Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

Coming to the House this afternoon and leading the debate for the Government on the second day feels a bit like turning up for a funeral with a wreath, and finding it was the day before. Yesterday the Leader of the Opposition actually buried himself in the Chamber in the first set-piece debate of the year, by telling the Government that we were going to be a 3-term Government. I know he is a young leader, but to bet on outlasting the rivals at this early stage of the second term seemed to me to be taking an enormously large chance on one’s future. I think it is actually clear that Mr English will soon be the youngest ex-leader of a major party in New Zealand’s political history, and the only doubt about that statement is whether the National Party will still be a major party when he is the ex-leader of it. National is a party that, to become a major party and a Government party again, has to recapture the centre of New Zealand’s politics, yet it has decided to move sharply to the right as its brilliant Christmas thinking contribution about how to recapture the centre of New Zealand politics.

Mr English does not believe in that; he describes National as a mainstream party. But he fails to articulate a clear position on any issue of major public significance. What is National’s position on Iraq? We know ACT’s position. ACT’s position is that we New Zealanders should be the policemen of the world, and if the Americans join us, that is our good luck. That is the ACT position on Iraq. The Green Party’s position is that it does not matter what Saddam Hussein does, because a group conference therapy session is the appropriate treatment for him. The National Party’s position is that it would like to find something different from the Government’s position, but it knows that the Government’s position is that of the majority of the people and therefore it is not quite sure what it is supposed to say on Iraq, and Mr Brownlee has been told not to write an article about it.

As Dame Thea Muldoon so nicely put the National Party’s leadership problems: “It’s not as though there is anyone else, is there?” She was talking about Bill English. Then, cruellest of all, she said: “Eventually someone good will come along.” This is why the young ones are looking very hopeful in the National Party at the present time. Who will the next leader be? Will it be Gerry Brownlee? Before Christmas, Gerry Brownlee thought he had the numbers. He got up to the big toe on his right foot, and then decided that he had the numbers in the National Party caucus. He made the profound mistake over Christmas, for a National Party person, of thinking—and thinking before he wrote something, which no National Party person should ever do. Even though what he wrote was exactly what Bill English had said, it got him into trouble with his colleagues because nobody wanted his or her colleagues to agree with Mr English. So Gerry Brownlee has been punished simply for agreeing with National’s leader, which is a whole new approach in party politics in New Zealand.

Who will be National’s leader? Will it be Dr Brash, who plans to lead a new, sort of eponymous National Party of Brash, Power, and Rich? He believes so. He is going around asking journalists for their advice about how to become the leader of the National Party, and they are drawing a picture of a dagger on a piece of paper for him. He keeps asking what it is, and they keep saying it is something one can buy at the post office. But is it credible that Dr Brash could be the leader of the National Party? An appropriate personal advertisement for Dr Brash in this position would be: “Elderly gent seeks post office, view job.”

It is clear that Dr Brash is totally out of touch with the reality of the world in which most people live. We heard that extraordinary speech in which he really did say that the unemployed should queue up at post offices, and then be offered a job. Problem No. 1 is that there are not any post offices any more. If someone turned up at Books and More and asked for a job, the staff would wonder what that person was doing. They are there to sell books and things, not to actually give people jobs. Then Dr Brash said that local government could be the employer of last resort. I bet every mayor in the country loved that idea! They are going to pick up 98,000 unemployed people and find them something to do, giving them cash at the end of the day! Indeed, a further brilliant suggestion was that people could queue up at a south Auckland post office, get a job in Queenstown that day, be paid in cash, and be back in south Auckland the following morning to queue up again for another short-term temporary job.

Dr Brash’s final contribution to how we were to make New Zealand grow faster in the long term, apart from saying that Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson were wonderful—which, even if we try saying it and do not believe it, does not do actually do anything for the growth practices in New Zealand—was to say that we should teach phonics in schools. I have always loved the notion of phonics, because anybody who says that a word that starts with “ph” is pronounced “f” has a bit of a problem teaching phonics in the first place. My wife, when she heard that, said: “ker, ra, a, p!” That was her response to the notion that teaching phonics is the ultimate answer to New Zealand’s future growth problems. Dr Brash believes that we teach by the “look and say” method in New Zealand still. We did not do that even 30 or 40 years ago—it was a caricature. But he thinks that that is the way reading is taught in schools today. My wife teaches in a decile 1 primary school. She will be happy to have Dr Brash come in and try to teach phonics by itself for a while, and to see how far he gets. I suggest that he start off with a good phrase from a tourism brochure: “Four hour tour.” Now, let him try to teach that one by phonics and explain it to 6-year-old children very simply indeed.

Dr Brash is determined to leave the 20th century behind and to reverse at full speed into the 19th century, his natural home. As one commentator says, it is as though the mistakes and excesses of the past 20 years have passed him by unseen.

The National Party vehemently claims that its agenda on race is not aboutMāori-bashing, but it looks surprisingly like that to many of us in this country. National is trying to distort a simple fact. The entire argument that the National Party is putting forward on the treaty is an illusion—a historical and intellectual conjuring trick, which anybody can see through in the simplest form. It relies entirely on one simple thing: reading the English language version of the treaty and ignoring totally the Māori language version. If one does that, one can arrive at some simple conclusions, but, unfortunately, they have no historical or legal validity. Given that Dr Mapp is so opposed to the Supreme Court Bill, I invite him to read the Privy Council’s judgment on precisely that matter. As he so slavishly believes in the intellectual excellence of English judges, he might as well go and read what they have said. They seem to know a damned sight more about the treaty than the front bench of the National Party does in that particular respect.

As for the rest of the parties in the House, I have dealt with ACT. New Zealand First wants to seek votes on the outer fringes of Courtenay Place, and in the stranger regions of talkback radio. The Greens took my breath away. I did not think they would finally manage to do that, but the Greens moved a motion of no confidence in the Government because we insist on living in the 21st century. I am a historian, and I am reading a very long history of Europe at the moment. I am still trying to find the century that is appropriate for the Greens to live in, if it is not the 21st century. They have no confidence in us because we believe in economic growth, in trade, in working through the United Nations, and in all sorts of other strange things that I thought most people who occasionally ventured out into the real world believed in. The Greens are the other side of the Don Brash coin, in many respects, at the present time. They will have very little influence from here on in the life of this Government.

This Government is proud of its achievements and its programme. We have the strongest fiscal position of any developed country in the world at the present time, and we continue to strengthen that position from month to month. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the developed world, and the lowest rate in this country for 15 years. We have one of the highest economic growth rates in the developed world. It will be over 4 percent on an annual basis by the end of March this year. All that the National Party can do is to turn not so much green as deep blue with envy, and to wonder how it can find anything to criticise within those kinds of achievements. At the same time, we are delivering real social gains to our people in the areas of education and health. We are producing workable programmes of sustainable development. We are working on issues of how we may better deal with matters of crime. We are working in a way that this country is supporting. I ask members to read the opinion polls; the Labour Party is back up to around 50 percent in the opinion polls. Almost every other party, including New Zealand First, has dropped in numbers since the election. At the last election Mr Peters held up three fingers to the public of New Zealand, and at the next election they will take one off.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Commerce): The now tragic and very sorry figure of the Leader of the Opposition was only made more tragic and sorry by his faux pas in the House yesterday. Conceding the 2005 general election as far ahead as this is actually not a very good look for someone who is struggling to maintain his position. It does not help that everyone knows he is only holding on to the position of Leader of the Opposition because no one else is ready, willing, or able—“able” being the operative part of that triumvirate—to take his place. The party will have to look well down the pecking order before it finds its future leader.

💬 Darren Hughes: No. 26.

💬 Hon LIANNE DALZIEL: I do not know what number Mr Key is on the list. I suspect that he has a future ahead of him, but not enough experience yet. He will have to bide his time before the rest of his colleagues realise he is the answer to the question they have been asking themselves since they made that fateful decision to move early on Mrs Shipley, and to place a very unready Mr English in charge of the National Party.

The only person they now have is Mr Bill English—and what a bewildered man he was on New Year’s Day! We saw the Leader of the Opposition on the first day of the year, when several members of the Government were at the Tuatapere sports day. We received a rousing welcome from the crowd—in the heart of Mr English’s electorate. That is not, of course, why we chose to be there. We were exploring the glories and wonders of this fantastic country, which is booming under this Government. We saw evidence of that, everywhere we went. We travelled around the entire circumference of the South Island. We called into all the rural and urban parts on the way, and we were able to really hear from the heartland as to how well people were doing. Heartland New Zealand is doing well. It was no wonder that there was a rousing reception for Jim Sutton, Minister of Agriculture; Annette King, Minister of Health; Paul Swain, Minister of Transport; Rick Barker, Minister of Customs; and myself.

Bill English arrived after we had been there for some time. Therefore, when we were all asked to enter the ring to choose the logs for the wood-chopping final, the commentator said: “We’re looking for the local member—actually, we’re always looking for the local member.” We had to remind him that the name of the local member was Bill English. However, that statement struck some resonance, because he was overheard telling one of the finalists in the wood-chopping competition that he had never been to the chops before. He has been the local member for that area for 12 years! I have to ask myself whether someone rang him and said: “The Government’s in your electorate. The Government is at the sports day. You had better head down there as quickly as you can and make yourself known to your constituents, because it is certainly being noticed that members of the Government are there in force.” The commentator at the show did announce to all and sundry that in the past the local river had run only 3 days a week, but that since Labour had been in Government it had been running 7 days a week and it was chocka!

I have to say that that was a great start to 2003 for the Government. We felt really reinforced in terms of the work we have been doing up and down this country. Maybe it was a significant start for the year for the Leader of the Opposition, as well, but the significance would be for a different reason.

I suppose we could also congratulate the Leader of the Opposition on actually remembering to move his motion of no confidence. But even when he moved his motion of no confidence—which he forgot to do last time—he still referred to the wrong Government. He referred to the Labour - United Future minority Government. That is not the name of the Government. The Government is the Labour - Progressive coalition minority Government, and we have the support of, a good working relationship with, and a confidence and supply agreement with, United Future. In the context of this debate I want to recognise what an excellent support United Future members have been. We have been able to work together on issues of mutual concern, and their contribution has been highly valued in all my portfolio areas. We have consulted extensively the party that gives us confidence and supply.

Gerry Brownlee is the only one who is taking his leadership bid seriously. I love the fact that when he wrote that article in the New Zealand Herald about treaty issues, he said it was because his constituents were demanding that he deal with those issues and speak out on them, and that he put them out there in the public eye for his constituents to see. However, the question I ask myself is why he sent it to the New Zealand Herald. I would send such a dissertation to the Christchurch Press if I were a Christchurch member and if that particular assertion were true. I think there is something going on. Something does not sound right. But I do have to say that nobody other than Gerry Brownlee takes his bid for the leadership of the National Party seriously.

I also want to comment on immigration. I have said that it is important that we debate immigration. It is very important that we do so, and I welcome that debate. What I have insisted on about the debate is that the debate itself be informed, rational, and balanced. The only way I can describe the contribution of the leader of New Zealand First is as ill-informed, irrational, and unbalanced. I have described the member as having become utterly unhinged on the matter of immigration. He is obsessed with the issue of immigration. He finds it absolutely impossible to understand the clearest explanations of the different statistics that are collected. He is obsessed with permanent long-term and arrival statistics. He knows nothing about the difference between those statistics and immigration approvals.

When I became the Minister of Immigration two things concerned me greatly. There were people in the country who had residence but could not get work; there were people in the country who had work but who could not get residence. The policy I inherited was focused on numbers. It did not matter what happened to people after they arrived in New Zealand. This Government cares about what happens to people after they arrive in New Zealand. I saw on television late last year an advertisement for Auckland. It was based on an extremely well-qualified medical professional with an Eastern European accent being interviewed as to why he wanted to come to Auckland—was it this, was it that, was it the America’s Cup, a whole range of issues. He said: “No, I want to drive a taxi.”

That might be funny if it were not true, if it were not based on reality. I have met a PhD-level agricultural scientist from Russia, a pharmacist from Korea, and an information technology specialist from India, all of whom are driving taxis. I have asked them how they felt about that. That was before we were in Government. I took their answers with me—the embarrassment, the humiliation, and the feelings they brought with them of having been cheated into coming to New Zealand—into my position as the Minister of Immigration. We have set about resolving settlement issues. No Government has ever done that before. We have taken a number of steps to address those settlement outcomes.

But I do want to make one point: settlement is a two-way street. It is not something that can be done to someone or for someone. It requires communities to work with new migrants. It does not need the kinds of comments that we hear from the leader of New Zealand First.

It is always good to follow the Minister of Immigration, the Hon Lianne Dalziel, who truly is one of the seven wonders of the Labour Party. It is truly one of the seven wonders of the Labour Party that that woman could be in Cabinet. I do not know what the other six wonders of the Labour Party are, but truly Lianne Dalziel has to be one.

Let us just look at the miserable Government that we have. We all remember when the Labour Party proudly stood up for the working man and the working woman. Labour may have had its policies wrong, but it knew whom it was that it stood up for. Let us look at this miserable Labour Party and ask: where are the working men, where are working women, and where are the policies for the people who work in New Zealand? There is nothing. Where in the Prime Minister’s statement to this House is there one policy, one action, one law that will be of any benefit to a working family in New Zealand?

I look across to the Labour members and I ask them to name one policy or one action in the Prime Minister’s statement that is for the working person. They cannot name one. There is not one. It is just sound-bite propaganda. Labour members should be ashamed of themselves.

What has happened to the average working person in New Zealand over the last 3 years? This Government has shafted working people. Their average net wage is now $14 a week less than it was when the Government started. The truth of it is that the National Party and the New Zealand First Party in Government did more for the working person than Labour, supported by United Future, ever did, and that is because they provided the policies that rewarded hard work. Where in the Prime Minister’s statement is there a vision, a goal for a working family in New Zealand to think that their Government shares a concern for them? There is none; not one; nothing.

I truly believe that Labour members should be ashamed of themselves. The Government came into office in 1999. Can anyone remember what its goal was—its No. 1 goal? It was closing the gaps. I ask members whether any Labour member is prepared to stand up here and say that the Government closed the gaps. Not one! Look at them! There is Minister Mark Burton like the Easter Island statue that he is, sitting there like a lump of granite on an island. Not one is prepared to stand up and say that the Labour Party set the goal of closing the gaps and that it closed the gaps.

What did the Prime Minister do? She banned the use of the words. She did not say, “Oh let’s not talk about it.” She actually banned the words from being used. That is what Prime Minister Helen Clark did. What is the big goal that they set last year? Growth! Top half of the OECD! We are going to get there! We heard from Michael Cullen that we are on target, but he does not know when. He says we are going to get there, we have the settings in place, but he does not know when.

When Michael Joseph Savage brought in the 1938 Social Security Act they asked him where the money was going to come from to pay for it, and he said that it would come from the productive forces of New Zealand, from the people of New Zealand—not from the Government, not from Government policy, not from Government law, but from the productive forces of New Zealand. The Government cannot redistribute what the people do not first produce. Members should go through that statement and reflect on that.

We would get the sense from the Prime Minister that the money comes from the Government, and that the wealth is the Government, not the productive forces of New Zealand. We know that the wealth is going to be created by small businesses, by medium businesses, by big businesses, and by working men and working women. Where are the policies for them? We have a full legislative programme, the Prime Minister says. What are the top three? There is the Television New Zealand Bill—does that get us into the top half of the OECD? I do not think so. There is the Responsible Gambling Bill, which is actually oxymoronic if we think about it, like most things this Government does, and there is the Racing Bill. Where, in there, is anything to stir economic growth in this country?

Jill Pettis looks confused. I realise she is confused because she goes on sound bites and propaganda, and what she is hearing from the speeches on this side of the House are the facts, so she is confused. Here are the policies of this Government: anti-growth and anti-business. Has Government spending gone up or down? It has gone up. Is that good for growth? No. What has happened to tax rates? Have they gone up or down under this Government? They have gone up. Is that good for business? Is that good for growth? No. What has happened to employing someone? Has it got easier or has it got harder? It has got harder. In fact, employers have to give people a Māori farewell before they fire them for not turning up for work. And this Government thinks that is OK. If someone does not turn up for work, he or she can be fired. It is just that there has to be a Māori song. Employers have to get Chris Carter along to sing “Pokare Kare Ana”, to show that they have due respect.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: “Pokare Kare Ana”.

Oh, whatever Chris Carter sings—God knows! What has happened in the Accident Compensation Corporation? Has it got more competitive and is there more choice under this Government? No, less! What has happened to local government, which is the bane of small business, the bane of farmers, and the bane of people who want to employ other New Zealanders? Has the scope of local government been constrained and limited under this Government, or has it been expanded?

💬 Ron Mark: Turned loose.

It has been turned loose, as my colleague Major Ron Mark says. That is what has happened under this Government.

I go back to an important point. Where is the care in this Government, in this Prime Minister’s statement, or in anything that we heard from Michael Cullen today, that shows any understanding of the situation of a working man, a working woman, or a working family in this country? They do not even talk about them any longer. They do not even pretend that their policies are in favour of the working person in New Zealand.

We had the most astonishing thing happen, and I want to share this with my parliamentary colleagues. Michael Cullen came along to the select committee. He heard from the Business Roundtable, he heard from Federated Farmers, and he heard from Business New Zealand. They put their point of view, and they said that what businesses and farmers are really struggling with under this Government, and under successive Governments, is that there is too much red tape and too heavy a tax burden. And do members know what Michael Cullen’s response to that was? He said they were just like the Post-Primary Teachers Association, coming along wanting a handout. We have a Minister of Finance who thinks that allowing people to keep more of what they earn, rather than pinching it off them through the Inland Revenue Department, is a handout. And he wonders why—

💬 Hon Damien O'Connor: Where do you live?

I do not live in an electorate that this Government has turned into a national park, like Damien O’Connor did. It was turned into a national park for Japanese tourists because that member failed his electorate, the productive people of the West Coast, and I would be ashamed if I were he—a Labour Party member from the West Coast who sold out to the Greens. That is what that member did, and he should be ashamed. I come from Epsom in Auckland, and I have to say that that is a productive part of New Zealand, and we will stop members like Damien O’Connor making us a happy tourist destination only, because we do want to be productive.

I hope it will come as no surprise to anyone in this House that I am going to use my little 5-minute slot to talk about issues of fundamental importance to New Zealand families and to New Zealand communities. The first of those relates to income tax rates. I call upon the Government to adjust the current $38,000 and $60,000 tax bands, the low-income tax rebate level of $9,500, and the family support and tax credit payments, for consumer price index inflation from 1 April 2003. The Government has signalled that it may do something about this in 2004. I say, why wait for 12 months? The tax band and the low-income tax rebates were established on 1 April 2000, and now require adjustment by 9 percent just to cover inflation. Family support payments were established in 1998, and now require an adjustment at over 12 percent. A decision by the Government not to make these adjustments now would represent a failure to honour its pledge—its card commitment—to no new taxes, since I presume that in making that pledge the Government was talking about real taxes and not just nominal rates.

The surpluses projected in the Budget Policy Statement are the result of the hard work of New Zealanders. A failure to adjust for the movement of the consumer price index would also amount to an unjust bonus in favour of the Government’s coffers, at the expense of New Zealanders and their families.

During the New Year recess, I noticed that the Bush administration has proposed to the United States Congress a number of tax measures that would see a family of four, with a household income of US$45,000, paying just $45 in federal income tax. That is $45 for a family—Mum, Dad, and two kids—earning $US45,000. It made me think again about the importance of ensuring that taxes for families reflect the reality of the number of people reliant on an income. When we think about it, the US administration is saying that a family of four needs about $US45,000 to live on. I stress that it is a Republican policy. Some of the Democrats have responded by proposing, in addition, that childcare rebates of $3,000 for the first child and $6,000 for two or more children should be paid to low-income families where one parent has stayed at home to care for the children. That is also United Future policy, and I would urge the Government to have a close look at it.

Rodney Hide mentioned submissions to the Finance and Expenditure Committee this morning. We also had them from Barnardos, from the National Council of Women, from the downtown ministry, and others, basically saying that we cannot honestly say that we have a surplus in the Government’s coffers while child poverty continues to exist in this country.

However, the central point I want to make is this: in this country it is time the parties of both the left and the right came to recognise the cost and the importance of raising kids, and the need for our taxes to take those realities into account. Perhaps there is the possibility—I am new here, and I am still optimistic, and I would hope so—of consensus in this House also around that issue. For the sake of New Zealand and its families I would hope so.

In talking about tax and families, we need also to remember that GST is a highly regressive tax for low and middle income families. Having paid their rent or mortgage, which are GST-exempt, they pay 12.5 percent tax by way of GST on all the rest of their income. Low-income families have no option.

My second point is in a way related to the first, but involves the expenditure side of the Budget. It would be a tragedy, in my view, if, having done all we can to help New Zealand families through the tax system, we ended up with many of our children being spoilt brats with a propensity for binge drinking, pot smoking, and juvenile crime. “Spoilt”, after all, when it is applied to a child, refers to the likelihood that his or her whole life will likely be a failure.

But we risk that outcome unless we emphasise, once again, the need for character education, in both the home and the school—one reinforcing the other. Like Tony Blair, I believe that entitlements and rights from society, such as quality education, health care, and tax breaks, must be accompanied by responsibilities and duties towards others in our communities. I understand that the legislative framework is in place for character education—that is, the teaching of basic values and virtues in our schools. It has been there since 1993. UNESCO is calling for it. Many MPs went to its national summit on values in October, but I also understand that the Minister of Education is dragging the chain and remains uncommitted. If that is so, I hope his Labour colleagues, and, indeed, all like-minded people in this House, can persuade him to change his mind and make this a priority. United Future is committed to seeing New Zealand become once again a great place to have a home, a great place to return to, a great place where people can feel safe, and a great place where we can together build communities where all participate.

One paragraph of the Prime Minister’s speech addresses issues regarding health funding for district health boards. I know that areas like the Western Bay of Plenty, with a higher percentage of senior citizens and Māori, will certainly welcome the population-based funding that will enable these boards to better address the needs of their communities, and address a long-overdue inequity they have faced. However, I am still not sure that the Government really understands that across the nation people are now not only concerned about queuing for access to public hospitals, but also the queuing they do in their cars on the congested highways in the major cities of our nation. I am not sure whether the Government yet realises how serious this situation is. We saw the recent release of Transit’s 10-year funding proposal, and I commend the Government for bringing this transparency about. Now, there is some better understanding of where communities are in the queue for their roading infrastructure requests, but this release has revealed how long some communities will have to wait.

The response of the communities has been one of shock, or we could call it road rage of a different kind. I take heart from the Prime Minister’s comments that the Government is committed to increasing spending on roading, and I look forward to the Budget announcements later this year to underscore these statements. We will work hard in United Future to provide additional solutions to the needs caused by the long-term underfunding of our roading network, by way of the Land Transport Management Bill, but these alternatives will not be enough on their own. When the Prime Minister says: “Auckland’s transport needs are getting long-overdue attention to relieve the congestion there, which impacts adversely on the whole economy.”, I trust that the Prime Minister is not overlooking areas like Tauranga, which face similar problems to Auckland, to a large extent caused by the very successful operation and expansion of the Port of Tauranga. By handling 34 percent of the country’s exports, this port has earned the reputation for being a vital component of this country’s economy. I trust that the people of Tauranga will hear further good news after the Minister of Transport visits Tauranga City later this week to acquaint himself first hand with the need for a commitment from the Government to a city that has courageously developed solutions to the stress placed on its roading infrastructure by massive growth over the past 50 years.

New Zealand’s population has doubled in the last 50 years, and is projected to increase by less than 50 percent in the next 50 years, to peak at around 4.8 million in 2046. By contrast, Tauranga City has doubled in population in the last 25 years, is projected to double again in the next 20 years, and to treble by 2046. These amazing figures may have to be revised even more upward after the very successful staging of the Around Alone yacht race stopover at the city over the summer, and the wide international media coverage that the city has enjoyed. There is no doubt that tourism has provided a huge boost to the nation’s economy, and this is the case in the Tauranga region also. We have benefited from unprecedented good fortune, and international exposure. But we can be sure of something: that if more and more of our visitors have their first experience of our beautiful country with the congested roads of Auckland, Tauranga, or Wellington, or they must continue to drive long distances on our State highways, which in other nations would be called secondary roads, then we may see that this romance with our nation becomes rather short-lived.

In Tauranga, the regional economic development agency Priority One is beginning to receive many more requests for information from successful businesses that are very interested in relocating to the Bay of Plenty. I am sure this is happening in other parts of the country, as well. To attract them we must have a business-friendly environment. The passing of the Resource Management Amendment Bill is crucial to the ongoing process of refining the Act and establishing legislation that finds the balance between good environmental management and a regulatory environment that does not discourage innovation and investment. United Future is committed to seeing that amendment go through this House in the very near future.

With the challenges facing our energy needs with the early expiry of the Maui gasfields and the roading bottlenecks, we will want to pursue further amendments to the Resource Management Act that allow for the fast tracking of significant projects of national importance straight to the Environment Court.

Finally, I welcome the establishment of the Families Commission, which will be able to give a focus for real concrete policies that will help the families of New Zealand.

Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore): One word sums up this Government, and that is “incongruous”, because what I heard earlier today was Lianne Dalziel—not the Minister of Immigration but, apparently, the “Minister of Rainfall”—saying that due to the wonders of the Labour Government, water flows every day of the week in rivers in the South Island. How extraordinary! I am surprised that we have not had a call from the Pope saying: “Give that woman a sainthood!” That is the kind of claim one would expect to hear. There has to be a warning to the Government, because those who go for those kinds of claims are quickly due for a fall. The reality is that every single thing the Government has claimed was built on the hard work of the 1990s. One does not get growth of 3.9 percent, or good employment, or good economic conditions, unless one has the foundations right. The Labour Government did not put those foundations in place.

I want to talk about the most pressing foreign policy issue facing not just this country but the world today. New Zealand is not simply a bystander. Our Prime Minister is not simply an academic commentator, as she would often have us think. One day recently she predicted that the likelihood of war was about 52 percent. Extraordinarily, the next day it had dropped to 50 percent; a few days later it had gone up to 70 percent; and in her speech later this week, she said that war was likely to occur. The role of a Prime Minister is not that of a dispassionate commentator. What we expect from a Prime Minister is leadership, and the reason is that the United States, Britain, Australia, and most European countries are actively engaged in assembling forces. There is a broad coalition of the willing, and we are not just talking about a narrow group of English-speaking countries. We can also include Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands; and from Eastern Europe, Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Slovakia. Every one of those countries is saying that Iraq is a threat to world peace, and disarmament is needed, and needed now. Yet today, when the Prime Minister was asked directly whether she supported a second resolution, her answer was “No”. So here is a person—a leader of the country—who says that she believes in multilateralism, but when the rubber hits the road, she ducks for cover. That is not leadership.

The reality is that as a nation we are turning our back on traditional allies. The outcome of that is to give the dictators free rein. Who honestly believes that Iraq can be trusted? Even the Prime Minister herself admitted that the statement made by Colin Powell strongly suggested—and I quote from the statement—“a pattern of deception and concealment of Iraq’s weapons programmes.” Based on that fact, does it seem credible that Iraq will stop doing that—that it will suddenly have a change of heart, and that everything will be revealed? In the words of Colin Powell: “You would only need one or two people to weapon inspect, because this country would suddenly become one of honesty.”

The reality is that Iraq is a brutal dictatorship in which lies, deceit, and manipulation are of second nature to its leaders. Anything one hears from an Iraqi commentator can be dismissed for was it is—a lie. That is the reality, and that is what the Government needs to understand. What Iraq is doing now is simply buying time. The question the Government must honestly and directly confront is this: how long can the international community really be expected to maintain the scale of inspection that would be required to guarantee Iraq’s long-term disarmament? Look at the pattern. We have had 12 years of continuous defiance of UN resolutions, and we seeing exactly the same pattern all over again. There is no doubt that the end of Iraq’s dictatorship will solve that problem.

That leads us to ask a serious question of the Government, which is what should New Zealand be doing? After all, the Government is charged with that responsibility. National’s position is clear: we should be supporting our friends. That means supporting Australia. It means supporting Britain. It means supporting the United States, and it means supporting them in the United Nations for a second resolution. That is how the authority of the Security Council itself is maintained. The alternative approach will actually damage the very multilateralism that the Government applauds. Trying to be all things to all people is the road to ruin, and it will cost this country dearly.

In her speech yesterday the Prime Minister said that Iraq was in breach of Resolution 1441. Members should remember that that resolution was supposed to be a final warning. As the Australian Prime Minister said yesterday: “Mate, the game’s up!” But the Prime Minister is unwilling to do anything to enforce that resolution. The Prime Minister said this afternoon that she would not even support a second resolution in the United Nations, yet she immediately went on to say that should there be a second resolution, the New Zealand Government would enforce it. But enforcing it means that she will leave the difficult work to others, and people have to ask questions about that.

That pattern of dissembling by the Prime Minister is shown in the decision last November to deploy New Zealand’s entire Navy—not just one or two ships, but all of our combat vessels—to the Gulf, along with an Orion and a Hercules. That is most of our Air Force. Yet the Prime Minister says that has nothing to do with Iraq! Remember that that decision was made just 2 days after Resolution 1441, so it is simply not believable for her to say that it had nothing to do with Iraq. This House, and this country, know the reality.

What we want from the Government is honesty and directness, so that when we deploy forces—as we obviously have done—we admit that it will make a difference in enforcing the resolution. At the very minimum, it will enable the release of other countries’ forces. Whether the Prime Minister likes it or not, we are part of the coalition of the willing. We on this side of the House require honesty and integrity of a Government about that—no dissembling, but a clear statement of principle. Do we support UN resolutions; will we support Britain, Australia, and the United States in the Security Council, or will we take the path of appeasement? That is the real choice facing the country.

That member has not listened for the last 24 hours. If one thing has been clearly stated over and over, it is a clear, close, honest, and simple Government position with regard to the matters—[Interruption] Look, Mr Mapp has had 10 minutes; he should draw breath for a while. The member should be really clear—the Government absolutely supports the rule of international law, and a properly pursued multilateral process—and, yes, we should pursue a diplomatic resolution to the absolute limit of our ability, if that can be found. The alternative is to send certain death and slaughter upon thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children of all sorts of nationalities. I tell Dr Mapp that I know of no one in his or her right mind who would want that as a first, second, or third choice.

But let me move on. Yesterday the numbers were 11 for Dr Brash. Today Mr Brownlee came close—he had 10. [Interruption] Several of them, of course, were the same person. They are hedging their bets! Mr Mapp had four or five, depending on whether he was supporting himself. For the moment Mr English is safe. It seems to be a matter of an absence of choice more than anything else.

It is a privilege to speak in support of the Prime Minister’s statement. What a contrast her statement was! It was full of the substance of this Government’s work and achievement, and brimming with facts and detail about the work programme ahead. What a contrast to the shallow, deflated, insubstantial flimflam from members opposite.

I want to answer Mr Hide, because he asked what this Government had done for working people. It is not often that I want to bother responding. It took about 8 minutes before Mr Hide said anything that was worth looking up, but he did. I am not sure whether it was so much a speech as a bit of a health episode that we witnessed from Mr Hide, but in what was really more of a “caca-phony”—to put it in his own words, which I think is a phonetic representation of a word most of us would know as “cacophony”—he asked what was being done for working people. I shall visit a few examples for that member. Obviously, the custom of him and his party is to avoid as long and as often as possible anything vaguely factual in their utterances in this House, because that might lead them into some difficulty.

Let us look at the massive improvements in access to primary health-care. It is a top priority, and it has been a top priority. We have made some good beginnings and laid some firm foundations. Let us look at public health organisations, which are already providing a broad range of primary health-care services to over half a million New Zealanders. The majority are now being guaranteed lower costs for primary health-care, and all are being assured of access to comprehensive and coordinated primary health-care. A further 25 public health organisations are due to start up in April this year. By then it is estimated that close to 1.5 million New Zealanders will be enrolled in public health organisations.

Yes, we have laid the foundations, and yes, we have talked about what we have done, but we are not resting on any laurels. There is much more work to do, and we are getting on with it. The economy is growing. We have seen an increase in economic activity. Occasionally, Dr Brash will show a little good grace and acknowledge work well done, but we have not had that from the speakers we have heard this afternoon. However, they cannot deny the truth of it. In relation to economic activity, there has been 3.9 percent growth in the year to September, and that has been driven by the household sector and by tourism. It continues the solid performance of the last four quarters.

What have we done for ordinary New Zealanders? What does Mr Hide mean? It always makes me just a little nauseous when I hear ACT members talk about ordinary working people. I remember the outrage some of my constituents felt when they looked at the advice of people like Muriel Newman to low-income people. About 3 years ago I had a woman in my office in absolute outrage over that book. She was an unemployed person and a devout Christian. The thing that outraged her most was not the hint that perhaps she could make an income out of a massage parlour or prostitution; it was the bit about getting a job. The ACT solution for people who do not have much money, who need support, who need decent jobs, is for them to get a job with someone in the market garden sector who grows fruit, and then eat their fill when nobody is looking—in other words, steal the food. That is what outraged my constituent most about that book. That is ACT’s formula. That is straight out of Muriel Newman’s solution to unemployed and low-income people. I am pleased to say that this Government sees it a little differently from ACT.

Yesterday we heard that unemployment is about 4.9 percent, with room for a lot more improvement. That is the best figure in 15 years—below 5 percent. It will be a tough road ahead to make further improvement, but we are determined to try. That is the difference between this Government and the sort of flimflam we heard yesterday. It is easy for Opposition members to sit over there and make the snide comments we hear so often, but where are the real solutions for the ordinary people that Mr Hide had the nerve to talk about?

Let us talk about tertiary education. We have seen control of the costs of tertiary education for growing numbers in New Zealand, and it will get better. It is not perfect, because a lot of people are still struggling with loans that stretch budgets to almost breaking point. However, improvements have been made. Controls have been put on those escalating costs, and we will do more in the next term, and the term beyond that. Mr English at least had a brief moment of honesty yesterday and acknowledged that that was likely. However, we will earn that third and fourth term. We are not taking them for granted, at all. We will earn them.

What else is there? We have seen 700 additional teaching positions in schools. We recognise that the ongoing increase in quality in schools and education is a key part of what is necessary to build that future we are committed to building. But none of that is taken for granted. As we went through the Prime Minister’s speech to this House yesterday, we saw a description of 3 years of solid hard work laying foundations, and also laying out the work ahead for New Zealanders. That speech was about all New Zealanders. Again, it was one of the things that differentiates members on this side of the House from some of those opposite. That speech was about inclusion. So often in recent times we have heard the politics of division, hatred, and greed. There is no place in this country—and there should be no place in this country—for that sort of political stance. I am proud to be part of this Government. I am proud to be working for a place for all New Zealanders in this society.

My portfolio of tourism, in particular, is part of the economic growth of this country, but we cannot take that for granted. I was pleased that before the end of the year we reached a milestone for New Zealand tourism of 2 million visitors to our country. But in the end it is not about numbers; it is about quality. In an interesting way, it is in everybody’s best interests. With tourism we have the opportunity in this country for the best of both worlds. People can come here to enjoy the quality of life and cultural experience of a society, and the natural environments we treasure—but only if we manage and build them with great care. We focus more on yield, rather than just on numbers. We focus on quality of service and delivery, and that is what this Government is committed to.

As a Minister, I am committed to looking after that important 10 percent of our GDP now, and 10 percent of our jobs in tourism. But those jobs have to be good jobs. They have to be quality jobs for the future, not just the jobs one does until one gets a real one. That is where having a long-term goal and a proper plan for sustainability is so important in tourism, and that is what we have. We have worked constructively in partnership with the industry from day one, and that work is continuing. We have a 10-year working programme—a long-term strategy that the Government and the industry have built together and are committed to putting in place together. That is what this Government’s approach is all about—working constructively with communities and business to build an inclusive, positive future for all New Zealanders from one end of the country to the other.

I want to finish by mentioning Tuatapere. What a great example! So many of our members were down there to help celebrate at the beginning of the year. That is a good example of a community getting alongside this Government and developing a world-class track. It is part of the solution to the question of how we look after our environments. Go and visit the Tuatapere Hump Ridge Track! They do not often see National members down there.

That member who has just resumed his seat spoke about ordinary New Zealanders and the advantages they are getting because of this brilliant Labour Government—that is in his eyes. Let me talk about that brilliant Labour Government when it comes to accident compensation victims. John Tamihere can smile, but he should listen to a few of them talk about the way that he and the Government treat them. It is an absolute disgrace. Accident compensation was not mentioned at all in the Prime Minister’s speech. On 18 March there will be a march, and Mr Tamihere and anybody else who doubts my word can go out there and talk to some of those victims first hand, and can learn how they are offloaded on to society and made to feel like second-class citizens. That is a real issue for New Zealanders. Those people have suffered at the hands of an accident, and they are bluffed and bullied around like nobody’s business.

I will be tabling a letter at the end of my speech from the chief executive of the Accident Compensation Corporation. I understand that when he was first appointed as chief executive, he was asked a series of questions, and I quote this for Hansard: “I am aware there has been some comment in the media about the procedure and its impact on ACC clients. I wish to assure you that ACC is committed to the following: 1. Only people who have completed a vocational rehabilitation programme and have a clear capacity to work will be referred for assessment. 2. Claimants who have been severely disadvantaged by injury will not be referred for assessment. 3. Highly skilled claimants will not be assessed as having a capacity to work in low-skilled positions.” That was a quote from a letter signed by the chief executive when he first got the appointment.

I will discuss those three points. Are claimants ever referred for assessment if they have not completed a vocational rehabilitation programme or equivalent? The response in recent times from the Accident Compensation Corporation is yes. There is a long-winded explanation, but the answer is yes. Are claimants ever referred for assessment if they do not have a clear capacity for work? The answer is that various assessments occur periodically in order to determine whether there is a clear capacity to work, to be work-ready, or to return to independence. The answer to that is yes. Are claimants ever referred for assessment if they have been severely disadvantaged by injury? The answer is yes. If a claimant has, for example, lost a limb, his or her ability to work is assessed in order to determine vocational rehabilitation needs, which could include training needs or a work-site assessment. Are highly skilled claimants ever assessed as having a capacity to work in low-skill positions? The Accident Compensation Corporation’s answer is that the corporation operates to objectives that include returning claimants to the same or a similar job as a priority, and if that is not possible other options are explored. That answer turns the chief executive’s statement into an absolute pack of lies.

This Government has said it cares for working people. I can tell you that that is rubbish when it comes to accidents. If the Government is concerned about that, we should be having an inquiry into the way that the Accident Compensation Corporation operates. We are pushing for that, and we will not settle for second best. We will not be like the National Party, making out that it wants an inquiry and then, behind the scenes, stopping that at every turn. We will be pursuing the objective of having an inquiry into the Accident Compensation Corporation with the utmost vigour, because I cannot think of anything worse than being a long-term accident victim in this country at this point in time. Those victims deserve to be treated like the decent, reasonable people that they are.

I want to turn to immigration.

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: Surprise, surprise.

Surprise, surprise, the member says. I am an immigrant, and I am proud of it. I am also proud of being a New Zealander. I do not doubt that there are many other people in the same position, but the point I am espousing is that if we open this country’s doors wide to an unlimited number of immigrants we will suffer.

💬 Hon Damien O'Connor: We haven’t done that.

I would not want to see four million versions of me come in. One is enough; my colleagues will support that. [Interruption] I come from Tauranga.

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: Liverpool—isn’t it Liverpool?

I knew Mr Cosgrove was misguided, and now I know how highly misguided he is. That is the pits, is it not? I want to tell members what the mayor of Tauranga stated recently in a little handout that went around. She was talking about the issues of funding and running the city of Tauranga, which is probably the best city in this country. She stated that most of those issues related to our massive and speedy growth, and most boil down in the end to money. She went on to state later in the article: “Each and every one of you deserves the full facts about the city balance sheet. Frankly, it is groaning under the strains placed upon it by growth. Rates revenue must grow to properly accommodate growth.” We are talking about the growth of the population and about migration into Tauranga—not migration from overseas, but migration from other parts of New Zealand. Those migrants are putting strains on the Tauranga system.

This is what the chief executive states: “Tauranga is the most desirable place to live in New Zealand.” Who could argue with that? Nobody with could argue that. “Growth is huge here.”, he states, and he goes on to state that while the number of ratepayers might increase, that will never equal the actual dollar cost associated with the services and facilities those extra people and businesses need. He goes on to qualify those services and facilities, including roads, parks, and footpaths. The point I am making is that a responsible city is stating that it cannot keep pace with people coming in from elsewhere. I do not want to stop that. The Government—and Damien O’Connor is a member of it—is trying to convince us that we should open the doors to Auckland and we will all be better off. I say to the House that that is a ridiculous philosophy. If members support that ideology, they are selling this country short.

If members doubt me, they go back to where I came from, the UK, and look at how it is straining at the seams all over the place as a result of having an open-door immigration policy. Not only can the infrastructure not cope with the number of people but it is also producing friction in that country, like nobody’s business. The situation is far worse than it was when I left there.

💬 Hon Members: Go back.

I am actually going back there. I will have a good look—

💬 Rod Donald: And give them some advice.

I will give them some advice, but I am trying to give members some advice. Mr Donald should listen, and he might learn something. I am ambitious, but that might be too hard an ambition to achieve.

Finally, before my time is up in this call, I want to touch on transport. I say the transport infrastructure in this country has been underfunded for years, and now we are reaping the rewards of that underfunding. Those members over there want to chip in, so they should tell us what they will do with Tranz Rail. Will they buy the rail track back? They should not keep us in suspense about that. It should be no great mystery. What will they do about Tranz Rail? They do not have a clue. Let me tell those members that if they do not do something we will be stymied on the roads in this country, particularly in the place where I come from, Tauranga.

💬 Rod Donald: Go and buy some shipping.

Mr Donald is at least saying something intelligent here. We should buy the rail track back—he agrees with New Zealand First—and we should develop coastal shipping. That goes to show that if one is around here long enough, even the Greens will say something sensible.

In my closing moments, I cannot emphasise enough that this Government must come to terms with our transport infrastructure. The Government has 3 years in which to do that. It can count on New Zealand First to support any positive innovation that does not put an extra burden or cost on the motorist or anyone else. We have to get this country moving, physically and in every way. This country depends on exports, and we need a transport infrastructure to service the export industries. I look forward to Government members getting off their backsides and doing something about that.

The Green Party comes to the debate we have been having on the impending war on Iraq with a mixture of happiness and sadness. We are happy that the Labour Government has not signed up to a unilateral US-led attack on Iraq, despite the pressure it must have been under from George Bush, Tony Blair, and John Howard, but we are sad that Helen Clark said in her speech yesterday that New Zealand would be obliged to consider contributing to a war against Iraq if it were sanctioned by the UN Security Council. Helen Clark has talked about providing logistic support or sending medical units. That disturbs us deeply. Regardless of whether an invasion was unilateral or UN-endorsed, it would needlessly lead to the deaths or injury of tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and devastate much of the country. It is clear that the killing and destruction would be needless, in that no one claims that Iraq is about to launch an attack on a neighbouring country.

Helen Clark argues that, as a loyal member of the United Nations, we are obliged to implement Security Council decisions. Such an approach has no moral or legal credibility. It was clearly established by the Nuremburg tribunal that obeying orders or implementing the decisions made by a higher body was no excuse for participating in mass murder—and we are talking about mass murder. United States strategists are talking about sending 800 cruise missiles against Iraq in the first 48 hours, and crippling water and electricity supplies. It has been described as the “shock and awe” strategy. “There will not be a safe place in Baghdad,” a Pentagon official told America’s CBS News after a briefing on the plan. “The sheer size of this has never been seen or contemplated before.”

It would be tragic if the Security Council did endorse the murder of many thousands of Iraqis. It would hugely undermine its credibility and threaten its future. It is precisely because the Greens are such strong supporters of the UN that we think our Government would be obliged to do everything possible to stop such a disastrous decision from being implemented. The Security Council would support an invasion of Iraq only as a result of arm-twisting by the Bush administration. Minister Jim Sutton has already explained that that is going on between America and other countries. It is clear from the speeches and questions in this House over the last couple of days that some parties are feeling the pressure to go along with the American superpower. If some of us feel pressured, let us just think what it must be like for a developing nation that is reliant on the US for support in aid, loans, and a market for its goods. We would not be alone if we did not join a UN-endorsed assault on Iraq. Most of the members of the General Assembly would be opposed to it and would not contribute anything.

When Helen Clark was an anti-Vietnam War protestor, she would never agree that because the then National Government had committed us to that war constitutionally we were obliged to go along with it. She probably admired Mohammed Ali for resisting the draft in the US. In those days, too, she would have wanted the anti-war voice of New Zealanders to be heard as loudly as possible in the corridors of Washington. Some of the biggest anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in New Zealand were against visiting US dignatories, such as then President Johnson. What has changed for Helen Clark? There was only an oblique criticism of the Bush administration in her speech yesterday. She even gave credibility to US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation justifying a war, saying that “he did present a case based on intelligence that strongly suggested a pattern of deception” by Iraq “and concealment of such programmes.”

It was shameful for our Prime Minister to give any endorsement to a speech that was itself full of deception and concealment of the truth. Colin Powell, described as the liberal of the Bush administration, was telling barefaced lies about the al-Qaeda link to Saddam Hussein. As the Dominion Post tells us, even America’s intelligence community is outraged at that. The spooks have told Bush and Powell that there is no link between al-Qaeda and its fundamentalists and the secularist Saddam Hussein regime. By echoing some of the Bush administration’s arguments and being rather meek in any criticism of it, the Labour Government is betraying New Zealand’s mission as an advocate of peace.

The world is at a critical juncture, and it is incumbent on all of us politicians to do what we can to stop this disastrous drive to war. It is not something that we must leave up to the big countries, like France and Germany. We should be out at the front edge, working publicly and privately with all those countries opposed to the war. We should never offer as an excuse that we are small and cannot do much. That was not the attitude that Helen Clark took when she was in the fourth Labour Government, marching on anti-nuclear protests and pushing through our antinuclear legislation. Her argument then was that we could make a real difference. Our nuclear-free stand resonated around the work and gave a little more hope to millions of people on all continents. We were then the mouse that roared; now we are the mouse that can hardly squeak.

Achieving peace is a cumulative thing. The efforts of every individual and every Government can add up to a powerful force that can stay the hand of the war-makers in Washington. We appeal to the Labour Government to become an advocate of peace in Iraq, and not to stand on the sidelines or half in the Bush camp. We appeal to individual MPs in the Labour Party, many of whom have been on peace marches. We ask them to stand up in this House and oppose the war—to oppose any war on Iraq. We would also like them to join the Green MPs on the big peace marches this weekend. We will be all around the country—in Auckland, Hamilton, Nelson, Rotorua, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin. We will be part of an outpouring of protest around the world that will see huge marches in places like London, Berlin, Melbourne, and Sydney.

One of the slogans in all the protests will be: “ No blood for oil”. Green Party MPs are proud to carry such a slogan. Would Labour MPs do so? Do they have the honesty and the fortitude to address one of the main reasons for the war, which is the desire of the big corporates behind the Bush administration to achieve greater control over Middle East oil, including the oil reserves of Iraq, which are the second-largest in the world? Unfortunately, I do not think the Labour MPs will do that. The Labour Party seems to still have a dollar each way with the United States: it gently offers some criticism, and then tells the Bush officials that it is really in the US’s camp. Why else would we have chosen this critical time in the build-up to an invasion of Iraq to send a frigate, and soon an Orion, to the Persian Gulf? One of the frigate’s tasks is to escort US and British warships through the Straits of Hormuz into the southern Persian Gulf. Another is to track all ships in the area and to pass that information on to the US aircraft carrier on board which an invasion of Iraq is being planned. Surely both those things are useful to the American preparations for war. And Helen Clark says that the frigate will not be brought home even in the event of a war.

Of course the Greens do not want Iraq to have weapons of mass destruction, but there is an inspection process in place, which is continuing, and so far it has not found any such weapons. At this point there is no reason to believe that the inspectors cannot successfully and peacefully complete their mission. We only wish that the inspection process and the destruction of nuclear weapons would be extended to all the nuclear states—America, Britain, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel. Perhaps we should start with the country with the biggest stocks: the United States, which is also the only country to have actually used nuclear weapons. It has also been the biggest user of chemical weapons, having dropped 17 million tons of Agent Orange on Vietnam during its war there. That brings us back to Vietnam and to the horrors perpetrated on that country by the same superpower that now threatens Iraq. Many people who sit in this House were then proud to march against war and injustice. I ask again: what has changed?

I rise to support the Prime Minister’s statement. It was a set-piece speech, the first up in the parliamentary year. If we analyse the Prime Minister’s speech, we can see how it contrasts with the speech made by the Leader of the Opposition.

The Prime Minister laid out a number—not all—of this Government’s achievements pre and post the election. Those achievements, of course, include a growth rate of 3.9 percent, which is one of the highest in the OECD, when many of our trading partners, because of international circumstances, are having difficulties. She outlined that we now have a 4.9 percent unemployment rate, which I think is the lowest for 20 years or more. She outlined the innovation framework again and laid out the set of legislation that will continue the growth and innovation of this country. Her speech was solid, and I believe it was what people around the country wanted to hear. They want to hear a Prime Minister who gets up and articulates what the Government has done and will do, and justifies why people should have faith in this Government—and they do have faith in it. I do not say that in an arrogant way; it is what the polls state, and they speak for themselves. We are at 49 to 50 percent in the polls, depending on which one we read. That compares with a tragic and a dismal performance by the Opposition, which is wallowing at about 22 percent in the polls.

Then we had Mr English’s response to the Prime Minister’s speech. I think Mr English is someone of honour. He tells the truth, and he told the truth when he said we were going to be a third-term Government. That could also be interpreted as an admission of defeat, of course. When he said that his National colleagues, all 26 of them, cowered behind their desks, scratched their heads, and looked worried because he had blown it—all except two, Gerry Brownlee and Maurice Williamson. I have known Mr Brownlee since he was at St Bede’s College, and I have never seen him look so ecstatic in his life, apart from when he was a woodwork teacher and got his angles right while building a cutting board.

Members should contrast the performance of the Opposition with what has been achieved under our Government—3.9 percent economic growth, unemployment under 5 percent, the apprenticeships scheme, and the list goes on.

People are feeling pretty good about the country. Let us review what happened to the Opposition over the summer. We had the Māori-bashing policy from Mr English. As a result of that, Winston Peters is now No. 2 in the preferred Prime Minister stakes, ahead of the so-called Leader of the Opposition. We had leadership grabs from Gerry Brownlee, and I did not think I would see Gerry run for that position.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member must use a member’s full name.

I apologise. I did not think I would see Gerry Brownlee run for the party leader’s position, but he is running all right. He is running for that position and he is in it lock, stock, and barrel. Even Maurice Williamson, whom I count as a pretty learned political commentator on National Party politics—

💬 Hon John Tamihere: Not the most lucid.

No, Maurice Williamson is not the most lucid member, but he certainly is the most learned of that crew over there on the National benches. He has admitted that Mr English is a goner. Is it any wonder that Mr English admits Labour will be a three-term Government? He is down in the polls.

We then had Dr Brash come out and say that unemployed people should line up at postshops to do anything, such as cutting grass with scissors, because the dole should be abolished. Mr English cringes a bit at that because, of course, he cannot come to terms with it. The Otago Daily Times stated this about Mr English on 7 November 2002: “The mistakes Mr English has made since his elevation have been those of a man not fully in control of his caucus, enjoying not much better than indifferent support from casual National Party supporters, and little better from its committed membership.”

💬 John Key: He’ll he a Prime Minister for longer than Mike Moore was!

I know that Mr Key, who is a pretty successful businessperson, by reputation at least, cringed when Dr Brash announced his postshop strategy and his idea to abolish the unemployment benefit. Mr Key could not believe what he was hearing. He knows that that is not possible or doable, and he certainly knows that it is not saleable. Mr English is a sort of human dynamo who came into the leader’s role, and then was short-circuited halfway through.

I want to turn to the ACT party. As Mr Burton said, we heard an extraordinary speech from the human blunderbuss of the ACT party, Rodney Hide. [Interruption] He might have been ordering pizza. Rodney Hide had the audacity to talk about working people. Goodness gracious! I ask that member two things: when did he ever give a damn about working people, and when did the ACT party ever represent a working-class person who was down on his or her luck? I do not think that Alan Gibbs—and members can correct me if I am wrong—has ever been down on his luck. That is the sort of person whom Mr Eckhoff, Mr Hide, and the party they belong to represent. Mr Hide talks about people who have real jobs. As far as I am aware, the most real job Mr Hide has ever had was working for Tappenden Holdings, a company owned by Mr Gibbs. I think he got the bullet from that. This guy, by his own admission, is the only trained economist in Parliament, with a degree from a good university down my way, Lincoln University—in zoology! I think that is rather apt, given the sort of trained monkeys that he has to deal with in the ACT party.

💬 Gerrard Eckhoff: What is the member qualified in?

I am qualified in common sense, because I am in the Labour Party.

I want to refer to some of the problems the ACT party has had over the last couple of months. I will not get into them in great detail, but I will say that Mrs Awatere Huata has given us an insight into the ugliness, the sludge, and the grotesque nature of the crew in the ACT party. I will quote from her press statement. She said: “The ACT party quite rightly stood by Owen Jennings”—I think he is called the Pharaoh because he knows all about pyramids—“when he was taken to court and found guilty of defamation. The ACT party stood by him when he lost his appeal, and it stood by Rodney Hide when it was alleged that his support for a Fijian investment conference cost investors their life savings.”

Let us look at the record of the ACT party. It stated it would bust the scams and go after people who used public money improperly. If you look at the litany, you see those boys have form.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member must not bring the Speaker into the debate.

That party has form. It includes Owen Jennings and Rodney Hide, the man who, when he was challenged in this House, to this day hasstill not answered the allegations made by Mr Tamihere and me as to why he did not open his trap to warn New Zealanders, and try to prevent them from being fleeced through those dodgy investment conferences. To this day he has not come into this House and said why he shut up. To this day he has not got off his chuff and gone to the police or the Serious Fraud Office, to say that he wants to help the people who lost money. He is the great scam buster, and now he has a scam on his own doorstep.

I will not get into Mrs Awatere Huata’s predicament, but I will say that—

💬 Gerrard Eckhoff: We addressed it!

I say to Mr Eckhoff that silence is often helpful in his case. Mrs Awatere Huata talked about natural justice. I can remember when my mates Mr Samuels and Mr Tamihere were being worked over, and accusations were flying around. There was no evidence and nothing had been proven, yet the ACT party, including Mrs Awatere Huata, did not hesitate to try to knife them before any natural justice was executed. What goes around may, indeed, come around.

I have got stuck into Rodney Hide and Richard Prebble a bit over the last couple of months. But they are not even worth attacking any more; they are yesterday’s people. Rodney Hide has always wanted Richard Prebble’s job. The problem is that Rodney Hide has all the vices of Richard Prebble but none of his virtues—when we can find them. Rodney Hide knows that the board of management of the ACT party will never allow that great genius to get his hands on the leadership of ACT. That is why I predicted—and I think I was the first member in this Parliament to predict it—that Deborah Coddington would become the leader of ACT.

But if we look at Deborah Coddington’s form and at what she writes, we see she is more even more extremist than her colleagues. She is to the right of Genghis Khan and Richard Prebble. We can see that she is way over on the right wing when we look at some of her history. In the Evening Post of 20 December 1995 she stated the following about a bureaucrat: “How quickly the bureaucrat moves to defend her fat salary, paid by us. She and her comrades are no better than dole bludgers, ACC parasites, the solo mothers who think it’s their right to procreate while you and I pay for it.” That is what Mr Hide, Mrs Coddington, and the other ACT members think of people in this country who may need the assistance of the State. Mr Hide should come back, take another call, and make another speech in order to explain how he will bust the scams within the party to which he belongs.

I am proud to stand in the debate today. Before I continue in the true tradition of the Labour Party I want to take my time in the first part of my first speech in this session to thank the workers who make the place really tick. That is not Opposition members of course, because they never work. To the Office of Clerk, the Clerks, the messengers, to security, and to the people who help to feed us in Bellamys, I acknowledge that we always think of them. We are a party that represents the best interests of all Kiwis, not just the few in the name of many.

I want to pause and pay a special mihi to one of the security officers who died tragically in an accident just before Parliament resumed. E tū te ārai kua whetūrangitia. Tēnei te mihi atu e te rangatira Sam. Moe mai, moe mai a moengaroa. He aroha ki a koutou mō te whānau pani. Kai te mihi, kai te mihi, kai te mihi nunui ki a koutou. Kia kaha, kia toa, kia manawa nui.

[Rise up the veil; a life has passed over the horizon. This is my tribute to you, Sam, the chief. Rest there, repose there in the long sleep. My condolences to you the bereaved family. My sympathy and deep commiseration to you. Be strong, be brave, and be stout-hearted.]

First of all I want to address treaty issues, and Māori relationships in that regard.

💬 Dr Wayne Mapp: Why does the member fold his arms at that point?

There is Dr Wayne Mapp, who likes to interject. The alumni from the University of Auckland really get desperate when Wayne Mapp gets up to speak in this House. “How the hell did he get a doctorate?” they have to say— “What happened?”. There was obviously a mistake.

In respect of the treaty we are in a very special moment in time in the rollout of our nationhood. Our leadership will be called upon across every sector in our society regardless of colour, race, or creed. In terms of the treaty debate the principles of the treaty have been espoused within our constitutional framework. It amazes me that simpletons sitting on the front bench opposite do not know what the principles are. Dr Wayne Mapp, as an ex-lecturer at Auckland University—I do not think he will ever get a job back there again—used to try to lecture on these matters, and did a much better job when he lectured on them than when taking cheap political shots.

It was all about this. The constitution, as it rolls itself out, means that the courts do play an integral and very important role in the definition of a number of laws laid down in this House. That is where a range of principles have been enunciated over the last 15 years. We have a huge jurisprudential background lasting over 15 years. The benchmarks and the precedents are in place. This Government has seen fit to ensure that the last two major settlements that set the benchmarks, and complete them in a national sense, have been completed. Those settlements are on the West Coast in terms of the Taranaki peoples, and now, on the eastern seaboard, for the Bay of Plenty peoples—Tairawhiti—with the signing in of the Ngāti Awa claim.

What I stand for here today, and am proud about, is that only this Labour-led Government could have achieved the turning-point in historical treaty settlement processes—led by a Minister who is much maligned, and often misunderstood. She is Margaret Wilson, the Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations. So we have hit the top of the process, and we are on the way down. Treaty settlements will start to accelerate, because the benchmarks are in place.

I have to say, in concluding my remarks on the treaty debate, that because the precedents are in place, and because our system is incremental and evolutionary, I often wonder why we have to continue to revisit a number of issues that the Hon Bill English led and voted on. Every member opposite, we will say for those who have entered the House in the year 2001, has voted affirmatively, in favour of treaty clauses. They shaped the history of this nation when they ran the Treasury benches for 10 years, and the selective dementia that is practised by them when they try to use this very important debate about our nationhood to divide and rule it, amazes me. That type of leadership should be shown for the bankruptcy that it is.

I want to talk now about the status and standard of Opposition politics and parties, because in a robust democracy we must have an Opposition. I am disgusted by the status and standard of, and lack of vim and vigour on, the Opposition benches. This cannot be a safe democracy with the level of incompetence that is exhibited day in and day out on the opposite benches. Those members struggle to lead the Opposition. It is no wonder that Kiwis vote for us in the polls at 50 percentage points, because they know that we are the safe drivers of the economy, and of nationhood in its rollout. They know we talk about all Kiwis; we are not talking about the favoured few of the ACT party.

In talking about the Opposition parties, I wanted to start looking at the National Party. I will spend a minute talking in terms of its leadership, vision, policies, and capabilities. And here it is—! Now that we have had a minute’s silence—because that is about all that party gets—we will move across to my good friends, colleagues, fellow citizens, and Māori over there in the New Zealand First caucus. That party would be one of the most interesting in a Kiwi democracy, because it does not have a caucus or caucus meetings. Its leader arrives in a cab 5 minutes before the House has to sit for question time at 2 o’clock, on a caucus day when other parties normally meet. New Zealand First members walk into Parliament like Brown’s cows or stunned mullets, and sit over on the Opposition benches.

The “tight six”—that is the Māori members; Pākehā voters in Tauranga never knew there would be six of them on the list—come into the House. We call them the tight six on this side of the House because we would not know their names, that they exist, or what they stand for—apart from one bloke who has been on the Waitangi celebrations committee since 1984, and if one wanted someone to sit on a committee who knows how it should not work, I would appoint him.

I move over now to my good friends and colleagues. My good friend Clayton Cosgrove from Waimakariri has indicated a few issues with the ACT party. That party is a circus, with the best conductor of a circus and biggest clown of a leader that we have at the moment. Big funders pump hundreds of thousands of dollars into that party in every election. In fact, it costs the ACT party multiples of 20 times per vote, in respect of the type of money that is pumped into it, in order for it to try to buy its way into this Parliament. A number of that party’s rorts have come home to roost, and day in and day out as Donna Awatere Huata sits up the back there, it is a continual memorial to the types of rorts, the lack of ethics, and the lack of standards that she learnt very well, right in the bowels of that party. That is what it stands for.

We can talk about integrity, credibility, and honesty, but the people who fund it have once again “rorted” New Zealand taxpayers—rather, New Zealand shareholders—in Tranz Rail. The Fay Richwhite boys sat there yet again, and sold their shares down. Three months after selling their shares down, $170 million is written off. That is not only disgusting; that sort of corruption is what we are in business to sort out. We are well on the way to doing it, and I am grateful and proud that I am in a team that will hunt that sort of nonsense down, but we have to remind our children what they got up to in the 1980s over the privatisation campaign.

And another issue will be raised: the multimillionaire son of a poor preacher man who leads that party. He has not had a job outside the 3 years when Sandra Lee turfed him out of central Auckland. There will be a lot more to come home to roost about that man’s integrity, credibility, and honesty, as to how he became a multimillionaire. It is all a rort about the privatisation campaigns, and members should watch this space for the way in which Mr Hide is associated with the Gibbs and Farmers of this world, and they will start to know exactly what we must always fight against in this country—the worst sort of crime, which is white-collar crime. They walk away from it, day in and day out.

So we have to say about this circus called the ACT party that there is absolutely no way that the National Party can get anywhere near a Government when it is lined up with that shemozzle, and we will talk about its lack of ethics and morality. I am just grateful to be on this side of the House, being led by somebody with some integrity and credibility, who is willing to face up and front up. We are robust, accountable, and transparent, unlike certain parties in this House.

I too listened to the Prime Minister’s droning speech yesterday, and it was quite clear that this Government is in cruise mode and has no new ideas. As the welfare spokesperson for my party I listened intently for some new plans to help those Kiwis most in need, but I did not hear one new initiative of note. For the 409,000 people in this country on benefits and needing the support of the community, there was nothing. For the 134,000 people on the unemployment benefit and looking for work, there was nothing to make their lives better. While Government members may wax lyrical about the unemployment figures, I remind them that they have enjoyed the best economic conditions in a generation and, still, long-term benefit dependency continues to grow. As a country we must continue to ask why. Helen Clark smugly thinks that this buoyancy is a result of her last couple of years of control-freak methods of management, but may I say that her style of management does not yet extend to the manipulation of the weather or commodity prices, or even the favourable exchange rates that underpin the good growth that we have seen.

The Government has enjoyed the best economic conditions in a generation, and, still, there are 409,000 people on benefits. If we look at the invalids benefit and the sickness benefit, we see that the December Economic and Fiscal Update from last year shows that those numbers will skyrocket in the next term. We consider that there are better ways of ensuring a safety net that does not engulf people in long-term dependency. I am interested in looking at different solutions to reduce that welfare dependency, and in doing so I am confident about National’s ability to develop a welfare system with a better mix of compassion, support, and encouragement.

I have been brought up to know that it is the Kiwi way to offer compassion and support for those in need, and that the only real way to make changes in people’s lives is through community-based projects. I know that because I have watched my own family members dedicate their working lives to community employment. I may not share some of their political philosophies, but I have known that one of National’s core philosophies—in fact it is a key part of our constitution—is the provision of assistance to those Kiwis who are in need of help. But unlike some of my opponents, I do not have a “Here’s your cash, and see you later.” approach to welfare. We believe that there are obligations to one another, as we are all members of the same community, and that is why I am investigating better ways of delivering welfare services.

I am looking at eligibility requirements for some benefits, but let me be clear in my intention. I want a country where children can grow up to be safe, secure, and vaccinated from Third World diseases, where they know their heritage, and where they attend preschool and school. I want teenage mothers—a small percentage of the recipients of the domestic purposes benefit admittedly, but one of most concern to the community—to have the opportunity to live in supported accommodation where they can get the help that they need and continue their education to at least finish secondary school.

I want a child protection system that is not in crisis and is not struggling to provide even basic protections for New Zealand’s children. Even though Mick Brown in his report told the Minister that the unallocated case list needed to be reduced to zero in 6 months, at last count we still had 1,400 children whose cases had not even been seen by a social worker yet. I do not think that is good enough, and my party does not think that is good enough either. Fourteen hundred children—who knows, there may be another Delcelia Witika, another Olympia Jetson, or another “Lillybing” sitting on that case list. I hope not, but frankly the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services does not know, because many of those cases have not been allocated to social workers.

Labour has made it politically incorrect to have a view on these sorts of things. I think it is time for us to talk about the sorts of lives that we as a community want to provide for the coming generations. We also need to talk about time limits and community support. Some benefits were designed to be transitionary. The unemployment benefit was not designed to support someone searching for work for 10 years; neither was the sickness benefit. After 10 years, that person will become trapped unless there is some intervention to help that person back out into the workforce. This Government thinks it is OK that someone like Jules Mikus can be on the sickness benefit for 20 years. Well, Opposition members do not, and I do not think the public does either. We intend talking about these issues and raising them with the public over the coming year.

Government members will shriek, they will talk about beneficiary bashing, and we had that unusual outburst from Steve Chadwick yesterday, but the funny thing is that a lot of these ideas that I have been considering have been implemented and developed by none other than the Minister’s idol Tony Blair. The UK is taking a much more proactive approach to welfare development, and I think we have a lot to learn from the Australian and UK models.

Parenting children is one of the toughest jobs a person will ever have, and being unemployed is one of the most demotivating experiences of one’s life. I know that because I have experienced both. I do not pretend to be an expert on either but I do say that experience of both those things does give me a head start when I look at developing a better welfare system for this country. We heard from the Prime Minister’s speech that Labour simply does not have the practical skills to give people the encouragement to make changes in their lives. Labour is happy with people being powerless, and it is happy with people being trapped in dependency. It is a good way to secure their vote. I am not prepared to have that negative view of welfare.

The Minister loves to quote statistics, but I remind him that those statistics are people. I would like to talk about a number of people whom I have worked with in my city over the last few weeks. It is pretty hard to stand opposite a hard-working couple who are earning less than the highest-paid beneficiary in this country, and explain to them why they earn less than $41,000—that being the amount earned by the highest-paid recipient. What was in the Prime Minister’s speech for them? There was nothing. Yesterday I began working with a woman who has spent 10 years on the domestic purposes benefit. She is desperate for work but is deflated by the regular knock-backs. We have started working together and we will find her a good job, but there was nothing in the Prime Minister’s speech yesterday for her.

I spent a day driving trucks with Tulloch Transport. That company said that its industry faces 40 vacancies for truck drivers who have their truck and trailer licence, and it cannot get any applicants. The Government’s plan offered nothing to address the fact that so many of our businesses at the moment cannot get the people and the skills they need. What about the mum in my Plunket group who is juggling time to work and motherhood, but is barely covering the childcare costs?

💬 David Benson-Pope: That’s why we have all those modern apprentices—thousands of them.

It is interesting that Mr Benson-Pope raises the apprenticeship scheme. How come a constituent told me that one of the people working in that member’s office said that the scheme is a load of rubbish and is not working? That was straight from the mouth of Mr Benson-Pope’s own electorate secretary. I say to the Minister to cut the academic rubbish about social capability and building and joined-up government, and get back to some common-sense discussion about jobs and getting people back into work or getting them into training. Stop trying to make it a complicated academic subject, and put some solutions in place.

The Minister keeps chanting about real jobs, but he arrogantly dismisses a lot of work. I ask the Minister to define what a real job is. My husband used to drive trucks for a living. Is that a real job in the eyes of the Minister? I get the impression he would not think so. He also used to be a builder’s labourer. I suppose in the Minister’s eyes that does not count as a real job, either. I had a job cleaning gravestones—one of my favourite jobs, I might add—but not a real job in the eyes of the Minister, either. I say to that Minister that he should define what is a real job. The value of a job is in the eye of the beholder. It is not just about money; it is about self-esteem, it is about connecting with one’s community. It is about being a part of things.

When the Minister talks about social exclusion, I say that there is nothing more exclusive than sitting at home and staring at the wall. Talk to anybody who has made the transition from welfare to work, and he or she will say that a dollar earned from work brings greater satisfaction than any dollar that can be given by the State. That is why National is looking at new solutions for the welfare system, and we are going to take the debate to the Government this year.

I want to thank David Benson-Pope for a somewhat vain attempt to inject some passion, and for helping the previous speaker at least to have some passion in her speech. If ever there was a passionless delivery, that was it. If ever there was an Opposition faction—well, the National Party Opposition faction—that was on some sort of cruise control, then from what we have seen during this debate, that was it. I am going to implore Mr English, as the current official leader of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition, to do the right thing and at least give Winston Peters, and maybe Mr Prebble, some of his salary—share it around. Mr English should not be looking just at members on this side of the Chamber. A more pertinent danger to his leadership, not just within his own ranks but in terms of de facto leadership of the Opposition, clearly is coming from the member for Tauranga. The mind boggles if the member for Tauranga would ever accept a second-in-charge position to Mr English, should Mr English make it to government, which of course in my view is highly unlikely.

We thank Mr English for at least acknowledging that we are now potentially looking very much at a three-term Labour-led Government. The work we on this side of the House are going to do will ensure that that extends beyond three terms. I have to say to the previous speaker, Katherine Rich, that quite frankly your lot had 9 years—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member must not bring the Speaker into the debate.

I said “your lot”. I apologise, and without at all questioning your ruling, I say to Katherine Rich: “Your lot had 9 long years and, frankly, you had your time. Your time has gone, and it is gone for a long time.”

One of the very critical things—and I do not think some of the other Opposition parties would disagree with this analysis—is that we may be seeing the Swedish style of Parliament, where there is no longer a major party from the centre-right in this country any more, but the centre-right is divided into three clear faction parties. I have said in a previous contribution to this debate that Dail Jones no longer recognises the party of which he was once a member. In fact, Rob Muldoon would be spinning in his grave if he could see the remnants of the once-proud party that he led, let alone the once-proud party that was led by people like Jack Marshall and Keith Holyoake. It was a significant party, representing a very broad cross section of New Zealand society, and, of course, it was the Government, as we know, throughout the 1960s. It had a significant grass-roots membership. When we look at the National Party today we see that it is far more reminiscent of some of those narrow right-wing parties that operate on a very narrow base in the Scandinavian parliament.

One of the problems we have seen at National Party meetings is that they do not know whether they will go the Brash way, the Maurice way, the Rich way, or which way. Who knows which way they will go? They are not sure whether their destiny lies in the centre or whether they should redefine themselves and gouge out a new position on the right.

If ever there was evidence of the kind of intellectual and philosophical vacuum that the National Party faction is operating in, I think that it was shown by the previous speaker, Katherine Rich, who talked about taking people off benefits. Presumably, the answer now is that she will take them off benefits after 6 months or so, then she will send them off to look for the nearest local post office, wherever that is, in order to see whether they will pick up a job. It reminds me very much of a sort of a “bob a job” scheme.

💬 Dr Wayne Mapp: It works in Australia.

No, it is a “bob a job” scheme. People find their local post office, if they can. They should not mistake it for Books and More, or anything else. That is the vision that is coming from that side of the House. Dare I say it, if we actually look at the vision of the ACT party—and I have to say that I get no pleasure at all from seeing the difficulty that ACT members are currently experiencing—we can see that they, of course, know everything about loyalty to their members! Look what they did to Ms Webster at the last election. Look what they did to Owen Jennings. If I were a member of the ACT caucus I would be watching my back. Two ACT members were dumped at the last election. They will not stop at Donna. In fact, if members want a description of the ACT philosophy, the all-embracing ACT way to care for people, then I will give members a quote. It has been quoted before. I accept that the quote is not too original. I think that Clayton Cosgrove used it. In the May 2002 issue of North and South, there is a quote from Rodney Hide, talking about his previous life. It is a fascinating article.

I acknowledge the fact that Rodney Hide has had a fascinating previous life before coming here. I think that his view of life adequately describes the philosophy of ACT and its view of loyalty and ethics, and all of that. I quote from page 79 of North and South, of May 2002. Mr Hide said about working with some colleagues: “I got very comfortable with the lifestyle. I liked the guys, all of them drunks, crooks, thieves, wife beaters and fighters, but I enjoyed them immensely. I thought to myself ‘I’m in a foreign country. If this is the way the game goes then I’ll play it’ ... ”. All I can say to that is: “Boy! Talk about the ACT party having the temerity to lecture the rest of us on ethics and loyalty!” Members should ask Ms Webster and Mr Jennings all about the loyalty that ACT has shown them. Quite frankly, if ever we did have a centre-right kind of coalition Government, can members honestly imagine Mr Hide—

💬 Dr Wayne Mapp: Yes, I can.

The member can imagine Mr Hide as a member of Cabinet. He can imagine him having some sort of role there, perhaps as part of some three-headed monster, unless, of course, New Zealand First can be the predominant player in that. Of course, we realise—and Mr English realises it too—that that is exactly Mr Winston Peters’ objective. His objective is to gouge out the Nats, and I would say to the National Party: “Be very careful because it does not automatically stand that you will be the dominant player in a centre-right Opposition in the next term of Parliament.”

Finally, I want to talk about three good local developments, which I acknowledge. It was a very good speech from the Prime Minister. We are delighted, and we thank Annette King, the Minister of Health, as we got the go-ahead for the much-needed Waikato Hospital neurosurgery unit. I publicly applaud Annette King’s efforts; I thank her for that. I thank Mr Anderton and Cabinet for giving us the go-ahead for the Waikato Innovation Park. That is two ticks on the board for the people of Hamilton. I say thank you to the Minister of Transport and to Transit for the traction that we are now finally getting on the Waikato expressway.

As Mr Lindsay Tisch knows, we have a long way to go yet. There is a lot of work that we as members of Parliament have to do. But when we go to the Long Swamp area and the Meremere and Ohinewai areas we see the construction and we see the bulldozers, and we see that things are actually happening for our region. We are, of course, delighted, but we are not going to rest on our laurels. Diane Yates, Nanaia Mahuta, and myself, representing the interests of Waikato, are going to get on with it We are chalking runs on the board. We are proud to be part of this Government, and part of this Government for many more years to come.

Kia ora, talofa lava, and warm Pacific greetings. It is my pleasure and privilege, as the member of Parliament for Mana, to stand and speak during this debate on our Prime Minister’s statement and our Government’s continued achievements. This Government has a pragmatism that is about real policy outcomes that address sustainable social and economic outcomes. What do we mean by sustainable social and economic outcomes, and how do we ensure that every man, woman, and child, irrespective of his or her culture, gender, religious and spiritual beliefs, and socio-economic, family, and community circumstances can each share the fruits of participation, opportunity, security, economic independence, and dignity? Our short-term and long-term aims are to build and sustain solid levels of economic growth, and to fund good public services and infrastructure sustainability.

Our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Helen Clark, stated in her speech that there is no reason for complacency or self-satisfaction. We continue to set ourselves tough goals, in order to ensure that our aims are met. We are delivering on our commitments, and we are keeping our word. We will continue to deliver as our budget permits. We all know that our Minister of Finance, Dr Michael Cullen, is a safe pair of hands and a successful and prudent financial manager. Our Government believes in living within its means, and believes that taxpayers’ moneys should be invested wisely to ensure that sustainable and economic outcomes are achieved.

Let us look at some examples of what we have delivered and achieved so far. In the economic area, New Zealand over the past year has been one of the OECD’s star performers, with annual average growth for the year to September coming in at 3.9 percent. That growth was driven by the household sector and by tourism, and it continues the solid economic performance of the last four quarters. Thank you, New Zealand. Moody’s Investors Service has restored New Zealand to the highest possible credit rating for foreign currency debt, returning us to the rating we held in 1983. That is great news. In fact, this morning, at the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Simon Carlaw, the chief executive officer of Business New Zealand stated that the Government’s management of finances has been sound. Let me repeat that: Simon Carlaw said that the Government’s management of finances has been sound. I say thank you to him.

In the social and economic area our unemployment rate has fallen to 4.9 percent, down from 5.4 percent for the September 2002 quarter. Employment levels have been growing for the past 10 quarters, which means more paid jobs and more paid work for New Zealanders. That is great news. Looking at regional and industry development, as the proud member of Parliament for Mana, I note two local examples of Government funding that have been given in my electorate and in Darren Hughes’ electorate for strategic planning in the Kapiti area. In December last year $21,802 was given to research opportunities for tourism, and we all know that Kapiti and Mana Islands are among the most beautiful icons and heritage sites in New Zealand, and are another potential major income earner from tourism. Thirty-three thousand, one hundred and sixty-five dollars was also granted to conduct a scan of potential and existing cluster industries in Kapiti. Those initiatives will bring more money into the local economy and into New Zealand. They will also work to create more jobs and business opportunities for our people.

We all know that our children are precious, and in early childhood education our Government has granted $8.8 million for the development of buildings, and it will create 1,343 new places for children in licensed and chartered centres over the upcoming year. In Porirua, in my electorate, I have seen many examples of the significant increase in the number of our children participating in early childhood education. We all know education opens doors, and it is a sound investment for the present and future generations.

Finally, at the end of last year I attended a function where our Government signed a memorandum of understanding with 54 mayors from around the country, and committed them to a shared goal that by 2007 all of our 15 to 19 year-olds will be engaged in appropriate education, training, work, or other options that will lead to long-term economic independence and well-being. Much progress has already been made with that agreement. It reflects a true spirit of partnership, with all the stakeholders—whether they be the market, the private sector, business, civil society, and the State—working together. We are grateful to all New Zealanders who work and who are committed to the Kiwi values of hard work and of realising sustainable economic and social participation for every citizen.

I will end on the wonderful words of our Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Dr Cullen—

💬 Gerry Brownlee: Who’s that?

The Deputy Prime Minister and the most successful Minister of Finance we have had, Dr Michael Cullen said: “We are not into Elastoplast or Band-Aid solutions. We are about long-term sustainable outcomes that offer real choice, real participation, real economic growth and independence, real dignity, and nationhood.”

CLAYTON COSGROVE (NZ Labour—Waimakariri): I seek leave to table a document referred to by Mr Gallagher. It is an article in the May 2002 edition of North and South, where Mr Hide states that he likes to work with drunks, crooks, thieves, wife-beaters, and fighters.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Is there any objection to that course of action being taken? There is.

The call went out to Labour Party back-benchers to spend their 10 minutes expounding on the virtues of this Government, and talking about the plan for growth. It is little wonder that the MP for Mana finished so early in her 10-minute speech. The far-reaching reforms this country saw in the 15 years prior to this Government taking office put New Zealand’s economy into a greatly improved position. We are now seeing the wide range of benefits that come from that platform for prosperity produced by the previous Government. This Government has a goal of economic growth. Furthermore, it wants to get New Zealand into the top half of the OECD, which we know means growth of at least 4 percent a year. We have heard Government members say very proudly today that we do have growth of 4 percent, but when one takes away the 1.5 percent population growth, the real growth is only about 2.5 percent. That is why National’s spokesperson on finance, Dr Don Brash, made the point in his speech at Orewa that the average New Zealander is $200 a week worse off than his or her compatriot in Australia.

What is the answer to that? The answer is improved productivity here in this nation. New Zealand’s productivity is stagnant at its current levels.

💬 Hon John Tamihere: The answer is that Gerry is safe.

I always enjoy Government members’ interjections, because they show that things are starting to hurt, and they do not like being reminded of that. The only sad thing about this speech is that I am giving it to Labour’s C team. It is not the B team, but the C team. It is sad that this speech should be wasted on anonymous members of the Labour Party—people whom no one in New Zealand can actually name. I was in Hamilton the other week, and found that people there still think Bob Simcock is the MP for Hamilton West, because he is the only person who does anything. We have ended up with a guy called Martin Gallagher in that electorate, and he is the second-worst select committee chairman I have experienced working with in my time in Parliament.

💬 Hon David Carter: Who is the worst?

David Cunliffe is the worst, but Martin Gallagher comes a very close second to him.

The point I make is that this is a do-nothing Government, with no vision for New Zealand. It is not just the National Party that is saying that. The New Zealand Herald ran a survey, in which it went out to the 120 top corporate executives and company chairpeople in New Zealand with this simple question: does New Zealand have a growth strategy to sustain business success? Only three of them said yes. Only three conceded that there was a strategy, or the beginning of one. One respondent even pointed to the 1990s economic reforms and called them a growth strategy. So the answer to that question from New Zealand business leaders was no. Mr Geoff Hunt, the chief executive of Alstom, said: “No one is clearly describing what sort of country New Zealand will be in 10-20 years’ time.” I am sure he was referring to the Government when he said: “If no one is painting the future, then it is unlikely that all the necessary steps will be taken to get us there. Even worse, without a clear view of the longer-term future, it is probable that short-term decision-making will remain.” Moreover, Mr Matthew Cockram from Bell Gully said: “There is a lack of coordination and vision at a national level”—and that is national with a little “n”, in reference to Labour—“about what we stand for as a country”. That is just an indictment from New Zealand’s business leaders.

There is an even stronger fear expressed in that survey that New Zealand is fast losing its competitiveness against Australia. Mr Clark Perkins, from JBWere—who is the brother of a member of one of the groups that the Prime Minister consults closely—wrote of “an urgent requirement to understand a strategy must be compelling when compared to Australia.” That is the point Dr Brash made. When compared with Australians, the average New Zealander is worse off by $200 a week. The criticism from business leaders is relentless. Geoff Vasey from the Ports of Auckland said: “You can’t have a knowledge economy and innovative businesses and ‘no risk’ labour regulation.” The New Zealand Herald reports that it is the Government’s failure to listen and act on businesses’ real concerns that chief executives find frustrating. Let us go back to Mr Cockram. He said: “The trend towards greater regulation and Government participation (e.g. the Local Government Act and ACC) emphasises a distrust of the private sector that is unhealthy. It reinforces a culture of dependence.”

Because this Government vilifies those who criticise it, many people spoke to the New Zealand Herald on a not-for-attribution basis. I have picked out three examples of what those people said. One said: “A growth strategy does not exist. It is politically driven and influenced, also mixed up and muddled over the Māori situation.” Another said: “The Clark Government is all window dressing and no substance. So far they have been incredibly lucky with the New Zealand economy they inherited. They are not to be trusted as essentially they are anti / do not understand business.” Here is another comment: “It is very easy to criticise, but there are no easy answers. The Government has sought answers by addressing demand in skill shortages. If only they would fix the Resource Management Act and the resulting delays/greenmail.”

The survey also went on to give a rating of the Clark Government’s impact on business in New Zealand. [Interruption] The new Government members can scoff at what business leaders say, but the reason I am raising business concerns in the Parliament today is that those members need to know that the people who are responsible for wealth creation in the New Zealand economy have very real concerns about the policies the Government is forcing on the nation.

In fact, in that New Zealand Herald survey, those 120 chief executive officers and chairpersons were asked to rate the Clark Government’s impact on business to date on a scale of 1 to 10—1 being hopeless, and 10 being positive. It was rated at minus 3. Business leaders have identified a number of areas, including the level of tax, that make it difficult to compete overseas: restrictive employment rules that make engaging staff a big contingent liability; a lack of skilled labour; the education system; and excessive Government regulation. So time and time again we are hearing from the business leaders of New Zealand that this Government lacks the vision and the plan to take the New Zealand economy forward.

I say to the House that there is one party in the Opposition, called National, that has the ideas, the talent, and the skill to provide that vision for the people of New Zealand. The next Prime Minister of New Zealand, Bill English, and the next Minister of Finance, Don Brash, have more idea about what is required for the future of this country than any member on the Government benches. It is clear that New Zealand needs new leadership and a new focus. More important, we need to address a much stronger economy in New Zealand. This afternoon I looked at the new New Zealand Stock Exchange’s NZSE50. I tell the House that 36 percent of the businesses listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange used to be Government businesses. They have been floated and put into direct public ownership. If one adds the ports into that figure, 40 percent of New Zealand’s sharemarket is made up of formerly State and council-owned businesses.

If New Zealanders are to have the opportunity to invest in successful, growing businesses, then they must have the opportunity to invest in many of the businesses owned by the Government that serve no social purpose whatsoever. It would be much better for us to say that the investment we as taxpayers have in those businesses should be released, so that the businesses can go into the parts of the economy where it matters. We must back business through a greater growth and innovation strategy than this Government can offer; releasing those enterprises so that more private capital can go into them and that can strengthen New Zealand’s capital markets. Forty percent of New Zealand’s capital markets used to be Government businesses, and they are many of the businesses than underpin the New Zealand sharemarket today. We need to grow the New Zealand sharemarket by providing more opportunities for New Zealanders to invest in businesses that there is no purpose in the Government continuing to hold.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Before I call the next member, I indicate to the House that the New Zealand First members have decided to split their time so that they have a 5-minute call each.

The Prime Minister’s speech contained very little of note, but during the course of it she did state: “Parliament should consider whether it is practicable to designate dangerous breeds and their crossbreeds, and then to ensure that they are leashed and muzzled whenever they are out of containment. Increased penalties for breaking the law should be considered, and enforcement of the law needs to be stepped up across the country.” The Prime Minister is quoted in a statement in the New Zealand Herald on Wednesday, 5 February as saying: “I personally am appalled at those dogs being in a position to rip adults and children apart.” So it is apparent to me as a member of New Zealand First that the Prime Minister has indicated that she supports consideration being given to increased penalties, the stepping-up of the enforcement of the law across the country, where it is practicable the designating of dangerous breeds and their crossbreeds, and ensuring that dogs are leashed and muzzled.

Unfortunately that message does not seem to have reached the Minister of Local Government, Chris Carter, who seems to be incapable of understanding the firm message given to him by his leader. All that he wants to do is to refer a bill back to a select committee, with no indication to that select committee of the matters that should be considered, despite the Prime Minister’s clear indication in her speech. The Local Government Law Reform Bill (No 2) is before Parliament. It is essentially an amendment to the Dog Control Act of 1996. As the date suggests, the Dog Control Act was passed only in 1996 and is generally a very sound Act. The Local Government Law Reform Bill (No 2) was referred back to this House in 1999, and it has stayed on the Order Paper since that time. Successive Ministers in this Labour Government have, over the last 4 years, failed to take any action with regard to that legislation.

I do not want to make any statements of a provocative nature—

💬 David Benson-Pope: Stop grandstanding on someone else’s suffering and sorrow. It’s disgraceful!

Clearly the senior Government whip cannot control himself, and needs to be muzzled and put on a leash. I am sure that all MPs—and there must have been about 35 or so of us—who met John Anderson today were greatly impressed by the positive manner in which he is treating the very distressing situation in which his family has found itself. Mr Anderson has set out five points in his submission, and I summarise them as follows. First, in relation to dog control officers, increased powers and better resourcing are required. Second, dog regulation should be enhanced by enforcing compulsory registration, the use of leashes, compulsory muzzles for all dogs over a certain height and weight, say 40 centimetres and 20 kilograms, when out of confinement—

💬 David Benson-Pope: What a political cockroach.

The senior Government whip may not like this, but I suggest that he keep control of himself and try to deal with this matter on a cross-party basis. Mr Anderson also submits that dogs should be off-limits at playgrounds and the like. Third, he says that stiffer sentences for owners breaking the Act should be brought in, and that an assault by a dog must be considered to be equivalent to an assault with a weapon. I agree with Mr Anderson entirely on that last point.

💬 David Benson-Pope: You just don’t want to help us to do anything about it.

The senior Government whip is still not restraining himself. Mr Anderson suggests that minimum sentences should be created, rather than maxima only. Fourth, he refers to the banning of certain breeds, and, fifth, he advocates education for all concerned. I should also mention that he suggests that working dogs should be exempted from those controls.

As a member of New Zealand First, it seems to me that this House should prepare a resolution and direct it to a select committee so that it can consider the submission prepared by John Anderson, and report back to the House on the five issues that he has raised. It is pointless merely sending this bill back to a select committee in the hope that something will be achieved. Some direction must be given to the select committee. The Minister of Local Government has absolutely no idea of the steps that we should take. He is now writing to local authorities to get some ideas from them. He has a very good short, sharp submission from a person who should know better than any of us the steps that are required to resolve the problem that faces us. The question of working dogs would be dealt with separately.

New Zealand First would be delighted to support a cross-party resolution of the House recommending that a select committee considers the issues that Mr Anderson has raised and reports back to the House in 3 months’ time, with the second reading of the bill to be completed in another 2 months’ time, and the bill to be finally passed by, say, the end of August. I look forward to support from United Future, the Greens, and the other Opposition parties, given that the senior Government whip does not seem to support the proposal. I look forward to support for that from the other Opposition parties for a cross-party view of this matter. I say that we should give some direction to the select committee as to what it should do, and that direction should be based on the very, very helpful and clear submission prepared in a brief way by John Anderson.

I take pleasure in rising to speak in the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement today, and, to start, I would like to quote the words of the Prime Minister in her statement to Parliament yesterday. Some of the first words that came from the Prime Minister’s mouth were her boast about the Government beginning the year feeling positive about the prospects for New Zealand and its policy programme.

She went on to talk about the economy’s so-called strong performance. First of all, here we had the Government trying to lead us to believe that the New Zealand economy over the past year has been one of the OECD’s star performers—even though we know that the Prime Minister’s quoted figures for our economy show that that is not quite the case, as stated by my leader, the Rt Hon Winston Peters yesterday.

I want to talk about another issue today. I really want to focus on a major issue where our country is not a star performer, and that is the very serious issue of our troubled youth. I look over at the Minister of Youth Affairs and say I am very concerned that this Government is not taking the problems and the troubles of our young people seriously enough. There is a lack of vision for our young people from this Government, which is unable to provide the leadership and the resources to give young New Zealanders a sense of purpose and direction. When Helen Keller was told once that it must be terrible to be blind, she turned to the person who said that and replied that the most pathetic thing in this world must be for somebody to be able to see but not to be able to have any vision. Those words of Helen Keller sum up this Government very, very well. We have high suicide and youth crime rates, and I say to this Government that a suicide can only be reported once. The suicide rates are very high in New Zealand and we need to look at that problem. It does not matter who says that; we do need to look at that problem and at our problems of youth crime, as well.

Last year I spoke to the Estimates of Appropriation, Vote Youth Affairs, and I asked the member for Tamaki Makaurau, the Minister of Youth Affairs, how on earth a Government could spend $1.7 million on youth affairs policy advice when it spent only $460,000 on a youth suicide prevention information service programme. Where is the vision and the leadership in that? When New Zealand First was in Government, we injected over $13 million into youth affairs. Now, 5 years later, this Government—members should do the maths—puts only about $11 million into youth affairs. Let us go back to the $460,000 spent on youth suicide. The Land Transport Safety Authority—and I am not saying this is a bad thing—can spend $10 to $15 million a year on advertising, but how much do we spend on our young people in the important area of suicide prevention?

I turn to the youth offender apprehension figures for the 2001 fiscal year, supplied by none other than the Hon George Hawkins. Total New Zealand apprehensions for people aged 10 to 13 were 11,000, and total New Zealand apprehensions for those aged 14 to 16 were 30,995, bringing total apprehensions for those aged 10 to 16 to 42,000. What message is this Government giving to our young people? The message that they get from this Government is that it is OK to commit a crime unless they get caught, that if they do get caught nothing much will happen, and that after nothing much has happened they can do it all over again. That is the message this Government sends to our young people.

I say our young people are more important than that. Our young people need vision. The young people of our nation need to be given what Helen Keller talked about: vision and hope.

It is always a pleasure to hear a passionate speech in the House, but I have some news for that young man, and it goes this way: read the polls. They are bad news for New Zealand First. Labour gets the majority of the youth vote, the Greens come second, National is a very poor third, and New Zealand First does not even rate. Mr McNair needs to be doing a little bit more. Let me make one other serious comment to him. The difficulty with talking about youth suicide is that it can have very unintended consequences. I know, because as a back-bencher in my very early days in this House, I had to make a speech about a young man in Invercargill who was shot by the Armed Offenders Squad. As a result of that particular speech, much happened in the area of mental health, and is still happening today as a result of getting that issue to the top of the political agenda. I suggest to Mr McNair that he do some reading and thinking. Passion is fine, but hard work is difficult, and dealing with the effects on people’s lives of situations like that is no soft matter. I commend him for his passion, but he should do some homework.

I congratulate the Prime Minister on what I think was a very good speech. People say it was boring, but if it is boring having the strongest economy in the OECD, I want to be bored. If it is boring having the lowest unemployment rates we have had in 15 years, I want to be bored. If it is boring having a housing crisis—as we do in Invercargill because the population is increasing at such a rate and housing stock is going up in price so much that people can no longer afford it, and the young people on Mr McNair’s sleeve are coming into the electorate in such numbers that we can longer afford it—I say that is good. Having a housing problem in Invercargill is a very good thing, because about 8 years ago the word in Southland was: “Last out, turn the lights out.” No longer—the issue in my city now is finding enough people for the work.

There are a few things I want to say about that. I was amazed that on a day when we had the best news about employment rates in 15 years, the Southland Times managed to find a negative comment.

💬 Darren Hughes: Really?

It did. I talked to the person who provided it with the copy—Mr Richard Hay, the chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce. He is a nice guy; I know him and I like him. I said to him that I did not particularly care what his views were about Labour’s policy on the Health and Safety in Employment Act, and so on. I said he was entitled to those views, and that was fine, but I told him not to say that the figures were rubbish and cooked up. He asked me why not, and I said because the source was the household labour force survey, which is probably one of the most statistically empiric of any set of studies the Government does. He accepted—[Interruption] I say to Mr Prebble, who is interjecting, that Richard Hay has considerably more intelligence than he does on these matters. Mr Hay accepted that that was right. He said that when the reporter rang him, the reporter did not tell him that those were the figures. I asked him whether the reporter had told him that the rate had gone up from 3.7 to 3.9? No, he did not know that either. I asked him whether the reporter had also told him that the figures for jobs compared with the September quarter had gone up from 44,200 people employed to 48,500 people employed. No, he did not know that either. I asked him what the figures told him, and he said “4,300 new jobs”. That was exactly right, and I told him that that was something we had to celebrate. It told me one other thing—the population in Invercargill is increasing too, in a way that we can now actually measure. Now Mr Hay thought that was good news. It so happens that I put a statement out about that, but it was totally ignored. That is all right. It is good news, and let us not worry about good news being reported.

I thought I would use that to illustrate the fact that Mr English has some particular problems. This is an editorial from the same newspaper on 8 February, entitled “Right you go, then.” It makes these comments—and Mr English can interject if he thinks I am not making the point correctly. Does Mr English think that is right? Yes, he is agreeing. The editorial says: “In its weakened electoral state, National has started working on the principle that right is might. The middle ground has become a wasteland for National’s ambitions, so its leaders have begun to veer so far to the right in their rhetoric that some ACT party members may be feeling crowded on their holy ground … In some ways, National is belatedly following a familiar pattern. When political parties take a hiding in the polls after holding power for a long time, they do tend to go radical.”

Let me also say that National’s themes are not new. Anybody who was around in the early seventies will know that the themes go this way: “Bash the unions”; “Bash the blacks”; and “Bash the solo mothers”. That is exactly what we had over the holiday break. We had “Bash the solo mothers” from Katherine Rich. Her recipe for solo mothers is to penalise the poorest of them if their kids are not inoculated. When she stands up in the House and says that she does not want kids to have Third World diseases, I say to her that we only saw a re-emergence of those Third World diseases after the benefits were cut. That is when we saw them come back—and Katherine Rich wants to visit that again on the mothers of this country. There was a very interesting cartoon of Ruth Richardson going around saying: “Good news! Under National, solo mothers can work again.” I suggest that Katherine Rich have a look at it, because the only thing soft about her on this matter is her teeth.

Then we had “Bash the blacks”. I want to read something else that was in my paper today, which I thought was very insightful. One of Mr English’s constituents sent me an email before Waitangi Day, as he was outraged that mainstream media had been banned from Waitangi. As a result, he was planning to go down to Te Rau Aroha Marae in Bluff and protest. Well, he kept his word. He decided he would go down to protest, but the leaders of Ngāi Tahu contacted him and said: “Come and join us in our celebrations.” This is what the newspaper said: “Mr Richards, a former cardboard recycler, was annoyed when he heard mainstream media had been banned from some events at Waitangi”, and so on, but instead of being brushed off, he was invited to join the celebrations. “Mr Richards accepted the invitation, and took his 2-year-old son with him to join Awarua runaka in celebrating the opening of their new meeting house on Saturday”—a magnificent occasion at which the Prime Minister was greeted very favourably indeed. After shaking her hand, little children went away, saying they would never wash their hands again—at the same time that Bill English was being booed at the Sevens.

Mr Richards went on to say that “he felt a lot better within himself for visiting the marae. He had not visited a marae before, but had been to a tangi where, sadly, a fight had broken out and he had not been left with pleasant memories.” These next words are important, and I ask Mr English to listen carefully and let me know whether he thinks that there is not a message in them. Mr Richards said he was speaking out in the hope that others with racist feelings or anger might see his story and start to question their own hatred. He said: “I feel a lot better about myself. I had had so many years of hate and misunderstanding”. I rang that man today and congratulated him on making those comments, going on to the marae in the way he did, and being prepared to challenge his own prejudices. That takes bravery, and I want to recognise it. I also congratulate the leaders of Ngāi Tahu on dealing with the matter in a diplomatic way.

New Zealand has changed. Not only Māori were at the opening of Te Rau Aroha Marae in Bluff; Southland society were there too. Mr English needs to know that redneck politics will no longer do. Those days are gone. The people of this country are entitled to some vision about how two peoples will live together and grow together. Ngāi Tahu mean business, and they will entertain Mr Richards any time—and any others like him who want to have a say.

I finish on this note: I come from a country that never addressed its racial problems. Its founding document is the Declaration of Independence, and throughout that document the drafters forgot the indigenous people of their nation. The country now suffers for that. New Zealand is the stronger. Let us celebrate our diversity, and our national days.

It is a privilege to stand in this new year of 2003 to speak to the Prime Minister’s statement, which was delivered yesterday. To begin with, I wish all members of the House a very happy New Year, and a profitable one as far as work is concerned. Welcome back everybody!

The Prime Minister’s statement was clear and concise, and can leave the country feeling confident that the hand is very solidly on the tiller, and that we are guiding this country in the right direction in almost all the most important areas that we can think of. There will always be debate in this House over issues on which others might disagree. The achievements this Government has implemented to date are many and varied, and have to be seen against the background of 9 long years of a National-led Government. In one way or another, it was a difficult period, and it takes time to repair the significant damage that was caused during that time. So as much as we would like to be as speedy as possible in implementing what a majority in this country sees as good, stable government and leadership, perhaps others might want to think about any urgency that Dr Cullen might require in the near future to progress the legislative programme that was endorsed by the results of the last election—resoundingly and deafeningly so, I would say.

I understand that quite a number of United Future, New Zealand First, and Green Party members have decided that the Wairarapa is a wonderful place to visit. I thank them for going and sharing some time in that wonderful part of the world. They are welcome to come back again, and just disappear for election year! As they travelled through my electorate of Wairarapa, I hope they noticed that there is a certain vibrancy about the place that has encouraged me to progress what the community in general wants. The Wairarapa electorate is geographically large and quite diverse, but let us consider the lower part of it from Masterton south, including Featherston and the Palliser Bay coastal areas, and, of course, Martinborough, which many members will be familiar with. There has been an increase in tourism, and in what is available in arts, culture and heritage. Those areas are buoyant. Building consents are certainly up, property sales are up, and unemployment in some areas is down quite significantly. In Masterton, for example, unemployment has reduced from 1,347 to 1,125 in the most recently reported period. That is positive for us. We have had a Business and Economic Research Ltd report, which, together with local mayors and Go Wairarapa—the economic strategy organisation we have in the Wairarapa—is forecasting that we can look forward to some really positive economic growth. Yes, it has been the result of some good rural returns, and rightly so. To put it diplomatically, after a period of great discomfort—extending particularly from the 1980s through the 1990s—the recovery is coming.

We do have areas of concern, which I am pleased this Government is addressing. Most recently, members will have noticed that the Wellington-based Labour MPs, including United Future’s leader Peter Dunne, have met the mayors of the Wellington region—including the Wairarapa mayors—and Wellington Regional Council representatives. That meeting was to help us all sing from the same songbook regarding transport issues, in particular, but we also noted that there are much wider issues involving the whole region on which we should be communicating. This response between local and central government in the Wellington region is similar to what occurs in Auckland. Transport and Tranz Rail issues have been most topical in recent times, and I am glad to say that we will address those issues.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

I have mentioned a few of the good things that have happened in Wairarapa, and certainly since 1999, when the Labour Government came into office. But I am pleased to inform the House that there is more that has helped to enhance positive progress for the Wairarapa electorate. For example, the Government’s Regional Partnerships Programme helps regions to identify local opportunities and respond to them. The Wairarapa has been allocated $82,500 under the programme. The Wairarapa also received a grant of $11,250 to facilitate a regional economic summit, which was very successful indeed.

The Wairarapa is one of six areas chosen for pilot schemes to provide high-speed, two-way Internet connections in regional New Zealand. The Government sees access to broadband services by all Kiwi communities as being crucial to New Zealand’s economic and social development. The pilot schemes will focus on finding ways to make broadband commercially viable in the regions. The Wairarapa was also one of the first areas to be granted funding under the regional museums policy with a $320,000 grant toward the construction of the Museum of Art and History in Masterton, known as Aratoi. The new gallery space means that cultural and historical material that has been stored away, such as taonga Māori, will now be on display to the public.

A 3-year funding package of $3.2 billion means that health is the big winner under the Labour-led Government, and the district health boards can plan health and disability services with certainty. In the Wairarapa, the funding package has helped to reduce waiting-list times. For example, the Wairarapa District Health Board has completely retired its residual waiting list, ensuring that all patients have a plan of care and certainty of treatment. Twenty-seven schools in the Wairarapa electorate will benefit from extra staffing for small rural schools. Children and families will benefit from additional Government funding to community social services this financial year—the Wairarapa will get $402,000. While I am touching on the subject of the concern we all have for children and families—particularly in relation to violent crime and child abuse—I again congratulate the Wairarapa electorate on getting behind the “Rise Above It” campaign. Again, I thank the Ministers and ministries involved in social development—the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Service etc.—for their immense input into helping our region deal with that particular issue.

There is so much more that we can talk about in relation to the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday. For example, we will continue to provide a stable Government with strong leadership. There is no reason for complacency or self-satisfaction. We have set ourselves tough goals to achieve over the next 3 years, and into the longer-term future—as confirmed by the Leader of the Opposition, who seems to think that this Government already looks like a third-term Government. I could not agree more. Our aim is to build and sustain solid levels of economic growth, and to fund good public services and infrastructure sustainability. We have rejected the discredited direction of the 1990s, and we will work to offer more opportunity and security, and a better quality of life, to all New Zealanders.

An example of a better quality of life for New Zealanders is the implementation of the victims’ rights legislation, which was released recently and will give much relief to many people around the country, and also the legislation on tougher sentences. Since the last election, sentences handed down for the worst crimes make it absolutely clear that the new sentencing legislation that came into force on 1 July 2002 imposes a tougher regime on serious offenders. For example, from my own area, Bruce Howse, the convicted murderer of the Aplin sisters, whom members may remember—a terrible event in the Wairarapa—received a life sentence with a non-parole period of 28 years. That is the longest non-parole period ever handed down in New Zealand. Although Mark Lundy was not sentenced under the new law, the Court of the Appeal took the intent of the Act into account when it increased his non-parole period from 17 to 20 years.

Yes, this Government does listen. It does care. It does communicate and consult with the New Zealand public. I commend the Prime Minister’s statement to Parliament.

I went through the Prime Minister’s statement looking for apologies, or looking, at the very least, for a set of promises about something that would be done in the future on a topic that was made a feature of every party’s election campaign. I went through the statement, looking, of course, for a crime and justice work programme. There is absolutely nothing. So I thought perhaps the work programme on crime and justice is so obvious it did not need touching; it did not need reciting. I went back through the Journals, through my own files as ACT’s representative on the Justice and Electoral Committee, and through the statements that have been made on the topic by the Minister of Justice over the past 6 months. What do I see as the Government’s crime and justice programme? First, we have the clean slate legislation. I have to assume that the clean slate legislation is part of the credit card promise to give more support for proven programmes to cut youth offending.

💬 Hon Richard Prebble: Oh yes, wipe their records!

Wipe their records. More support for proven programmes to cut youth offending—it is a pretty easy promise to make, given that the Government knows there are no proven programmes to cut youth offending. At its most cynical it could mean the Government was saying it would give more support to nothing, because there are no proven programmes. But it does not sit at all with the only active move related to youth offending at this very moment before the House, which is a bill to suppress the records of young offenders. It is a bill to tell young offenders that the community does not really care about offending. It does not really draw a distinction between kids who go straight and stay straight for 10 years, and those who have never offended. It does not really care about the message that is going out already from a youth justice system that automatically suppresses all the records of offending while one is a youth. If the Government was wanting to do something about proven programmes to cut youth offending, it would have been funding some research to find out what has been the real effect of a youth justice system that says to youth: “We don’t think crime is wrong; we think it’s just a little mistake; we think that if you offend you’ll get a second chance, a third chance, and a fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth chance.”

The average young offender has had between nine and 11 prior incidents involving the youth justice system before he or she gets anywhere near a custodial sentence. What sort of message is that sending to young people? What sort of message is that sending to people at the key area of dealing with crime—the entry level? We all know that after people become habitual offenders, after they are confirmed in their habit, after they have become persuaded that it is easier to live by preying on others rather than making for others, after they have decided that the system is a sucker and any feeble excuse will do, the resources of the community are still applied for them, those who cause trouble, instead of for those who do not. After they have had those lessons it is too late.

It is far too late for us to start thinking about rehabilitation as the primary objective of our penal system once young offenders have been through this useless youth justice system, but that is exactly what we have done. We now have a new Sentencing Act that is focused, in vain hope, entirely around rehabilitation. No demonstrated programme in full operation has ever been able to establish that if we are really nice enough to offenders they will be nice back to the community. So we have adopted a youth justice system that says: “Don’t worry about it; we do not really care; the law does not really mean what it says; crime can pay; truth does not necessarily out; and cheats can prosper.”—because all those things happen.

Even the Government’s youth justice report, which was finally released in the 3 months before the last election, and was 2 years overdue, did not dare offer any statistics on performance in youth justice. It did not dare to try to compare the so-called achievements of our youth justice system with those of other countries. The report did not dare mention the United States experience of a one-third drop in youth crime, over a period when the youth population grew from 26 million to 34 million. It did not dare to compare the rates of victimisation of people from youth or any other crime. The youth justice report simply asserted that it was doing very well, but would do even better if we were doing more of what we are doing now.

The report did not provide any statistics on proven programmes to cut youth offending. If it had been taking that seriously it would have asked where the proof was that anything was being done at the moment that cuts any offending. Where is the proof, when they do not bother to keep statistics? We do not know how many young offenders are arrested. We do not know how many young offenders are dealt with by family group conferences. We think it is around 6,500 to 7,500. The police will tell us that the number of young offenders arrested is somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000, because it is not clear that records are being kept on the same basis, and that the numbers who are actually processed through the Youth Court might be between 12,000 and 14,500. However, the actual outcomes—a finding of proven, or not proven—are probably around 1,500 or 2,000. We simply do not know. Yet Mr Goff went into the election trumpeting that he had dealt with youth justice.

What other programmes do we have on the plate at the moment? We have the “boy racers” bill. We are told that a bill is pending probably to ban private prosecutions against police, or at least to ban publication of the names of police who are accused of exceeding their proper role in the use of firearms. We have some sort of promise to deal with the obviously widespread scandal of cross-examination by an accused who upsets a victim who has already had a terrible time. There might have been two or three instances in 2 or 3 years. I compare the immediate ministerial promise to deal with that with absolutely no action on the repeated plea by victims for the right for them to say something in court.

Just last week in Wellington, Jonathan Tolo, a barman whose eye was seriously damaged—probably forever—went to court, with his family, as the victim of an entirely unprovoked assault with a flying glass. All he wanted to do was tell the court what he thought should happen, but he was prevented. That was no slip-up; that was no loophole or oversight. It was a direct result of the Government rejecting ACT’s amendments in the select committee to allow that to happen. We brought that forward, against the backdrop of a sentencing bill that imposed a duty on the judge to listen to the submissions about sentencing from whānau or representatives of the offender. So we have a victim who has no right to speak, a victim—

💬 Hon Richard Prebble: If the victim was a criminal, the court would have sent him to jail for speaking out.

He would have offended the court if he had spoken. All he wanted to do was put forward a completely non-binding suggestion as to what he thought would be justice, and he was gagged deliberately by a Government that has absolutely no interest in real criminal law reform and only wants to make gestures—a Government that at the commencement of this Parliament was so contemptuous about the concern about crime that the Prime Minister felt she did not even need to mention the topic. It does not have to put any provision in the parliamentary calendar for reform of the rorts. The Minister of Justice repeatedly pointed to judges complaining about the deliberate so-called errors in his Act and said the Government would fix them, but gave no indication of any time. The Victims’ Rights Bill now means that the police cannot properly prosecute burglary. The Government is asking whether it can slip a change through in the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2).

That speech is an example of why the ACT party is in such a terrible disarray. What a bunch of whingers, whiners, and losers! They are absolute whingers. I listened for 10 very, very long minutes and I did not hear one new idea. I did not hear any policy, any direction, any vision, or any direction for the country. I heard just the same old Stephen Franks whingeing, whining, grizzling, moaning, and running down the country. He is constantly running down the country. That is why ACT members will not get anywhere. They are paralysed internally. They have no vision. They have internal leadership problems. ACT will always be a minor fringe party as long as its members continue to offer New Zealand absolutely nothing.

It is not surprising that we turn our attention also to the National Party. If it is a joy and delight to be a member of the Labour-led Government, which has strong leadership, good vision for New Zealand, strong public support, and direction, what an absolute misery it must be to be part of the once-proud National Party of Keith Holyoake and Jack Marshall. It must be an absolute misery to be part of that party. It has no leadership, no principles, and no vision.

Let us start with Bill English. He is the absolute example of why the National Party is not performing at all and why it will not be back here, in his own words, “for three terms at least”. I thought that he was a bit under-optimistic. I would have said “three or more”, but “honest Bill”—as we call him over here—calls a spade a spade. When he sees a three-term Government he is prepared to admit that it is a three-term Government. I would have added “at least”. Then, of course, we have the problem of the things he constantly keeps saying in the media, much to the embarrassment of his own colleagues. He said that the troops were going to come back from Afghanistan. Then, no, they were not, and then they were going to come back halfway. Members can tell when the National Party is in such disarray. The eyes of Opposition members are cast downwards every time their leader speaks. The reality is that a democracy deserves good Opposition. Unfortunately, we have the National Party.

We will now look at New Zealand First. Really, I think it is fair to say that New Zealand First is the legitimate Opposition. No one treats the National Party seriously.

💬 John Carter: Tell us about the goat joke.

I will be happy to talk about the goat joke, because it relates entirely to the National Party. It is funnier if one tells it about the National Party. However, I will not be distracted by jokes other than the National Party, because it is the only joke in town.

New Zealand First, of course, is also a narrow fringe party. While it does claim to be the Opposition in this Parliament—I think with some due course—then it will never have the appeal. If it starts to try to scratch the itch of immigrants, and if it starts to scratch the itch of treaty and Māori relationships in the country, it will always be a very fringe and small party. On Waitangi Day I was at the Orongomai Marae, and it was chocka there. There was the biggest crowd on that marae in about 6 or 7 years.

There is a wind shift going on in this country. Trying to scratch that old itch, which is what ACT wants to do as soon as it can get rid of Donna Awatere Huata—although it cannot do that at the moment because the situation is embarrassing—will mean that, in the end, ACT and New Zealand First will always be small, minority parties, as opposed to the Labour Party, which is inclusive. We say that no matter who people are in New Zealand, they have a contribution to make. If someone is out of the tent and not able to make a contribution, that is to the degradation of New Zealand. It is New Zealand and the future of New Zealand that count, not trying to pick off one group against the other. That is why some of those things that they have put forward as policy planks are despicable.

I want to talk about some of the issues the Prime Minister raised in her excellent speech. It had substance and it had vision. She raised a number of things that I want to turn to because they relate to my specific area. She mentioned transport.

💬 Hon Richard Prebble: One paragraph. That’s all it got.

It was quite a long paragraph, as I remember, and pretty well written. In the last 5 or 6 years the National Party has completely sidetracked this debate by wanting to privatise roads. That is what it wants to do. National Party members spent time trying to privatise roads, to the absolute outcry of the entire New Zealand local government, and that is why they have no support at all.

We have come in and tried to tackle the tough issues. The reality is that funding will always be a problem. As we get more efficient engines, the ability for us to get more fuel excise tax will worsen. It will get worse. But we did take the bull by the horns and say that we would take some heat, and put the petrol price up 4 cents. Then the National Party said it would take it off. The big thing about that is that National’s transport spokesperson said the way to solve New Zealand’s road safety problems is to build a 4-lane motorway between Auckland and Wellington. I think it was the person who parades himself as the National Party spokesperson on transport, Mr Roger Sowry. He says that a 4-lane motorway between Auckland and Wellington—[Interruption] We have had some advice that it would cost billions of dollars, but I ask why we should stop at that. What about the 4-lane motorway between Wellington and Picton? What about the 4-lane motorway between Auckland and Sydney? This is the National Party that wants to build 4-lane motorways and cut the price of petrol by 4 cents. That is voodoo economics. We know what that is—spend more and cut tax. It does not work. It does not add up.

In transport, the ghost of Bill Birch and “think big” is alive and well in the National Party caucus. We have some long-term planning on transport, some strategic direction, and some alternative funding mechanisms. At last, a Government is tackling the transport problems and difficulties of this country. It is not just roading; it will be rail, as well. We will have a multi-modal strategic approach to transport, which New Zealand has not had for many, many decades.

I wanted to talk about telecommunications and the work we have done there in the regulation regime and broadband, and the programme of work we have for small business, but the problem of course, in speeches like this, is that there is never enough time to talk about the positive things that this Government has done. We do not want to hear Opposition members running New Zealanders down, running the country down, and bringing everybody down. We want to hear them trying to lift the spirits of New Zealanders, which is what this Government does. Give this Government a hand to lift the spirits of New Zealanders, because what they want is hope and we are giving them that. Until those Opposition parties can join with us, they will always be in Opposition.

That was a sad, sad reincarnation of the speech we hear every time that Minister gets on his feet: $18.95—buy the CD and cut out the middleman. That is the same speech we hear from Paul Swain every time he gets up. Was the “Minister for Business Lunches” in the first term pretty popular? He ingratiated himself with the business communities around Wellington and Auckland, put on a bit of weight, came back to Wellington, and the Prime Minister decided: we cannot have too much more of that; he is getting too popular. How can we solve that in one swift move? Make him Minister of Transport! That will fix him; we will never hear from him again! He got one paragraph in the Prime Minister’s statement, and despite the Hon Richard Prebble, during the course of his speech, asking him to refer to it, he cannot remember what was in it. He does not have a clue what he is supposed to do for the next 3 years. He has no idea at all, so he comes down here and gives us a re-run of the same old tired general debate speech we heard from him over the last parliamentary term and year.

I have been sitting down here listening to the Labour Party speeches over the course of this debate, and one thing struck me when we were listening to Lianne Dalziel’s speech. How sad is she when she spends her New Year’s eve with members of Parliament, driving around New Zealand on motorbikes! How sad is that? I ask those members opposite who were involved in that, where those members’ friends are. Where are the real people those members should be spending Christmas with, instead of getting around the North Island—[Interruption] The young member for Otaki chirps out there. There was only one group I felt more sorry for, and that was the penguins on Auckland Island, having those Labour MPs trapped there with them and having to put up with them while they sat around. All the penguins wanted was peace and quiet, and what do we get? A picture in the newspaper of Chris Carter in his togs with Darren Hughes standing behind him holding his clothes! I will leave that there.

It is an absolute privilege to be back in the House in 2003. This will be a great year for the National Party and for the centre-right political parties in this Parliament. This is the time when it will all happen. I support the motion of no confidence in this Government put by our leader, Bill English. I listened to the sad, tired, pathetic, drawn-out speech that the Prime Minister gave. It was so bad, she had already told the media how bad it was going to be, before she delivered it—cut out the middleman, forget the spin, just tell them it will be bad. She reported it as bad and then delivered it badly. There was no expectation, and that lack of expectation was certainly met.

I did not hear one new idea. There was not one new policy, thought, or piece of vision. There is no direction for New Zealand. There is no map set out. There is no plan we can follow. This Government is concerned with only one thing, and that is staying there. It is not about advancing any policy ideas or any agenda. It is just simply not good enough for a Prime Minister to sit and give a political commentator’s overview of the last 12 months, and a bit of a view about what she thinks will happen in the political scene over the next 12 months.

What is the Prime Minister’s view? What is her plan? What will she do? We can all read newspapers about the current political situation. We do not need to hear it from her. This is not an academic exercise where one is handing in a project for POLS 352 at Auckland University. This is about leading, vision, and having a plan. There was no conviction in the Prime Minister’s statement, at all. It is pretty clear to me, and to members on this side of the House, that the reason that today’s economy is doing well is a result of the economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. There is no question about that.

💬 Government Members: Oh!

Those members scoff. What have those members changed from the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s? Not one thing! Have we had a reversal of any major legislation? The Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act? No. The Fiscal Responsibility Act? No. None of that has changed. Did we get the benefit rates put back up? No. Nothing has changed. It is just more of the same.

This year, Bill English and National will be making the Prime Minister talk about the Treaty of Waitangi. We want to know about its role in legislation and the way in which its interpretation will affect the lives of ordinary New Zealanders. has been said on this side of the House today, it is simply not good enough to call anyone who raises those issues a racist. I see Rick Barker yelling out from the other side of the House. He has had a busy afternoon, obviously. I say to him that he should go back to his office and sign off a couple more JP nominations.

This year, for the first time, we will see the operation of the Tertiary Education Commission up and running, the nub of which makes it the education equivalent to a district health board. That is simply what it is. The worry I have for this organisation is that it will be used as a political buffer, designed to put space between the Minister and the sector and the users of the sector. The fee maxima solution offered by Steve Maharey is a short-term stopgap measure, and I worry about the damage it will do to the flexibility of institutions to introduce quality courses and run themselves in the best interests of their students.

This measure does not address real structural cost, at all. It does not address any long-term problems in tertiary education. It is short-term thinking, and it is shallow. In tertiary education the real problem is that in the 1990s the participation issue was solved. Essentially, anybody who wanted to attend a tertiary institution was able to do so. Now it is incumbent upon this Government to solve the problem of quality. That is the next step, not some stopgap band-aid measure whereby one tries to lock in the student vote by half-hearted fee maxima legislation.

Quality issues involve looking at real questions about the delivery of international competitiveness in our tertiary education sector. This Government’s reforms do not address structural quality or funding reform issues in tertiary education, at all. It is not real policy, and I say to Steve Maharey this reform is a disappointing attempt to address those issues. Rest assured, National will be watching and monitoring the progress of the Tertiary Education Commission right from the beginning, because it is the quality of education that matters, not who owns the institution or how the Government can get short-term political solutions to keep the student vote. Students, I say to Minister Maharey, are far smarter than that. I want to know what this Government will do to make our institutions internationally competitive.

I am delighted today to take over responsibility in the area of defence for the National Party, and with Ohakea and Waiouru in the Rangitikei electorate, and Linton Army Camp on its doorstep, it is an excellent opportunity not only to fight for local interests but also to put a wider international viewpoint when it comes to our international commitments and international defence arrangements.

This Government has become tired, arrogant, and dull, and the best way for us to sum that up is to look at the way it has reacted to the situation in Iraq. This Prime Minister is desperate to embrace multilateralism, only if it means no involvement in any conflict, while balancing that with her future job at the UN and not letting go of what she perceives to be a real chance of a free-trade agreement. This is not a commitment to an international role, at all; this is a badly designed domestic balancing act, and the Prime Minister has no idea from day to day where to sit on this issue. Every time it is raised in the House she shifts her position.

In conclusion, this year is one in which National and the centre-right parties in the House will not be doing anything other than holding this Government to account on every single decision it makes, and, more to the point, every time it refuses to make a decision by taking short-term stopgap measures for political purposes rather than advancing a pure political agenda.

Te mea tuatahi māku, kei te mihi atu ki a koe e te Kaiwhakahaere Tuarua o te Whare Pāremata mō tēnei tau hōu, kei te mihi atu ki a koe. Kei te mihi hoki ki ngā mema katoa o tēnei Whare Pāremata, ā, me tēnei Whare tupuna o tātou. I tēnei rā kei te mihi whānui atu ki a koutou katoa, tēna koutou, ā, tēna koutou katoa. Kei te tū tonu tēnei ki te tautoko I ngā kaupapa i pānuitia ai e te Peremia i nanahi nei, ngā kaupapa whakahaere mō te ao whānui, mō to motu o Aotearoa.

[An interpretation in English was given to the House.]

[The first thing for me to do is to extend a New Year greeting to you the Deputy Speaker of the House of Parliament: greetings. Greetings also to all members of this House, and to this ancestral House of ours. I extend a general greeting to all of you and to all of us. I continue to support the policies today that the Prime Minister announced yesterday—policies for all of New Zealand to work on.]

I rise to support the speech that the Prime Minister made yesterday. I believe that the plan she rolled out for the coming year in terms of the Government’s agenda was very clear. The priorities have been made. It has been mapped out. The compass has been swung, and it tells us how we will achieve the priorities and aspirations of New Zealanders.

To most New Zealanders, the compass reading was quite clear. Most New Zealanders understood what this Government’s plans and priorities were all about. Yet, as I look across to the other side of the House at a group of Opposition members of Parliament, specifically National Party members, I see that they still seem to be in a state of hibernation. When the Prime Minister delivered her eloquent speech and spoke of the very clear mandate this Government had to roll out its plan, I waited with bated breath to see how the Leader of the Opposition would respond. Then, when I thought about it, I wondered what Leader of the Opposition I was expecting to see rise to respond to the Prime Minister’s speech.

I saw Gerry Brownlee sort of move, then I saw my whanaunga Winston Peters and I waited for him to get up and take the call. Then I saw Bill English drag himself up and respond to the Prime Minister. I observed the expressions and the body language of Opposition members, specifically those in the National Party. They seemed to be frozen in time. There was very little movement in my colleague John Carter’s eyelashes, yet there was his leader, Bill English, about to respond. People were waiting to hear a big, big bang in response to the Prime Minister’s speech, but there was silence.

Then I thought that as they were coming out of a deep freeze they would be defrosting slowly, and that sometime, perhaps, they would come alive. Yet as I listened to the response of the Leader of the Opposition, Bill English, I actually felt sorry for him, because basically all he talked about was the soprano voice of my colleague Chris Carter and also the Treaty of Waitangi. I acknowledge that he was at Waitangi. I know that this is the time when the Academy Awards are awarded, when nominations are being received for the best actors and actresses of the year, and I had to wonder to myself. I had seen the Leader of the Opposition, Bill English, at the Waitangi marae, and I remembered the big headlines of the day before, when he said: “I’m going to tell Ngāpuhi what to do. I’m going to tell those Māoris that I’m going to demolish the Māori seats in the third millennium when I become Prime Minister; and I’m going to tell Ngāpuhi that they’ve done the wrong thing by excluding the mainstream media. I’m going to do all this, and I’m going to do all that.”

When I sat with the Leader of the Opposition at Te Tii Marae things were very quiet. There was very little murmur about telling the Māori that they will get rid of the Māori seats, and about telling Ngāpuhi how to run the kawa on the marae. In fact, Bill English got up and accompanied the karakia. He was asking for divine guidance.

When we look at what is happening around here and understand some of the things that go on at the Academy Awards, people are sometimes awarded for the being the greatest blooper of the year. When the Leader of the Opposition says that Labour will be here for another, third, term, I wonder how long the National Party will be in Opposition. Will it be 5 years or 6 years? When we look at what Mr English said, I think I believe him. Labour will be here for a third term. In fact, I invite him to expand and say that it might be here for a fourth or fifth term. Sometimes one has the integrity to be able to get up and when one is outflanked on all sides—outwitted, outflanked, and outlawed—sometimes it is more dignified to get up and say: “I surrender.” They should put their hands up and say: “I surrender. We are defeated on all flanks.”, and give credibility to the Labour Party that defeated them.

He would have had more credibility with the people of this nation if he had said: “I surrender, Helen, you win. The Labour Party is doing a good job for all these reasons.” Perhaps some of the swinging voters whom ACT has attracted might come back to the National Party. I do not know. But when we talk about integrity and the contribution in this House, people outside are fascinated. They say: “Look at all those actors. Look at Simon Power. He should have been in Moulin Rouge or in Lord of the Rings. They are good actors.”

We have Gerry Brownlee, who wants everybody to be a look-alike, like him, under the Treaty of Waitangi. God help New Zealanders if somehow, somewhere in the Treaty of Waitangi we are going to be he iwi kotahi tātou. That means we will all look like Gerry Brownlee. I know that the Speaker would have a few words about that, and I certainly know that some of my colleagues around here would have a few words about looking like Gerry Brownlee. This is the way he believes that the Treaty of Waitangi and the issues around it should be resolved.

I want to pick up the challenge that the Leader of the Opposition made in terms of debating the treaty. Let me say to this House that the National Party has been in here for 9 years and it did nothing about the Treaty of Waitangi. It did absolutely bugger all. The issues of the treaty were brought up, time and time again, but the National Party never put them on the floor of this House. That party now has the audacity to challenge the Labour Party. The Labour Party has written a lot of the Treaty of Waitangi into domestic law. We have done that. We get criticised for it. The leader of the National Party wants us to debate it any time. The response is that the Māori members of the Labour Party will go anywhere, any time, nominated by Bill English, even the Waitangi marae, to debate the Treaty of Waitangi. We will not pull back from it.

I even saw my good friend John Carter shaking his head when his boss got up and talked about the Treaty of Waitangi. I know that he recognises the rights of the tangata whenua under the treaty. We are all New Zealanders. Kei te pai. But the diversity of New Zealand is really what is special. Māori, Polynesians, Hainamana, Asians, and Indians are the people who make up our country. Kia ora tātou katoa.

I rise to speak to the Prime Minister’s statement and to endorse the motion made by the Rt Hon Winston Peters—namely, that this House has no confidence in the Labour minority Government—and the reasons that were outlined for that. I will read some of the comments from that statement. The first one states: “The economy’s performance has been strong”, and I have heard from members of the minority Labour Government the reasons why they deem that to be so. In the Speech from the Throne last year, and again in this statement—as my colleague Doug Woolerton has already said—there is not one mention of the state of agriculture, and the huge impact on the farming community. There is no recognition that in 1999 that Government inherited a stable, buoyant economy. The reason for that buoyancy has not quite passed away, although there is a higher exchange rate. With that buoyancy went the will of the farming community to really make the measure. The rural community has seen increased dairy production, helped year after year by a favourable climate—even in Northland this year. It has seen 1,000 head of cattle go through the sale yards at Kaikohe every week, well grown and off to the overseas market. It has seen the early draft of lambs meeting very high prices at Smithfield this past year. Those indicators of performance have nothing to do with the planning or the performance of that Government, since there is no plan. There is not one mention in this statement of an economic plan for this country, and there has not been over the last 3 years. It is the mirror issue here—gazing at the mirror.

Page 4 states: “Growth and innovation.” One of my colleagues has written above that: “Growth by imagination”, which almost describes the way it is. Then I read: “The very foundation of a dynamic society and economy lies in the talent and skills of the workplace and people.” I think of last year when the honourable Minister of Education wasted man-hours and pupil-hours week after week, month after month in the development of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement. He had secondary teachers out on the street because of his obtuseness and arrogance with regard to industrial matters. He now has the gall to praise teachers for the National Certificate of Educational Achievement, yet the other day he said it was a credit to the secondary teachers who designed and implemented the system. How much more effective that system would have been had that Minister exercised some ordinary intelligence and common sense with regard to the secondary teaching profession. And so on throughout this long and rather tedious commentary about what the Government plans to do.

In the brief time I have left, I want to turn to another issue. On the Order Paper before us, but with no mention here, is the Resource Management Amendment Bill. Members of the House will have seen—particularly those who live in the Auckland area—the concerns that have been expressed throughout recent months about the nature of that bill. In many quarters it is regarded—and the “Business Herald” has said so repeatedly—as a positive impediment to progress and economic development. There is not a word about it here. The bill has had a mixed history, coming from the McShane “thinkpiece” to the House in 1999. It went through the select committee by May 2001, and has sat there, silent as it were, since then. The Minister is now rewriting the bill. The reason I want to bring it to the attention of the House is that in all of those harbingers of economic progress, there is not one mention of the feeling out there in the community with regard to this obstacle to economic development. The worst part about it all is that the Minister has twice stated in the New Zealand Herald that, contrary to expectations, she has no intention of recommitting her rewritten bill back to the people.

Today I heard the Hon Chris Carter say that that is the way things should be done with regard to the dog legislation. The Minister for the Environment has stated quite firmly that she has no intention of doing so. I bring our concerns to the House, and the concerns of many more outside this place, that if the Minister has rewritten vital parts, under the democratic process that bill should either be resubmitted, or should lie in this House for a reasonable amount of time, allowing for representations to be made. That is the only way that this legislation can be a valuable resource for developing the community in the future.

Tēnā koe e te Kaiwhakawā, koutou hoki ngā mema o te Whare nei.

[Greetings to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to you as well, members of this House.]

I stand to endorse the motion of the leader of New Zealand First, the Rt Hon Winston Peters. In so doing, I want to say that while the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday might have covered a number of matters of achievement—and I am mindful she did not want to present it to this House—I was more interested in the number of issues the statement did not make. I want to touch on one or two of those. The first one is housing—particularly housing for Māori. I know that that sector of our community has been very staunch in its support for the Labour Government, yet how does that Government repay it? How many Māori families have been able to enjoy home ownership under the administration of this Government? I suggest that the number is nowhere near that provided by the former Department of Māori Affairs, which a former Government did away with. How does that help iwi in the rural areas of our country? How does that help those of our people living in urban areas? Of course, that argument applies not only to Māori, but also to all of those who seek housing ownership. I also want to touch on employment. The Government is clearly basking in the reflected glory of the latest figures, which show that unemployment is down to 4.9 percent. While I have some doubt about the Government’s claim to be responsible for that, my concern is for those who are still unemployed. As part of that concern, I ask how many of them are Māori, and how many are immigrants who have come to us during this Government’s administration? I suggest that the figures will not be flattering to the Government, and that is why there is no mention of them.

I also want to touch on Māori television. The effectiveness of the support the Government is giving to that kaupapa is somewhat lost when we consider that many of the target audience will have to bear a financial cost to enjoy the privilege of access. Today we heard from the Minister of Māori Affairs, who recognised the expertise and knowledge of the new chief executive officer of the Māori Television Service. If that expertise was good enough for the Minister to extol in his comments, why were the new chief executive officer’s advice and recommendations not accepted when he suggested that the preferred channel for Māori television should be the one offered by CanWest? I ask that question of members of the Government.

I also want to touch on health. While I applaud the decision to provide funding on a population basis, I raise a question with regard to rural services. They are still an issue, and the people of the far North, who will no longer have the privilege of 24-hour surgical services, will certainly be interested in the integrity of the Government member for Te Tai Tokerau. During the election campaign, he promised that 24-hour surgical services would not be cut.

The other thing missing from the so-called statement of intent from the Government was the issue of prisons. There was no mention of the fact that the Government will be continuing with the construction of prisons around this country. In spite of the strong opposition, nothing was said about pressing on, not only with prison construction, but also with the sites of construction.

Finally, I want to respond to some of the comments made by the member for Tamaki Makaurau. It was very interesting that we had some comments regarding New Zealand First’s Māori members.

I rise to speak in support of the Prime Minister’s statement. I want to focus a little on contrasting the economic policies of Labour with those of National and ACT. ACT’s economic policy is as flawed as National’s, but given recent events concerning allegations of improper conduct by ACT MPs concerning the Pipi Foundation and trust monies, perhaps we should not be surprised. What has been the ACT party’s response to its links with the Pipi Foundation? Obfuscation! At one stage it tried to blame Labour. Its latest “Act” has been to “Hide” by proposing an alias. That is right—a new name. What is it? It is “ACT”, aka “The Liberals”. Using an alias like “The Liberals” to describe ACT is an oxymoron, as I think it is defined in grammatical terms. I am sure that most of us could think of a lot more appropriate names for ACT, but “The Liberals” just does not do it for me, Mr Franks. In the spirit of the new parliamentary year, I will give him a few ideas that came to my mind. Perhaps it could be the “Economic Jihad”, or how about the “Ruth Richardson Front”? The “Fundamentalist Foundation” has a bit of a ring about it. I did give some fleeting thought to the “Neoclassical Revivalists”, because that conveys some of the fundamentalist act of faith that is behind the party’s neoclassical economics. I am sure that lots of others will have better ideas than me, but please spare us “The Liberals”! In the context of ACT, that has more spin than any World Cup bowler.

New Zealand is a better place than it was 4 years ago, and the Prime Minister’s opening statement to Parliament can give our people confidence that we will continue to advance as a nation. Underpinning New Zealand’s progress has been the philosophy that underpins the economic decisions of the Labour-led Government. Social democracy, which we favour, is built on a sound philosophical framework. The Labour Party believes that a moderate and responsible Government like ours helps build a prosperous and fair economy. Its social-democratic economic policy can be defined both by what it is and what it is not. It is not a controlled command economy à la the failed far-left economies like North Korea, nor is it the highly regulated protectionist economy that failed in the late 1970s and 1980s. Equally, it is not the fundamentalist neoclassical economy still favoured by ACT and National. In most overseas countries, the ideology of fundamentalist neoclassic economics is seen as flawed. Our own New Zealand experience of the adverse human and economic consequences of that austere, misguided, neoclassical fundamentalism is one of the reasons I became active in the Labour Party 6 years ago. The National and ACT parties’ continued obsession with squeezing inflation, no matter what the economic and social cost, relied upon a simplistic economic model altogether too narrow to make good sense.

What about National and ACT? Have they moved on? No—never! They will die in the ditches. They cling to the purity of their simplistic neoclassical views. They still think that issues of distribution and efficiency can be separated. They do not care if there is great disparity in income and wealth. They say and act as if it does not matter. They do not think it has any effect on the overall performance of the economy, but we know it does. Contrast that with the philosophy of the Labour Party’s economic policies. We think social cohesiveness and equality of opportunity are important to economic prosperity, and to personal security. We think the failed neoclassical policies that widened the gap of wealth and income between New Zealanders undermine the economy and threaten the prosperity of us all. We say that their policies were one of the reasons behind the poor performance of the New Zealand economy before we took over.

That does not mean that Labour wants all New Zealanders to be the same. We do celebrate success. We want innovation. We do not say that all is perfect in New Zealand—and it never will be. We do need to improve our savings and our investment. We have a very poor savings record. We do need to improve the lot of low-income families and children. But New Zealand is a better place than it has been for a while, and it is certainly better than it was 3½ or 4 years ago when Labour took over. Paid employment is the most effective way of ensuring a decent income and the equitable sharing of work and wealth.

New Zealand’s labour force participation rates are high, yet our unemployment rates are low. They have dropped very significantly to below 5 percent. That is the ninth lowest in the OECD. That is wonderful. Public debt is decreasing, the Budget is well controlled, and the future looks pretty good—especially when we compare ourselves with many of the overseas economies that we traditionally compare ourselves with. Yet in this debate we have heard ACT and National complaining that New Zealand’s economic performance under Labour is poor. That is nonsense. Growth is strong.

💬 Stephen Franks: Don’t go too far.

Gross domestic product—and Mr Franks will like this—is at an all-time high. ACT and National trot out their tired old comparisons of our wealth and income compared with Australia, yet they continue to deny the obvious. One of the main reasons that Australia surged ahead of New Zealand in the late 1990s was that it was running a pragmatic economic policy when New Zealand was strangling its productive sectors with its radical imposition of neoclassical economics.

💬 Stephen Franks: Dig a new hole.

Mr Franks says dig a new hole, but what would ACT and National do? Their prescription is their old bitter and destructive medicine. The recent winner of the Nobel Prize in economics is a guy called Joseph Stiglitz. For those who care to read, he has shown quite compellingly that the neoclassical economic model favoured by Dr Brash and Mr Hide is quite flawed. The assumptions that are necessary to make neoclassical economic models work are just so simplistic and wrong. When the more complex dynamics of a real economy are factored in, the neoclassical model fails. One of the examples used by Mr Stiglitz is how the IMF’s neoclassical response to Asian economic problems in the 1990s exacerbated rather than helped those problems. Most reputable commentators now agree with that analysis, yet New Zealanders—under National and the then Reserve Bank Governor Don Brash—suffered the same malaise. Unduly harsh monetary policy strangled our economy quite unnecessarily, yet that old IMF dogma, that neoclassical fundamentalism, is still the dogma of National and ACT. New Zealand’s economy has been unleashed from the National Party’s straightjacket, but given half a chance, Don Brash and Rodney Hide would put the straightjacket back on and pull it in another notch. Most New Zealanders know that would hurt. The so-called Washington consensus of neoclassical theories, which are still favoured by National and ACT, have as little international support these days as Washington’s threatened unilateral war against Iraq.

I will turn to that issue briefly, because once again ACT has got it completely wrong. Labour, along with most European countries, is correct. The consequences of war against Iraq include, as we all know, dead and severely maimed innocent people. I am one of those who thinks that the invasion of Kuwait set up a circumstance that justified a war. I also think that there would have been justification at that time for going all the way to Baghdad, but the decision was made not to go there. A decade has passed since then. Although Iraq’s subsequent breaches of UN resolutions are terrible, they do not justify a unilateral response on the part of the United States. I compliment both the Rt Hon Helen Clark and the Hon Phil Goff on their sound leadership on this issue, because I feel confident that the course they have plotted is the right one.

I also endorse Peter Dunne’s comments in relation to Israel. I am opposed to the Israeli responses to Palestinian grievances. The continued occupation of large parts of the West Bank by illegal Israeli settlements is not justified; nor are their provocative and destructive incursions into the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, does not justify the suicide bombing by Palestinians, but I hope that the international community will bring increased pressure, both on Israel and on the US financiers, to curb Israeli excesses and allow the establishment of a Palestinian state.

About 2 hours ago I had the privilege of being appointed Opposition spokesman on justice, which in the context of my experience as a lawyer is both a challenge and an opportunity. I was the chairman of Simpson Grierson, I am a member of the Council of Legal Education, and I have been on the board of the New Zealand Law Society, so I have lived the law and lawyers.

I thought what I would do in the short time you have afforded me Madam Speaker is talk about the differences between National and Labour on justice issues, because we stand starkly divided on a range of points. As the starting points are different, it is really not surprising that the outcomes are similarly so. I plan to talk about four things—access to justice, equality before the law, judicial activism, and political correctness. I will start with access to justice. National has waged a battle to seek that the Government reverse its decision on court fees. Members of the House will recall that the Government imposed swingeing increases, in the order of 600 percent in some cases, in filing fees and hearing fees. The result is predictable. Anecdotally, and to some extent supported by imperfect statistics from the ministry, the court load is significantly decreasing in respect of civil litigation. That is because the costs are too great for some litigants. There is an oppressive flip side, reflected in the legal maxim that costs follow the event. It works this way. When a plaintiff succeeds, he or she is entitled to costs. Those costs include the heavy filing fees of which I have spoken. So the hapless defendant, perhaps of modest means, is saddled with a very significant additional burden. That, surely, is unsatisfactory. It reinforces the cynical observation that the courts are open to everyone, like the Ritz Hotel. That surely cannot be right. If we are committed to access to justice, we should be dealing with that issue.

The second issue I would like to deal with is equality before the law. That issue obviously looms large at present. Bill English calls it one standard of citizenship. But of course equality before the law is an old legal principle and it goes way back before the Treaty of Waitangi, although it is reflected in article 3 of the treaty. This idea of equality before the law has been abrogated constitutionally in a number of jurisdictions. Canada, for example, has a charter of rights and freedoms, with provision for affirmative action programmes. In the United States Supreme Court, there is a significant constitutional case challenging university admission affirmative action policies. I certainly view with concern the failure by Parliament to legislate with precision in Treaty of Waitangi areas. The unvarnished references in legislation to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi have encouraged, I would argue, misguided judicial activism.

That leads me to the third area, and that is judicial activism. I would argue, presumably contrary to the position of my noisy, clamorous Labour friends opposite, that the legislature should actively avoid the encouragement of judicial activism. It is timely to recall a comment by Justice Dyson Heydon. He was a New South Wales Court of Appeal judge. This month he has been appointed to the High Court of Australia. He said: “The more the courts freely change the law, the more the public will come to view their function as political; the more they would be rightly open to vigorous and direct public attack on political grounds; and the greater will be the demand for public hearings into the politics of judicial candidates before appointment and greater control over judicial behaviour after appointment. So far as these demands were met, judicial independence would decline. None of these outcomes would be desirable.” The issue of judicial activism has a particular relevance at the moment as we look at the passage of the Supreme Court Bill through this Parliament. If that bill is enacted, then very directly will this issue arise in the context of the appointments that are made by the Attorney-General.

The last question that I would like to deal with relates to political correctness. I say it is the last issue, but there is always the possibility that my friends opposite will seek leave for me to speak for some greater period.

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: We did that once. It was very exciting!

The member did, and he got a great outcome, as I recall. I would just like to start on the issue of political correctness with a comment made by Justice Louis Brandeis 70 years ago. He said: “Experience teaches us to be most on our guard when the Government’s purpose is beneficent. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”

I have the misfortune to be on a select committee with one of the noisy members opposite, who is currently sitting in the Chamber. Today we heard some comment on the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Bill, and on offer to us was the opinion that that legislation reeks of political correctness because the free flow of information and ideas is the lifeblood of participatory democracy. When people stray from the straight and narrow and, as a result, a criminal conviction is entered against them, that information, which shapes that person’s life and the lives of those who deal with that person, should be public knowledge.

Those are the four points I offer to the House tonight in response to the Prime Minister’s statement: access to justice, where the Government, in my view, has lamentably failed; equality before the law, where there is unfinished business; judicial activism, and the risks that arise there; and political correctness.

The Prime Minister yesterday stated, among other things, that we must improve our social outcomes. I agree with that, and I am sure everyone in the House agrees with that, but how is it to be done? Obviously, common sense tells us that we need either new or better inputs to get better outcomes. My colleague Judy Turner stated that we must rebuild families, and the commission for the family is, of course, part of that. To do that, there has to be a political will to first build whole families, which will then improve our communities and, of course, our nation. This has begun, but it needs to be strengthened considerably. The longer we skip over or ignore the family, social outcomes, I believe, will deteriorate. We see these disastrous results as pictures, and we hear about them as stories on our televisions and in our newspapers every day.

May I be so bold as to suggest to the Prime Minister at least one way to ensure that she achieves her desired social outcomes, and that is through growing social capital. I want to touch on that issue tonight. Social capital is vastly different, of course, from economic capital, which featured very strongly throughout her speech. Social capital increases as it is shared with people, in contrast to the zero sum gain of economic capital, where “the more I share the less I have”.

Social capital, I dare say, is really the glue that keeps our communities together, whether the community is a group, a congregation, a neighbourhood, a school, a club, or whatever. But the question has to be asked: how can we grow social capital? I want to suggest something here tonight. I suggest that a reform of our education curriculum would begin a major breakthrough. Let me explain. It would come about through integrating universal values and truths with the attitudes, the academic achievements, and the learning skills taught in every school in New Zealand.

I am not suggesting, of course, anything to do with values clarification, for that has already promoted only personal preferences and indeed values confusion. I am talking about those universal truths of certainty found in all cultures, on all continents, over all time. Virtues, I believe, build societies, and they develop the civil behaviour we all desire. These are taught and modelled, not just discussed and left to chance. Social capital is formed by fairness, responsibility, truth, tolerance, duty, compassion, equality, respect, justice, and freedom. They are just a few that come to mind.

United Future is convinced, along with thousands of other Kiwis, that character education is a reform that will work. Other reforms may work, but high standards of behaviour work even better. What is more, nothing else works without them. These are, I think, some of the missing things from our social inputs today. The State, we must remember, cannot build social capital. Only individuals and families can do that. The State is here, of course, to set up the regulatory framework to make sure that a caring, loving, and just nation is developed and nurtured. Girls, boys, and adults being taught what is right and wrong will build our social capital, to give a genuine sense of aroha. Aotearoa will progress as ordinary New Zealanders make families and parenting, and schools and teachers their highest priority. We need to restore education to its true dignity and we need to restore to our teachers the honour due to them, because they, as our trustees, pass on traditions and virtues from one generation to another. United Future is here and is willing to help the Prime Minister.

In reply to the Prime Minister’s address yesterday, I say that there are two issues that I think are worthy of some mention. First, where is the wealth of this country heading, and, secondly, where in the Prime Minister’s statement was there a mention of one of our nation’s fundamental concerns, the safety and security of all New Zealanders?

In her speech the Prime Minister said: “The strong economic performance has had a very positive effect on the Government’s fiscal position.” That is wonderful. But what about the taxpayers’ fiscal position? She went on to talk about sustainable economic growth, but who would that benefit—the Government? Those who provide the wealth of this nation must take part in that wealth. The Prime Minister says the Government wants to work with business to lift productivity. What is the point? Again, for whose benefit is all that productivity for? There is no benefit to people if they cannot accrue some of the wealth that they have helped to create.

Then there is the issue of the work-life balance. Families are being hurt by having to shoulder their increasing tax burdens. The purpose given to achieve all those objectives was outlined by the Prime Minister: “Our children and our young people deserve to grow up in supportive families with adequate incomes.”, and the best way to guarantee that is to reward them for their efforts, reward them for their work, reduce their taxation, and allow them the ability to be self-supporting, self-reliant families.

I move on to the second point. In the last few weeks there has been a series of horrific crimes—none more horrific than that which occurred on January 21, when two women were hacked by an assailant armed with a sword. The same man who did that then shot another person. On February 1 a man admitted to ripping the heads off live chickens. Unbelievably, Barry Ryder, while abiding his parole conditions, was free enough to commit sexual assaults on three boys. Meanwhile, a number of shocking dog attacks have provoked an outrage that has everyone wanting a quick and decisive response. It was important enough for the Prime Minister to include a mention of the attacks in her address. But what about the people? What about the rising tide of violence on our employers, the taxpayers of New Zealand—the people who put us here? Surely we can see an interest in maintaining their health and safety—or is that just being cynical about it? I did not hear of any priority to push for a safer and more secure society.

There are many laudable goals that this Government has fostered, and I am sure some of those things simply represent an omission by default. But one of the things that will make this Government better this year will be a vigorous and rigorous Opposition. Right now, we do not really have that, do we? We have a minority Opposition. We need cooperation amongst all of us to push through the best policies that we possibly can, but that is not what we are getting from over here. Anything that the Government throws up, the Opposition simply tears down as a matter of course, without even investigating whether it is a good policy or otherwise. We do need robust debate, openness, and receptivity to new ideas—and that applies to both sides of the House. I think the problem is that National, the minority Opposition, is not standing behind its leader and supporting him. He is leader in name only. Every time I sit here and watch Gerry Brownlee have a look at him, I am not sure whether he sees leader or lunch. It is time for the National Party to gel together, and start contributing to the lively debate of this Chamber. Its function is to scrutinise the Labour Party, to get the best out of it. Right now, the performance on that side of the House is extremely poor and dismal.

It is a great privilege for me to stand in support of the Prime Minister’s statement, which was made very strongly by the Rt Hon Helen Clark to Parliament yesterday. It set out the Government’s priorities for this year, and outlined to the country why the Labour - Progressive Government wants to continue taking New Zealand forward in a very positive and proactive direction. There was no carping, moaning or whingeing in Helen Clark’s speech. Her speech was actually a positive agenda for New Zealand that all people can look to, to see that they have a Government that is there to represent all the people of this country.

I took particular note of the Prime Minister’s reference to the economic development policies of this coalition Government, which I believe are having a real impact. We often hear in this House that people are saying the Government has done nothing to assist the economy, and that the good times New Zealand is experiencing are simply occurring in spite of what the Government has done, not because of it. However, if one focuses on the economic and regional development policies, and the partnership the Government is taking with parts of New Zealand that were often forgotten, and also sees that our gross domestic product figure is at 3.9 percent, I do not believe that can be regarded as some sort of mistake or miracle. I believe that has been achieved through having smart and active policies, which make sure the whole country grows. We then see that flowing through into low unemployment, which was at 4.9 percent yesterday, and growth in the economy, which is at 3.9 percent. I was pleased to see the Prime Minister say that smart, active economic development polices would be a priority for the Government this year.

I was also very pleased to see an emphasis on transport, through mention of the land transport strategy and our Land Transport Management Bill, which is currently before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and is receiving submissions. That will pave the way for New Zealand to have an infrastructure to enable economic growth to take place, and to enable our people to travel around New Zealand safely and efficiently.

I was also very pleased to see reference to the Modern Apprenticeships scheme. There was no policy more popular on the campaign trail than the Government’s investment in skills training, and the fact that 6,000 young people will be working in apprenticeships right across the country. That is certainly part of being an active Government. The Supreme Court Bill shows that we are taking a view about New Zealand’s nationhood. That bill is before the select committee at the moment for submissions. It will be part of developing New Zealand and showing who we are in the world today.

I am pleased that we will also see some real movement on the Families Commission this year. I acknowledge our colleagues in United Future at this point, who are leading the charge on that. It is a very clear policy direction and goal for them, and I am looking forward to working with them during our first full year together in the Parliament. I think we will achieve a lot of good things. We also see the Agenda for Children rolling out, and that is very, very important in an international framework. Also, locally, we have the youth development strategy, showing that we have a vision for young people. We say that families, young people, and children are important.

I am very pleased to report that the Government is being very well received in my electorate of Otaki. The policies of this Government are having a real impact and making a difference in Horowhenua and Kapiti. We received some funding before Christmas for a cluster coordinator for our apparel and textile businesses, which has been about making sure those sunset industries have a sense of sunrise about them. I think that will lead to more jobs and exports, as well. The Racing Bill mentioned in the Prime Minister’s statement will obviously be very important in my area. We are looking very positively at some plans around tourism. We started the year strongly with the A P and I show in Levin. Mary Davis organised a good showcase of Horowhenua talent on the agricultural side of things. We had the Manakau medieval market at the weekend as well, with 20,000 people in attendance. I understand that the local member of Parliament was beheaded at that occasion, and what has grown back may not be too pleasant for members to see.

In Kapiti we are working very hard on transport issues. I am really pleased to be working with Winnie Laban, the member for Mana, who is a fantastic local member. We are working closely with our Wellington colleagues on issues like roading and transport, to make sure we open up all the Kapiti Coast, Wellington, and the Wairarapa. I think we will make some good gains there this year. In Horowhenua we are going through the health services review, and working with the Ministry of Health and the community on a new hospital for Horowhenua. I am very hopeful that we will see some progress on that this year.

When the Prime Minister sat down, we heard a very disappointing speech from the Leader of the Opposition. We heard the usual gaffes, but, despite having had 4 hours to prepare, work up an issue, advance an idea, or put a convincing case on his no-confidence motion, those things simply were not there. I thought to myself: how has it come to this? Here is a man who was on the rise for all of his political career, only to see it all go horribly wrong when he got the job he coveted. He was forced to come down to the House twice yesterday to subject himself to speeches from his two pretenders. The interesting thing was not his presence during the speech of Dr Brash or Mr Brownlee, but how many National Party members of Parliament came to the House to watch those two auditions take place. There were 12 National Party members in the House for Mr Brownlee’s speech, but only 10 for Dr Brash, so I guess the smart money would have to be on Mr Brownlee.

Both of those numbers came perilously close to the 14 votes one needs to lead the once-great National Party. It takes only 14 people to take control of a party that once boasted 67 MPs in this House. That was when Mr English first became a member of Parliament. Now that he is in charge of that great machine, National is down to 27 members. His brilliant political management has resulted in that number. Mr English did not look like a proud leader when he listened to those speeches—he appeared as though he was looking at able lieutenants. Rather, he looked like a man forced to preside over a succession duel, despite the fact that rumours of his political death are still only partly exaggerated.

Dr Brash’s speech simply lacked credibility in a modern world. It was a policy prescription that was more about the past than about the future. He promotes an alternative vision based on policies that have been comprehensively rejected in this country. I find National members’ sense of reverence for Dr Brash truly unusual. I think it is bizarre that they have put him in charge of policy review, when their publicly stated aim is to try to rise above 20 percent of the vote. He seems to be regarded as a kind of elderly uncle who has returned from war, full of stories of battles never won, and who is held in high esteem.

Mr Brownlee was determined to give a big-picture speech. He was determined to show that he had given it some thought. He even went as far as quoting a book. I have listened to lots of Mr Brownlee’s speeches in this House before, and I have never heard him deliver a researched contribution until the speech he gave at the beginning of this year. That is because this was a speech that he desperately wanted to be noticed. I know that because at the end of his speech he helpfully gave us an executive summary of what he had said, just so that some of his slower colleagues would get the message that he was a man on the move, with a broad understanding of the issues on New Zealand’s political landscape.

So we will watch with interest as these two men position themselves, because I am sure that by the end of the year one of them will be in charge. In the meantime, though, they are stuck with Mr English and his hapless deputy. Mr English’s speech yesterday should have been his finest. He knew word for word what Helen Clark was going to say. It is the only time in the calendar year that Bill English is 4 hours ahead of Helen Clark. It is the only time that he is ever in advance of her in any way shape or form. But rather than use those 4 hours to set to about the Government, Mr English used them to take a nap. He used the 4 hours to take a sleep for his energy levels, and came down to the House and gave a reheated joke from last year, tacked on a bit to add bones to it, and, when that fell flat, his colleagues cringed, and that set the scene for the next 20 minutes.

The most remarkable statement he made was his very conservative, timid view that the Labour Party was only a three-term Government. Now we have to watch Mr English attempt the final refloating of his career, on the back of code language over the Treaty of Waitangi and the relationship between Māori and the Crown. I find it fascinating to watch Mr English do that, because I do not think that deep down he believes it. And that is part of the problem for the National Party. Mr English did not come into politics to ride race-based politics in an attempt for a double-digit preferred Prime Minister rating. I believe that that is anathema to him. I think he hates giving the “one standard of citizenship” speech, because he knows what it is code for. He knows what buttons it is attempting to push in the community, and I think he feels highly uncomfortable about it.

I think that as Minister of Health he did a good job of recognising the difference between Māori and Pacific communities, and that what he is doing at the moment is something that he will reflect on very sadly when his political career is at an end. But Murray McCully got hold of him with a strategy to target Māori, and for the sake of the job he wants he has held on to it. That is despite the fact that every time Murray McCully has been in charge of strategy for the National Party—and that has been at the last four elections—at each of those four elections, under his strategy, National has lost votes. National’s vote share has fallen from nearly 48 percent when Murray McCully took over, to just over 20 percent now. Under the great strategy of the brat pack and Mr McCully, National members have watched 27 percent of their vote shaved off. Now, in order to try to refloat the ship National they have moved their party right where nobody in New Zealand is anymore. It is hardly a way to win back middle New Zealand. Bill English is now, as Marc Alexander said, the leader of the party in name only. He is no longer in charge of the policy agenda; he is no longer in charge of the personnel. He is in charge of a ship that is heading right, when the rest of the country is in the middle. It is going to be a long, sad year for the New Zealand National Party.

The Labour member Darren Hughes was so impressed with the Prime Minister’s speech that he could not sing her praises for more than 2 minutes! It was not a Prime Minister’s statement that was delivered in the House yesterday. Once again, Prime Minister Helen Clark behaved like a dispassionate commentator, rather than the leader of our country. She admitted that in her statement, by saying that she would comment on the current state of the economy and on the Government’s key areas of activity for the year, etc., etc. I am not sure, though, whether she would get a job as a radio commentator, because the majority of her caucus members fell asleep and forgot to clap during her speech. How can any Prime Minister show such detachment and fail to articulate any conviction or vision, let alone any purpose for New Zealand, at this internationally challenging time? It is that lack of genuine conviction by the Prime Minister and her Cabinet that gives the public little confidence in the Government’s ability to deliver high economic growth and one standard of citizenship for all New Zealanders.

In her 2001 Prime Minister’s statement Helen Clark attacked National for imposing high English-language requirements on potential migrants, claiming that that stifled economic development. Just over a year later the Labour Minister of Immigration, out of the blue, announced the raising of the English-language requirements for potential migrants. It was laughable to hear the Prime Minister, in her statement this year, claim that raising the English-language requirements for potential migrants would contribute to economic growth. Can the Prime Minister make up her mind and explain to the country which of her statements is true? Currently the Association for Migration and Investment is suing the Government over the retrospective nature of that change. Two petitions have been lodged in Parliament, protesting that change. Why does the Prime Minister continue to stay silent on that important issue?

I would like the Prime Minister to explain her inconsistent attitude to all New Zealanders. Last night the Prime Minister hosted a Chinese New Year function, and once again told the attendees there: “The Government recognises and values the importance of the Chinese community in New Zealand. It makes a huge economic and social contribution to our country. The many new Chinese migrants are also bringing new ideas, a strong work ethic, and valuable contacts with their countries of origin.”

If that is the case, why is the Government raising the English-language requirement in order to exclude more Chinese migrants? If that policy had been in place in the 1990s, the size of the Chinese community would be well below 1 percent of the population, rather than the current 3 percent. Interestingly, the Prime Minister apologised to the Chinese community last year for the poll tax. The poll tax was imposed with the explicit intention of restricting Chinese migrants. I would like the Prime Minister to explain that inconsistent behaviour.

Last night the President of the New Zealand Chinese Assocation warned the ethnic affairs office to achieve a positive outcome for the Chinese community in a few months’ time, when the Government will be announcing its poll-tax reconciliation package. That warning should have been directed at the Government. It has done nothing to promote New Zealanders’ understanding of the pain and the hurt that the poll tax brought with it. Many affected parties are concerned at a possible backlash when that package is announced, possibly around May. This irresponsible Government consistently puts short-term political gain ahead of taking necessary steps. The lack of public education and preparedness is leaving the Chinese community vulnerable to public hostility and is making it a potential scapegoat for political opportunism in the near future. I challenge the Labour Government to do the right thing: to start a public education campaign now, in order to ensure that the members of the Chinese community will not be left to fend for themselves.

Sadly, the irresponsible and patronising attitude of this Government extends to many communities. We have learnt of the Hon Chris Carter’s graceless assault at Waitangi. Let us spare a thought for the Indian community. In the Easter break of 2002 I was invited, along with the Minister, to attend the Indian Central Association’s annual conference. For years, Indian community leaders have given up their Easter break and travelled at their own expense to the national conference. Last year it was held in Auckland. I and other speakers carefully did our research and prepared written speeches, in order to show our respect to those leaders. The Hon Chris Carter, who represented the Prime Minister, stood up, spoke off the cuff, and told the audience that Gandhi was a great man. I am sure that was news to the Indian leaders gathered there! His speech became worse: the leaders were then told that the Prime Minister loves eating curry.

We then waited and waited with anticipation for the substance of Chris Carter’s speech, but that was it. That was the speech that the Minister gave to the leaders of the Indian community—that Gandhi was a great man and Prime Minister Clark loves eating curry. He said that to the leaders of the Indian community who had travelled from throughout the country to attend the association’s conference. He treated them appallingly. The fact that the Asian communities are polite and determined to be hospitable to their guests does not excuse any Minister for not doing his or her homework. I want that Minister and other Ministers to stand up and explain the type of patronising, arrogant behaviour that they show towards the ethnic communities, while at the same time continuing to claim how important those communities are to Labour.

The ethnic communities deserve respect. The Hon Bill English’s call for one standard of citizenship for all New Zealanders is timely. The ethnic communities have the right to expect to be respected and treated with dignity by the Government. This year there was not even a single mention by the Prime Minister of the ethnic communities in her statement. We must ensure that the participation of the ethnic communities in the political process is genuine and is not just window dressing. A debate on one standard of citizenship may be painful to the Labour Government, because it tends to apply different standards to the different communities and to give them different speeches. But on the Opposition side of the House we believe that all citizens in New Zealand should be treated equally, with dignity and respect.

E tū ahau ki te mihi ki a tātou, nō reira tēnā koutou.

[I rise to extend a greeting to you all: greetings.]

It is with pleasure that I contribute to this debate, and support the comments delivered yesterday by the Minister of Māori Affairs in support of the Prime Minister’s statement. The Māori economy is frequently presented as being a drag on the New Zealand economy, but that is just a myth. The Māori economy paints a very different picture from that. The Māori economy is robust, enjoys strong growth, and is poised for continued expansion. Obviously, it faces its share of structural challenges. No economy can shrug off the burdens of history without considerable effort and hard work. However, it is exciting in itself that we can now meaningfully speak of financial accounts that contribute 1.4 percent to New Zealand’s economy. Further positive development of the Māori economy will continue to boost our country’s overall growth rate. More importantly, the future of both economies critically depends on an ongoing improvement in Māori capital.

Culturally, self-determined development has the potential to widen the horizons and lift the aspirations of many Māori. The Government is contributing to that potential. This Government is committed on a path beyond our expectation, with supportive legislation as the hallmark to foster and manifest that self-determined development in the Māori economy. Ultimately, it is good to know that the Māori economy is alive, active, robust, and contributing to the growth of our nation. That is why consultation with Māori, the new Māori Television Service, and the development of legislation to implement the fisheries allocations are all important. That is why we have completed more treaty settlements and the passage of legislation that effects them.

Māori are shrugging off historic negativities and are moving on. Was it not a wonderful opportunity that our nation could enjoy the excitement of Waitangi Day—an opportunity that we could enjoy collectively, as one nation? I recall an article labelled “Bill English flags Māori seat U-turn”, which suggested that National might be ready to withdraw its support for the Māori seats in Parliament. Why is that? The article stated it is “… to better fit with its theme of one standard of citizenship for all New Zealanders.” That is obviously a U-turn on National’s previous stance that the Māori seats in Parliament should stay until Māori no longer want them.

The Leader of the National Party just travels from one disaster to another. After all, he has already endorsed this Labour Government as a three-term Government beyond 2005. I say to that member that we have a campaign manager, and he did not get axed at the following election. We on the Government side of the House are very clear that when the Leader of the Opposition rears to his feet—it is obvious that it happens every time—his entire caucus drops their heads. Why is that? It is because they have lost confidence. There is no direction, and only archaic rhetoric. In the absence of real policy and direction, it is a case of picking on the Māoris again.

I have some advice for the Nats. We all know that this will happen; it is just a matter of time. The hammer is about to fall. But before it does, National should consider this: it has a Māori member from Tūwharetoa who comes from an iwi well respected for its authority and future thinking. Georgina te Heuheu should be elevated in seniority within the party, not demoted. She has done the hard yards and possesses leadership qualities. National members should nominate her as their next leader instead of the ghost from the past, Dr Brash. This Government is committed to ensuring Māori representation in Parliament, and it has further enhanced that representation with the passing of the Local Government Act. This is a committed Government.

I turn to the crisis over Iraq, and particularly to resolution 1441. Our Government, along with the people of New Zealand, is peace loving. We are a peace-loving nation. Wherever possible, we practise and exercise the values of peace, especially in the international arena. We are committed to being proactive on disarmament issues internationally. We hold a strong view in favour of a diplomatic solution, and we hope for that outcome.

We will continue to provide a stable Government with strong leadership. There is no reason for complacency or self-satisfaction. We have set ourselves top goals to achieve over the next 3 years and into the longer-term future. Our aim is to build and sustain solid levels of economic growth and to fund good public services and infrastructure sustainably. We are implementing smart, active policies to encourage and facilitate growth and development. New Zealand over the past year has been one of the OECD’s star performers, with average annual growth for the year to September coming in, as we have heard all day, at 3.9 percent. The unemployment rate has fallen to 4.9 percent, down from 5.4 percent, for the September 2002 quarter. Employment levels have been growing for the past 10 quarters.

Many initiatives have been taken in line with the growth and innovation framework to strengthen the economy’s capacity to grow, and we will continue to build on them this year. We have rejected the discredited direction of the 1990s and we will work to offer more opportunity, security, and a better quality of life for all New Zealanders. Work is under way on policy to improve the support for low-income families, and to provide further assistance for families to move into employment and to build better futures for themselves and their children. This year’s Budget will see us take the first steps in the change process, with further major changes being planned for the 2004 Budget.

Last week our OECD report covering the situation of young people made for grim reading. Some of it was out of date, and in respect of youth offending the report was inaccurate, as we have heard today. The Agenda for Children and the Youth Development Strategy Aotearoa, both released last year, provide clear direction on the way forward. The challenge now is to get a coordinated approach across the Government agencies and to work efficiently with non-governmental organisations. Our children and young people deserve to grow up in supportive families with adequate incomes, to have secure homes, to have their health and education needs met, to live lives free from violence and crime, and to be able to fulfil their potential as human beings.

I open by saying I am delighted to be back this year in your company, the Hon Clem Simich. It is always a great pleasure to be working alongside you and other members. Other members will most likely rise to their feet and cheer when I say that I acknowledge the Hon Clem Simich and thank him for the call. I am delighted to be back in the House. I want members to know that I thoroughly enjoy my job. They will never hear me complain about the remuneration or anything like that. I am an enthusiastic member of Parliament and am pleased to be entering 2003, although I must say I have some reservations about it.

💬 Lindsay Tisch: Tell us why.

Members want to know what those reservations are, and I will tell them. We are entering 2003, and I have had my nose to the ground, so I know how many New Zealanders feel. Because I met many Northlanders and people from throughout the country at Waitangi this year, I know people are genuinely concerned about race relations in this country. So I am pleased to be back here this February. I am pleased to be a member of Parliament, and I am delighted to start the year, but I have certain reservations about the state of race relations within our country.

That concern includes the fact that many Māori have been consistently put down by leaders in this country. Those leaders have talked consistently about failure instead of about success, and have commiserated consistently with Māori instead of celebrating their success. I tell the House there is no mana in that, and there is no mana in the leaders of the Labour Party consistently talking about failure and commiserating with Māori. In fact, Labour Party members are using Māori as the equivalent of a depressed, illiterate, underclass that requires constant funding in some form or another. That is how they consider Māori. I have picked up on that from people from throughout the country, and it is very, very condescending.

I was interested in Pansy Wong’s comments earlier about Chris Carter’s speech to the Indian community last year, when he had stood up, unprepared for his speech. That is what Pansy Wong has just said, and she has huge credibility in this Parliament. She said that Chris Carter, in his unprepared speech, told the Indian community that Ghandi was a great man, and that the Prime Minister enjoyed curry. That is very embarrassing. That interested me because I was one member who made the effort to go to Waitangi this year. Granted, I live very close to Waitangi, in Whangarei. Waitangi is only an hour’s drive from my home, and even if I did not have a car thousands of my Whangarei constituents would have given me a lift. So I went to Waitangi this year, where Chris Carter made another speech. I will tell members that I was chastised by fellow members of the National Party because I told them, after returning from Waitangi, that during Chris Carter’s speech I felt so embarrassed for him—for him, and that is why I was chastised—that I wanted to crawl under a rock.

Chris Carter’s speech at Waitangi was very embarrassing. But I could not get under the rock—because Dover Samuels was there! First of all, Chris Carter stood up and pranced around a little bit; members can picture that in their mind’s eye. He stood on the Māori unity flag, and people shuffled him off—

💬 Simon Power: The great liberal.

The great liberal; they shuffled him off. The other members who were there saw that. People shuffled Chris Carter off, trying to keep things low key. Chris Carter made a speech about spilling blood—on Waitangi Day, on a marae! To end it all—and this is almost as bad as telling the Indian community that the Prime Minister likes curry—Chris Carter did something else. But first I will tell members what Bill English did. At the end of Bill English’s speech, when there was a huge silence, out of respect, we stood up and supported Bill English with a waiata. This is what Chris Carter did: he pranced around, and when he had finished his speech he invited Labour members to sing a Māori song. That is what he did, and members from throughout the House can imagine him doing it. Chris Carter said the Labour members would sing a Māori song, so three Labour members joined him in singing the Māori song “Pokare Kare Ana”. Dover Samuels scuttled under a rock. My first complaint of this year is that that was my rock, because I, as a National Party member, have consistently opposed Chris Carter for 3 years, yet I felt stink for him because that song was so condescending to Māori.

The point of all that is simply that I say such condescending speeches and talk have hurt the many Māori who continue to go about their daily work committed to their families, just like everybody else. Many, many Māori leave the rest of us for dead in all the abilities and talents they express throughout this country—in fact, they leave for dead Labour Party members, not the least of them being the last speaker, who talked about the success of the Māori economy. Why is it that Labour Party members cannot talk about the success of Māori, instead of commiserating with them and constantly talking about their failure?

My hope, on entering 2003, was that this Government would rebuild race relations, and would not turn its back on genuine grievances—historical treaty grievances—but would meet need wherever it exists, regardless of race. That was my wish. This is my message to Helen Clark: she should improve on her poor record of settling genuine, historic grievances, righting historic broken promises, righting land confiscations, and righting the dispossession of people in various parts of the country. She should be doing that, not granting special privileges to Māori and not sending the very able Chris Carter north to win friends and influence people. She should not be funding councils, having special Government representation, and changing the tax laws to suit Māori. She should be settling genuine historic grievances, because the National Party supports that. We started settling genuine historic treaty claims, but we do not support cash for votes. In terms of social spending, it is whether families are in need that should be important, not people’s race. As if New Zealand has enough money to support the cash for votes philosophy!

Labour has had the best tailwind in a generation, has it not, with low interest rates, a low exchange rate for the New Zealand dollar, good weather up until now, and high international demand for commodities? Labour has had a great tailwind. Any Government can govern when the going is good, but I want to see those people govern when it all turns to custard—and it will.

Before I call the member, I point out that the 10-minute slot for the Green Party will be shared, with 5 minutes each. There will be a bell at the end of each 5 minutes.

When we debate health issues in this House and, indeed, around New Zealand, the discussion invariably turns to waiting lists and district health board deficits. So it was interesting to note that those two burning issues did not rate so much as a mention in the Prime Minister’s speech. Of course they did not, because they are a source of severe embarrassment to this Government. The Government promised that it would slash waiting lists, but instead of slashing waiting lists by increasing the number of operations that are performed in New Zealand, which is the only way of truly slashing waiting lists, the Government has tried to slash waiting lists by a sort of smoke and mirrors policy of pushing people off the list and back to their general practitioners for a so-called reassessment, and by arbitrarily increasing the number of points that are needed before a patient is eligible for an operation. It is no wonder, therefore, that genuine waiting lists are continuing to climb.

I want to discuss tonight yet another health crisis in New Zealand, and that is the 16,000-odd New Zealanders who are diagnosed with cancer each year, and why it is that despite all of the talk, all of the hand wringing, the publication of the new Towards a Cancer Control Strategy at the end of last year—a long-overdue document—and despite all of the money that we spend on cancer detection and treatment, so little is being done in New Zealand in the area of cancer prevention to reduce and, indeed, eliminate the underlying causes of cancer in our midst. Seven thousand five hundred New Zealanders die from cancer each year, and it is now, of course, the second leading cause of death. Breast cancer rates have doubled within a generation and are projected to double again. Despite all the money on the detection and treatment processes, survival rates for most cancers have remained essentially the same for the past 20 years.

What then do we do about it? Numerous studies show that environmental and occupational contaminants are the main contributors to the soaring rates of cancer. Even the very conservative World Health Organization estimates that at least 80 percent of all cancers are environmentally related. If 80 percent of cancers are environmentally related, where then is the focus, the strategy, or the plan to reduce our environmental exposure to cancer-causing substances? Where is the strategy to phase out toxic pesticides, particularly the known human carcinogens—pesticides that are known to cause cancer? Where, indeed, is even the acknowledgment that pesticides are a major cause of cancer? Where is the strategy to eliminate dioxins, among the deadliest substances that humans have ever invented, or the strategy to reduce and eliminate workplace chemicals and carcinogens?

Overseas studies have identified at least 60 occupations that pose an increased risk of cancer to workers: electrical workers, meat workers, timber workers, radiographers, boat builders, hairdressers, and so on. Overseas, much work is being done to look at those occupations. But what are we doing to protect workers in those and other high-risk occupations to remove what are known cancer-causing substances in our workplaces? What are we doing to compensate workers such as timber workers who have been exposed to substances and have become seriously ill as a result?

The International Agency for Research on Cancer has identified 24 substances that have been proven to cause just one cancer, and that is lung cancer in humans. Now one of those cancer-causing substances, of course, is tobacco. We congratulate Steve Chadwick and, indeed, the Government, on initiatives to try to reduce our exposure to this particular cancer-causing substance. But what about the rest? What are we doing about the other 23 known causes of lung cancer and all the other cancers? Where are the similar initiatives, the legislation, and the strategies for the cancer-causing pesticides, vinyl chloride, benzene, and all the others? If we are serious about cancer prevention and reducing cancer in our midst we should be developing a major strategy—a major focus—on cancer prevention in New Zealand.

In listening to parts of the Prime Minister’s speech yesterday, and chatting to members around the House, it is possible to believe that, in fact, we share a good many views in common. We all like to live in a community where we are all able to participate, contribute, live healthy lives, and look after the environment. There is a fair bit we agree on, so I will concentrate my 5 minutes on those areas where we might find a measure of agreement.

The Green Party’s attitude to growth on a finite planet is our point of difference. It is just not possible to simply go on producing more without undermining the planet’s capacity to sustain life. It is either our own lives, the lives of the other species, communities, and generations with which we share this planet, or our own capacity for enjoyment. It is the Green Party’s contention that rather than judging our success by how much our economy is growing, or by how much we earn, we look instead for new criteria based on the measure of human happiness and the state of the environment.

It is not that we Greens think that there is no scope for growth or trade, but we see little point in doing or trading any more of anything unless it adds to the sum total of human happiness and the capacity of the planet to sustain life. If it simply means more cars on our already overcrowded roads, if 3.9 percent growth increases the energy use, and adds to the 80 million kilograms of waste going into New Zealand landfills every week, it makes little sense. If, in spite of that 3.9 percent growth, the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, clinical depression, cancers, and cardiovascular disease go on burgeoning, can we not begin to see that decades of growing our economy, working more hours per man, woman, and child than ever before, and producing more, and getting bigger, just might be a flawed model?

Perhaps it is time we focused on doing more of the things that genuinely enhance the quality of life in this extraordinarily beautiful and abundant country, and more of the things that sustain that extraordinary beauty and abundance, and make an effort to share what we have in order to make the time to enjoy the experiences of living here. Improving the quality of our existence rather than the quantity of our position needs to become our focus.

The Government and the Prime Minister in particular are to be commended for their focus on the arts. The additional funding has made more good artistic activity happen and ensured the survival of a number of our creative icons. I want to make a plea, not for more money, but for a diversion of money earmarked for existing non-art activity into the kinds of artistic effort that would improve the quality and the uniquely New Zealand flavour of those other non-artistic activities. The arts ought to be more than special events and special places for special occasions. They have the capacity to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, to enrich life, to make workplaces more enjoyable, and our hospitals and healing places more hospitable and more healing.

It may be difficult to measure the healing qualities of the recent Nelson Hospital extension landscape and mural features, but I have little doubt that the reduction in stress levels for patients and staff in those places is sufficient to justify the relatively minimal cost of the additions. That kind of initiative is worth repeating in public and private places, spaces, and occasions up and down New Zealand. Our prisons, our workplaces, our schools, and our neighbourhoods are all appropriate venues for the work of numerous talented, and frequently underemployed and undervalued, New Zealand artists. The Government could well offer a lead to the private sector by making a senior figure in each of our Government departments responsible for following up on arts projects in their ministries. Could such activities meet my criteria for enriching the environment and the quality of our lives? I think so.

On the transport front, initiatives to create safe cycling and walking routes to our schools also have the capacity to make our urban environment safer, reverse the obesity trends in our youngsters, increase the likelihood that they will avoid diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and enhance their capacity both to learn and to enjoy life.

My final plea is to the Government to take a leadership role in encouraging New Zealanders to buy New Zealand – made, ahead of imports, and to stop signing up for agreements that oblige us to take the products of sweatshops and lax environmental standards. In a food-producing nation it is an absurdity that most of the products on our supermarket shelves are imported. Buying local is one sure way of looking after the environment, getting more New Zealanders into good work, and ensuring that those who are unable to work—for whatever reason—have sufficient income to care for themselves and their families. Mindlessly producing and consuming ever more is a recipe for a tragically inadequate diet and a recipe for an even more tragic future. When we are capable of so much more, why do we readily settle for so little?

This is the first speech I have given in the debate on the Prime Minister’s Statement in the three terms I have been in Parliament that my mother will not be listening to, and I take this opportunity to thank those members around the House who have sent me their personal expressions of sympathy. Having said that, I would now say to the Green Party that 3.9 percent is very significant in my electorate, because it indicates jobs, houses, and growth and development that is bringing the sort of lifestyle that I think most people in New Zealand, and most people in this House, seek for their families.

In my fourth term in Parliament I find it gratifying to at last be able to talk about growth in the East Coast electorate. For a number of terms in Parliament I sat and watched the parties—now on the opposite benches—that were in Government impact their policies on my electorate in a way that brought a considerable amount of suffering and deprivation to those communities. I saw the closure of Opotiki Hospital and Wairoa Hospital, and I saw nothing significant put in their place. I saw Māori providers sidelined, although I will say in defence of the former Prime Minister, Jenny Shipley, that when she was the Minister of Health she did encourage the participation of Māori, as provided in the health service. She got that ball rolling, and I bet they wish that she were here today to put some enthusiasm, some policy, and some direction back into the National Party.

Provincial New Zealand is doing well, and, yes, I accept the comments of Phil Heatley, who said that this Government has had a number of positive factors working alongside it. We have had a good economic climate. We have had good climate on the East Coast, which is significant. However, it is the policies of this Government, the investment in rural communities, and the engagement with rural communities that have made this Government’s policies work.

For the first time since I have lived in Gisborne I saw unemployment drop below the national average. That for me is very important. This is an area where 50 percent of the population are Māori, it is an area that historically has been deprived of opportunities in industry and jobs. It is an area that under the previous Government saw the relocation of Heinz-Wattie to Hastings, it saw the closure of Weddell Kaiti, and the loss of major industries that had employed and sustained our people over generations. Those people had no other option. They had nowhere to go. When I see our unemployment level drop below the national average, it tells me that something good is happening. The members on the Opposition benches can be as cynical, negative, and critical as they like, and they can put the Government down as much as they like, but the reality for the people on the East Coast is that their unemployment level has dropped below the national average for the first time, probably, in 25 years. For me, that is an accomplishment—one that I am proud of and will continue to be proud of.

A number of good things have happened on the East Coast. I want to highlight some of them, because for me what is significant about the growth on the East Coast is that it is not about talking about Pākehā growth and then bringing Māori up to speed, it is about talking about partnerships and businesses that are showing the true spirit of the treaty, where people are working together and taking more account of their common goals and sense of direction, rather than of those differences that will always be there, and should always be there, because we are two peoples.

One of the best examples of that are the new primary health organisations in the health system. The primary health organisations are a success in Gisborne. Gisborne and Wairoa had the first in the country. Those primary health organisations were not driven by the Government or the district health board, but by the Māori providers in those regions. I want to commend in the House tonight Ngāti Porou Hauora on the East Coast, who have taken the non-Māori providers alongside them and engaged them in providing the sort of health service that reaches out to that community. It works in that community and it is providing the East Coast with the best health service it has ever had. Ngāti Porou Hauora are leading it and taking all the other providers along with them.

I commend organisations like the Kaiti Medical Centre—my own doctors—and the Desmond Road Medical Centre, which have got in alongside the iwi health providers and are providing a service that is not just to Māori or to Europeans, but in which they call on the skills and the knowledge of each other and each other’s communities to provide a more holistic and better health service for everyone in my region. That is a success that I will take with me when I leave this Parliament. It is a success that is delivering positive returns for everyone in the community at the present time.

Like many other areas in the country, we are experiencing a skills shortage, and that is great. A member from another party said to me: “I went to Gisborne in the holidays and I couldn’t move for fear I tripped over a bulldozer.” That is about right at the moment. There is an enormous amount of construction work going on, and, like many other areas, we are seeking skilled labour. I went to a Taste Gisborne festival out at Dean Witters’ property at Cedenco, which he opens up to the people of Gisborne. They have music, wine, and food, and everyone goes along. It is one of the great events in Gisborne. I went along to that and a builder came up to me and said: “So what’s the Government doing about builders?”. My first response to a question like that is: “What are builders doing about builders?”, but I was able to take him through exactly what the Government is doing to enhance the skills in our community.

The number of Modern Apprenticeships has doubled this year. The Māori trade training scheme was a great scheme, and many of the interior decorators, the builders, the plumbers, and the electricians were people who went up to Gillies Avenue, stayed in a hostel, and trained under the Māori apprenticeships scheme. I support that scheme coming back into our region.

With regard to Modern Apprenticeships, I say to the industry that there is a role for them to get alongside their members and encourage them to participate, as well, because it is no use a builder coming to me and saying that he lays people off at the first sign of a shortage of work but when he needs more builders he expects the Government to provide them. The message is that we do need to train now, because this growth will be sustained.

In areas like Gisborne we are seeing our community change and grow. We are seeing very wealthy apartments being built and hotels going up. That is very different for our community, and it will bring work with it. The Gateway programme being run at Lytton High School is a way for builders to engage with young people, to find those who are suitable for apprenticeships, and to stand alongside them and encourage them into their industry.

We have had a shortage of teachers. This year the Government is training 700 more teachers than predicted roll growth says we will need. That is a significant increase.

💬 Jim Peters: Too late.

I hear comments from members who actually were not even in the House when the National Government was in office. I am interested to ask them what members opposite did. They ignored the fact that there was going to be a teacher shortage, and left the incoming Labour Government to pick up the pieces. We are happy to do that. It is what we always do after a National Government. We are good at it. We will ensure that the schools in Gisborne are able to attract the type of staff they need.

I have waited a long time in this House to be able to give a speech about prosperity and growth in the regions. It took a Labour Government to deliver it. I look forward to working with any member on the other side of the House who is keen to encourage that sort of growth in his or her community, and I look forward to it being sustained.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): The slot for New Zealand First will be split, with 5 minutes for each speaker. There will be a bell at the end of each 5 minutes.

Kia ora tātau, fellow MPs. I welcome members back to the House for the new year, and I look forward to this next session. I would like to endorse the Rt Hon Winston Peter’s reply to the Prime Minister’s speech yesterday. As New Zealand First’s spokesperson on conservation, I did not hear one thing from the Prime Minister about this very important portfolio. Then, listening to Mr Carter’s speech last night, I came to the conclusion that she had left it to Robinson Crusoe—the Minister who was stranded on the Auckland islands with Boy Friday. In his speech he was so proud that he had locked up large tracts of land and coastline. I say to Mr Carter that he should take stock of himself, because if he thinks he is going to lock up 10 percent of our coastline by 2010, then I warn him that Māori and other New Zealanders will vigorously challenge him over his department’s arrogant attitude. I say to him that if he is thinking that this is an indication of how efficient he is, then the Department of Conservation is in serious trouble.

The headlines to a very, very good article in the latest Independent, which no doubt everybody would have read, state: “Govt’s resource grab dices with sea law”. The article states: “Conservation Minister Chris Carter is likely to face legal challenge under international laws if the government proceeds with plans to tie up vast areas of ocean and ‘no-take’ marine reserves. ‘No-take’ means no economic activity: no fishing, no oil/gas exploration, no mining, etc.”

Let us look at the effect of locking up 10 percent of our coastline. Members should listen to these facts: New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone is the largest in the world behind Indonesia, Australia, and USA at 1.3 million square nautical miles. I will give more facts. The length of New Zealand’s coastline is 5,650 kilometres. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to calculate that 10 percent of that is 565 kilometres. Therefore, 10 percent could be used most effectively to alienate traditional fishing grounds, leaving vast areas of non-productive barrens. Where is the Government’s consultation plan for Māori? There is not one, and there has not been one. I say to those Māori MPs over there that Māori will be watching, listening, and monitoring their progress in locking up 10 percent of the coastline.

I say to Mr Carter, the Minister of Conservation, that there has been raping and pillaging of our kai moana. In the past 2 months, groups have been apprehended with large quantities of paua—for example, a person had $880,000 in the bank and had been on the dole for 11 years. That is what I call progress. If the Minister does not stop this, locals will take it into their own hands and someone will get hurt. I listened to Mr Tamihere tonight, prattling on—

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: A good speech!

I said he was prattling on. He became so excited that he forgot who he was. He needs to consider whether he is the true role model for our youth.

I am really pleased to contribute in this first debate of the year. Yesterday in her speech the Prime Minister spoke about children and young people being the future of the nation. Unfortunately, the New Zealand Living Standards report and the OECD report on social indicators make very grim reading for New Zealand and this Government. New Zealand First believes that the potential development of a significant number of young people is at risk, and some of the reasons for that can be directly linked to poverty in New Zealand.

Family poverty is becoming increasingly evident in the area of dental health. The rate of tooth decay in children is rising rapidly because sugar drinks are the cheapest drinks for families to purchase. That is an appalling state of affairs for a nation with a dairy economy. Has any emphasis or teaching been put into schools to educate our children about the prevention of tooth decay? The answer is a resounding no. The district health boards have insufficient funding for the dental therapists to carry out this function. Prevention is always better than cure, and it is far less expensive than the drilling, filling, or extraction routine. Additional funding for dental therapists to carry out this aspect of health education in schools is absolutely essential and would save essential, valuable health dollars. The old saying “a stitch in time saves nine” definitely applies to this aspect of health education. Dental therapists are at schools on a relatively regular basis in most areas of New Zealand and are a very professional and accessible resource. The bottom line is that all children in New Zealand should know how to use a toothbrush and toothpaste and how best to prevent or minimise tooth decay. We all had the benefit of that health education and awareness at school, and so should our children.

This essential service is underfunded and under-resourced. The dental service is a quality service, and it deserves recognition for the part it plays in ensuring the well-being and health of our children. Fluoridation of water, particularly in Northland, would assist children. A group advocated for this at Waitangi on Waitangi Day, but, unfortunately, funding is an issue for councils. Child health and reducing the rate of decay in our children’s teeth are not priorities for local councils; rather the Government is responsible for these, and New Zealand First challenges the Government to act on the matter. The Prime Minister’s speech recognised that the future depends on our children and young people. It is now time for the Labour Government to get serious and invest in the dental health of our children.

The Prime Minister’s speech mentioned that legislation on asset testing is to be prepared. Action is urgently required in this area, and it has been for some time. Unfortunately, nothing in the speech mentioned any time frame for implementation. New Zealand First believes that any policy designed to impoverish our senior citizens is destructive and shortsighted. I recall, like many others, that in 1999 the Labour Government said that it would remove asset testing in its first term of Government, but did this happen? No, it did not. Is this lack of action to continue in this term? We have all heard these same words before.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.