Public Works Amendment Bill

I move, That the Public Works Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

The Public Works Act 1981 is an essential tool for addressing this country’s infrastructure deficit and delivering public works which our communities depend on, including roads, schools, and hospitals. The Public Works Amendment Bill introduces targeted amendments to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and clarity of the Public Works Act’s standard acquisition and compensation functions, while ensuring appropriate protections and processes exist for affected landowners. The bill also includes a new process to support restoration of public works damaged by severe weather and other emergency events.

As a reminder to the House, I will briefly summarise what this bill does. The Public Works Act 1981 allows land to be acquired for the Crown, local authorities, and network utility operators that are requiring authorities under the Resource Management Act 1991 and its replacement Planning Bill. The bill does not change the fundamental requirement that these entities must first attempt to acquire land by agreement through good-faith negotiations before compulsory acquisition may occur.

The bill includes a package of updates to acquisition processes in line with modern technology and practices, including surveying, public notices, use of electronic communication, and requirements to provide certain information to landowners. It promotes more flexible project delivery by enabling central and local government to coordinate and combine land acquisition.

The bill doubles the minimum negotiation time frame before compulsory acquisition may occur from three months to six months for Māori freehold land with more than four beneficial owners. The Minister for Land Information will also require the consent of the Minister for Māori Crown Relations or the Minister for Māori Development for any compulsory acquisition of protected Māori land.

The bill introduces an emergency recovery process to support the timely restoration of public works that are damaged in severe weather and emergencies. Rather than developing bespoke legislation, as was needed after Cyclone Gabrielle and the Kaikōura earthquakes, the bill contains a new process that can be activated by Order in Council when needed.

The bill updates and improves compensation settings for landowners, introducing an incentive payment of 10 percent of land value to a maximum of $100,000 where agreement is reached before a compulsory acquisition process begins.

I’d like to thank the members of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for their consideration of the bill. To all the organisations and individuals who took the time to make submissions, thank you for your contribution to help shape this essential piece of legislation. As a result of the select committee process, several changes have been made to the bill. These changes were largely technical in nature or offered additional clarity and do not alter the overall policy intent of the bill. In closing, I want to again acknowledge the valuable suggestions made by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee in their report to bring the bill to this stage.

I consider that the bill honours this Government’s commitment to deliver public works fairly and effectively. For that reason, I commend the Public Works Amendment Bill to the House.

💬 SPEAKER: The question is the motion to be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m at a slight disadvantage of having not been on the committee, but none the less have kept abreast and tended to, as Opposition spokesperson for land. Labour will support the bill. Labour does support the modernisation of what has been a reasonably fair and effective regime. Of course, as the Minister laid out, it is a long-standing principle of the compulsory acquisition of land, usually for infrastructural purposes. It has kind of worked—and I’ve worked with individuals who have been going through the process for roading projects. There have been more recently, of course, some more controversial ones where roads have gone right through farms—divided farms—and do create a real dilemma for landowners, going to the point of emotional stress and anxiety and concern. I’d like to acknowledge that, for many people involved in the process, this hasn’t always been ideal.

The compensation process has been, on balance, I’d say pretty fair, but, of course, if you don’t want to sell, then there’s no price that the Crown can pay for land that will satisfy your expectations. That, in particular, is true for Māori who have held land, who have been often allocated land or been given land back, of course, through a Treaty settlement process. Then along comes the Crown and says, “Well, we want it back again.” That, again, has created, I guess, some fear that this bill, in terms of the modernisation process, might be once again overriding Māori land rights. That is one of the things that I think the committee looked at. There’s been general agreement that that would move forward, but there are still some issues, I think, that colleagues of mine might raise through the process.

There is, of course, right at the front-end here an incentive for landowners to cooperate and to trade off. That might not always deliver the fair outcome; paying them a bonus, effectively, does have unintended consequences, possibly, through land valuation. As I say, I wasn’t on the committee to hear the submissions that went through that process. None the less, I guess it is fair enough that someone who is facing a compulsory acquisition order can move forward cooperatively; that they get paid a bonus for that land.

Can I say that the provisions that align the Public Service Act and line things up—I think that general modernisation process is sensible, as we go forward. One of the areas that the wider public might be concerned about is the allocation of rights, of course, to Transpower. That, when originally constructed and built as a network, was for the purposes of all New Zealanders. It still is, to some extent. But the way that the pricing for the electricity system—it’s now simply that Transpower value their assets, and then charge us accordingly. So the automatic right of access to land, the automatic right of expansion of the network and the increasing value of that Transpower network—it means that we’re going to pay for that. I would caution our Government, any Government into the future, that it doesn’t just give Transpower the right to kind of go out and invest, particularly if this Government of the day now, the coalition Government, opens the door to part-privatisation of Transpower—which I suspect might be on their agenda. If they were to do that and get money in from invest—I don’t hear any denial from over there. It’s a very, very valuable asset, and so I wouldn’t even actually trust a denial.

None the less, if Transpower was indeed to be part-privatised—because the National Government, in spite of their denials, did it last time. If they were to do that, then what, effectively, we would do is once again privatise the automatic right of return on poor infrastructural assets. I hope that members who were on the committee, who will have—I hope—considered this issue, can explain, and through the passage of the bill through this House, may try and hopefully convince us and reassure us that that won’t happen. Because we have acknowledged that Transpower sometimes does have some challenges getting access to land and constructing some of their new pylons. It should be something that landowners have a right to say no in, up to a point, because they are ugly and they certainly do have impacts on land value. Yeah, they are ugly, Mr Speaker; they are shocking. I don’t see you living in Christchurch underneath those pylons that go through the city. Indeed, it’s an unfortunate passage. I don’t want to get into a debate with you, Mr Speaker, but none the less—

💬 SPEAKER: Wise man.

—the right for Transpower to acquire land for new pylons is a significant onus on landowners. Indeed, this piece of legislation needs to ensure that there’s a balance between the right of the Crown to come in and take land, and the right of private landowners to negotiate fairly. I’m not sure where ACT—and they may in fact be opposing this piece of legislation; they’re very pro-private property rights, and so I guess they probably assume that private property owners should have the right to say no. That’s not the way that it’s worked in the past under a more collaborative arrangement through Government, but none the less we have a coalition Government that thinks that private property rights surpass anything else that is important across this country.

This bill is about the compromise that we need. It is about enabling local government or central government to move forward with infrastructural development. It brings up to date the necessary legislation, and it has, as I say, provided some processes in there that ensure that private landowners get rightful compensation. The Labour Opposition doesn’t want to slow down the passage of good legislation. This, on balance, is a good piece of legislation. It’s a little late in the piece from the coalition Government, but none the less Labour is here to facilitate the process of this bill. It will support the bill, and I look forward to, as I say, some of the questions being answered by the Minister and by other members—particularly ACT—to assure us that we’ve found the right balance between private property rights and public acquisition. I support the bill, Labour supports the bill, and we look forward to the explanation from the Government.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. On behalf of the Green Party, I stand to oppose this legislation. The Public Works Amendment Bill is one that turns its back on the ability for whānau and community to enjoy, without disturbance, their whenua, their homes, their forever homes—because they will not have a choice, ultimately. The legislation says that it’s there to improve land acquisition; to provide new ways of giving compensation, and some payments to speed up the process; relocation of infrastructure; empowering Transpower; and in spaces like emergency recovery. For myself, being someone from the coast who was impacted both in January and March, in Northland, I know that emergency recovery is really important. But when people commit to their forever home and lose the ability to go to the Environment Court to contest a Public Works Act taking of their private property—that they have had for generations and committed to as a whānau—then on behalf of those impacted whānau, we as the Green Party say no.

The legislation says that it’s there to modernise the Public Works amendment legislation. It is there to provide these—I’d say—“inducements” to support whānau to get on board and agree to their land being taken. That the compensation payments are there to help whānau to agree that their land should be given over—and, in fact, the power of decision making is now removed from an independent party, being the Environment Court, to now Ministers. So where is the fairness in the process? These are concerns of the Green Party as we’ve sat through submissions.

Also, myself, I had a public works amendment member’s bill looking to protect whenua Māori from this legislation that’s been used as a patu on Māori landowners for far too long. But all for nothing, because the House didn’t support my proposed member’s bill to protect, at least, whenua Māori in this space.

We talk about advancement and progress and that sometimes, you just can’t help it; that State highway has to go through your whenua, apparently. But when I think about the 26 kilometres of the four-lane highway to come through Tai Tokerau, from Te Hana to Warkworth, and then the proposed expansion all the way up to Raumanga, Whangārei—Raumanga, Whangarei—

💬 Grant McCallum: Yep, great news. Great idea—great idea.

HŪHANA LYNDON: —and when I hear someone from the other side yelling at me, I think about the landowners of Raumanga; I think about the landowners in Waipū; and even our own Whangārei district councillor Matt Yovich, whose 160-hectare family farm, which has been in their family for 100 years—they’re losing parts of their farm too.

💬 Tim Costley: Maybe they want to be able to drive somewhere when they’re not on their land.

💬 Hon Member: Do you enjoy the motorway?

💬 SPEAKER: That’s enough, thank you.

HŪHANA LYNDON: So when you say that the 26 kilometres of whenua to establish this four-lane highway is so essential that we’re going to spend $3.6 billion, the most expensive road in the country, you fail to address the Brynderwyns. You can have 26 kilometres of $3.6 billion of road from Warkworth to Te Hana, but if you can’t get past the Brynderwyns, where are you going?

When I think about Auntie Lynda and their whānau farm, their land, where their ashes are buried, where this is their forever home, who have been in the newspapers, who have said, “We farmed. We established orchards. We have planted natives. We are committed to this whenua.”, they are losing their land for the purposes of a four-lane highway to Whangārei.

Then I want to talk about Raumanga. This is coming into town, into Whangārei. While we’re committing $3.6 billion to 26 kilometres from Warkworth to Te Hana, it’s not even near Whangārei, but the landowners of Raumanga, in Whangārei, are now hamstrung. When I read their letters that the New Zealand Transport Agency have sent them, they are years off losing their homes, but they can’t do anything because now they’re stuck. Who wants to buy a house in Raumanga that could have a four-lane highway coming through?

The Raumanga Medical Centre will be gone. The Raumanga Medical Centre has full books. They are deeply committed to community, and yet that road is going to take out the Raumanga Medical Centre. So don’t act like this is some public good where you’re going to actually come in—why do we need extra lanes in Raumanga and Ōtaika? But they are being mapped right now and being told, “Taihoa, wait a minute. We’re going to take your whenua and we’re going to enter into some conversations and it could be years—it could be a decade, eh?—before this comes through.” But the whānau in Raumanga and Ōtaika are now stuck; they are stuck in limbo of public works hanging over their heads.

Let’s talk about whenua Māori. Whenua Māori is not protected. It can still be compulsorily acquired through the public works amendment legislation—the fast track of public works across general title and whenua Māori. Of Māori submitters, 97 percent said, no, they don’t agree. In fact, when you look at it, we’ve suffered enough as Māori; we’ve given enough for towns, for rail, for cities to be established—schools, quarries. We’ve given to the infrastructure of this community in Aotearoa, and yet still we’re expected, through this legislation, to give more. Why? That’s the question right here. Not only are you going after general title, you still maintain the focus on taking whenua Māori. Despite the protestations and those objections from Māori who came before the select committee and offered submissions saying, “No. No more. Not one more acre.”, they’re going to do it anyhow. That’s what’s so demeaning about the veil of, “This is an improvement. This public works amendment legislation is there to speed up land acquisition and to help with infrastructure and for Transpower or for emergency recovery purposes.” Māori have given plenty. Give us a break.

We have general-title landowners with this heaviness hanging over their whenua just here in Kaipara, in Waipū, all the way into Whangārei—this noose hanging over landowners, saying, “Tāria te wā—te wā [the time will come]; when we come for you, you have no way to object.”, because, ultimately, the Environment Court has no say. And then for whenua Māori, no, you’re not clear either, because this is about the public good for everybody and, despite all you’ve given, you still must give more.

So, as the Green Party, we do oppose this. We do worry about private property rights. We do worry about those—

💬 Hon Members: Ha, ha!

HŪHANA LYNDON: When you lose whenua, then you’ll know. When I’m sitting with landowners right now who have this noose over their heads, and they are shedding tears of frustration because they have no avenue to fight this, it is all based on the Government’s side. That’s where the power sits. The landowner is disabled in the new system. I hope we really consider this, as members of the House, in terms of where the private landowner sits, let alone the tangata whenua who have already lost enough—and yet this is, on balance, OK? Come to Tai Tokerau, and talk to our landowners. Come to Tai Tokerau and talk to hapū and iwi. Talk to Tūwharetoa, they’ve already told us in the select committee.

[Authorised reo Māori text to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]

[Authorised translation to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]

ACT supports the Public Works Amendment Bill. I just want to reassure the member who’s just sat down, Hūhana Lyndon, that the Brynderwyn section of State Highway 1 is far more resilient as a result of work that has been carried out under this Government since the 2023 cyclones that hit the North Island. Around 55,000 cubic metres of potential slip material has been removed from above the road, which removes a significant risk and means that the road’s unlikely to be closed in the way that it has previously. Three sections of road have been widened to three lanes of 12.5 metres wide, so that, in the event that material does come down two lanes can remain open. So I want to reassure the member that the Brynderwyns are much safer than they were, and many of her concerns have been addressed.

Now, New Zealand cannot build the roads, the rail, the water networks, and the electricity networks, if acquiring the land to do so takes years. Compulsory acquisition, we must acknowledge, is one of the strongest powers that the State can exercise, so landowners must be treated fairly.

This bill strikes a better balance. Authorities must make clear offers backed by registered valuations, and negotiate in good faith before compulsion is considered. Landowners who reach an early agreement can receive an incentive payment, recognising the disruption and the cost that they carry.

The bill also gives Transpower a more practical acquisition pathway and clarifies that disputes over compensation belong in the Land Valuation Tribunal. It creates a faster process for rebuilding after emergencies, and with proper safeguards. Property rights matter; so does getting essential infrastructure built. This bill makes the process faster, clearer, and fairer. That’s how we unlock New Zealand’s potential. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to rise on behalf of New Zealand First and also as the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee which considered this bill some time ago. First of all, I just thank the select committee for the work that they did, and the officials and the submitters. I also wanted to thank both the current Minister but also the Minister before who we spent a lot of time with, the Hon Chris Penk, working through quite a number of pieces of legislation, and this was one of those. I wanted to commend him for the work that he did over a long period of time.

I just want to respond to something that the ACT Party over here—or was it the Green Party? I can’t remember which it was because it sounded a bit like the ACT Party talking as the Green Party. They were talking about the individual as opposed to the collective. I got very confused by what they were saying because they were standing up for individual property rights, which was magnificent, but it was the Green Party who was doing it.

This legislation is walking its way through the difficult thing, because land is precious. Land is precious to many people. Land is a place where people—it is hopes—[Hūhana Lyndon holds up a visual aid]

💬 SPEAKER: Excuse me. Sorry. Don’t wave the visual aid around like that again. It’s fine when you have the floor, but not at other times.

It is hopes; it’s dreams; it’s aspirations; it’s blood, sweat, and tears that people put into that. Some of them will be Māori; some of them will not be Māori, but land matters to a lot of people—a lot—and so taking land is a really significant step. But sometimes—and here is where I was a bit confused by the Green Party member Hūhana Lyndon’s speech—the collective good overrides that individual good, and needs to override that individual good. That is why we have a Public Works Act. We’ve had a Public Works Act for many, many decades. This piece of legislation is trying to make sure that that process is done as efficiently as possible and as fairly as possible. Part of that fairness is making sure that the person or the people whose land is proposed to be acquired are well aware of why that piece of land has been chosen to be acquired—the options which were considered—and saying, “Sorry, guys. It’s got to be your piece of land that we need for this piece of infrastructure.”

This legislation is about trying to make sure that we as a country become more productive, more efficient, and it is making this important part of our system more efficient. Here are just a few quick examples of that. Improving efficiency: the Environment Court cannot revisit designation decisions so we don’t do the thing twice. It can’t make valuation decisions. It makes it easier to re-site third-party infrastructure which might have been displaced by the original public work. It makes emergency recovery works easier. Just think about some of the storms we’ve had. If a road slips, it slips into the neighbouring land, and you need to fix that road and sometimes you need a little bit of that neighbouring land. What is the problem? You have to be able to do that and you have to be able to acquire that land quickly and efficiently.

It allows for efficiency, too, through combining projects so we don’t have two separate authorities needing to both go through the Public Works Act process for the same piece of infrastructure. It also allows for incentive payments to make it easier for someone to sell, to incentivise them to sell earlier on by giving them actually more money than they would otherwise get.

This retains the overall architecture of the original Public Works Act. That’s the attempt to acquire by agreement then the compulsory acquisition. It does, from a Māori point of view, for that whenua Māori, mean that there is a longer process and they do have that objection process which other landowners don’t. It respects that link to land.

The final thing just to say was that we examined, significantly, at the select committee process, the role of Land Information New Zealand as the gatekeeper. They told us very, very clearly that if a Government agency or acquiring agency hasn’t done their job properly, they would be the gatekeeper and say, “No, no, you’ve got to do it again better than you’ve done it before—the identification of options and so on.”

Also that issue which has been raised in terms of the ability to be able to exit land that the Green member raised—I agree completely with that. It is something that if your land has a designation sitting over it, and somebody wants to acquire that land at some point in time and you can’t move on. That’s a real challenge and it is one that we do need to sort out because you put people’s lives in limbo.

With that—oh, and the other thing just to say is that including Transpower makes complete sense because they are clearly an essential public utility—possibly the most essential public utility in the land—and it makes sense that they should be able to exercise powers directly through the Public Works Act. I thank everybody involved in this and commend the bill to the House.

💬 SPEAKER: The next call is a split call. I call on Mike Davidson.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to speak to this bill, the Public Works Amendment Bill. I’d like to acknowledge the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, which this bill went through. While the Green Party does support the modernisation of bills, there are obviously aspects of this bill that we definitely do not support. Therefore, we will be opposing this bill.

I think it’s really important to start with the fact that when you have 0 percent of iwi Māori supporting this bill, and 90 percent outright opposing it, there are significant issues with a bill. This is part of the problem we have, and it’s really important that, actually, we stand up for iwi Māori when they are obviously having their rights squashed. Therefore, one of the things that I want to mention in this call is a couple of comments that we need to be assured about.

We need to understand the impact that we’re having, because this is something that has faced iwi Māori for a long, long time—generations, in fact. I even looked down in our area in Waimakariri and the impact of State Highway 1 through Ngāi Tūāhuriri and the displacement that type of roading actually has on the hapū, and even now when they’re rebuilding a bypass and the potential that could have had to displace, impact the whānau as well. It’s such a shame that it continues to happen right until today when we know the impacts that it’s had in the past and how it’s driven Māori out of their communities into urban areas and has actually made it a lot worse for hapū and iwi as Māori were forced to be urbanised. It’s a shame that we don’t seem to learn lessons from the past and we continue to make it worse.

It’s funny, when you look at Waimakariri, I say again, this seems to be the biggest issue they had—the potential loss of a golf course in Pegasus for housing. I think they should remember, actually, who was there first and how they were removed from their land, which is a lot more significant than losing a golf course that was failing. I think, as a country, we must remember the damages that we have done to iwi Māori, especially when we look at how we acquire land. The Green Party does not support this bill because it flies in the face of what iwi Māori would like and it totally ignores the fact that 90 percent of iwi Māori opposed it and not one supported this bill.

I’d just like to mention a couple of things in the time I have. A submission from the Law Association of New Zealand is concerned that the bill goes well beyond procedural streamlining and it introduces substantive changes that significantly affect the exercise, oversight, and accountability of compulsory acquisition powers. I think when we read that we should be very concerned about how far we are stretching and what we’re actually doing and the impact this is going to have.

Also, aside from iwi Māori, I want to just quickly mention a submission from Dunedin City Council. They say the amendments to compensation provisions may create additional costs for local authorities—another unfunded mandate. I think this is really important to note and so I’ll quickly use my last 45 seconds to talk about this unfunded mandate. I think this is what we’ve seen a lot of this term of Government—and not just this Government but previous Governments. It is pushing more and more responsibility to local government, making them have to do more and more and actually without the funding to do it properly. They do it and they have to then spend ratepayers’ money. And what happens? Government then blames local government. That is a significant issue we have, and, actually, if we want to be better, we have to work in partnership. We need to work in partnership between local government and central government and we need to work in partnership with iwi Māori.

People have been complaining that it takes too long to build infrastructure in New Zealand. There is too much red tape and there is a lengthy opposition process which can delay important infrastructure projects.

This bill is the second part of the process to modernise the Public Works Act. This bill will make sure the land acquisition process is faster but also fair. This will see better outcomes for landowners and help to reduce the cost of building infrastructure. I commend the bill to this House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the call. The Labour Party is going to support this law, but I want to acknowledge the deep feelings that are being expressed in the House today, particularly by the Green Party, and I want to talk about that need for a balance between public good and private rights.

It is an irony that we have the ACT Party supporting this bill when its members are constantly talking about markets and constantly thinking they should be unfettered and will balance themselves. Arguably, that says that all price gouging is absolutely fine and that the market price is what it will bear. And in fact in this case that would mean that owners of that property could reach for the sun, the moon, and the stars, and sometimes get it at the behest of taxpayers because that public good was necessary.

I want to talk about some of the mechanisms that are in this bill that I think are good. This bill will make acquisition fairer in the sense that more will be paid for those acquisitions, and there is an incentive process which will allow a maximum of $100,000 to be given for a settlement that’s reached in good-faith bargaining. I am a huge fan of good-faith bargaining. I think it is very much a recognition of power imbalance, and it puts people into the space where they try and do the right thing. I’m not going into that process with rose-coloured spectacles at all. I’ve spent most of my life in employment law where good-faith bargaining is part of the mechanisms used. It doesn’t solve all problems, but it does put people into a position where they strive to meet the needs of each other and strive to do the right thing. So I’m thrilled to see that mechanism.

I do want to talk, not lightly, about that issue of balance between private and public good and the need to recognise private ownership, particularly in the case of Māori, and I do that with a lens to the reality of the history of brutal compulsory acquisition and, in fact, the stealing of land in this country, and the trauma that was involved in that. So I just want to record, in a really simple way, why we would take that into account.

In 1840, Māori basically owned all the land in New Zealand. By the 1860s and 1870s they had lost huge amounts of land, including the whole of the South Island, to Crown acquisition and European acquisition, and then in the 1890s to the 1920s there was such a massive wave of acquisitions that Māori land went down to 8 percent. By the mid-20th century, the Public Works Act was part of that story, and there was also compulsory acquisition of what was called uneconomic interests. So the amount of Māori land in Māori hands fell to 4 or 5 percent—that’s what was left.

There have been massive amounts of thought about this since, but Māori land at this time is only at 5 percent—the estimate is 5.5 percent. That is how much land is left. That is a story of deep trauma, and it’s an absolutely terrible story. When people equate it with other issues of private ownership, I think they do an injustice—it’s not the same. It doesn’t mean that it isn’t important to consider private rights, but it’s really important that we tell that story and we remember that story.

Having said that, the Labour Party is supporting this legislation because it’s better than it was and because some of the mechanisms are an attempt to balance those rights, and the Labour Party has always had a strong hold on the need for public good. That is something that is a valid part of this discussion, and we do need to always think about the people in our communities and what’s good for them in a public sense, rather than private interest.

I want to strongly contrast the deep irony of the ACT Party standing up in support of this bill when it is also creating bills in this House, in this term of Parliament, that are talking about private rights that don’t even exist and then are attributing them to people and compensating them.

💬 Todd Stephenson: They do exist. They do exist.

I will explain. I’m being asked by the member for ACT what I’m talking about so I’m going to tell him. We have a situation where we had a bill that came into this House called the Regulatory Standards Bill, which said that when there is any consideration—

💬 Todd Stephenson: They’re property rights.

They are not property rights.

💬 Todd Stephenson: They are property rights.

They are not property rights, and I will explain why. They are not property rights because they never existed. The community owned those rights. The only rights that property owner owned were the ones that were already recognised. That is what the nature of law is—

💬 Todd Stephenson: Sorry, Helen—wrong.

—and I will argue over a coffee later with my colleague, because that is true. That is absolutely true. They didn’t exist before this Government had given them away for nothing, and now it has strung us all up so that we cannot use rights that we had before as a community because we will have to compensate others. So it is deeply ironic that the ACT Party washes over everyone’s rights here but is not doing so when it desires an outcome that deeply privatises the very rich. It is giving rights to the very rich, and it is not considering cultural context.

So this is a situation where we have to be brighter than that. We have to be brighter and we have to be more considerate of that balance between what is public good and private good, and we have to consider the subtlety of who—it’s not that subtle—it is that we are attributing those rights to. I would ask the people who are voting this year to consider that. Is the party they’re voting for actually considering their good, or is it considering the good of a lot of very, very rich people who are probably taking their money overseas, because that is actually what I think is happening. I think we have a party and a Government that is absolutely captured by a love affair with the very wealthy and has turned that into a group that it looks up to, admires, and sucks up to. What we have is a discount of our own history, which we were putting right, and we have a discount of the humanity of the connection between us all.

It is so important that the parties that are voted for at the next election turn that around. We have a much better future before us than that. That is a morally barren but also a materialistically barren way of looking at things. It will get us nowhere. I would love to see that get turned around in this country.

The Labour Party will always be a party that thinks harder than that and is prepared to consider the grey, is prepared to consider the public good, and isn’t actually too worried about what giant international companies think. It cannot afford to do that because otherwise we end up where we are going, which is that we will own nothing and be beholden to a whole lot of corporate interests. We must be brave. We must have a future that belongs to us, and the kind of hypocrisy we saw today when the ACT member stood up is the sort of thing we need to consider. If the voters consider that as an issue, I invite them to go down a whole different course and look at which parties are providing adult leadership here and are committed to their interests. Most of us are not in the class of people who are looked after by the ACT Party, the National Party, and the New Zealand First Party currently. It is very, very important that you can see that the Labour Party supports this. They can understand why. They can understand that it’s not because we are refusing to look at the complexity of the issues; it’s because we’re balancing interests and we’re prepared to do things that make sure that we respect private rights and public rights and we balance those things.

💬 SPEAKER: I’d just like to say to members if you’re selling tickets for that coffee, I’d be interested in knowing when it is.

It’s a pleasure to come back to the Public Works Amendment Bill. This is the second tranche of reforms, the first being the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill, to make the process faster and fairer, and I commend it to the House.

💬 SPEAKER: A split call.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very interested in the member who’s just sat down, his contribution there.

💬 Hon Member: You can have a coffee with him too.

I’m not offering coffees. That was my colleague. Although—[Interruption]

💬 SPEAKER: I think we might just calm ourselves right down—be quite a good thing.

Although we are here to midnight, so perhaps a coffee at 4.20 is a good idea.

Now, as I was saying, I’m very interested in the member who just sat down, his brief contribution where he was talking about those critical projects and that critical infrastructure, because that seems to be a key issue in this legislation before us, the Public Works Amendment Bill. It would be good to hear a bit more about that and how it works as a trigger.

I say that because I have not been on the select committee. We are here in urgency and we’re going to go through with the committee stage of this bill very shortly. You, Mr Speaker, have stolen one of our members of the committee by making him an Assistant Speaker, so instead you get me.

💬 Hon Member: Oh!

I know everyone will be very excited about it.

💬 SPEAKER: Barely able to contain myself, but anyway.

💬 Hon Damien O'Connor: She had to have a chance to speak.

Yeah. This legislation is really important, and I am excited to be here and talking about it, because in my previous life as a resource management and local government lawyer, I did a lot of work with the Public Works Act and had cases relating to where designations were put over somebody’s land or a notice of requirement was on their land and it stayed there for a long, long time and it restricted what they could do with their property—or, in this case, it was a leasehold property, but it restricted what they could do. Trying to pull the trigger on that—the mechanism to then get their land, or their lease, in this case, actually taken—was a big palaver for them. We commonly have referred to designations on someone’s land as a blight, and that is because the blight is that you have hanging over you that one day your land might be taken, and that is a big deal. We’ve heard particularly from the Greens about why that is a big deal and just now as well from my colleague Helen White.

Of course, when I was in legal practice, we would make every one of our juniors watch that great Australian movie The Castle, which, of course, deals with this topic very well and very beautifully. Somebody, they can have lived in a place, their family can have lived there for hundreds of years, or a family might have lived there for 20 years, and it is their home, it is their castle, so it is a very serious issue when they are made to abandon that property, even if they are compensated.

💬 Hon Members: The vibe!

That’s right. That is a great movie. I’m pleased that people opposite have seen the movie as well, and I won’t be too distracted by the vibe, though I could. Now—

💬 Tim Costley: The Green Party’s dug a hole. It’s filling up with water.

💬 SPEAKER: That’s enough. Just leave it alone. Thank you.

Anyway, the point is—and I couldn’t hear what that was, but I presume it was a reference. You know, go to the pool room and all that.

Now, we’ve been told that what this regime does is two things: it makes it quicker for land to be taken, on the one hand, but on the other hand, it’s fairer with its compensation. That is very important that that balance is right. Like my colleague Helen White just said, it is very interesting that ACT, the party of private property rights, is so emboldened and enthusiastic about infrastructure being able to trump those private property rights. This is very different from the other legislation that we’ve had in this House, particularly the Resource Management Act replacement legislation, which I will talk about in the committee stage, because that goes to designations and who can designate.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, this is a good piece of legislation that will make the process easier and fairer, with more clarity. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for allowing me to take a call on this bill.

💬 SPEAKER: Oh, no problem. That’s all right. That’s fine.

Thank you. Very generous of you, Mr Speaker, as always. I expected no less. The Public Works Amendment Bill went through the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and it’s an interesting piece of legislation. It’s one of those bills that is both not, well, straightforward but also incredibly complex because of the nature of the unit of analysis, I suppose. It’s not just about land. It’s not just about the cold, hard, sort of, geography of terrain and facts and infrastructure and utility. It is actually, as we’ve heard in this House, also incredibly emotive, because it’s about people’s castle or whenua Māori or their forever home and all of the other aspects of life that ground us in this place. It’s difficult, and achieving balance is also difficult.

But Labour does acknowledge that the Public Works Act that currently exists, that’s been around for a while, is, by definition, in need of some modernisation. There’s an aspect to this amendment that allows notifications via email, for instance. It does require some modernisation, which is not to say that it’s not fraught and that it’s not without a huge amount of consideration. When we have these conversations about improvements and improving efficiency and making systems more efficient, we should never lose sight of the fact that it’s not just about efficiency. There are also many other, much more tangible and much more important considerations to be made.

But it is nevertheless an important piece of legislation that enables infrastructure. It gives the Crown and local authorities significant powers, and with that come some significant responsibilities. But it does grant significant powers to acquire private land so public works and those infrastructure projects can proceed. Those powers, as I said, are significant, and the system therefore not only needs to be efficient but it also has to be fair, it has to be transparent, and, really, really importantly, it has to be in such a state that the public can have requisite trust about the system. That balance is therefore incredibly important.

For an agency who are acquiring a property, for them, you can imagine a situation where this one particular piece of property may be just the last piece in a puzzle, or it may be just a very small part of the acquisition process to allow a much bigger project to be delivered. But for the people who are losing that property, obviously, it’s incredibly important. For the person that owns that property, it could be their home, it could be their business, it could be whenua Māori or land that’s been in their ownership for generations, so it’s not something to be taken lightly.

Hence the fact, as several contributions have made today, that there is a perspective that we need to bring to this to make sure that we do get it right. When we talk about making public works faster and we talk about making the Act works better and more efficient, as I said, that can’t be the only test. We do think that there has been some improvements made through this process, and I want just go through a couple of aspects of that now.

When I said about modernisation, the bill allows—as I said—notices to be sent electronically, updates aspects of the land acquisition process to modernise that and make that a little bit better and clearer, and it provides some greater clarity around the different interests in land, because it’s not always a straightforward process, in terms of ownership. It allows for better coordination where projects may involve multiple different types of public works. So you can imagine situations where that gets quite complicated quite quickly.

That matters because many of those big infrastructure projects these days, they’re not simple and they’re not straightforward. So a road project, for instance, it may require utilities to be relocated or work done by several different agencies, sometimes in parallel, sometimes in sequence. Therefore, we do see a need for some better coordination so that, at the very least, we can limit some of the duplication that already exists and some of the unnecessary delay, which can also be hugely upsetting to people, as we’ve heard today. Having something hanging over them, the impending acquisition of land, and that can be particularly frustrating when there’s delays and the timeline just unnecessarily makes that even more disruptive.

So landowners do need clear information and they need to know why things are happening. This bill does, I think, require that some further information about the nature and the purpose of the work be provided. It provides an opportunity for there to be the acquisition process and the compensation available, alongside an attempt to negotiate, in good faith, earlier in the process. Those are all important. Again, we acknowledge the fact that compensation for something that you dearly, dearly don’t want to have to lose in the first place is not really compensation at all—but there has to be some way of negotiating some sort of conclusion, I suppose.

So imagine, I suppose, somebody receives a letter—they get a letter, they say that their property is going to be part of something that’s needed for a transport project, and they may never have had to deal with Land Information New Zealand before, they may never have had to have dealt with the Public Works Act before. It’s not overly common that everyday people get to be in this position. They might not really know whether the whole property is going to need to be acquired. There’s lots of things that need to be sorted, and some professional advice needs to happen and people need to know, right from the outset, what sort of services they should be engaging to make sure they are supported through this project and don’t end up on the rough end of this deal. Ultimately, people just want to know that they’ve been treated fairly.

When we think about the connected public works, another practical change allows agencies, as I said, to coordinate some of that land acquisition better. It allows land to be acquired, in some circumstances, to reallocate third-party infrastructure that could be affected by public works. I don’t think we need much imagination to see how some of those could really benefit not just the project itself, but some of those landowners as well.

Looking back on the submission process, we heard from Infrastructure New Zealand who, unsurprisingly, were broadly supportive of the bill and emphasised that the Public Works Act, whilst being an important enabler of nationally significant and regionally significant projects—it argued that delays in land acquisition can actually be responsible for a fair proportion of those increases in prices that we have seen and some of the uncertainty that holds up over infrastructure delivery.

So the Public Works Act amendment is an essential—well, the Public Works Act, full stop, the existing piece of legislation, is an essential piece of legislation in New Zealand. We do have to balance those rights, as we’ve heard today, between private land ownership and public good. It’s not easy. It’s always going to be a little bit fraught. The best that we can do is put our mind to the things that we can do as a Parliament to make the process better, to make the information more clearer, to make the compensation more fit for purpose and understanding of the different ways where private land can be owned today and to make sure that there’s requisite opportunities for people to be well ahead of this and not feel like they’ve been dragging through something that’s, essentially, traumatic and really unfair.

So whilst we are supporting this bill, we absolutely acknowledge the fact that it’s difficult. The committee of the whole House stage is coming up next. It’s unfortunate that we haven’t had a little bit of a gap in between those stages, because there’s several things that we want to ask the Minister, but we will support this bill.

Well, the importance of this bill has never been demonstrated than by the most important new road that will be built in New Zealand in the not-too-distant future, and that is the one that will go over the Brynderwyns. The reason that the road over the Brynderwyns is so important is it will allow people to travel to the region that is miles above the rest, namely, Northland, and it is the home of the Ranfurly Shield, and I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak in this House and reflect on the Public Works Amendment Bill.

Now, 1981 is the year that we’re going back to. I was reflecting on what I was doing in 1981. I know that I was protesting. I was out on the streets as a six-year-old, looking cute, making sure that I protected our people. But it was the Springbok tour of 1981, of course, was going on. There are some stories that probably can’t tell because they’re not my stories to tell. It is, it seems, like a generation ago. Kiri Te Kanawa—I do remember this, strangely.

💬 SPEAKER: This is all good, but we’re on the bill.

Well, 1981, Mr Speaker—I’m just trying to create context around things must change, because times they are a-changing. I can sing it through if you want, but I don’t have to.

💬 SPEAKER: Well, I thought you were heading down the line of my adventures in my HQ Holden the way you were carrying on there.

I did own an HQ Holden, Mr Speaker—1972. Two-tone, three-speed. Anyway, back to the bill. I will focus.

Times do change, and obviously, in this House, legislation does need to change or catch up, but also we’ve got to be cautious and have checks and balances to make sure we get it right and it is fit for purpose in the 21st century. In 1981, Mr Speaker—I don’t want to prolong this, but Smash Palace, you’ll remember—and you’ll remember the story of Smash Palace, which I think is quite relevant to this piece of legislation and Bruno Lawrence and all of those things that happened.

As has been said from colleagues from my team, we do support this bill, but there are questions. It is about fairness. It is about transparency, and a big one that I’ve noted is around trust—trust in the Government and trust in the officials and the bureaucrats that have to administer any legislation that comes through this House.

As I was thinking about what relevant stories, other than the 1981 stories that I have about the Public Works Amendment Bill, I consider Mount Messenger, which crosses from Taranaki into the South Waikato, or it takes us on the journey north, and there is a huge piece of work that is being done, the Mount Messenger bypass.

That is a contentious piece of work. Not only is it expensive, it is about resiliency, but there is a real challenge for one family that is majorly affected, and they are affected because of the Public Works Act. And it is still going through the court system, it is still struggling through the process. From memory, it is maybe six years on. I have met with the family involved, and the word “trust” comes to mind. The breakdown of trust that they have had with NZ Transport Agency—the lack of trust they’ve had with those that have visited them. I think for them it was, “Have we got a deal for you”, but then, in many ways, this piece of land, which they have farmed for two generations, is now having, I guess, the carpet or the wool pulled out from under them. We need to make sure, as my colleague Dr Tracey McLellan mentioned, that it’s around private land and private property rights, and it is also about the public good, and how do we actually figure that out and make it work properly.

We support the improving of the process so that landowners know what is happening and why. Again, I think more information and more understanding, I would say generally creates a better outcome, because people understand. It might be hard, it might challenging, but we need to actually move forward on this. We need an effective system, we need a fair system, and we need a transparent system. It would be good to spend more time, as was said, to consider it before we move into the committee of the whole House stage, but we’re in urgency, so we have to deal with the cards that are handed to us.

In closing, we hope that we can find a 21st century solution in moving forward, and we will—not like MTV, that opened in 1981 and is struggling to survive, but that in 2026 we can move this forward.

💬 SPEAKER: The question is, That the amendments recommended by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee by majority be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.

Ayes 97

New Zealand National 48; New Zealand Labour 30; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 17

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 12; Te Pāti Māori 4; Kapa-Kingi.

Amendments agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Public Works Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 97

New Zealand National 48; New Zealand Labour 30; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 17

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 12; Te Pāti Māori 4; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

💬 SPEAKER: This bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Public Works Amendment Bill.

Committee of the whole House

Part 1 Amendments to principal Act, and Schedules 1 to 4

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, the House is in committee on the Public Works Amendment Bill. Members, we come first to Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 4 to 5, “Amendments to principal Act” and Schedules 1 to 4. The question is that Part 1 stand part.