Appropriation (2026/27 Estimates) Bill

Thank you, Madam Chair. I rise to speak on Vote Justice as the chair of the Justice Committee. Before I begin, I want to acknowledge my predecessor, the Hon Andrew Bayly, who chaired the committee through the Estimates process and the hearings held on 18 June. I became the chair on 2 July, and I thank Andrew for his work leading the committee’s consideration of these Estimates—and James Meager for his prior chairing as well. It has only gotten better over time.

The Justice Committee has recommended that the appropriations for Vote Justice be accepted. In 2026-27, the total appropriation sought for Vote Justice is approximately $1.087 billion, an increase of 4.9 percent on the estimated actual expenditure for the year 2025-26. During our consideration of the Estimates, we heard from the Hon Paul Goldsmith, the Hon Nicole McKee, and the Hon Karen Chhour, along with officials from the Ministry of Justice and the Executive Board for the Elimination of Family Violence and Sexual Violence.

The committee explored a wide range of issues, including legal aid, Te Au Reka, the overall justice pipeline, firearms reform, adoption and surrogacy legislation, and efforts to prevent family and sexual violence. We heard that Budget 2026 includes additional funding to address demand pressures in legal aid, with legal aid continuing to be one of the largest components of Vote Justice expenditure. The committee also discussed the role of technology and improving efficiency across the justice system.

The Estimates also provided for substantial capital investment, including approximately $251.5 million in capital expenditure. Alongside that, Budget 2026 includes funding for significant justice sector infrastructure projects, including two new courthouses in Rotorua, as well as wider law and order investments such as new police stations in Greymouth, Madam Chair, and Whanganui, Mr Bates.

The committee also considered the implementation of the Arms Bill and noted the Budget provision of $44.9 million over four years to establish the new firearms regulator, modernise firearms ICT systems, and establish a firearms licensing review committee.

Overall, the committee’s examination highlighted ongoing investment in justice services, legal aid, community justice support, court modernisation, and justice infrastructure. These appropriations help ensure that New Zealand’s justice system remains accessible, effective, and capable of meeting future demand.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks to the Minister of Justice for being here. I just wanted to first of all ask a procedural question: whether there would be any other Ministers attending—for example, the Attorney-General, as a result of the connection of that portfolio to the Justice portfolio?

My understanding is that the Minister for Courts and Associate Minister of Justice is available right here, so any questions relating to her areas, she will be able to answer.

Thank you, that’s very helpful—that was going to be my next question, but the Minister jumped up, so thank you very much, and we will just indicate, I suppose, if there’s a particular—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Yes, and the member will speak from their seat.

CAMILLA BELICH: Thank you so much. Well, my first question is to the Minister of Justice around the effects of the reductions in staffing at the Ministry of Justice. We heard during the Estimates programme that “great progress” had been made—that’s a quote, not an opinion—in relation to the reductions of staff at the Ministry of Justice. I wanted to ask the Minister what progress has been made in determining, since the Estimates hearing, and if he can give us more details on the roles that will be implemented; also, the timeline for this, whether there’s been consultation, and, if there has been consultation, whether this has concluded or not.

Thank you. Well, since we came into Government, of course, right across the board, we’ve been having a real focus on restoring financial sustainability across Government. We’re borrowing, still, a huge amount of money in each Budget—including this Budget. This Budget is borrowing over $11 billion. We as a Government have set a path back to surplus in the next three or four years, which is very important, because we shouldn’t be sending the bill to future generations.

Justice has had to play its part in finding those savings and getting back to a reasonable level. We included a range of updating of fees and collections in Budget 2024, which brought in some extra revenue. This time, approximately $10 million per year in savings were delivered—in 2024, sorry—and I’m looking forward to a further $7 million in savings expected from reductions in back-office roles as part of the ministry’s reprioritisation to manage within baselines in this year ahead. How they do that, in terms of the exact numbers of fulltime-equivalents, is something for the chief executive to manage. I don’t have any exact figures to hand at this stage, because I think it’s still under discussion.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ve got a number of questions for the Minister in Vote Justice particularly about the Electoral Commission, and particularly about youth enrolment. First of all, I just want to ask the Minister if he’s made it easier or harder for youth to enrol to vote?

I’ll just seek advice from the Chair in terms of—is the Estimates debate supposed to be on the Estimates and what we’re spending on or has it got a full remit across any policy sort of element?

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): We’re just checking it is Vote Justice, but we’ll see.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Oh, it’s definitely Vote Justice. We fund the Electoral Commission through Vote Justice, and we continue to Vote it.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The question is in order.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Ah, right—OK. Well, as I recall the question, it was about whether it makes it easier to vote or harder to vote. My response to that is that it is very easy to vote in New Zealand. If you look at our requirements and expectations, they are very light indeed. We don’t require people to bring ID or anything like that to vote. What we do have is a simple requirement that New Zealanders who want to vote should be enrolled. The Australians, of course, expect people to be enrolled 30 days before the election. We are expecting people to be enrolled by the day before voting starts, and that is two weeks before election day.

Election day, for people tuning in on their crystal sets to this debate, is 7 November, where we have a choice between going forward or going backwards as a country, and I’d encourage people to go forwards and give their party vote to National. That’s on 7 November.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Minister, can I just remind you this isn’t a party-political broadcast.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, thank you. I’m just giving people some advice on this matter. Early voting starts on 26 October, so people need to be enrolled the day before.

I actually asked whether he’d made it easier or harder, not whether it was absolutely easy or hard. I just would like some reflection on whether the Minister of Justice thinks a four-year allocation of $80.6 million—which is intended to improve and modernise election processes, it’s intended to improve enrolment and communications—is enough. Has he been chasing the Electoral Commission, when, actually, compared to 2023, we have got 5 percent fewer youth—18- to 24-year-olds—enrolled to vote, and the line is stagnant? And worse—as the Minister clearly explained the cutoff date, 14 days before—13 days before, depending on how you calculate the enrolment and the date—means that we will not get this 10 percent boost in the 18- to-24-year old age group. Would the Minister also agree that 18- to 24-year-olds have their life ahead of them, and will be hugely affected by the choice of Government in 2026?

Yes, I do believe that young people will be greatly affected by the outcome of this election, and that’s why it’s so important that the current Government is returned so we can carry on the good work, have a strong, vibrant, growing economy, that we stay strong on law and order, and a host of other things—so I welcome that question. The only point I would say in relation to enrolments—the latest advice I’ve had on enrolments is that 89.5 percent of people entitled to vote have enrolled at this stage. That is slightly ahead of the previous election, at this stage of the cycle, so that’s good news. The member would have seen, like everyone else in New Zealand over the last couple of weeks, the advertising campaign that has kicked into gear, encouraging people to get enrolled.

I’ll remind people who are listening: it is the law to be enrolled. Citizens and people who are entitled to vote are required to be enrolled, and to update their details each election. So that is the process that we’re going through. Of course, the group that will lag behind is the youngest group, when people are voting for the first time—and that’s why there is a huge amount of effort being put into encouraging young people to get enrolled. I even heard, today, some reference to there are even adverts in some games that people play online in New Zealand—you can be playing a game and an ad will be coming up encouraging you to get enrolled. The Electoral Commission is being very thorough and very creative in their efforts to encourage people to enrol.

Point of order. I just want to raise it as a point of order because I don’t want to lose questioning time, but you did warn the Minister of Justice about talking about who he believes that the electorate should vote for, and he didn’t adhere to your kind request. I just wondered if you could remind the Minister again that we do have some serious questions around the electoral changes, and we’d prefer not to hear his personal opinion on who people should vote for every time we pose one of those to the Minister.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): It wasn’t actually my advice to him, I was just pointing out this is not a party political broadcast, but I take your point. I will kick him under the table if he says it again!

Point of order, Madam Chair. I seek leave to table this graph, which has been compiled by our wonderful library staff. It is not publicly available, and I think it shows very clearly the gap between the election three years ago, and the election this year.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): You’re seeking leave for that?

CELIA WADE-BROWN: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Leave is sought for that purpose—

CELIA WADE-BROWN: The gap in youth enrolment.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): I’m putting in the leave. Is there any objection?

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Yes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to follow up on my colleague’s point about the Electoral Commission, and then I do have some other questions for the Minister of Justice. Of course, accepting the fact that every Budget allocation is a choice, I reflect back on the Minister’s comments during question time today when answering questions on this very issue, and he made the very good point that his understanding was that if we do nothing, then we hit a particular circumstance. The current Budget allocation under the heading “Integrity Improvement to Electoral Services” includes a package of things. One of them is the reduction of that enrolment period. There are other measures in there, including trying to facilitate automatic enrolment over a longer period—so not for this election, but, essentially, for the 2029 election. Arguably, the better choice, in terms of facilitating democracy and dollar spend, as opposed to putting money into the first function, would be to put a larger percentage of that financial bucket—or the entirety of it—into the second function: ensuring that there are automatic enrolments.

So just wondering, in terms of the Budget allocation, whether the Minister would comment on that financial choice, especially given the fact that the Electoral Commission themselves advised against putting funding into that first option. I’d be grateful for the Minister’s confirmation or otherwise of this: my understanding of their view is that the problem we hit is not for the 2026 election, in terms of the spend; the problem we hit is the 2029 election and being able to count the votes within the period of the writ.

Now, if the Budget allocation were to go towards automatic updates, as opposed to changing the registration day, we could then meet the problem identified by the Electoral Commission. It would be a sound spend of Budget finances over the coming three years—instead what it looks to me is that we have a very heavy, front-loaded Budget that’s focused on the registration issue, and then that peters down. The question for the Minister is: firstly, am I correct that that is the issue we face in terms of the count, which has justified this spend, and that the issue is 2029 not 2026; and if that’s the case, is the better spend not put into updating the roll?

The second question is in relation to something that’s not in the Budget, but I would ask the Minister whether he considered contingency funding for this—because he was aware that there would be a report coming out from the Law Commission on hate crimes and proposed changes that they made. The report was given to the Minister on 23 June, which is well after the Budget was announced, but, again, significant proposals—if the Government were to go ahead with the proposals, it would mean changes to the systems and processes in both the Police and the Ministry of Justice, in terms of their case management, so there would be budgetary allocations. It would have been possible for the Government to allocate contingency to ensure that they could respond to those proposals. Is it the Minister’s intention that the Government would take that work programme forward; and if so, because there isn’t a contingency, does that mean there wouldn’t be any action on this before the next Budget? Or has the Minister got any other views on that? I might leave those two there, but I do have a few others that I’ll stand to later.

Just in response, the Budget did include extra resources for the Electoral Commission, and we fund it on a sort of a three-yearly basis, but we put some extra resources in following the feedback from the previous election, where there was a good deal of disquiet about some mistakes that were made. I recall some votes being lost and then found, and some mistakes had been made, and so there was a concern around the rigour. When we think about elections, there are three things in particular that we’re focused on. One is the integrity of the system, which is fundamental to our democratic consent; secondly—the integrity of it—the timeliness of the vote is relevant and important; and the accuracy of the vote is also important. That’s why we’ve put some extra resources into that. How exactly it is allocated and used is, obviously, the independent writ of the Electoral Commission, and we don’t interfere in that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m interested in asking the hard-working Minister of Justice: there’s been a continuous intention described about putting victims first in both our budgeting and where this budgeting goes to. Minister, I’d like to ask you to please explain some of the ways that these intentions have materialised through the Budget so that the Government can continue to put victims at the heart of most of its spending with respect to justice and being forward-looking. How do you anticipate this will further help the number of victims of violent crime go down, as we have been seeing? Minister, I’d like to hear about that. Thank you.

Thank you, Rima Nakhle, MP for Takanini—a great place in Auckland. A significant part of the justice budget is for policy advice. There are different elements of our justice system in terms of how we achieve our overall goal as a Government to restore law and order, and fix the basics in law and order, so we can build a future where New Zealanders feel safe in their community. The particular measure that we had in mind is to reduce the number of victims of crime. In other parts of the Government response, there’s the Police for example, so we’ve put extra resources and extra police on the beat.

In terms of justice, one of the most powerful tools that we have is our legislative framework, which is why the policy budget section of justice is so important. It is through our laws that we send messages. Our message is that we want to have fewer victims of crime, and to do that, we want to restore real consequences for crime, and we did that through changing our sentencing laws—when you have three strikes.

Then we also have the insights—and I would be interested in people’s observations on this—but a good place to start, if you want fewer victims of crime, is to focus on that very small group of New Zealanders who create multiple victims over and over and over again. A case in point of that, of course, is gangs, who are not just like Rotary or the Lions or some community group; they are less than a quarter of 1 percent of the adult population, and they are associated with 20 to 25 percent of the violent crime. That is why we’ve changed the law to give Police extra powers to deal more effectively with gangs, and we’ve worked our way through that as well.

We’ll focus on sexual violence: that’s why we brought in legislation around stalking, that’s why we’ve done away with permanent name suppression for convicted sex offenders—all these things were aided and abetted by the policy function of the justice ministry. That’s why we continue to fund that, and there is much, much more work to do in that space.

The good news is that the primary measure that we use on that is the New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey, where 185,000 New Zealanders reported that they’d been a victim of serious violent or sexual offending in the 12 months before, which is a horrendous figure, when we came to power. We set a goal of reducing that by 20,000, down to 165,000. The good news is that the most recent figure available has it down by 46,000, and so that’s 46,000 families who have not had to go through the pain and trauma of being a victim of serious violent crime. Now, it’s still too many, but it feels like we’re making some good progress.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just had a follow-up question to the question around the restructuring at the Ministry of Justice, and I know that the Minister of Justice said he would try and get some answers on that. Specifically, we raised with him, during the Estimates process, the reason for those reductions, and he did state that there will be reduced staff due to technological advances that would be occurring in the financial year. I just wanted to see if there was an update from the Minister on that specifically.

Another question that I had related to the questions around the Electoral Commission, and they are being raised now. As the Minister said, in relation to the increases in funding that came about as a result of the changes to the Electoral Amendment Act 2025, the decisions around the spend in that were up to the discretion of the Electoral Commissioner. However, I wanted to know specifically: is he aware of the amount that the Electoral Commissioner has specifically utilised in order to advertise the change of electoral enrolment deadline that was put in place as a result of his changes to the Electoral Amendment Act? I would be grateful if that specific figure around additional spending as a result of that change by the Electoral Commission could be obtained.

I’ve got another question, just if the Minister is getting advice on that. He did speak to some of the legislation that the Government has passed. One of the pieces of legislation that the Government has passed is the Crimes Amendment Act, which has recently been passed and had policy work undertaken during the year that the Estimates relate to. The Crimes Amendment Act has some controversial elements, including citizen’s arrest powers. I wanted to ask the Minister—with those citizen’s arrest powers, there was a bit of confusion in one of his recent interviews around the age group that that would apply to, so I wanted to ask him: do those arrest powers apply to children of any age, and do those associated mechanical restraints also apply to children of any age?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Right, here we go—Vote Justice. Justice’s sector leadership and support appropriation, Minister, covering the ministry’s coordination role across the justice sector, rises only marginally from $16.653 million to $16.909 million for 2026-2027. Just a few figures here, Minister, for May. Community legal assistance falls from $66.414 million to $16.186 million in this Vote. Not one appropriation line in Vote Justice is identifiable as dedicated funding to reduce wāhine Māori disproportionality. Just more to that to that point: wāhine Māori make up 44 percent of police proceedings, 66 percent of women remanded in custody, and 71 percent of women sentenced to imprisonment.

As of April 2026, Minister, wāhine Māori are 65 percent of the total female prison population. Wāhine Māori are incarcerated at nearly 11 times the rate of non-Māori women. The Minister will know the Ombudsman warns that “without meaningful interventions, there is a risk the disproportionate rates of imprisonment for wāhine Māori will be embedded in the projected prison population growth.” The last point in this particular piece is that the Justice Committee has been told the woman’s prison population has almost doubled under this Government and is projected to rise 63 percent over the next decade.

The issue is there is a system response issue; it is not an offending severity issue. The majority of women in prison are not charged with violent offences. The Ministry of Justice’s own research, Minister, shows the system responds more seriously to wāhine Māori, with disproportionate amplifying at every single stage. The Ombudsman, again, identifies survival-driven offending, such as shoplifting—right, to provide for families—as a key driver of wāhine Māori imprisonment.

My questions, Minister—because these are concerns for Māori women, they’re concerns for their whānau, and they’re concerns for their hapū and their communities in which they reside—from me: what measurable reduction in the number and proportion of wāhine Māori in prison is the Government committed to achieving over this term of Parliament? If there is no such target, how can Parliament assess whether current spending is working—question one. Question two—I’ve got five, but I’ll go with the first two, because my minutes are going to be up shortly. The Ministry has told the Ombudsman it is establishing a Reducing Māori Disproportionality programme, with wāhine Māori as the initial focus. Minister, which appropriation in Vote Justice funds this programme and what dollar amount is allocated to it in ’26-’27?

These are real issues, Minister, and, sadly, in what we’ve listened to and what we note in the Vote, it seems that wāhine Māori are not thought about, cared about, and understood in this Vote, in any real and serious way. The numbers tell us—the numbers tell us how incarceration rates are rising, and that’s a systems issue; that’s how Māori woman are dealt with. And yet, the response to those, which should be a good and careful, considered response, is poor. I’d be interested—very interested—as many of our community in Te Tai Tokerau would be, to your response to those questions. Thank you.

Well, I thank the member for the questions, and it is a real issue that she raises, and a long-standing issue in New Zealand where wāhine Māori—Māori women—are disproportionately represented throughout the justice system. They are over-represented as victims of crime as well as in the prison system.

In direct response to the question, we don’t have prison population targets. The previous administration did have a target to reduce the prison population by 30 percent across the board. We all want to see fewer New Zealanders in prison, but it’s our view that that needs to follow a reduction in crime. What we saw in the last Government was a fall in prison population, but at the same time an increase in violent crime. We don’t think that is an appropriate thing. We’re not prepared to risk public safety in an effort to reduce the prison population. Our focus is not necessarily on reducing the prison population but on reducing the number of victims of crime. Given that wāhine Māori are more likely to be victims of crime, they are more likely to benefit from that focus.

Nevertheless, there has been a lot of research done on the disproportionality of wāhine Māori being both sentenced and having longer sentences, and I have studied that information quite closely. A certain amount of that difference can be explained by the offending being a more serious offending leading to more serious outcomes, but it is true that the research shows that there is a gap there which is unexplained, and it continues to be a big challenge to the sector. I mean, obviously, I can’t comment as Minister of Justice on judicial decisions, because the judiciary are independent and accountable.

I would say that there are thousands of New Zealanders who work in the justice system, many of them are Māori of course. I don’t agree with the proposition that it’s a very simple thing to say there is structural racism within the system, because I think that’s offensive to the people who are working in a system doing their very best to deliver for all New Zealanders. I back and support the many thousands of New Zealanders who work in the justice system, as I say, many of whom are Māori, who are wanting the best outcome for all New Zealanders, including Māori, but there is still this gap there, and it has been there for a long time.

We do invest enormous sums in a range of programmes designed to reduce that gap. I can point to Te Ao Mārama court processes, which are designed to have much greater use of particular Māori tikanga and views of how to handle the situation. There’s been a big expansion of those Te Ao Mārama courts. The previous Government, of course, had a massive expansion planned, and we, quite rationally, said, actually, we’re going to do five or six, so let’s take stock to see if it’s working effectively or not before we keep on rolling out the expansion, and we’re in the middle of that process at the moment.

I would just draw attention to one thing that the member said where she referred to survival-driven crimes such as shoplifting. I’m sorry, I just don’t accept that. We need to send a clear message as legislators and people in this Parliament that there is no excuse for crime—people are accountable. We have in this country one of the more generous welfare systems in the world. New Zealanders do help those who are in need, and there are many ways that people can access help if they need them. There is never an excuse to steal food or to shoplift. That is our view, and we will stick with it.

Madam Chair, tēnā koe. I also have questions relating to Māori in prisons, and especially wāhine Māori. However, I appreciate that answer, although subjective. What Budget initiatives, if any, are dedicated to ending the overrepresentation of Māori in prison, especially considering that Māori men are now more than six times more likely to be in prison than non-Māori men, and Māori women are now almost 11 times more likely to be in prison than non-Māori women and are 70 percent of the remand population? That is one of the many questions I have around this report by Ināia Tonu Nei.

Does the Minister of Justice dispute that over 50 percent of all prisoners reoffend within two years of their release because these institutions were never designed for rehabilitation? Have there been any unforeseen fiscal and social costs associated with the implementation of the three-strikes laws, sentencing reforms, and the Gangs Act? Does the Minister recognise that Māori are imprisoned at higher proportions and rates than others, and does he agree that this is a problem? What impacts have three-strikes laws, sentencing reforms, and the Gangs Acts had on the over-incarceration of Māori? And lastly, to put this to the Minister because, as we all know, Māori are unjustifiably overrepresented in the justice system, and this inequity is continuing to grow as a result of the socio-economic consequences of raupatu and this Government’s active decision to prosecute and imprison more people for low-level drug offences, crimes of poverty, homelessness, and even the clothes that they wear.

The final question for the Minister is this: does he agree that prisons fail to deter crime and to address its causes and other issues such as mental health and addiction and that, ultimately, they trap our people in lives of violence and poverty?

Well, I thank the member for the questions. I can’t see her, because she’s hidden behind the Hansard—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): She’s moved.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Thank you. I think it’s worth remembering that people are sent to prison in this country and it’s not easy to be sent to prison in this country. The long-term insights into the prison population in New Zealand did make the very clear and strong point that the vast majority of people who are in prison in New Zealand are there for serious, either sexual or violent, offences. That is the bulk of the prison population.

There’s a number of objectives that we have when we send people to prison. Yes, it may be that they may be rehabilitated to change their ways when they come out; yes, it may deter people from carrying out the act; but there are other very significant roles of imprisonment, and one is to keep the rest of the community safe, and I go back to the proposition that our Government has focused on reducing the number of victims of crime. As I said at the beginning, there’s a small group of New Zealanders who create fresh victims over and over and over again, and the extent to which they are taken out of circulation and held responsible for their actions for longer means that they are unable to create fresh victims for a period of time. Now, of course, eventually they will come out, and that is why we focus on rehabilitation.

The other purpose of sending people to prison is to denounce the act. It is society saying that we denounce that act, and that is why there’s been so much frustration, particularly in the sexual offences space, where cases are often difficult to prove. People go through the whole process, which is a traumatic process, through the court and a conviction has been attained, and then people have been concerned that there have been very light consequences sometimes passed through, and that is why we’ve toughened up the consequences. We’ve sent a message from Parliament that we don’t think that being sentenced to a period of time on PlayStation at home denounces a sexual violence act explicitly and clearly. That’s why we’re wanting to send a clearer message, and the hope is that that message will get through, particularly to young men in this country.

I find it interesting that we’ve had universal support for tougher sentences for stalking and tougher sentences for some things, but when it comes to the broader message around accountability and consequences, there seems to be a variety of views and opinions, but that is where we come from on this matter.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a quick couple of questions for Minister McKee around the Firearms Licensing Review Committee appointments. When we were at the hearing, advertisements were only just going out for the committee, with no confirmed date for that $4.7 million that was allocated. I was just wondering: what is the confirmed appointment date, and will the committee be operational before the enforcement of the new Arms Act regime begins?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the member for his question; that’s a good one. On 23 September, the Firearms Licensing Review Committee will be established. We are very close to announcing the appointment of eight members and the chair. They will be set up ready to go on implementation date, which, as I mentioned, is 23 September 2026.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Picking up the couple of comments from the Minister of Justice with further questions—one of the things we saw from the sector insight around wāhine Māori is the fact that one of the most common reasons for wāhine Māori to be incarcerated is because of shoplifting. Reducing the incarceration rate for wāhine Māori is both the Ministry of Justice’s and this Government’s priority, yet we have seen legislation put in place that actively goes against that priority. I want to check with the Minister: how then would the Minister reconcile both making it worse for wāhine Māori but also, at the same time, wanting to address the issue—as we heard from other speakers—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): As related to the Estimates.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Yes, because there’s no budget in Budget 2026 that specifically addresses this. There’s no itemised, I guess, appropriation in Vote Justice that specifically addresses this.

What is also important to note, because the Minister mentioned the victims of crime survey quite a lot—I would like to put on record that that is a projection; that is not actual data. But at the same time, in that data, in terms of the victims for Māori, for disabled, for rainbow, they have increased significantly over the last few years. How would the Minister, in Budget 2026, address the increase in the victimisation particularly for those communities?

The Minister did mention Te Ao Mārama, and it’s also important to note that in Budget 2026, Te Ao Mārama’s funding has been continuously paused to expand the programme, despite the fact that we know Te Ao Mārama works. On top of that, we also saw in the Budget—if the Minister wouldn’t mind elucidating for this committee why there has been no additional funding for the Te Kooti o Timatanga Hou, despite the fact we know that Te Kooti o Timatanga Hou works.

Those are our questions specifically around the victims figure around Māori that the Minister has mentioned before.

My question is: in Budget 2026, the Ministerial Advisory Group for Victims of Retail Crime has been given additional budget, despite the fact that the ministerial advisory group (MAG) has wound up, as far as the Minister has reported. So why has that particular MAG been given an additional $450,000 in 2026-2027? In the Supplementary Estimates that were received at the same time as Budget 2026-2027, despite multiple resignations from the MAG over the last year, there has been no reduction in the funding or no drawdown of the funding of that particular MAG, so where has that money gone, despite the multiple resignations?

Finally, just around the ministerial advisory group, looking at that $450,000, is the Minister expecting that ministerial advisory group to continuously take on additional functions and/or seek additional advisers for that ministerial advisory group, and if that is the case, does the Minister know who those advisers for the ministerial advisory group would be or have been?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m just going to answer the member’s question around Te Ao Mārama. Te Ao Mārama is a pilot programme that’s been under way for a couple of years. It’s been in eight different sites. The reason why we have not apportioned any more money to it is because we need to await the evaluation. The member had said that it’s been successful; well, there’s actually been no evaluation to tell us of its success. On this side of the hall here, we actually want to make sure that we put money into successful programmes that have shown us that they are successful. We have to stop throwing money at different programmes that have not shown whether or not they have that success. Until we get the review on Te Ao Mārama, which is expected sometime in 2027-28—it’s not being undertaken by us; it will be undertaken by the courts themselves, and it will be a robust programme—then we can decide what works, what doesn’t work, what we can roll out, for instance.

What I will mention about the Te Ao Mārama programme is that there are some aspects of the programme that have worked well that do not have any cost implications at all and have actually been rolled out to other courts throughout the country, as well, as a result of showing that it did work fine. But for us to put money into a programme, we need to ensure that that programme is financially sustainable and does have good benefits for the people that are using it, for society, and for our community, because, quite frankly, we think the country has had enough of Government throwing money at schemes that don’t necessarily work.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My question can be for both of our Ministers. You know, in this this role that we have, the mahi that we do on the Justice Committee, we often hear the phrase “justice delayed is justice denied”—

Tom Rutherford: Oh, yes.

RIMA NAKHLE: I hear that my chair, Tom Rutherford, the wonderful chair, is agreeing with me. There’s a lot of kōrero as well about how when “justice delayed is justice denied”, this is where victims are also suffering. So, Ministers, talk us through how this outlook, as well, is being addressed with the appropriations, please. Thank you.

I’ll defer primarily to my colleague Nicole McKee, but I’ll just make the point that if we look at the broader justice priorities for the Government over the last three years, number one has been to reduce the number of victims of crime; number two has been to reduce the number of serious repeat youth offenders exemplified by the ram-raiders of old, which we have dealt with very effectively as a Government; but the third area has been this one, which the member has referred to, about speeding up the processes of the courts, because there have been huge delays to justice. That means that people can’t get on with their lives or can’t get their disputes resolved or, in the Family Court, can’t get their situations resolved in a timely fashion. We’ve had a huge focus as a Government on looking at the many, many things that we can do, through changes of legislation; changes of technology, such as greater use of audiovisual facilities; changing the rules within the courts; getting cooperation between the Police, Corrections, the courts, and the judiciary—all designed to speed up the process. The good news is we’ve made good progress on that, and Minister McKee might like to outline some of that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, there has been a lot of work that has been done over this term of Government to try and help speed up the courts and their timeliness. Minister Goldsmith referred to legislation. Some of the legislation includes Family Court Associates being progressed. There was a pilot that was under way when we came in. We’ve actually managed to get another eight Family Court Associates out around the country assisting judges and freeing up judges’ time. We have legislation coming through which will empower community magistrates to do more work, which will also free up judges’ time. We’ve made changes to the Coroners Act so that we can get them moving quicker as well.

One thing that the member has mentioned: “justice delayed is justice denied”. When families are waiting to hear outcomes about loved ones and how they’ve passed, waiting eight years can be absolutely over the top. The changes from the Coroners Court have also allowed us to speed up the justice process. Of course, we’ve put up the judges caps across various courts in order to ensure that those that are retiring—and, of course, there are a lot of boomers across the country, in all fields but especially in the courts, who are starting to retire. We’re putting the caps up to ensure that the process for those that are retiring and the new ones that are coming in is not stalling in any way; that there’s a smooth process there. Of course, the very last thing which is about to be implemented this year is Te Au Reka, the digitalisation of our courts, and this, indeed, will also speed up the process, once that’s under way.

When we came into Government, we were told that there was, on average, around 12 events that a person needed to attend when they were going through a court process. At the moment, I think we’ve got that down to around about nine events—I will be corrected if I’m wrong there, but I think it’s around nine events—and we expect to try and get it even lower. It should be sitting at around six events per person. To double it to 12; to get it down to nine—we’re halfway there.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I just want to note that we’ve only got about eight minutes left, so I’ll take Vanushi Walters.

Thank you, Madam Chair. One question for the Minister of Justice, very briefly, on legal aid. We had the review recently, which identified the shrinking pool of legal aid practitioners, and remuneration or appropriate fee-setting as two of the key issues. The response thus far, and in the Budget, is the line under justice demand-driven cost pressures, with an initiative response which is explicitly a one-off allocation. My concern is that this isn’t addressing what we’ve heard in the report, because we now have a zero allocation in 2027-28 and 2028-29. I’m just curious as to the Minister’s plan in terms of his intentions with the one-off and what the intention is over the three-year budget forecast to address the issues that have now been very clearly identified as a result of the report.

Yes, in terms of legal aid, we did a triennial review of legal aid, as the member notes; it had been a bit delayed from the previous Government, who I don’t think had done it in a timely fashion, but we got on to it. We came up with suggestions, and those suggestions weren’t met with great enthusiasm by the legal profession. We then went back and decided, “Well, how are we going to do this?”, because, as a country, we’re spending significantly more on legal aid. It has increased significantly over the last few years, but the demand is even higher.

We wanted to look at, “Well, what is it that’s driving this demand upwards?” Some of that is the fact that more people are electing jury trials, and they, of course, are much more intensive and expensive. What we’ve done is we’ve put some extra resources into this year, and we’re going away and having a more fundamental root-and-branch look at what we can do in the broader system, to make changes that may take pressure off legal aid and to focus those limited resources to where they’re most required.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a supplementary on that. Is the Minister of Justice considering bulk funding for legal aid, given his previous comments?

I just note that I’m still awaiting answers on my questions around spending from the Electoral Commission, the functionality of particular provisions in the Crimes Act, and also the number of roles being restructured and types of roles in the Ministry of Justice. It’s frustrating not to hear those by the end of this hearing, so I won’t speak too long, to ask the Minister whether he will be able to come back to me with answers to those questions.

I did want to ask, in relation to move-on orders, what resourcing has the Minister put in place—considering that I understand he is still intending to pass the move-on orders before the election—and what resourcing has been put in place to provide education to the community and the police about how move-on orders will be implemented? We understand there are concerns that facilitating move-on orders, especially in relation to some of the provisions that are preventative, may require additional resourcing from Police. What forethought has gone into that?

Just quickly, in terms of the Electoral Commission, one of their core functions—for which they’ve always been funded—is to encourage people to enrol.

Their hands were kind of tied behind their back by the previous Labour Government when it introduced election day enrolment, because they had this big campaign to encourage people to get enrolled, but at the same time, they were saying, “Please get enrolled, but by the way, it doesn’t matter if you do or you don’t because you can just rock up on election day and get enrolled.”, and so fewer and fewer people were being enrolled in a timely fashion and there were more and more people not enrolled prior to writ day. That was the problem there, but I understand—my advice is—that there’s been an extra $2 million allocated on top of the normal allocation for enrolment advertising.

In terms of the Crimes Amendment Act, in terms of citizens arrest—she asked about that. There is no age specification, as there hasn’t been in the existing law, which has been in place for many decades. The difference was that it applied after 9 p.m., but it didn’t apply before 9 p.m.

Madam Chair, I also have a couple of questions on the move-on orders, and am conscious of the time. What support—if anything—will the ministry provide to homeless whānau who have been moved on, and what support can these people expect to receive from the Government in these situations?

Final question: has the Government considered the implications of the Trespass (Specified Retail Premises and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, especially when it comes to whānau accessing kai and essentials in a situation where the main provider has been trespassed from the only supermarket in their area, especially for people living in rural and isolated communities?

In terms of the move-on orders—what was the question? Oh, the question was around the support for people who are struggling with housing difficulties. Of course, the purpose of the move-on orders is not our response to housing issues. We have many tools with which to help those who are in need in terms of housing, and my fellow ministers, Ministers Potaka and Bishop, are responsible for the many, many millions—if not billions—of dollars we spend on housing support in this country. The move-on orders are focused, from a justice response, on dealing with and reclaiming our main centres, town squares, and CBDs for the enjoyment of people who live there, who work there, and who visit there, so that people can feel safe in those environments.

Just a quick one for Minister McKee again, around Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand. At the hearing, we heard about the Minister’s plans for the changeover between the current regulator and the new one, Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand. I was just wondering if there has been a liaison team set up to transfer the work over between New Zealand Police and Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand?

My understanding is that the Ministry of Justice and New Zealand Police are working quite closely with each other and that they have been working on an information-sharing agreement as well, to make sure that that is up and ready to go on 23 September, when the transfer takes place. It is not so much a liaison team but rather those that have been working in both entities still working together to make sure that the implementation is sound.

I’ve been told by the teams on both sides that everything’s looking pretty good, that they’re on track, and that the agreements are actually coming around very, very quickly and very well. I look forward to further agreements being made with other agencies to implement what we call the red-flag system—if you recall during the Arms Act—where the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service will also get some information-sharing agreements with Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand and, of course, with New Zealand Police as well. That will come after—in fact, they may be working on it now—but it’s not needed to be implemented by 23 September.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members, the Minister’s time in the chair, in this portfolio, has come to an end. We now have the Minister for the Public Service and Digitising Government. The Minister is available to speak to that portfolio from 5 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. The Hon Jan Tinetti, chairperson of the Governance and Administration Committee—sorry, you were just blocked from my vision there.

Committee of the whole House—Estimates Debate

Public Service and Digitising Government