Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister for ACC) : I move, That the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill be now read a first time. The primary purpose of this bill is to establish an Accident Compensation Corporation petrol levy. I intend to refer it, at the appropriate time, to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. Previously, an Accident Compensation Corporation amount was collected alongside the petrol excise duty, but this was not an Accident Compensation Corporation levy. It was also not possible to change the petrol amount without either making legislative amendments to the Customs and Excise Act 1996, or affecting Crown revenue. This bill will enable changes to the rate of the petrol levy without legislative amendment. The Accident Compensation Corporation motor vehicle account covers the costs of all motor vehicle - related injuries. The motor vehicle account has recently faced a significant increase in costs. There is a legal requirement to collect enough levy to fully fund the motor vehicle account.

The increases have resulted primarily from improved estimates of long-term rehabilitation costs for seriously injured claimants, and underlying cost increases. The estimates were improved as a result of isolating and better understanding the rehabilitation costs for seriously injured claimants. The motor vehicle account has the highest proportion of serious injuries of all the Accident Compensation Corporation accounts. The improved estimates and underlying cost increases, therefore, affect the motor vehicle account disproportionately more than the other Accident Compensation Corporation accounts.

The Act focuses on rehabilitation, it aims to restore to the maximum extent practicable the health, independence, and participation of claimants, including those who are injured in motor vehicle accidents. Increasing costs in the account, particularly in relation to rehabilitation, means that the motor vehicle account is in deficit in relation to future liabilities from past injuries.

Our Government is working towards keeping costs of motor vehicle accidents down. We have developed the New Zealand injury prevention strategy, which includes reducing motor vehicle injuries as a priority. We have also developed the New Zealand transport strategy, which again has safety as a focus.

The Government considered options of the best way of funding the Accident Compensation Corporation motor vehicle account. In recent years most increases in the motor vehicle account costs have been absorbed into the annual vehicle-licensing fee. The cost of vehicle licensing has increased to a point where there may be adverse social impacts. Some people had difficulty paying the licensing fee because it was a high one-off cost. A small number of people have not been licensing their vehicles at all. Having unlicensed vehicles on the road is not consistent with decreasing motor vehicle accident rates.

The Government wants transport to be affordable for all New Zealanders, and we want vehicles to be safe on our roads. The Accident Compensation Corporation consulted widely on the options for Accident Compensation Corporation motor vehicle account funding. Many New Zealanders indicated they would prefer to absorb the increases in the accident compensation motor vehicle account as part of the petrol amount rather than as an addition to the annual vehicle-licensing fee. The Government agreed with this approach. Absorbing the increase as a petrol amount is seen to be fairer, and avoids some adverse social impacts of increasing the annual vehicle-licensing fee.

Petrol usage is broadly correlated to risk in terms of distance travelled on the road. In December last year, following public consultation, the Government announced that for the 2004-05 levy year the petrol amount will be raised from 2.3c per litre to 5.08c per litre. This bill brings into effect those changes and establishes the petrol amount as a petrol levy.

Given that the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act provides for refunds for overpayments of levies, the bill also provides for regulation to refund the petrol levy for commercial uses of petrol off-road, such as for farming vehicles, marine vessels, and other machinery. It also provides flexibility for future options for an Accident Compensation Corporation levy to be placed on other fuels.

There are no plans at this stage to place an Accident Compensation Corporation levy on any fuel other than petrol. In fact, there are several barriers to placing an accident compensation levy on such fuels. For example, diesel is not subject to an excise duty, and much of the uses for diesel are for purposes other than powering motor vehicles.

This change is purely to future-proof the Act, should these barriers be removed and should it be appropriate to apply an Accident Compensation Corporation levy to other fuels. Further work is being undertaken on long-term funding of the Accident Compensation Corporation motor vehicle account in the light of the New Zealand Transport Strategy. There will be full public consultation on any further changes to the way the motor vehicle account is funded.

There is a second function of the bill, unrelated to the Accident Compensation Corporation motor vehicle account. The bill also reverses undesirable changes to the Accident Compensation Corporation appeal regime, which was introduced by way of the Statutes Amendment Bill last year. Section 162 requires that appeals to the High Court are either by leave to appeal being granted by the District Court, or special leave being granted by the High Court. Section 162 was repealed and now accident compensation appeals to the High Court can proceed as of right. The District Court Amendment Act will remove the requirement that leave be sought, so people would be able to appeal to the High Court regardless of circumstances.

The effect is that a significant filtering mechanism has been removed. For example, 25 of 40 attempts to appeal accident compensation decisions to the High Court were refused leave. The High Court Rules committee is concerned at the potential impact on the High Court’s workload. I am concerned at the potential cost implications for accident compensation. The Minister of Justice agrees that the amendments should be reversed.

I believe that this is a practical way to manage costs of the appeals process. The bill therefore reinstates the previous Section 162 of the Act. The Department of Justice intends for the District Court Amendment Act to come into force by Order in Council later this year. This amendment bill reinstatement of Section 162 would be brought into effect by the passing of the Order in Council that brings the District Court Amendment Act into effect. I commend the bill to the House.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (NZ National—Port Waikato) : I am pleased to have the opportunity of speaking on this Labour Government’s “Unashamedly Blatant Tax Amendment Bill”, otherwise euphemistically known as the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill. This bill literally represents yet another iniquitous and rapacious grab by this socialist Government into the pockets of ordinary New Zealanders. The tax in this bill comes as one in a series of taxes, levies, and increased compliance costs that this Labour Government is systematically and stealthily imposing on the people of New Zealand.

This is the Government that says that it is focusing on economic growth. This bill epitomises just why the Prime Minister has had to admit in this Parliament that her Government’s policies have no date attached to when New Zealand might ascend into the top half of the OECD. This bill’s 5.8c per litre increase comes on the top of the 1 July Crown revenue petroleum excise tax increase, which was from 17.8c per litre to 18.5c per litre, and the 1 March 2002 road fund petrol tax hike, which was from 13.5c per litre to 17.7c per litre. That is 3 years in a row that this Labour socialist Government hits the ordinary New Zealand taxpayer in the pocket, and that is just in the area of accident compensation, and it is probably only the beginning.

It is relevant to this bill to look a little wider, and glimpse over how hungry this Government is to grasp into the New Zealand workers’ hard-earned wages by whatever method it can. I took the trouble of going to our Parliamentary Library to see how in relation to this bill the Government has managed to spread its tentacles, and grasp taxes from the New Zealand worker. The chronology it has left is quite extraordinary. This was the Government that said it would not increase taxes. All we have to do is look through the bill, and on the first page we see “income tax”.

Mr SPEAKER: The member can talk about this bill and the reasons for introducing it or not introducing it. But what he is doing now is going through a long list of taxes that are outside this bill.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: Thank you Mr Speaker. I will go straight on to excise duties, petrol tax duties, and Accident Compensation Corporation levies, of which we have a chronology that is a legacy of shame to this Government. Might I just start with the Accident Compensation Corporation levies, because four of them were outlined by the parliamentary research unit on 1 April 2002, a short year ago. The Accident Compensation Corporation motorbike registration levy was raised from $134 to $211, a rise of 57 percent, just in July 2002. The car ownership levy increased 14 percent from $130.23 to $141, and there are a whole range of other levies, including petrol excise duty, that have also been increased by this Government.

It is also relevant to remember that many anticipated this—including the effects of the Kyoto Protocol, which is also likely to have the effect of increasing petrol tax by at least 5 percent. The list is readily available. It goes on, and the impacts it has on business and economic growth in New Zealand are profound.

Turning to the bill, I point out that the regulatory impact and business costs compliance statement states the reason for increasing costs is that the motor vehicle account is facing exactly that increase in costs. The statement saysthese increases have resulted primarily from improved estimates of long-term rehabilitation costs for seriously injured claimants and underlying cost increases. I want to ask the Minister why, for 3 years in a row, the corporation has had to fine-tune the way it estimates these costs, and they have gone up each year.

We know that the Government’s focus—it is all over the annual report—is on prevention, care, and recovery. If, indeed, prevention was to be successful, and if rehabilitation was to be successful, these costs would not have gone up. In fact, the levy would have gone down. But the Government has failed on all three counts.

This Government used to talk about how it would fix the Accident Compensation Corporation; how it would make the Accident Compensation Corporation more efficient; how, by removing the competitive model, everything would be better. But it is not. The Accident Compensation Corporation is actually a $2 billion business. It is a substantial business. This Government says that one of the major focuses encompassed in this bill is the area of prevention so that these levies might be contained. Yet, less than 1 percent of that $2 billion is actually spent on prevention. In fact, it is in the order of 0.75 percent.

This amendment bill is undoubtedly unnecessary. One of the extraordinary things that I note in the Accident Compensation Corporation’s book Consequences: What Accidents are Doing to New Zealanders, is the fact that deaths and injury on the road are reducing. The Accident Compensation Corporation says that this is good. On closer analysis, road deaths have marginally come down. But it is of huge concern that in New Zealand we average 12 deaths on the road per 100,000 people, whereas in the UK there are only seven deaths per 100,000 people. In 3½ long, tortuous years of this Labour Government, what has it done to effectively prevent road deaths, let alone deal with the more important statistic, which is the moderate to serious injuries? Those are the ones that impact on Accident Compensation Corporation levies. If we analyse exactly what happens, we see that in 1988-99 it was those moderate to serious injuries that sank the lowest they have done in decades, and over the last few years they have marginally increased. This tax bill is an indictment on the ineffectiveness of this Government’s policies to do what it said it would with the Accident Compensation Corporation, and that was to have effective prevention and a focus on prevention, and early rehabilitation.

These are the right things to do, but under this model, which the Government has put to New Zealand, unfortunately none of it has succeeded. For 3 years in a row this Government has gone about increasing the Accident Compensation Corporation levies from petrol. This bill just epitomises another failed policy of this Labour socialist Government.

DARREN HUGHES (NZ Labour—Otaki) : I rise with pride to speak to the first reading of the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill, and, in doing so, follow on from the member for Port Waikato, who I do not think believed what he had to say when it came to the approach this Government is taking with accident compensation. He knows that we are putting a huge emphasis on rehabilitation and injury prevention. We have reshaped the entire model around those principles, and it is another good example of the Government bringing legislation to the House that ties in very closely with strategies the Government has put in place. For example, the injury prevention strategy that the Hon Ruth Dyson announced last year, and the New Zealand transport strategy that has also come out, have very clear goals. Here we have legislation that puts those high-level goals into something practical for the New Zealand people. When it comes to the tax increase, of course that is controversial with regard to roading funding, but it was well signalled from December last year. The Government is making great progress on injury prevention, and this is a bill we can vote for with some pride.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : Clearly, the member who has just resumed his seat has no connection with accident victims, because he would not be singing the praises of the Accident Compensation Corporation if he had a great deal to do with them. I think the member should stay silent, talk to some accident victims, and hear what the dickens is going on.

Darren Hughes: As a constituency MP, I know what I’m talking about.

PETER BROWN: That is a debatable matter, at the very least. There are accident victims out there who are suffering immensely. Accident compensation is missing the mark completely in many, many areas, and this might well be one of the areas where it is missing the mark.

We are not necessarily against the Accident Compensation Corporation increasing the 2.3c per litre excise duty to 5.08c per litre, but we say that money should come from the levy that goes into the consolidated account already. The motorist is paying plenty to run his or her motorcar and to be covered by accident compensation. That is where the Government should have taken that money from in the first instance—from the 17.5c per litre, or thereabouts, that goes into the consolidated account. This is another slug at the motorist. This Government has slugged the motorist in this country more than Mike Tyson was by Lennox Lewis.

David Benson-Pope: Very droll!

PETER BROWN: I thought that was pretty good. That member can sit there and say the motorist should be slugged for this and that, and slugged here again, but not every motorist will pay this duty—only the petrol guy, and not the diesel guy or the truck guy. Do they not get involved in accidents, I ask that member? [Interruption] That is quite right; they do.

Hon David Carter: He doesn’t know.

PETER BROWN: Mr Benson-Pope is silent now. I can tell members that if the Government wants to increase the levy for accident compensation, it should put it right across the board. Accident compensation is meant to be a “no-fault, no-blame” structure. But what happens is that only the people whom we think are vulnerable enough to pay are targeted. The others are left alone. Ruth Dyson knows that what I am saying is true; she knows that she has put the diesel people into the too-hard basket. She almost acknowledged that in her opening speech in this debate.

Hon Ruth Dyson: You would put a tax on diesel?

PETER BROWN: We would put the whole thing across everything, but we would take it out of the tax that is already being paid.

Hon Ruth Dyson: What would you take it off?

PETER BROWN: I am almost positive that this bill will go to a select committee. The Minister has done her numbers, so she knows that the Greens or United Future will prop this bill up and get it through its first reading. I will tell the select committee exactly how to solve the problems of this country in terms of accident compensation, exactly as New Zealand First is telling the select committee how to solve the transport problems.

Hon David Carter: The Greens would put us on bikes and skateboards.

PETER BROWN: Bikes and skateboards!

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): I am trying to hear, as are other members.

PETER BROWN: I could not even hear myself. I read in a press release that if this excise duty goes up, Shell New Zealand will also impose extra costs of collecting it on the motorist, plus there will be GST on top of that. I might be a simple sailor, but would someone tell me how the extra cost of collecting 5.08c per litre is dearer, or amounts to very much more, than collecting 2.3c per litre? I fail to understand that. The oil companies are accounting for paying 2.3c per litre into the Accident Compensation Corporation’s coffers, and accounting for paying 5c per litre will not, in my estimation, add any cost to the oil companies. But like the Government, they are climbing on to the motorist again. I hope that the other oil companies show a good deal more responsible attitude than Shell New Zealand.

The Minister referred to a legal requirement to fully fund the motor vehicle account. That all sounds very sound and sensible; we have no argument with that. However, there is also a legal requirement for the Accident Compensation Corporation to provide accident compensation to accident victims. Daily in my office I receive letters—and I have no doubt that National Party Opposition members also get letters—from accident victims who state the accident compensation system is failing them. If this bill goes through this House as it is, will the Minister give the House an assurance that accident victims will be better looked after? I do not think so. I think that much of that money will be absorbed in administration costs and goodness knows where else. As this bill stands, New Zealand First will not be supporting it. We will not be supporting it to a select committee, and we would urge the Minister to rethink the whole thing properly.

LARRY BALDOCK (United Future) : First, I think that members in the House should focus their attention on the member Peter Brown, because he will probably have a heart attack when he hears my first statement in this speech. United Future will not be supporting this bill. United Future will not be propping up the Government on this measure. If the Government wishes to raise new taxes, it will have to look to the Greens for support, because we do not support this measure to increase the levy for accident compensation. The reason we are not supporting this bill is that we cannot condone a further unnecessary increase in the tax burden borne by New Zealand motorists. New Zealanders already pay more than $1.7 billion in petrol excise duties, road-user charges, and motor vehicle licensing fees. However, more than $785 million of that is diverted straight back into the consolidated account. It is not spent on accident compensation, roads, or anything that is directly transport-related. That $785 million is siphoned straight out of the regions, and now the Government is asking motorists to cough up even more.

United Future is not against providing more funding for the transport-related costs borne by the Accident Compensation Corporation; members should not get us wrong on that. We believe motorists should have to pay for the rising costs of treating the people who are injured in car crashes. Accident compensation levies at the petrol pump may be a simple way to collect that funding—the more one drives, the more one pays. Perhaps that might be considered common sense, but we have to ask whether it is fair. There is no compensation for or consideration of the individual motorist who takes care of his or her own safety, who may purchase a safer vehicle and therefore, should not be bearing the costs that are spread across the whole driving public. However, if that is the measure we are to follow, then the extra funding should come from the revenue already collected from road users—as has been said already on a number of occasions by different speakers in the House—rather than taking the form of yet another extra cost for motorists.

Of the excise duty that is currently collected at the pump, 2.3c per litre is already ring-fenced for the Accident Compensation Corporation. Given that so much of that excise duty goes directly into the consolidated account, why not ring-fence a further 3c per litre of that for the Accident Compensation Corporation, and give the long-suffering motorists a break? The fact that 2.3c per litre is already ring-fenced proves that the Government can designate the funds to the proper source when it chooses to do so. Given the fact that the Government expects to have significant surpluses this year, it would be reasonable for the Government to put its hand into its pocket to meet those needs on this occasion. We support the Government’s common-sense approach of not spending all that surplus before we are sure of it being there, and—

Hon David Carter: So you’re supporting a tax increase now?

LARRY BALDOCK: No. We are supporting a prudent approach to any potential windfall. But that would have been a very small step in the right direction.

United Future has consistently called for the revenue that is collected directly from road users to be spent on roads and other transport-related expenses, including the Accident Compensation Corporation. We understand that the initial fiscal impact of that would be considerable, so in order to give the Government’s finances time to adjust we have argued that it should be phased in over a 5-year period. Perhaps the increase of 3c per litre for the Accident Compensation Corporation could be used by the Government to make a start on such a policy, rather than passing this bill, which does the complete opposite of that.

At a time when New Zealand’s economic growth is coming under increased pressure from both external factors and deficiencies in our national infrastructure—especially roading—is this really a good time to siphon another $75 million out of the regions and businesses of New Zealand? This extra Accident Compensation Corporation levy will cost Canterbury an extra $10 million per year, the Bay of Plenty $7 million, Otago $4 million, Wellington over $8 million, the Waikato $10 million, and Auckland a whopping $28 million—and those are just conservative estimates. How does that support the Government’s much-publicised priority of encouraging regional development and economic growth? How can it be fair to take all that revenue from regions that are already paying almost twice the amount they receive back from the Government for transport-related expenditure, including that relating to the Accident Compensation Corporation?

I urge the Government to reconsider its support for the measures in this bill, and instead to support United Future’s policy of spending all revenue already collected from transport users on transport-related matters. That would address the need for increased Accident Compensation Corporation funding, and, at the same time, it would benefit road users and encourage economic growth at both the regional and national level. The Automobile Association’s director of public affairs, George Fairbairn, has said that some members of the association accept the need to cover skyrocketing medical costs, but that they want to know when the levies will stabilise. When will we see the increasing cost of medical expenses resulting from accidents on our roads begin to stop climbing, and reach a plateau? I believe that will be when we begin to build roads that provide a safe environment for motorists to travel on.

It has been clearly pointed out by Ministry of Transport officials—even as far back as 1999—that 15 percent of the fatalities and injuries on our roads are a result of the road conditions themselves. It would therefore make much more sense to invest more of the finance that has already been gathered into building better roads, and to have a net gain from a reduction in the expenses that come from accidents and injuries that result from poor roads.

I reiterate that United Future will not be supporting this bill.

DAVID CUNLIFFE (NZ Labour—New Lynn) : It is indeed a pleasure to follow the member Larry Baldock. He is erudite, intelligent, and honourable—and, in this case, he is wrong.

Bernie Ogilvy: Is that ever said about you?

DAVID CUNLIFFE: It is often said about me. Mr Baldock has made an important point. He has asked why all the money that has been raised from transport sources is not spent on transport uses, and he has suggested that, as a first step, that should be done. The point is that if that money were diverted into transport uses, taxation would have to be raised from other sources. I am afraid that, even in a United Future world, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Someone asked me on the street what I did for a living, and when I told that person I was a politician, he scratched his head and asked what I made. I scratched my head and thought about it for a while, and then it finally dawned on me—on this pre-Easter occasion—what it is that we make around Parliament: law. It is a pleasure to be able to support this bill, because it will make an excellent law. It is fair. It puts the cost where the risk is highest, and reduces the cost where the risk is low. It provides for sustainable funding for accident compensation, and it ensures that people will be able to be rehabilitated and to go forward.

JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) : The Green Party will be supporting this bill to the select committee, because there are some very important principles in it that we strongly support. We hope that we will make some improvements at the select committee to take the bill further in some directions where it has started in a small way, but not gone far enough. The first important principle we support is that there should be better long-term care and rehabilitation of accident victims. Because the National Party kept cutting levies right throughout the 1990s, and not funding the tail, we have ended up with a lot of people—many of whom I have helped through my constituency office in the Coromandel—who are having their accident compensation payments chopped off when they still need them, because the money is not there. Peter Brown is right on that count, but why does he then oppose raising the money to fix it? We support raising the money to fix it, and I will get to that in a minute.

We also support the strong principle that people should pay roughly in proportion to the contribution they make to the risk. Obviously, that cannot be taken to a fanatical degree, but it is undoubtedly true that the person who uses his or her car once a week to trundle down to the local shops does not contribute to the risk of accidents as much as the person who drives tens of thousands of kilometres every year at high speed on motorways.

At the moment, those two types of driver pay the same amount. The people who hardly use their vehicles, who use buses, walk, or cycle, and use their cars only when they have to, pay the same levy as the people who take their cars everywhere. So we strongly support shifting from the registration cost of the vehicle and on to the fuel cost, which much more closely mimics the actual use of the vehicle.

The trouble with this is that all the Government has done at this stage is put the increase on to the fuel rather than have that shift. We believe that if the Government could show people that it had reduced their registration cost by $141, then they could have accepted 15c a litre on petrol instead. That would have been a fairer way to do it, and we will continue to argue for that. Putting the cost entirely on registration is a barrier to vehicle ownership, and that is unfair. It is also a barrier to safety, because people do not register their vehicles due to the very high cost. Also, putting all the cost on to registration, rather than on fuel, makes it easier for people to evade paying their accident compensation levy at all. They can avoid it by illegally driving unregistered vehicles. One simply cannot avoid a levy on fuel. People either buy fuel or they do not. So we are disappointed that we have taken only a small step in that direction.

However, we agree with Peter Brown that it is unfair that this applies to petrol and not to diesel. We believe that diesel users should contribute in the same way. They should contribute according to the kilometres they drive, rather than by way of the registration cost of their vehicle. Whether that is done by a levy on diesel, which is possible with a rebate system, or whether it is done by a levy on road-user charges, which is also possible—and which is how they pay for roads—is fine by us, but it should be done in that way, rather than done on the registration cost.

At the moment, of course, we have a strong incentive for people who do high mileage to buy diesel SUVs, which are a huge risk to other vehicles in a crash, although safer for their drivers. They are much more dangerous for anybody they run into. People are much more likely to be killed if they are hit by an SUV than if they are hit by a light car. So SUV owners are externalising all the costs of their safety on to other people, and there is an incentive to use those vehicles rather than petrol cars because people get their accident compensation cheaper, if they drive very high mileages, by going to diesel rather than to petrol.

I am disappointed that National Party members do not support funding long-term care and rehabilitation of accident victims, because clearly we are not going to get that unless we fund it, and they are opposed to what they call a new tax. We do not call this a new tax. We call this paying one’s way. We are disappointed that they do not support full funding of transport injuries from the transport system. They seem to support some kind of cross-subsidy from the general taxpayer to road crash victims. We do not support that, and in fact calling this a new tax is really just scoring a cheap political point. It is a statutory requirement that the system be self-funding, and if we want decent long-term care and rehabilitation, then we have to fund it, and it has to be funded by transport users.

Peter Brown and United Future both say that the money should come from the current petrol excise. Let us have a look at that proposition. The current excise is only on petrol. If we want the increase in accident compensation funding to come from that, then diesel users are not going to be contributing a cent, because diesel users do not contribute anything to the consolidated account. That is one of the great inequities at the moment. All the excise that goes into the consolidated account comes from petrol users. None of it comes from diesel users. But I have great difficulty with the idea that fuel and motoring is not something we can tax for general revenue. Virtually every developed country in the world taxes fuel and motoring for general revenue.

Nobody argues in this House that all tax on tobacco ought to go into building cigarette factories. Nobody here argues that all tax on alcohol ought to go into booze barns. But somehow people argue that all tax on motoring ought to go into roads. If we look at the land transport pricing study, published in the late 1990s, we will find that the costs that motorists cause to the rest of the economy—costs that are picked up by the taxpayer—are far more than the $700 million a year that goes into the consolidated account from the petrol levy. So the Greens have no difficulty with some money going into the consolidated account from a fuel levy, but it ought to be equal across the board, across petrol and diesel.

In fact, if we want to snaffle that money for accident compensation or something else, or if we want to put it all into roads, then members have to say which hospitals in the country they are going to close, and which schools they are going to reduce funding for—because that money is being used now. It is being used for the general expenditure of the Government, and if members are going to take it from there, they have to argue what they are not going to do instead.

We heard Larry Baldock talk about money being siphoned off from the regions, as though there were some great sink into which this accident compensation levy is poured and as though the regions never see it again. Where does the levy money go? It goes back to accident victims and to treatment systems, and where are they located? They are located in the regions. So in fact the money that is “siphoned off” from fuel tax in the regions goes back into the regions in rehabilitating people who can then play a part in the workforce and contribute to the economy of the regions. It goes back to the people who work in the treatment and rehabilitation systems in the regions, and that provides economic development in the regions.

Roads and motoring are not the only things that boost the economy. All the other services, such as health services, and care and rehabilitation, also boost the economy, and it is a completely shallow argument to say that this money is being siphoned off somewhere, never to appear again and never to play any useful role in the economy.

So I am disappointed at the shallowness of the debate that has taken place today. The Green Party wants to see a much more concerted move of all of the costs that are loaded up-front on owning a vehicle on to the cost of running it, so that it is cheaper to own a vehicle and more expensive to run it. That will be a good incentive, in that people will use their cars more wisely, but they will have access to cars. People will not be shut out from transport because they cannot afford the registration fee, and people will not be driving unregistered cars. We want to see it shifted to diesel on the same basis, so that diesel users at least contribute their share to the Accident Compensation Corporation, to the economy, and to the consolidated account. It also gets rid of the distortion that, at the moment, is promoting diesel as a cheaper alternative to petrol when it is not, and is promoting all the emissions that go with diesel.

Peter Brown: What about gas?

JEANETTE FITZSIMONS: What about gas, indeed! If it still existed, would it not be nice? I still drive on CNG whenever I can, but that is another issue. As I say, we will support this bill to the select committee. We will see whether we can get some improvements on it when we get there

MARTIN GALLAGHER (NZ Labour—Hamilton West) : I support the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill. I support the Minister in her introduction of this bill, and I take this opportunity to commend the previous speaker for a well-reasoned contribution, in which the sort of political opportunism that we see from one of the Opposition parties on that side of the House was totally absent.

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (NZ National—Rodney) : I take no pleasure in speaking on the introduction of the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill. I would have thought that a Government should be damned well ashamed of itself to come into this House and increase the Accident Compensation Corporation levy on petrol from 2.3c per litre to 5.08c per litre. That is a huge increase in that levy—or tax—on the public of New Zealand. What was so pathetically absurd in the contribution of the co-leader of the Green Party, Jeanette Fitzsimons, was that she thinks the way to provide more service is to increase the spending. It is the way the Green Party thinks. It has no idea of how one actually runs a business or an organisation.

The first thing that should happen is that the Accident Compensation Corporation should have to deliver some efficiency, instead of automatically coming to the Government when there are a few more costs and saying that it wants more money. Of course, the reason that the Accident Compensation Corporation can come to the Government and simply say that it wants more money is that that Labour Government has renationalised the Accident Compensation Corporation. It is under no threat from this Government. No matter how inefficient it is and no matter how big a monopoly the Accident Compensation Corporation becomes, this Government will say: “Yes, we’ll enable you to levy more charges on the poor people of New Zealand with this legislation.”

The increase is more than the total of the old levy: it is 2.78c per litre. The old levy was only 2.3c per litre. Motorists will have to pay almost 3c per litre more on their petrol when this bill goes through, and Labour thinks that is great.

What has become of that once great Labour Party, which used to care about the working-class people in this country who have to use petrol to get around? It is going to slug those people another 2.78c per litre. It all goes back to the problem that Ruth Dyson as the Minister for ACC, and her cronies in this Labour-led Government, said they cannot have competition in the Accident Compensation Corporation, or efficiencies or better services delivered through competition. They said they would re-establish a monopoly. We all know what happens when there are big monopolies. They become very inefficient, and costs go up.

Look what has happened. All we have seen since competition was wiped out of the Accident Compensation Corporation is that the self-employed workers levy has gone up 40 percent, the wage-earners levy has gone up 10c to $1.20 per $100 of income—an almost 10 percent increase—and the motorbike registration levy has increased significantly. There was a 57 percent increase in the motorbike registration levy. Previously the car ownership levy increased by 14 percent, and now there is a further increase in the petrol levy—all because we have a monopoly. It is a monopoly where competitive efficiency is impossible. The only answer the Government, which refuses to allow competition in the system, has is more taxes and more levies on the public.

I draw the attention of the Minister who introduced this bill to the requirement of a regulatory impact and business compliance costs statement to accompany all legislation introduced into this House. The Hon Ruth Dyson is not without some intelligence. Some of the Ministers on the Government side of the House are short a few quid upstairs, but the Hon Ruth Dyson has—

Hon David Carter: A sandwich short of a picnic.

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH: She does have a couple of neurons upstairs. I know that. I want her to look seriously at this regulatory impact and business compliance costs statement, and to tell this House through the course of the debate on the passage of this legislation whether she genuinely considers that that is a thorough cost-benefit analysis. I draw her attention to the statement of the net benefit of the proposal on page 7 of the explanatory note. That statement acknowledges that there is a 25 percent increase in the costs. It states that that has been assessed through assessment of the various components of the account.

What we do not see here is anything about the costs on the economy that the increase in the petrol levy will impose. It should have been possible to estimate the increase in transport costs. It ought to have been possible to estimate, for example, the increase in costs for the export sector in getting products to the wharves. It ought to have been possible to get the increase in costs to our education sector. It ought to have been possible to get the increase in costs to our elderly retired folk. It ought to have been possible to itemise in that statement of net benefit the actual cost to the economy of this very significant increase in the cost of petrol through that levy.

That is what a cost-benefit analysis is all about, and we see nothing of it. We talk about what we see in the business compliance cost statement, which states that the various options that were explored have costs and benefits. The following impacts can be anticipated to varying degrees. There has been no attempt to quantify the effects on the wider economy. There has been no attempt to quantify the drop in petrol consumption. It might be a positive thing for the environment if less petrol were consumed. It is a totally inadequate cost-benefit analysis in relation to this legislation. It allocates no costs to any of the impacts. I believe that when the Government, through this legislation, is imposing a more than doubling of the petrol levy on the New Zealand public, there should be an assessment of the wider costs to the economy.

That is simply not good enough for a Minister like the Hon Ruth Dyson. A Minister with her tertiary qualifications—and we are not talking about some hopeless Minister here—ought to be able to make sure that a bill she introduces has an adequate cost-benefit analysis. By any assessment, it is a woefully inadequate cost-benefit analysis.

I come back to the point where I started in this debate. Before levies are imposed on the public when there is a monopoly administration system, like the accident compensation scheme in New Zealand, the Government has a responsibility to the public to make sure that every possible mechanism is used to introduce efficiency into that system. This Labour Government has done exactly the opposite. It has rebuilt the Accident Compensation Corporation into a huge monopoly, the efficiency of which it is now impossible to measure because there is no competitive mechanism to measure it.

Darren Hughes: How come premiums have come down?

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH: The junior member Darren Hughes says that levies have come down. He should tell the truth in this Parliament. Under his Government, accident compensation levies continue to go up. As I said before, levies for self-employed workers have gone up, wage earners levies have increased, the motorbike registration levy has gone up, and it is serious for businesses around the country as well as for motorists. Under this Government, accident compensation levies continue to go up because we have a monopoly. We have an inefficient empire running the Accident Compensation Corporation, and this legislation is just feeding an inefficient bureaucratic empire. We are totally opposed to it.

Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (ACT NZ) : On behalf of the ACT party I rise to strongly oppose the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill. This is a bill that has been brought forward by a Labour Government that promised no new taxes. Apart from the people who earned over $60,000, there were to be no new taxes. I ask the Government members sitting opposite what on earth they think this bill is. It is a bill to increase taxes. It is a bill to gain something like $155 million from hard-working New Zealand families. It is a tax-grab bill. Members opposite should slink in their seats because they are going against their election promise and increasing taxes in this bill that we are now debating.

The bill increases petrol taxes from 2.3c a litre to 5.08c a litre. This is the third time petrol taxes have been increased since Labour has been the Government. In this case, it is a 120 percent increase. If we look at the figures, New Zealanders use almost 3,000 million litres of petrol a year. If we multiply that by 5.08c, we end up with a very large amount of money that the Labour Government is stealing off hard-working families. But we should not be surprised, because since Labour has been in power it has increased the tax take from $34 billion in 1999 to $43 billion in the year 2003. That is a $9 billion increase, mostly because of the stealth taxes it has introduced.

Labour members said there would be no new income tax increases, but what they have done is increase levies, charges, and taxes in a whole range of different areas. For example, we know that fringe benefit tax has gone up and that tobacco tax went up. Petrol tax, which is what we are talking about today, has already been put up a number of times, as have diesel and road-user charges. If we look at things such as the cost of birth, death, and marriage certificates, they have all gone up, as have driving licence fees. There is a litany of different types of fees and charges that this Labour Government has put on.

If we look at accident compensation levies, we find Labour has increased the levies for the self-employed by 40 percent. The wage earners levy was increased by 10 percent. Motorbike levies increased by 57 percent, and car ownership levies increased by 14 percent. Even over the last couple of weeks we have had new levies and taxes on car dealers. We now have new levies and charges on school exam fees, for goodness’ sake. Across every level of New Zealand society this Labour Government has increased charges.

When we think about a tax-grab bill from the Accident Compensation Corporation we have to ask how come we can possibly have that. The only reason that that could be done is that the Accident Compensation Corporation is a monopoly. The previous speaker pointed that out loud and clear. The Labour Government nationalised accident compensation. We actually had a competitive model operating, and operating extremely well. That was one of the really good things that the National Government did. Labour came into power and immediately changed it. It scrapped it, and meanwhile there were so many employers in New Zealand who had found their accident compensation levies had gone down for the first time ever. This Government came in, and what did it do? It imposes additional costs on to the business sector of New Zealand that earns us the wealth and creates a rising standard of living if only it is given a chance.

We now have the Accident Compensation Corporation as a monopoly. It is bureaucratic, inefficient, and costly. It is just a monster in New Zealand. It urgently needs to be reformed, but this Government is doing it in the wrong direction.

Employers universally oppose accident compensation being run by the Government. In spite of all of the assurances by Labour, they know that it is a service they get, and costs they have to provide do not even match anywhere near what the private sector can do. That growing cost burden on New Zealand’s small businesses will add to the cost that ordinary New Zealand consumers have to pay. It will also make them less able to withstand a downturn in the economy.

A while ago an article in the New Zealand Herald estimated that the costs of small business had increased by over $25,000 per year for a medium-size small business. As that was done several months ago, I suspect that that figure is nearer to $30,000 a year in additional compliance costs since Labour has been in power. That is a shocking indictment on the Labour Government. It is putting a huge deadweight cost on the small businesses that are trying to produce the wealth, the jobs, and trying to keep this country going. All Labour can do is to think of all these new charges and new red tape, and dump it on the backs of small businesses.

That is disgraceful. This Labour Government came into power trying to pretend that it was pro-business. This bill lets us see the Labour Government’s colours. This is an anti-business Labour Government. All it wants to do is to nationalise as much as it can, and if it cannot nationalise it, then it will regulate it to death. Over the last 3 years in this House we have seen legislation that does just that.

The justification for the bill is meant to be all about injury prevention. If we look at the statistics on the rate of serious injury and death from motor vehicle accidents, we find that it has actually decreased by 30 percent over the last decade. That is in spite of the number of cars increasing by 30 percent over the last decade. New Zealand is developing an excellent track record in preventing motor vehicle injuries and deaths, and the Government knows that. It has a Minister of Police who, given any opportunity, will stand up in the House and tell us what an excellent job the traffic police are doing. We have a process through Transfund and Transit New Zealand where dangerous roads are being fixed, where the engineering, which is a major cause of accidents in this country, is quietly being improved over time. We should start to see the death rate and the injury rate on New Zealand roads reducing even further.

What is the Government’s response to this? Its response is simply to increase accident compensation levies, pretending that it is trying to keep up with the demand. It is just hollow words. This is simply a way to try to gain a whole lot of money to put into a fund—something like the Cullen fund—that will be worth over $2 billion by the time the Government has finished building it. The Government is trying to do it very quickly over a period of 4 or 5 years—trying to get this $2 billion into this fund so that it can pay for future accidents. However, the Government is actually asking today’s motorists not only to pay for the long-term claimants of yesterday, last year, 10 years ago, today’s claimants, and tomorrow’s payments, but also to pay for the claimants in 10 or 20 years’ time.

How fair is that, to burden this generation of motorists with the costs to come in 20 or 30 years’ time? It is an absolutely stupid idea. We would only get a Government monopoly even thinking about doing something like that. In fact, if it were not a monopoly it would be trying to keep the cost down, provide an excellent service, be efficient, and it would try to make the motorists and all the other people who pay accident compensation, which is virtually every working New Zealander, feel they were getting really good value for money.

We should expect this sort of bill, because this is a socialist Government. Labour has a track record of trying to take money off the workers of New Zealand to give to those who have not earned it. That is the socialist philosophy. We understand that the average working family in New Zealand is now $1,400 a year worse off in real terms than when Labour took office. What has the Government done with that money? It has put it into funding privilege for the groups that it likes. It has put it into buying the votes of beneficiaries, superannuitants, and so on. It has not put it into the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders who actually earned it.

DAVID BENSON-POPE (NZ Labour—Dunedin South) : I am pleased to rise in support of this fine legislation.

Hon DAVID CARTER (NZ National) : As I start to speak to this bill, it is interesting to note the length of calls that Government members have just taken to justify yet another tax bill before the House today. Here we go again in another attempt to slug the motorist, in the hope that the petrol pumps will tick over shortly and another 2.78c a litre will be added to the price of petrol.

Peter Brown: Plus GST.

Hon DAVID CARTER: Yes, plus GST, and the Government cynically hopes that people will not notice the increase. Mark my words: I will be making sure they know that when that new tax increase goes through, yet another tax increase is being slugged on to the New Zealand motorist.

As we debate this bill, I recall with interest the election campaign in the middle of last year. Time and time again, Government members around the country promised: “Read my lips. There will be no further tax increases.” I have lost count of how many times we have brought legislation into this House recently in an attempt to slug New Zealanders—most of them real Kiwi battlers; middle-income New Zealanders—and here we go again with an unashamed attempt to have a crack at the motorists of New Zealand. There is an awful track record in that regard. Just over a year ago, we battled in this House to stop another attempt by the Labour Government to put up petrol prices. On that occasion, it put petrol up by 4.7c a litre. Nearly 5c a litre was slugged on to motorists that time, and this time it is 3c—in an attempt to make sure that they did not notice it. The justification is that the rise is required to plug further the huge bungling bureaucracy we have around accident compensation. On the matter of the last 5c increase passed in roading legislation, I recall that the speeches delivered in the House promising that roading money to all parts of New Zealand were absolutely amazing.

Hon George Hawkins: Take your hands out of your pockets!

Hon DAVID CARTER: I will take my hands out of my pockets if it will make George Hawkins feel better. Why does that member not stand and make an attempt to justify the legislation? He is probably not allowed.

Anyway, here we are debating this bill because the current Minister for ACC has contributed to getting accident compensation into a mess. The corporation has come back to the Minister and said that it will need a little more money, because money is being spent without any sort of budgetary control. Ruth Dyson has said not to worry, because on a Thursday, just before Easter, the Government will slip in a little bill and put petrol up by 3c a litre—[Interruption] The Minister keeps interrupting, but as soon as we ask her to repeat what she is saying, she cannot remember. Mark my words: I will make sure that residents of the Banks Peninsula electorate will remember this particular petrol increase, and I will make sure that they know who is responsible.

Hon Ruth Dyson: They don’t even know who you are.

Hon DAVID CARTER: They do not know who I am? I will make sure that they do know who I am. They will know who is responsible, and they will also know that Rod Donald put his hand up and supported this 3c tax increase.

Rod Donald: And add it to diesel—

Hon DAVID CARTER: No. Rod Donald has not read the legislation. He now says that we are adding 3c a litre to diesel. He is wrong, again—which gives me an opportunity to debate the logic of the Greens’ argument. Jeanette Fitzsimons came into the House like a dutiful little puppy dog and said that she would support whatever the Labour Government put before us. Then she came along with the most interesting argument of the lot—she attempted to argue that it was fair that the user paid. She attempted to argue that somebody doing a considerable mileage was likely to have a higher accident rate, and therefore should pay more. Is that right? Rod Donald is nodding his head. Well, what about all the cyclists who are hurt in this country and require accident compensation support?

Rod Donald: Get rid of cars, I would say.

Hon DAVID CARTER: Oh, so now we are to get rid of cars! I will happily debate that with Rod Donald next time we campaign in the Banks Peninsula electorate. I will happily debate his new policy about how to get accident compensation under control—get rid of cars! That is the logic of the Greens. United Future members at least have had the stomach to stand up this time and say they will not support a tax increase.

Peter Brown: It’s only because they knew the Greens would.

Hon DAVID CARTER: I still admire the fact that they have finally come into the House and are prepared to stand on something they promised in the election campaign. That is a vast improvement on what we have seen in the past. But we cannot keep slugging the motorist, because $1.7 billion is grabbed from the motorist now in the form of road-user charges, vehicle licensing, and fuel excise tax. I guess Labour Party people can argue that 3c a litre is not much in amongst $1.7 billion, but the point that has been made by members on this side of the House is that at some stage we have to stop slugging motorists. They cannot continue to pay for the inefficiencies and inadequacies of the Accident Compensation Corporation.

That brings me to my last point. After the 1999 election, we stood in this House and watched that socialist Labour Government dismantle the accident compensation industry that existed in New Zealand. We had speaker after speaker from the Labour Party. I guess if I went back through Hansard, I would find that George Hawkins was allowed to speak in the House. He probably got up and made a speech like this: “Mark my words: ACC costs will not increase.” Darren Hughes, the new member, interjected in the House only half an hour ago that accident compensation costs had been held. That is the sort of propaganda Darren Hughes is prepared to believe. Accident compensation levies have continued to increase ever since the Government renationalised that industry. The farmers I represent now face—

Jill Pettis: You can’t represent anybody.

Hon DAVID CARTER: That member says that I do not represent farmers. I am happy and proud to be here representing the farmers of New Zealand. They do a lot more for this economy than that member has ever done. The point I am making to Jill Pettis—the junior Government whip who used to be in the Speaker’s chair—is that the farmers I represent now face accident compensation costs 60 percent higher than in late 1999. So Darren Hughes tells porkies when he comes into this House—[Interruption] Darren Hughes is being economical with the truth if he argues that accident compensation costs have not increased. [] Well, get up and take a point of order, lazy member!

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): If the member could just withdraw that reference to you know what.

Hon DAVID CARTER: I withdraw those references to “you know what”. The point I am making is that accident compensation costs have increased and have continued to increase, and it is absolutely unreasonable for any Labour member of Parliament—in this House or outside—to argue that they have not. Only on the eve of Christmas last year, that Government increased the New Zealand self-employed levy by 12.4 percent.

METIRIA TUREI (Green) : I was just explaining to the Committee the amendments that the Greens are putting forward to Supplementary Order Paper 77 in the name of the Hon Parekura Horomia, and I will continue with that. The amendments that we have put forward will mean that any third party who may lease the UHF spectrum will have to commit to prime-time broadcasts, primarily in te reo, so that te reo is not relegated to obscure times when no one is watching the television. At other times te reo programmes will have to be prioritised. Any third party will have to commit that the service delivery takes into account the needs of te reo learners, both children and adults, and ensure that practical access to as many people as possible is made available.

Those amendments reflect our concern about the current General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) commitments: that those commitments do not adequately protect Māori broadcasting. We know that a request has been made to abandon funding for Māori broadcasting. There remains a GATS reservation in respect of Māori broadcasting, but the limits of that reservation are not clear. There is no reservation to prevent foreign ownership or delivery of te reo programming. For example, the reservation may protect the funding of Te Māngai Pāho but not necessarily the use of the spectrum for Māori broadcasting, nor the service delivery of Māori programming to the country.

The Greens’ amendments will ensure that any third party will be required, through its business plan, to prioritise te reo, and to commit to delivering a broadly accessible service. That is an essential protection in this legislation. We urge all parties in this Committee to vote for those amendments.

KATHERINE RICH (NZ National) : I rise to speak to Part 2 of this bill. Once again, I say that for something that was supposed to be a flagship project for this Government, the Māori Television Service has been an utter shambles from the very beginning. Almost every step that has been taken towards the provision of the Māori Television Service has faltered. It seems to many members of the public that this group of people just cannot get anything right. We have seen director after director—a virtual game of musical chairs in terms of directorships—move on and off the board, with alarming regularity. The service has been an absolute embarrassment.

Nobody has really explained how the television service will play its part in preserving the language. On the Opposition side of the Chamber we feel it is vital that work is done to preserve the language, but we would argue that if we took that $55 million per annum and put it into teachers, Māori-language programmes, and school programmes, in particular, the whole country would be much further ahead in terms of learning the language. If members compare the Māori Television Service—which is being based on a Canadian model, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network—with that network, they will find that even though Canadian cable broadcasters are forced by legislation to carry that channel under a “must carry” clause in the legislation, only about 1 percent of Canadians watch the channel. I would like the Minister to answer this: how can this New Zealand channel play a part in preserving the language if nobody will watch it, or if very small numbers of New Zealanders will watch it? Broadcasting into the ether is not enough. There is no way that the language can be preserved if the service is on an obscure part of the Sky remote and nobody watches it.

I turn to clause 47(3), which states: “The Crown must not incur any liability to the Service or expend any money for the use of the Service under an appropriation by Parliament unless—(a) a final statement of intent has been presented to the House of Representatives by the responsible Ministers; and (b) the responsible Ministers have agreed to the output agreement prepared by the board …”. To the Minister sitting in the chair, the Hon Parekura Horomia, I say that that clause is a bit late, because we on the Opposition side of the Chamber would like to know what has been happening within the Māori Television Service for the last 3 years. Certainly a number of liabilities have been incurred under that Minister’s responsibility, when in fact the Māori Television Service has had no legal status in relation to the law, at all.

We have seen a lot of high-profile liabilities being incurred, heard a lot of debate about directors’ fees, and seen some programming projects that have gone bad. In just the last month we saw that Slightly Upbeat Productions has not paid any of its bills. It has left a lot of people with unpaid bills, and those people have incurred a lot of costs when it came to producing programmes. We are about to hear about another one of those issues. A number of programmes that Te Māngai Pāho has funded are open to question. I say that that particular clause is quite late, because the Māori Television Service has been going out and spending a lot of money, signing leases, signing programming contracts, and signing up staff.

While we are on the subject of staff, I would like to get back to another high-profile staff member. I would like to read from the Māori Television Service’s website. This is the part I did not manage to read the other night. Reading from the website notes, I learn that Mr Davy is an accomplished recording and video producer. He is a composer, a songwriter, and a musician. He has extensive experience in drafting and managing international licensing and royalty agreements. He has authored two books, The Platinum Formula and Would members believe that neither of those books exists? This bit is very interesting: “His non-conflict directorships include being founder and commissioner of the Asian Hockey Association.”, I say to Mrs Wong.

Pansy Wong: Really?

KATHERINE RICH: Yes. Mr Davy is “a member and adviser of the Middle East Round Table for International Relations. He is also a member and adviser of the BC Securities Commission.” Of course, the only truthful thing we know about Mr John Davy is the fact that he is Canadian.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I call Deborah Coddington.

Rodney Hide: I hesitate to say that there is bias.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Rodney Hide: I withdraw and apologise. I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. What rule was the Chair applying in calling Deborah Coddington before me?

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Mr Hide, you may not remember this, but you had a call yesterday on the same part of this bill that we are now debating.

Rodney Hide: Oh, that is right. I got it in before I was thrown out of the Chamber.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Yes. You had a call at 9.36 p.m. last night.

DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT NZ) : I rise on behalf of the ACT party to speak to Part 2, and to continue from where Katherine Rich finished off. She talked about the clause that mentions the statement of intent, and said that it was 3 years too late. It is actually longer than that. If we go back to 1997, we find that taxpayers’ money was being spent on setting up the Māori Television Service and commissioning programmes, doing research, and consulting huge numbers of the Māori community. That was all being done without the benefit of legislation like this, which enables that to happen.

The other area where this part is too late, because we have already gone down this road and blundered into trouble, is clause 28, which deals with directors having a conflict of interest. I suggest that that is also too late. We should go back and look at some of the people who were involved in the steering groups, back in 1997, for setting up a Māori television network, and then look at some of the companies that have received funding from Te Māngai Pāho. Let us not forget that the Māori Television Service and Te Māngai Pāho are interconnected, in that the funding of $13 million a year for the television service is only for the actual running of it, and the $155 million that will be spent by 2005 is for the making of programmes. Many of those millions of dollars have been spent on programmes before this television service has even come within cooee of going to air.

But I will come back to the issue of a conflict of interest. I put some questions to the Minister about the full list of grants that have been made for funding. It is very interesting to look at the companies that have been given millions of dollars to make these programmes. If we look at the companies, and then do a search at the Companies Office to see some of the directors behind those companies, well lookee here, we find they are the same people who were involved in advising the Government on setting up the Māori Television Service, and the same people who have been given money from Te Māngai Pāho to make a lot of these television programmes.

Iki Animation Ltd is just one of them. It has received several million dollars. Cinco Cine Film Productions appears again and again. We have no idea about the quality of those programmes. The only way that we can judge them is by looking at what has already gone to air, before the Māori Television Service was set up. If we take the judgment of some of the people who watch those programmes, I would say that they will not be terribly successful.

What are the boundaries within this legislation for the quality of programmes when we have a conflict of interest, which really just amounts to snouts in the trough—the restrictions on the same people appearing again and again, who are involved in both the setting up of the service and lining up for the funding? That is already happening. It has been happening for several years, and I really do wonder why the Minister even bothered to put this clause in. We will address schedule 2 later on—I know that—but nevertheless Part 2 refers to that schedule.

I have received some correspondence from a young 18-year-old Māori person who was in the gallery the other night watching this debate. She emailed me and stated that as a young 18-year-old Māori who is studying politics, she is very concerned about the Māori language. She is appalled by the standard of spoken Māori on some of the shows like Pūkana, and She said that the language is poor, including that used on the Māori news and the current affairs shows. The presenters come across very poorly and unprofessionally, and she said that they represent a really fake attitude to Māori things.

JILL PETTIS (Junior Whip—NZ Labour) : I move, That the question be now put.

PANSY WONG (NZ National) : This is very important legislation, and I applaud the Chair for allowing more calls. There are two clauses in Part 2 that I would particularly like to speak to. The first one is new clause 28A, which refers to the fact that the Māori Television Service will be broadcast on the UHF frequency. I read with interest the introductory speech on this bill by the Minister of Māori Affairs. He promised that the Māori Television Service would be encouraged to embrace sunrise, not sunset, technology. To that end the service had to broadcast, according to the Minister, in such a way that its programmes would be technically available throughout New Zealand. I do not see how this bill supports that.

The National Party certainly will hold the Labour Minister of Māori Affairs to the promise he made when introducing this bill that the service would be broadcast using sunrise technology. But instead, the Māori community will get second best. The platform for the service is only UHF. That means that all those people will have to pay $200 for a new aerial and the tuning of their television sets. I do not know whether the Minister has the mandate for that. Did he tell the Māori community and other people who want to watch Māori television that they will have to pay $200? I think the Minister owes this Parliament and the public an explanation of that. Who will pay the $200? I think that is a fair question. Can the Minister take a call to explain why he thinks UHF is sunrise technology? Why is the other platform not being used? The Opposition parties and the public are listening intently to this debate, so the Minister owes us a duty to stand up and take some calls in order to answer some very serious questions.

The other issue I wish to speak about is clause 28, “Duties of directors”. That clause states: “A director of the board, when acting as a director, and the board acting collectively must—(a) act in good faith, honestly, and with integrity;”. I would like the Minister to reflect, take a call, and explain to us the actions of some of the directors. For example, what happened to the first appointee, as pointed out by my colleague Katherine Rich? I have just learnt, like most people, that apparently the first chief executive, Mr John Davy, is in charge of some Asian hockey service. I wonder whether Mr John Davy can speak Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, on top of his other skills?

Hon Parekura Horomia: Yes.

PANSY WONG: The Minister reckons that John Davy is fluent in Chinese—as fluent as I am in the Māori language, I bet! What happened to the board that appointed Mr John Davy, who ended up in jail? The board was supposed to act with integrity. Where is the accountability?

The situation becomes worse. After finding out through the media—and by the way, the media has been doing all the hard work in finding out that Mr John Davy was not worth the paper that his name was written on—about Mr Davy, he was not got rid of by the board but through an external source. Then the chairman of the board, Mr Derek Fox, started to interview for the next possible candidate for the vacant position. Mr Derek Fox sat on the selection committee and asked questions, apparently making sure that none of the candidates came up to scratch. What did the board do? It had a 5-minute break. Mr Derek Fox left the room, and we learnt that the board voted three to two, with one proxy vote, to appoint him as the chief executive.

The Minister really needs to take a call and explain to the public whether that was an example of a board of directors acting in good faith, honestly, and with integrity. If it was, we might have to re-write the legislation.

MITA RIRINUI (NZ Labour—Waiāriki) : I move, That the question be now put.

EDWIN PERRY (NZ First) : The main thrust of this section is the purpose, and part of the purpose is the Treaty of Waitangi obligations. I say to our Minister that obviously there is some attraction to the Treaty of Waitangi, but I believe that will just be a fuzzy feeling for our Māori people—just another fuzzy thing to try to entrap our people into something that is going down the wrong track.

I want to touch on the teaching of te reo. I ask our Māori members why we do not leave it to the kōhanga reo, to the kura kaupapa, and to all the programmes the polytechs currently run. I know that there are private te reo classes running here, there, and everywhere. I mention my fellow MP’s kōrero last night about learning from television. I am not an expert in that particular area, but I think the information he gave last night is very important. I do not believe that this is the right forum for our young people, or people like myself, to learn te reo. I give an example: my daughter Renée, who is currently at St Joseph’s College, did not go to kōhanga reo as a baby, or as a 5-year-old. She went straight into kura kaupapa Māori and is now a very fluent speaker of te reo. All I am going to say to the Minister is that it was already happening in a qualified way in those particular areas I have mentioned.

I want to talk about the directors. We have heard this afternoon, and we have heard through the papers before, all the negativism towards Mr Davy, who I think had a job somewhere in the world—whereabouts was it?

Rodney Hide: Afghanistan.

EDWIN PERRY: It probably was Afghanistan, but through the grapevine I did hear: “Haere ra, John Davy!”, which means: “Get on your way, there is no more work here for you!”. With regard to the directorships of this particular television station, let us not get into the nepotism. Let us keep away from that. If this bill goes through, neither we nor the Minister want that landing on our heads like it did on Mr Davy. I want to spell out some things here. Mr Davy had an advance on his salary. He had an impeccable CV. If I had been sitting on that board, the first thing I would have asked Mr Davy is if he was that good, where was his credit card to get an advance on his rent and on his car? Quite frankly, the directors did not smell this man coming, so I advise the Minister to beware who he puts on the board.

I want to touch on the quality of the programmes. I have seen some of the previews of those programmes. I hope there is some te reo that matches the kōrero they are speaking. With those hop-pop ideas they have, I am sure that there will be some real quality te reo. I will be interested in Mr Gudgeon’s interpretation of some of the te reo they will be putting in those programmes. Let us be aware that we are using taxpayers’ money. Let our whānau across the floor be aware that there are other important things. There is marae development, and I must say that New Zealand First, in coalition with National, put $3 million—only a snippet—into marae development. That can be trebled, because that is the foundation of our people, and that is where we must build our strength from—not from some television station. That should come later, not now.

Land development is an issue, but I want to talk about membership. The member from, I think, National, talked about that issue. Membership will cost something like $200, but who the hang will be able to afford to pay that? I know what they will join up to. Because Super 12 is here, they will join up to that. They will not join up to this.

I am just looking back through the bill, and I might just be moving quietly aside here, but let us talk about banking. Why is the Government putting the banking with the Bank of New Zealand? Why is it not going with Mr Anderton’s big bank, the Kiwibank?

MAHARA OKEROA (NZ Labour—Te Tai Tonga) : I move, That the question be now put.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (NZ National—Port Waikato) : I have great pleasure in speaking on Te Aratuku Whakaata Irirangi Māori, and I am looking forward to the Minister taking a call and explaining to us exactly what—

Rodney Hide: We’ll be waiting a long, long time.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: That is right. We might be waiting a while, but it is absolutely relevant. I am very glad to be using the new name prompted by the fine member for National, Georgina te Heuheu. The contribution by Edwin Perry was an absolutely relevant and excellent one.

Ron Mark: It was a gem.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: It was indeed a gem, because he asked why we are using the medium embodied in Part 2 of this bill as the flagship to promote te reo Māori and tikanga Māori. I asked the question yesterday. What is the evidence base behind this medium being the one that will make the huge difference in promoting Māori language? From the report of the Māori Broadcasting Advisory Committee, I pointed out just how perilously precipitous the fall in the usage of te reo has been over the years. It might be very well for the Minister not to listen to this, but I would like him to take a call and tell the Committee about the evidence base behind using $55 million on a Māori television channel that has a body corporate structure and clearly has had so much difficulty over the past 2 to 3 years. Will the Minister take a call and tell us what the evidence base is behind using this very important resource on this very important question? I go over it again: in 1973, the status of te reo was that 13 percent of Māori had high fluency in it. In 1995, it was down to 8.1 percent of Māori with high fluency in te reo. By June 2000—probably at the beginning of this Minister’s position as Minister of Māori Affairs—we heard that only 4 percent of Māori had high fluency in te reo.

As Edwin Perry was saying, there have been some wonderful results through the kōhanga reo movement. The question I have to ask is why we are spending all that money on a television station that is very unlikely to reach a large number of Māori for the reason that he said, which is that there will be a cost of $200, and for many that will be prohibitive. As my colleague Pansy Wong so rightly pointed out in respect of clause 28A, the Minister was the very one who said that he would encourage sunrise technologies, not sunset technologies. Surely, those sunrise technologies are the ones that would be relevant and of high quality, and ones that had been developed through time that would hit the right target—those young Māori between 0 and 5, or 0 and 10. That is the crucial time.

Simon Power: 0 is young.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: The whole point is that instead of a television station that will not reach such a large portion of Māori, can the Minister give us the evidence base that this extremely unwieldy structure will be effective. I really would like him to take a call on this point, because it is absolutely crucially important. If we look at clause 24, “Appointment of directors”, it was on 15 March 2002 that the Minister of Māori Affairs, Parekura Horomia—

DAVID BENSON-POPE (Senior Whip—NZ Labour) : I move, That the question be now put.

KATHERINE RICH (NZ National) : It is quite interesting to stand here and debate Part 3 of the Māori Television Service Bill, which will establish the Māori Television Service and spend approximately $55 million per annum, at a time when, in my home town, seven of our 10 hospital theatres have been closed down because they do not have any money.

John Carter: How many?

KATHERINE RICH: Seven of our 10 hospital theatres have been closed down because we do not have any money to do operations.

John Carter: Is that recent?

KATHERINE RICH: It is just in the last couple of days.

Hon Dr Michael Cullen: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. What has hospital wards operating got to do with Part 3 of the Māori Television Bill? There used to be some rules in this place about relevance of debate. It is bad enough that we have the debate on every part as a second reading debate. Now it appears to be a second reading debate about a completely different bill. I know that the member has not been here very long, but there are some rules about relevance in the House.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I am ruling on the point of order. The member will keep to the part.

John Carter: I raise a point of order, Madam Chair. It has been a convention, if we are talking about conventions, that members are allowed a lead-in to a debate.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Yes. The member has had that.

John Carter: She has had only a few seconds, Madam Chair. If you look at your clock you will have a better record of that than I. It is not unusual for a member to have some lead-in and then come to the bill. The member was talking about the money that has been spent. It is quite normal for that to happen.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The member has had 2 minutes to do that.

Ron Mark: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Are you speaking to the same point of order, Mr Mark?

Ron Mark: No. It is a new point of order. There are those of us in the House who would have thought that that was quite spurious. I ask you to consider that—

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Is the member calling the ruling spurious?

Ron Mark: No. It would be very helpful if a man could be allowed to get two words in without a woman interrupting. I am looking at Jill Pettis. I know that it is a habit that is hard to get rid of, but the member should try.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Points of order will be heard in silence.

Ron Mark: My point is that we do note that the Committee stage is an important part of the debate. It is an opportunity for the Opposition to put its arguments against the various clauses and for the Government to respond in kind. I am a little concerned that the only contributions we have had from the Government in this debate are contained in points of order, and I ask that members be advised that they should make their contributions as 5-minute contributions.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): That is not a point of order.

Stephen Franks: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. The Leader of the House spoke about the generality of the debate. I have given two speeches in this debate, and on both occasions I addressed myself specifically to technical points and asked for guidance or comment from the Minister, as I invariably do in the Committee stage, on points that I believe are proper points of inquiry. The problem that I have, if the Leader of the House is correct that, in fact, one should confine oneself only to those kinds of points, is that there has been no response, and that if one does that, one actually makes a boring speech.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): That is a point of debate about Government members speaking or not speaking. A lot of members have spoken on this bill and will continue to speak on it. They do need to restrict those speeches to the part concerned.

Stephen Franks: Madam Chairperson, you did not let me finish my point of order.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): It is not a point of order. The member cannot raise a point of order about whether the Government participates. That is a point of debate. It is the Government’s decision.

Stephen Franks: It would be very helpful if there were an indication that we were likely to get more than one speech per part, which is provided for in the Standing Orders. It is at the discretion of the Chair. Those of us who endeavour to confine ourselves strictly to the technical clauses in the bill end up with our comments on the part as a whole never being heard, because we simply get closed down. Given the concern of the Leader of the House about the way we are addressing the bill, I invite him to consider that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I take the member’s point, but the Chair is the sole judge of relevance.

KATHERINE RICH: As I return to the point I was making, as we stand in the Chamber and debate Part 3, it is a sad indication of this Government’s priorities that we are debating the Māori Television Service Bill at a time when seven out of 10 of the hospital theatres in my home city have been closed down due to lack of funding. Each month there are usually 20 operations for grommets; now there will be only 10. But getting back to Part 3, as I continue with my speech—

Hon Dr Michael Cullen: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. You were distracted, but the member has just carried on talking endlessly about grommets, operations, and hospital wards in Dunedin. That has nothing to do with Part 3. If she cannot speak on it, I suggest that she leaves it to Stephen Franks, who can speak on the details of the bill.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The Committee stage is the nuts and bolts stage. The bill is considered provision by provision—[Interruption] There will be silence while I am on my feet and speaking. The bill is considered provision by provision to determine whether the details of the clauses are drafted properly, and incorporate the principles of the bill as agreed to by the House. I refer members to Speaker’s ruling 88/3.

KATHERINE RICH: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I understand that when there is a debate during the Committee stage, if members refer to a part, and the clauses within that part, they are still allowed to make comments regarding those clauses. The point I was making during the debate on Part 3 of the Māori Television Service Bill is that it is a sad indication of the Government’s lack of concern about the real issues. It is setting up a television station at a time when seven out of 10 of our hospital theatres are being closed down.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Those are matters that should be addressed in the second reading. I have made a ruling on this matter as to relevance. I ask the member to continue.

John Carter: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Is this a new point of order?

John Carter: Absolutely, and that very question brings me to a second matter that I want to raise with you in a minute. I am concerned about the conduct of the Committee. You have correctly ruled that when there are points of order they are to be heard in silence. We often hear interjections from the junior Government whip. Indeed, you just had to remonstrate with her and tell her to stay silent. You made the point that members were to be silent during points of order, whereupon the Deputy Prime Minister then uttered an interjection across the Chamber. Also, when Katherine Rich was standing and he wanted to raise a point of order, he yelled out: “Sit down, it’s a point of order.” It is not for him or the junior Government whip to run the Committee, it is for you, Madam Chairperson. We support you in doing so, and so you should.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I thank the member for his assistance. He is absolutely right. This is about the third warning during the debate on this part on points of order being heard in silence and rulings being heard in silence.

KATHERINE RICH: It is interesting to see the way members opposite have conducted themselves during the Committee stage of this bill. They have not liked many of the points we have raised in this debate. They have not liked us to mention names like “John Davy”, or for us to say words like “Viaduct Basin”. They do not like mention to be made of any of the disastrous decisions the board has made in regard to the Māori Television Service. Government members have lost all signs of a sense of humour as they sit there with totally sombre, sour faces. They do not like it one bit.

In terms of Part 3, though, there are some pretty interesting clauses. One of those clauses is clause 76A, “Review of Act”, which states: “(1) The responsible Ministers must, as soon as practicable after the expiry of 5 years from the commencement day,—(a) commence a review of the operation ...”. I would like to hear from the Minister whether he really thinks that that channel will be up and running in 5 years for a review to be undertaken. At the moment, as it has taken a good 3 years just to get the legislation into the House as far as this, I wonder whether when we turn on our television sets in 5 years’ time we will see any channel at all. Certainly the signs are not good. It is doubtful whether the channel will be watched by a large number of New Zealanders. Frankly, I think that that clause should be reviewed and amended so that a review is done in 12 months’ time. In 12 months’ time the House will want to have some significant questions answered about the way the television channel has conducted its business in the interim.

It is very interesting looking at the clauses that relate to the protection of trustees. There is a very long, long clause that basically indemnifies all trustees from any liability, any failure, or any mistake made in terms of putting the bill in place. I am not surprised. Those who were to consider being trustees or directors would want every indemnification possible, because the chances are that this thing will not work, and if it does not work they will be in the gun.

RON MARK (NZ First) : I want to focus a little more on new clause 76A. If I read that clause correctly, it tells me that if this bill is enacted it will require the Minister to review the entire operation 5 years out from the commencement date. That surely must mean reviewing the structure, the costs, the uptake of te reo, and the outputs—that is, the number of people who will be speaking te reo that can be directly attributed to the performance of this television channel. Hopefully, the review will also look at the appropriateness of spending the money on this programme as opposed to other programmes like Māori health.

Pansy Wong: It doesn’t state that.

RON MARK: But one would say that it should. I hope that the Minister in the chair, the Hon Parekura Horomia, or even the Minister of Finance who is here in the Chamber now, will take a call to explain something to me. I have a fear that in reviewing the set-up of the service they will find that Māori have once again been set up for failure. Why do I say that? I will put some information out here in the Chamber that I have had put to me, and I will leave it to the Minister to stand on his feet and tell me whether it is true. I have not heard his speech. We will publish the speeches from the Labour Party members on all these bills come the next election, so that Māori can see just how much work that party did in the House or Committee on any day and what Labour members did to earn their money.

I want the Minister to talk to me about why the Māori Television Service is not operating on Sky, or why Māori television is not free to air alongside Television One and TV2.

Jill Pettis: Which seat did the member win?

RON MARK: That woman cannot help but interrupt men. She has to chip and chip away. She should sit down. I have been told that there is a satellite floating around up there in the sky called—I ask her to listen and learn something—the Optus B1.

Jill Pettis: Not from you!

RON MARK: The member should not be so nasty. It may be close to the adjournment time, but that member should take a pill or something. The Optus B1 satellite is floating up there and I understand that Television New Zealand is operating on frequency 12456, symbol rate 22500, on a Forward Error Correction of three-quarters. I understand that TV2 is operating on exactly the same basis. I also understand that Sky is on that same television satellite. There are eight channels there for Telstra Saturn.

The chap who pointed that out to me asked why, given that Television One and TV2 are on the same satellite—which is free to air on those frequencies and symbol rates—Māori television is not on that satellite. Why is Māori television not operating off that satellite free to air in the same way as Television One and TV2 are operating, and why does it have to go on UHF? The Minister knows why that is; he has some answers there. I would like to have the answers to that. I am told that if we were operating Māori television in the same way that Television One and TV2 are operating, then the coverage would be nationwide. There would be no blank spots, and there would be no issues of Māori sitting up in Northland and knowing that whilst $150 million will be spent on this project, they will never get to see it. So I would like the Minister to talk to me about the Optus B1 satellite.

I would also like him to talk to me about the failed Government bid. I understand that Television One and TV2 planned to form a contract with Telstra Saturn to stop Sky from ruling the satellites. That whole contract fizzed out. It was due to happen in August/September of last year, but it did not. Sadly, the Government folded and failed to keep up the pressure to stop Sky Network Television from freezing out other competition. However, Telstra Saturn had a legal obligation to pay for two Optus B1 satellite transponders—that is, TR4 and TR8—for the next 7 years. Part of that agreement set aside half the 54 megahertz transponder for TVNZ to distribute free to air. Why is Māori television not on that? Why is Māori television to be set up at a cost of $150 million, ready to be chastised at the review in 5 years’ time—provided for under clause 76A—for blowing money, for not having achieved its targeted outputs, and for not having been able to identify how many Māori have taken up te reo? I have the horrible feeling that Māori have once again been set up to fail.

MURRAY SMITH (United Future) : I am concerned at the proposal in this part to terminate the Te Reo Māori Television Trust. It seems to me that the replacement, which is the channel itself together with Te Pūtahi Paoho, is focused too much on this particular proposal, in terms of the advancement of te reo by television. I envisage that the Te Reo Māori Television Trust would take—and it does take—a far broader approach to the issue of promoting te reo on television generally. That is what we need here. We need a body with Māori on it that looks at the wider issues of how te reo is best promoted on national television.

As I indicated before, I am simply not convinced that we should isolate Māori television and te reo education, if that happens, on a separate channel that hardly anybody will watch and that not very many people will have access to, by the sound of it. That will simply isolate the language and put it to one side. In fact, it will be destructive of te reo in New Zealand, rather than helpful to it. We really need to have a trust such as Te Reo Māori Television Trust to look at the broad perspective of how we promote te reo on nationwide television.

I note that in the New Zealand Māori Council v case, which the Government tells us is the foundation for why it is promoting this service, the comment was made that it is necessary for there to be mass exposure to te reo throughout New Zealand. That is how we will advance te reo in New Zealand—through mass exposure to the language, not by the restricted and confined exposure that will occur when we simply have one fringe channel that is watched by a minority of people, and that may, or may not, deliver education. The Government is sidelining te reo; it is not promoting te reo amongst the general New Zealand population.

Stephen Franks: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I ask the same question about relevance that was previously asked by the Leader of the House.

MURRAY SMITH: The essential point, if my friend was listening, was the termination of the Te Reo Māori Television Trust.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Yes, the member is correct. He is sticking to the part.

MURRAY SMITH: I note also, in new clause 76A, that a review is talked about, to occur in 5 years’ time. I do not have the optimism of my friend Ron Mark, who thinks we will have a wide-ranging review, because if he looks at subclause (2) in new clause 76A, he will see it states: “Prior to commencing the review referred to … the responsible Ministers must consult with Te Pūtahi Paoho on the terms of reference for the review.” It states there that the Minister, who now has an obligation in terms of the promotion of the Māori Television Service—in the way that the Government wants to promote it through that restrictive channel—has to consult with the body that will, in fact, head the review on the terms of reference. I can see that those terms of reference will not be terms that will look at wide-ranging issues like whether we still need the television channel, because we are asking that body, effectively, to look at voting itself out of existence.

I am not confident that the review procedure in the legislation will provide the sort of wide-ranging review that we will need. I do not think even the Government is confident of that, because we have already seen previously in clause 28C on Supplementary Order Paper 77 a sort of expectation by the Government that the UHF right will cease to be used. There is almost an expectation of failure for the service, because the Government has now put in, by way of that Supplementary Order Paper, all those provisions that set out what happens if the service does not require the UHF right, ceases to use the spectrum licences, or proposes to transfer the UHF right to a third party. What does the Government envisage in such provisions? How long will this channel keep going?

I think this review is not broad ranging enough, and if we still had the Te Reo Māori Television Trust operating, then it could continue to assess whether this proposal of the Government continues to be the most effective way of trying to get as many New Zealanders as possible familiar with te reo, and more and more fluent in it. That will not happen. I and some other members are attending a te reo course at the moment. This bill is like saying that only members of the Māori caucus would be told about that te reo course, because we were confining it to them.

STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) : I hope that the Hon Dr Michael Cullen is listening to me, because I think there is a matter that he would have a close interest in. Clause 72, “Protection of trustees”, has a provision in subclause (2) that is deeply confusing. It appears, on first reading, as though it states if a trustee, officer, or agent refuses to help set up this legislation—the words are: “ … fails or refuses to act in order to prepare for, or assist in, the implementation of this Act,”—then he or she cannot be held liable. The other interpretation is that if he or she does fail or refuse to act in order to prepare for, or assist in, the implementation of the legislation—in other words, if he or she does something in order to assist—then he or she cannot be held liable. I think that anyone, whether a lawyer or non-lawyer, who reads subclause (2) will see two completely opposite meanings for that subclause, and there is nothing in the grammar or context that really states what it is that the Government is trying to do.

Clause 72 is about the protection of trustees. I assume that they already have a protection in their trust deed. I would be very surprised if they had taken on the trustee exposures if they did not have a protection in their trust deed. So the provision in clause 72 must be intended to add a new kind of protection for them. But is that a protection for trying to delay, block, or change some aspect of the legislation, or is it a protection for not doing one of those things? I can see no indication from the context about what was intended.

The second point concerns clause 74, which states that the directors of the service must be appointed as soon as reasonably practicable after the commencement of this legislation “in accordance with section 24.” I turn to clause 24 and see it simply states that the board must consist of seven directors, four appointed by Te Pūtahi Paoho and three by the responsible Ministers. To understand what is going on we then have to go to schedule 2, where the appointment provisions are set out. When we go to that schedule and try to imagine what clause 74 will mean in practice, we find that that clause is a very covert, discreet signal that we then have some joint action by the Ministers and Te Pūtahi Paoho. An almost hilariously detailed set of definitions has been set out.

Clause 74 is a little 5-line clause, but behind it lurks pages and pages of definition—on suitability, conflicts of interest, financial probity tests, and the whole 9 yards. All of that is implicit in company law and would be totally unnecessary if clause 74 simply stated: “The directors shall be appointed as if they were directors of a company and have all the duties, responsibilities, liabilities, and requirements of directors of a company, except that—”, and the Government might then have been able to tell us quite clearly why it was that this service was not a company. But nothing in Part 3 tells us that. Indeed, nothing anywhere else in the bill tells us why the service was not made a company.

I think we can then find out why the service will not be a company. It is because this legislation is a carefully cobbled-together set of compromises that are entirely political and are set up to allow the Ministers, in fact, to control the outfit without alerting Māori to just how deeply they are being patronised. New Subpart 2A, which contains new clause 76A, “Review of Act”, underscores that. Clause 76A(1) states: “The responsible Ministers must, as soon as practicable after the expiry of 5 years from the commencement day,”—in other words, 5 years from now—“(a) commence a review of the operation and effectiveness of this Act …”. It is not to be a review of the Māori Television Service, but of this legislation, in accordance with the terms of reference set out by the Ministers.

There is nothing in the Māori Affairs Committee’s report that tells us what it is up to here. Clearly, someone said this legislation was a dog and someone else said the committee should not worry about that, because the legislation would be looked at in 5 years’ time. That is the most amazing code of acceptance of failure. Even with that little safeguard the Government was so hopeless in the drafting and presentation of this bill that we have had a shambles today concerning which amendments go forward and which do not. This legislation is an abject failure.

DARREN HUGHES (NZ Labour—Otaki) : I move, That the question be now put.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (NZ National—Port Waikato) : It gives me great pleasure, once again, to speak on the third part of Te Aratuku Whakaata Irirangi Māori Bill. I take up the point that my colleague from ACT Stephen Franks made about Subpart 2A, concerning the review of the legislation. It is quite extraordinary that new clause 76A(1) states: “The responsible Ministers”—it does state “Ministers”, not even “responsible Minister”, and we would hope that there will be clear accountability there—“must, as soon as practicable after the expiry of 5 years from the commencement day,—(a) commence a review of the operation and effectiveness of this Act in accordance with the terms of reference set by the responsible Ministers;”.

I am here to try to help the Minister on this occasion. I have put in an amendment that I hope will be a useful contribution. In my last speech I did ask the Minister where the evidence base is that this television service will increase the knowledge of te reo Māori and tikanga Māori on an objective measure in the future. We have seen a dramatic decline in those areas since 1973, and it is absolutely important that the success or otherwise of this station be measured. Consequently, I have suggested an amendment to add a new clause 76B, which would state: “The responsible Minister must ensure from the beginning of the establishment of the Māori Television Service”—not 5 years later, but from the beginning—“that operational research be carried out in order to continuously monitor and measure the efficacy of the Māori Television Service in achieving an objective difference in the number of Māori who are fluent in te reo”.

I hope that the Minister will take the time to treat that amendment seriously. All too often we lack the operational research needed to assess and monitor whether a particular piece of legislation is, indeed, effective. Knowing the scarce resources, and knowing the various alternatives that are available—as was enunciated by Edwin Perry just a little while ago—to increase the use of te reo and tikanga Māori, I think immediately of the kōhanga reo organisations and kura kaupapa Māori initiatives in the schools, which surely must be extremely pivotal to increasing the knowledge of the matters that this bill is all about. Surely it must be important to have some effective, objective measurement right from the beginning of the legislation, when it comes into being. I hope that the Minister will take this amendment seriously and will take a call to comment on it.

When we think of what has happened in the last few years, in terms of the television service, unfortunately we realise it has been a litany of one mistake after another. If we can ever rescue something out of the unmitigated conglomeration of disasters that have occurred over the last few years—and I will not go over them—it is to make sure that we do such monitoring and measuring right from the start.

I note that clause 78, “Amendment to Broadcasting Act 1989”, states: “Section 53E of the Broadcasting Act 1989 is amended by adding the word ‘; and’ and also by adding the following paragraph: ‘(f) the needs and preferences of—(i) children participating in te reo Māori immersion education; and (ii) all persons learning te reo Māori.’ ” It is absolutely essential that we remind ourselves from the very beginning that that is what this bill is all about.

DAVID BENSON-POPE (Senior Whip—NZ Labour) : I move, That the question be now put.