Appropriation (2011/12 Estimates) Bill, Freedom Camping Bill

First Reading

I move, That the Freedom Camping Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the Local Government and Environment Committee consider the Freedom Camping Bill, that the committee report finally to the House on or before 1 August 2011, and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions, and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington region despite Standing Orders 187, 189(a), and 190(1)(b) and (c).

The purpose of this bill is to address the negative effects of freedom camping. Many visitors stopping along our roadsides at rest areas and look-outs face more than a spectacular view. Too often they also face a pile of human waste and toilet paper. This is often a “gift” from a visitor who hired a cheap campervan with no toilet, and then used the rest area or look-out to camp overnight in order to avoid paying camping ground fees. We are an outdoors destination. We want tourists to continue to come here to explore and enjoy our countryside. New Zealanders do just that on their own holidays, and we want to protect our reputation. Inappropriate camping and toileting does this country a disservice, and we do not want this behaviour to be lodged in anyone’s memories when they get home. Freedom camping is an important part of our tourism industry and great Kiwi lifestyle, but we cannot tolerate irresponsible campers spoiling our most iconic areas with human waste and litter.

This is particularly important as we gear up for the Rugby World Cup. Roughly 85,000 visitors are expected to arrive on our shores. For many of those this will be the holiday of a lifetime, so we are acting rapidly to ensure that this legislation is in place by then.

The number of freedom campers has doubled over the past decade to 110,000 international visitors and more than 40,000 New Zealanders. The existing system, in which each of our 67 districts has its own bylaws, is not working for the responsible freedom camper wanting to do the right thing, or for councils wanting to protect their local environment. This bill will enable councils to determine where camping is allowed, where it is restricted to campervans with self-containment, and where it is prohibited. The Department of Conservation will be able to make similar rules on the reserves it manages. There will be nationally consistent signage and practical enforcement provisions. A website will be provided, outlining where people can and cannot camp nationally. Camping at specific sensitive sites and depositing human waste on roadsides is already illegal, but councils and the Department of Conservation have very limited options for dealing with offenders. This bill will increase the tools available to them by creating an infringement regime. This will avoid the need for councils and the Department of Conservation to take expensive court action, and therefore provide a more effective deterrent to inappropriate behaviour.

The bill will provide the same approach as that used for other relatively minor offences, such as parking and traffic offences. People can be ticketed when they camp in an area in which camping is prohibited, or camp in an area where camping is restricted and they breach those restrictions—for example, by using a campervan with no toilet in an area restricted to self-contained campervans, or by depositing waste whilst camping. The bill sets the infringement fee at $200, and I believe that this will provide a strong deterrent for potential offenders. Enforcement officers will still have the option of taking a matter to the courts if they consider that the offence warrants that action—for example, a campervan emptying its sewage tank in a rest area. In that case, a far higher penalty, to a maximum of $10,000, might be imposed. The ability to impose high fines already exists for breaches of council bylaws, including camping bylaws, but this bill provides a uniform regime across council land and public conservation land. It will enable local government agencies to effectively enforce their existing and future bylaws relating to camping.

I must emphasise that this bill does not change the locations where anyone can camp. The presumption is still that freedom camping is not only allowed but encouraged as a core part of the back-country experience. The infringement system will apply only in vehicle-accessible areas near formed roads, near the coast, and near Great Walks. Councils and the Department of Conservation already restrict camping where it would be a problem in specific sites—for example, in city car-parks—where camping could damage natural values, or where there is a more suitable camping site nearby. This bill is designed to allow such decisions to be effectively enforced. In the case of public conservation land, the bill will also provide a clear and transparent method for making such decisions in future, taking into account the purposes for which land is held and any management plans.

In summary, this bill will provide my department and councils with another tool to protect our open spaces, our tourism industry, and the interests of back-country users, and it will reinforce the back-country code. I commend this bill to the House.

First Reading

Conservation is one of those areas that arouse a huge amount of passion and pride from all New Zealanders. What is most disappointing about the debate that has commenced is the total lack of passion, vision, support, or understanding that the Minister of Conservation demonstrated in her speech. That will be a big disappointment, as has been this Government’s contribution to conservation over the last 2½ years.

The Freedom Camping Bill has been warmly welcomed by many groups around this country, and Labour will certainly support its progress to the Local Government and Environment Committee. I am disappointed that we will have such little time at the select committee, as indicated by the Minister, to consider the concerns that have already been expressed publicly. As with many legislative provisions, the devil is in the detail. If we do not get it right at the select committee and report it back to the House, we are likely to cause problems. The rush, I understand, is to make sure the provisions are enabled before the Rugby World Cup. I personally do not think that is a good enough reason to rush legislation and possibly get it wrong.

As the Minister outlined, this provision is really an empowering one so that local councils can determine areas where they say freedom camping is not allowed. That is quite a big step for New Zealand to take. We have often prided ourselves on our welcoming attitude to people who want to get out and about and see the best of our country. We do not welcome people who pollute it. We do not welcome people who abuse the beauty we are so proud of and destroy it for other people. It is important to have that protection, but whether this bill is the right mechanism for doing it is certainly part of the debate we will have.

I am not sure I agree with the Minister that the instant fine regime is the most appropriate, and I do think that there will be more difficulty with enforcement than the Minister has outlined. For example, if a freedom camper gets a fine and then gets in his or her car and drives to the airport to leave the country as previously planned, what happens? Do we just say that that is bad luck? I am not sure we do. The legislation reads to me as if the vehicle owner has the responsibility, but it could be a rental car company—more likely than not it will be a rental car company. Then what happens? Does the rental car company have the onus of passing on the fine that has been incurred—unfairly, in my view? Does Hertz, for example, have the responsibility of chasing that person around the other side of the world in order to get that $200? That detail would be quite important, particularly to rental car companies.

Another concern I have is that there could be some relationship between motor camps and a council. The council will determine the zones where freedom camping is or is not allowed. If there is some relationship between a camping ground and a council, the council might say that it is to their benefit to exclude freedom camping in a large part of that area, for the benefit of the motor camp. That would not be fair on freedom campers. They would be unfairly punished because of that relationship. That is something we also might need to protect against.

Another area of concern that has been drawn to my attention, through quite considerable publicity around this bill, is the issue of trampers. It is very common in New Zealand for trampers to sleep the night at the start of the track or at the end of the track and then start their journey the next day, either on foot or by driving home. If that area is not allowed to be used as a freedom camping area, then those trampers might have to stay some distance away and ruin what is a very important part of tramping tradition of being able to get to the start of the track the night before and then start walking very, very early the next morning. Those are areas that I think deserve the rigour of attention.

I am sure Chris Auchinvole will guide the bill very well through the Local Government and Environment Committee, which in my view has developed a reputation—and a fair reputation—of paying considerable attention to detail in legislation. Our deliberations today were significantly enhanced by the presence of Aaron Gilmore, who contributed very well. It was fortunate he was there, because otherwise we may well have floundered on some of the detail, particularly in the local government provisions. It was extraordinarily helpful, and I hope he is able to sub in for some of the members as we consider this bill.

This bill has arisen because of the Government’s desire, which I certainly support, to ensure that precious areas of our country—areas where people want to visit, see, and enjoy—are protected against anything unpleasant, are damaged, or are destroyed by people who are not as respectful as we want them to be. We do not know whether that happens a lot or is quite rare, but we know that some councils have been particularly upset about it. I know that other colleagues will add to that.

Rural Women New Zealand is not a group that complains lightly. It has put on public record its concerns about the damage to specific environments that is being done by freedom campers. Mount Maunganui locals have complained of behaviour in their area. I am sure they were not referring to Simon Bridges or to any other local members of Parliament; they were referring to freedom campers. That area is a magnificent part of the country, and I am sure Simon Bridges wants to make sure it is protected, as well.

The same has happened in Queenstown and in Picton. Those are areas where we want to make sure that as we parade around the world, inviting people to come here and saying to people that our country is the best in the world and that it is 100% Pure New Zealand, we want to be able to back that up. When those people come to visit, we want to show them the pristine areas we so enjoy.

I find it frustrating, though, that the Minister supports this sort of legislation, as she did in her introductory speech, but at the same time has significantly undermined the ability of her own department—the Department of Conservation—to progress the very issues that this Freedom Camping Bill is designed to protect. Basically, instead of charging the Department of Conservation with protecting our waterways, protecting our land, and enhancing it for the betterment of all New Zealanders and visitors to enjoy, she has handed it over to Minister Brownlee and said he should have a look at the national park areas in schedule 4 to see whether there is anything there worth mining. In the most precious parts of New Zealand, she has said we should have a little surgical mining, as the Prime Minister described it.

I was stunned that the Minister of Conservation was prepared to hand over that part of her portfolio, which should be the area she defends most, to something as outrageous as mining in those protected areas. Members of the public were outraged, as well, and I was very proud that we had thousands and thousands of New Zealanders marching on the street and saying they want to protect the most precious parts of our country. These are the parts of the country that we also want this legislation to protect from freedom campers who are damaging it.

I will return to the actions the Minister has taken in terms of the Department of Conservation. The department is now required to be a profit-making organisation. That is not what the Department of Conservation was set up to do. It was designed to be the advocacy group, the lobby group, and the brains behind the passion that New Zealanders feel about their most important areas.

The Minister has led a huge and negative step backwards in her own portfolio. It is a big disappointment to many New Zealanders who care about our environment more than they care about anything else. I was surprised the Minister did not take the lead when this bill was originally publicised. In fact, it was the Minister for the Environment who took the lead in all of the media. I was quite surprised that the Minister of Conservation introduced the bill today. I thought it had perhaps been transferred to the Minister for the Environment, for some reason, because all of the publicity had Nick Smith’s name attached to it rather than that of the Hon Kate Wilkinson. That is a puzzle, but I am sure it is something I will spend more time discussing at the select committee, and I will see whether we can get to the bottom of it.

As I said, the principle of the legislation to protect our areas that are currently being damaged by freedom campers is supported by Labour. We will support this bill going to the select committee. I want the concerns I have raised—and others I am sure submitters will raise—to be addressed in the select committee process. I am sorry that it will be so truncated because of the Rugby World Cup. I think our rights to enjoy our country are worth protecting, and I will be ensuring that that happens.

First Reading

I wish to take only a brief call in respect of the Freedom Camping Bill, and to acknowledge and support my colleague the Minister of Conservation, Kate Wilkinson. I acknowledge that Kate Wilkinson is the most practical Minister of Conservation that the department has had in more than a decade. The practical gains she is making for conservation are far better than some of the highbrow dreamer ideas we saw in the years of Labour. We on this side of the House are deeply proud of that work. Yes, this bill is a joint piece of work. The Minister of Local Government, the Minister for the Environment—me—and Kate Wilkinson have worked hard on bringing this package together, as we should. That is how we operate on this side of the House. I know that that side of the House is a bit incapable of that. I know that Chris Carter and Ruth Dyson do not talk these days. We on this side of the House work very closely together.

This bill is a very pragmatic response to the real problem of freedom campers defecating in some of our most iconic spots, leaving a right mess. This bill provides a practical response to that. It is no good leaving every one of our councils to make their own rules when, frankly, the 120,000-odd international tourists who come here actually would not know which district they are in from one day to the next. That is not a criticism; it is just the nature of the international traveller. That is why having a standardised approach between the Department of Conservation and the councils makes such good sense.

I commend the provision in this bill for a $200 instant fine for those who breach the freedom camping requirements. Labour has indicated some opposition to that. Let me just say it is totally impractical to say to the Department of Conservation or to a council that it has to spend 5,000 bucks of ratepayers’ or taxpayers’ money on trying to prosecute some tourist from the other side of the world for defecating at a precious campsite. It is not practical. A $200 fine is a really sensible way of dealing with it.

I was surprised that Ruth Dyson took issue with the provision that the rental car company should be responsible for the fine in the event of a visitor doing a runner. It is the same for speeding fines and parking fines. Do we not care for our environment as much as we care about those things? We all know what happens. If someone goes to Australia and gets a car from a rental car company, the company takes a copy of their credit card. If the person picks up a fine while they are there, it is charged back against them. The most important provision deals with the fact that some rental car companies—particularly those with rental vans without containers—have not been responsible. This bill will put some responsibility back on those companies to play their part in protecting the environment, and that is a good thing.

This bill does protect and retain the right for New Zealand families like mine to be able to go out and enjoy the great outdoors—and so it should. To reassure Ruth Dyson opposite, I tell her that nothing in this bill will constrain the right of her and her family or me and my family to go to the end of the Heaphy Track and camp there for a night before we proceed to tramp. That is quite plain in the provisions of the bill.

The last point I will make is that the underlying presumption of this bill is that people can camp anywhere unless a council specifically prescribes it as a non-camping area. Maybe the difference between this side of the House and Labour is that we trust the councils. We think they are pretty common sense.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Yeah, right! You abolished ours.

Ruth Dyson wants to stand up for the failure of water management. Only 10 minutes ago she was giving a speech saying she is concerned about water quality. How can she defend the track record of Environment Canterbury, which after 18 years did not have a plan in place for dealing with water in the precious area of Canterbury?

The last thing I want to do is acknowledge Jacqui Dean, the member of Parliament for Otago. This cause is one she has championed both in Opposition and in Government. This issue is not new. It has been around for quite a while. Jacqui, both in caucus and in working with local authorities, has been pivotal in this bill getting to this point. I know that it concerns a particular issue in the Otago area she represents. That district should be very proud of the contribution she has made to this practical bill being brought to Parliament to have this environmental problem dealt with. It is a good bill, and I say good on Jacqui Dean and Kate Wilkinson for taking this practical step to deal with this environmental issue.

First Reading

I take great pleasure in rising to speak on the Freedom Camping Bill. As my colleague Ruth Dyson has said, Labour will be supporting this bill to go to the Local Government and Environment Committee.

This issue is a Nelson issue. It is a big issue in Nelson. The whole business of responsibility for the environment, and the responsibility of visitors to the loveliest parts of our country, is one of the presumptions of this legislation, and I support that. Over the summer in Nelson this issue kept coming up. I will give a couple of particular examples from my own experience. I have the privilege of living just a block away from a park, quite a large park, in Nelson. Parked down the end of a dead-end street that crosses the street I live in have been a number of motor homes and campervans, which began to attract a lot of public attention for two reasons. One was that up to about a dozen of them were parked there. I myself saw them there; it was not hard to see them on my way home. But those campervans were parked there in a place that was not a camping area. That is one issue.

The second thing is that the fouling of that area really upset local residents, including me. It is not good to go to bits of the road that abut parks, where people have stopped and parked their motor homes or campervans, and where, if the vans are not self-contained, they have then proceeded to use the public area as their own personal toilet. It is not responsible, and it is not what we want, either from tourists or from New Zealanders who are camping. It goes for everybody. This bill is about tourists who come to New Zealand to enjoy our picturesque areas. They must know that it is not acceptable for them to foul our beautiful environment any more than it is for any of us to do that. So I support this legislation.

The issue ran hot in Nelson because there was a real concern about the bill preventing people from enjoying our environment. I hope the Minister of Conservation has this approach right in the legislation, and we will find out shortly in the select committee. I think it is about right. The issue is not about preventing people from pulling up, parking, stopping over, and enjoying our lovely environment; nobody wants to stop that. With the people being called freedom campers, though, there was a bit of a backlash in Nelson, and it was said the bill would outlaw a way of life they enjoyed. But that is clearly not the purpose of the legislation, and I would not support it if it were. However, we on both sides of the House require people who want to enjoy Neale Park, or anywhere else in Nelson, to treat those areas with respect, and those areas that give people access to lovely views, water, and recreation in our environment. We do not ask for any more or any less than that.

I want to give another example that is also related to my own experience. Members of my family have a place in the Marlborough Sounds. That is not where I live; I live in Nelson, but it is common for Nelson people to holiday in the Marlborough Sounds and to go there for recreation. I am one of those people, and I thoroughly enjoy it. I will not tell people exactly where the place is, because they might go there and enjoy it too much! It happens that in this little bay where my family has a house there is a legitimate camping site that the Marlborough District Council has said can be a camping site for 2 nights only. But the locals have had to put up signs saying “Please don’t treat this like your personal toilet.”, because the abuse that has occurred in that lovely part of the Marlborough Sounds has been obscene. It has been offensive in anybody’s language. If those offenders can be fined, then that is good. Let us slap an instant fine on them, but, more than that, let us demonstrate to the people who come to our country as tourists that we are equipping the local authorities to do something about this issue.

Where my family is in the Marlborough Sounds, as I said, the Marlborough District Council has allocated space for freedom campers. That is great; it is a beautiful spot. It is nice, and I do not begrudge anybody spending a couple of nights there. But if their vehicles are not self-contained, and are not geared for the disposing of their own waste, then I am sorry but they cannot use our backyard for that purpose. It does not matter whether it concerns a park in Nelson or a dear little bay in the Marlborough Sounds where I am still trying to catch snapper, the protection of the environment that this bill provides is worth supporting.

I have a bit of a problem, which I hope we can sort out in the select committee, with the mechanisms around the instant fine. I think it will be quite hard to recover that from campers sometimes, but if it can be done through credit card bills then that is fine. I remember a very long time ago getting a fine through Hertz, because I travelled in a bus lane without knowing it while driving a rental car in Rome.

💬 Jacqui Dean: How did you know the difference?

Well, everybody was going at a zillion miles an hour, so it was really hard to know. I was just trying to stay alive. I did not know it was a bus lane, and I got a ticket later on through Hertz for travelling in that lane. But I copped that, and saw clearly that it is possible a fine can be extracted later on. Billing someone’s credit card is a very easy way of doing that, so let us explore the practicalities of it.

In essence, this is a constructive bill. I like the fact that it underscores people’s responsibility. We have a responsibility as citizens and keepers of this land to protect it, but the people who come to visit it also have a responsibility to treat our land and this place with respect, as well. I spent a large part of my youth tramping up and down Mount Taranaki. I was born and brought up in New Plymouth, and there we go to the beach and to the mountain. We learnt that if we took something in, we took it out; we did not leave it behind. We should not foul the environment with waste of any sort, and the particularly offensive examples we have had recently in the Nelson area have made me absolutely committed to making sure that this provision goes through and works, so that local councils and the Department of Conservation have the ability to strike fines and to punish people where they are caught. It goes to our reputation as a country and as a tourist destination, and to our own responsibility, to look after and be the kaitiaki, the guardians, of our environment. To that end, I support this bill and so will most of the people in Nelson. Thank you.

First Reading

I am a freedom camper. I spend my holidays cycle touring this great country of ours, or at least I used to spend my holidays doing that, when I was able to take my holidays at times when I was not competing with peak motorised traffic on the roads. Most nights when I am bike touring I sleep in a bed, especially as I have become older, as it seems more comfortable. However, when I go bike touring I always take a tent, and I always end up camping out some nights—freedom camping. Oftentimes camping is the best or most attractive option, or the only option. I guess I pride myself on leaving my campsite as I found it, except for perhaps a little bit of flattened grass. To me, that is a very valuable part of New Zealand tradition.

Many New Zealanders and, I think we will hear today, many people in this House value it. It pains me to have seen in recent decades more and more places that I have personally camped in and that make really good campsites becoming off limits. Thus, more and more people are channelled into commercial campgrounds and away from being self-reliant.

I also say that it irritates me to see in the Freedom Camping Bill the term “freedom camping”, which I think perfectly describes the New Zealand tradition that I have referred to, as it is used to mean something quite different. Although the definition of that term in this bill will catch the genuine freedom camping I have described, it is really targeted at one particular group of people: those who travel around in campervans that do not have toilet facilities and that are, therefore, cheaper. That is what the bill is actually about.

Let me be clear. I know there is a genuine problem with that group of people. When I was a member of the West Coast Tai Poutini Conservation Board, we received a number of delegations from councils coming to us to complain that almost too many tourists were being attracted to our region by the fantastic West Coast conservation estate. If any members of the House are not familiar with the features of that estate, I certainly recommend it to them. Councils were saying that a proportion of those people would park their campervans in rest areas and at other points next to the road. There was both a problem of litter and a larger problem that many of those campervans did not have toilets. Council staff needed to take time and spend money on a very unpleasant cleaning up process.

There is a genuine problem, but which solution to that problem is most consistent with maintaining rights and freedoms, and with continuing to encourage our vital tourism industry? Unsurprisingly, the Tourism Industry Association is aware of this problem. It had been working on it for some years and had developed a solution. Its solution had an operating assumption that, in general, people come to this country because of our clean, green reputation, and they do not set out to undermine or despoil it. The people who rent these particular kinds of campervans—the cheaper ones—are, in general, some of the most enthusiastic about our environment. They rent these vans because they do not have much money, and the fact they have chosen to spend their limited resources to come here speaks volumes about the high priority that they place on our environment.

Although, of course, there are some ratbags who simply do not care, for the most part the people who rent these campervans would look after our environment if they could, so the smart approach is to make it easier for them to do precisely that. Put simply, creating more places where campervans can spend the night that are sensibly spaced and that have toilet facilities and rubbish facilities is the smart way to go. The campervan companies would be charged with the responsibility of disseminating information about the responsibility to use these places, and information about exactly where they are. That solution was being developed and had not yet been given the chance to work before this approach from the Government and, indeed, from Local Government New Zealand was imposed.

Some critics will say that some local authorities have large, attractive areas and a small ratepayer base, and that is a fair point. I live in one such area, and other members of this House do also. It is a common problem, and I know it is a real one, too. That problem is at the heart of the difficulty of providing good quality health services in many of our rural areas, for example. It is the reason cited by the West Coast Regional Council for its being unable to adequately monitor compliance with resource consents as closely as it would like to.

But let us also remember that these tourists are contributing to local economies by spending on everything except accommodation. They buy food, fuel, visitor experiences, and so on from local businesses. Many businesses benefit directly from having them in the region, and many others benefit indirectly. It seems reasonable to ask that the local economy contribute to some of the facilities needed by tourists, particularly when those facilities alleviate other costs that would otherwise be borne locally, as they would be in this case.

In cases where a local community still cannot afford the cost of these facilities, the view of the Green Party is that the Sanitary Works Subsidy Scheme needs to step up. The Government needs to ensure that the scheme is sufficiently resourced and flexible to be able to assist those local communities to provide campervan facilities. After all, our whole New Zealand economy benefits from the tourism industry, and it is reasonable that the whole economy, therefore, helps to provide the tourism infrastructure required. This is the right approach and should be allowed time to gain traction to deal with the problem.

Instead, the approach being adopted is punitive. It might work—it is possible that it will—but it seems a less likely method to work than the one I have outlined. The problem is that people want to do the right thing but cannot do it. More broadly, it replaces the welcome mat that we extend to tourists with warnings of harsh penalties. This method runs a great risk of being counter-productive.

In all of the debate, which has been going on for some years now, one of the facts I find most curious is that there is almost no hard information about the size of the problem. Perhaps the select committee might challenge officials and submitters to try to provide this information. I suspect that it is an extensive problem, and undoubtedly a very unpleasant one, but it is actually relatively small. There is some irony, then, that this bill is being advanced just now.

I think we established in the House that one dairy cow produces about the same volume of excrement as 14 human beings. The Government is planning for a million extra dairy cows. Despite the Land and Water Forum having provided a historical consensus for both those who use water, such as the dairy industry, and conservationists to put in place a national policy statement on fresh water—

💬 Hon Rodney Hide: They hate farmers.

—including Federated Farmers, I say to Mr Hide—the Minister has elected to not include the provision that would have required resource consent for dairy intensification. It seems a little ironic in this debate today. The extra pollution that will be caused by that one decision will dwarf the pollution that could be caused by hordes of campervan tourists. This bill sets out in the wrong direction, casts the net too widely, and uses the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a walnut. The Green Party will oppose it.

First Reading

I must say I was a bit shocked that the Green Party has now joined—

💬 Chris Hipkins: He’s still here.

—yes, unlike Darren Hughes—the attack on farmers, along with the Labour Party. It is very, very clear that the Green Party hates farmers and the Labour Party hates farmers. Farmers are the very people who provide the backbone of the country, and the fact that those members would turn the issue of freedom camping into an attack on farmers is extraordinary to me indeed.

Let me start by thanking the Minister of Conservation, Kate Wilkinson, the Minister for the Environment, Nick Smith, and their officials for their work on this bill, because, surprisingly, it was a very tough policy issue to work on and to resolve. I also acknowledge the work of Local Government New Zealand in this regard.

Freedom camping has obviously been increasing in recent years, particularly in popular tourist destinations such as Fiordland, Queenstown, Nelson-Marlborough, the Coromandel, and the Bay of Plenty. That increase in popularity has also resulted in an increase in complaints. The Greens asked for some data, so here is some. The number of complaints to the Marlborough District Council about freedom camping have increased from 132 in 2007 to 432 in 2009. The main problem is people who camp on inappropriate sites such as lay-bys, beaches, and car parks, and leave behind human poo and other litter. This behaviour is offensive and it creates a human health risk. Many of the sites used by freedom campers are on local authority or conservation land, and both councils and the Department of Conservation spend a lot of money monitoring and cleaning up these sites. Queenstown Lakes District Council spends $30,000 a year on monitoring patrols, just looking out for the poo.

Although we want to encourage visitors to come to New Zealand and enjoy our country and all it has to offer, we also want them to respect our environment and be responsible campers. At present, we do not have an effective way to deter irresponsible freedom camping or an enforcement regime to address the sometimes offensive behaviour of some freedom campers—just some. Expensive and time-consuming court action is not working; therefore, the Freedom Camping Bill provides a low-cost, simple way of addressing the problems created by some freedom campers. The bill provides a nationally consistent infringement regime that will enable local authorities and the Department of Conservation to issue an instant $200 ticket to those who are creating the problems. This is a great bill, and it has the full support of the ACT Party.

First Reading

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. Ngā mihi nui ki a koe i tēnei ahiahi, otirā, ki a tātou o te Whare. Kua tū ake au ki te kōrero mō tēnei o ngā pire, Freedom Camping Bill. E ai ki tāku e mōhio nei, ko tōna tikanga he whakarite tikanga, he whakarite whāinga, ture rānei mō te hunga noho puni nei i Aotearoa. Kei te tautoko te Pāti Māori i tēnei o ngā pire i tōna pānuitanga tuatahi nei. Nā, e ai ki tā mātou, ēhara i te mea ko te iwi Māori tētahi hunga whai i tēnei momo noho. Ko te nuinga o te wā, ko te Ao Māori ka haere ki roto i te kāinga o tētahi o ngā whanaunga, ehara i te mea nō te mataku ki te noho i raro i ngā whetū, kāo, ehara tērā i te raruraru ēngari, he momo noho tēnei e kitea ana, mai i te hunga i hara mai ai i tāwāhi ki taku mōhio, nō whenua kē, ka hara mai ki Aotearoa nei pēnei i ētahi o ngā kaikōrero i te ahiahi nei, hara mai ki te mātakitaki, ki te āta titiro ki te ātaahua o Aotearoa whānui nui. I roto i a au o Te Waiariki, me kī, mai i Ngā Kurī-a-Whārei ki Tihirau, mai i Maketū ki Tongariro ka eke mai te hunga tūruhi, te hunga hara mai i tāwāhi, i runga i ngā waka e kōrerohia ake nei, ki te noho puni nei. Nō reira, kei te mārama au ki te tikanga o tēnei pire me te tautoko ake i tōna whāinga.

I te tau kua hipa i te Māehe, ko taku hoa a Rahui Katene, nāna tonu tētahi kōrero ā-nūpepa nei i tuku ki te ao, me te whakamārama ake mō te noho a tētahi hunga kainoho puni nei i Kaikōura; me tana āki tonu ki tērā hunga kia kaha rātou ki te tiaki i te taiao, ka mutu, ki te āta whakatikatika i muri mai i a rātau, kia kaua e waiho wā rātau para, wā rātau tūtae ki te taha o te rori, ki te wāhi i noho ai rātou. E ai ki ngā kōrero i tērā wā mai i a Rahui, i noho nei tēnei momo hunga ki runga i tētahi pā tawhito, pā tūwatawata, ko Ngā Niho Pā tērā. Kai Kaikōura tēnei o ngā kāinga engari ko te mate kē, ko ngā para, ko ngā tūtae i waihotia ake ki tērā o ngā pā tawhito. Koinei te riri o taku hoa a Rahui, koinei tāna i tuku ai i tētahi kōrero i te nūpēpa ki te whakahē i tērā momo noho.

Kei te mōhio tātou, nā runga i te āhuatanga o ngā kōrero o te Whare Pāremata i te rā nei, ehara i te mea kō tēnei kaupapa, te freedom camping he kaupapa hou, e hia kē nei ngā tau kua pēnei tonu te noho a te hunga hara mai tūruhi nei, haere i te whenua, ā, ka noho i te taha o te rori nā te toringa mai o te rā rānei, nā te kore waka rānei, kua tū te tēneti, kua noho i te ngahere, i te taha o te rori rānei. Nō reira, ehara i te mea nō nāia tonu nei tēnei momo noho. Engari, kei te whakarongo ake ki te kōrero a te mema o te Kākāriki me tana kī mai, ko tērā pea ko te aronga o tēnei pire, e hāngai tonu ana ki ngā mea e hara mai ana i runga i ngā whēne, ngā waka heri tāngata nei, ngā vans nei. Koinei pea tōna aronga. Ko te mate kē, mō tēnei wā tonu nei, kei te mōhio tonu tātou ka ekengia a Aotearoa e te hunga hara mai ai ki te mātakitaki i te kapu whutupōro o te ao ā kō ake nei. Tērā pea ka ekengia a Aotearoa e te tini, e te mano, e ngā waka e hia kē nei, ā, kāore e kore ka whai i tērā momo noho, arā, ko te noho puni nei.

Pēnei i ētahi atu o te Whare i te ahiahi nei, ko te take nui, ko te waiho ake i te para, te tūtae i te taha o te rori. Ka pātaia te pātai, ā, tēnā, ka taea e tātou te whakariterite i ngā whare paku, i ngā ipu para, me kī, kia taea e rātou te whakatikatika i muri mai i a rātou? Koinā te pātai nui. Tērā pea ka raruraru tātou ki reira. Ehara i te mea kei a tātou ngā rawa ki te whakatika i ētahi wāhi hei kohikohi i ngā para, ka mutu, ka pērā anō hoki ki te āhuatanga o te tūtae. Nō reira, ahakoa kei te tautoko ake i tēnei pire, kei te pātai te pātai mō ngā rawa, mō ngā mea hai whakatutuki i te moemoeā, kia noho pai, kia noho ātaahua a Aotearoa nei.

I roto i tēnei pire, ko te mana o ngā kaunihera ki te whakarite, i ētahi kaunihera ā-rohe tāku e kōrero nei, kia taea e rātou te whakatika i ō rātou ake ture mō rātou ake, mō tērā rohe, mō tēnā takiwā, mō tērā rohe, mō tēnā takiwā. Ka pērā anō hoki te taha ki Te Papa Atawhai, kia taea ai e ia te whakarite tikanga mō tēnā rohe, mō tēnā takiwā. Nō reira, he pai tonu tērā, kia taea ai e rātou te whakarite i tērā, ka mutu, mēnā ka raru tētahi, ka kore e whai i te ture o tēnā takiwā, o tērā takiwā, ā, ka pēnei i ētahi ka whainahia, mai i te $200, neke atu ki te $10, 000.

Nō reira, ko tāku tino kaupapa, i tua atu o te take mō ngā ipu para me ngā whare paku hei āwhina, hei wāhi tuku i ngā para, ko tērā e pā ana ki te wāhi o te Ao Māori ki roto i ngā whiriwhiringa o ngā kaunihera. I tēnei wā tonu nei, i raro i te Local Government Bill o te tau 2002, kei reira tētahi wāhanga mō te kōrero, mō te whakawhitiwhiti whakaaro ki te tangata whenua, ki te mana whenua rānei. Ko te mate kē, ehara i te mea he tino pakari mai tērā whāinga o te ture. Ko tā mātou e pīrangi nei, kua whakapakari ake tērā wāhi, arā, kia whai wāhi te Ao Māori i roto i ngā kōrerorero i te taha o te kaunihera ā-rohe, ka mutu, i te taha o ngā kāwanatanga ā-rohe—me mahi i te taha o te mana whenua. Koinā te tino pūtake i te mea, i ētahi wā nō te Ao Māori ērā whenua, ka mutu, me whai wāhi rātou ki te kōrero ki ngā iwi, ka mutu, ki te whakamana i te whāinga o tēnei pire. Ko te mea pai e kitea nei i roto o tēnei pire, ka waiho ake ki tēnā rohe, ki tēna rohe kia whakatika i a ia anō me ōna ake ture e pā ana ki a ia engari, pēnei i tāku e kōrero nei, ko te īnoi atu kia whai wāhi te Ao Māori, te taha ki te mana whenua, te tangata whenua i roto i ngā whiriwhiringa.

Ehara i te mea, he nui ngā kōrero i tua atu o tērā. Hoi anō, me pēnei rawa te kōrero, e kōrerohia ana i roto i ngā kōrero o te Ao māori, ko te kōrero mō Ranginui e tū nei, mō Papatūānuku, ko tā mātau o te Ao Māori, ko tōna tāhūhū ko te tiaki i te āhuatanga o te taiao, ko Papatūānuku e takoto nei. Nō reira, kei te tino āro atu mātou ki te tino pūtake o tēnei pire. He pai tōna tirohanga, he pai tōna kaupapa, he pai tōna tikanga. Koinei mātou e tautoko nei i tēnei pire engari, ka titiro ake ā ngā rā kei mua i te aroaro, kia kitea mai ai ko te wāhi ki te Ao Māori i roto i ngā whakawhitiwhitinga whakaaro ka puta ki te taha o ngā kaunihera ā-rohe, kaunihera ā-kawanatanga nei. Nō reira, ko ēnei ētahi paku whakaaro ake hei tāpiri atu ki ētahi o ngā kōrero i te ahiahi nei. Huri noa i tō tātou Whare, kia ora tātou.

[Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. My huge appreciation to you, and indeed to us of the House, this afternoon. I rise to address the Freedom Camping Bill. As I understand it, the purpose of this bill is to find remedies that will deal with issues caused by freedom campers in New Zealand. The Māori Party supports this bill at its first reading. However, I need to point out that Māori, by tradition, are not freedom campers. At most times they stay in the home of a relative—not because they fear sleeping under the stars; not at all, that is not where the problem is. To my understanding, this kind of lifestyle has come about through campers from other countries coming to see the beauty of New Zealand. Hordes of tourists, and those from overseas in vehicles referred to here as campervans, have a strong presence in my electorate of Te Waiariki, which stretches from the Dogs of Whārei across to Tihirau, and from Maketū inland to Mount Tongariro. So I have a clear understanding of what this bill is about, and support what it is intended to do.

In March last year, my colleague Rahui Katene made a widely reported statement in the press about the need for freedom campers in Kaikōura to take more care when deciding where and where not to dispose of their food and body wastes; she urged that they should take greater care of the environment, and ensure that they clean up before they leave and not leave their rubbish and body wastes on the side of the road or where they had parked. According to reports at the time, freedom campers were using Ngā Niho Pā, a traditional pā site in Kaikōura, as a place to defecate. That so infuriated my colleague that it prompted her to go to the press to voice her opposition to that form of camping.

Because of what has been said in the House today, we know that freedom camping is not a new phenomenon. It has been around for a long, long time. People who have come from overseas and travelled the land have parked up or pitched a tent in the bush or by the roadside at sunset. But I take on board the message from the member of the Green Party in his address to us, that the focus of this bill is particularly on campers in these vans. This perhaps is its focus. But the problem is that New Zealand is about to be inundated by hordes of people coming to watch the Rugby World Cup. Without a doubt, a large number of those people will resort to campervans to get about.

As some in the House have said, the major issue is that there are not the facilities to dispose of human waste and litter left behind on the roadside. The question then is whether we can provide toilets and rubbish containers so people can leave the place nice and tidy after them. That is the big question. It could be our downfall. There are not the facilities to dispose of human waste and litter. So while we support this bill, we question that there are the resources and tools to fulfil the dream that New Zealand should remain a beautiful and attractive country.

Local authorities will have the power through this bill to regulate, manage, and control human waste and litter for this or that region or district. So that is good. The bill allows each local authority to set by-laws to suit its region or district. The bill allows for fees and fines to be set from $200 right through to $10,000.

Apart from rubbish bins and toilets to help with the removal of litter and human waste, the real issue I have relates to the participation of Māoridom in consultations with councils. Currently there is a provision in the Local Government Act 2002 to consult with tangata or mana whenua. The problem is that that part of the Act is not adhered to strongly. We want it enforced more firmly. We want local councils and local authorities to engage more strongly in their consultations with local Māori, particularly when it comes to enacting the intention of this bill. A positive feature seen so far about this bill is its flexibility. It enables a local authority to regulate according to its situation, but, as I said earlier, participation of local Māori in the consultation process is a must.

There is not much more to add. Taking care of the environment is an essential need to take care of Earth Mother lying here, and Sky Father standing before us. We support the real intention of this bill and its good insight, philosophy, and meaning. The Māori Party looks forward to seeing a specific consultation provision for iwi, in the bill. These, then, are but some small considerations to add to the speeches this afternoon. Thank you to us throughout our House.]

First Reading

Freedom campers have an important place in New Zealand’s tourism industry. They are very important to us. Both international tourists and New Zealand domestic tourists quite rightly enjoy the freedom to park their vehicles at no cost and to enjoy our beautiful environment responsibly. For the most part freedom campers in New Zealand are responsible about where they camp, and they are to be encouraged in this endeavour. They take notice of signs that prohibit them from certain areas and they are responsible with their waste. But ever since I have had the privilege of serving as an MP, I have had people from all over my electorate, particularly in Tasman, tell me of their very serious concerns about irresponsible campers who ignore the signs, park their vehicles in areas with no facilities, have no facilities in their vehicles, and leave their litter and human waste behind. In fact, some of the anecdotal evidence I have had from local constituents has been not only disturbing but also, quite frequently, disgusting to hear.

We all know that this problem should not go on. Local councils just have not had the tools to deal with it until now; neither have communities that have concerns. In addition, different approaches by different councils have made it difficult for freedom campers to know where they can and cannot park for the night.

This Freedom Camping Bill deals with the problems I have outlined. It provides better information for freedom campers and effective enforcement powers to councils. It enables councils to determine where camping is and is not allowed, where it is restricted to campervans with self-containment, and where it is prohibited. Nationally consistent signage and enforcement will make things clear for everyone involved. Quite frankly, this is long overdue. I commend this bill to the House.

First Reading

I wonder what our pioneering ancestors would think. The Freedom Camping Bill is a nanny State bill if ever there was one, because we are now going to be told where we can do poos. I will tell members why this bill is nothing but a bit of grandstanding by Nick Smith and a few members over there. If it was a true bill to address the issue, it would be called the “Environmental Protection Bill”.

I accept that there is an issue and there has been an issue here for a long time. It was not raised on the basis of people stopping for the night but of people stopping during the day, and in South Westland in particular.

💬 Hon Tau Henare: Doing their business in the day?

That is right. I do not think that member does; he should do it more often, because it might clear his head. The issue is that in many places throughout rural New Zealand there are simply no facilities; there are no toilets. If people are travelling 200 kilometres, or even 100 kilometres, and stopping, then the question of where they go to the toilet is a significant one for them. We ended up with, and still have, many stopping places—not camping places, but stopping places—up and down the country that are littered and are absolutely disgusting.

The question is what we have done to help tourists to know about the situation. We have done nothing. Our signage is pathetic. As the Minister of Tourism I raised the issue that we as a tourism industry and as a country had a responsibility to inform those people, whom we were hosting in this country, about some normal issues of where they should go. We tell them whether there is petrol. We sometimes tell them about the speed limits. I have to say, though, that that signage is quite pathetic. Many tourists coming to this country get pinged for speeding when they probably have not seen a speeding sign, because those signs are so small. The same thing will happen now.

The nanny State National Government will let the councils say people can go here and here, but not there. Speakers in this debate have said the law might be used to chase people to camping grounds when they may have otherwise camped out around this country. We have a spectacular country. We have a small population. No one could say we are overpopulated. The vast majority of people visiting this country come because they want to see the spectacular scenery and enjoy the incredible nature that we have.

I ask what is wrong with using a shovel. Will someone camping somewhere with a shovel, dealing with their excrement properly, be fined as well? Can Mr Henare tell us that? He does not know. The question is whether the normal, sensible systems that many people have adopted over many, many years will be accepted as mitigation for what has been a growing problem. I accept that it is a growing problem. But here we have, for cheap political purposes, a bill that will, I have to say, send shivers up the spines of many people trying to market and promote this country to a whole lot of people out there.

💬 Hon Steve Chadwick: That was the best the Minister of Tourism could do.

The Minister of Conservation is over there. She is jumping up and down. I ask her what she or her Government has done to increase the level of facilities and toilets throughout the country, and what she will do to address the issue of daytime toilet need up and down this country—up and down this country. People will be told where to go in the evening when they stop—they will be told where to go at night—but what about during the daytime? Hold on, hold on! Help is coming. They will have to go down the road and round the corner, and there is a spot where they can camp and go to the toilet. It is rather ridiculous.

I think we need a more comprehensive approach to this issue. Labour will support the referral of this bill to the Local Government and Environment Committee because we accept that there is an issue, but I have to say it is a bizarre approach, and it is a half-hearted approach from a Government that thinks we can just fine the people who come to this country—and I can just imagine the reaction of many, many tourists when they come to this country—when we have not even informed them through a normal system of signage and education about the protocols around this. The councils I have spoken to over the years, Westland District Council in particular, have been complaining about this issue for a long, long time, I have to say. As people have driven down through South Westland there have been no toilets, and there have been some shocking sights at popular rest areas. But we have not even put up a sign. We have not even bothered to put up a sign that says to those travellers: “No toilets for the next 50 kilometres”, implying—

💬 Simon Bridges: What should the sign say?

Well, just listen.

💬 Hon Tau Henare: Go to the gas station.

We have that. We say: “No petrol for 100 kilometres”. I have seen signs like that. But we do not assist people by saying there are no toilets for 100 kilometres, which would imply the same thing. I am raising the realistic issues of people as they travel around this country. If the nanny State party over there is going to tell people where to go to the toilet now, and if the National members think they have addressed the problem of camping at night, then they are kidding themselves. What will this Government do to address the issue of toilet need during the day, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson? You can even understand it yourself, can you not?

Some real issues need to be addressed here. There are some wider environmental issues, and the issue of the tourism industry contributing to more infrastructure in this area is an important one. I challenge the Government to address that issue. The fact is that the Sanitary Works Subsidy Scheme—the subsidy for small communities to put in place toilet facilities and dump stations—has gone. There is no assistance at all. Small communities are expected to put in place large facilities. Even for camping grounds that might be then allocated or dedicated to this purpose, I say that if one has a concentration of campers in one area, one will have to upgrade the facilities. The question is who does that. Some commercial camping-grounds will be happy to do that, but many, many areas around this country will not be able to do that without proper assistance.

In conclusion, I say this is an ad hoc response. It is a bit of political grandstanding by Nick Smith, and it does not address the major issue of infrastructure for tourists—not just at night time but during the day, as well. If we are to uphold and support the “100% Pure New Zealand” brand in this country, then a more comprehensive look at environmental infrastructure for tourists has to be addressed. But that Government chopped $15 million off Tourism New Zealand’s budget in the last Budget; there is $15 million less to promote New Zealand. I guess that is one way of addressing this problem, because there certainly will not be as many people coming to New Zealand. Maybe that is it—in fact, National might have outsmarted us; I concede that. It may be that National’s cunning plan to address this issue is to cut $15 million off Tourism New Zealand’s budget. It will reduce the number of people coming to the country, and we will not have the problem. That is exactly what will happen here.

The bill is a Draconian approach to what is a real issue. We will just fine individuals, whose understanding of the English language might not be great, who have had no information or education about the norm and protocol in New Zealand, and who have hired a rental van, with or without facilities—like elsewhere in the world. Those people will feel really gutted, I am sure, when they are slapped with a $200 fine. It surprises me, but the nanny State, the Draconian Government that National is, has finally shown its true colours. It has cut the budget of Tourism New Zealand, and cut the money from the Sanitary Works Subsidy Scheme and the support for local councils for toilet and sewerage facilities. It has simply slapped a fine on those people who cannot hold on any longer. Thank you.

First Reading

Picture this: an international visitor is on the edge of the great Lake Taupō for the very first time, when that visitor stands in a piece of —. What will that do for his or her experience of this fantastic country? There will be thousands pouring into Taupō when they come to support South Africa, Ireland, and Wales during the Rugby World Cup in only 92 days’ time. I am proud to support the Freedom Camping Bill, this practical, sensible legislation that has been led by Jacqui Dean and the Minister of Conservation, Kate Wilkinson.

First Reading

I have listened to the debate in the House, and I recall that I had a glorious year as a Minister of Conservation. It is a pity that Nick Smith did not even mention that wonderful, practical reign! However, I am following on from a former Minister of Tourism, the Hon Damien O’Connor, who pointed out the very problems that we had to face when we were in Government, but that this bill just does not fix. This bill is absurd.

Following the example of the member from Taupō, I ask members to picture this: new tourists arrive on the shores of Lake Taupō and do not have a clue where to find the toilets. There is no signage. There is no small subsidy scheme for Little Waihī to even build a decent ablution block next to a camping ground or at a pull-over on the side of the road. So what do the tourists do? They foul the side of the road. We see it, and we are aware of this problem. But now they will be pinged with a $200 fine. Who will issue the fine? Will it be the local authority? Will it be a regional councillor? Will it be a front-line Department of Conservation ranger, who instead of protecting species—now that $13 million is being knocked off the conservation budget every year—will have to issue fines? Who will be responsible for issuing the fine? Do members know what the tourists will say? They will say: “I am not going to pay it.”

So we will set up an amazing bureaucracy through the Freedom Camping Bill to catch the pooper. Is it the dog or is it the person? Who will issue the fine? Is the fine for the dog or the person? And who will check that the fine has been paid when the tourists leave the airport? Will it be a customs officer, or is it the airport’s responsibility to say: “This person was found soiling the road in Tekapō, so must not leave the country until the $200 fine is paid.” This is a stupid bill. That is all. It is not practical and it is stupid. It is a nanny State response to the complex issue of the spoiling of our beautiful environment, which we all care about.

Freedom campers actually came to us when we were in Government too—

💬 Hon Member: You did nothing!

Hang on a minute! They proposed a solution with a mix of penalties for those who did not have ablution facilities in their campervans. They said there was a problem, but that everyone was being pinged because some campers pay a premium to get a campervan that has a good ablution block in it. But is that going to stop the guy who has been drinking at night and goes into the bushes for a quick one? We have to think of the practicalities around this, and this bill does not solve the problem we are all concerned about in respect of our clean, green environment.

There is another issue, and I heard Damien O’Connor mention it too. It is ironic that the Government thinks this is the quick fix to environment protection, when it has cut the very subsidy that allowed small communities to put in basic sanitation blocks and facilities wherever they saw the need along the countryside where freedom campers wanted to go. That subsidy scheme has gone—zip. I wonder whether the collection of the $200 fine proposed in this bill will go back into local authorities’ coffers through the department of tourism so that they can build decent ablution blocks, and campervans can pull up and use those facilities. That was the sort of proposal and the solution we put in for other previous big events in this country. We put in more refuse collection and we started to build small ablution blocks. Members over there did not even know that scheme existed. I do not think that Government members even realised how good that scheme was. Local authorities loved it. Local authorities could make the decision about where these were to go.

💬 Jacqui Dean: What scheme?

The Sanitary Works Subsidy Scheme. Ask Minister Tony Ryall. It was administered through the Ministry of Health, and all of the funding has gone.

The National Government has not even looked at some little tool box solutions that were there for the Government at the time. Clearly, Minister Ryall has not talked to Minister Wilkinson, who has not talked to the Minister for the Environment, Nick Smith. Those measures that were already there are not even included in this bill. The nanny State National Government is just going to issue fines all over the country. It is not going to put up any signage. There is nothing in here about signage to say—

💬 Hon Member: Yes, there is.

No there is not. There is no information for freedom campers at all about this law change. There should be information kits for new visitors to the country to say: “Welcome to New Zealand. Now you are going to find you get a $200 fine, and we will take the apple that you bring in from Australia off you, too. We will ping you for that. Welcome to New Zealand. Haere mai. Welcome to the Rugby World Cup. Have we got a quick-fix solution for you.” This is a band-aid solution. I hope that the Local Government and Environment Committee can flesh out the bill, and that is why Labour will support its referral to the select committee.

In some areas, in Rotorua, for example, the provisions in this bill sort of meet what is being done anyway. We have something called a Rotorua open public place policy, and in that policy we promulgate by-laws and encourage people in freedom camping situations to go to a place where there is a toilet and ablution facility.

This bill is just silly. It is not a bill that will give us a great reputation as a country of liberal thinkers. People love the environment and people want to come here. It is a nanny State bill. It is a stupid solution—again, because of the Rugby World Cup. I think the Minister could have done much better than this. There could have been a mix of fines and a mix of the Sanitary Works Subsidy Scheme, and it could have been promulgated. We could look at where the fine could go, instead of just into the Government coffers as another revenue back-door facility. For goodness’ sake! Who will be policing this? Who will monitor this? If it is to be front-line Department of Conservation rangers, then I think that is an appalling waste of conservation money.

There was a whole mix and suite of solutions to what looks to be a very overt problem that causes environmental degradation. I hate this bill being called the Freedom Camping Bill. To me it is more like the “Freedom Camping is Dead in New Zealand Bill” or the “We’re Going to Tell You Where to Go Bill”. As Damien O’Connor said, we could have come up with an environment protection bill and looked at this whole problem of degradation and contamination of public sites in a much more comprehensive manner that fitted our clean, green environment.

First Reading

The real problem with freedom camping, as members have noted, is that although the Government can bring in any number of measures—it might be fines, good signage, or describing places where people can and cannot camp, and whether they have self-containment—the real problem we need to overcome is that we need people who visit New Zealand from overseas, and New Zealanders themselves, to understand that they have environmental responsibilities. We cannot stop people going to the loo in our beautiful places in New Zealand just by the suite of measures we are proposing in the Freedom Camping Bill, but they are a good step along the way. They are an excellent step along the way of reminding people who come to New Zealand that we love them—we love people coming to our country; we love the way they spend money in our country and make a contribution to our society—but please, they must not foul our environment before they go home.

The other point is that unless we get on top of this problem we are in danger of people coming to New Zealand from, say, Sweden, parking up against the shores of Lake Wānaka, seeing the mess left there, and then going back to Sweden and saying that they loved New Zealand but it is actually not as good as New Zealanders crack it up to be. We need to be very careful that we maintain New Zealand’s good image.

The reason this bill is so good is that it is making a stand. Labour members can lament the fact that the bill will not fix the problem, but it will. It will help to fix the problem, because we will remind people of their environmental responsibilities. As I say, no single measure will fix this problem. Once again, it is up to individuals to understand their environmental responsibilities.

In closing, I commend the Minister of Conservation, Kate Wilkinson, for her preparedness to act on this issue in advance of the Rugby World Cup. I congratulate Geoff Ensor from the Freedom Camping Forum, who has worked so hard across many sectors on this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

When the bell rang last night, interrupting the debate, I was talking about the proposal in the Budget to privatise the power companies Meridian Energy, Genesis Power, and Mighty River Power, and also to sell the stake in Air New Zealand. I was setting out why Labour thought this was such a short-sighted policy. I listened very carefully and with interest to the interchange during question time between the finance spokesperson on this side of the House and the Minister of Finance. The Minister was trying to make some sort of case that the special dividends from Meridian Energy, paid as a result of selling assets that Meridian had acquired in Australia, should be excluded from the valuation, and that somehow this made it sensible to sell off strategic stakes in the power companies. But I want to say to the Minister of Finance that it is ordinary business practice, as he should know as a shareholding Minister, for those energy companies to be buying and selling assets overseas all the time.

If the Minister knew the portfolio well, he would know that Mighty River Power, for example, at the moment has significant geothermal assets that it is working on overseas. There is a joint venture in Chile and some work is being done in the United States. Nobody expects Mighty River Power to hold on to those assets overseas long term. Everybody knows that Mighty River Power’s core business is developing renewable energy in New Zealand, as we saw with its announcement yesterday of a very significant geothermal plant in the North Island, which will take its geothermal production up to significant levels, and also make that manner of renewable production a very significant part of the energy mix in New Zealand. So it is wrong to say that somehow we should take a company’s overseas activities out of the mix when calculating its rate of return to the Crown. That is simply misguided, and it shows a further flaw in the thinking that selling a majority stake in our important and profitable power companies, and selling the stake of about 80 percent in Air New Zealand, is somehow good for the country.

Just on the case of Meridian, I tell the House that the Australian business the Minister referred to was one the company purchased when I was on the board, and sold when I was on the board. That resulted in nearly $1 billion worth of value for New Zealand taxpayers, and accrued no risk to New Zealand taxpayers. While the business was being held in Australia, it meant that we got scale when we were trying to build wind power in both New Zealand and Australia, and that we could sell that activity at a profit in an overseas market with no effect on New Zealand taxpayers, at all, except to make sure they got nearly $1 billion worth of extra revenue in the kitty. That not only was a good deal, and a good example of a business doing something successful in Australia, which unfortunately for New Zealand businesses is not always the case, but also shows the lie inherent in the Minister’s thinking that somehow we should exclude special dividends from the equation when we are looking at the rate of return from State-owned enterprises. The fact is that under Labour there were frequent special dividends. Special dividends are still paid by State-owned enterprises under this Government. The Minister knows that, and trying to cook the books to avoid the half a billion dollars this Government got in special dividends only this year from State-owned enterprises, in respect of which he would sell a stake that once gone is gone for ever, is just absolute folly.

I will talk about what selling the rest of our power companies would mean in practice. I remember when I was on the board at Meridian, and I have to say that it was a very, very good board; I learnt a lot from the businessmen and women who sat on that board and who exercised excellent governance skills in the company when I was there. I think the directors’ fees were $50,000 a year. At Contact Energy, which ran a business of a similar size and with a broadly similarly balanced portfolio of hydro and other generation activities—because they all inherited the old ECNZ set up—the directors’ fees in total in 2010 were $993,000 for doing the same job that State-owned enterprise directors do for a fraction of the cost. That is another thing that will happen if these power companies are sold off. The reality is that it will cost a lot more to run them, because the private sector, which will have a significant stake in them, will demand a lot more to participate in governance, and probably in management.

We see this repeated all the way through in overheads, executive pay, and the general approach to the way in which the business is run. No one should presume that we would have the amount of renewable energy that we now have in New Zealand, or indeed that we would have acquired the additional generation capacity and the efficiencies in generation that we have acquired over the last 10 years, if most of the system had not been State-owned. Most of those directors sit there every day. They know that the Government thinks it is in the general national interest that there should be more and better generation capacity, and that it should generally be renewable. They know that is what the people want, they know it is generally what the Government wants, and they sometimes take what I will say is more than a commercial approach to make that happen. That is a good thing. We should be pleased that our power companies do that, and that they try their best to keep a lid on power price rises.

If this proposal goes through, and if majority stakes are sold, or even if significant minority stakes are sold, in Mighty River Power, in Genesis, and in Meridian, then we will undoubtedly see attempts to put power prices up significantly. Indeed, if we look at the Budget documents, we can see that the Government has calculated a higher rate of return on that very assumption once the sale has occurred. The experience with energy privatisation overseas, particularly in the United Kingdom, is that a country does just get higher prices and greater extravagance, and of course it loses for ever the dividend flow that it currently benefits from. The policy is a foolish policy. It is what this Budget absolutely relies upon in order to make the figures work, but it is something we should not follow at any cost.

The Budget has to be considered not in a vacuum but in the context of the three Budgets that Mr English has presented. To understand where we are trying to steer New Zealand, I think we have to have a close appreciation of exactly what the fiscal and structural problems are that the Budget is intended to fix. So it is worth spending just a few minutes rehearsing the context of this Budget to understand where I think we want to go as a country.

The context of this Budget—the narrative—is now becoming, I think, a little clearer. By 2004 the froth of the early conditions of the previous Government had been knocked off, and the traded sector—that is, roughly speaking, the competitive part of the sector, the thing that creates wealth rather than spends wealth on our behalf—was already in recession. Not a single job had been added in the last 5 years. There was also massive ballooning of private sector debt, from around $80 billion or $90 billion in 2000 to about $160 billion or $170 billion in early 2009. Inflation was at 5.1 percent—people have forgotten that—at the end of 2008. We had a massive blowout of core Government spending. From memory, it was something like $32 billion in 2000, which had gone up to about $60 billion in 2008; there had been a 50 percent growth in just the last 5 years. The economy had grown by less than 1 percent in each of the previous 3 years prior to our becoming the Government, compared with Australia growing at over 3 percent. As we now know, New Zealand achieved the remarkable feat of entering into recession—it was the only developed country to be in recession—before the global financial crisis was triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Not just Budget 2011 but also the previous two Budgets taken in conjunction as a suite are designed to fix those problems.

I have to say thank heaven for the election. If New Zealand had continued on that trajectory, I know exactly where we would be today: we would be in an IMF recovery ward along with other countries that have comparable debt-to-GDP ratios. We proved quite conclusively, as the Prime Minister put it, that we can spend like a First World nation. Now is the time to prove that we can earn like a First World nation.

What are we trying to do? First of all, we are trying to manage the current fiscal situation against the background of some very severe turbulence coming out of left field. Not only have we had the global financial crisis, which was the worst economic recession in the last 70 years and has tested—and, let us face it, continues to test—many, many developed economies, but also we have had two massive shocks from these two earthquakes. If anyone thinks this is just an idle comment, I tell them to just look at what has happened in the No. 1 export market of New Zealand and the No. 4 export market to New Zealand. I am talking about Australia and Japan. In Japan, our fourth-largest export market, we have seen exactly the human impact that the dreadful disasters—the nuclear fall-out, the tsunami, and the earthquake—have created. There has been appalling loss of life, but also it has severely impacted on their economy and their production. In case anyone did not notice, although the tornados and floods in Australia did not lead to large loss of life—thank goodness—they have resulted in the worst quarterly GDP outcome for Australia in 20 years.

These extreme events—known as black swans, I think, in technical literature—happen. They do not happen just in New Zealand; they have happened to two of our closest partners. And they have been an added dimension for us to deal with. Nevertheless, this Budget has stuck to the task, and has steered New Zealand through these difficulties while addressing the Christchurch problems in a very coordinated and structured way.

Where are we with this Budget? First of all, we have continued to restore some fiscal prudence on New Zealand. Taking account of the past and new measures to restrain the growth of public expenditure, we now forecast that we will be back to roughly, I think from memory, a $700 million deficit by 2013, and to surplus by 2014. This will allow us to start repaying debt, which many developed countries with very high debt-to-GDP ratios may not be so favourably placed to do. It will be a remarkable testimony, in my opinion, to Mr English and his senior colleagues that we have gone through this most difficult situation with some reasonable prospects in sight.

Nor have we forgotten what I would call the long-term structural agenda. Nothing had been done under Labour to address an outmoded tax system, or to reduce tax and incentive-sapping measures. We have had the most important tax reform in 20 years. We now have a situation where in gross terms—not in net terms, because, of course, a fiscally neutral tax package was introduced—two-thirds of the revenue costs went to reducing taxation on people below the average income. So much for the rich mates’ ritual we hear from members on the other side! They simply will not look at the facts. We now have the highly favourable situation where three-quarters of New Zealand taxpayers pay a top marginal rate of 17.5c. To put it round the other way, they are actually able to keep 82.5c of every marginal dollar they earn.

This will take some time to seep through the economic structures of New Zealand, before we can see the incentive effects coming through in a very positive way. But one thing is very clear: the advice we received from many sources—not just Treasury—was that if we wanted to do something to create a step change in New Zealand’s economic performance, we had to address these tax issues. That is exactly what we have done.

The structural programme has also advanced on a number of fronts. Education is not just a social policy issue; it is also an economic reality. I think there is a wide understanding in New Zealand that at the upper level of New Zealand educational achievement there is nothing wrong at all with our education system. In fact, it is a world-class education system. The people at the bottom of the heap have been underperforming, and we know what those statistics tell us. So although we started a programme of addressing some of the structural deficiencies at the tail end of the New Zealand education system, through such elementary steps as introducing standards by which parents could make some judgments about whether their children are making progress, we are also advanced across a number of areas. As for the suggestion that this might have been a slash-and-burn Budget, I tell the House that total education spending will, I think, reach $12.2 billion this year, which is an all-time high. We are a moderate Government doing sensible things in a moderate way, and I think we have a lot of support from New Zealand for that approach.

I will also focus on infrastructure. I recall the Prime Minister making the point a couple of years ago when he said that New Zealand is, in a sense, a country like a small company, with outstanding assets but under-invested in its own future. We have had to ramp up structural investment in our infrastructure. The State will inevitably play a large role in that; we have no ideological problem with that, whatsoever. So the State has invested very significant money in what everyone calls—I think completely correctly—the superhighways of the 21st century, and this Budget has rolled out another $900 million - plus to complete the next cycle of that investment.

I have the privilege of going around export companies in New Zealand, and company after company always come to me and say what a boon this investment will be to them. One of the things that is becoming clear is that the distinction between manufacturing export companies and service export companies—what we call them—is no longer clear. I went to see a company called FRAMECAD, an outstanding New Zealand export company. It is hard to describe what it is. Is it a manufacturing company? Yes. Is it an information technology company? Yes, and it sends its CAD designs of framing materials, through ultra-fast broadband, to machines it has pre-installed in locations. It is companies like that—and sometimes we will not even be able to predict who it will be—that will take advantage of these things. We are making an investment in our future, out of trust that this is the right thing to do.

Finally, I will focus on investment in water. I think that that will prove to be an outstanding background for us to exploit all the advantages of these new trade agreements. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is a privilege to take a call in this Budget debate. I intend to focus on transport issues. When it comes to transport, this Government, under Steven Joyce as Minister of Transport, is simply on the wrong track. This Government is creating monuments in concrete and asphalt to 1950s-style transport thinking. The roads of national significance—or the roads of significance to National—that dominate the transport budget are memorials to old-fashioned thinking, locking Kiwis into cars, trucks, and an oil-dependent future.

As Wellington debates an appropriate sign for the airport, I would like to propose instead of the “Wellywood” sign a gigantic statue of Steven Joyce near the proposed Basin Reserve flyover in order to remember him, the “Colossus of Roads”.

I intend in this speech to explain the Green Party approach to transport, look at the roads of significance to National, and discuss the smart alternatives we should be adopting. The transport budget is primarily delivered through the Government policy statement, which is currently out in draft form. It is an enormously influential document, determining how we will spend more than $38 billion over the next 10 years.

Firstly, I will state the Green approach to transport. We believe that our Government is wasting our scarce national resources on uneconomic motorways, and locking us into a car, truck, and oil-dependent future. I ask where the balance is, when for every dollar we spend on walking, cycling, buses, trains, and coastal shipping, this Government is pouring $7 into building more roads. Walking and cycling come off particularly badly in this Budget, receiving less than 1 percent of the total transport budget, even though 10 percent of Kiwis cycle or walk to work and would do so even more if it was safer.

This Budget is massively skewed, with $13.7 billion, or 39 percent, of the total National Land Transport Fund going towards State highways, to the detriment of local roads, police safety, transport planning, and public transport infrastructure. It is like investing in a CD store at the dawn of the iPod age. These projects lock us into old ways of getting around, and constrain the smart alternatives.

The Government policy statement allows for an increase of only $90 million in subsidies for public transport services over the next 10 years. Public transport services will receive less than 10 percent of the National Land Transport Fund. This suggests that the Government wants to constrain the high growth we have seen in patronage over the last 10 years.

There is no joined-up thinking in this transport budget. The Government talks about roads of national significance when it should be looking more broadly at transport corridors of national significance. The Green Party believes in smart transport investments that balance roads with sustainable transport options that will future-proof our transport system so that it is more affordable, efficient, and versatile.

Out of Government, the Green Party has achieved the electrification of the Auckland rail network, we have saved the Overlander train, Johnsonville’s trains, and Wellington’s iconic trolley buses, and now we are working with the Government to roll out the national cycleway. The Greens are not anti-car or anti-road; we love to drive. We are pro transport choice. We do not want to stop all road investment; we just want to stop pouring billions of dollars into white elephant motorways that will make congestion worse.

The roads of significance to National that dominate the transport spend are expensive. We are talking about $10.7 billion over 10 years, and many of the roads are uneconomic under the Government’s own benefit-cost ratios. That is without measuring the true cost: the externalities of climate change, obesity, and road safety. The OECD report reference to the National Infrastructure Plan shows there is no correlation in New Zealand between motorways and economic growth, yet there is a strong positive correlation between investment in other types of local roads and rail.

Recent research from the United States shows that the economic stimulus spending on public transport there created twice as many jobs per dollar spent than spending on motorways created. We hear from the “Colossus of Roads”, Steven Joyce, that motorway projects are good for creating jobs. However, that makes no sense when to create just a single job costs between half a million dollars and $1 million. Even Don Brash, in his latest 2025 task force, said of one of the roads of significance to National that there was no evidence that the project would provide a net benefit to the economy.

Many of these projects are not even needed. For example, the Western Link Road, which was the community’s preferred option over the Kapiti Expressway or, north of Auckland, the Campaign for Better Transport’s “Lifesaver Highway” would cost considerably less and do considerably more for road safety in the short term than the $1.7 billion “Holiday Highway”.

Essentially, the National Land Transport Fund is the Minister’s own discretionary fund to play with and make political decisions with, and he has rammed through these motorways under a shocking process. That is why I call them roads of significance to National. These roads benefit trucks primarily and are roads of trucking significance. They run through iconic and important communities of national significance, and they lock us into an increase in greenhouse gases, which are already up by 70 percent since 1990 in the transport sector, as if the climate was not of significance.

The Government is woefully and wilfully ignoring the price of oil. None of the business cases take into account volatile or rising oil prices nor the huge impact that current world prices are having, seeing road traffic levels declining over 3 percent over the last year. Unlike many businesses, councils, and Governments, this Government has no plan—or plan to start planning—to reduce our dependence on oil, which accounts for 16 percent of our gross domestic product or 99 percent of our transport fuel.

This huge fortune we are wasting on our motorways is based on a fuel of declining significance. These roads of significance to National will not even help motorists stuck on our crowded roads. Building roads to deal with congestion is like dieting by extending the belt buckles. These roads will increase sprawl significantly in low urban housing density, meaning higher infrastructure costs and higher household commuting costs, and constraining public transport more akin to the 1950s than the 21st century.

We are at a turning point. If we keep doing things the way we always did, building more motorways and spending the vast majority of the Budget on roads for trucks, we will not get a different outcome. We need smart transport solutions.

Just before Bill English read out his Budget speech I highlighted the major missing piece of the Budget—funding for the central business district rail link—when I tabled my petition signed by thousands of Aucklanders. Building the link would transform the rail network, whose patronage grew over 20 percent in the last year. It would unlock the rail network, unlock its constrained capacity, and transform the central business district. Primarily, the rail link would benefit motorists by taking cars off the road, massively benefiting the regional economy.

This Government, however, is determined to continue the heritage of previous National Governments by thwarting Auckland’s ambition for a central business district rail link. The Government policy statement contained only $370 million, or 1 percent of the National Land Transport Fund, for building new public transport infrastructure, meaning the central business district rail link will stay just a dream. Auckland cannot do it alone, given that this Government removed its transport revenue - raising options. The “Colossus of Roads” got his officials to produce a negative review of the business case, amazingly identifying only $148 million in benefits, whereas I prefer to go by the internationally reviewed and more robust Auckland Council review, which showed $3.3 billion in wider economic benefits. This Government is holding Auckland back, despite the clear call from the people of Auckland, the strong business case, and the plain need to get the loop now.

In Wellington, funding was missing for another transformational transport project—the light rail system—to link up the region’s rail network with its southern suburbs. The Greens have been champions for rail in Parliament. We love it because it is efficient, better at reducing congestion, safer, environmentally friendly, and, lastly, economically beneficial.

This Budget fails to address the affordability of buses and trains, to develop a smart strategy to see more Kiwis cycling, to encourage car sharing, or to promote better urban design. At a time when New Zealand’s Budget deficit is higher than ever, we should be investing only in transport projects with strong and proven economic cases, like the central business district rail loop or walking and cycling. Steven Joyce has essentially raided the transport pantry and taken all of the money to fund his pet political project—his politically inspired roads of significance to National—in the pursuit of some outdated and misguided vision of economic growth.

In summary, these uneconomic and, in many cases, unneeded roads of National Party electoral significance and roads of trucking significance rammed through under a terrible process through communities of national significance based on a fuel of declining significance—as if the climate was not of significance—must be stopped. We need real transport leadership and a balanced approach to transport spending, but all we have is a monument to the 1950s—a “Colossus of Roads”.

I am pleased to take a call and to stand up and support this Budget. I thank the Hon Bill English for the work he has done—and might I say that it was not easy. It has been a hard process to go through this but there is no doubt that this National-led Government has presented a Budget that is about building our future as a country, it is about building a stronger economy, it is about a stronger workforce, it is about a platform for growth, and it will make a substantial difference to where we go as a country. It is a responsible approach in these times, which are our times, and which, indeed, are a bit tougher. In Vote Social Development, I am proud to say, we found savings but avoided wholesale cuts to services and to programmes. We have done so through a continued focus on finding efficiencies and getting smarter at what we do, how we run it as a business, and how we do our business.

Vote Social Development has a total appropriation of $21.7 billion—one-third of all spend is under that responsibility. In this Budget, fiscal constraints meant that we had no new funding. So we have focused that funding and that spending on who needs it most. I am going to talk to members about youth employment, children in care, parenting support, employment assistance, the Christchurch rebuild, community organisations that have had our support, and, of course, our wonderful superannuitants. On those wonderful superannuitants we are projecting to spend about $9.5 billion in the next financial year—$9.5 billion just on superannuation. On top of that, we also project to spend about $288 million in supplementary support to them. That is through disability allowances, accommodation supplements, and also through special needs grants and special needs loans.

In Budget 2011 we set aside or reprioritised $250 million for social initiatives. This included, of course, the $55.2 million that is going into youth employment, and a $43.7 million package—and I will talk to members a bit more about those wonderful children in care who need every bit of help they can get. The $55.2 million that has gone into the youth employment package is to help those youth who make up about one-third of our current unemployment benefit numbers. Currently we have about 17,100 young people on the unemployment benefit. We all know that they need better lives. We all know that getting them at that age and making sure they have a future and a way forward is one of the best investments we can make as a Government. That is why we have built on what works. So we have evaluated and looked at what has worked and then we have progressed that.

We have the Skills for Growth programme in which we subsidise an employer who takes on a young person for a minimum of 12 months, and attached to that is a whole training and skills growth programme. The young people are attached to an industry training organisation. They are attached to a target industry where the jobs are needed. The intention of that policy is to make sure that those people do not come back on a benefit in their lifetime. That gives them a skill for life, real job experience, and also that training alongside of it. We think that is pretty exciting and will make a difference.

We took the very, very successful Job Ops youth employment scheme, which currently has seen over 11,000 young people in work. Those 11,000 young people are in work due to the $5,000 subsidy for 6 months. The scheme takes those young people in, gives them a job for 6 months, and most of them stay on for a lot longer. We now have training attached to that scheme, so it is now Job Ops with training. That means those young people also having training systems alongside them for those 6 months. It is $13 million, but funding places for 3,000 young people is certainly a worthwhile spend and one that we have come up with in this Budget.

Of course we have the Limited Service Volunteers, which occasionally gets mixed up with the military-style activity camps, and I do not like that. They are very different schemes. The Limited Service Volunteers scheme is for those on the unemployment benefit. It is a 6-week course that is about motivation and self-responsibility, and clicking into what young people can do. It gives them those sorts of skills, gives them career advice, and then follows their progress afterwards. However, the military-style activity camps are very, very different in that they deal with very serious youth offenders. I am really rapt that the Limited Service Volunteers scheme has come along, that we are putting a lot more into it, and providing a lot more places. There is ongoing funding for 1,500 places a year.

I turn to community responses. We knew the recession was hitting as we came into Government, and we knew there would be an increase in demand for our services that are out there, with people working on the ground. However, there was a decrease in funding because the foundations and the various philanthropists were not able to give the same amount of money to those services. We wanted to fill that gap. We have spent more than $55 million over the last 2 years on 700 organisations. More than $55 million has been spent on more than 700 organisations. What we really notice, though, is that those organisations are still feeling that pressure. As we went around and spoke to them, they said “It ain’t over yet. We need a bit more help.” I am absolutely delighted that this Budget has put $25 million more into those community organisations. There will be three rounds of funding. It will be available as it is, and I know that the funding is much needed. We are getting a fantastic response from the people out there in the community. I love that it is community-led organisations as well. It is people in the community on that forum who are taking these funding applications and deciding who gets them and where they are needed most.

But I have made no secret that what I am most proud of in this Budget is the assistance we are giving to children in care. These are the children who are removed from their homes because, quite frankly, an adult has treated them appallingly. At worst, the children have been seriously abused or sexually assaulted, and in this instance the best is that they have been hideously neglected. These are our children. They are broken, they are hurt, and we are not doing as well by them as we could. We take about 2,200 of these children from their homes each year, and we take about 90 babies at birth. Literally, a social worker and a policeman or policewoman are waiting outside a delivery room and the baby is taken. What we do with the children is put them into great foster homes and try to work with them to get them the right counselling. In some cases we are doing it well, and in others the truth is we are not.

What we are doing, after running a pilot scheme, is increasing the Gateway assessments for health and education. It is as simple as asking how we can fix their very complex problems if we do not even know what they are. How can we do what needs to be done with these children, when we do not even know what their history is, what their needs are, and what we can do? There is a full assessment, usually led by a paediatrician, with an administrator next to them who collects all of the children’s educational history, which sometimes can go back quite far. The children are often transitional. They have moved from before-school programmes, to after-school programmes, to schools, because they have been moved around. We are making sure that we are going back and getting as much information as we can.

Our pilot schemes have told us that 88 percent of those children who come into care have health needs—40 percent or more have mental health needs. Those children are not being seen, and they are not getting the services they need. Of the more than 40 percent of children who are seen to have either severe mental or behavioural issues, only 7 percent are currently getting assistance through the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, and that is not good enough. We then had to make sure that we were getting them the services they needed, so we put $14.5 million into mental health services. To be quite blunt, we can spend so much time arguing about whether something is behavioural, or psychological, or what has caused the major problems that these children have, that we are trying to squeeze them into a gateway that is not there, or it is a mental health issue. The mental health people say it is not their problem, and the psychologists are saying that the child fits more there, and in the meantime this child has grown up and not received the support that he or she most desperately needs.

So I will build them their own little flexible box and I will direct-purchase what they need, without the need of having to slot into those arguments of where they fit. I reckon that is one of the most important things that we can do as a Government. Let us work out what those needs are. Let us make sure we then address them.

We will also fund early childhood care for those children, from the age of 18 months through to 3 years, and then of course the 20 free hours’ care clicks in. I say that this is great for the kids because we know that quality early childhood care makes a difference, but I equally say that this is about respite care for those wonderful foster parents or grandparents who are raising these children. They have stepped in to look after them. Yes, we are funding $2.4 million into Parents Inc. to give support to foster parents and to those grandparents raising grandchildren in our communities up and down this country. They beg us, almost on a daily basis, for help. They take these children on, all through their own means. They live in our very small communities, and they live in our larger towns as well. They want help. I am really proud to be giving that help to them. I am proud of this Budget, I am proud of what we are doing for those most vulnerable children, and I think it will make a difference. Thank you.

We have just heard from the Minister for Social Development and Employment. It was interesting to hear her final comments in her speech about children. One of the areas where she has disappointed me most is that she has been more about talk than action in her 2½ years as Minister. Although she has said how much she cares about children, she does not follow it up with action. I am looking forward to the day when there will be some real action, and children in New Zealand will be put at the centre of a Government’s policy.

I have heard the words “bland”, “boring”, “no vision”, “no plan”, “no ideas”, and, “a Budget for yesterday, not tomorrow.” Those are some of the comments that we have heard from around New Zealand on the National Government’s third Budget. I would like to add a few other words to those ones. There has been quite a lot of “creative accounting” in this Budget. There is a fair dose of “dodgy figures” in this Budget. Some very heroic assumptions have been made in this Budget, and the whole lot has been mixed up with a very big handful of fairy dust. I believe that the public, over many, many months, have been played like a fiddle in the lead-up to this Budget. The Government has been assisted by the media, by commentators, and by cheerleaders for National, all playing the same tune as we went into this Budget. People were softened up to expect a tough Budget. There would be no new spending; it was a Budget about savings and growth. There would be cuts to projects that were “nice to have”, although it has never been defined what “nice to haves” are. It was to be about the unaffordability of the growing deficit this country has.

We were told week in and week out, over and over again, that we were borrowing $380 million a week, and that it was unsustainable, unavoidable, and unacceptable. New Zealanders were told that in this Budget they would have to take the pain. They would have to accept the pain, they would have to swallow the cuts that were coming, and they would have to stop complaining about selling our power companies and selling Air New Zealand, because there was no alternative. The poor Government had to do this because it was forced into this position! That was the mantra we heard week in, week out. I believe that the public were played like a fiddle. The truth is that the public are being fiddled by National, because if we look at National’s Budget we see that it is based on some pretty dodgy figures indeed. They are now emerging. Weeks after the Budget was presented; we are starting to get the true picture of what this Budget actually meant.

Let us take the first dodgy figure: the need to borrow $380 million a week, which is equivalent to $86 having to be borrowed every week for every man, woman, and child in New Zealand. But we have now discovered something after the Budget was presented, and it came out not by the Government being upfront about it. The public has learned that Bill English has been borrowing $100 million more per week than he needed to borrow. But, miraculously, before the election the Government will not need to borrow so much, so good will their management of the economy be. No one would argue that they ought not to borrow when the terms are good, but why not be honest and upfront about what they are borrowing and why they are borrowing it? New Zealanders are clever enough to understand if they are told, but what was happening had to be uncovered and drawn out.

The Government used that $380 million per week of borrowing as a way to scare New Zealanders. It made people much more worried than they needed to be. People worried about their own personal situations. They saw their jobs going, they saw their partners’ jobs going, and they saw prices rising faster than their wages. They saw their food bills, power bills, petrol costs, and rents going up. They could see that the tax cuts that were supposed to help them and the income assistance available were less than the rising prices they were facing. They knew they were not getting compensation in their wages or from those tax cuts, so they were very worried about their own situation. Loaded on top of them, the Government then made them worry about the position this country was in. It was about to implode because we were borrowing $380 million a week.

It has been beautifully orchestrated by National members. They were covering up their own economic incompetence. They used the shadow of the Christchurch earthquakes and the Pike River disaster, along with alarming Kiwis, to set up what I believe is an agenda to push through their old, tired policies of the past. It was all about positioning for the election. There is no denying that we have to reduce our Government borrowing in this country. It needs to be tackled, and a Labour Government would do that, but why not be honest about what we are borrowing? Why not front up to the public of New Zealand and say what money will be spent on? The first step in a recovery plan is to be honest about the situation one faces. We have not had that sort of transparency from this Government. This Government should own up to the fact that it is borrowing for the tax cuts it gave to thousands of well-paid New Zealanders last year. It should stop the fudge about it, and stop the fiddle about it. It is a fact: this Government is borrowing to pay for tax cuts for the top income earners in New Zealand. We could not afford those tax cuts, but the Government gave them anyway.

The irony of it is that Government members made changes in this Budget to Working for Families. I believe the changes they made to Working for Families bring them in about $300 million or $400 million, which affects middle-income earner families earning up to around $80,000 or $90,000 per year in joint income. Government members could have been much fairer if they had just lifted the top tax rate a little for those who got the big windfall in the tax cuts last year, and it would have brought in the same amount of money. But who did they tackle? Who did they hit? They hit middle-income earners with families to grab money off them, but left the high-income earners in this country with their tax cuts and the money in their pockets. There was no fairness in that.

Let us have a look at some of the fairy dust that Government members sprinkled around at the time of the Budget. Let us look at the jobs they said will be created over the next 4 years. They said we will get 170,000 jobs. Was that not the same figure that they promised in the 2010 Budget? I believe it is. In fact, if we look at the Budget’s additional information estimates, we see that 155,000 jobs will come between now and 2015. That is actually 10,000 fewer than they had in last year’s Budget. Those jobs will not be out there unless there is a change in this Government’s direction and a proper plan to create those jobs. In fact, unemployment has gone up, not down. Then we had the fairy dust about how our economy was going to grow by 4 percent every year over the next 4 years. Even Treasury is backing away from that prediction. Guess what? There is more. We can look forward to wage increases of between 4 and 5 percent every year for the next 4 years. Who believes that? The public certainly do not.

Then we had the doozy of them all: the creative accounting in the Budget. We will be allowed to choose whether we sell our assets. We will get to choose by voting at the next election. But when one looks at the Budget documents, one sees that the Government has already cashed up. It has banked the money already over the next 4 years. The Government has sold our assets. It is a con job. There is no choice for New Zealanders. The Government has banked the money from the sale of those assets.

Then we get to KiwiSaver, the other bit of a fiddle that went on. We get to choose whether we want to change KiwiSaver, but the Government is already cutting the $10 a week tax credit from New Zealanders from 1 July. This Budget is not about a forward plan; it is about pulling the wool over the eyes of New Zealanders.

Since John Key’s campaign before he became Prime Minister in 2008, and since then, he has been relentlessly focused on the things that matter. We have been focused on bringing down debt, bringing down taxes, and really delivering a brighter future for the people of New Zealand. We can contrast that with the Labour Party. We can contrast that with Trevor Mallard, for example. We are told that Trevor Mallard is campaign manager for the New Zealand Labour Party. One would think that in that role he would have a lot to do. But we have a party over there that is more focused on sports events than on the campaign. I understand that Trevor Mallard is in serious training for a cycle race.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I haven’t ridden a bike for 3 months.

Well, on his blog he has challenged a former sickness beneficiary turned blogger to a cycle race. My question to Trevor Mallard is whether that makes him the Sonny Bill Williams of New Zealand politics. Does that make him the Sonny Bill Williams—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have to leave the Chamber, so I cannot take the next call. The answer is that unfortunately I do not quite have the body.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): That is not a point of order.

I agree with the member; he does not have the body. He is not the only one in the Labour Party who it seems is focused more on sporting events than on campaigning on the issues that matter in this country. Take Trevor Mallard’s close colleague Clare Curran. Earlier this week she auditioned to be a franchise rugby team cheerleader. Then we have my old teacher Chris Carter, who is not standing for the future Parliament. He is also very much involved in sports. He is training for the New York City Marathon—in New York, sadly!

National is a party that is very much looking at the policies and focusing on the issues that matter. In this current term we have brought down taxes, bureaucracy, and borrowing. We have continued to do that. Current projections are for 170,000 jobs in the next 3 or 4 years, and for real wage growth of 4 percent. We can contrast that with a party on the other side—not many of whom are in the Chamber—that wants to put up taxes, spend more, and borrow money.

💬 Todd McClay: Spend other people’s money.

Labour members want to spend other people’s money, not their own, because of ideologies they learnt about at university, which for some of them was a very, very long time ago.

💬 Todd McClay: Or when they first came to Parliament.

Or when they first came to Parliament, which, again, was a very, very long time ago. But we on this side of the House are in the real world. We have delivered a Budget for the times. It is a realistic Budget, a Budget we can be proud of, and a Budget that builds for the future of this country.

💬 Hon Rick Barker: Even Tau’s going to sleep now.

I say to the senior whip on the other side that Labour can be ashamed of its record over the 9 years before we were in Government. Debt as a country was up from about $100 billion—

💬 Hon Rick Barker: Debt was down.

The facts do not lie. Debt was up from $100 billion to $170 billion. We know that Dr Cullen, by taxing more—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Who’s borrowing an additional $100 million a week that they don’t need? Who’s borrowing more than they need?

💬 Hon Rick Barker: Every Budget with a surplus.

Labour members do not like it. They do not like the facts. By taxing more, Dr Cullen managed to balance his books. But we know he grew the State from 2005 on by about $2.5 billion more each year. That is not a record to be proud of. In fact, that is a record to be ashamed of. All the while, the real economy in this country—certainly from the end of 2004 onwards—was going backwards. If we take out of the equation the huge ballooning of Government spending and the spending on plasma TVs by the likes of the Opposition spokesman on finance, David Cunliffe, so he could watch himself on Parliament TV, we see that, frankly, this economy was going backwards. Exports were going backwards. That is a record of shame. Labour left us with a decade of deficits, with rising debt year on year for 10 years.

In this Budget, and in the earlier two Budgets, we have consolidated our position and have taken off the sharp edges, so we have done the opposite. We are moving the country over the next 3 to 4 years—2014 to 2015—back into surplus, which will be by the end of a second National term. So we are bringing debt down—

💬 Hon Maryan Street: You’re borrowing more than you need, and you’ve given unaffordable tax cuts.

Maryan Street says we are borrowing more than we need. Here is the deal: her Government, if we were unlucky enough to have one in this country, would want to borrow more.

💬 Hon Members: No.

Well, let us go through it. The Labour Party says “Oh yeah, let’s have a research and development tax credit.” When Phil Goff is asked what that will cost, he says it is about $800 million, which he will take off the farmers. We will get to that. What will it really cost? It will cost about $1.2 billion more than that.

💬 Hon Maryan Street: No, Simon, you don’t know what our Budget looks like. You don’t know what our policies are yet, so stop talking out of a hole in your head.

Well, the facts do not lie in respect of Labour’s uncosted research and development policy. How will Labour pay for its research and development tax policy? I will tell members: it will do so out of its farmer-hating policies. That is we have on the other side: farmer haters. Labour members want envy taxes. They will take it out of an emissions trading scheme from 2013, I think.

💬 Hon Maryan Street: Make them pay their fair share, you mean? Make farmers carry their own weight, like the rest of us have to?

Actually, farmers are people who work very, very hard, day in and day out.

💬 Hon Maryan Street: They could be a lot more productive if they tried harder.

There we go. Maryan Street says that farmers could be a lot more productive if they tried harder. What a slap in the face to hard-working farmers. I hope Federated Farmers pick up on that comment. Maryan Street said that the farmers of this country should try harder and be more productive. They actually are productive. They are a brightline in this economy.

Members on the other side of the House, through their envy politics and taxes, want to tax farmers more and take down the good that is in this economy. We do not subscribe to the sorts of policies that would tax farmers more. We do not cost our policies on that. We do not want to put the top tax rates up. Let me tell the House what putting up the top tax rates does. It sends the so-called rich—and let me say that there are not many of them in this country—overseas. They are the doctors, the builders, and the hard-working people that Ms Street does not seem to like. That would send them overseas. All the while, Labour members, with their wedge politics, want to put minimum wages up. Labour members want to put the people they say they represent out of jobs.

I say that unlike Labour we want to give this country a fair go, but we want to do it through equality of opportunity. We want to do it through getting our debt down, paying our own way, getting Government finances in order, delivering more jobs, and investing in public services and infrastructure. Yes, we will trim back where we need to, because we cannot have the lolly scramble that Carmel Sepuloni wants; we cannot have that any more. Unlike the other side, which seems more interested in sporting events—and in Trevor Mallard being the Sonny Bill Williams of New Zealand politics—I think we are a party that is interested in the things that matter in this country. I am proud to be part of this Government.

If the $300 million per week that the Government is borrowing for this country was going any way towards alleviating the struggles that New Zealanders are feeling, then we could understand it, but that money is doing absolutely nothing to do with that. The three things I want to focus on today with regard to the Budget announcements by the National side of the House are, first, the beneficiary-bashing that has begun under this Government, second, the impact that the Budget will have on Māori and Pacific young people, and, third, the social implications of the high levels of unemployment that are being brought on by that side of the House.

I really want to start with the beneficiary bashing. I see that the Government has set aside $40 million for welfare reform, and the Minister for Social Development and Employment will be convening a group of seven Ministers to look at the Welfare Working Group’s recommendations. I wonder which Ministers will be on that group and what we as a country have to look forward to. Obviously, the Minister for Social Development and Employment will be on that group. She is a solo mother herself, who now looks down her nose at other solo mothers and says she got the training incentive allowance but other sole parents do not need it. She says times have changed now, so sole parents do not need the same level of support that she had.

We have a Prime Minister who likes to go around saying he grew up in a State house, yet in his own electorate, where Labour had planned affordable State housing to be part of the Hobsonville housing development, that Government decided that it did not want that in the Prime Minister’s area—that type of housing there, or those types of people to be living in that specific area. We also have a Minister of Education who, when she first started, increased the fines for truancy, but who in her own electorate recently refused to fund a school bus that would get kids from a poor rural area to the nearest school. We see it does not make for a very good committee if we look at the Ministers who may possibly be on it.

We are very concerned on the Labour side of the House about the beneficiary bashing that is taking place. It is a deliberate attempt to shift attention away from the fact that the National side of the House has done absolutely nothing to create jobs. It would rather put the boot into people who are already experiencing hard times, and shift the attention away from the fact that this Government has done an abysmal job of leading this country. What we know about New Zealanders—and I think this is something that we need to remind that side of the House about—is that generally Kiwis band together when times are tough. We are compassionate as New Zealanders. We lend our neighbours a hand when they are experiencing difficulties. We do not put the boot in when they are down, which is exactly what that side of the House is attempting to do in its beneficiary bashing.

💬 Hon Tau Henare: Where’s this member standing?

I met a solo mother of two children on the weekend in west Auckland, I tell Tau Henare. She is a solo mother whose husband left her last year. He left her last year with two kids, and one on the way. When I met her on the weekend she told me that—

💬 Hon Tau Henare: Whatever.

—I know Mr Henare does not care—things are so bad that she cannot afford to keep the third baby. She will be adopting that third child out, because she cannot afford to look after another one. Yet members on that side of the House like to put a stigma on sole parents, as if it is their fault and as if they are bludging off the system and deserve to have everything taken away from them. The woman I spoke to is struggling so much that she would put her third child up for adoption because she cannot afford to look after it. I blame members opposite for that, I say to Mr Henare.

When we look at the beneficiary bashing that is taking place, we see people like a mother who came in the other day with her 18-year-old son, a mother who is fearful that her son may commit suicide. He is on the unemployment benefit, but has a sickness that I will not go into detail about. He has tried time and time again to get a job and cannot get one. His mother says she sees him becoming more and more depressed. She is fearful that he may actually kill himself because of depression over the fact that he cannot find employment. That side of the House has done nothing to create jobs for boys like that one. That side of the House continues to put the boot into people like that 18-year-old, who is now considering suicide.

Talking about the boot, we may as well go on to boot camps. Earlier the Minister for Social Development and Employment said the $25 million that is going into these limited service training courses will be of benefit with regard to getting those young people motivated, into employment, and into training. She says they are not military-style courses, yet they are run by our Defence Force. I cannot understand how they cannot be military-style, when the Defence Force is running them. However, $25 million is going into these military-style training courses, which are prefaced on the idea that our young people have no motivation or discipline to work or to study, when the reality is that they are not being given the opportunities to work or study. There is no lack of discipline or motivation; there is a lack of opportunities, because that Government has failed to create them for those young people.

I am fearful for the young Māori and Pacific people who are neither in employment nor in education, because in 25 years’ time they will make up over 50 percent of the New Zealand population. They will make up over 50 percent of the workforce, and we will be reliant on them to move our country forward. People like—hmm, let me think—Brash, Banks, and all those people who continue to put down and pull down equity measures, and who continue to attack our young Māori and Pacific women and men, will be reliant on those very same young Māori and Pacific women and men to support this country, yet that Government has done absolutely nothing to invest in them.

We see cuts to early childhood education. I do not care what the Minister of Education says; this Government has cut the money provided for early childhood education. That, as Professor Gluckman has said, is where the investment needs to be made, yet members opposite have no understanding of the evidence and of the importance of that investment for us and our future as a country. Instead, we see Māori and Pacific young people continuing to be thrown on the scrap heap and then, when they cannot find employment or get into training, they are attacked by that side of the House as being bludgers on the State, when that is simply not the case.

I am concerned about the social implications of the high levels of unemployment that we face at the moment. Recently I was at a meeting with west Auckland lawyers—I think some of them showed up at a meeting that Tau Henare held recently, and they were not impressed—and one of the senior lawyers said that during tough economic times, a family lawyer will not go without work. Those family lawyers talked about the fact that because the Government is failing to address the needs of people, we face such tough economic times that family lawyers are seeing increased cases of marital splits and domestic violence. All of those things are a result of what the Government has, or has not, been doing.

I am concerned about the social implications of the high level of unemployment and the poverty that we face. I was a child and a teen during the 1990s. I had two parents who lost their jobs in the 1990s, and I have been a single mother, so I know how difficult that is. But I have never ever seen the situation as hard as it is now. I know of parents who cannot afford to put food on the table for their kids. I know of a mother who cannot even afford to keep her third child, and who is adopting her child out because of that. Some people coming through our office are sleeping under bridges or in cars because, on top of everything else, there is a housing crisis that members opposite have failed to address. Those members are running our country into the mud. We need to make sure, as a country, that on 26 November they are not allowed to continue in Government, because the situation will only get worse. We are looking at repercussions that will continue for decades if that Government is re-elected on 26 November. Thank goodness it will not be.

There is a song by that famous rock and roll band AC/DC called “Back in Black”. I tell members that the Budget we have just been given will put us back in black by 2014. By 2014 we will be back in black. Today somebody referred to Labour as being petty and pathetic. I have to agree with whoever said that—

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: That’s just their good points.

That was just the two good points of that party. All those members could moan about were BMWs and the cost of a paint job and a few curtains. The BMWs were actually bought and signed off by none other than the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, Helen Clark. But there was no talk of how good it will be with 170,000 new jobs over the next 4 years. Nobody stood up and thanked Mr English very much not for creating 170,000 jobs but for creating the conditions so that employers can get out there and start employing the unemployed. Today I heard the Governor of the Reserve Bank—

💬 Hon Member: Who?

That is what I expect from members of the Labour Party. That member asked who the Governor of the Reserve Bank is. All members opposite do is hate farmers, but farmers are the backbone of this country. They still produce 30-odd percent of our economy, and we should always stand up and thank them.

This is the third Budget by the Hon Bill English. In 2009 we helped New Zealanders through the recession. We turned round the forecast of ever-rising debt. In 2010 we built the platform for growth, savings, and investments. In 2010—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Read the line again, Tau.

I will get back to that member very shortly. In 2010 we made the biggest tax reform in 25 years. In 2011 we will have a faster path to reach surplus, we will have faster growth, and we will rebuild New Zealand’s second-largest city, Christchurch. We will have done that all in the space of 3 years.

This Government’s management over the last 3 years has been great. Oh, here he is. Here comes the walking wounded, “Mr Sonny Bill”. That is right. I say to him: “Have a seat; we’ll wait for 5 minutes while you sit down.”

Why do Labour members hate the producers of wealth in this country? Is it because of jealousy? Last week I was down in Queenstown, in Cromwell, and in Alexandra. Queenstown is not a place I usually go to, but I talked to some people on the ground. This is what I found out. They know that things are hard at the moment. They know that things are tough, they know that things need a good management team, and they know they have the team to do the job. I was touched by some of the words from those people in the south.

I turn now to Auckland City.

💬 Todd McClay: Get on to Carmel Sepuloni.

She will be in there somewhere. I want to talk about Auckland City and how I see that city as being the engine room of New Zealand. I see it as the engine room of our economy. But there is something going on in west Auckland that is an absolute outrage. I have not heard one Labour member from the west talk about their so-called constituents. I know that we have a member of Parliament who does not even bother to turn up for work, and that is an outrage too. It is an abject outrage.

💬 Simon Bridges: Are you talking about Carmel Sepuloni?

No, I am not talking about Carmel Sepuloni or Phil Twyford, but I will soon. My message to Len Brown, Mayor of Auckland City, is this: stop bleeding west Auckland dry. The Auckland City Council had the chance to bring in a rating system for all Aucklanders.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Rodney promised not to.

I say this to “Mr Crippled” on the other side: Rodney Hide put together—

💬 Catherine Delahunty: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am offended by people of any side of this House being referred to as cripples, or people with disabilities being referred to as cripples, or people with any kind of sports injury being referred to as cripples. It is no longer a contemporary parlance that is acceptable.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I hear the member. I think it was done in jest. I looked at the member who was targeted, and he was not responding in a way that he could have. But I hear what the member says, and I just remind members that when we are in the House there is the requirement to address people by their names. I ask that we respect that point.

I apologise to the member. On average, west Auckland businesses pay 40 percent more than anybody else in Auckland City, and that is a constitutional outrage.

I tell members that we played the game out in west Auckland. We went to see Len Brown. We made a submission. The businesses made a submission to the Auckland City Council, and the council threw its hands up, because its members are all lefties; they do not know what to do. They threw their hands up and said there was nothing they could do. Well, the legislation that was put through under the stewardship of the Hon Rodney Hide allows them to make a change. But they have said they will not do it.

Here is the thing: it is not as if businesses in west Auckland do not want to pay any rates; they do. They want to pay their fair share. But what they are being asked to do is an abject disgrace on Auckland City Council. Those businesses pay 40 percent more than anybody else in Auckland City. Do members know what effect that has on businesses in west Auckland? They are not in a position to pay for extra staff when times are tough. When times are tough nobody from the Auckland City Council and nobody from Len Brown’s office comes out and says that they will cut those businesses some slack for the next 3 years. No, they expect businesses out in west Auckland to pay another 3.9 percent on top of the 40 percent extra they are paying in rates.

I have just a little bit to say on Carmel Sepuloni and the other guy out in west Auckland—I forget his name. It would have been all right if Labour had a home-grown candidate, but out of 180,000 people in west Auckland it could come up only with somebody from Taranaki and somebody from—in fact, I do not know where he is from because he has been all over.

💬 Simon Bridges: He’s from Herne Bay, isn’t he?

No, he is not in Herne Bay; that is the other west Auckland Labour member of Parliament. There are three seats in west Auckland. David Cunliffe is not from west Auckland. Carmel Sepuloni is not from west Auckland—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Taupō!

The member says “Taupō”. For goodness’ sake, I am from South Auckland—25 years ago. I moved into the city and did the hard yards before I got into politics. It is time for west Aucklanders to think very seriously about the sort of representation we have had out of the Labour Party. It has amounted to nothing more than a slogan that west Auckland is an eco-city. That will change on 26 November when I come back to this House and I am the National member for Te Atatū.

That speech was made by the former New Zealand First member for Northern Māori, the former Mauri Pacific member for Te Tai Tokerau, and now the National Party candidate—he has failed three times—for Te Atatū. He said he did the hard yards.

💬 Hon Tau Henare: That’s right.

That member has never done hard yards in his life. He has never done hard yards. The hardest job he has ever done is lifting his arm to put on his Dirty Dog sunglasses. He uses his drinking action to put on his glasses—lifting his arm a little bit further than his mouth. That is the hardest work he has ever done in his life.

He complained about rates in west Auckland. They could have gone down if Rodney Hide had got the legislation right. If the legislation that Tau Henare voted for worked, it would have been all right for his constituents. What did we hear? The member did not even bother reading the legislation he voted for, much less doing anything about it or making representations.

I want to make a few points about the Budget. The first is that, frankly, it is disappointing. I thought that in Bill English’s third attempt—or is it his fourth attempt; I cannot remember whether it was Birch or English who did the last one for the last National Government—he would present something with some sort of plan in it. But, unfortunately, this Budget had nothing that looked like a plan whatsoever. It was ad hoc. It had a number of arrangements in it that would not be allowed under a prudent Minister of Finance like, for example, Dr Cullen. Even Bill Birch would not have put together the sorts of arrangements that Bill English has put together and called a Budget. For example, I refer to the inclusion in this Budget of the sale of the State-owned enterprises over a 4-year period. I refer to the absence of money for the overseas advisers who, apparently, the Minister is lining up to sell the State-owned enterprises to the Chinese—lining up to work as consultants on it. I refer to the money that the Minister is proposing go to Featherston Street—about $300 million—to be spent on selling those State-owned enterprises. I refer to the lack of dividends from the State-owned enterprises. When we sell something the dividend flow stops, and that should be taken into account. We cannot take in the money from the receipts, as the Minister has done, without showing the cost of the sales and the dividends forgone, but that is what he has done.

Bill Birch would not have fudged the figures as to the borrowing. Almost certainly, Bill Birch would not have borrowed more than was necessary at a particular time. Bill Birch would not have speculated, using Kiwi workers’ jobs, on a change in interest rates. Bill English is borrowing today because he thinks he knows better than the people in Tokyo, Berlin, Geneva, and New York what is going to happen to international interest rates. We know that Bill English has sitting beside him someone who played around quite a lot in the foreign exchange market and might know quite a lot about short-term positions, but the message we have always had since the time of Muldoon is that one does not gamble in the foreign exchange and interest rate markets. That is what this Minister has done. I do not know how much higher the New Zealand dollar is as a result of that. I do not know whether it is 1c, 2c, or 5c, but there is a view that each of those cents is worth at least 10,000 jobs to Kiwis. I want to know why that Minister is keeping the exchange rate artificially high in the way that he is, costing Kiwis jobs. He said, and the Prime Minister said, right at the beginning of their time in Government, that their priority was giving Kiwis jobs.

In the same way, I ask why he and his Associate Minister of Finance Steven Joyce are prepared to idly stand by and watch New Zealand jobs be transferred from the Hillside workshops to China. Why do they not take into account the cost to New Zealand of that? Why do they not take into account the number of Kiwis who are made unemployed? Why do they not take into account the tax that would be paid in New Zealand if those jobs were here? Why do they not take into account the apprenticeships that would be created in New Zealand if those jobs were here and the training was done? That Minister and Steven Joyce specifically told the KiwiRail board not to take those things into account but to take—and I am an accountant—a narrow accounting view rather than an economic or socio-economic view of the value of that work.

💬 Hon Tau Henare: He was a teacher.

Actually, the taxpayer pays more, I say to Mr Henare—the taxpayer pays more. As well as paying for the railway wagons, we do not get the tax, we do not get the apprentices, and we pay unemployment benefits to the people who are dismissed. We pay more as a result of sending those jobs to China, but that is something that Tau Henare and Bill English support. It is something they support, and I think that is very, very sad.

Having said that, this Budget does not even do the job the National members said it would do. They said they would attack the deficit and they said they would close the gap, but what does this legislation do? It funds a $16.7 billion deficit. The Minister has got it up to a record level, and he has got it to that level because he has managed to do what I thought was probably economically impossible: he has attempted to stimulate the economy with massive tax reductions aimed at people like the Prime Minister who get a tax drop of over $1,000, but at the same time he has run the economy down. Normally, the perceived wisdom is that if one gives tax cuts the economy will be stimulated. What that Minister has managed to do is at the same time give tax cuts and deflate the economy—to have the sort of growth that is almost unprecedented at the moment within the OECD. One has to go to places like Spain, Greece, or Iceland to find a country that has a plan that is so bad that it is deflating in this way.

We know now from feedback that has come that there is a certain amount of boredom on the part of the Prime Minister, that he is feeling particularly—

💬 Hon Maryan Street: Tired of the job.

He is feeling a bit tired and a bit emotionally strained by it. There have been a few hard decisions to make. Even on this side we thought we would get some sort of leadership from a Budget that had a plan in it. We have seen nothing of that. We have heard irrigation schemes announced but not put into the Budget. We have had Telecom subsidies—

💬 Jo Goodhew: $35 million is in there.

Oh, $35 million of the $400 million is in there. I thank the member very much. She has just told us that $365 million of hidden subsidy to farmers is not in the Budget. I thank the member for making that clear.

What the Labour Party stands for is a fair Budget. People should pay their tax, and bludgers at both ends will be hit when there is a Labour Government. Beneficiaries who blatantly bludge will be hit, and I make it clear that the bludgers like the “Prime Bludger”—the leader of the National Party, the person who got a $1,000 a week tax cut, the sort of person who hides his income in trusts—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member, but his time has expired.

After almost 14 hours of debate what is striking is the enormous gap between the Opposition and the people of New Zealand in their understanding of the Budget—an enormous gap. The general public have at worst shrugged their shoulders and said that something had to happen. They are looking forward with some confidence, not just to the Rugby World Cup but to the prospect that after a number of years where they have not had much in the way of wage increases, and where at times they have been concerned about their job security, we will have an economy that picks up speed moderately but definitely. It will demonstrate to them that they have weathered a New Zealand recession induced by the previous Labour Government and its bad policies, followed by a global recession, and come through the other side of it with sound and positive prospects.

The debate, I think, has shown the depth of the disarray of the Labour Party. I do not think it has hit rock-bottom yet. I know it looks like rock-bottom. It looks like it could not get much worse, but it will—it will. It will not turn round until Labour apologises to the New Zealand public. It will not turn round until those members roll out of bed one morning and say to themselves that the New Zealand voters were right to kick them out. How many Labour MPs, do members think, believe that the result of the 2008 election was the right result for New Zealand? Not one.

💬 Hon Tau Henare: Stuart Nash.

Has he apologised?

💬 Hon Tau Henare: He has apologised.

Well, is that not good? What a smart young man. He is widely regarded as a smart young man around the building, I understand—a bit of a mover. But until they apologise—

💬 Hon Paula Bennett: Chris Carter?

No, he will never apologise. He never will. At least he has realised that being in the Labour Party is bad even for his image—even for his image, being in the Labour Party is a bad look. So he has got out.

But, no, Labour members need to apologise first for the damage that they wreaked on the New Zealand economy. Thousands of people lost their jobs because of bad economic management. People’s incomes and well-being were reliant on a speculative economy driven by the fuel of borrowed money. That was actually Labour’s contribution to wealth in New Zealand. So those members have to apologise for that. Then they have to apologise for getting so out of touch with New Zealand voters that they forgot that the economy matters to voters. Labour was chucked out because its members thought that the things that mattered to Labour mattered to New Zealand. And they still do. They still think that the things that matter to the Labour Party in Parliament—which is dominated by student politicians, and which is increasingly behaving like the executive of some worn-out student union—matter to New Zealand. The reason we know that is that those members keep wheeling out the same old stuff that they said when they were in Government.

💬 Chris Tremain: And filibustering on a bill for students.

Well, that is what proves it, actually. There is the one thing they have been really motivated about in this whole Parliament. I know that it matters to New Zealand because it fills the halls in Balclutha—I can tell the House that! If a speaker goes to west Auckland to campaign on voluntary student union membership, even Tau Henare could get a crowd! The only thing that really matters to Labour members is to stop student union membership becoming voluntary. It is the only area where they have shown any focus, any organisation, any backbone, or any leadership—from the real leader of the Labour caucus, Trevor Mallard. And there is that rising star—what is his name—from Wellington Central; I cannot remember his name. All I know is that I used to think that Ruth Dyson was a hopeless health spokesperson, but I have changed my mind because he has managed something that is almost impossible—that is, to make Ruth Dyson look right on to it when it comes to health. He has succeeded. We will wait for “Stuart Little”—yes—“Andrew Nash”, who plans to win the Napier seat, does he? So the Labour Party has not hit rock-bottom yet.

💬 Hon Rick Barker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I know these debates are to be free-ranging, and that people like to have good humour, and so on. But—

💬 Melissa Lee: I can’t hear.

💬 Hon Rick Barker: If the member has a problem she should take a point of order.

💬 Hon Members: We can’t hear.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just allow the member to speak.

💬 Hon Rick Barker: We are entitled to have a free-ranging debate, but members are to be addressed respectfully, and the way in which the member speaking addressed Stuart Nash was not in accordance with the Standing Orders. I ask him to withdraw and apologise.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I just ask that there be some decorum, and respect for the Standing Orders. This came up earlier in the debate.

The Budget debate demonstrates that until Labour members apologise, no one will listen to them.

💬 Simon Bridges: So say sorry.

Until they say sorry to the country for all the trouble they have put us through—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Say sorry for what?

That is it— “sorry for what?”. I rest my case. I could not have put it better myself.

This Government has had three Budgets and one plan. That plan is to rebalance the economy: to move away from excessive consumption and borrowing and move towards exports, investment, and savings. There is a very simple reason for that; it is pragmatic, as this Government is, under the leadership of the Hon John Key. New Zealanders will not be able to grow their incomes in the next 10 years from increased house prices and bigger Government spending, because the world will not lend us the money to do it—full stop. That is it. Just about everyone in New Zealand knows that, except Labour members, so it cannot happen. We cannot indulge in wishful thinking here. The world will not lend us that money, because we are one of the most highly indebted countries in the developed world. We are up there with Spain and Portugal. So we will have to earn it. That is why this Government, over the last three Budgets, has put in place the building blocks of better economic performance for the future, at the same time as it has supported this economy through the recession.

I will remind the House of a few of those: in 2009 we locked in one of the largest infrastructure investment programmes the country has seen in generations. And we have stuck to it, despite the recession. It is long-term, beneficial to people and the economy, and the next bit is broadband. In the last Budget we did a tax switch. We increased taxes on spending and property, and cut taxes on earnings, savings, and investment—the only thing that Labour had to say was that it wanted to put income taxes back up—which has changed the incentives in the economy, and pushed us in the direction that New Zealand is already going. Then in this Budget we got the Government’s books under control, and set out to lift national savings.

The reason why the Government has been able to retain the support of New Zealanders through this difficult time is that we are simply pushing in the direction they are already going. New Zealanders have been admirably resilient through this recession. We have not had a national whinge-fest. They have rolled up their sleeves and got on with the job, and that is what the National Government is doing. We are doing what New Zealanders do. We are being careful with their spending; they did that 2 or 3 years ago. We want to pull our borrowing back, because they know, and we know, that too much of it is a bad thing. That is why we have so much confidence in the future. It is partly because the trading nations of the Asia-Pacific region want to pay more for more of our goods—that is very promising for the next 5 to 10 years. But the deeper reason for our confidence is that resilience that New Zealand has shown.

I am proud to be part of a party that over the last two decades has backed New Zealand’s transition into being a small, open, flexible, globally focused economy, and now New Zealand is getting good at it. That is why New Zealanders have not complained about this recession and that is why they have strongly—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. His time has expired. Members, this debate has concluded. The question is that the amendment in the name of the Hon Phil Goff be agreed to.