General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. What a bad day for Opposition members. They spend every morning girding their loins for question time, scurrying through the Internet and all the newspapers, trying to dig out a story. At their procedures meeting they work themselves up about how they will knock over a Minister that day, and then they come down to the House at 2 o’clock. Would not members rather be watching the cricket? Opposition members are failing in their job of trying to hold this Government to account. It is embarrassing! For 9 years members opposite saw themselves bestriding the political landscape as the health system collapsed, the education system failed New Zealanders, and the welfare system and bureaucracy blew out of control. Now that they are in Opposition they come down to the House every question time and, simply, they not only fail themselves but also fail New Zealand.

It is no wonder “Mr 3 Percent” is shaking every time he gets up to ask a question in the House. Have members noticed how his bits of paper are folded up and how he moves his hands? He is not worried about the question; he is worried about the looks that Shane Jones and David Cunliffe are giving each other the whole time. But I do not want to focus on what does not matter; I want to focus on the huge challenges that face this country because of what we have inherited from the previous Government, and also because of the worsening financial crisis.

The most important question raised in this House today was the issue of the balance of payments and the challenge that it raises for New Zealand, which the Minister of Finance, Bill English, spoke about. There is no doubt that whereas when Labour members were last in Opposition they spent years travelling around the country talking about the burden of the public balance of payments, it is now significantly worse than when that party came to power in 1999, and it was significantly worse when they left office, after the best economic conditions we have had in this country for 9 years.

New Zealanders know they have a Government that is focused on the issues that matter to them. They have a Government that is focused on improving the public safety of New Zealanders. Judith Collins is right on the money when she demands improved performance from the Department of Corrections. This Government will support her in ensuring that public safety is improved. She is also doing that role as the Minister of Police.

New Zealanders also want to support the Minister of Education, Anne Tolley, in her excellent work in getting bureaucracy and administrative overheads out of the Tertiary Education Commission, so that we can back our good tertiary institutions that want to go forward and produce good education for young New Zealanders.

We also support the leadership of our Prime Minister in working, together with Ms Bennett, on the 9-day fortnight, which will give us an opportunity to put a job support scheme in place for New Zealanders at a time when they need it. This country is facing increasing economic challenges, and many New Zealanders are confronting the difficulties of those challenges. I know that in my own electorate of the Bay of Plenty builders, plumbers, and electricians who have never been out of work in 30 years are now facing that reality as the effects of the world economic crisis reach New Zealand. I know that the Minister for Social Development and Employment is keen to ensure that we can assist those people in those small businesses.

But the failure of members opposite is no more stark than when it comes to health. Over the last few weeks the National Government has demonstrated that despite a doubling of the health budget in the last 9 years, New Zealanders’ access to health services has got worse. Fewer and fewer New Zealanders, on a per head of population basis, have had access to elective surgery. It has been harder and harder for them to get timely service in our nation’s emergency departments. We know that New Zealanders want improvements in those areas, and that is why New Zealanders support this Government. This Government is focusing on the issues that matter to New Zealand at this difficult time. Day after day the Opposition focuses on the irrelevancies.

I really enjoyed Tony Ryall’s little performance at the beginning of his speech—his little dance and hop, and the waving of his arm. I think it deserves a nice little song to go with it, like the song that was sung to him at the opening of Wellington Hospital, which was “If You’re Happy and You’re Healthy, Clap Your Hands”. So let us give him a big clap—the clap that he deserves.

I have to tell the House that the mask is starting to crack. The National Government’s carefully arranged, smiley, friendly face mask is starting to change; it is on the move. Day by day the cracks are getting wider as the Government’s real agenda is starting to be exposed. National members duped the people of New Zealand into believing that they were not the Tories of the past and that they were not Don Brash’s National Party from a mere 3 years ago. National members said that that party had been killed off and buried. They said that they no longer believed in race-based attacks on Māori, that they no longer believed in bashing workers and beneficiaries, that the privatisation agenda was gone, that their Business Roundtable mates were gone, and that they were now “Labour-lite”.

As John Key said, it was a matter of doing whatever it took to get into Government. Our political foes cuddled up to all our policies. They positively embraced and extolled them. One could almost accuse them of thinking they invented our policies. They tried to convince New Zealanders that they could have all of Labour’s policies and a brand new, shiny, smiley leader thrown in for good measure. They told voters that they now backed paid parental leave; 4 weeks’ paid holiday; Kiwibank; KiwiSaver; early childhood education, although minus the word “free”; the Superannuation Fund; affordable visits to the doctor; and our antinuclear policy—the list went on. They told New Zealanders that, yes, they could have it all. But in the past few weeks large cracks have been appearing in the carefully arranged mask.

We are now seeing glimpses in Government of the real National Party agenda. That agenda is not being acted out by the National Party leader; he is doing what Bill English says he always does best—just bouncing from cloud to cloud. John Key is the emperor with no clothes. If we take away the smiley face, the talkfest, the token gestures, and the story about the State house and how his mum was a solo mother, there is very little behind that. The real agenda is being acted out by the old National Party members. They never went away. They are the movers and shakers in Cabinet, and they have the same old policies, the same old rhetoric, and the same old results for New Zealanders. It was only a matter of days before the National Government brought in the first bill to bash workers—the fire-at-will bill. It was not long before they attacked public servants, and it was not long before they wanted to fiddle with the superannuation scheme.

We have the old apparatchik, Bill English. He is still there; he has not changed. He never changed his mind about privatisation. The mask almost slipped down completely during the election campaign when he said that National would sell Kiwibank, but not just now. It is his job to soften up Kiwis for the fire sale that is coming. Then we have Tony Ryall. He has not changed his mind about carving up the public health system. He has not changed his mind about the people of New Zealand paying more to go to the doctor. Then there is Nick Smith. Before he even became the Minister for ACC he was planning to privatise accident compensation. One has to say that his extravagant language and over-the-top frenetic behaviour in the past few weeks must be aimed at scaring New Zealanders into accepting a second-rate scheme, privatisation, and cuts. Then there is Judith Collins. It did not take even 100 days before she got into privatising the prisons of New Zealand. Then there is the old plotter himself, Murray McCully—the mover and shaker of all National Party agendas. He has been busy destroying New Zealand’s international reputation regarding overseas aid.

You see, this Government has not changed its spots, because old leopards cannot. I tell New Zealanders to look out, because Don Brash Mark II is back. John Key might be the face—the mask—they are looking at, but behind that mask the same people are there. I say “Look out!” to Pacific Islanders, women, union leaders, workers, beneficiaries, Labour supporters, environmentalists, and artists. This is Groundhog Day.

I am not going to stand up here and criticise the National Party, nor am I going to stand up and criticise the Labour Party; I want to address an issue that I think is partisan to all members of Parliament. The Prime Minister was asked this afternoon about New Zealand superannuation, and he referred to the fact that $4.7 billion had been lost. But there is actually another loss, it is a very real loss, and it is a greater loss. It has been estimated that over the last 3 years some $6 billion has been lost by—or is now tied up in moratoriums on—finance companies. This money has been lost mainly by savers, and particularly by elderly savers, and I think that it is an issue that should concern all parliamentarians from all sides of the House.

About 46 finance companies have now collapsed, and I think that a number of issues come out of that. I will be raising, at the Commerce Committee tomorrow, the proposal that we have an investigation into what has given rise to these collapses, and what we can do to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen again. These collapses have had a huge impact on the lives of these people, mainly elderly people, who have worked their whole lives and raised their families. But now, in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and sometimes 90s, when they thought they had provided for their future and their retirement, they have now found that some, most, or all of their funds have been taken from them.

The issues I want to address are the issues of related party transactions between the shareholders and directors of finance companies with those finance companies. I want to raise the issue of dividends that have been passed to the owners of those finance companies, in some cases just a few weeks or months before those companies have collapsed. The issue arises as to the licensing of financial advisers, and I am aware that the previous Government introduced legislation that tightened up the regulations relating to financial advisers. We need to look at the quality of the advice that was given to those investors, those savers, and we need to look at the potential conflicts that are faced by financial advisers. We also need to look at the legal profession, to see whether people have been given bad advice, and to see whether money has been passed on to vendors of properties in excess of what would be normal.

A lot of people have lost a lot of money, and although it is very easy to say to those elderly people that they should go out and seek legal advice and commence legal proceedings, a lot of them have lost everything, or at least a lot. Last week I referred in this House to a meeting I had had with Ron Jensen, an elderly investor in his 70s from Hamilton. He and his wife invested in a unit that was supposedly sold to them by Blue Chip New Zealand. The sum of $200,000 was raised by taking a mortgage on his property, but the property that he was purportedly sold does not exist. It never existed; he may well have a claim against the solicitor who advised him on that transaction. These are issues I think we need to look at. Earlier this afternoon I brought to the House a petition by Suzanne Edmonds. This lady has championed the rights of some of these people, in relation to their losses, and she has called for a royal commission. I personally think that that is unrealistic, but a lot of these issues can be addressed by the Commerce Committee, and in particular the issue of the accountability of directors, trustees, company management, and other parties associated with failed finance companies.

This is a very real issue that concerns very real New Zealanders. It concerns New Zealanders who have worked for and given their all to this country. These are real people. Since I met Ron Jensen last week I have received a letter from a gentleman who has actually moved out of his house and is now living in a caravan. He is living in a caravan so that he can rent his family’s home to pay mortgagee payments. I recognise that these people are adults; they have gone into investments with their eyes open and with advisers, but in some cases they have been misled, duped, and possibly even defrauded. I think that this is a very serious issue that concerns all members in this Parliament. I have asked for the support of the National Party for an inquiry at the Commerce Committee level, and I have asked the support of Te Ururoa Flavell, the Māori Party member on that committee. This afternoon I have asked the chairman, the Hon Lianne Dalziel, for her support. So I hope that the Commerce Committee will be prepared to support the inquiry. Thank you.

We have just heard why the ACT Party is doing so well as opposed to the Labour Party; it has actually talked about something that is important. Instead of the deputy leader of the Labour Party giving us 5 minutes of personal abuse, let us talk about something that is important. People on this side of the House want to talk about what is important and what actually matters to New Zealanders. I will take a few minutes today to talk about the Auditor-General’s report into the management of offenders on parole, which, I can tell members, will not be, and has not been, brushed under the carpet and ignored. I know that is what Labour would have done with it, but I am setting higher standards than that. My focus, and the focus of this Government, is on public safety. I know that Labour would have brushed that report under the carpet.

Labour has never ever—not once—referred to the issue of public safety in all its many press releases, many questions, and many, many hours spent on this matter. Not once has Labour ever addressed the issue of the report—which is public safety—not once did Labour mention it. In fact, the Minister who was in charge of the Department of Corrections, and who is now the Leader of the Opposition, the Hon Phil Goff, was in charge during the whole time of the audit. He was in charge for that whole year, and he should have checked. Instead, unfortunately he just relied on what he was told without taking any basic steps on the issue. One thing we know is that after the coroner’s report came out, Mr Goff said: “Well, look, everything is obviously fixed; the coroner’s report has said that.”, because that is what Labour was told. He said that that was great: “We’re so proud of that.” That is what Mr Goff said, but unfortunately he never bothered to check. He was so keen setting himself up to become the next leader of the Labour Party, his eyes were not where they should have been.

It is important that the Department of Corrections, whose primary role is to keep the public safe, and its chief executive enjoy the full confidence of the public. I am very pleased that the chief executive has committed to rebuilding my confidence and the public’s confidence in the department and in him. In the coming months I will be expecting Mr Matthews to work hard to gain that confidence. I will be holding him to very high standards, and I expect that the State Services Commissioner will hold him to similarly high standards. My concern was, and remains, that the serious public safety issues be addressed in the department. I have done everything in my power, and will continue to do so, to ensure that that issue is addressed. The State Services Commissioner has recommended that the chief executive and I engage an independent person to chair an expert panel to review the Community Probation and Psychological Services’ procedures and performance measures. We are working towards that. I think that that will bring a great mix of internal and external participants with expertise in change management to assist Mr Matthews to lift up the performance at the department. I am confident that with that support Mr Matthews will be able to undertake this task. If not, I expect that the State Services Commissioner, will hold him to account.

The Department of Corrections deals with large numbers of society’s most difficult and dangerous people, and we know there are always going to be issues. Unfortunately, when there are an awful lot of very dangerous people locked up together, bad things will happen. That does not mean, though, that we should ever accept that the Department of Corrections’ failures should be taken as a matter of course. When I received that report from the Auditor-General I was staggered at the extent of non-compliance, given that the audit took place after Karl Kuchenbecker’s murder. Following that terrible tragedy, the previous Government gave assurances. One of the things Mr Goff said was that: “We must learn from failings which occurred during this tragic episode.” Well, yes! His Government even said that it had “moved swiftly to tighten up the way probation was managed.” I do not really think so. That Government said that it identified and addressed the issues—no, it did not. It also claimed that it had remedied the deficiencies in the system that were made apparent by the Karl Kuchenbecker tragedy. I do not think that actually happened, and that is the tragedy. How many people have to die before anybody cares? Unfortunately, we have heard everything from Labour’s members—because it was all on their watch; every single bit of this was on the Labour Government’s watch—except anything about public safety and improving the system.

I would like to talk about something very important today, and that is education. When I came back into the House after question time I heard Tony Ryall, the Minister of Health, boasting about what the new National Government is doing, and he mentioned Mrs Anne Tolley, the Minister of Education. I was thinking about that comment, and I remembered a press release that I had read just today on the Internet from the New Zealand Principals Federation, put out on 8 March. It says “Minister of Education missing in action”. This is from a press release of the New Zealand Principals Federation. I will read a little bit of it, because I guess it contradicts what Mr Ryall said a few minutes ago in this House: “The New Zealand Principals’ Federation is disappointed and angry that Education Minister Anne Tolley failed to appear at its annual Presidents Moot held on Friday. The meeting, held in Wellington, brought together representatives from local and regional principal associations throughout the country, as well as sector heads from the Ministry of Education, Teachers’ Council, Education Review Office, NZEI and directors of the Ariki Project. … The theme of the Moot was ‘Moving Forward Together’.”, but the principals have made the point of asking where the Minister of Education was. She was supposed to turn up but she failed to show.

She has also just told the Auckland Primary Principals Association that she is not going to their meeting in early April in Auckland. Earlier today, Plains FM, a popular radio station in Christchurch, rang me to ask whether I, as the former Minister of Education, was prepared to talk on their radio station today about school funding. I was delighted to, and they said they had been trying for weeks and weeks to get the Minister of Education, Mrs Tolley, but she just would not go on. Why is she, in the words of the New Zealand Principals Federation, “missing in action”?

Mrs Tolley is missing in action because of the very points that my colleague Annette King made earlier. She is embarrassed and ashamed, because during the election campaign she and her party went out to New Zealand and said they would not change anything; they would keep all the policies that Labour had put in place and that were popular. In education, Labour doubled education funding from over $5 billion to over $10 billion. We brought in 20 free hours, we put in 7,000 teachers above roll growth, we built 42 schools, and we removed interest on student loans. We did lots and lots of things that were incredibly popular; Mrs Tolley said “Oh, no—we’re not going to change any of those.”

By the way, when she was asked a question about the 90-day rule at New Zealand Educational Institute meetings, she said “Oh, that is not going to impact on education, on teachers and support workers in schools and early childhood centres. They are not going to be affected by that.” Well, we discovered the untruth of that statement very soon in the new National administration, the new Government. We saw before Christmas that Mrs Tolley had been very untruthful on the 90-day rule in the period before the election.

She has also gone to ground because of a few other issues that are coming to the fore. One is pay negotiations. The kindergarten teachers’ collective agreement—now expired—has to be negotiated. We have had pay parity as an absolute principle in education; indeed, it was brought in by a National Government in the early 1990s—parity between secondary and primary teachers, and between primary and kindergarten teachers. When people have the same qualifications and the same experience, they get the same pay. We in the Labour Party think that educating small children is just as important—in fact, some could argue more important—as educating older adolescents, because it is about the educational journey that children are set on, right at the beginning. The kindergarten teachers’ collective agreement and the agreement on support staff have now expired. Mrs Tolley, the new education Minister who was described by the New Zealand Principals Federation as “missing in action”, has not yet even given an instruction to the Ministry of Education to begin negotiations. In the so-called 104 days of action, there has been very little action indeed.

Throughout the education sector at the moment there is enormous anxiety about some of the fantastic programmes that have taken place under the Innovations Pool funding programme. I see Paula Bennett, my colleague from west Auckland, over on the other side of the House. She knows of two projects in west Auckland, because local principals have been to see her. There is a truancy initiative of $80,000, which was signed out by me as education Minister last year, and the Waitakere learning plan, which had another $100,000 signed out by me. That money, already appropriated, has been frozen by Mrs Tolley in her role as the Minister of Education; those are just two small examples of what is happening all over the country.

Let us make no mistake; this National Government is focusing on what matters. We face some of the toughest times we have had in a very long time, and some of our older people will remember the effects of a global downturn. They got through it by banding together as families, as communities, and as Kiwis. We can get through this downturn as well, but it requires decisive action. It requires a Prime Minister like John Key, and it requires decisive action from our leaders at all levels of society. We are worried about our young people, who will find it harder to enter the workforce, but at the moment we fear most for the hard-working, low-income Kiwis who are supporting families through these hard times.

Although the previous Government sat around hand-wringing and talking about capacity building—which I must say, when I look at the bureaucracy around it, I now think meant empire building—this Government is getting on with concentrating on the action that is needed. Only a few weeks after the Job Summit—in fact, less than 2—this Government is working quickly, because every day that we hesitate more jobs are, unfortunately, lost. New Zealanders are already feeling the economic squeeze. Employers are holding off on making decisions while they look at just developing policy. We have wasted no time in putting the job support scheme in place, because people need to know about it now. This is the first initiative to come out of the Job Summit. It will be available from 27 March, which is exactly 1 month after the Prime Minister’s Job Summit.

Let me give members some details of the scheme. It is for those businesses that have 100 or more employees, and about 1,600 companies that will fit into that category. They employ around 580,000 people. As I said, it will be available from 27 March 2009 through to December 2010. A business can be in the scheme only for a period of 6 months, and it can be in it only once. The subsidy is paid directly to employers to pass on to employees, because we already have a mechanism for it to be done and the actual intention was to try to keep the administration down where we could.

A voluntary agreement must be agreed between employers and employees that they will reduce work hours by up to a maximum of 10 hours a fortnight. There also needed to be a ratio between those whom employers were looking at making redundant and the number of people who were in on the scheme, so we have made that a 1:10 ratio. Companies need to stand up and say they are looking at making 10 people redundant, say why they are looking at that, and say that as a consequence of that, 100 people have come to a voluntary agreement to reduce their hours. That will bring down the wages bill for the company and hopefully get it through a temporary tough time, so it can then pull itself out of it. The scheme provides the breathing space that is needed in these tough economic times.

We anticipate that 20,000 to 25,000 workers will take up this scheme. That does not mean that as many as that were necessarily going to be made redundant—as I say, we are looking at a ratio of 1:10—but that number is pretty hard to get to. We are not exactly sure how many workers are going to come into the scheme. It will work with some businesses and not others, and I think that is really important to know. We do not think that this scheme is the fix-all for all businesses and for all workers who are out there trying to survive, and unfortunately some jobs will still be lost. We have to be realistic; this scheme will not save every job. It is never going to be enough, but we have to do our bit. Workers will still face a cut in their income, and that is a reality. But that is better than not being in a job at all, and that is what this Government is focusing on trying to avoid.

I read a quote from Helen Kelly today, who said “We are very pleased to see the practical discussions … turn into real policy so quickly”. As I have said, every day that we hesitated, another job was lost, and this Government needed to work quickly.

💬 Sue Bradford: What will the workers be doing during the 5 hours?

One of our colleagues asks what the workers will be doing in the 5 hours that the Government is paying them for, and the answer is whatever they come to an agreement with their employer about. This Government puts no conditions on what employees will be doing in the 5 hours. So they could have the day off and go and spend it with their children at their school.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. To Aotearoa, I say that the previous speaker was the famed westie firefighter Paula Bennett, who, after having arrived in the role of Minister, is reduced to reading notes written by a primary school teacher because she cannot be let loose on a portfolio. Not only has she stood and misrepresented what the Job Summit has done, she has failed to tell New Zealand families, children, mothers, and fathers—

💬 Paul Quinn: How do you know? You weren’t even there.

Of course, that was Paul Quinn, the man who refuses to take responsibility for the destruction of Māori rugby in New Zealand. When is he going to resign? When is he going to stop double-dipping and give his job to Louisa Wall, a real rugby advocate? However, let me come back to the failed policies hidden by the previous speaker, Paula Bennett—no training, no human capital, a complete abandonment of any prospect of productivity—as she presides over fair-minded, industrious Kiwis being tossed on the scrap heap and given a morsel of 5 hours without an opportunity to transform themselves. Yet their Prime Minister boasts in the Wall Street Journal—it must have been short of news on that day. Something else was happening in Afghanistan, the satellite was in the wrong place in Iraq, so readers were reduced to reading John Key stating that he was going to pursue supply-side economics and shrink the State as a way of growing Aotearoa.

But I really want to talk today about the feline behaviour displayed to us by the Māori Party. The Māori Party boasted that they would come in, change the seabed and foreshore legislation, and bring rangatiratanga to this House. Today we saw the kapahaka, taiaha-swirling chief, Dr Pita Sharples, hiding behind the handsome bulk and frame of Gerry Brownlee—a rather dangerous thought. Of course Mr Brownlee was giving cover to the Māori Party, which has boasted and exaggerated what it will deliver, but now realises that the Foreshore and Seabed Act, which it falsely believed will be overturned, will never be repealed by National. I recall Gerry Brownlee and Simon Power nodding vigorously when the question of public access came up. Hone Harawira was up and down the country; he is the tomcat of that crowd over there. Now, in the behaviour of Pita Sharples today, we have a house cat hiding behind the master of the manor, Gerry Brownlee. Not only did they fail to address the issue, they have demonstrated today that they are joined because they are afraid.

Māori Party members are afraid to stand up and admit that, despite the fact that the Māori Party came into existence on the seabed and foreshore legislation, they have no intention of delivering. They are hoping and they falsely believe that, just because 2 or 3 years have passed, John Key, Gerry Brownlee, and the various other acolytes of Don Brash—who, only 3 to 5 years ago, were smashing the daylights out of the good name of Māori people—are going to deliver. The other thing they have forgotten about is that when they say that 23,000 Māori are doing the haka in joy because the seabed and foreshore legislation is going to be changed, those are the people who have already lost their jobs in terms of capacity to work full-time every day. They are young people 16, 17, 18, 19 or 20 years old.

Dr Sharples is hoping that there will be a brilliant diversion, and that all the whānau, the marae, and the hapū will do the haka over the seabed and foreshore and somehow forget about the fact that accident compensation is about to be stripped. They will soon lose a host of other entitlements in relation to hospital visits, health visits, and schools; as my learned and very influential colleague Chris Carter pointed out, schools are being run down—except private schools, which are going to be subsidised and bailed out. Those are the things—equity, development, truth, righteousness—that the Māori Party parrots on about every day. They will not be delivered on. The Māori Party cannot hide behind the rhetoric about the seabed and foreshore, and there is no profit in hiding behind Gerry Brownlee—emissions are both front and back in that regard. Kia tūpato.

Of course they are hoping that John Key, who wanders around like a male version of a Barbie doll up and down the country celebrating his 50th birthday along with Barbie, somehow can suck Aotearoa into believing that this is a friendly kind of Government. In actual fact, the power base lies with Tony Ryall and Bill English. It is a wicked recipe.

That was not a very convincing leadership bid from the member. It was indeed a very subtle one, if it was one at all.

Today I want to talk about the legacy of the last Labour Government in health, because it is of deep concern to all New Zealanders. What a huge sigh of relief we can breathe that an excellent John Key - led National Government is now in place to fix up the mess that Labour left. Four months on from when Labour left office it is important to outline just how badly the Labour Government mismanaged our health system. Who were the accountable former Ministers? First was the Hon Annette King, who in 1998 had the gall to state that a waiting list of 68,000 was criminal. Well, what an injudicious statement because it came back to bite her. She was the very Minister who then set about deceptively culling tens of thousands of New Zealanders from the waiting list. She sent them back to their general practitioners, to wait and wait, and some of them tragically died. Then of course there was the Hon Pete Hodgson, who helped to cement in the mesh of bureaucracy entangling the 21 district health boards and the 80 primary health organisations. That created a growth industry of filing clerks, and red tape strangulating any efficiency within the system. We know that there was no increase in productivity during those 9 years of the Labour Government.

What happened during that time? Crucial front-line clinical staff were neglected while Pete Hodgson talked and talked about workforce planning. That is all he did; he talked about workforce planning. In fact, Labour ordered 43 reports into health workforce planning in its time in office, and nothing happened. Thank goodness for National getting straight into action and getting straight into solutions, such as bringing in the voluntary student bonding scheme for doctors, midwives, and nurses employed in hard-to-staff areas and specialities. Then, of course, there was the Hon David Cunliffe, the man who said “I’m running the show.”, when the truth was that the show was wildly running out of control.

The Labour Government’s legacy in health is one of vastly increased spending—from $6 billion to $12 billion—and no increase in productivity. It was a legacy of vast increase in bureaucracy. In fact, just in the Ministry of Health alone a total of 1,430.7 full-time equivalent staff were employed in June 2008, compared with a year earlier when the number was 1,236. So that is 200 more staff in just a year. That is a recent example of how a bureaucracy just mushroomed under that Labour Government.

Years earlier it was Annette King who told New Zealand that as the 21 district health boards were formed, the Ministry of Health would be downsized. How wrong she was, once again. Thank goodness we have a new National Government that is concentrating on front-line clinical services rather than on bureaucrats.

There has been great concern about district health board deficits. The Labour Government said it would get the deficits down, but what was the headline on 9 December 2008? It was “DHB deficit blowouts greet new Health Minister”. The outgoing Labour Government had predicted district health board deficits totalling $111 million, but a 40 percent blowout in district health board deficits to over $150 million has been revealed by the Minister of Health, Tony Ryall. Annette King is the very one who kept on saying that the Labour Government would control those deficits. The mismanagement of this system by Labour—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker): I regret to advise the member that his time has expired.

Dr Paul Hutchison is, I think, the very embodiment of what we are seeing with this National Government. It is reverting to type and going back to the old ways that it has always used. It is serendipitous that National’s response to the economic downturn happens to look exactly like its programme in the 1990s. How serendipitous!

Actually, it is not serendipity at all; it is planning. The National Government has a planned approach to going back to the 1990s. Cuts to accident compensation provisions, the privatisation of accident compensation, and the underfunding of superannuation are all coming back, as happened in the 1990s under a National Government. But it goes on from there. Tax cuts that favour the rich over the poor—does that sound at all familiar from a National Government? Yes, I remember that. National did that in the 1990s, as well. And what about bringing back titles for knights and dames, in this time of economic downturn? If that is not elitism, and a case of National at its best, then I do not know what is.

But it goes further than that. We are already starting to see apprenticeships disappear under this National Government, just like they did in the 1990s.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Come on!

Well, Gerry Brownlee should wait to see the figures, because I think he will find that under this National Government, apprenticeships will be on the decline, just as they were in the 1990s. National’s mask is slipping and it is not very pretty underneath there. We know that the National Government is definitely reverting to type. I have many more examples. What about reducing workers’ rights so that they do not have any in the first 90 days of their employment? If that is not the National Government reverting to type, then I do not know what is.

I will spend a little time talking about another area where National members really have shown their true colours, and where they really have shown exactly the ideology that we have always known was there. They have tried to hide, and they have perhaps got away with it for about 100 days, but now the mask is slipping and they cannot get away with it. I am talking about pay equity. In 1990, when National last came to power, what was the very first piece of legislation it got rid of? It was the Employment Equity Act 1990. Within weeks of taking office, National abolished it. Well, those members are back, and guess what? Pay equity is off the drawing board again.

Just 2 weeks ago, the Hon Tony Ryall made an announcement. This time there was a different excuse but the same outcome. The Hon Tony Ryall said that the National Government was scrapping pay equity for school support workers—those people who are teacher-aides and administrators in our very important education sector—and for social workers. Yes, that is right, folks: for front-line staff working for Child, Youth and Family, there is no fairness and no pay equity. These things are now completely off the agenda after a decade of making progress towards achieving those things. In comes a National Government, and guess what? Pay equity goes again.

I have to agree with the Chief Human Rights Commissioner on this one, when she asked the other day, at a breakfast meeting here in Wellington, what it was with the National Government. It is OK for it to say that it might use taxpayer funds to bail out Fisher and Paykel Appliances, that it might use taxpayer funds for a whole range of private business entities, and that it will bring back titles for knights and dames, but will it honour a commitment to fair pay for women in the workplace and in the Public Service? No way, not under a National Government. To use taxpayer money for all sorts of other ventures is acceptable, but not for fairness at work for women. It is the same old National Party.

💬 Paul Quinn: Read the Dominion Post, Sue. You lost that one yesterday.

Paul Quinn comes in here and says: “So it should be.” He does not believe that there should be fairness for anyone at work, because he voted for the 90-day bill. Paul Quinn also supports Tony Ryall’s cutting out those workers’ right to have a fair pay investigation so that they might take that forward and argue for that in a good employer relationship, in a collective employment negotiation. But, no, the National Government has had to scuttle that investigation, and it has scuttled it straight away.

National is reverting to type, and the mask is slipping. What do we find underneath that mask? It might be John Key up there, with his nice smile and his affable way of not quite pronouncing his words properly, and looking a bit goofy. People think they will give him the benefit of the doubt because he is kind of nice and a little bit cuddly. But John Key is out there smiling away, while Bill English, Tony Ryall, and Nick Smith are all doing the policy work that is taking us straight back to the 1990s. They are privatising accident compensation and privatising the prisons. Where have we heard that one before? Oh gosh, in the 1990s! Was that not what National did then? It is reverting to type, and its true colours are coming out.

Although I hesitate before responding to some of the diatribes that came from opposite, I do need to correct some of the—not false statements, but half statements that have come from the opposite side of the House. Let us very quickly review the pay equity debate. Pay equity reviews are taking place throughout the Government departments. Those reviews are continuing. There are, however, two pay equity investigations that have been stopped. Just to add a few facts into the situation, the social worker gap between male and female used to be 9 percent. Most in this House would say that that is unacceptable. That gap is now down to 1.5 percent. That pay equity investigation has been cancelled. There are better ways to spend the money, but that, of course, would not worry the members opposite.

John Key and the National-led Government are forging ahead and creating confidence amongst voters. People voted for change on 8 November, and they are getting those changes. We are delivering on the promises, and we are creating confidence amongst even those who did not vote for National. Yesterday I spoke with Prime Minister John Key, and I passed on a message to him. Many people would think that any supportive message that I passed on to the Prime Minister would come from National supporters, but this one did not. Many people will be surprised to hear that this supportive message came from self-avowed Labour voters who said they had been surprised. They had grave concerns about John Key, and they said those concerns have been allayed. They have discovered that in fact they were wrong about John Key. The determination to deliver on promises has surprised them. The work rate of the Prime Minister and the members of Cabinet has surprised them—and they are delighted. Not only that, the sheer common-sense approach of this Cabinet, of John Key, and of the legislation that has come before this House, has been greeted with delight by the public. The economic future of New Zealand businesses and of our State-funded services, the livelihoods of the employees, and the welfare of families are what is at stake. Therefore, there is delight in seeing the actions of this Government.

Members have heard details today from the Prime Minister of the assistance going to employers so they can ride out economic hardship, and we have heard more details from Minister Bennett about this. The fact that it has been done speedily is also important. Just 1 month after the Job Summit this scheme will be in place. How is that for action? The Government assistance of $12.50 an hour per worker for up to 5 hours per fortnight will be a voluntary agreement, negotiated between the workers and the unions. Hello—what does this say? This tripartite arrangement is an emerging hallmark of this Government. There is willingness for these parties to work together in light of the economic uncertainty. That news is positive for everyone but the Opposition. It is clear that the success of this Government is having a destabilising effect on the Opposition—in particular, on the leadership, and on the leadership aspirants. As Leader of the Opposition, the Hon Phil Goff, struggles to register on the radar of New Zealanders—the Cunliffe, Cosgrove, and Jones camps are nipping at the leadership heels. They are secretly delighting in the Labour woes. They could not say that to their own people, of course, but they are hoping that by the time they assume the leadership, the sinking ship will not have taken on so much water as to be totally unsalvageable.

This Government is committed to delivering on its promises. It is committed to prioritising front-line services over backroom bureaucracy. It is committed to action, not procrastination. It is committed to New Zealanders’ future, rather than concentrating on measures that are purely about re-election as the previous Government did. The people of the Rangitata electorate are looking for leadership. They are looking for vision and proactivity in Government, and National’s John Key - led Government is delivering on that. We have a woeful legacy from the Labour Government. We have increases in funding, with no increases in elective services within health. We have massive but hidden budget blowouts in more than just health. We have the district health board deficits. We have the woeful situation with the Accident Compensation Corporation books. We have the numbers of people who have been hidden on special little lists within the district health board system. We have a surgical waiting list cull of 30,000 people that happened under Labour, but there was even more hiding there.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou katoa. In this time widely referred to as the recession, but more appropriately named the consequences, the Greens see an opportunity to address serious environmental issues and to create work. Our Green New Deal is based on the premise that the economy and the environment are absolutely connected, which is so unbelievably obvious that we feel we are continually stating the obvious—but in this Parliament one can take nothing for granted.

One dimension of the Green New Deal is the creation of green-collar jobs in one of our disaster areas—contaminated sites that need a safe clean-up. As the green technology emerges to address toxicity issues, we will need people to work with the more than 800 toxic sites that are scattered across our clean, green Aotearoa. This may not sound like the most appealing form of waste management, but it is a vital job that will enhance more than our tourism reputation. It will also stop our communities from facing exposure to the deadly consequences of our ongoing foolish and romantic relationship with deadly chemicals. Yes, we have banned DDT and pentachlorophenol, and now endosulfan, but the deadly legacy of these chemicals is ubiquitous in rural communities, as are the residues of modern versions of these chemicals in many of our foods, gardens, children’s toys, houses, forests, and farms. The Green Party is on a mission to clean up the use of dangerous chemicals by applying the precautionary principle, but we must also clean up the deadly legacy of toxic sites.

Last week I went to a hui at Wairaka Marae in Whakatāne, where a wide range of groups met to discuss solutions to what may have been some of the most intractable clean-up issues. Bioremediation technologies are emerging that may well be cheaper and a great deal more effective than the industrial ones used at places like Māpua, with such debatable results. Scientists, health professionals, and local authorities attended the Wairaka hui and contributed positively to the solution, but they were not the instigators. The true heroes and instigators of the work to clean up toxic sites are the Whakatāne sawmill workers. These mainly tangata whenua whānau are the people whose bodies are the waste dumps for the forestry industry’s reckless misuse of pentachlorophenol, contaminated by dioxin in the Bay of Plenty. They are the leaders of the collaborative model, because they refuse to pretend that little signs saying “disused industrial site” or the building of subdivisions and supermarkets on top of toxic waste dumps are appropriate responses. Thanks to them, we are beginning to find affordable solutions to the toxicity issues. Their commitment is to work with both Māori and Western scientific thinking. They say that if we heal Papatūānuku, then we also heal ourselves, and that we should look to her for answers.

There is now evidence as well as hope that indigenous fungi and other natural forms of bioremediation will clean up Aotearoa. The pilot research on the fungi grown on the contaminated sawdust from the Whakatāne board mill is indicating that pentachlorophenol and dioxin levels can be hugely reduced. The goal for clean-up is 100 percent, because when a millionth of a millionth of a gram can cause cancer, birth defects, or a range of immune deficiencies, anything less than 100 percent is a risk to human beings after a single exposure. However, thanks to the sawmill workers and their colleagues, we might one day be clean and green again.

Another issue is often avoided when talking of contaminated sites, and that is the pollution of land that may be returned to hapū under te Tiriti settlements. In addition, wild foods gathered by tangata whenua, such as tunga and watercress, are affected by the toxic bioaccumulation of many pesticides. If we breached te Tiriti when we stole land, then we certainly breach those articles again when we pollute it. A contaminated site needs to be fully restored to a healthy state, as do our economy and our community.

The final toxic environment that I cannot resist mentioning is the debating chamber of Parliament. Every day, as question time degenerates into acrimonious backbiting or disingenuous nitpicking about the Standing Orders, I look up at the public gallery—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker): I regret to advise the member that her time has expired.

I stand proudly to acknowledge a Government that is committed to keeping its promises and getting things done. Prime Minister John Key has demonstrated strong leadership and a focus on what matters to New Zealanders. What a stunning first 100 days!

At the start of this week Prime Minister John Key announced that titles are to be reinstated in the New Zealand Honours List. This is not about elitism, as the Labour Party would have us believe. Unlike the previous Government, we wish to celebrate the success and achievement of excellence of New Zealanders. The Minister of Corrections, Judith Collins, has continued this theme with the announcement of an award to recognise newly graduated Department of Corrections officers who have demonstrated outstanding achievement during their training. This is about celebrating excellence in the corrections system.

This Government has no problem with dealing with its priorities in the economic area, and it can also progress a number of other areas with ease. One of those is recognising the people in our community who do well. The current Prime Minister John Key has the ability to deliver on our election promises as well as respond to the challenges that arise. A great example of this has been the Job Summit. Within 1 month of the Job Summit, we will deliver on the Job Support Scheme—within 1 month. The 9-day fortnight has moved swiftly from being a good idea at the Job Summit to being something concrete that will help ordinary New Zealanders keep their jobs. We have wasted no time in putting this Job Support Scheme in place. This Government is working quickly as New Zealanders feel the economic squeeze. It is an interim step and it is targeted. This scheme will ease the burden on employers and will stem unemployment. We are facing the challenges head-on, moving nimbly and boldly where necessary.

The Job Summit focused on paid work, but I will take a moment to talk about unpaid work—volunteers, and the enormous contribution that they make to New Zealand. I celebrate the achievement of the voluntary sector. An example of this was the Ironman event held in Taupō just this weekend. There were 1,288 participants who entered the water and over 2,000 volunteers—which is 12.5 percent of the local community—volunteered to make that event a success. That is what we mean about voluntary service and voluntary work, and the National Government is proud to acknowledge the work that our volunteers are doing to keep our communities ticking over.

This work was undertaken by professional groups, Business and Professional Women, the SPCA, our local schools, and our kindergartens. The first volunteers were on the job at 3 a.m. on Saturday, and the last would have finished over 24 hours later.

I also celebrate the work done by the more than 8,000 volunteer firefighters in New Zealand. These men and women are the heroes in our communities. They are the ones who turn up to fires, vehicle accidents, and emergencies in our communities. On Saturday night in Taupō I was proud to be at the volunteer firefighter awards celebrating Clifford George’s 25 years of voluntary service. This is an outstanding achievement, and that is what National is about. It is about recognising achievement, not bemoaning it as elitism, as Labour would have us do. It is important that we recognise the voluntary work done by our firefighters. They provide an incredible service. They are here to support not only us in New Zealand. They also provide incredible support to those fighting the Melbourne bushfires in Australia.

We have a Government that is producing results. As well as the achievements made following the Job Summit, we are celebrating success and excellence in our communities, and recognising the achievements of hard-working volunteers.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.