General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

I love this country, New Zealand. All of us are either people or descendants of people who have sailed and flown from every corner of the Earth for a better life. We live together, mostly in harmony, and work to give our children a better tomorrow than we had ourselves. And this is made possible by the only political system that’s ever worked: liberal democracy. Those words mean universal human rights and free and fair elections with universal franchise.

We should never forget that our country is the original liberal democracy—the first in human history to give every adult the right to vote. Thousands of New Zealanders went on to make the ultimate sacrifice defending it. They lost their lives in barbaric conditions because the opposite of liberal democracy—totalitarian racial supremacy—had to be stopped. Today, we’re fortunate to live with that inheritance. Today, our Human Rights Act empowers the Human Rights Commission to “promote racial equality and cultural diversity.” Perhaps that’s what the commission had in mind when they said, “Give nothing to racism.” And we’re fortunate in this House that we do not have political parties that are overtly racist—or at least that’s what I thought.

I thought we’d never have a political party elected to our Parliament that openly and casually preached racial supremacy. I thought we all believed in being born free and equal, as Prime Minister Fraser signed up to in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but unfortunately there is a party in this Parliament that openly and casually declares racial supremacy, and I’m calling today on their leaders to stop it. Here it is for all to see on the website of Te Paati Māori: “It is a known fact that the Māori genetic makeup is stronger than others.” Let me say that again: “It is a known fact that the Māori genetic makeup is stronger than others.”

This is not some nut-bar party from the backblocks of Europe. It is not some dark website in the corner of the dark web. This Te Paati Māori, who have two seats in our Parliament and claim to oppose racism. When this was brought to my attention, I wondered what the diplomatic way to deal with it might be. I thought of approaching their MPs, but given some of the things they’ve said about me and ACT, I wasn’t so sure if that would be effective. So I wrote to Meng Foon, the Race Relations Commissioner, five weeks ago, on 23 August, and I pointed out that Mr Foon regularly wades into public debates and perhaps he should call this out. Two weeks later, on 7 September, he wrote back and said, “I understand your concern and the sentence you highlight should have been constructed better.” Really?

So we’ve got a Race Relations Commissioner who thinks racial supremacy is OK, just maybe fix up the wording. I wrote back on 9 September and noted, within days of that statement, he’d made public statements calling out racially charged statements in local body elections. I called on him again to take action. He wrote back and said, “I’ve notified Te Paati Māori of my concerns and intention to meet and/or speak with them. I would like to have the ability to discuss those matters with them.” Maybe his stealthy methods are effective? They’re not. Two weeks later, it remains there for all to see on their website: “It is a known fact that the Māori genetic makeup is stronger than others.”

A more realistic conclusion is that the Human Rights Commission is a pointless organisation that spends taxpayer money saying they’ll give nothing to racism but runs for the hills when real racism appears. That’s why the Human Rights Commission should go. But, with them having failed, ACT appeals to Te Paati Māori: take this racist statement off your website. It is not us; it does not belong in New Zealand’s democracy. And failing them acting, then it’s up to the people of New Zealand to see their true character and motivation, and make sure that they are never allowed anywhere near power.

That is not the best New Zealand can do. This country at its best is a modern, multi-ethnic liberal democracy with inclusion for all, and I watch with interest to see if all the usual suspects pile on and call out the Māori Party for this outrageous statement, as they should. If they don’t, ACT will because our country deserves freedom and equality.

In the 2020 election campaign, the then National Party finance spokesperson had a bit of a nightmare: his alternative budget didn’t add up. And I mean that literally: it did not add up. It was about $4 billion short of what it should have been, and it scuttled the credibility that Mr Goldsmith might have had as spokesperson.

But the reality was that there was a deeper problem: the National Party’s fiscal Bermuda Triangle. Now, being the modest man that I am, I won’t dwell on the unnamed National MP who said that that was the most devastating lie of the election campaign—I won’t dwell on that—because the most important fact is that it was accurate, because the National Party tried to claim that it was possible to cut taxes, increase spending, and reduce debt all at the same time. It doesn’t add up, the triangle doesn’t work, and the public understood that at the 2020 election.

Well, guess what! Today, we have proof that the National Party is still stuck in the fiscal Bermuda Triangle. They still can’t make their plans add up. And what’s worse: their plans are so out of touch, they are even worse than when they last proposed them.

This was proved today by Christopher Luxon in Morning Report. In the space of 46 seconds, Mr Luxon entered, exited, and sank in the Bermuda fiscal Triangle. Now, he started out OK, because he said that our economy was in better shape than the United Kingdom—thank you very much, Mr Luxon, for that. But then he was asked, “Would you rule out further borrowing for tax cuts?” First he said “yes”, then he said “no”, and then when confronted with this question for a third time, Corin Dann said, “So, borrowing for tax cuts, that’s off the agenda?” Christopher Luxon? [Impersonating Mr Luxon] “Well, that’s a separate issue.”

No, it’s not. It is the issue. The issue is, how will the National Party pay for their tax plan? Let’s be really clear: this is a tax plan that the National Party leader and deputy leader have reiterated time and time again: tax cuts for the highest-earning New Zealanders, restoring tax breaks for landlords and speculators, indexation, and removing the bright-line test. Now, conservatively, that’s $6 billion that the National Party need to find somewhere for their tax cuts.

But there’s more. Chris Bishop this week said—and leaving aside the astounding gall of this statement—that he wants to get rid of the State house waiting list. That’s another $13 billion, conservatively, that the National Party need to find. But apparently there’s no borrowing for that, which means the only other answer to that is massive cuts to health, to education, to housing, to all of the social services—or it just means that, once again, the National Party’s plan does not add up.

And we are seeing today, in the United Kingdom, just what can happen when ideology buys into the reality of a constrained COVID world. The National Party’s recipes never change: trickle-down economics and giving tax cuts to the wealthiest New Zealanders at the very time where we need to be investing in social services. So come on, Mr Bayly, you were there—what’s happening in the fiscal Bermuda Triangle now? What’s happening in the fiscal Bermuda Triangle? Is it more debt? Is it cutting taxes? What is it, Mr Bayly? That’s the problem with the National Party. They’re stuck in the fiscal Bermuda Triangle.

Meanwhile, on this side of the House, we take the balanced approach that got us through COVID. We’ve got through COVID in as good a shape as any other country in the world—from a health outcome and from an economic outcome. Mr Bayly was a great finance spokesperson; he’s left out in the cold now. I still want you back, Mr Bayly. I miss you! But Mr Bayly, here’s the record: 3.3 percent unemployment, one of the lowest levels of public debt in the OECD, a 5 percent bigger economy than what we had before COVID, and massive reason to be optimistic. The tourists are back, immigration’s coming back, and international students are coming back.

As New Zealanders look to this summer, they know they have a Government that got New Zealand through COVID and has an economic plan for the future. On the other side of the House, they are stuck in their fiscal Bermuda Triangle with an economic plan that does not add up.

It’s a privilege and an honour to follow my colleague, the Minister of Finance. Normally, at this point in the debate, I would offer some witty riposte—I daren’t do that with Mr Robertson. But I do want to say what a privilege it is to work alongside a finance Minister who works in the truest and finest traditions of Labour Party finance Ministers, who takes grip of the economy and makes it serves the interests, not only in the short term but in the long term as well; not only in the interests of today but in the interests of working people in the long term, and I’m going to come back to that.

This Labour Government has operated in a world climate that is facing some major challenges: not only the aftermath of the pandemic—and we’re still working our way through that—but now with the war in Ukraine that is putting major pressure on economies around the world. But we have reason to be optimistic in New Zealand. We have reason to be positive about the outlook in New Zealand, because, as the Minister of Finance has just said, you look at what we have achieved in New Zealand—even though people have had a tough winter and had a tough year this year—and look at the record. We have low unemployment. We’ve had one of the highest levels of GDP growth in the last quarter of any country that we choose to compare ourselves with. And all the while, we have maintained, as well, vital public services, we’ve looked after them, and we’ve kept focused on both the short and the long term.

This Labour Government is doing what Labour Governments do, and is doing it well. We tackle the hard problems, and we tackle the problems of today as well. And we don’t just deal with the easy stuff; we deal with the problems that our predecessors left in the bottom drawer, left in the too-hard basket—which is what the previous Government did.

This Government has laid good foundations in the five years we’ve been in place. I look at our Minister of Education and the work that he’s done in our education system to improve its performance. I look at our track record—as the Minister of Finance just did—on our COVID pandemic performance where we saved lives and kept pressure off our public system, and we’ve now invested more in our public system than we ever have before.

As I said, the results speak for themselves: GDP growth; inflation tracking better than many other countries. We’ve got low unemployment—that doesn’t mean to say we don’t have the challenges of labour shortages, we do. They are challenges that the world is experiencing, and we’ve got them here. But that’s why I look to our Minister of Immigration, who’s doing an outstanding job of repositioning our immigration policies, our immigration platform, getting more people across the border, and focusing on the skills we need, along with our Minister of Education and others, who are focusing on investing in New Zealanders to play their part in our economy and their part in the future as well. So we’ll continue to work with the hospitality sector. We’ll continue to recruit the nurses that we’re recruiting offshore now—400 applications, I think, since July, more than 300 approved, three quarters of them for our public health system, a quarter of them for the private sector—things are going well in that respect.

But I want to deal with one very important policy initiative that the National Party, in their typical fashion, has decided they’re allergic to, but is actually very important, and that is a social income insurance scheme. It’s very important, and I want to acknowledge the work that the Hon Grant Robertson has been doing on that. That is a programme that deals with the unfortunate incidence of redundancy that happens. And it is there to support the thousands of New Zealander workers who face the prospect of redundancy but without any redundancy benefits, because they don’t have it in their employment agreement, collective or otherwise—well, some do, but many don’t.

But it also deals with those who fall sick during their working life, get cancer, or get some other sickness and need time out and who don’t otherwise qualify for support. Without this sort of scheme, those are the people who are plunged into poverty and uncertainty. And, of course, it’s not just good for workers either. This is a scheme that’s good for business. For those who do have a redundancy scheme, it alleviates pressure off their balance sheet, for one thing; they don’t have to carry the contingent liability of redundancy. They don’t know when it’s going to be triggered, but they know that they have to have the means for it if they sign up to employment agreements with it. But it’s actually good for them too, because it gives them certainty about their workforce when something untoward happens and a worker has to take extended time out. But it means that worker is supported and then is available to come back if that’s what they and the employer choose to do. Or it means that worker—if that’s the situation they’re in—can get other training to be an active member in the labour market when they recover from their sickness or otherwise are ready to go back to work.

That’s what that scheme does; that’s why it’s so important. It’s a good, progressive Labour scheme, and I’m proud to be part of a Government that’s putting it in place.

Here we have another Minister double-counting the nurse numbers. Andrew Little is fudging the numbers because he knows that the numbers of nurses applying from offshore for a visa to come to New Zealand are so abysmally bad that they’re worse than when the borders were closed. Only 75 nurses from offshore in 12 weeks have applied. He’s double-counting the numbers like Michael Wood did yesterday, claiming there were 300 nurses applying for an Accredited Employer Work Visa. Most of those workers are onshore and are already here, and are applying for a different type of visa. The numbers don’t lie, Minister Little—75 nurses. That’s 26 a month, compared to 57 a month when the borders were closed. These guys can’t organise themselves out of a paper bag.

It’s been a rough few weeks for the Minister of Immigration, our latest immigration Minister. Things are so bad under his watch that an incident management team have been set up to go into Immigration New Zealand, which is the first time that we can find out that this has ever happened. A team of 27 senior managers from across the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment were sent in to sort out the problems caused by a trio of hapless immigration Ministers.

Things are so bad that Michael Wood had to scrape the bottom of the good-news barrel last week by arranging a patsy question to himself about the 2021 Resident Visa (RV21) processing. “We’re on track”, he proudly proclaimed, “to meet the deadline of 80 percent completed by June 2023.” Only a Labour Minister in a Government that has got such a woeful track record of delivery could pat himself on the back for a delayed deadline that his Government had pushed out by six months. The truth is that we were never on track at any stage—not even for a single week—to meet the 12 months that they’d originally promised. They pushed it out to what they thought it would be, which was mid - next year. The reality is that Immigration New Zealand are already making noises about the fact that that’s going to have to be delayed again because they keep shifting people out of RV21 to fight other fires. So now Michael Wood is having to celebrate by patting himself on the back for a delayed deadline which is, in fact, an actual broken promise.

Then poor Michael Wood had to watch his Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, this week, during the Mood of the Boardroom survey launch speeches, under pressure from top CEOs from around the country who were lamenting the skills shortages in New Zealand. Grant Robertson said—and I quote—“It will take some time for New Zealand’s immigration settings to kick in.”, and then he said, “I do believe that in summer, we will get workers here.” Mate! Someone tell him he’s dreaming.

You can’t trust a Government that promised us 20,000 workers back in February, when 1,000 showed up. So while Grant Robertson makes these empty promises to the CEOs in the Mood of the Boardroom, the skilled migrant pathway to residence—the skilled migrant category (SMC)—remains closed, and it has been since March 2020. The message has been sent loud and clear to skilled migrants around the world that “You are not welcome.”, and skilled workers are choosing Australia and Canada.

We are 12 months too late to open the SMC. We had two years with borders closed to sort this out, but they never did it, and the leaks coming out of Immigration New Zealand are that they’re going to reopen the SMC next month. Well, too little, too late. The workers have already moved to Australia, and if we want to wait for immigration settings to kick in, as Grant Robertson says, things are just going to get worse, because the immigration settings that are yet to kick in are the fact that the right of partners of skilled workers to an open work visa is extinguished from December. It’s hard enough to attract skilled workers in the current settings we’ve got now, and this is just another roadblock that will make workers choose Australia over New Zealand. Top companies like Rocket Lab will tell the Minister this, but the question is whether he will do something about it.

Then, yesterday, poor Michael Wood had to double-count the nurses, like Andrew Little did today, and if things hadn’t already gone from bad to worse for the poor immigration Minister, in the Estimates debate a couple of weeks ago, Michael Woodhouse asked him a very simple question: what is the current balance of the memorandum account? The memorandum account, for those who are watching, is the day-to-day operational account of Immigration New Zealand that usually tracks towards zero. The costs of Immigration New Zealand are offset by the visa fees, and when he was asked what the current balance of this was, the Minister answered, ‘Well, it’s about negative $14.7 million, tracking down from $18.1 million.” Well, he was only about $130 million out, and he still hasn’t come down to the House to correct his answer.

The fact is that the taxpayer has had to put in almost $300 million worth of funds to prop up a department that is failing New Zealanders. In fact, next year the memorandum account is due to be negative $220 million, so the poor, hapless immigration Minister has had a rough few weeks, and I can’t see anything getting any better soon.

The saying “Think global, act local” is certainly true for me. Foreign affairs and local government urges one to focus the mind on issues ranging from rural water supplies for our most isolated communities, to harnessing the potential of our young people, growing the Māori economy, while addressing the most pressing concerns beyond our borders—from climate change, to the war in Ukraine, to the impacts of a global pandemic. So much of what we experience is driven by global factors.

Europe is entering unchartered waters this winter with energy prices 10 times higher than before Russia’s war on Ukraine. Globally, diesel prices increased 74 percent in the last year. Some expect inflation in the UK to reach 18 percent in the first quarter of 2023, the highest level for the UK since 1976. US inflation is at its highest in a generation and there are fears of entrenchment. The Chinese economy is slowing, with growth below 4 percent, and they’re still focused on a COVID elimination strategy that sees more than 40 cities in lockdown. Declining orders from China and Hong Kong are causing concern across the rest of Asia. Over in Australia, the global downturn could have a significant impact on the economy of our closest partner.

Here, at home, we’re not immune to global impacts on our economy. Our inflation, though below the OECD average, has caused a significant cost of living crisis for New Zealanders, and hardship for many. It has required high levels of Government support, and we’ve stepped up with the cost of living payment for low and middle income earners, fuel excise cuts of 25 cents per litre to help people fill up the petrol tank and get to work and school, and we’re working with the supermarket sector so that Kiwis can pay a fair price at the checkout. In addition to that, we’ve increased Working for Families, superannuation, the student allowance, and main benefits from April of this year. In infrastructure, we’re moving after decades of neglect—exposed by councils, the Auditor-General, health authorities, and others—that has resulted in toxic brown water spilling out of household taps. We’re strengthening the foundations our economy is built on, especially in infrastructure, through our waters reform.

The one thing we cannot afford to lose sight of is the infrastructure deficit that we face. We’re confronting challenges because we have an economic advantage and a Government philosophy that is, in many cases, unique to New Zealand. The economy is nearly 5 percent bigger than before the start of the pandemic—similar to Australia, and ahead of the US, the EU, the UK, and Canada. Since July 2020, more than 200,000 New Zealanders have taken up free apprenticeships or trades training. We’re backing Māori and Pacific aspirations. Our Māori and Pacific economies contain massive, massive potential. By realising the potential of Māori-owned land and training our rangatahi through initiatives like Mana in Mahi and the cadetship programme, we’re ensuring all parts of the New Zealand economy have the same opportunities to grow.

The state of the world is not cause for despair in totality. We need to remain optimistic as we come through one of the most difficult winters in memory. These are challenges, but we can get through it. And it’s important to ensure that we’re investing where it matters: better health, education, mental health, and housing. We’re also preparing for what the world might throw at us at this very uncertain time. We’re keeping a lid on debt and making important investments to deliver a high-wage, low-emissions economy that provides greater security in the good times and the bad. New Zealand is well positioned to respond to the challenges ahead, whether it be health and safety of our drinking water, war, or pandemics.

Under the leadership of the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern and our Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, our Government has responded to a global pandemic where there was no rule book; responded to our climate change challenge and is focusing on the needs of the Pacific; and responded to conflict and crisis around the world to buffer the negative impacts—all the time, balancing responsible economic management while caring for people. That’s why there’s cause for optimism. That’s why we need to continue to move forward.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Housing, under this Government, is a social and economic disaster. In no area more than housing has this Government failed to deliver. They are simply incompetent and incapable of fixing issues in New Zealand society. Big talk in Opposition; utter failure to deliver in Government.

First we had the KiwiBuild promise: 100,000 houses in 10 years. Where are we up to? Fourteen hundred built, so far, in five years. I’ve done the numbers. We’ve just ticked over the fifth-year anniversary of KiwiBuild. We’ll complete the 100,000 KiwiBuild houses in the year 2308.

Hon Judith Collins: Oh, fantastic!

Harete Hipango: Appalling.

CHRIS BISHOP: I’ll be long gone. Judith Collins will be long. Harete Hipango will be long gone. Barbara Edmonds will be long gone. Mr Speaker, you, sir, I’m sad to say, will be long gone, because KiwiBuild is not going to be completed.

Members might remember the now Prime Minister in the 2017 election debate, waxing lyrically about kids living in cars. She said, “I refuse to stand by while children sleep in cars.” Back then, around a hundred New Zealand kids, shamefully, lived in cars. The number now is nearly five hundred—480. It should be to the enduring shame of this incompetent and useless Government that practises kindness—or at least preaches kindness but can’t put it into practice—that tomorrow morning, hundreds of New Zealand children and hundreds of New Zealand families will wake up in a car. The Prime Minister has broken her promise.

Phil Twyford said, five years ago, rents will fall under Labour. Phil Twyford said that. I’ve got the quote. He said that under Labour’s policies, rents will fall. Yet today, we see TradeMe reporting that tenants continue to feel the pinch as median average rents remain at an all-time high. Rents are up—in the last five years—$140 per week on average. In Lower Hutt, they’re up $225 a week on average in the last five years.

Phil Twyford used to say that it’s a disgrace that the Government spends $90,000 per day on emergency housing. Well, guess what! The Government now spends a million dollars a day housing people in motels.

Hon Louise Upston: A day?

CHRIS BISHOP: A day. We’ve just ticked over, two months ago, a billion—not a million; a billion; “B” for Billy, with a capital “B”—dollars spent on housing people in motels. Four-thousand households live in motels. Four-thousand kids will wake up tomorrow morning in a motel.

The Government said they would fix the State house wait-list. The Prime Minister likes to say, wrongly, that the Government’s built 10,000 State houses. I heard Kiri Allan say it on radio this morning—she said, “Oh, no, don’t worry, we’ve built 10,000 public houses.” Wrong, wrong, and wrong again. Guess how many Kāinga Ora houses, Housing New Zealand houses, the Government’s actually built in net terms in five years.

Hon Louise Upston: How many?

CHRIS BISHOP: Two thousand six hundred. Pathetic number. They demolished 4,600. They ignore that bit. They don’t count the net number. They’ve demolished or sold 4,600 and built net 2,600. The Government said they’d stop the State house sell-off; they still sell State houses. Another broken promise. So, in net terms, 2,601 new Kāinga Ora houses. So how do you get to the 10,000? Well, 4,000 of the 10,000 are not new builds. It’s not new housing; it’s an existing house that’s being leased by a community housing provider that now accesses the income-related rent subsidy. It’s called a redirect. Four thousand of the 10,000 purported new public houses are just redirects. They’re not new houses whatsoever; it’s a redirect. It’s an existing house. The Government has bought 1,400 houses. Again: not a new house.

So when the Prime Minister and Kiri Allan and all the other Labour MPs, probably most of whom are sitting on the backbench, are rampaging around the country, saying, “Oh, don’t worry, we’ve built 10,000 public houses.”, you sitting over there need to know: that is wrong. The Government has not built 10,000 new public houses; instead, every metric is worse. The wait-list is up by 20,000. Emergency housing is up by a matter of thousands. And people in the most severe and urgent need of State housing—820 on the wait-list—now wait 421 days for a State house. This is a Government that came to power promising a lot, but they refuse to practise what they preach in Opposition. They’re incompetent.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I must start by saying that the contributions from the Opposition today and in general over the last wee while remind me somewhat of Winston Churchill, and not in a good way—not in the statesmanlike way, not in the profound way, but in the way that they just ooze pessimism, and I’m sorry for that visual. The contributions were delivered by an Opposition with an unfortunate, pessimistic disposition, and when I see that unfortunate, pessimistic disposition and hear it in this House, I’m reminded that it was Winston Churchill who once said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” We know on this side of the House that the Opposition are simply on the wrong track when they have to resort to that sort of pessimism and talk down our economy, talk down our future, simply to make their point.

The reality is that there is a really strong cause for optimism in New Zealand. New Zealanders are hard-wired to be more optimistic than not. It’s how we work. It’s how people work. It’s functional, it’s adaptive, and it’s the way things go. New Zealand has cause for optimism because we share three main advantages, and they are our people-first COVID response, our strong economic position, and our proven team. Let’s just go back through those three things in a little bit more detail.

Let’s go firstly with our people-first COVID response, which we know saved lives and protected our economy. But, more important, it also demonstrated the values of this Government—the fact that if you put people first always, good things happen. People are the heart of our economy, and that is always the right way to conceive of these issues.

The second thing is our strong economic position. It was by design; it certainly was not by accident, as is often insinuated, and it sees us starting the next phase of our economic recovery in a much stronger position than many others that we might compare ourselves to, despite facing the very same global issues and the very same global cost of living pressures that we all find ourselves facing at the moment. But what we do know is that people’s incomes are growing at the highest rate since records began.

More homes have been built in the past year than since records began. The size of our economy is larger than what it was pre-COVID, and our Kiwi exports are in demand. We’re in demand. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I remember New Zealand Prime Ministers having to pay to get on American talkback shows. Now we have world looking at us. We are in demand, we are on that stage, and that stage means something.

The third thing is our proven team—the same team that got us through COVID-19 is now using those same smarts to get us through the tough times we’re now facing, and we are facing tough times. No one denies that. There’s no easy fix but at least we’re taking some action to ease those pressures, and the National Opposition can guffaw but their record is to simply vote to not support Kiwis. They’ve voted against the wage increases. They’ve voted against the cost of living assistance. They’ve voted against the winter energy payment and increasing benefits. They’ve got no answers unless you conceive of ill-focused tax cuts to the wealthiest with a $6 billion price tag that either means that we’re borrowing more money or, presumably, given recent announcements in that direction, that they’re simply slashing more services. That’s their answer.

New Zealanders, as I said, are hard-wired to be more optimistic than not. It’s adaptive, it’s functional, and it’s how we work. It means that when hard times come, and they do—hard times come and go—we understand, as people who are destined to be optimistic, that these things are temporary. They don’t last forever. They’re not permanent. We get up, we get on with it, and we look to the future with that optimism that our Minister of Finance has so ably couched his opening contribution in today.

We are a country that is in demand, as I said, and that’s no small feat. We’re ready with, I think, one of the best Governments in our history in place to tackle whatever the world throws at us next. We’re full of optimism, full of pride, and full of all the thankful and prideful things that we should remember from the last five years. Thank you.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. If I may ask a question to members in the House, and to those who may be listening along at home today, it’s a question about whether any of us in here have ever had a drink when we haven’t necessarily felt like we really wanted to, if we’ve ever had more of a drink than we wanted to, if we’ve ever drunk alcohol just for the sake of fitting in.

It’s Mental Health Awareness Week, and five years ago I had the privilege of delivering my maiden speech in this place with my colleague Golriz Ghahraman. In that speech, I said, “Too many of those we serve and represent are navigating insecure housing and insecure work. When you don’t know your neighbours or your co-workers to any depth, and you have a problem, you’re not inclined to talk about it. You internalise it and individualise it. It’s your problem. It’s therefore a problem with you. Without strong communities, without mainstream recognition of the power of collective action, we don’t hear each other’s voices and we don’t put our finger on [the] systemic issues that … we need each [other to resolve].”

Around two years after that speech, the Government released its commissioned mental health and addiction inquiry, He Ara Oranga. The central premise of that inquiry reflects all of the contemporary research about mental health and addiction. It shows us that, much like our physical health, all of us are born with the genetic makeup that we have inherited from our parents and our grandparents and our great-grandparents and so on. Basically, we are born into this world with brains that may have inherited a greater or lesser potential for development of mental ill health, like physical ill health. But, fundamentally, what that report found is that it is our environments, the opportunities that we have access to, our circumstances, the communities that we live in, the systems and structures, and the rules and the regulations that we live within that either can enable or disable.

The question for this House is whether we want to go about creating those enabling environments, or continue to perpetuate those disabling environments. The good news in He Ara Oranga, like, actually, the Safe and Effective Justice Advisory Group review Turuki! Turuki!, is that our Parliament has some pretty clear recommendations about how we can go about making those enabling environments.

Here, I really want to drill down into some specific recommendations where they were very straight-up on what it is that we can do about drugs. All substances, all drugs, can cause harm. The question is whether we want to go about recognising the reality that those substances exist regardless of whether we want them to or not, to create rules, regulations, environments, circumstances, situations, systems, and structures to reduce that harm. Criminal prohibition doesn’t go about getting rid of those substances; it pushes them underground, as was reflected in He Ara Oranga, and what this report said is that the best thing that we could possibly do to go about reducing the harm that these substances create is to create sensible regulation, grappling with the reality that these substances exist.

They didn’t limit these recommendations to illicit drugs or illicit substances; they also included the most harmful drug that we have in our society, legal or illegal—that is, of course, alcohol. So the question then becomes: what can we do about it? Well, there were two really clear recommendations when you drill down through both the mental health and addiction inquiry and the Safe and Effective Justice Advisory Group review, as commissioned by the Labour Government in the last term, one of which is to implement the recommendation of the former Health Promotion Agency to remove the special appeals processes so that communities can go about putting in place local alcohol policies that work for them, putting people over profit.

One of the other things that we can go about doing is to finally do something with the ministerial forum commissioned back in 2014 by the former National Government, chaired by Sir Graham Lowe, that said that we need to go about getting rid of the glamorisation and normalisation of alcohol from our sports in this country, like we did with tobacco decades ago. Members in this House can do something with these recommendations, and, in fact, they have an opportunity to do so with a bill that’ll be in front of them in about a month’s time. That bill, of course, is my alcohol harm minimisation bill. I want to this afternoon acknowledge Hāpai te Hauora, Alcohol Healthwatch, and dozens—dozens—of other organisations and public health experts who put their names on the line to support the petition that was tabled today and accepted by one Arena Williams. And I want to thank my Labour colleagues, those who have indicated their support, and encourage National to do the same.

谢谢, e te Mana Whakawā, and talofa. Our economy is fit for today’s environment because we have the right leadership to lead this country: the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson. May I remind the House of the three goals that the Government had set out at the beginning of this term. One was to continue to keep New Zealanders safe from COVID-19. It was to continue accelerating the recovery and rebuild from the impacts of COVID-19. And, lastly, it was to continue to lay the foundations for the future, including addressing key issues such as climate change, housing affordability, and child poverty.

It’s the first time I’ve spoken since the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, and I want to make a contribution to acknowledge her leadership. The late Queen Salote III of Tonga was the only monarch who was a female in 1918. The world didn’t know that until 1953 at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The monarch of Tonga—the Queen of Tonga—declined on a rainy day in London to cover her carriage because she had stated that it was her respect for Queen Elizabeth. The people of London actually acknowledged the Queen of Tonga by writing songs about her, such as “Linger Longer, Queen of Tonga”. Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Tonga later that year, in 1953. On 30 June 1965, Queen Elizabeth II bestowed upon her—the first woman ever in the world—the title of Dame Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George. This was in respect of the relationship that the two Queens had at the time.

The same year, in December, here in Auckland, Queen Salote of Tonga passed away. Queen Elizabeth had sent a plane from England to take the Queen of Tonga home to Tonga. That is leadership and that is a demonstration—as bestowed upon these two Queens, the late Queen of Tonga and the late Queen Elizabeth II—of respect. If it wasn’t for Queen Elizabeth II, most people wouldn’t know where Tonga is, and I want to say toka ā Kuini ‘ofeina ‘o Pilitānia.

I come back to the House. Our economy is today the best ever it can be because of the leadership of our Prime Minister and our Deputy Prime Minister. From the flax roots of Papakura, I want to bring two issues that are actually working well in Papakura. Auckland Transport (AT) Local at the moment, on-demand rideshares have been trialled last year and up until later on this year, in October. The rideshares mean that for the last 12 months locals have been able to—there was a bus route that was redundant and most people didn’t use that bus route—they didn’t use it because it wasn’t working for the community. AT had brought this rideshare in, and because of the half-price public transport, locals are using this rideshare, with over 18,000 trips since it began.

What the community are saying is that the half-price public transport from Flax Bush, in Papakura, is working from the community. Ramona Durie is a budget adviser for Christian Care Budget Services in Papakura. She tells me every day when I see her that the winter energy payment and the cost of living payment are making a difference to everyday New Zealanders, to everyday Papakura people. She sees people who are in hardship. That’s why they come to budgeting services.

Last week we had the Onehunga High School whakatau for their Tongan leadership group. All 15 students were here in Parliament. Mr Speaker, they told me that they had loved what you had shared with them about faith and your family as being important to being here. They also said to the Acting Prime Minister at the time, the Hon Grant Robertson, what a difference the funds made that we provided as the Government to build classrooms at the school—the head girl, Christina Elone, was in tears when she thanked the Acting Prime Minister at the time—what a difference it made for students at Onehunga High School.

I just want to say that we are in this environment because we have the right leadership that provides for New Zealand to continue keeping us safe from COVID-19, accelerate our recovery from COVID-19, and continuing laying the foundations for the future.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Over two months ago, I put it to this House that the Prime Minister cannot even bring law and order into her own electorate of Mount Albert, that she cannot keep the streets of Mount Albert safe. It is now true that she cannot keep the malls safe, the businesses safe, and our families safe. It is definitely true, and you can ask anyone. The terrified store owners, shop workers, and staff at St Lukes mall don’t feel safe anymore. We know. The Hon Mark Mitchell and I actually visited the mall and talked to the people there and some of them are permanently choosing to move to a safer place. They’re quitting their jobs because they do not want to work in an environment where they feel vulnerable.

That is a terrible indictment on a Government who apparently cares about people. Oh no; they don’t, actually. They prefer to look after themselves. The MPs who might need lamingtons actually need security detail, but people who have guns pointed at them, who have batons beating down their doors and things stolen from their stores—work they have put heart and soul into—are not being protected by this Government. Last month, I spoke to shopkeepers who are actually sleeping on the floor of their shops because they don’t feel they’re protected. That is just one issue that this Government is failing at.

Today at question time, I put some questions to the Minister for Broadcasting and Media, who is spending $370 million of taxpayer money—$370 million of taxpayer money—to create a new public media entity replacing RNZ and TVNZ, both of which, put together, are worth less than the money they are spending on this new venture. I asked the Minister whether it, in fact, had a regulatory impact statement (RIS). He couldn’t actually answer that.

I asked him if it had had a cost-benefit analysis done. After several questions, he told me I could come to his office and get them from him. So guess what I did! I turned up. I didn’t actually have the swipe card to go up to his office, so I had to wait downstairs and get reception to ring his office. His office was rung. I had to wait about 15 minutes—I guess that’s what it took his senior private secretary or the senior staff to print the material for me.

Guess what! [Holds up document] The bit in pink is the regulatory impact statement—that is the regulatory impact statement. Members of Parliament normally require a little bit more than that. Literally what it says is that it is exempt from it, because it has done a strong public media business case. Guess what the Minister’s office printed for me! Not the cost-benefit analysis, but the strong media business case. But guess what! This is what comes: the redacted version that is available publicly, and it has no costs, no money that we can track.

There is absolutely no transparency—so typical of this Government. There is no RIS, no cost-benefit analysis—which members of this House should have—to decide whether this is a good idea. There is no transparency. How can members genuinely say that the $370 million that the Government will be wasting on an entity replacing RNZ and TVNZ is good money being spent for a good purpose? With this document? I’m sorry, members; I certainly can’t tell if it’s good. I know it’s bad, because there is a cost of living crisis in New Zealand and $370 million could wipe out the waiting list of people waiting for cancer medication, and there would be money left over to deal with tens of thousands of patients waiting for surgery. This is a failure. This is a Government that is not delivering to New Zealanders. I say we need to end this Government.

I have been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for Godot because there’s no plan coming from the other side of the House. I was hoping they were going to talk about their fantastic tax cuts for the rich, the ones that would give Christopher Luxon $18,000, should he become the Prime Minister, and yet give a cafe worker $2 a week difference in their tax. But no, they didn’t even go there. All they did was nit-pick, complain, grumble, and be sad sacks about what this Government has been doing to make things better for New Zealand. The reason I wanted to hear a plan was because I want to know what they plan to do for women. What does the National Party plan to do for women? I haven’t heard a single idea. And I’m not expecting much, either, because when I look at the opposite side of the House I don’t see much diversity.

Fifty-four percent of our members are women. So we have an opportunity to make a difference, and, boy, have we been using it. We have got the record number of women in Cabinet positions. We’ve made huge differences to women—to mothers and to working mothers. We’ve got the Best Start payment, providing an extra $65 a week for the parents of newborns. We’ve recorded the lowest gender pay gap in recent history. We’ve introduced a $5.5 billion package for families. We brought free and healthy lunches into schools. That is the stuff that women care about.

We have expanded school-based health services and are making doctors visits free for children under 14. We’ve reduced the compulsory school fees—oftentimes, that is coming out of the budget that women use to run the house. We have delivered the largest ever funding boost for primary maternity services. We’ve extended paid parental leave from 18 to 26 weeks. We have increased abatement thresholds. We’ve strengthened equal pay legislation and delivered record pay settlements in the feminised sectors. We’ve ensured free period products for all primary, intermediate, and secondary schools, and for kura.

We’ve increased leadership in the public sector. We’re reducing the gender pay gap, as I said. We’ve passed world-leading legislation that is giving women leave if they have a miscarriage—that is a world-leading piece of legislation, led by friend and colleague Ginny Andersen. We have more women on public boards than ever. We have employment action programmes tailored specifically for Māori, Pacific, and Asian women, who experience the largest pay gaps. We have women who’ve been targeted with COVID funding. We’ve removed abortion from the Crimes Act—it is now being treated as a health issue. I still don’t know what the Leader of the Opposition’s position really is on that. One minute he votes one way, another minute he’s not ruling out which way he’s going to vote—we don’t know, as women, what National is going to do in the space of women’s reproductive health, should they ever get into Government.

Now, last night we passed the Accident Compensation (Maternal Birth Injury and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. That is going to make a difference for 28,000 women who have never been able to access ACC in one of the very critical areas around maternal health, and I am so pleased that our Minister, Carmel Sepuloni, has seen that through. Now, what have we had from National? Well, nothing—not even tax cuts. They haven’t even mentioned tax cuts today. I don’t feel comfortable and confident as a woman that they will be there to look after me, to look after my sisters, to look after my mother, to look after my daughters. They don’t have a plan. They’ve been miserable. They’ve been pessimistic. They’ve made us all feel quite depressed.

You can bet your bottom dollar that, with the lack of diversity that we see and their lack of interest in these issues, when they make all the cuts that they say they’re going to—when they stop spending—it is the women who will suffer first. That is always what happens. And so I invite people listening to this debate, I invite people sitting at home thinking about how their world is looking at the moment—don’t get sucked in to the pessimism from the other side. If you’re a woman, think very carefully about who is going to be looking after you going into the future—this Government that has delivered for women, that has delivered for children, that has delivered for minority groups, for people who don’t sit squarely in the mainstream; or are you going to go with an Opposition who normally advocate tax cuts for the rich but, perhaps because it’s Wednesday, perhaps because they’re tired, haven’t even come up with a single plan for economic recovery.

This side of the House is doing well by the economy. I want to thank all New Zealanders for their part in it, and there is good cause to be optimistic.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s with much pleasure that I’m talking in this debate. Of course, we all heard Mr Robertson earlier, struggling with this concept about how you balance the books in New Zealand. He likes to term it “Bermuda Triangle”. But, of course, I think what’s happening now is they’re starting to see the shonky economics that Mr Robertson has been perpetuating for the last five years. This is a Minister that has just overseen one of the worst cost of living crisis, and the member who has just resumed her seat, Ingrid Leary, she talks about making it harder for women when the cost of living crisis is exactly what is going to make it harder for women and their families. That is really where it is hurting at home—the money; trying to make ends meet—and we’ve got thousands of people now vulnerable because of the cost of living crisis.

I think the issue around what Mr Robertson was talking about—he has trouble with the concept of how to balance the books. I think the Mood of the Boardroom survey just very recently is showing that people are now understanding the shonky economics that he has perpetuated. I am reminded of the great saying by Lincoln: “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.” That is coming home to roost for this Government, and for this finance Minister. This is a man, this finance Minister, who has overseen the doubling of New Zealand’s debt. It’s increased by over $60 billion—

Todd Muller: That’s outrageous.

ANDREW BAYLY: —and it’s going to continue Mr Muller, because for this Minister of Finance, even though he’s taking an extra $41 billion of new additional tax every year, that is not enough. He is going to continue to run a deficit this year and the next year, and that is why this Government is in such trouble—because it spends like mad.

Of course, what that means is that New Zealand has had the second-highest response to COVID, of which some of it, I’ve got to say, has been OK. We’ve had $60 billion spent, of which $25 billion went to help people to pay workers in their businesses, and of course that was a good thing, because, as some of us know—unfortunately, not enough in the Labour Government understand—it is the small businesses that drive this economy, that create the taxes that ultimately leads to us as a Government being able to fund new schools, new hospitals, all the things that we need to do in this country. So apart from the $25 billion of spend that’s happened over the last 2½ years, you’ve got to ask: where has the other money gone? All right, let’s be generous; there was probably another $10 billion that he spent that was OK. That leaves another $25 billion that has been spent by this Government over the last 2½ years, and not one person in this House would be able to identify any big strategic change that has occurred as a result of it. It has just disappeared into the wind, never to be seen, and, of course, that’s $25 billion of additional debt that future generations have to pay down.

So I have to ask: what has that $25 billion that’s been spent—that no one knows—resulted in? I’ll give you some examples. If we’d taken that $25 billion and said, “Let’s do the cross-Auckland harbour tunnel.”, that’s roughly about $10 billion. We could have done that; we could have committed to that 2½ years ago. We could have funded all of the infrastructure transport needs for Wellington—roughly $6.5 billion; the total programme. We could have ticked that off. We could have funded the new Dunedin Hospital. I know it’s under way, but it’s about $1.5 billion. We could have said, “Let’s do it, and let’s do it in a hurry.” We could have funded—and I’ve got Mr Muller here down in Tauranga—the new motorway, State Highway 29, from the Kaimais down to the port. And, of course, that would have driven some economic gains, but don’t worry about that. That’s probably another billion bucks. And, on my reckoning, I’m at $20 billion. I’ve still got $5 billion to spend. And that is the scale of undisciplined spending.

SPEAKER: The time for this debate has expired.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.