Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) : I am grateful for the opportunity to speak once again on the title of this tertiary education bill. The Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill has been called a reform bill and undoubtedly, in many respects, that is an enormous misnomer. I suggested that perhaps a far more appropriate title would be “The Labour Government (Let Us Reform the Tertiary System Again) Bill”, because the last reforms were so bad.

The whole essence of the Labour Government’s bringing in this bill came about through the enormous excesses of waste we have seen under Labour in tertiary education over the last 7 years. National has calculated that in the order of $419 million has been spent just on paper-shuffling for no purpose whatsoever. The OECD pointed out that on average there has been a change or a reform every 2 years. So here we are, after Minister Maharey brought in the first reforms back in 2001, and we have had reform after reform, and after this amazing $419 million being spent, who else would bring in a reform? It was none other than Dr Cullen.

During 2003-04 the real excesses occurred. Those were the years when a course on homeopathy for pets was broadcast over the radios and TV sets of the nation, and when “pendulism” for beginners and other such vitally important and extraordinary courses were perpetrated by this Labour Government, amounting to probably a massive half a billion dollars of extra expense. Something like $1 billion of good education money has been wasted over this last 7 years.

Here is the absolute irony: now that we have had Dr Cullen as the Minister for Tertiary Education, suddenly Helen Clark has come along and decided to rearrange the deckchairs. And who should come in as the new Minister for Tertiary Education but none other than the former Minister of Health, whom Tony Ryall described the other day as having joined the graveyard of Ministers of Health. His task is a considerably difficult one in that he is going to have to face a bureaucracy that has mounted from 16 bureaucrats at the beginning of this millennium to 340, and is rapidly increasing by another 28 or so as 13 or 14 investment managers and 13 stakeholder engagement managers are brought in.

One of the other possible names for this bill would be the “Let’s Add More Bureaucracy to the Tertiary Education System Bill”. That is because the Minister, when he first brought in the legislation, said it was going to be a high trust - low compliance bill. We know that it happens to be the very opposite. Right around the country we are getting complaints from tertiary institutions that are saying they are literally being threatened by these investment managers. They are being told that if they do not play ball with the managers, their investment plans will not be sorted out. We are finding that some of the universities are in deep difficulties because the Government has, even before the legislation has been put in place, demanded that the investment plans must be in. Therefore, though the universities have not been able to know the details of the plans, they have had to go ahead. So we have places like Victoria University being millions of dollars out of pocket. We have places like Auckland University estimating that it is something like $8 million out of pocket. This bill is indeed a travesty.

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) : I think this bill should be called the “Worst Example of Government Reform Bill”, because, as my colleague has pointed out, this bill is one more stupid attempt to achieve the impossible vision of one of the previous Ministers, which was, I think, that of Mr Steve Maharey. We are now 8 years on since Labour promised to reform the tertiary education system, and its main achievement under the title of “Education Tertiary Reforms” has been to try to reform the legislation it put in before. For instance, this bill abolishes charters and profiles. I can remember the Minister for Tertiary Education telling everyone how vital it was that we had charters and profiles, on whose development millions of dollars were spent only to have them junked.

There is a stack of documents—I think it is about this high; others would estimate it is that high—that are full of sociological gobbledegook about how the Minister can sit in his office and govern the educational aspirations of New Zealanders in the tertiary education system. It does not matter how often bureaucrats set out to write pages and pages, stitching together contradictory objectives in pursuit of utopia; they keep failing, and this bill will fail.

It turns out now that 29-year-olds with PhDs who are called investment managers have a total stranglehold over the direction of the tertiary education system in New Zealand. I tell the Minister that I think the 20-year-olds who are spending tens of thousands of dollars getting their education should have more say than one of their peers who happens to land an overpaid job in the Tertiary Education Commission. I looked at the purpose clause, clause 3, which states the purpose of the Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill, and there is no mention of students—none. One would think we are running a whole system with no people in it. The bill is about organisations, plans, stakeholders, and bureaucrats. They do use up about half the resources, but not all of them. There are still these people called students, I say to the Minister, and this bill should be called the “Fulfilling the Aspirations of Young New Zealanders Bill”. It should be, but it cannot be because they are not mentioned in the bill.

I have asked some of those 19-year-olds whether they have read the statement of tertiary education priorities.

Moana Mackey: Since when did the National Party talk to students?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, that is the problem—the sheer arrogance of Labour believing that it knows what 19-year-olds want. I asked one just yesterday, actually: “Have you read the statement of tertiary education priorities, and are you aware of the stakeholder consultation plan?”. I got a vigorous response in language that I will not repeat here, but it was essentially: “I haven’t read them. I’m not going to. I don’t care who wrote it, and it makes no difference to me, anyway.”

So the people who are meant to be complying with all the nonsense in this bill do not know about it, and even if they did they would say it was rubbish. They do not care what it is, and they will do what they like. This bill should be called the “Total Waste of Time Tertiary Reforms Bill”. As my colleague Mr Hutchison has pointed out many times, the people who designed it are all going. Steve Maharey, Michael Cullen, Janice Shiner, and Russell Marshall will all be gone—all gone—when this bill comes into effect. There is no accountability. They do not have to follow through, but they do have to answer to the public for this. They have spent $400 million thinking about it. This little, skinny bill here is the product of $400 million of analysis over 8 years, and nothing sums up better the total incompetence of this Government.

KATHERINE RICH (National) : I will follow on from some of the comments made by my colleague Bill English. Here we are, some 8 years after Labour campaigned on the issue of tertiary education reform. All through 1998 and 1999 Labour talked about tertiary education reforms and what they would do for universities, polytechnics and the wider tertiary education sector. Now, 8 years down the track, this is the bill that will fix everything. This is the bill that somehow will make a miraculous difference out there in tertiary land and ensure that the investment we make as a country will go to the right places and meet the needs of students. Well, for all those students out there listening to the debate and thinking about this bill, we can say one thing, and that is that this bill will not deliver utopia out in the tertiary education sector. This bill is so full of jargon, bumph, and statements that nobody can understand that it will not have any chance of engaging students or the wider public.

The phrase of the moment is “stakeholder engagement”. It is a very interesting phrase. It gets used around Wellington a lot, but when we ask anybody what exactly it means in terms of the day-to-day workings of an organisation, we find that it can mean everything and nothing depending on who uses it. We asked the Tertiary Education Commission what these stakeholder engagement managers will actually do. We were told that they will go up and down the country, meet with community members, and seek out the needs of local communities. We kept saying: “Yes, but how will that be done?”, and they said: “Well, they are going to have cups of tea with local people and they’re going to hold meetings and hui, and talk about tertiary education.” I go back to the 19-year-old students Bill English mentioned. Will they turn up and want to take part in these meetings? Will they want to get publicly involved?

Moana Mackey: Some will.

KATHERINE RICH: Get real! They are more interested in other aspects. They will not be involved in this kind of consultation process.

What will the investment managers do? Some little upstart who might have a tertiary qualification and be quite bright is currently travelling up and down the country at huge expense, ringing up vice-chancellors and saying to them things like: “I’m going to visit you every Tuesday to talk about what’s going on in the university.”, and, of course, vice-chancellors are saying: “What? I’m busy running a university. Why do I want to talk to some little upstart about what’s going on every single week?”. It is just added bureaucracy. It is bureaucracy that is symbolised by this bill.

It has taken $420 million to get to this point. The sum of $420 million has been spent on an organisation that went from a handful of staff to well over 300, and now it has an extended network of offices up and down the country. We had one in Dunedin. It opened its doors and got involved in engagement, worked with universities and polytechs to develop charters and plans at huge expense to the community, only for the Tertiary Education Commission to turn round and tell communities and the Education and Science Committee that what it had set up was not quite “fit for purpose”. So they shut it all down, shut down the leases—and who knows what that cost?—and did an about-face. I feel sorry for the tertiary education sector. It has got involved in this process in good faith. It got involved in writing all its charters and plans, and it spent huge amounts of money to get this far, only for the Government to change its strategy and say: “No, guys and girls, this is not what we’re going to do. We are going to go in a totally different direction.”

The upshot here, though, is that a bill that says it will reduce bureaucracy and make it easier for tertiary providers now introduces more planning than we have seen in the tertiary education sector before. Tertiary education providers will have to do more planning—medium-term plans, short-term plans, and long-term plans—and if they want to keep their charters they can do that, as well. This bill does not deliver something that will be less bureaucratic or have less red tape. It will mean more and more planning, and it will mean that the focus is taken off the teaching and education of our students and put more on the management and planning.

This bill would be better off being referred to as the “Let’s Put as Much Jargon into One Bill as We Possibly Can Bill”. It could be the “Let’s Spend a Lot of Money and Get Nowhere Bill”. I think those members over there should be ashamed that after $420 million worth of thinking, and 8 years into this Government, this is as far as this Government has got. It has taken 8 years to get this far and at huge expense. There are glossy documents but nothing else.

COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) : When we listen to Labour members talking about their goals and aspirations around tertiary education, we know that we cannot have any confidence in them. Basically, we have the old adage that a leopard will not change its spots, and once something has been made crooked it cannot be made straight. Those could be quite good lines to use in addressing the title of this bill, the Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill.

It is quite rich when we hear Labour members trying to blame previous Governments for the model that they have carried on with for 8 long years in funding tertiary education. When we check out Labour’s policy on its website, we find it quite interesting to see that Labour members have been the ones who have perpetuated this low-quality, visionless numbers game. Labour talks about building up to some 250,000 people in industry training. At the moment we have something like 140,000 in industry training, and we are having great difficulty in maintaining quality tertiary education at our institutions. Today we heard Labour’s boasting about getting close to 14,000 Modern Apprentices. We have to remind people that there are 140,000 people in industry training. The Government has spent over $200 million on trying to get a completion rate of just under 4,000. Again, we would be wise to consider this bill as amounting to 7 years of going sideways—7 years of wastage.

It is interesting, when we consider the performance of the Labour Government around tertiary education, especially in industry training, that the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation in Auckland last year had a 9 percent completion rate of its Modern Apprentices. The parallel apprenticeship programme, run out of the Manukau Institute of Technology, had a 90 percent completion rate. So today we are seeing the abysmal performance of a Government flagship policy, whereas the parallel programme that has been produced and developed by the Manukau Institute of Technology and all the other institutes of technology around New Zealand is outperforming this sham that the Labour Party calls the Modern Apprenticeships programme. [Interruption] I am sure that the member who represents the electorate of Waimakariri would be very interested to know that when we look at the conduct of the Minister—and he has a big part to play in this Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill—we see that when he talked this year about setting the fee maxima, he failed to gazette it. It was part of our job, on the select committee, to ensure that we inserted another clause in the bill so that we could enact this year’s fee maxima. The Minister had overlooked it, and he failed to gazette the fee maxima.

When we look at the purpose of the bill, we see that quite iconic line that states: “… without affecting the academic freedom and autonomy of institutions preserved and enhanced by the principal Act,”. We know that that was stated previously in section 161 of the Act, but the reason why it was put back in was that the committee felt that the Minister had too much authority. When we go over to new section 159AC, “Revocation and replacement or amendment of tertiary education strategy”, inserted by clause 8, we see it all laid out there that the Minister has an enormous amount of control. All the way through this bill we see that the Minister has quite unshackled authority. That scared the institutions, and they recognised that there was a risk there.

When we look at it all, we see that we have had a capped funding arrangement at the industry training end, and we have had universities providing high-quality education. We have had this industry training section in the middle that has been coming to Wellington about every 5 days, on its knees, and begging for money. The Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill should be sorting out the industry training section.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) : I move, That the question be now put.

PANSY WONG (National) : I am not surprised that the Labour member is very anxious to close the debate. I want to question one of the purpose statements of the bill. Apparently, the bill will enable the Tertiary Education Commission effectively to monitor the performance of organisations. Just now I have been told by my diligent National colleague that this exercise so far has cost the public $420 million, for nothing. Another $100 million can be added to this bill.

Let me share this with the public. Two years ago I brought it to the attention of the Minister for Tertiary Education, Dr Michael Cullen, that there was a cash-back scam of senior students signing up to learn English and getting a kickback, and that this scam covered about $100 million of student loans. There was not much prospect of the Government recovering that. When this was brought to the attention of the Minister, Dr Janice Shiner, the Chief Executive Officer of the Tertiary Education Commission, said that an inquiry would be carried out. Twelve months later I asked what the result was. She said that the competent staff at the Tertiary Education Commission had politely written a letter to the 13 institutions that were suspected of being part of this scam. That letter said: “Have you been good? Did you really take part in those scams? We will come out and visit you, and we will give you plenty of notice before we do so.” Those remarks were followed by this statement: “Please sign on the dotted line that you did not take part in this scam.” The commission got all those signatures and closed the inquiry.

So it took this backbench MP, with no additional resources such as the 340 staff working in the department, to go to Television New Zealand’s Close Up programme. Only then did we manage to get the Tertiary Education Commission to take another look into the scam. Files have been sent to the Serious Fraud Office so that it can consider whether to prosecute those institutions.

It did not stop there. This is not even funny, because then the chief executive officer of the Tertiary Education Commission went on television and said that a new policy had been introduced and that the scam had stopped. Well, we brought the latest scam to her attention only about a month ago this year. Three institutions were still advertising for students. I was told that the commission sent a letter to one of the institutions and asked it to stop doing this. So a scam was brought to the commission’s attention 24 months ago, and 24 months later a poorly resourced backbench National MP is still doing the job for an organisation of 340 people—

Colin King: And growing.

PANSY WONG: —and growing.

I want the next Labour speaker who is so proud to support this bill to take a call and explain to the public why the passage of this legislation would make this organisation more effective. What would change? All we know is that it has wasted $420 million, and, as I have just said, another $100 million can be added to that bill. I am really looking forward to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Parekura Horomia, who used to be very good at taking calls, explaining to the public why he is so enthusiastic about backing this organisation and believing that it will be effective. We are really looking forward to the Minister taking a call and saying what the public is getting for this $420 million. There is silence. I am sure that the Minister will oblige and take a call.

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

Hon DARREN HUGHES (Deputy Leader of the House) on behalf of the Leader of the House: I move, That the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3) be now read a second and a third time. The bill confirms and validates 16 Orders in Council made under 10 Acts. The bill must be enacted before 31 December this year in order to prevent the subordinate legislation from lapsing.

Of the 16 orders confirmed by the bill, I would like to briefly focus on two in particular. These apply to movements in the consumer price index to the rates of social security benefits, New Zealand superannuation, and war pensions. The legislation that governs superannuation specifies a 65 to 72.5 percent band within which payments can be made. One of the two orders also made an additional increase to the rate of New Zealand superannuation, so that the net amount payable to a couple is 66 percent of the net average wage. In practice, this has meant that more than half a million older New Zealanders have been receiving $26 a fortnight if a single pensioner or $42 a fortnight if a couple, from 1 April this year. This reflects the commitment that Labour made in its confidence and supply agreement with New Zealand First, and I recognise New Zealand First for its support in that regard.

It is good to see that this bill looks set to receive the overwhelming support and confirmation of this House. The bill was introduced by the Leader of the House on 8 October this year, and was referred to the Regulations Review Committee on 11 October. The committee rightly asked the departments responsible for administering the legislation to explain why confirmation or validation of the orders was warranted. The committee was satisfied with the responses it received, and presented its report 2 weeks ago on 7 November, recommending that the bill be passed without amendment. I thank the Regulations Review Committee for its consideration of this bill and for the efficient work it undertook. I particularly recognise the chair of that committee, Dr Richard Worth. I commend this bill to the House for its second and third readings.

Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) : It is right and proper that the House be detained for a period while it considers the significance of the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3). As the previous speaker has said, National supports this legislation.

Generally, of course, Parliament does not favour omnibus bills, but some specific exceptions within the body of the Standing Orders contemplate that there will be some classes of cases where that indication will be departed from. Standing Order 263 deals with this issue, and it provides that there may be omnibus bills in the nature of confirming or validating actions that are “otherwise illegal” or that “validate and confirm regulations:”. It is the case also that some statutes provide for the making of regulations that will cease to have effect after a fixed period of time, unless they are validated or confirmed by an Act of Parliament passed within that time. If you like, that is a form of statutory sunset clause, whose effect can be avoided by Parliament confirming the regulations and giving them continuing force.

There is a subtlety in all of this: there is a distinction to be drawn between validation and confirmation. Validating a regulation, as opposed to merely confirming it, potentially does more than to avoid the lapse of the regulation under a sunset clause. It can also cure a defect in the regulation, or in the manner in which the regulation was made, that would otherwise have led to the regulation being regarded as invalid. I have said there is a subtlety. It is a subtlety that parliamentary counsel pick up, following accepted practice. If we look at Part 1 of this bill, we see that clause 4, “Validations to prevent expiry do not cure invalidity, etc” specifically states: “In the light of their purpose, the validations effected by” these various provisions “do not—(a) express an intention to give legislative force to the provisions of the enactments validated; or (b) apply to any reason for invalidating any of those enactments; or (c) override any presumption that would otherwise apply to any of those enactments.”

When we look at the particular confirmations and validations, we see that some measures are to be confirmed and others are to be validated and confirmed. As an example of the first, the regulations under the Animal Products Act 1999 are to be confirmed. Other members will speak about that. An example of a validation and confirmation would be the order under the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act 2001.

I will say something more about the legal position here. Each year, legislation is introduced to confirm regulations that would otherwise lapse. Confirmation is not an opportunity to explore issues of validity; rather, it is the House’s opportunity to consider the policy that lies behind the regulations to be confirmed. So it is not an exercise confined to examining regulations for conflict with delegated legislation principles. It might well be the case that specific orders are referred to subject select committees, but here, because of the significant number of provisions that are the subject of confirmation and/or validation, they went to the Regulations Review Committee—which has, as members know, a general responsibility for delegated legislation—and were dealt with by that committee, not by a subject select committee.

Before I sit down, I will give members just two examples of what happens here—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Please do—more than two.

Dr RICHARD WORTH: One of the younger Ministers on the other side of the House has asked for more than two illustrations. I am certainly happy to oblige him with multiple illustrations, if that is truly required. But it is probably not, and other speakers will pick up other illustrations founded on what I say. I will take just one, which will be of particular interest to that young Minister: the Tariff (Concession) Amendment Order 2007. As members may be aware, that order amended Part II of the Tariff of New Zealand, which is the first schedule to the Tariff Act 1988, by altering the tariff concession reference number 80, which allows for duty-free alcohol imported by passengers arriving in New Zealand.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: That’s something very close to the member’s heart.

Dr RICHARD WORTH: It is something close to the member’s heart. His predilection for alcohol is well known and is the subject of comment both in this House and outside it. But because that order was made under section 9 of the Tariff Act it was necessary, in terms of section 11 of that Act, for it to be validated and confirmed by an Act of Parliament if it was not to expire. “So what?”, the Minister may ask. Well, the “so what” answer is this: if the order is not confirmed it will lapse, and the duty-free concession allowance of three 1,125 millilitre bottles of spirit will revert to the previous concession allowance of one 1,125 millilitre bottle of spirits. That was the position that existed prior to 1 September 2007. So the New Zealand Customs Service, that hard-working group of civil servants, would then be required to collect the duty payable on the additional two bottles that previously qualified for duty-free entry under the de minimis duty collection provision of the customs legislation. As we would all know and recognise, that would create administrative difficulties and uncertainty for travellers, duty-free retailers, and customers.

I will just take another example, which relates to the Social Security (Rates of Benefits and Allowances) Order of 2007. That order increased the payment rates of most social security benefits by the percentage increase in the consumer price index for the year ended December 2006. Section 61H(3) of the Social Security Act provides that an Order in Council made in terms of that legislation expires 12 months after it is laid before the House under the Regulations (Disallowance) Act, unless it is validated and confirmed. So it is an example of validation and confirmation by an Act of Parliament passed before that date. In this case the order was laid before the House on 5 March 2007, and if the order is not validated and confirmed before 5 March 2008, it will expire, will it not? So the payment rates of benefits and of New Zealand superannuation would revert on that date to the rates that applied on 31 March 2007. That would cause hardship and inconvenience to the people who are dependent on those benefits. It would cause administration difficulty for the ministry, as it would need to notify beneficiaries and superannuitants and explain that the rates of their benefits would reduce, and the ministry would have to field inquiries and complaints on that issue.

The reason it is so important that the orders that are currently detaining the House be passed in this legislation is so that a regime will be in place that will not produce inequity and unfairness. But there is a wider issue, but perhaps I will deal with that very particular issue in a later call.

LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) : We are fortunate to have someone of the calibre of Dr Richard Worth, who chairs the Regulations Review Committee. We have seen today how he has been able to crystallise and articulate the essence of such important legislation—legislation that to most minds is of a technical nature and does not really inspire many to be part of this debate. But it is important to realise that regulations and orders can expire and that they need to be rolled over. Even if we do not have an interest specifically in the regulation before us, we can look behind at the policy that drives these sorts of regulations. Those who have a mind to do so will see what the policy decisions are that have promulgated the regulations we have before us. This Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3) is important legislation, and there is much to take in. I said that this is a technical bill, but we are asked this afternoon to allow departments, through the clauses in the bill, to be able to operate and carry on their functions. Subordinate legislation has a time frame on it that is going to expire—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Really!

LINDSAY TISCH: That is why we are here, I say to the Minister.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I have always said the member is a genius.

LINDSAY TISCH: Well, it is a great committee we have. The Regulations Review Committee not only has Dr Worth as its chair but has on it my esteemed colleague here, Eric Roy, who is the authority on fishing. He will be able to tell us what the fisheries legislation means. One of the provisions we are asked to confirm and validate this afternoon specifically talks about fishing. I know that my colleague Eric Roy will be able to do that, as an expert in that area. Subordinate legislation needs to be confirmed and, in some cases, validated to avail the effect of what are commonly called sunset clauses, where regulations and orders in subordinate legislation will be deemed to be revoked and will expire on a certain date.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Struth!

LINDSAY TISCH: That is important to realise, and that is why we are here today. It is an annual event. I say to the Minister that I have spoken on this before—it is an annual event.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I remember that speech.

LINDSAY TISCH: Oh, it is not the same speech as last time, because we are dealing with different clauses this time. These clauses will expire on a date, and it is important that they are confirmed and validated by an Act before this Parliament. That is the reason we are here this afternoon. The regulations and orders that we will be validating are in Part 2 of the bill. I will go through those in a minute.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Slowly.

LINDSAY TISCH: Well, there are nine clauses here in Part 2, where the regulations and orders are specified in the bill, and to avoid revocation we must today confirm and, in some cases, validate those. As I said, this is a technical bill, so it does not have the panache or the excitement of many, but it is certainly an important bill.

I draw the attention of members to the contents page of the bill. This bill has in it the title and commencement—I do not think we in National will be commenting on those. Part 1 of the bill talks about the “General and technical provisions”, and includes the purpose clause. Part 2 contains the confirmations and validations that are so important. There is the Animal Products Act 1999, the Commodity Levies Act 1990, the Customs and Excise Act 1996, and the Fisheries Act 1996, which I am sure my colleague Eric Roy will want to make comment on. Our spokesman on fishing, Phil Heatley, who is standing up, will probably want to make a valuable contribution on this also. There is the Gambling Act 2003, which I will be speaking on. There is the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act 2001, and the Social Security Act 1964. There is the Road User Charges Act 1977, the Tariff Act 1988, and the War Pensions Act 1954, which my colleague Dr Worth spoke about.

I draw the attention of members first to clause 11 of this bill, which relates to the Gambling Act 2003. The regulations were made under section 319 of the Gambling Act 2003. That section provides that if regulations requiring gambling operators to pay a levy are made on or before 30 June in any year, the regulations would expire on 30 June of the following year, unless they are specifically confirmed by an Act of Parliament passed during the year. That is the reason we are here today—so that a levy can be struck. Since 1996 successive Governments have considered it appropriate that the major gambling operators should contribute to the cost of addressing the harm caused by their products. Section 317 of the Act states that the Government may allocate responsibility for developing and delivering an integrated problem gambling strategy to a department. This responsibility was allocated to the Ministry of Health, which took over the role of the Problem Gambling Committee of New Zealand from 1 July 2004.

Section 319 of the Act also provides that regulations may be made requiring gambling operators to pay a levy to recover the cost of developing, managing, and delivering an integrated problem-gambling strategy. This strategy will be funded from an appropriation to the ministry, and the Crown will recoup this funding from the levy. The levy, which is calculated using a formula supplied in the Act, provides a mechanism for apportioning the cost of the strategy between the main gambling subsectors—that is, non-casino gaming machines, casinos, the New Zealand Racing Board, and the New Zealand Lotteries Commission.

This formula is always subject to debate. I spent much time working on it back in 2003, because it is a formula that I think does not have fairness and equity. I will not talk about that today, because, of course, that is a policy decision. We are not talking about policy today; we are talking about the confirmation and validation of a levy so it can carry on. So I will not talk about the process, which is a policy decision of the Government—I will not get into that debate.

This levy that I have talked about, the problem-gambling levy, is fixed for a term of 3 years. Three years has been established as the maximum period for which the levy can be made, to coincide with the conclusion of the 3-year funding round. It may be that during that period of time there are overs and unders—that the levy that has been collected has not met the budget that has been required—so there is a provision in section 318 of the Gambling Act that provides that when the next levy is going to be made under the formula, those unders and overs can then be apportioned out. That is how that process will work.

In my remaining minutes I want to talk about the indexing of the war pensions and associated allowances. This is done annually, and it takes into account the percentage increase in the consumer price index over the previous calendar year. It is important for those who receive war pensions that this provision is there. Otherwise, if it were to lapse, it would be a huge problem, and it would contravene Government policy—here I am actually talking about Government policy—and there may be the need, if payments have been made, for the department to ask for money back. We do not want that to happen. These people who are eligible for war pensions need to have certainty and security. One of the provisions that we are talking about here—clause 15 in the bill—validates and confirms an order in the War Pensions Act 1954. It is important that we are able to roll that over and to confirm and to validate the War Pensions (Rates of Pensions, Lump Sum Payments, and Allowances) Order 2007.

If the increase in the rates of war pensions, lump-sum payments, and allowances are not confirmed, the department that is responsible for this will be asking for money back and trying to retrieve those overpayments—and that goes back to 1 April 2007. Our committee spent much time on this. It is an important committee. We have scrutinised and analysed these clauses. National is happy to support this bill before the House.

ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) : Seldom in the annals of the history of this House do we have something before us as riveting and important as the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3). This matter has been handled by the Regulations Review Committee. Our chairman, Dr Worth, gave a very full report on our activities, and I am sure the House was impressed at the standard and qualities of the chair of that committee.

This bill is actually important. Members may think I am speaking with my tongue in cheek, but the Regulations Review Committee’s examination of this subordinate legislation is significantly important. Let me explain why. Any members who care to canvass or talk to businesses or organisations in their community hear the constant cry of the excessive cost of compliance. Here today we are validating the ability to charge levies and fees, and that argument that we are constantly confronted with—the cost of compliance, the cost of doing business—is a significant element of that. So we need to take this matter seriously.

It is interesting that the Regulations Review Committee has had some changeover in personnel. There has been some movement, shall we say, in the Labour ranks; certain people have moved off this much esteemed committee, to be replaced by others. I am a little disappointed that the members of the committee from the other side of the House are reluctant to take a call today to talk about the very important issues that have come up in this subordinate legislation bill.

You see, it really fits into delegated responsibility. I think it is important that members are aware that it would be highly impractical if, every time a fee were struck or a levy set, a whole bill came before the House, went to a select committee, and came back here. So these issues are grouped, and, as other members speaking on this bill have said, we are validating about a dozen different provisions on this occasion. It is important that we have that delegated responsibility and that we can deal with these issues in a group.

But I need to say that one of the concerns of the Regulations Review Committee is that there are more delegated responsibilities out there than there are statutes. One of the things we are currently doing is to review the pertinence and relevance of all of those delegated responsibilities. There are some out there that do not have sunset clauses, so they just carry on existing. Today we are dealing with the ones that will fall off the perch and will not continue to exist, unless we actually validate them.

Part 1 sets out the processes by which the decisions are made. That is quite clear.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Really?

ERIC ROY: I can see that that Minister is also concerned that members from his team are not explaining these relevant and pertinent bits to the House at large. Part 2 contains nine different pieces of legislation that we are validating. The first one, in clause 7, is the Animal Products Act 1999. A fee structure is set, so that the Animal Products Act can operate. Not only are we validating the collection of these fees but also we are setting in place a process by which we can have some confidence that animal products are safe and adequate to use in a very important part of New Zealand’s industry, the agricultural industry.

I should talk for just a little bit about the Commodity Levies Act, which covers the way in which—

R Doug Woolerton: Oh, God!

ERIC ROY: I can see that Mr Woolerton is very interested in this. The Commodity Levies Act sets out a process by which the people involved can be canvassed as to whether they are in favour of a levy being struck. One of the concerns I have about this process involves the people who participate. If members look at the Commodity Levies Act, they will see that a number of producer groups have been canvassed under that Act, like the pipfruit growers. They might strike a levy this year for all suppliers to be—

Hon Maurice Williamson: They’ve got the pip with Labour!

ERIC ROY: Do not get the pip, please, I say to Mr Williamson. It might be that the levy this year will be X. The pipfruit growers might have 951 suppliers—I do not know whether that is the number, but it could be that—and it might be that as few as 90-odd, or about 10 percent, respond. We need to presume that if there were some concerns, the suppliers would vote against the levy. Participation in the vote is frequently lower than 30 percent. It is about striking the cost of a levy that the various suppliers will have to fund.

The list here includes the Animal Products Act, which I have mentioned, and the Biosecurity Act 1993, which has a couple of validations in here that I find quite interesting. One of them is the Biosecurity (Gypsy Moth Levy) Order of 2004.

Hon Maurice Williamson: I didn’t know that was in there!

ERIC ROY: Well, exactly! Members will know the furore that took place when the painted apple moth was treated with spray in Auckland, and this kind of levy allows for the management of that sort of thing. This particular levy allows for the payment of a fee to be used to set up all the little traps, so that if there is an incursion of gypsy moths, we are able to find out that they have come in. This levy is quite important as it provides for the first line of defence in our biosecurity, so that our forests are safe. If we have an incursion, then it can be dealt to.

The second validation under the Biosecurity Act that I find quite interesting is the Biosecurity (Varroa (South Island) Beekeeper Levy) Order of 2005. Members will know that varroa came into New Zealand about 5 years ago—

Hon Parekura Horomia: Spell it!

ERIC ROY: I can see that the member is also concerned that Labour members are not taking a call on this particular issue. When varroa came into New Zealand, it was agreed that if it ever got to the South Island it would need to be dealt to. So all the bee-keepers in the South Island—separate from those in the North Island—struck a levy under the Commodity Levies Act that would be used to deal with the problem when it occurred. But did it—

R Doug Woolerton: What happened?

ERIC ROY: What happened when it was found in Nelson? The Minister for Biosecurity hummed and hawed—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Hummed and hawed?

ERIC ROY: Yes, he hummed and hawed, and nothing was done. We have here a rollover of legislation to deal with the incursion of varroa in the South Island, when it is already there! We have a Minister for Biosecurity who is doing absolutely nothing about resolving that issue. That is a fascinating little insight into the Commodity Levies Act in relation to the Biosecurity Act; it is achieving very, very little.

As I have mentioned, this bill is an important part of what we do in terms of the process of striking fees and levies. We should not take it lightly. It is a significant step that takes place every year in a number of different ways and involves a number of organisations. The Regulations Review Committee provides a check and a balance; it makes sure that the proper process has been adhered to. Frequently, that committee writes and ask questions to determine the level of consultation, how many people voted, and what the process was. Members now have to sign off that review, and National is supporting this legislation this afternoon.

PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) : I rise to speak on the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3). Doug Woolerton contacted me about this legislation. I tell members that Doug can read, contrary to some opinions in the House. He asked me to give him a brief, particularly on the fisheries issues in respect of this legislation.

Members of the House will know that in schedule 10 of the Fisheries Act 1996 there are levies and conservation orders that need to be addressed in this legislation. I recall that some years ago, when I first took over the spokesmanship of the National Party in respect of commercial, customary, and recreational fisheries, we had a massive problem with regard to the levy orders that Labour had overseen, which the select committee at that time had to unwind. I recall that between $18 million and $20 million of extra levies had been collected unlawfully by the ministry, and had not been spent on what they were collected for. A return of those levies had to be passed through this Parliament, so that commercial fishers were not left short in the pocket in terms of unlawfully collected levies. We oversaw that legislation, and we made sure that that money was returned in kind to the commercial industry. It was returned not by way of a cheque written out to the industry but by ensuring that that money was spent going forward, in terms of levies not being collected that needed to be and of the unlawfully collected money being used to fill the gap.

Here we have the Government again slipping into subordinate legislation a section to do with the Fisheries Act 1996—

Hon Maurice Williamson: It’s an outrage!

PHIL HEATLEY: I say to Mr Williamson that the Fisheries (Schedules 2, 5, 6, and 8) Order 2007 is confirmed in this legislation.

I would like to go over the specific schedules, so that members are aware of what the House is doing this late afternoon. In terms of the Commodity Levies (Fish) Amendment Order 2006, orders Nos 1 to 3 were made under the Commodity Levies Act 1990. Section 12 of that Act states that the levy orders made under it must be confirmed by an Act of Parliament, and that is what we see before us today. Otherwise, the orders are deemed to be revoked. We do not want to see them deemed to be revoked; that is why we are passing this bill today.

Order No. 1 extends, for 5 years, the existing order relating to fish. It was made at the request of the Seafood Industry Council, the body that represents commercial fishers across the board and to which the levy is payable. The levy finances work on policy issues, research, promotion, and administration for the seafood industry. Members need to be aware that this levy is not collected for the promotion of Labour Party policy during next year’s campaign. I know that the Labour Party is looking at spending taxpayers’ money, and at spending all sorts of levies collected, to promote party policy during next year’s campaign in order to get around the provisions of the Electoral Finance Bill. But in the case of the seafood levy, that levy is collected for the seafood industry to use for its own research and promotion. It is not to be used for the promotion of Labour Party policies during next year’s election campaign. This is one avenue where the Labour Party, and the Labour Government, cannot use taxpayers’ money or industry levies in order to promote themselves and put themselves back on the Treasury benches. That would be illegal. We will be watching closely to ensure that the Labour Party does not use this funding to pursue its own political purposes.

Order No. 2 replaces the existing levy order relating to southern scallops, which expired in July 2007. Just then my voice cracked; it does that occasionally—a sort of second wave of puberty. The member from Kapiti has just gone through the first wave of puberty; other members, like myself, are going through the second wave. Order No. 2 changes the way that the southern scallops levy is calculated. In this case, the levy is payable to Challenger Scallop Enhancement Co. Ltd, not to the Seafood Industry Council. The company may spend the moneys collected from the levies for the purposes of enhancing and managing scallops and scallop harvesting rights in the southern scallop fishery. Over a number of years now we have seen how that enhancement company has evolved and boosted scallop production and the harvest not only for commercial fishers in the commercial fishing industry but also for recreational and customary fishers. It is a very successful fishery. During question time in the House tomorrow, Metiria Turei will probably promote the southern scallop fishery as a success story in New Zealand fisheries. I look forward to hearing her do that.

Order No. 3 imposes a single levy on farmed green-lipped mussels, Pacific oysters, and salmon. It replaces two existing levies on farmed green-lipped mussels and Pacific oysters. Members should get out their pen and paper and note that the levy is a voluntary levy paid on farmed salmon. It is a compulsory levy on farmed green-lipped mussels and a compulsory levy on Pacific oysters, but it is a voluntary levy on farmed salmon. For the benefit of those members who are writing this down, and for the benefit of Doug Woolerton, who is struggling to get this down, I say they should note that it is a voluntary levy on farmed salmon and a compulsory levy on the other species. It is payable to the recently established industry organisation New Zealand Aquaculture Ltd.

So we have the situation where the levies paid in the commercial sector are not paid just to one group. The first levy I spoke about is payable to the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council. I pointed out that the levy on southern scallops goes to Challenger Scallop Enhancement Co. Ltd, but this levy to do with aquaculture is paid to New Zealand Aquaculture Ltd. This will be the first time that that particular company, set up only recently, will be administering that levy for a full year. It will be interesting to see the company go through the process of making sure that the use of that levy is correct and that there is accountability for it. I remind the company and the House that the levy finances the work aimed at developing and managing the aquaculture industry, including promotion and research.

Once again, I say that the levy is not to be used for the promotion of the Labour Party during the election campaign next year. It is to be used for the promotion of aquaculture and aquaculture research. Should we see either Helen Clark or Michael Cullen dipping into those funds, or putting some sort of political pressure on Aquaculture New Zealand to use those moneys to promote Labour Party policy one day out from next year’s election, then that will be illegal. Harry Duynhoven may have plans for that use. Harry Duynhoven may be the shifty character who wants to do that before next year’s election day, but we will not allow that. This legislation says this money is not for the Labour Party and not for Harry Duynhoven; it is for the aquaculture industry to spend. Harry Duynhoven may very well blush, because he knows that I have caught him out in this House today. He knows that I can read his mind, and he may be embarrassed. The National Party will not see the use of that money by Labour happen. That money is not to be used to promote the Labour Party; it is to be used to promote aquaculture and aquaculture research only.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) : Kia ora, Madam Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tātou katoa. I am told that every Wednesday morning, somewhere deep in the precincts of Parliament, an industrious committee is faced with about a 60-minute marathon in which a demanding schedule of regulations is put through the most rigorous parliamentary scrutiny. Regulations, acting as the legal instrument of Parliament, are examined by the Regulations Review Committee, in so far as regulations demonstrate points of detail in the implementation of policy. The bill before us is small. It has only 15 clauses all up, but, as is typical with subordinate legislation, it contains a range of varied items of lawmaking of interest to the Māori Party. Indeed, there is a smorgasbord of choice—an entrée of fish; supplemented with road-user charges, animal products for meat-lovers, and, chancing one’s arm, with a main meal of gambling. But as with every smorgasbord, some items on the menu do not always please the palate. Having previously had our venerable co-leader Dr Sharples speak on this bill on 11 October, and with his absence from the House today, I thought I would take the opportunity to add some spice to the smorgasbord laid before the House.

I note that the Regulations Review Committee was satisfied with the responses of officials with regard to this bill and recommended it be passed without amendment. So the menu for the smorgasbord is actually a set menu, and has been confirmed. That being the case, I will move directly to commence a discussion on the main dish rather than tempt the palate with the entrée. The dish I have chosen is gambling. The Māori Party is pleased that the levies imposed will assist in building capacity to deal with the ravages of gambling in our communities, particularly in the communities of the poor. Let me remind us all that for every $1 received by a community group as a grant through pokie machines, $3 has already been taken. We agree with the Green member Sue Bradford about the disproportionate manner in which casinos, pubs, and clubs are levied. We were also heartened to hear Maryan Street say that the gambling levy would be reviewed in 18 months, as opposed to 3 years.

We know that the communities of the poor are not necessarily the communities that receive anywhere near the money taken from them. If members check out who gets the bulk of these community grants they will see that it is not the Ōtaras, Māngeres, Ford Blocks, Bell Blocks, or Cannons Creeks of our society, nor is it the service organisations or sports clubs in the communities of the poor.

This brings me to the issue of gambling amongst Māori. We know from the work of the Problem Gambling Foundation that Māori have serious issues with gambling. I want to take this opportunity to address that issue. We know from the research that pre-European Māori society did not have traditions of gambling. It is fair to say that the early Māori experience of gambling with the settlers was generally positive. Gambling then involved group interaction, with the outcome—that is, the profits generated—directly benefiting the participants. The participants were in control, and the profits from the activities directly benefited their marae, church, and community. I myself remember card games—especially euchre and 500—and housie. Those games were the special fund-raisers. Fun was had by all. The profits went to the marae, choir, local school, or kapa haka group. Elder relatives I have spoken to do not recollect ever being aware of problem gamblers as a result of those activities. If issues arose—particularly those of child neglect—as a result of those activities, group pressure was brought to bear to address the situation.

Songs were composed. I remember very clearly a song composed by Professor Hirini Moku Mead, relating to an all-night card game and a sober warning of children being neglected as a result. As some members might have heard before, it goes something like this: “Tahi, rua, e toru roimata; whā, rima, e ono roimata; ka whitu, ka waru, ka iwa roimata; kei whea rā māmā?”.

[One, two, three teardrops; four, five, six teardrops; seven, eight, nine teardrops; where, oh where, is mum?]

That was a beautiful rendition, I thought. What the song is actually asking—besides counting—is, after all these tears, where mum is.

I also know that betting on horses was another activity where the benefits were individualised and the profits left the Māori communities in which the TABs were situated. Again, this was a social activity, as relatives would sit outside the TAB sharing dreams, disclosing losses from the week, and casting aspersions on the whakapapa of the horses that did not win. Needless to say, it was great wonder—and often a misplaced sense of matakite—that led many of my relatives to go on about how they picked a winner by the interpretation of dreams. It seems that anybody’s dream counted. Some used to make up dreams for uncles and aunties. That was all part of the fun. Every dream had a winner, and post-race analysis always managed to find that winner—the fault being with the interpretation of the dream.

Although I am referring to what was seen as fun, the current situation with Māori and gambling is no longer a laughing matter. Statistics from the Gambling Helpline in 2005 indicated that Māori were overrepresented—29.4 percent of new clients were Māori; 12.1 percent of significant others phoning the helpline were Māori; in face-to-face counselling, 31.4 percent of new clients were Māori; 35 percent of new clients were Māori men; and 22.9 percent of significant others seeking counselling were Māori. Pokies were the prime mode of problem gambling for men, at 72.6 percent, and for women, at 90.8 percent. In the 4 weeks prior to seeking help, 401 clients spent $573,125. That is an average of $1,429 each, which is $357 per week. That is a problem.

It is with these statistics from the Problem Gambling Foundation that we in the Māori Party alert this House to the devastation caused by access to gambling—particularly access to pokie machines and the effect they can have on whānau. The research shows that for every problem gambler, five other people are negatively affected.

We are supportive of this bill, but we caution that, as is the case with tobacco smoking, we in the Māori Party take very seriously the damage to whānau done by gambling, and especially the one-armed bandits robbing people in the name of entertainment and for the good of the community, apparently. In ending, all I can say is that members should watch this space.

Hon PAUL SWAIN (Labour—Rimutaka) : It is with a great sense of humility, enthusiasm, duty, and loyalty that I announce that I support the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3).

JO GOODHEW (National—Aoraki) : I rise in support of the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3). I do so having come to understand more about what this sort of bill is in aid of and its purpose. The Regulations Review Committee brought this bill to the House. As other speakers have already outlined, a number of different confirmations and validations are in Part 2 of the bill. They include the Animal Products Act 1999, Commodity Levies Act 1990, Customs and Excise Act 1996, Fisheries Act 1996, Gambling Act 2003—which I intend to spend a bit more time on soon—New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act 2001, Social Security Act 1964, Road User Charges Act 1977, Tariff Act 1988, and War Pensions Act 1954. I intend to spend a little bit more time on some of these particular Acts and on the importance of their being validated here today in the House. I reiterate that National is supporting this legislation. But even though the whole House is likely to be supporting the legislation, it does not make it any less important that we understand what the bill actually brings into play.

One area I have a particular interest in is the Gambling Act 2003 and the levy that will be validated by this particular legislation. It seems that gambling is an area that others here in the House this afternoon are interested in, as well. I am particularly interested in it because in my previous life, working in crime prevention, I came to understand a little bit more about the need for a problem-gambling levy. We need the levy so that we have the opportunity to put in place some element of counselling and to make sure that problem gambling is seen. This afternoon, the member Te Ururoa Flavell talked about some of the gambling that we all grew up with—for example, euchre and housie evenings. In fact, I remember some years ago we had a gambling night when we were betting on horses that were cut out of plywood. We wound up the rope to see who could wind up the rope the fastest.

That is the sort of gambling that for many, many years people have had a great sense of fun with. They have also actually raised money, as has been suggested here in the House already. That is the sort of gambling that continues and is the safe sort of gambling. In recent years we have become aware of some of the hardship and some of the significant personal, social, and economic costs for individuals, families, communities, and the general public that problem gambling has wrought.

It has a disproportionate effect on some groups and communities. Problem gambling contributes to poverty and socio-economic inequalities, but that has been addressed since 1996 by successive Governments, and there is now a problem-gambling levy. Other aspects have now been used. I must say that the implementation of pop-ups on the one-armed bandits or pokies—call them what you like—has been brought into play. Having talked to the owners of clubs and pubs, and even the people who operate casinos, I am unconvinced as of yet whether the pop-ups actually do a lot of good. After all, some of the problem gamblers will simply press the button and off they go and continue. Because problem gambling is an addiction. It is an addiction that tears apart families. It is an addiction that is not cheap to treat, either, because as with other addictions, the counselling required and the detection of people with that addiction is quite expensive in terms of personnel, and being people with an addiction, those people are cunning. They are very, very cunning, and therefore they will try to escape detection by the people running the casinos, pubs, or clubs.

It is really important that we have that levy, but equally the National Party’s way of looking at it will always be that there must be a very good cost-benefit analysis of how we spend the levy. Our colleague Sandra Goudie has certainly shown that in the past some of the problem-gambling services have not been doing a good job, but have been spending an inordinate amount of money on counselling that probably has not been put to good effect.

What else would happen if this legislation were not passed? In another part of the bill we need to confirm the War Pensions (Rates of Pensions, Lump Sum Payments, and Allowances) Order 2007. War pensions are indexed annually to take into account the percentage increase in the consumer price index over the previous calendar year. It is absolutely imperative that we do that each year. I am sure it is not something that is easily forgotten, but equally it is important for those who are receiving war pensions under the War Pensions Act 1954 that it is increased and indexed to the consumer price index, because those same people are often left on limited incomes. Those same people are often left with disabilities that have come about as a part of their actions in serving our country. They served it many years ago, but now their health has suffered as a result of doing that.

We also need to make sure that the superannuitants of New Zealand are looked after. That is why we need to confirm the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act 2001 and the Social Security Act 1964. That is also indexed to the consumer price index, and those people are often on limited incomes and will certainly be looking out to make sure that their income is increasing.

In summary, I would say that while being in the House this afternoon for this particular bill, the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3), I have learnt quite a lot about what has been described as a bill that simply passes legislation that needs to be validated and confirmed each year. The report of the Regulations Review Committee tells us that it asked the nine Government agencies responsible for administering this subordinate legislation to confirm that this action is required and to explain why confirmation and validation is warranted. The committee reported that it was satisfied by the agencies’ responses. Therefore, I would just say that National has great pleasure in supporting this legislation, and that I have learnt a lot about this type of legislation this afternoon.

DIANNE YATES (Labour) : I rise to speak on the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3), and I was absolutely fascinated to hear that the previous speaker, Jo Goodhew, has learnt a lot from this debate, because I have learnt a great deal from her. I have just learnt that she cares about superannuitants. She must have forgotten about what Mrs Shipley did to superannuitants when she came into power and what happened to the payment rates of superannuation.

I am really glad that Jo Goodhew supports Labour Government policy on this issue. It is about time that she did support it, because many superannuitants are afraid. They are afraid that if Labour should ever lose the Government benches in this House, their superannuation would not continue to be paid at the current rates, and that the age of qualification would go up. I see members shaking their heads. I say it happened. It happened when Mrs Shipley was the Prime Minister of this country, and heaven help us if it should ever happen again. That is why many older people will be really concerned about this issue and the comments that were made by the speaker opposite. So I am really pleased that we see a new caring, sharing National Party.

I also say that this bill is a routine bill. It is legislation that basically turns over many of the levies that are charged annually. I look forward to the passing of this legislation.

NATHAN GUY (National) : It is with great pleasure that I rise to talk about the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3). It is very important legislation in front of Parliament this evening. In particular I will make some comments on clause 8 in Part 2, regarding the Commodity Levies Act 1990, which is very important legislation for the rural community, and also clause 13 in Part 2, regarding the Road User Charges Act 1977.

When we look at the Road User Charges Act 1977 we see that it establishes a mechanism whereby cost can be incurred for vehicles, particularly heavy trucks, that are over 3.5 tonnes. The member Jonathan Coleman from Auckland would see them travelling over the Auckland Harbour Bridge. The revenue generated from these road user charges is paid into the National Land Transport Fund. It is great to see that the Labour Government has endorsed the National Party policy of 2005 by now putting all those taxes into roading, instead of into the consolidated account, because we all know that about 50 percent of costs incurred at the petrol pump and the diesel pump goes into taxes.

Hon Member: Siphoned off.

NATHAN GUY: Yes, it is siphoned off into the consolidated account. So it is great to hear that the Labour Government is now endorsing the National Party policy of 2005 by putting those taxes into getting more roads built in this country. [Interruption]

I looked at the Act, which I have in front of me, for Mr Duynhoven’s information. He might be interested to learn that this legislation came into effect in March 1978, and I want to raise some particular points for Mr Duynhoven. I will talk about the number of axles permitted on the road and about the road-bearing weights on those axles, as well. Mr Duynhoven would, I am sure, be very interested in that. We can look at what is happening in Australia, where there are road trains, or B trains. Australians are allowed far longer loads on their vehicles than we in New Zealand are, so I think that will happen here in time. Perhaps under a National Government we could inject some more money into roading and get the Resource Management Act tidied up.

The other aspect I want to talk about is the Commodity Levies Act 1990. When we look at this Act, we see that it covers a whole wide range of primary production sectors. I will not go through all of them, but I will give Mr Duynhoven a few examples. It includes arable crops and asparagus right through to milk, meat, maize, nashi pears—I am not sure whether any of those grow up in Taranaki; it might be too cold—and through to horticultural products such as passionfruit and other pipfruit. In essence, we are passing this subordinate legislation this evening to ensure that those primary sector industries have some funding to be able to get on and do market research, and research and development. Some may choose, through the process in the Regulations Review Committee, to put it out for 5 years and some may choose to have it struck at 1 year, and generally the percentages range between 1 percent and 5 percent.

National has no issues with this legislation in front of us tonight. In fact, we believe that it is very important and paramount legislation, particularly for primary industry products that are covered by clause 8, relating to the Commodity Levies Act 1990. So National supports this reading of this bill in Parliament this evening.

PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) : I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Hon Harry Duynhoven is using his phone at the moment with an earpiece. That is inappropriate in this Chamber.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member should consider his position and take the issue outside the Chamber. Thank you.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN (Minister for Transport Safety) : I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I take it that if I adopt the practice of using a post and telegraph - type handset to listen to my messages on my cellphone, that is acceptable. I take it also that if I tuck my head under the bench—as I saw a National member doing earlier in the day—to listen to cellphone messages, that is also acceptable. Perhaps you could clarify that, Mr Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): There are a number of Speakers’ rulings on that and the Speaker has given a considered ruling on the use of electronic gadgetry inside the Chamber. I suggest members have a look at the Speaker’s ruling.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: I ask for clarification on one other matter to do with this. Is it acceptable to use a laptop computer in the House? I understand it is. And is it acceptable to use an earpiece in association with a laptop in the House?

Dr Jonathan Coleman: Who’s doing that?

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN: I am not doing it; I am asking whether it is acceptable.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Again, I suggest that the member look at the very precise ruling that Madam Speaker gave on this. It is quite extensive and it covers the issues that have been raised by the members.

• Bill read a second time and a third time.

Hon DARREN HUGHES (Deputy Leader of the House) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I move, That the Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill be now read a third time. In considering what is actually quite a straightforward piece of legislation, which simply extends the expiry date of the current legislative framework from 31 December this year to 1 July 2009, it is very interesting to look at who so far has spoken against the bill. This bill relates exclusively to parliamentary matters. The Opposition spokesperson on such matters is the shadow Leader of the House, Gerry Brownlee. Mr Brownlee is not known around the House, it is fair to say, for being someone who hides his light behind a bushel. He is not known for being a shy member of Parliament. Yet, despite this, he has not contributed at all to the debate on this bill and there has to be a reason for that.

The reason Gerry Brownlee has not spoken at all on the debate on this bill is that if he did speak, he would have to admit not only that the National Party secretly supports this bill but actually that it was that party’s own idea. To use Mr Brownlee’s actual words from question time less than 2 weeks ago: “… National was happy for a rollover, provided it would lead to a much shorter election period.” Without Mr Brownlee in the House, National’s charismatic team of Tony Ryall and Nick Smith have been trying to explain this away. They have come up with all sorts of creative explanations for what Mr Brownlee meant. But his comments make the matter quite clear: National supports a rollover to the current legislative framework. Of course it does; it was National’s suggestion. The simple reason that the National shadow Leader of the House has not spoken in this debate is that to do so would be to give away National’s dirty secret. Despite that party’s bluff and bluster, its members actually support this bill; they actually use it, and they actually need it.

The other reason we know that National does not really oppose this bill is that National members keep spending the money that the Parliamentary Service provides for communication services.

R Doug Woolerton: Get out of here—do they?

Hon DARREN HUGHES: I say to Mr Woolerton that it is terrible. We have seen the now infamous “nick4nelson” pamphlet.

Hon Harry Duynhoven: Nick for Nelson?

Hon DARREN HUGHES: The “nick4Nelson” pamphlet. It is pretty rough on the eye, but it calls on people to change the Government. There is only one way people can change the Government in New Zealand if they believe in the rule of law, and that is to use their vote to do it.

R Doug Woolerton: So who’s paying the money?

Hon DARREN HUGHES: Mr Woolerton asked if Nick Smith used taxpayers’ money to pay for it. Yes, he did. It is an exceptionally revealing document because it not only says “nick4nelson” and why New Zealand needs a new Government but, on the inside cover, lists about 10 people who are praising Nick Smith for his work as the local MP. What is insightful about that is that for most of us who have the privilege of being constituency members, simply helping people is reward enough in itself. But, for Nick Smith, it means going around to get quotes from people about how wonderful he is and then asking the taxpayer to pay to publicise those quotes on a pamphlet and distribute it.

Hon Harry Duynhoven: Does it give membership details?

Hon DARREN HUGHES: No, it does not give membership details but it does say “www.nick4nelson.co.nz” and it asks people to change the Government. Equally, the chief Opposition whip, Anne Tolley, has sent a survey form around her electorate asking people not only who they intend to vote for at the next election but who they voted for at the last election.

R Doug Woolerton: Does Bill English know that?

Hon DARREN HUGHES: Bill English knows all about this because Bill English knows how these rules work. He is an expert on how this bill works because he knows how to spend Parliamentary Service money for communication purposes better than any other member of this House. Bill English knew that when he was the leader of the National Party. So, despite all the claims of outrage from National speakers opposite, they keep spending money from parliamentary resources on the very things they say we should not be able to spend the money on.

Given that they really support the bill, they have had to come up with all kinds of imaginative reasons to oppose it. First they tried to claim that somehow this bill changes the rules from what everyone thought they always were. It does not. The bill has a very simple purpose: to extend the understanding until 1 July 2009. It shifts the date for the expiry of the rules determining what is happening right now—rules that Nick Smith is using, rules that Anne Tolley is using, rules that Bill English used with great gusto in 2002. We need only look at the election pledge pamphlet that Bill English issued in that fateful year when he had responsibility for the National Party together with Nick Smith and Tony Ryall when they were the young bright leaders of their party. I have in front of me a pamphlet that they put out as their commitment to their country—the pledge commitment that went out from the National Party during the year of the 2002 election campaign. There is a big House of Representatives crest on it, and they used the pamphlet to communicate with voters.

Hon Bill English: It was legal!

Hon DARREN HUGHES: Mr English says that it was legal; that it was within the rules of the time. He could still go and put this pamphlet out now under the rules that he is voting against and saying are such terrible things for us to have. It was a highly political document on which Bill English set out his 2002 promises for that year’s election campaign. In fairness to Mr English, it did not solicit votes, it did not ask for donations, and it did not ask people to join the National Party—because nobody joined the National Party in 2002; in fact, people were leaving it in great droves. It was a highly political document paid for by Parliamentary Service’s money. That was the understanding that we had all previously operated under.

The National members are now describing in the House that such action is corrupt. Bill English said it was legal back then in 2002 as though his own pledge commitment was alright. OK, he does not want to talk about his 2002 commitment, but let us look at what the National Party is doing in 2007. I have in front of me a 2007 publication from somebody called John Key, the leader of the National Party, who is borrowing Hillary Clinton’s phrase “Join the conversation.” There is a big photo of John Key, the National Party logo, the National Party website, and on the National Party website there are media releases from people who are saying how good National’s policies are. In question time today, Mr English said it was terrible that on a taxpayer-funded website there might be a media release relating to the policy of a party. Yet the very website that John Key asks people to go to is stacked full of highly partisan, vote-gathering media releases from the National Party. That was funded this year by the National Party from Parliamentary Service along with the “Change the Government … nick4nelson” leaflet.

Hon Harry Duynhoven: They’re saying it’s not good for us—it’s illegal—but for them it’s great.

Hon DARREN HUGHES: Mr Duynhoven makes a good point. They want to have one law for some people; they want to be able to keep these laws for themselves and not for other people. I want to know from Nick Smith, who knows a lot about judicial matters, whether this is corrupt legislation. If it is not corrupt now, in 2007, why should it be corrupt after 31 December?

Hon Member: Because it’s an election year.

Hon DARREN HUGHES: So in election year, John Key does not plan to communicate with the voters who put him into Parliament.

Hon Bill English: That’s not true!

Hon DARREN HUGHES: “That’s not true!” said Mr Bill English. So in 2008, he does not want to have to communicate with his own constituents. It is very, very revealing when these things come up. I ask the National members if it was corrupt of Bill English to put out a 2002 pledge card pamphlet. Is he now saying, as the National members are asserting in this debate, that revalidating this law is a terrible, corrupt act? Nick Smith is using his usual over-the-top phrases that none of his own colleagues believe in when he says them, much less the public or other MPs. If that is the case, I ask members whether Bill English should pay back what was spent in 2002 under the rules we were operating under at that time. Of course he does not think he should have to, because the National members do not hold themselves to the same rules that they want to hold other MPs to in this House.

The other imaginative argument that National members have run is that somehow this bill has changed the rules relating to the accounting of parliamentary spending under the Electoral Act. That self-described electoral law expert—that is what he called himself to the media—Tony Ryall, chaired the select committee with regard to the Electoral Act. Those members know that the Electoral Act passed by National makes it absolutely clear that communications by MPs in their roles as MPs, rather than as candidates, do not count towards election spending. National MPs know that—it is their law, and nothing in this bill changes it.

They have also been busy rewriting history and talking about the fact that laws relating to the electoral system have only ever progressed on a bipartisan basis. The reality is that Labour has tried to reach consensus on this bill. Indeed, six of the eight parties in Parliament support this bill, because we have engaged in this process in good faith. The great irony is that despite the fact that six of the eight parties are supporting the bill—and the National Party is one of the two parties not supporting it—the National Party is the single biggest beneficiary of the law that is being passed with this third reading debate this afternoon. National is the party that receives the most money from the Parliamentary Service, yet National is saying that members of Parliament in 2008 should not communicate with their constituents.

I want to hear from the next National Party speaker as to whether these surveys that are going out, asking people what party they voted for at the last election and who they are voting for at the next election, paid for by Parliamentary Service, will be issued in 2008. I guarantee we do not get an answer on that question, because National members plan to keep on doing what they have always done. The National Party needs this bill to pass its third reading more than any other party in Parliament, and those members sit there with their imaginative arguments, trying to argue both sides of the coin even though they cannot wait to keep ploughing into Parliamentary Service resources in that regard.

This bill provides clear, transparent, and fair rules so that all MPs can continue doing their jobs. I commend the bill to the House.

Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) : The only elucidation that came from that speech was the fact that we just heard 10 minutes of talk about the National Party and not one total minute about the content of this bill. This bill is all about the Labour Party being up its old tricks. New Zealanders know that the member who has just resumed his seat would not be in this Parliament if the Labour Party had not stolen $800,000 of taxpayers’ money and spent it on the pledge card. Those members stole $800,000 of taxpayers’ money. They had to pay it back. They had been told by the Chief Electoral Officer that if they spent the taxpayers’ money on the pledge card, they would have to include that money in their election expenses. The Labour Party members said they would include it in election expenses. In the end—and it is a summary of this bill—they did not include it in their expenses, and that is what this bill is all about.

This bill is all about allowing the Labour Party to repeat the pledge card rort of 2005. Hand in hand with the Electoral Finance Bill, this bill provides for the Labour Party to spend taxpayers’ money right up until election day with complete abandon and no regard whatsoever for the rules that have previously existed in Parliament. What the National Opposition has said is that we should have the rules that applied before the 2005 general election. Those rules were clear and understood. Those rules made it clear that if a party spent taxpayers’ money on electioneering, that was illegal and would have to be declared in its election expense, but the Labour Party ignored those rules completely. It was found to have stolen $800,000 of taxpayers’ money. It subsequently stole the 2005 election.

That has allowed Labour to get the red printing presses working overtime. We asked a number of questions in the House about this never-ending slew of material coming out of the Labour Party. We asked whether that would carry on in an election period. Here is what was amazing, and this is what this bill does. If these brochures I am holding up were put out by a Labour Party MP in the week of the election, they would not count as an election expense as a result of this bill. But wait for this—if a Labour Party candidate who is not a member of Parliament puts out these pamphlets, they are counted as an election expense. They are counted as an election expense if a Labour Party candidate who is not a member of Parliament puts them out. Dr Cullen would not answer this question, so let us hear an answer from the next speaker from the Labour Party. What is the principle that allows the Labour Party to say that because this brochure is put out by a member of Parliament, it is not counted as an election expense, but, if this brochure, together with a picture of a woman who purports to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand, is put out by a Labour Party candidate, then it is caught as an election expense? There is no way that that can be justified. It is Labour up to its old tricks again, rorting the system in favour of its own party.

This bill is not about what is being spent today. This bill is about what the Labour Party plans to spend in an election year, and about changing the electoral law to favour Labour. Everyone in New Zealand knows that the Electoral Finance Bill and this bill are all about advantaging Labour. Labour members will do anything, say anything, and spend anything to win the next election. What we know is that their union mates spent well over $1.5 million at the last election, by estimates, in support of the Labour Party. We know they will do everything possible to secure a victory at the next election.

Gerry Brownlee has been absolutely clear on this bill. We do not believe that this bill should be passed to allow this practice during an election period. We do not know why members of this House want to give existing parties and members of Parliament an electoral privilege that they are not prepared to give to anybody else. There is silence. Why would the Government want to give an electoral privilege only to members of Parliament and existing parties and not to other people who are standing in an election? Let us understand what that means. Labour is exempting only members of Parliament from the coverage of the Electoral Finance Bill.

Hon Darren Hughes: You chaired the select committee.

Hon TONY RYALL: That is a good point. I did chair the Electoral Law Committee—after 1993—that finalised the MMP legislation. It was done in a multiparty way, and both National and Labour voted for the legislation. I know that before I was the chairman and a member of that committee, the committee worked very closely with the Hon David Caygill, the senior Labour member on that committee, to come up with a bill that both parties could support. Members of that committee realised that if something is done to a person or party today, that person or party can come back and do the same thing the next time. That is the reason why, with the Standing Orders and other procedures in this House, we always rely on a multiparty or all-party agreement to achieve this. Governments have almost always realised that there will come a time when they are in Opposition, and they would not want the victors of each election deciding what the rules will be. That is the reason why the two main parties and others in this House have generally, more or less, agreed on the nomenclature of our electoral systems. They have agreed because they know that it would be bad for democracy to have a system where the victors change the rules after every election.

It does not worry Helen Clark, Michael Cullen, and Annette King—all those ageing people on the Labour front bench—because they are going at the next election. They will not be standing in 2011, but I would be worried if I was one of the younger people in the second and third rows. Labour’s intent on forcing this bill says to the Parliament and the people of New Zealand that Labour is happy with a system where the victors can write the rules to suit themselves. That is a boot that can fit on two feet.

That is the reason why parties in this Parliament have always come to a more or less multiparty agreement on important electoral law.That was certainly the case on the Electoral Law Committee when we did the MMP legislation during the mid-1990s. We wanted a law that would endure, that was durable, and that enjoyed the confidence of the main parties, if not all the parties, in Parliament at that time. We are going to end up, with this bill and the Electoral Finance Bill, with legislation that will not endure. This bill will not endure. The Electoral Finance Bill will not endure, because we know that there are significant parties in this Parliament that do not agree with what the Government has done. The Government could have sought a multiparty bipartisan agreement, as was the case when I was chairing the Electoral Law Committee. That is what we did. We worked closely with Labour members to make sure we had legislation that would endure and legislation that would not change every time a new party took the Treasury benches. That is not good for democracy. That is why New Zealanders have a sense that this bill and the Electoral Finance Bill are just not right. They are just not fair. They are anti-democratic. They are all about entrenching the privileges that Labour has as Government.

We all know about the clause that Labour did not want the public to see in the select committee. We will hear more about that on Thursday. The public knows that law like this should be done with the agreement of the whole of Parliament, in order for the legislation to endure. We do not want New Zealand to be a banana republic, a Zimbabwe of the South Pacific, where the victors change the laws to favour themselves. But that is what this Labour Party is doing. It is inviting future Governments to change the law to suit themselves. I, for one, do not agree with that. I think we should have a law that endures, and is fair for all New Zealanders. It does not matter to guys on the other side of the Chamber who will not be here in a year’s time. It should matter to the lower benches of the Labour Party, because they may be in a future Parliament and they will not want a future Government to jackboot over their rights as an Opposition, as this Government is jackbooting over the rights of all New Zealanders with this attack on the democratic values that most New Zealanders hold dear. The few exceptions are on the benches opposite.

Hon PAUL SWAIN (Labour—Rimutaka) : That was a tired old retread from the National Party, called Tony Ryall. He had the temerity to talk about people who have been here a long time, and are old in face. There is such a thing called a mirror that I might give him for Christmas, which is not too far away. The debate gets more and more curious, the more we listen to the National members on the other side of the Chamber. The problem, of course, is that they have completely misread and misrepresented the bill. This is a very, very simple little bill.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Simple rort; it’s a rort.

Hon PAUL SWAIN: I will come on to the rort, from the member called Nick Smith. We are going to talk about him in a minute. I want to set the framework here because it is really important, and people at home might not have understood what this bill is about, after hearing from that tired old retread, Tony Ryall, who spoke previously. The point is that at the moment there is a framework for spending Government money if one is a member of Parliament. It is very, very simple and all members of Parliament do it. They have electorate offices, public advertising in their local newspapers, they put out information, and there are rules around that. Basically the rules say that we are not allowed to electioneer with it, which means we are not allowed to elicit a vote, we are not allowed to say “vote for Labour”, “vote for me”, or “vote for the party”. They also say that we are not allowed to collect money or ask for money. All of these things are called electioneering. Do members know what? That appears in this legislation that we are debating. It states that we are not allowed to do those things.

So what this legislation does is say that we tried to get some agreement on some rules about what should be spent. In fact, the National Party said “Yes, we’re in.”, then it said “No, we’re not.” We said: “Well, let’s roll these rules over.” They said: “Oh, yeah. We’ll do that.” Then “Oh no, we won’t.”, they said.

Hon Darren Hughes: Where’s Gerry?

Hon PAUL SWAIN: Yes, Gerry Brownlee said that. So the problem we have now is that the framework expires at the end of this year. What we are doing is just simply rolling it over until 2009, until we can get some new rules in place. So the framework does not change, and electioneering is not allowed. National members now are outraged by this legislation. They are appalled by it. They are outraged and appalled by this legislation because it allows members of Parliament to spend taxpayers’ money.

There is a question I have not been able to get an answer to yet from anybody, and I am going to start firstly with Nathan Guy. Does Nathan Guy support this legislation, or not? We get no answer when we ask these direct questions. I assume, by the outrage and appalling behaviour that those members have displayed over there, that somehow they are going to vote against this legislation. So the next question is, if they are going to vote against this legislation, does it mean that Nathan Guy, once this legislation is passed, will not put out anything, like this pamphlet I am holding, into the letterboxes of people in the Ōtaki area? He says in the pamphlet “What you think does matter”. He goes on to say “Keeping in touch is important.” There is a bit of a questionnaire about all sorts of things on the back of the pamphlet. One of the other things he says here, which is really nice of him, is “To save costs I’m generally sending one form per household.”, notwithstanding the fact that this is enormously expensive. But what this legislation does is it allows people to do this.

I say to Nathan Guy that if he votes against this legislation, he needs to stand up in this Parliament and say “As a result of my vote in Parliament, I am not going to spend one single cent of taxpayers’ money next year, putting out stuff like this.” If he is going to be consistent, he should say “Yes, I am. I am not going to put out anything next year. I am so outraged by what the Government is doing in this legislation, that I have voted against it.” I do not think that will happen. I do not think he will stand up and say “I oppose this legislation and I’m not going to put out anything next year that is funded by the taxpayer.” I bet he does not do that.

Strangely enough there is a member of Parliament up north called Anne Tolley. When I pick up this pamphlet that she has put out, which starts with “What you think does matter”, I wonder where I have read that before. I go back to Nathan Guy’s pamphlet, which reads “What you think does matter”. Methinks that these two pamphlets are the same. I turn them over, and they are. The only difference is that the names are different. I notice down the bottom of the pamphlet it says “Privacy notice. Supplying this information is voluntary. The information is being collected by Nathan Guy in his capacity as a member of Parliament”—which is what this bill does; it says that if one is a member of Parliament, one is allowed to do this kind of thing—“and will be used for related activities.” I wonder what they are. It sounds sniffingly like—

Hon Darren Hughes: Feedback.

Hon PAUL SWAIN: It sounds like a little feedback, and “maybe we might send you a little pamphlet about what National is going to do”. We know what that means. Nathan Guy and Anne Tolley are outraged by this legislation. They are going to vote against it, but will not say whether they will do this next year when, according to them, this is an outrage.

Of course there is Nick Smith, who always has a lot to say about this kind of matter. Here we have a little pamphlet from him that says “Why New Zealand needs a new Government”. Of course, the fact of the matter is that New Zealand has a fabulous one at the moment, which is why this is probably false advertising. But the fact of the matter is that Nick Smith is going to vote, I presume, against this legislation.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You bet.

Hon PAUL SWAIN: Yes he is. He is going to vote against it.

Hon Darren Hughes: A principled man.

Hon PAUL SWAIN: He is a principled man. He is going to vote against it. I ask Nick Smith then, once this legislation is passed, next year is he going to put out information similar to this?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Will the member yield?

Hon PAUL SWAIN: No, I am asking the member a question. Will the member—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am very happy to answer the member’s question. There is a simple procedure in Parliament’s rules and it is for the member to yield. I am happy for the member to yield, to answer his question.

Hon PAUL SWAIN: I am not going to do that. I know what the rules are.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): OK. That is fine. The member is not prepared to yield.

Hon PAUL SWAIN: The point is that the member will not answer the question. It is just a simple thing. He can just call out, across the House, yes or no. He will not do that. He will not answer because he knows that next year he is going to put out information like this in his electorate. So I ask the member Nick Smith, if he is going to put out information like that, why he is voting against this legislation that allows it.

Hon Member: There’s a word for that.

Hon PAUL SWAIN: Well, there is a word, but we are not allowed to mention that word, Mr Assistant Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Absolutely.

Hon PAUL SWAIN: That is exactly right, because I know what the rules are. But the fact of the matter is that a word in the dictionary describes what Mr Nick Smith is doing. He now has said, of course, that he will vote against this bill, but we know that next year, against all the principled outrage and moral indignation that we will probably hear from him in a minute, he will do exactly what the bill does; that is a strange thing. So I ask Nick Smith again.

I have here an article about John Key’s “Join the conversation” cards. So I ask National members who are outraged by this legislation, and who, presumably, are going to vote against this legislation, whether we will see John Key putting out any information funded by the taxpayer next year—yes, or no? Well, is that not interesting? [Interruption] Yes, there is National’s deputy leader. He should know. You know, I will hazard a guess; I will take a punt that the National Party will vote against this legislation and then—surprise, surprise—will use taxpayers’ money, which the legislation allows them to do, to put out information like this, and information as on this brochure: “My commitment” from former leader Bill English.

Here is another one: “Ten steps National’s first Budget will take”. The leaflet is funded by the National Party. How do we know—because it has the little parliamentary crest on it. This leaflet is funded by the National Party. All we want is—

Hon Harry Duynhoven: By the taxpayer.

Hon PAUL SWAIN: It is funded by the taxpayer. All we want is a simple question answered. If the National Party is so appalled by this legislation—which will have the support of the majority of the parties in the House—and it has a right to be, and if it is going to vote against this legislation, which it has a right to do, does that mean, therefore, that it will not spend one single solitary cent of taxpayers’ money next year? The question, simply, is yes or no. All I want is one National member to tell me yes, or no. Of course, they will not say yes, or no, because we know that the answer is yes. So the public of New Zealand need to know that National is voting against the legislation but will spend the money this legislation allows. And there is a word for it that we are not allowed to mention in Parliament.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) : In 1988 a Labour member of Parliament was found guilty of committing a corrupt practice. We need to be quite plain today that this law makes what was corrupt now lawful. Let me recite the offence of that period, because it speaks volumes about the importance of this debate today. Reg Boorman, back in the time of the previous Labour Government, was trying to secure his re-election in the Wairarapa electorate, and he extensively used his parliamentary budget to win that election. The judge ruled that that was a corrupt practice—that he had breached the $20,000 limit in using taxpayers’ money. But this bill says that it is quite OK to use parliamentary money, and, more significantly, when tied up with the Electoral Finance Bill it makes such expenditure outside the $20,000 limit.

Did anybody in 1988—anybody in the media, or any member of the Labour Party—defend Reg Boorman and say that his rort was OK? No, they did not; they said that it was corrupt. And that corrupt practice prevented Reg Boorman from ever being able to stand for Parliament again. That has been the settled law through all the period since. Yet through this sneaky, dirty bill, and under a fragile majority in this House, we are today to make what was corrupt, right. But I say that it does not; it was corrupt then and it is corrupt today. I also say that this—

R Doug Woolerton: What a load of rubbish!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, I ask Mr Woolerton, because he and his colleagues said to the House—

R Doug Woolerton: I’m saying you are talking a load of rubbish.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, which part does the member agree with? Does he agree that Reg Boorman was kicked out of this Parliament for a corrupt practice?

R Doug Woolerton: You’re exaggerating.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, no, he was not? I have not exaggerated a single piece of history that has occurred. Let us take the next chapter of history. Labour in the 2005 election put out this pledge card I am holding up. It breached the law in two respects. In relation to the first, the Auditor-General said it was wrong to spend $820,000 of public money on this pledge card. But even more significantly, the Chief Electoral Officer at that time, David Henry, said that this pledge card should have been included in Labour’s $2 million limit. Let me just recite those numbers. The limit that any party can spend on campaigning was $2 million; this card exceeded that amount by $800,000; so Labour broke the law—broke the law—by not including it. It broke the law not just by a little bit, by a thousand dollars or two, but by $800,000. Yet today this sick, desperate Labour Party is passing a law to make both those illegal acts lawful. This bill will mean that it will be OK for the Labour Party to rort the public purse for another pledge card. That will be OK. But even more significantly, the $800,000 spent on the pledge card will not be included in the campaign limit.

Mr Swain asked this question: will National use the provisions of this law to produce material next year? Let us just look at the numbers. Mr Swain is saying that $17 million—which amount is just by coincidence; Labour has increased the budget by 20 percent—can be spent, and is controlled by this bill, and at the same time that party is saying that I and the National Party cannot spend more than $2 million of public money on campaigning. This is about $17 million compared with $2 million. It will appal me that I will not be able to work hard with the volunteers in my electorate—citizens who want to change the Government quite legitimately. They will not be able to run fashion shows, as we did this year, or do as we did on this Saturday when we had a fundraiser at the A and P show. We will not be allowed to spend that money on campaigning, but we will be able to spend the $17 million out of the public purse. I say to members opposite that that is a corruption of our election laws.

R Doug Woolerton: You’ll have $7 million—$7 million!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: And I say to Mr Woolerton that I am damned proud of this country’s democratic heritage. I am proud of the fact that we were the first country to allow New Zealanders, regardless of wealth and regardless of race, to be able to vote for members of this Parliament.

R Doug Woolerton: You’re in the money—you’re in the money.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I am proud of the fact, I tell Mr Woolerton, that we are the sixth oldest continuous parliamentary democracy in the world. I am proud of the fact that we were the first country in the world to give women the vote. But today I hide my head in shame, because what we are doing through this bill is not just an issue of the next election; we are undermining the democratic heritage of this beautiful country of ours. In a sick partisan act, we are skewing the rules solely to help the Labour Party.

I know that the Labour Party in Nelson is incredibly weak. I know that it has the weakest organisation ever, because the people of Nelson have no faith in Labour. But Labour says that it does not care whether it has public support, strong branches, and strong organisation; it wants the right to be able to fleece the taxpayer and at the same time to shut down anybody else from having a say.

R Doug Woolerton: You spent more than any other party.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: New Zealand First says that we need this bill to protect ourselves from the Auditor-General.

R Doug Woolerton: Well, give us half your $7 million.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I say to Mr Woolerton that members of Parliament who are honest and decent do not need laws to protect themselves from the Auditor-General. Members on this side of the House reject this bill and we are happy to follow the rules of the Auditor-General. We think the Auditor-General’s judgment about what was proper and what was improper was quite fair.

I say to members opposite that this bill is about giving the fingers to the Auditor-General, and if members of Parliament can give the fingers to the Auditor-General on the abuse of public money, then why should officials and health bodies bother considering the Auditor-General? Why should those who work in our councils have respect for the Auditor-General if we in this Parliament say we will just veto him when it suits us? Why should any of our 200,000 public servants have respect for the Auditor-General when this bill gives him the fingers and says that Parliament is above the law?

The tragedy of this bill is that it undermines not only our public respect for systems, for the way in which public money should and should not be used, but also the very essence of our democracy. I will be OK, because I am a sitting member of Parliament; I will be able to use the public purse. But what about the average citizen who wants to compete to be a member of this House? This bill is all about creating a closed shop for Parliament. I know that the trade unions of members opposite have long been into closed shops, creating a select club, and grabbing the powers and privileges that go with it, but we in the National Party say that it is morally wrong. It is morally bankrupt. We should not be overriding law that says that the things covered in this legislation were a corrupt practice. We say that the court decisions that have arisen out of both the Bob Clarkson case and the Reg Boorman case are perfectly able to be followed by this Parliament. We say to members opposite that they overrule the Auditor-General at their peril.

That is what this bill does. It overrules the independent Auditor-General. Ultimately, this bill says one thing: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This bill is a disdain on this House of Parliament. It is a disdain on our proud heritage as a democracy. It is solely about the crude attempts by Labour and Helen Clark unfairly to win a further term, because they are not prepared to fight an election on the old rules. They are going to rort the taxpayer. They are going to cheat the rules, and, sadly, this institution of Parliament will be the loser.

ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) : I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I know that points of order must be raised at the time a matter to be raised occurs, but I did not want to interrupt the speaker, Nick Smith, who was on his feet. During the course of the member’s debate, Mr Woolerton continually interjected from an advantageous position, not from his normal seat. I just bring to your attention that that is certainly inappropriate in the context of the debate.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I thank the honourable member for that. Maybe he should have raised the matter during the course of the speech, because members cannot move to facilitate interjection. I did call the member to order several times.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : The Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill is a very simple bill. Basically, it reflects, in part, the Speaker’s directions. Several MPs—two from National, two from Labour, and, I think, one from every other party, with the exception of Progressive—have sat down on a regular basis for quite some time and debated and discussed the Speaker’s directions, and they have been amended accordingly. When they were recently signed off, the Auditor-General’s opinion was sought. I am not sure whether his opinion was formally sought or whether the Speaker spoke with him privately; I understand that a National member spoke with him privately. He agrees with the sign-off—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: He does not.

PETER BROWN: He agrees with the sign-off of the Speaker’s directions.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: He does not agree with this bill.

PETER BROWN: I am not talking about this bill. If the member listened for a bit he might learn something, because he has misunderstood this bill totally. What he said publicly in Parliament, which will be recorded in Hansard, is almost 100 percent wrong.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Explain.

PETER BROWN: I will endeavour to explain.

The Speaker’s directions are reflected in this bill. This bill tells us, as do the Speaker’s directions, what the funding entitlements are for parliamentary purposes. I will not read that, because it is self-explanatory. But the bill also goes on to explain what electioneering is in the time of an election period. If in that period a member of Parliament goes out and produces a communication—which one could say was a brochure, a pamphlet, or whatever—that explicitly seeks support for a party or a member, then he or she is deemed to be electioneering. If a member seeks a vote for that party or that member, he or she is electioneering. If that member encourages a person to become a member of a political party, he or she is electioneering. It is quite, quite concise, and it is quite sensible.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Does Labour’s pledge card meet that definition?

PETER BROWN: The member is questioning the pledge card. Now, I cannot recall what the pledge card is, but I have here a pledge brochure. I cannot find a great deal of difference between what I have been told about the pledge card and what I have been told about this pledge brochure. This brochure was paid for by the National Party out of its parliamentary funding. It is a huge brochure—

Hon Member: So the taxpayer paid.

PETER BROWN: Exactly.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: What did the Auditor-General say about that publication from National?

PETER BROWN: The member is interjecting to a degree his colleague has objected to.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I just asked the question: what did the Auditor-General say about National?

PETER BROWN: When that member was asked a question he would not answer it. I am answering some of his questions, but I am not wasting my 10 minutes on a member who is totally confused and does not know what he is talking about.

The last time Nick Smith spoke in this House he told members and people in the gallery that he could use the $64,000 he got each year to run his electorate office—or offices, because as a constituent MP he is entitled to two, or expected to have two—to advance himself. That is absolute poppycock, and he knows it. He knows that that money is to pay for the lease of his two offices, to pay for cleaning them, to pay for the power they use and for the equipment in them, and to pay for the surveys the National Party puts out from time to time. Those surveys are put out on an individual basis, but we know they are produced by the National Party’s head office. He is also allowed to spend part of that money on advertising the fact that he is a resident of Nelson, that he has an office there, and that he runs a clinic from time to time. That is what he has the money for. But he has told the public of New Zealand that he will use it to advance himself totally. He knows he would not be allowed to get away with that. This bill in part stops that practice from occurring. He knows that this bill in part stops that.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Under this bill I can.

PETER BROWN: No, the member cannot. He should try to find it out. What I would like you to do—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!

PETER BROWN: Not you, Mr Assistant Speaker. What I would like the member’s party to do—and I might propose an amendment to the Speaker’s rulings in relation to the National Party in particular—is to present audited accounts to Parliamentary Service to see how its members use their money, because it is absolutely disgraceful that the member is telling the public of New Zealand that under the bill he gets $64,000 a year to advance himself. That is the impression he has given, and that is not right, and the member and his colleagues know it. His colleagues know that they do not get that money to advance themselves. They have to have an office, they have to have all the equipment in the office, and they have to have the office cleaned, and what have you.

It is legitimate for a Government to put out brochures to tell the public of New Zealand what they are entitled to do under any specific piece of legislation. That is the correct thing to do. The member, or an earlier member—I think it was Tony Ryall—said that if a Labour Party candidate distributed those brochures to people he or she would be in breach of this law. That is rubbish, and Tony Ryall knows it—and Nick Smith knows it. Nick Smith shakes his head, but, yes, he does know it. He has been here 17 years and he does not know how the system works? I do not believe that.

I have been critical of the Auditor-General, and I stand by everything I said. In the document he produced early on in the piece—in June 2005, I think it was—in which he apparently was saying that he would take a tougher line on and a closer look at how we spend our money during the election period, he has the heading “Complementary rules and standards should apply”. I will read to the House part of what is under this bullet point. I know I have read it before, but maybe the honourable members from the National Party will take note of it. It says here that rules and standards for publication should “identify clear and workable procedures for the approval of publicity before publication takes place;”. It goes on to say a few other things. New Zealand First was caught by the Auditor-General largely because of this brochure I am holding. New Zealand First produced this brochure, which outlines our policies. It does not ask for a vote, it does not ask for people to become party members, and it does not ask for money. It does not ask for anything.

Hon Bill English: That’s fine.

PETER BROWN: The brochure outlines New Zealand First policies. That is what we are meant to do. Bill English is acknowledging that, and I thank him for that.

Let me make it quite clear that our people went along to Parliamentary Service and asked whether this brochure was OK. We sought permission before publication. We went further than that and asked the Chief Electoral Office whether it was OK, and we got a clean bill of health on both counts. We followed the rules that the Auditor-General recommended, and then we found out we were captured by the Auditor-General’s ruling in his report entitled Advertising expenditure incurred by the Parliamentary Service in the three months before the 2005 General Election. We followed the rules, we followed the procedure, but we were captured.

Hon Harry Duynhoven: The Auditor-General’s report came after the event.

PETER BROWN: As the honourable member says, that was after the event.

We could not have done anything other than what we did. I do not know whom we could have asked. Our people asked for permission conscientiously and diligently, but we were captured. The Auditor-General told the Hon Peter Dunne that two parties in this Parliament did not break any rules. He said to Peter Dunne that those two parties were United Future and New Zealand First. I understand the Hon Peter Dunne asked the Auditor-General whether he would put that in his report, and the Auditor-General said no.

We welcome this bill, because it reinforces in legislation what we have put in the Speaker’s directions. This legislation will make clear for everybody involved in the next election the terms for using parliamentary funds as expenditure. We welcome this bill and we support it wholeheartedly at its third reading.

KEITH LOCKE (Green) : There is not really any alternative to this Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill if Parliament is to operate properly, particularly in the 3 months leading up to polling day. Every party in this House will be in the same bind, which is why it is so disappointing that there is not unanimity in this House over this question. Instead, it has become a political football, even though we just do not have any alternative.

On the Parliamentary Service Commission all parties, including National, worked as best they could to try to sort the implications of the Auditor-General’s decision in relation to spending in the last 3 months before the last election. If we do not clarify this issue through this legislation, all we will be able to do in the last 3 months before an election is to sit in our offices—if we have offices in the cities outside of Parliament—and do individual casework, because it is difficult to sort this out in terms of the Auditor-General’s decision, without clear legislation or reference to the Speaker’s direction. At one end, as the legislation makes clear, we can cut out anything that calls for a vote for a person or a party, that calls for people to join a party, or that calls for money for that party. Those things are clearly ruled out in this legislation. We can clearly establish that if any advertising—particularly during that 3-month period leading up to the election that the Auditor-General is so worried about—calls for any of those four things, then that advertising is not parliamentary business and is not paid for out of a parliamentary budget.

At the other end of the spectrum—and some of the Auditor-General’s rulings are confusing, as the previous speaker, Peter Brown, indicated—if we are dealing purely with policy and members of Parliament explaining policy, then that should not be included in this ban. If it is included, we run the risk of virtually the whole of Parliament closing down and all the staff being sacked for the last 3 months before the general election.

In between those two poles of things calling for votes, members, or money and things dealing with policy there is a whole grey area in the middle of what we might call sloganeering. This includes using billboards for sloganeering that do not necessarily tell people to vote for the National Party, the Green Party, the Labour Party, or whatever, but that are sort of in a bit of a grey area in the middle. That still has to be sorted out—we still have some work to do. We have not had time to work it all through in this Parliament before establishing rules for the next election, so we had to roll things over and pass this bill.

As has come up in Parliament today, the Greens have an idea of people outside of Parliament, a body representing the citizenry—we call it a Citizens’ Assembly—somehow getting to grips with this issue, as well. When MPs approach this issue they do so with a certain bias that comes with being in an incumbent party, and a certain vested interest. It would be good to have that independent look at it. It is true, and it cannot be completely avoided, that incumbent parties do have a certain advantage in the election period. We have resources—communications resources, travel resources, office resources—based on incumbency, which gives us an advantage, perhaps, over parties that are not represented in Parliament and are trying to get into Parliament, or individuals who are trying to get into Parliament. That is a structural problem, so we have to take advice. I think the Citizens’ Assembly is a way to help to achieve that, and to redress some of that imbalance. I do not think it can ever be completely redressed, but I think we have to proceed in an objective way.

I think we should work together on this issue, so it is disappointing that all the parties are not working together on it and that some parties in this House today are using the issue as a political battering ram, when we are really all in the same boat in that respect. So, hopefully, we can all work together, support this bill, and try to fine-tune it over the next year or two. Thank you.

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

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) : Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tātou e te Whare. A week ago today the Māori Party’s view on the Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill was clearly set out by Dr Pita Sharples. As with anything we in the Māori Party are involved with, particularly in regard to issues in this House, we take this issue very seriously, as indeed we do the serious business of humour.

Last year we received a notice that we had committed a crime. The crime was advertising and publicity expenditure deemed outside appropriation for the 3 months prior to the general election of 17 September 2005, and here is the notice. As there is no word for “guilt” in te reo Māori, we could only acknowledge this and say: “Āe, i raro i ngā ture Pāremata, i hē mātou.”—that we were wrong. The Māori Party did not make up excuses. We did not seek legal advice on how to convince others that our wrong was in fact a right. “Fair enough”, we thought, and we fessed up and paid up. The crime was centred on an advertisement in a local paper, and it was for the amount of $53.66, including GST.

On 16 August 2006 we dipped into our Māori Party and staff kai kitty and duly paid in cash the amount of $53.70, for which we received a letter of receipt. [Interruption] Thank you. This letter of receipt, which was received on 17 August 2006, was headed “Receipt of illegal election advertising expenses”, and it stated: “we confirm receipt of funds representing the refund of illegal election expenditure as outlined in the Auditor general’s report. Please find attached your tax receipt for $53.70. This represents $47.73 plus GST. Regards …”, blah-blah-blah.

When we discussed this crime of expenditure outside of appropriations, we thought we might invoke what is normal for the Office of Treaty Settlements and this House in settling Treaty claims. We thought 2 percent of $53.70 would be a satisfactory amount in repaying the debt, which would bring the compensation payment to about $1.07. We chose not to do so as we were not prepared for the outcry that would surely, and rightly, have followed. We imagined the headlines of “Māori Party refuses to pay in full”. So we decided to pay the paltry sum of $53.70. We decided that it did not really warrant that sort of headline, so we paid in full. We congratulate the Hon Jim Anderton and his Progressive party on being the only political party in this House that did not act illegally. Most other parties have paid, but there are still one or two that to date have failed to put their hands in their pockets. The interest on their debts must be building, I am sure.

What has disappointed us most is that, first, some people still believe that Kevin Brady, the Auditor-General was wrong; and, secondly, even worse, this House has passed retrospective legislation to make legitimate that which was illegal. We sure know how to look after ourselves and we have a wonderful ability to rationalise our behaviour.

The question we in the Māori Party have is about the letter that refers to the refund of illegal election advertising expenses and whether the other parties have received a letter headed just like it. I wonder why it is that we in the Māori Party have not received a letter to say that all is now forgiven and that it has all been made legal and above board. As we have stated previously, although this bill is portrayed as merely being a rollover of existing legislation to 2009, and although pledges have been given that what happened in 2005 will not happen again, what the Māori Party knows only too well, as students of history and of power, is that the ends will always justify the means for those who crave power. History has shown that some people will do almost anything to retain their positions. The funny thing that I have found interesting in the debate thus far is that both major parties seem to blame each other, yet they both tested the rules to the limit and were found wanting.

Much reference has been made in this House to Nicky Hager’s book The Hollow Men as we have debated this bill and its mate the Electoral Finance Bill, which we will be debating before the House winds up for the year. Both of these bills have rightly been linked, but it is the book that I want to make reference to. The book alludes to the notion of what is referred to as “wedge politics”, the politics of division and fear; the politics whereby one group is cynically set up to be feared. It is a type of politics that has again been seen on our television screens and in our newspapers, and this time around it has also been directly experienced by the men, women, and children of Rūātoki and Tūhoe. It is a sort of politics that utilises a technique called dog whistling, which refers to the notion that certain messages will be transmitted and heard by a specific set of the audience. They are subliminal, racialising messages that politicians use and that are the last words to be remembered by the listener.

In the last few weeks we have been subjected to wedge politics and dog whistling straight out of The Hollow Men, which provided a damning account of gross manipulation of the public in the interests of power. By way of example, I ask members to think back, if they will, to the press conference of Monday morning, 15 October, when the nation was advised of terrorist training camps in Tūhoe, of Molotov cocktails, of napalm bombs, of military-style weapons, and of threats to the lives of the Rt Hon Helen Clark, the honourable John Key, and the President of the United States, George W Bush. When leave to lay charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 was denied, the Prime Minister went on the offensive, stating that those arrested were still facing very serious firearms charges. All of this happened while the issue was sub judice, and while much effort was being made in this House to ensure that members of the Māori Party did not break the sub judice laws in debates. It was then announced that the Hon Parekura Horomia was also a target of assassination.

Increasingly, more and more people are coming to believe that the police raids of recent weeks have been a cynically orchestrated campaign by and for the Labour Government, based on the very thing that drove Dr Brash, that was practised by Mr John Howard in Australia, and that has its origins in Karl Rove, the brain of Mr George Bush. The irony is that this divisive and destructive form of politics, when published by Nicky Hager, was the object of considerable criticism by the Rt Hon Prime Minister and her colleagues, who railed on Don Brash following his Ōrewa speech. But over these last 4 weeks the Prime Minister and her colleagues have been indulging in exactly the same behaviour, for exactly the same purposes, and, it would seem, for exactly the same kind of populist result, with Labour improving in the latest Fairfax media Nielsen poll this past weekend.

It would seem that racism, despite technically being an illegal practice, remains as something to successfully draw on when ratings are down. Don Brash did it to spectacular effect in the year before the last election. Could it be that the Labour Government is following suit? What sort of games will be played out before the next election? I have used this example to make the point that when it comes to power, any means will justify the ends. The financial cost of such behaviour will be borne by the people as we in this House set about appropriating money for parliamentary purposes. The cost of wedge politics is always paid by the innocent. This time it was paid by the people, young and old, of Rūātoki and Tūhoe and those who have dared to challenge it. The question is who will be next.

DIANNE YATES (Labour) : I rise to speak on the Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill. I welcome this bill, and I am very, very pleased. I am a person who, in elections, is extremely careful. I have always been very careful to comply with the provision of the existing Act that sets out the four things that I as a member of this House have always been very careful about. We do not put out anything under parliamentary expenses, or using parliamentary money, that says “vote for me”, “vote for my party”, “give us money”, or “become a member of our party”. That was drummed into me, and if ever I have been unclear I have rung Parliamentary Service, or, in the case of an election, the Chief Electoral Office. This bill spells the rules out even more clearly than does the existing Act. The rules are absolutely clear and there is no room for interpretation. I have a great deal of sympathy for what Peter Brown said earlier in this debate, and most of us in this House have been extremely careful to abide by these rules.

I have in front of me a piece of information sent out by the National Party in 2002, and I understand that Bill English authorised it.

Hon Ruth Dyson: It’s a commitment card.

DIANNE YATES: It is, but it is in blue. It is looks very, very similar to Labour’s commitment card, except it is bigger. It bears the National Party logo and the parliamentary crest, which means that it was paid for by Parliament. The information was sent out in 2002, and that was OK; it complied with those four rules. It does not say “Vote for National”; it does not say “Give us money”; it does not say “Join the National Party”; and it does not say “Vote for Bill English” or anybody else. It is exactly the same in form and content as Labour’s pledge card. It was OK in 2002, but suddenly it was not OK in 2005. But I can tell the House that as a member of Parliament I have been very, very careful to abide by the laws, and I, along with many people in this House, resent being told by people on the other side, and by people perhaps outside this House, that we are corrupt, and all sorts of things. Most of the members of parties in this House have been very careful to abide by the law.

I have always been in a very marginal seat, and I have been hypercareful to abide by the law. I have checked out that everything I put out was in compliance with that law, so I resent some of the comments from the other side of the House. I look forward to the implementation of this bill and know that it will spell out very, very clearly, particularly for those people who cannot read the previous Act very well, what those four rules are. Clause 3(2) provides that under Parliamentary Service funding rules a candidate cannot say: “Vote for me”; “Vote for my party”; “Give us money” or “Become a member of our party”. It is spelt out very clearly and I am very pleased to see it there.

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) : It is a shame that this debate has come to such a level of deliberate ignorance. When I listen to the Government speakers they do not explain, because they cannot bear to, the context in which this Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill arises. I want to make a couple of particular points about that.

The first is that we do not need this bill. Parliament has wasted its time for weeks on this bill and its predecessor legislation. We have this bill before us only because of the petulance of Dr Cullen, who can never be wrong. Dr Cullen and Helen Clark got caught out by the Auditor-General for breaking the rules. They broke all the rules, particularly by breaching the electoral expense cap, but the police could not be bothered to investigate—in fact, they could not even find the right section of the Act to apply. Dr Cullen and Helen Clark got caught out, and then they said: “Well, the Auditor-General, who caught us out, is just trying to smear the Labour Party.”, as if that is all he ever did. The Auditor-General, they think, wakes up in the morning thinking about one thing—the Labour Party. Actually, he does not. He wakes up in the morning thinking about good and proper process, and how to enforce the rules that he has laid out.

That is why we have this bill, because Labour said: “If the Auditor-General says we’re wrong, he must be wrong. And if he says we’re wrong, then everyone must be wrong, and that is why we need validating legislation.” So they passed validating legislation to validate what we always knew were the rules, which we had all kept—generally—except the Labour Party. This bill is just an extension of it. Helen Clark could not stand being wrong, because she believes that the Labour Party is always right; that whenever it comes to anything to do with politics, the centre of the world is the Labour Party. Our constitutional conventions mean nothing; our electoral law means nothing; and our Auditor-General is on some cheap political smear, just because Labour got caught out.

This bill is a waste of time. It is unnecessary; it is before the House because Michael Cullen and Helen Clark cannot be wrong. That is why National has opposed the bill. It is nothing to do with what is required to run fair and free elections. At least the Government has admitted that the bill just re-enacts the rules, as we already had them. That is the first point.

The second point is that the Labour Party cannot understand the significance for this legislation of changing the regulated period. The laws around electoral finance are always going to have to be a balance between politicians, who are dead keen to get their message out, the public, who must have a role in influencing an election, the careful use of public money—all these things have to be balanced alongside common-sense intuitions about the public’s interest in elections and when it really matters. For decades New Zealand has had a law that balanced those out, with pretty minor changes, supported by all the parties. The core of it was this: for a 3-month period before the election everything could be counted as an electoral expense, including that which was spent by MPs.

What effect did that have on MPs? Well, we never quite knew when “3 months before the election” was, but it did mean we had to be very careful to meet not only the parliamentary hurdle for the kind of material the member opposite is displaying but the hurdle put down by the Electoral Act. That was a tougher test. So things that we did in March or April, we did not do in September or October because that was close to the election, that was when the definition of “election expenses” counted, and if we broke those rules, we were in serious trouble. For 30 years—maybe longer, I do not know—that has worked.

What has changed now is that although the definition for what MPs can spend remains unchanged from what it was traditionally, there is now no constraint from the Electoral Act on what MPs do. So we have the ridiculous situation that Tony Ryall pointed out where a document published by a Labour MP that sets out Labour’s policy will be legal, during the regulated period—that is, all next year—but the same document published by a Labour candidate will be illegal. That means one law for the candidate and one law for the politicians. That is what is at the heart of the dispute about this bill. Parliament is passing this definition of what MPs can spend money on, and alongside the Electoral Finance Bill it means that the politicians will have more money, fewer rules, and more say but the general public will have a lot less money, much tighter rules, and much less say in the election. That is what is going to happen.

The Labour Party, of course, wants one law for Labour and one rule for everybody else. Let us see just how different these definitions are, so that people can understand how this whole collection of legislation—the Electoral Finance Bill and this appropriation bill—is all about Labour. Helen Clark cannot stand being wrong, so she has fixed that. She is trying to pass this appropriation bill. It makes no practical difference to anything; it just proves that it was the Auditor-General who was wrong, not Helen Clark. She did not like people criticising the pledge card, so she is passing this bill to make the card legal; she has fixed that. She does not like the idea that people might raise money to attack the Labour Party, so she is passing the Electoral Finance Bill; she has fixed that. She does not like the idea that MPs’ spending might be tested by the same law that every other citizen of New Zealand is subject to. She does not like that, so she has fixed that. She has passed the legislation to make sure that MPs’ spending is subject just to our own rules—not to the rules that the rest of the country will have to adhere to.

Let us look at these definitions, so that people understand the legislation. The definition in the appropriation bill is the one we are used to for MPs. It is pretty clear and we all know what it is. We can put out almost anything, as long as it does not seek support for the election of a particular person or party, does not ask for money—we all know that; we cannot send out a parliamentary letter asking for a subscription to a party—and does not encourage someone to become a member. We cannot send out a membership recruitment letter on parliamentary money. That is how politicians see it. They see the rule as being that we can do almost everything except those things.

The Electoral Finance Bill, which is the rule for everybody else, is absolutely different. It basically states that we cannot do anything much, in case—can members feel the difference—it might encourage a voter to vote or not vote for a party or candidate. It also states—and this is the new bit, which the Minister of Justice does not know about because she has not read the bill; what happened to the competent Minister of everything—that we cannot do anything that encourages a voter to vote for a party or a type of party that is indicated by views, positions, or policies. That is almost anything. I say to the Government that if it believes that that should be the rule for the public, then it should put it in this bill. The Government should put it in the appropriation bill. Why did the Government not put in the appropriation bill that an MP cannot send out anything on public money if it will encourage a voter to vote by reference to views, positions, or policies? We know why. It is because that would rule out most of what MPs put out. That is why it is not there.

Parliament will pass this legislation with a low level for MPs and real problems for the public. That shows us just how Labour thinks it is the centre of the world. During the last couple of elections it introduced the “waka jumping” bill. What has happened to that innovative constitutional arrangement? It has gone because it could not stand the scrutiny. But it served Helen Clark’s needs for one election. When it really mattered it worked. Labour does not care about waka jumping now. It is the same with this bill. It is designed to serve one need, which is to get Labour re-elected. Everyone else can be damned.

Hon MARIAN HOBBS (Labour—Wellington Central) : I rise to support the third reading of the Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill. I rise without any of the noise and angst of some of the previous speakers and, in my final months in this House, also without the personalisation of attack, which is something I will not miss when I leave this House.

This is a very simple bill. The current legislative framework governing spending by parliamentary parties expires on 31 December this year. This bill extends that expiry date until 1 July 2009. Extending the current framework will ensure certainty and transparency for all parties. If the legislation lapses, then we will return to the uncertain, unclear situation that followed the report of the Controller and Auditor-General last year. This legislation relates to the legislative framework in which rules relating to parliamentary spending are set. The legislation does not set out all the rules of parliamentary spending. The details are set out in the determinations and directions issued by the Speaker. New determinations and directions were issued only last month. They received praise even from the Office of the Auditor-General. That is the clarity we are seeking as we move forward.

The proximity of the election made it impossible to reach agreement among parties on an enduring legislative framework. That is sad. For that very reason, it is essential that we extend the current interim framework until 2009, when the tempers will be down and people are able to work together. This will allow parties to work together outside the heat of an election campaign and come up with some enduring rules that we can all agree on.

This legislation is about providing clear, transparent, and fair rules so that all MPs can do their job—which continues right up to the election—and nothing else. I have just heard Bill English get up and say that we do not need this legislation. Colin Espiner wrote: “The second thing to point out is that Labour has no choice but to bring the companion piece of legislation”—the bill we have in front of us—“before Parliament. That is because to allow it to lapse would basically mean that all political parties would once again be breaking the law in the way they use parliamentary funding.”

Like my colleague Dianne Yates, I have tried very hard to keep to those rules. In the 2005 election I used to run an advertisement in the local Rialto Cinema, which stated my name and phone number and invited people to come to me to tackle Government departments and roads—and God knows what else. I rang Parliamentary Service and asked whether I could keep doing that. It said that of course I could because I was not asking for money or votes but was doing my services as an MP, which I continued to do. I ran that advertisement right the way up to the election. I therefore support very strongly this legislation, which allows us to continue doing our work. For somebody like me, who is not seeking re-election but who wants to make his or her services available right to the bitter end in order to help constituents, this bill makes the rules very clear. Thank you.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Building and Construction) : Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to take a short call in support of the earlier speaker—my colleague who is soon to leave the House—Marian Hobbs on the Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill. This bill will pass. This bill has been subject to a great deal of haranguing and misinformation. This bill is a very simple bill. All it does is ensure that established practices, which unfortunately have not been allowed to proceed as a consequence of politicking from the other side of the House, can continue under the cloak of legitimacy given by this House. It is disappointing that many of the points made in relation to this bill have become embroiled in debates and misunderstandings pertaining to electoral finance matters. Of course, the Electoral Finance Bill, which is soon to reach us, will no doubt pass, as well.

A few things need to be pointed out, in relation to this appropriation bill, so that those New Zealanders who have not already been put to sleep by contributions from the other side of the House are possessed of the necessary facts. Firstly, all parties in the House were consulted on this bill. Secondly, all parties were prepared to work together in a genuine attempt to reach consensus. However, it is very saddening—but accurate—to say that our friends in the National Party on the other side of the House decided to play a game of pettifogging and turn this into a petulant set of outbursts designed to score political points rather than to establish and continue a very well-tried system of funding the genuine activities of MPs.

It needs to be pointed out that all legitimate contributions that were designed to get us over a point of consensus were tried. In early September this year, the Government’s representatives were informed by the National Party’s negotiators that rather than supporting a substantive amendment, the National Party would be prepared to support only an extension of the current rules. They also admitted that these rules were working well. Mr Brownlee—my fellow traveller to the United States—said also that National was happy for a rollover, provided it would lead to a much shorter election period. So it remains to be said that the Opposition is purely opportunistic. That is to be expected in adversarial politics; however, it is not a decision that has been arrived at by Dr Smith and others on the basis of some lofty political principle but rather on trivial, miscalculated, tactical, point-scoring exercises in the House. That is to be expected.

It is important that we bear in mind that the larger debate looms in front of us as to what is to pass through this House as a reasonable attempt to ensure that money spent in the pursuit of electoral victory is premised on the principles of transparency, and that people who do contribute are required to do so in such a way that they do not undermine the political process that we have every election, as we saw in the last election. It is very difficult for the public, actually, to understand what is really happening in this short, relatively inconsequential amendment represented in this bill, which will pass. It is unfortunate that it has become embroiled in another set of issues. But members can rest assured; we look forward to that debate, as well.

This bill is regularising what both parties could have committed to had it not been for the main Opposition party seeing this as being a petty opportunity to score political points. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) : The gentleman who spoke previously talked about a history lesson; I would like to speak to this Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill’s history by going back to 30 August 2005. There is a note of a telephone conversation that David Henry, the then Chief Electoral Officer, had with the New Zealand Labour Party general secretary, Mike Smith, where he raised with him the matter of a piece of propaganda that was being distributed to letterboxes nationwide. He asked whether it was being paid for by the Parliamentary Service, and he made a note that he said whoever paid for this piece of propaganda did not matter and that it did not need to call specifically for a party vote.

I then go on to a letter dated 2 September, in which the Chief Electoral Officer, David Henry, referred Mike Smith, the general secretary of the New Zealand Labour Party, to that same piece of advertising. The section was quoted from the Electoral Act, and the Labour Party was told that the advertising, in the view of the Chief Electoral Officer, did breach that section of the Electoral Act. He stated that in his view the statements made in the advertising encouraged or persuaded, or appeared to encourage or persuade, voters to vote for the Labour Party. The advertising was therefore subject to the provisions of section 221. At that stage in history anyone would ask whether the Labour Party stopped issuing electioneering propaganda, and the answer is here, in history, in writing: no; in fact, it did not. Quite to the contrary, Labour put out another piece of electioneering that quite clearly breached that same section of the Electoral Act, after Labour had had it in writing from the Chief Electoral Officer that that was the case.

Finally in this correspondence we see the Labour Party accepting that it was breaking the law, and saying that the party would pay for it out of its funds and declare it as part of its electioneering campaign. But we found out that after the election Labour members changed their minds and were happy to stand, having broken the electoral law.

That is the rort that has us on the path of this legislation in front of the House tonight, because Labour members had to then blackguard the Auditor-General’s decisions and make their illegal behaviour legal. They did that by introducing validating legislation. They validated, in retrospect, the illegal activity they had knowingly taken part in, despite being warned in writing by the Chief Electoral Officer. Most New Zealanders, after having broken the law, after having been told they had broken the law, and after having been caught, would change their behaviour. Most New Zealanders, if they were warned that they would break the law if they continued their behaviour, would change their behaviour, but not this Government. This Government passes legislation to make its illegal activity legal. This was activity that those members were told in writing was illegal, and for which, by all that is right and just, they should have been prosecuted for doing because that contributed to their stealing the election.

Those members changed the law to make their behaviour legal, but that legislation is due to run out at the end of this year, 31 December. So we would have thought that Labour, after having come down this road, would now make every effort to reach a cross-party agreement. In fact, around the table at the Parliamentary Service Commission back in May of this year, the previous Minister of Justice started talking about this validation legislation running out at the end of the year. He talked about it in June of this year and again in July of this year. Did he do anything about it? No, he did not. He just counted on the fact that the Labour Government would push through whatever it wanted, when it wanted, and in the way it wanted, because it could buy the support of the minor parties and get the majority it needed in the House. The Government had done it before with the validating legislation, so why would it not be able to do it again? And at the end of September the first discussions took place about the Government maybe having cross-party agreement.

But by that stage Labour had introduced the Electoral Finance Bill, which is Draconian legislation designed to shut down free speech in this country. But the National Party said that we had to look at both pieces of legislation together because they were both part of the same construction. They are both part of the same equation, and we do have to look at them together. We were quite happy to discuss the two of them together, but in order to do that we said that if Labour wanted to roll over that validating legislation for a couple of months, then that was OK and we would support it, but on the proviso that we were looking at the whole scenario—the two pieces of legislation going hand in hand. They are the facts, that is the history, and this is all quite clearly supported in writing.

So here we are tonight, discussing a bill that sets up one set of regulations for members of Parliament and for political parties in Parliament that have been bought by the generous finance in this bill before the House tonight in order to get votes, and we are discussing another set of rules in the Electoral Finance Bill, which will come before the House on Thursday, for everyone else. That is why we are talking about corruption. This is a Government, led by Labour, designing law that suits it and nobody else.

I will talk about a couple of pieces of propaganda I have here, which were put out by Labour and which are quite OK this year. There is absolutely no problem with these pamphlets this year; the distribution time is not in the regulated period and under the old law would have been quite fine until 3 months before the election. No one could have queried that the distribution of these pamphlets did not fit the regulations. That is fine, but this Government has said that it is OK for parliamentarians to put such pamphlets out in the regulated period next year. If I am an MP, then I can put them out. But if I am a candidate, then, under the regulations being passed by this Labour Government, doing that will be electioneering and it will have to count in my candidate’s $20,000. That is not fair, that is not right, and that is not just.

It is a very simple thing to understand. I suggest that those members opposite go away, put aside their research notes, read the bills, and then try telling National members that they are wrong, because members opposite will find that National members are not wrong; they are right. These pamphlets, if put out by a Labour Party candidate in the regulated period next year, will be counted as electioneering. But if they are put out by an MP, they will not be so counted. MPs will be able to do that without any problem, at all. If Labour members would listen and read the bill, then they would understand that.

This bill in front of the House tonight is a travesty of democracy. This bill is appalling legislation. Its support has been bought by the minor parties for what is essentially State funding in drag. On behalf of the National Party, I say that we will not support this legislation. It is appalling legislation and Labour members should hang their heads in shame.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) : Firstly, I want to point out the context of this bill, which is that homeownership has become incredibly expensive for families because of this Government’s failed building policies. I note that in my own electorate the price of housing for New Zealanders has increased by 122 percent.

Hon Member: How much?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The increase in the price of housing in my Nelson electorate is 122 percent. Over the whole country it has more than doubled. At the same time, poor financial management by this Government has resulted in interest rates going from 6.3 percent, when Labour came to Government, to the latest figure of 10.4 percent. The consequence of both those high house prices and increasing interest rates is that we have seen record declines in the level of home affordability and also in homeownership rates.

National seeks a simple test for changes to the building legislation: how will this bill help home affordability? We have heard the rhetoric from the Prime Minister that she thinks home affordability is an important issue. I remind her that during 8 years of a Labour Government we have seen home affordability in New Zealand—a country that has prided itself on homeownership—becoming the lowest in the OECD.

I remind the Minister in the chair, Shane Jones, that the average mortgage as a percentage of income in 1999 was 42 percent. Today that figure is 83 percent. How many of us members of Parliament really believe that a family can afford to spend 83 percent of its average income on servicing a mortgage? It is nigh on impossible.

What are we getting in this bill from the Government? We are getting a bill that is going to increase the costs and the bureaucracy of our building laws and make home affordability even harder for New Zealand families.

I want to remind the House of the heritage of Norm Kirk. I grew up in North Canterbury, where there was great pride in the fact that former Prime Minister Norm Kirk was able to build his own house in Kaiapoi. What does this Government do? It regulates that possibility out of existence. It will now be impossible for any New Zealander who wants to aspire to build his or her own home; that person will not now be able to do it. I ask Shane Jones whether he really wants to go down in history as the Minister for Building and Construction who took away the opportunity for the average Kiwi to be able to build a roof over his or her head.

Then we come to the provisions on rates in this bill. We have just had an inquiry into the increased costs we are putting on ratepayers. Do members realise that under this Labour Government, rates have been increasing at three times the rate of inflation? Local councils all over New Zealand are pleading with us as parliamentarians to stop dumping extra costs on them.

Hon Darren Hughes: Why do you oppose development levies then?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: And what does Darren Hughes want to do? He is imposing increased costs with this bill. I want to know from Darren Hughes why he is going to put up the costs of rates in his electorate in Levin and the surrounding communities. Why is that member so intent on dumping extra costs on them? I will tell members why. It is because that member has no idea. He has no understanding of the building industry, no understanding of the struggle of average families to be able to afford their own home, and no understanding of the increased bureaucracy involved.

I remind members what the Wellington City Council said. It said that the amount of paperwork required to get a building consent for the average home has more than trebled under this Government. Dunedin City Council has just announced that it will have to expand its building department by an extra 15 staff, at a cost of $1.3 million. Who will be paying that cost? It will be those who aspire to own their own home.

National members say that this bill should improve home affordability, yet it does the opposite; it imposes regulatory constraint. I have a submission here from the Institution of Professional Engineers, which is a very respected institution. The submission states that this bill will require people to get a building consent to re-putty the windows on their home. I know of red tape going mad, and I know that members opposite have no appreciation for the bureaucracy and red tape they are imposing, but even they must see stupidity in a bill that the Institution of Professional Engineers says will require people to go to the council for a building consent to re-putty the windows on their house.

We hear all this garbage from the Government about sustainability. Do members know that it costs an average of $1,100 to get a building consent for a solar water heater system? The Government is very generous. It will give people a grant for $500 if they meet a whole lot of bureaucratic costs, but it will be imposing a cost—through this legislation—of over $1,000 to get a consent for a solar water heater system. It is no wonder that Australia has three times as many solar water heating systems being installed than in New Zealand, as a consequence—

Dianne Yates: It’s free with at least three councils.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I say to the member opposite that it is a disgrace that in Australia, three times as many solar water heating systems are being installed than in New Zealand, despite all the Government’s bull and rhetoric around sustainability. On the practical elements the Government is failing.

Does the Minister in the chair, accept the view of the Institution of Professional Engineers on this bill? I put this question to the Minister: why is it proper to charge councils for the costs of his bureaucracy in approving councils as building consent authorities? The silence is deafening. The arrogance of the Minister in the chair is such that he does not think he has to answer to anybody. He thinks he can just ram legislation through Parliament, increase the costs on councils, and increase the cost on homeowners, and there will be no come-back. Well, I say to Mr Jones that there will be a come-back. It is coming in about 11 months’ time, and it will be with a vote of no confidence by the people of New Zealand in the bureaucracy the Minister is imposing on the building industry of New Zealand.

In this bill we have provision after provision that will further increase costs for councils and builders wanting to get on with business. I met with a builder last night at a Rotary club. He told me that he has had it up to the eyeballs with the Minister’s red tape, such that he and his colleagues see no future but to move to Australia. We saw the figures today—more New Zealanders left for Australia in the last year than at any time in 10 years. I say to the Minister that stupid, bureaucratic laws like this, which he is putting through our Parliament, are part of the red tape and the control-freak element of his Government that is driving New Zealanders overseas and taking away from New Zealand talented builders and those who work within this industry. It is because of the red tape he is imposing.

Members on this side of the House say that we do not need more of this sort of legislation. We need legislation that will provide for proper business accountability by those who work in the building industry, but not more and more unnecessary bureaucracy.

The last point I want to make in this debate is in respect of the submission by the Registered Master Builders Federation of New Zealand to the select committee. The submission stated that there are unnecessary red tape costs of $30,000 for each house built in New Zealand. There is $30,000 of extra imposition as a consequence of the mad red tape that this Government is imposing on the building industry.

The organisation had something else to say, and I thought it was even more extraordinary. It said that it now takes longer in New Zealand to get consent to build a house than it takes to actually build it. When it said that to the select committee, we thought that it could not be true, and that the organisation must be pulling our leg and exaggerating a bit. So I talked to some builders in my home area, and they gave me examples of where it had taken twice as long to get the consent from the council for a building than to build it. That is nuts.

JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) : It is a great pleasure to follow my colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith, who has taken a huge interest in this building issue. I am the deputy chair of the Social Services Committee, which heard the submissions on this bill.

Russell Fairbrother: And a very good one, too.

JUDITH COLLINS: I thank very much the chair of the committee, who is, of course, Russell Fairbrother. He is a very good chair. One of the points I noted is that as a homeowner I thought about how hard it was to buy our first home some years ago. What has happened in those years is that it has not got any easier to buy one’s first home. In fact, it has got significantly harder. So now we have a situation where in many parts of the United States, for instance, people can buy homes considerably more cheaply than they can here. They can get much bigger houses in much better areas, and everything else.

I think that one of the points Dr Smith made is absolutely relevant. He said that in parts of Australia it is significantly cheaper to buy or build a house than it is here. The member, Ms Yates, keeps calling out: “But not in Sydney.” That has a lot to do with the cost of land in Sydney, actually, I say to Ms Yates, which anybody who has been there would know.

I also note that one of the big concerns has been that as the amount of red tape and bureaucratic interference has increased and increased, the people who pay for it, the people whose interests are supposed to be being protected, are actually unable to afford the home they would like to be able to build. So, for instance, if people do wish to build a house, they will have to build a house that is considerably smaller or does not have the same amenities that they would otherwise have if they had not had the red tape and had not been told they have to do this and that and this.

What is really amazing is that anything that has been built in the last few years becomes absolutely suspect. So the bigger the regulation, the bigger the risk. That is actually what has happened. As we have regulated and regulated our industries, including the building industry, we have ended up with more leaky homes. We have ended up with more people who have homes that are totally unsatisfactory. We have more expensive homes, and what we do not have are more people owning their own homes.

I can recall no time in our history in New Zealand when we have had a smaller proportion of people who own their own homes. We were a home-owning country, and now we are turning into a country of flatters and renters. Why that is so important is that when people buy a home, they buy into a community. As part of that, their children buy into a community. They get some stability. They get the ability to be in the same school. They do not get the transience that often happens with rental properties.

One of the problems that I see, which is totally not addressed by this bill, is the fact that this bill will put the cost of building up. It will not increase the quality of building. It will, however, put the cost of building up. As was noted, one of the most absurd situations is the fact that people will have to seek consent to re-putty the glass around their windows. Why? Because, of course, that relates to weathertightness. The fact is that if they left it, that would be fine. It could leak all it liked. But should they go to re-putty it and fix it, they have to get consent because they might be disadvantaged without some sort of consent.

What I think is really, really stupid in this bill is the fact that the Government simply will not listen. We have on the select committee my colleague Bob Clarkson, who knows more about building than anybody in the House, and everybody in the House put together. He is the person who is the expert on building. Bob Clarkson knows building. What do the Government members do? Do they want to have a talk to Bob Clarkson? Do they listen to Bob Clarkson at the committee? No. All they do is try to score funny little points and laugh about it.

What is very, very worrying for the people of New Zealand who actually care about this issue is the fact that they cannot afford to buy their home, their children cannot afford to buy their own home, and that people who have worked all their lives and are in their 40s cannot afford to buy their own home. That is what concerns them. They do not think it is a laughing matter. They would like to hear from people like Bob Clarkson. They would like to know how they can get their homes more cheaply, and they would like to know why it is that in this Parliament, when things go wrong, there is a desperate need to regulate everything.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) : Thank you, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to speak on this most concerning bill, the Building Amendment Bill. It is most concerning because once again we see this Labour Government making it more difficult for ordinary New Zealanders to own their own homes and build their own homes. I note that the commentary on the bill states the most ridiculous assertion—that the 2004 Act was designed to improve building standards, including work done by unqualified and DIY builders, and that this bill will add clarity. That is just unmitigated tripe. Unfortunately, the very opposite exists.

We have heard the excellent arguments from the Hon Dr Nick Smith, who is an engineer and who certainly knows about building. We also have in our caucus, of course, Bob Clarkson, the builder from Tauranga, who has more experience than anyone put together.

Judith Collins: And he beat Winston Peters.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: He did, of course. He did a brilliant job in Tauranga and he will continue to do so.

Pita Paraone: What did he do?

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: His contribution to Tauranga in building the stadium and giving it to the people of Tauranga was a monumental gift, and much more than this Labour Government or any individual in this Labour Government has ever done.

The National Party believes that the bill gives the Government much wider powers to bill councils for accreditation and audit them as a building consent authority, and this is what is of such great concern. This bill basically shifts the system from one of fixed fees by regulation, to full cost recovery. Undoubtedly it is this cost shifting by central government to local government that will inevitably drive up rates. This is what we are seeing, time and time again, by this Labour Government. First of all, it was the power of general competence, and now it is shifting every cost it can think of on to local government, and from there go the extra costs to ordinary, hard-working Kiwis who wish to build houses.

I think the Hon Dr Nick Smith was absolutely right in mentioning the cost of house prices over the last 6 to 7 years. But it is not only the cost of house prices, it is the cost of building, as well. I myself applied 3 years ago to build an extension on my house. I could not afford to build it at the time. Now, 3 years later, the quotes coming in are double what they were 3 years ago, just for an extension. As Dr Nick Smith said, the submission from the Registered Master Builders Federation said there was, on average, an extra $30,000 of unnecessary costs to build a house in New Zealand. That has to be a travesty for every hopeful homeowner in this country.

Again, the Labour Government has basically regulated Kiwis out of not only building their own homes but also building their own baches. It is one of the great historical traditions of New Zealand. It was pointed out that Norman Kirk, that great New Zealander, built his own home without all this fuss and bother. He would not have been able to build his home today; nor, for that matter, would Prime Minister Robert Muldoon have been able to build his bach at Hatfields Beach. It is an excellent structure, which still exists today, in which the family enjoyed many happy hours.

Why can Kiwis still not have the right to do that? Why does this Labour Government insist on putting every hurdle it can imagine in front of them, to prevent them from doing ordinary things that Kiwis should be able to do? I was absolutely intrigued and concerned when I heard that representatives from the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand pointed out in their oral submission that people will be required to get a building consent to re-putty the windows on their houses. This may be an extreme extension of the weathertight provisions, but that is how ridiculous it has become under this Labour Government.

RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER (Labour) : Obviously the preceding three speakers have not taken the time to read the Building Amendment Bill. If they have read the bill, then they do not understand it, and that is an even sadder situation. They should admit to not having read it, rather than to not understanding it. Nowhere in this bill or the Act it amends does the legislation prevent anybody from building his or her own home.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Yes it does.

RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER: Can the member show me where?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: OK.

RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER: Nowhere does the bill prevent that; nor would it have prevented Norman Kirk from building his own home. There is the power for regulations—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Mr Fairbrother has challenged us to explain how this bill will prevent people from building their own houses. There are provisions in the Standing Orders for a member to yield. If the member would yield to me, I would be happy to point that out to him.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Can I just say to the member that he is perfectly entitled to ask for that, but the member does not have to yield.

RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER: I listened to the member’s earlier speech and it had no content whatsoever. Why should I give up my time, to allow him to further waste the time of this country with the inability to concentrate on the matter at hand?

Let me repeat that there is nothing in this bill to stop a person from building his or her own house—fair and square, full stop, end of story. So those members should stop the fearmongering, stop trying to gain votes and panic the populace, and stop rushing out there with their fear—and, I would say, ignorance, but it may well be highlighting the level of intelligence of the people opposite.

I really want to make clear that this bill puts right that which that party on that side of the Chamber allowed to drift on for 9 long years. The rains came down, and that party did nothing; houses leaked, and that party did nothing; houses rotted, and that party did nothing; balconies collapsed, and that party did nothing. Dr Hutchison had the temerity to stand up and say that we are shifting the costs on to local government. That member should tell me about section 28 of the Building Act 1991. That section of the Act was the fulcrum of the regime that was ushered in by the National Party. That section cast upon territorial local authorities the responsibility for administering this open slather Act, under the guise of free-market enterprise. It was a disaster waiting to happen, and it happened, with tragic consequences to so many decent and proper New Zealanders.

There is nothing in this amending bill that further adds to the bureaucracy. There is nothing in the Act that this bill amends that makes it more difficult for homeowners to build a home or have a home built. This legislation defines and refines the areas of responsibility, so that for homeowners who find they have been built a home that is not satisfactory the lines of responsibility are crystal clear. No more expensive inquiries need to be embarked upon; no more time of this Parliament has to be wasted on inquiries before our select committees; no more specialists need to be appointed to take 2 years to find the cause of the problem; no more territorial local authorities need to run for cover and blame everybody else; and no more builders need to pay off huge debts at $10 a week to couples who trusted their life-savings and their ambitions to builders who were unable to build to a building code that had insufficient regulation.

This is remarkably good legislation. It amends a good Act. It does nothing to complicate that Act. Let us concentrate on just one aspect of this bill. Let us talk about putty. Members opposite obviously have no idea what putty is. Putty, to them, is probably the poor electorate constituent who comes to their offices and has fear bred into him or her by having the feeling engendered that there is a nanny State out there, and that the Labour Government is responsible for it. That is the sort of putty those members know about.

The putty that this bill refers to is the putty that used to be applied to hold windows into the window frame. These days, most windows are retained by an aluminium strip. However, the bill does not prevent one from putting putty into a window. If the member does not know where to look to discover this, I will take him to clause 6 and the definition of restricted building work. [Interruption] There should be restricted MPs on that site, I say to Mr Henare. Restricted building work means building work that is critical to the integrity of a building. I ask members opposite to tell me the way puttying a window pane into a window frame becomes integral to the integrity of a building. I ask members opposite to tell me the way a pane of glass is critical to the integrity of a building. It may be very good to stop the draughts or to keep the rain out, but it is not critical to the integrity of a building. So to fearmonger on that angle alone shows the folly of the arguments opposite.

KATRINA SHANKS (National) : I stand to oppose this Building Amendment Bill. Why would that be? I see the Minister, Shane Jones, is sitting in the chair there with a smile on his face, because he knows that he will not be sitting there for very long. This Government has no commitment at all to the building industry. In fact, it has an absolutely appalling track record in doing the right thing by builders. I had a piece of paper here, which I am trying to shuffle around and find, that told me how many Ministers have been responsible for the building industry in the last 8 years. I cannot find that bit of paper but I am surprised, because the list is very long. How many Ministers have there been in 8 years? Eleven Ministers have sat in that chair and ripped off the building industry. The building industry deserves better; it deserves a Minister who has commitment to it. But the Minister sits there with a smile on his face, knowing that in 6 months’ time most probably he will not be sitting there. He will have moved on and there will be a new Minister again facing the building industry—an industry that has struggled and struggled to come to terms with the changes in this legislation.

It is not just this piece of legislation. If I were to put together all the pieces of building legislation that have had changes in the last 8 years, the pile would stand very high. Why is that? It is because the Government has had to go back to amend the legislation, time after time.

Russell Fairbrother: And what changes did you recommend in the select committee—zilch, nothing.

KATRINA SHANKS: The chair of the Social Services Committee, who chaired the committee on this bill, is on the other side of the Chamber. Yes, another amendment has gone through that select committee to correct a piece of legislation for the building industry—yet again.

Russell Fairbrother: Very elegantly put through, too.

KATRINA SHANKS: Very elegantly, indeed! And how much input did the building industry really have into this legislation? Did the public get to have a real say on this legislation? Or shall we go back to the weathertight homes amendment legislation. Let me think what happened there. It was the same type of legislation. Oh, no—why do I not go back a little further to 2002 when we started with the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service. Then in 2004 we had the Building Act. In 2006 we had the Weathertight Homes Tribunal—

Russell Fairbrother: What’s this got to do with this bill?

KATRINA SHANKS: It is the building industry, so it has a lot to do with it. All these people reading this part of the bill will be confused, because Labour has put through seven legislative changes for the building industry. [Interruption] That member cannot sit there and deny that, because it is a fact. There were no submissions on the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill 2007 before his select committee, I do believe. In fact, the bill was rushed through his select committee and the public did not even know about it until it got into Parliament. Then what happened? Is the member proud of this? Let me guess. The Government suspended the Standing Orders for that legislation—for the first time in 10 years. I hope that the legislation in Part 1, “Amendments to principal Act”, does not face the same consequences as the legislation before your select committee that you put through, as well.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): When the member uses the word “you”, she is referring to the Chair.

KATRINA SHANKS: My apologies, Mr Chairperson; thank you. Not only that, but I think the building industry deserves better. What does this Building Amendment Bill actually do? Does it make homes more affordable? Does it?

Russell Fairbrother: Yes.

KATRINA SHANKS: I ask the member how it will make homes more affordable. The member cannot tell me that this legislation is addressing the issues in our society today—because it is not. It is another poorly drafted bit of legislation. Does it do anything to address the bureaucratic problems of the original Building Act—does it?

Russell Fairbrother: Absolutely; it does.

KATRINA SHANKS: There are a few bits here and there. But it has created more uncertainty—

Russell Fairbrother: Thank you. That’s a concession no one else has made—a few bits here and there. That’s good.

KATRINA SHANKS: It is a teensy concession. It has created more problems than it has fixed. Does Part 1 do anything even to reduce the rate increases that are facing—

Russell Fairbrother: Yes, it does.

KATRINA SHANKS: It does not, at all, I tell Mr Fairbrother, and he knows it. Was that matter even raised in his select committee—was it? Did the committee consider that when looking at this legislation? I doubt very much that it did. And this legislation restricts DIYers. I know that the Minister—not, of course, this current Minister, because he was not the Minister then. Or was it two Ministers before? Was it Clayton Cosgrove, or was it the Minister before that?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: No, it was Margaret Wilson.

KATRINA SHANKS: Margaret Wilson? Was that not, like, 1999? If I could find that massive list of Ministers—

BOB CLARKSON (National—Tauranga) : I would like to mention the people on the Government side of the Chamber, who need to learn that they have two ears and one mouth. That is because God allowed them to listen twice as much as they talk, so they should shut up a bit. At any rate, that is a good start.

In talking about the Building Amendment Bill, let us start with restricted building work. Clause 16 states that such work must be carried out by a licensed building practitioner. What a lot of rubbish that is! Some of the best building work I have seen has been done by DIY builders. Basically, a DIY builder can now build only a simple building.

Russell Fairbrother: That’s not right.

BOB CLARKSON: Hang on—in the Social Services Committee we were told what a simple building was: for example, a hayshed. We were also told the NZS 3604 standard for building a wooden-framed house was deemed to be a simple specification. “Does that mean that a house can be built by a DIY builder?”, I asked in the select committee. The Department of Building and Housing’s chief executive agreed that that was so. That puts the cat among the pigeons. This bill is a mess.

Let us move to clause 27, “Buildings with specified intended lives”, which states: “Section 113(1)”—gosh, there are a lot of numbers here; anyone would think I was a lawyer—“is amended by omitting ‘50 years or less’ ”—

Hon Member: No, we don’t think that.

BOB CLARKSON: —I earn more than you—“and substituting ‘less than 50 years’.” What a joke that is! If people check most building materials that have a guarantee, they will see that most are guaranteed for only 15 years. In fact, builders sign a permit that says the life of the building will be 50 years, but the materials have only a 15-year guarantee. That clause needs a bit of explaining, and I may ask the Minister to explain it later. Why are we talking about 50 years? I cannot remember any construction material that is guaranteed for 50 years. If any material is guaranteed for 50 years, we could have an interesting situation. The timber frames could last 50 years—if they did not suffer from leaky home problems—but people may end up sitting in their house with no cladding on it, because the cladding is guaranteed for only 15 years. But people should not worry, because the Labour Government is going to bring in double glazing, so they will be able to sit behind double-glazed windows. It may be a bit windy, but it will be reasonably warm.

I want now to talk a little about dams, but not too much. I believe that most dams are pretty safe. I would like to mention the dams at Mangakino. They are definitely safe. My uncle was one of the bosses on those dams when they were built, and members can believe this or not, but I actually helped to pour the concrete on those dams 60 years ago. So I know they are built properly.

Hon Member: Child labour!

BOB CLARKSON: Ha, ha! I helped my father. But I will get away from that.

Let us get into “Purposes of licensing building practitioners”, the heading of new section 282A inserted by clause 56, which are: “(a) to assess and record building practitioners as having certain skills and knowledge relevant to building work;”. Man, that is a long sentence! Why do we not just record what the tradesperson learnt when he or she trained for the trade? I thought that when people trained for a trade—

Russell Fairbrother: You abolished tradespeople.

BOB CLARKSON: —the member should keep quiet and learn—and passed the exams, they effectively had a licence to build or construct a building. Why do we continue to blame tradesperson builders by licensing them? I can tell members right now that the licensing of tradespeople will not fix leaky homes—no ifs or buts.

I move on to clause 75, “Registrar must contact licensed building practitioners”—those are big words for me—“on annual basis”. That sounds like a bureaucratic mess. The Government will have to start another department. The Labour Government will love that—more control of people. It is as simple as that.

Let us kick this bill into touch. I say this again: let us license inspectors. They have caused a lot of the problems in the past. Let us make inspectors the best and most capable people on the site. I will make a prediction: builders will refuse to join the licensing system. I tell members that at the moment about 3 percent of our builders are DIY builders. In Australia when a form of licensing was brought in, builders refused to join it, and now 30 percent of the builders there are DIY builders. I think the Minister should rise now and deal with all these concerns.

Hon TAU HENARE (National) : I want to make just a few points, basically to do with the DIY industry. This nation is built—I ask members to excuse the pun—on the back of DIY work. DIY work has built some of our most famous baches and getaway homes. Our country has been built on the back of DIY—

Russell Fairbrother: That doesn’t change in the bill.

Hon TAU HENARE: Yes, it does.

Russell Fairbrother: It does not.

Hon TAU HENARE: I am sorry; it does. I know that the member is under pressure from Mr Nash. I know he has to make a few inroads here in order to make sure he gets his name before the public, because Mr Nash is biting at his tail, but the member should not allow himself to be sidelined by that. We have to make sure that in this country the tradition of No. 8 fencing wire, the tradition of the DIY man—and the DIY lady, as of late—is kept.

There is no doubt in my mind that under this bill home affordability is also under threat. The issue of affordability is that with these changes, one can guarantee that the price of a house will rise. And who will bear the brunt of that? It will be our children. It is easy for us to stand up and say they will work and get the deposit they need, but the more we load bureaucracy on top of young people, the less likely it is they will get their own home. The Minister should know that; he has had some experience in the building industry. The more bureaucracy we load on young people, the less likely it is they will be able to afford the deposit for their first home. I will give an example from the electorate of Te Atatu, where I and some other people work and reside.

Hon Chris Carter: I thought I had a 12,000 vote majority.

Hon TAU HENARE: The member does. That is going. Like all things, it will end. The average price of a property on the peninsula there is $350,000-odd, and it is going up. There has been a 40 percent increase in the rateable value of homes in Te Atatu this year. That is a shocking indictment, and this bill adds another layer of cost on to that.

Where are we going with regard to the DIY issues? Yes, Māori love to go on to the old papakāinga, to the family homestead, and maybe throw up a shack. We call it a home; some people call it a shack. But will this bill stop DIY people from being able to throw up a shack, so that maybe one day they can move into something better? You can bet your bottom dollar it will—not you, Mr Chairperson, and I apologise for using the word “you”. The public can bet their bottom dollar that this legislation will stop the DIY tradition this country was built on.

Russell Fairbrother: Speak to the part.

Hon TAU HENARE: The problem with regard to that member is that he is trying to play catch-up. He is trying to play catch-up in his own electorate, because the Deputy Prime Minister was the one who signed Mr Nash’s nomination—and boy does he feel stink about that!

But I come back to the bill. The last issue I want to touch on, very briefly, is that if we have higher compliance costs, it is natural that house prices will rise. Who bears the brunt of that? It is not the local authority or the Government; it is the homeowner, or the prospective homeowner. It is just another tax, and we know we do not like higher taxes.

JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) : I want to take a brief call in this Committee on behalf of United Future. The thing that struck me about this bill when it first came to the House was that it was progress on the Building Act that had been well consulted on by the department. A lot of work had been done, bringing the department to a place on a number of issues whereby it was able to move ahead and put forward an amendment to the Building Act to tidy up areas that needed tidying up.

It became apparent during the select committee process that a number of submitters had taken the time to highlight other issues and ongoing work that needed to be signalled and worked on for future amendments. The Building Act is the kind of Act that will more than likely be back regularly before the House for amendment in order to reflect the changing nature of the building industry because of developments in building, in building materials, and in building design. This bill never pretended to cover every change that is necessary to improve the Building Act, but it is certainly a step forward. Those of us in the Chamber who are choosing to support the bill are doing so because it has been well-considered. Yes, some submitters chose to highlight issues for further consideration—issues that fell outside the immediate scope of this bill—and they were right to do so, and those issues have been noted.

One issue that struck me was that of the PIM report and the fact that this bill includes, in the list of things to signal early to people who are building, the need for disability accessibility, particularly to public buildings. Some of the city councils that submitted referred to the fact that the information in a PIM report is often not asked for—it is not sought—and therefore can be slightly irrelevant to building projects. Often by the time a PIM report is received, plans have already been drawn up and the project is a huge way down the track. It is an issue for the future and we may need to work out a way in which the information contained, for instance, in PIM reports can be accessed by designers and builders earlier in the process so that the recommendations and requirements such reports contain are considered at the earliest possible stage. That is the kind of issue that was brought up for future consideration.

United Future is very happy to give its ongoing support to this bill, because certainly many of the submitters also referred to the many good things in it. Although they signalled the need for future changes, they were also very supportive of the bill’s provisions.

LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) : I wonder what happened to the house that Jack built. Do members remember that back in August 2004, in debates on the same topic, we had a bill that was 358 pages long?

Dr Paul Hutchison: How many?

LINDSAY TISCH: The Building Bill, as it was at that stage, was 358 pages long. Now we have some amendments to that legislation by way of this bill, which has about 30 pages. I said at that earlier stage that the regulations that would come from the legislation would be horrendous. That is what I said. I want to quote from that—

Hon Chris Carter: I thought it was a good bill!

LINDSAY TISCH: If it was such a good bill, why are we amending it today? Why are we here if we got it right the first time? You see, it was not a good bill.

We identified at that stage that the compliance costs involved in this industry—costs that Nick Smith identified in an earlier speech—were going to be absolutely horrendous, and that is exactly what has happened. An article on 16 July 2004 in the National Business Review stated “Government puts another nail into home improvement”.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Come on, “Stumpy”, you can do better than that!

LINDSAY TISCH: At least I am standing up when I am talking.

When we consider all the extra compliance, we see that this bill will be a handicap and that it is absolute overkill. National cannot support a bill of this nature. It is a very prescriptive regime that is overkill and an overburden of bureaucracy and administration. That is what it is.

My colleague mentioned a few facts on the question of housing affordability. I know that the Minister in the chair, Shane Jones, was on the Commerce Committee that has been looking at housing affordability. I am sure he will very clearly recall the submission from the Registered Master Builders Federation, which made some significant and very timely remarks on the whole inquiry into housing affordability. The federation identified a number of problems, issues, and challenges that the building industry, especially the housing industry, is facing here in New Zealand—also offshore, but specifically here in New Zealand. The federation said that about 50 percent of the increased cost of housing could be attributed to rises in land costs—

Russell Fairbrother: What’s this got to do with Part 1?

LINDSAY TISCH: It is very much to do with building. Probably the greatest asset people will ever have is their own home. So when we are talking about building, I say to the list member from Napier, we are talking about a significant part of people’s assets. Everyone strives for homeownership. We have gone past striving for the quarter acre paradise of the 1960s, but we do want to be able to afford our own homes.

I go back to the point that the Registered Master Builders Federation made. It said that in terms of the increased cost of housing, it was quite clear that rises in land costs accounted for about 50 percent, the rises in local authority infrastructure levies and fees accounted for approximately 15 percent, and the increasing compliance costs accounted for 15 to 20 percent. The increases in labour and material costs accounted for approximately 20 percent.

I come back to the very prescriptive nature of this bill that both I and Dr Smith mentioned earlier on. This bill is making the law around building extremely difficult, when it could have been tweaked at the edges. You see, this legislation is overkill. This is bureaucracy at its worst. What are the Government members trying to do? They are bringing in more legislation to try to fix a problem that they perceive to be there. I said back in 2004 that there was no need for the Building Act 2004. If the existing Act at that time had been tweaked at the edges, and if we had been able to identify what those challenges and issues were, we would not have had to have 358 pages of bill at that stage. Now here we are, 3 years later, trying to sort out those things that we on the Government Administration Committee at that time identified as major challenges. Three years later those challenges are coming through, and here we are, having to deal with those same sorts of things.

I mentioned the compliance costs as one of the major factors. If we were to look further at what the Registered Master Builders Federation had to say, we would see that it talked about the infrastructural levies and fees. I quote from page 7 of the federation’s submission: “The largest %age increase in cost has been in the rise in local authority infrastructure levies and fees—900% over five years.” Let me say that again: “900% over five years.” How does the Government account for that? Where is the justification for local authorities having to comply with the costs that have been imposed on them by the Building Act?

Dr Paul Hutchison: 900 percent.

LINDSAY TISCH: The increase was 900 percent over 5 years.

The federation goes on to say that since the passing of the Building Act 2004 “higher levels of design detail are now required to secure building consents: 9-10 pages of plan detail sufficed to obtain a building consent in the early 2000s, whereas now some 30 pages of detail are required;”. Seven years ago it was 10 pages; now 30 pages are required. The point made at that stage was that the local authorities do not have the staff to be able to implement and to understand what this all means. They do not have quality people with the expertise or the knowledge, because people with these skills are few and far between.

When we look at the costs that are being incurred, we see that they are completely outrageous. The situation is overkill. It is far too prescriptive in terms of a homeowner or someone wanting to build his or her first home. That is the thing that people strive for—a stake in the ground—going back to those early days when everybody owned his or her own home. Homeownership is now outside the reach of so many Kiwis today. That has come about because the Building Act 2004, along with the legislation we are talking about tonight, is over-prescriptive. This legislation does not need to happen, and National is voting against it.

RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER (Labour) : With considerable care Opposition members have avoided looking at any particular clause in the Building Amendment Bill presently before this Committee. I want to bring them back to clause 12, which deals with this issue of do-it-yourself builders. Clause 12 does not prohibit do-it-yourself builders. Clause 12 merely says that a building consent will be required if the Governor-General by Order in Council determines certain work to be restricted building work. There is no such Order in Council, so at the present time, and with the passing of this bill into law, there is no restriction on do-it-yourself builders. It is a simple clause in the bill. If Opposition members had cared to read it, we would have saved ourselves 20 minutes or even longer tonight and could have looked to some substance.

But what is the substance of this bill? Let us go to clause 19. Who in New Zealand can object to clause 19? Not even “Bob the Builder” from Tauranga. Clause 19 provides that a licensed building practitioner who carries out or supervises restricted building work under a building consent must, on completion, provide that the work—I am paraphrasing—meets the purpose required, and he or she must give a certificate to that effect. So the licensed building practitioner is taking upon his or her shoulders the obligation of guaranteeing the work that was promised to be built. This is not loading compliance on local body authorities. This is not adding to costs. This is a simple guarantee to homeowners and people building homes that what they get is what they asked for and what they expected they would get. It is simple accountability—it asks licensed building practitioners to stand by their work.

Then Opposition members talked about building bureaucracy adding to time delays. But the Opposition forgot to look at, or omitted to look at, clause 24. Clause 24 amends section 104 of the Building Act. It says: “A territorial authority that receives a copy under section 104 of a compliance schedule must, within 5 working days after receiving the compliance schedule, provide the owner of the building for which the compliance schedule was issued with the statement in relation to the compliance”. So this puts an obligation on the territorial authority to provide a certificate within 5 working days. How will that add to the time period?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: That’s a joke.

RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER: It is not a joke—it is in clause 24. I tell Mr Smith that he should pick up the bill and read it. He should cast his mind to the bill and read it, and he will find that clause 24 answers his every concern. What do we find in clause 41? We find that territorial authorities must keep information about buildings. A territorial authority, once it has supervised the procedure to ensure that the building is built as expected by the homeowner, must then keep records so that if something does prove to be faulty, the identification of fault and responsibility can be made quickly and economically.

So, if we look at the Building Amendment Bill before this House, we see that nowhere does it limit the right of do-it-yourself builders. We see that nowhere does it add to the cost of local authorities. We see that nowhere does it extend the time span. Not one clause in this bill fits any of those three descriptions. I listened with careful attention for the last half hour or more—40 minutes—and none of the Opposition speakers could take their argument to any clause in the bill. Instead they ran off to other sources and made broad, sweeping statements as they propagated fear among people out there who may happen to have been listening to the radio until this speech came along.

The other interesting thing about “Bob the Builder”—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Order!

RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER: —the member for Tauranga—is that he took the opportunity to speak in this Chamber using prepared notes, but he failed to accept an opportunity from the Minister’s office to come and discuss his concerns with those officials. No, he wants to avoid the nitty-gritty, to avoid getting down to the detail, and to avoid addressing the issue. He saves his carping criticism for this Chamber and speaking in generalised forms, again avoiding reading the bill.

What the debate tonight has shown is that there is an abject failure to address the simple things that this Building Amendment Bill does—or a determination not to do so. The bill simplifies the process of consents. It sets up a simplified regime for licensed building practitioners, so that those practitioners can carry responsibility for that which they certify. It dictates the simple way in which they must do it, and it sets up a register of licensed building practitioners.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) : A poll came out on Monday in which 67 percent of those people polled said that they had had enough of a control-freak Government that wants to try to regulate every single part of people’s lives. Yet the Labour members in the Chamber this evening do not get it. They do not get the basic fact that New Zealanders have had enough of the Government’s petty, silly laws that want to regulate every single part of people’s lives. I want to rise to the challenge posed by Russell Fairbrother and take him through the bill so that he might understand how this is another set of petty regulations. First, I refer him to restricted building work. One cannot do restricted building work unless one is a licensed building practitioner. So my question for members opposite is: would Norm Kirk, in 1936, have been a licensed building practitioner when he set out to build his home in Kaiapoi? Of course not. What this bill will do is—through establishing restricted building work and saying it can be done only by licensed building practitioners—effectively kill off those do-it-yourself Kiwis with the do-it-yourself Kiwi spirit and prevent them from building their own homes.

Then Government members ask what else in the bill will be restrictive. I draw their attention to clause 91. Clause 91, far from making things easier as Russell Fairbrother says, quite deliberately sets out to reduce the exemptions from gaining a building consent. If one is doing minor repair or maintenance work, one will now require a consent. Let us take what the Institution of Professional Engineers said. Suppose a homeowner discovers a small leak in the weatherboard of a house built many years ago. One board may be rotten and need to be replaced. At present, without this bill, the remedy would be to remove the rotten board, replace it with a new one as similar as possible to the original, and apply a suitable paint system. Job done. What does this bill do? This bill states that one would have to get plans and specifications drafted up. One would have to roll along and seek building consent and say: “Is the board I have had designed adequate? Am I able to get the right paint system? Have I got the right paperwork to do it?”.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Stop making it up.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Mr Clayton Cosgrove says that I am making it up. I have a question for Mr Cosgrove, and it is this: did he tell New Zealanders that the Building Act 2004 would result in a 900 percent increase in compliance costs in the building industry? Does Mr Cosgrove accept that Labour’s 2004 bill banned do-it-yourself building?

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: What I accept is that you made it up and you won’t admit it.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Ah! Well, we know Clayton Cosgrove. The great thing about Clayton Cosgrove is that his song in the building industry was “Do it once, do it right.” That is what he said. Let us check out his record as Minister. Labour introduced the Building Act in 2004; it amended it in 2005. It said: “Oops, we’ve got a bit of a mistake. We’ll have to get it amended again.” So it was amended again in 2006. Then, hello, hello, here we are again tonight, with the man who says “Do it once, do it right.”, amending 31 pages of a bill. If we look at the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service, we see that he had five cracks—five amendment bills—at trying to get it right. Members on this side of the Chamber say “Clayton, you are a Clayton’s Minister and we have no faith in you.”

Let us try this one. Did the Prime Minister do it once and do it right? Well, she appointed George Hawkins to the portfolio of building. He did not go so good. She then gave the job to Mark Burton. He did not go so good. So then she gave the job to Lianne Dalziel. That did not go so good, either. Then she gave Margaret Wilson a try; then Annette King a try; then John Tamihere a try. Then she thought, “Oh, I’ll go back to Mark Burton and give him a go again.” Then she tried Chris Carter, who I note is in the Chamber, then Clayton Cosgrove, and now we have Shane Jones. It is little wonder our building laws are such an abortion when we have had 10 different building Ministers in a period—

Katrina Shanks: You have missed one. We’ve had 11.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I am sorry. Would members opposite help me. I have missed one of the Ministers they have had in the last 8 years. This is from a Government that says: “Do it once, do it right.”

Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister of Education) : I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Dr Hutchison has had only one call.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) : I am grateful for the opportunity to speak again on this very important but very unsubstantial Building Amendment Bill. I want to finish off the point that the Hon Dr Nick Smith was making about there being 11 building Ministers in 5 years. It is what the Labour Government calls recycling. It just recycles the Ministers. It is doing it in education, in health, and, of course, in the area of building because it has made such a disaster of the Building Act 2004, which took up 340 pages and has since been amended on a yearly basis. That is about 200 percent more than the tertiary education bill has been amended, by the way.

I wanted to talk about the fact that I flew down to the Hawke’s Bay yesterday, and as I went over New Zealand’s magnificent, verdant farmland I saw thousands of dams, all over the country. These are the dams belonging to our farmers and which are so vital to our basic primary industry. A large section of this bill—[Interruption] I can see a farmer who regards dams to be important to farming in New Zealand and who considers it important that we remove compliance costs and allow farmers to build the traditional dams that are so vital to feeding their stock. Federated Farmers made the point in its submission that many farmers own and operate dams as part of their farming business and as such their primary concern is with potential compliance costs. Safe farms and farmers are of real importance to the federation. It states: “We believe the safety requirements need to be balanced against the wealth-destroying effects of excessive compliance costs. The federation would like to draw attention to the impeccable safety record of farm dam owners and point out that in light of this, the imposition of large compliance costs in pursuit of questionable or negligible safety gains is unnecessary and damaging.” The federation went on to say that the compliance costs for dam owners include paying engineers to certify their dam, paying the council a fee to register the dam, paying the cost of being accredited, and paying for any remedial work required to make the dam compliant with new legislation. There are also intangible costs in having to go through the process—becoming familiar with new requirements; uncertainty; time out from the business, which could be better spent farming; as well as the hassle and stress.

Just the other day I decided that I wanted to put a small dam on my small landholding up in that excellent piece of New Zealand—Port Waikato. I did the right thing: I rang the council and asked what I had to do. The council said: “You don’t have to come to us, but you have to go to the regional authority.” In going to the regional council, to put in a dam that was to be 1-foot high and would probably empty out in the summer, I had to go through an extremely expensive and ridiculous process.

Hon Member: Wasn’t it exempt?

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: This is not exempt. The regional council insisted that for this small farm dam, even though it might have been used for a few Muscovy ducks, which I am quite fond of, as well as to feed my cattle, this was going to be the sort of process—a process that this Labour Government just cannot help itself aiding and abetting. But I must say I was quite astounded when I learnt that large dams have not been regulated ever in New Zealand. I agree totally that it is high time that they were. I was intrigued to hear my excellent colleague Bob Clarkson point out that 60 years ago he helped build the Mangakino Dam—at the age of 5. That is a remarkably fine dam.

I want to bring up one other new point, if I may.

SUE MORONEY (Labour) : I move, That the question be now put.

KATRINA SHANKS (National) : I would like to add some clarity to this debate. There has been confusion about how many Ministers have managed to handle the building industry portfolio in the last 8 years—since 1999. Nick Smith said that 10 Ministers have been responsible for this industry, but he was wrong. There have been 11 Ministers in the last 8 years. I had to think back as to what Minister was not mentioned. I found my list. I knew it would be easy to find, because it was a big list. I looked back to 1999 when it was Mark Burton; in 2000, George Hawkins; in 2001, Rick Barker; in 2002, Lianne Dalziel; in 2003, John Tamihere; in 2004, Margaret Wilson; in 2005, Chris Carter; in 2006, Clayton Cosgrove; in 2007, Mark Burton; and now Shane Jones is responsible for the Building Amendment Bill. So we found the name of the missing Minister.

It seems that Ministers are given this portfolio as they move their way through Cabinet. They start by managing the building industry portfolio. Once they have managed to confuse the public, and write legislation that nobody can understand and that needs amending, they move on. They move on, as soon as they have managed to confuse the public. Once again, this amendment bill is 30-odd pages long and it amends legislation of 360-odd pages. That means 10 percent of the Building Act 2004 has been changed.

Now I would like to talk about one specific part of the bill. It would have been really good if some of the Labour members on the Social Services Committee had been sitting in the Chamber tonight and entering into the debate. They were part of this debate and were part of making this bill. Yet the only person here from Labour is Russell Fairbrother. Where are the rest? National has lined up to debate this bill, but Labour has absolutely no interest in it. There is one Labour member from the committee speaking on this bill. Where is Labour’s commitment to the bill? It has none. It does not want anything it has to say about the bill to be recorded in Hansard.

I will talk about clause 6. For those people who have just tuned in, we are talking about the Building Amendment Bill, which is an adjustment to the 2004 legislation. It is 30-odd pages long and amends an Act of 360 pages. I would like to talk about clause 6 because there was quite a lot of confusion in the select committee and amongst submitters, especially the Registered Master Builders Federation. The definition in clause 6(4) states that “restricted building work” means building work that is “critical to the integrity of a building; for example, its envelope and structure;”. That is all very good, because the Registered Master Builders Federation came to the committee—I ask Russell Fairbrother whether that is right, because he was on the committee—to say it was concerned that if one changed putty in a window, one would need some form of building consent. That was its concern on reading this bill, which was not clear to them.

The select committee had another concern about the definition of “restricted building work” in clause 6(4). It states that it is building work that is “of a kind declared by the Governor-General by Order in Council to be building work that must be carried out or supervised by a licensed building practitioner …”. The definition goes on to explain what a licensed building practitioner is.

We are creating this bit of legislation, but it is actually up to the Governor-General by Order in Council to decide what type of building work should be restricted or not restricted. This bill does not tell us what building work should be restricted, outside of a building’s envelope and structure. So how would we even know, when putting this legislation forward, whether a putty—

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Minister of Immigration) : I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): I think that recent contributors are not really covering any new ground. There have been three closure motions and 18 speakers.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) : This part is another case of the Government imposing additional costs on our local authorities that flow through to rates. We may as well call this part the increase in rates provisions. But, on top of that, these provisions state that the Government made a stuff-up in 2004 in the way it struck the levy on buildings, and that it will validate whatever it did wrong—make it right—so that it can still fleece local authorities for a heap of dough. That is basically what the provisions state. Back in 2004, when the original Building Act was passed, the Government made a mistake in the way in which it set the building levy and in the definition of building value.

The question is whether the councils should have to pay for the Government’s stuff-up. Let us remember that it is not the councils that pay the bill; it is actually the ratepayers. What we see in this bill is further increased costs for ratepayers. We heard Local Government New Zealand point out to the Social Services Committee how much the cost of accreditation will actually be for local councils. I give the example of the Dunedin City Council. The Dunedin City Council said that the Building Act this year will require it to increase its costs by $1.3 million a year. It will have to take on an extra 15 staff. Members opposite have said that the reason we need this bill is leaky homes. Well, I hopped along to the Weathertight Homes Tribunal and checked how many leaky homes there are in Dunedin. There are three. What is the total value of the leaky homes in Dunedin? It is $930,000. Why are we imposing on the ratepayers of Dunedin an extra cost of $1.3 million every year for a problem that we know started off costing only $930,000?

My first point is that we have just had a great big rates inquiry. A key recommendation of that rates inquiry is that this Parliament take far more care in imposing additional costs on ratepayers. What does the Government do? It rams through Parliament another building bill that will just add to the rates bills of our constituents all over New Zealand.

Then we come to the issue around code compliance certificates. I was interested in the contribution from Russell Fairbrother earlier. He said that this is a great bill, a really good bill, because it will require the issuing of the code compliance certificate within 5 days. But do members know what? I searched through this bill and I searched through the original Act. Could I find anywhere a penalty for a council that does not issue a certificate within 5 days? No. We know that members opposite passed a Building Act that required building consents to be processed within 20 working days.

Russell Fairbrother: What about Part 2?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I am talking about code compliance certificates, I tell Mr Fairbrother. We know that, in respect of the timing of building consents, they are meant to be processed within 20 working days. Half the time they are not. The Master Builders Federation says that it takes longer to get a consent to build a new house than it actually does to build it. Why would we have any faith in the provisions that are being put in place here around code compliance certificates and the 5-day rule, when there is absolutely no penalty?

Sue Moroney: What has this party got against local government?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I ask Ms Moroney where the penalty is for councils that do not comply within 5 days.

Sue Moroney: What has the National Party got against local government?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Sue Moroney asks what National has against local government. Has the member read the submission from Local Government New Zealand on this bill? The member opposite has obviously not read the submission from Local Government New Zealand, which vigorously opposed what this provision in clause 92 is proposing.

Sue Moroney: What has that party got against local government?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: She is like a broken record. I ask that member what she has against ratepayers. Why have rates gone up at three times the rate of inflation since Labour has been in Government? I ask Sue Moroney why rates have gone up at three times the rate of inflation under her Government.

Sue Moroney: Why did unemployment go up so much under the National Government?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Let us talk unemployment, then. Unemployment went up in 1984, under the Labour Government, and continued to go up until 1992. Unemployment started dropping in 1992. It is absolutely true. It is absolutely correct. And unemployment continued to drop right through that period. I say to Sue Moroney and others on that side of the House thank goodness for the National Government and what we did in the 1990s; it provided for a sound economy that has seen a continuing drop in unemployment.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Minister of Immigration) : Without the puffery, hot air, and overexpended energy of the previous speaker, Nick Smith, I will address some of the issues in Part 2 of the Building Amendment Bill.

I will start by addressing some of the points that Dr Smith raised. He talked about transitional provisions and about additional impost on local authorities. He said that this bill is basically all about leaky buildings, that Dunedin has only three leaky buildings, and therefore we should do nothing. It is interesting that in this debate tonight the Opposition has taken its usual stance: oppose everything, propose nothing. Those members propose nothing because they have nothing and because they have no idea.

That member Nick Smith talked about the accreditation scheme and why we are auditing and accrediting local authorities. There are a couple of basic reasons. It is because local authorities said to us, and building inspectors said to other people and to me when I was the Minister, that they were doing things like drive-by inspections. The Waitakere City Council was a good example of that with the famous case of the house of Colleen Dicks, where the inspector signed off the house as being weathertight, but there was a big yellow thing called the sun coming through the roof because a big hunk of roof was missing. To this day the builder says that he built a weathertight home because the building inspector signed it off as such, and poor old Colleen Dicks wears it. The truth is that local authorities, some through the best of intentions, were charging for but not delivering an A1 building consent process. Dr Smith also—quite rightly, fair go; I do not often give him a fair go because he does not deserve it, but I will on this point—said that there are delays in building consents and a lack of efficiency.

What we have are two alternatives. We can go to the organisations and say that they are not delivering on time. We can, as Dr Smith wanted to do, put a penalty on the organisations so that if they do not deliver on time we drop the hammer. Dr Smith proposed a bill to this effect. I think it was called the free consent bill or the 20-day rule. Ms Tolley will know, because her chairman wrote it in a National Party newsletter, that Dr Smith’s own National Party called that member and his bill “daft”. I will leave it there, because I can do no better than the description Dr Smith’s own National Party colleagues called him and his bill.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Did not!

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: They did, and I tabled it. He thinks he can make it up.

What we do with an organisation is to say—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You’re just lying, like you normally do.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I take offence at that member. He used an offensive term and I would ask for him to withdraw and apologise.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I withdraw and apologise. I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I take offence. This Minister is a guy who can dish it out but who cannot take it.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: What is the point of order?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: The point of order is this. The Minister made an offensive remark about me and I would ask him to withdraw and apologise.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: No, I quoted a document.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: He did not quote the document. That is simply untrue. I have taken offence. I have done the honourable thing and have withdrawn and apologised. I say that the Minister should do likewise.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): I think the member has a point there. Obviously, on a point of order, he has taken offence.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: I withdraw and apologise.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Thank you.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: I will table a document later tonight that will prove that member for what he is. In that document is the word “daft”. It refers to his bill, it is from the National Party, and it was penned by the member Ms Tolley’s chairman. That is a fact.

But, moving on, if we have an organisation that is inefficient, we go in and we try to solve the problem. We ask whether it has enough people and resources. If it has, as many local authorities have, a 100 percent increase in building consents but it does not put on one more inspector, or maybe one more typist to type up the consent documents so that the inspectors can go out and give code compliance and those sorts of things, then it has, like any organisation that does not have enough resources, a problem. And, yes, it is true that councils like the one in Palmerston North realised they had a problem. It has new technology, and it has gone from 12 to 20 staff. In Manawatū, the local authority has said it is getting out of providing consents; it wants to contract to the Palmerston North Council, which has the resources and the efficiency. That is what we do. We do not propose a daft bill. We look at the organisation and we attempt to deal with that.

If one does drop the axe, as that member did, and say that a late consent is a free consent, what one fails to understand, among many things, is that the costs for that free consent are not visited on the person who wants the consent to build the house, they do not disappear into the ether. I know that the member has a limited understanding of cost accounting and economics, but those costs do not disappear into the ether. They are visited on every other ratepayer.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The member who is speaking happens to be a Minister, and I have been really enjoying the opportunity to debate my bill to deal with late consents. But my point of order is that despite the fact that I would love to debate the bill that I introduced, we are debating Part 2 of this Building Amendment Bill, and, very sadly—although I would be happy to include it—it does not actually include my bill to deal with late consents. In fact, there is no mention in clause 92, clause 93, clause 94, or clause 95 of that late consents bill, yet the Minister has given members a 5-minute diatribe on a bill that was debated by Parliament some 6 months ago.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): That is correctly raised on a matter of procedure in the Chamber. I did mention when we commenced this part that its four clauses are to do with validations and transitional provisions.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: I would be happy to comply. I suppose what I was attempting to do was to talk about the same issues that Dr Smith mentioned in his own—as he puts it—diatribe.

But the point about this is that, yes, there are costs in some of these measures, and these transitional provisions will have a cost, but, no, this is not just about leaky buildings. This is to ensure that this whole Act and the amendments to it—because we amend Acts to improve them, of course—will secure good building standards and good local authority standards for homeowners so that they can rely on those standards when building what will usually be their biggest asset.

I will leave Dr Smith with this question. I opened my address by saying that he, as usual, in his own bizarre, energetic way—to put it tactfully—has simply opposed every clause in the bill. That is what he is good at. It is the sign of a man who is hollowed out. He has never once proposed an alternative to Part 1 or to all the things he criticises. He has never proposed one item to amend Part 2. He has never stood there and given members his policy or said what he would do in terms of the validation provisions. It is simply a sign of a hollowed out man from a hollowed out party. He is bereft of ideas but is a man who can stand up, and, in an energetic, mega sort of fashion, while going red in the face and with his hair standing on end, have a go to oppose any legislation. I invite the Committee to really reflect on his contribution tonight—or the lack of it, as we have seen time after time.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) : I seek leave to table the building amendment bill in my name that is before the House, and also the building amendment bill that has been tabled by my colleague Bob Clarkson, which sets out very clearly National’s propositions. I note that during the entire 1990s Labour did not table a single amendment bill as a member’s bill.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Leave has been sought for that course to be followed. Is there any objection? There is.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) : Thank you, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to speak on Part 2, “Validation and transitional provisions”, of this unfortunate building amendment legislation—the fourth amendment since 2004 and, by golly, the Building Act has needed amendment. It is somewhat ironic that Clayton Cosgrove talks about puffery and hot air; he is the man whom one could describe as a strutter and a poser.

John Hayes: And a puffer.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: And a puffer. Nevertheless, he admitted that these transitions will impose more costs. More costs are exactly what this Labour Government has imposed on the building industry, and these transitional provisions do exactly that, and also impose extra costs on the local bodies.

I want to concentrate for a little bit on clause 93, “Transitional provision for content of project information memorandum”, because that was an issue that just about all the local territorial authorities commented on. They made the point that what the Government was trying to do was absolute duplication.

I will for just one moment look at the absolutely positive Wellington submission, which says: “Council is concerned that some of the proposed amendments will not effectively address the current technical issues. Of prime concern to Council are the proposed amendments to change the definition of restricted work, to the definition of owner that do not address the problems of ongoing accountability, to the fee regime that do not address the key issue of appropriate cost allocation, and for accessibility provisions on PIMs that are not necessary and will not address the identified problem.”

That is what I am concerned about, because it is quite clear that the purpose of a project information memorandum is to provide project-specific information that is relevant to the proposed building work. It is designed to act as a big issue. This is made utterly clear by the Auckland City Council. It says that the project information memorandum is designed as a big issue to filter covering areas such as land features, district plan requirements, fire evacuation schemes, etc. It says in its policy analysis that including accessibility and disability requirements in project information memoranda has the potential to deliver more clarity to consumers about the standards that buildings need to meet; however, the manner in which project information memoranda are provided renders them ineffective, for a variety of reasons. The council points out that they are required in building consents, anyway. But, no, this Labour Government insists on a belt and braces approach in this area of accessibility and disability requirements in project information memoranda, even though every local territorial authority throughout the country pointed out that it would impose more costs. As my colleague Lindsay Tisch said: “The largest %age increase in cost has been the rise in local authority infrastructure levies and fees—900% over five years.”

Mr Chairman, I think you are wondering what this has to do with the content of project information memoranda. Indeed, I am sticking precisely to that matter, because I am concerned that every territorial authority in New Zealand was concerned that these requirements are being put into the project information memorandum as well as the building consent. They will impose greater time, greater effort, and greater costs, which are the very characteristics of what permeates throughout this Labour Government amendment bill. It is such a travesty in terms of what has actually been happening in the building industry in New Zealand over the last 5 years.

RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER (Labour) : I move, That the question be now put.

JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) : Thank you, Mr Chair, for allowing me to speak on this matter. It is of extreme importance to constituents in the Wairarapa electorate. I would like to bring to the attention of the Committee a number of examples of the sorts of costs the massive Resource Management Act brings to individuals in my community. Before I address that, I would just like to say how deeply disappointed I am that the star of the Labour Party, the up-and-coming Shane Jones, has been made a Minister and is in charge of the Building Amendment Bill. I have to say I am deeply, deeply sorry about that. This bill is poorly worded. It is a total shambles, and it will do nothing to reduce the costs to individuals.

My first example of the legislative controls concerns a constituent in Greytown, a Mr Edridge. He went to the South Wairapapa District Council because he needed resource consent under section 92 or 93 of the Act. He needed resource consent to build a fowl house. It cost him $900 in fees paid to the council for a hen house for five hens. That is absolute nonsense.

I have another example. I was phoned the other night at 10.15 by a Woodside farmer, Roger Barton. Under the modular package in the legislation he had approached the South Wairarapa District Council because he wanted to tender for a sheep shed at Wallaceville and bring it across to the Wairarapa and put it on his farm. He asked what the cost would be, and the council said it would be $600 for resource consent. When he actually put the tender in, the council then said to him that under the modular arrangement it required him to have an engineering report done before and after moving the shed. The cost of that was $3,000. The council did not stop there. Then it said that under the rules that apply in section 94 of the Act he had to take a photograph, but it could not be a digital photograph. Mr Barton asked why it could not be a digital photograph, and he was told that was because he might adjust it—he might adjust it!

The point of what I am saying to the Committee is that the Government can have all the rules it likes, but under the current legislation and the bill Shane Jones is now responsible for, common sense has gone out the window.

Let me give members another example from Masterton. I have a constituent who has come to New Zealand from Scotland. He has had to go to the local authority, to the district council, to get approval to put a temporary cover over 17,000 strawberries. He has to do that because the territorial authority has to agree, as per section 93(2) of the Act, to that happening. Now, the territorial authority has said that because the temporary cover units to cover the strawberries are coming from the UK—they are sold globally—he cannot bring them into the Wairarapa without an engineer’s report. So that poor man does not know whether to bring them into the country. If he does not bring them into the country, he cannot get an engineer’s report. Why is it good enough to bring those units into Australia, South Africa, the UK, and right across Europe, yet the legislation here puts red tape in the way of making any sort of progress whatsoever?

There is another problem with regard to this bill. We can have all the words we like, as this bill says, and we do not want leaky homes, but what about the burst water pipes that may result from importing untested copper pipe from China? I am told by many plumbers in my electorate that that copper pipe will not last 7 years, yet it is untested. Why do we have such lengthy legislation, I ask Mr Jones, when he has done nothing to bring the common-sense testing of materials into it?

When we look at the whole question of land and subdivision—

• Progress to be reported presently.

• House resumed.

• The Chairperson reported progress on the Building Amendment Bill, and no progress on the Human Tissue Bill.

• Report adopted.