Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill

Mr Speaker, I present a legislative statement on the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee to consider the bill.

The bill ensures the Government has the ongoing ability to issue loans to New Zealand citizens and permanent residents who require consular assistance while overseas and are facing exceptional circumstances. The bill, by empowering the Minister of Foreign Affairs and their delegates, allows New Zealand’s consular officials to continue the longstanding practice of issuing consular loans where it is essential to ensure the immediate safety and wellbeing of citizens offshore. That practice has been in place for at least the last 25 years.

The bill is necessary to provide the express statutory authority required to issue loans under the Public Finance Act 1989. The practice of issuing consular loans did not require express authority under the Public Finance Act until that Act was amended in 2013. The need to provide express authority to enable the ongoing provision of consular loans was only identified by officials in 2020, a period of unusually high demand for consular loans caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill provides that loans may be issued to a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident who is in distress and where exceptional circumstances exist and if doing so would provide short-term assistance and be consistent with New Zealand’s consular functions. Such loans are an important tool for assisting New Zealanders offshore whose immediate health and safety is at risk and who have no other means of financial assistance in order to resolve that situation.

The bill also validates consular loans already granted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in good faith during the period after the Public Finance Act was amended in 2013 and before the ministry received in 2020 its current delegated authority from the Minister of Finance to lend money for this purpose. By advancing this bill, we will preserve an important tool in our tool kit for assisting New Zealanders who find themselves in distress and without other means of immediate assistance as they travel overseas and engage with the world. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I’m going to cut to the chase: National will support this bill, though we’re slightly confused—and this is not throwing stones at the Minister. We’re sort of slightly confused by when, in many ways, going through quite a fulsome process that may have been able to be sorted through a statutes amendment bill or somewhat, but we can raise that in select committee, and that’s, again, not throwing stones. I think this is a good bill; it’s certainly a necessary bill. So I just want to reiterate, again, National’s support.

It’s a very small bill that takes up four pages in total, particularly if you include the schedule, and, with no offence to the Parliamentary Counsel Office, had they formatted it slightly differently, it would only be two pages of actually substantial legislation. So there’s not a lot in it. But you know, we’re in Opposition and therefore I’m going to see how long I can talk on this, which is me attempting to be generous to the other side of the House.

💬 Hon Aupito William Sio: Come on!

Look, it’s a bill that’s come about—and William Sio is optimistic I’d run out then, but no, sorry, I have not.

This is a situation where law changes have had unintended, unexpected, and certainly unanticipated consequences. As the Minister who’s sponsoring this bill—Hon Nanaia Mahuta, who has just resumed her chair—has pointed out, there’s something called the Public Finance Act of 1989, which sets out, strangely enough, the use of public finances, and, in particular, what the Crown can and cannot do. There were changes in 2013. I was in Parliament at the time, but well, I’m a straight-up, honest man; I can’t remember anything about it. But clearly—clearly—it made changes which had flow-on effects. So I’m trying to introduce some humour into, basically—and a very bad attempt.

But in 2013 there were some legal changes to that Act which have then had flow-on effects into the space of consular loans. So for those at home or anyone in the House who is still listening, it’s always been the practice that New Zealanders, be you a citizen or a permanent resident—or, it should be added, another person who is attempting to assist a permanent resident or a citizen—our consulates, our embassies are able to provide loans. Really important to stress that word. It is a loan; they are not gifts. I think it will actually be interesting for the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee to inquire, more out of curiosity, how large these loans can be, on what terms they are given, and, to be honest, it would be interesting to know what does or doesn’t happen if they are not paid back. But in practice, these loans have been given out.

But it was in 2020 that officials—and it will have been, I strongly suspect, because of the COVID dynamics and people desperate to get home, finding it very, very difficult and certainly expensive—realised that actually these consular loans being given out were being done illegally. So this piece of legislation is, in effect, doing two things: one, making it legal, once this gets Royal assent, to give out loans, and, unusually for parliamentary practice, it also looks backwards, and so it’s going to validate loans that have been given out since 2013, as I say. That retrospective legislation, as you know, is relatively rare. I think all of us—well, most of us; I can’t speak for the Green Party—don’t like to see retrospectivity, but I think in this case, it makes a lot of sense.

For the legal beagles—the likes of Christopher Penk and others—I’m sure they have read the Public Finance Act 1989. I did take the time to do so. Every good MP has done so; I haven’t. You can read into that what you want, but no, section 65K is what’s, effectively, the offending part, which has caused a lot of these problems—again, not intended. Section 65K says the Crown must not lend money except under statute. Except as expressly authorised by any Act, the Crown must not lend money to a person or an organisation. As people will know in the House, we pass legislation all the time to authorise the Crown to be able to spend, loan, give money, so social welfare, health, defence—you name it. Obviously, what powers are given to the Minister of Finance to borrow, you know, like billions of dollars a day—that’s all explicitly done in statute. So where we’ve ended up with these consular loans, it was not explicitly written into legislation, and therefore the Crown, ipso facto, has not been allowed to do such loaning.

So this is a good bill. It’s going to, ultimately, allow the Public Finance Act of 1989 in area 65K to be honoured correctly, and, again, to make it expressly authorised via this Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill, to make it very, very clear that the Crown can lend money in these circumstances, and, once again, introducing a retrospectivity to ensure that those loans done in the past are legal.

So to begin finishing up there—I mean, I’ve noticed I’ve only spent sort of five minutes; I could start the speech again. But no, in all seriousness, thanks to the officials—obviously, the likes of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade I assume—who had detected this and have brought it to the Minister’s attention, to acknowledge the Minister as she’s going to shepherd this through the Parliament. As I indicated right at the start, the National Party, all humour aside—well, attempt at humour—is going to be supportive of this. We look forward to it coming to the select committee and, as I say, it’s only a small curio or a curiosity. It would be interesting in the initial briefing to get some sort of sense of these consular loans, how often they are given, what sort of amounts are given out, and, as I say, how quickly they are repaid or otherwise. I just, again, want to stress that, particularly to the Minister or her officials listening, that’s not to block the bill or anything. It’s just, I have to say, a curiosity from this member at least. So it gives me great pleasure—seven minutes in; now I feel OK with the whips. And William Sio’s laughing; all is well in the world. I commend it to the House.

It’s a pleasure to follow the speaker on the other side in support of this bill.

This is not about new policy. This is a technical correction in the bill. For over 25 years, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has assisted New Zealanders in distress overseas by providing temporary financial assistance by way of a consular loan to them when they had no other means of financial assistance and their immediate health and safety was at risk. So for over 25 years, this has been done in accordance with the authority in the provisions of the Public Finance Act 1989 until the Act was amended in 2013.

Anyway, so that’s what we’re doing tonight. We saw in the pandemic how necessary this was when New Zealanders and their families were, for a number of reasons—lost passports or could not get home safely—required consular assistance, and they were able to receive that consular assistance.

Many times the provision of safety, shelter, when returning home, was not possible during the pandemic. So a majority of those loans were issued at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. They were typically around $3,000 or $4,000. So I think it was really, really—still necessary at this point in time. But as I said, we were doing this under the provisions of the Act 1989 until 2013 and somebody—anyway, so we’re correcting that.

Happy to support the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the tabling of this bill for consideration.

Look, I do confirm that National support this legislation. It is an anomaly that needs to be fixed. The work that is done by our missions overseas in helping or assisting New Zealanders is extremely important for those who fall on hard times or who are desperate. It gives us the opportunity to help them to make sure they get home.

There is a question for other speakers of the Government as to why this needs to go to a committee and then come back to the House and take up extra time. If it is straightforward, just fixing an anomaly that was there previously and there are no challenges with it, I’m not sure why we’re not just taking all stages with this one debate and then voting. And then for those who are uncertain, it’s fixed; and for those who are needing assistance, they can get it.

The Minister may also be able to instruct one of her colleagues, as this has been found to be not legal at the moment, if it’s been happening from the moment the Government found it was illegal, are they still providing assistance and doing so illegally? In which case, there is a necessity to do this a lot more quickly.

The final point, I think, is in around our immigration settings. There will be New Zealanders overseas who are in relationships long term, who are married, and who want to return to New Zealand, and their spouses or partners don’t have the visas to allow them to come to New Zealand as permanent residents or as citizens. Once they are here or they’ve applied overseas, they will get those sorts of things given to them, but can that assistance be provided to them and their children—a New Zealander overseas in London, for instance, who for whatever reason has fallen on hard times and must return to New Zealand—can the assistance be provided? Perhaps they have been in a relationship or married for a period of time and have children. Is the assistance available to them also, given that they are not New Zealand citizens or permanent residents? They may like the Government to provide clarity for us on that. But it is important that this provision is available to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and that the funds that have been given out against the law are rectified as quickly as possible.

I don’t mean to be dramatic, but, to me, this technical bill, the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill, as has been described by my colleague the Hon Aupito William Sio, is actually also about what it means to be a New Zealander, because it’s incredibly important, if one finds oneself overseas in distress, and we’ve heard that word used, in difficult circumstances, with no back-up, alone and desperate, to know that the country that one belongs to is going to step in and provide support and that the details of how that will be sorted out—it will be sorted out fairly and that help is available. There’s incredible social capital in that, and that can’t be underestimated, because that speaks to our democratic institutions. We can’t have democracy without trust and faith in our institutions, and so these small numbers of consular loans actually have a huge impact on those who receive them and the goodwill that they have to our country. I certainly know that I would want to know that my family, myself, could rely on that from the country of Aotearoa New Zealand should we need it.

The second part of this bill is technical, and it has been said in the House that it needs to clean up what has been illegal loans. That’s incredibly important as well, because to maintain that trust in our democratic system, we need things to be legal, we need our processes, our rule of law to be correct. So we are doing that cleaning up tonight to make sure that what we have is in order after the 2013 amendment that my colleague spoke to. So, on those two grounds, this is actually quite an important bill even though it is technical, and it’s a real pleasure to hear that others are supporting it. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to very briefly speak on the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill. As others have said, this is an important bill but it is very simple and timely. It’s just the change to the statutory authorisation to give the Minister of Foreign Affairs explicit ability to issue or continue to issue consular loans to New Zealanders overseas when they need them. I’ve been in that position, as many have in the House, where we have been overseas or lived overseas, and it is heartening to know that we have consular support, including financial support, when and if we do need it. Of course, those types of supports have become more and more essential in a time of pandemic, and our connectedness with our overseas whānau has come to the fore or been challenged over the past 2½ years. So it’s a technical bill, it’s a simple bill, it’s a timely bill, and we do commend it to the House.

Well, thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in support of this Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill. As others have said, it’s quite a straightforward bill, for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s not actually a bill that changes policy. It doesn’t change what happens. It’s already, as the explanatory note and general policy statement say, a longstanding practice to issue consular loans, which previously didn’t require express authority under the Public Finance Act until that Act was changed in 2013. Now, that means for the last nine or so years, for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade through its embassies around the world to issue a loan to a New Zealander who found themselves stranded overseas, they would be technically breaking the law. So this bill tonight is not changing the policy. It is, rather, retrospectively, or at least for the future, making legal something that everyone accepts should happen but technically is not legal at the moment.

It also is worth noting that this is not free money that will be handed out to any New Zealander who may have run out of money at the pub. There are specific criteria for consular loans. You have to be in distress, exceptional circumstances must exist, and it must relate to a person’s immediate health or safety. So it’s not as though this is a lender; it’s more a lender of last resort for people that find themselves in deep difficulty while overseas.

And I think there is something—perhaps not uniquely Kiwi about it, because people from many different countries travel and get themselves into all sorts of trouble. But I think it is perhaps more Kiwi than for most countries to have this network and this kind of assistance. There’s not many of us and we’re from all different walks of life, but the one thing we have in common is that we are travellers. If you’re a New Zealander, there’s one thing I know about you for sure, and it’s actually the only thing I can be certain of, given the great diversity of people that make our country home and call themselves New Zealanders. But I can be sure that, at some point, you or your ancestors have paddled, sailed, flown or otherwise got yourselves to New Zealand for a better tomorrow. We are the quintessential nation of immigrants. We are people who have travelled further across the globe to give our children a better tomorrow than anyone else. Some people will say, “Actually, what about Australians?” I just make the point that Australians, if you look at the map, haven’t travelled quite as far as New Zealanders for a better life. And some people who know their history are also aware that Australians did not travel quite so voluntarily either.

To travel to seek a better tomorrow on different parts of the world is a quintessentially Kiwi thing. And often we find that we want to explore the rest of the world and find out what else is out there. We are a country that has perfected the OE—and that’s the second time in recent history that the Prime Minister’s tried to defend herself against my charges she’s made New Zealand unattractive to young people, by pointing out that her and I both spent time and learnt overseas. Well, the OE is something that means young New Zealanders find themselves travelling and may often get into situations of bother and difficulty. And if the bank of mum and dad is not immediately available, a consular loan may be what gets them out of trouble.

I, personally, in my travels, have never taken advantage of something like that. I have had some interesting times out there, but one incident that I always recall was a time, probably about 15 years ago, I was in DC and I needed to get some documents notarised by a New Zealand passport holder. So I went to the Kiwi pub in New York a couple of days before, and, ironically, there were no Kiwis there. I was in DC a couple of days later, and I looked up and found the New Zealand embassy. And what an oasis of Kiwi-ness in the middle of that mad city was our embassy! The funny thing was, I’d been living in North America, with Canadians and Americans, for a few years—my own accent had started to take on a bit of their timbre—and these Kiwis inside this embassy, I think they only talk to each other, because I got in there and it was just an oasis of flat vowels [Speaks with an exaggerated New Zealand accent] and they’re all talking like this. And I thought, what a wonderful thing. The way they had it set up, they had, you know, mist and fern and ponga fronds inside, and they’d really made a great effort of making this oasis of Kiwi-ness. I got there and I found someone that worked there who was obviously a Kiwi, and I got them to notarise my documents and that was all good to go. And then I said, “Well, you know, is there a fee?” And they said, “Oh, look, bugger it, we don’t know. We probably should charge it, but we don’t know how, so it’s on the house.” And off I went on my merry way, to continue my exploration of the capital of the United States. It was a good time, made all the richer by being able to visit New Zealand’s network of embassies around the world.

So I always think, when I think of these consular loans and this extension that the Parliament is ratifying tonight, or at least putting through the first reading, of the role that having that network of embassies around the world can play for our small, or at least numerically small, nation of people who love to travel. Because, despite biological reality, Kiwis certainly do fly. And if we’re going to be flying, I think that it’s important that our laws—in very limited circumstances, with the obligation to pay it back—allow our embassies and consulates to advance moneys to New Zealand citizens who find themselves in distress and need to borrow some money immediately for their health and safety to be preserved. So, with those thoughts recorded, I would like to further commend this bill to the House on behalf of the ACT Party. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill. For over 25 years the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been assisting New Zealanders in distress overseas by providing temporary financial assistance by way of a consul loan to them when they are in distress or when they don’t have other means of financial assistance and their immediate health or safety is at risk. This is an important service for New Zealanders in distress.

COVID-19 was a good example, when thousands of Kiwis were stuck overseas, and some of them didn’t have any means of assistance. And so as COVID-19 has shown, the circumstances can change quickly for any of us, really. As someone who has a lot of family links overseas, when things go wrong for me I like to look around and then, you know, be able to go to my embassy for assistance. In some places this could be quite crucial and critical; in fact, it could be lifesaving. So because of that this bill is quite technical but in a way it’s also straightforward and simple, and it’s essential. So I commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I join others across the House in commending the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill to the House. The point of the legislation has been pretty well covered by others. I will just add that I think there’s a lot of good public law in it, small as it may be, and, of course, all public law is good public law, as I’m sure we all appreciate.

It’s actually an exercise in emphasising the importance of the rule of law, in a way, because this is saying that the Government and its agencies are not above the law. I think it was President Nixon who famously or infamously commented that “When the President does that, it means it’s not illegal.” But, of course, if the New Zealand Government does a thing that is not authorised by law, or in fact is expressly prohibited by law, then it is, nevertheless, under our constitutional arrangements, capable of being illegal or, perhaps I should say, at least not lawful.

So it’s important and appropriate that the Government and Parliament take seriously the fact that, at the moment, on our statute book we don’t have the ability for our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and its various representatives overseas to make the loans that others have referred to. So we don’t even need to concern ourselves with the theoretical possibility of an action that’s not expressly authorised but nevertheless may be legal because it’s not prohibited. In fact, as others have explained, an amendment to the Public Finance Act 1989, which was made nearly 10 years ago, put the situation such that loans cannot be made in these circumstances. Prior to that, as others, from the Minister onwards, have explained, it had been a longstanding practice that New Zealanders in distress would be able to have loans made to them in certain circumstances, and the criteria are set out in this bill, presumably carrying on that previous tradition and, indeed, as I say, authorisation that such loans could be made.

The reason that this is important, as I say, is to demonstrate and enable, indeed, the New Zealand Government to comply with the law. And to do that it needs to provide this authority going forward, but also to look backwards for that intervening period where such loans have not been lawful and to say, “Well, actually we’re deciding that those things we will regard now as having been lawful, notwithstanding they took place in the way we’ve described.” So it’s an exercise in retrospectivity.

Ordinarily, of course, the law—well, at least I should say, sometimes the law frowns upon retrospectivity, most obviously in the criminal law. We don’t make offences or punishments that didn’t exist at the time that the offence or the act or omission was committed or took place, but in this case it’s something of a victimless crime. There’s no particular reason not to allow these things to be retrospectively validated. Frankly, that’s good for the good name of the New Zealand Government. It’s also good for the individuals, the citizens, or permanent residents, as the case may be, who are overseas and who have been made such loans in their distress and, as others have pointed out, subject to various terms and conditions of the repayment.

The criteria that are set out in this legislation are simple enough on their face. As others have said, at the select committee it will be an interesting exercise to understand the limits of the powers and maybe interrogate that a little bit. The Minister herself may already have a good feel for that, because it is the Minister of Foreign Affairs from time to time who is given such authorisation. I don’t know the extent to which she or he would be able to delegate those powers again. That’s, to me, quite an interesting point and, again, it might be thrashed out at the select committee. But the Minister must be satisfied that the person is in distress—“satisfied” as in satisfied that that condition is met, of course, not satisfied in the sense of deriving any satisfaction from it—also, that exceptional circumstances exist. So not only some manner of distress but also, I presume, an inability to gain equivalent assistance elsewhere, maybe an inability to take out a loan locally for reasons of not having a banking or other sort of commercial arrangement possible in that country, maybe due to lack of a legitimate or acceptable local identification and so forth; also, that short-term assistance would be provided.

So for all these reasons, National has been supporting the bill. We think it’s an important measure to tidy up the statute book and allow these loans retrospectively. So we commend the bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I just intend to take a brief call this evening, because what this bill seeks to do is to, effectively, fix an issue of a technical nature now that it’s been brought to the attention of the House by the Minister. Mr Penk is right, when he talks about the retrospective nature of the legislation and how it’s an important balance that any Parliament needs to consider in terms of whether legislative provision should be one that includes a retrospective approach. At the moment, the process is clearly not satisfactory in law.

What is this bill seeking to achieve? Well, it’s seeking to achieve a fairly straightforward opportunity for New Zealanders and Kiwis who—whether they’re on holiday, whether they’re on business—for whatever reason, they are somewhere overseas when they go to, as Mr Seymour puts it, the oasis that we know either as a consulate, an embassy, or a high commission, that there is a straightforward process to provide financial support to whānau who are in dire need, in unfortunate circumstances, and who might be meeting a particular need around health and safety. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. And not to be out of step with anybody tonight, I also stand in support of the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill tonight. I think most people, as has been evidenced by the contributions tonight, would agree that providing practical support is a really important service to the New Zealanders who find themselves in distress overseas. As we all know, circumstances can change. There’s things that we’ve witnessed on several occasions over the last two or three years and someone can, for a variety of reasons, simply get caught without the means to get home. And when that happens, it’s incredibly important that they can look to their New Zealand Embassy for that support.

So as has been well traversed tonight, the bill simply seeks to re-establish the legislative authority for what is a longstanding practice, and it’s certainly not seeking to create any new policy approach. What we do know is, since 2014, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has provided consular loans to around 443 New Zealanders to either return home or to simply shelter in safety when returning home isn’t the best—or even possible—solution. What we also know is those loans are typically around about $3,000 to $4,000, and they’re commonly for replacement passports or for flight tickets home.

The retrospective nature of this piece of legislation has been mentioned, and while retrospective legislation is unusual, it is certainly appropriate—as has been commented on tonight in this particular case—because it doesn’t actually change those rights and responsibilities between the two parties, between the ministry or between the recipient of the loan.

So to summarise, the bill is needed simply to correct an error and to ensure that the consular loans can continue to be accessed by New Zealanders in need and given with the proper authority. So I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call, the final call for the National Party, on the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill this evening. It’s lovely to be back in the House after the recent parliamentary recess. I think, for me, that highlighted one of the reasons why this is actually quite timely and important to have this going through the House now. We’ve heard a number of, I think, pretty apt descriptions around why this is appropriate and necessary. Indeed, I support those, in terms of the general tidying up of a slight error that had been in place for a number of years, actually, and had gone through largely unnoticed. And, while still enabling the intent to occur, it was actually not specifically operating under that delegated authority. So it is good to tidy this up, and I say “timely” because we’ve seen, over the last few weeks—last couple of months, really—a significant increase in the number of Kiwis now starting to travel again as the borders reopen, as the world re-engages and reconnects after COVID-19. We are seeing a lot more Kiwis taking that opportunity to embark on their OE or to travel again for business or to go and see family members, or whatever it may be. There’s any number of reasons for travel, and I think, personally, it’s a fantastic thing for Kiwis to do, to get out and see the world.

I was actually fortunate enough to be part of a parliamentary delegation, just in the last few weeks, that travelled to Europe. For me, I really enjoyed the opportunity to get up there, because I love travelling but also to engage on trade- and defence-related topics, which are really relevant. But, on that delegation, every one of the members of that delegation lost our luggage in Frankfurt. Now, this is part of the chaos that’s going on up there at the moment. But, for me, it just highlighted that unexpected things can happen at any time. I think that’s part of the intent of this bill: it’s to enable an appropriate response to be made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or the Minister specifically, to support a Kiwi, a permanent resident or citizen, to actually have some support in one of those situations where something unexpected has happened and they have been left short, with no funds or no access to funds, or any number of other scenarios—no identification documents or whatever it may be. So having the ability for our consular services to provide that support is an important consideration, I think.

It’s nice to have that backstop, for those Kiwis that are travelling, and for us to be able to provide that sort of support as well, to know that we can aid Kiwis when they’re going through a particular challenge like that, which, of course, would be extremely stressful for anyone who was facing those sorts of circumstances where they were unable to get back home or had no money, lost their passport, any combination of those sorts of factors—illness, injury—where they just need some support and they just want to get back to their family and friends to get on with life in the love and care of their home environment. So tidying up this little glitch, I think, is particularly timely given we are seeing now so many Kiwis starting to spread their wings again and travel around the world. So, on that note, I happily commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. And talking about timely, isn’t it a coincidence that as the other co-chair on the European delegation I get to take a call after my colleague Tim van de Molen. Actually, my colleague just mentioned that unexpected things can happen, and didn’t we see that on our delegation. Not only did our luggage get lost for five days but all members managed to get on quite civilly. And actually, I think we enjoyed each other’s company. So there you go—unexpected things happen.

So what this bill does is it deals with a very important tool that we have in our tool kit and a service that assists New Zealanders overseas in distress. It has been mentioned by several members now, but the COVID pandemic, of all things, has definitely shown us that circumstances at any stage can change very quickly, and people find themselves in hot water and for whatever reason are unable to get themselves home. And it’s very important that in those circumstances they can then look to their embassy and have some support and assistance.

So this is a service that has been provided for over 25 years, with the ministry assisting New Zealanders in distress by providing that temporary financial relief by way of a consular loan. I guess as the last speaker, I’ll just tie a few other strands together. One of the thoughts is that this bill is not seeking to create any new policy approach. It is retrospective, but it’s to make sure that we have the power continuing to make loans for providers in the legislation, as we have for the last 25 years.

It is also important to note, as a previous speaker has mentioned, that roughly between $3,000 and $4,000 is commonly the cost used to replace either passports or tickets home. The previous speakers also mentioned that this is a very small but important bill, and it means that we can ensure that we preserve an important tool we have to assist New Zealanders in distress overseas, and I commend it to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill be considered by the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.