Rates Rebate (Statutory Declarations) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Rates Rebate (Statutory Declarations) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

The bill will make it easier for low-income ratepayers to apply to the Rates Rebate Scheme. It does this by removing the need for applicants to sign the application form in front of a witness who must be a council officer, justice of the peace, or other authorised person. Applicants will still be required to verify that information on their application form and make sure that it is accurate, but they will be able to do this in a much more accessible way.

This may seem like a small change, but the benefits are important to those who need help paying their rates. Currently, applicants need to attend in person to have their signature witnessed. This can be difficult, especially for those with a physical disability or mobility issues. In the last rating year, 79 percent of applicants were superannuitants, a group more likely to be experiencing declining mobility or a physical disability. In fact, the latest disability survey showed that 49 percent of this group had a physical disability of some sort.

Applicants also pay for the cost of travelling to an authorised person to complete their applications. These costs can be significant, particularly for those people living in rural communities. For some applicants, particularly those in smaller communities, needing to discuss their application form with council officers in public can be a significant source of stress and embarrassment. Some councils have staff that carry out home visits for those applicants for whom travelling would cause too much physical or emotional stress. I’d encourage this approach across the council sector.

The bill will overcome these difficulties and save the costs faced by applicants and councils from the statutory declaration requirement in the current process. Removing the need to be physically present also creates the opportunity for an online application process, should one be become available in the future.

The bill also makes a change that will give councils the opportunity to design their own application forms if they think this will benefit their community. These forms will need to be approved by the Secretary for Local Government to ensure they comply with the statutory requirements. For those councils who do not want to design their own application forms, a standard application form will continue to be supplied by the Department of Internal Affairs. Submitters to the select committee on the bill supported this change.

This change was needed before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. However, New Zealand’s response to the pandemic has also shown how important it is that people can access Government services remotely, particularly those people who are more vulnerable to illness. During the COVID-19 response, the Government made a temporary modification to the statutory declaration process so that it can be completed remotely.

This bill will ensure that vulnerable people will still be able to access the Rates Rebate Scheme without needing to attend a public office in person, and allow people to verify their information remotely. This will also provide ongoing benefit to those who are ill for whatever reason and at home and cannot get to the council offices. The Rates Rebate Scheme provides important support to ratepayers on low and fixed incomes. In the last rating year, just over 300,000 people received a rebate at an average amount of $582, and that makes a big difference.

The bill is just one of a number of changes the Government has made to improve the Rates Rebate Scheme. Under changes to the Act begun by my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson, residents of retirement villages can now access the Rates Rebate Scheme like other households. The Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Act, passed into law in March last year, ensures that those receiving a winter energy payment will not have this payment included in their income for the purposes of calculating a rates rebate. This change ensures the winter energy payment is used for its intended purpose.

I want to thank the Social Services and Community Committee for its work considering the bill. The select committee recommends one change to the bill, and that’s to change the commencement date to 1 July 2020. This means the bill will now come into force at the beginning of the next rating year, and I support the change.

I note the select committee also recommends that the Secretary for Local Government consider requiring applicants to provide their IRD number on their application forms. This would enable officials to undertake income data-matching. It would provide officials with another tool to ensure the income information provided on application forms is accurate. I support the select committee’s intent to ensure the application process is secure and that accurate information is being provided; however, both the select committee and my officials have advised that a number of operational changes are needed before data matching could happen.

I’d like to thank those that took the time to submit on the bill. I was pleased to see several submissions from the local government sector, who all supported the intent of the bill and noted that it would reduce the costs of administering the Rates Rebate Scheme. A number of submitters made clear the problems the statutory declaration requirement can cause for applicants. The citizens advice bureau noted how applicants can struggle to find an authorised person to complete their statutory declaration. Submitters also made it clear that the Rates Rebate Scheme provides important support to those ratepayers that are on low or fixed incomes and are struggling to pay their rates.

Some submitters noted that, while the bill enables an online application process in the future, not everyone will want to apply online. This is an important point, and the intent is that the application process will remain accessible for all who wish to apply. This means a paper channel should continue to be maintained in an online application process, if an online application process is introduced in the future.

In conclusion, the bill will make it easier for low-income ratepayers to access the support they are entitled to. It will also reduce the costs for local councils administering the Rates Rebate Scheme. This is just one of a number of changes the Government has made to improve the Rates Rebate Scheme, as I’ve mentioned. We’ve also ensured that those living in retirement villages can access the scheme and that people aren’t unfairly penalised for receiving a winter energy payment. The bill gives local councils the flexibility to design their own application form, should they wish, and maintain a paper application process. Finally, the change will enable an online application process to be implemented in the future, should councils wish that to be the case. So I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you very much. Good morning, Madam Speaker. I acknowledge the Minister who’s just taken her seat, Nanaia Mahuta, whose name this bill is under. Pleased to make a contribution on this Rates Rebate (Statutory Declaration) Amendment Bill. I’m pleased to also be a member of the Social Services and Community Committee, which oversaw the proceedings of this bill, and I also acknowledge my fellow committee members as well.

We in the National Party do not support this statutory declarations amendment bill, and we have noted in the report a minority view on the bill. Before I go there, this bill is set to amend the Rates Rebate Act of 1973, which, effectively, sets out the Government-funded rebate scheme to low-income ratepayers, which we in the National Party support. Of course we support this rates rebate for those on low incomes.

The intent of this bill is to make it easier for those applying for this rates rebate by removing the requirement to do a statutory declaration to verify the application. And therein lies the biggest hurdle for us as the National Party in terms of this amendment, and we cannot support this. Currently, those applicants who apply for this are required to physically present themselves, either to a council office or to an authorised person such as a justice of the peace, or go in to see their local member of Parliament to complete an application. We don’t believe that this bill has been well thought through. It is piecemeal. In fact, we know that we are here to actually fill up time of what is a deficient legislative programme.

I just want to acknowledge the comments made by the Minister Nanaia Mahuta, and also there were comments in her first reading speech in terms of the intent to reduce the burden, to make it easier for those to access this rates rebate. I note her comments around the physical presence of having to come in and do a statutory declaration, sometimes in small communities—it may be embarrassing. Actually, I acknowledge the intent for the Minister to want to take the burden out of that for people in our community, and, you know, I acknowledge it. But at the same time, I don’t believe that we should remove what is a very important process in terms of robustness and scrutiny on that rebate. Ultimately, at the end of the day, we are accountable for every single dollar of taxpayer money, and I think there is an expectation on taxpayers, including older people in our community who are still contributing, that we do provide some very good and clear oversight and robustness in processes like this. So I acknowledge the intent—we should always try and make systems processes easier—but, at the same time, it should not be at the cost of oversight.

I don’t believe that the process of a statutory declaration is overly cumbersome. There are a number of people in our communities—our JPs in our libraries, MPs, council staff—who will make themselves available to assist those to get those statutory declarations. I don’t agree that it is such an impediment that we should remove this measure of accountability. Further, I don’t believe that there has been any data to support the case for this particular amendment. Where is the evidence for that? And I don’t believe that embarrassment should be a reason to remove an important oversight, as I see it. We have to be accountable for every single dollar taken up by the scheme.

I just want to touch on the submissions, and I do want to acknowledge and thank all those that came and made submissions to the committee on this bill. Just an overview, the committee received 10 written submissions on this bill. Of those 10 submissions, four were from territorial authorities. One submission was by a local government organisation, two submissions were from other organisations, and three of those 10 submissions were made by individuals. So I think it’s important to note that 70 percent of the submissions were from either a territorial authority or a local government organisation.

I just want to also touch on the fact that part of this amendment—in terms of why I say it’s piecemeal, why did the Minister not take into account the New Zealand Productivity Commission inquiry, which was just in November last year, and their final report? They actually made some recommendations around a wider overhaul of the system. So if it is about ensuring a better process and that it is easier for those, particularly many of the superannuitants that apply for this, there was actually a recommendation to abolish the scheme and replace it with a national rates postponement scheme. So I see this amendment as more just tinkering at the edges. But perhaps the best path forward would have been to take into account those recommendations and have a look at a wider change to the system, which would actually be far more effective for more people in terms of wanting to address some of those challenges for those in the community. And I think this is what I talk about when I say it’s been piecemeal—this has just been tagged on; that wider report is not taken into consideration. At the same time, it’s a bill which, I repeat, could, effectively, expose this current scheme to abuse.

So, you know, in effect, this bill should have perhaps waited and we could have had a look at that Productivity Commission report and look at a wider overhaul of the system, because we’re probably going to be back here having a look at it anyway. I think there are some good recommendations in that report that the Minister and the Government members could take into account.

Just talking about the actual parts of the bill, the main substantive amendments are in Part 1 of the bill, which is the part that provides for the removal of the statutory declaration. And then Part 2, the related amendments, provides that the verification is replaced by a form approved by the Secretary for Local Government—that is in Part 2 of the bill. I also note, and it is in the report, that the date that the Act comes into force changes to 1 July 2020.

So I repeat the concerns that we have in the National Party, which have been outlined in our minority view, in that we should not remove the very important oversight and access to the Rates Rebate Scheme. It is now, effectively, an honesty system, which we believe is open to abuse. It has no oversight. We don’t believe that the council members will have the opportunity or the resources to go and check through all these applications. At the end of the day, this is still taxpayer-funded money to support the scheme, and we should still hold that line in terms of some oversight for those applying for this. We do not support this bill.

I wish to pick up something which the previous speaker, Agnes Loheni, just said. She said that this was an honesty system, this bill, and it’s clear that members of the Opposition simply don’t trust our fellow New Zealanders. That’s a very sad state of affairs.

This bill makes life easier for elderly people. As an MP, I have signed off these forms myself, and, memorably, on a couple of occasions, gone to visit bed-ridden people so that I could help them with this particular declaration. Why would we not make life easier for people who are finding it a little bit difficult to get about? It’s a very good reason to support this bill. It is an excellent bill, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, Dr Russell certainly hasn’t given me a lot to reply to; so the one point she’s made is the one I’ll start with. Yes, the National Party does trust our fellow New Zealanders, but not all people, sadly, are trustworthy. I invite Dr Russell to indicate whether every person she has ever dealt with, ever encountered in her life, has been trustworthy, particularly when given the opportunity to avoid paying a bill or to get something for a bargain or in another way to put one across the system. She’s looking down studiously, but, having made that allegation before, I think she should answer the question. No, clearly she doesn’t want to.

So I say again: the vast majority of New Zealanders are honest, and I think everybody in the National Party recognises that. It’s probably why we represent most of the electorates in this country, because we make the connection with our constituents, and they expect us to be responsible, particularly with the way we collect their money—not us personally through the rate system but by association, as members of this Parliament, through our tax system. They don’t want us to collect one more dollar than is justified and they expect us to spend every dollar that we could collect as responsibly, as appropriately as we can, and in ways that do make a real difference. What we are seeing at the moment from this particular Government is fiscal recklessness that borders on total irresponsibility. Their current approach to handling public accounts and revenue is absolutely alarming.

Now, I appreciate the fact that the Minister of Finance had an incredibly difficult job in May this year. Whatever Budget he had put together by, say, the end of February, when most of the decisions would have been made, would have had to go out the window. We all know that and we recognise the challenge that he faced. But the Budget we saw on—was it 19 May?—whatever date it was in May—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): 15.

Sorry?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): 15 May.

15 May. Thank you, Madam Speaker—wasn’t really a Budget at all. It was, to be fair, more just of a fiscal update. And it’s relevant to this bill, because we’ve also seen a Government that is at the moment telling us, “We don’t even know how we’re going to spend all the money, but there’s somehow this $20 billion, nobody knows where it’s coming from out there, that we’ll spend”—

💬 Hon Nanaia Mahuta: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. As interesting as his points may be to himself, this issue before us is about the Rates Rebate Scheme which benefits superannuitants. It’s not about a general Budget debate.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I was just going to raise that very point myself. The general debate starts after question time on Wednesday—so second reading Rates Rebate (Statutory Declarations) Amendment Bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I appreciate that. I was simply wishing to make the point—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Mr Macindoe, please don’t offer any challenge to my suggestion to you.

I wasn’t, Madam Speaker, I promise you I wasn’t looking to challenge you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): This is twice. Second reading.

Great, OK. I didn’t have the opportunity to hear the submissions on this bill. This is the second successive bill which has come through the House in this urgency period which emerged from the work done by the Social Services and Community Committee. I’ve only recently joined that committee; so I am at a disadvantage because I wasn’t present for the committee’s hearings. Reading the report, which is quite short, I’m not even sure how many submissions were received and how many were heard.

💬 Gareth Hughes: It’s pretty easy to find out. It’s only 10.

I was about to pay the chair a compliment to say that, in the short time I’ve been on the committee—and I mentioned this last night when he wasn’t here; I’ll mention it again now—I’ve been very impressed by the way that he chairs the committee. I believe he does so in a very professional and collegial way, as a result of which there’s a good sense of purpose in that committee. So Gareth Hughes deserves our support. I’m just acknowledging the fact that he is going to have the advantage that I don’t have this morning of being able to talk about the submissions in greater depth.

💬 Dr Deborah Russell: They’re on the system; you can find them.

Ah, not being able to hear submitters in the committee does put somebody at a disadvantage, because quite often you then have the opportunity to pick up the flavour, what has motivated them, that goes well beyond the written submissions. Of course, I’ve looked at what has been put forward, but I didn’t have the advantage of hearing from those people. It is, as I say, a very short report.

I do want to acknowledge the work that local government does, and it’s nice to be able to speak on a bill introduced by my fellow Waikato MP, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, for whom I have great respect and with whom I think I’ve always enjoyed a very good relationship. I acknowledge the work that she does, but I can’t agree with her on this bill, largely for the reasons that my very good colleague and friend Agnes Loheni has already mentioned.

In particular, it’s because we have to be responsible, and that was the point I was trying to make in referring to Budget matters. We are in unprecedented times. I know that’s become a cliché, but at the moment, more than ever before, it is really important that we are accountable for every dollar of taxpayer and ratepayer money that we take and how we spend it. Unfortunately, I think that this bill is a case of robbing Peter—in this case, the taxpayer—to pay Paul—in this case, the ratepayer.

💬 Michael Wood: That’s how the Rates Rebate Scheme works. That’s what it does.

Well, Mr Wood seems to think that that’s an admirable objective. I would challenge him to take a call and tell us whether a bill of this nature should be being debated here on a Friday under urgency.

💬 Michael Wood: Generally speaking, this is the place we change laws.

Oh, well, he’s being very, very cynical and sarcastic now. So I look forward—

Tim van de Molen: It’s more than he’s said in any contribution over the last 48 hours.

That’s right. It’s longer and, actually, more comprehensible than any of his contributions in the last 24 hours.

I want to apologise to our constituents for the meetings we have cancelled with them today; for the appointments, therefore, that we cannot keep; for the functions and events that we cannot attend in our electorates when we should be there. We’d made commitments to them and we’ve inconvenienced them in order to be here today to debate fairly minor matters. I suggest to you that this is a total abuse of our urgency system. Urgency should be—

💬 Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Our job is to put through legislation.

Yes, absolutely. I’m so pleased the Hon Carmel Sepuloni has said that. So why did her party and the parties who support them—

💬 Hon Carmel Sepuloni: It’s part of our job.

Oh, she can continue to shout. Why did her party and those who support them in Government waste 2½ years doing nothing, filibustering over and over again on bills that everybody supported? That’s on the record; people don’t have to take my word for it. That’s a matter of public record that they wasted 2½ years and now, suddenly, they’re saying, “We had to adjourn Parliament during the COVID period and we’ve now got a heck of a lot to do.” Well, why didn’t they get on with it in the first 2½ years that they were in office rather than abusing the urgency system and, by association, abusing our constituents in this way? Absolutely outrageous—indefensible. I wasn’t cross at the start, but after listening to the inane interjections that have come from the other side of the House, I’m getting pretty worked up now. I actually didn’t think I’d be taking a full call, but you bet I’m going to be taking a full call now.

Their key point on this particular minor matter revolves around the way in which people declare their circumstances in order to qualify for a rates rebate. Now, I have huge sympathy for those who are both elected or work within local government, because they’re under a constant tension between ratepayers who, on the one hand, want them to keep rates as low as possible and are always alarmed when there’s a threat of significant rates increases—and we’ve heard so much of that in recent times in this post-COVID environment, when people’s livelihoods are at risk and their incomes have taken such a hit—but, on the other hand, of course, we all want our councils to be able to deliver all the basic services that are expected of local government, and we also like it when there are a few extras that enhance the social and cultural appeal of our cities or our towns. Unfortunately, there’s often the tension there between those who say, “Oh, you can’t afford anything else, don’t fix the swimming pool, don’t bring that show to town.”—or whatever it might be—and others who say, “But that’s what gives us quality of life.”

Ultimately, it comes down to the people who are affected by this bill, because I do have huge sympathy for the elderly, for all who are on fixed incomes, for those who are on low incomes who really do struggle. We all acknowledge that. But there are other ways of being able to assist them. Having a system that is open to abuse—and that’s the problem with this bill—simply lends itself to ensuring that the decent, honest people are punished again, penalised by having to pay that little bit extra. And those who can get away with being dishonest will. That is why we are saying: do not have a system that is so lax, that enables people to go through the cracks far too easily, and dump on the decent, hardworking taxpayers and ratepayers of this country.

I rise to add New Zealand First’s support to the Rates Rebate (Statutory Declarations) Amendment Bill. For those watching at home, maybe a little alarmed after watching that speech and the perpetual outrage of the member opposite, who has seemed to fire up over what is actually a pretty good bill and a generous bill, a bill that looks to lower the barriers for low-income people who need to get access to a rates rebate, it is really important for those people on low and fixed incomes and particularly in these times when we know there is going to be some increase in hardship through the COVID response and recession. So New Zealand First has no qualms in supporting the bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Just about missed it, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I did.

The contribution of the last speaker was so substantial that I missed that too!

I want to acknowledge the Minister of Local Government, Nanaia Mahuta. She’s been around local government long enough to know that people in this building should never annoy the people that are out there doing the work. And I think she’s quite right in that respect, because local government is a tricky business, and the big difference between local government and this form of Government is that local government set the rates and collect the rates and everybody knows what they’re paying. So, when you’re out there as a local government politician, you front up to everybody that goes past you whether you like it or not, and you get the blame for everything that happens. In here, we kind of have tax bills that go through here on a weekly basis almost, certainly on a monthly basis. We set the taxes and we never get the blame for it So the big difference between local government and national Government is that local government politicians are accountable for every step they make; we don’t seem to be until the end of the three-year term, when we are certainly accountable for some of the things we have or have not done

Anyway, that wasn’t my point. I also, like one or two other speakers, was not on the Social Services and Community Committee at the time this bill came through, but I have been around local government long enough to have a fairly good understanding of rates rebates. Whilst we don’t support this bill, I do have a great deal of sympathy for those people who collect a rates rebate. I think it’s an essential part of what we do. Whether it’s the right way to deliver these things or not is an argument for another day. This argument that we’re having today is all about how we deliver the rates rebate and what the best form of delivering it is.

I’m going to point out some of the anomalies in the Rates Rebate Scheme in a moment, but one of the interesting things about our councils and how they’ve evolved over the years is that almost every council—in fact, all of my councils but one in my electorate—has a JP sitting in the office most days of the week and some at some time. So the current form of acquiring a rates rebate isn’t that complicated, and I tend to agree with one or two of the previous speakers who think we are spending a bit of time down here on a Friday debating a bill that probably isn’t entirely necessary.

However, the point I want to make about the Rates Rebate Scheme is that it’s all very well for those people who live in their own house and pay their own bill, but many of our superannuitants in New Zealand—and there are various reasons for it, a lot of them legislative—don’t actually live in their own house but do pay the costs of living in that house. That’s where this rates rebate scheme is very challenging. Because if they live in a house that’s either provided for them by family members or provided for them by a trust, and they have an agreement to pay the costs of the operation of that premises, they don’t qualify for the Rates Rebate Scheme. And through our electoral offices—I’m sure all of us will get inquiries of this nature—I’ve had a number of inquiries in my time in this place from people who are ineligible for the Rates Rebate Scheme for varying reasons, and the reasons often relate to the way they occupy the premises they live in.

So there are some anomalies in this scheme, which I think are not ideal. Not everyone is treated the same. What I noticed, and I spent a bit of time in local government—and the other thing you can do in local government, which is actually quite a good idea, if you really want to find out what the constituents think, you go and sit out in the council office or the foyer of it on a rates payment day. You’ll get a bit of feedback then. A lot of politicians wouldn’t like to do that, of course, because it would make you a bit nervous.

But now, of course, with the way we’re changing society and the way we’re changing the way we do things, people don’t go to the council office as often as they used to. They don’t turn up at the building and pay their rates as they have done. I’ve even had a constituent who brought the cash into my office to give it to me to pay the council rates, because they’re either not able to go into the council building or they’ve been banned from it for some reason or other or whatever. So you get all forms of methods of paying rates, and people are, I guess, to some extent, intimidated by the fact that they’ve got to go and pay their rates or they do go to pay the rates. They’re also intimidated by the fact that they have to acquire or fill out a form in order to get a rates rebate. So, often they will need assistance to do that, and in my experience of JPs’ work, JPs are always friendly and offer to assist in any way they are legally able to. So I think that probably the need for this bill is minimal, to say the least. So I don’t think there’s a great deal of need for it.

I just want to talk about one or two other things in respect to this bill as well. Of course, if we lived in a perfect world, we wouldn’t need a rates rebate scheme because everyone would be paid adequately to pay the bills they need to pay and get on with life. We don’t live in a perfect world, unfortunately, and that’s just one of those things that happens to us.

I want to talk about just one other issue, which I’m very opposed to, because I just don’t like the system. It relates to the kind of—and there’ll be some terminology for it that I won’t use, but it’s a little bit like reverse mortgages, where you, effectively, drip-up your house on the basis of paying the bills you need to pay to live. I’m definitely violently opposed to that sort of proposal. I think that type of thing diminishes people’s ability to understand where they sit in life, basically, because what it does is it creeps up from behind you. You don’t know it’s coming, and, nowadays, when I was born, you got to 65 and you thought, well, that probably will be my lot. I didn’t think that and I’m past that now. The problem is, you then get to 69 or 70 and think “God, I might have 20 years left yet and I’ve got no money to keep me going.” That’s the very reason I’m opposed to this type of situation, because when you get that stuff creeping up on you and you go on and on and on living and you keep on living and suddenly you’ve got to the point where you’ve actually got nothing left—you’ve got no equity left in your property or your life. The world changes so quickly and I think it’s a very dangerous situation—a very dangerous situation—to get into, and it’s one that I don’t like. [Interruption] Yeah, I should be at the beach. You’re right, Hamish. I’d be a lot better off there.

But I do think we’ve got to be careful when we put legislation of any sort in place, that we think about what happens as people’s circumstances change, as we live longer, and as the world rolls on. So we are opposed to this Rates Rebate (Statutory Declarations) Amendment Bill for a number of reasons. One of them is that we don’t necessarily, on this side of the House, think it’s the most appropriate system, and I’m not sure there’s a better system, frankly. I don’t know how you would deal with the issue that the Rates Rebate Scheme is designed to deal with in a better manner than we are dealing with it at the moment. Now, the argument we’ve got, of course, is that this bill changes the way you make an application for that rates rebate scheme. In fact, it could become more onerous, because, if you’ve got to start providing your IRD number and then the IRD starts to check the facts against your IRD number, there could well be much more expense than there is in what goes on now. I don’t know whether that will happen or not, because the moment you put your IRD number on something, and if the Secretary for Local Government then gave the IRD the opportunity or the ability to check that, or this Parliament did through legislation, it may well become a much more expensive and more cumbersome scheme to operate than it is now.

I think, Madam Speaker, you yourself brought a rates bill to Parliament, as a member’s bill, not that long ago, which enabled some of our older members of our society to claim rates rebates back on, I guess what could be called, body corporate properties. That’s probably not quite the word, but something like that. So that’s another issue that’s been through this Parliament in recent times.

Anyway, I am standing as a National Party member of Parliament and we certainly are not supporting this bill. Thank you.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I thank the previous members for their kind words about my chairmanship, but before it goes to my head, one thinks they may be simply looking for content, for filibustering—but thank you very much.

This might be the only opportunity I have to speak on this bill, because I’m not the Green Party spokesperson for it, but I do want to thank members of the select committee, the Minister, and the submitters. It was a really collegial process, and I do thank everyone involved. A total of 103,000 people applied for a rates rebate in 2019, so this is about helping people get access to support faster and simpler, and over the course of the consideration of this bill, I had to see a justice of the peace myself for some banking forms, and the line was snaking out of the Karori Community Centre. I was near the front. It was closing in 15 minutes’ time. I don’t know what happened to all the people snaking behind me, and these are daily experiences Kiwis face. So I’m incredibly proud of the fact that we’re making it easier.

There are three big points I want to very quickly talk about. One is the commencement date. In this COVID environment, I’m glad we’re bringing this forward, because people can get access to support faster, which is wonderful. The second is our comment around IRD numbers and potential data matching. That’s about, I think, future proofing the system and making it even easier to administer in the future. The third point I’d like to raise is the National Party’s objection in their minority view. Of course there are still the offence provisions in the existing Act which apply. Nothing’s actually changing there.

A point to the future—obviously it’s owners who can apply for a rates rebate. We’re increasingly becoming a rental-based society; so I think we need to have a look at that in the future, as renters currently cannot access this. So I think we need to have that conversation in the future. Kia ora koutou.

Madam Speaker, thanks for the call. Very delighted to stand here on a Friday morning in urgency to speak on the Rates Rebate (Statutory Declarations) Amendment Bill.

I have two concerns about this bill that I’d like to raise. First is around the commission’s report that came out recently, which stated that this is not well-targeted at all. And the reason for that: if you take people who own their homes, they pay rates to their council; it can be anywhere from $1,500, a couple of thousand a year, right up to thousands of dollars a year, depending where you live in New Zealand. Often the conversation, especially around older people, people like Ian McKelvie’s vintage—

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: He’s young!

He is young. People that have mortgages, often the conversation is if someone doesn’t have a mortgage, they don’t have their income—they may have a pension—often the focus is on them. But the real focus of this bill needs to be on people that rent, elderly people that rent. They can’t get any relief through this, because they pay their rent to the landlord, and the landlord is the one that pays the rates to the local council. But the commission came out and said that this bill is not well-targeted, because it needs to focus on the people who rent; often sometimes they don’t have high incomes. They need assistance. They’re the ones we need to be focusing on. So that’s my first real point around the Rates Rebate Scheme. The commission also came up with their report stating that this is not only untargeted, the whole system needs to be revamped, and that system they came up with was a national rates postponement scheme, which would, basically, better fulfil the purposes that this bill wants to do.

I want to acknowledge the Minister; I can see what she’s trying to do. But I also want to reflect on some of the comments from the Government members during this debate. Some of them, one of them in particular, mentioned the fact that we want to make it easier for people to access rates rebates. Well, there are plenty of justices of the peace. They’re wonderful people. Their role is a very important role, and as MPs you get to know them reasonably well. To become a JP, you have to go through a process, you have to meet up with your electorate MP, and you get a feel for which part of the communities need which type of JP. But to go and see a JP is not a huge process; it doesn’t take months. You, basically, make an appointment—it’s free, it’s accessible—and we heard from the Government members saying they’re trying to remove cost. Well, it’s not that hard to go and see a JP, and they perform a very important role. They, basically, safeguard us.

Deborah Russell mentioned the comment around, “We don’t trust Kiwis.” Well, Deborah Russell, you’re a former accountant, I believe—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I’m not, actually, Mr Walker. I won’t take offence at that, though.

I am. So that member would have heard of the fraud triangle. And the fraud triangle is, basically, as we know, a triangle has three sides. And this is around the motivation when people want to commit fraud. So you’ve got opportunity on one side. The second part of that fraud triangle is pressure, and then the third side is the rationale behind it. So, when you lower the safeguards, the likelihood of fraud being committed increases when there’s more conditions present.

So, if we look at one condition: pressure. If you’ve got someone who lives or maintains a high lifestyle or they have pressure from their friends or family to live a certain lifestyle, there’s pressure for them to commit fraud. The second one: rationale. Often you may get someone out there that wants to “borrow” money from the Government, or rip the Government off, but in their head they’re borrowing it because the Government can afford it. And then there’s the third part, which I want to touch on, which is around opportunity. Removing the role of the JP—the justice of the peace—to look at the documentation, to see that there’s a genuine need here, presents an opportunity for someone. That’s what this bill does. It removes the JP from the process. The process now becomes a council issue—it’s, basically, form-filling. You’ve given the opportunity for people to commit fraud on this bill.

All this bill is doing—a well-intentioned bill which will give the opportunity to a lot of people out there to commit fraud, and that probably goes to the heart of this Government: well-intentioned. They had the cheek to stand here this morning and say that no one will abuse this process. We only need to go back a few weeks. Look what happened with the wage subsidy scheme. How many businesses are already coughing up, paying that back? A wee lesson for the Government: it’s well-intentioned but there are people out there that will rip off the system, and our responsibility as MPs is to ensure our taxpayer money is spent wisely. And this has hit a sore point, because now they’re all chipping up, they’re all waking up, they know it. So I urge any member of the Government to explain how this system is not going to be ripped off. It’s not well-targeted, as the commission stated, the whole system needs a complete revamp, and for those reasons we do not support the bill.

What a miserable lot they are on the other side of the House, denying a group of New Zealanders, mainly senior citizens, a slightly easier process to access a little bit of financial support when they don’t have much income. Well, on this side of the House, we stand the side of the Citizen Advice Bureaus, we stand on the side of Grey Power, we stand on the side of the Waimate District Council, the Waitomo District Council, the Wellington City Council, who all submitted in favour of this bill because they know it’ll make life a little bit easier for the people they serve. I look forward to members on the other side of the House fronting up at Grey Power during the election campaign and saying why they oppose this bill which makes life a little bit easier for those people. On this side of the House, we’re here to support all New Zealanders and make progress. That’s what we’re doing. I commend this bill to the House.

Madam Speaker, firstly I acknowledge the Minister for Local Government, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, for clearly a well-intentioned bill, also acknowledging the chair of the Social Services and Community Committee, Gareth Hughes, for his contributions, in that he confirmed that it is an attempt to provide an easy, immediate solution for the targeted New Zealanders who will benefit from this bill.

The point to consider, again, is whether this is the best bill—under the circumstances—for most New Zealanders. The Productivity Commission inquiry points out that the bill will lead to an unfair situation, because it does not treat alike the situation of renters who are on low incomes, and the targeted beneficiary of this bill, and New Zealanders who are in low-income households who live in their own homes and therefore do not rent and who are not paying mortgages. The bill will create a different treatment for a like type of New Zealander, making it, essentially, unfair to those who will not qualify for it.

Now, the accommodation supplement has been the Government’s principal form of assistance to the low-income household where they live in their own home. However, because of the very low costs of that—of living in their own homes—they are not able to secure that assistance. This bill making it easier for them, but only them, is something that needs to be thought out; especially because, in taking on this bill, the Government will take responsibility for paying out the rates rebate to the New Zealanders that are targeted to receive it.

The requirement to make a statutory declaration is not difficult; as my colleague Hamish Walker has pointed out, the process is accessible. The presence of people who are authorised to take statutory declarations is sufficient. If it appears that they are lacking, maybe that is one area that can be looked at as well. I have been a solicitor for a while in New Zealand and have never really looked at statutory declarations as an opportunity to make money, but really as an opportunity to help. The many numbers of people who come and walk into my office on a regular basis for this, the citizens advice bureau themselves have made themselves always available and always, always—if not almost always, there will be someone who will be on hand to take a statutory declaration. The purpose of the verification of the statutory declaration really just provides a reasonable and necessary check on people making declarations. If this is considered to be too arduous, then, as the Productivity Commission had suggested, maybe there would be a better scheme, a national scheme which would have Government collaborate with local government and suitable financial institutions to design a better scheme.

In fact, the Productivity Commission itself suggests that this Rates Rebate (Statutory Declarations) Amendment Bill be abolished.

Order! The member’s time has expired.

This is a very important bill that we’re debating in urgency this morning. We support the whole scheme about the rates rebate, but we do have some issues with this bill that I want to talk about this morning.

But, I guess, looking back, because it’s always good to look back while you look forward, I had seven years on the Horowhenua District Council before I came into this place; so I understand grassroots and I understand how ratepayers rely—actually, quite a few of them rely—on this important scheme. But what we are going to debate this morning, and, indeed, we’ve had good contributions from this side of the House—probably found a little bit wanting on the other side. They don’t seem to want to engage with us today on this particular bill. But there is an issue, and that is about taking away the statutory declaration in this bill. It’s written in the bill here that this can be difficult, costly, and time-consuming. I used to be the Associate Minister of Justice who used to oversee the justices of the peace, and I got to know the JPs up and down the country very well. JPs do a fantastic job, and they are accessible. If I look in my community, my late father used to be a JP. He’d turn up every couple of weeks to the local library, which is very much a community centre now, and I know that happens in the Kāpiti Coast library as well. So JPs are very accessible to, effectively, sign off the paperwork to ensure this process is right.

Our concern is if that process indeed is going to be removed, it’s going to be very easy—well, too easy—for applicants to be able to, effectively, fiddle with the system, not be accountable. In the end, I have a fear that this bill could cost councils more than what it’s trying to save by some of the detailed work that needs to go on with the statutory declaration.

💬 Brett Hudson: It’s almost as easy to get wrong as accidentally getting your eligibility wrong on your superannuation application, isn’t it?

I’m not going to go there today, Mr Hudson, but your point is an interesting one. When I look at the engagement on this, because the whip for the Labour Party stood up and said that all these councils were in favour of it, and I thought it would be interesting to note for the House today that they received 10 submissions—ha, ha! It doesn’t seem like a huge amount of support to me—and heard oral evidence of four submitters in Wellington. So it’s interesting for the whip to stand up and say, “Oh, there’s widespread support on this.”

But right now, when you think what ratepayers are thinking about it, it’s the cost of their rates, and there are debates going on, raging in communities right now, because the annual plan process is upon councils, councils are settling on their rates for the next 12 months—a massive debate in the Horowhenua District Council, where the votes were almost split around the table about an increase. In the end, they decided to not have such a substantial increase, which I think the community, by and large, supports, because we find ourselves in a very unusual situation with COVID-19, where a thousand people are still lining up at the dole queue at WINZ a day. That is massive, isn’t it? So, when you think about the hardship of people that rely on the scheme, we’re going to have more ratepayers that are going to rely on this Rates Rebate Scheme because of the hardship that they find themselves in.

The other thing about this bill that I found rather interesting was that it talks about councils being able to design their own application form, and I thought: why on earth wouldn’t you want to streamline this process? Because one council will, potentially, have a different form to another council. This is going to put a lot more accountability on council staff to, effectively, tick the boxes and try and understand if the applicant is actually being true to their word, because there’s no statutory declaration, no JP oversight to look at the forms, to look the individual in the eye, to make sure that they are satisfied that everything is true and correct.

So this bill could end up costing councils more because of fraudulent activity, because someone—and I see there’s an opportunity for applicants to go online as well as the tried and tested paper-based method. Now, what we saw in COVID and the Zoom sessions—and I want to acknowledge Steven Joyce and the great work that he did rolling out ultra-fast broadband up and down New Zealand. We didn’t completely cover the whole country—we’ve still got black spots—but we relied very heavily on internet access when we were all locked down in our own homes. I think the online ability is good, through this bill, but there’s a caveat. It’s a bit like online voting, and that debate has been had and been booted around local authorities and even for our general election. Online voting is a concern to me because it’s just too easy to have fraudulent activity, and this is the concern that I have with this. Move away from a paper-based system, make it easier to go online with transactions; people go, “Yeah, that’s a great idea.” But then, once again, you don’t have the necessary oversight.

The other aspect that I thought was interesting was the data matching with IRD. I would have thought—because there’s been massive investment in the last Government and this Government in terms of IRD having to get their systems in place for a modern developing country like ours. Billions of dollars have been invested in IRD to make sure that their systems can actually be more accessible and work. So when I read that the Secretary for Local Government, which is, basically, the person that runs Internal Affairs, should consider applicants including their IRD number on the rates rebate application form—and “consider” means, well, what? Just have a fleeting glance at it? I’m not sure. I didn’t sit on the select committee, but could someone tell me if this issue was widely canvassed and debated?

💬 Agnes Loheni: We did talk about that.

So it was considered. And why wasn’t it—

💬 Agnes Loheni: There was no reassurance about how it was going to work.

Yeah, no reassurance from IRD, or from DIA—from both? Yeah. So it’s interesting. So I’m a little bit disappointed that when you think about the investment that’s been made in IRD—billions and billions of dollars into their software systems—why on earth couldn’t IRD provide a check with the IRD number being included? [Bell rung] Mr Speaker, I’m just going to wrap up in a moment. So that’s the bit where I have a concern, because it just looks a bit easy that the committee has—we’ve heard that the committee discussed it, but they’ve, effectively, passed the buck over to the Secretary for Local Government, and that, in my mind, is disappointing.

So, in summary, we can’t support this bill, because we haven’t been given enough assurances through the select committee stage that there won’t be fraudulent activity, potentially, as a result of making this application process easier. I’ve heard from our opponents over the other side. They say, “Oh, well, you stand up in front of Grey Power and talk about this in the election campaign.” Well, we support the Rates Rebate Scheme—we do wholeheartedly. It’s very important for those people that are struggling to make ends meet, and we know there are going to be more people, as a result of COVID-19, that are going to have to put their hand out and go through this very important scheme. What we don’t support is the checks and balances that are, effectively, being taken away, and we believe that this bill has the ability to even cost local authorities more in terms of potential fraudulent activity.

So there was an opportunity to get this right, with more checks and balances, through the select committee process, but, unfortunately, the Opposition couldn’t get their voices heard enough and were blocked. We’ll wait and see, in due course, whether our concerns about this bill come to pass. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. This is a good bill. I commend this bill to the House.