Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) : I move, That the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) be now read a third time. I thank members and officials for their work on this bill. It has been given a thorough examination, and the amendments have made a good bill better.

This bill deals with three quite separate, but in their own way important, land transport matters. They concern new powers to deal with the problem of drug-impaired drivers on our roads; a comprehensive rewrite of vehicle registration and licensing laws, including a new system for managing the release of vehicle owners’ names and addresses; and the continuation in force, pending further reforms, of legislation that, amongst other things, empowers local authorities to undertake parking and bus-lane enforcement and to make traffic by-laws.

People who drive while their judgment and reactions are impaired by drugs—and by that I mean both controlled drugs and prescription medicines—are a danger to themselves and to others. This bill aims to reduce this risk by creating an offence of driving while impaired and with evidence in the bloodstream of a controlled drug or a prescription medicine, and by empowering police to determine whether a driver is impaired by means of a compulsory impairment test. If this test shows that the driver is impaired, it will be followed by a blood test to determine whether drugs are present.

Only recently, drug researchers at Massey University announced the findings of the latest in a series of illicit drug monitoring reports. It was found that 90 percent of P users, 62 percent of Ecstasy users, and 90 percent of injecting - drug users surveyed had driven under the influence of a drug other than alcohol in the past 6 months. Many reported driving too fast, losing concentration, losing their temper at another driver, driving through a red light, and nearly hitting something, while driving under the influence of a drug. An Institute of Environmental Science and Research deceased driver survey conducted between 2004 and 2008 found that 257 of the 826 deceased drivers, or nearly a third, had cannabis in their system. Those people may have survived if they had not mixed cannabis use with driving. These are very disturbing statistics. This bill will provide police with additional tools to get drivers impaired by drugs off the roads before they add to the death toll and the injury toll on our roads.

This bill was introduced by the previous Government back in 2007, and I give it due credit for that. I am proud to bring this bill through for its Committee stage and third reading within 6 months of the new Government being sworn in.

I acknowledge the spirit of bipartisanship in which the House dealt with the bill during the Committee stage last week. Discussions with the Hon Trevor Mallard led to the bill being amended to strengthen its anti-drugs message. The amendment deals with the issue of drugged drivers who are injured or otherwise incapacitated and who cannot undertake the impairment test, and thus who could not be charged with the new drug-impaired driving offence. The amendment enables drugged drivers to be charged with another new offence—that of driving with class A drugs, such as P, in the bloodstream—without the need for an impairment test when injury prevents it.

I can assure members that we are well aware that this bill is just the first step in dealing with the drug-driving problem. When a practical, affordable drug-testing device that can produce results that can stand up in court becomes available, then I will be very happy to bring legislation to the House to enable it to be used as an enforcement tool.

I would like to respond to media articles on Monday that queried why the bill does not cover Valium and related drugs, known collectively as benzodiazepines. Given that the bill has been in the public domain for the best part of 2 years, I am only sorry that this issue was raised after the Committee stage was completed last week. I am advised that when the previous Government had the bill drafted in 2007, the professional medical advice was that these drugs should not be included. That advice had not been challenged until the weekend. I am not a pharmacist, but, based on the evidence I have seen in the past 24 hours, I believe that these drugs should be considered for inclusion in this legislation. I have officials working on this matter now as a matter of priority. If their advice supports the inclusion of benzodiazepines, I will write to all political parties and ask for their support for a special amendment to that effect before the legislation comes into force, which is currently scheduled for 1 December. I know that the Green Party in particular is keen on including benzodiazepines in the legislation, and I thank Metiria Turei for her work and support since this matter was brought to light over the weekend and on Monday.

I stress again, and I think that this point was made by members on both sides of the House during the Committee stage, that this bill is a first step towards tackling the problem of drugged drivers on our roads. No doubt more issues will come to light as time passes, and we will deal with them in a measured way as they arise.

I turn now to the motor vehicles register. Currently any person may obtain the name and address of a vehicle owner simply by quoting a plate number. A person who complained to the New Zealand Transport Agency about this said: “I might as well have my name and address stencilled on the back of my car.” Some disturbing evidence of harassment was reported to the select committee, and mass-marketing campaigns using names and addresses have been sourced from the motor vehicles register. This bill will not ban the release of names and addresses from the motor vehicles register; instead, it will enable the public interest to be balanced against privacy concerns. Other reforms implemented in this bill are powers to deal with vehicles where the owner’s identity is unknown, free competition in the marketing of personalised plates, and empowering the registrar to require that mopeds are inspected prior to registration in order to deal with concerns about the current law, which allows unsafe machines sold by unscrupulous traders to be used without any safety inspection.

Finally, the Transport Act 1962, which contains the traffic enforcement and management powers of local authorities, expires at the end of this month. New legislation is not yet ready, and the Transport Act needs to be extended in the meantime. Once it is passed, this legislation will achieve that.

This bill will make a significant contribution to road safety by getting drug-impaired drivers off the roads. It will contribute to vehicle owners’ peace of mind by reducing the opportunity for harassment, or worse, through the uncontrolled release of name and address details to anybody who asks for them. Finally, the bill maintains in place various local authority traffic powers pending a wider reform. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) : I want to reinforce what the Minister of Transport said in his opening comments on the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). The bill was dealt with on a multipartisan basis in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and I commend both the chair, David Bennett, and Tau Henare for the work they did. A comment was made coming out of the committee that it was pretty hard to tell who was from what party as we were working through the particular issues, which I think was healthy. For most members of the committee, it was a late experience. We came to the committee after the evidence had been heard and we had officials back to explain things to some of us quite a few times to make sure we got our heads around the bill, because the effect of drugs is not simple. The point we got to at the end was that a lot of our intuition is correct and the evidence is very clear that people who drive with drugs in their system, and especially those who drive with both alcohol and drugs in their system, are much more likely to have accidents and they are more likely to be serious accidents.

From the time of the work Harry Duynhoven and Annette King did on the legislation—and, I think, David Parker; there may have been another Minister on the way—going through to the current Minister, there has been a positive approach to the legislation. The passage of time has meant that it was improved in the select committee, and again there was a lot of openness to that. The one issue I would have preferred more work to be done on was that of a non-primary legislative arrangement for the introduction of devices for random testing for drugs at the street level as the machines came in and for machines that would have avoided the need for a blood test later on. It is not beyond our wits to design something in primary legislation that allows for that to come in by way of Order in Council, the way that breath-testing devices are currently certified by the Minister at the moment. If it can be done for breath-testing devices for alcohol, it should be able to be done for breath or saliva-testing devices for drugs. My view is that our Regulations Review Committee arrangements in New Zealand are sufficient protection against the executive because any of those regulations would go to that committee and if any one member of that committee wished, it would be referred to the House and the House would have a vote on it. So that is a way that I think Parliament reserves its position against Ministers who abuse the regulatory process, and it is a pity we did not use it.

The Minister is correct that there were a couple of amendments that I am very pleased he agreed to promote and, certainly, improve in their drafting. The ideas worked their way through the Labour Party caucus and through quite a lot of positive discussion—not always supportive, I must say—on the Red Alert blog site. It was interesting to use modern technology to consult on issues like this and to get an instant response. Some were gut responses, some were intuitive responses, and some were very well-researched responses to the way that Red Alert is beginning to work.

Another issue the Minister referred to was the group of drugs known as—and I will not attempt to pronounce the long name—Valium, and the effects on people who drive with excess amounts of Valium in their systems. I tell the Minister that my understanding of the legislation is that if someone is involved in an accident and is clearly showing the effects of drug use of some sort—and I am told people who use Valium in a way beyond the way it is prescribed end up pretty dopey, tired, and slow—the impairment test could be applied to them. If they fail that impairment test, then they can have a drug test, and their only defence would be that they were using it within the prescription regulations. That is roughly what we aimed to get, and if we have a person who is very anxious about that, and obviously our hearts go out to people whose relatives have been killed in such a situation, I am not sure that this detail of law change is exactly what is needed.

I think there is room going forward. I know that this will not be a unanimous view amongst all members of the House, but some of those issues should be in the review of in the Misuse of Drugs Act. One of those issues is whether the class A category is the only category that can be tested for, or, where the results are positive without an impairment test, there can be a conviction. As has been pointed out to me, there is still room for careless driving, reckless driving, or a number of other charges to be brought against people for careless or reckless driving causing death. People should not get off scot-free, but we need to look at, for example, people who use amphetamines as opposed to methamphetamines, or people who use some of the more serious of the cannabis family, and whether drugs that are not currently in the class A group could be there.

In the end, the suggestion I promoted was something that will get a relatively broad consensus, it will not be too controversial around Parliament, and it will take care of the worst drugs, especially methamphetamines, which appear to be the most commonly used drugs in conjunction with alcohol and cause some of the most serious overconfidence and reckless behaviour. If we can get the worst of them now, and work on the rest of the drugs going forward, then that will be something positive. I commend the bill to the House. Like most work in this House, it is a progress report. If people say “We’ve finally got this issue nailed.”, they are fooling themselves.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) : I reiterate what the Hon Trevor Mallard just said. I thought that was a pretty good summary of the situation we have, and it followed on from what the Minister of Transport said, about how the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) is really just a starting point. When we look at the idea of drug-impaired driving, we know that sensible citizens would expect that it would be illegal anyway. They would not expect a Government in 2009 to have to pass legislation prohibiting it, but the reality is that it is not illegal. The other reality is that if we look at the statistics that came before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, we see that there were a large number of potential cases where drug-impaired driving had had a very detrimental effect on road safety, and where many people had lost their lives. It is long overdue that something is done about the issue, and this legislation is the starting point in trying to address it. In no way is it the final solution in making sure we cover off all the angles, but it is a very good starting point.

I congratulate the Minister on the work he has done in promoting this bill through the House. He has made it a personal endeavour to make sure we get this legislation through the House in a timely way, and that has met with public opinion and also with the need to get some runs on the board in regard to having the prohibition of drug-impaired driving delayed no longer. I also thank members of the select committee from both sides of the House. I think Trevor Mallard should be singled out for his contribution to this legislation. He was the most senior member in respect of experience on the committee. That showed, and we were grateful for his experience, so I say thank you to Trevor for his work in regard to that committee and the legislation. That was good stuff.

Hon Lianne Dalziel: That’s a beautiful thing. Well done!

DAVID BENNETT: We actually gave him a letter of thanks, so it was good.

When we look at the legislation, people have to understand that technology is not where we want it to be—

Hon Trevor Mallard: No more praise, David, thank you. It’s causing trouble.

DAVID BENNETT: No, I say to Mr Mallard that his political career is over anyway. The politics of this debate will be lost on some.

In regard to the nature of the legislation, we found that the technology was not quite at the level of the political will. If the technology had been at the level it is in relation to drink-driving—where we can easily test on the side of the road, and within a quick and cost-effective testing regime pick whether someone is under the influence—we would have taken on board a much stricter approach. This legislation really does reflect the level of technology out there, which is not at the level we would expect for drink-driving technology.

A case that has been highlighted this week is another example of the other point the bill shows, which is that in relation to drugs it is very difficult to cover off all the bases. It is probably a lot easier to detect the place of alcohol in the system of the human body and at a relevant point in time, whereas drugs have the potential to be tested and seen in the body for a long time after they have been consumed. There is also a range of drugs, ranging from those that are prescribed to those that are illegal. There will be a huge market for drugs in the future, and although there will no doubt be drugs that will be very beneficial to people’s lives, we may not want to have people driving high under the influence of those drugs. So there needs to be a bit of flexibility in this legislation, because it is dealing with a pretty fluid area. There is constant change in the number and use of drugs in our community, but this bill is primarily aimed at those drugs that are basically controlled or illegal. Any genuine citizen out there would expect that anyone caught in a car accident under the influence of those drugs would face a conviction. That has not been the case up to now, but will be changed under this legislation.

In relation to drug-impaired driving, a two-part test has been introduced in the bill. The first part is quite a simple impairment test, which goes back to the good old days of the drink-driving test before that technology advanced. Following that test is a much more expensive blood test. In effect, we are creating a situation where the number of cases that will go through that full testing regime is reduced to those cases that are most likely to have a success rate for conviction. In doing so, we reduce costs and the workload on our police in undertaking those testing regimes. The impairment test seems to be a test that the police will need some help in enforcing, in the sense that they will need to be trained and given some idea of what potentially could be seen as part of that test in the future. A lot of work has to be done in implementing this legislation to make sure it is a reality, not only in regard to the police but also in regard to any blood-testing arrangements. There will be development issues as we go forward in implementing the legislation.

Another thing we probably need to look at in this legislation, and which became much more of a subsidiary issue, is the issue of the motor vehicles register. This issue has been sitting there for a while, in the sense that a lot of people have felt their privacy has been compromised and that they need to have a situation where they can protect some of their personal information. This bill attempts to do that, in a way that protects the legitimate interests and uses of motor vehicles register information but at the same time provides personal protection for individuals. All in all, I think there is a good balance in regard to the motor vehicles register. The issue was much simpler, in the sense that we could suggest stringent rules that would apply and know that those rules would be seen to be effective in the areas sought for them.

The drug-impaired driving part is still a work in progress and will be so for many years, as technology develops, as changes come in drug use, and as Parliament looks at all the options available—through not only the Misuse of Drugs Act but also the drug-impaired driving legislation.

All in all, I thank members of the committee, the officials, and all those who submitted on this legislation. The bill was introduced in the previous Parliament and has been carried through. I think that it is a good start in that process; it is not the final solution but certainly it is the good start we need. It will give us a very strong base to work from as we work towards making sure that drug-impaired driving is not legal on our roads any more.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) : It is a pleasure to speak in the third reading debate on the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). In doing so, I note that today we are voting on an improved bill, thanks to the efforts of the Hon Trevor Mallard, and the agreement of the National Government last week to adopt his amendments.

Hon Trevor Mallard: And the very hard work in the select committee.

DARIEN FENTON: I tell the honourable member that I will get to that. The previous Labour Government introduced this bill in 2007. In late 2007, the previous Transport and Industrial Relations Committee considered 49 submissions from a range of groups, and heard 21 of those submissions. The committee reported back before the last election, and the bill has made its way into the legislative programme of the new Government. Much of the first part of this bill has had most of the attention, and I suppose that is rightly so. That first function enhances the powers of the police to deal with drug-impaired drivers by creating a new offence for when the driver is impaired and there is evidence of drugs in the driver’s blood.

As we have heard through the debate on this bill, Parliament supports the bill. We have heard many passionate speeches from members about drug-driving. There is no doubt that everybody agrees that getting into a vehicle and putting any life at risk by driving with drugs in one’s system is not acceptable. We inevitably turn to thinking about our family members and friends when this kind of debate takes place. We think about our children, many of them just embarking on their lives as drivers, and we worry about the awful things that can and do happen. Therefore, I am pleased that the passing of this bill today will provide another means of getting dangerous drivers off the road. It is not the taking of drugs that is the focus of the bill, but the driving while using such drugs; this bill is about transport safety.

This week we have heard some criticism of the bill in the media, because benzodiazepines are allegedly not covered by the bill. Having followed the bill from start to finish, I believe that it is not as straightforward as that. It is true that the Hon Trevor Mallard’s amendment that enables the prosecution of injured drivers who are unable to carry out an impairment test is confined to class A drugs, but without that amendment being subsequently adopted by the Government there would be no prosecution of such injured drivers. However, it is not totally true to say that benzodiazepines are not covered by the bill and have been overlooked. New clause 4(3)(a) in Part 1 of the bill describes what controlled drugs are, and new clause 4(3)(c) describes what prescription medicines are. In our advice to the committee way back when we were first sitting, we were advised that the controlled drugs that would be tested for were cannabis, benzodiazepines, opiates, amphetamines, and so on. That was the advice given to the select committee at the time.

Clauses 5 and 6 describe the offence under the bill that a “person may not drive or attempt to drive a motor vehicle while (a) impaired; and (b) that person’s blood contains evidence of the use of—(i) a controlled drug; or (ii) any prescription medicine.” I emphasis that last point: “any prescription medicine”. That includes benzodiazepines. Benzodiazepines are prescription drugs, which means they must be prescribed by a doctor. To obtain them in any other way is illegal. This bill states that anyone who is impaired and who is identified through a blood test as having a prescription medicine such as a benzodiazepine in his or her system, and who has ignored the instructions of the prescription and/or their medical professional, is just as liable as any other drug-driver for prosecution.

The issue is a little more complicated than it seems at first appearance. I was a little bit disturbed that the Minister could not give answers to the media when asked about the claims that benzodiazepines were not included in the bill. His response was to blame Labour. He said that the bill was the way Labour drafted it and the way it came back from the select committee. Well, I am sorry, but I call that a cop out. I call that a failure of responsibility. This is an issue for National not Labour, because National is the Government. I thought it was a job of the Minister. I thought he got paid lots of money to check such things. After all, was it not the Minister who was telling the country not that long ago that this legislation was a priority for the Government and that it failed to get through the select committee, which is rubbish? The bill did not get through in the last Parliament because we did not have time. It is one thing to pick up a bill drafted by Labour and with amendments pushed by Labour members, but it is quite another to try to blame them and the select committee—and I take offence on its behalf—including his own National members, for the omission that, at best, is questionable.

However, I agree with the Greens that we need to get this bill right. I agree that drugs such as benzodiazepines need to be covered, perhaps beyond the requirements of prescription medicines. Perhaps the bill does not cover the issues to the extent that at least one submitter would like to see, but the select committee had to consider all submissions, all advice, and all issues, and make the decisions that are being reported back today. When considering this bill, as I have from its inception and through all stages in the House, I wanted to ensure that the purpose of the bill, which is a transport safety measure, was paramount.

I noted the Green’s first reading speech in which Metiria Turei commented on the assurance that the then Labour Government had given that the bill was not a Trojan horse for blood testing under the Misuse of Drugs Act. I also note the comments of my colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard. My view is that the Misuse of Drugs Act is being reviewed by the Law Commission, and that is the place for that debate to happen. The debate around the extension of testing procedures for that Act should take place in Parliament, with extensive consultation and involvement of the public. Maybe we will get there, but let us do it properly. This bill is about getting drug-drivers off the road. It is about adding another protection to the armoury of the police to ensure that that happens. It is about being able to take the next step in prosecuting such drivers so that there is a clear message to anyone who thinks it is OK to get into a car in an unsafe state of drug influence.

The second part of this bill, which has not had a lot of attention, is about protecting the vehicle register from abuse. New Part 17 came about in the original bill because of complaints about the misuse of private information. Vehicle owners have no option but to register their information. They are required by law to do so. Thus, the Government has a responsibility to protect that information. The bill deals with this issue, but it does not deal with the other major series of complaints received from the public, which are about the misuse of vehicle registry information from direct marketers. Direct-marketing is the sending of unsolicited mail to prospective customers. As one man said in his complaint about direct-marketing, “I will give you a false address in future. My car was written off but I am still getting junk mail about my warrant of fitness. My details should only be released for law enforcement. My name has been given to a marketing company, who has given it to someone else. I am forced to give my details but disagree that this information should be given to anyone else.” The select committee was advised that the best way of managing this was through a process called opting in—in other words, those who registered their cars have a choice about whether they receive information from marketing companies. That seemed pretty fair to me and the Labour members, but unfortunately the National Government disagreed with it and has gone for an opt-out process, which means that vehicle owners will continue to be pestered with unwanted and intrusive junk solicitation. Let us wait for the complaints to continue.

Having said that, Labour believes that the good in this bill is stronger than the problems, which is why we are supporting it along with the changes made with the advocacy of Trevor Mallard and supported by the Government. I will take a moment to thank the advisers and officials. The select committee tested them considerably, particularly with a new committee that started in this Parliament. Having the work go over two Parliaments made the process more difficult. The advisers and officials had to go over much of the work that was previously done and explain the whole thing from the beginning. I assure those listening today that Labour is serious about cracking down on drug-driving. Labour started the process. It has worked with National since the election. This bill that we are passing today will make a real difference in the road safety concerns around drug-driving.

JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Green) : I am happy to rise to address the third reading of the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). The Green Party supports this legislation. We do so with some unease, as the bill does not do quite what it was intended to do and it does not meet all of our objectives. We want to encourage the creation of deterrents, and the use of enforcement against drivers who drive while they are impaired. We do not want legislation, though, that appears to address the problems, but simply complicates the issue with what could be well-intentioned but otherwise ineffective provisions.

The Greens are always after the best possible law—law that is effective and just. Although it is not always the case with legislation in New Zealand, we have worked hard to make sure that the bill goes some way towards meeting those objectives.

In the first reading, my colleague Metiria Turei noted our great concern that impaired drivers are on our roads, causing harm to property and, most important, causing harm to our communities and people. The primary culprit for this harm is, of course, the use of the drug alcohol while driving. Alcohol remains the No. 1 problem drug for road safety, and we believe that further measures could be taken to reduce that harm.

Although acknowledging that fact, it is true that other drugs can cause impairment. It is important to have legislation that is concerned with drug-impaired driving overall, whether alcohol, lawful drugs, or unlawful drugs. Thanks to the Green Party, this bill has been extended to include legal drugs and prescription medicines.

We have retained this legislation’s focus on impaired drivers and we have not allowed it to become a back-door way of prosecuting drug offences. Legal prescription drugs that are used in such a way as to cause impairment will also be captured by the new offence provisions in this legislation. This is a consistent and cohesive approach to removing dangerous drivers from our roads, irrespective of the cause of their impairment. The victim of a crash does not really care why the driver was impaired; the fact that the driver was impaired should be sufficient reason for getting the driver off the road.

However, we are extremely concerned—this is one reason for the unease about this bill, as I said earlier—that this bill excludes a major class of drug, benzodiazepines. I note the comment made by my colleague Darien Fenton. I can only be guided by my colleague Metiria Turei, who has worked intensively on this bill, whereas I have not. Benzodiazepines are commonly known as sedatives and are a widely used prescription medicine. They have been implicated in a number of road accidents and deaths. They are exactly the kinds of drugs the Greens were worried about when the negotiations on this bill began. They are the kinds of drugs that the Greens expressly wanted to be included in the bill, because they have been implicated in road accidents and deaths.

Metiria Turei, our spokesperson, has talked with the Minister of Transport, Steven Joyce, about this issue. Her understanding is that he recognised this was an oversight, and he has called for a scientific report into whether these drugs could be included in the legislation. She said that the Green Party will support any parliamentary measures to ensure that this legislative gap is filled as soon as possible—and it must be filled. We look forward to seeing the Minister progress this issue to make our roads safer.

Although we have argued that the impairment test should remain so that the new law is not used as a back door to prosecuting under the Misuse of Drugs Act, we none the less remain concerned about the misuse of the impairment test by enforcement officers. The physical impairment test referred to in the bill will be administered by the police. We are concerned about the test’s subjective nature, particularly as it leads immediately to a blood test.

One concern relates to the discriminatory filters in the police force that lead to unjustified targeting of Māori, and, in particular, Māori men, when it comes to drug offences. Research in 2002 from the Christchurch Health and Development Study—the work of Professor David Fergusson, who has done very good work in this area—clearly shows that one of the primary risks for being targeted by the police for drug offences is being a Māori man. The research concluded that the administration of current cannabis laws was inequitable, and biased against Māori and males, and that the current cannabis laws were discriminatory. The difficulty is that the choice to target one particular person for a search or to stop that person’s car is strictly a matter of individual police decisions. Such discriminatory filters have been recognised in the areas of policing and health. Of course, similar discriminatory practices have been known to affect younger people and those who are already known to the police. Although many police officers are well aware of these practices and operate fairly, it is not the case for all officers, who exercise considerable power in the community, particularly over young people. Professor Fergusson has produced further research suggesting that young people are simply not aware that driving under the influence of cannabis or other drugs can cause impairment. In large part, that is because of the legal status of the drug. It creates considerable barriers to getting across to young people truthful and trusted information about the harm cannabis can cause. Again, I hope that, some time in the near future, we may take a much more mature approach to this issue.

A blood test is used for detecting alcohol-impaired driving. If a person goes over the limit, that person is in breach of the law. That limit is established through proven scientific methods that show definitively that, at that specified level of blood alcohol, a person is impaired and should not drive. But for the evidence-based legal blood-alcohol limit, a blood test would otherwise be an unreasonable search and seizure.

The same principle should apply in relation to other drugs, particularly cannabis. The law should establish, using quality science, a level of drug use for specified drugs that definitively shows that a person is impaired by the specified drug at that time, and that limit should be set out in law. That is more difficult to show for most drugs than it is for alcohol. Our laws, though, should be evidence-based and scientifically sound. The subjective view of a police officer is not a robust test, nor is the simple presence of a drug with no scientifically based assessment of the level of impairment that that drug can cause.

This bill is a very blunt tool for dealing with the issue of impaired driving. In this respect, science and technology will eventually provide us with much better guidance to enable us to have good-quality law that is based on science, that is based on evidence, and that does not abuse the fundamental rights of our citizens. Until then, we have some way to go, but the Greens support this bill as a first step.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) : Ā, kia ora tātou katoa i tēnei pō. Ka nui te mihi ki a tātou, otirā, ki a koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I read a statistic today that confirmed even more for me the importance of doing what we can to reduce injury and death on the roads. Fifty-one percent of Māori people who died due to injury, died on the street or highway in road deaths. Forty-six percent of these deaths were due to motor vehicle crashes. That is one hell of a waste of Māori potential that is just being ripped away from us because of hazardous driving and reckless drivers.

It is not just the loss of life that we are talking about here, which is a tragedy in itself, but also the estimated social cost of road crashes, which includes loss of life or life quality, medical and rehabilitation costs, legal and court costs, property damage, and loss of output due to injuries. In 2005 that was heading well beyond a $100 million amount. That is a huge amount to spend on all of those particular aspects that occur from death by road accident.

I stated in my second reading speech that in my electorate alone in the Eastern Bay of Plenty there were some 62 injury crashes on local roads and another 47 injury crashes on State highways in just one year, in 2006. Some of these injuries were due to drivers not having gone through all the requirements to be on the road in the first place. Of the at-fault drivers and crashes in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, 14 percent were driving on a restricted licence, 3 percent were disqualified drivers, and 10.7 percent held a learner licence. But by far the most significant factor in doing something about road safety is actually in what this bill is trying to do. It is introducing a new duty of not driving while impaired by drugs.

In 2006 driver alcohol and drugs were a contributing factor in 99 fatal traffic crashes, 409 serious injury crashes, and 1,128 minor injury crashes. These crashes resulted in 109 deaths, 556 serious injuries, and 1,768 minor injuries. These numbers are based on crashes where alcohol or dugs were proven or suspected to be a contributing factor in a crash: 100 hundred people who did not need to die; over 2,000 people who will never ever forget the idiot in charge of the wheel, for what he or she did to impair their loss of enjoyment of life. I am told that at the select committee submissions were received from people who claimed that cannabis does not impair driving. In fact, some even testified that it made a person drive even better; that it made that person become a better driver. Well, as this House knows, research to date confirms that cannabis, and its active ingredient THC, impairs driving and has a considerable effect when consumed at high levels. So let us not dream on that this is not the case. I have been to too many tangi, courthouses, and hospitals not to see the effect of drug-driving as being a serious issue that must be considered.

Some people may say that those people who drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs should cop whatever damage comes to them. But it is not about just them. For every 100 drunk or drugged drivers or riders killed in road crashes, 56 of their passengers, as well as 39 sober road users, die with them. This Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) is for those people. It is to preserve our people power, to protect our whakapapa, and to invest in the lives of all of our whānau.

The current threshold for the offence of drug-impaired driving is being “incapable”, which means being incapable of having proper control of a vehicle. This bill lowers the threshold to being “impaired”. Where there is evidence of controlled drugs or prescription medicines in the driver’s blood, it is determined by a robust test. We support the move to penalise drug-driving and the introduction of a testing and penalty regime that mirrors alcohol testing. But we do have two important concerns. These were concerns that I raised during the Committee stage debate. I had two specific amendments. The first concern related to informed consent, and the second one concerned the prohibition on storage and analysis of blood samples.

Firstly, there are a number of widely accepted and established ethical protocols in the field of research, and arguably the most important of these is the principle of informed consent. Informed consent means that the people being subjected to research are properly informed of the research to be undertaken, what it entails, and its implications, and that they give their consent to it without interference. New section 209A compromises this fundamental principle, and it was on this basis that we put forward an amendment to address it. We hope that having raised these issues consistently around the bill, the Minister will ensure that the ethical considerations are given due respect so that we can seem focused going into protocols around research.

The other amendment that I put up responds to a number of concerns about the storage and re-analysis of blood specimens for research purposes. The blood specimens that are taken from drivers who fail drug or driving-impairment tests give rise to a whole host of concerns about who has the right to such samples, and, in particular, our anxiety that the information should not be tampered with. We are concerned about the wide implications of the State having legal rights to use blood samples for further research, such as what kind of research, by whom, for what purposes, and for whose benefit. Although this might sound like a conspiracy plot, there have been such examples in our recent history, and, indeed, examples concerning indigenous people around the world. It has been discovered that highly questionable genetic research has been conducted on body parts, and on tissue and blood samples, without permission, without ethics approval, and without the opportunity for public debate.

In a desire to understand why so many of their own developed stomach cancer, one whānau underwent genetic blood-testing, and unbeknownst to them, these blood samples were passed on to international genetic companies for further analysis and commercial exploitation. This was done without their consent, and, for some time, without their knowledge even. If members are interested, I refer them to a paper entitled Hands off our genes: A case study on the theft of whakapapa written by Donna Gardiner. The research done by a whakapapa on its blood is not for exploitation or for profit; it is not up for grabs.

The Minister of Transport gave me an assurance following that debate that the issues have been resolved and that the Institute of Environmental Science and Research had some pretty tough criteria around how any research is conducted. The samples are not allowed out of the facility, for security and biohazard reasons, and, therefore, the officials have assured us that the samples will be kept for only 12 months. We will leave that issue there. Suffice to say, these are very important issues to the Māori Party that we have signalled. We must ensure that we do the right thing.

The Māori Party has previously stated in the House that it is fully supportive of the need to put in place a testing regime for drug-driving. We accept that current limits on saliva-testing technology mean that the taking of blood is the best way to do so at this time. We also accept that the very best of intentions may lie behind the idea of storing the blood samples for further research, specific to drug-driving. However, we cannot accept the very real risk that unwittingly this might create a situation where whakapapa is able to be compromised. We do support this bill in its final reading, and we will always support any interventions concerning the protection and preservation of life. We will be watching, as one would understand, to see that the protocols are adhered to, and that the proper protections are in place. In closing, I offer thanks and congratulations to the Minister of Transport for working with the Māori Party on our concerns. Kia ora tātou.

Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) : I am pleased to speak in the third reading debate of the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). The bill has three main purposes. They are to provide for more comprehensive anti - drug-driving laws, to provide more privacy provisions regarding access to the register of motor vehicles, and to preserve certain provisions in various transport Acts that are due to expire on 1 July this year. It is the first purpose that most New Zealanders will relate to. This bill is about getting unsafe drivers off the road in order to make the roads safer for us—that is the prime purpose of this bill for me. We already have an established mechanism in relation to drink-driving; that has been well accepted and well publicised. Drink-driving is simply not acceptable. There is a very easy screening test that can be done at random, and it takes just a few seconds. But that is not the case, at all, for people who take drugs and drive.

This bill establishes a regime for prosecuting drug-impaired drivers who have consumed a controlled drug or a prescription medicine. The penalties are aligned to those that apply for drink-driving. The police will have similar powers in such circumstances to those that are in the drink-driving legislation. There will be defences for people who have consumed prescription medicines in accordance with a prescription, or in accordance with instructions from the manufacturer of the drug or a health practitioner. The screening test for a person who has taken drugs and driven is a compulsory impairment test that tests coordination, physiological reactions, and markers for drug impairments, such as pupil dilation, and a blood test. It takes some 10 minutes or so to complete the compulsory impairment test. Police officers will be trained in the technique.

The compulsory impairment test will not be used as a screening test but it will be used as the breath test can be used with regard to alcohol. It will be used in a targeted way—namely, if an officer notes that a car is being driven dangerously or erratically, the officer will stop the driver, and if the driver passes the alcohol breath test, the officer can then proceed with the drug impairment test. Provision is made for the impairment test to be done away from where the driver and the car have been stopped. That takes into account the fact that the terrain where the car has been stopped may not be conducive for the test to be undertaken there, or the roadside may be poorly lit. That provision is there to ensure that the test is done in the safest possible situation.

There have been a couple of changes since submissions on the bill were heard by members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. The first change concerns situations where a person has been injured in a road traffic accident and is unable to do the impairment test. In the original bill, if the driver was hospitalised and unable to perform the impairment test, the driver could not be prosecuted. A Supplementary Order Paper introduced by the Hon Trevor Mallard in the Committee stage will ensure that hospitalised drivers can be prosecuted for a new offence of driving with class A drugs in their blood. That is the same process that occurs already when injured drivers are proved, by way of a blood test, to be over the alcohol limit.

The second change is to clarify the situation whereby the police can advance both an alcohol test and a drug impairment test at the same time on the roadside. The change makes it quite clear in the law that if a person marginally fails the alcohol breath test and the officer is concerned that the person exhibits signs that he or she is more impaired than the level of blood alcohol suggests, such as having slurred speech, then the officer can proceed to do a drug impairment test. If the person fails the impairment test, then he or she will have a blood test to check for drugs.

The select committee heard very concerning interim evidence from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research. It presented reports that really made the point that drinking and taking drugs and driving cause death. I will quote from a couple of studies that the institute gave the select committee. One study, which was carried out over 4 years from June 2004 to July 2008, was of 826 drivers who had died as a result of a motor vehicle accident. Samples were taken from deceased drivers whose deaths were deemed not to be due to medical problems that occurred prior to the accident or due to intentional harm, such as suicide. The study found that 80 percent of the drivers were culpable for their own accident, and that that was particularly true for those aged under 20 and over 80. Those drivers were all analysed for drug and alcohol use, and the interesting statistics are that 48 percent had no alcohol or drugs in their system, but that over 52 percent had used alcohol and/or drugs. That is over half of those drivers.

The select committee asked the institute how many innocent people had died as a result of drivers taking drugs. The institute provided a further evaluation of the data for the 5 years from 2003 to 2007, and looked at 90 people who had died in crashes where drugs were cited as a contributing factor. Of those people, 53 were drug-affected drivers who had died as a result of their own driving, having taken drugs, but 28 were the passengers of those drivers, and a further nine were other road users. So out of the 90 deaths, 37 of them were innocent victims—that is, over 40 percent. That was quite a horrifying statistic to me when I heard it, and that is why it is so important to pass this legislation. It will ensure that drivers can be tested for drugs through the impairment method that has already been described.

The second purpose of this bill relates to the motor vehicles register. The bill improves the protection of personal information held on the register. Applications for the name and address of a vehicle owner will be dealt with under the Official Information Act, which applies a public interest test, and there will be special provision for approved bulk users. This bill also implements new measures to deal with vehicles where the name or current address of the owner is unknown. It also provides for much of the detail that is currently contained in the statute to be dealt with in regulations, where it can be easily updated.

In summary, this bill is timely and necessary, and it will save lives. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) : I am very pleased to take a call on the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). I thought as a starter I would talk a little bit about the principle that I hold with regard to this issue. I have not been involved in the select committee process, so I probably do not have the level of detailed knowledge on the bill that members who were involved in hearing submissions may have.

When I go out into the electorate and talk to people about the issue of driving whilst impaired, I find that people do not necessarily make a distinction between somebody who is driving whilst impaired as a result of drugs and somebody who is driving whilst impaired as a result of alcohol. I think the fact that this bill deals with some anomalies around driving whilst impaired by drugs is very important.

The bill has two main functions. The first is that it enhances the powers of the police to deal with drug-impaired drivers. It creates a new offence for when a driver is impaired and there is evidence of drugs in the driver’s blood. The second function is to make changes regarding the registration and licensing of motor vehicles, and I will talk a bit more about that function in a few minutes.

The Labour Government introduced this bill back in 2007, and the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee further improved it over 2 years. We acknowledge the good work done by the select committee. I was particularly interested in the approach taken by my colleague Trevor Mallard, who has taken a very active involvement in this bill, to seeking public feedback and public opinion on this issue. He put several blog posts on the Labour MPs’ blog Red Alert, and I am told that over the totality of the two posts he had 46 comments; some of those were from him replying to other people’s comments.

Hon Anne Tolley: 23!

CHRIS HIPKINS: Probably not quite that many.

Hon Trevor Mallard: We know Anne Tolley reads it.

CHRIS HIPKINS: We know Anne Tolley read it, because she has mentioned it in the House.

I think it is a novel approach, because it is a very accessible way for members of the public to have a direct say on a particularly technical piece of legislation before the House. Some of the matters Trevor Mallard raised in his blog post were technical, but he was also seeking feedback in a fairly immediate way. People can give feedback without having to come to Parliament or write a submission; they can simply post a comment on the blog, and the comment goes directly to MPs. Other Labour MPs have read it, and we know that Anne Tolley has read it. So members of the House are able to get immediate feedback from members of the public. I think that is particularly good, and we can see the value of that approach in the amendments that Trevor Mallard has put forward and that the Government has indicated it will support.

I acknowledge the work done by National when it accepted Labour’s amendments. They are sensible amendments, and we are very pleased that National will be supporting them. They will give police the ability to test for class A drugs when people are hospitalised, which is common after car crashes, and they will allow the police to carry out drug tests after a driver has failed a test for alcohol, where that is considered to be appropriate. So I think we agree that those things are very sensible. We recognise the dangers of drug-driving, particularly with the growth of the P menace, which I think many in this House acknowledge is increasingly becoming a problem. So we are pleased that National has picked up this legislation and is working to have it implemented.

However, I will depart from the bipartisan approach slightly at this particular point in time—just for a change—and say that it is kind of strange to be talking about a bill that will enhance the powers of police to crack down on drug-driving when the Government has just pulled $49 million out of the road-policing budget. Presumably, the police will hitchhike to catch drug-drivers. I am not entirely sure how many cars were to be taken away from the police, but they will presumably have to hitchhike. Maybe they will be given bicycles to catch drug-drivers. It is a bit strange, really, to see this bill come before the House while at the same time there is publicity around the reduction in the budget for police cars.

One of the other things, I guess, that has been interesting about this debate is that we have seen a reasonable amount of common agreement across the House that this bill is necessary and should be supported and pushed through. But we also saw through the course of this particular debate this afternoon—I have not seen all of it, but I saw part of it—an acknowledgment that this is not an absolute solution to the problem and that there is more work to be done. It is quite unusual that both sides of the House—or all sides of the House, really—admit that there is still more work to be done. We certainly welcome that work.

The roadside impairment test will become compulsory under this bill. When an officer at the roadside has reason to suspect that a driver is impaired, the driver will be required to carry out a series of tests. If the driver cannot satisfactorily complete this series of tests, he or she will be required to provide a blood specimen. If an illegal drug is detected in the blood specimen, an offence will have been committed. In the Land Transport Act there is already the offence of driving while incapable of proper control due to alcohol or drugs, so, together, these two offences will send a clear message that people must not drive whilst under the influence of drugs.

The new impairment offence will enable an officer to make a well-informed decision about a person’s ability to drive safely, and if that person is not safe, he or she will not be able to continue. I think that will provide a significant level of reassurance to the public. It should, however, be noted that any evidence of drug use that is gathered as evidence of a driving offence will not be able by law to be used as evidence of any other offence under the Misuse of Drugs Act, because this measure is particularly a transport measure.

I want to talk about the second part of this bill, which deals with the motor vehicles register. The bill implements measures to improve protection of personal information held in the motor vehicles register. I think everyone in this day and age is becoming more and more aware of issues around privacy and the protection of personal information.

It is interesting to note that under the current law, any person can obtain the names and addresses of the present and previous owners of a motor vehicle simply by quoting its registration plate number. That is quite interesting, because motor vehicles change hands frequently. It is interesting to note that my name and address may be available in relation to a vehicle that I may not have owned for 4 or 5 years. That obviously creates some interesting privacy issues, and this part of the bill helps to deal with that. The information is available over the counter at present at post shops and other registration agencies, and there are no safeguards on how this information can be used.

The system is clearly open to abuse. There are examples where angry motorists, in the aftermath of a road-rage incident, have used the register to trace a person and then harass that person. I think that is something we would all be very concerned about. Professional car thieves can also use that information to target high-value vehicles. They can use the register to find out where the person who owns that car lives, and then they can effectively go and steal the car. I think that is an issue. Looking very closely at the requirements around making that information a little bit less accessible is, I think, very valuable.

The names and addresses of vehicle owners began being made available over the Internet in bulk during the 1990s, and, of course, that has probably exacerbated the problem. The Internet has created a whole range of new problems with making information available. I think we would all agree that making information available over the Internet is a good thing, but when that information is personal information new moral and ethical issues are created. The Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4) helps to address that situation.

It is interesting to note that 2.3 million people are on the register of names and address for vehicle ownership, so this will impact on a significant number of people. The information on the register of drivers’ licences is well protected, so I ask members why motor vehicle owners should be treated any differently. This bill addresses that very concern. It removes the current obligation on the Registrar of Motor Vehicles to release information to anyone who asks for it. Instead, requests for information will be dealt with under the Official Information Act in the same way that any other request to a Government department or Crown entity is dealt with. To assist with the consideration of Official Information Act requests, the bill clarifies that the principal purposes of the motor vehicles register—and this is very important for those familiar with the use of the Official Information Act—are law enforcement and the collection of revenue.

The bill recognises that, on occasions, the individual’s privacy interests may be balanced against the wider public good. Therefore, the bill will empower the Minister to authorise information to be released for certain purposes at the discretion of the Minister. Prior to issuing such an authorisation, the Minister will need to seek the views of the Ombudsman and the Privacy Commissioner, and that authorisation may be a one-off or it may be a standing authorisation that is valid for up to 5 years. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon NATHAN GUY (Associate Minister of Transport) : It is great to rise and take a call on the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). It is a bill that I am very supportive of. I need to acknowledge from the outset the work on the bill that was done by the Labour Opposition. The Hon Trevor Mallard proposed some amendments that we were able to incorporate with the Government’s thoughts during the Committee of the whole House stage. Now we have a very robust bill that will endeavour, I believe, to make motorists safer in their communities. It will stamp down on drivers who are drugged, and it will give the police more powers to act on those drugged drivers.

I will make a few introductory comments about this bill and then I will conclude by making a few comments around the motor vehicles register, which the previous speaker, Chris Hipkins, alluded to. This bill aims to reduce the road safety risk created by persons who commit the offence of driving while impaired with the evidence of drugs in their bloodstream. It will give the police the ability to perform the impairment test. I need to talk a little bit about the impairment test, because it will be made compulsory under this regime. It will involve instances when a police officer stops a driver and suspects that he or she is driving under the influence of drugs. Drivers will have to walk and turn—this is outside the vehicle—they will have to be able to stand on one leg, and they will have to undergo a test that determines the size of their pupils, as well as their reaction to light. That measure is very important. It will enable police to have greater powers to crack down on drivers who choose to drive under the influence of drugs.

The other important thing that this bill does is determine that, from time to time, some people are on drugs that have been administered by a specialist or a general practitioner. This bill allows those people some relief from prosecution. If they have medicine, in accordance with a current prescription, from the manufacturer, they will be allowed to have that medicine. One example could be someone in hospital who needs morphine. The schedule covers all drugs; this point is very important. I have had a briefing from the police, and if we think about it, we see that we have a long, established history of how we can test for alcohol, but we do not have such a test for drugs, because drugs in today’s society are always evolving. Whether it is cocaine, heroin, cannabis, or LSD, all of those particular drugs are ongoing and evolving. That is an important thing to note.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I don’t think cocaine and heroin are evolving. They evolved a long time ago.

Hon NATHAN GUY: They evolved a long time ago, but, as Mr Mallard knows from getting around his electorate, new drugs are coming into society. I think we need to be aware of that.

The other important point I make in wrapping up is to make some comments around the motor vehicles register. From time to time an incident might occur on the road where a vehicle cuts someone off, the driver of the vehicle that was hit jots down the registration plate number of the vehicle that hit it, and then that driver looks up the owner of that vehicle. For a small fee, anyone can do that by going into a post shop. We need to ensure that that information is protected. It is my understanding that the information relates to over 2 million vehicles. Of course, there are people who choose to use the register as a marketing ploy. They get out there and bombard through direct-marketing all those people who have a vehicle licensed through this mechanism. We need to be very, very mindful of that.

The other significant point is that, from time to time, a part of a vehicle might need to be recalled. That happened to my vehicle recently. I got a note from the Ford motor company saying that I had to go in and have something taken off the vehicle and replaced. Under this bill, motor vehicle companies will still be allowed to send mail directly to people who purchased a vehicle from them. It will also allow the police, the Ministry of Justice, the Customs Service, the Ministry of Fisheries, and the like—agencies that are involved in law enforcement—to access the register.

In summary, this is a good bill. There is a great deal of support across the House for it. I need to acknowledge the work done by the officials, and the good work done in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee by the chair, David Bennett, and his good team. I commend this bill to the House.

SUE MORONEY (Labour) : It is my pleasure to rise to speak to the third reading of the Land Transport Amendment Bill (No 4). Every party in the House has acknowledged that this bill was introduced by the previous Labour Government, and it has enjoyed good support throughout the House as a result of its being well-drafted legislation.

Before I come back to the detail of the bill and its very good intentions, I will speak to the very serious issue of the way in which the changes in this bill will be resourced, given that, as my colleague Chris Hipkins pointed out, the funding for road policing has been reduced in Budget 2009. It has been cut by $49 million. Yet here we are debating in the House today this bill, which is about to pass its third reading—this bill is about to become an Act—and this will put even more pressure on those road policing resources because of the additional issues that the police will now have the ability and powers to deal with.

Hon Anne Tolley: Get your facts straight.

SUE MORONEY: Well, the facts were actually in the Budget, and also in the media today—$49 million has been cut out of road policing.

On top of that, as we discovered at question time today, an additional $21 million is being cut from police resources, and this will have an impact on the fleet of vehicles available to the police. The involvement of vehicles in road safety policing is quite fundamental. If members on the Government side of the House are really stuck, I can probably offer them my family horse, which won the Melbourne Cup in 2000 and, on retirement, became a police horse in the Melbourne police force. I could probably bring Brew home if they get stuck for police vehicles!

Hon Tau Henare: He was a good horse!

SUE MORONEY: He was a good horse, but I have to alert the Government to the fact that he was owned by my family and sometimes he had to be chucked out of the police academy for bad behaviour. So perhaps he would not be terribly reliable, but maybe he would be more reliable than having no transport at all. All joking aside—of course, that was not a serious offer—and to come back to the bill itself, I am concerned about the level of resourcing that will be put into road policing as a result of this legislation.

This bill amends the Land Transport Act 1998, and it has two main functions. Its first function is to enhance the powers of the police to deal with drug-impaired drivers. That is a new power, and new powers require resourcing and always have some teething problems. That is the reason why I raised the concern about the funding cut to road policing in the Budget that has just gone through the House. This bill creates a new offence for a situation when a driver is impaired and there is evidence of drugs in his or her blood.

The second thing that this bill does is make changes to the registration and licensing of motor vehicles. I think that is probably the least contentious part of this bill, because it is about people’s ability to maintain their privacy. Many members have made great contributions on this part of the bill and talked about how it will stop the abuse of people’s private information by marketing companies.

Chris Hipkins gave a very detailed explanation of some of the criminal activity that can be associated with this information being freely available, but I would like to draw the House’s attention to another area of great concern. That issue is about access to information via the registration and licensing of motor vehicles. This is a concern for women and families who live in fear of previous violent partners or of other violence associated with their lives. There were instances outlined to the select committee where women who had protection orders against former loved ones had found that the access to this information had worked to their disadvantage. When they had tried to move in order to not be easily located by people whom they had protection orders against, they found out that their previous partner had been able to track them down by using the registration and licensing information from the motor vehicles register. The openness of this register and the way in which its information has been used are very serious issues that have many consequences. Sadly, we now live in a society where the openness and the freedom of that information have worked to undermine the protection of individuals within our society. It is a sad thing that we have needed to do, but across the House everyone agrees and understands the rationale for why the changes must be made.

I want to acknowledge the good work that was done across the parties in the select committee; select committee processes do not always work in this way. One of the very important things about the type of democracy that we have here in New Zealand is that our select committee process—and many people come from overseas to observe this process—has the ability to do exactly what we have seen happen in respect of this bill and its development. It is a very fine feature of our democracy that parties can get together and work on a very detailed issue. I can see from the work that has been done in the select committee that there was a great deal of detail for the officials to impart to members of Parliament. Members were then able to work through not only all of that detail but all of the very tricky issues that come with the detail.

Of course, issues involving people’s access to, and use of, drugs are very contentious and difficult to deal with. However, the select committee has been able to deal with this issue in a way that has accepted all members’ perspectives. Many members who have spoken about the select committee process have praised the Hon Trevor Mallard’s participation—and I am loathe to join in with them in doing that! Obviously, they recognise that many good ideas have come from this side of the House. In fact, some of us would say that any of the good ideas that the Government has had have been based on Labour policy or previous bills put forward by the previous Labour Government—and this bill is just another example of exactly that.

In summary, I commend the bill. I thank the select committee members for their very hard and detailed work on this issue; obviously, they had a great deal of support from the officials. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon TAU HENARE (National) : I was going to just go through a summary of where I think the bill is, but the previous speaker, Sue Moroney, brought up the issue of horses. I say that that member not so long ago spoke publicly against the very tax break for horses that she agreed with when Winston Peters was the Minister for Racing. That is the sort of thing we get from the Opposition. The debate on this bill started really, really nicely, with everyone was patting each other on the back, but the last two Labour speakers, the one before Sue Moroney—

Hon Nathan Guy: Who was it? Hipkins?

Hon TAU HENARE: Yes. Chris Hipkins suggested all sorts of things about there not being any money in the kitty. Let us be serious about this. This bill was introduced in 2007. It is now midway through 2009, and the only reason this bill is where it is today is because of the good work of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and because of the efficiency of a National Government that wants to do things. It is about good chairpersonship, it is about a good Minister, and it is about a Government that wants to get ahead and stop dilly-dallying and playing politics like the last member was doing.

The bill is about three things. Let us concentrate on the small, administrative matter: the continuation of the Land Transport Act 1998, and other little bits and pieces that have to happen. That is the administrative part. The next part is about protection; it is about protecting the privacy of individuals in this country so that private citizens know that their information will not be bandied about by stalkers, by all sorts of miscreants, and even by some of those people who get into telemarketing.

The big stuff I want to talk about, in the third part of the bill, is the drug issue. I think that is the key issue to this bill. The Greens have called it a blunt tool, some have mentioned that it is a discriminatory practice, and some have called it other things. The key here is about saving lives. The key here is about making sure that if you drink and drive, and if you take drugs and drive—yes, I am speaking absolutely to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and that is why I am using the word “you”—then you are pinged for it. We can go through all sorts of reasons why people drink and drive, and take drugs and drive, and we can blame it on this, that, and the other thing. But drink-driving and drug-driving would not happen if people did not get behind the wheel of a vehicle. It is as simple as that. This is one time when I think the psychologists, the researchers, and the analysts of all kinds who dream up reasons why people do things have got it wrong. The clear message is that this community does not put up with, and will never put up with, people getting behind the wheel of a vehicle in a drug-impaired state. The message is quite simple: people should not smoke and drive, needle and drive, or swallow drugs that they should not be using and drive. It is quite clear that this bill is about the protection of the innocent.

I finish by mentioning something that came up in the select committee about research, and what happens to the blood samples after they have been tested in a hospital. My colleague Te Ururoa Flavell mentioned this issue in the Committee stage, and I raised the issue also at the select committee. I am satisfied that the further research that the bill talks about is only about the drug issue. The blood samples will not be used for any research purposes other than that. I want to put that on the record, and assure my colleague that I think the issues he raised, and that I raised in the select committee, have been worked out in a manner that assures us that those samples will not be used for some sort of Frankenstein research along the way.

I commend this bill to the House, but we should be mindful that it is only a small step. As some of my colleagues have said previously, different drugs come on to the market—it seems like an everyday occurrence—and we have to be up with the play. We also have to be up with the play in terms of the technology that we have at our disposal to grab these people, who do not like themselves and do not like anybody else. Why else would they be drug-impaired and alcohol-impaired behind the wheel of a vehicle? Kia ora.

• Bill read a third time.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) : I move, That the Parliamentary Service (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill be now read a third time. For the reasons that have been outlined in speeches previously, it is essential that this bill is passed before 1 July 2009.

This is a short bill that provides an interim definition of the term “funding entitlements for parliamentary purposes” for the purposes of clarifying the principal duties of the Parliamentary Service. The bill provides a very similar interim definition to that set out in the Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Act 2007, which expires on 1 July 2009. Generally speaking, the bill maintains the legislative framework that has been in place since that legislation was passed in 2006 and preserves the conventions observed by members before that time, which was that the parliamentary publicity entitlement should not be used for electioneering. As I have said, this has been a convention for many years; it was provided for formally in the 2006 legislation.

The bill also enables the Parliamentary Service to do its job, and avoids creating an environment of uncertainty for officials where the review of electoral finance law is in progress. I think it is worthwhile to remind the House of the history of the interim definition. The Auditor-General made some comments that were publicly discussed post the 2005 general election. Parliament itself has largely accepted the Auditor-General’s position and reached the conclusion that the definition provided in the previous Act was a good one. The definition may not survive through the review that is in progress at the moment, but, Mr Deputy Speaker, you will be aware that all parliamentarians are very, very conscious of how the public purse is spent in the pursuit of their particular responsibilities as representatives. This bill largely protects those who are supporting parliamentarians, and puts some bounds around that expenditure.

I look forward to the passing of this legislation today. National will be supporting it.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) : The Labour Opposition will be supporting the Parliamentary Service (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill. I think there is no choice but to do that. It is the third time we have done this. We had interim legislation in October 2006, which expired in 2007. Late in 2007 the expiry date was extended, and the legislation will expire on 30 June this year. This bill again pushes that date out while another review occurs.

I note the strong support of the Leader of the House now for the legislation. It reminds me somewhat of the comments of my former colleague Steve Maharey. He made some comments while in Opposition, as I remember it. He said: “That’s one of the things you say in Opposition.” I note that Anne Tolley, when in Opposition, said this legislation was a rort and was an absolute disgrace to democracy in New Zealand. Now she is voting for it. The Leader of the House said it was Mugabe-style legislation, and it was utterly disgraceful. Now he is not only voting for it—[Interruption] Oh, it is all right now, because the National Government is promoting it, not the Labour Party. I can understand, from the comments I made earlier, that sometimes people’s perspectives change when they go from one side of the House to the other. But I think the National Government now understands the necessity for this legislation, although I am not sure whether it needed to continue it for this period of time. If Government members had got on with the job in the way they said they would do, had the reviews done, and had the proper legislation introduced, this bill would not be necessary.

But I can accept that the National members have had one or two more important things than this bill on their minds over recent months. Hopefully, now that that time has passed, they will be able to focus on this issue and get it sorted out.

• Bill read a third time.

TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) : It gives me great pleasure to rise to speak on the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area Bill, and it seems like members opposite are looking forward to hearing my speech as much as I am looking forward to delivering it. I will start by saying that I support this free-trade agreement because I believe free trade has been important for New Zealand in the past. It has allowed our businesses and industries to grow and prosper to the size that they are today, and it will offer great opportunities to us in the future. I believe that this free-trade agreement will offer those opportunities to many businesses and industries throughout New Zealand. A number of those businesses and industries are present in my electorate of Rotorua, and I will talk about a few of those in greater detail in a moment.

I have said that this is an important agreement, and I think it is one that others in the world are taking notice of. Of course it is one of the first agreements, if not the first, that the bloc of Asian countries that is collectively known as ASEAN has signed with any other country. Others are taking notice, and particularly I mention the United States administration. Our Government has great ambition to establish a free-trade agreement with the United States market—as did the previous Government—because I think it will do important things for much of the primary sector in New Zealand, as well as other sectors. But we know that discussions in this area are not always as straightforward as we, sitting here in New Zealand, might hope. Why is America perhaps taking greater notice of us now? It is because of the growth, and the potential for growth, in many of the consumer markets in the ASEAN countries. Of course, collectively with these countries, through freer trade, New Zealand is becoming more appealing to the Americans. It would be great if we were a larger country; perhaps we would more easily negotiate a trade agreement with America by ourselves. But the fact is that the world’s economy is coming closer together, and through this trade agreement and other free-trade agreements that have been negotiated or signed, including the one with China, I believe that America is starting to take a bit more notice. Indeed, the new administration has suggested that it would be happy to move forward and have discussions with New Zealand, in partnership with a number of other Asian countries. That is very much what we must focus on—how as a Government we can support more manufacturers, farmers, those involved with horticulture, and other producers in New Zealand, so that they have better, fairer, and freer access to important and more lucrative markets overseas.

I will give a little bit of background about why I think that this is an important agreement. The ASEAN countries are our third-largest trading partner, and they are also our third-largest export market for merchandise goods. I have said that this is the first comprehensive agreement the ASEAN countries have negotiated for goods and services. That includes investment policy, intellectual policy, and some competition policy around the agreement, so that, in future, as trade grows, we do not have disagreements over what is competitive trade and what is anti-competitive. I think that provides a broader approach to regional trade integration—something that those countries in ASEAN have themselves promoted. We know there is a lot of trade—and growing trade—amongst them—[Interruption] Yes, very good; I am very happy to keep going until my dinner is ready. But as I was saying—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: You’re not meant to repeat the words on the note, though; you’re meant to carry on with your speech.

TODD McCLAY: No, no—listen to the man others in this House call their friend. Of course, I put that down in my debate notes, because I knew that it would be a message to those who are making my dinner at the moment. They are listening intently and the dinner will be ready.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Hey, I’d be worried. Gerry has just left the House; he’s probably going to eat it.

TODD McCLAY: Ha, ha! The note that was passed to me said: “Don’t take any notice of the member opposite. He hardly ever says anything of interest.” I agree with that.

Where I was before I was thinking of my dinner—and I apologise if the member took any offence to that; it was meant in jest, as many things in this House are—was to say that our New Zealand exports to ASEAN countries have increased by 121 percent since the year 2000—a 121 percent increase of our exports to that group of countries since the year 2000. Imports have increased dramatically by 244 percent in that same time period. There are 566 million people in those countries, in the ASEAN markets. They are responsible for about NZ$2.2 billion of global trade. What have we achieved with this negotiation and this agreement? In effect, there will be no tariffs on 99 percent of New Zealand exports to Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Viet Nam by 2020 at the latest. That means that, in relation to that increase of 121 percent of exports to these countries over the last 9 years, 99 percent of the products we export will face no tariff barriers over the next 12 years, between now and 2020. That will be a saving of $50 million on duty at today’s rates, and based on today’s trade, for our exports to these countries. That is a direct saving for the New Zealand producer, and that makes our goods more competitive when they reach these markets. By 2010 tariffs will be eliminated on $429 million worth of New Zealand exports at current levels.

I mentioned earlier a number of the areas that will be covered by this agreement, and I want to focus on the area of dairy, for a moment. The select committee received a submission from Fonterra on behalf of the dairy industry, and it is interesting to look at what it had to say. Of course, it will be no surprise to those who are involved in dairying in New Zealand that Fonterra strongly supported this free-trade agreement, and supported it being implemented as quickly as possible. Fonterra recognises that dairy tariffs in key ASEAN markets typically range up to 10 percent, and that our exports incur about $50 million in tariffs per annum. Over that period of time in respect of those countries, with a reduction of tariff rates and the removal of barriers, those in the dairy industry—and the farmers in my electorate of Rotorua—stand to gain. In 2010 there will be an elimination of dairy products from tariffs, as I said. That will include milk powder, casein, butter, ice cream, and cheese. In Reporoa, in my electorate, there is the Fonterra dairy factory, which employs many people and supports many, many farmers indirectly through the processing of their milk. This agreement will mean a greater resource there. I think there will be more employment in my region because of this agreement.

Meat and wool are also very important in many parts of my electorate. We received a submission from Meat and Wool New Zealand that also covered the Meat Industry Association. That, too, supports the agreement strongly. Those entities said that the red meat and wool industries are export-focused sectors of the economy, and that they accounted for about 17 percent of New Zealand’s total merchandise export receipts to the year ended September 2008. The industries employed about 40,000 people, either directly or indirectly, and they have said that during the same period their sectors exported $330 million worth of their goods to the 10 ASEAN countries concerned. Again, the agreement means that tariff barriers will be reduced. The tariffs on beef exports will be reduced for beef to enter these markets between 2012 and 2020, with sheep meats and wool by 2010 to 2016. Those amongst us who have meat and wool producers in our electorates know that the last few years have been difficult times for them. The prices they have been receiving, particularly for sheep meat, have been down. The good news is that prices have increased this year, and a number of farmers tell me they believe that the future is brighter. However, this agreement will go a long way towards helping them and making sure that in the future their access to those markets is sustainable.

Let us get to forestry. Members opposite like talking about forestry; I know that. Forestry is very important in Rotorua, the forestry capital of New Zealand. We are proud of that. Tariffs will be eliminated on key forestry products, again between 2010 and 2020. Again, that is not just about logs—and in my electorate we do export a lot of logs—because this agreement reduces tariffs on processed products, in many cases, like paper. The mills in Kawerau produce a lot of paper; they employ a lot of people there to produce fibre plyboard. One of the problems we have in this country, which we certainly have found over the last 9 years, is that there is not enough focus on the forestry sector. There is absolutely not enough focus on the forestry sector or support for the many people who are employed or gain income from forestry in my electorate, which is one of the reasons, probably, that the people of the Rotorua electorate decided they would like a change, along with the rest of New Zealand last year. We should be investing more in forestry in our country, to add value to forestry in our country, and to add value for jobs so that we can export goods to other countries where we will get a greater return. Through that, the forestry industry will be supported and will gain much, much more.

In respect of horticulture, kiwifruit and apples will have the same conditions. Between 2010 and 2011 their tariffs will be reduced. I am glad that tariffs are coming off onions. I do not like onions, so I tell the person making my dinner not to put onions in it. I am about to finish here—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry, the member’s time has expired.

STUART NASH (Labour) : I was quite interested to hear the member over there, Todd McClay, talk about what a wonderful industry forestry is. I know it is, because I have worked in forestry for Fletcher Challenge Forests and Carter Holt Harvey. But I say to my mate over there that National has made no friends whatsoever in the forestry industry with the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Forestry Sector) Amendment Bill, which we were debating last night. In fact, a lot of foresters have called me up and asked what the hell is going on. The emissions trading scheme was in place, they were all geared up for it, and now the Government has taken another year out of it. National has made no friends, whatsoever.

I move on to this bill, the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area Bill. I rise in strong support of it for a number of reasons. First and foremost, this bill implements a major agreement achieved by the last Labour Government.

Todd McClay: Ha, ha!

STUART NASH: Well, let us give credit where credit is due: Helen Clark and especially Phil Goff took years of work to arrive at such an important agreement. It is a fantastic result for New Zealand, and I think that we should give credit where credit is due. I congratulate Minister Groser for being in the right position at the right time—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Who?

STUART NASH: Well, is that his name? I have not seen him, but he does exist. If we listened to him we would think that he had negotiated the vast majority of contracts that we have ever had. In fact, did he not sign the Treaty of Waitangi?

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: He climbed Mount Everest.

STUART NASH: He did everything!

Sue Moroney: No, that was Aaron Gilmore.

STUART NASH: Oh, was that Aaron Gilmore? At least Mr Groser was there to pick up this free-trade agreement and sign it on behalf of New Zealand.

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

STUART NASH: I was cut down in full flight while talking about the wonderful things that Minister Groser had done, but they were not as good as the wonderful things that the Hon Phil Goff and the Hon Helen Clark did in getting the deal under way and signed.

What tends to happen is that Labour and National attack these things in a bipartisan and cooperative way when it comes to international trade, but not, sadly, when it comes to policy. I will deal with that a little bit later, but now I will talk about some of the work that Phil Goff has done on this agreement. Organisations like Federated Farmers have applauded the Hon Phil Goff for his work on this free-trade agreement. That organisation has said: “Despite all the doom and gloom in the other sectors, it strategically sets New Zealand up for the long haul and farmers appreciate that,”. Farmers appreciate what Phil Goff did for them. The Wellington Regional Chamber of Commerce chief executive has commented: “I would like to congratulate Phil Goff and his officials for their hard work and successful outcome.” Alisdair Thompson, from the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern), said: “Overseas Trade Minister Phil Goff is to be congratulated for his work in expediting the ASEAN/CER FTA for New Zealand,”.

All of us in this House at the moment would agree that Phil Goff was an extremely hard-working Minister of Trade, and the previous quotes, this bill, and the free-trade agreement with China are testament to the fact that New Zealanders, especially those engaged in any form of international trade, are eternally grateful to the Hon Phil Goff and to the officials who did the groundwork on these very important and seminal free-trade agreements.

The passing of this bill will be the conversion to law of a Labour vision for greater international engagement for New Zealand companies. It will be a great victory for New Zealand businesses with export aspirations. But I must admit that those businesses have been severely let down by the current Budget. I support this bill because it opens up enormous potential opportunities for New Zealand businesses that either are currently engaged in exporting or want to become engaged in the export arena. As mentioned by, I think, every single speaker in this debate, the ASEAN market has over half a billion people and accounts for approximately $1.4 billion in global trade. That is a lot of people, and a lot of those people are for the first time entering the age of consumerism. It is absolutely fantastic.

We all agree that increasing the number of free-trade agreements is very much in the best interests of all New Zealanders going forward, for a whole number of reasons. Sustainable economic growth will be achieved only with a much greater degree of international engagement. Of that, I have absolutely no doubt. Export growth is the only way forward for New Zealand. We are a market of 4 million people, and therefore the ability to grow a significant company in this market is slight, if not close to impossible. I cannot think of one large company that has made significant profits without some form of international growth.

Let me pose a question: how will we get maximum benefit out of this agreement? Let me tell members. Ninety-seven percent of New Zealand businesses are small to medium sized enterprises, which means they employ fewer than 20 people. The vast majority of those companies simply cannot afford international marketing or an international market development manager. They cannot afford to relocate sales reps offshore into a market they have no understanding of or control over. Let us remember that we are talking about doing business in countries that have different languages, different legal systems, different business cultures, different mind-sets, and different attitudes to business as a whole. This is especially so in the ASEAN countries—I am talking about Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam. The languages are different, their legal systems are different, their business cultures are different, the channels to market are different—members will get the picture. Doing business in Saigon is not the same as doing business in Tauranga. Gone are the days when New Zealand business people could turn up with All Black jerseys and hope to clinch a deal.

One of the major problems with our economy at the moment is the lack of people with international business experience. So what do companies do in a time of recession?

Todd McClay: They change the Government.

STUART NASH: No, they do not. That is the wrong answer. I am talking about companies. The best ones increase their marketing budget. That is Marketing 101, but those members would not know that.

Simon Bridges: This member earns too much—look at his ties.

STUART NASH: Actually, I remember that member saying that he won Tauranga because he had two ears and one mouth so he listened and did not speak. I suggest that he practise that as he might learn something.

New Zealand’s eyes and ears—our international marketing managers and market development gurus—work for a Government department called New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. That organisation was set up by Mike Moore. I think that members on both sides of the House would agree that Mike Moore knew a little bit about trade. After all, he became the head of the WTO—I tell the characters opposite that that is the World Trade Organization. Gerry Brownlee is now in charge of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, and what happened to it in the last Budget? It lost $10 million of funding. What? Mr English stripped $10 million from the budget of the country’s international marketing arm. New Zealand will never reach its full international potential—it will never reach full, sustainable growth—unless it understands its international competitive advantage and can market it offshore.

Where was Mr Groser when the gods were handing out the dollars for 2009? Was his ego such that he could not get down on bended knee for an organisation that has a mandate to implement his vision? Why did Mr Groser not tell Mr English that he needed more staff with experience on the ground? He needed people who, in this time of recession, could help businesses to internationalise through providing opportunities so that when things take off, we would fly. Where was Mr Groser? I have no idea.

New Zealand’s SMEs—for members opposite who have no business experience, I say that that means small to medium sized enterprises—are the backbone of New Zealand companies. Opposite I see a doctor and a lawyer but no business people. What is going on? Labour is the party of business—we all know that. In fact, the only gentleman with business experience is Mr Tremain, and he is keeping quiet because he knows I am right. If we are to develop our vision for international competitiveness—[Interruption] Dr Coleman is a medical doctor who could not manage his way out of a paper bag, let alone Mt Albert—then these people will need the money and expertise to take it offshore. Yet Mr Brownlee cut $10 million from our international marketing development managers. In these times of uncertainty, it is even more important to open up global trade routes. We absolutely need people on the ground who know how to open up channels for market so that our small to medium sized enterprises can get over there and make it happen. You cut $10 million from that budget. That is shameful; it makes me cry.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): The member should not include the Speaker in his speech.

STUART NASH: But, Mr Assistant Speaker Roy, even you understand that this is shameful. I apologise.

The Budget said to me that Mr English simply does not understand the dynamics of this country’s economy, nor does he understand what needs to happen to achieve sustainable economic growth. Cutting $10 million from New Zealand Trade and Enterprise when we are debating a significant free-trade agreement is akin to stealing the future—

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

JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) : The National Government understands very, very well the importance of free-trade agreements and the importance of opening up trade, in particular around the ASEAN region. That is why I am very pleased to speak to the second reading of this ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area Bill. It is the National Government that understands trade. It is the National Government that is in constant dialogue with groups such as Federated Farmers.

Hon Steve Chadwick: So is Labour; don’t be silly.

JACQUI DEAN: I do not know whether there is a farmer amongst the Labour ranks. I remember that the Minister of Agriculture in the previous Labour Government had not been anywhere near a farm. I fail to see how the previous Labour Government could have had any sense of the importance of agriculture—it certainly did not show any signs of it in its policy. But this National Government does, and the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area Bill is an excellent opportunity for New Zealand. Interestingly, it was recommended by majority that the bill be passed without amendment. It was supported through the select committee process by all parties except the Greens.

Simon Bridges: Did Labour understand it?

JACQUI DEAN: Labour members worked very hard in the select committee process to understand the provisions in the bill. Given that Labour members do not represent the agricultural community, where the main benefits of this bill are—

Simon Bridges: Whom do they represent?

JACQUI DEAN: Well, the previous Labour Government and current members struggle with representing city folk, whereas in the main National MPs, and I am one of those proud members—and I am surrounded by them, as a matter of fact—have their roots in rural and provincial New Zealand. We will be the beneficiaries of the provisions in this bill.

I address this bill because it is important and significant for us in New Zealand. Just briefly, the Association of South-east Asian Nations, or ASEAN, includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam. These are good, strong, emerging markets for New Zealand exporters, and this bill puts in place the provisions where New Zealand exporters can take advantage of the provisions that will go into this bill. The agreement was concluded on 27 February 2009, and this Government is wasting no time in bringing this legislation before the House so that New Zealand exporters and importers can take advantage of its provisions.

Addressing the bill itself, Part 1 makes amendments to the Tariff Act, creating provisions to designate preferential tariffs for goods that are produced or manufactured by the parties to the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area Bill. Under those amendments to the Tariff Act, New Zealand can then set different tariff rates for specified parties. This is quite a technical bill, so I will take the time to go through the provisions. For the benefit of members opposite, I am dealing with Part 1—

Todd McClay: The ones who represent the list.

JACQUI DEAN: Yes, the list members on the other side of the House. Part 1 addresses the issues in the Tariff Act. Secondly, this bill amends the definition of “free trade agreement” in section 15A of the Tariff Act to provide for transitional safeguard measures for this agreement. Of course, there must be transitional provisions, and this is the part of the bill where those come into play.

Part 2 amends the Customs and Excise Act to allow the chief executive of the New Zealand Customs Service to designate certification bodies that are authorised to issue a New Zealand certificate of origin to goods that are to be exported to ASEAN agreement parties. There was a lot of discussion within the select committee on how we must endeavour through the process of considering this bill, and, in fact, through any activity of this Government, to make commerce easier, and to make exporting and importing of products easier, more streamlined, and more efficient in order to encourage trade between these ASEAN partners. The amendments to the Customs and Excise Act are designed to facilitate that. The certificate of origin will identify the goods, and certify that they are of New Zealand origin.

Part 2 and the amendments to the Customs and Excise Act will create the criteria that the chief executive of the Customs Service must measure applications against before the service can certify a body to issue certificates. In the bill the criteria to certify that goods are of a New Zealand origin are described so that goods can be measured against them before certification can take place. This provision also enables the creation of regulations that will set prescribed terms and conditions for certification. This is very important for our exporters, who need certainty. It also sets the criteria, application forms, and fees. As members can see, this bill is quite technical. There was a lot of discussion around it, and it was designed to make the process easier for our exporters in New Zealand.

Moving to the key outcomes of the ASEAN agreement, there will be no tariffs on 99 percent of New Zealand’s current exports to the four key markets within the 12 years to 2020. These four key markets for New Zealand are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Viet Nam. Those of us who have an interest in agricultural matters will understand very clearly that those four markets are very important emerging markets for our exporters.

Todd McClay: The farmers will be pleased about that.

JACQUI DEAN: Yes, I can happily inform my colleague from Rotorua that the farmers are pleased about that. On full implementation by 2020 the bill will provide a total duty saving to New Zealand of $50 million, based on current trade levels. In 2010, tariffs will be eliminated on $429 million of current New Zealand exports to Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

At this point I will acknowledge that this has been a bipartisan agreement, and the approach in the select committee has been generally cooperative and constructive, and I thank my select committee colleagues for that. We were not always in total agreement, but generally we moved in a bipartisan way. It is important to note that tariffs are progressively being eliminated on exports to our very important export markets including Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, but in some of those markets only on milk-powder, butter, wool, products such as kiwifruit, and some manufactured products. This bill brings good news to the New Zealand agricultural sector. From 2011 to 2020, tariffs will be removed on a further $435 million worth of exports to Indonesia, Malaysia, Viet Nam, and the Philippines. We have looked at New Zealand exports, but for ASEAN exports to New Zealand there will be improved access to New Zealand markets through the gradual elimination of tariffs, and that is the nature of this bill. That is what this bill is all about. By 2010 goods from ASEAN countries that are within the 85 percent of tariff lines will be able to enter New Zealand duty-free. There are some good, practical measures in this bill.

I finish my speech this evening by noting that—and I did say this before, but I will say it again—this bill is hugely beneficial to New Zealand trade. It was very encouraging to note Minister Groser saying that New Zealand Trade and Enterprise will be directed into having a focus on our exporters. That is also good news, because it is all very well putting into place a free-trade agreement, and I have described some of those measures in the bill, but in order for that to take effect, and for New Zealand farmers, exporters, and producers to take advantage of it, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise must have its focus on exports and productivity. That is one of the key messages of the National Government through its Budget. I think this bill is a very clear example of this National Government’s desire.

CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) : I will pick up from where my colleague Jacqui Dean left off, in terms of the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area Bill. My colleague Jacqui Dean has a strong background in business, and I know that her electorate down in the south will benefit extremely strongly from the bill. I will start with a point that Jacqui made, which was about New Zealand exports and the key benefits from this bill. The benefits are encapsulated in the statement that there will be no tariffs—that is, zero tariffs—on 99 percent of New Zealand’s current exports to four key markets within 12 years, by 2020. Those four key markets are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Viet Nam.

I will put that statement into the context of what impact that will have on real businesses out there in the New Zealand community. I will talk about a couple of instances that I have experienced in the last couple of days. The first one was when I had the fortunate opportunity to be invited up to the Tauranga electorate, Simon Bridges’ territory, and to a number of businesses in his community. We specifically asked to talk to businesses involved in the export community that are driving New Zealand’s growth and that will benefit from the bill.

One of the key guys we first met was from Oasis Engineering. Oasis Engineering is a wonderful business in Tauranga that is developing valve technology for the compressed natural gas (CNG) industry. It is quite a specialised business, but it is looking for opportunities to put its technology into garages and petrol stations all around the globe. It is quite phenomenal what Oasis is doing and the investment it is making into its product in order to stay 18 months ahead of the world with its product. Oasis takes out patents, but the interesting thing is that on a global scale, taking out a patent is a pretty difficult thing to fight for from down here in New Zealand. But this company is out there doing amazing things. About 70 percent of its market is now exports. It believes there is a huge industry in CNG. In fact, many of the Asian markets, including the ones we are talking about with this ASEAN bill, will have benefits for Oasis. That is absolutely fantastic. Taking the tariffs off its exports to those countries means that it can compete on an even keel. With the technology that this particular business provides, it is absolutely wonderful. This bill will help Oasis Engineering incredibly.

Another business we went to in Tauranga was a company called Trimax Mowing Systems. What a wonderful company. When I stand here and listen to Opposition members talking about employers and how terrible they are to employees, I think they should go right now to see this business. Its export market, which is the majority of its market, has gone through the floor. It would be easy for that business to be sitting there saying that it will have to cut the workforce because these are tough times. But what is Trimax doing? It has its guys on ladders painting the roof, doing all the cleaning, and getting the factory shipshape so that once the export market starts to grow again, it will be in good shape. It has the skills, it is looking after its employees, and it is making sure that when the market picks up again, it is ready for business. That is absolutely fantastic. It is a great company. Although its bigger markets are in America and the UK, it too will potentially benefit significantly from the bill. It is absolutely wonderful.

I will highlight another thing that happened in the House last night. I had the absolute pleasure of hosting in Parliament The Icehouse group. It was able to bring along to Parliament a number of key exporters that are doing absolutely awesome things in the New Zealand market. It is absolutely amazing. I am talking about the Sutton Group. I am talking about two amazing gentlemen from a couple of companies from my own electorate of Napier and from Hawke’s Bay: Robert Darroch from Future Products Group and Hamish Whyte from Furnware. I will talk about Robert Darroch. In 1990 he started out with one other man in his operation. Future Products Group now has 150 employees. It exports products all around the globe. It specialises in the fit-outs of supermarkets, garages, and BP petrol stations. It is an amazing business, dealing with international brands like IKEA. It is a fantastic example. The company is now a $50 million company and is keen to grow further.

This shows how important groups like The Icehouse are in helping people in business, like Robert Darroch from Future Products Group and Hamish Whyte from Furnware. These groups encourage and engender the passion in those businesses to get out of places like Hawke’s Bay, and give them the confidence to go up to Auckland, to go north of the Bombay Hills to first start taking on markets there, then to put their toe in the ocean and into Australia, and then up into Asia. These guys are absolutely wonderful. Companies like Furnware and Future Products Group are the future of New Zealand. They are doing a wonderful job.

This ASEAN agreement will help firms like Future Products Group, Furnware, Trimax, and Oasis. They are the businesses that will improve our balance of payments, grow this nation, take us forward, and grow us out of this recession. I am really pleased to have been able to be involved with those companies in the last week. This bill will help take those companies forward and will help take New Zealand forward. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Broadcasting) : I move, That the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill be now read a first time. This bill amends the Radio New Zealand Act 1995. Its purpose is to update Radio New Zealand’s charter following the second 5-yearly parliamentary review required by section 7(4) of the Radio New Zealand Act 1995. The enactment of this legislation will conclude that review, which was not completed during the term of the previous Government.

Radio New Zealand’s charter is a statement of its statutory functions. The charter outlines the purposes for which the Government owns and funds Radio New Zealand. The second parliamentary review of Radio New Zealand’s charter was completed in 2006. In preparation for the review, Radio New Zealand conducted its own preliminary review of the charter in 2005. This was followed by an extensive public consultation process, which led to the drafting of a revised charter. The charter’s second review gave Radio New Zealand the opportunity to consult its listeners and stakeholders. The revised version of the charter was amended after Radio New Zealand considered the feedback contained in 165 submissions.

The Commerce Committee was then invited to undertake the second review of the charter on behalf of the House of Representatives. In December 2005 Radio New Zealand’s proposed new draft of its charter, as amended following public consultation, was forwarded to the committee for its information and consideration. The select committee tabled its report on 22 March 2006. In the report the committee stated that it was satisfied with the drafting of Radio New Zealand’s proposed revision. The new charter was unanimously supported by the committee.

As a result of this comprehensive review, the revised charter makes a stronger statement than its predecessor about Radio New Zealand’s role as a public broadcaster. The revised text also streamlines and clarifies the charter but will not materially alter Radio New Zealand’s functions or its operations.

Clause 5 inserts new section 8, which contains the charter. The charter is divided into two parts: purpose and delivery. The first part, the purpose, makes a strong statement concerning Radio New Zealand’s purpose as being to serve the public interest, and it describes how this will be achieved through Public Service broadcasting principles of independence, freedom of thought and expression, reliability, and accessibility.

The second part, delivery, expands on how the charter’s purposes must be delivered, and requires Radio New Zealand to endeavour to provide services of the highest quality according to key delivery measures. Amongst other things, those measures require Radio New Zealand to provide services that are predominantly and distinctively of New Zealand; that inform, entertain, and enlighten the people of New Zealand; that are challenging, innovative, and engaging; and that foster critical thought, and informed and wide-ranging debate. The language in the charter has been simplified and the intent is more clearly expressed. This should allow the public to better understand the charter’s objectives.

The Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill also sets out the principles of operation for Radio New Zealand. These are designed to support the introduction of the new charter and reflect Radio New Zealand’s non-commercial public service nature. New section 8A, in clause 5, includes a stronger definition of “commercial-free” and recasts financial viability requirements so that they now remove any potential for requiring that Radio New Zealand provide a dividend. This is consistent both with this Government’s expectations of Radio New Zealand and with longstanding practice.

The bill also updates the requirement for a 5-yearly charter review. Under the current legislation the implementation of a revised charter is delayed, as in the current case, and the life of the new charter before the next review is required can be significantly shorter than the intended 5 years. New section 8B, also in clause 5, removes this potential and provides that the clock does not start ticking on any future review until the charter then in force has been in place for 5 years.

It has now been almost 3 years since the completion of Radio New Zealand’s second charter review. This bill languished under the last administration, whereas this Government is committed to fulfilling its legislative responsibilities. This should have been done, but the previous Government just never got around to doing it. This is an unfair situation for Radio New Zealand, and it shows that the previous Minister of Broadcasting had other priorities. It is highly desirable that the related legislative process be concluded as soon as possible to ensure that Radio New Zealand can operate to an up-to-date and clear public service mandate.

The adoption into legislation of the revised charter supports this Government’s manifesto commitment to provide certainty in relation to the operations of public service broadcasters. There is a remarkably high level of public support for the concept of public service radio broadcasting in New Zealand. This is illustrated by the results of recent research. As well as using the Nielsen company to carry out an ongoing listener survey, Radio New Zealand contracts the company to carry out Radio New Zealand value indices research. The results of Radio New Zealand’s latest annual survey of its listeners are the best that Radio New Zealand has achieved since the broadcaster commenced specific charter research in 2000.

One of this Government’s broadcasting commitments was to have more transparency around public funding for broadcasting. We want to make ratings and research data such as this research by Radio New Zealand available in one place so that it is easy for people to find and use. We want to aggregate all this information on a central Ministry of Culture and Heritage website, and we intend to have this up and running by the first quarter of the new financial year. The research shows that Radio New Zealand is doing a really good job, but we want to make sure that people know where to go to find out this kind of information about all our public broadcasters.

Radio New Zealand and its staff won an outstanding 13 awards for excellence at the 2009 New Zealand Radio Awards. These awards recognise the very best work from commercial and public service radio broadcasters throughout the country. The awards won by Radio New Zealand included metropolitan station of the year, best radio website, individual journalist of the year, best documentary or feature programme for its tribute to Sir Edmund Hillary, two awards for best daily or weekly series, best dramatic production, and best music feature.

Radio New Zealand has adapted well to new technologies in the changing media environment. Radio New Zealand National and Radio New Zealand Concert are both available on the FreeView platform. Online broadcasting activities have been a major focus for Radio New Zealand in recent years. Radio New Zealand has a growing web presence as far as online listening is concerned. Its website offers live streaming, a high-quality text-based news service, podcasting, audio on demand, and an extensive programme archive.

In January of this year Radio New Zealand advised that more than 6 million programmes or programme segments were replayed via its website in the 12 months to the end of December 2008. The volume of online listening, which included audio on demand and podcasting, was more than double the level recorded in 2007. Many of the people who are now downloading programme content through the Radio New Zealand website are new to its audience. These people include younger listeners, and a growing number of New Zealanders who are living overseas. Radio New Zealand’s online broadcasts have increased every month since the service was first launched in 2005, and that growth is expected to continue.

Radio New Zealand is leading the world’s media with its coverage of events in Fiji, with many major international news organisations quoting Radio New Zealand in their own reports. With heavy censorship of local Fijian media, Radio New Zealand International’s website and direct shortwave broadcasts have been among the few reliable sources of news and information for those living in Fiji. With the continuing political and social instability across the Pacific, Radio New Zealand International is now clearly regarded as the authoritative voice of the Pacific.

Radio New Zealand Concert plays a vital role in the health and well-being of many of New Zealand’s premier cultural institutions, including the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Chamber Music New Zealand, the New Zealand String Quartet, the Royal New Zealand Ballet, the National Opera of New Zealand, and performing orchestras in Christchurch and Dunedin.

Radio New Zealand’s services and programmes are non-commercial, pure examples of public service broadcasting. They reflect and respond to the needs and interests of particular sections of the national audience without consideration for the interests of advertisers. The enactment of the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill will deliver certainty and clarity to Radio New Zealand as a public service broadcaster. It reflects changes proposed and accepted as part of the second statutory review of the Radio New Zealand charter, and it concludes that review. I move, that the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill be considered—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): The member may move that motion at the end of the first reading. At this stage he must indicate which select committee the bill will be referred to.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: It is going to the Commerce Committee.

BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) : I am very pleased to speak in support of the introduction tonight of the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill, and to speak fulsomely about Radio New Zealand as an organisation.

I acknowledge that there is a lot of flu going around. Maybe the Minister of Broadcasting has a touch of that flu, because he did not seem to speak too passionately about Radio New Zealand. In fact, he was about as flat as the Mt Albert headquarters for National on the night of the by-election. In my view Radio New Zealand is a national taonga. It is a treasure, and I am very pleased to see this renewed charter for Radio New Zealand. I shudder to think what life would be like without it. What would we have done last month? How would we have known that National was conceding the Mt Albert by-election, without the interview on Radio New Zealand to tell us that a month before the election?

Radio New Zealand has survived against the odds. National members have not always been great fans of Radio New Zealand. At times they have looked at cutting the guts out of Radio New Zealand, so I acknowledge that the Minister of Broadcasting has brought this bill forward. It has been long in gestation. In fact, I acknowledge that there were coalition partners within the last Government that dragged their heels somewhat on this bill as they were perhaps not quite so enthusiastic about Radio New Zealand. But the bill is here in the House tonight and that is a very welcome development.

As the Minister has mentioned, Radio New Zealand is constantly acknowledged for its contribution to New Zealand life. Internationally it wins many awards, and last month it won the New Zealand Radio Awards radio station of the year award and 13 other awards, including all of the journalism radio awards. It won an award for being the metropolitan station of the year, which is an acknowledgment from the commercial radio industry that it is a leading radio station on an international basis.

I would like to talk for a moment about some of the background to the bill. It began under Labour; we will support it. I also acknowledge at this point the contribution made by the former Minister of Broadcasting, Steve Maharey. It was Steve Maharey who in a member’s bill in 1993 first suggested the idea of a Radio New Zealand charter, which came through embodied in legislation passed in 1995 by the then National Government.

One of the things I would like to touch on is that the Minister has spoken in support of Radio New Zealand, yet the fact is that Radio New Zealand’s funding has been frozen for the next 4 years. It got a lift of about $2 million under the previous Government but it has now been frozen for the next 4 years. It is easy to praise Radio New Zealand as an organisation; it deserves that sort of praise. The Minister in a speech last month talked about its playing an important role in public life both in New Zealand and in the wider Pacific region. It is a very important tool in foreign policy because Radio New Zealand International is the voice of New Zealand in our South Pacific region. But if Radio New Zealand is to continue to contribute, grow, and develop, then it certainly needs more financial support than it will get over the next 4 years.

Be that as it may, we have the bill here tonight and it is about the Radio New Zealand charter. I acknowledge that the charter is extraordinarily positive. It reinforces Radio New Zealand’s capacity to do its job. It will reinforce the ability of Radio New Zealand to continue to operate and to provide its leading voice in terms of New Zealand’s cultural identity and its contribution to public life. Many MPs have been interviewed by Radio New Zealand. The programme Morning Report is part of the lifeblood of the nation, as is Checkpoint and other programmes. I think it is fundamental to New Zealand life for many, many New Zealanders. So we are very pleased to see this bill back before the House.

I would like to look back through the history of Radio New Zealand. In the 1970s and 1980s, Radio New Zealand and the other State broadcaster, Television New Zealand, faced a tough time. The National Government of the time froze the license fee, which caused great difficulties. It is almost a miracle that Radio New Zealand has survived. That funding gap also caused Television New Zealand to become much more commercially focused, and, in some respects, to move away from the public service objectives that were expected of it. Through the charter, Radio New Zealand upholds those public service broadcasting objectives. They are a fundamental requirement for Radio New Zealand and it is to be applauded that they uphold them. Amongst the requirements that this charter embodies, its purpose is to foster “a sense of national identity by contributing to tolerance and understanding, reflecting and promoting ethnic, cultural, and artistic diversity”. The charter requires Radio New Zealand “to inform, entertain, and enlighten the people of New Zealand:”. It will provide programmes that “are challenging, innovative, and engaging:”. It will “foster critical thought, and informed and wide-ranging debate:”. It will “stimulate, support, and reflect the diversity of cultural expression,”. It will “provide comprehensive, independent, accurate, impartial, and balanced regional, national, and international news and current affairs:”. If members think of the range of hosts from Morning Report through the Nine to Noon programme—hosts such as Kim Hill on Saturday mornings and Chris Laidlaw on Sunday mornings—and the host of other programmes across Radio New Zealand National and its sister programme Radio New Zealand Concert, they will see that it absolutely delivers on the objectives reflected in this charter.

I comment on the history of Radio New Zealand, going back to the period before this charter was first suggested by Steve Maharey in 1993. There has not always been unanimity of support for Radio New Zealand. When Steve Maharey introduced his bill back in 1993, Tony Ryall—who was at that point, I think, a Minister with responsibilities in that area—said that it was costing taxpayers $20 million a year to provide the two networks, National Radio and Concert FM. His view was that those services could be provided to an equivalent, if not better, standard by an alternative provider. I have spoken to commercial broadcasters since I took on the Opposition portfolio for broadcasting, and I have not yet met a person who does not uphold the fact that Radio New Zealand is an important component of the broadcasting scene. Even commercial broadcasters say that they uphold the idea of contributing taxes towards Radio New Zealand because of the job it performs, and the functions it carries out to a very, very high level, as those awards obviously recognise. As I have mentioned, that has not always been the case. There have been times through the period of the 1980s and the 1990s when it was not just Tony Ryall who was questioning the value of Radio New Zealand. Maurice Williamson, who was the Minister of Broadcasting at one point, did not believe that the Government needed to provide some of the services that Radio New Zealand was providing. He was in two minds at one point in the mid-1990s about issuing the directive that the funding for Radio New Zealand be continued.

I hope that members opposite have moved on. I think that we require a bipartisan commitment to Radio New Zealand and the contribution it makes to New Zealand life, identity, and culture. It is recognised time and time again as an important and integral component of New Zealand life, and this bill really embodies that recognition. We have seen not only the industry but also media commentators recognise Radio New Zealand. I again note the issue of funding for Radio New Zealand. John Drinnan in the New Zealand Herald quite recently talked about a somewhat miserly approach to Radio New Zealand. This is a newspaper media commentator acknowledging the contribution that Radio New Zealand makes, and saying to the Minister of Broadcasting that we really need to look at the funding models for Radio New Zealand.

One of the things reflected in the charter is how Radio New Zealand has been a leader in embracing technology. There were 6 million downloads from Radio New Zealand in the calendar year of 2008. Life gets busy and not everybody is simply able to listen to Radio New Zealand on the spot. Radio New Zealand has leading-edge technology, which is a wonderful resource, but the technology costs money. I implore the Minister to consider the future of Radio New Zealand in a cash-straitened environment. There is also a report that looks at Radio New Zealand’s funding, which I understand the Minister has declined to release. I say to him to put it into the public domain. Let us have the debate; let us see what the organisation that reviewed Radio New Zealand’s funding had to say. Let us hear the argument, and let us see if there is a strong case for Radio New Zealand to have improved funding.

I am supportive of this measure. The charter is integral to Radio New Zealand. Radio New Zealand is an absolutely vital component to New Zealand public life. I am very pleased to see this bill come through into the House. The Labour Party will be supporting this bill through to select committee.

PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) : I rise to support the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill. The bill amends the Radio New Zealand Act 1995, and it contains a new Radio New Zealand charter, as the two previous speakers have alluded to.

I will start by acknowledging the Minister of Broadcasting, the Hon Jonathan Coleman, for his courage to take action—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Leadership!

PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA:—and leadership; that is quite correct—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Competence!

PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA:—and more than competence. He has leadership written all over him. I commend Mr Coleman. Once again, this bill is an example of the Labour Party resting on its laurels and not getting legislation through this House. It is a brave move to take on this legislation and move it quickly through the House.

As we all know, Radio New Zealand is a Crown entity, established under the Radio New Zealand Act 1995. As both the previous speakers have already alluded to, it provides listeners with exciting and independent radio coverage that one will not find from other private broadcasters. It broadcasts over three nationwide networks, namely Radio New Zealand National, Radio New Zealand Concert, and the AM network, which relays our proceedings, even tonight.

Public radio broadcasting did not start with Mr Maharey. It had its beginning in 1925, when under a 5-year contract the Government granted the Radio Broadcasting Co. substantial income from the radio dealer’s licence and 25 shillings from each receiving licence on the condition that the company expanded four existing stations in the main centres in order to establish a national, non-commercial broadcasting system. Company income was insufficient to meet those demands for expansion, so in 1931 legislation was passed to establish the Government-appointed New Zealand Broadcasting Board, which was also dependent on that licensing fee income. After the war, this system became the New Zealand Broadcasting Service. In 1962 Government department status ended with the establishment of the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation. Then we came to the 1995 Act, where Radio New Zealand was established as a stand-alone, Crown-owned entity with the major responsibilities that I have already spoken of.

Under the Act, 5-yearly parliamentary reviews of Radio New Zealand’s charter are required. In 2005 Radio New Zealand undertook its own review, and in consultation with interested parties—listeners and stakeholders—it developed a revised version of that charter. As we have already heard, the parliamentary review of that charter was undertaken by the Commerce Committee, which will later review this bill and oversee its progression through Parliament.

The previous Government did not really get to the point of introducing this bill. As I have already said, it has been a bit lax, a little bit—well, it was occupied with things that do not matter. We know that; we have heard that. We now have a Government in place that will take action on matters such as this one. As we have already stated, the bill is really about the charter. The charter is a particularly important document that sets out operating principles. It defines what Radio New Zealand does, from the staff to listeners and stakeholders, and it is easily understandable, with objectives that are quite precise.

Let us go through the bill. As the honourable Minister has already stated, new section 8(1), inserted by clause 5 of the bill, looks at the purpose: “As an independent and commercial-free public service broadcaster, the public radio company’s purpose is to serve the public interest.” In that respect, it is particularly important to recognise that we have a wide public interest. It is not necessarily about niche programming; it is about what the public will demand. What I like personally about Radio New Zealand and what it delivers is that it does not deliver what we get on other private broadcasting networks. We do not get a deluge of sport or talkback; we get coverage of art, culture, and politics that is unsurpassed in other broadcasting packages.

The bill also, in new section 8(5), addresses service delivery: “In achieving its purpose, the public radio company must endeavour to provide services of the highest quality”—of the highest quality. It is not about just throwing money at programmes, which the last Government was good at; it is about throwing money at high-quality programmes and high-quality outputs that are—and here is the crux—predominantly and distinctively of New Zealand content. That is really important. I have heard nothing from across the Chamber about what Radio New Zealand represents, which is New Zealand culture. I move down to new section 8(5)(g), which says the services must “reflect New Zealand’s cultural identity, including Māori language and culture:”. Again, that is particularly important. I allude to my Māori Party friends as well as to all the Māori out there who understand the need for this type of programming.

New section 8(5)(l) refers to including “an international service to the South Pacific in both English and Pacific languages:”. As someone who has spent a bit of time in the South Pacific, and who has heard the programming in the South Pacific, I know that this is a particularly critical part of showing New Zealand and its culture and language to our Pacific Island brothers and sisters. Again, it is very critical to this legislation to describe the importance of our culture, our language, our customs, and the values that make us New Zealanders.

I also refer to new section 8A(1), also inserted by clause 5. It says “The public radio company must, in fulfilling its Charter, exhibit a sense of social responsibility”. That is right: social responsibility. It is really critical to balance that requirement for social responsibility with the provisions of new section 8A(3)(b)(i) and (ii), which talk about financial responsibility. The issue is about finding the balance between social responsibility and financial responsibility, which is something my colleagues from across the Chamber have no idea about. They are tax-and-spend liberals who would just raise taxes and spend them on programmes that are not effective.

We are talking about highly effective, quality programmes that represent our culture and our customs.

Katrina Shanks: Heritage.

PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA: And our heritage—I thank the member. This bill really is about supporting an institution in this country called Radio New Zealand. It is an institution that, as the honourable Minister has already said, cleaned up at the New Zealand Radio Awards this year. Its website, as my honourable colleague from across the Chamber has said, has over 6 million hits a year, and the quality and make-up of that website—its look and feel—are of particularly high quality. So I commend this bill to the House for its certainty, its clarity, and its support of New Zealand culture. Thank you very much.

Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) : I am pleased to take a call on the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill, because it is a Labour bill. When we brought in this bill the then Opposition members on these benches were railing against publicly funded broadcasting, and they were railing against the charter, saying that nanny State was invading our lives. Yet here National members are tonight congratulating the Minister of Broadcasting, who had nothing to do with this bill; he was on the Opposition benches and its spokesperson on broadcasting when we worked on this bill. I acknowledge Sue Kedgley, who I am sure will later take a call on this bill, because the Greens and Labour fought to maintain the integrity of, and funding for, Radio New Zealand.

Let us go back a little in history and look at what Tony Ryall from the Bay of Plenty said about Radio New Zealand. He said: “I believe that we should be putting up for tender the provision of a concert programme network and the provision of a national radio network.” That is really what they all wanted to do right through the 9 years we were in Government. What about Maurice Williamson? He said: “I have said regularly and publicly that for a company that is both the public radio company and that runs the commercial operation of radio, it is a little like a temperance league running a brewery. They have conflicting interests, conflicting reasons for being, and conflicting funding streams with the potential to subsidise from one to the other.”

When National was in Opposition, it hated the Radio New Zealand Bill. This amendment bill was started after a review of the charter by this House in 2006. Good on Minister Coleman for getting this bill into the House, because it is ours. Of course we will support it. The Minister of Broadcasting talks about wanting quality, publicly funded broadcasting. That is rubbish. If he had his way, he would love to get his hooks in here and flick off Radio New Zealand, too. He talked to Auckland University of Technology students about it, and went very quiet. His introductory speech was also incredibly quiet and incredibly non-committal. He just said that we should get this bill through the House. He does not like it; he never has. He went to Auckland University of Technology and talked about his top priorities for broadcasting. He was more focused on what we will do with Television New Zealand than what we will do with Radio New Zealand.

Although he says how wonderful Radio New Zealand is, and how it is a great watchdog for democracy—and he compares us with countries like Fiji in that respect—what has he done with the funding? Let us look at the funding for Radio New Zealand over the next 4 years. We cannot have publicly funded public broadcasting with frozen funds, and the funding has been frozen at $34.1 million—only $34.1 million, and no more—over the next 4 years. But he wants a robust, quality, publicly funded broadcaster. Well, we cannot have quality for that amount. How do we keep up with technology? How do we keep up with inflation? How do we employ talented staff, who are essential in keeping publicly funded broadcast robust, which is what the previous Government supported? Words are very cheap, I say to Minister Coleman. He praises a broadcaster, on one hand, then starves it, on the other hand. We are used to that. Robert Muldoon starved radio and Television of the public broadcasting fee. We are used to hearing that from National Governments, which say they are absolutely fantastic with business.

This Government forgets that a well-funded public broadcasting system funds the scriptwriters and the musicians who put the content into the charter. That is what Steve Maharey set out to do with the charter. Over Labour’s 9 years we had a brand. We were proud of New Zealand, and talked about telling our stories; it was called the New Zealand identity. Artisans, musicians, poets, and storytellers were excited about having their stories told on national radio. It was absolutely fantastic for us.

I will go back a little bit in history to say that it was in 1999 when the Labour Government—again—started to reclaim public broadcasting values from what was a deregulated, free-market wilderness. It was a shambles. It was all predicated on a commercial rate of return and the broadcasting fee in order to subsidise public broadcasting. We restructured Television New Zealand. We encouraged the development of voluntary codes for local content on radio and on television. It was great stuff. We established Māori Television, and I acknowledge Pita Sharples, who went to Māori Television’s. first birthday. I thank Minister Sharples for acknowledging the Labour Government and the previous Minister of Māori Affairs, Parekura Horomia, for their commitment, with the support of Steve Maharey and Helen Clark, to getting Māori Television under way. These are great histories of what Labour Governments have done for broadcasting in New Zealand.

I say to Minister Coleman that not only did we say that broadcasting was fantastic but also we put money into funding New Zealand On Air and Te Māngai Pāho that has been the real generator of getting New Zealand content and te reo on Māori radio on the airwaves. It is a fantastic story. I know that in Rotorua—I am sure that Todd McClay goes along and does regular broadcasts on Māori radio; they would be difficult to understand—the listenership is simply phenomenal. My husband used to have a regular weekly broadcast session. You know, old people in Rotorua came into the radio station to listen to live broadcast, because they loved to hear those stories being told. That was very vulnerable, and I congratulate Minister Coleman on not changing the charter too much. It would have been quite sinister to see a new Minister of Broadcasting in a new Government strip the charter of all the values that we care about.

I want to talk about another aspect of the charter, the way the charter will be delivered. Section 8(5)(e), to be inserted in the Radio New Zealand Act by clause 5 of the bill, states that the charter will “stimulate, support, and reflect the diversity of cultural expression, including drama, comedy, literature, and the performing arts:”. I heard a fantastic programme on The Arts on Sunday on Radio New Zealand National last week. I ask members to guess what it was focused on. It was focused on the cuts to Artists in Schools in this Budget. The discussion was not shut down, which was great. It was there for us all to hear. People talked about the value of these programmes to develop scriptwriters and artisans in our community. What has happened? Funding to Artists in Schools has been completely cut by the National Government. Those programmes, with a mere $8,000 investment, had multiplier benefits to communities of up to $500,000. This Government has cut the Artists in Schools programme.

It is pretty rich when we have a charter and we have a Minister of Broadcasting who supports the charter, which has some great aspects in it, but other Ministers around him are cutting budgets that would have provided us with the ability for artisans and broadcasters to teach kids in school about the value of broadcasting, so that those children can come into the industry. They would have learnt how to write the stories that will be used on Radio New Zealand. The initiative has been cut. I think that is appalling. It was not mentioned in the Budget, but like the cuts to everything else, like community education, we are starting to see now how deep these cuts are. The Government thought the cuts would go unnoticed. It thought that cutting the arts did not matter, that they were a bit of fluff on the side. But we cannot have a good public broadcaster and we cannot have a charter that can be maintained, that tells the stories of New Zealand, and that tells all the aspects of delivery that are in this charter, if we do not support the artisans, the scriptwriters, and children learning how to do broadcasting. I think that is very sad. It is very short-sighted.

But I must congratulate the Minister on one thing. Section 8A(3), to be inserted by clause 5, states: “The public radio company must, in fulfilling its Charter, ensure that it operates in a financially responsible manner …”. Thank God! The Minister of Broadcasting does not expect any return on funds.

SUE KEDGLEY (Green) : The Green Party is delighted to support the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill. We are immensely relieved to know that there is still one broadcaster left in New Zealand that still has a public service charter that commits its organisation to serving the public interest—not commercial interests, but the public interest—and to providing independent, impartial, balanced news and current affairs. Radio New Zealand is the only independent, commercial-free, public service broadcaster left in New Zealand whose sole purpose is to serve the public interest. Is it not fantastic to listen to the radio when it is not interrupted every few minutes by commercials? We are relieved, too, that the Government has not yet seen fit to scrap Radio New Zealand’s charter, as it has scrapped Television New Zealand’s charter. Of course, we applaud the charter. Who would not applaud a charter with the lofty goals of committing Radio New Zealand to providing independent, commercial-free broadcasting, and so on?

The Green Party strongly supports Radio New Zealand because we believe it is critical to the health of our democracy that we have broadcasters whose sole purpose is to serve the public interest; not to maximise the profits of shareholders, or to chase ratings and to schedule programmes according to how much advertising they will attract, but simply to serve the public interest. It is extraordinary that we have such a broadcaster, because we in New Zealand have the most unregulated broadcasting environment in the Western World.

It is a time where an increasing concentration of media ownership is going into fewer and fewer hands and virtually all of our media are in foreign ownership. We are seeing an ever-greater convergence of newspapers, television, and radio operations, less and less diversity of opinion, and fewer and fewer independent sources of news and information. But Radio New Zealand stands out as a veritable beacon, as the only truly independent, commercial-free, public service broadcaster in New Zealand. Thank heavens for that! Although Radio New Zealand has a charter with these lofty and admirable goals, the Green Party is concerned that successive Governments have not provided Radio New Zealand with the funding that it desperately needs to implement the charter. This is the critical issue that we need to debate. What is the purpose of giving Radio New Zealand this lofty charter if the organisation is so cash-strapped that it cannot deliver on the charter goals?

In the 2007 or 2008 financial year, the then Minister of Broadcasting commissioned an independent review to determine the level of funding required for Radio New Zealand to maintain its services at its current levels—that is, just to keep the organisation going. This review was carried out by independent consultants. It was agreed that the results of the review would form the basis for all future discussions with shareholding Ministers about the level of funding that was needed to maintain Radio New Zealand and its core services. So this is a critically important document that will allow the public to know whether, and by how much, Radio New Zealand is underfunded. The Green Party has been trying to get hold of this critically important document, but the Government—the Minister—is refusing to release it under the Official Information Act claiming that it is commercially sensitive. What utter nonsense!

Radio New Zealand is a public service broadcaster so how can an assessment of its funding possibly be commercially sensitive? We have gone to the Ombudsman asking for this document to be released as we think it is scandalous that this independent funding review is being kept secret. We suspect that the real reason for keeping it secret—indeed, we know—is that this Government and the previous Government do not want the public to know that the independent review concluded that Radio New Zealand was underfunded by $7 million a year, which we are informed of by reliable sources.

The latest Radio New Zealand statement of corporate intent acknowledges that the independent review found that Radio New Zealand was underfunded in its ability to sustain its current services. It found that this was contributing to its relative financial instability and that it would limit future investment in necessary, key, strategic, infrastructure investments. These are obviously diplomatic words, but they are code for saying that Radio New Zealand is financially squeezed and substantially underfunded. Last year, acknowledging this underfunding, the Labour Government finally increased Radio New Zealand’s budget by $2.6 million—which is way less than what the chairman of Radio New Zealand said was needed to maintain Radio New Zealand services at current levels. In fact, the chairman said that he was disappointed that the amount allocated by the Labour Government was well below the recommendations of the recent funding review. It was $4.5 million below the recommendations.

Radio New Zealand was hoping for a further increase to meet this $4.5 million a year shortfall in the funding that was recommended by that independent secret review. Unfortunately, as previous speakers have pointed out, Radio New Zealand’s funding has been frozen by the National Government for the next 4 years. So that means that—never mind inflation—staff wages are frozen. That means that Radio New Zealand will continue to be substantially underfunded, even for carrying out its core activities and to retain its current services. This underfunding will inevitably undermine its ability to meet its charter obligations, to deliver its core services, and maintain, let alone improve, its present services. We are told that already the staff have been told that their wages will be frozen this year; the only thing they will be offered is job security, and Radio New Zealand is projecting a deficit of $1.1 million this year.

I ask members to think about the implications of this underfunding. If Radio New Zealand is constantly cash-strapped, if it cannot invest in new, fresh, innovative programmes, and if wages are frozen so that it becomes increasingly difficult to attract and retain staff to keep the organisation going, then inevitably the quality of Radio New Zealand will deteriorate, and so too will its ratings. This will become a vicious circle. If the quality of programming deteriorates through lack of funding, if ratings then deteriorate, we are fearful that we will start to hear calls not just from ACT—and I am sure Roger Douglas will make these calls soon—but also from the National Government to sell this gem, which is the last, and the only, independent public service broadcaster left in New Zealand.

Increased funding is at the heart of this debate; it is absolutely critical. The supporters of Radio New Zealand, the huge numbers of people who listen loyally to Radio New Zealand, who are as delighted as I am to be able to listen to an informed, interesting, impartial radio organisation that is not constantly interrupted by commercials, need to campaign for an increase in funding. Otherwise we will find that even though Radio New Zealand has a charter it will not be able to deliver it and its programmes will deteriorate. We will be in a vicious circle. Before we know it, the National Government will be talking of selling off, not just Television New Zealand Ltd (TVNZ) but also Radio New Zealand. We know it will try to sell off TVNZ if it gets the next term of Government. We know that because it has already removed its charter and its funding base. We are worried, even though the Government has agreed to this charter, that it really has the same game plan for Radio New Zealand. Therefore, every New Zealander who is concerned about Radio New Zealand needs to be fighting for increased funding for it. Thank you.

Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS (ACT) : It has been over 35 years since I was Minister of Broadcasting and I was very pleased to give it a bit of a shake up at that time. I only regret that the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill does not do the same. I suspect I take a slightly, or maybe a substantially, different stance on this bill from anyone else in the House.

The Radio New Zealand charter tells us that the public radio company’s purpose is to serve the public interest. The fact is that every radio station in New Zealand serves the public interest; if they do not, they simply do not survive. The flaw in Radio New Zealand National is not the inadequacy or otherwise of the charter; it is its structure, as Radio New Zealand National is a monopoly. It is not a monopoly in that consumers do not have choices over the radio station they want to listen to; rather, it has a monopoly of Government funding for radio. Despite the fact that Radio New Zealand National is able to transmit without ads, it still does not rank alongside other market participants. This suggests one of two things about the money it receives. First, there is a large element of waste; it is very hard to charge for services that the Government is giving away free, yet others run commercial operations successfully. This suggests that a lot of money the Government ploughs into Radio New Zealand National is wasted; perhaps it is the thinly veiled leftism that turns so many New Zealanders off. Second, there is a lack of consumer sovereignty. Consumer sovereignty results in resources being moved to the highest-value users. If consumers buy more TVs than cars, then capital will move from car production to TV production. But when a Government pours money into Radio New Zealand National at the exclusion of all others, consumer sovereignty fails to align the capital resources and other resources correctly.

Although ACT will vote for this legislation, the bill fails to do one thing that will deal with these problems; that is, make the funds contestable, and I believe that should happen. If other radio stations or, for example, community groups were able to bid for the right to Government funding by demonstrating the kinds of programmes they sought to offer, and the nature of the public interest they would serve, then the money could achieve a lot more than it does at the moment. But if we continue to funnel it into one organisation, then we will see the waste continue and increase. Only competition enables consumers to choose and provide a disincentive for waste. Until the Government begins to move in this direction, the monopolies, whether they be health, education, welfare, or radio, will continue to fail.

Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Māori Party) : Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. The Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill has emerged as a result of a parliamentary review. In coming to this review I have been thinking about some of the history before us that has helped to shape the modern-day Radio New Zealand. I think of the legendary Wīremu Parker of Ngāti Porou, who was the first appointed Māori reader and who maintained a strict vow to himself that he would never use a Pākehā word in his bulletins. I think of Ngāti Kahungunu man Ted Nēpia, who during the 1950s broadcast a weekly 20-minute Māori current affairs programme, Te Reo o te Māori, from a Napier radio station. Then there was Bill Kerekere and Leo Fowler, who took the large mobile broadcasting studio around New Zealand. Māori broadcasters who joined the section included Selwyn Muru, Haare Williams, Whai Ngata, Hāmuera Mitchell, John Rōpata, Derek Fox, Pūrewa Biddle, Te Pere Curtis, John Tūrei, and Hēnare Te Ua. Radio New Zealand is all the better for the expertise of people such as Ana Tapiata and Eru Rerekura, to name just a few.

If a picture painted a thousand words, the art gallery of Māori broadcast talent that has shaped Radio New Zealand would be full to overflowing. Taken together, this history is a proud one that has carved out the broadcasting highway that we travel on. But the reality is that although the history of Māori broadcasting as a collective force can be recounted at any one time, it was generally one or two individuals, at best, doing what they could to ensure that Māori programming was included as a key feature of a distinctive New Zealand radio voice.

Even today, in terms of current content, Radio New Zealand has only about 5 or 6 percent of on-air time dedicated to Māori programming. We are proud of iwi radio stations and all the incredible achievements that the 22 Māori radio stations have demonstrated throughout Aotearoa. But Radio New Zealand has an independent and commercial-free public service broadcast for New Zealand, and must firstly serve public interests. The Māori Party supports the view that Radio New Zealand should remain in public ownership but show a greater responsiveness to the needs and aspirations of all peoples of Aotearoa. Public interest includes the interests of our Treaty partners, the 15 percent of the population who are iwi Māori.

The bill amends the Radio New Zealand Act 1995 to provide for a new charter, which resulted from a 5-yearly parliamentary review as required under section 7(4) of the Act. Neither the existing nor the proposed charter makes any mention of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, although both contain provisions to reflect New Zealand’s cultural identity, “including Māori language and culture”. It is the Māori Party’s view that signalling the Treaty of Waitangi in the charter might help Radio New Zealand to understand its statutory obligation better. It is the Crown’s duty as a Treaty partner to assist and support iwi and hapū to fulfil their responsibilities as guardians of their respective reo.

Having consideration for the impact of Te Tiriti is not just about te reo but about Māori stories, Māori shows, Māori current affairs, and Māori events. The Māori Party will therefore be putting forward a Treaty of Waitangi clause to be inserted in the charter to ensure that overarching decisions on Māori language and culture lie with Māori, and that broadcast content upholds and promotes the Treaty relationship. The Treaty clause will ensure that overarching decisions on Māori language and culture lie with the Māori partner, that future charter reviews require consultation with the Māori partner, and that broadcasting services uphold and promote the Treaty relationship. However, it is not just about introducing a Treaty clause; it is also about the participation and involvement of Māori in helping to ensure that the highway to the future for Radio New Zealand truly does reflect tangata whenua interests as the indigenous peoples of this great country.

We were initially concerned that any statutory review of the Radio New Zealand charter could be conducted without being required to undertake any formal consultation with Māori. In getting to this stage, Radio New Zealand conducted a preliminary review of the charter, followed by public consultation on the reviewed charter. The new draft was considered by the select committee and is reflected in the bill.

We believe that future reviews of the charter need to include consultation with Māori, including Te Whakaruruhau. We appreciate that section 50 of the Crown Entities Act 2004 assesses the extent to which as an entity Radio New Zealand fulfils the charter expectations of its performance on an annual basis. We therefore recommend that annual assessments of performance against the charter should take Māori views into account. Future assessments should take into account the views of Te Whakaruruhau o Ngā Reo Irirangi Māori, the national federation of Maori radio stations; Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, the Māori Language Commission; and Te Māngai Pāho.

Finally, although much of the new charter is a tidy-up of wording and grouping of the provisions, there seems to be only one notable deletion, which is the programming of interests for minority audiences. We believe that we should reinstate a provision to provide programming of interest to minority audiences.

We support the bill at its first reading, but we want to make it quite clear that we require consultation to be undertaken with Māori separate to the select committee process. The Crown’s duty to protect and promote te tino rangatiratanga of iwi and hapū in respect of their taonga is also to be carried out by State-run cultural institutions such as Radio New Zealand. To ensure that that does take place, we recommend in the strongest way that before the bill proceeds further, specific and genuine consultation is undertaken with Te Puni Kōkiri, Te Whakaruruhau o Ngā Reo Irirangi Māori, Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, and Te Māngai Pāho. We will then look forward to seeing the considered views of Māori about the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill when it comes before the select committee. Thank you.

KATRINA SHANKS (National) : It is my pleasure to rise and speak to the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill tonight. The bill amends the Radio New Zealand Act of 1995 and contains a new Radio New Zealand charter that has resulted from a parliamentary review required by the Act. This charter is reviewed by the House of Representatives at 5-yearly intervals to ensure that the charter stays current in the changing environment that we live in. Radio New Zealand’s proposed new draft is considered as part of the Commerce Committee’s review and is reflected in this bill. No other review was performed, apart from the select committee review, when it was taken into consideration. Formulating a charter is considered to be best practice for public broadcasters.

Radio New Zealand began its charter review process by examining the charters of various comparable public broadcasters, including those of the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. The review sought to ensure that the revised draft was expressed as a set of aspirations, in simple and accessible language. It was also to be technology neutral, and to differentiate Radio New Zealand clearly from commercial broadcasters. It is very important that we maintain that difference and that gap so it is unique in its own right. The draft of the revised charter was approved for public discussion by Radio New Zealand’s board of governors and the Minister of Broadcasting. Radio New Zealand then initiated an extensive consultation process. On-air promotions broadcast 37 times on Radio New Zealand National and 17 times on Radio New Zealand Concert, between 18 October and 2 November 2005. The deadline for public responses was pretty rapid, on 4 November, and Radio New Zealand estimated that the on-air promotions reached 16 percent of all New Zealanders aged 15 and over. And 16 percent is not a bad hit for the people it wanted to touch, in order for them to put in a submission or a view on how the charter would affect them in their lives.

It is important that we ensure that we protect this charter and the integrity of the programmes that are made under it. More important, Radio New Zealand estimates that 460,000 of its listeners heard the charter review information at least once. That number of 460,000 is a big touch. Not many people can provide that number when we ask for submissions on a normal inquiry. It is an approach that we should maybe have for all submissions, if we can get a touch like that at 460,000. Some 118 individuals and organisations that had made submissions on the previous charter review in 2000 were invited directly to make submissions, as were those who had commented on issues relating to Radio New Zealand in the intervening 5 years. In addition, there were approximately 3,000 hits on the charter review section of the Radio New Zealand website during the public consultation process. So the public had a wonderful chance to be informed, to understand exactly how the charter would impact on them, and to have an input into that process.

The Commerce Committee chose a great democratic process. A total of 165 submissions were received and analysed for the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage. As a result, eight minor amendments were made to the draft charter. A copy of this charter was provided to the Ministers, and it was appended and presented to the House. The public consultation process was considered to be of a satisfactory standard, so it was unnecessary to conduct a public submission to go through the matter and to get people’s opinions. It was interesting, though, that the select committee went on to say that it wanted to ensure and strongly recommend the retention of the word “spiritual” in the charter. That desire came through very clearly in submissions, and it was good to see that this stayed in and appears in the context of the requirement that Radio New Zealand endeavour to “contribute towards intellectual and spiritual development:”. So that element, which had come very strongly from submitters, was maintained. The interaction between religion and international politics has become one of the most significant issues in many parts of the world; therefore, it was good to see that that will be well-covered in Radio New Zealand’s programming.

The charter states that the purpose of Radio New Zealand is to be a public broadcaster, which is followed by provisions stating how it achieves that purpose through delivery of its services. The adoption of the revised charter supports the Government’s manifesto commitment that provides certainty to the operations of public broadcasters. And that is very important. If we want to keep our high standard of public broadcasters, we have to ensure a certainty of the operations—that they will be going from year to year, and even for much longer. This charter is for a 5-year period, so it is important we have a vision in place and some aspirations, and a framework in which our top-class public broadcasters will stay with Radio New Zealand. The revised wording streamlines and clarifies the charter, especially by defining “commercial-free”, but does not materially alter the role and expectations of Radio New Zealand.

The amendment charter is divided into two key parts: purpose and delivery. The first makes an explicit statement on Radio New Zealand’s purpose, as being “to serve the public interest.”, and how this can be achieved through public broadcasting principles. The part about serving the public interest is interesting in itself, because many people have a different definition of what a public interest actually is. It is good that this charter has kept that wide, so that we can have a broad range of programmes running through Radio New Zealand and a broad range of ideas coming forward as to what programmes there should be in the future, as our society changes and the needs of listeners change, as well—as do the demographics to a certain extent. The second part expands on delivery: the way that Radio New Zealand can deliver the charter. The bill is consistent with the rights and freedoms set out in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, and the bill clarifies that the clock will not start ticking on the next 5-yearly review until the bill comes into law. That takes into account the fact that there may be a significant time lag between the start of a review and a new charter coming into force. So it will not necessarily be 5 years exactly, but it will be around the 5-year period.

The previous Government had proposed to disestablish Radio New Zealand as a Crown entity company, and to establish it as an autonomous Crown entity. This will not go ahead, because there is no compelling reason for that change. An appropriate balance of independence, operational flexibility, and well-understood transparency and accountability measures are best served by maintaining Radio New Zealand as a Crown entity company. The corporate form provides a flexible operational framework backed up by a well-established and transparent set of Government responsibilities. It can accommodate both commercial and non-commercial entities. Examples of not-for-profit companies include primary health organisations and Catholic school health boards. Crown research institutes are an example of Crown entity companies that, like Radio New Zealand, have a significant public service character and are constituted as companies. It is my pleasure to support this bill here tonight.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) : For anybody who is still awake after that last member’s speech, I tell them that that was Katrina Shanks from the National Party showing the true degree of enthusiasm that National has for the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill. Commitment and passion for public radio dripped from every word we just heard from Katrina Shanks!

The Labour Party supports this bill because it confirms the important role of Radio New Zealand as a public broadcaster. Labour believes in public broadcasting, and has invested in it over a long period of time. We believe that it is important that New Zealanders hear their own voices and their own stories. In a time when we have a plethora of choices in the media market, we still have a public broadcaster that we know will reflect who we are. The charter is a very important part of that, and this bill is an important part of that, too.

I will reflect briefly on some of the history around Radio New Zealand; we have already heard a bit of it in the debate tonight. I particularly want to talk about the period after 1988 when Radio New Zealand was a State-owned enterprise, and eventually became a Crown-owned company in the 1990s. It was a very difficult time for Radio New Zealand. Year upon year in the 1990s we saw budget cuts for Radio New Zealand’s budget: $10 million a year was taken out of Radio New Zealand in the 1990s. That was a perilous state for our public broadcaster to be in. I see that Tony Ryall is with us tonight, and is making some interjections. In 1993, at the time that money was being taken out of Radio New Zealand, this is what Tony Ryall had to say about the broadcaster: “I believe that we should be putting up for tender the provision of a concert programme network and the provision of a national radio network. At present, it costs taxpayers some $20 million to provide those networks, but those services could be provided to an equivalent, if not better, standard by an alternative provider.” A translation of that is: “Flick it off, sell it, and privatise it.” I am quite sure that Tony Ryall has not changed his view about Radio New Zealand one iota. In fact, it would be interesting to hear from Mr Ryall to see whether he has. I do not believe that National is truly committed to Radio New Zealand. It is a good thing that this bill has come forward. It is a Labour bill, and it ensures that the charter will now be able to be implemented in a proper way. But I do not believe that National’s commitment to public broadcasting is anything more than skin deep.

My colleague Sue Kedgley has already spoken tonight about National’s attitude towards Television New Zealand and the other charter we had in place to govern public broadcasting. That has gone, and we have not really heard from Jonathan Coleman how Television New Zealand will continue to fulfil its important role as a public broadcaster over the next few years. We know that in the past the National Party has not been very keen on the notion of social responsibility in public broadcasting, but tonight, all of a sudden, social responsibility is back on the agenda. Ms Kedgley is a more charitable person than I am, and she has been congratulating National on that. I am not convinced, and one of the reasons I am not convinced is that, as we have already heard tonight, the funding for Radio New Zealand has been frozen at $34 million a year. Over the next 4 years no new money will be coming in for Radio New Zealand, so how will it be able to fulfil its obligations under the charter to be a public broadcaster that all New Zealanders can be proud of? It is not just the Labour Party that is raising these concerns. An editorial in the Otago Daily Times recently said: “Frozen funding means no pay rises, no money to meet inevitable rising costs, no money for infrastructural development and no money to meet new trends and developments in the medium. That does not augur well for such an admired and critical part of our broadcasting services.” That is what the editorial in the Otago Daily Times said. The paper could see through National’s rhetoric on this bill.

In 1995, when the charter was brought in, Sharon Crosbie said that the charter was a document to be “waved at the Treasury, NZ On Air, Rotary groups, staff and the board. The Ministry might reinterpret the charter each year but it is now nailed to the door … to … protect public radio”. That is what a charter can do for public broadcasting. No matter what is slung at the charter, and no matter what ridiculous political accusations, such as those we heard from Sir Roger Douglas tonight, are flung at it, it is a charter in law that protects and provides for New Zealanders a public radio service that can reflect them and their values. That is an essential thing. Sharon Crosbie was alluding to the fact that there were people in Treasury and other places in our system who would like to see Radio New Zealand flicked off. There still are. As I said before, I think that Tony Ryall is one of those people, and I am sure that others in the National caucus also believe that.

Public broadcasting in the digital age is more important than ever. We hear a lot from National about the importance of choice. In the media world we have so much choice. We can have programmes and content delivered through the Internet, television, and radio—a huge variety of sources. Some may ask why we need public broadcasting in that environment. It is all out there; we can all go and get it. We need it because it is important to our identity. It is important to our sense of who we are.

I was reflecting on this the other day when I was watching the programme on Sunday morning that follows Q+A on Television One.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Mr Garrett would know about that.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes, Mr Garrett has been on the Q+A programme. Attitude is the programme that follows Q+A, and it is about New Zealand’s disability sector. It is one of the most amazing, incredible, and insightful programmes. Radio New Zealand also has a programme on the disability sector, called One in Five. Again, this is incredibly important programming that in the fully commercial environment would not see the light of day. We need public broadcasting to bring forward the stories of New Zealanders that we simply would not hear in a commercial environment.

We need to be able to do this in different ways. Radio New Zealand’s website is something that it can justifiably be very proud of. The website allows an incredible amount of access to sound archives, and is listened to around the world by expatriate New Zealanders. Radio New Zealand staff are developing their craft in terms of the new media of delivery of broadcasting. That is something that needs to be supported and invested in, but is not being supported and invested in, because funds have been frozen by this Government.

I will speak about something that has not been talked about in the debate tonight that comes under new section 8(5)(l) of the charter, inserted by clause 5. It states that Radio New Zealand should: “include an international service to the South Pacific in both English and Pacific languages:”. We generally know that service as Radio New Zealand International. The Radio New Zealand International service is highly regarded and appreciated across the Pacific. It keeps people in far-flung islands in the Pacific in touch with world events through a range of programming relevant to them. It is an incredibly important part of New Zealand’s relationship with the Pacific. I do not think that it has always been appreciated as well as it could be by Governments of all sides in terms of the role it plays in New Zealand’s being a positive influence in the Pacific. I have a grave concern that over a number of years it has not received the funding it needs to ensure that New Zealand continues to be an important part of the lives of people in the Pacific. So although it is good to see the service reflected in the charter, the fact that funding has been frozen supports the notion that Radio New Zealand International will not be developed by Radio New Zealand. The service has the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and NZAID, which are also under attack from this Government. I am concerned that Radio New Zealand International will not be able to fulfil the charter requirements we see today.

The bill does some very important and significant things. It puts in place principles of operation to allow the charter to work. It is worth reading these out, because they actually show the value of having a 5-yearly review process such as we have for this charter. The review showed that Radio New Zealand needs something to back up its principles of operation. Now we have a public radio company that must: “in fulfilling its Charter, exhibit a sense of social responsibility by—(a) having regard to the interests of the community in which it operates; and (b) endeavouring to accommodate or encourage those interests when able to do so.” It sets up Radio New Zealand as an institution that will be socially responsible and promote New Zealand’s identity.

This is a good bill; it is a Labour bill. I am very pleased that the National Government has picked it up, but we need a greater commitment from the Minister of Broadcasting, Jonathan Coleman, to public broadcasting that all New Zealanders can be proud of.

MELISSA LEE (National) : I rise to support the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill. It seems like a lifetime ago when I last spoke in this House. It is a pleasure to be standing here tonight to speak in this Whare. Kia ora tātou. Before I talk about the bill I will go through some things Mr Robertson mentioned. The Television New Zealand (TVNZ) charter has disappeared, according to him. It has not disappeared. I tell Mr Robertson that it has not gone anywhere. Perhaps he should study it a little bit more. The TVNZ charter did not disappear; it is being managed by New Zealand On Air so that it can provide transparency. TVNZ did nothing with the charter money—absolutely nothing.

Hon Tony Ryall: Willy Nilly got funded.

MELISSA LEE: Willy Nilly got funded, apparently. Mr Robertson also talked about the wonderful programme called Attitude. I agree with him that it is absolutely fantastic.

Brendon Burns: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I draw your attention to the claim that the TVNZ charter did nothing. It funded a programme the MP was involved in.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker): That was not a point of order. Order is about order. That was a debatable point, and the member was being discourteous by interrupting the member’s speech.

MELISSA LEE: I will correct Mr Burns. The charter money did not fund Asia Down Under—I will get to that subject. Mr Robertson talked about the Attitude programme, and he was right—Robyn Scott-Vincent and the production team do a wonderful job. But that funding does not come directly from the charter fund. Asia Down Under is not funded from charter money, either. It is so typical of members opposite to mislead people—so very typical. Jacinda Ardern mentioned that I parked, apparently, in a disabled car park. I remind people that I took a cab and left my car at home—so what was that about being misleading?

The bill amends the Radio New Zealand Act 1995 and contains a new Radio New Zealand charter that has come about as a result of a parliamentary review that was completed in 2006, as required by the Act. Although it is a small bill, it speaks volumes beyond its few pages. Do members know why? The Radio New Zealand Act 1995 requires that the charter be reviewed at 5-yearly intervals. After the last review of Radio New Zealand was completed in 2006—after a preliminary review that was followed by a public consultation process on the revised charter—the previous Labour Government should have done what this Government is proposing to do tonight. The select committee of the day recommended the charter. The previous Labour Government never finished the job. That is how committed the Labour Party is to public broadcasting! Well, are we not lucky that the John Key - led National Government cares about public broadcasting, and that the Minister of Broadcasting, Jonathan Coleman, is making sure we get on with the programme? That is unlike the previous Government, which never finished the job—it never did it right.

The amended charter is divided into two parts: purpose and delivery. Before I get on to the purpose and delivery of the charter as reflected in the bill, I will take a moment to talk a little about the vibrancy of radio and the important role it plays in our daily lives. The sheer speed at which it happens is absolutely incredible. I have never worked in radio, but as someone who once worked in television I found that, compared with television, radio has speed, simplicity, and connectivity with the public. I used to get rather jealous of my colleagues who worked in radio.

I am an avid listener to the radio. Instead of the latest single that my son would rather I listen to while I am driving, I like to listen to talkback radio when I get the time. Often talkback is one way of gauging what people around New Zealand are concerned, incensed, or even passionate about. Perhaps some of those members opposite should ring up talkback radio stations and get their anger out and sorted. Radio—in particular, Radio New Zealand—provides a raft of programming that commercial radio does not cater for, such as children’s drama, the Radio New Zealand Concert programme, and poetry reading, to name just a few things that do not happen on commercially driven radio stations. Radio New Zealand’s radio drama is incredibly engaging, and even without pictures and special effects, by using just sound, it can inspire and trigger great imagination, which I believe is incredibly powerful.

The purpose of Radio New Zealand as a public broadcaster is to “serve the public interest”. That purpose supports the National Government’s commitment to providing certainty to the operations of public broadcasters, and that is a good thing. The revised wording suggested by the bill streamlines and clarifies the Radio New Zealand charter. For example, clause 4 amends section 2 of the Radio New Zealand Act by defining “commercial-free” to mean “without advertising or sponsorship; but (b) to avoid doubt, does not include announcements by Radio New Zealand of its own services”.

Grant Robertson: Say “I don’t know.”

MELISSA LEE: What this means, I say to Mr Robertson, is that although Radio New Zealand is commercial-free it can run its own station advertising, as is common in television and radio, to promote its own brand or programmes. Perhaps the Labour Party should try that.

Proposed new section 8(5) deals with the delivery of service—which the previous Labour Government was very lax in doing, never even completing the process during its term—in Radio New Zealand’s endeavour to serve the public interest. That is the bit I really care and am pleased about. In my maiden speech I spoke about my concern for New Zealand’s youth as they become exposed to more and more overseas content than our very own New Zealand content. The revised charter puts in plain language what is expected of Radio New Zealand in that regard, stating that in its endeavour to provide the highest quality it must provide content that is “predominantly and distinctively of New Zealand”. To me, that is absolutely wonderful, because I have a 10-year-old child who can now listen to the radio and hear about New Zealand.

The delivery provisions further state that Radio New Zealand’s services must “inform, entertain, and enlighten the people of New Zealand”, and that the content must be “challenging, innovative, and engaging”, unlike some members opposite. It also demands that services must reflect the diversity that exists in culture, drama, comedy, literature, and the performing arts. They must also reflect New Zealand’s cultural identity, including Māori language, te reo, and Māori culture. This one I really like: services must “provide comprehensive, independent, accurate, impartial, and balanced regional, national, and international news and current affairs:”, which, I have to say, are lacking in our media sometimes.

Stuart Nash: Is this another speech Jonathan wrote for you?

Chris Hipkins: “The Maestro” wrote it.

MELISSA LEE: Ha, ha! Oh dear! It is so good to be back in the House. The amazing thing about radio is that it has the function of reliving some of the most historic moments in our history. I remember Sir Edmund Hillary climbing Mount Everest.

Stuart Nash: You remember that?

MELISSA LEE: I do not remember it, because I had not been born then, but the thing is that when I heard the story on the radio I could picture it. Radio has an amazing function.

This amendment bill clarifies the uncertainty Radio New Zealand had previously over its status. The previous Government proposed to disestablish Radio New Zealand as a Crown entity company and establish it as an autonomous entity. But in Minister Coleman’s wisdom—and I am sure Radio New Zealand will breathe a sigh of relief—that will not go ahead. Radio New Zealand can go about its business of producing good local New Zealand content.

It is lovely to be back in this New Zealand Parliament as a member of Parliament. Regardless of what Labour members might say, this bill is a National Government bill, and the Minister is finishing what the previous Government should have done but which it never did for years and years. I commend this bill to the House.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) : I rise to support the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill. This bill amends the Radio New Zealand Act 1995, and contains a new Radio New Zealand charter. That new charter results from a parliamentary review, which was required by the Act. This bill began under the previous Labour Government, so we support it. Over the past decade New Zealand has undergone a quantum shift in terms of how we view ourselves. Our public broadcasters have had an important role to play in that process, and Labour was a leader in making that happen. This bill has been delayed for 2 or 3 years. We acknowledge that, and there were reasons for that delay. But let us not forget that it was Labour that initiated the review of the Radio New Zealand charter.

Under section 7(4) of the Radio New Zealand Act 1995, Radio New Zealand’s charter is required to be reviewed by the House of Representatives at 5-yearly intervals. The second parliamentary review was completed in 2006. In preparation for that review, Radio New Zealand conducted a preliminary review, followed by public consultation on a revised charter. Radio New Zealand’s proposed new draft was considered as part of the Commerce Committee’s review and is reflected in this bill. The charter in new section 8, inserted by clause 5 of the bill, states that the purpose of Radio New Zealand is to be a public broadcaster, followed by provisions stating how it achieves that purpose through the delivery of its services. Radio New Zealand began its charter review process by examining the charters of various comparable public broadcasters, including those of the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. The review sought to ensure that the revised draft charter was expressed as a set of aspirations in simple and accessible language. It was also meant to be technology neutral, and to differentiate Radio New Zealand clearly from commercial broadcasters.

The changes in the charter are positive. It is updated, it is given a clearer focus on the technological changes that are taking place, and it acknowledges the increasing use of podcasts and web technology. It upholds that Radio New Zealand is a State-owned entity that should not be influenced by commercial interests, which is not the case with other public broadcasters, particularly Australia’s multicultural Special Broadcasting Service, or “SBS”, which has recently started to run advertisements. So I tell members not to presume that because we have an excellent Radio New Zealand National that will always be the case, and that it will not be subject to pressure to partially fund itself with advertising. The charter does away with any requirement for a return on funds, and we understand that Radio New Zealand is pleased with this bill. It is pleased the bill has passed through all the hoops and is now back before Parliament for a final conclusion. So we are very pleased that this bill is before the House, and that the National Government is supporting it.

It is all very well, though, for the Government to bring in this legislation and say it is committed to Radio New Zealand being a “great watchdog for democracy”, as the Minister of Broadcasting, Jonathon Coleman, has done, while at the same time freezing the funding for that great watchdog, and having very little policy in place to build on it. It is one thing to praise an organisation; that is easy. But it is quite another thing to starve that organisation of funding. The previous Labour Government was committed to providing strong baseline funding for Radio New Zealand. We were committed to a strong broadcasting system, and we do not believe that the National Government is. Frozen funding means no pay rises, no money to meet the inevitable rising costs, no money for infrastructural development, and no money to meet new trends and developments in the medium. As the Otago Daily Times assistant editor Simon Cunliffe wrote in an opinion piece in that newspaper this morning, “that does not augur well for such an admired and critical part of our broadcasting services.”

I am a former journalist—a print journalist, not in radio—but I have a passion and a commitment to the craft of journalism, the ethics that underpin it, and the importance of the fourth estate in contributing to a strong and vibrant democracy. I am also the Opposition spokesperson on communications and information technology, and I understand the importance of what is called “convergence”, which is the inevitable converging of information and communications technology and broadcasting. That is happening right now, and it is resulting in new ways of delivering and receiving traditional media and information. So I will talk about the differences between Labour’s and National’s policies in this area.

Despite the National Government’s support for this legislation, the Government has virtually no policy on broadcasting, and no policy on the convergence of the media and information and communication technology. Instead, National has frozen the funding for Radio New Zealand National and Concert FM for the next 4 years. National’s broadcasting policy is a joke. With regard to radio, in essence the policy states that there will be continued funding for Radio New Zealand National, the National Pacific Radio Trust Board, and Access Radio, but it does not state anything about freezing that funding. That is all the stated policy about radio.

In comparison, Labour’s policy was far more comprehensive and visionary. It states: “The radio broadcasting sector in New Zealand is one of the most successful and competitive in the world. The mix of commercial and non-commercial radio broadcasting provides a wide range of choices for New Zealanders. But changing technology is providing both challenges and opportunities for the radio industry. Labour is committed to ensuring that diversity in our radio broadcasting continues to provide New Zealanders with programming across interest groups and technologies. … Labour will ensure the availability of diverse programming on radio through both national and local radio broadcasters.”

Labour’s policy goes on to state: “Ten years ago … New Zealand music airplay was at 7.5 percent. Radio New Zealand was under-funded and largely available only on the AM frequency. Today … New Zealand music airplay is between 19 percent and 20 percent. Radio New Zealand is available on AM and FM as well as streaming online and by podcast.” Radio New Zealand’s website, which is a pretty incredible website really, has something like 6 million hits a year. That website was developed under the Labour Government, and there was more to come in that area. I would be very interested to know what National’s policy is in this area. Labour’s policy also points out: “Access Radio has more funding available as well as funding for specific projects. National Pacific Radio Trust is broadcasting programmes by and for Pacific peoples throughout New Zealand.” We would like to know a bit more about National’s policy in that area, too.

Labour’s policy vision is: “Ten years from now … New Zealand radio should be available in digital form to New Zealanders around the world on any technology that they choose. This will include radio by and for the diverse range of ethnicities and interest groups that make up New Zealand society.” The pro-competitive policies that Labour introduced during the telecommunications stocktake are driving the convergence of many technologies. We are seeing that convergence in every aspect of our lives. Digital media and content now impact on the lives of all New Zealanders in some way. Labour believes that all New Zealanders benefit from the convergence of information and communications technology and the broadcasting industries. I have not heard a word out of National members about any of these matters.

In the last decade the Internet and other forms of communication, such as cellphones, have increasingly become vehicles for broadcasting, and traditional broadcasting receivers, such as television, have become more interactive. This will continue to be the case in the future. It is important, therefore, that we ensure that the regulatory environment keeps pace with technological changes, to ensure that New Zealanders receive safe, competitive, and high-quality services, regardless of the medium through which they are accessing those services. Labour wants New Zealanders to have the best possible access to digital content, especially content that is produced locally. We would have encouraged more innovative ventures, such as the New Zealand On Screen and New Zealand On Air projects, which are making much of our rich cultural heritage available online and free of charge. We will keep working to develop policies that ensure that New Zealanders have better access to important local content. Labour recognises the importance to New Zealand of digital content. Labour’s digital content strategy sought to recognise and leverage content to our advantage. That content strategy shares the same vision as the National Digital Strategy for New Zealand to be a world leader in using information and technology in order to realise its economic, social, environmental, and cultural goals, for the benefit of all its people.

We believe that public broadcasting plays a vital role in nation building. We have a conviction that public broadcasting should not be left to the market. The Government needs to be looking comprehensively at whether the needs of all New Zealanders are being met. Public broadcasting needs to be properly funded. I commend the bill to the House.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) : I thank the member from the other side, Clare Curran, for her speech. She said there would have been “more to come” from the previous Labour Government. I am sure New Zealanders would be interested to know how that would have been paid for, and what sort of increase in expenditure would have been necessary to deliver the “more to come” the member mentioned.

In New Zealand a thousand voices are all talking their talk, saying different things, creating a very interesting soundscape of New Zealand life. What is unique about the Radio New Zealand charter is that Radio New Zealand seeks to be an impartial voice. It seeks to operate in the public interest, and, though it needs to be commercially viable, it does not cede to commercial pressure.

The Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill amends the Radio New Zealand Act 1995. It presents a revised charter that states the purpose of Radio New Zealand as a public broadcaster, followed by provisions stating how it is to achieve that purpose through delivery of its services. This bill, which presents the updated charter, though not necessarily controversial, or dramatic, or something that will attract heated debate across the House, quietly contains some very pertinent reflections on a nation of people who are diverse, blended, and engaged together in the expression of democracy.

The Radio New Zealand annual report states that “Every day, Radio New Zealand captures and reflects the thoughts, opinions and information we want to share as a nation, in programmes that contribute towards our broader collective understanding, help us follow what is going on in our own country and stay in touch with developments in the world around us.”

As a kid I could never ever understand why my parents used to enjoy watching the news. I was much more interested in cartoons. Perhaps some of the older members of the House may remember some of the programmes.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Gerry likes cartoons, too.

JONATHAN YOUNG: Well, I must admit that certain warm feelings come to me if I ever see Captain Pugwash, Clutch Cargo, Gigantor, or Huckleberry Hound. I can tell that some members in the House tonight felt warm, fuzzy feelings as I mentioned those names. What I discovered was that the older I became, the more interesting Radio New Zealand became. My son would say that the older I became, the more boring I became. I would say that one of the interesting things about Radio New Zealand is that it captures and reflects the thoughts, opinions, and information we want to share as a nation. It captures our culture and reflects it back to us. It causes New Zealanders to think. There are many programmes on Radio New Zealand that I enjoy every week, and I learn many things. It is reality radio. The charter is not just legislation; it is a living guide.

The amended charter is divided into two parts: firstly, its purpose and, secondly, its delivery. The first part explicitly states that Radio New Zealand’s purpose is to serve the public interest, and that this is to be achieved through public broadcasting principles. The second part expands on delivery. As an independent and commercial-free public service broadcaster, Radio New Zealand National seeks to serve the public interest. An independent broadcaster is free from political influence or preference. Being commercial free, it is free from commercial influence or preference. It is owned by the public to act in the public’s best interests.

Independence is a critical key in ensuring that our public broadcaster has the confidence of New Zealanders, that its content is unbiased and factually correct—that it is true—and that, without bias, it serves the best interests of the public without fear or favour, without political persuasion, but based on merit. Of course, this charter not only speaks to the necessity of those with political or commercial interests not exerting their influence in inappropriate ways, but also, just as important, places on broadcasters the serious responsibility to maintain their editorial independence and integrity in the execution of their responsibilities and duties. It is a reflection of the true professionalism of the media, which New Zealanders greatly appreciate.

When we stand strong on those principles, we serve democracy well in ensuring that Radio New Zealand does not make the news, but reports it; does not create opinions, but accurately reflects the views and opinions of New Zealanders in a legitimate and appropriate way. In this regard the public broadcasting service of Radio New Zealand is a contributor to how democracy is reported, protected, and promoted in New Zealand life. It offers a mouthpiece to the voices of this nation. Once again protecting this voice rests very strongly on the board of Radio New Zealand and the principle ensconced in the charter of serving the public interest of New Zealanders.

When we use the term “broadcasting” it lends itself to two definitions. Firstly, it speaks of transmission over a broad area, and, secondly, it speaks of the content appealing to a broad range of people—having a wide appeal to a wide audience, and acting in such a way as to serve the public interest. So there is a responsibility in the charter for our public service broadcaster to bridge different communities, providing that which is of value not only to single sectors of our society but also to the community at large. It supports the people of New Zealand. Every culture has its values, a mixture of traditions of the past and aspirations for the future. Section 8A(1) in clause 5 states that Radio New Zealand “must, in fulfilling its Charter, exhibit a sense of”—and we have heard this term—“social responsibility by—(a) having regard to the interests of the community in which it operates; and (b) endeavouring to accommodate or encourage those interests when able to do so.” Although we are many and diverse, we are all New Zealanders.

Radio New Zealand is charged with the responsibility of reflecting expression that is distinctly and predominantly New Zealand, but how that is defined is an abstract and organic process, because our culture is constantly changing shape. In seeking to fulfil such an obligation, the charter states—section 8(5) in clause 5—that Radio New Zealand is to “ (d) foster critical thought, and informed and wide-ranging debate: (e) stimulate, support, and reflect the diversity of cultural expression, including drama, comedy, literature, and the performing arts: (f) stimulate, support, and reflect a wide range of music, including New Zealand composition and performance: (g) reflect New Zealand’s cultural identity, including Māori language and culture: (h) provide awareness of the world and of New Zealand’s place in it: (i) provide comprehensive, independent, accurate, impartial, and balanced regional, national, and international news and current affairs: (j) provide programmes which balance special interest with those of wide appeal, recognising the interests of all age groups: (k) contribute towards intellectual and spiritual development: (l) include an international service to the South Pacific in both English and Pacific languages:”. I believe that if we have a radio service such as this, we have something that we can all be justly proud of in New Zealand.

It is my pleasure to support the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill and commend it to the House. Thank you.

• Bill read a first time.

• Bill referred to the Commerce Committee.

Hon HEATHER ROY (Minister of Consumer Affairs) : I move, That the Motor Vehicle Sales Amendment Bill be now read a first time. It is my intention that this bill be referred to the Commerce Committee. Section 163 of the Motor Vehicle Sales Act requires the Ministry of Consumer Affairs to conduct a review of the Act after 2 years of its operation. This bill is the result of a proactive assessment of the Act, which looked at whether the operation of the legislation is meeting the intended policy goals. The bill makes a number of amendments to improve the legislation’s workability and operation.

As an ACT Party Minister in the National-led Government, I am very supportive of such proactive assessments of the relevance and effectiveness of legislation. Legislation should achieve its stated intention without imposing unnecessary and unforeseen side effects. The principal Act came into force in December 2003. It introduced a new registration regime for motor vehicle traders. This regime served to make traders more accountable, but it also offered people more flexibility to participate in the industry. New information disclosure requirements for used motor vehicles were introduced, and the Motor Vehicle Disputes Tribunal was established to offer consumers a forum for the hearing of complaints against traders.

The policy that underpins the principal Act has several core elements: a requirement for motor vehicle traders to be registered, requirements for information disclosure concerning used motor vehicles, and a provision for consumer redress through the Motor Vehicle Disputes Tribunal. The review of the Act by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs considered how those elements were operating. The review identified areas where the Act’s operation would benefit from amendment. The review report, which was tabled in the House in March 2008, was followed by further consultation on the review’s recommendations, and that has led to the amendments set out in this bill.

The bill makes amendments to the renewal of annual registration by motor vehicle traders. At present, an individual who is applying to become a director of a motor vehicle trading company must supply a statutory declaration with his or her initial application. That person is then required to provide an annual statutory declaration as part of the registration renewal process. The requirement is onerous, costly, and serves no purpose if the person’s details have not changed. The bill amends the renewal procedure to allow a company secretary to confirm to the registrar that the information held on the registry about the company is correct. In particular, companies with directors who are based overseas will benefit from reduced compliance costs, as a result of a small legislative change.

Acceptance or refusal of a renewal application by the registrar will remain essentially the same as it is currently. However, at present people can be appointed as directors between annual registrations, without any check on their suitability. Accordingly, it is proposed that the Act be amended to require that notification of a new director or of the appointment of an individual who is involved in the company’s management be accompanied by a statutory declaration as to the person’s suitability for registration. Again, this is just a small legislative change, but it is one that brings added protections to consumers that unsuitable persons are not legally able to become motor vehicle traders.

There is a further loophole in the current legislation that allows unregistered traders, or those whose registration has lapsed at the time of their conviction for certain offences or at the time of their going into bankruptcy, to not be automatically banned from trading as a motor vehicle dealer in the future. Such traders can currently continue to sell motor vehicles until the registrar can take a case to court to ban them. That process can take some months and incurs costs to the Government. This bill closes that loophole, and proposes that such a person can be automatically banned without being registered under the Act, if he or she met specific criteria, such as convictions for crimes of dishonesty, or going into a second bankruptcy within 10 years of the first.

The Act currently requires private sellers to display a consumer information notice, or window card, containing information on the trader, cost, vehicle registration, warrant of fitness, and other important details, when selling through a car market. In all other circumstances, private sellers do not have to display a consumer information notice. These notices are prescribed by regulation under the Fair Trading Act 1986, must be completed and displayed by traders when selling used motor vehicles, and must list the consumer’s rights when purchasing from a trader. The current requirement for private sellers at car markets to display a consumer information notice is confusing for private sellers and for consumers, who are often under the impression that they have more rights than they actually do. The requirement also creates compliance costs for car market traders, who spend much time ensuring that private sellers complete the forms, and it diverts much of the Commerce Commission’s enforcement time.

Under this bill, traders who use car markets will still need to display the notices, and car market operators will have a specific obligation to ensure that this happens. The bill also removes the requirement to display a consumer information notice for transactions between traders, or between traders and wreckers. This is an unnecessary compliance cost on such traders, as it provides no value to either party.

The bill provides for costs to be awarded against a trader who does not attend a Motor Vehicle Disputes Tribunal hearing without good cause. Although the existing legislation already provides for the awarding of costs against a complainant for non-attendance, this provision does not extend to non-attendance by a trader, even though many hearings are held near the trader’s premises. That creates a perverse incentive for traders to be absent from the hearing, as they know that costs cannot be awarded against them, and it causes inconvenience and cost to consumers. This amendment should lead to consumers having more timely access to redress.

Changes are also made, in order to improve transparency, through amendments to the tribunal’s reporting requirements set out in the Act. The changes will allow all decisions of the tribunal to be made public. Through publication of the tribunal’s decisions, both motor vehicle traders and consumers will benefit by learning about what they can expect under the law. Consumer advocacy groups will also be better informed and better able to pass their knowledge on to their clients. The Ministry of Consumer Affairs and enforcement agencies will be better positioned to assess the effectiveness of the tribunal and to monitor for any systemic issues within the industry.

Lastly, I bring it to the attention of the House that the bill increases the financial limit for the operation of the tribunal from $50,000 to $100,000. This change in the limit reflects consultation with the tribunal, industry, and consumer organisations. It also recognises that motor vehicles, both new and used, may cost in excess of $50,000. This change future-proofs the financial limit, and it provides protection to consumers who purchase high-end vehicles. Regardless of consumers’ financial means, they can still have difficulty in gaining redress from a motor vehicle trader. The change in the limit allows consumers to have their issues heard in the appropriate forum.

The changes I have outlined will strengthen the operation of the Motor Vehicle Sales Act. They are designed both to reduce unnecessary compliance costs to the industry and to improve consumer protections and give consumers better access to dispute resolution through the Motor Vehicle Disputes Tribunal in relation to vehicle purchases. I commend this bill to the House.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) : The Labour Party will be supporting the first reading of the Motor Vehicle Sales Amendment Bill. It is somewhat ironic and it may be symbolic that we are discussing this particular bill—which, in essence, reduces the compliance costs for used-car dealers—today rather than focusing on, in the words of the Government, the issues that matter. At a time when 1,100 people are losing their jobs on a weekly basis—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: How many?

CHRIS HIPKINS: A total of 1,100 people are losing their jobs on a weekly basis, yet the most important legislation this Government wants to bring before the House is a bill that reduces the compliance costs for used-car dealers.

Government members think that reducing the compliance cost for used-car dealers is more important than creating jobs. They think that reducing the compliance cost for used-car dealers is more important than making sure that people can pay their mortgages. They think that it is more important than closing the wage gap with Australia. Was that not one of their key manifesto commitments at the last election? They were going to close the wage gap with Australia, yet nothing has come before this House that will do anything to close the wage gap with Australia.

This is a lazy, do-nothing Government that is interested just in passing legislation, most of which was developed by the previous Labour Government, rather than coming up with anything original. It is not focused on the issues that matter, and that is why we are debating the Motor Vehicle Sales Amendment Bill, rather than legislation to get the economy moving, and to create some jobs in the economy.

It is symbolic that we are discussing used-car dealers. I ask members whether there are similarities between the approach of a used-car dealer and the approach of a lot of National members. They will tell voters anything that they want to hear so that they can make the deal, even if they have absolutely no intention of sticking to their promises. They are a lot like some of the dodgy used-car dealers that the legislation passed in December 2003 was designed to target.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I’m getting a warm glow.

CHRIS HIPKINS: That is dead right. The used-car dealers are more important to the National Government than people in New Zealand who are losing their jobs.

What does this bill do? The bill amends an Act that is designed to protect consumers in relation to motor vehicle sales. Although the bill is important, and I reiterate that the bill is important, it is certainly not addressing the most important issue facing New Zealanders at the moment.

New Zealanders are concerned about their jobs. In fact, people in the motor vehicle industry are also concerned about their jobs. A survey in January carried out by the Motor Trade Association showed that over 200 people have lost their jobs in the motor vehicle industry. A press release from the Independent Motor Vehicle Dealers Association highlighted that a fifth of New Zealand’s 2,000-plus used-car dealers have closed down in the past 6 months, as the recession bites. As fewer and fewer people are employed in this industry, the National Government thinks it is more and more important to deal with this industry’s concerns rather than deal with the thousands and thousands of New Zealanders who, on a weekly and monthly basis, are losing their jobs. The National Government thinks this is the most important legislation to bring before the House. Industry groups say the closures and cut-backs at surviving dealerships have wiped out at least 10,000 of the 50,000 jobs in the used-car business. That is another example of jobs being lost under this National Government, yet it has no real plan to do anything about it. It has absolutely no solutions.

Recent statistics have also shown that the trend in motor vehicle retailing continues downwards. Once again, we are focusing not on an issue that matters, but on something that the National Government wants to put through the House just to make it look like it is doing something.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Spurious.

CHRIS HIPKINS: It spuriously looks like it is doing something, rather than actually putting any legislation or any proposals before the House to create jobs. New Zealanders are looking to this Government to show some leadership, and there is none. The Government is showing absolutely no leadership.

One thing that this bill does is to remove the requirement that when people sell their car privately, but use a sales lot to sell it, they put a bill of sale in the window explaining what it is that someone is buying.

Hon Steve Chadwick: That’s compliance.

CHRIS HIPKINS: That is right; it is deemed to be a compliance cost. People will not have to do that any more.

But if National was selling the car, we know that the bill of sale in the window would not mean anything anyway. National members would just write down whatever they thought they had to write down in order to get someone to buy it, regardless of whether they were intending to deliver what they had been promising.

Hon Steve Chadwick: Like the tax cuts.

CHRIS HIPKINS: It is a lot like the tax cuts. The No. 1 promise on the bill of sale from National at the last election was the tax cuts. It passed them straight away, then, within 6 months, it took them away again. The bill of sale from National was completely worthless. It is ironic that we are removing the requirement to put a bill of sale in a used car when someone is selling it privately on a lot, but we know that if National was selling the car, the bill of sale would not mean a damn thing anyway. Frankly, National members, like a lot of used-car dealers, say whatever they like. The silver tongues over in the National Government—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: That’s David Garrett.

CHRIS HIPKINS: —it is David Garrett who has the silver tongue—would say whatever they need to say in order to get people to buy whatever it is they want to sell, regardless of whether they intend to deliver on their promises.

This bill is symbolic of National, because it thinks that reducing compliance costs for used-car dealers is more important than coming up with any kind of plan to create jobs for New Zealanders at a time when 1,100 people are losing their jobs on a weekly basis. In fact, it could be 1,101 if Sam Lotu-Iiga would give up one of his jobs.

• Debate interrupted.