Appropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill, Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

I move, That the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. The Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill ensures that the regime under the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act 2005 continues beyond 30 June 2013, when it would otherwise expire. This means that compensation payable to prisoners for breaches of their human rights will continue to be subject to the existing guidelines and restrictions in the Act. This ensures that prisoners will not receive compensation for wrongful treatment without first having to redress the harm that they have caused their victims. Under the regime made permanent by the bill, if compensation is awarded or paid pursuant to a settlement agreement, certain deductions can be made from it. These include deductions for any legal aid debt related to a prisoner’s claim and any outstanding reparation owed to victims.

The regime also provides a simplified process for victims to make claims against the money through the victims’ special claims tribunal. This can include claims for emotional harm or property damage or loss caused by the offender. The bill also makes a small change to the civil limitation period for victims’ claims for their benefit, and clarifies that the Act applies to unlawful detention claims.

The bill is another step the Government has taken in championing victims’ rights. The Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill prevents the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act 2005 from effectively expiring. This means that there will continue to be a fair and appropriate regime that balances the rights of prisoners and their victims. I would like to take the opportunity to thank those members of the House who have been supporting this bill, particularly those who have supported it all the way through to help it get through in time for 30 June. I commend this bill to the House.

Third Reading

If there is one thing that the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill is not, it is a victims’ rights piece of legislation. It is not about enhancing victims’ rights at all. It is very much a lottery-driven piece of legislation when it comes to victims’ rights.

The genesis of the original legislation was what is known as the Taunoa case, which made awards of damages to prisoners whose New Zealand Bill of Rights Act rights had been traduced through the behaviour management regime then in place in prisons in New Zealand. It resulted in awards of compensation. So, effectively, the State was required to compensate the prisoners.

The difficulty was, as seen at the time, that a new injustice was created. The prisoners whose rights had been breached and who won compensation as a consequence had themselves—it is self-evident—breached the rights of their victims, who had no claim against them. Under the common law rights that those victims had, they had lost the right to make a claim, even putting aside the accident compensation rights they had. They could not make a claim for exemplary damages for the conduct of the prisoners. So the prisoners enjoyed a windfall, and the victims continued to suffer the consequences of the crimes committed against them. The Government of the day, the Labour Government, introduced the legislation to ensure that any awards of damages went to compensate both the State and the victims before the prisoners themselves received any amount of compensation.

That situation was not, and will not be under the legislation we are now considering, without conflicting values and principles. It is not right that prisoners should be subject to mistreatment while in prison. We sentence people to prison to deprive them of their liberty as a sanction against their antisocial conduct. We do not send them to prison to be further mistreated, abused, and treated in improper ways. That is not acceptable, and so it is correct that the State, which is the custodian of these people while they are incarcerated, should itself face a sanction.

Equally, it is wrong that access to compensation by victims should be dependent on what might be described as the entirely fortuitous circumstance that the perpetrator of the crime against them is him or herself subject to a violation that leads to a compensable right, which leads to compensation that can then be claimed by the victim. That does not deal with victims’ rights at all. So there are limitations. Although we can understand that there is an injustice that ought to be, and continue to be, addressed, it is not a satisfactory conclusion or a resolution to the overarching issue of victims’ rights and the ability to be fully compensated for the loss that victims of crime suffer.

The original bill dealt with the obvious injustice, but it had a sunset clause. The reason it had that sunset clause was that it was expected that there would be a review of just that situation and of just those principles that I have articulated, on the basis that there might be a more coherent and comprehensive approach taken to victims’ rights, including the ability to be compensated for loss other than that compensated for by accident compensation.

Simply rolling over the existing legislation with no change leaves the same contradictions in place and leaves a still unsatisfactory situation in place. It still means that only those victims who have perpetrators who themselves are subject to a compensable act get access to any compensation—it is only by chance, or by lottery, and that is not satisfactory.

What we still continue to need is a coherent and comprehensive approach to victims’ rights. The best that the Minister of Justice can do, and she made the announcement today, is to continue and reheat existing policies. This afternoon she made an announcement that the extra money that is collected through the offender levy, the $50 that is levied on convicted offenders, will be passed on for the benefit of various victims programmes. Well, that is the intention of the levy, and so the announcement that the Minister has made today, in her attempt to dress it up as some sort of enhancement of victims’ rights, is nothing of the sort.

💬 Hon David Parker: And it’ll probably reduce the fines.

If anything, we will see a reduction in fines because of other measures being taken in the justice area, such as the reduction in funding for Crown solicitors, fewer prosecutions, fewer charges taken, and therefore less collected through fines and therefore less levied on offenders. It is contradictory.

What we saw this afternoon in the announcement was the same old mutton dressed up as lamb, and that in combination with this legislation means we still have an unsatisfactory situation when it comes to victims’ rights. The announcement this afternoon was for $750,000 to go to victims as the additional amount that is already being collected through the offender levy. It will affect 4,000 victims, but there are thousands upon thousands of victims each year, many of whom go uncompensated as a result. So this issue still needs to be addressed.

I should put on the record yet again, in this third reading, that one of the objections we have to the bill, notwithstanding that we will vote for it, is that the Minister promised that all Opposition parties would be consulted on a more comprehensive approach to the issues that this bill covers. That never happened. That was a promise broken. How unfortunate. As we had promises of consultation over MMP, so we had promises of consultation over this. In both cases, the promises were broken. The Minister’s word stands for nothing.

This legislation has its origins in the previous Labour Government, and it dealt with an obvious situation, an obvious injustice. If this bill were not in place, the small sliver of injustice that would remain would still be there, and we want to cover off at least that level of injustice, and so we will continue to support the bill for that reason. But it is not satisfactory that several years after the original bill was put in place, there does not appear to have been any comprehensive work done by the Minister or successive Ministers of Justice under this Government, or the ministry they have presided over, on developing options for a better approach, a more comprehensive approach, to victims’ rights. That is important.

We should deal with victims’ rights aside from, apart from, and separately from the way we deal with our penal regime and our system of punishment for offenders. Let us call offenders, those who are antisocial, and those who do bad towards others in our community properly to account through our criminal justice system. Let us have a criminal justice system that provides appropriate levels of punishment but also aims to rehabilitate and restore people to good character and a constructive role in society. But let us also recognise that there are victims of crime, and their issues need to be dealt with, too, through effective voice, through effective support, and, where required, through effective compensation. None of the measures put in place, including those in this bill, gets us anywhere closer to a better system, a better regime, of looking after victims of crime, whether serious or non-serious crime. That is a situation that must change.

The fact that the present Minister has taken no effort to talk to other parties about a new approach, about different approaches, and about a new way forward tells us very clearly that this Minister and this Government are not serious about new measures to deal with victims. It is about dressing up and reheating old, half-baked ideas, and taking the issue no further. We need better progress and we need a better approach. In the words of the New Zealand Law Society when it submitted on other legislation, when it comes to criminal justice, it is better to have a cross-party approach to it. Those discussions will begin one day, and we look forward to that, but they will begin under a different Government, a new Government, a Labour-led Government that wants to take victims’ rights seriously—one thing that simply reheating the present legislation does not do.

Third Reading

It is a pleasure to rise as chairman of the Justice and Electoral Committee to speak in support of this Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill in its third reading. This bill has been brought to the House by the Minister of Justice, the Hon Judith Collins. It is a good bill and it is worthy of our support. It has gone through the process of the House in full detail and in a way that I think has done both the Justice and Electoral Committee and this House proud.

As a Government, we make absolutely no apology for putting victims first. I find it quite deeply upsetting to hear Andrew Little talking about protecting the rights of the criminals. These are people who have committed wrongs and who are incarcerated for good cause and for good reason. It strikes me that it is a matter of basic common sense and principle that if an award of compensation is made to them during their term of incarceration, the first party to benefit from that should be, in fact, the victims of the crimes that were committed and that have resulted in their incarceration. So this is a good bill. It is part of this Government’s plan to build a better justice system, and we have embarked on a comprehensive programme for reform not only to enhance our justice system but also to protect communities, to prevent crime, and, as I said earlier, to put victims first. We are making no apologies for focusing our justice system on the rights of victims. We are staying tough on crime.

This Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill responded to concerns arising from the 2005 legislation that offenders should not receive compensation for wrongful treatment without first paying the debt they owe because of the harm caused to their victims. This new bill will ensure that the system is fair, that it is balanced, and that it will not lead to any unintended injustices. Our reforms mean that the victims of crime in the criminal justice system are, obviously, there because of no fault of their own. They are not there because they have done anything; they are there because they are the victims. And they have to deal with the financial, the emotional, and the physical effects of the crime that has been perpetrated upon them and committed against them. This bill seeks to do that and to do it very well.

We have ensured that crime is coming down, and the numbers are undeniable. Part of the reason that crime is coming down is the focus that this Government has been putting on the efforts to reduce crime and to make New Zealanders feel safe in their homes, in their communities, and in their families.

One aspect of this bill that is of interest is that we received, I think, seven submissions. Those submissions recommended that this bill proceed with speed and with haste because they supported the legislation that came before the select committee. The expiry date of the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act 2005 was looming, and we needed to move quickly to achieve the result that we wanted. That is the reason that this bill is before the House today.

It is a very good bill. I commend it to the House. The select committee worked well throughout the various stages of the bill, and I want to thank the members of the select committee, who participated very fully in their deliberations on the bill. I commend this bill to the House.

Third Reading

I want to remind this House why the legislation that we are debating today, the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill, has not actually lived up to the expectation that was had for it and for this present Government when the legislation was originally debated and passed through this House in 2005, as my colleague Andrew Little has described. He quite rightly highlighted the fact that “Successive Governments”—both Labour and National—“have made the political decision that paying out significant compensation to prisoners for their treatment while in prison is unacceptable to a significant proportion of the public, and could affect confidence in the justice system.” That was the basis for the legislative change that Labour brought into effect in 2005. We introduced the original legislation to “further reduce the likelihood that prisoners would be awarded compensation for rights breaches during their incarceration.”

But the sunset clauses were put in there for very good reason. They were included to limit the application to claims arising from the behaviour management regime, which have been described, and which nobody in this House would describe as being on the side of criminals. Actually, it is being on the side of the proper treatment of incarcerated prisoners, and as has been quite rightly pointed out, that is not something that anyone—any member of this House—could possibly stand up and say that they would find unacceptable. I want to talk about the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and also the Crimes of Torture Act, which we have passed in this Parliament as well, and our commitment to that.

Sunset clauses were included really to look at that behaviour management regime situation, to make sure that any applications that were being dealt with under that could actually be dealt with, and to also allow time for an independent prison complaints body to be established. The view of the Ministry of Justice at the time was that the legislation and its sunset clauses together—and it was together—“represented the best compromise between ensuring compensation is only paid to prisoners once they have redressed the harm caused to victims”—in terms of the financial obligations that arose out of that—“and upholding New Zealand’s domestic and international human rights obligations.” That actually remained the ministry’s view. I should say to the House that the document that I am quoting from is the regulatory impact statement that led to the introduction of the legislation that reaches its conclusion in the very near future, on 1 July.

So the sunset clauses in the 2005 legislation were originally due to come into effect on 1 July 2007. However, the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Amendment Act 2007 extended the sunset clauses to 1 July 2010, and the reason for that was, again, twofold. It was because work on the independent prison complaints body was still ongoing, and the behaviour management regime claims were not completed. But neither of those things was an indication to an incoming Government, an incoming National Government, that this would result in the kinds of changes that it has now introduced, nor that it would be made permanent.

In 2005 the Ministry of Justice began its work on an inter-agency working party to examine existing prison complaints and monitoring processes within the Department of Corrections and to scope the role of an independent prison complaints body. Under that enhanced role that came down to the Office of the Ombudsmen, it was given responsibility for monitoring investigations into deaths in custody and serious incidents that could potentially affect the safe, fair, and humane treatment of offenders.

What I should point out to the House is that we did actually receive a submission from the Office of the Ombudsmen. Of course, with the office’s important role in terms of being formally designated as the national preventive mechanism for prisons and compliance with the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, its statement to our Justice and Electoral Committee, I believe, was very, very important. What it stated was: “We are concerned that the victims’ claims scheme, which the Bill makes permanent, provides neither a suitable way to compensate victims of crime nor a suitable way to prevent abuse or mistreatment of prisoners in accordance with New Zealand’s international obligations.” I believe that that is an incredibly serious statement, because the Government is claiming not only that this bill somehow will enhance the rights of victims but that it is in accordance with our international obligations. The Office of the Ombudsmen, which has this very important role in terms of oversight of our prison service, says the exact opposite.

I want to remind this House again, as I did in the second reading, of a document that was drawn to our attention by the Sensible Sentencing Trust. I believe that the trust has raised an exceptionally sensible point that every member of this House should be aware of and that is that it discovered that there was a report: Victims of Crime in the Adult Criminal Justice System: A Stocktake of the Literature. Where did it find this stocktake of the literature and what did it find? Well, the trust found it on the Ministry of Justice website, because the Ministry of Justice has been doing this work on the victims of crime. And what did the trust find to be the guiding principles for providing effective service and support to the victims of crime? They were: “Respectful and confidential treatment: available research shows that while outcomes are important to victims (eg, reparation, convictions) consistent with the concept of procedural justice, the manner in which victims are treated is more important.”

That is what the literature said. “Individualised response/ flexible services: there is strong evidence that people are affected differently by crime. Services allocated purely by crime type or victim type are likely to miss other victims with significant needs. Assessment must ensure individual needs are identified, and services need to be sufficiently flexible to provide individualised response. A range of service options should be offered so that individual preferences can be catered for.” It goes on about services being accessible; the provision of right information at the right time in the right format; delivered by experienced, knowledgable, well-trained, empathetic staff; consistent high-quality services and support; integrated service provision; end-to-end individualised support; and accountable services.

The Sensible Sentencing Trust said this is what victims are asking for. That is what they want, and, unfortunately, this bill does not resolve these problems, because what it says is that money will be allocated to victim support but only if the human rights of the person who has perpetrated the offence are somehow offended against in a way that earns them compensation while they are in prison for a crime—you know, the crime, in fact, may or may not be one that affected the individual concerned.

There are many people, for example, in our prisons who are in there because they have been caught with possession of a drug, they have been caught several times drink-driving, they have problems that they need to have addressed, but they are serving time in prison. In many respects they are the victimless crimes where nobody else has actually been harmed in the process of them committing what is an offence. But they too are caught by this, and if their human rights are challenged by the service that is supposedly providing them with humane prison treatment, then somehow that means that that money is available, and that is the only way that it is directly available apart from the offenders levy.

It seems to me that this is getting the wrong point. If we are going to hold people accountable for meeting those financial obligations, then surely it means that we should be looking at more productive ways and more, I believe, important ways of holding people to account for their actions. If we are to ensure that people take responsibility for their actions, then surely it is not only if they have been in this situation but if they have a windfall like a Lotto win or something like that—all of these things were supposed to be looked at when we actually allowed for the sunset provision to take place. So I think the Government has really done a great disservice both to the victims of crime and to our international standing.

Third Reading

It is never a happy sight to see this Parliament passing bad law, and that is what we are seeing tonight. With the passing of this Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill we are embedding, as a permanent provision in our legislation, a mechanism that was marginal at best as a stopgap, short-term measure, which is all it was ever intended to be. It intended to respond to the particular moment in time: an unfortunate series of incidents at Mt Eden prison and the ongoing public concerns about that. It was intended to be legislation with a sunset clause. It should have been allowed to simply fade away while we did something much more sensible and much more long term.

This legislation and its various iterations—I think this is the third cycle of legislation it has gone through: an extension, a continuation bill, and now this legislation to make it permanent—have chewed up an inordinate amount of parliamentary time and resource. In the meantime, we are told, the Minister of Justice and her officials are too busy to even consider or contemplate a very good proposition that came from Judge Boshier some 7 or 8 months ago proposing that we create an offence of family violence. That would have been a means by which we might actually have addressed the issue of protecting victims, of reducing the number of victims. That would have been a useful and appropriate means of using the resources and time of this House and the people in it. Unfortunately, instead we are spending time perpetuating bad law such as this prisoners and victims legislation.

Does the Government continue to be genuinely concerned about a public backlash if inmates seem to reap some financial benefit, some restitution for having their rights denied them or for suffering abuse while in the custody of the State? If there is a problem, if the Government is genuinely concerned about that, the solution is actually self-evident. The solution is to create a safe, humane, decent environment in our prisons to ensure that inmates do not suffer abuse or denial of rights. The problem simply goes away. There would not be an issue if we created an environment in the prisons where prisoners’ rights are secured, and where they are safe environments for both inmates and, indeed, staff who work in them on our behalf.

The events at Spring Hill Corrections Facility last weekend, and the series of events over recent months, which are becoming more frequent and more serious, demonstrate we do not have that safe environment in our prisons, and that demonstrates we have a great deal of work to do—genuine work finding real solutions to real problems rather than fiddling about the margins with this piece of legislation that actually has not even worked.

What we have done here, effectively, is to create a lose-lose situation. This legislation being embedded in legislation takes away the rights of prisoners to fair restitution if their rights are abused or compromised. It diminishes our right to claim we are a country that respects human rights and basic decency, and, as the previous speaker, Lianne Dalziel, pointed out, it does contravene international law. And what do we get in exchange for this? A piece of legislation that over 8 years has delivered virtually nothing to victims. A figure of something like $45,000 has been returned to victims under the provisions of this legislation. That is less than $6,000 a year—basically pennies, rats and mice, peanuts. We would have been better to not devote any time to it, close the House early one night, save a lot of money, and give that to victims. That is an equally nonsensical suggestion as the one that we continue to embed with this piece of legislation, which is a lose-lose piece of legislation. It has not worked for 8 years. Why will it work for another 8 years or 8 years beyond that? It simply makes no sense.

It has been claimed that the Greens’ opposition to this bill reflects some sort of lack of concern for the well-being of victims. Indeed, at an earlier reading, one of the Government’s spokespeople saw fit to suggest that I had made a speech on this bill without once mentioning the word “victim”. In fact, I suggest to that member a course of active listening, because I continually referred to “victims” in my 10-minute speech, and that particular member managed about 90 seconds of commentary on this very important piece of legislation. We do have significant concerns for the well-being and rights of victims and would seek to put in place a comprehensive review. When the Greens supported this legislation in 2005—somewhat reluctantly, but we did support it—it was on the understanding that there would be a comprehensive review of the rights of victims, ideally a cross-party approach, as Mr Little has indicated. I was somewhat surprised to hear the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee, a competent and typically quite amiable chair, talking about this Government’s comprehensive reform of the justice sector. I think the Government is being remarkably modest. If it is undertaking a comprehensive reform of the justice sector, why is it not telling anybody about it? There is no evidence of any such comprehensive reform. We are seeing short-term, reactive, stopgap measures.

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

I am pleased to take the opportunity to make some further comments about this unfortunate piece of legislation that has been inflicted on the House. It would perhaps be a defensible piece of legislation to continue to embed as a permanent feature, rather than a temporary one—which is how it was designed and enacted—if we had any evidence that in the ensuing 8 years it had done any good. As I mentioned earlier, it clearly has not done a great deal of good. A total sum of $45,000 has been dispersed to victims as a result of this piece of legislation. Despite the significant cost to the country of enacting it, both the process cost and the cost of the various stopgap pieces of legislation—the continuance and now this one—it is all for a grand sum of $45,000 to victims.

As I said earlier, our original support—our somewhat tentative support, but support none the less—for the 2005 legislation was predicated on the expectation that a comprehensive review of victims’ rights would be undertaken. We have an issue in New Zealand with having a very disjointed and not very strategic or well-considered approach to making restitution to victims. We have some good programmes in place. We have some good restorative justice processes, albeit not as many as we could use—those very positive means of getting good, fair outcomes that are transparent, that serve the needs of victims, and that make offenders think and, hopefully, deter them from reoffending.

Unfortunately, we have never seen the review, the significant review—a sort of clean slate approach to how we can make good, and how we can ensure that the victims of crime get restitution as appropriate and that they get the appropriate treatment and counselling. There are means, not to undo an offence that has been done to a person, but certainly to help them recover from it. We are not even at page 1 of thinking through what that might look like. That is a piece of work that, I suspect, will require, as Mr Little indicated earlier, an approach from a new Government, a Government with a more progressive set of ideas, and a Government not frightened to take a step back and undertake the difficult piece of work of a comprehensive review, rather than these add-on, stopgap, short-term measures, which really do us no good and, indeed, are now doing us harm. Thank you.

Third Reading

I rise and take a call in the third reading of the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill. The previous speaker, David Clendon, talked about a Government that was more comprehensive. I cannot think of a Government that is more comprehensive than a Government that is reducing offending by 25 percent by 2017. Results so far from corrections show there is an 8.9 percent reduction in offending. Overall crime rates have reduced by 50 percent. Violent crime is down by 20 percent and youth crime by 5 percent. Results so far show that the total crime rate is down by 9 percent, with violent crime down by 7 percent. So I am not sure what the previous member means when he talks about comprehensive and progressive Government that is proving its results.

This is about a bill whose purpose is to make the restrictions on awards of compensation and the victims’ claims process in the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act 2005 permanent. We are balancing the rights and responsibilities of both the victims and the offenders. We know that incarceration on its own is not enough to reduce recidivist offending. However, there are some issues that are important here. The Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act 2005 did respond to concerns that offenders should not receive compensation for wrongful treatment. We talk about a court of law, but there is also the public court of opinion. It was quite clear—the Hon Lianne Dalziel actually spelt it out—that the original legislation in 2005, which was supported by the Green Party, was to give confidence to the public that we were responding to and balancing the needs of victims, and that is what this Government is doing.

Seven submissions were submitted on the bill but were not proceeded on. I finally wanted to say this: the bill confirms the Government’s commitment to supporting victims by providing that for any compensation awarded in respect of prisoners in claims for compensation, the claim limitation period is to be suspended when the compensation is paid to the Secretary for Justice. This, in regards to the other reforms that we are introducing as a Government, is a good bill. It is not a bad bill. It is a bill that introduces and addresses some issues. The principal Act had a sunset clause that has now come to its end. We are now making this permanent to give confidence to our communities of need. I commend this bill to the House.

Third Reading

I note that the Greens feel that the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill goes somewhat too far from their concern for prisoners’ rights, which is, of course, quite a proper concern. Labour, on the other hand, seems to say that the bill does not go far enough, and its concern is that there should be more attention given to victims’ rights, and that is a fair enough position as well. New Zealand First actually wants to achieve both of those things with an appropriate balance.

I think this bill makes a contribution to that. I do not think it is really going to make much difference to anything in the end, but it is certainly worth considering. The Justice and Electoral Committee has, indeed, done just that. I am pleased to see that it made a number of recommendations and they have been incorporated into the bill. New Zealand First will therefore support the bill, as it is better than nothing.

The principles we considered were these: first of all, we say that being a prisoner means being penalised only by the temporary removal of personal liberty and by incarceration, and it does not mean anything more than that. Prisoners should have the opportunity for rehabilitation, education, and reorientation in their direction of life. Secondly, it does not result in the loss of other rights for them, and it does not mean the loss of the right to compensation for genuine injury or disability from genuine accidents, and it does not mean the loss of the right to compensation for significant mistreatment, if that should occur.

On the other hand, the rights protected in this way must be balanced against the fact that there is concern in the community that prisoners abuse some of those rights, especially the right to compensation for mistreatment, and especially accident compensation on some occasions. So there are genuinely held concerns in the community about that and we must give some attention to them, even if cases of abuse of rights are rare. We should certainly not mollycoddle prisoners, and we should make sure there are no rorts like some of those we have seen in recent years.

We in New Zealand First also accept that there is a need for an accessible process for the victims of a prisoner to be provided for in claims against any award made to a prisoner. Victims’ rights, we think, have been seen as almost second-class rights for far too long. This bill, at least, properly pays attention to that. It creates a clear right and an easily usable process for a victim to claim against an award made to a prisoner. New Zealand First therefore believes that the bill does achieve an appropriate balance to protect the rights of prisoners on the one hand, while on the other also meeting community expectations that prisoners’ compensation be acceptable by their victims to meet the properly awarded claims made to those victims.

The Government originally wanted a diversion fund to hold those proceeds, and that, of course, was quite impracticable and has been abandoned, and we are glad to see that. Some submitters also said that the courts had pre-empted this bill in the Taunoa case and that the bill is therefore not needed. They thought that codification would not be positive and that the law should be allowed to develop further, as it tends to do. However, codification does provide certainty and consistency in the law, and I think that Parliament does need to set out what the scope for claims by prisoners will be. It does not mean that the courts may not develop the law within the scope of the Act further anyway. I agree with the Kim Workman submission that codification helps both prisoners and victims understand their rights. I note that section 13 of the principal Act sets out the essence of those issues.

It says in section 13: “No court or tribunal may, in proceedings to which this subpart applies, award any compensation sought by a specified claim unless satisfied that—(a) the plaintiff has made reasonable use of all of the specified internal and external complaints mechanisms reasonably available to him or her to complain about the act or omission on which the claim is based, but has not obtained in relation to that act or omission redress that the court or Tribunal considers effective; and (b) another remedy, or a combination of other remedies, cannot provide, in relation to the act or omission on which the claim is based, redress that the court or Tribunal considers effective.”, and that seems to me to be a very appropriate provision.

In section 14(2) there is a whole list of guiding considerations for awarding compensation that a court or tribunal must take into account. That includes such things as “the extent … to which the plaintiff, the defendant, or both took, [concerning] reasonably practicable steps to mitigate loss or damage arising from the act or omission on which the claim is based;”, and another one is “whether the defendant’s breach of, or interference with, the right concerned was deliberate or in bad faith; and … the relevant conduct of the plaintiff; … consequences for the plaintiff of the breach …”, and so on—a whole list of those things, which I think are very relevant to the issue.

Taking all of that into account, New Zealand First considers that the bill now does achieve the correct balance—that prisoners’ rights will be preserved, but will be appropriately restricted in the ways that I have mentioned in the claims that are brought. More important, the victims of crime will have a clear right and process to make claims against any award that the committer of the crime against them has received, and that is as it should be. The victim should have the first claim against the money that a prisoner has received in such a claim. The prisoner who committed a crime can only expect that he or she must first compensate the victim before benefiting themselves.

I understand that the Labour Party, which also supports the bill, wants to see a much wider right for victims to claim the assets of the convicted person. That, of course, is beyond the scope of this bill, but New Zealand First would support such an investigation and the development of legislation as suggested by Labour. I would doubt, however, that any additional legislation would prove to be necessary or would really make all that much difference, because victims of convicted persons already have civil rights to make claims against those persons and, arising from that, they also have the right to enforce those claims. Perhaps those rights are not clear enough or easy enough to access, and again that might be something that could be addressed in the future. But New Zealand First would need to be convinced that there needs to be anything more at all.

Similarly, New Zealand First would like to see better legislation to ensure much better treatment of victims, which, again, is outside the scope of this bill. It is something that other parties have referred to and which we heard quite a lot about during the submission process for this bill. So I think that is something that all parties need to give good consideration to. In the meantime, New Zealand First will be happy to support this bill, which, as I have said, does make a worthwhile improvement to victims’ rights without compromising prisoners’ rights, either.

Third Reading

Before I call the next member, the member has something on his box, which is at an oblique angle to me, and if it is a slogan—I am talking to the member who has just resumed his seat—it is out of order. If it is a slogan, could the member just put the box away, please. Had I noticed it, he would not have got the call.

Third Reading

I intend to take just a very short call in support of this bill, the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill. Many of the views have already been traversed in this House through the various stages of the bill. I think it is pertinent that there were only seven submissions in relation to the bill. It is not a particularly controversial bill, unless you are a Green member.

The scheme represents a balance, as Denis O’Rourke, the previous speaker, has said. We believe that it represents that correct balance between the rights of the offenders and the rights of victims. It does respond to that concern raised in respect of the initial Act that offenders should not receive compensation for wrongful treatment without actually repaying the debt that they owe for the harm that they caused their victims. This bill is fair, it is balanced, and it ensures the system will not lead to any unintended injustices. It does put victims at the heart of our justice system. It puts that stronger emphasis on victims. This bill really helps to reinforce that we want to ensure that victims are heard, that they do get the support that they need, and that they are not brutalised again and again and again when the defendants are tried.

This is part of a suite of justice improvements. We are also, of course, modernising court processes to make the justice system safer and more efficient, speeding up court cases, and improving civil justice. This is a sensible component of that suite, and I certainly support it in its third reading.

Third Reading

I regret to say that the last speaker, Kate Wilkinson, was wrong about this bill, the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill, doing a whole lot more for victims. This bill had the opportunity to do a whole lot more for victims, but it is an opportunity lost.

💬 Hon Kate Wilkinson: Why didn’t you do it, then?

Why did we not do it? I will tell the member why we did not do it. All of the major victim legislation was brought in by a Labour Government. I brought in this particular piece of legislation, the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act, but I brought it in to deal with a narrow range of offenders who happened to get caught up in the behaviour management regime in prison—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Also under Labour.

—and were treated unlawfully according to our own law. The behaviour management regime was a National Government invention, unfortunately. It took us a couple of years to catch up with the fact that it was doing badly. The New Zealand Government was acting unlawfully, which brought the inmates in line for compensation.

I happen to know that the people who were in the behaviour management regime were not particularly nice people. I looked at the range of offences they had committed, and they were horrendous offences. Damaged, scarred individuals, injured people, hurt people—offenders who never showed remorse, and never did anything to put things right. So when I looked at the Taunoa case, which was going to be expanded under a class action effort by a lawyer who I thought was more interested in gold-digging than in seeing justice done, I said that this was not good enough.

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Mai Chen.

What this legislation—no, it was not. But she will be glad to know, Mr Finlayson, that you have accused her of that, and when she reads the Hansard, she will now read your comments, so it is good to have got you on the record.

What the bill that I introduced did, first of all, was say that compensation should be paid only when there is no better way of righting the wrong than monetary compensation. It required a whole range of things that should be looked at to put things right for the inmates. Then it said that if it is good enough for the inmate to be compensated for wrongful action against him, why is it not good enough for that money that the inmate gets to then be available to the victim—to the person whom that inmate wronged—so we could see some restorative justice done? And I stand by that. That was the sensible thing to do at the time.

What I say about this legislation now, however, is that it deals with a very narrow group of inmates, and this is where I want to come back to Kate Wilkinson’s comments. It deals with only a very narrow range of inmates—a handful of people, probably. It has given probably $40,000 to $50,000 back to victims, but that is peanuts in the wider scheme of things.

I thought to myself at the time that I wanted to see how this legislation worked, so I put a sunset clause in so that after a period of, I think, 4 years or 5 years this legislation would come to an end and the Government, if it wanted to keep it, would have to renew it or would have to look at reforming it. The idea of the review was that the Government would take seriously the prospect of people who are in prisons who have wronged their victims being required to give more back to the victims by way of reparations, and not simply the narrow group of offenders who were wronged through the behaviour modification regime. Why should a person in that situation pay money back to the victims but not an inmate who won Lotto? Suddenly they have got a lot of money, they are rich, and the person whom they have harmed is still suffering from their actions. What about the crooks who write about their criminal experiences? They write books in prison and make money out of it. What about the person who inherits a whole lot of money? They did not have money at the time that they were convicted. They did not give a cent back to their victims. Nothing was done. What about people who come into money who are suddenly able, if they choose—and too often they do not choose—to put things right for their victim? What I thought this legislation might have done is have a proper review and have a look at the options.

There is one group of offenders that particularly made me angry. We are seeing more of them at the moment than we have ever seen before, and these are the white-collar offenders. They do not simply go and burgle somebody’s place—that is bad enough—they rip off money in hundreds of millions of dollars. They have resources. They have skills. They have assets. They never give back to the victims, because they have enough skill to know that they can protect their assets in trusts. These crooks whom we lock up for 2 or 3 years because they have ripped off people—they have taken their life-savings—come out of prison, go back to driving the flash car, go back to living in the big house, and go back to the international holidays, and all the while the people whom they ripped off, who have lost their life-savings, end their lives in penury. I say that is wrong, and there must a better way of dealing with that. This review would have had the chance to have a look at it.

When the legislation ran out of time with the sunset clause, the Minister Judith Collins promised the Opposition that she would involve the Opposition in discussions on a review of that legislation to see whether we could put something better in place for victims. She dishonoured that promise. She broke her word, and she came back into the House with the same legislation, having wasted 2 years without any review at all. I think it is time that a National member got to his or her feet and explained why the Government did not take up the opportunity to do the review, and why it did not honour the promise that it made to the Opposition that such a review would take place.

There is a myriad of ideas that you can explore when you are in Government. I believe very firmly in restorative justice. The best thing that can happen when a person commits a criminal offence against another person is for that person to put things right for the victim, in so far as that is possible. The concept of restorative justice is the purest form of justice. So why did this Government not look at some of the restorative justice schemes that were operating overseas? I introduced schemes on restorative justice. I am proud of them. They could have been expanded.

Why did the Government not look at how you get behind the trusts that protect the wealthy white-collar offenders, and why did it never require them to pay money to the people whom they have wronged? That was an opportunity. Why did the Government not take it up? Why did the Government not look at the concept where when a person goes to prison they have got no income, they have got no ability to repay to the victim, but when they come out and they resume work again it is a clean slate? Why do they at that point owe nothing to the victim whom they have wronged? That is a concept, Chris Finlayson, that the Government could have examined, could have looked at—

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Useless Minister of Justice. You had 6 years.

We had the best legislation that this House has ever seen in justice when I was Minister of Justice, Mr Finlayson, and you know that. That is the truth. You had real legislation. If the Government has time to pass rubbish justice bills that are about rhetoric and not about doing anything that makes a real difference, it should have used its time on this bill to come up with some innovative ideas about how to look after victims and how to put in place a system of restorative justice.

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Try to give something other than a vain—

This Attorney-General, who is meant to protect the rights of New Zealanders, brings a bill into the House that takes away court-given rights for families looking after seriously disabled adults—steals their rights—and breaches the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which he is sworn to protect, and he comes in and tries to tell this side of the House what justice is about. That is the greatest injustice, Mr Finlayson, that I have seen from any Government—robbing permanently disabled, adult disabled people, and you, Mr Finlayson, are responsible for that.

What I want to say is that this legislation gets support from the Opposition only because it was better than nothing—only because it was better than nothing. It will still help in some cases where offenders come into money because they have been wronged by the actions of the State, and that gives the victim claim on that money. But I want to repeat what I said in 2005, because they still believe it: “Most people believe that it is wrong that offenders should be compensated for wrongful treatment, but in turn are not required to pay restitution to the victims they harmed.” I said that in 2005. I stand by that, but what I want to repeat to Mr Finlayson, because he is partly responsible for this, is that this was a lost opportunity—an opportunity where the Government could stop mouthing meaningless rhetoric about helping victims, and actually do something to turn that into a reality. That was the lost opportunity, that was the broken promise, and that is what this National Government stands condemned for.

Third Reading

It is my pleasure to take a call on this Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill. Well, it was interesting. Phil Goff just sat down—6 years as Minister of Justice, he put this legislation in place, and now he is standing up and saying it is pretty weak. Actually, if he thought it was pretty weak, he should not have put it in place to begin with. If he wants to be strong for victims, well, he should be standing on this side of Parliament, because we support victims. We are the ones who are putting through this strong legislation supporting our victims in New Zealand, and making them a priority for this Government. But this bill does have a very difficult task. It does, because we must acknowledge the Crown’s failings against prisoners, and at the same time recognise the impact that prisoners have had on their own victims. It is a very fine line to actually get it right.

Currently, we know that this legislation has got a sunset clause, and when that expires this bill will come into force, and it will allow for the prisoner debts such as reparation payments and legal aid costs to be deducted from compensation. We do know that it will allow for a process whereby victims can make civil claims against offenders. We do know that this is going to make it permanent. There are no sunset clauses in this legislation, because we back this legislation to be the correct legislation. We do know that it will provide for cases where the compensation may take a while to be granted, and the statute of limitations on victims’ claims may expire, and it will prevent this situation from happening and ensure victims have their right to redress. We do know that we had eight submitters, the main one being the Law Society, which submits on most legislation in this Parliament, and makes some very good points. It raised many points around the human rights in this legislation, but we believe we have got this balance right.

We do have to remember that victims are the centre of our justice system for this Government, and we will do everything that we can for those victims in New Zealand to get good outcomes. This is one more bit of legislation in the right direction. It was my pleasure to take a call in the third reading of this bill tonight.

Third Reading

Is this a split call?

💬 Dr Rajen Prasad: Yes, it is.

Five minutes.

Third Reading

I am pleased to take a short call on this particular bill, the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill. Let us be clear. I think we will all agree that the public expectation is that prisoners will not benefit from their crimes, if you like, in any way, or indeed by what happens to them when they are serving a sentence. The Taunoa case brought that to light, and there was the reaction against it, justifiable public reaction, that while this was happening to somebody when they were supposed to be being punished, the victims outside were not receiving anything. So Minister Phil Goff, in those days, brought an interim measure into place, and that was put in. Clearly, and the records show, it was in the expectation that a better system would be found, hence the sunset clause, which has been renewed several times.

If I take what the last speaker, Katrina Shanks, was saying, that this is as good as it gets—well, Ms Shanks smiles, but that is the message I take from what you said—that National is the Government that is interested in victims, and this is its response to it. So if this is as good as it gets, let us see how good this bill is. It has added nothing more than the original bill—$50,000 has gone back to victims, over what period of time? Since 2007. Members on the other side of the House stand up and crow about this as the exemplar—that this is how it ought to be done. That is intellectually dishonest. If, indeed, the thought had been put into how this bill was constructed, then Ms Shanks could have got up today, pointed to the new additions to this bill, there would have been cross-party support, everybody in this House would have supported it, and New Zealand would have put a marker in the sand. But that is not what has happened.

What has happened is that this is the further politicisation of this particular issue. When something like this comes out with great fanfare, Ministers say “Look, here we are, addressing the problem.”, but that lasts only as long as their story is on the front page of the newspaper. The grafting that needs to go on to actually address the problems is where the real work of policy makers goes in. That has not happened in this particular bill. In fact, even the promise given for cross-party negotiations did not take place. Why did that, at least, not happen? As I say, that did not happen.

There is no moral ground on which the Opposition could stand to say that this is the best we can do and the best we can bring forward. There was no proper review. There have been any number of the ideas that have come out as to how victims could be compensated. Mr Goff raised very, very good points about how to balance the victims of white-collar crime and the victims of blue-collar crime. The Government’s side—the National Government and the ACT Party—is not interested in the victims of white-collar crime. It is not. That has run into billions of dollars. In fact, to be absolutely honest about the desire to redress victims, if this bill was properly addressed—as Mr Goff designed it and as the promise was given—the Government would have come back today with a comprehensive bill that would say that this is how we compensate the victims of white-collar crime and this is how we compensate the victims of blue-collar crime, and there would be no difference.

So it is intellectually dishonest, as I say, to say that this is a demonstration of this Government doing the best it can in bringing forward an exemplar, because that is not what this bill does. This bill does not deliver on a promise—the promise that victims will actually be properly compensated. I have not heard of any victim coming up and saying that $50,000 over 8 years is really the best we can do. If that is the best that this country can do, the best that the Government can do, then I think we fall far short of the ideal. So it is an opportunity lost, and, again, the victims are the victims again.

As for the next time this bill is looked at, I think members across the House have made many, many good points as to what it would look like. We will support this bill because there is no reason why we should not support it, but we are disappointed that it has not delivered on the promise. Thank you.

Third Reading

I rise to add another Green Party voice in opposition to the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill, following on from my colleague David Clendon, our justice spokesperson, who raised several key points relating to our position. I think you can sum up our opposition with four key points, roughly. One is that the original Act, the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act 2005, provided for a review to ensure that victims’ rights and the effectiveness of this bill were able to operate clearly. This bill is now going to entrench, without consultation and review, that law. We think that is a massive lost opportunity. There is a lot of thinking and work to be done to ensure that our system is adequately delivering for victims outside of the prison system, and also that our prisons are as safe and geared towards rehabilitation as they can possibly be. By passing this bill in this way, we are missing the opportunity to have that conversation, and, as a result, we are missing the opportunity to make our country safer and fairer. We believe that is a real shame.

The second reason we are opposing this bill is around the fact that we want to ensure that our prisons are safe and promote rehabilitation. There is a very real possibility, too, that this bill will provide a perverse disincentive for prisoners to report injury, abuse, or even torture within the prison system. Anyone who has had anything to do with the prison system must be aware of those power relationships in there and the very real potential of abuse and the need for our systems to actively check those power imbalances to make sure that those places are as safe as possible. That is a matter of rights, but it is also a matter of promoting good rehabilitation, because we know that the more people are alienated from society, the less incentive there is for them to turn their lives round. If they do not feel they are being respected by society and have a stake in society, then there is no sense for them to rehabilitate.

The third reason we are opposing this bill is that we have a commitment to human rights for all people—victims and prisoners. We note that New Zealand has signed the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. This requires each State party to ensure that victims of torture have an enforceable right to fair and adequate compensation. This bill threatens that commitment. We have been told it is justified, but over 6 years $45,000 has been returned to victims. I am not sure you can say that that is actually a justifiable result for the victims or for the victims who are prisoners.

The fourth reason we are opposing this is that we actually want to improve the justice system for victims. Again, as I said earlier, this is a massive lost opportunity of the time that has been spent on this bill coming back to the House—for the third time, in fact. We are being told that the Government with its agenda at the moment cannot look at work around domestic violence legislation. We have been told by the Minister of Justice that the decades of work that have gone into looking at alternative pre-trial and trial processes that might help increase the conviction rate from the pitiful 1 percent that it is for most sexual offences have been taken off the agenda and are not worthy of the time of this Government. Again, we have seen similar work in the Evidence Act. If this Government really, truly cared about victims, then the focus would go on actually ensuring our system delivered for victims. It is a sad day when we get this instead.

Budget 2013 was a very good Budget—a very good Budget—for New Zealanders. It confirms that New Zealand is on the right track, it forecasts economic growth for New Zealanders, it forecasts more jobs for New Zealanders, it forecasts rising wages for New Zealanders, and it forecasts a return to surplus for the Government’s books by 2014-15. They are all the issues that matter to New Zealanders right across the country, all the issues that this Government has been talking about for the last 4 years, and, I have to say, all the things that the Labour-Green Opposition has consistently opposed at every opportunity. The Budget builds on the momentum created over the last 4 years as this Government has grappled with probably the deepest depression in the economy since the 1930s—the global financial crisis—and the dreadful earthquakes that have wreaked such havoc in our second-largest city, the beautiful city of Christchurch.

In order to rebuild this country’s economic performance, this National-led Government has set four priorities: firstly, to responsibly manage the books, and it is clear from the Budget that we are doing an excellent job of that; secondly, to build a more competitive and productive economy, and, again, the Budget shows that we are doing exactly that; thirdly, to rebuild Christchurch, and, with an $18 billion investment from this Government, we are certainly working hard to rebuild that city; and, fourthly, to deliver Better Public Services, and the Prime Minister has set 10 targets across a range of ministries in order to deliver those services to New Zealanders. It is that latter point that I want to focus on today.

If we look at all three of the portfolios that I have responsibility for—police, corrections, and the Serious Fraud Office—they have certainly had an outstanding year. Corrections was named as the department of the year at the end of last week by the Trans-Tasman. Recorded crime is at its lowest rate in 24 years and reoffending rates have fallen by nearly 9 percent. Budget 2013 provides the platform to continue to see lower crime and further reductions in reoffending, and that will enable the portfolios that I have responsibility for to achieve their Better Public Services targets. Budget 2013 makes $10 million available from the Justice Sector Fund over the next 2 years to establish new services to support prisoners on their release into the community, and in the next couple of weeks we will be making announcements about the details of this. We have rolled out the expanded programmes within corrections, both within our prisons and for community offenders, of increased educational opportunities, increased skills training, and dramatically increased alcohol and drug rehabilitation available to offenders. There is the transference of three prisons into working prisons, where prisoners will have a very structured 8-hour day of both working and training. We have revamped youth prisons so that, again, those young people have a very structured day that revolves largely around education, and gets them into the normal habits of ordinary young New Zealanders to help them when they go back out into the community.

It has become clear to us, as three-quarters of our prisoners do return to our communities, that the next area that we have to focus on is what sort of support we give to those people when they have completed their sentences and are returning to their homes and their families and their communities. So those are simple things like connecting them with the social service agencies that they are going to need to support them through the next few months. As much as we might try to get them all some form of employment, that is not always possible. So they do need to have some assistance. They need accommodation. Corrections tells me that several hundred prisoners could be released much earlier into the community if there was accommodation available to them, but, of course, unfortunately, many people do not want to have a newly released prisoner living in their street, so accommodation becomes very difficult.

We do want to provide employment. It is very clear that if we can get ex-offenders into employment as quickly as possible on their release, then they have a much better chance of not returning to prison, of not breaking the law. Of course, for many of them, they need ongoing assistance around just plain, basic living skills—how to budget, how to manage a bank account, how to keep themselves and their families clean and well-fed and living normal lives. So we are certainly looking at how we can provide those services to prisoners as they are leaving prison, in particular, and whether that sort of programme needs to be extended to some of our more high-risk community offenders.

It is interesting when you look at the results that corrections has seen over the last 4½ years that we are starting to see that drop in reoffending rates—nearly 9 percent. We have set a target of 25 percent by 2017. When you consider where corrections came from—when this Government took office, the probation service had been run into the ground. Under the previous Labour Government, it was seriously understaffed and seriously underfunded. This Government injected $255 million into the probation service alone to try to get it back into some shape so that it could deliver services to do the job that New Zealanders expect it to do. The result of that now, 4½ years later, under this Government, is that the Department of Corrections has been named the department of the year.

Even though the day after that came out we did experience a group of prisoners—29 prisoners—in Spring Hill Corrections Facility running rampant, it was interesting to me, and heartening to me, to see that the response from the corrections officers was absolutely perfect. They followed their professional code to the letter. They showed that the extra effort and resources that we have put into safety training have paid off. They followed those procedures and protocols exceptionally well, but, more important, when it became clear that fire—which is the worst possible danger in a prison where you have, and we did have, many prisoners who had locked themselves in their cells rather than participate—was involved, those prison officers then risked their lives to go in and save the prisoners who had set fire to their own surroundings. They were very brave actions, and, fortunately for me as Minister, I would say that we are very lucky that we had no serious injuries out of that for either our officers or any of our prisoners.

Budget 2013 has set us up, in police, corrections, and the Serious Fraud Office, for another exceptional year as part of the justice sector that this Government is ensuring is effective and is delivering good public services to New Zealanders right across the country.

Mr Speaker, this is a split call with my colleague Steffan Browning. This year is the 120th anniversary of women gaining suffrage in this country. It is also the 80th anniversary of women entering Parliament and the 20th anniversary of women first taking leadership of a political party in this country. I think it is particularly important this year, and especially this week, following the death of Dame Margaret Shields, to consider how our political system is doing for women and how this Government, in particular, through this Budget is delivering for women. Of course, we have made really significant progress since the 1970s, but there is a sample of measures that tell me we have still got a long way to go. In this speech I would like to look at just one of those measures, which is around the gender pay gap.

We have an entrenched gender pay gap and, according to some measures, it is growing. Other measures tell us that it may be narrowing because male wages are declining. So what is this Budget offering us as women in terms of making some fundamental change in the inequality that exists for us in this country? According to the Minister of Finance one of this Government’s priorities with this Budget is to build a more productive and competitive economy. Well, that should really bode well for women, you would think, especially in light of the Goldman Sachs research last year that showed that closing the gender pay gap could increase productivity by 10 percent. That is worth over $20 billion a year to this economy.

Surely, for that kind of outcome it would be worth actively and strongly pursuing a policy towards that end. Yet the Budget announcements relating to promoting a productive and competitive economy have been devoid of gender analysis. The Minister is focused on increasing tourism, with $20 million a year; marketing education overseas, with $10 million a year; and providing $25 million a year on new research and development. It is not that I do not believe in any of those initiatives, but I really struggle to see how they have got the potential that is held within measures that would reduce the gender pay gap.

So what is the Government doing to close the gap? My temptation, honestly, is to say “nothing”. It has said it is not going to put anything into extending paid parental leave and it has threatened to use its financial veto, against the will of this House, despite the fact that extending paid parental leave will strengthen women’s attachment to the workforce and the loss of that contributes to the gender pay gap.

Further, it has legislated against paying family carers their legal entitlements, which would have significantly helped with the gender pay gap. Further, it has not acted on the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner’s recommendations regarding pay for aged-care workers—another core factor in the gender pay gap. And when we look at non-Budgetary measures, we see that it has refused to pick up my member’s bill, which just provides a technical tool to enable women to argue their case.

Those are four distinct things that this Government could be doing to radically increase productivity in this country—and it has done nothing. But if I am being truly fair, I have to acknowledge that it has increased funding for the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and that that ministry is responsible for monitoring the gender pay gap. That is particularly important now that nobody is actually responsible for lowering that gap.

So how will the ministry deliver for us women in New Zealand? Last year the Human Rights Commission critiqued the ministry, saying that women are being short-changed by those setting targets on their behalf, and it criticised the ministry’s pale ambition for women’s progress in New Zealand.

Well, I would expect, as I am sure a Minister of Finance who cared about productivity would expect, that ministry to have taken those criticisms on board and to have radically strengthened its targets. But no. Actually, the ministry has watered them down. From a target of having 47 percent of appointments to State sector boards in 2015, now we find its target is to continue to increase from 41 percent in 2015, and a web page dedicated to gender pay gap just justifies the use of its measure. This year it has put out six media releases and has contracted one piece of research. That is this Government’s pitiful commitment to gender pay inequality.

I rise to speak on the Appropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill in terms of biosecurity, in particular. On the surface, in this Budget it appeared that there was a $5 million to $7 million drop in biosecurity funding, and we certainly commented on that. The Minister said: “No, no, no. That was a reshuffling of figures between 2011-12 and this current Budget, and that is all that is.” But what is actually very, very clear is that despite the increasing risks to biosecurity because of staff cuts and increased trade, this Government has not given an appropriate increase to biosecurity funding. There has been some talk of increased staff, but that is actually just a drop in the bucket compared with the staff drops and cuts since 2008. This Government is not addressing biosecurity adequately at all.

This week, as we speak, there is a conference on bees in Queenstown. Federated Farmers are talking on bees down there, and very soon there is another conference for the National Beekeepers’ Association. I know that that industry has come to the Minister, it certainly has come to the rest of us, and it is wanting assistance around biosecurity. It has been under continued threats, under continued impacts, from the lack of biosecurity controls in this country. We all know about the varroa bee mite and that varroa got away, and that now all beekeepers, effectively, are having to deal with varroa. They are having to go through some quite significant control methods to keep varroa from taking out their hives, because if they do not, the hive perishes. New Zealand is already all the worse for the feral hives being totally decimated. We now rely totally on kept hives and the controls in them.

So that is just one example. Another bee disease, Nosema ceranae, a small unicellular fungal parasite of bees, came in and showed up when Psa showed up in kiwifruit. Although it does not seem to decimate the hives to the same degree, if we get a particular virus in, which would be very easy with this open border approach by the Government, the combination will decimate hives. We need to not allow that. The fact is that that bee disease is here. We will deal with it, or it is being dealt with, through hive management as best as possible.

There are other factors potentially impacting on our bee health, including neonicotinoids, or neonics for short. These are synthetic pesticides that have been shown to affect bee numbers. They are used as a systemic poison in seeds that expresses out through the pollen in things like corn and other flowering plants like brassicas. That needs to be pulled in immediately. We need the Environmental Protection Authority to reassess them, but it actually should be stopping the use of them immediately until it does reassess them, just as the EU is doing. Neonics, as I say, need to be reassessed. The only reassessment of pesticides as such at the moment is of the organophosphates. The Government is not putting enough into reassessments of either those or new chemicals. We get tons of new chemicals being allowed in each year and yet reassessments of existing ones are woefully slow.

Just back into the biosecurity issue and the open border approach, the Government intends to allow honey imports from Australia too, and yet we have this lack of an increase in biosecurity funding to actually control the potential diseases that will come from the open border approach. Another aspect of the open border approach is the raw pork imports, but that can be for another speech. Thank you.

Budget 2013 has, I think, to be seen against the background of its predecessors, the economic challenges facing New Zealand, and, in particular, the quite extraordinary challenges facing other developed economies of the OECD. Shortly after the Minister of Finance introduced this Budget into the House, I—like other trade Ministers from New Zealand over the last 10 years—had the privilege of representing New Zealand at the OECD ministerial meeting. Going from New Zealand, where I think there is growing confidence that we are indeed on the right track, into the heart of Europe and the heart of the problems of the eurozone was very striking, indeed. To say that the mood was sombre would be considerably understating the case. I mean, forget the outlier countries—the countries in serious trouble, like Greece, Portugal, and Spain. We just got news on the eve of the OECD ministerial meeting that the youth unemployment rate in Sweden—a country that I am sure most members of this House would consider is one of the most cohesive and successful societies in the world—is 25.1 percent. There is 25.1 percent youth unemployment in Sweden, with riots taking place in Stockholm as a result of the frictions that this inevitably causes. So I think that people need to wake up and smell the roses here when they sit down and see the enormous progress that New Zealand has made under the superb leadership of the Minister of Finance, Bill English.

I had the privilege of speaking to a leader of one of these countries, who asked me: “Well, Mr Groser, what are the big numbers in New Zealand?”. And I said: “Well, the big numbers, Prime Minister, are these. We have growth of 3.1 percent. We have inflation of 0.9 percent, and 0 percent on food prices. We have unemployment still higher than we want, but trending down and currently at 6.2 percent. We have seen household income rise 20 percent in the last 4 years. And as for our debt,”—and remember this: the average gross Government debt to GDP in OECD countries is well over 75 percent, and for many of them it is above 100 percent—“we are trending just above 30 percent at the moment, from memory, and we will be back below 30 percent in a year or two. We will return to surplus in 2014-15, which has been much improved by the latest statements coming out of Treasury a few days ago.” This Prime Minister said to me: “My God, I wish we had numbers like that.” And I bet that most of those countries would wish that they had numbers like that; they wish they could tell their young people that there is a future for them in their countries.

The achievement of this Government is quite considerable, and I sense a growing realisation in New Zealand that we are turning the corner. When we set this against the background of the numbers that we inherited—let me reel off just a couple of them. Inflation—

💬 Dr David Clark: Five long years.

—you can check it yourself if you think it is a lie—to November 2008 was 5.1 percent, which is five times the current rate of inflation. We had huge debt growing because the Labour-Green Government of the previous 3 years lost the plot completely, just throwing money at every problem that arose in the belief that that would solve the problem. There was no prospect of returning to surplus at all. There was not even a date out there—no prospect of returning to surplus. When you think about the turn-round between those two sets of numbers, and also factor in the extraordinary additional challenges of the biggest natural disaster to hit New Zealand for 70 years, which cost $40 billion, and the collapse of our finance companies through the greatest financial crisis in the last 70 years, I think this Budget and the achievements of the Minister of Finance and his senior colleagues in steering New Zealand to this position is nothing short of remarkable.

Looking at this Budget, I will pick out just a few issues at random. Look at the position of health. I think it is important to look at these issues, given the absurd critique that somehow this Government is focusing on—what do they call it—rich mates. Is that not the rhetoric that is used—rich mates? Let us look at just the facts. This is a National-led Government. We are working for the nation. Let us look at some of the data in this year’s Budget to uncover the real truths here. In health, a portfolio that Minister Ryall has handled with outstanding professional ease, the way that Mr Ryall has managed to move this whole debate forward in such a positive direction is extraordinary. We have allocated in this Budget over the next 4 years an additional $1.6 billion for dementia care, for more elective surgery, for better treatment of diabetes, and for more screening for adult health.

We have allocated an extra $900 million that is carefully targeted at early childhood education, at primary education, and at social education. And as for poor families—just to return to the theme of the absurdity of this critique that we are trying to look after rich mates—we are interested in all New Zealanders, particularly people who are hard-pressed by economic conditions. The first thing is that we believe absolutely—and all the empirical evidence tells us this—that the most important assistance you can give somebody is a paid job, and we have created 50,000 of those new jobs in the last 2 years. We are going to insulate a further 46,000 homes, mostly for people on low incomes, because the evidence tells us that warm homes are a crucial ingredient in the health and educational performance of young children in low-income families. We are going to allocate an additional $21 million to deal with rheumatic fever, one of the childhood problems that have plagued these people over many years. This is what this Government is interested in: all New Zealanders—the nation.

But this has not been a Budget just conceived on its own; we have also pursued a rigorous plan through the Business Growth Agenda. Much of this has been implemented through previous Budgets. If we look at the fantastic tax reforms, the fiscally neutral tax reforms introduced in the 2010 Budget by the same Minister of Finance, we can see the benefits of this already coming through. The figures that came through in terms of fiscal balances this week showed increased tax revenue as a result of the structural changes the Minister of Finance introduced, under some of the most difficult economic conditions that the world has seen in 70 years. And we will see also, as this economy continues to move in the right direction, the effects of incentivising middle-income New Zealand to the point where 75 percent of New Zealanders are paying the top tax rate of 17.5c. We are going to see the structural policies that we have introduced over the last four or five Budgets start to impact on New Zealand’s long-term and medium-term prospects.

And all of this has been done under a coordinated plan called the Business Growth Agenda, which covers, broadly speaking, six headings: innovation, capital markets, skilled and safe workforces, management of our natural resource base, more effective use of our infrastructure and investment in it, and close attention to export markets, which is the portfolio, obviously, of greatest interest to me in terms of the Government’s structural plan. We can see elements of Budget 2013 in moving forward all of these agendas. Let us just look at innovation, for example. This Budget has allocated an additional $96 million for further investment in public services. We are going to invest $106 million over the next 4 years in research and development assistance to business and new start-ups. So I think that this Budget, as with its predecessors, is placing New Zealand in an excellent space, so that in the second decade of the 21st century New Zealanders can look forward with great confidence to a future in this country.

Finally, to conclude, I am going to award first prize for the most ridiculous comment made in the context of this Budget to the co-leader of the Green Party Dr Russel Norman, or, as I call him, “Dr No”, since he is opposed to any policies that would raise growth or create employment. You may recall that Russel Norman likened our current Prime Minister to Rob Muldoon. Having been in that Prime Minister’s so-called think tank for 3 years—2½ years under Muldoon and 6 months under David Lange—unlike an Australian schoolboy, I actually knew Muldoon’s personality. I would argue that I have never met two people more unalike than John Key and Robert Muldoon.

On behalf of New Zealand First, I would like to welcome the wandering minstrel of a trade Minister, Tim Groser, back to this country for a rare visit to this Parliament. Unfortunately, he needs to get—he is leaving the Chamber now—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order!

—his facts right. Mr Groser, the previous speaker, made the comment in the Budget debate that he was just recently in Sweden—on one of his junkets to try to get a job with the World Trade Organization, spending $250,000 of taxpayers’ money trying to get a job for himself. He said that in Sweden he was told that its youth unemployment rate was 25.1 percent and that Sweden was appalled by that and so envious of New Zealand.

Well, I have got news for Mr Groser, and I have got news that is hard facts. He needs to spend a little bit more time in this country and a little bit less time on junket trips around the world. The unemployment rate for 15 to 19-year-olds in this country, according to the New Zealand household labour force survey of March 2013, is—guess what. Guess what the percentage of unemployed for the 15 to 19 age group is. Do any of the National Party members know what that is? Would you take a guess? Would it be close to the 25.1 percent of Sweden? Would any of you know? Well, actually, the figure in New Zealand is 25.6 percent—26 percent of 15 to 19-year-olds in New Zealand are unemployed.

So here we have Mr Groser going on about how terrible youth unemployment is in Sweden—it has a rate of 25.1 percent—and saying how wonderful New Zealand is when, in actual fact, New Zealand’s youth unemployment rate is higher. So, Mr Groser, I suggest that you spend a little bit more time in this country, and a little bit less time wandering around the world, and learn about the facts of your own country. In terms of unemployment in the next age group, 22 to 24-year-olds, it is 10.9 percent, and for 25 to 29-year-olds it is 7.1 percent. This is appalling. This means that you are talking about one in every four or five of our young people in this country being out of work. That is appalling.

If you look at the regions around this country—Northland, with an average of 10 percent unemployment; the Bay of Plenty, with 8 percent unemployment; Gisborne - Hawke’s Bay, with 8.4 percent unemployment; and the Manawatū-Wanganui area with 7.7 percent unemployment—you see that these are not good figures at all. We constantly hear the National Government saying that it is trying to get unemployment down when, in actual fact, out in the provinces things are pretty grim. It is even worse if you are a Māori or a Pasifika person, or if you are from Middle Eastern, Latin American, or African areas. Māori are currently 13.9 percent of our unemployed people in this country. Pasifika people are even worse off at 15.2 percent. Those of Middle Eastern, Latin American, or African origin are 10.9 percent.

It was interesting that a survey of National Party voters in the paper on the weekend said that they were not that affected by unemployment. Not many people in their families were affected by unemployment. They did not know too many people suffering from unemployment. It was interesting that the favoured few—the rich cats who were referred to before by Mr Groser—seem to be exempt from this. It does seem that the anointed ones—those who support the National Party—certainly seem to be doing well out of this Government while the middle-class, everyday, good, hard-working, average Kiwi is not.

There is nothing to promote growth in this Budget. There is nothing for jobs or to lift incomes for good, hard-working Kiwis. This Budget does nothing for provincial New Zealand. In fact, it attacks provincial New Zealand. We heard last week that provincial New Zealand will be paying an extra 3c a litre from 1 July, which will rise by another 3c for the next 2 years to 9c a litre. So people in the likes of those areas with high unemployment—in the likes of Northland, in the likes of Gisborne - Hawke’s Bay, in the likes of Manawatū-Wanganui and the Bay of Plenty—are not going to be seeing anything for their extra 3c to 9c a litre on their fuel tax. They are simply just going to be paying more money to put petrol in their family car and in their work vehicle each week to get to and from work or to take their family out and about. They are not going to see anything more from it, because all the “roads of National Party significance”—all the “roads of National Party significance”—happen to be north of Hamilton, in the main.

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: That’s not true.

They are. They are, apart from a little bit in Wellington and a little bit in Christchurch. In all those provincial areas, hundreds of kilometres away, they will see next to nothing.

What have we had from this Government, apart from 5 years of tinkering around the edges? We have had a lot of broken promises. For example, in July 2007 the then Leader of the Opposition, John Key, said: “That would be a fundamental purpose of our Government, to narrow the wage gap between ourselves and Australia, and to grow local wages in New Zealand.” That is what he promised as the Leader of the Opposition in July 2007. The reality today is that the wage gap with Australia has increased by $58.18 a week. So 5 years later he has not followed through on his promises as the Leader of the Opposition. In fact, we are worse off compared with Australia.

On 27 November 2007 John Key, still the Leader of the Opposition, said: “We’re here today at Westpac Stadium.”—and many of you will recall him standing in the middle of Westpac Stadium—“It holds nearly 35,000 people. And believe it or not, the equivalent of this entire stadium—and more—leaves every year to permanently live in Australia.” And then Mr Key went on to say: “I’m convinced we can give them a reason, and a purpose, to stay in New Zealand. And that’s why I want to be New Zealand’s next Prime Minister.” That is what he said. Well, what happened?

This was also the promise: “We’ve got an agenda which is about the economy, it’s about building opportunities, it’s about stopping 80,000 people leaving a year to other parts of the world.” That is what he said on 27 August 2008, leading up to the election. The reality, 5 years later, is that 126,669 New Zealanders have left for Australia under John Key. So his promises as the Leader of the Opposition and coming into Government have not been fulfilled.

As to asset sales, much of this Budget was built on the sale of assets, trying to balance the books, and trying to come into surplus in a few years’ time. On 12 October 2008 Mr Key released My key commitments to you. These were his commitments to you. He said: “I’m not interested in selling assets—I’m all about building assets.” So is it not interesting that in 2008 he talked about building assets but, in actual fact, the whole agenda was to sell assets?

He then went on to say on his personal commitment card: “I personally guarantee that we will maintain and build New Zealand’s asset base by … not selling Kiwibank or any other state-owned company.” The reality, however, was that National has sold off Mighty River Power, selling nearly half of something that all New Zealanders, including every person in this room, already owned, and it has moved it over to the wealthy people who could afford to buy the shares, and 2.5 percent of New Zealanders are now better off as a result.

Mr Key said on 30 January 2007: “I have no intention of being a Prime Minister who tackles only the easy and convenient issues … But I can tell you that dealing with the problems of our growing underclass is a priority for National, both in opposition and in government.” He said that as the Leader of the Opposition. The reality today, under this Budget, is that the underclass has grown, with 32,873 more children living in benefit-dependent households during the time of this Government than when National come into office. This Budget has not delivered for the underclass, and it has not delivered for low and middle income New Zealanders. This is a very disappointing Budget.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Ka nui te mihi ki a tātou. Talofa lava. There is a saying in Maoridom that goes something like this: Tama tū, tama ora; tama moe, tama mate. Loosely translated it says something like: “Those who are productive will survive and those who sit back will die or perish.” It is a message that has been widely reflected, I think, in Budget 2013. It reflects the thinking that our whānau will reap the rewards of security in jobs and increasing the income that comes into the homes, and that is important. It is the concept behind Whānau Ora; that together we can achieve the transformation we need to stand on our own two feet and craft our future. But it also could apply that those of us who turn up to Parliament each day and focus on making gains for our people can expect to see results.

This Budget is a pragmatic Budget driven by the needs of the people. It is a Budget that allocates resources that matter; resources to enable our whānau to stand tall and to stand strong. I want to focus on three themes that represent the gains that we of the Māori Party have fought so hard for in this year’s funding—namely, opportunity, support, and sustenance.

The Māori Party has a track record of seizing opportunities, taking big decisions quickly, and grabbing the moment to make the difference. We have been elected into this place to make everything count, to open the doors, and to ensure that the voice of tangata whenua is interwoven throughout every vote, every departmental balance sheet, and every ministerial portfolio. So this Budget builds on that powerful precedent established by Whānau Ora to do what is right for all of our whānau.

A basic moral test for any Parliament is how our most vulnerable members are faring. The Māori Party has always taken steps to protect those of our whānau who are facing challenges, te pani me te rawa kore, and this Budget is an opportunity, a good opportunity, to put resources where they matter most: in our homes, in our kōhanga, in our kura, in our marae, in our daily lives.

One of the highlights for us is in the dedicated investment in Māori and Pasifika trades training. It is not just about the $43 million—and that is absolutely sizable. It is also about the focus of working in partnerships with iwi, with hapū, with Māori and Pasifika communities, the community groups, and with the employers and the tertiary education organisations. Everyone will be in the same room talking to one another, making sure that Māori and Pasifika learners have the support of vocational training, apprenticeships, qualifications, and even perhaps the cost of the tools themselves. We have another saying that goes something like this: Mā tōu rourou, mā tōku rourou ka ora te iwi.

[With your food basket and my food basket the people will live.]

Working together we can make it happen. That collective and collaborative approach, which Whānau Ora has delivered on and He Kai Kei Aku Ringa, the Māori economic development strategy, is built upon, comes together in the form of Marae CBD. This, I believe, is a fantastic initiative, one that the Māori Party campaigned on in the 2011 elections, and I have to say it is revolutionary in its making.

What we see occurring with Marae CBD is the opportunity to restore our marae to thriving hubs of social, cultural, and economic activity to their whānau. It is a great day indeed when $1.2 million is set aside to invest in the entrepreneurship that is marae-led and marae-based. We have worked hard to make sure that we provide all of our children with the best possible chance of success, and it starts from participation in early childhood education.

This Budget delivers $172 million in new investment in early childhood education, with the funding targeted to support our most vulnerable communities, and it is focused on making a big impact amongst Māori and Pasifika communities. That is an opportunity not just in setting a pathway of educational success for our mokopuna but also to improve upon quality and leadership to make sure that all of our babies are equipped for a brilliant future.

Of course, an opportunity can be realised only if we have the courage and the strength to actually last the distance, and that is why a second policy plank for our Budget pledges this year has been on support. We knew that to achieve our aspirations to lift whānau incomes it is not just about jobs and training and further education, it is about the dollars and the cents coming into the household.

There are two particular packages that we are proud of having pioneered and that is the emphasis on microfinance and the support for financial literacy. This Budget brings with it a commitment to pilot a partnership with NGOs and financial institutions. In my electorate of Waiariki the AWHI Credit Union has been working for years to help its own families help themselves. It is about mutual self-help.

Today we welcome the move to support the provision of low or no interest loans for low-income borrowers. Too many of our families have been caught in a stranglehold of loan sharks, who strip them of their dignity and rob them of their finances. I am sure you in your electorate, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson, recognise some of that. This Budget, hopefully, supports them. Of course, our biggest hope was that we could act on lifting the minimum wage, but, unfortunately, the Government failed on that account—unfortunately, yet again.

Perhaps the highlight for us in this year’s Budget has been in the practical support we have pushed for in the area of housing. I want to congratulate our co-leader Tariana Turia on the massive $100 million of home insulation, and, particularly, its focus on low-income households and those with children or high health needs. We are also excited about the commitment to trial a warrant of fitness for Housing New Zealand properties and to then see that trial leading on to other social housing providers. I believe it is a genius idea promoted by the expert advisory group on poverty, and it is about supporting our families to thrive in a warm, dry home.

This Budget also attempts to address overcrowding, or, more to the point, to support so many of our whānau who know the value of living collectively and choose to live together. Project 324&5, putting another 2,000 extra bedrooms on to existing homes, is a novel approach, I think, of responding to the needs of whānau. Of course, one of the obvious reasons we have focused on healthy homes is to deal with some of the appalling health indicators that have beset Māori and Pasifika communities and whānau for far too long. It beggars belief that despite 9 years of plenty the Labour Government did nothing to address the rates of rheumatic fever.

This Budget almost doubles what we originally achieved with the $24 million signed up to in the relationship accord with National. Tariana Turia has gained another $21 million for rheumatic fever prevention, and all credit to her for that fight to keep our children alive. Another boost and another important health announcement—which took place today, I believe—was the $35 million boost of new funding to prevent diabetes and heart disease.

When we are talking about survival, that brings me to the third major platform of the Māori Party influence on Budget 2013 and that is, of course, Te Reo Māori me ngā tikanga. From unlikely quarters, one of the first tweets this afternoon was from Morgan Godfrey, celebrating the fact that papakāinga housing and Te Reo Māori had been increased.

For the benefit of Mr Harawira, who has clearly has not read the Budget, let me count a couple of things that he should have noted: $12 million to support and retain teachers in Māori language immersion education, $8 million for a new Māori language research fund, $5.9 million for priority learners to gain National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2—that is, Māori—an increase of the Mā Te Reo funding of $2.5 million, 30 new scholarships to attract Māori and Pasifika candidates into the teacher education area, and funding for new kura with $134 million for capital funding announced by the Associate Minister of Education Nikki Kaye. It is one of the most dedicated announcements of funding for Māori medium education that we have ever seen in many years, and all credit to my colleague Dr Sharples.

In closing, it is not all good news. Of course we have asked for a lot more, and we still stand resolute in our opposition to the sale of State assets, which has bankrolled this Budget. We have some real issues around the welfare reform work stream, and we are deeply concerned at the lack of emphasis on wise environmental stewardship, kaitiakitanga. That aside, this Budget is still about whānau, and we hope that it does produce the benefits that we set out in negotiating with the National Party. Ka nui te mihi. Kia ora tātou.

Budgets are about priorities, and Budget 2013 writ large once again that tertiary education is not a priority for this National-led Government. It is a slow and painful attack that is changing the way we view and approach tertiary education in this country. It is a long and steady shift. It is a long and steady shift from public provision to private provision. It is a long and steady shift from backing our students to study to not backing them, and to not investing in our future. This Budget missed the opportunity to invest properly in tertiary education, and in New Zealand students in the process. This is yet another anti-education Budget, like those we have seen in the last 5 years from this Government—that education is a cost to be cut and not something to invest in. We have seen this in so many areas, and, notably, we have seen it in the area of tertiary education.

But this really is not surprising, given that the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment, Steven Joyce, sees tertiary education as something that needs to be dampened down. Tertiary education is not something that he sees as positive for the future of our country any more; no, we have a Minister with the self-declared aspirational aim of dampening down demand. He is a Minister who thinks that success in his portfolio is turning students away from our tertiary institutions, rather than enrolling them and empowering them with the skills and the learning that a tertiary education can give to people. This is what aspiration for New Zealand has come to mean under this Government: cost cutting and turning people away. We saw it in the last Budget, when we limited access to education by cutting student allowances for postgraduate students. This Government might talk big the rhetoric of the fact that we need to be an innovation-led economy, that innovation is our future, and that we need research and development, but it turned off the tap of that innovation incubator that is postgraduate study. We have seen this Government and this Minister have to concede that his moves in the last Budget have meant we have fewer postgraduate students in this country now as a consequence. This is something for which we will pay the price for a long time to come.

What did we have in this year’s Budget? What group did the Minister turn his guns on to dampen down demand for education? Those over 40. As a 39-year-old, I take great umbrage at the fact that this Minister does not think that someone over 40 can learn anything else. This is a Government that is really taking literally the idea that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. This is a Government that is ready to throw anyone over 40 on the scrap heap and tell them that they are not worth investing in, that they have nothing to offer the nation, and that we as a nation will not get any benefit from retraining them. The Government is telling people over 40 all over this country “We don’t need you.” By limiting student support and student allowance to 120 hours for those over 40, we are denying ourselves as a country opportunities in so many areas. This is a Budget of lost opportunity. You know, National Governments past and the National Party used to believe in the notion of lifelong learning. Even while we were chasing Lockwood Smith out of windows at the University of Canterbury in the 1990s, he still did believe in the notion of lifelong learning. He still thought that people, whatever their stage in life, had something to offer and something to contribute.

But what we have seen in terms of tertiary education in Budget 2013 is, once again, National’s commitment to the two-speed economy—the two-speed economy in relation to geography. This is a Government that, when it comes to tertiary education, has given up on the regions. It has made funding decision after funding decision that is leaving the regions cold—

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: Rubbish!

—in terms of the provision of tertiary education. It is a Government that simply does not believe in it. Members opposite are telling me “Oh, this is rubbish.”, and Anne Tolley, in particular, is calling out something. Well, I am going to talk about the Eastern Institute of Technology in that Minister’s electorate and what the Eastern Institute of Technology has lost under her Government. The fact is that levels 1 and 2 provision has fallen all over New Zealand, and, most notably, in the regions. When that Government made a decision to competitively tender out levels 1 and 2 foundation tertiary education, it made a decision to do national provision. The national provision has meant that regions all over New Zealand are suffering.

Anne Tolley, instead of barracking across the House, might like to give some thought to what it is that the region that she represents has lost. What has the Eastern Institute of Technology lost since her Government has been in Government? Well, it lost $2.3 million in 2013 as a result of that competitive tendering. That is right—$2.3 million cut from the Budget and fewer students in that part of the country who can stay in that region and receive their tertiary education. All this is at a time when 2,574 people from Gisborne and the Hawke’s Bay have permanently migrated from that area to Australia. This is not a Government that is willing to back our regions. This is a Government that has seen apprenticeships in that Minister’s area fall by 40 percent since 2008. This is not a Government that is backing the skills training and the education of our young people, while all the time Hawke’s Bay has had a skill shortage in the area of industrial electricians, welders, and precision engineering—all things that could have been taught at the Eastern Institute of Technology if this Government had not decided to slash funding and slash costs.

But it is not just Minister Anne Tolley’s area that has lost funding. Canterbury, Gisborne, as I mentioned, Hawke’s Bay, Nelson, Marlborough, the West Coast, Otago, Taranaki, Waikato, and Wellington have all seen a net loss of levels 1 and 2 provision in their regions because of the cuts this Government has put in place. What we have seen is $51.6 billion less going into our polytech sector since Budget 2011. A further $38 million was put out for this private provision, and where did this $38 million go if it did not go to our polytechs? That is right, it went to private training enterprises. Again, it is continuing the theme of moving from public to private provision of tertiary education in this country. This is something that this Government cannot be proud of. This is a Government that is letting down its young people and is not properly providing tertiary education opportunities in our regions. In so many areas, this is a Government that has no plan for, and has given up on, regional New Zealand. Tertiary education is just another area where that Government has done it.

It is time that we had a new approach. Labour is proud of its history, from Peter Fraser right through to the last time when we were in Government, in the way in which we have backed tertiary education. We democratised it and we allowed people to enter it. It is time that we got back to that. The world is changing. The merchant bank approach to our economy is no longer enough. We need a Government that knows that skills and a productive economy are absolutely central to our future. This is not a Government that believes in that; instead, it is a Government that sees the training of our young people and the tertiary education of our young people only as a cost to be cut. This is not something that can continue. We look forward to a time when we have a Labour Government that will deliver a Budget that sees tertiary education as an investment and will back our young people in that.

💬 Dr Cam Calder: This principled, pragmatic—

Order! I have not called the member yet, but he can stand and ask.

💬 Dr Cam Calder: Mr Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Cam Calder.

Enchanté. Merci. The principled, pragmatic Government continues to work relentlessly for the betterment of every New Zealander. It is working and succeeding in cushioning vulnerable New Zealanders from the ongoing effects of the worst financial conditions in decades. Whilst in Spain the unemployment rate is in excess of 25 percent and that of the US is in double figures, here in New Zealand the household labour force survey shows very encouraging job growth, with the unemployment rate dropping from 6.9 percent to 6.2 percent in the March quarter. There were 38,000 more people employed in that quarter. This result puts New Zealand in 11th place in the OECD. Our participation rate grew to almost 68 percent and remains higher than that of Australia, which rests at around about 65 percent. Our growth in GDP, at 3 percent, is higher than for most other developed countries.

Wages have increased by 22 percent since 2008; 22 percent is twice the rate of inflation. House mortgage rates are at the lowest in 50 years. Annual inflation is running at 0.9 percent. The cost of living increase is the lowest in decades, and we have heard that Standard and Poor’s has endorsed the Government’s approach by placing us in the world’s 10 least risky economies. Just yesterday the good news continued. Further positive signs of a stronger economy, underpinning the tax revenue and combined with responsible control over spending, kept the operating balance before gains and losses—the OBEGAL deficit—below $4 billion, which was $664 million less than was forecast.

The Government’s economic management has been widely praised over the last few years by a variety of international pundits of impeccable economic credentials. Most recently, the IMF Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, praised the Government’s economic policy and Business Growth Agenda. She described the economy as being very stable, very promising, and a lot better than in other parts of the world. Imagine what her comment would be should the New Zealand economy be managed by a dysfunctional pick-up team of an anti - free market Labour Party and the red-green money-printers. The IMF, in the report issued only yesterday, endorsed New Zealand’s balanced and pragmatic economic management and confirmed that the Government’s economic plan strikes the right balance between supporting growth and limiting public debt. The IMF stated: “The benefits of the plan are many. First, it withdraws fiscal stimulus at the right time by making room for the expected increases in private sector and earthquake-related construction spending. Second, it has improved the macroeconomic policy mix by reducing pressure on monetary policy. Third, it creates fiscal space to help the country deal with aging and health care costs that are expected to increase over the long-term and to cope with any negative shocks that may cause a sharp reduction in domestic economic activity or potential liabilities associated with the banking sector. Last, it could help raise national savings, reduce the current account deficit, and limit the increase in foreign liabilities.” It is a resounding vote of confidence in this Government’s proven, prudent financial management, a safe pair of hands, and a stark contrast to the reincarnated 1970s Labour Party in coalition with those of a red-green hue.

Our economic programme includes a large number of measures aimed at improving the competitiveness of businesses, including increasing our exports and infrastructure and innovation, improving skills, deepening the capital markets, and sustainably developing our natural resources—interventions vehemently decried by Labour and the Greens. It seems they truly do believe that all they would have to do, should they ever find themselves on the Treasury benches, is press a button and print money. Hopefully, that is a clarion warning call to all thinking New Zealanders mindful of their children’s and grandchildren’s future. This Government is encouraging investment right across the New Zealand economy, as we know that nothing creates jobs and grows income for New Zealand families better than economic growth. A growing, healthy, productive economy allows us to invest in infrastructure, better public services, security, education, and health.

No Government has ever spent more on health. Let us look at the facts. We are making $1.6 billion available over 4 years, boosting total health spending to a record $14.7 billion—$14.7 billion. While many developed countries around the world are freezing or even reducing their health funding, National is growing and protecting our public health services.

In my maiden speech I spoke of my wish to see a campaign for men to raise their awareness of the need to take responsibility for their prostate health. Budget 2013 delivers $4.3 million over 4 years to raise awareness among men of the need to look after their prostate health. Each year about 3,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 600 die of the disease. A prostate cancer awareness campaign will ensure men get better information, will get better care, and will ultimately enjoy better survival rates. This Budget is great news for Kiwi blokes and their families.

We are combating the high rate of obesity in New Zealand by significantly increasing funding to raise the number of people getting heart and diabetes checks. That is a national health target. We are doubling the funding for Green Prescriptions, at a cost of some $7.2 million. Green Prescriptions see general practitioners or nurses prescribe exercise and improved diet to patients and their families, which is a proven way of increasing physical activity and improving health. We have extended the Fruit in Schools programme. Last year over 18 million individual pieces of fruit were delivered to pupils in low-decile schools. Over 100,000 students in 484 schools across our country benefited.

Sadly, New Zealand faces an increase in dementia as people live longer. This Budget invests $17 million in aged-care and dementia services, including improved home support services, trained health care workers, and increased funding for dementia care workers and bed subsidies. We have targeted $100 million to meet population changes and cost pressures in disability support services. We are investing $48 million in elective surgery such as hip replacements and for cataracts, and more than $21 million to reduce the incidence of rheumatic fever among our most vulnerable, which is particularly apposite in our schools in Manurewa, in Māngere, and in Manukau East, in parts of the far north, in Flaxmere, and in Porirua. I was visiting Ngā Iwi School just last week, delivering a certificate to the principal there for its hard work in reducing the incidence of rheumatic fever by swabbing the throats of vulnerable kids.

No Government has ever spent more on education—no Government has ever spent more on education. National’s targeted spend across the entire education sector for 2013-14 will be $12.4 billion. Ensuring every child gets a good education, we believe, is the most crucial intervention we can make to raise living standards, unlock the potential that lies within all our young people, and allow them to realise their dreams and aspirations and to create a more competitive and productive economy. We are spending over $1.5 billion on early childhood education. Our education investment in early childhood education and in primary and secondary schooling is 7.2 percent of our GDP, which is well above the OECD average of 5.8 percent. This is a huge increase, up from the $860 million spent on early childhood education in 2007-08, yet only a few weeks ago the New Zealand Educational Institute president had the barefaced effrontery to rail against cuts in early childhood education.

We are spending $5.67 billion on primary and secondary schools and over $4.2 billion on tertiary education, but, unlike with the previous Government, this spend is targeted and we expect results from the money invested. All up, our spend on education is well over $12 billion, as I mentioned. We are demanding outcomes from our spend and are setting ourselves targets. We make no apologies for wanting all kids to leave school with the tools and skills they need to unlock the potential that lies within all of them. That means intervening early with those being left behind, and lifting them up and encouraging those who are doing well to do even better. We know that quality early childhood education sets a child up for life, and we are aiming in 2016 to have 98 percent of all entrants in school having participated in early childhood education.

We have invested over $48 million in the Targeted Assistance for Participation fund, which will mean that vulnerable communities, Pasifika, and Māori, many of whom are in the south of Auckland—Manurewa, Māngere, Manukau East—will benefit and be engaged in early childhood education. This is a prudent, compassionate Government delivering a fiscally responsible Budget for the betterment of all New Zealanders.

I rise to speak today on this Budget 2013 because it has been a really important Budget. It is Bill English’s fifth Budget, and the fifth in a series of Budgets that has taken us through the worst global recession since the 1930s. It is one of the five Budgets that have allowed us to invest in our communities, to support jobs, to protect our most vulnerable, and now to chart a path to pay off debt and to get back into surplus by 2014-15. It is a big ask, but we are getting there. We are on our way.

It was good to see that the OECD in its economic survey just recently has confirmed that we are absolutely on the right track, that this Government is improving productivity to support long-term growth, that our banking system is in good shape, and that it applauds the fact that we are on track towards a Government surplus. The report also notes that the economy is gathering momentum. It is gathering momentum through the post-earthquake reconstruction of Christchurch and Canterbury, through business investment, and through increased household spending. This is all good news from this Budget.

Of course, as the MP for Christchurch Central I am mostly interested in what this Budget does for Christchurch. Supporting the rebuild of Christchurch and Canterbury is one of the four pillars of this Budget. It is one of the four, along with responsibly managing our finances, building a more productive and competitive economy, and delivering better public services. I have always been very grateful that the Prime Minister comes from Christchurch, that he was educated there, and that he began his working life there, because I know he understands us. I know he understands the value of our city and our province, and that he and this National Government support the rebuild 100 percent.

We are second-largest city in New Zealand. We are the gateway to the South Island. We are the first stop for tourists to the area. We are the hub for businesses and the transport centre for exports. It has been really good to see that despite all the damage from the earthquakes the port of Lyttelton has exported record tonnages over the last few months. Of course, we are the home of the Crusaders. Without doubt Canterbury and Christchurch are the economic powerhouses of the South Island and this rebuild is the biggest economic undertaking in New Zealand’s history.

For the people who live in Christchurch and Canterbury, for our economic influence, and for our national pride it is enormously important that this city gets rebuilt. And it will be rebuilt. It will be rebuilt safer, stronger, more people-friendly, more sustainable, and even more beautiful. We are on our way to create a 21st century city and to position ourselves in the world as a great small city, and a place where people will want to live, will want to visit, and will want to invest. This is a one-off opportunity, and we have to make sure that we all make the very most of it.

I am really pleased that Budget 2013 has increased the Government’s commitment to fund that rebuild by a further $2.1 billion. The total cost of the rebuild, which will include funds from insurance, from investment, and from local and central government is now estimated to be about $40 billion. We had thought $30 billion, but it has now escalated to $40 billion, and this Government’s contribution will also increase from about $13 billion to $15 billion. It is a huge amount of money, and it indicates just how much work has got to be done in the city.

It is really positive for Christchurch and Canterbury because it underpins our future growth and jobs for at least another decade. Latest figures show that Christchurch is really doing well in terms of employment. The unemployment rate is down to 4.3 percent and dropping. There are increased wage rates, increasing numbers of building consents, and with a growth rate of 7.5 percent—absolutely unheard of in New Zealand—Canterbury is the most confident region in the country. Also, we have high levels of internal and external migration and low unemployment, and it is starting to become a real economic hotspot. Tourism is also increasing with our guest nights rising, and we have a higher than average proportion of international visitors visiting in comparison with local visitors. That is not surprising when you consider that Christchurch is deemed by Lonely Planet as one of the top 10 cities in the world to visit in 2013. Who would have ever thought that, pre-earthquake?

The Budget increases funding for the things that matter most to Cantabrians—rebuilding our homes and communities and investing in health and education. The Budget allocates $900 million of new capital funding for the rebuilding of the Christchurch Hospital and Burwood Hospital. This is going to be the biggest health project ever begun in New Zealand. There is also funding for the justice and emergency service precinct. This is a hub in the central city that will allow emergency services—police, the Department of Corrections, St John Ambulance, and fire service—to work together much more efficiently and effectively.

The Budget has also got funding for tertiary education institutions. On top of that it allocates $92.4 million for the greater Christchurch 21st century school renewal programme, which will benefit many future generations of school students.

There is an extra $303 million that has been allocated for the central city recovery plan, which includes nearly $80 million for the development of the Avon River precinct. The Avon River flows through the city, and that will become the focus for our city. The precinct will provide public amenities, and become the equivalent of a recreational waterfront right downtown. There is also funding for the final land zoning decisions, and the work of CERA, that is the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority.

On top of all this Christchurch will benefit from its share of the general Budget investments. Those are the investments that are designed make our economy more productive and competitive, such as research and development for businesses and funding for tourism and international educational marketing—all areas that are really important to us. Also Christchurch will be part of the broadband and irrigation projects. In terms of public services we will benefit from the Warm Up New Zealand: Healthy Homes project funding and improved support for low-income families. Of course, there is our share of the $14.7 billion going to health. That is health for all our families. It is focused on the elderly, dementia, diabetes, asthma, extra operations but also on maternity and child care, and men’s health.

All in all, this is an intelligent and well - thought-out Budget. It is an excellent Budget for the people of Christchurch and Canterbury, and for the rebuild, and that is good for all New Zealanders.

It is interesting the way the sequence goes, but we seem to have just had a selection of speeches, one after the other, commending this Budget to Parliament. I rise to speak in favour of the Appropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill. I would like to congratulate my colleagues who have spoken on this Budget before me, and my equally esteemed colleagues who are to speak on it shortly. Although I know we all share the same level of excitement and enthusiasm, my own take on it is that this is a responsible, finely tuned Budget for what are, in my opinion, post-ideological times.

Let us think back to what we came through. The age of growing the Public Service to grow the economy is over. In fact it has been over for quite some time. As a nation we may be small in numbers, but we are productive and have proven ourselves as a nation to be highly capable of achieving great things with the materials that we have. This recognises the quintessential essence of fundamental New Zealand values. Unfortunately, previous Governments have not always recognised this and kept it in mind. Under the previous Labour Government the Public Service ballooned, but the services to the public did not improve. Nor did Labour policies prepare us for the impending global financial crisis. Rather than saving for a rainy day, one could say that the money was spent with what could be described as reckless disregard, knowing that by the time the coin—or the lack thereof—dropped they would be out of office and, indeed, in one notable case, out of the country.

Labour’s time in office has reminded us of one very simple fact: dogma does not pay bills. Dogma does not pay bills. When this Government came into office, it inherited a set of Government books that had debts running to more than 60 percent of GDP by 2020, and no prospect of Budget surpluses seemingly ever again. The Government has not and will not follow down that destructive road. We understand that a productive economy requires a fine balance of innovation and diversification and continuing to do what we have always done best, but in a smarter fashion.

In both the West Coast and Tasman regions, this Government has invested in tourism initiatives, such as three of the Prime Minister’s Cycle Trails, while also ensuring that traditional industries, including responsible mining—including responsible mining—can continue as well. These initiatives, as well as those brought forward by local business groups who have seen the potential for future growth for the community, by the community, have led to a strong and growing belief across the region that we have turned into a positive stretch of road and that our future is indeed beginning to look bright. The National Government is building towards a stronger, more stable economy that can again weather global storms and deliver opportunities, higher incomes, and more jobs for New Zealanders.

Budget 2013 continues our work to build a brighter future for Kiwi families. Economic growth is the highest in 5 years, almost the same as Australia and higher than almost every other developed country. Our economy is forecast to grow between 2 percent and 3 percent a year over the next 4 years. That is an enviable situation. The much-mentioned number of working-age New Zealanders crossing the Ditch has dropped so low that it seems to be conceivable that many of our recent graduates are simply crossing the ditch to create a time zone barrier between them and constant phone calls from their parents. It is said in relation to our Australian rivalry that jealousy is just love and hate at the same time. Well, Australia may have hated seeing Richie McCaw lift the Webb Ellis Cup, but it loves our sensible tax regime and more structurally sound regulatory environment.

This National Government has created an environment in which business feels safe to invest and create. This is being evidenced, mentioned recently, by an increased corporate tax take of a considerable sum of money. There are 50,000 more jobs than 2 years ago, and the unemployment rate has fallen to 6.2 percent—the lowest in 3 years. This is combined with a wage growth of 22 percent. Mortgage rates have hit 50-year lows—the lowest since 1965.

Innovation has been and will continue to be key to our continuing success. A feature of Budget 2013 is a $100 million a year for an internationally focused growth package providing extra research and development assistance to businesses, additional funding for tourism, and more resources for marketing New Zealand to international students. This growth package acknowledges New Zealand’s need to pay its way in the world through increased trade and investment, which, in turn, creates jobs and opportunities for New Zealanders. It is all about increasing productivity. Within the package, science and innovation funding has increased by $50 million a year. This takes the Government’s annual investment in research and development to $1.36 billion in 2013-14, which is the highest ever. That is something we can all be extremely proud of.

Innovation, though, must not be seen as the place of only the economy. The need for public services to innovate is there also. Over the next 4 years we will invest $1.6 billion in new initiatives to meet cost pressures and population growth. We are investing in more support for aged and dementia care, more elective operations, better heart and diabetes care, and more preventative screening. The Government is helping more New Zealanders get the skills they need to build successful careers and fulfil their potential. We are lifting student achievement in all levels of the education system.

Budget 2013 is focused on delivering better public services within tight financial constraints, but not at the expense of those in need. This, I am very proud to say, is a major feature of this Government. Following work by the Ministerial Committee on Poverty, Budget 2013 confirms important initiatives to support low-income families. These include $100 million over 3 years to insulate 46,000 more homes for low-income families, more than $21 million over the next 4 years to reduce rheumatic fever in children, and an extra $1.5 million for budgeting services in 2013-14 in addition to the $8.9 million already provided in 2012-13. There will be a whiteware procurement programme to help beneficiaries buy new appliances under warranty using Ministry of Social Development repayable grants. The Government is investigating in partnership with NGOs and financial institutions to support the provision of low or no interest loans for low-income borrowers.

We have heard a lot recently in debates on a trial on Housing New Zealand Corporation properties of the Housing Warrant of Fitness programme for rental housing. Probably one of the major features of this Budget was in housing—again, something that there is a great need for, and it is penetrating right through the Budget programme.

These projects in Budget 2013 as a whole will ensure that this exciting and enthusiastic nation continues to have a future that is worth being excited about—a future that is worth being excited about; a future not based on arcane ideology, not based on scare tactics, not based on a tired or divisive dogma but based, rather, on working together as communities to ensure that we can all weather any storm that comes our way. I believe Budget 2013 will help achieve this, and I commend it to the House.

Can I say that I understand that it is the role of the National Party backbench to get up there and read their research notes with as much energy and passion and enthusiasm as they can. I accept that that is a legitimate role of backbench National Government members, but sometimes, I have to say, I sit in the House and I think “That member is better than that.” That is exactly what I have been thinking for the last 10 minutes. That member, Chris Auchinvole, is better than the speech he was just forced by his whips to deliver. But I commend him for doing that; I commend him for his loyalty to his party more than his loyalty to the honesty of the past. I invite him to stop misrepresenting the past in the way that he did by reading the research notes—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Can I just say to the member that members should not make reference to the reading of speeches. It is entirely a matter for the Speaker.

Thank you. Can I, Mr Assistant Speaker, commend your attention to detail. It is incredibly admirable, and I hope it is as contagious as courtesy is. There are a couple of points that the member raised when he presented so eloquently his speech to the House that I want to draw to his attention as being incorrect. He said, for example, that the public of New Zealand did not get any increased services through the increased investment that the Labour-led Government made in public services.

💬 Chris Auchinvole: None of them much worth.

I will remind that member of a couple of things. For example, in 1999 the Work and Income briefing to the incoming Minister had to be contracted out to a private contractor because Work and Income did not have the competence within its own organisation to write a fundamental document—the briefing to the incoming Minister. If Mr Auchinvole thinks that is acceptable, then his standards are much lower than those that I support for the Public Service in New Zealand.

I remember having to advocate for constituents to get into Work and Income appointments in less than 3 weeks. That time delay for appointments to see Work and Income is creeping up every month—every month, every month. All the constituency MPs and any list MPs who support constituents in their area know that what I am saying is true. It is getting harder and harder and harder for people in need to get access to the public service support they deserve, because the Government is running down public services.

Mr Auchinvole also talked about the Labour Government squandering our money—that we did not put anything away for a rainy day. That is just wrong. I can remember Michael Cullen year after year after year delivering on the public record a Budget surplus, and Bill English sitting over here, braying at him to spend it on tax cuts. Dr Michael Cullen said that tax cuts for the most wealthy New Zealanders were not the right thing to do with a Budget surplus, and that it was better to save for a rainy day and invest in our future. That is what he did, and it is the opposite of what this Government is doing.

I think that this Government should look at addressing the causes, as well as the symptoms, of poverty in a much more holistic way. Putting increased money into treating children who have rheumatic fever is very good, and we need to do that because we have children with rheumatic fever. Those are the symptoms. But unless the Government also invests in the causes of poverty-related illness, then we will continue to have children who do not just have a disease and then get better but who pay for their entire life in diseases of poverty, diseases that are preventable, and diseases that should be an embarrassment on the public record of this nation. We are not a Third World country, but we have children in our nation who have diseases that are common in Third World conditions. That is where we should start investing: in our children, in their health, and in their well-being. That is not what this investment sees.

What the National Government is driving is a two-speed economy. We have two speeds geographically, with the main cities doing very well and the regions stagnating. That is not a good thing for New Zealand. It is not a good thing for the prosperity of the regions, obviously and literally, and it is not good for the morale of those areas either. We know what happens in provincial towns where we have high levels of unemployment and where young people are leaving school with no hope, with no light in their eyes, and with nothing to look forward to in their area. They leave, they go to cities for a better time and a job, they do not return, and the downward spiral in the provinces continues. Under National that has just ratcheted up. We have a two-speed economy, with the cities doing well and the regions stagnating.

We have two speeds within our economy, with our exporters and our manufacturers struggling. Some of the best and brightest of our country are struggling to survive while our speculators are doing very well. What sort of economy do we want? Do we want an economy that is based on cheap jobs, low-income jobs in tourism and hospitality—where we have bigger and better casinos and lower-paid workers and casualised labour looking after the tourists who come to New Zealand—or do we want a strong, high-wage, high-skill economy, where industries like those in our manufacturing sector are supported? We are getting the opposite under National. We see punishment of exporters and manufacturers, and support for our speculators.

We see the two-speed economy in Auckland, where the growth in house prices is absolutely rampant. We have suburbs in Auckland where there is no property to be bought for less than $1 million. That used to be the exception. Now we have entire suburbs like that—$1 million suburbs—yet we have people queuing for jobs in a supermarket. When a vacancy is advertised in a supermarket in Auckland hundreds of unemployed people try to get that one job, in the very next suburb to those million-dollar houses.

We have also a two-speed economy with regard to fairness, with incomes and wealth becoming more and more concentrated in the hands of the few, where the gap between those who are doing well and those who are not is getting bigger and bigger and bigger every month. There is growing inequality, growing tension, and growing frustration. This is the opposite of the healthy society that we in New Zealand have been so proud of for so long.

We certainly have a two-speed economy in Christchurch. Half of our city is depressed and angry, to the point where our district health board is issuing quite strong warnings about it. People are angry because they have got wrecked roads; they have no community facilities, no pools, and no libraries; and they have got houses that either they cannot live in because they are so badly damaged or they are not allowed to live in because Government Minister Gerry Brownlee refused to allow rockfall mitigation on the Port Hills on city council or Government land. This is not the sort of Budget that is going to address those fundamental issues. It is not the sort of Budget that is going to address that two-speed economy.

Labour’s KiwiBuild will build 10,000 affordable houses a year. That is the sort of smart thinking and long-term investment we need in New Zealand. Homes will be sold to owner-occupiers for what they cost to build, not to speculators who are banking on future tax-free capital gains. That is the sort of speculation the National Budget supports. That is the sort of inequity that it produces, where the speculators are doing well and the young people struggling to buy their first home cannot get their foot on the front doorstep. That is the sort of society that National supports, but it is not one that I support.

Labour’s NZ Power policy will reduce average household power prices by $230 to $330 a year and lower business power bills by 5 to 7 percent. That is the sort of smart thinking and investment in New Zealand families and New Zealand businesses that this country is crying out for. Our current electricity market has excessive prices. We know that. We know that the boards and management salaries have been excessive. But National continues to back it.

We want a Budget that gives New Zealand hope. We want a Budget with vision for the future for a fairer, more equal, and healthier nation, and that is the opposite of what National is delivering. National is delivering the opposite of what Labour will do.

The last speaker in this debate on the Appropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill, the Hon Ruth Dyson, started her intervention by attacking my hard-working and very intelligent colleague Chris Auchinvole. She mentioned that she thought he could do so much better at his speech. Well, his speech was an excellent speech about the great job this Government is doing under extremely difficult circumstances. I only wish I could say the same of the last member and that she too could make a better speech than the one she has just delivered. In fact, her whole speech was about what is wrong not with New Zealand and not with this Government but what is wrong with Labour members, their view of New Zealanders, and their lack of desire for New Zealanders to get ahead—their lack of ambition for all New Zealanders.

This Budget was one of the best Budgets that Bill English has delivered on behalf of New Zealand. We have had the great fortune on five occasions to stand up and say to Mr English: “This is a very good Budget for the times.” We have got to remember that when we came into Government we inherited books that were going in the wrong direction, with great debt spiralling, and that around the world economies were crashing—the global financial crisis. Mr English has said to New Zealand that we have a plan. He worked very hard over the first 3 years of this Government to put in place some of the building blocks to fix the problems in the economy we inherited.

Come the election a year and a half ago, we came forward to New Zealanders and reminded them of the plan. We were re-elected. This year Bill English has delivered another Budget that is part of that plan to build a stronger economy, a better economy, and an economy that will do much more for all New Zealanders and put us in a much better place in the world. This is just part of that plan that we move on with. I think that members of the New Zealand public get this. Certainly when I am out talking to them in different parts of the country, they know we have come through difficult times and they are grateful for the strong leadership our Minister of Finance has shown.

This is a Budget that builds on the momentum that we have created over almost 5 years now. It has four key priorities, including responsibly managing the Government’s books, and I am certainly going to talk more about that in a moment, because we hear the opposite from Ruth Dyson and from many—not all—members opposite. They do not want to manage the Government’s books responsibly; they want to tax everyday New Zealanders much, much more and spend on their behalf—tax and spend. Well, we have had enough of that.

A second priority is building a more competitive and productive economy. Many members of this House agree that that is what we have got to do. Where we have great difficulty in this Parliament is agreeing on how to do that. Can I say to you and to our Minister of Finance, Bill English, that the plan he has put in place over the last 4½ years is starting to show a great benefit in the areas of competitiveness and a productive, growing economy.

A third priority is to deliver better public services for New Zealanders, because New Zealanders deserve those better public services. I want to touch on a few of these in a moment, in particular the great work that Tony Ryall has done in health and the excellent levels of achievement that we are starting to see—the job has only just started—from Hekia Parata in education. Finally, the fourth priority is rebuilding Christchurch. That is so very, very important to all of New Zealand but particularly to the people of Canterbury, who have gone through such very difficult times.

Under unbelievably difficult conditions, Budget 2013 has freed up a further $1.5 billion by redirecting spending to where it matters most for New Zealanders. This takes the total reprioritisation of Government spending between Budget 2009 and today to $14.9 billion. That is $14.9 billion, which, had the Labour Party still been in Government, would have been spent in areas that were not productive for the economy. And, woe and behold, heaven forbid, under a Green-Labour coalition Government that figure of almost $15 billion would have been so very much more because Russel Norman and his mates have already got designs on more than $15 billion of spending of hard-earned money by New Zealand taxpayers that they want to take off them and tax, recycle, and print a bit more to spend.

At a time when the Government’s finances are tight, reprioritising spending allows significant additional funding for new and improved initiatives, and there have been so many of them. This Budget was about spending well, not spending up—spending well, not spending up. If Mr Norman has his TV on, wherever he may be, I bet you he has just turned it off because he does not understand that. He understands spending more money and printing more money; he does not understand that it is about better spending.

In the economy we have a record that all New Zealanders can be proud of. It is not good enough yet, we need to do much more work, but compared with almost every developed country in the world, New Zealand is punching above its weight, with the exception of one, and that is Australia. Have we not seen over the last little while that things are not as rosy across there as they were? Can you remember over the last four Budgets before this one? Bill English got on his feet and delivered excellent Budgets for the time for New Zealanders, and the Opposition members were screaming and yelling: “Why can’t we be more like Australia?”. Well, I can say to you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and to members opposite, that if it were not for the great work of Bill English they would have got their wish.

The Australian economy is going in the opposite direction from us now, and our economy would be so much more like theirs. Indeed, we have a 3 percent—3 percent—GDP growth rate forecast over the next couple of years. There are so many countries of the world that wish they were in a position to have a 3 percent growth. In Europe is still negative and in America it is floundering. In many parts of the world, 3 percent is something they only dream of. Of course, we know that mortgages are at a 50-year low. Well, that is very easy to say, but for those New Zealanders out there working hard through difficult times, who are earning their money, paying their taxes, and paying their mortgages, they know there is real benefit to them with interest rates being at a 50-year low, because that is money in their pockets that they get to spend.

Debt is under control. It is higher than anybody would want, but when we came to office in 2008, the forecast was that debt to GDP would hit 60 percent by 2020 under the policies that were in place during the 9 years of the Labour Government. Remember that that Labour Government had $20 billion worth of surpluses, $20 billion of extra money, and when it went out of Government, most of the problems that it accuses this Government of doing not enough about—and can I say that we work very hard for New Zealanders—were actually still there. They had not got better in those 9 years. The best we could say about the Labour Government was that at least it did not get as bad as it could have been. But after $20 billion of surpluses and all that skiting from the Labour Government, most of the great challenges were still there, and this Government inherited them. They were no better; perhaps they were even worse.

Well, under this Government and Bill English’s plan debt to GDP will be at just under 20 percent by the year 2020. That is a saving of $60 billion of debt to the taxpayer. Under Labour and its policies there would have been around $120 billion of debt and no possibility of any Government surpluses any time at all. Under the work that Bill English has done—being careful about how we spend money, delivering better services for taxpayers, and unapologetically asking our civil servants to deliver more with the money that the taxpayer has earned and provided to them—our debt to GDP level will be 17.6 percent. We are on track in 2014-15 to a modest surplus of $75 million. The Opposition is already working out how it will spend that if it became the Government.

The surplus is modest, but guess what. This year the amount that we will have to borrow is about $2 billion. So our Government deficit will be about $2 billion. In Australia the deficit is more than $20 billion. That is the country that Labour said, over four Budgets, that we must be more like. Labour members said: “We must be more like Australia. Why can we not be more like them?”. Well, actually, the Australians are now wishing that they were a bit more like New Zealand. I think they wish that they had Bill English as their Minister of Finance to put in place a plan to be very careful with Government spending, to make sure they would get back to surplus, and to make sure debt levels would not grow. So we are on track back to surplus.

I want to touch on one thing that I think is so very important to New Zealanders, and this shows you the great difference between the Labour Government of 9 years and the work we have done in 5 years. When we came into Government an elderly lady in my electorate wrote to me, saying: “Mr McClay, it looks like the Labour Government has ruined ACC. I know times are tough. You can have my little payment that I get back so that we can make it survive.” That tells me that ACC is very important to New Zealanders; it is important to this Government.

Remember those billions of dollars of losses, those great challenges we had with ACC? Well, not only has the Government been able to turn that round but we have signalled in the 2015-16 year that there will be $1 billion of levy reductions to New Zealanders—$1 billion going back to them because ACC is now in great condition financially. We have 40 percent of lower ACC levies signalled for families and businesses. That is fantastic work.

💬 Hon David Parker: Why not now?

The member asks: “Why not now?”. It is because we have a plan; we need to stick to it. It is not about borrowing and spending, as that member’s party would do. Thank you.

Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. In this Budget debate I want to rise to talk about the economic choices facing our nation. New Zealand faces a number of economic challenges. We face growing inequality, decline in economic competitiveness relative to other nations, growing debt, and a large number of Kiwis out of work. Over the last 60 years New Zealand has seen a steady decline in comparative economic performance, and despite Kiwis working some of the longest hours for some of the lowest wages in the OECD, the country is sprinting—it is running as fast as it can—just to stay where we currently are.

In this Budget 2013 debate I would like to see our Parliament put aside some of the pointless point-scoring we have heard from the Government benches, some of the petty partisan politics, and the intellectually lazy reading of pre-prepared notes from research departments. Let us have a debate around the economic direction of our country. Let us ask some of the questions, like what it will take to deliver a prosperous New Zealand for our kids. What is the direction we should be taking? Where are the new jobs and the new innovation going to come from? And is New Zealand currently on the right path? These are all important questions if we want our kids and future generations of New Zealanders to grow up knowing there are good jobs to go into. The question is whether New Zealand is going to keep sliding down that OECD ranking, and whether the poverty that some Kiwi families find themselves in right now is going to be exacerbated or alleviated in the coming decades.

The Government has tried to make this Budget debate about just the surplus. But if you look at the numbers, there is the current account deficit, which is a more worrying measure of our economic performance, and what we know from the Government’s books is that we are set to be the worst—the worst—in the OECD by 2017. Our national debt is set to skyrocket—$61 billion extra over the next 5 years—and our tradable sector is struggling. Without new exports or innovation we are going to have to keep selling the assets and keep resorting to borrowing offshore to maintain our lifestyles. That has been confirmed just today with the release of the OECD Economic Surveys: New Zealand 2013.

When you drill down past the spin, what the Budget reveals is severe structural problems facing us. They are getting worse. National’s entire economic strategy is flawed. What we are doing as a country is digging ourselves ever deeper into an economic hole. The current path National has New Zealand on is clearly not working. As the saying goes, if you find yourself in a hole, it is time to stop digging. But despite the worst economic performance of New Zealand in the last 50 years, National is doing just that. The one answer it has to our economy is literally to dig more holes.

Why would you pick fossil fuels and digging more holes and drilling more wells as your one industry to save the economy? It has got the fourth-lowest royalty plus tax rate in the world. There are pages and pages of tax exemptions, and data out today shows that the Government is currently spending $46 million subsidising fossil fuel production and exploration in New Zealand. The Government literally called out the navy when iwi and protesters got in their way, and it changed the laws at the behest of foreign offshore oil companies. I remember when the National Party used to talk about “one law for all”. Now what we hear from the National Party is “one law for oil”. That is what we hear. It is another egregious display, just like the shameful Skycity deal—another display of making crony capitalist decisions for its mates.

The question the country should be asking is why you would pick fossil fuels and digging more holes as your winner and why you would subsidise it, because it is entirely a gamble. The Government cannot guarantee there is any oil there. We know that the hypothetical oil is likely to be deep at sea. The only way it is ever going to be economically feasible to extract it is if the oil price is high. If the oil price is high, what we know is that every US$1 price rise in the barrel of oil wipes $40 million to $60 million off New Zealand’s GDP. Given that we still import two-thirds more oil than we export, if the oil price is high we should be thinking about oil reduction plans, not oil dependency plans. Unlike most other Governments, militaries, councils, and businesses around the world, this Government has got no plan to reduce our dependency on oil. It has got no plan to even start planning. The only plan it has got is a $12 billion borrowing binge for motorways and $46 million subsidies for oil drillers. It is the only plan it has got.

The Government is not suggesting Kiwis are going to pay any less at the pump if we find more oil. It is not a smart, sustainable area to focus on. We know it is job-poor. We know the profits are going to flow offshore; the Government’s own reports are saying 90-plus percent. We know it is unsustainable and there is still no plan for what happens once you have used up the oil or drilled it. It is inconsistent with taking climate change seriously. Even the International Energy Agency says that we cannot even burn 70 to 80 percent of the oil we already know about without the Government going and trying to subsidise people to find some more down in the depths of the ocean. It is a last century approach to economic development and it is the same type of thinking that got us into the mess we are in right now. It is a model based on resources, on commodities, and on being a price-taker, not a price-maker. It is about not being able to influence our country’s economic destiny. It is a gamble that someone will find something down there and they will not leave too much of a mess as they extract it, and that maybe we will clip the ticket somewhat as they send the profits offshore.

New Zealand is always going to lose under this strategy. If you look at the other legs of the National Party’s plan—dairy intensification and more mining—New Zealand is always going to lose out if we are trying to race Uruguay to cram more cows on a paddock. We are going to lose if we are trying to compete with China to see who can drill more holes in the ground and compromise our environment. We are always going to lose in New Zealand if we are racing to trash our environment faster towards economic growth.

Another option, of course, is to look to the future. It is to have a plan around what is coming in the next century—the century we are in, not the last century. It is to look at the markets and where international capital investment is heading. It is to focus on what Sir Paul Callaghan said was our strengths, our niches. It is to focus on a smart, green strategy that is going to build a richer New Zealand. Our strengths are in technology. They are in clean energy, in a pure New Zealand brand that sees a premium paid when we export our products around the world. In 2011 Bloomberg reported that international capital investment in renewables outstripped fossil fuels. That is where the smart money is heading. That is where New Zealand should be looking, not at making more holes in the ground.

Do not get me wrong. I have got nothing against digging holes in the ground. In fact, I would not mind digging a few—just some holes with a smarter rationale. I mean, I would like to see the Government dig a trench to have a second internet cable to link New Zealand to our markets for resiliency, for competition benefits, and to support our thriving information and communications technology sector. I mean, this is a $23 billion industry that, you know, has grown by $3 billion in the last year alone. Over the same period our oil imports have been down, and just today the same OECD report that I referenced said that New Zealand’s high-cost, low-speed internet is slowing us down. The Government could do more to support the sector. From greater education, apprenticeships, scholarships, procurement, removing patent software, and a second internet cable, there is a lot the Government could do. This is a much smarter future for New Zealand, because there is virtually no limit to the amount of software or information and communications technology services we could be exporting around the world, but there is a limit to the amount of cows we can cram on a paddock or holes we could dig.

I would also like to see another hole dug, this time in the Auckland central business district. A central business district rail link for Auckland will transform our biggest city’s public transport network. It is going to unclog it. It is going to benefit motorists, primarily, and it is going to help supercharge our biggest city. I think unclogging our biggest city’s transport and reducing the $8 billion fuel import bill is a smart way.

Thirdly, I want to see a power system that works for Kiwis, for Kiwi businesses, not for excessive profits. Every year hundreds of millions of dollars are taken out of Kiwis’ pockets and businesses’ bottom lines, and we see excessive profits from the so-called market, which is acting like a huge stealth tax on our economy. Over the last 70 years our electricity prices for families have risen by 70 percent in real terms, while across the rest of the OECD their prices have dropped 6 percent on average. That is why we have put out the NZ Power plan—to give Kiwis a choice.

What we are seeing is a real choice. Under National there will be more price rises, more excuses, and more assets sold. Under the Greens and Labour what you are going to see is cheaper, greener power and Kiwis saving $300 a year. NZ Power is also going to deliver cheaper, greener electricity in a market that is more innovative, smarter, and ready to take on the challenges. Growing clean-energy exports is where the smart money is. That is where international investment is going. That is where the Pure Advantage group of business people say is a $6 trillion global green energy, cleantech sector that New Zealand could get a slice of. It is what PricewaterhouseCoopers says is a $22 billion economic opportunity for New Zealand. That is where we should be looking—not towards the past, not towards oil drilling and drilling more holes, and more fracking, mining, and drilling for New Zealand.

In summary, we have got a great number of choices facing our country, a huge number of strategic economic challenges, which are not being addressed by the Government with a single-minded, media-friendly focus on just the deficit. What we need to do is look to the future, not to the past. It is to look at where we can develop our economy. It is to look to things like the technology sector. It is to look at growing green exports and clean energy. It is about the “100% pure New Zealand” brand. Aotearoa’s future is not looking to the past; it is looking to the future. Kia ora.

I move, That the debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.

Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill

Third Reading