COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill

In accordance with a determination of the Business Committee, I move, That the COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate that the bill be referred to the Epidemic Response Committee. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported back to the House by 12 May 2020.

The bill follows the COVID-19 Response (Urgent Management Measures) Legislation Act, which this House passed on 25 March 2020. That Act canvassed a wide range of issues that were considered necessary to effectively respond to COVID-19 and to aid our recovery from it. Altogether, this bill amends or modifies the application of 45 different statutes. It will better equip New Zealand businesses and charities to ride out the impact of COVID-19. It will ensure that essential workers are able to contribute their skills to the recovery effort without being disadvantaged. It will provide an equal opportunity for people to participate in local government by-elections, and it will address a range of potential problems that regulators and regulated parties might encounter administering and complying with statutory requirements in the context of the COVID-19 response.

There are two tiers of amendments that are included in this bill. The first tier are more significant amendments that will enable businesses, civil society organisations, local government, and others to more effectively manage the immediate impacts of the response to COVID-19 and to mitigate unnecessary and potentially longer-term impacts on society. Changes to insolvency and corporate law will increase the prospects of businesses surviving the COVID-19 response. Changes include the addition of a business debt hibernation regime that will allow companies and other entities to enter into agreements with their creditors in relation to existing debt, and adding safe harbour for insolvency-related directors’ duties. Other changes include giving registrars the ability to issue exemption notices in relation to compliance with statutory obligations, and relief for entities that cannot comply with rules in their constitutions because of COVID-19.

Changes to commercial property law will support commercial tenants and borrowers to manage situations where businesses are unable to pay their rent or to meet their mortgage obligations. The amendments extend the notice period before landlords can cancel commercial leases for non-payment of rent, and they extend the notice period before mortgagees can exercise their rights to sell or repossess a property. Changes to parental leave will allow essential workers to temporarily return to work to assist in the response to COVID-19 without being disadvantaged by losing certain leave entitlements and payments.

Changes to local government by-election timing adjust the timing requirements for local government by-elections. The bill enables key stages of these by-elections to be postponed until COVID-19 movement restrictions are no longer in effect. They’re temporary changes that will ensure that COVID-19 doesn’t prevent New Zealanders from being able to have a reasonable and equal opportunity to participate in local government by-elections as and when they arise. The first change postpones the start of voting for the current Ōtorohanga District Council by-election if significant movement restrictions are still in place by the time this bill is enacted. The second change establishes an Order in Council mechanism to make further by-election timing adjustments if these are necessary. The final amendment enables council chief executives to postpone any further by-elections if public health concerns mean that holding a by-election to fill an extraordinary vacancy isn’t appropriate due to COVID-19.

Changes to the Gambling Act will allow for a period of 18 months for the Heart Foundation, Coastguard, and Countdown Kids Charitable Trust to send and receive forms and take payments for their lotteries online or by phone. This provides these organisations with the ability to operate their existing lotteries despite social restrictions and the continuing impact of COVID-19 on face-to-face sales.

The second tier of changes in the bill concern 22 minor amendments considered necessary to respond and recover from COVID-19. Rather than outlining each of these amendments individually, I’m going to highlight the general policy parameters of these changes in their groupings.

Three amendments are proposed to defer new regulatory requirements in circumstances where Government agencies or businesses would have difficulty implementing the new legislation or requirements that are due to come into force while New Zealand is responding to COVID-19—for example, delaying the commencement of a new regime to regulate financial advisers. This is necessary, as the requirements under alert level 4 in particular made it difficult for the sector to prepare for the regulation while at the same time responding to an increase in demand for financial advice services.

Four amendments are proposed to defer existing statutory deadlines and other minor exemptions where compliance would not be possible or would be unnecessarily burdensome—for example, extending the duration of firearms licences and dealers licences that are expiring in a situation where COVID-19 restrictions have resulted in deferred processing of licence renewal applications. This is necessary to avoid situations where people are non-compliant with the Act through no fault of their own.

Seven amendments are proposed to mitigate impracticality issues that have arisen through the COVID-19 response—for example, amending the Coroners Act 2002 to enable a coroner to direct a pathologist to take swabs to test for COVID-19 as part of a post-mortem examination in a situation where the deceased is suspected to have had COVID-19.

Finally, eight amendments have been proposed to mitigate problems with legislative compliance that have arisen due to the physical presence requirements or other technological reasons—for example, to allow for clinical examinations and reviews taking place under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992 to be undertaken by audiovisual link rather than in person.

In closing, I’d like to acknowledge the support of colleagues in the development of this bill. The bill cuts across quite a large number of portfolios and it does demonstrate the wide-reaching impacts of the COVID-19 epidemic, and I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. My pleasure to speak on this COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill, which the Opposition will support to the first reading and to select committee.

I’m holding two copies of the bill here: this one here, which I’ve picked up from the Table, and this was the one that was sent to us last night, and I’m glad—

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: They’re both the same. I can assure you they’re both the same.

I’m looking very carefully, and there are 133 pages on each side, and I’ve read them before, and I do think they are the same law. That is a relief, following the last piece of legislation. So I’m hoping that we are not inadvertently going to pass another several billion dollars of spending by mistake. You would think it was a laughing matter, but it’s not a laughing matter. Actually, it’s been quite a dramatic period that we’ve had in the House here, where I think New Zealanders have understood that the Parliament and the Government has to respond swiftly to an incredible situation that we’re facing with COVID-19 and the impact that it’s having across the economy. So they do need to respond quickly and effectively, but it is also important that the legislation that’s brought before the House is properly scrutinised so that we can have a reasonable understanding of it, and that system failed last week.

But I’m hoping this piece of legislation, which does a number of things which are designed to—well, there’s a whole heap of things, but if I was to focus primarily on those activities that are trying to deal with some practical issues that business is having to deal with because of the consequences of the lockdown that we’ve had for coming up to the seventh week now, and we’ve had a number of businesses that, in the national interest, have been told that they can’t trade and so they’ve had very little revenue, and that creates all sorts of problems, as one can imagine—problems for paying the bills, keeping a company solvent. That’s a very difficult issue for directors of companies who obviously face very substantial legal threats and dangers if they are seen to be trading insolvently.

But, of course, we don’t want to have a situation made even worse where many businesses will fail, many people will lose their jobs, and so we’re looking for practical ways. So the safe harbour provisions around insolvency-related issues, duties, and the business debt hibernation are practical things that we support and will make a difference around the edges. What they probably won’t do sufficiently is make the sort of difference that a scheme to get cash in the hands of small businesses, such as was suggested by the National Party today and Simon Bridges, the National Party leader—which is to say, let’s have a look at the GST that you paid last year and allow businesses to get those payments repaid up to $100,000. Cash in the hand would make a real difference to businesses right now. These provisions in this legislation will help a bit, but certainly not, on their own, bring an end to the situation.

The other thing that’s being covered in this bill is changes to the company property law area where, again, we’re seeing right around the country a lot of businesses struggling to pay the rent. We’ve had the Government’s wage subsidy, which has brought in a lot of money—$10 billion to help pay wages for people employed. That money, I’ve heard the Prime Minister say a number of times and lots of other Ministers say, is going to businesses when, really, that money is actually going to employees in order to keep them employed and to pay their wages. But the businesses themselves are still having to struggle with, particularly, rent and a whole heap of other costs, interest costs, and they’ve put out a whole new fit and all sorts of material that they’ve leased for the company to trade, and there’s costs associated with that.

Now, rent has been a real issue. Five weeks ago, six weeks ago, the Minister of Finance said he was going to sort it, don’t worry, and an announcement is imminent. At one point, we heard that it was going to be announced before Easter, and Easter came and went and nothing happened. Then, eventually, a week or two ago, they made this very underwhelming announcement that what they were going to do is extend the notice period before mortgagees can be thrown out—not mortgagees, but also lessees in arrears to the landlord—so from a few days to a few more days. That was met with a great deal of disappointment right across the country.

Again, the best remedy to that is a mechanism to get cash directly into the hands of those small businesses affected. Now, people might ask, “Well, what’s going on here? The National Party is in favour of giving cash out to businesses? I thought they understood that businesses had to stand on their own two feet.” Yes, indeed, that is our general approach, but what we’re dealing with here is a situation where the Government, on behalf of all New Zealanders, has said, “You cannot trade for seven weeks. You cannot sell your stuff. You cannot open your store and effectively do your business.” That is an extraordinary situation, one that we haven’t really had in this country’s history, and that is why there is a very strong argument to support businesses properly. So this legislation, in so far as it extends a period that leases must be in arrears before landlords can cancel leases, is very much too little, too late on that score and very much inferior to the policy that the National Party announced today.

The only thing I’d also mention is changes to the Commerce Act around cartels. As a former commerce Minister, I’ve always been interested in this, and this is, again, a minor thing but not insignificant. We’re in the heat of the battle as companies try and organise things to keep trading when they’re under extreme limitations during this period. You now have the ability to go to the Commerce Commission to get an authorisation of an arrangement between companies, and this legislation waives the application fee. So, you know, we’re broadly comfortable with that, and, again, it will make a slight practical difference to some parties.

So all in all, if I was to sum up this legislation, we will go off and it will be considered by the Epidemic Response Committee, and I’m grateful that it has a little bit of time—you’d probably want a little bit more time, but we can understand the urgency here. These things in this bill will make a small difference, but if you really want to save jobs and enable reducing the carnage amongst the small business battlers of this country, then the best thing you can do is get some cash in their hands right now. So alongside this bill, I’d encourage the Government to seriously consider changing their approach to that. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a great pleasure to take a call on the COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill. I can agree with the member who’s just resumed his seat, Paul Goldsmith, that this is no doubt utterly extraordinary circumstances for New Zealand and for any Government in office at the time. We’ve had to respond to a situation that pretty much every other country around the world is having to face but do so in a way that understands and respects and is sensitive to the needs of New Zealanders and our peculiar circumstances.

Our particular circumstances are this is a condition that is largely imported. With a border like ours and New Zealand as a destination that it is, not only for its expatriates but for tourists, a lot of people cross our border and that is how the virus made its way here. So the measures we’ve had to take in response, knowing what we knew at the time and know now—because knowledge about the virus is changing by the week and by the day. We have responded and taken measures to protect New Zealand and its interests, and there’s no question that the more we understand about this virus, and until we get the ultimate control mechanism, which is a vaccine, then some measures that we have in place now are going to last for some considerable period of time. That will have an impact on sectors in our economy.

So it was vital, absolutely vital, with the support of members opposite, that we put in place the initial set of protections—this is after the controls on the border and a variety of other measures. But those measures are in place to sustain and support business—and we’ve done that. Bucket-loads of cash, frankly, have been provided to support business to get through this very difficult phase. That’s the immediate phase. Then there will be the next phase of response for those businesses and those communities who have all done the right thing. Then there’ll have to be, as we move down the alert levels, a range of other measures as we start to get back to something closely resembling normality. But we’ll still be a significant way off that.

Then there is the really long-term stuff, which is what we do, which is the real jobs-generating stuff, knowing that there will be workers displaced from their current jobs, and some sectors will be worse affected than others. It’s the investment that the State can encourage and provide, and also work alongside private investment to get new endeavours of new activities and new investments up and running that’s going to generate those future jobs.

This bill is partway between the initial responses and the next wave of responses to enable measures to be put in place, rules to be put in place, that allow public organisations and private organisations to make decisions, make judgments, and get on and do their thing. So that’s what this is about.

In relation to the Property Law Act, which comes under my responsibility as the Minister of Justice, we have been very concerned—and it was predictable that it would happen; that businesses that were forced to cease trading and therefore couldn’t cover their overheads beyond just their wage costs, which could be supported through the wage subsidy scheme, were going to need some assistance to manage that relationship with their landlord. Of course, it’s not just the tenants either. There are some landlords who are somewhat vulnerable too. If your small business is as a landlord with a tenant who is a big multinational corporate, actually you as the landlord are not the one with the whip hand, necessarily; it’s the tenant. So these measures in relation to the Property Law Act are about pushing out the time frames by which a landlord could issue a notice of termination for breach of covenant, principally the covenant requiring the tenants to pay their rent, to provide a breathing space and hope that the parties will take the opportunity to come to terms, understanding that this is an extraordinary set of circumstances, and so that the landlord who thinks there’s a bunch of other tenants queuing up to take their premises when, actually, that queue isn’t very long—in fact, there’s no queue at all—might be able to come to terms with their tenants.

I’m announcing this—the signal was very clear, and I’m pleased to say, at least anecdotally, the response I’ve had has been very good. Many landlords have responded, many tenants have responded, and they’ve been able to come to terms and reach agreements. But it is fair to say too that there is some residual effort required to deal with those landlords and tenants who haven’t been able to reach agreement, and work is under way in Government to explore and to look for a solution that will deal with that, but that is not in this bill. But Schedule 14 of this bill covers those changes to the Property Law Act.

Another area that is my specific responsibility is the Coroners Act. There is a small administrative change, if you like, to deal with the situation where a person had died and it is assessed as most likely as a result of the virus but they have not been able to return a positive test or even be tested prior to their death, and this allows a coroner to order a test to be taken so that it can be determined that that death is associated with COVID-19. So those changes appear in Schedule 6.

In Schedule 15, there are changes to some of the time frames under the Local Government Act, because—would you believe it—less than a year after the last local body elections, there are some by-elections that have to be held, and this is simply not a time to be running by-elections with the difficulties of people getting their post, getting their mail, and what have you, and officials and potential candidates being able to communicate with their constituency. So there have been some pragmatic judgments made about some changes to time frames to allow that to happen.

Another area that is of specific interest to me is in Schedule 8, the changes to the Courts (Remote Participation) Act, in relation to Corrections to allow, where audiovisual link facilities are not available, audio-only means to be used to conduct hearings and get decisions made in those crucial areas.

So this bill deals with, I think, some very practical questions that might be around for some time. It makes it appropriate to make these changes to this legislation—changes that could not be made under the Epidemic Preparedness Act and the immediate management order provision under that legislation. So this bill makes some very useful changes. It is good that it has got to this point, good that the bill we’re debating is the one that in fact the House should expect to pass—because we have learnt from last week. On that note, I commend the bill to the House.

The Hon Roger McClay—Todd McClay.

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

💬 SPEAKER: Taumarunui rugby club.

That’s right, exactly. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I too rise to speak on this bill, and the National Party will be supporting it. It is an important time for New Zealanders to see that the House can work together where we can pass legislation or make changes that will help everyday New Zealanders and, in this instance, a lot of businesses who are facing great uncertainty.

But I am going to preface that by saying I don’t think the bill goes far enough, or at least there are many other things that we need to focus on and that need to be done with great urgency, because we have a great number of New Zealanders and their businesses. When I talk about businesses, I’m talking about individual New Zealanders—the people that live in our communities that go to work every day and work hard, and that business is more than just a business for them. For many of them, it’s not only their livelihood and the way they pay for their children’s education and other things; it’s actually their life. They are facing great uncertainty and a huge amount of challenge, and I want to address that in a moment.

Indeed, some of the parts of the bill make a lot of sense: the extension of the rent arrears. I can see why the Government would see that’s important at the moment, but it is talking about arrears and death; it’s not talking about, or finding ways to, helping those that are in arrears or those they owe money to—the landlords—and I’ll come to that in a moment.

The business debt hibernation also buys time for businesses. I suppose it gives us some certainty, but it doesn’t take away the weight that’s on the shoulders of small business, where they wonder how they can even come close to dealing with the debt that has been built up over the last five or six weeks—for some, seven and longer. The reduction around the impact of regulations is very important, but, actually, there are many more areas where regulatory reform is needed at all times, but particularly today, to get burden off business. As we look at how some of these business people are going to try and rebuild their lives—how they are going to go out there and try and get their business back on an equal footing—there are many areas of burden from regulation that will impose cost upon them, and if the Government doesn’t look to focus and do something about that very quickly, there will be far more businesses that fail that should and could otherwise survive.

The safe harbour around directors is very important. It’s technical but it is very important because we’re not in, as far as business rules are concerned, normal times. Therefore, the normal rules and the responsibilities that directors have can’t have the same impact upon them.

In everything I’m about to say, this is about the jobs of New Zealanders. Now this comes to the deficiencies in the bill and what more needs to be done and how it could be added to and what is needed. It’s around saving jobs and making sure that New Zealanders can see that the taxpayer, through the Government, is going to work with them to protect them, to help them, to keep them in jobs, to keep their businesses going. I would say this House did a very important thing. It’s almost seven weeks ago, maybe eight, when we came in recess and met and we passed legislation, and we gave the Government the ability to spend up to $52 billion without a lot of direction, or a lot of direction from the Government at least, as to what that was to be spent on. One of the first things they did was the wage subsidy, and that has meant that New Zealanders, as they sit at home during lockdown, have less uncertainty more certainly, I suppose.

But the wage subsidy for 12 weeks runs out in four weeks’ time, and this bill should be dealing with that. It should be extending that or talking about how, in many sectors, it will become available or extended. The reason for that is that a company that has taken 12 weeks of the funding for wage support is giving that to their workers. It doesn’t actually do anything for the business other than mean they didn’t have to lay them off at the time it was given. They didn’t have to make those workers redundant or to sack them. But it hasn’t been productive for them, because during the lockdown—that’s the reason we have this bill here: to deal with the implications and the flow-on of that lockdown—their employees were sitting at home. They weren’t generating anything for them, so the taxpayer subsidy that kept people at least on the books, in as far as work was concerned, didn’t help the business at all, other than their employees are still there.

Kelvin Davis, when I asked in question time earlier, said, “Well, there’s still money left available.” Grant Robertson was the same. There is four more weeks. But if you are a small business or a large business in New Zealand and you still are not able to open, because this bill doesn’t allow you to open, and you have four weeks’ worth of the subsidy left and you don’t know what it is you will be able to do with it—whether you’ll be able to trade or not or the conditions of that or what level 2 looks like—you have so much uncertainty that you are this week faced with the decision of whether or not to lay those workers off, to make them redundant. The reason for that is generally the redundancy period would be four weeks.

So the problem we have is that, actually, if there is not the certainty from the Government that this bill should be providing, that the subsidy will continue or they’ll be able to open and trade again, they can’t wait, because in four weeks’ time the full subsidy will have been used up and they won’t have income to the level they need or they won’t have reserves to then—I’m coming back to that, Mr Speaker—be able to lay those workers off. So this week, New Zealanders face uncertainty of whether they will return to their jobs because businesses up and down the country are facing uncertainty. They don’t know whether they can open, they don’t know what the rules will be yet because the Government hasn’t provided that to them clearly, and they don’t know whether or not that subsidy will continue.

In this bill, there’s a lot of work around rent and landlords. I want to be cautious, because there have been times when it seems that, on purpose or not, the Government has tried to demonise landlords. We certainly saw that during the Epidemic Response Committee hearing when we discussed this. I asked Grant Robertson seven weeks ago, I think it was now, whether or not he would look to do more with landlords and businesses that couldn’t pay their rent. He said at the time it was a few days, maybe a week, away. Well, we’re still waiting.

So in this legislation, there are provisions to help businesses with debt and around what landlords can do and so on. But that’s not good enough, because we have many situations where businesses have had no turnover for seven weeks. They’ve had no grant from the Government at all. There is a small interest-free loan for a year, that for the average business may be $20,000 or $30,000, but that doesn’t come anywhere close to the debt that’s been built up, and still landlords are sitting there, not sure what will happen, even though they’ve been working hard and reducing their rents and giving rental holidays and so on, and the economic burden—the weight of this debt upon businesses in New Zealand—continues to grow.

So what is it that actually is needed? This bill should be actually talking about the wage subsidy and extending it. It should be looking at cash-flow grants for businesses in New Zealand—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! I’ve been very generous with the member, but I think he better come back to what’s in the bill. Just the last two minutes.

Good. All right, thank you, Mr Speaker. And therein lies a problem, because whilst there are some good things in there, actually there is not that much to fill up 10 minutes.

💬 SPEAKER: There’s no obligation to fill the time. If the member feels he can’t stay in order, I’m happy to terminate his call.

Thank you. I’ll do my very best. Why don’t I finish with this, Mr Speaker: a heartfelt plea on behalf of the business community in New Zealand—the tourism sector, the small businesses, the people that are still locked away and can’t open their shops—for the Government this week to address the challenges that they face. The weight of the debt and the uncertainty that’s upon them is going to have implications not for days or weeks or months but for years to come. This bill is a start, which is why we are supporting it. But, actually, they can’t wait until the Budget next week. They can’t wait until some politics plays out. They need certainty today around what’s going to happen so they can plan, and if that doesn’t happen quickly enough, there will be businesses that close that shouldn’t close because those people have done—

💬 SPEAKER: Second warning.

—what they were meant to. Then, finally, there will be people that will lose their jobs this week that wouldn’t have to otherwise. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I rise to support this bill—an extraordinarily broad piece of legislation. Mercifully, I will not be taking my full allotted time, but I want to talk about some of the significant provisions.

I want to start speaking very briefly about insolvency and corporate law support for businesses to survive and the development which has already been elaborated upon by Minister Kris Faafoi about the concept of a safe harbour. Whilst it is important for firms—whether they are large or whether they are modest—that the directors feel that they have the latitude to continue to maintain the firm’s operations despite the threat of liquidity, crunches, or insolvency, Kiwi businesses and the men and women in those businesses need to strike a balance. It would be a very, very dismal outcome if, in actual fact, firms are already insolvent and they continue to trade, racking up bills with their suppliers that will never be paid. So whilst this provision does give the necessary latitude and it removes the fear of litigation and statutory action being taken against directors, it does impose upon those directors an additional duty—largely unenforceable—of judgment to be very, very careful with the decisions that they make. They don’t actually have, under this bill—the directors—a carte blanche level of entitlement to engage in reckless behaviour, but much is the fiscal cost of slip between company cup and debtor lip.

In relation to the mortgage support for commercial renters and landlords, this is a vexed issue. Obviously, tenants and many of us as members of the House have received stories of woe in the sense that income’s dried up. The medical emergency has shrunk revenue and it’s caused an enormous amount of stress amongst people who love their businesses, derive not only their livelihood but virtually a sense of being, and the pride associated with taking an idea—whether it’s in tourism or retail, whatever the service is that’s being offered—and building up a nest egg and building up a sense of esteem, and all that has been severely disrupted as we’ve managed our way through the COVID crisis. This particular provision will assist both landlords and leaseholders to work together to resolve their problems. Many landlords are up to the gills in debt, and they do depend on the cash flow from those that occupy their buildings to service the debts that they have against their assets. Not only do we expect a level of common sense; it may come to pass that further work is required in this area, because inevitably what we might like to see as an act of pragmatism and economic kindness may not necessarily come to pass.

In terms of local government elections—of course, we think about the own election in the House, but more on that at a later date—this enables widespread participation at local elections that could be disrupted. It’s a moot point as to how long restrictions are going to impact on us in terms of our ability to move freely around—a key entitlement that Kiwis have taken for granted—but, having said that, this bill reminds us that when it’s been necessary for us to act in a collective fashion, we have done so over the last four or five weeks. But it’s important that these statutory processes continue—i.e., the ability to elect from the community our representatives and they not be halted because of inflexibility in various laws.

So I stand, once again, and I say that our party supports this piece of legislation.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s my pleasure to be able to stand to speak in the House, since we were suspended, to this COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill. If you’ll humour me, Mr Speaker, can I just start by first of all acknowledging all our first responders and essential workers that have carried us through what has been a challenging time for us as a nation, through both the level 4 and now the level 3 lockdown.

Can I acknowledge the Government and the work that they have done. None of us could have predicted or expected to be hit with something as serious as a global pandemic, and I think that everyone in this House has responded and worked as hard as they can to do the best that we can for the country.

On saying that, I felt very strongly six weeks ago or seven weeks ago, when we moved into level 4, that—and we went into a full lockdown. All of us could see and understand, or should have seen and understood, just how significant the impact was going to be on us as a nation. We had to be focused on flattening the curve, and I think that the country’s done a very good job of doing that. But we understood that there was going to be a price to pay on that, and that was going to be the economic harm that we now have to face and try and deal with in terms of recovery. I felt very strongly at the time—and I raised this with the Minister for Small Business and the Minister of Revenue, the Hon Stuart Nash. I said to him, “If you are going to move us into level 4 and if you are going to shut the country down, of course we’ll get behind you.”—and the country has got behind that decision—“But you must have an equal and opposite response when it comes to the economy.”

You must have someone—Dr Bloomfield’s done a very good job of protecting the health system and leading the health response. You must have a focus on what we’re doing from day one in terms of the support that needs to be put in place, especially for our small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) but across our whole economy. If you don’t do that, if you fail to do that, and you take too much time, then the pain and the suffering and the damage is going to be far worse.

I feel that we’re in a position right now where although it’s good to have this bill in the House, and most of the provisions in it we are supporting—and I will talk directly to the issues that the Hon Andrew Little has raised in his role as the Minister of Justice and in my role as the portfolio holder in our party in Opposition. But I just want to say and put on record that this is way too slow. This should have happened four, five, six weeks ago.

I indicated clearly and signalled clearly to Stuart Nash that we were already working on this. There was no problem. Our leader, Simon Bridges, had indicated that we would cooperate and work if it meant passing legislation to make sure that the enforcement agencies actually had the powers under a state of emergency to be able to actually police the lockdown, right through to our economic response in terms of—and especially with—businesses having cash flow.

Having had my own company and having done my own start-up, and having carried the burden of understanding clearly the responsibility to my employees and the fact that they had families that they were feeding and children that they needed to school—they needed certainty. They needed to be able to financially plan themselves. Understanding all of that, I understood very clearly that there were two things that were going to be front of mind. One was cash flow coming into the company and the other one was payroll, and you had to make sure and you had to be confident and work hard so that you could match those two things together.

Now, the Government has responded—sorry, Mr Speaker. I will get back to the—

💬 SPEAKER: Well, hardly back to it—the member hasn’t quite been there yet.

The Government has responded in terms of the wage subsidy. We could debate the effectiveness of that, because, unfortunately, a lot of companies have fixed costs, and they may have to use some of that when it’s actually intended for the employees. So we could have a debate about the wage subsidy. Fundamentally, that was good. A good response—good to put that in place. At least employees had some certainty around three months on the 80 percent, but there was a massive deficit and hole around cash flow.

Coming to the—thank you for your patience, Mr Speaker, and I want to acknowledge that. I will come back to what’s being proposed in the bill. Very quickly, on the rents—to me, that’s good, but it’s messing around on the fringes. We’re going from 10 to 30 days. I understand the sentiment that the Minister was talking about in terms of allowing the landlords and the people renting to have that space to be able to negotiate something, but one thing I think we can all agree on is that there is no square peg going into a square hole here.

I know that with every single case that I deal with in my own electorate in supporting my own constituents, every case is different. Some landlords are not wealthy commercial property owners. They might have invested their life savings in one commercial building and, actually, that revenue is quite important to them. So I agree with the Minister: let’s not demonise the commercial landlords, because many of them are working very hard, and they’re trying to accommodate the businesses that are renting space in their buildings, without a doubt. I just don’t feel that this goes far enough.

It extends it from 10 days to 30 days. It’s putting off the inevitable, because what’s happened is that the tap—that cash flow I was talking about—has been turned off, and the hand that turns it off has got a responsibility to find a way of actually filling that gap that’s created. It’s through no fault of their own. It’s not the Government’s fault that we had to deal with coronavirus and it’s not the country’s fault that we had to deal with that, but the reality of it is that the Government’s hand was the one that turned the tap off, so we have to find solutions and ways to be able to bring those SMEs through.

SMEs run on two things, fundamentally. They run on confidence and they run on energy. If you remove the confidence or the energy is driven down, you’ve got a big problem in terms of trying to recover and have them lead the recovery, because the Government—they don’t generate revenue. It’s our businesses that generate the revenue. They are the ones that pay the tax that runs our health system and that runs our education system. So, fundamentally, they need to be supported.

In terms of the electronic communications in our courts—look, this is common sense. We have got a backlog. I understand that we’re going to have to deal with that, so, basically, what the Government’s proposing is that instead of using the audiovisual link (AVL), we can go to an audio link. I agree with this. I think this is a good move. I don’t want to see it used once we transition out of lockdown and when we can get the courts back up and running again. I think that it’s important that we transition back to having the default of an AVL, because, obviously—the Minister’s agreeing. He knows the issues around going to just an audio link only.

In terms of being able to swab a deceased person—absolutely. It makes complete sense. We’re in support of that.

So, Mr Speaker, thank you again for your tolerance. I just felt very strongly that I wanted to make some comments that I feel, fundamentally, are critically important for us as a nation. I’d just finish on this: it feels like there’s been a sense of urgency—I think that there has been a genuine sense of urgency. That sense of urgency needs to scale up and not be reduced. Every day now is a wasted opportunity in terms of how we respond, and I’d rather see—people are starting to feel “Why are we staying in level 3?” They want more information and they want more transparency around that, and I feel very strongly now that, daily, the Government should be looking at ways to be able to get the country moving again. That means having that rapid testing regime in place. That means having—

Order! Order! Order! I have been very tolerant.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call on behalf of the Green Party on the COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill, and in my speech I will talk to the content of the legislation, starting with the title of it. Just pointing out that this is further management measures, and this does sit in the context of a huge amount of work that has been going on in Government, working with business and with our communities to make sure that we all get through this together and reset ourselves to be as strong as possible in the next stages of our recovery.

This piece of legislation is not the headline-grabbing legislation—I don’t think anyone would characterise it that way—but it’s really important, and I think it does demonstrate the extent of the work that’s required at the moment, because this legislation amends 45 statutes and it’s in two tiers. So there are some substantive policy issues, and then there’s a lot more technical amendments that are helping just make sure that the law is meeting the needs of people in the changing times and that we’re not putting undue expectations on them that are actually impossible with the restrictions that we have in place at the moment.

So, just to talk to some of the headline changes that are in this legislation—although I will just say that I am really pleased to see, considering the breadth of amendments in this, that it will be going to the Epidemic Response Committee for consideration and submissions, because it is very easy, in the speed that all of Government is operating in at the moment and the range of people coming together to work on these responses, for mistakes to be made. So to have that public scrutiny is very welcome to us. That there’ll be the report-back date on 12 May, back to this House—that also acknowledges the urgency of this work, and I think that the Government has got the balance of that right.

So, back to some of the headline substantive changes—that probably won’t be headlines—that are around changes to insolvency and corporate law, and that creates a business hibernation regime to allow companies and other entities to enter into agreements with the creditors in relation to existing debt and adding a safe harbour for insolvency-related directors’ duties. That has been raised, and we have heard those issues coming from the community, of people wanting that added security, and it does, I think, make sense in this context to add that in. I will also endorse, though, the messages from the Hon Shane Jones in relation to safe harbour not being an incentive to neglect duties and responsibilities, and that is not the intent of this.

Another point that has had quite a bit of discussion from the Opposition members is around the changes to commercial property law and extending the notice period before landlords can cancel commercial leases for non-payment of rent, and extending the notice period before mortgagees can exercise their rights to sell or repossess a property. While more is being called for in this space, and I suspect there will be more work needed in this area, it is good to see this coming in now in the context of a wide range of changes and that that can happen more speedily while the other policy work can be properly considered.

Another aspect in this, which has been about just—and is—securing that the essential workers and people who really put themselves out there to keep us going through this really difficult time, of just making sure that none of those people are unintentionally penalised, and so I haven’t heard anybody else mention in the House that in here is the change that, if somebody has returned or returns temporarily from paid parental leave, but to be able to help keep us going, they’re not going to lose their parental leave. I think that is really important, because we know that people really want to be part of the solution and be part of trying to get us all back on our feet, and I’d hate to see people penalised from time with their children in the future for that instinct and that assistance that they’ve offered us. So it’s great to see that change.

There’s also a change to local government by-election timing, as I understand that there are by-elections that are scheduled. So voting in the current Ōtorohanga District Council by-election would not be possible with the restrictions in place, and we don’t—certainly in the next phases, either—want people congregating. So this just enables postponement from any by-elections to a time when it would be appropriate for people to be coming together.

Another thing that this bill is changing which is considered substantive and, I think, speaks to some of the Government’s connection to community, that this has come through in the changes, is a change to the Gambling Act—not something that I, certainly, would have expected to be part of our COVID response. But it enables charitable organisations, specifically the Heart Foundation, Coastguard, and Countdown Kids Charitable Trust, for whom one of their primary fund-raising mechanisms is through those raffles that people may have seen or bought at other times, and that keeps those organisations running. But the legislation prevents those organisations from selling raffle tickets via online or by phone. So this is recognising that we don’t want these organisations to fall over; we want them to be able to maintain their traditional funding base. So it makes a change to the Gambling Act to enable them to do that in this time when they can’t do that on a face-to-face basis. I do really just want to acknowledge the extent of the Government’s communication and connection to community that this type of change is being picked up and is being responded to so promptly in legislation. It gives me a lot of confidence for our future.

So there’s also the second tier, as the Minister referred to it, of technical changes, and there are 22 minor amendments that fall into that category, and they cover a wide range of things—so, deferring regulatory requirements where we know that either the Government or the sector covered by the regulatory regime actually just won’t have the time to be able to put the new system in place. So that covers, I think, the new system or regime that’s been set up to regulate financial advisers, just because, in this context, people haven’t had the chance to get together to be able to do that work. It defers existing statutory deadlines and other minor exemptions where compliance would just not be possible. So firearms licences, where people are not able to go in, and we certainly don’t want, I’m assuming, our police time taken up with renewing firearms licences at this time—there is other work for them to be doing. So this just extends that and makes sure that people aren’t at odds with the legislation, through no fault of their own, and makes amendments to mitigate impracticality issues. So, at the moment, one example of this is to enable coroners to direct a pathologist to take swabs to test for COVID-19—pretty straightforward but actually not something that’s supported by legislation at the moment and, I think, something that we all, while it’s a technical change, have an interest in seeing that change happen quickly.

Then, also, amendments to mitigate problems with legislative compliance, and one of the examples of this is to allow clinical examinations or reviews under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act to be undertaken by audiovisual link instead of having to be face-to-face, which is what the law requires at the moment. I think that is a good temporary measure—and, obviously, a temporary one; we wouldn’t want to see that become the norm in other circumstances. But, again, we’re happy to commend this bill.

Before I call the member, I’m just going to ask Mr Faafoi to move the offending object. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s with pleasure that I lend my thoughts to the COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill. In particular, I want to focus on the clauses as they relate to local government. But, first, before I do that, I would like to thank and acknowledge the work that the Government has done over the past nearly six weeks, and that’s all encompassing for all Ministers, and also to widen out my acknowledgment to all members of this House, who, from their homes in isolation, and their bubbles in isolation, have kept up particularly the pastoral care work, which is an important part of an MP’s role. It seems that just reaching out at the end of a telephone line to an individual somewhere in the electorate or in New Zealand is a really good way of connecting at the moment. If we can do anything more than provide information and reassurance, then I would say that we have all been gainfully occupied in this time and will continue to do so for some time.

So this COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill does make a number of amendments to a number of bills. I want to focus my attention, as I said, on local government. To add context to that, I want to say that on 24 March this year, as I was going into the fruit and vege shop for the last time in what will probably be more than a month or so, I got a phone call from a former parliamentary colleague, now Mayor of Northland, the Hon John Carter, who alerted to me and raised the issue with me the future of local government within COVID and after the COVID epidemic has been brought under control, and that is the impact on local government funding.

What the Hon John Carter raised with me is that he knew the day before we went into lockdown—as, no doubt, a number of mayors and CEs knew—that local government revenue would be badly impacted. John Carter raised with me commercial rates, that businesses would be struggling and unable to honour their rents sometimes, and that therefore the commercial landlord would then be unable in some instances to honour their rate obligations. John Carter had done some calculations about the impact that would potentially have on his district council, and I imagine that district councils all throughout New Zealand were doing the same sort of calculations about the impact on revenue—not only from rates revenue but also fees and charges, development contributions, and so on. And such has come to pass.

The conversation very quickly turned to the issue of rate increases. Should it be a zero rate increase—very attractive in some quarters? Should it be a managed rate increase? Should that expenditure be more targeted towards recovery—more targeted towards infrastructure? So there’s been a lot of thinking in local government all around New Zealand on just how they were going to respond to the COVID-19 epidemic and what their response was going to be.

This legislation makes several amendments to the Local Government (Rating) Act, to the Local Electoral Act, and to the Local Government Act, which are set out in the bill. I’m not going to go through every one. Some of them are practical and sensible. Jan Logie, the previous speaker, mentioned a few of them. Timing milestones, which are set in statute for by-elections, have been given greater flexibility for carrying out their by-elections. There is one current by-election currently under way. There will be allowance to fill extraordinary vacancies on councils as they arise from time to time.

I think what is probably quite undervalued but a very useful amendment is that there is a clause which removes the requirement to publish a notice in the newspaper. Those of us who have been around legislation for a while know that there have been amendments in a number of statutes where public notices are required to widen out that requirement to wider than just a notice in the newspaper. As we know, a number of newspapers still cannot publish, and particularly in smaller communities. Those small community newspapers are the very place where people do see public notices, but now, due to this bill, those local authorities can use other forums. I think a happy consequence of that is that people who do take notice of public announcements will get used to perhaps following councils websites as a good source of information for them.

The only clauses that give National members a little cause for concern are those that allow for consultation to be limited on current long-term plan changes. Normally, there is a prescribed consultation process for LTPs, long-term plan, change processes, and due to the nature of timing and the limitations on consultation we find ourselves in now, there are clauses in this bill to limit that consultation provided that the Office of the Auditor-General (OAG) provides a report on the changes within the LTP proposed changes. That is a good measure.

But there is a concern that there are clauses where, because of the timing—where waiting for a report from the OAG would prevent a change in an LTP if it had to take effect before 30 June this year, which is not a long way away; it’s something like seven weeks away—it will then be acceptable for the LTP to go through without an Auditor-General report, but the report must state that there has been no OAG oversight and state the reason why. I understand that fail-safe. I understand the reason for it, but as my colleague and spokesperson for Auckland local government, Denise Lee, pointed out in a conversation to me last evening, Auckland Council, for example, is dealing with a very large annual budget. For scrutiny of any changes of any kind where in legislation consultation is prescribed, any change to that should be done rarely and reasonably. So that is one of the clauses—the only clause, to be fair, in the local government part of this bill—where National does have some concerns.

So I will just about conclude my contribution by just saying to the local government sector that the local government sector may be at home in their bubbles, mayors and chief executives may be zooming their meetings instead of having them in person, and councils may be meeting with or without their pants on—David Benson-Pope, Dunedin City Council today; most unusual—but, none the less, business is still being done, communities are still being minded, and I commend and congratulate them for that.

I call Ginny Andersen. Well, it is a split call. This is the next split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity for speaking on this bill at this important time in New Zealand’s history. This bill forms part of the Government’s plan to get New Zealand moving once again. It provides support and certainty—certainty at a time when we need it. It amends 45 different pieces of legislation to allow businesses, workers, local government, families, and charities to adapt to the changed environment that we are now operating within to enable us to manage the immediate impacts of COVID-19 but also to mitigate those longer-term impacts. This Government took immediate action to cushion the economic blow by protecting jobs, incomes, and businesses, and this bill forms part of the foundations now being laid to chart our course to recovery. So far, we have already seen over 1.6 million New Zealanders supported through the wage subsidy; also, the introduction of new tax and rent measures to support small and medium businesses; and we have worked with banks to help guarantee finance to businesses that need it.

This bill enables us to adapt, and it does it in five main areas. This bill includes changes to insolvency and corporate law to help businesses facing insolvency increase their prospects of remaining viable, and to keep New Zealanders in jobs during the COVID-19 response. Secondly, there are measures to support commercial tenants and landlords who are struggling to pay rent or to meet mortgage payments, which I know from my own area in the Hutt is a real concern. Thirdly, it changes the parental leave scheme to allow essential workers to return to work without being disadvantaged by losing entitlements to certain leave payments. It changes the local government area, as already has been mentioned, by looking at the by-election timing so that this continues to be a fair process. Finally, changes will also be made in the charitable space to allow groups such as the Heart Foundation, Coastguard, and Countdown Kids Charitable Trust to process their fund-raising lotteries through email, phone, and electronic payments. These are important adaptations and changes to enable our country to continue working under such extraordinary circumstances.

We have a hard road ahead of us in New Zealand, and I would like to conclude today by simply acknowledging firstly those essential workers and their families that have gone above and beyond for New Zealand at a time when we have needed it more than ever before. I would like to acknowledge all of those businesses that are doing everything they possibly can to keep ticking over at a time that is incredibly difficult. I would like to acknowledge all those Government workers in the public sector who have done work so that we have bills like this to continue to pass legislation when we need to. And I would like to acknowledge all those people at home who are working, alongside trying to school their children every day. I know it’s not easy. It’s a hard road ahead, but I know that by working together across this House and getting agreement, as we have today on this bill, New Zealand can work together to make sure we recover from the shock which is COVID-19.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to talk to this bill and to collaborate on a piece of work that we think is important. I want to talk to three schedules in this bill: Schedule 11, Schedule 4, Schedule 6. The first two comments I make will be brief, the third—to Schedule 6—will be a little bit more substantive.

Section 11—I want to talk to the mental health component. The audio and teleconferencing abilities under this schedule are useful. I just want to exercise some caution—a mental health examination done by audio or done by teleconference will be incredibly difficult. It’s already difficult in person and there are so many cues in person that you pick up that I would just exercise some caution and great skill in using that part of the bill.

Schedule 4 talks to the business debt hibernation scheme and also alludes to the wage subsidy, both of which we support and would be particularly useful for people like those we saw in front of the Epidemic Response Committee this morning: the hairdressers, for example, who tell us that, unfortunately, there are host employers already handing back their apprentices; the master plumbers who have written to me and said if the wage subsidy is not extended, an estimated 35 percent—or about 970 apprentices—will be laid off.

I would also like to point to the travel industry, who may benefit from this, and encourage the Government to look at what they might particularly do for travel agents. The reason I say that is this. It turns out there is about $100 million of offshore refunds, cash refunds, for New Zealanders who booked with travel agents. If travel agents don’t survive, the ability to bring that back into New Zealand will be severely compromised because it was done through a one-to-one relationship. Imagine if we could bring that $100 million back—those refunds in fares; cash fares, not credits—into New Zealanders’ hands. To do that, we’re going to need to keep some of the travel brokers, the face-to-face travel brokers, alive. So if we could just apply ourselves to that—how we could also do something good there.

I particularly, though, want to talk to Schedule 6, which is amendments to the Coroners Act. The particular line I want to talk to here is new section 21B(2) inserted by clause 2: “a preliminary inspection of the body performed under section 21A of the Act must include the taking and testing of nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs in any case where the deceased is suspected to have had COVID-19 at the time of death.” Now, we already have, under several provisions in law, the ability and the requirement to do testing on deceased people. So I see this more as a reminder rather than something dramatically new into the law. I also point out there that the requirement is to do a nasopharyngeal—nose—swab as well as a throat swab and that’s a reflection on the times when we’ve been running out of nasal swabs during this lockdown period—just how important that is, that we’re going to put that in legislation: you’ve got to do them both, a nose and a throat swab.

I also want to comment on the large body of work that needs to wrap around this particular provision, so everyone in the House is absolutely agreed it’s the right thing to do. We need to do swabs on those who are deceased who we think might have had the infection. But here’s my problem. My problem comes from a written parliamentary question four days ago, 5604 to the Minister of Health: “How many coronavirus tests, if any, have been undertaken on deceased patients?” And here’s the answer: “I’m advised that this information is not collected by the Ministry of Health in a form that is able to be reported on.” Why on earth are we passing legislation if we’re not going to be able to do anything with it?

Substantially, the ministry, if they want this piece of legislation to be effective—and it’s good. It’s important. We need to know if people have deceased and actually had coronavirus, because that will give us some sense of where it is in the community and what we may or may not be missing. But if we do that, if we pass this, if we say yes, that’s what must be done. It helps us nought if we’re unable to report on it. As of four days ago, the Minister of Health said to me, “We’re not able to collect it and we’re not able to report on it.” That will be a substantial body of work, and I’d suggest it’s a digital collection, because we found that out with contact tracing—you can’t answer the questions because it was manual, manual, manual through until about 6 April, when they moved to a centralised digital platform, and now we can start getting some reporting on it. These will be important figures. Let’s do it right from the beginning. Let’s get to a digital platform as soon as we can so that we can report on the nose and throat swabs that are done on deceased patients who we suspect coronavirus.

So the point I’m making here is the argument for it to be in the bill is good, but it’s going to need a lot of wraparound work to actually bring it to life. So if the Government could apply themselves, please, to get it into a mechanism where we can easily collect and easily report, I think it will fulfil the ambition of this schedule. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to the COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill. It’s commonly said that the Government makes laws. That is not true. This Parliament makes laws, and New Zealanders overwhelmingly and voluntarily follow the laws of this Parliament. Why? Because they believe that our processes are robust, that we think carefully about the laws that we are making, and that we listen. As a result of that, we have a long tradition of democracy in this country that has done pretty well for us.

Now, lately, things have been a little different. We have been facing a global crisis, and we’ve been asked to unite against a common enemy. I think it’s fair to say that Parliament has come to the party and given the Government a free pass. Well, the anaesthetic is wearing off. This Parliament cannot afford to continue to be a rubber stamp for the Government sweeping its mistakes under the carpet. I think the turning point we saw just last Thursday when I read in the newspaper “Parliament passes wrong law”. Well, actually, I often think that’s happened, but I never imagined it would happen because the Government couldn’t even make sure the right piece of paper was on that Table and Parliament really did pass the wrong piece of legislation. It is time to bring democracy back and for Parliament to do its job that New Zealanders elect us for, of scrutinising the Government’s legislation properly.

No member of this House can say in good conscience that the 133 pages that they received less than 24 hours ago have been properly read or understood in terms of their implications. I suspect that there will be serious unintended consequences of some of the headline issues in this bill. The Hon Shane Jones pointed out that the safe harbour against trading while insolvent may well be abused. Well, I’ve had a number of people in the business community raise this possibility with me. They’ve said that for every director who continues to trade and is able to keep the nexus of a company together because of this exemption, you are going to find people who take advantage of it and put bad debts on to other companies, and it may well turn out that this so-called safe harbour is net negative.

But what of the other major initiative in this bill, which is the change in the time after which a bank can foreclose on a landlord who’s borrowed from them, or a landlord can move on a commercial tenant? Well, what I’d say to the Government is that over the last four or five weeks, overwhelmingly, landlords, tenants, and banks have come to voluntary arrangements. I know there are some egregious and sometimes heartbreaking exceptions, but, overwhelmingly, people have come to arrangements. I said to the Minister of Finance at the Epidemic Response Committee five weeks ago now, “With respect, Mr Robertson, you have to move on commercial leases and you have to move soon.” Well, five weeks later, he moves, but it’s far too late. If people have got through the last five weeks, they probably don’t need his help now. What they do need is a serious cash injection for those companies that have no money—no good passing the buck from tenant to landlord to bank, because the buck has to stop somewhere.

It’s with considerable regret that I oppose some aspects of this bill. I think allowing charities to continue raffles digitally is very sensible. I think some of the local government amendments allowing people to have digital meetings and some of the administrative changes allowing forms to be filed digitally are very sensible. I think extending firearm and driver licences is very sensible. But the question, when a member of Parliament decides whether or not to vote for a piece of legislation, is not “Does the member of Parliament think there are some sensible things?” but “Can they in good conscience vote for a bill that not one person in this Parliament”—I can guarantee—“has properly read and understood?” For that reason, I stand in opposition to this bill on behalf of the ACT Party.

I’d go on to say that the regulatory impact statement requirements have been neglected in the case of this bill, and that is a great shame. Throughout this COVID-19 response, the Government has said, “We don’t believe that there should be a regulatory impact statement.” The Government hasn’t taken the option even of using cut-down regulatory impact analysis on this bill. What they have done is said “We don’t believe regulatory impact analysis gives any value.”, and that’s in the departmental disclosure statement for this bill. The best they could come up with is a vaguely related regulatory impact statement from another bill which doesn’t actually really have anything to do with this particular bill. The fact of the matter is that if the Government thinks that regulatory impact analysis has no value, then they believe the impact of their laws on New Zealanders has no value, and the property rights and the rights of New Zealanders in general have no value. The fact that there is no—

I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but the member’s time has—

💬 David Seymour: —regulatory impact analysis is another reason to oppose this bill. Madam Speaker, can we get some clarity on how long this speech is?

It’s finished.

💬 David Seymour: Oh, it’s finished. So what you mean is 7½ minutes?

It was my mistake. I beg your pardon.

💬 David Seymour: I appreciate the extra time. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I do apologise to the House. I thought that the Labour member went first and ACT came second, in which case no Labour member stood up, so I gave you the full 10, but it’s been pointed out to me that it was my mistake, that you go first and the Labour member goes second. So I will now call the Labour member.

Thank you to my colleague Mr Seymour, and I understand that, look, we’re operating in relatively fluid and flexible times, so I don’t intend to take much time of this House this afternoon. This is unprecedented times. We are passing immeasurable amounts of legislation to ensure that we can protect New Zealanders, and consistent with the comments from this side of the House, we commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise in support of the COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill. I’m going to limit my comments predominantly to the matters relating to commerce and the matters particularly relating to changes to insolvency laws to give some protection to businesses, and particularly to directors of those businesses, and also to the debt hibernation scheme as proposed.

I’m going to speculate that, clearly, Ministers and Government members had the same sorts of conversations that many National Party members had with business owners and directors preceding and then into the early stages of the lockdown. Given previous issues in our history, there are very stringent requirements on directors and their obligations regarding their oversight of companies, and particularly where they might be trading when they are insolvent. If we actually look at the conversations that we had with people in those roles, and the situation today and in the weeks preceding, it’s quite possible—a debatable point—that there are any number of businesses whose directors should possibly already have instigated measures towards potential insolvency, simply because the outlook has been so bleak, and remains to a large degree, that it is completely uncertain, and their very clear legal obligations would no doubt and did, in fact, given the conversations we had, lead many to believe that they were at risk of being deemed to have failed to have met those obligations and were permitting a company to continue trading when they had every or sufficient reason to believe that insolvency was in very severe doubt.

So if these measures were not to be taken, unquestionably we would have many more businesses folding in very short order in New Zealand. Now, this is no guarantee that they won’t, but it is very clear that without these measures, there would certainly be any number—and probably a great number—of businesses that would have to be put into insolvency because of that gross uncertainty of the outlook and the legal obligations that rest upon those that govern those businesses. So we support the principle of the measures. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are guaranteed to work, and it doesn’t mean that as they are written they will have the consequence that they intend.

If we look at it, the fundamental issues that are facing businesses right now—yes, there is the future uncertainty, a massive uncertainty which persists and will probably persist for some time to come, but the immediate greater issue, actually, is a lack of cash flow. So many businesses have been shut down if not completely, as near as complete as possible. Many are still either unable to trade or unable to trade anything like their normal levels under the current alert level 3. What they really need is income, cash flow, to help keep those businesses solvent and going.

Just today, the Leader of the Opposition announced plans that National, had it the opportunity, would do to help to address those very immediate issues, which are things like the GST cash-back, the ability to recognise capital investment very rapidly—things that would help to keep a company trading today and give a greater sense of optimism and certainty about the future to maintain themselves or to sustain for some time. Alas, we’re on the wrong side of the House at the moment. We can have great plans but we can’t legislate for them.

In the absence of being able to put that very good plan into action today, we would instead say that these measures are important but they are just a part of it. There is no bill on the Order Paper that seeks to do anything like what the Leader of the Opposition proposed today. There is this, these measures around the safe harbour and the debt hibernation, but there is no other side of the equation which is putting cash flow into businesses, money into businesses, in the immediate sense. So it’s about a half of the puzzle in that respect.

But further to that—and we are absolutely going to support this through to select committee—I note with some trepidation, as I went through the provisions related to these measures, yet again—and I have at least been consistent in my criticism of Government bills which have large, broad, powerful regulation-making powers riddled throughout. I’ve done so on the Arms Legislation Bill, on the Fair Trading Amendment Bill, and the conduct of financial institutions, and these measures are, again, measures that have enormous scope of regulatory amendment to them once this bill, should it be enacted, is enacted.

The worry I have with that—it’s two: one is, really, that, as I’ve said previously in other bills, it’s a bit of a sign that the Government hasn’t actually got its policy sorted out. Now, the circumstances we’re in sort of justify that to some extent: there simply isn’t the same time that there would normally be in the formulation of policy and the translation of that into a bill. But none the less, it’s indicative of the fact that the policy is not concrete in its detail yet, so that is an issue. But the worry I have about it is: what will it mean for directors of companies who may be relying on these—the safe harbour and this debt hibernation and the certainty that it’s supposed to help to bring—if the regime is one which can be changed readily without recourse to Parliament?

Almost any manner of the provisions of these items can be changed. For instance, in the debt hibernation, there are certain excluded debts through regulation. Excluded debts can be changed at any time over the period that these protections would otherwise apply. So what a director signs up for today may change before the term of the crisis and the term of the provisions of the bill apply or expire. So my question to that is: how are directors going to respond to that? Are they going to say it introduces uncertainty which might limit their ability to actually sign up and take advantage of the debt hibernation and safe harbour provisions? Or will they say, “No, we’re comfortable.” and that the intent of Parliament is clear, and “Although the power is with Government to change things almost at a whim, we won’t hold that that introduces so much uncertainty as to prevent us from using the provisions.”, that they might think differently?

So my point is: to raise this is not to say it’s a reason to not support the bill but to emphasise with the Government that it is important that they listen to the submissions that are made in the very short select committee process this bill will receive. We know that the Epidemic Response Committee will give it very good attention, but it is important that the Government is prepared to listen to what submitters say and the implications of the bill as written, what it will mean for them perhaps being able to take up the intentions which rest behind it. Because if they say, “It’s fine, no problem.”, well, that’s all well and good. But if we have submitters that come and say, “Well, actually, the way you’ve written it is good from a legislator’s point of view but from a director’s point of view, actually, you’ve not given us the certainty around the regime that we need in order to be able to sign up to it.”, then I would implore the Government to heed that, if those are the messages that come through, and make changes.

It may actually be better to have the regime very clearly articulated in the primary legislation and accept that if during the course of events it is determined that something was not quite right, well, that’s what an amendment bill is there for, rather than have a very broad and almost unrestricted regulation-making power, if it is the case that submitters tell us that having that would create an uncertainty which might make it difficult for them to use the safe harbour or the debt hibernation provisions that are being put there to protect—or the idea to protect and sustain businesses.

So we support the bill. I note comments made from the ACT member a few moments ago. We will support the bill. It’s not enough on its own; it is a piece of the puzzle. Really, the Government should be looking at how they can get cash into the hands of businesses now so that they can sustain themselves alongside these sorts of measures which do help, to a degree, deal with the fact that there are so many uncertainties into the future yet. But we will support the bill to the select committee.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I wish to speak very briefly on behalf of the Government in support of the COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill. This is an omnibus bill which contains provisions that have been worked on by Ministers across the Government who have, alongside their officials, been working day and night to identify the practical and pragmatic ways in which the Government can support the response and the recovery to and from the COVID-19 epidemic. I look forward to its consideration by the COVID Epidemic Response Committee. I look forward to their feedback from it, and I commend this bill to the House.

on behalf of the Leader of the House: I move, That the COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill be reported to the House by 12 May 2020.

Motion agreed to.