Address in Reply

I stand to make a contribution, and it is a privilege to make a contribution to the Address in Reply debate. Te mea tuatahi māku e te Kaiwhakahaere o te Whare, kei te mihi atu ki a koe te rangatira, kua hoki nei koe ki te tūranga tino teitei tuarua mō te whakahaere kaupapa i roto i te Whare. Kei te mihi hoki ki tō tātau Kaiwhakahaere tuatahi a Margaret Wilson me wō hoa tokorua, a Anne Hartley me Ross Robertson.

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

[The first thing for me to do, Mr Deputy Speaker, is to congratulate you on becoming Deputy Speaker of the House. It is a great honour indeed, as well. I congratulate our Speaker, Margaret Wilson, also, as well as your Assistant Speakers, both Ann Hartley and Ross Robertson.]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I think it was with generosity that one of your Assistant Speakers, Ross Robertson gave—I thought for a while that he was making a Speech from the Throne—a bilingual and multicultural interpretation of his responsibilities to this House, and I think it was appreciated by everybody here.

But I just want to say, Mr Deputy Speaker, that it is indeed interesting to hear contributions from members across on the other side of the House who have been recycled and reincarnated back to this Chamber. I find it mind-boggling that some of them have had some sort of memory loss about their contributions and where they stood in this House several years ago. Who was it who said: “I will never sit at the same Cabinet table as Jenny Shipley.”? I need to be reminded because I myself am suffering some sort of memory loss. Who was it? Who was the chief of the waka-jumpers? That very legislation is coming before this House again. Who was the chief? Who sat side by side with the Rt Hon Winston Peters, now the Minister of Foreign Affairs? Who held his hand? Who got up and praised Winston Peters some time ago? Who was it who sat in the same Cabinet as Jenny Shipley and other members of the Tory National Party? Who was it? I am at a loss to understand the credibility or the memory of some of the members who are making a contribution to this debate tonight. I am mind-boggled.

I am proud of Winston Peters, and I think he will make a good Minister of Foreign Affairs. I know that sticks in the craw of a number of Tory members. It sticks in their craw. Why? Because they are bad losers. They have not touched the ground yet. They have not realised that in fact they are not the Government. They lost the election and they lost the negotiations with the leader of New Zealand First to form a coalition. The time will come when Winston Peters spills the beans and tells this House exactly what happened and why he opted to enter an agreement with the Labour Party, which led to a Labour Government. Is not sour grapes a thing of the past?

I listened to the contributions that have been made by the so-called front bench of the National Party, and I heard them putting down the Minister of Foreign Affairs in all sorts of ways. Yet I wonder what they would say if the same member had decided to go with National. I heard the honourable member Simon Power criticising Winston Peters. I wonder, if National members had succeeded in forming some sort of ragtag coalition with Winston Peters, what—[Interruption] Come on! What would they be saying now? They would be saying: “Winston Peters is a good fella. He’s my mate. He’s my whanaunga. He’s a good guy. Don’t you criticise Winston Peters; he’s part of the National Party now.” But because he did not go with the National Party, and because he had the wisdom and the vision to come to an arrangement with Labour—and with Peter Dunne—all of a sudden there is gnashing of teeth and frothing at the mouth from the Tories on the other side of the House.

But I want to talk about something that makes me proud to be a Māori. The Speech from the Throne, which acknowledged the need to recognise the emergence of a new, dynamic Māori nation was, I think, unprecedented in the history of this House. Further, I want to compliment my colleague from Te Tai Tokerau, Shane Jones, on his visionary speech and his hopes for this nation and the Māori people. That is the type of leadership that is needed in the new Māori generation—not the type of leadership that locks us into the Stone Age, into the grievance mode, forever. The type of leadership we need should be based on the economic future and the ability and the energies that our Māori nation has to move forward in a new direction in a new generation. We need to unlock the energies and the potential of our young people—not have them look backwards all the time, locked into the grievance mode, the Stone Age mode. I came from the Stone Age mode, and I tell members that I am glad I moved out of it. It is inspiring to see Māori leaders who get up and look to the future. Their vision is for a united nation, a united New Zealand, where both Māori and Pākehā stand tall in this country together, moving forward.

I say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, with respect, that there is something happening in our country that politics will never control, and that is sex. Go forth and multiply! That has been said in the wisdom of the Gospels—go forth and multiply—and New Zealanders know how to do that. If members have a look in our schools and go out on our streets, they will see a new generation of New Zealanders moving around with aspirations and looking forward. That new generation recognises the value of education, recognises the value of being respected, and recognises the value of employment. Those young people are moving forward without any baggage of grievance hanging over their heads, without any of the clouds of negativity associated with that. Every Māori has the capacity, and is proud to be able to stand beside anybody else and achieve and succeed in this country of ours.

But I want to put a challenge to some of those other leaders across on the other side of the House who want to lock us into some sort of grievance mode, into the Stone Age, into going backwards. I say to them that they should look to the future for our people and our young people. They should give them a go, and should unshackle the chains of grievance and victimhood. They should unshackle those chains and give our young people and the Māori nation an opportunity to move forward together with the rest of New Zealand so that we can achieve the potential of our young people and can have a new and dynamic Māori nation. This is the call from Māoridom. This is the call we can achieve. We do not need the platitudes I hear all the time. We can achieve, we stand tall in our country, and we can move forward. We are as good as anybody else. We can achieve in the education field, we can achieve in higher education, we can achieve in business, and we are doing it now. That was the emphasis that Shane Jones put in his speech yesterday—exactly that. Those are the opportunities for our people, and for the emergence of a new Māori nation.

Nō reira, e te Kaiwhakahaere kei te mihi whānui atu ki a koe me ngā mema, tātau katoa e noho nei i raro i te tuanui o tēnei Whare huri ana, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, ā, kia ora mai anō tātou katoa.

[And so, Mr Deputy Speaker, I extend a huge greeting to you, to the members, and indeed to all of us seated under the roof of this House: greetings, and greetings to you right around, and thank you to all of us.]

Mr Deputy Speaker, it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair in an elevated position compared with the one you held previously. I would like to congratulate you on that. Frankly, it is disappointing to me that you are not in an even more elevated position. Nevertheless, I offer my congratulations to your colleagues, as well.

This week, for our country, the competition just became a lot tougher. Australia is passing innovative industrial law, and it already has productivity growth that is higher than New Zealand’s. Australia has 2 percent annual productivity growth; we have about 1.5 percent or 1 percent. The Prime Minister said in her speech that that is the big challenge. Well, I have to ask the Government what kind of plan it has to address it. The reality is that the Government ignores the advice of the OECD. The OECD has said that one of the major blockages to growth in this country is our sclerotic industrial law. This Labour Party, in Government, has held our nation back. That is the truth of it.

I challenge Parliament: under this new regime, Labour, United Future, New Zealand First, the Greens, the Māori Party, and ACT can change that. I will be introducing a member’s bill that will provide for a 90-day probation period. I have heard New Zealand First say that that is what it wants. Mr Peter Brown has said he supports that. Well, he will have the opportunity to actually vote for it. It is the same for United Future, which will also have the opportunity to vote for it. With this bill we will find out whether those parties are the lapdogs of the Government or whether they have independent minds. That will be the real test. The Māori Party knows the challenge of growing the economy, as many of its members are involved in small business. They know the challenge of getting young people into their first job. They also will have the opportunity to give people a chance.

That is what the 90-day probation period is actually about—it is about giving people a chance. It is not some kind of radical measure, as the Labour Party would have the country believe. New Zealand is one of only two countries in the OECD that do not have any form of probation period. I say to the Government that if it is serious about productivity growth, it will unshackle the economy where it counts. Where it counts is in making extra jobs for people who need a break. That will be the acid test for those parties when my legislation is presented to this House.

It will not surprise members to know that over the past few weeks I have received literally hundreds of emails, letters, and phone calls from people up and down our country. And there is a common thread: people are fed up with this Government’s political correctness. They are fed up with this Government’s excessive intrusion into their lives. Actually, Labour may want to reflect on why this position has attracted so much attention. The reason is that people know that political correctness is a real issue. I heard some members, in their maiden speeches, totally misconstrue what it is about. The public knows that this Government would sooner be engaged in social engineering than in anything else. For heaven’s sake, that is exactly why the Prime Minister came to this Parliament! She wants to remake this country. Has she ever given New Zealanders the chance to vote directly on prostitution? Did any New Zealander get the direct opportunity to vote on that issue? The answer is no. Did any New Zealander get the direct opportunity to vote on civil unions? The answer is no. Poll after poll indicated that New Zealanders did not want those changes.

People are sick and tired of social engineering, because it is all about trying to control the way they think and the way they lead their lives. Labour has presided over a project that is intended to fundamentally change this country. That is why I am receiving all of those emails, letters, and phone calls. People know that the issue is real.

The education sector is particularly prone to trying to embark on the social engineering project. It is part of the sisterhood Helen Clark has put together for that purpose. It is not surprising that education would be the focus of social engineering. Why? Because the Government wishes to change the views and attitudes of young people. How does it do it? It promotes things that may seem innocuous, like sports games with no scores. What could be wrong with that? It helps people to participate. That is the idea of the Labour Government. Who gets fooled? No child gets fooled. Children know who won, who lost, and what the score was. [Interruption] The Government junior whip might ask why scores matter. Actually, games are about lessons in life. When people sometimes do not win or succeed, they have the incentive to try harder in the future in order to better themselves. That is actually what competition and success are all about. It is about building on things that do not go quite right and about doing them better next time. But Labour does not understand that.

Of course, primary school is only where political correctness started. The next step was the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). Dr Lockwood Smith has advised me that it was intended that NCEA would be competitive and that people would know whether they had passed or failed. But under Labour and the teachers unions, the idea of failure has gone out the window. People do not know whether they fail a subject under the NCEA. It is not recorded. An achievement pass is given to those scoring between 45 and 60 percent. I have to ask the Government whether such people have passed or failed—whether they knew more of the subject or less of it. Let me tell members that on that basis NCEA is not a preparation for life, for work, or for university. I have taught at university, and I can tell members that in the universities people do pass or fail. That is an important lesson. The people who fail their exams re-sit them in order to do better and improve themselves. That is the reality of the situation.

So political correctness is about changing the culture. It is actually about destroying aspiration. It is about destroying the values of this country, and the public knows that. Labour, of course, is deeply attached to political correctness, because it wants to control people’s lives. Why did my colleague have to assist people in her community to clear mangroves? The reason was that the Resource Management Act, as Bob Clarkson mentioned today in Parliament, has strangled the community concerned. Actually, in that particular case it has strangled the harbour. The community could not get a consent for that work. So what did the people do? They took direct action. They had no choice about that, because this Government thinks it knows what is best for them. The whole project against political correctness is about restoring power back to the people. It is about giving choice to people, and it is about valuing aspiration and success.

I want to close by returning to my initial theme. This country is in a competition. Our closest competitor is Australia. Australia is doing better than we are. It is passing laws that mean it will do better than us in the future. Australia achieves a 2 percent productivity gain each year, which is way better than us. If the Government wants to know the reason why New Zealanders are going to Australia, it is that people have better prospects there. The Government’s plan, as outlined in the Speech from the Throne, will not address that. That is why its project is doomed to failure, and that is why New Zealand First and United Future will rue the day they sheeted their fortunes to a failing Government. It is a huge mistake, and they will regret it.

If Wayne Mapp is the answer, what was the question? He is the eradicator—the Arnold Schwarzenegger of the National Party; the throbbing cerebral cortex of the National middle bench. He is a man whose highest calling—on display again tonight—is to take New Zealand away from the values that Kiwis have for a long time held dear. Kiwis want there to be a fair shake of the sav. They want the great Kiwi egalitarian tradition, reflected in the idea that every New Zealander, no matter what his or her race, creed, gender, or orientation, deserves to have fair opportunities in life. If that is what that member seeks to eradicate in the name of political correctness, it is he, and not this Government, that is doomed to fail.

The theme of my remarks tonight is in support of the Speech from the Throne, which affirmed that New Zealand’s future will be built upon the passion, innovation, and tenacity that we see in New Zealand’s past and present achievements in every aspect of our people’s endeavour. On the sports field, in the science laboratory, in space exploration, in film making, in fashion design, in the arts, in technology, and in business, New Zealanders are creating history for themselves and for us all. Today, Kiwis can be found hidden in the underbrush just about anywhere in the world. No fewer than 16 percent of our people are dispersed, but they add value when they are prepared to play their part in our future.

Our Speech from the Throne covered two key issues: it reaffirmed the Government’s aim of lifting productivity so that we can secure a prosperous future, and of transforming New Zealand’s business base so that we can lift output and value per hour worked through capital and technology. That is our core economic mission, and much of the Government’s programme of the next 3 years will be in support of that. I want to touch on just two themes. Firstly, I will address the skills shortage—

💬 Darren Hughes: Over there.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE:—like the one opposite—and, secondly, I will address the lifting of productivity through technology.

Let me turn to the first issue. It is my honour and privilege to be the Minister of Immigration in this Government. My aim is to build consensus throughout this House and the community around several key propositions. The first is that immigration is a no-brainer for our economic development. In a country where 56 percent of our firms tell us that skills shortages—the shortage of skilled labour—are a constraint, and where one in three firms tell us that it is their No. 1 problem, we cannot build a future that is prosperous without addressing that shortfall. We can get skills in one of three ways. We can train people, and we are doing that. We can bring back New Zealanders who have gained skills overseas, and we are doing that. The New Zealand Now website that we launched 2 weeks ago had 1.7 million hits in its first 2 days. It has had nearly 4 million hits in 2 weeks from Kiwis overseas who say that New Zealand is humming, and that it is time to come home. They want to look at that website, want to think about how New Zealand has changed, and want to come home. That is one thing we can do.

Another thing we can do is to shift from a passive approach to migration to an active one. We can go out and search for the best talent the world has to offer, and we can bring it home to add value to our economy. Under this Government, our migration system will be overwhelmingly built around the search for talent. We will make migration work in New Zealand’s national interest by adding value to our economy and our society. In order to do that we must rewrite the legislation, which, frankly, after many years of changes across both sides of the House, is now a complex mess. We will align our policy with the drive for skills and talent, and we will fundamentally rebuild the New Zealand Immigration Service through a baseline review. Yes, there will be some mistakes. Yes, there will be gaps in the information that the service holds on individual cases. It will be of no surprise to anybody if we have a few more of those over the coming years, but, frankly, that is not the issue. The issue is not whether there will be the odd hiccup; the issue is whether we can fundamentally redesign a system that suits New Zealand’s national interests. My commitment to the House is that, under this Government, we will achieve that transformation as part of a larger calling to rebuild this nation.

The second thing I want to talk about is our technology infrastructure. We live in a world where our children are millennials. They are born digital, they live online, they have iPods and podcasting, they live with multimedia, and they do not talk to their friends by ringing them up but by texting them instead. That is how they get dates and that is how they get jobs—that is life; it is online. Those kids cannot and will not stay in a country that is not enabled with world-class broadband. Our businesses, seeking to build global channels to markets or to a network of suppliers, will not be able to conduct business if their competitors have fast, cheap broadband but they do not. That is once again why the Speech from the Throne stated that building a competitive, world-class information and communications technology infrastructure around accessible broadband is a must-have for the New Zealand economy.

The Government is making two key contributions to that aim. The first is called the Digital Strategy. It is a short, crisp, punchy road map of $400 million worth of programmes that we are implementing systematically over the next 4 years. The aim is to boost the demand for information and communications technology by addressing connectivity, user capability, and content, and we are rolling that programme out progressively over the next 4 years. It is a win-win situation. It is a good news story—the business sector loves it, the community sector loves it, and it is coming to a town or a city near people. There are contestable funds that individual Kiwi communities and Kiwi groups can apply for support from, in order to do cool new stuff in information and communications technology that they could not do before. We will be laying open-access fibre and open-access highband with microwave, and we will be doing that to ensure that we break some of the old bottlenecks and get bandwidth to Kiwis who need it.

But that will not be enough. It will not be enough to do that without giving some serious attention to the regulatory framework. We have the most expensive mobile phones in the OECD. We are 30th out of 30 OECD countries. That is a travesty. That is why, when the Telecommunications Commissioner reports back on mobile phone termination rates early in the new year, this Government will take those recommendations extremely seriously. I will boil it down. The customer is paying 27c a minute for termination, when it should cost 12c to 14c. People are being gouged, and that has to stop.

We have one of the lowest uptake rates in the Western World for broadband Internet. Why is that? It is not just because we have free local calls. It is not just because we have a long, skinny country with mountains in the middle. It is because some companies are defending a 20th century business model in the face of 21st century demand. The Government’s message to them is to get with the programme. If companies want to invest for the future and build a world-class infrastructure, we will support them. But if they want to starve this country of the highways of tomorrow and isolate our millennial children so that they leave our shores in order to live digital lives, then we will not stand for that. That is too important to ignore.

This country must move forward in the 21st century. This Government is on a historic mission to lift our productivity, and we will achieve that. We will bring this House and the people of New Zealand with us, because there is, at the end of the day, no alternative. It is a no-brainer to say that we need skilled migrants to fill our labour shortages and boost our talent pool, and it is just as much a no-brainer to say that we need cheap, fast available broadband in order to do business and connect with Kiwis around the world. Those are just two of the hundreds of programmes this Government will roll out in the next 3 years, in support of the vision that the Governor-General laid out in the Speech from the Throne.

In conclusion, I say this Government is in a hurry. Business as usual will not get us there. This Government is prepared to take the odd risk in order to deliver every New Zealand child the future he or she deserves, and I and my colleagues are proud to be part of it.

Mr Deputy Speaker, before I begin my speech in this Address in Reply debate I would like to congratulate you on your role, and the Speaker, Margaret Wilson, and the Assistant Speakers on their roles. It is great to know we are in safe pairs of hands.

I would like to congratulate new members in the House—this is an exciting place and they will enjoy the cut and thrust—those returning to the House, and the new party. I think it is exciting to see more diversity coming into our House. I welcome back Nandor Tanczos.

What did this election deal to us? It dealt a very strange hand, but I know that a Government under the leadership of Helen Clark was voted for by the people of New Zealand. They voted for a Labour-led Government, and that is what we have. It is a victory for the type of country that the majority of people in this country want. We have leadership that is intelligent, experienced, and highly visible both nationally and internationally.

We have got vision in this Government. I have heard people ask what the vision is, and the Speech from the Throne delivered the vision of the sort of society that I came into the House to build, and that is one that is inclusive, tolerant, creative, and proud. That is the sort of society we are proud of, one that we love, one that values excellence and hard work. We have policies that address need, not back-pocket greed, which nearly was the success of the day. I was deeply disturbed to hear on the campaign trail “What’s in it for me?”, not “What’s best for mine and for those in the generations to come?”. We have a proud country—telling our stories, singing our songs, and making our movies. We have a front bench to be proud of: strength, diversity, hard work, women, experience, and ownership of policies—and it is policies that I will go on to talk about.

It is not a group of old hacks who believe they are the natural Government of this country. National members are already baying for a leadership change, asking why Don Brash did not take them there. Certainly, out in the regions of New Zealand there was a definite sniff for change, and I felt it very much all around me in Rotorua. But it did not happen, so the Opposition will be baying for a change of leadership. I must say, from our region, that the look of Mr Brash with Judith Collins beside him was a very frightening look for New Zealand. It was a very anti-woman, anti-family look that I personally found very frightening. The campaign was a campaign driven by wedge politics, and I had not felt that before in the last two campaigns. A National Government would have damaged the New Zealand that we have worked so hard over the last 6 years to build. The public sector, which now has confidence and leadership, and is a public sector to be proud of, would have been absolutely slashed and burned.

But I want to talk as well about policy, that came out of the Speech from the Throne, and health policy in particular. That is my love and I am sorry to have left it behind, really, but I have gone on to a new and exciting challenge. We have actually consolidated the health sector after the terrible so-called health reforms of the 1990s. We value practitioners. We have learnt the art of valuing health practitioners, and we would never privatise in the health sector. I want just to mention midwives, in relation to valuing practitioners. I am afraid that Garry Evans, a coroner, came out with some very damaging and not constructive recommendations when he looked at midwifery practice. That is what primary health organisations are all about, and the ministry is already getting general practitioners and midwives together to work more closely in the primary health organisation environment. This Government also settled the nurses’ award, which had been left in abeyance for 9 years. We are getting on with valuing those people in the health sector.

But there are two new pieces of policy that I think were missed in the election and that we are particularly proud of. The first is the Universal Newborn Hearing Screening programme. Now that we have got that, and also school-ready checks for every New Zealand child, we will prevent children falling through the gaps in their learning and skill acquisition. We will have resilient children who are ready to learn, to soak up what is there for them, to grab opportunities with two hands.

Wherever was the Opposition’s health policy? In the entire campaign I never heard it mention one piece of constructive health policy. Perhaps we have to wait 3 more years to hear what it was.

Our social policy is something to be proud of. The Working for Families package of structural benefit reform will assist 350,000 New Zealanders, including those in work. It will raise the bar for low and middle income New Zealanders, so that they too can take part with every opportunity to add to productivity in our country. The focus on youth is also something I can see we will move into in the next 3 years, with youth transition programmes helping children move from school into work, with the Gateway programme, and with youth justice facilities to help turn our kids round. Youth restoration programmes help young people go back into communities and grab skills and learning.

The focus on apprenticeships and skills-based training is incredibly exciting. Our employment statistics are an example of something we can be so proud of. The number of people on the domestic purposes benefit dropped by 3,329 in 1 year. When I hear some of the speeches in this debate refer to beneficiary dependency it makes me mad and sad, because beneficiaries are getting back into the workforce, just as we expected them to do.

In conclusion, I do not ever want to be involved again in such an ugly, mean-spirited campaign that did not talk about policy. The allegations made were mean and untrue. There was questionable funding of campaigns—that was so overt—the media withdrew from informing the public properly, and there was wedge politics of the worst kind, scoring on the backs of minorities. I come from Rotorua, and our community has been ripped apart by an Opposition that pitted Māori against Pākehā in a way such as I have never seen before. Thank goodness I am there to help mend that gap in the next 3 years! If PC stands for political conviction to make a difference for the families and the people of this country, then Labour and I will be there.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 9.58 p.m.