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Budget 2017 invests $1.24 billion of new operating funding over four years and $785.6 million of capital funding in law and order initiatives to help make our communities safer, Police Minister Paula Bennett, Justice and Courts Minister Amy Adams, and Corrections Minister Louise Upston say.

“The extra investment in Budget 2017 includes the $503.8 million Safer Communities Package which was announced earlier this year and will deliver an additional 1,125 police staff,” Mrs Bennett says.

The Government will update the Equal Pay Act and amend the Employment Relations Act to implement recommendations of the Joint Working Group on Pay Equity.

This will make it easier for women to file pay equity claims with their employers, rather than having to go through the courts. It will also assist employers in addressing those claims.

“The Government has accepted the recommendations of the Joint Working Group, which set out principles for raising and resolving pay equity claims through bargaining,” State Services Minister Paula Bennett says.

An overseas company’s application to purchase Lochinver Station has been declined because the benefits to New Zealand are not substantial and identifiable, Ministers Paula Bennett and Louise Upston say.

Pure 100 Farm Ltd, a subsidiary of China-based Shanghai Pengxin, applied to the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) last year to buy the 13,800 ha farm near Taupo for $88 million.