Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister for ACC) : I move, That the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This bill merges the Accident Compensation Corporation’s (ACC) self-employed work account and the employers’ account into a single work account, so that levies better reflect industry risk and are more stable. The bill also renames the medical misadventure account as the treatment injury account.

Under the current ACC account structure, the use of self-employment as a rating factor results in the different treatment of small businesses that carry out similar activities that entail similar risks. For example, self-employed plumbers currently pay a different levy rate from that paid by sole-trading plumbers who have set themselves up in a company structure, even though they face exactly the same risk of workplace injury. The basis for this unfairness lies in the failed privatisation attempt made by the previous National Government. The insurance industry did not want to insure all self-employed people, because they knew that they would not be able to make enough money from them due to administration costs. So an arbitrary distinction was made based solely on business structure, and the self-employed work account was thus created.

With coverage for personal injury being renationalised, the self-employed work account is no longer needed. The account merger will allow levies paid by businesses to be paid on the industry risk associated with their industry grouping, rather than on their business structure. In its time, the self-employed work account has been very unsuccessful. It has high volatility due to its small earnings combined with a high turnover of levy payers from year to year. Small businesses in the self-employed work account, particularly, have cited levy instability as having created problems for their business cost planning.

Merging this account with the employers’ account will ensure that the levies are more stable for both the self-employed and employers. The merger will also improve the focus on reducing the risk of injury by encouraging industries to better coordinate health and safety across their workplaces, regardless of their business structure.

This merger is not intended to redistribute the excess reserves currently in the employers’ account to the self-employed. The bill, therefore, provides for a 3-year transition period for self-employed and employer levy rates in each industry or risk class, and the relative funding positions of the employers’ account and the self-employed work account to be equalised. This provision enables the Government to ring-fence the difference in the funding contributions between the self-employed and employers—approximately $100 million of the excess reserves in the employers’ account—and reimburse these funds to employers through rebates during the transition period.

I know that the Opposition will again try to pick out the businesses that may have a levy rate next year that has increased on this year, and blame it on the bill. The fact is that the indicative average levy rate under the new merged work account has been calculated at 89c per $100 of liable earnings for employers and the self-employed. This rate is based on the same funding target that is currently set down for the separate accounts, and is considered to be sustainable over 3 years. After the transition period is complete, employers and self-employed people in the same industry or risk class will pay the same levy rate.

The Government intends that the remaining overfunding in the merged account be returned to levy payers during the 2007-08 levy year and out-years. If, as some have requested, the entire excess reserve in the employers’ account were to be refunded to levy payers in one levy year, employers would experience a significant increase in levy rates in years to come. That is because the ACC would not have any excess to fund the future cost of claims. What many—including the Opposition spokesperson—do not understand is that levies are collected each year in order to fund not only the cost of claims for that year but also what the claims would cost across the lifetime of the injury. If the excess in the account was fully refunded to employers next year, levies would need to be dramatically increased in future years in order to pay for the ongoing cost of the claims that were made.

Using the bill to destabilise levies from year to year would be totally inconsistent with the objective of levy stability, which is a fundamental principle of both this bill and the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act, which it is amending. If the amount levied from employers was lowered significantly more than is planned, ACC Partnership Programme employers would be more likely to exit the programme to take advantage of the rebate of the excess funding. That would obviously jeopardise the functioning of the programme, and it would also give financial advantage to partnership programme employers who had not financially contributed to the account from which they were benefiting.

This merger is also likely to have a positive impact on injury prevention in workplaces. By bringing self-employed people and employers together at the risk-class level, the experiences of the respective groups would come to bear on the levy rates. This will incentivise a greater level of cooperation on injury reduction between employers and the self-employed within the industry groupings of the new work account.

As both of the accounts are projected to be adequately funded for 2007-08, merging the accounts to take effect from 1 April 2007 will make the transition to a single work account easier by reducing the impact of the merger on levy payers. During the 2007-08 levy round ACC provided levy payers with information on the proposed policy package, including indicative levy rates for the merged work account to assist those seeking to understand the impact of the merger proposal.

Following the levy consultation, ACC published updated indicative levy rates on its website. The Department of Labour also wrote to each of the organisations that provided a submission on the bill, and to those who had made submissions on the proposal during the levy consultation, with further information on how the merger of accounts would be implemented.

I note that the two amendments in the name of Dr Paul Hutchison, the former National spokesperson on ACC, were defeated in the Committee of the whole House. What Dr Hutchison was asking for in his amendments will be provided, under my assurance to the House—and I repeat this in my third reading speech—on the ACC website. In my view the proposal was sensible, but it does not need to be in the legislation. However, it is something that I would be happy to reconsider in the future.

As mentioned, the bill also renames the medical misadventure account as the treatment injury account. This renaming of the account is appropriate, as the terminology in the Act was changed from “medical misadventure” to “treatment injury” some time ago. The reason for leaving the name of the account at the time was to allow health professionals and health professional organisations to become familiar with the treatment injury regime. Now that a sufficient period has passed for these groups to come to terms with the new terminology, the time is right to rename the account.

This bill builds on the framework provided in the existing legislation by ensuring that our accident compensation scheme is funded in a fair and sustainable manner. I conclude by thanking all members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for their careful consideration of the bill in a short time frame. I also thank the officials from both ACC and the Department of Labour for their fine work on the bill. I commend this bill to the House.

PANSY WONG (National) : That was an appalling contribution from the Minister for ACC, Ruth Dyson, who is no more than an apologist for the State-owned monopoly agency the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC). This bill does nothing more than legalise stealing from both the employers’ account and the self-employed work account, and I will seek to explain that point further.

First of all, today Treasury released the 6-month account to December of the Government account. Once again, that account recorded an operating surplus that was $1 billion up on the forecasts. But Treasury went on to say that most of the extra money could not be spent, because the surplus was mainly due to increases in investment return from the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, the Government Superannuation Fund, and ACC. Actually, that additional contribution from ACC amounted to $254 million. How appropriate it is for Treasury to go on to say in its press statement that those entities will hold on to any gains that are made.

Let us now come back to ACC. Apart from holding on to that $254 million, it is holding on to a $688 million surplus in the employers’ account, which represents a 63 percent margin. It is also holding on to the $60 million surplus that is in the self-employed work account before it is merged, which is a 20 percent margin. Even the Minister herself said that ACC wanted eventually to operate to an 11 percent margin on the account. But before the merger it insists that the surplus margin needs to stay at 53 percent so that in future it can make rebates to those people. But why in future? Which other entity in New Zealand has the luxury of taxing people, holding on to the surplus, and not paying interest? Even the Inland Revenue Department would pay interest on the use of taxpayers’ overpayment of tax—it would rebate that.

This illogical, ridiculous stance of ACC and the Minister seeks to penalise those hard-working self-employed people, because for the next 2 years they will be asked to front up with the additional $100 million so that their account, which sits at a 20 percent margin, will go up to a 53 percent margin. How logical is that? Well, let me give the public, and those poor self-employed people in the meat industry, a taste of what is to come for them in the next 2 years. Self-employed people in the meat industry, if there were to be no merger, would have to pay a levy of only $6.57 per $100. I ask members to guess how much they pay—[Interruption] Well, I am glad that Mr Peter Brown is at last speaking up on behalf of those self-employed people! He supported that—he thought that the rate of $6.57 was too expensive. But I ask members to guess what he did. He supported this bill so that that rate could go up to $8.83 per $100. I am looking forward to those poor self-employed people in the meat industry knocking on the doors of New Zealand First members’ electorate offices and asking them who put them into Parliament so that they could penalise those hard-working self-employed people.

How illogical this bill is, which the Minister insists is helping the self-employed! The Meat Industry Association wants an answer from the Minister, which is still to come. It pointed out that under this bill, members of the Meat Industry Association would have to pay an additional $360,000 for the next 2 years, though past history has shown that claims are only $25,000. So I am really looking forward to Mr Peter Brown of New Zealand First, who has no sympathy and no empathy for hard-working self-employed people, taking a call to justify his party’s position.

It is outrageous for this Government and the parties that support the passage of this bill to impose, on the one hand, a surcharge of $100 million on the self-employed, and, on the other hand, to hold back the $688 million surplus from the employers’ account contributors. I proposed a sensible amendment during the Committee stage. ACC says it wants to achieve a margin of only 11 percent. I was being conservative; as a National member I feel apologetic towards my colleagues for saying that ACC might get it wrong, so we should give it a 9 percent additional margin.

So my amendment is to bring down the employers’ account to a 20 percent margin and still allow ACC a 9 percent leeway, which means that employers should be entitled to a $500 million rebate—which is their money. At the same time, that sensible amendment would have meant that self-employed people would not be penalised for the additional $100 million.

I want to acknowledge Mr Gordon Copeland and the whole United Future party. They, at least, came to this Parliament to stand up for their supporters, hard-working self-employed people. They support that sensible amendment.

The other sensible amendment that I have moved is to defer the passage of this bill until April 2009, for a very good reason. New Zealand would then have a National Government, which would have a Minister like myself, who would not make apologies for ACC and who would make that State monopoly agency work for the people—not, like the Minister says, hold on to, confiscate, and steal those surpluses so that ACC can feel comfortable in case it gets the calculation wrong. That is why my diligent and intelligent colleague Dr Paul Hutchison also asked why ACC cannot subject itself to an independent team to look at the way it arrives at those levies. After all, the corporation has a history of building up those reserves. The difference between National and Labour is that we are on the side of hard-working New Zealanders, and we oppose the passage of this bill.

SUE BRADFORD (Green) : I will take just a short call this afternoon to confirm that the Green Party welcomes the return of this bill to the House for its third reading, and that we continue to offer our support to this and all other Government efforts to work towards a fair and sustainable accident compensation system for this country. There is still much that needs to be done, but every constructive step along the way helps.

The most important part of the bill we are dealing with today is the merger of the accident compensation employers’ account with the self-employed work account. The Green Party believes it is only sensible and equitable that people should not be discriminated against on the basis of their business structure when their injury risks are the same. These kinds of historical inequities arose from the National Party’s unfortunate privatisation project in the late 1990s, and it is just a pity that we have had to wait 7 years to see this particular discrepancy put right.

I would now like to take a couple of moments to explain briefly why the Green Party did not support Pansy Wong’s amendment yesterday in relation to the merger of the accounts. The issues that the National member was trying to address are covered already in clause 8, through a new section that permits the Government to make regulations to cover a transitional period until the 2009 tax year. That change allows the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) to deal with the problems that Ms Wong rightfully raised, and the Government has indicated that $100 million will be set aside for that purpose. This money will, in effect, act as a rebate for employers but will be assessed with reference to their business activity risk and to maintaining the stability of levies. Pansy Wong wanted to leave this new clause intact, but also to rebate in, with no defined mechanism, in 2007-08 an additional 20 percent across the board to employers. The cost of this would have been a further $100 million.

Essentially she was recommending an arbitrary, one-off gift of $100 million, to be made by ACC to employers, making it a final total extra cost to the corporation of $200 million, given that she was seeking to leave the Government’s proposed transitional mechanism intact. The Green Party therefore voted against the National Party amendment, as we believe that although we acknowledge that historical anomalies exist, it is better to start with a clean slate by simply merging the two accounts, as encapsulated in the bill.

Merging the employers’ account and the self-employed work account into a single account will be a big help in equalising and lowering the cost burden for the self-employed, who will also still have the option of taking out the CoverPlus Extra insurance if they want to. The Green Party welcomes the third reading of this bill and looks forward to further improvements to our accident compensation system—perhaps of a more substantial nature, next time round.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) : The Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill is a very unfortunate bill, in that it cements in the dull monopoly of the State’s Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), which unfortunately is becoming less and less efficient as we go on. We have heard the Minister speak about the changes in 1998 that galvanised the ACC monopoly into action. Privatisation was associated with a rapid number of changes, which included early rehabilitation, much better safety procedures and efforts within the workforce, a lowering of the levies, and, more important than anything else, a lowering of accidents in the workplace. The changes galvanised the ACC, and it has benefited from them over the last 5 to 6 years. It is only now that we are starting to see the slowing down of ACC and the typical monopoly reactions, and this bill absolutely epitomises them.

In the title debate I suggested that the bill be called “The Labour Government (Defy Commonsense) Bill”, which is what it does by rewarding those at high risk and penalising those at low risk. It could also include a grab of over $400 million from employers who paid that money in good faith, believing that their account was fully funded, and I say that money should be given back. The merging of the accounts is directly the opposite of the basic insurance principle of matching premiums with risks. In this bill the employers’ account, which is associated with lower risks, lower claims, and lower accident rates, will be merged with the self-employed work account, which is associated with higher accident rates and higher claims. The Labour Government, intent on its socialisation of the insurance system, is merging those two accounts, to the detriment of the efficiency of ACC and to the detriment of the direct signals and incentives to improve behaviour.

The Labour Government is in complete denial over the value of experience-rating. We heard that the other night, when the Hon Mark Gosche was talking about insurance. He just wants it all to be pooled—all with the same sorts of premiums. That is sheer madness, in terms of human behaviour, and the behaviour that we know—

Dr Jonathan Coleman: Actuarial madness.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: It is actuarial madness, as my colleague Dr Jonathan Coleman calls it; he is absolutely right. One of the particularly concerning things about the last 6 to 7 years under the Labour Government is that moderate and severe accident rates have gone up in this country. There have been hundreds of thousands of accidents, and the Labour Government, through this bill, is sending the wrong signals. It should be doing the direct opposite of what it is doing, and making sure that those who are at higher risk do pay higher premiums. That is the particular madness about this bill.

The other thing that has occurred with the merging of the accounts is that the Labour Government has totally broken faith with employers. They have been paying their levies in good faith, thinking that their account would be fully funded, and they have accumulated a surplus in the order of $570 million, or something like that, where the risk margin has risen to 163 percent. I say good on Gordon Copeland from United Future for pointing out how silly the Labour Government has been. ACC itself recommends a risk margin of 111 percent. My colleague Pansy Wong suggested the very sensible amendment that the risk margin should go to 120 percent, and that the money grabbed by this Labour Government should be given back to employers—where it came from. But, no, what is the Government going to do? It is to go ahead with a risk margin that is way over that recommended by ACC itself. That absolutely defies principle, and it absolutely defies common sense. I say good on Gordon Copeland for pointing that out.

There is no doubt that a lot of other things are wrong with this bill, but I was prepared to put in two very sensible amendments that would at least have brought transparency into the auditing process of ACC, so that both the public and levy payers could understand it. I was glad that the Minister said those amendments were intelligent and constructive, but then she turned round and did not support them going into the legislation. At least she has said she will ensure the information is put on the ACC website, and we will hold her to account on that. But it shows the contrariness of the Labour Government that when it accepts that an amendment is constructive and intelligent, it then turns round and does not vote for it.

Finally, I would like to point out another thing that just cements in how Labour has broken faith with the process one would expect from ACC. In the transitional provisions of this bill, the Government has said that the levy consultation process for 2007 and 2008 will be bypassed. That is an absolute travesty. It is ominous and unprecedented, and it goes in line with the grab of $468 million that the Government has taken from employers.

This bill, absolutely, reflects just how badly the Labour Government understands the basic principle of accident insurance. It reflects that the Government is not prepared to put incentives in place to reduce the number of accidents in New Zealand, and it reflects the Government’s inability to be able to stick with the time-honoured process that all levy players expect. It has done away with the consultation process for 2007 and 2008—and that is shocking.

Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) : The bill we are about to pass through its third reading, the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill, came to the select committee that I chair, the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and I was interested to note some of the strange comments from National speakers last night about the process the select committee used. We had a very limited time—which had been voted on by this House; it was not decided upon by the committee—that meant we were not in a position, obviously, to open the bill up to the normal public process of submissions. So we chose a very broad range of representative groups of employers, unions, and other interests to make submissions. They did so very well, and they came forward with some interesting views on the matter. It is interesting to note that all of the National members on the select committee agreed with that process; there is no record of National members voting against it. Yet they came into the Chamber and took cheap shots at the select committee chair—myself—last night, for a process they had agreed to unanimously. That paints the picture of the standard of Opposition we have—purely sitting there, not looking at the realities—

Peter Brown: Pansy Wong was one of them, wasn’t she?

Hon MARK GOSCHE: I think Pansy Wong was one of them, but I am not sure because they change spokespersons so regularly over on those benches that it is very hard to keep up with who is the spokesperson on accident compensation this week and who will be the spokesperson next week.

But the fact of the matter is that the members of that party over there were in agreement with the process, and they never raised a single vote against it in that committee. That actually illustrates that they approach their job as an Opposition from a fairly lazy viewpoint. I say that they have a fixed position on these matters; logic and rational argument does not actually count with them. That is why not one of them is able to explain why they want to vote against this bill and punish self-employed people. That is supposed to be the party of entrepreneurial spirit, the party of capitalism, and the party that supports self-employed people, who quite often go on to form companies and run larger businesses. But many, many people in business in New Zealand start out being self-employed. It is the first step.

Peter Brown: I was one of them.

Hon MARK GOSCHE: Peter Brown indicates that it was his first step into business, before he went on to greater things. And that is the case for so many New Zealanders. Why has the National Party turned its back on them? After making the mistake it did back in 1998 or 1999—or whenever it was that it hocked off the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) to its mates in the private insurance industry—why does National want to repeat that mistake 15 or 16 years on, and show that it has not learnt anything? In fact, National is prepared to say to hard-working self-employed people out there that they are on their own, as they were when it hocked off ACC last time and set up the separate account. The account is not there for a good reason, and the evidence that was presented to the committee in relation to the bill showed that.

The reason there was a difference between the self-employed work account and the employers’ account was predominantly that the self-employed work in high-risk industries. That is the reason. It is not because of any other reason; it is because self-employed people were in industries like fisheries, farming, and forestry when they happened to set up as self-employed persons. The risk for those people is the same, and we illustrated that last night when Dr Paul Hutchison—strangely—chose professional rugby league players, or rugby union players, as an example. He tried to argue that if professional rugby league players running out on to Mount Smart Stadium for the Warriors had set up their business affairs and turned themselves into companies—and I am sure that some of them do—they should pay a different levy from the people in the same jerseys, running out on to the same field in the same team, who were self-employed. We on this side of the House—and on those other two sides, because National is the only party voting against this legislation—are still waiting for a rational, logical explanation as to why a self-employed rugby league player should pay a different premium from, and have a different risk to, the one who has set up a company. It is the same for a plumber.

The select committee heard from a representative of the Seafood Industry Council who was in a cleft stick. He said that he was not taking a position on this bill, as the National members wanted him to do, because he wanted to be able to live a little longer. If he had said he was for the bill, he would have half his membership after his throat, and if he had said he was against the bill, the other half would be out to get him. On the back of fishing boats, that situation may occur—people with exactly the same risk and exactly the same job, but operating in a different way in terms of whether they are self-employed or set up under a company structure.

So the situation is that National is again parading to the nation its desire to return to the failed policy it had back then in the late 1990s of privatising ACC, despite all the evidence that where that has happened, or where it is the basis of worker compensation around the world, the levies for everybody are higher and the services are not as good. In my view, we have the best system in the world. It is envied by many, and a few have managed to try to copy it. But does the National Party recognise that? No!

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

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : Let me make the New Zealand First position clear from the onset. When we last debated the issue of accident compensation we came down in favour of privatisation. We voted against the bill that did that, in 1998 or early 1999 as I recall, because we did not think it gave enough lead-in time before the election, but we thought the merits of privatisation outweighed a monopoly-type situation. We have not had a debate on it since.

Hon Maurice Williamson: Good man!

PETER BROWN: I thank the member for telling me that but I want to make it clear that we believe that a private scheme, or one that allows a degree of competitiveness, provides for efficiency, innovation, and cost-effectiveness, whilst if there is a monopoly, there is monopoly-type thinking.

But I want to be fair to the Government—[Interruption] I have to say to that member over there that he is so imbalanced that he will fall off his pedestal. But we take a balanced approach; we voted against the 2000 bill to nationalise or reform—whatever it was—the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) and we made a few stipulations at the time. On behalf of New Zealand First I personally spoke to two Ministers, the Hon Ruth Dyson—

Hon Maurice Williamson: Two Ministers?

PETER BROWN: Yes, there were two of them at one time. It was overpowering—just me against two Ministers, and both of them women. So members can see that I was at a huge disadvantage. But I spoke to them and outlined our concerns. Over the years—we have to be fair—they have addressed many of those concerns. They have not got them all yet, but the last one was to incorporate medical misadventure into the accident compensation regime. Up until a few months ago—I think it was a few months ago; let us say it was a year ago—a person subject to medical misadventure had to prove his or her case. We said that was totally wrong from the word go. The Government has accepted that and has incorporated it under the accident compensation banner. They now want to change the term from medical misadventure account to treatment injury account. We do not like that; it does not reflect what it is all about. But nobody has come and said anything about it at all—the public have not, the National Party Opposition just accepts it—

Hon Maurice Williamson: Didn’t know until tonight!

PETER BROWN: They did not know it—the member sits on the committee! So we are not going to pull the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill down for that, but I am registering tonight that we are not happy with it.

We are happy that the employers’ account and the self-employed work account are being combined into one account. After my managerial role as a stevedore, I started my own little business. I was self-employed.

Hon Maurice Williamson: Really?

PETER BROWN: I was self-employed, yes. Then I took on people. I took on a partner—

Simon Power: Sure?

PETER BROWN: I am absolutely positive, I say to Mr Power. I had quite an enterprising little company and I was doing quite well. But I paid the same levy—as I recall—as I did when I was self-employed. It did not occur to me that there should be a difference. I was doing exactly the same job and I should pay the same levy. That is what this legislation is all about. I heard National Party members saying the self-employed should be paying more. In actual fact, that is not true. It is the higher risk occupation where more should be paid, and where the organisation or the individual is not prepared to address the risk potential, more should be paid. This bill brings them all together and, therefore, the levy is paid on the risk.

Now we have the situation of whether the levy structure is correct. I listened to Pansy Wong in the select committee and she made an impact on me. I thought she had a point. [Interruption] I listened to her—and she will verify this—and I asked her to get me some details. She gave me some very loose details. Then I asked her whether she would give me further details that she was going to present to the House. If I could convince the Minister and the Government of this, would National support it? She said oh no, National opposed it anyway. So I thought it was going a little bit beyond—

Hon Maurice Williamson: She would have said that if it’s good legislation, we would have supported it.

PETER BROWN: No, I do not think she was saying that at all. I then heard we should be paying the money back to the employers because there is too much money in the account. I listened to Gordon Copeland last night. He was outraged. He was actually tearing his hair out with anger and frustration because the money should be paid back to the employers because there is too much in the account.

Simon Power: Gordon Copeland being self-righteous? No!

PETER BROWN: I can tell members that he was sitting behind me and with the hot air coming off him I nearly floated off. But I am sure that when Judy Turner gets the opportunity, she will explain exactly about this. Let me tell members that when they look into the practicalities of paying the money back to the employers, they will see that it is downright impossible. Some employers last through the whole period, some start up, and some fall over. It is impossible to calculate who should get what. The rebate could be cut, or the rebate that the Minister is saying will occur in the fullness of time could be increased.

But let me say to the House with some sincerity that today I had a letter from a guy who started out his life as a fitter some years ago—[Interruption]—I ask the member to listen to this because this is important. He started out and he worked on a number of projects that involved asbestos. Now he has asbestitis—

Hon Member: Asbestosis.

PETER BROWN: I thank the member for correcting me. That is what he has. He has been diagnosed, he has been told it is a dreadful disease, and he has been told it is terminal. He has gone to ACC and asked for a payout of a lump-sum compensation so that he can live the rest of his life in comfort. They have given him a pittance of an independence allowance and have told him that if he had put the claim in a few months after he did, he would have got a lump-sum compensation. I tell members that his letter makes one’s heart bleed. It makes one cry.

I ask the Government to look at these sorts of things. If there is money in the employers’ account that has to go anywhere, the Government should think of extending the claim time. It should think of the people that this legislation is all about. We are insuring here, under a monopoly organisation, virtually all the workers of New Zealand. Some of those workers—mature people—are finding that they have been subjected to some sort of affliction that they did not know they had. It is emerging in their older age and they are now finding that they are entitled to peanuts when really we should be saying that there is money in the account—as National has been saying all afternoon, and I think to some degree Labour has recognised that—and that, instead of paying it back and giving greater rebates, we should be extending the claims back a year, or two, or three, so that these people can spend their lives in some sort of dignity.

That is the New Zealand First message to this Parliament and that is the message we are asking members to support. We will support this bill and we will pressurise this Government to address the real issues. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) : I rise on behalf of United Future to speak in support of the third reading of the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill. I express at the beginning United Future’s concern that the Committee of the whole House failed to support the Supplementary Order Paper in the name of Pansy Wong that would have allowed a rebate to New Zealand employers. Her colleague Simon Power suggested that my colleague Gordon Copeland was self-righteous in his efforts to back Pansy Wong’s amendment, which I find a little difficult to understand. Maybe he jumped in before he had all the facts.

The Supplementary Order Paper that Pansy Wong was keen to get through last night talked about the risk ratio that the Accident Compensation Corporation itself has set. It believes that its assets should be 111 percent of its liabilities, yet the current figure of the employers account is 163 percent. Its assets are 163 percent against its liabilities. My colleague Gordon Copeland figured out that that represents $468 million of overpayment to the employers’ account, and he suggested that before the two accounts are joined and reconciled, that money should be divvied back out to the people who had overpaid in the first place. We are disappointed that people did not see the vision of that last night, so that that move could go ahead.

I want also to correct something that the New Zealand First speaker has just mentioned. He talked with some apprehension about the new account called the treatment injury account, and he was concerned that this was some sort of new provision. I say to Mr Brown that all that it does is reflect that we changed the terminology in an earlier amendment bill. We changed—as he rightly said—the fact that when people receive an injury due to a medical misadventure of some kind, historically they had to prove that the medical misadventure had taken place before they could receive compensation. An earlier amendment bill changed that, and in changing it, we changed the terminology. So we no longer refer to “medical misadventure” under the accident compensation legislation.

We now call it “treatment injury”, because people no longer have to prove that there was negligence on the part of the practitioner from whom they received the treatment. If they have an injury and it is the result of the treatment, then they receive compensation. So calling the account the treatment injury account is purely to reflect the new language and provisions of an earlier amendment bill. So it is nothing sinister; it has been in the legislation for some time now. In relation to medical misadventure, if some fault is found on the part of a medical practitioner, it is still the domain of the practitioner’s regulatory complaints authority. The medical practitioner can be put under disciplinary measures if that is deemed to be helpful to the situation.

United Future supports the overall intention of this amendment bill. It does seem ludicrous that if people are doing the same job with the same level of risk, they should be paying separate amounts depending on their employment arrangements—whether they are self-employed or employees. We think that is a nonsense, and we are happy to see that issue resolved with this bill. We are very happy with the work that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee did to bring the bill back to the House.

I will reiterate that we are very disappointed that the Committee of the whole House failed to see the picture suggested by the Supplementary Order Paper that Pansy Wong was putting forward. I think it would have made a huge improvement to the outcome. I notice that the Green member Sue Bradford felt that the bill did cover that because regulation-making powers were mentioned in one of the clauses. I took it from what she suggested that she meant if we wanted to pay it back, there is the potential to do it. I think it is an important issue. It is a lot of money, and I think when those two accounts are blended we will lose sight of who is owed what, and the matter will just be ignored. In fact, what will happen is that surplus will end up propping up the new joint account, and I think that is an unfair provision. However, aside from that Supplementary Order Paper not being agreed to, we are happy to support the third reading.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) :Tēnā koe, Madam Assistant Speaker, kia ora tātou. The Māori Party comes to the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill aware of the responsibilities of the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) under the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act of 2001. I understand that section 3 of that Act charges the corporation with “providing for a fair and sustainable scheme for managing personal injury that has, as its overriding goals, minimising both the overall incidence of injury in the community, …”.

As a consequence of the proposals that have come before the House during the passage of this legislation, all employees, self-employed people, and private and domestic workers will pay levies into the work account, with entitlements funded out of it also. The drive to create a fair and sustainable scheme has been complicated in the case of the self-employed work account by the fact that this account is often volatile due to the small number of earners and the potential claimant base. The incentive behind the bill is, therefore, to merge the employers’ account and the self-employed work account into a single work account.

The Māori Party supports any initiatives that seek to address inequities and instability in the current system and to make compliance comparatively hassle free. The intention of the 2001 Act was to provide a level playing field for claimants, whether self-employed, in high-risk industries, or in private employment. A level playing field is obviously something that every member in this House would support as being in keeping with the commonly held view about there being one law for all and due access to justice.

In this context we were concerned to read reports from the Access Support Services lobby group that ACC is exiting blue-collar workers from the scheme at a faster rate than it is exiting white-collar workers. According to a study of ACC’s own injury statistics in 2005, a plant and machinery operator is twice as likely to be exited from the scheme as a clerk or administrator is. Workers involved in the agricultural and fishing sectors or in trades are also disproportionately more likely to exit the scheme than legislators and administrators or professionals. It would appear that the so-called blue-collar workers are less equipped and supported to be able to negotiate ACC support for their rehabilitation than, say, their white-collar counterparts. This clearly demonstrates a class bias and, I might add, a race bias.

The Māori Party is advised that similar statistics are also likely to be seen for Māori workers as compared with non-Māori workers. However, there is some lack of clarity around data collection, which we want to raise in the context of this Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill. It should be remembered that until 1998, ethnicity data was not collected for accident compensation claims. Ten years ago the ACC Injury Prevention Strategic Plan identified a goal to “substantially reduce serious injuries in ethnic groups overrepresented in injury statistics”.

It goes without saying, of course, that even though Māori have a higher injury rate across the board, Māori are significantly less likely to make an accident compensation claim and are more likely to be declined cover. In honouring this strategic goal, ACC improved the collection of the ethnicity data by establishing the injury profile of Māori and Pacific peoples. Since 1998 ACC claim forms have included ethnicity as an option. However—and here is the catch—as it has not been obligatory, it is difficult to relate claims injuries to ethnicity. Despite this, what we do know from the information available to us is that the application and take-up rate of accident compensation by Māori is significantly lower than by non-Māori, particularly given that Māori are overrepresented in injury statistics across all age groups.

Let us look at the level playing field in more detail. The data tells us that the proportion of Māori continuing as claimants in a subsequent year is even lower, and that Māori have significantly higher chances of being declined ACC support than non-Māori. We also know that Māori aged 25 to 64 years, particularly Māori men, are more likely to be injured at work than are non-Māori. This reflects the types of occupations that Māori men are overrepresented in, such as manual and trade occupations.

Therefore when we look at the purpose of this bill, which proposes the merging of the self-employed and employers’ accounts, a very obvious question is how Māori will fare. It is important to note from the outset that Māori and Pasifika people constitute the lowest proportion of self-employed amongst their populations. The ethnic group with the greatest proportion classified as self-employed without employees is the Asian labour market, on 14.3 percent, and the European labour market, on 13.4 percent, as compared with the Māori labour market, on 6.5 percent, and the Pasifika labour market, on 4.4 percent. Those Māori who are self-employed are largely involved in the primary sector, in particular in agriculture, forestry, and fishing. Those areas are known as high-risk industries and occupations.

I am told that the Council of Trade Unions in its submission on this bill endorsed the merger approach as making practical sense in that it would bring clear focus to the areas of injury prevention and health protections across particular industries and enterprises. Therefore, we would hope that the high-risk or low-paid industries within which Māori are generally employed—fishing, farming, and forestry—will benefit from the new emphasis on safety management practices and capacity for weekly compensation cover. In line with this new emphasis we would expect to see increased priority on educating the self-employed about safe working practices, and the development and implementation of new measures to ensure that safety standards are adopted.

During this third reading debate we want to bring to the fore again the previous concerns raised about the impacts of this bill’s proposals on the self-employed. We were aware that because of this bill the levies will almost certainly increase, and in some high-risk industries like fishing and forestry levy increases could be quite significant. The table provided in the Government’s briefing paper suggested that there are likely to be increases of between 30 percent and 56 percent across a range of industries as a result of the merger. We would be interested in learning what these implications will be, in particular for the employment areas of greatest risk.

Finally, the issues we have canvassed in this speech extend, of course, outside the coverage of this bill. The gap in claiming accident compensation cover between Māori and non-Māori, the lack of awareness of accident compensation entitlements, the inequality of outcomes for Māori, the increased risk of injury that accompanies industries such as fishing, forestry, and farming, and the serious issues related to the gaps in data collection do, of course, warrant far greater consideration than we can give in this forum.

We the Māori Party have appreciated the willingness of the Minister to share with us the strategies that the Accident Compensation Corporation is leading, such as the PaeArahi position, staffing and general practitioner training in cultural competency, and other initiatives related to the Māori access strategy. We support the merger as a way of enhancing the current system and we will, therefore, support the bill. We are hopeful that the issues we have outlined today will remain a high priority for the Minister and the agency. They will need to be a high priority if we are truly committed to creating an enduring and sustainable accident compensation scheme based on fairness and justice for all. Kia ora tātou.

JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) : I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I refer you to Speakers’ ruling 16/5 regarding eating in the Chamber. The Minister on duty in the House tonight for the Government has been eating in the Chamber. She had a full biscuit going there and ate all the way through the speech from the Māori Party. I ask you, Madam Assistant Speaker, to ask the Minister to refrain from doing that.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): I did not see the Minister but if she was doing that, she knows there is a rule about it.

SUE MORONEY (Labour) : We are here to discuss the third reading of the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill. It is my privilege and my very great pleasure to rise to speak in support of the third reading of this bill. I have quite a bit of personal interest in this whole area, and I want to talk about the world-class system we have in regard to accident compensation, which is the envy of many other countries. When we look at some of the issues raised by Te Ururoa Flavell in the speech he has just made, where he talked about people’s knowledge of their rights under this system, I think we can reflect and see that it is just as well we do not have a system based on people having to know their legal entitlements and having to be able to afford to pay for lawyers, in order to get any money back for injury treatment.

Simon Power: It’s lawyer-free—that’s right! It works superbly well!

SUE MORONEY: I know that National members would love to give this whole area over to lawyers and make it an absolute nightmare for working people. They really want to make sure that working people do not have good access to compensation when injured at work. However, this Government will not sell our accident compensation system to the legal profession, the Insurance Council of New Zealand, or any other area like that. Our very fine accident compensation system is very accessible. By world standards it is much more accessible for working people than systems in other countries, and we certainly do not want to go down the line of reducing that accessibility.

This bill clarifies and simplifies the accident compensation system even more, because it brings equity into the situation. I want to outline the background as to why we are even here talking about this bill, which merges the two accounts of self-employed and employed people. It was an artificial split in the first place. If we go back in time, we know that it was never meant to be the case with our wonderful accident compensation system. It was decided purely on the basis of industry and the occupations people were involved in, which is how the levies were set traditionally. However, in the 1990s the National Government saw fit to split the self-employed off from the employed, in an effort to line the system up for privatisation by insurance companies. We are now coming full circle and rectifying the very artificial split that occurred during that time. So what we are now doing is consistent with the aims and objectives of the very collective system we have in place—

Dr Jonathan Coleman: Of the Labour Party.

SUE MORONEY: —yes, that is right; the collective responsibility of the Labour Party—that ensures that people are treated equitably. This bill makes sure that despite what National members have tried to argue, the scheme does give the right incentives. Of course it does. This bill actually links the injuries to—

Simon Power: Yield to Darien Fenton. At least she’ll say it with passion.

SUE MORONEY: Mr Power might learn something from this, because—

Simon Power: I doubt it.

SUE MORONEY: I am sure the member will, because when National members argue that this legislation does nothing to link injuries to levies, they are completely and utterly wrong. [Interruption] I will explain. Jonathan Coleman does not know what I mean by this, so I will need to explain it to him. When the levies were split based on the business structure, it was nothing to do with the type of industry people were involved it, but it was to do with the way their businesses were structured. How did that make the levies appropriate to the injuries sustained in those industries? No one from the National Party has been able to explain that to us yet.

National members do seem to have a view on the self-employed. I am not sure what they have against the self-employed, but they have tried to portray the view that somehow the self-employed take a whole lot of risks with their own personal health and safety that other people would not take. I cannot understand where the National Party is coming from on this issue. Why are National members so against the self-employed? Having been self-employed myself, my understanding is that self-employed people rely solely on their ability to perform their jobs. Why on earth would they take greater risks with their health and safety than employed people? There is silence from the Opposition. That is what Opposition members have been trying to portray throughout this debate, but they still have not been able to explain why it is that without any evidence they believe self-employed people are sloppier in their work practices, or put themselves in harm’s way more, than people employed by companies. It is very interesting that Opposition members should be arguing this, because they have not been able to come up with a decent argument on it yet.

But even more interesting is being a member of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that considered this bill, and observing the National members on that committee. I thank the officials for the wonderful work they did on this bill and the large amount of very precise information they gave the select committee. They were able to put tables before us—quite complicated tables that took a while to work through—that showed exactly what the merger of the two accounts would mean for every industrial group. There were 127 levy risk groups, and the officials went through, in very fine detail, what the levies would mean for each of those groups, under both the separated accounts and the merged accounts.

As I was looking through all those figures, I was most interested in observing the National members, who went straight to the pages of the businesses they owned, and who seemed to be interested in looking only at what it would mean for the dairy farm, etc., that they happened to own personally. The questions for the officials that came from National members simply reflected their own personal interests in this field, whereas the rest of us—Peter Brown, and the others on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—were focusing on what the impact would be for the rest of New Zealand. We were not consumed with our own personal interests; we were looking to see what would happen overall. However, that was certainly not what was happening from the National Party’s perspective.

But there was a bit of a dilemma, because when the National members did look at what it meant for them personally, they discovered that the levies looked pretty damned good under this situation. Under the new bill, the levies for those particular members were looking a lot better when the accounts were merged. That was very interesting—I think it was one of those flip-flop moments—because it caused them the ultimate dilemma: “Do we argue for this bill as National Party members, because it is personally good for us?”. Out of self-interest I could see them wondering: “Should I actually support this bill because, personally, it does a lot for me, or should I toe the party line and back the Insurance Council position?”. What a dilemma! “Do I go as a National Party member with personal self-interest, or do I back the party line to ensure that the party can have good donations from the Insurance Council?”. Well, I think at the end of the day—

Simon Power: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The member was fine until that last remark, and you will know, Madam Assistant Speaker, that it is completely out of line to suggest that any political party, or member of Parliament, is under the influence or direction of any outside organisation.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): The member is correct. The member will withdraw that remark.

SUE MORONEY: I withdraw that remark. It was, however, very interesting to watch the dilemma, and the flip-flop that was actually happening before us in the select committee, about which line National members would take.

They have ended up taking the party line, but it sounded like opposition for opposition’s sake. I listened very carefully to what Peter Brown said in his speech and in discussions he was having with Pansy Wong, looking for the very fine detail and the evidence for Pansy Wong to back up the facts she was asserting about this bill. When those facts and the detail was not forthcoming, then that sounded to me as if the Opposition were opposing this for the Opposition’s sake.

Finally, I want to talk about what happens to people. We are talking about statistics and levies here, but I want to talk about the impact on people’s lives when they are injured at work because, after all, behind all the facts and figures we have looked at, that is the real point of what we are dealing with here. Certainly, in my time of training health and safety representatives in the workplace, I know that they were able to tell me very clearly about the impact on the lives of working people when injured at work, particularly if workers had had to take time off work due to those injuries. So I want to remind the House that we are talking about significant impacts on people’s lives. That is where these levies go—to ensure that people can have dignity when they have been injured in their working lives. That helps to take the financial pressure off them, and it can help the impact on family relationships, as well.

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote) : Labour supporters listening to the radio at home are going to be chilled to the marrow by that speech, because that was the voice of the Labour Party rejuvenation programme. That dissembling, illogical ramble is what Labour is bringing into Parliament and presumably we cannot go much lower than that standard of oratory.

One of the arguments that we have heard from these Labour members throughout is that insurance premium will be dictated by business structure. Mark Gosche spoke constantly about the example of the rugby league player. He was saying that just because a rugby league player is self-employed rather than having a business structure that player will not be tackled any differently from anybody else. They are saying that people in the same occupation have the same level of business risk. They do not seem to get the point.

Let us put the issue just a bit more simply. If the members over there cannot understand the idea that people doing the same occupation can have different levels of risk, let us put it in terms they may understand, such as political risk—who might be here after the next election—and put a risk premium on that.

Mrs Yates, the former member for Hamilton East, lost her seat so one could say that she is unlikely to be here at the next election. So that is probably a medium-low risk. Then there is Minister Dyson. She probably will be here because she will have a reasonable list place, but then she could explode at any moment. So that is a high level political risk. Then, of course, there is Mr Peter Brown, the deputy leader of New Zealand First over there. He is a relatively safe pair of hands, but the reality is there is not a hell of a lot of excitement there either, and the final reality is that his party will not be here at the next election.

So there are three members with three very different sets of circumstances. But under Labour thinking, the same risk premium would be put on each one on the chance of them being here after the next election. Now that is a simple example and Labour members should be able to get that. The three members are all doing the same job but there is definitely a different level of risk for all three with regard to their being here after the next election. That is really what this legislation comes down to.

The Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill will pool two pre-existing accounts into one so that the risk is spread across all. But in actuarial terms that is complete madness because under the terms of risk rating there will always be different levels of risk for different individuals doing the same job. The reality is that that needs to be reflected in the premium. What we have here is a Labour Government bill that is driven purely by philosophy, and purely by ideology. Labour hates competition. Darien Fenton is a hardbitten unionist and does not like competition. She is going to get up in a few minutes and tell members that.

Darien Fenton: It’s a social contract!

Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: There, she said it. Socialism—that is what she wants. She wants socialism in accident compensation, and that is what one will get here.

But the reality is, if members look back through history, when accident compensation was put up for competition under the last National Government—as it will be again under the next one—insurance premiums went down and the levels of medium and serious risk declined. It was good for the people; it was good for business. But that party over there is anti-business and anti-employers. I have never heard these members, none of whom have ever been self-employed—although one claimed to be before—be so concerned about the rights of the self-employed.

This bill is a total rort. Labour will combine these two accounts. They will literally be stealing $500 million from the employers’ account and spreading it across the account as a whole. But the real devious part is that Labour will be keeping those premiums low until just about the time of the next election so the issue will be off the political map—it will not be causing any problem. After the next election the levies will go up. Does that cause any surprise about this Government? It is not surprising at all. This Government has done so many dishonest, and, frankly, unethical things to the people of New Zealand—this is just the latest in a long line.

This Government decided that it would curtail the usual levy period for 2007-08; there was not going to be an adequate period of consultation. The pure reason for that was that the Government thought it could get away with it. It was not going to cause enough electoral damage; the Government would be able to sneak that through and it would not tarnish them.

There are people listening at home who know all about this Government. They know that this bill is a rort. They know it is bad for New Zealand business. Do members know what the real irony is? Yesterday the National Party announced an historic piece of legislation that will enable businesses to give more to charities. They will get a tax break and it will actually benefit the very people that this craven, unethical, morally bankrupt party purports to represent. The reality is that the underclass will be better off. We oppose this bill—bottom line.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I draw your attention to Standing Order 106, “Misrepresentation”, which states: (1) A member who has spoken to a question may speak again to explain some material part of the member’s speech which has been misquoted, misunderstood or misrepresented in the same debate.” I seek to explain that the honourable member who has just resumed his seat referred to me as a “safe pair of hands” and that I would not be here next time, because I do not offer the excitement—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): No, I am sorry—

PETER BROWN: I just point out that his leader got 40-odd percent. He is not here, and I still am.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): That is not a point of order. The member knows very well that it is a point of debate.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) : I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in the third reading of the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill. I thought after the last contribution that we needed a bit of sense in the discussion, and a bit of a history lesson. You know, unlike the party opposite we actually want to have—and continue to have—a world-leading, easy to access, no-fault accident compensation scheme. The National Government nearly got away with the destruction of that in the 1990s.

My perspective—and I am proud of this—is inevitably coloured by the experiences of people and injured workers under the various reforms of the National Government in the 1990s, and I have not heard much comment about them. I know that the Opposition does not like us referring to the 1990s, but in the absence of any commitments from National—I have not heard any—to maintain the current system of accident compensation, and in view of its defence of privatisation that we have heard in this House from members opposite, I have no choice but to reflect on the National Government’s past botch-ups. This bill has reminded me just how awful that past was.

Prior to 1992 New Zealand had an accident compensation scheme that was fundamentally sound and cost-effective. It was held up as a model for other countries to emulate, but after National came to power in 1990, Bill Birch—remember him—the then Minister in charge of the accident compensation scheme, moved quickly to establish a committee to review the scheme. Interestingly, the committee included a former Treasury secretary, a former National Party leader, and a senior manager from Shell Oil, none of whom had had any significant involvement in accident compensation. This committee recommended a four-stage programme towards ultimate privatisation of accident compensation.

In 1992 the Accident Rehabilitation and Compensation Insurance Act implemented stage one, which transferred the cost of workers’ non-work, non – motor-vehicle accidents from the employers’ levy to a new levy imposed on workers by way of a payroll tax. Although many campaigned against the 1992 Act, the severe, negative impact of its provisions, particularly on severely injured people, galvanised a number of groups into action prior to the 1993 election. This group, called the Coalition on Accident Compensation, included the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, the Disabled Persons Assembly, the Women’s Division Federated Farmers, Grey Power, and other disability and community organisations. This campaign highlighted the significant number of cases where the injured person had been disadvantaged by the severity and inflexibility of the new approach to accident compensation under National. One such case highlighted how a tetraplegic 13-year-old boy was prevented from moving from hospital to his home because the new regulations denied the Accident Compensation Corporation any discretionary power to contribute to the cost of his necessary home care.

Dr Jonathan Coleman: What’s that got to do with the merging of the accounts?

DARIEN FENTON: I will get there. National made specific commitments during the 1993 and 1996 general elections that accident compensation insurance would not be privatised, but it broke that promise—surprise, surprise! The Accident Rehabilitation and Insurance Compensation Amendment Bill was introduced into Parliament in September 1998. That bill came about because of major lobbying from the Business Roundtable, the Employers Federation, and the Insurance Council of New Zealand, with lobbyists from Australian insurance companies, such as HIH Insurance and FAI, working almost full time in Wellington during that period—and it does appear that the Insurance Council was at it again during the last election.

Dr Jonathan Coleman: What about the SFWU?

DARIEN FENTON: That union opposed it, in case the member is interested. This bill created a work injury insurance market, with compulsory private insurance, statutory suspension of the common law right to sue, and statutory limits on workers’ entitlements. The bill was promoted as providing choice—and we hear about that quite a lot from the National Opposition when it comes to talking about workers’ rights, health and education, and other social services. But, you know, the only choice was for employers who could choose between insurers competing for business. There was no choice for injured workers. Their legal right to sue, which New Zealanders had traded off in the social contract in 1974—the enacting of the original accident compensation scheme—remained suspended by law. Workers were dependent on an insurance contract between their employer and an insurer, which they were not even party to.

What happened? Well, the inevitable happened. The profit incentives of privatisation changed everything. There were arguments about which workers were covered and how. Workers were caught between one insurer and another because they had two jobs. There were many instances of spurious rejections, where workers had to jump through hoops again and again. Many had huge battles getting the insurer to take their claim at all. Frustrated doctors had to deal with a plethora of insurance companies, many of whom would not accept injury claims. There was a review process, but it was a farce, because it was conducted by a person appointed and paid for by the employer’s insurance company. It was a process based on a narrow interpretation of legal issues. People who lost—and it was very hard to win—were forced into the social welfare system, but lost money in the change-over period, with dreadful stand-downs. Many with injuries that took longer than a couple of weeks to heal were simply sacked and also forced on to the welfare system, often with stand-downs and no money to feed their families. The entitlements were miserable, injury prevention was not improved, and rehabilitation was undermined. Injured workers became angry and depressed. I came across many cases where workers could have been rehabilitated, but because of the battle they were having with insurers they simply lost hope. The market approach to injury prevention was based on the claim that employers would respond to the prospect of reduced future premiums by investing in injury prevention and health protection—and are we not hearing that again today?

Well, it did not happen. As I said, we still hear arguments about it—that money somehow is a motivator for employers to provide decent prevention and rehabilitation. That ignores the fact that today’s workplaces are very different, and the causes of accidents and occupational disease are complex and diverse. We can add to that the changes National made to health and safety laws, and other deregulations of the labour market, and see that National members created the conditions that not only failed to prevent accidents but allowed them to happen. Shame on them! National took away the right of workers to refuse unsafe work, deprived the Occupational Safety and Health Service of resources, and prevented workers and their unions from prosecuting unsafe employers.

Labour has restored a modern social insurance scheme, firmly founded on the principles of the Woodhouse commission in 1967, and this bill is part of it. It does seem necessary to explain to some of the members opposite the notion of the social contract—and there has been a lot of derision about those words—that was entered into by the people of New Zealand all those years ago, and which New Zealand people still believe in. New Zealanders gave up the right to sue—we have to look only to America to see how good a decision that was—in return for a no-fault accident compensation scheme. Justice Woodhouse described the scheme’s objective as “the restoration of the [injured person] to the fullest, physical, mental, social, vocational, and economic usefulness of which they are capable.”

Thank goodness this Labour-led Government has acted to restore that social contract, not least because HIH, one of the insurance companies that was active in lobbying National for privatisation, collapsed not long after in Australia, in one of the biggest corporate failures that country had ever seen, leaving thousands of workers without protection. Indeed, a former Australian Minister of Small Business and Tourism, Joe Hockey, has repeatedly called for Australia to consider again the New Zealand accident compensation model. New Zealand’s accident compensation scheme has the cheapest cover of schemes in any comparable country in the world. Just across the Tasman, employers are paying several times more.

Demands for reserves to be paid back to employers are ridiculous. This has happened in the past, and if members knew their history they would know that it has resulted in the near bankruptcy of the employers’ account. The money is not the employers’ money; it is a payroll tax, and workers have shared the burden of that with employers, so it does not belong just to employers.

I used to dread accident compensation claims for workers, because they were so hard to resolve under National’s changes. Today electorate office staff tell me that disputes over accident insurance used to be one of the biggest complaints they had during the 1990s. But that has all changed. That simply does not happen these days; the claims are few and far between. The mediation service this Government has introduced has been a resounding success. It enables people to be heard and issues to be resolved in a constructive way.

This bill fixes an anomaly that needed to be fixed. It also builds on the commitment of this Labour-led Government to restore the social contract New Zealanders entered into in 1974 and have never voted to change. I commend the bill to the House.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Customs) : I move, That the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time. I would like to thank the members of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee for their thorough and thoughtful consideration of the bill. The fact that there continues to be cross-party support for the bill further highlights the recognition given to the New Zealand Customs Service and the high regard that is held for the way its important work is carried out, as it continues to protect our country and facilitate the safe transition of goods, craft, and people across our borders. I would also like to thank the clerk of the committee, staff, and officials for providing the support and advice necessary to progress the bill.

This bill strengthens New Zealand’s border security measures, and it provides for more effective and integrated border management. I made the point during the second reading of this bill that it recognises the fact that New Zealand’s trade and travel landscape is continuing to change, and that we must change in order to keep pace with it. Increasing threats to our communities through terrorism, international organised crime, drugs, identity fraud, and other issues mean our legislation must provide clarity, and it must be effective and flexible enough to respond to increased demand and ensure that our activities at the border can be conducted effectively in a rapidly changing environment. That also includes continuing to meet our international obligations as part of the wider border control community, in order to improve safety and security for travellers, goods, and craft when crossing our borders.

The bill has been drafted to take account of both Government and community interests in effective border management, and of the right of people to travel and conduct legitimate trade across our border. The fact that the select committee generally agreed with the provisions in the bill as drafted, and that only amendments of a technical nature were made, is a positive indication, albeit a rare one, that the right balance was struck in its drafting. It is important that I also acknowledge the support of all parties in backing this bill. It is worth noting—to use the words of my colleague Dianne Yates—that this bill is not about party politics but about “New Zealand Ltd” and about keeping our borders secure. The support of all political parties in being able to look at the bigger picture is welcomed in that regard.

To reiterate, the key principles of the bill are to contribute to the Government’s commitment to protecting our communities and our country from threats such as drugs and transnational crime; to recognise that the Customs Service is the first point of contact at the border for people, goods, and craft, and that it needs to have the legislative ability to refer to other agencies, such as the police and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, people and goods that are of interest to them; and to address current limitations in border powers, to provide more effective integration and stronger links between the agencies that work at the border to ensure that people or goods that pose a threat do not slip through the gaps. This bill also consolidates border security - related amendments made to the Customs and Excise Act 1996 in 2004 through the Border Security Bill, which was designed to help counter continuing and increasing border-related threats.

The particular aspects of this bill will allow the Customs Service to strengthen its activities across three key areas, which I would like to highlight. The first of those relates to the limitations on the use of electronic communications devices—for example, cellphones, palm pilots, and other handheld electronic devices—in designated border control areas, such as the primary processing area at the airport. Many people will be aware that the use of cellphones and other modern technology devices can thwart law enforcement activity at the border. For example, drug couriers who are stopped for questioning, or people who are engaged in smuggling activity, may attempt to use their phone to alert associates at or beyond the arrival gates. The potential to do that has now been removed by the bill.

Secondly, there is also a provision to detain persons arriving at or departing from New Zealand for up to 4 hours, in cases requiring investigation for public health or law enforcement purposes. That addresses the practical reality that the Customs Service, on occasion, needs to refer a person to another agency or for further processing. The provision clarifies the law in that regard, while allowing for the more effective assessment and management of potential risks.

Finally, the bill contains a section relating to prohibited exports and the ability to impose export controls in respect of catch-all goods. That provision keeps us apace with the relevant international obligations that New Zealand has signed up to. It also reinforces best-practice standards, which continue to build confidence in New Zealand as a trading partner, as we move to implement those controls. The provision in the bill provides the ability to impose controls on the export of catch-all goods that could be used in an everyday context for civilian purposes but that, when combined with other products or compounds, could be used for an undesirable, strategic purpose—for example, in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction or in a chemical weapons programme.

Briefly, in response to issues raised by the Opposition spokesperson on customs matters, Shane Ardern, I say that the only change this bill imposes regarding the indexation of the excise duty on alcohol relates to the date on which it occurs. That was done in response to submissions to the select committee from the industries affected, and in fact it will make it easier for them to manage those adjustments, while also reducing compliance costs. The member should note that those minor annual adjustments have been occurring since the 1990s, when a National Government was last in power. So they are by no means a new tax, as was wrongly implied in his speech.

In conclusion, the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2) is important legislation that supports a whole-of-Government approach to better border management and affirms this Government’s commitment to a vibrant economy, to strong and safe communities, and to protection of our national identity and way of life. I commend the bill to the House.

SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) : I know that when we are totally in support of a bill—as the National Party is, in this case—and when we have to do the work of the Queen’s honourable Opposition, and we are able to do it to the extent that the Minister Nanaia Mahuta feels the need to respond to it in her address, then clearly we have been successful, particularly when it is damn difficult to find something to pick holes in.

I say at the outset that National does totally support the moves within this bill. I thank the Minister for the explanation she gave earlier on. But I ask the Minister whether, during the process when the bill was brought to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee on 1 August last year, and when officials were giving advice to the committee, proper consideration was given to the fact that there has been massive growth in this country not only in trade in the conventional sense but also in tourism, by a whole range of different vehicles.

I can do no better than to hold up an article in the New Zealand Herald on 12 February, headlined “Cruise ships to bring in $9 million in a week”, which stated that the number of cruise ships arriving in New Zealand in one go will put enormous pressure on our customs staff at the borders. I hasten to add that customs staff do a brilliant job. I congratulate all of those who may be listening tonight on the work they do. But this will put enormous pressure on them. One cannot help but wonder whether under this Government customs staff will be adequately resourced to carry out that work. Certainly, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that at both the Auckland port and Auckland airport those resources are severely under pressure. One only needs to look at the statistics to see that 239 new incursions in biosecurity have come into this country over the last 5 years. One can soon understand that those resources are being severely stretched.

So I say to the Minister of Customs: yes, this is a whole of Parliament issue; no, it is not a political football. Certainly it represents “New Zealand Incorporated”, and a whole-of-border approach should be widely supported by the Parliament. But have the Minister and the Labour Government taken full advantage of the opportunity that was presented to them? I suspect not. I say to my colleagues, I am sure that is not the case.

I welcome the opportunity to discuss the fact that cellphones and text messages, and such like, will no longer be allowed at the borders—particularly as they have been used in drug trafficking, which we know has been a growth area for our border control in recent years. I also welcome the fact that those who are suspected can be detained for a longer period of time. If it is a potential medical issue, that length of time will hopefully be long enough to establish how big a threat they are to the country. If they are deemed to be a threat, then they can be detained for a longer period of time. I thank the officials for the work they have done on that.

The amendment in clause 8 in regard to prohibited goods is clearly a sound move. There is a lot of activity now in tradable goods that are hard to identify amongst normal trading goods as potential ingredients for weapons of mass destruction or drug manufacture. So that is a good move.

The Queen’s honourable Opposition can find no more to criticise the Government on in this bill, so on that I will finish my speech. I congratulate those involved in the select committee process and welcome the bill to the House.

DIANNE YATES (Labour) : I rise to speak on the third reading of the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2). I thank Mr Ardern and the National Party for their support of this bill. I am pleased that over the several readings of the bill the Opposition spokesperson on customs has actually become more informed about the bill and the content of it. Mr Ardern has noted the growth in trade under a Labour Government, and I am pleased he has acknowledged that along with the growth in tourism. As he has discussed the cruise ships coming into Auckland, he will also have noted that the media, particularly, took notice of the way that the Customs Service speedily dealt with people on those ships. He will also have noted that new recruits are channelled towards Auckland as part of their training because of the greater bulk of work that comes through there.

While we are dealing with the third reading of this bill, I praise in particular the Minister of Customs, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, for the work that she has done, and also the New Zealand Customs Service. In previous readings both sides of the House have praised the Customs Service for the work it does on our borders protecting us. I said before this is not about party politics; this is about “New Zealand Limited”. The Customs Service has had some very successful hits on drug imports into New Zealand, as well as on an amazing variety of things, such as detecting false qualifications, false stamps, and false passports coming into New Zealand. For a small country, I think the Customs Service staff do an exceedingly good job.

Some of us, as members of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, were very impressed when we looked at the work that the Customs Service did at the Auckland airport and the sea port. We were also very impressed that even the poor old dogs work very hard, walking up and down all day trying to detect drugs. We have a very effective Customs Service in New Zealand—perhaps one of the most effective of our services in New Zealand. It does an excellent job. This bill is about making sure that Customs Service staff have the power to do what their job is—that they have the time to apprehend people.

I note that Mr Shane Ardern, who is the National spokesperson on customs, came on board a little more, and that he understands what the excise provision in the bill is about. I am pleased that obviously Mr John Hayes of the National Party explained it to him at the Committee stage of the bill. I thank Mr Hayes for his contribution in the Committee and his contribution to the debate. I also thank Tim Groser for his contribution.

What is really sad is that those two very effective people are on our Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, and, as people would have noticed in the media, neither is included in John Key’s thinktank on foreign affairs. I think that is rather disappointing. They are very competent and experienced people—as we have seen in the House—who know about these areas, but neither of them is the spokesperson on what they know about, nor are they members of the National Party thinktank. The leader of the National Party is not utilising his own team, and I think that is probably typical of what we have in the National Party at the moment. We noticed that Mr Ardern repeated his error on two readings of the bill, but I am glad that Mr Hayes has actually put him right on those particular issues.

Shane Ardern: It’s more taxes, going up and up.

DIANNE YATES: It is no more taxes. What has happened is a rationalising around the date of the collection of the excise tax. [Interruption] I am sorry that Mr Ardern did not take up his full time in this debate, and is constantly heckling from the other side of the Chamber. I remind Mr Ardern that he did have 10 minutes to make his points, and there is no point in his shouting now about matters he could have spoken about during the debate.

Once again, I thank all those who have been involved in this bill. I also point out, as we have said, the work of the Custom Service staff and its excellent chief executive officer—as Customs Service officers, and on this bill in particular. I thank the submitters on the bill—particularly the New Zealand Law Society, which pointed out some amendments that would make the bill more workable.

As I have said, I thank the select committee members, who worked very well with the officials to work out whether periods of detainment were long enough. It was not just about the amount of time to process; it was also about the geographical distances that staff might have to travel in order to apprehend people. As we in New Zealand know, the coast of New Zealand is around the same size as the eastern seaboard of the United States. It is extremely difficult to protect. We were very concerned when working through this bill whether Customs Service people would have the time in the 4-hour detention period provided for in the bill, to actually travel wherever they needed to go.

As has been noted, there were issues around cellphones and their use at the point of entry. We have had experience of people being able to phone ahead about nefarious acts. That prohibition on the use of cellphones is a very good measure contained within the bill.

Once again, I thank the select committee members. I thank the Minister, the staff, the select committee staff, and everybody who has worked on a bill that is basically a technical bill that keeps New Zealand up to date and our borders and country safe. I am pleased that the bill is going to proceed, and thank the Opposition for its support.

JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) : Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker, for allowing me to speak in support of the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2) on behalf of the National Party. The preceding speaker, Dianne Yates, was, until 18 months ago, the electorate member for Hamilton East. I leave the people of New Zealand to judge the quality of her representation for those people—of course, they demonstrated that through the ballot box. That member is soon to be New Zealand’s ambassador to Madrid, if she can pass the Spanish test that she is busy studying for. She will do far better in Spain than she has ever done for the people of New Zealand or for the people of Hamilton East. Really, she does not have a clue as to what this bill is about, beyond covering three minor points that had been previously covered by the “Minister of Dog Chipping”, Nanaia Mahuta. I am not sure what competence she has to discuss the protection of our border, but I suggest to the Minister that her next year’s effort before moving on to the Opposition benches, which is becoming more certain by the hour, might involve coming up with a policy of chipping every New Zealander—in fact, every person in the world—so that when they cross our border they can automatically register with a piece of machinery somewhere, so that—

Darren Hughes: Is that National Party policy?

JOHN HAYES: No, I am suggesting that this would be something that the “Minister of Dog Chipping” could inflict upon our population, in the same way that Labour is inflicting an excise tax on this country of ours, particularly on the winegrowers. I have just come from the Beehive where a very, very impressive function is being held that was organised by my colleagues from Hawke’s Bay, Chris Tremain and Craig Foss.

Russell Fairbrother: They don’t do anything else, do they?

JOHN HAYES: The former member for Napier might well say that. I am not sure that he will be doing very much in a few months’ time, either, after the next election. These people have shown initiative, they have shown creativity, and they have brought at least 50 companies from Napier and Hawke’s Bay down to Wellington with a couple of hundred people—an outstanding effort. They have brought in councillors from the various councils, and they are promoting the food and the excellent wine from the Hawke’s Bay area. They have been doing a fantastic job.

Meanwhile, on the Government benches the leeches of Labour are flat out, sucking out a tax that requires winegrowers, through this bill, to front up at the beginning of their financial year and pay tax in advance on their wine production before they get any income from it. This is a huge burden on our economy, and the winegrowers will let the Government know at the next election just what they think of this plan.

It is a wonderful arrangement that people can be detained for 4 hours at the border—coming in or departing—and it is just a pity that Mr Zaoui was not picked up, because that would have saved us a lot of money down the track.

Darren Hughes: That wasn’t Don Brash’s opinion.

JOHN HAYES: Well, it is my opinion. I am sorry for the member for Otaki. Is he still the member? Yes, he has a very small margin, but he is the member, at the moment.

Darren Hughes: Don’t talk about your problems.

JOHN HAYES: I am not talking about my problems, sunshine. I saw the member down in Cuba Street the other night with someone on the back of his bike. We know what he is up to. We need an export control on the member.

I do not believe that this Government is treating our winegrowers fairly, and I say, in all seriousness, that we should get rid of this excise tax, because it is penalising productive people in this country, who are already being penalised by an unsatisfactory exchange rate—an outrageous exchange rate.

Darren Hughes: Whose fault is that?

JOHN HAYES: It is the member’s fault. He is on the Government benches and he is calling the shots. He is making these policies, and my people in my electorate are suffering, and they have suffered enough from the excessive stealing of Labour through its tax system.

The only thing that is making this bill worthy of our support is the department officials, who have done a brilliant job—no thanks to the Labour members on the select committee and the members sitting opposite. Certainly, the chief executive of the Customs Service and his team are doing a really wonderful job, and it is our delight to support this bill and the changes they have been putting in it. It has been a pleasure for us to support this bill.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : I intended to take a short call—I do not think that it would have been of any length. But I found the speech of the member who has just resumed his seat, John Hayes, very interesting. I am not sure that he actually touched on the bill, at all. He spoke about the problems in the Hamilton East electorate—I do not doubt there are problems in that electorate, but I cannot find any reference to them in the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2). He spoke about the potential for the next ambassador to Spain, who is hopeful of learning Spanish in time for the appointment. He spoke at some length about a function in the Beehive that was put on by National members—one has to conclude that he was at that function for some little while. He spoke briefly about tax on winegrowers, and I thought: “Ah! He is getting to the bill.” So I furiously looked through the bill for information about the excise tax, and there is some reference to it. But there was not even one word of protest about that tax by the National member, who is on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.

He then moved on to the subject of Zaoui. I personally would like to expound my opinion on Zaoui—and it would take quite a long time—but I do not think it would be appropriate to do so in this debate on the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2). We then got on to the subject of the member sitting in Cuba Street—and I found this most unusual—spying on bike riders. I have to say that the mind boggles as to what he saw and why he was doing that. Then he moved back on to the subject of tax on winegrowers. Again, I thought he was talking on the bill, because somewhere there is a clause in the bill that deals with the indexation of rates of excise duty on alcohol and tobacco. I thought he was going to get to that clause, but he moved on again. He made the categoric statement that National supported the bill because of the wonderful officials. I have no doubt that the officials are wonderful, but I have to say that I have never heard that as a reason for supporting the bill.

New Zealand First supports this bill. We were not on the select committee. We are happy with the purpose of the bill, and we are happy with the bill as it is written. We note that there were four submissions, only one of which came before the select committee. The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee received advice from the New Zealand Customs Service and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I can tell members that a Minister like the Rt Hon Winston Peters would have given the committee very, very good advice, so it is no wonder that the select committee got this legislation correct. It also received advice from the Regulations Review Committee and the Parliamentary Counsel Office.

We need to support the customs people in this country. I note that the select committee did not get the bill quite correct. The Minister had to bring in a Supplementary Order Paper to tighten it up in terms of the Customs Service people having the authority to hold people a bit longer than the bill provided for. I think this bill should go through the House speedily and with the support of every political party. New Zealand First is most definitely in support of this legislation.

KEITH LOCKE (Green) : The Green Party also supports the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2). In particular, we like the way that it firms up the ban on strategic exports—that is, exports that can assist repressive forces in other countries. We think that New Zealand should be a beacon of peace in the world, and it is inconsistent with that aim for us to be exporting military equipment that can be used against innocent people.

There is a clear ban in the bill on the export of components for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and there is a ban on the export of many other military items. With many of the military goods and their export, it is a question of which countries they are to be sent to. This can be a little loose in terms of definitions. The bill states that exports can be banned where it is “… contrary to New Zealand’s interests,” and of course that can sometimes be a matter of debate. This definition is filled out somewhat in the criteria of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade for the assessment of export applications, which says that exports should not contribute to a regional conflict and should take account of the recipient’s record on international humanitarian law.

On that second ground we should be careful, perhaps, of exporting to the United States military, which clearly violates international humanitarian law in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and at its detention centre in Guantanamo Bay. However, our Government would probably think that that would be a step too far. Winston Peters would probably define that as anti-Americanism, even though that would only get us offside with the Bush administration, not with the American people who are quite critical of that administration on issues of war and peace.

It is certainly good that in 2004 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade turned down an application by a New Zealand firm Oscmar International to export a man-worn laser detection harness to the Israeli defence force, presumably because it would have violated one of the ministry’s criteria—that is, not to contribute to a regional conflict. However, there is subsequent information that Oscmar effectively exported the technology for this device to Israel via the United States by exporting the technology via the Internet. So it is good that a new category relating to the export of electronic goods is now in the legislation.

The harness that Oscmar exported was also exported around that time to other countries. The ministry approved 30 other export applications for the device. We do not know which countries these harnesses went to, and for all we know they may have gone to some countries with a repressive Government or some countries involved in regional conflicts. We do not know this because the information was withheld as it was deemed “commercial in confidence”. In some ways there is even less openness now.

Last October the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee asked: “Which strategic goods have been stopped from being exported from New Zealand in the last financial year? Please list the name of the item and the country it was intended to be exported to and the New Zealand Company involved.” One item had been refused permission to be exported by a company, but the select committee was refused the particular information requested “to protect this information which has been provided in confidence.” This leaves a huge hole in the accountability of the whole system. It means that we are simply supposed to trust the ministry to get it right, which is not the way things are supposed to operate in a democracy. Surely other New Zealand exporters would get a few clues on what to do and what not to do, by being able to find out from the public record which items had been declined for export, and to which countries they were going to be sent.

This is particularly true in that additional category included in the bill—electronic goods. Electronic goods can be even more difficult to define in terms of whether they are strategic or whether they should be exported to this or that country. For example, the crystal oscillators produced in New Zealand by Rakon were ruled out as being strategic goods by the military because they were also used in civilian goods.

There were two problems from the Greens’ point of view, in terms of whether these crystal oscillators would be deemed to be strategic goods. Firstly, it is clear that they were dual-use goods, and dual-use goods are covered by the legislation. There is an argument that their export to the US military should have been prevented because they were to be used in guidance systems for smart bombs and missiles, which clearly are being used today to worsen regional conflicts, particularly in the Middle East. However, it is worse than that, because Rakon clearly received a lot of funding—tens of thousands of dollars—from a major US military contractor, Rockwell Collins, to develop the crystal oscillators to a military specification, not a civilian specification. Rakon’s words were that they had to be developed to be “radiation hardened” and “shock hardened” for use in these missiles.

There is another tricky area with strategic goods. One successful software exporter in New Zealand is Right Hemisphere, which produces 3-D display software, working up displays for both civilian purposes and military purposes. What do we do in that situation? Are they covered by this bill? It is not an easy situation. What we find in business and in Government is that military uses are often overlooked, if companies are big enough and exporting enough.

We can all recall how the US and British Governments were quite happy to export military equipment to Saddam Hussein in Iraq in the 1980s when they were getting a lot of money out of it. They are a bit embarrassed now about how they exported bits for Saddam’s chemical weapons to gas the Kurds. At the time those same Western Governments tried to cover up the fact that Saddam had gassed the Kurds because Britain and America, under their presidents, thought that Iraq, under Saddam, was an ally against their main antagonist, as they saw it at the time, Iran.

We can also look at the problem of export of strategic goods from the other end—perhaps in the light of a recent Green effort, headed by our co-leader Russel Norman, to stop the Superannuation Fund investing in companies that produce nuclear weapons and cluster bombs. One of the arguments used by the Government to counter our concern was that when we are dealing with big firms like Boeing, they are so big that they are in all kinds of ventures, both civilian and military, and it is wrong to stop investing in them purely because they have some military products, even if, as in the case of Boeing, these products are powerful enough to blow up the world.

I think our Government has a duty, in things like the Superannuation Fund or what we export, to provide an example to the world. It does not mean to say we abandon all military exports, but it does mean that we should not really see our future as a major arms exporter. We do not want our economy geared to any significant extent around the business of war.

One of the problems we see in the United States is that so much of its economy is devoted to producing the machinery of killing, that even many Congress people owe their elections to donations from big arms producers. Over $400 billion of the American Budget is devoted to military expenditure—and much of that to producing arms. Companies in New Zealand that produce military weapons for export should not be the favoured recipient of grants from public agencies, the way that Oscmar has been in recent times.

Hopefully the bill, which I reiterate we support, will be a step towards a more moral and more pro-peace export policy. Thank you.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) : Kia ora tātou katoa, itēneipō. I do not know whether members know, but this morning the Race Relations Commissioner announced a range of initiatives that are supposedly making a positive contribution to race relations in Aotearoa. One of these initiatives is a peace treaty, created by a person by the name of Jason Kerehi. It was launched on Waitangi Day in Masterton, and the people of the Wairarapa were given the opportunity to sign a treaty that calls for a peaceful, tolerant, and inclusive community. The peace treaty provides an opportunity for people of all cultures to sign up to its intentions. All ages are embraced, and the peace treaty is now touring Wairarapa schools and libraries to gather more signatures before it is placed in the Wairarapa Archive.

I wanted to refer to this initiative in speaking to the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2), because so often in the House we tend to focus on system failures, policy glitches, and the regulatory weaknesses that require legislative tweaking. Meanwhile we overlook the impressive contributions that are made every day by New Zealanders in their commitment to this issue of harmony and peace in the world. This bill is on a much bigger scale, obviously, but it is driven by the same goals that inspire Jason Kerehi—that is, the quest to promote peace and safety.

This bill aims to protect the well-being of New Zealanders by restricting possibilities for terrorist intrusion or safety threats. We welcome the broad definition of “safety threat” as encompassing suspicion related to infectious diseases, and including biological or chemical weapons.

Hon Tau Henare: What’s it got to do with the bill?

TE URUROA FLAVELL: So this legislation, against the question that was asked by Mr Henare, would probably have been very useful, in fact, 167 years ago, when tangata whenua were introduced to a host of infectious diseases that accompanied the arrival of the settlers. The onslaught of infectious diseases was rampant, as we know, and impacted negatively on the Māori population to a level where it was thought the extinction of tangata whenua was a real possibility. At that time our people lacked the immunity required to fight even common bacterial and viral infections. The population suffered from a disastrous decline from the introduction of infectious diseases, alongside the impact of weaponry, drugs, and foodstuffs to which Māori people were unaccustomed.

In the Mōhaka ki Ahuriri Report 2004 of the Waitangi Tribunal, Professor Ian Pool is cited as attributing the 19th century Māori population decline as being largely due to infectious diseases brought by Europeans. He and other scholars, such as Professor Mason Durie do, however, also acknowledge the connection between infectious diseases such as dysentery, influenza, and tuberculosis, and the socio-economic conditions including land alienation. These so-called diseases of poverty served to decimate the Māori population right until the mid-20th century. So the increased capacity of the customs officers under this bill to detain a person under a suspicion of a perceived threat to endanger the lives of others, is welcome. We can never overlook the impact of our shared history on our future.

The Māori Party is also pleased to endorse the fact that the bill ties in with the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987 in prohibiting the import and export of strategic goods relating to nuclear weapons. Strategic use, as interpreted in the strategic goods list currently kept by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, is defined to include the development, production, or deployment of nuclear explosive devices, biological weapons, chemical weapons, or military goods.

In an interesting twist of fate it should be noted by this House that some 49 years ago today—28 February 1958—the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was founded in London by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, amongst others. It is our hope that by the time we commemorate 50 years of that campaign, this bill will well and truly be established among our statutes, and our borders will be benefiting from tighter scrutiny of areas of concern, with a particular relationship to nuclear threats.

Of course, we cannot address this third reading of the bill without pointing out again the very real danger of racist ideologies that threaten the security of Aotearoa for tangata whenua. I want to acknowledge at this point the recommendations of the National Council of Women of New Zealand, which, like the Māori Party, was concerned at what could be seen as an unchecked licence of new powers for customs officers. I am advised that the National Council of Women suggested in its submission to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee that there should be a requirement to document, and report annually, on the frequency and circumstances of incidents that necessitated the use of new powers.

The Peace Foundation, likewise, was concerned at the suggestion of the unbridled powers of seizure and detainment. In fact, it was at the foundation’s suggestion that the select committee, I am told, introduced new section 175B to insert the word “reasonable” before the words “cause to suspect”. At the second reading of this bill we focused extensively on the subjective interpretation of the concept of “reasonable”. My colleague Mr Hone Harawira explained that on at least 16 different occasions in the bill the test of reasonableness is proposed as a basis of judgment. Interpretations of reasonableness are required in order to understand the nature of “reasonable force” to detain someone, the seizure of anything that officers consider they have “reasonable cause” to suspect as evidence, or the capacity to detain a person if officers consider they have “reasonable grounds” to believe that the person poses a threat.

So I return again to the concept of racist ideologies and the ability of officers to be able to identify accurately and, indeed, to understand whether the ideologies are reasonable, and whether the ideologies are racist. We register here our concern that those officers responsible for border security, and the measures around that, are equipped to be able to understand the impact of racism.

Hon Tau Henare: What do you mean?

TE URUROA FLAVELL: I am talking here about institutional racism, which the Te Pūao-o-Te-Atatū report described as “… a bias in our social and administrative institutions that automatically benefits the dominant race or culture, while penalising minority or subordinate groups.” The Māori Party wishes to remind this House that the New Zealand Customs Service has in the past fallen into the context of exercising such bias, through the actions of its officers.

In 1981 the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service was criticised for drawing up a list of twenty “subversives” who participated in protests against the 1981 Springbok Tour. That singled out certain individuals as being subversives, and it was deemed by many to be a violation of the right to protest Government decisions. It was also deemed to be an act of racism against those who were determined to speak out about the adverse effects and the impact of the apartheid policy.

I am not suggesting by any means that the practice we saw in 1981 would be replicated in 2007, but one would hope that in the implementation of this new Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2), the agency and the officials involved will pay particular caution towards preventing such targeted surveillance from occurring again.

Hon Tau Henare: Tell us what you really think.

TE URUROA FLAVELL: Finally, in response to that comment, I say that the Māori Party will support the bill at its third reading, and we urge the Minister and the New Zealand Customs Service—Te Mana Arai o Aotearoa—to ensure that the service truly lives up to its name and protects the authority and the rangatiratanga of tangata whenua, alongside all other New Zealanders.

JILL PETTIS (Labour) : I am pleased to join the debate this evening, and I was privileged to sit on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee when this bill was being considered. I pay tribute to the Customs Service, as have other speakers before me this evening, and I acknowledge the very important role it plays in New Zealand society. Fifteen percent of the revenue this country earns is collected by the Customs Service. We all know that the Customs Service is a very historic service and has played a strategically important role in New Zealand society. In all developed nations, customs services historically have played, and currently play, a very important role. I, with other members of the select committee, have visited the Customs Service and looked at its operations at the Port of Auckland, the Auckland Mail Centre, and Auckland International Airport.

Our Customs Service fulfils a wide variety of roles, and it has many, many responsibilities. We do not always pay tribute to and have cognisance of the role it plays in maintaining strict biosecurity in New Zealand and the very important role it plays in keeping our borders safe. I think it worthy to note also that Customs Service staff are fairly representative of New Zealand society as a whole. The service draws its staff from right across a large majority of the groups that are represented amongst the New Zealand people, and I commend it for that.

The nature of border management has changed considerably in more recent years as we see the continuous increase in the volumes of trade and travel. Many of us in this House travel internationally more often than do some sectors of society, as we go to international fora and meetings. We all know first hand how incredibly busy airports are. I know I often wonder just where all those people are going. So border security has changed and heightened considerably in just the last decade.

There are increasingly varied sources and natures of risks. Terrorism is a word that, unfortunately, we are all too familiar with. The increase in import of drugs and transportation of drugs throughout the world is a problem that has grown over recent years, and, sadly, I have to say, we do not see any end to that at the moment, so vigilance and detection are critically important in that area. Weapon proliferation, unfortunately, has also increased, and identity fraud is growing, as well. As a consequence of those four items I have mentioned, there is increased international emphasis on trade and travel security. So this bill really is an investment in the future security of all New Zealanders, and, in my opinion, it is a very wise investment.

The Customs Service has seen a lot of developments since 2001. The Act was amended in 2004 following the events on 11 September 2001 in America, and there has been increased focus on travel and supply chain security, law enforcement, and immigration matters throughout the world. Since 2004 further areas have been identified to enhance border security and integrated border management practices, which has led to the current bill. The key provisions in the bill refer to the use of electronic devices, to border processing obligations, to an extension of the export control regime, to searching persons for dangerous items, and to the ability to deal with unlawful travel documents. When we visited the Customs Service in Auckland we saw many of the forged documents that had been detected by the very skilled staff. The bill also refers to the detention of risk goods and to information-matching for benefit purposes, as well.

Earlier on tonight members talked about the service’s ability now, through this bill, to require somebody who has been detained not to use an electronic device, such as a mobile phone, when he or she could be in the process of thwarting enforcement activity. That is a very important and essential measure, given the increased technology that is available to very ordinary people—people who may look ordinary but who are up to nefarious and clearly illegal activities.

This bill clarifies the Customs Service’s border management role. Importantly, it also builds more interoperability between agencies that have a very real interest in border-related matters. It builds on the existing powers the Customs Service has and provides a very measured response to border management that quite appropriately balances the State’s border requirements and the protection of the rights of individuals. Importantly, it protects the rights of law-abiding people who are travelling for legal purposes so that they may travel in as unimpeded a way as possible.

This is an important bill, and it is being broadly supported across the House. I think, as responsible members of Parliament, we realise how important this bill is to individuals’ safety and the safety of our borders. I thank other members who were on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee for the cooperative way in which the committee worked. I close by reiterating my support, and that of my colleagues on this side of the House, for the Customs Service and all of the staff.

• Bill read a third time.

Hon RICK BARKER (Minister of Internal Affairs) : I move, That the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be referred to the Government Administration Committee. This bill amends the Births, Deaths, and Marriages Registration Act 1995, which, as the name suggests, provides for the registration of information about births, deaths, and marriages. Information on adoptions, changes of name, sexual assignment and reassignment, and civil unions are also registered under the Act. The Act provides for access to the registered information. These functions are administered by the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

This bill has three main objectives. Firstly, the bill defines the purposes of the registers held under the Act and introduces a new framework for providing access to the information that is consistent with those purposes. This new framework incorporates privacy safeguards and sanctions, but also recognises that there are a range of legitimate reasons why people want to access the information. Secondly, the bill enhances the registrar-general’s ability to ensure that registered information is accurate, complete, and meets the purposes for which it is collated. Thirdly, the bill modernises the Act to take into account the new functions that the Births, Deaths, and Marriages registry performs, and other social and technological changes that impact on the registry’s work. In recognition of the extension of the registry’s functions, the bill will change the name of the Act to the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 1995.

Information about births, deaths, and marriages in New Zealand has been officially registered for nearly 160 years. During this time the nature of the information collected about those life events has increased. In addition, new registers such as the register of donors and donor offspring under the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act and the civil union register have recently been created. Clause 13 of the bill creates a new register of name changes by overseas-born people who are New Zealand citizens or permanent residents, and provides for certificates of those name changes to be issued. People must be able to access and obtain evidence of information that supports their identity and family history. It is vital, therefore, that people can trust that their personal information is being held securely, and that it is being used only for purposes that are consistent with those for which it was collated. Clause 6 of the bill sets out the purposes of the registers. They are a source of information about demographics, health, mortality, and other matters important for Government, as well as an official record of events, both for evidential and research purposes.

Clause 26 is a key provision that establishes the main aspect of the new access framework. In general terms, individuals will be able to access their own records and those of their immediate family members, and they will be able to authorise access by other people—for example, genealogists. Access requests made by other people will have to be for legitimate purposes, such as for administering estates. Clause 38 creates an offence of making a false statement in order to obtain access to information to which a person is not entitled. Open public access will still be available for historical records. These include records of births that occurred at least 100 years ago, marriages and civil unions that occurred at least 80 years ago, and deaths where the deceased person died at least 50 years ago or was born at least 80 years ago.

This graduated approach to death records means that when a person has died later in life, the death record will be available to the public at an earlier stage than that of a record of a person who died at a younger age. This recognises that death records contain information about the deceased person’s spouse or partner, and parents, who may still be alive, and that the records contain information, such as the cause of death, that can be sensitive for family members.

Clause 30 enables the registrar-general to provide Internet access for those historical records. This facility will be particularly useful for family history research. Similar access provisions exist in Australia, Canada, and many states of the United States of America. By allowing general public access to historical records only, there will be less risk that people will be able to use the information relating to living or dead individuals for fraudulent purposes.

Of course, that in itself will not prevent identity crime; personal information is available from many other sources. Nor will it remove the need for organisations to have robust processes for verifying the identity of people with whom they do business. A birth certificate is not, after all, proof of the holder’s identity. It is only proof that a birth took place. However, the bill will make it more difficult for fraudsters to obtain information that could be used for illegal purposes. This is reinforced in clause 38, which provides for increased penalties for offences involving the misuse of information.

Clause 26 repeals the Act’s provision relating to the maintenance and production of indexes to the registers. Indexes were designed to facilitate the researching of paper-based records, and are no longer necessary as the registry’s records are now computerised. Individuals and organisations that have already purchased indexes will still be able to use them for their own purposes, but clause 30 creates the offence of publishing that information on the Internet. This will also help to limit the opportunity for the information to be misused. Death information is currently obtained by some non-Government organisations in order to remove the names of deceased individuals from databases and mailing lists—a practice that avoids the pain caused to family members if correspondence is sent to a deceased person—and clause 26 enables this practice to continue, but only on strict terms relating to the way the information can be used and prohibiting publication of the information. The processes for supplying this information are similar to the Act’s current information-matching provisions applying to Government departments.

Several of the bill’s provisions enhance the registrar-general’s ability to ensure that there are complete and accurate records in the event that they are registered under the Act. Clause 30 provides for the registrar-general to be able to obtain address information from the Ministry of Social Development, to help to locate the mothers of children whose births remain unregistered after a lengthy amount of time. This clause also enables the registrar-general to share name change and death information with overseas counterparts. This will help reduce identity crimes by ensuring that birth records are notated with the fact of a name change or death that occurred in another country. Clause 35 provides that the Ministry of Health can give the registrar-general information about a birth or death that has not been registered, or that has been registered incorrectly.

This clause also enables the registrar-general to update records held under the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act, by using information such as name change or death information held by other registers. This will help to ensure that donors and donor offspring can identify each other with the most up-to-date information.

The bill amends the Act to give better recognition of de facto relationships. Clause 10, for example, requires both parents to sign their child’s birth registration form, regardless of their relationship status, unless it would be impossible or inappropriate to require both parents to do so. This will help improve the accuracy of the information provided, and will reduce claims that a person has been wrongly named as a parent. Enhancements are also made in the bill to improve the registrar-general’s ability to collect and disclose information by electronic means.

This bill is relatively predictable, but important. It covers a number of matters that will enhance the functions of the Births, Deaths and Marriages registry. It will ensure that the registry continues to be the trusted custodian of the life event records held by it. I commend this bill to the House.

SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) : I am very pleased to speak on National’s behalf on the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill. I commend some of the very sensible changes being put forward in it, but I also have to express some grave concern about the bill. The Minister Rick Barker is quite right; this is a very, very serious bill.

What is happening here, among some of the very sensible changes, is the fact that the changing of the purpose of the legislation being amended, the Births, Deaths, and Marriages Registration Act, is being glossed over quite considerably. If we look at the original Act, we see that there are only three parts to its purpose, comprising paragraphs (a), (b), and (c). Paragraph (a) is about the fact that information is recorded—that is fine; that stays the same. Paragraph (b) is about access to information. The current Act allows for the ready access of information by the New Zealand public, and that is as it should be. That has been a time-honoured tradition in this country. Paragraph (c) is for the provision and effect of information. So that is a very sensible purpose, which is already in the current Act.

But what is happening in this bill is that the purpose is being modified considerably. The bill now states that access will be regulated, and that the provision and effect of information will also be regulated. This has very serious consequences for the public, who will be absolutely dismayed by such a consequence. I am surprised that the Minister is now looking at regulating access to information and the provision of that information, when the Minister’s own department states that its strategy includes the introduction of new technologies that allow greater access by applicants through the Internet.

But that is not happening in this bill, because if we look at clause 26, we see it substitutes sections 73, 74, and 75 of the principal Act. In fact, it will preclude all of those thousands of members of the New Zealand public who want access to information from birth, death, and marriage certificates, which are historical records. They will not be able to access readily that historical information. Under clause 26, the changes being made to sections 73, 74, and 75 of the Act are such that it will make it virtually impossible for anybody to have that ready access.

That is the crux of what this bill is about. It is turning on its head the public’s understanding of their access to the information on birth, death, and marriage certificates. They will no longer have that ready access. The New Zealand public needs to wake up and to make themselves very aware of what is behind the introduction of this amendment bill. That is in spite of the fact that the Minister’s own department stated that the public would have greater access through the Internet as a result of changes being made in his department.

I can tell members about some excerpts indicating that the New Zealand public reckon that the records are the records of the people, and that the Government is merely the custodian of those records. The New Zealand Parliament has its foundation based on the Westminster system. England has a record of its ancestry that is second to none, through its careful retention of its historical records and the recordings made and kept by its citizens. England has to make public records available to the people at a reasonable cost, so that they have the opportunity to research freely their past and that of others. That access is freely available to them.

I know there are some outstanding contributions to be made by my colleagues, so at this point I will be happy just to declare that National will be opposing this bill on the grounds I have mentioned.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) : I am pleased to speak on the first reading of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill and I look forward to the Government Administration Committee, of which I am a member, considering the bill and reporting it back to the House in due course.

Identity is an important issue for New Zealanders. It is about who we are and what we are, and our histories and our families. Records of identity are important to us because they provide the basis for determining individual entitlements and help us trace our lineage and establish our identity. We want to know that identity information is being used responsibly, that it is up to date, that it is accessible, and that it is accurate. We need trusted records that are up to date and modern.

Sandra Goudie: What’s been the problem to date? There’s been no problem to date. What a load of rubbish.

DARIEN FENTON: I listened to the member’s speech and I ask her to do me the courtesy of doing the same. In its statement of intent for 2006-09 the Department of Internal Affairs told the Government Administration Committee that it currently registers over 102,000 births, deaths, and civil unions. It issues over 200,000 birth, death, marriage, and civil union certificates and printouts. That is a big job and we need up-to-date legislation to ensure that these records continue to be the best they can be.

Many of us in this House have been involved in tracing our family history—even the member opposite, I am sure. Sometimes that has surprising results and some of us discover family backgrounds we knew nothing about. I am sure we can all tell a story about a skeleton in our closet we did not know about, or someone we recently found out we were related to. We may not have known about that person and we may not be so comfortable about it. Of course, in New Zealand it is not hard to find lost relatives. At a 50th wedding anniversary, over the weekend, of a distant cousin on my Irish side I found hundreds of whānau I have never met before. I am sure they are all registered somewhere, and it is very interesting.

Some stories are really heartbreaking. For example, we found out that my grandmother on my husband’s side had changed her name from Burkheimer to Burke during the First World War to hide her German ancestry because of the antagonism towards New Zealand citizens who could be identified as having German blood. Many of us will have dealt with Pacific Island citizens and citizens of other countries who have had terrible trouble accessing their records at home. Sometimes those records had been kept in one place and were blown away by a hurricane or destroyed in a civil war, and so on. That means those people are not able to access simple things like pensions.

It is amazing how those records have an impact on our personal decisions. When my son was born I was living in a de facto relationship with my partner, John. We discovered, when we went to register our son’s birth in Whangarei, that because we were not married his birth certificate would record that he was illegitimate. That was not so long ago. Members know what it is like with children, they grow up fast, and my son is now 27 years old. We were shocked that that societal judgment would continue forever more on our son’s record. We decided to get married because we could not predict how such a thing would be viewed by future generations. We got married at the Whangarei registry office when my boy was just 6 weeks old, and he had what was then the fairly unusual experience of attending his parents’ own wedding. He was not a witness, of course; he was too young.

Of course, if I could have looked forward to the 21st century I would see that the word “illegitimate” would become obsolete, that we could enter into a civil union rather than a marriage, and that society would judge neither us nor our son. In fact, if I could have looked forward to this Labour-led Government I would be able to see that life would be very, very different. However, let me put on record that my marriage has lasted 27 years and my son has grown into an intelligent, hard-working citizen with a strong social conscience, so I have no regrets. May I add, he earns more than his mother so he is making his contribution.

Another issue that many of us have become aware of recently is the increasing use of identity fraud or identify theft. This makes it even more essential that we have up-to-date, relevant, and modern systems of information collection. At the moment any member of the public can obtain the registered information of almost anyone else, and that is not acceptable. Even in New Zealand we have heard the sad stories of the names of babies being collected from gravestones and used for identity fraud. Our identity and personal information are valuable. Criminals can find out our personal details and use them for their own ends to open bank accounts, and to get credit cards, loans, State benefits, and documents such as passports and drivers’ licences in our name.

In the United States and Canada, for example, many people have reported that unauthorised persons have taken funds out of their bank or financial accounts, or, in the worst cases, have taken over their identities altogether. Can members imagine someone else pretending they were them, running up vast debts and committing crimes while using their names. In many cases victims’ losses may include not only out-of-pocket financial losses but substantial additional financial costs associated with trying to restore their reputation in the community and correcting erroneous information for which the criminal is responsible—for example, never being able to access a loan again.

In one notorious case of identity theft the criminal—a convicted felon—not only incurred more than $100,000 of credit card debt but also obtained a federal home loan and bought homes, motorcycles, and handguns in the victim’s name. He also called his victim to taunt him, saying he could continue to pose as the victim for as long as he wanted because identity theft was not a federal crime at that time, before filing for bankruptcy, also in the victim’s name. While the victim and his wife spent more than 4 years and more than $15,000 of their own money to restore their credit and reputation, the criminal served a brief sentence for making a false statement to procure a firearm but made no restitution to his victim for any of the harm he had caused. We want to avoid that as much as we can in New Zealand. We have not seen this on any great scale; let us not go there.

This legislation introduces measures to protect individual privacy and reduce the likelihood of identity fraud. It amends the Births, Deaths, and Marriages Registration Act 1995 and proposes changes, especially concerning public access to the births, deaths, and marriages registry information. This means that people will be able to access only their own records or those of their immediate family, or those of other people only with their consent. It will be an offence to try to obtain information by falsely claiming to be authorised to access a person’s record. The new access provision will preserve open access to historical information, and any restriction on records will not apply to those over 100 years old.

Changes in new technology provide us with many opportunities, and this bill reflects this by enabling the registrar-general to provide Internet access to historical records. This will make it easier for those on a quest for family information, but the graduated approach to death records recognises that some sensitive information, such as that of a spouse or partner who may still be alive, or the cause of death, may be sensitive for family members.

I am particularly pleased, given my experiences that I have related to this House as a young mother, that the bill removes discrimination against people in de facto relationships and includes a provision that requires both parents to sign the child’s birth registration form regardless of the relationship.

The bill is technical but important. It reflects the privacy and security needs of the 21st century. We have made significant security enhancements to the New Zealand passport and citizen application processes, and this bill builds on that. I look forward to receiving submissions in select committee and working with the other members—including the member opposite—on the Government Administration Committee to return this bill to the House for its second reading.

MARK BLUMSKY (National) : In the interest of facilitating business through the House I will save most of my comments—if the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill does go forward tonight—for the second reading, Committee stage, and so on. Before I start I want to—

Hon Member: Is this going to be the highlight of your career in Parliament?

MARK BLUMSKY: Absolutely, this is where I am going to make a difference. The previous member who just spoke, Darien Fenton, mentioned the length of marriage. I take the opportunity to congratulate the member on the length of her marriage, and also to congratulate her husband on his courage, bravery, and the sacrifice that he has made.

Darien Fenton: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member referred to courage, and that is not acceptable in this House, as I understand it.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The usage was not in the manner that we have banned in this House.

MARK BLUMSKY: The word was used in admiration for her husband, Mr Speaker.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I know.

MARK BLUMSKY: National is opposing this legislation for a number of reasons, which I will very quickly allude to. There is some good in this bill. I think the fact that the name of the bill has been changed and the word “relationships” has been brought in is a plus. The fact that 6,000 births are not registered is an issue that needs to be addressed. Mind you, feedback today indicated that an education process needs to be undertaken for Polynesians, and maybe that will get thrashed out in the select committee process.

Issues that have created concern for me, just reading through the bill, are issues with business compliance costs. It states quite clearly in the explanatory note that business compliance costs will be involved. There is neither scope nor feel for what those will be, but it is yet another cost that will be put on private sector organisations that want to be involved.

Secondly, another of the issues I have is that when one looks at the consultation undertaken, one sees that the notes make it very clearly known that there has been a lot of consultation with “Government agencies”. But the line that worried me the most was “Public consultation has not been undertaken.” So there has been no discussion about this bill, none at all, with anyone other than Government agencies.

I took an opportunity this afternoon to talk to the New Zealand Society of Genealogists and asked whether it had any issues before the bill before the House. I can assure members now that that the society has issues—issues that it has put on a note to me—which need to be brought to the fore, and which will certainly tidy up this bill. I will take the opportunity in the further processes of the bill, if it passes this first reading, to bring up those issues that the society has raised. Thank you for the opportunity.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : I listened with interest to the member who has just resumed his seat, Mark Blumsky. He raised in a vague sort of way some concerns, but said that National would not be supporting the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill. I thought, if there are concerns, it would pay to address the bill, tidy the thing up, and then possibly support it.

Mark Blumsky: And we may do that.

PETER BROWN: Well, the member is going to vote against the bill tonight knowing that there are concerns about it.

If one is in doubt about what a bill stands for and what it is meant to do one should, perhaps, always read the purpose clause, and I will read it. It states: “The purposes of this Act are—(a) to require the recording and verification of information relating to births, deaths, marriages, civil unions, name changes, adoptions, and sexual assignments and reassignments, … ”.

Now I do not know really what it means by “sexual assignments”. I certainly do not know what “reassignments” are. I could only conclude, going back to the customs legislation, that when one of the National Party members Mr John Hayes said that from time to time he goes down Cuba Street spying on bike riders that that is a sexual assignment. Is it a sexual assignment if he is sent there by his leader? It would not necessarily be a sexual assignment if he was doing that as a hobby. I know that the member who has just resumed his seat has a sort of inkling to go to Cuba Street from time to time.

Mark Blumsky: I live in Cuba Street.

PETER BROWN: He lives in Cuba Street, well there you are! That is the reason. But I am at a loss to understand, and I say this very seriously, what this bill means by “sexual assignments”.

Mark Blumsky: Are you going to oppose it as well?

PETER BROWN: No, I am going to support this bill because I want to find out what this is all about. I think one of those members on the Government side will stand up and tell me. But there are a number of concerns that need to be addressed.

I have some notes here, and I understand from my reading of this bill that, for example, both parents will have to sign a birth certificate. That makes sense to New Zealand First for a number of reasons, and this bill will provide the law that compels people to do that.

The bill tells me that a register will be created to record name changes by people born overseas who are New Zealand citizens or who are permanent residents. Those people will be issued with certificates rather than copies of the declaration form, as currently occurs, and that seems to be a worthwhile step.

Another point is that individuals will be able to access their own records and those of their immediate family. They will also be able to authorise other people to access these records for genealogy purposes. Currently, I am told, a person can generally access anyone’s registered information. I find it appalling that people’s records can be accessed by just anybody. That matter needs to be tightened up.

The bill addresses a number of other issues, but there is another worrying concern that I have, on behalf of New Zealand First. It is the definition of “immediate family member” in clause 7(3). It reads: “in relation to a person,—(a) means the person’s mother, father, son, daughter, sister, brother, grandparent, grandchild, spouse, civil union partner, or de facto partner; and (b)”—and I have real concerns with this—“to avoid doubt, does not include—(i) a stepparent, stepchild, stepgrandparent, stepgrandchild, or stepsibling of the person;”. It then goes on to list former spouse, civil union partner, or de facto partner of the person.

I say to the House, with some seriousness now, that I know of a situation where the father of a young daughter lost his wife. He married again—a young woman—and he and his new wife are looking after the daughter as their own. The daughter is a terrific young girl, and the mother and the father are terrific people. To say, by law, that they are not immediate family members does not sit comfortably with me. That is totally wrong, and I want this bill to go to the select committee so that that issue on its own can be addressed, because if that is the way this country is going, then it is going the wrong way.

Chris Auchinvole: That’s right!

PETER BROWN: Well, I’m glad the member over there is awake; I thought he was snoozing. I ask him to help me get this right, because although there is some good this bill will do, we are not going into this sort of garbage. New Zealand First will support this bill going to the select committee, but we will be looking to fine-tune some of the detail. Thank you.

Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Māori Party) : The world of Māori is rich with metaphor and allusion as to the connections between birth and death, and everything in between. We have many ways of saying “As one day ends another one starts”: Ka tō he rā ka rere he rā—“When a sun sets another rises”. Although this is literally applied to the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon, it also refers to the cycles of life. And then, of course, there is a more familiar whakatauākī: “Hinga mai rā he tētē kura, ara mai rā he tētē kura”—“As a dead frond falls off the fern, a young shoot uncoils.” This is taken to mean in Māori: “As one chief falls, another rises.”

As we come then to the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill, it makes perfect sense to us, the Māori Party, to be discussing it in the context of cycles of life and the interconnectedness of people, land, and ancestors. These matters of life and heritage, of mana tupuna, and of whakapapa, are utterly central to any understanding of what it is to be Māori.

Our identity in 2007 is intimately and regularly connected through to those from whom we are descended and, with that, our obligations to those who come after us. Our people treasure the capacity to recite whakapapa genealogy, tracing descent from Te Kore te Pō, and eventually through to Ki Te Ao Mārama.

In such a world view, issues of identity are incredibly complex, and it is debatable whether any legislation will be able to deal adequately with the delicate nature of real-life situations. Take for example the broadened powers for the Registrar-General to obtain evidence that a registrable event has occurred and that accuracy must be verified.

In the situation of birth, the bill stipulates in the new section 9 that both parents must notify a birth unless there are exemptions. These exemptions include that the other parent is unavailable or that requiring the other parent to sign the register would cause unwarranted distress. Unwarranted distress is an interesting concept. What sort of unwarranted distress could one imagine a child who does not know one of his or her birth parents goes through? How does one weigh up whether the unwarranted distress of getting an unwilling parent to sign a form is worth incurring, if it prevents the unwarranted distress of a child who believes he or she is parentless?

Another definition that stood out is that pertaining to the interpretation of a child having only one parent at law. This is further explained as a child being born as a result of an assisted reproduction procedure, such as donor insemination. It becomes even more complicated if the other parent is deceased or missing, which, again, justifies grounds for an exemption. Surely, a deceased or missing parent does not cancel out that parent’s whakapapa or connection to his or her child, nor the child’s need to name and claim that parent as his or her own.

These are very complex issues. Exempting parents from the signing of birth registrations will in effect deny the child’s entitlement to his or her own whakapapa. Is this in the best interests of the child or is it in the best interests of the adults involved? Although we can appreciate the many variables introduced as exemptions in this bill, we cannot allow discussion of this bill to take place without emphasising the sacred significance of one’s genealogical blueprint.

Yet it is because of the unique status of one’s whakapapa that we will be supporting the bill through the first reading, to enable privacy safeguards to be established, which is the stated purpose of the bill. The rapidly increasing problem of identity crime, identity fraud, and identity theft is being demonstrated in the gaining of money, goods, drugs, and other benefits through the use of false identity. A recent fraud report from KPMG describes identity crime as being one of the most pervasive developments occurring in Aotearoa in recent years. Indeed, it is so pervasive that the security index survey commissioned by information technology company Unisys found that more than half of New Zealand respondents were most concerned about identity theft and about people getting hold of their credit card details and misusing them.

Modern technology allows people to more easily create sophisticated alter identities faster and online. As was discussed last night for the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill, it has become a simple matter to falsify documents over the phone or on the Internet. The Māori Party is always willing to upskill and share our new knowledge accordingly. In researching the background to this bill I uncovered a whole new phenomenon called phishing—with a “ph” not an “f”. Phishing websites trick people into giving out personal information. According to Visa, the number of such websites has tripled over the past year. Phishing attempts—emails purporting to be from banks or auction sites in order to steal people’s identify information—are reaching about 15,000 a month across the world.

True to our number 8 wire mentality, New Zealanders up and down the motu are doing what they can to avoid being victims of identity crime. According to Baycorp Advantage—now Veda Advantage—three in four people now take steps to protect themselves from identity crime, and the ideas are nothing if not innovative. New Zealanders are locking their letterboxes, using shredders to dismantle household paperwork before it is chucked in the bin, or simply guarding their purses and wallets with more vigilance. In fact, the sale of shredders by the Warehouse has been rising by 25 percent each year with the intensified need to chop precious papers into tiny flecks.

The key issue behind identity fraud is, of course, the corruption and offensive nature of the crime. It is a crime that is extremely costly both in terms of invading one’s personal identity and on a purely financial level. In 2006, respondents to a KPMG fraud survey reported some 546 cases of fraud by loans gained through falsified identity. All in all these cases totalled a value of $2.8 million.

I started this call tonight referring to the intrinsic value of identity as the jewel in the record of whakapapa. Conversely, to abuse and misuse identity through fraud and identity crime is a breach against whakapapa. We absolutely support the need for full information to be available at the time of the registration of births, deaths, marriages, and relationships. We believe it is critical that Māori are able to access information about whakapapa, and would hope that in the bill the notion of whānau—in the sense Peter Brown mentioned—can sit alongside that of “immediate family” for this purpose.

We also want to place on record the importance of being able to access such information for family historical research and genealogical study. We will, therefore, vote in support of this bill, and in doing so hope that the very sensitive and complex issues we have raised about the tracing of whakapapa and the due access to records will be given sufficient attention before the bill returns to this House. Thank you.

RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER (Labour) : I, too, speak in relation to clause 10 of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill, which deals with the need to register the names of both parents at birth. I take a slightly different angle from that of my friend who just spoke for the Māori Party, Dr Sharples. I accept, entirely, what he said, but my experience as a lawyer is dealing with adopted children and the parents of adopted children. Although the stress for a parent to adopt out a child is unremitting and never able to be fully eased, the distress for a child who has been adopted is, perhaps, even more painful.

I can remember making a journey on behalf of a client to a town a way from Napier, with a client who had accessed her Department of Social Welfare file and ascertained, as well as anyone could from that, the name and the address of the mother. With this client we approached the mother. The physical characteristics were the same. We confronted this woman and my client said that she thought she was her daughter. The woman—and all characteristics indicated she was the mother, but she had been in denial since the birth—said that she had never had any children. The impact on the adult child seeking to identify who her genealogical forebears were when the woman—who all objective evidence pointed to as the mother—stood in front of her and said that she had never had a child, was totally devastating. So I accept that clause 10 of this bill, which makes the parents of a child primarily responsible for registering the birth, is very important.

I take up the point made by Dr Sharples about what is unwarranted distress, and I ask him just to read that against the provisions of subsection (2) of new section 9. The whole of clause 10—particularly new section 9—sets a very high standard. So any Family Court on appeal, when considering what is undue distress, would take a very high threshold to be satisfied there was unwarranted distress. We are not talking about embarrassment; we are not talking about inconvenience. We are talking about the absolute top element of distress having to be established.

• Debate interrupted.