Estimates Debate

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Climate Change Issues) Link to this

The Government has a major challenge on its hands in respect of climate change policy. There are a number of points I wish to make in the approving of the estimates. The first concerns the importance of accurate information. One of the concerns I have had, both in Opposition and upon coming into Government, was that there have been widely varying estimates on New Zealand’s Kyoto balance—in fact, variations of over $1 billion. So a major investment has been made by the Government in the land-use and carbon-analysis system, to try to use the latest satellite technology so that we can get some reliable figures around where New Zealand’s carbon balance sits. I am pleased to inform the House that last month we received the first of that satellite data, and that has given us far greater confidence about our estimates of New Zealand’s forest area. That shows that New Zealand will be broadly in balance in the Kyoto period.

Members will be aware that we are progressing towards important negotiations later in the year in Copenhagen, in which New Zealand is determined to play a constructive role in securing a post-2012 agreement to succeed Kyoto, and that last week we announced a target of a 10 to 20 percent reduction in emissions below 1990 levels. There has been some debate about whether that is the right place for New Zealand to position itself. I would note that it is a more ambitious target than has been set by the United States, by Canada, and by Japan. It is very similar to the target proposed by our near neighbour Australia. The real thing for New Zealand to understand is that because our emissions are 24 percent above 1990 levels, a reduction target by 2020 of between 10 and 20 percent will actually be enormously challenging and, as the papers released from Treasury today note, incredibly ambitious. New Zealand is actually committing to contribute a greater portion of its GDP to this challenge of climate change than what many other countries are contributing.

A very important priority in these estimates is finalising and trying to build as broad a consensus as is possible around an emissions trading scheme. My ambition would be for us to be able to go to Copenhagen with emissions trading scheme legislation in New Zealand settled.

There has been some debate about the events in Australia last week. In the Senate, the current Labor Government had its carbon pollution reduction scheme voted down. My view is that that is just one of the humps and bumps that will occur around this difficult and challenging issue. It does not change the desire of the New Zealand Government to work closely with Australia. I note that the Liberal Party in Australia and its leader, Malcolm Turnbull, are on record as supporting an emissions trading scheme for Australia. I am confident they will get there. I am equally confident that the right thing for New Zealand to do is to align its own emissions trading scheme as closely as is possible with Australia’s, given the huge level of trade, inter-people contact, and the like between New Zealand and Australia.

The last point I will make concerns the huge number of initiatives that the Government has got going across the board to try to improve our environmental performance and to address those increases in New Zealand’s emissions. Just last week Parliament passed legislation to provide an incentive for full electric cars. We announced in the Budget the $48 million commitment for supporting biofuels, and a price incentive for the development of that new technology. The Minister of Energy and Resources, Gerry Brownlee, has committed $323 million to the home insulation and clean heating initiative. There are important initiatives by the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Forestry, David Carter, for incentivising new forest planting. There is a very broad package that provides for a common-sense and balanced approach to this challenging area of work.

CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) Link to this

It is interesting to have the opportunity to follow the Minister for Climate Change Issues, and to take a call. It is a useful opportunity to make a few points in reply to what the Committee has just heard. The Minister, I think, ought to be much more careful about trumpeting the new Government’s environmental credentials than he has been, because the record reflects that in fact there is nothing to crow about. Since November 2008 we have seen a number of retrograde steps be taken as far as the environment is concerned, particularly in climate change policy.

We have seen, by an administrative announcement only—no legislation in the House; no respect for the dignity of Parliament—the emissions trading scheme be put on hold, at the cost of significant investment in new planting in the forestry sector, as well as potential leadership in the carbon registry business. That scheme was ready to go, yet this Government, for the sake of a political deal with the ACT Party, said it would not put legislation through the House to suspend it, as it had said it would, but would just act as though it was suspended and stop the officials from undertaking the allocation plans that they should have been undertaking. Of course, all of that led us to the situation last month where we had to assist the Government to get some legislation through the House in order to save people from being in blatant breach of the law.

Then we have the restored significant tax breaks for offshore minerals exploration, these at a time when that industry is doing very well, thank you, and where, without a price of carbon yet being levied by the consumers of those minerals exports in developing countries, we are actually cooperating in the fairly irresponsible action of sending fossil fuels to those nations prior to the time at which they will bear the price of carbon and an obligation to price those emissions. There is nothing environmentally friendly about enhancing our ability to do that.

Then there is the repeal of the moratorium on the future construction of baseload thermal electricity generation plants. The Minister in the chair smiles, but I do not think that is terribly funny, because it jeopardises the ability to put in place the New Zealand Energy Strategy target of getting our electricity generation by 2025 to 90 percent renewables on baseload. Achieving that target is very important for getting the emissions down, yet the Government takes it out of the law and says it is kind of committed to the New Zealand Energy Strategy. Gerry Brownlee made a speech back in February in which he promised to give the Government’s exact position on that strategy, and we are still waiting for it.

Then there was the phase-out of the old, inefficient light bulbs. The cries of “Nanny State!” ring fairly ironic now. Given the legislation that we have seen presaged in the House on issues like the use of hand-held cellphones, it seems that what is sauce for the goose is not necessarily sauce for the gander.

Then there is the Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee, which the Minister refers to regularly, and which I have the pleasure of sitting on. It has relitigated all these issues after last year’s hearing of them, and no doubt we will relitigate them again when we get amending legislation through the House on the emissions trading scheme at some point. It is an interesting committee to sit on; let us hope it does not prove to be a total waste of time.

Then we have had the replacement of Labour’s very carefully targeted home insulation package with a completely untargeted one, and with all the nightmares that we knew would emerge from that. There are 4-week waiting lists in order to get a quote from a provider. That will not help families terribly much this winter; I fear we will see more of that.

Then there is every possible excuse for coming up with a weak carbon pollution target. The first excuse, as I recall it, was that we had better wait until we got the most recent forestry data. Then suddenly the Minister decided it was absolutely vital to rush through a public consultation round, yet it was quite obvious from the statements that were being made by Ministers that the Government had made up its mind on the target prior to that consultation. I think that those who participated in that round felt that very keenly.

The Government has scrapped the Fast Forward Fund and the research and development targets—the list goes on. This Government does not have a proud record on the environment or on climate change.

SANDRA GOUDIE (Chairperson of the Law and Order Committee) Link to this

How refreshing it is to be part of a Government committed to real change and showing real leadership at all levels! In speaking to the estimates for Vote Corrections I pay tribute to the excellent work done by the Minister of Corrections, the Hon Judith Collins. In conjunction with the Department of Corrections, the Minister has done in 6 months what the previous Government could not do in 9 long years. I also want to say what a great job my colleagues on the Law and Order Committee are doing, supported by ACT, in spite of the many challenges they face.

So what is the good news? Well, there is plenty of good news, and the Minister is doing such a great job it is hard to know where to start. I mention in particular probation funding, which has increased to improve community safety. The Government is injecting an extra $255.9 million into the probation service to address issues raised in the critical report by the Auditor-General. As the Minister has said on numerous occasions, the safety of the public should be the No. 1 priority when offenders are released on parole. This Government inherited a probation system under extreme stress. The previous Government increased the number and complexity of community-based sentences without providing enough resources or training of probation staff. The extra funding shows that this Government is serious about fixing the probation system and improving the safety of the public. The total extra funding includes $205 million of operating spending over the next 4 years, and $50.9 million in capital spending in the next 2 years.

The Auditor-General said in February that the Community Probation and Psychological Services had 10 percent fewer probation officers than it needed, due to increasing numbers of offenders on community sentences. Budget operating funding of $133.8 million over 4 years will enable the Community Probation and Psychological Services to recruit an extra 134 probation officers, 26 front-line managers, and 20 psychologists, which will ensure it can effectively manage almost 100,000 sentences and orders a year. That is a magnificent step forward; these are fantastic initiatives by the Minister. This is just a part of the many initiatives that the Minister of Corrections, the Hon Judith Collins, is undertaking, and it has been a fantastic start to this Government’s control of corrections and making sure that the job is done, and done well.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) Link to this

I lost count of how many times Sandra Goudie used the word “fantastic” in her speech. The Minister of Corrections has made a very interesting start in the corrections portfolio, and, given that this is her first Budget as Minister of Corrections, she has made much of the fact—as all National Ministers have, of course—that she walked into, in her case, an explosion in terms of prisoner numbers. Well, let me just remind the Minister, because she is very good at the rhetoric and very good at stomping her feet and acting tough, that the rhetoric often does not match the facts.

Judith Collins said she was going to sort out the Department of Corrections from the top—the chief executive—down. Heads were going to roll all over the place. But no one has been sacked, no one has been held accountable, and in theory no one is responsible.

We remember the slogan that the National Party campaigned on: “Tough on crime”. Apparently when we were in Government we did not lock enough people up. National said prisons were all hotels with flat-screen TVs. I think I have been into 10 prisons now, and I have not been able to sight one of those flat-screen TVs. Then we had the myth about underfloor heating, and all those things. It was as if we were going to walk into a Hilton hotel.

The Minister also fails to recall her own election promises around parole. The estimates were that those promises would double the bulging prison population, but she walked in, read the briefing to incoming Minister, and—in theory—the scales fell from her eyes and this was all news to her. Judith Collins knew what she was getting into. She was reminded of that, in fact, in 2007 by David Carruthers, who gave figures to that effect.

The Minister said she was going to sort out the hierarchy in the Department of Corrections. People were going to be made accountable; heads were to roll. No one has gone, no one is accountable, and now it is all an operational matter, unless she wants to take the credit for something—for instance, for the drug-testing figures, most of which happened under the previous Government.

But let us get past that issue. Let us look at the big issues. One of the big issues, of course, is private prisons. The Minister came before the Law and Order Committee, which asked her to please tell it what the costs would be of the private prisons. I noted her answer this afternoon, because we will be checking those reports. Her department has provided information on a number of occasions, and it has provided figures that show that mark-to-mark in the case of the Auckland Central Remand Prison—the only example in New Zealand of a private versus public contest, if you will, to run a prison—the public system was cheaper, if the cost is all that one is interested in. Corrections officers came before the select committee and told us about some of the nefarious activity that had occurred in the private prison, because those officers have worked under the private and the public system. But, again, we have no real information on costs. I note with great interest that this Minister refuses to put the whole issue of private versus public prison management out to an independent agency, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, or whoever else—somebody who does not have an axe to grind—so that we can get some facts around which system is more cost-effective, efficient, and effective at rehabilitation—all of those things. She will not do that.

Then we come to the other issue, which is using shipping containers as cells. This is a cracker. I remember being on the radio with the Minister, and in the space of fewer than 24 hours both she and her department produced four different figures on what the containers would cost. At the select committee she produced another set of figures. [Interruption] I do not think the chair of the select committee was present during the visit we made to Rimutaka Prison. That was a pity; we were all in mourning about that outcome. We asked the prison officials, as we viewed two very classy looking shipping containers, what the costs were. The reply from one of the officials, who will remain nameless—because I think it was a bit of a slip—was that that was the best-kept secret. The officials did not know the costs. Again there was a lack of detail around that.

Then, of course, we have the issue of double-bunking. Beven Hanlon, head of the Corrections Association of New Zealand, whom I know the Minister holds in contempt, given some of the comments she has made about him in the House, has said it is not double-bunking but overcrowding. He says it is overcrowding and it is dangerous. I note that Ms Goudie has said our No. 1 priority as a Parliament should be to keep people safe, and I think we all share that sentiment. It is a pity the Minister does not share that view with regard to prison officers. She has described a broken collarbone or humerus—or a broken bone; I am not a doctor—as “a minor injury”. When she was caught out on that, then she said any injury should be taken very seriously.

I say to the Minister that I have been around in politics, and I have observed politics. I know that greater minds than mine have been inside this place, but as an observer of politics I note the level of her rhetoric and promises, and the foot-stomping, tub-thumping, and fist-thumping routine that she carries on with. Judith Collins is possibly the most macho Minister of Corrections we have had since John Banks. If she can live up to the expectations she has raised in the community, she may well indeed be beatified by the electorate. I suspect, though, that she will not be able to do so once we pick away at the double-bunking issue—and she cannot come up with a cost for the shipping containers—and at the lack of logic around private prisons.

The worry around private prisons—and the Minister will not answer these questions—is that the Auditor-General, Parliament, the select committee, and even the genius who is the chair of our select committee, along with members of Parliament and the media, under the Official Information Act and other mechanisms provided through our constitutional framework, have the ability to seek information from Government departments. We are not talking about any department here; we are talking about the department that is charged with incarcerating our citizenry. That is, I would say, a core function, along with the police and the military. Through the mechanisms of this Parliament we have the ability to elicit information directly, and to make the Department of Corrections accountable. As the chair of the select committee has said, the Auditor-General did a damn good job of that through his report.

The problem I have with the private prisons debate is that we will now have to go through a filter. No longer will the Minister be able to get up and say an issue is an operational matter so it is not her problem, and we should go and ask the chief executive. The chief executive will now be able to say the department has a contract with a private provider. The Auditor-General does not have the power to delve into the business of a private company—

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Corrections) Link to this

It gives me great pleasure to rise and speak to the estimates for Vote Corrections. The Department of Corrections has had a remarkable turn-round this year. It is with great pleasure that I say that it is partly because we have given the department good direction, and also because we have listened to the department and to the Auditor-General when a plea was made to properly fund the department.

A total of $385.4 million has been allocated to enable the Department of Corrections to cope with a rising prison population over the next 4 years. I was absolutely appalled to find out that the previous Government had received a request from the department in September last year for particularly urgent funding in relation to the Community Probation and Psychological Services, and that the request did not even elicit a reply from the then Minister of Corrections, the Hon Phil Goff. I was also appalled to find that, in fact, the department had previously put forward estimates as to the rising prison population, and that they had not been accepted by the previous Minister, Phil Goff—obviously because it showed that we needed to have more prison beds. That is the emergency situation that we are now facing in the corrections system.

A key component of the funding is $145.8 million in capital funding over the next 2 years to increase double-bunking at the new facilities of Northland Region Corrections Facility, Auckland Region Women’s Corrections Facility, Spring Hill Corrections Facility, Otago Region Corrections Facility, and the new prison under construction at Mount Eden. We are putting double-bunking into these new prisons because they have a huge amount of infrastructure, and these are the same ones, as at Spring Hill, that cost $343,000 a bed when built under the previous administration.

Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. The Minister of Corrections came into this portfolio, having created gales of rhetoric before the election. She despicably attacked the neutrality of the civil service as her first act of foolishness, and then had to back down when the caretakers of civil service neutrality found that she, firstly, was wrong; secondly, did not have the necessary information; and thirdly, gave the public a dangerous impression of how the hard-working, industrious staff of the prison service—starting from the top—were doing their jobs. In order to distract attention, she has now launched a missile saying that society will get better outcomes, in particular Te Ao Māori, from the privatisation of prisons. The true test of whether the privatisation strategy will win is not in whether dollars and cents will be saved, but in how many young men and women will, as an experience of serving time in a private prison, go back better equipped and better skilled to resume a more industrious role in society. Not once have we heard anything from the Minister, other than florid language, loose bits of dollars and cents—well, an absence of sense—as to what she is doing with prisons such as those where I come from: the hīnaki, the whare herehere, where we come from.

Funds are being stripped from Ngāwhā prison. The Minister should be securing the support of New Zealanders for the idea that this experiment will reduce the level of recidivism and cause prisoners to experience prison in such a way that they will be better equipped for society. That approach never once features in this very bleak and mean-spirited approach the current Minister has to prison management and the fortunes or otherwise of the prison population. It is an issue of particular importance to us Māori members of Parliament, given the disproportionately large number of our young people who end up in jail.

It has been a measure of considerable concern that our friends from the Māori Party are busy talking to the iwi, unwisely advising them to stand at the front of the queue, somehow either to build or run the prisons. I am waiting for the Minister to say publicly somewhere that the proponents of private prisons in the Māori world are basing that thesis on the perpetuation of Māori crime, and that, somehow, by creating a private prison, the Government will stop Māori offending, or, more important, it will give them a better experience. Shame on those misguided souls, following the empty rhetoric of the current Minister, who believe that Māori families will get a better deal out of topping and tailing, double-bunking, or the privatisation of our prison system!

It not only speaks to the barrenness of the minds that have conceived such a foolish, wretched idea; it also shows that there is no money or substance to back up the Minister’s rhetoric. Somehow, New Zealand will be used as a social laboratory again—that word is spelt with a “b”, not a “v”, although one’s emotions suggest that it is spelt with a “v”. No, it will be used in a very brutal way to try out this half-baked idea that has not worked in the United States of America. Consequently, Schwarzenegger was required by the courts in California to release multiple numbers of prisoners from that prison system, and that is what we will see when we have not only private prisons but also topping and tailing and containers. There is no way that containers represent the best option for a key function that these prisons have to serve. These young men and women not only are incarcerated—and I say “men” with a great deal of stress—but also will come back into society. We should not for a moment think that by shoving prisoners into containers, where they must top and tail, cheek by jowl, we will have them come back into society better prepared. That is why this Minister is unfit for this position.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) Link to this

I touch on the Budget, of course, because we are in the estimates debate. I see that the legacy of the Minister of Corrections, Judith Collins, who is also the Minister of Police, flowing from the Budget, will be to institute, in her own words, a $21 million cut in police resources. It is interesting if we look at, I think, page 16 of the transcript of the meeting of the Law and Order Committee that examined the estimates for Vote Police. The Minister had initiated those cuts. No chief executive will come to the Minister and tell her that he or she wishes to cut the budget unless the Minister tells him or her that he or she wants, in her words, “savings”. The savings are cuts. I asked the Minister whether she would take responsibility herself for any degradation of service, given that she had required $21 million in cuts in a recession, when crime is likely to head north, as it generally does in a recession. She said that Mr Broad could answer the question and that it was an operational issue. Then I put it to her that, in theory, if she had given $21 million in extra funding to the police, she would crow about that fact—and she is fond of doing that. I am sure she would not consider it an operational matter, and she would crow, as she does extensively, about how wonderfully that money had been applied, and about any increase in service. But, oh no, if it is a cut of $21 million, then that is an operational matter!

This is a Minister who also trumpets the fact that she has delivered out of the Budget a whole 43 new police vehicles. That is not a bad thing, I would have thought. Any new vehicle for our police is a good thing. Then, a couple of days later, we worked out that she requires, as part of the $21 million worth of cuts, police to take 443-plus vehicles out of the police force. She envisages that they will not be front-line vehicles. She said that they could be vans. Well, I was at a police station recently, and I stood in the car park with a particular officer and I asked him to tell me which vehicles in the car park were not front-line. He looked at me and said: “Clayton, take your pick. They’re all front-line.” Even the car that is used by the police officer the day after the burglary, to gain the evidence and to follow up on leads, and the community police officer’s car that patrols around the mall are front-line. Does the Minister expect that we will see a return to the 1990s, when the police had to wait an hour to get a car to respond to a call? That is what happened in the 1990s. In the Law and Order Committee I asked the Minister of Police whether, given the historical precedent of what happened in the 1990s, she thought that there would be a risk. Commissioner Broad responded: “It does create additional risk. That is surely evident.” That is this Minister’s legacy thus far.

The other thing that this Minister is fond of crowing about is that she has put 600 extra police on the streets. That is what her political promise was. We unpicked that in the select committee. We asked her whether that was in addition to the 1,250 police who were budgeted for, funded, and were being recruited by the previous Government. Her answer was: “Well, ah, no.” She then prattled on to say that there will be 600 new police, but we now know that 380 of those were funded by the previous Government out of the Budget. That is a broken promise.

I say to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Judith Collins, that her rhetoric on this matter is misleading, possibly even more so than in respect of the previous vote, Vote Corrections. She is cutting $21 million out of the police budget and does not have the fortitude to take responsibility for it. She is saying to the commissioner: “I am requiring the cut, but if it all turns to custard and there is a degradation of service from our police, it is your problem, not mine.” She is saying that this Government is supporting the police so much that, on the one hand, it is giving them 43 cars, and, on the other hand, as part of a $21 million cut in funding—which she calls savings—it is getting rid of 343 cars. By the way, the promise that the Government will put in 600 police officers in addition to what Labour put in is now a complete and utter phoney, a complete and utter hoax, and it is in black and white that the Minister has admitted it. She finally admitted, after months in office, that, oh no, she bodged the figures, and that 380 of those 600 police were actually funded for and implemented by the previous Government.

I say to the Minister that she can smirk as she did in front of the select committee, she can crow as she does in this Parliament, and she can raise expectations—and, my word, they are raised, because crime was going to be non-existent under this Minister—but if we go and talk to the police around this country we see that they are scratching their heads to identify non - front-line vehicles. Maybe the Minister’s self-drive vehicle could be classed as being a non - front-line vehicle.

DAVID GARRETT (ACT) Link to this

The Government will provide in this year’s Budget $10 million over the next 3 years for the police to roll out Taser stun guns at a cost of approximately $1,000 each. An initial $5.3 million of that $10 million will provide the police throughout the country with 720 Tasers. What a wonderful piece of expenditure it is. I say that without a trace of facetiousness, and I say it for this reason. We need only go back a couple of months to see two tragic cases where the use of a Taser would have made a difference. In one case, a Taser, had been available, would have saved a life. In the other case, a life was very close to being lost. About a month ago an actor—I believe his name was Mr Mokaraka—was involved in an incident. The circumstances are a bit unclear. There has been a suggestion that he was attempting suicide by cop. In any event, he came out waving a meat cleaver. Luckily for him, the police officer on the scene at the time was an ordinary police officer, who shot him with a pistol, and Mr Mokaraka is alive today because the armed offenders squad had not been deployed. Sadly, the reality is that those gentlemen are trained to fire two shots to the large part of the body, and one does not survive that. So Mr Mokaraka is very, very lucky.

If we go back a year or so ago, we know of another sad case, in Christchurch. A fellow, who was apparently mentally disturbed, appeared in the dusk or evening, armed with a hammer, and was shot and killed. That case highlights exactly why the Taser is a humane weapon and is a wonderful advance for the police in this country. I say that, again, for two reasons. Firstly, had the officer been armed with a Taser, that man would almost certainly have been alive today. Secondly, members will recall that there was a considerable dispute as to just what the circumstances of that case were. Lawyers in the Chamber will know that eyewitnesses are frequently unreliable. There were conflicting eyewitness accounts of whether the man was advancing or was static, or exactly what he was doing at the time he was shot.

I have seen the Tasers to be provided to the police both here and overseas. They are equipped with a video camera and audio. As soon as the device is turned on, on comes the video and audio. Had the officer in Christchurch been equipped with that weapon, two things would have happened. Firstly, that poor man would be alive, and, secondly, there would be no dispute as to the circumstances that led to him being shot. Instead, he is dead.

We can go back a few more years, to the Wallace case in Waitara, which is still, sadly, going on. We can think of the anguish that has been caused for the family, the police, and the policeman, and we can think of the cost, all of which would have been avoided if Constable Abbott had had a Taser made available to him that night, instead of having to make a snap decision to use a pistol.

This is a wonderful move, and the Government is to be commended for it. It will result, certainly, in fewer people being killed or seriously injured. It will probably result in fewer complaints to the Independent Police Conduct Authority, because, as I know from my experience as a lawyer, where there is video evidence of what someone has done or has not done, it becomes very much harder to dispute it.

The ACT Party fully supports this move. We would like to see, if possible, the programme accelerated and every front-line policeman having the option of the humane use of a Taser, rather than having a firearm, which is usually fatal and is sometimes, purely by the grace of God, not fatal. I have seen the Taser in action in Arizona, during a visit I made a couple of years ago. I was told that frequently simply turning the Taser on is effective. I recall that members of a select committee became agitated or anxious when the laser sight came upon them, even though the weapon had no cartridge in it. It was no threat at all, but every member was aware of it. I have been told that the experience overseas is that when that light hits the chest, the situation is defused.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police) Link to this

Thank you for the opportunity to speak in the estimates debate in relation to the New Zealand Police. Five main operating funding decisions for Vote Police were announced in Budget 2009. There is nearly $23 million to fund 600 additional police staff by December 2011. Over the course of 4 years we will provide $182.5 million to fulfil this commitment. I am sorry that the Opposition is so mean-spirited about this. The Budget also includes $17 million of capital for property and $3 million for cars and computers.

As Mr Garrett has just said, we are funding a Taser roll-out to our front-line police staff throughout the country. It is with great pleasure that I can say that, and I endorse many of the words that Mr Garrett has said about it. Tasers can save lives, and we have already seen this occur in New Zealand. Some incidents have been publicised in terms of the media having been there, and certainly the media were at a recent incident in Hamilton. But the police have advised me of other incidents that are subject to court proceedings and are not in the public domain at this stage. However, I can tell the Committee that Tasers, when used properly and in the right circumstances, save lives.

Nearly $5 million will be put towards reducing the waiting time in Auckland courts. We think that is extremely important, because justice delayed is absolutely justice denied. Far too many of our victims are re-victimised by the length of time involved in having their proceedings go through the courts.

There is $570,000 towards the Fresh Start programme for young offenders, and that is in conjunction with the Ministry of Social Development.

The operating expenses ledger also includes $14 million offered by police in line by line savings. The commissioner has assured me that these savings will come from the better use of available resources, so the impact on service delivery will be minimal. No fewer kilometres are expected to be travelled by the New Zealand Police’s cars. I accept the commissioner’s word on that, because unlike Mr Cosgrove, who has previously spoken, I believe the commissioner when he assures me accordingly.

We are funding a couple of other non-departmental expenses. The first is the provision for interception capability on telecommunications networks. We are also contributing to the UN drug control programme. I say, too, that the funding that we are putting into the digital radio for the police will be a lifesaver as well, for police and also for victims. Digital radio has already been shown in the Wellington region, where it has been rolled out, to have stopped criminals in their tracks. At the moment, strangely enough, anybody can trot along to an electronics shop and buy a police scanner for a couple of hundred dollars, but fortunately, with this new radio system, those scanners will not work. That is something that will give a great deal of protection to the police and also to the public.

In conclusion, I want to take just one moment to thank the Law and Order Committee for its work, and in particular to thank its chair, Mrs Sandra Goudie, who ran a very good select committee despite all sorts of behaviour from some people. I also want to thank the police for the fantastic job that they do for the New Zealand public. There is just one final comment. I would like to offer my congratulations, as Minister of Police, to Deputy Commissioner of Police Lyn Provost. It has been a pleasure to work with Mrs Provost, and I think she will be a great asset to the office of the Auditor-General.

ALLAN PEACHEY (Chairperson of the Education and Science Committee) Link to this

The focus of the education estimates is to get the maximum value from the taxpayers’ investment in education. The appropriation sought for Vote Education in Budget 2009 is $10.8 billion, which is a significant increase on the appropriation sought for the previous year. The Budget concentrates on areas of education that will make the most difference, and lying behind the Budget is a single-minded purpose, which is to raise student achievement. For example, participation in high-quality early childhood education provides children with foundation skills for them to succeed at school. We all know that alphabetic awareness is critical to children learning to read and to write. The more of our children who arrive in our schools with that awareness, the greater their chances will be of making it—not just in school but in life. There is $69.7 million for improving access to early childhood education by expanding the 20 free hours policy and by removing the 6-hour daily limit. There is $69.7 million for that.

Behind the Budget is an understanding that good literacy and numeracy skills are essential for success. The Government wants every child to reach national standards in literacy and in numeracy, and to get the help he or she needs when that child is having difficulties. It is for that reason that the Government wants parents to receive clear, easily understood information about how their children are progressing towards achieving the national standards. This will enable parents to become more involved and more informed about their children’s learning. The sums of money devoted to this are considerable. There is $523.3 million in operating and capital funding over 4 years to give this country a modern, 21st century school footprint. There is $523.3 million for that. There is additional front-line funding for raising achievement in our schools. There is $80.1 million in additional funding for day-to-day school operations. There is $36 million to support the crusade for literacy and for numeracy. There is $16 million to fight truancy, and $34 million to improve schools’ access to high-speed broadband. These are very significant sums.

One of the measures that gives me the greatest personal satisfaction is the additional funding to improve the education of children with special needs. There is a 16 percent increase in Ongoing and Reviewable Resourcing Scheme funding—an additional $51 million. This is the first time in 10 years that there has been an increase in special-needs funding of this proportion. As a result, an additional 1,100 students will be entitled to Ongoing and Reviewable Resourcing Scheme funding—an additional 1,100. I invite the next Labour speaker to take a minute to explain why, over 10 years, the Labour Government, which is now out of office, did nothing. It did nothing for our special-needs children. Those members should get up and tell us why.

Of course, one of the features of Vote Education is that the Government has had to provide for several significant cost pressures that were not covered by the previous Government. How often do we hear this? This Government is having to cover the cost pressures created by the previous Government, but not provided for. For example, there is $169.1 million in 2009-10 to pay the increases in teachers’ salaries. There is $70 million over 4 years to cover salary increases for school caretakers, cleaners, and ground staff. There is $127 million to inflation-adjust funding for tertiary institutions in 2010. These are significant amounts.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Tēnā koutou katoa. The Education and Science Committee discussed the appropriations with the education Minister a few weeks ago. During that discussion I asked the Minister some questions about national standards. I was trying to find out what need the Government was trying to address. The question I asked was whether the Education Review Office had reported that schools lacked the tools for assessment, or whether it was that schools were not consistently applying those tools. The Minister gave me some confusing answers, telling me that there were assessment tools already and not all schools used them, and that we did need national standards. I have been talking to teachers and parents, and listening to principals’ comments about this issue. Many of them are wondering what problem we are trying to fix, although everyone agrees that plain English reporting to parents is a pretty good idea. But what are we trying to measure through these standards that we do not have a way of finding out already? How well a child is progressing or how close to the top of the league table his or her school is—we pressed the Minister as to whether these were hurdles or progress indicators, and she said they were both.

The Green Party finds it quite strange. If we ask teachers now, they can tell us now who is doing well in their classes and who needs extra help. They already have the assessment tools to do that. As the Canadian teachers union says, they know what the cows weigh; they are more interested in feeding the cows. That particularly rural image is not necessarily appropriate for our children, but I get what it is saying. Let us get on with pouring our creative energy into helping our children explore the world and their connection to it. We do not need more publicly available measuring between the young and diverse learners. We need smaller classes and better professional development in public schools and kura kaupapa.

National standards could be a huge waste of money. However, they pale in comparison with the Budget priority, which gave $35 million to private schools. I asked the Minister why she cut some important educational programmes for public schools and community education and gave that funding to private schools. I asked her that because the Green Party is very concerned that the measure of a safe and successful society is reducing the gap between the privileged and the poor, not increasing it. Many of us have been to visit some very nice private schools, and we have seen beautiful data projectors, well-stocked libraries, and heated swimming pools where students in wetsuits learn to kayak. We have seen the small classes and the wonderful array of qualified staff offering many options to students. Let us not pretend that public schools do not also attract wonderful teachers, but they do get ground down by large classes and tired resources.

A teacher colleague of mine told me that some weeks more than six young people will come with a note from home and a look of shame, and tell her that the reason that they have no shoes is that their family cannot afford to buy them. This happens in the Minister of Education’s home city of Gisborne. Meanwhile, $35 million is going to private schools to enhance the privileged. If one reads the “Bunnythorpe address”, which was recently delivered by Heather Roy of the ACT Party, one will see that this is the world as it should be. Parental choice and privatisation is the ideal way for education to develop in this country! I find it extremely scary and sad that there is an agreement between National and ACT on education, which is pushing a privatisation agenda. We need that $35 million elsewhere to create more equity, not less. We want that $35 million back. We want to spend it on education for sustainability, Enviroschools, adult and community education, te reo Māori, and literacy. We need an equitable public education system for all our children to flourish. We need a bigger gap between the rich and poor, the privileged and educated, and the vulnerable, in public schools like a hole in our hearts. Kia ora.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) Link to this

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. There has been a little bit of interchange across the Chamber between the senior Government whip and myself as to whether the primary Minister and the officials will be available. The estimates debate is the time when there is to be a detailed examination of the Minister. Obviously I am treading around the conventions, as far as absence is concerned, in talking about the availability of the Minister to make a speech.

We have three members here who want to speak. I want to speak mainly on the details of school closures and the decisions that the Minister has recently made, and on special education, which is the responsibility of Heather Roy. We have one member who wants to talk on early childhood education and the details in that area, and we have a third member who wants to talk on Māori education. I accept that one of the Associate Ministers is available. I am sure that the Ministry of Education officials are running across the road to get here, although they have not made it yet, in order to back him up. I wonder whether it is possible, because of the detailed questions, to carry on with one of the other estimates and to come back to this one at the point when the Minister and the officials are available. Even, frankly, if Dr Sharples was available to handle Mr Davis’ questions, I think that would also be acceptable.

I remind you, Mr Chairperson, of what this phase of the Budget is. It is the detailed approach to the estimates whereby we want to ask some very specific questions that relate to individual schools, in my case. Although I have lot of respect for Dr Mapp, I am sure that without ministry support he will not have the answers available in order to respond within the time frame of this debate.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) Link to this

I seek leave for this debate to be held on the next sitting day on which the estimates are to be considered.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) Link to this

It is unbelievable that a Minister of Education, earning a ministerial salary, does not have the backbone to come to the Chamber to defend her estimates and her cuts. Why can we not have a Minister—

COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura) Link to this

I start by getting us back on to Vote Education. This Government is putting $11.5 billion into education in this Budget—a 2.7 percent increase. With regard to Vote Education Review Office the Government is putting in $30 million—a 4.9 percent increase. That is a significant increase.

The highest priority in the 21st century, with regard to human rights, is access to a first-class education. That is a very, very important point. In fact, a person needs to have achieved level 2 of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement in order to complete a trade, because that is the level one needs just to be able to complete the literacy side of it. Education truly is portable; it goes where we go and it goes where we take it. That is very positive. It is a ladder out of disadvantage, and it is the single identifying feature between those who have and those who do not have.

This Government, to its credit, has put more dollars into education than any other Government before it, and in the most challenging economic times in 70 years. This Government has utilised every available dollar to do that and it is using those dollars to get the most significant benefits in educational outcomes. This Government is focused on educational outcomes, and such a focus is to be commended.

I want to spend a few moments addressing a couple of the differences that have been expressed by Opposition members about the Government’s view of how those dollars are to be spent. One of those issues is around adult and community education. This Government values adult and community education. We are investing $124 million into adult and community education over the next 4 years. That is significant. The question that I pose to members opposite is: what part of the $50 million would they take out of special education to fund adult and community education? What part of the $36 million for increased focus on literacy and numeracy would they do away with, in order to focus on adult and community education? What part of the tens of millions of dollars would they take away from skills training and support for youth and the unemployed, in order to fund adult and community education? Those members opposite would want the money spent on adult and community education. This Government is saying it thinks otherwise.

Another point I would like to deal with, and one that I think is appropriate, is the $35 million allocated to private schools. On a year-to-year basis that is $10 million per year and when put into the context of the 30,000 children in private schools, that figure equates to the State being saved $152 million a year. That is significant. Those members opposite would say that we should let those schools fail. This Government says otherwise. The Government has proven itself to be a good manager of the New Zealand educational system. The Opposition has proven itself not to be.

I want to deal with a couple of issues that the previous Government shrank away from. The first is truancy. This Government is investing $16 million into an initiative to address truancy over the next 4 years. That equates to $12,000 per school, but when Labour was in power up to 30,000 children at any one time were not attending school. This initiative is significant. The second initiative is for voluntary bonding with regard to staff in education. This initiative is very, very important, visionary, and hugely significant. We intend to invest $19 million into retaining staff in areas that are difficult to staff. This Government is managing the education system very well.

SUE MORONEY (Labour) Link to this

When the economy is in recession I think a Government’s priorities become incredibly important, and this Government’s priorities are out there to be seen. Vote Education is the vote that had the largest cuts. It was the biggest loser under this Government’s Budget. That tells us a lot about where this Government’s priorities are and where they are not. But even within Vote Education one can see the priorities that this Government has out there for New Zealanders to see. Not many of the Government’s speakers have chosen to say that even in the time of economic recession they felt it was important and a spending priority to increase funding to private schools by $35 million. It is almost like the evil whose name they do not want to speak!

The previous speaker, Colin King, asked the Opposition where it would fund the $13 million that was cut from adult education. That was an extremely short-sighted cut. It has meant that all the night classes have closed down in schools like Fraser High School in Hamilton, and in all the other schools that have had to cut their night classes, and hundreds and thousands of New Zealanders have had that learning opportunity taken away from them.

The Government has cut $13 million from adult and community education. I tell Mr King that the $13 million should be taken out of the $35 million extra for private schools. That is where that funding should come from, and it should be going to the people who are looking at second-chance education—the masses, not the elite, in this country. That is where this Government has its priorities absolutely upside down, and those figures demonstrate it very well.

Why do I talk about education having the largest cuts in this Budget? It is because the single largest cut, I believe, came out of early childhood education. An amount of $275 million was carved out of early childhood education, which this Government would have us believe is an area it is prioritising. The Government is prioritising early childhood education so highly that the sector suffered the largest single cut, and that largest single cut was to reduce a plan that was there for staff—for teacher-child ratios to be improved so that the quality of early childhood education could be improved in this country. That Government, and that Minister, the Minister of Education, decided to can that plan and in the process, in one decision, carved $275 million out of early childhood education.

The Minister would have us believe that early childhood education is a top priority and that increasing participation would be the priority in early childhood education. Well then, she is failing by her own goal; she is failing miserably. When she came to the select committee’s estimates hearing I asked her what her plan was to increase participation in this sector. She said it was the funding—as her colleague before has just argued, as well—to extend the 20 free hours to Playcentre, to te kōhanga reo, and to children aged 5 and over. When I asked her whether that would add more children to the early childhood education experience than there are now, she said no. So that money is not adding one additional child to the system; it is paying for children who already access early childhood education and it is extending the 20 free hours to those children. It is doing that but it is not extending; it is not adding one more child into the early childhood education sector.

What are the Minister’s plans? A few weeks ago she announced a plan, which had actually been brought forward by Labour, that will add an additional 400 places. Well, I have news for the Minister. The Ministry of Education tells us that we have to add 19,000 new early childhood places to our current system by 2011 just to stand still in terms of participation rates—not the measly 400 that the Minister was parading in the House 2 weeks ago, but 19,000. There is no plan. The Minister has no plan to add those 19,000 positions. But it is even worse than that because Labour had in place a plan to go forward, which would have already delivered by now nine new early childhood education services on school grounds in South Auckland where the participation rates for early childhood education desperately need to be improved. What has the new Minister done with that? She has cut the services down to three; it was nine, it is now three.

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) Link to this

I rise to agree with my colleague Sue Moroney on the fact that this is all about priorities—priorities in education. If we agree that the main priority of education is to raise achievement, then I say that this Budget misses that opportunity in a number of ways. If we are to raise achievement, then the priority needs to be the quality of the teachers in front of the kids. If we strip everything away, all of the social issues, the one single thing that raises achievement more than anything else is the quality of interaction between the teacher and the student. That is the most important thing.

So it disturbs me to see that in terms of support and resources for teachers, $5 million has been taken away in this Budget. In terms of curriculum support, which enables teachers to understand the curriculum and be able to deliver it properly, $7 million has gone. For the provision of advisory services—the people who travel around, go into schools, and support teachers to improve their craft and their skills—$3 million has gone. That is $15 million in total, yet when we listened to what Colin King said, we heard that $16 million has gone into boosting the truancy fund. On the surface that seems admirable, yet if we were to invest in teachers and in their ability to engage with kids and to excite them about schools and learning, then we would not need huge funds for truancy. If school is the best adventure in town, if pupils are engaged and interested in what they are learning, then they do not want to truant. I think it is a bottom-of-the-cliff situation to put a heap of money into truancy and to take money away from improving support for teachers. It is about priorities.

One of the priorities for those of us who are on the left of the political spectrum, compared with those on the right, is that we believe in cradle-to-the-grave education. We believe in opportunities. From the time our kids are born they can go through early childhood education, through the compulsory sector, and through into tertiary education, if they so desire. Unfortunately, there is a group of people who, for whatever reason, may not engage or succeed in education and who leave the system having underachieved, or they might have been out of the workforce for a little while and want to have the opportunity to get back into adult education. Unfortunately, their opportunity to do so has been severely jeopardised by the fact that there have been cuts to the adult community education budget.

Adult community education also offers social priorities. I will touch on one of the social opportunities—it is also a health opportunity—that adult community education offers in Kaitāia. There is a course for those people who want to do massage. Four people wanted to take up this massage course, which is probably a course that the Minister of Education would term a hobby course. However, one of those people who took up the opportunity for the massage course, who paid $50 and went off on a Saturday to do the course, is the father of a tetraplegic boy who is confined to a wheelchair. This father used the massage course to massage the limbs of his son, who is confined to a wheelchair, and that has taken a measure of the burden off the health system.

Another person who did the massage course is a woman whose elderly husband suffers from chronic arthritis. She massages his joints. Again, that alleviates his pain, and it also takes a measure of the burden off the health system. The final two people who participated in that massage course—this hobby course—are both practising nurses, who used the massage techniques and strategies to supplement their ability in their work as nurses.

It is really important that we do not forget that aside from the fiscal savings that those on the right are looking for, there are also the social and the health savings that those of us on the left are concerned about, because we are concerned about people. For those on the right, it comes down to profits.

We are also concerned about unemployment. My understanding is that the 0.6 percent of the tertiary education fund that has been cut for adult community education will mean that 4,000 tutors will probably lose their jobs, at a time when 1,000 people a week are already losing their jobs because of the recession. We should be looking for opportunities for people to retain their jobs. Unfortunately, this 0.6 percent cut in adult community education will impact on 4,000 jobs. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Hon DAVID CARTER (Minister of Agriculture) Link to this

I must express a bit of surprise and disappointment that the Opposition asked for Vote Agriculture and Forestry to be debated today, but that no one from the Opposition seeks to make a call. I will make a couple of comments, because this is an extremely important vote and there is a huge amount of work going on.

The first comment I will make is around the economic recession and the fact that no sector of the economy is immune from its effects. I think the House needs to be well aware of the pressures on the dairy sector, which has been hit quite hard by recent adjustments in the pay-out price. If we look at the Fonterra payout of $7.90 a year ago, which is now readjusted to a predicted payout of $4.55, we can see that that obviously makes quite a difference to an important sector of our economy. The situation is a lot brighter in the sheep industry, in that after years and years of very low sheepmeat prices, we now see a real example of the resilience of our sheep-farming sector. The price has probably nearly doubled over the last few years. But, again, I give a note of warning to the Committee that many farmers, particularly those in the Hawke’s Bay region, have been struck by 3 years of drought. They have had 3 years of drought, so they have actually destocked; in some cases they are down to half the previous stock levels. The prices for lamb production now may well have doubled, but with half the number of ewes that those farmers had previously, they are still facing a fairly dramatic time.

My Vote Agriculture and Forestry involves doing a lot of work, because there are a lot of challenging issues before us. One issue that is very much a focus of mine, and a focus of this National Government, is an intention to do something around the provision of water infrastructure in order to allow more irrigation.

SUE KEDGLEY (Green) Link to this

I was pleased to hear the Minister discussing the issue of live exports of sheep for slaughter, and pleased to hear his comments on the programme the other night. He implied that he would not approve live sheep exports under his watch. But I suggest to the Minister that what New Zealanders would really like to hear from him is an unequivocal assurance that there will be no live sheep exports for slaughter, under the National Government. He has made a generalisation, but New Zealanders want an absolute assurance that this brutal live trade in the export of sheep for slaughter will not proceed under this Government. We would be very grateful if the Minister could clarify that.

I do not think that anyone who saw the television programme the other night would ask questions as to why New Zealand should not be sending live sheep exports for slaughter in Saudi Arabia. The conditions are absolutely horrendous on the ships. The sheep are jammed into those ships—we saw the pictures of the ships—and then, once they arrive in Saudi Arabia, there is no animal welfare legislation there or any way of guaranteeing that the sheep sent for slaughter will not receive the horrendous treatment that was shown on the screen the other night.

The other question we need to ask is why on earth we would even consider sending our sheep all the way on that horrendous journey simply to be slaughtered at the other end. We have a very satisfactory trade in halal sheep—

Hon DAVID CARTER (Minister of Agriculture) Link to this

I certainly want to respond to the contribution Sue Kedgley made prior to the dinner break, because it was a contribution that was full of inaccuracies. There was hardly a word of truth in the whole contribution. Firstly, she spoke about the live sheep export issue. She accused this Government of working under the radar to reopen that trade. She knows full well that the discussions were initiated in 2003 by the then Labour Government, which she was prepared to support over 9 long years, and those discussions have been ongoing at a very slow pace. But for her to suggest that we were negotiating under the radar is completely untrue.

The second issue she raised was an accusation that we were about to launch the trade. The only reason that that particular accusation came to light was that she released a press release saying that in June this year we would be resuming trade. As anybody who is abreast of this issue will know, June 2009 has passed and the trade has not been initiated, so I suggest to Sue Kedgley that she maintain some accuracy around this issue instead of trying to wind up many hundreds of New Zealanders who share a genuine concern for animal welfare, as indeed I do.

The issue she then referred to was the pork industry’s continued use of sow crates. Again, she suggested that I am not making enough progress to wind up this issue. Again, I remind her that she, supporting the Labour Government, had 9 long years to do something, and accomplished nothing in that time. I have made considerable progress in that I have given very stern and strong messages to the pork industry, which has accepted the need to reform its industry and is working to do so.

Sue Kedgley claims that I have the ability to make changes to the animal welfare code, and that is quite incorrect. I have gone through that quietly with her on one occasion, and also in the House, trying to explain to her how the law works. Section 76 of the Animal Welfare Act is quite specific. I can make minor amendments to a code, but she seems to think that something as major as this would slip through without being recognised as substantially more than a minor amendment. In fact, it would then incur the wrath of the industry, not unfairly, I might point out, and result in judicial review.

I care deeply about animal welfare, but I will not see the Greens continue to use the issue simply for political gain on their part, and come down to the House and proffer half-truths and inaccuracies. The people of New Zealand deserve to know the truth. I am quite prepared to give it to them, but I expect Sue Kedgley to do the same.

KEITH LOCKE (Green) Link to this

This afternoon in Parliament I think we had a very good debate on the question of Afghanistan and whether the SAS should be recommitted there. I note that the conclusion was that four parties were against the SAS going and one was for. I think that reflects the great concern in the population. It would have been good, as Labour speakers said, if the debate had happened before the commitment of SAS troops rather than afterwards.

One point from that debate I would like to take up is the question of terrorism. Dr Wayne Mapp, in his contribution as the Minister of Defence, said—and he has used the expression before—that if we do not commit troops and fight the Taliban, Afghanistan will end up being a “haven for terrorists” again. In a later point he said that it would be an uncontested home for al-Qaeda. I think it betrays reality; as Phil Goff said, if Osama bin Laden is anywhere, he is probably in Pakistan. All kinds of journalists have been running around Afghanistan, talking to players in Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the Government, and all sorts of factions, and no one I know of has come across al-Qaeda in the past year or two. If anything, there is just a very small core. But it serves the purpose of people who want to support this type of intervention in Afghanistan or elsewhere to portray some giant conspiracy: Osama bin Laden sitting in his cave in Afghanistan, and all the tentacles going out and bombs going off in cities around the world, duplicating the communist conspiracy of the past, which was used to justify all sorts of other interventions, including in Viet Nam.

The reality is that these terrorist groups generally—including the ones that bombed in London, and Jakarta most recently—have their own particular rationale. We very strongly disagree with, object to, oppose, and criticise the way they are killing civilians in trying to get to their political goals, but if we want to understand what terrorism is about we have to actually look at it in each situation and look at the arguments that each terrorist group comes up with to get some support behind it.

When we look at the London bombings and the people engaged in that, we see clearly that there are two basic motivations, as they explained it. They felt alienated in Britain. They felt that Muslims there, including Muslim youth like themselves, were being mistreated. Also, they objected to what was happening in Iraq with the British invasion of Iraq. There are different configurations of explanations for the support going to terrorist groups around the world. Osama bin Laden, I think, had three planks when he got going. First was opposition to US troops in Saudi Arabia, second was what was happening in Palestine, and third was the Western military pressure on Iraq and the sanctions against Iraq. He got support around that.

So if we want to get rid of the evil of terrorism, we have to actually look at the causes and try to deal with them. In fact, if we look at a range of cases, we see that foreign intervention, particularly foreign military intervention, is exactly what gives these terrorist groups their fuel, not as some giant interlinked conspiracy, but in each country they exist in. So it is from that point of view that I believe it is an error to send the SAS troops to Afghanistan and engage in a military solution rather than a solution involving dialogue, reconstruction, and the things that our provincial reconstruction team is doing. Peaceful solutions are increasingly being advocated around the world.

If one thinks that a military solution is right, and that putting in a lot of foreign troops, bombing places, having sweeps across the Afghan countryside, upsetting everyone, killing civilians, and everything else, will get rid of terrorism, one is dreaming. In fact, it goes completely the opposite way. There have been articles in the Dominion Post, the New Zealand Herald, and all kinds of papers, and when we read the stories of why people in Afghanistan go towards the Taliban, we see that the kids there feel alienated and have nowhere to turn. So they turn to the Taliban, to madrasas, and Islamic fundamentalism, just as in our society the young kids in South Auckland or Porirua who turn towards the criminal gangs are the kids who are at a loose end, are in poverty, and do not see a future.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) Link to this

Pest control is a core function of the Department of Conservation, and it is an absolute necessity for the protection of New Zealand’s incredible biodiversity. This is especially so in our forests for the protection of vulnerable birds, endangered insects, and fragile plant species. In the 2009-10 Budget this National Government cut pest control funding to the Department of Conservation by $82,000. This cut is highly irresponsible. Pest control has more than just biodiversity benefits. Indeed, it is a key component of New Zealand’s response to climate change and to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Green Party has called on the Government to set a responsible target for the meeting in Copenhagen, which, as we know, the Government has failed miserably to do. In order to demonstrate the practicality of a responsible 30 to 40 percent target, the Green Party has released a plan called Getting There, which shows exactly how the Government can reduce emissions both drastically and cheaply. In order to meet a responsible target of between 30 and 40 percent, New Zealand will need to take responsibility for 48 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. That will require both actual cuts in our emissions and the purchase of some credits.

How will pest control help New Zealand to meet this responsible target? Pest control on just 219,000 hectares of juvenile forest will capture 8.75 million tonnes of emissions. That is, pest control alone will capture 17 percent of the emissions that New Zealand needs to save to meet a responsible target of 30 to 40 percent. How does this work? Over 200,000 hectares of easily identifiable public conservation estate land is juvenile forest and shrubland. Pests are the reason why those areas never grow into mature forests, which are an important carbon sink. Eliminating pests from juvenile forests will enable those forests to mature and store carbon. Pest control focused on these juvenile forests will return the fastest result. That is, the benefit of much of this carbon storage will occur in time to meet New Zealand’s 2020 target.

How much will this pest control cost? It is easiest to describe the cost in terms of cost per tonne of carbon. A pest control programme over 219,000 hectares of juvenile forest will cost between $5 and $10 per tonne. This will save the taxpayer money. At today’s prices, the cost of purchasing carbon credits is around $25 per tonne. By 2020 the cost may well be as high as $100 per tonne. If we act now, it will cost us $5; if we delay, it will cost us $100. If we do this pest control now, we will save money and emissions, and meet our obligations as a credible and responsible international citizen. Extra jobs would also be created by this pest control programme. The biodiversity of our native birds and forests would flourish, benefiting our tourism industry. In a recession, every job and every dollar count. In a climate crisis, action now will save us money.

The Green Party is a specialist in practical solutions that deal with both the climate crisis and the recession, and that is what the Green New Deal is all about. Investment in pest control—as set out in our plan, Getting There—will easily achieve this. Biodiversity of our forests will be enhanced, native bird and tree species will be saved, jobs will be created through pest control and through our burgeoning tourism industry, precious and scarce public money will be saved through taking early action, and carbon emissions will be cut.

This National Government has no plan, and is using bogeymen to frighten the public away from acting as a responsible international citizen and protecting New Zealand’s fragile biodiversity. Only the Green Party has the plan to get us through the twin crises of climate change and recession.

Hon TIM GROSER (Minister of Conservation) Link to this

I make just a few comments on the issues that the member Metiria Turei has raised. First of all, I will put the so-called cuts into some perspective. The so-called cuts—the savings that we have asked for, some $13.5 million each year over a period of 4 years—are to be compared with a total spend of the best part of $1.6 billion. No matter how one makes the comparison, if one takes the narrowest comparison of spend, as a Government we will still be spending $57 million more in Vote Conservation than was spent as recently as 2007-08. The idea that there are great swingeing cuts simply does not stand up to any serious scrutiny.

I have said before and I will repeat now that such is the scale of the problem facing our country in terms of our responsibilities in biodiversity that as a country we could probably spend three or four times the amount we do—I do not know what figure—and there would still be biodiversity jobs that could be done to the benefit of New Zealanders. We are in a general situation where we are trying to fight our way through a recession. We believe we have taken a responsible fiscal position. The very modest savings at the Department of Conservation—I have a great deal of respect for the men and women who work there—are extremely moderate, and will provide the basis for maintaining the position with regard to its core functions. At the end of the day, the argumentation that the member has used is correct: the pest, weed, and fire control is part of the sequestration equation.

I just say to the member that one of the frustrations I have, among many frustrations with the current Kyoto Protocol accounting framework, is that we are not properly incentivised under the rules to deal adequately with the 6.8 million hectares of mature forest; I appreciate that the member was talking about young forest, for the most part. I am actively looking at our options on that issue, as a small net increase in sequestration over the magnificent resource that we have in our indigenous historical forests would be an absolutely enormous potential sequestration. Unfortunately, we are not clear as to what the net picture is in terms of loss and gains, but I assure the member that I am actively considering this in the context of wearing my other hat, as Associate Minister for Climate Change Issues (International Negotiations).

But I very much take the point the member has made with regard to pest control being part of the climate change picture. As a matter of principle, we as a Government give the department, the director-general, and his senior staff a target to meet. We do not interfere politically with the specific decisions that the director-general and his senior staff make in respect of weed and pest control.

Just to indicate how this is played out, I say that I went through the figures, and I think they are quite interesting. These are the figures that the department has supplied to me as the Minister as to how it will meet its targets. I will, first of all, read out some figures expressed in terms of hectares, and then I will make a comment or two about value. The figures are for 2008-09, and draw a comparison with the year to come, 2009-10. With regard to weed control, we will increase the number of hectares this coming year from 481,000 to 531,000. So the department will actually increase the total volume of hectares of weed control under this so-called budget cut regime. The amount of money will go fractionally down in respect of weed control, from $22 million to $21 million.

With regard to possums, we will increase the number of hectares where we will try to reduce possum numbers, or try to eliminate possums, if at all possible. The total number of hectares that will be processed next year is going up—I repeat, going up—from 244,000 to 310,000. In deer control, it is the same picture. We will increase the number of hectares where deer control will be in operation. The precise figure is 339,000 going up to 360,000. There will be a reduction in goat control in terms of hectare coverage, by a considerable margin, for the simple reason—

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) Link to this

The Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Steven Joyce, does not strike me as a ditherer, but I am starting to change my mind. The National Government was elected more than 9 months ago, and an essential component of National’s campaign strategy was its $1.5 billion commitment to roll out ultra-fast broadband to 75 percent of New Zealand homes within 10 years. That was National’s big-ticket item, its big campaign pledge. The first thing the new Government did was to axe the existing broadband programme introduced by the previous Labour Government, which was called the Broadband Investment Fund and had dozens of regional projects poised to roll out, and had widespread support in the industry.

In 2008 the previous Labour Government committed to spend $500 million in broadband investments over 5 years. The targets were high-speed, open access urban fibre networks, improved rural connectivity, and improved international links. But the new Government axed it, and there was a vacuum in the industry. It took this Government until the end of March to release its investment proposal for consultation, the Broadband Investment Initiative. Since then there has been nothing. The submissions closing date at the end of June came and went, and what did the Minister do? He said he needed more time to think about it. After 2 more months he is still thinking about it. We are now approaching the end of August and there is no indication of how and when this Government will start rolling out broadband to 75 percent of the population.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Communications and Information Technology) Link to this

Perhaps I could quote my good friend Paul Quinn, whom I do not often quote, to be fair, but I should quote him more often. I think he summed it up when he said that there is a difference between 9 years and 9 months. I think he summed it up rather well.

Clare Curran, the member opposite who has just resumed her seat, may not recall this, but when the then National Opposition announced its broadband policy, it said that it wanted to take the first year to finalise the plan because, amongst other things, it is such a huge sum of money. It is $1.5 billion to invest in ultra-fast broadband. As the member points out, if it is matched by private sector contributions, which is certainly the Government’s aim, we will be talking about a $3 billion investment. I imagine that if we do not take the time to get it right, then the criticism will be that we rushed it. It is one of those situations where the Opposition will not be happy, as it will be too early, too late, not enough, or too much. That is, I suppose, the lot of being in Opposition.

The Government remains very strongly committed to its pre-election promise. To be clear, we received 104 submissions on the proposal, which was very encouraging. The submissions made a number of comments and added things to the proposal. That analysis has now been completed. Cabinet will address the final version of the plan shortly. It will address some of the key issues that have been raised in the submissions, including the definition of the relevant coverage areas for the network, the ability for local fibre companies to provide second-layer services as well as dark fibre, and the need to provide regulatory certainty to the industry. It will address the issue of demand side or take-up risk, and the need to retain flexibility over the funding model that the Crown Fibre Investment Co. will implement. These are all crunchy issues that Cabinet is about to address.

The other really important part is the rural broadband side and, related to that, the telecommunications service obligation, or TSO. Again, there is a range of issues. The first and, I think, most important one is ensuring that rural schools have access to world-class broadband services. We cannot afford to have the digital divide between urban and rural education providers. The Government is very conscious of that, and knows that it is very important. Once we have addressed the issue of rural education, then we must maximise what one might call the spillover benefits to surrounding communities. Initially, we allocated $48 million in the Budget this year, and that will be supplemented from other revenue sources. Alongside that, telecommunications service obligation arrangements are being reviewed in conjunction with these rural broadband issues.

I stress that any question of relaxing the requirement for free local calls is not on the table. Also off the table are changes that would impact on the ownership of Telecom shares.

These are the biggest issues, but they are not the only issues. There is a number of other very important corollary issues in the portfolio, one of them being, of course, international connectivity. I note that the member opposite did not mention it, but it is a very important area in the broadband space. It is good to see that there are a couple of potentially viable commercial options for improving international broadband connectivity for New Zealand. That is exciting. The Government is prepared to play its part through the organisations it is involved with in the space to help facilitate activity there.

Another area is that of complementary measures. If we can get complementary measures that reduce the cost of fibre roll-out, then that is of benefit to all players in the industry. We are doing a lot of work in that area, looking at the access to ducts and poles, looking at access to land on which infrastructure is located, and, of course, looking at the constraints imposed by our good friend the Resource Management Act.

There are issues around mobile services, which is an important part of both the telephone and broadband space. Members will be aware of the investigations into mobile termination services. The Commerce Commission’s final report is due to me in December of this year. Of course, there is the issue of national roaming, which remains in the hands of the Commerce Commission. It is good to see increasing competition in the mobile space, with a third player coming into the market. It is also good to see the further investment and deployment of third generation services by both Telecom and Vodafone. It is a vibrant and exciting market and we are pleased to see it develop further. We will be making more comments on international roaming.

There are a whole lot of other areas, such as the readiness for digital literacy in the education and health sectors. We will address all those areas in the coming 12 months.

DAVID BENNETT (Chairperson of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee) Link to this

It is a great pleasure to rise to talk about the estimates debate in respect of Vote Transport. When we look at Vote Transport, I think we need to give great praise to the Minister of Transport, Steven Joyce. He has delivered the leadership that has been lacking in the transport sector for a long time. Within the short period of 9 months he has achieved more than the previous Government achieved in 9 years. He has been a revolutionary Minister, who has performed a great role.

The major investment in transport in this Budget is into the roads of national significance. This investment will provide an economic spur to this economy, and it will deliver jobs and the infrastructure for us to grow and have the strong economy we need to deliver the social services that we all wish to see. Let us look at some of the roads of national significance. Firstly, there is the Waikato Expressway on State Highway 1. For 9 long years Labour tried to build that road, but the only part of the Waikato Expressway it finished was the part we started. Labour had 9 years and it could not put the Waikato Expressway up there. The good people of the Waikato have had deliverance from the Minister, and we thank him for that. The good people of Tauranga also got deliverance last week. They got the Tauranga Eastern Corridor, which will revolutionise the Tauranga coastline. We will see further development further out, past Papamoa, as we open up the link between Whakatāne and Tauranga, which is so lacking.

But today we also need to focus on something that I think many New Zealanders will want to see our Government focus on in transport—that is, making our transport systems safer. Today we saw the release of the Safer Journeys discussion document, which I encourage all members to read. It goes through many of the issues that we will face in making transport safer in the next few years. It performs the role of providing a strategy for safer transport use, which we have not had in this country. There has not been that direction, and we have been putting out the issues so that people can discuss them. These issues are important to New Zealanders, because far too many people are losing their lives on our roads.

The road safety priorities are in three categories. There is the high concern category, the medium concern category, and the areas for continuing focus and emerging issues. We can look at some of the high concern issues. The first one is the need for a reduction in alcohol-impaired and drug-impaired driving. This brings in a lot of the debate around alcohol consumption levels when we compare them with other countries, especially Australia. We can see the initiatives that the National Government passed recently around drug-impaired driving, something that Labour did not pass in its 9 years in Government.

Another area is the safety of young drivers. There are far too many accidents involving young drivers, and their rates of injury and death are too high. We can look at having safer roads and roadsides, which is part of the programme of constructing roads. That will give us safer roads to drive on. Safer speeds has an important role in the high concern category. The document also looks at the safety of motorcyclists. Those are the high concern issues that the National Government has identified, and it has put out this discussion document so that people can give us feedback and we can then address these issues. That is called listening to the people. That is called engaging with the public. It is giving them a chance to have a defined opportunity to make some constructive criticisms and to promote some ideas. That is what we need in Government. We need to engage with the people to find the best solutions.

The issues of medium concern include improving the safety of the light vehicle fleet, safer walking and cycling, improving the safety of heavy vehicles, reducing the impact of fatigue on driving, and addressing distraction while driving. We are opening up consultation on those issues in order for people to give us feedback on what they think we should be doing in those areas.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) Link to this

I thank the previous speaker, David Bennett. He is a fine select committee chair. He holds the Government to account on a regular basis. Thank goodness he does, because nobody else does. He asks fine questions of the Government.

Where is “Dazza”? Where is Darren this evening? It is his big chance to talk about transport—

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment) Link to this

I stand to take a call on Vote Employment, and I am sure that the Opposition will take calls, as well, with it being such an important vote, and such an important issue at the moment as far as what is happening in the country is concerned. It will not surprise the Committee to know, though, that when the ministry officials and I were before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for the estimates, Opposition members did not have enough questions on employment, and we finished early. With the way that things are at the moment, our economy is strongly influenced by the performance of the labour market, and employment is obviously a key issue not just for this Government but also for the country. However, Labour members did not have enough questions, and we finished early on that day because they did not have enough questions to ask us. But that is all right.

Members might be interested to know that the first question we had was from the previous Minister, Ruth Dyson, asking me to define productivity. It will not surprise members that she did not know what productivity was, even though for 9 years members may have thought that Labour members had been concentrating on that. What happened, though, was that we had an Opposition that was so keen to be so clever, its members did not end up addressing any of the real questions that needed to be addressed.

Our economy is strongly influenced by the performance of the labour market. We are facing the biggest economic downturn since the Depression, yet we heard very few questions coming from the Opposition. We know that a well-functioning and flexible labour market is the key to improving economic performance, and it is absolutely vital that we get this stuff right. We are responsible for the labour market analysis, for that information to support our national, our regional, and our sector labour market engagements. We are keenly interested in what is happening in the overall picture. I think the vote has a good interest in where we are heading longer term—getting us through these tougher times, recognising what skills we need to move further ahead, and making sure we are upskilling the workforce where it is needed. Recently there was a good report on aged care, which is of vital importance if we are to look at how we move ahead.

I want to talk a bit about the unemployment rate and where we are at, at the moment. Members should make no mistake: we are at 6 percent at the June 2009 quarter, but we do compare favourably internationally. We are ninth out of 30 of the OECD countries.

HEKIA PARATA (National) Link to this

Kia ora tātou. I am delighted to stand and make a small contribution to this estimates debate in respect of Vote Employment. I am delighted to follow on from the Minister, who has provided us with a very rich context around the labour market at a time of deep recession, which allows us to discuss some of the challenges that confront us today. She has also provided us with some very helpful statistical definition, which can guide us in our consideration of the issues that face us.

As we all know, and as this Government in particular has been prepared to be seized of, we are in a deep recession. We are also very aware of how important employment is, not only as a contribution to growth and productivity—