Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Foreign Affairs: 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.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. I move, That the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

It’s a pleasure to speak in support of the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill following its first reading on 26 July 2022. I’d like to thank the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee for their sterling work in the consideration of this bill. The committee tabled its report in November 2022, and it recommended that no amendments be made.

The bill is necessary to ensure that Government has the ongoing ability to issue loans to New Zealand citizens and permanent residents in accordance with the New Zealand consular functions. An unprecedented global pandemic and complex geopolitical events have highlighted how necessary it is for consular officials to have the ability to provide temporary financial assistance in the form of a consular loan. This doesn’t mean that it’s a free-for-all, but that specific criteria must be met before a consular loan can be considered—that includes that a person is in distress, exceptional circumstances exist, and lending money would provide short-term assistance consistent with New Zealand’s consular functions.

There are two key provisions of this bill. Firstly, the bill will create a permanent delegable statutory authority for the Minister of Foreign Affairs to issue consular loans to New Zealand citizens and their immediate family members—and, in rare cases, permanent residents who are overseas facing exceptional circumstances. Secondly, it will create retrospective statutory authority for all consular loans granted between July 2013—which saw a public finance amendment inadvertently remove the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s legal basis to issue consular loans—and June 2020, when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade received its current delegated authority from the Minister of Finance to lend money for this purpose. So the bill simply fixes an anomaly and reestablishes legislative authority for a longstanding practice. It does not seek to create a new policy to issue consular loans, but to create ongoing certainty around the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade ability to provide consular loans.

In summary, the bill does two things: it allows New Zealand’s consular officials to continue the longstanding practice of issuing consular loans and it corrects some unintended consequences for consular loans when the Public Finance Act was amended in 2013. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

I’m very happy to support this bill, the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill. Obviously, we’re only at the second reading at the moment. We have the committee stage and the third reading to go, but as we intimated on this side of the House during the first reading, we support the legislation.

This is a really good example of a practice which has been going for a long, long time. There were some statutory changes—and I might just highlight a little bit of that—which changed the legality of the process. So I think one of my first themes from this side of the House is to say that the idea of consular loans to support New Zealand citizens, and occasionally permanent residents—and I might elaborate on that slightly—is a positive thing. There is absolutely no dispute, I suspect, from any side of the House that New Zealanders overseas in distress are able to go to our consulates and embassies and get assistance, and consular loans are just one of the aspects that can be provided. The Minister who has just resumed his seat, Minister Webb, has pointed out that family members can be assisted as well.

The context to this is that it’s something that has happened for a long time. Consular loans have been a pretty standard activity. I think it was back in 1989 that there was some legislation—part of the Public Finance Act—which authorised this, but Parliament made changes in 2013 to that Act, and it was unknown at the time that the change to that Act meant that, actually, legally speaking—not morally or ethically, but legally speaking—the giving of consular loans was no longer legal. So, again, for listeners at home, it’s not to stress that anything wrong was happening; it’s just that all of a sudden it became illegal and, in effect, the new Public Finance Act 2013, or rather the new expression of it, said a very specific delegation must be given.

So this is a bill which is, in effect, doing two things. One is making it absolutely abundantly clear in a new piece of legislation, this Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill, that a permanent delegation is given to the chief executive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to exercise that authority to give consular loans, and it’s also retrospective to make it clear in respect of the loans that have been given in the past.

I just want to make one very brief comment. The Minister touched a few times on the exceptional nature of assisting New Zealand permanent residents. I don’t want to give particular examples here. People are welcome to go and read the New Zealand Herald. There are occasions when New Zealand permanent residents do need more assistance than we currently give, and I want to acknowledge through the Speaker that this is not precisely within the bill, but it’s an encouragement to the Government and future Governments to perhaps look at how our consulates and embassies not only help New Zealand citizens but New Zealand permanent residents as well to get further and fuller assistance. I really want to make that clear. Some assistance is given, but I feel that, in many ways, our permanent residents have pretty much all the rights of a citizen, and certainly those overseas require that as well. But with that, I would like to commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, it’s a pleasure to rise to take a call on the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill. This bill provides express statutory authority for the Minister of Foreign Affairs to continue the practice of issuing consular loans in exceptional circumstances to New Zealand citizens, and permanent residents in distress overseas, as the last resort. This is a practice that’s been going on for the last 25 years. The Minister has been assisting New Zealanders overseas. The need of this was highlighted during the pandemic where about 300-plus New Zealanders were assisted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, so amending this legislation is timely.

I’d like to thank the two submitters who submitted to the committee. One of them was asking for permanent residence to be included in this legislation, and the second one simply expressing his gratitude and saying that this bill provides him with comfort. So it’s a good bill; I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I also welcome the opportunity to speak to the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill. I wasn’t part of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee when it was considering this bill, so you may be wondering why I’m speaking on it. I was just wondering that myself, but we’ll do our best for at least a short contribution.

In the matter of making loans from consulates overseas to New Zealanders—by which, we mean not only New Zealand citizens but also permanent residents, as my friend and colleague Simon O’Connor has astutely pointed out—this is a longstanding practice, I understand. So, to some extent, it’s merely providing authority for that which has already been taking place, not only on the basis of that going forward but also to validate retrospectively or retroactively that which has already been taking place. I think that’s a worthwhile endeavour for our Parliament.

I’m reminded, of course, of the famous Shakespearean maxim “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” I think the reticence of the select committee to broaden the eligibility of lending reflects that we should rightly be reasonably tight in the circumstances in which the State would lend money to those who need help, only because we need to demonstrate clearly that they do need help. And, of course, that quote is from the famous Hamlet play. And for fans of Hamlet, they might have noticed there’s a new section 2AA. So, at some point, the drafters have a decision whether to insert a clause 2B or not to insert a clause 2B!

But anyway, with probably more on Hamlet and less on the bill, I think I’m perhaps the wrong “Bill”, actually—for those fans of the Bard. I think I should probably leave my contribution at around about that, and only add that we commend the bill to the House.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to take this call on the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill. It’s necessary to ensure that the Government has ongoing ability to issue loans to New Zealand citizens and permanent residents in accordance with New Zealand’s consular functions. But, essentially, it just tidies up the legislation to make it fit for purpose. So it’s for that reason that I commend the bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I rise in support—it appears, with the rest of the House—of the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill on behalf of my colleague Golriz Ghahraman. This is a short and technical bill, which we thank the Minister and the officials who worked on it for bringing here for us today.

We mihi also to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee and your officials. We understand that there were just two submissions—and one of them just to say thanks. So that must have been a great day at the office—but the main point, of course, being that no changes were made to the bill from that process.

So we note these loans have been going on for a long, long time, and it is the worst thing to be stuck overseas. I am thankful—I am very, very thankful—that we have a mechanism whereby our people can get hold of our consulate or our embassy and make their way home. We saw it with COVID, people trying to get back here. You just never know what might happen around the world that gets you stuck.

I see that we need to do this. We have to have the explicit authorisation for the changes to the Public Finance Act, and that seems all good with us, so we commend this bill to the House.

I rise on behalf of ACT on this happy occasion to say that we too support the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill.

I wanted to take the opportunity to recount actually seeking help from our embassy in Washington, DC. One day, I actually needed to get something signed by a New Zealander and, being in Washington, not knowing any other New Zealanders having just arrived, I went to the embassy. It was a very interesting experience, because, first of all, there were all these Kiwis who only talked to each other. I actually had forgotten how bad we sound, having been in the States for a while. So we heard all of these flat vowels.

They also had a fountain and lots of ferns, so it was almost like entering the New Zealand bush—this wee oasis in the middle of a city of madness: Washington, DC. I needed to get something signed and they did it. This woman who worked at the embassy said that she was certain that she was supposed to charge me a fee for the service, but she couldn’t find the piece of paper that said how much the fee was—so she said she’d just do it as a freebie.

I think that’s probably a good summary of how New Zealand consular staff and embassies around the world have sought to help Kiwis far from home for a long time, and we should be very grateful for the work that our diplomatic corps do—with the possible exception of the recent arrival in Dublin. However, for the most part, they’ve done a wonderful job and made New Zealanders proud and welcome around the world.

But, of course, while it’s nice to be friendly, as Stuart Nash has recently discovered it’s also very important to follow the rules—even when you’re trying to help people. That’s something that this bill helps to put back in place, in the sense of consular loans. If an embassy overseas is to give some money to a stranded Kiwi, the thing is that money spent from the taxpayer can only be spent if there’s a proper appropriation made by this Parliament. It’s an old principle: no taxation without representation.

So it’s important that if that money is going to be taken from taxpayers and applied to a purpose, then there’s actually a proper procedure under the Public Finance Act to allow that to be done. I’ve got to commend the Government for making sure that these few hundreds or thousands—maybe a few tens of thousands—of dollars of small and formal consular loans are done by the book.

But what about the $55 billion allocated to COVID? As I read in the Herald earlier this week, the Treasury can now say that of the estimated $55 billion allocated to COVIDspecific appropriations, $36 billion had been spent. They actually don’t know what a large portion of that $55 billion was spent on. In fact, this Government has a terrible history of taking money that Parliament appropriates for one purpose and then spending it on something completely different.

A good example would be the $30 million that was used to buy the land at Ihumātao. Totally outside appropriation, as the Auditor-General found. So while it’s extremely important—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The member is speaking totally outside of this particular bill. So if you can come back to this, please.

Well, Madam Speaker, it’s a theme, isn’t it? While it’s very important that we are for a few tens of thousands of dollars doing the right thing, what would be good to see is if this Government—from Labour—could actually come to the House and start being a bit more fastidious about the way that they spend taxpayers’ money more generally.

But that doesn’t take anything away from this particular bill, which is a very good start. And long may “no taxation without representation” be honoured by Governments of New Zealand—starting with this one, who have a bit of retrospective work to do. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill.

In Committee

Clause 1 Title