Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

The National-led Government encourages enterprise, rewards resourcefulness, and salutes success. The substance of the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday will create new opportunities to engage those qualities. I am wholeheartedly behind the Prime Minister’s speech and the direction he has laid out for legislative change in 2010, which will make this country a better place for all New Zealanders, particularly after 10 years of economic mismanagement and a global recession.

Last night I spoke about the opportunities that unlocking the potential for our natural resources will afford. For those who are concerned about minerals recovery, there needs to be an awareness that a considerable amount of mining activity is already conducted on Crown-owned land. I can think of Oceana Gold at Reefton, of Pike River Coal, and of the Stockton mine, all on the West Coast and in Buller—an area that is not strange to Mr Speaker—and all involve working on Department of Conservation - supervised land, with the Pike River coalfield tunnelling under a national park. Those are all permitted activities. Those who have concerns should take faith from the process of the Resource Management Act, which provides controls over the activity. The recently amended Act was strongly supported in this House last year by 108 votes to 13. People can have confidence in the process, and should be assured that that is the case.

Other areas the Prime Minister addressed will guide us into prosperity. The two most important things that a country requires from its tax system are for it to be fair and equitable to all its residents and for it to stimulate economic growth. Tax cuts for all New Zealanders, we are told, are likely in the May Budget. Tax cuts, as is widely recognised, are a stimulant for economic growth, as they put more money into the hands, and, indeed, into the pockets of individuals to make choices about what they do with them. An increase in GST is being carefully considered. One of the advantages of such an increase is that, coupled with reduced income tax, it is universal in its effect, and in fact it favours savings and investment over consumption. Lower taxes put the right incentives into the economy. A certain degree of consumption is a good thing, as that is how businesses grow and develop. It is imperative that the balance is correct.

💬 Chris Hipkins: Do you understand any of this?

Absolutely, but I am not sure that member does. GST could disproportionately disadvantage beneficiaries, superannuitants, and lower-income earners, so they will be fairly compensated if GST is raised, thereby negating the risk to lower-income earners. There is a lot to like about these ideas, moving forward.

I was one of the many New Zealanders who unfortunately believed the hype that led up to the Prime Minister’s statement. I thought that we would have a grand plan, that we would have a big shift in the approach of the Government, and that we would have progress. Frankly, from a political point of view, I was quite anxious about the possibilities coming from this statement. But what happened? We found that National has no plan to increase wages and no plan to create jobs. What it has decided to do is to fall back to its old approach and have tax cuts for the rich, paid for by the poor. What we want is a system that is fair and one that people who are on the average wage will get real benefit from. But as outlined by Mr Key yesterday—more to the media than in this House—no one on an average or a below average wage, such as $48,000 or below, will be affected by his drop in the top rate of tax. No one will be affected, and no one will benefit. But the Prime Minister will get $509 a week—

💬 Hon Annette King: More.

—more—but just on the pocket money he gets from Parliament, not on his real income. He will get much, much more on his real income, but on the pin money that he gets from his parliamentary job, he will get $509 a week more. If one happens to be the head of Telecom, it will be $2,500 a week more.

What John Key says depends on when one listens to him saying it. Last year he was asked, very directly, about a hike in GST. He stated: “National is not going to be raising GST. National wants to cut taxes not raise taxes.” He then went on to say that if a National Government was doing “a half-decent job”, it would not need to raise GST. “If National was doing a half-decent job”—says John Key—“it would not have to raise GST.”

Then, yesterday, we had the Prime Minister misleading again. He said that New Zealand taxes consumption at a relatively low rate. That is what he said. John Key said that New Zealand taxes consumption at a relatively low rate. I thought that was interesting and I tried to find out what it meant. Let us look at like countries and look at the OECD. Thirty countries were reported on in the latest OECD report, it was published in 2009, and it goes up to 2008. There are 30 countries there, and if we were relatively low, I would have thought that we would be in the bottom 10. Yes, Chris Tremain, the member for Napier, nods. He also says that we would be in the bottom 10 if we were relatively low. I was looking for us. I was trying to find us on the chart and I could not find us. I had to go all the way up to No. 6. We are the sixth-highest consumption-taxed country in the OECD out of 30 countries. Are we relatively low?

💬 Hon Members: No.

Of course not. It is just another misleading statement from the Prime Minister. We already hit our poor much harder than most other countries, and he is proposing to put up GST.

As a proportion of our GDP, we already pay 110 percent more than Australia does. We pay 110 percent more. We pay 8.4 percent of our GDP in consumption tax, and in Australia that is 4 percent. So what is the story? The Prime Minister is the person who promised that we would have equality with Australia. He is the person who said that that is the objective for New Zealand. Now we have Dr Bollard, whom I think everyone in this House would believe before they would believe the Prime Minister, saying that that is not possible with this Government’s settings.

What do we have? We have a Prime Minister who is clearly bored with the job. He has a pile of mates who are high-income earners, and he is asking how the Government could possibly help its mates with their poor income and what progress can it make relatively quickly to do what is rapidly being labelled out in Wainuiōmata as the Sheriff of Nottingham approach. What he is doing—

💬 Paul Quinn: Have you been there recently?

I was in Wainuiōmata this morning. Does the member remember the way to Hutt South? He has not been to his office for a long time. I was in Wainuiōmata this morning. That member promised to shift to Hutt South, but he still lives in Roseneath. He promised to shift to Hutt South, and he still—

💬 Paul Quinn: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member has made a false accusation against me.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker): That is not a point of order, and the member knows that.

I ask when the member is shifting to Hutt South, or at least I ask when he will get a global positioning system to help him find his way out to the Hutt Valley when he is wanted out there, rather than getting lost on the way to the meetings in the way that he always does and not turning up when he promises to. He can interject on me—

💬 Paul Quinn: I’ve been to more meetings there than you have recently.

Yeah, but not without a mirror. That member has his meetings with a mirror; that is what he does. He looks at himself in the mirror, he preens himself, and he says that he has had a meeting. That is Paul Quinn. [Interruption] Hekia says he is not the sharpest pencil in the House, and I agree with her. I agree with Hekia Parata.

💬 Hekia Parata: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am being deliberately misquoted. I said that the member Paul Quinn was good-looking, not that he was not as sharp a pencil as elaborated.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker): The member knows that that is a debatable point. It is not a point of order.

I would like to focus for part of my speech on the Minister of Education, Anne Tolley. I asked her a question today about whether she was in the 11.9 percent who claim to fully understand her national standards system or in the 88 percent who admit that they do not. I make it very clear that I am with John Hattie, Lester Flockton, and just about every other assessment academic in the country. I accept that I do not understand what is in her mind to do with the assessment system. No one understands how it will work, and the reason is that a whole pile of the work that needs to be done on it has not been done on it yet. John Hattie was very clear that the most able kids will suffer, so I ask what we are doing. That Government has taken away gifted and talented education, and now it is focusing down the curriculum so that the brightest kids will suffer the most as a result of this system. This is so badly designed that John Hattie told the Prime Minister to scrap it and start again.

I support high standards. As Minister of Education, I put well over $10 million into developing asTTle. That produced—

💬 Paul Quinn: Is that all?

People come from around the world to look at asTTle. It is the best system in the world, it is working well, it produces really good reports for parents, and if someone could read them to Paul Quinn, then he would understand them.

Ā, tēnā tātou e te Whare. Kua puta te mahere rautaki o Nāhinara mō te tau e heke mai nei engari, arā anō tētahi kōrero kāore anō kia korerohia. He take tērā e hāngai tonu ana ki te noho o te Pāti Māori me te hoa haere a Nāhinara. Me pēnei kē taku whakamārama, nō te Rā o Waitangi, e pēnei ana tētahi pātai a te Pirimia: “Why can’t this be the generation of New Zealanders who open the next chapter of our history?”. Koi nei tā te Pirimia. Ka pā tūturu tēnei pātai ki tētahi tautohenga tōrangapū nui rawa atu o Aotearoa, arā, mō te hanganga ture takutai moana.

E tekau mā tahi marama ki muri i pānui atu te rōia matua o te Karauna i te whāinga matua o tētahi rōpū arotake i te ture me ōna tāngata nā runga anō i te kawenata tautoko a te Pāti Māori me te Rōpū Nāhinara. E rua ngā kaupapa nui o te arotaketanga, tuatahi kia kitea mehemea e whakapūmau ana, e whakanui ana te ture i te mana whenua, tuarua, ki te whakapūmau i ngā tikanga tūpuna, i ngā tikanga hoki a te marea i roto i te pire takutai moana. Mai rā anō e mea ana te Rōpū Māori me taurite tēnei tikanga, te whakapuakitanga o te mana o tēnā iwi, o tēnā hapū, otirā, kia whai wāhi anō te tokomaha mō ake tonu atu. Koi rā pea te pūtake o te pātai a te Pirimia ki a tātau. Koi nei te reanga ka whakawātea i te huarahi ki te paerangi i ngā rā kei mua i te aroaro, kia tau katoa i runga i te pūmau me te mārama ngā take e pā ana ki te takutai moana. Engari, i konei pea o māua huarahi ka tīhoi. Hei tā te kauhau a te Pirimia i Waitangi, me anga whakamua tātau kia kaua e waiho ake mā ngā raruraru o nehe i te taenga mai o tauiwi, e whakakotiti, e whakapōrearea ō tātou whakaaro i tēnei wā.

Kei te rongo au i ētahi e mea ana, kāore rawa i pēnā te ngāwari. Kāore e kore, ko te ture o te tau 2004 te mea taumaha rawa atu o te rau tau kua hipa. Ki a au nei me anga whakamua tātou, engari kei wareware a muri. Nō muri tata nei, āe, engari kei te pupū tonu ake te āhuatanga o te riri me te mamae i waenganui i te tangata whenua. E kore e wareware ki ngā tāngata e 25,000 i hīkoi ngātahi ki te Pāremata i runga i te whakaaro kotahi—me pana te ture ki tua o tāwauwau. Kua takahia tō tātou mana i te ao whānui nā ngā whakatau maha a te Whakakotahitanga o ngā Whenua o te Ao i a rātou e mea ana, he ture takahi i te Māori i te mea, he ture whakakore tērā i ō tātou tikanga whenua, nā te paku kore whakaae atu, ā, karekau he paku aha hei utu i a tātou, mātou me kī o te ao Māori. Kua whakarūhī tō tātou mana hei Pāremata ki te kōrero mō te tika me te pono, nā tō tātou kore aha ki te whai i te tika me te pono i mua i ngā kooti, hei whaiwhai haere i te whakataunga mō Ngāti Apa.

I te tau 2003, koi nei te wā i noho a Ngāti Apa me te Rōia Matua o te Karauna i te kooti, he wā whakahirahira mō te hanganga kaupapa mō tēnei motu. Ko te tikanga, ko taua whakatau o te kooti he mea pānui mā tēnā, mā tēnā o ngā mema Pāremata katoa, mā ngā tauira ā-whare wānanga nei, mā te hunga whai nei i ngā kōrero tūpuna me ngā mahi tōrangapū tae atu ki te hunga whai i te ture. Anei tā Ahorangi Jane Kelsey mō te whakataunga o Ngāti Apa. E ai ki tāna, he whakataunga auaha “because judges in the Māori Land Court and the Court of Appeal were prepared to take the risk and challenge the prevailing precedents.”

Nō reira kei te hoki mai au ki te wero a te Pirimia kia whakawātea tēnei whakatipuranga i te huarahi whakamua. Ko tā tēnei whakatupuranga, he poipoi, he ako, he tautoko, he waitohu, he awhina i ngā reanga kia tipu, kia pakari. Ki tā te Ao Māori, he tōtara wāhi rua, he kai nā te toki. Me aro ake te kaitōrangapū ki ngā whakaaro o te nuinga, āe, engari ko te mahi a te rangatira, ko te māia ā-ngākau, ā-wairua ki te whakakotahi i a tātou, ahakoa tukia e te ua, e te hau.

Nō reira, ka piki taku wairua i ngā kupu a Sonny Rāniera Tau i te hui a te rūnanga manukura—arā, iwi leaders’ forum. Ko taua rūnanga, he whakakotahitanga i ngā iwi e rima tekau mā whitu, ko tā rātou he kōkiri i ngā take o ngā iwi, hapū katoa e pā ana ki ō rātou ake rohe moana. I tautoko a Rāniera i te rūnanga hei reo pai mō te tangata whenua ki te Karauna nā te mea, kua kōwhiria ngā mema katoa o te rūnanga e ō rātou ake iwi. He aha hoki te tikanga o tēnei kōrero? E pēnei ana pea. E kore rawa e tatū noa ngā whiringa kōrero mō te takutai moana, mei kore ngā iwi, ngā hapū e noho tahi me te Karauna. Nō reira me āta whakarongo ngā māngai ki ō rātou ake iwi, hapū rānei, me pūmau, me pono ki ō rātou whakaaro.

Ko tā mātou kī taurangi ā-Rōpū Māori ki te hunga tautoko i a mātou, ka whakapau wera, ka whakapau mātou i te kaha ki te whakakore i te ture, ā, he whāinga nui tērā mō mātou. Engari, kei te titiro mātou ki mua me te ngākau rorotu. E hiahia ana matou o te Pāti Māori, he reo mana motuhake mō te iwi Māori i roto i te Whare Pāremata nei, kia whai wāhi ai ngā iwi, ngā hapū, i roto i ngā whakahaerenga katoa o te takutai moana. Kua akiaki mātou kia whakatinanahia ō rātou tikanga, ka mutu ko tā mātau hoki ko te kī atu, me whai mana ngā iwi me ngā hapū, kāore i kō atu, kāore i kō mai. Mā te wā ka kitea mai ai ngā hua o wā mātou mahi. Nō reira, waiho tērā kōrero ki reira.

I tēnei wā mō te wā poto, me kōrero au mō tētahi atu take nui, whakaharahara, arā, ko tērā i tīmata mai ai i nanahi, ā, anei ahau e rongo nei i ōna hua. Tērā tētahi tohu nui, whakahirahira e hiki ai te wairua o te iwi Māori, arā, ko te tīmatanga mai o te tukutahi i te reo Māori me te reo Pākehā i tēnei Whare. Kua roa kē tēnei rā e tāria ana. Nō te tau 1987, ka whakamanatia te reo Māori i raro i te Ture o te Reo Māori. He hurihanga nui mō tēnei motu, ā, e 23 tau ki muri, anei tātou e whakanui ana i te tikanga o taua ture.

E pēnei ana te whakapapa. Ka noho tonu te mahi tukutahi o ngā reo i roto i a Māui Tikitiki a Taranga, arā, te wāhi e whiriwhiria ana ngā take Māori mai i te 24 o Hui-tanguru 2000. Kua whakapākehātia ngā kōrero Māori a ngā mema Pāremata mā ngā manuhiri kōrero Māori nei, ā, ka rere tika tonu ki ngā mema Pāremata. I taua wā, i puta te kōrero a te Kaitiriwa o te Whare—arā, te Karaka nei—a Ailsa Salt, mēnā ka eke te mahi ki te taumata e tika ana, ka kokirihia kia tae mai ki tēnei Whare. Mai rā anō i te tau 1999, i konei tētahi kaiwhakamāori mō te Whare Paremata e mahi ana, nā runga i ngā whakapae a ngā mema Māori i ngā tau 1996 ki te 1999, mō ngā uauatanga o te kōrero Māori i te Whare. Nō reira, me mihi ki ngā mema huri noa i te Whare, mai i ngā Kāwanatanga maha o ērā wā, nō rātou te whakaaro nui ki te kōkiri i tēnei take kia korerohia te reo Māori, hei reo tūturu o te motu, kia tere tonu te rongo a ērā atu mema Pāremata i ngā kōrero e rere haere nei.

Hoi anō, ko tā mātou ko te kī atu, ko ā mātou whakataukī, pepehā erā mea katoa kei te putake mai i te Māoritanga he mea kīnaki mō ēnei kōrero, he whakaputanga mātauranga, he mea ārahi i a tātou i ēnei rā. Hoi anō, nā ēnei mātauranga, ēnei māramatanga e mōhio ai tātou arā noa atu ngā huarahi e wātea ana ki wā tātou tamariki mokopuna i ēnei rangi, ā, he huarahi i takahia ai e ō rātou tīpuna, e ō rātou mātua. Kia ora.

[Greetings to us, the House. National has provided a statement regarding the year ahead, but there was one topic that was not really discussed. That matter has some relevance to the agreement between the Māori Party and National. Let me explain. On Waitangi Day the Prime Minister asked the following question: “Why can’t this be the generation of New Zealanders who open the next chapter in our history?”. It is a question of the utmost relevance to one of the most significant political debates to have impacted upon Aotearoa, the foreshore and seabed legislation.

It has been just under 11 months since the Attorney-General announced the terms of reference and members of the Government’s ministerial panel to review the Foreshore and Seabed Act as provided for in the confidence and supply agreement between the National Government and the Māori Party. There were two key components to the review: to ascertain whether the Act adequately maintains and enhances land ownership, and to ensure that both customary and public interest in the coastal marine area are recognised and provided for. It is a balance that the Māori Party has consistently advocated for—the need to respect the mana that every iwi and hapū express over their coastal marine areas, while at the same time promoting the concept of enduring public access. That, then, is perhaps at the heart of the question that the Prime Minister put. This generation must the one to open the next chapter of history by providing certainty and clarity around interests in the foreshore and seabed. But this is where we differ in some respects from the approach taken by Mr Key. Mr Key’s Waitangi Day proclamation was that we should move on and accept that the history of colonisation and injustice cannot be allowed to dominate decision making.

I can hear some of our people saying that is easier said than done. There would be little dispute that the 2004 Act has been the most pivotal piece of policy served upon Māori for at least the last century. To me, we must face the future, being absolutely informed by our past—a recent past, admittedly, but one that continues to engender hostility and anguish from amongst the indigenous people of this land. We will never forget the memory of 25,000 people marching on Parliament to universally reject the Act. Our international reputation has been damaged by consistent findings from the United Nations that the Act discriminated against Māori because it extinguished property rights without consent or compensation. And our capacity, as a Parliament, to talk about matters of justice is severely compromised by the complete disregard for the concept of due access to the courts, as spelt out in the Ngāti Apa decision.

That period of time in 2003, during the Attorney-General v Ngāti Apa case, is a very significant period in the building up of our nation. Indeed, I would hope the Ngāti Apa decision would be compulsory reading for all members of Parliament, all students of history and politics, all those with intentions to enter the halls of law. This is what Professor Jane Kelsey said about the Ngāti Apa decision. She described it as creative, occurring only “because judges in the Māori Land Court and the Court of Appeal were prepared to take the risk and challenge the prevailing precedents.”

So again I come back to Mr Key’s question challenging this generation to open the next chapter of history. The critical responsibility for our generation is that we are able to provide the insights, the knowledge, the direction, and the support that will help all future generations to grow and develop. Māoridom considers that we cannot advance if we ignore or deny the conflicts that have rendered us asunder. Opinion polls, focus groups, and political commentators all have their place, but ultimately the true test of leadership lies in the courage to work with policy differences.

In this respect, I was heartened by the words of Sonny Rāniera Tau in his analysis of the iwi leaders’ forum. That forum consists of representation of all 57 iwi and is a powerful advocate for the recognition and mana of iwi and hapū over their coastal waters. Mr Tau spoke in support of the forum as the best group to represent Māori in negotiations, given that all members are elected members of their own iwi. What does this really mean? Quite simply, the foreshore and seabed approach that we consider and conclude in upcoming months can be effective only if there is meaningful engagement between the Crown and iwi/hapū. It is expected that those representatives communicate well with iwi and hapū, to be accountable, to be transparent, and to be faithful to the views of their people.

The key commitment that we gave to our constituency is that we would do everything in our power to repeal the Act—and that has been a priority for us. But we also face the future with optimism, wanting to ensure that the Māori Party, as the strong and independent voice for Māori, can ensure that all aspects of the management of the marine environment and marine resources enable effective input of iwi and hapū. We have advocated for iwi and hapū involvement in decisions that bear the influence of tikanga; and we have spoken out consistently for the recognition of the mana of iwi and hapū. Time will demonstrate the fruits of our efforts. So let us leave that matter there.

Now let me turn to another important matter, which arose yesterday, and here I am profiting from that. There is one thing that would inspire hope for the success our people seek; that is the significance of yesterday, a day in which, finally, simultaneous interpretation has been welcomed into this Chamber. This has been a day long in coming. In 1987 the Maori Language Act declared te reo Māori an official language of New Zealand. That was a key event in the history of this nation, and it is somewhat sobering to think that Parliament, some 23 years later, is finally honouring the intention of that Act.

The whakapapa goes like this. On 24 February 2000 a simultaneous English-Māori translation service was installed in the Māori Affairs Committee room so that direct English translations of members of Parliament or visitors speaking in te reo can be made. At the time, then Deputy Clerk of the House Ailsa Salt said that if the service was a success it could be introduced into the House. We have also had an interpreter in the House since 1999, after Māori members of Parliament expressed concerns during the 1996-99 Parliament about the barriers to speaking Māori in the House. So I want to recognise the efforts made right across the House, in successive terms of Parliament, for the right to be able to speak Māori and for it to be given the status of an official language, with the capacity for other members to benefit from an immediate understanding of the concepts and statements expressed.

Indeed, we advocate that our whakataukī, pepeha, and kōrero tawhito are cultural assets and capital of tangata whenua as being the essential core of Māoritanga. They embellish our talk, demonstrate the unique knowledge and wisdom of Māori frameworks, and provide contemporary guidance based on historical precedents. Indeed, it is through such learning and leadership that we are confident our future generations can open many new chapters in the history of our nation—chapters that are stronger for the foundation they emerge from. Thank you.]

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. He mihi nui ki te Whare Paremata, he mihi nui kite. For speakers of te reo rangatira and translators of te reo rangatira it is indeed a good day.

What a happy summer break it was, standing on the infamous Kōpū Bridge and talking to carloads of visitors about why they were coming to the Coromandel. Strangely, not one of them said: “I am hoping to see an industrial-scale goldmine in a forest park.”, or “Lead me to the gold processing plant. I want to relax to the smell of chemicals and the music of crushing machines.” No one even asked to see Gerry Brownlee in nothing but his tramping boots paying final tribute to the schedule 4 forests and mountains before he, assisted by the Prime Minister’s speech yesterday, attempts to rip them open.

What is schedule 4? Most people back where I come from call it the goldmining ban, and they do that because we were part of creating it. In the Hauraki-Coromandel we drew a line in the land at Kōpū-Hikuai, and after about 15 years’ hard work, we created enough support to see a level of legislative protection. We did not say that it was about protecting icons in exchange for stewardship land, and it was voted in by a National Government. We said that gold was a finite resource and that modern goldmining was not sustainable. We still say so, and we do not want the blood money from mining spent on conservation projects as a Faustian bargain.

We called then, and we call now, for the protection of steep forested catchments and waterways, for Tīkapa Moana, the Hauraki Gulf, and the fragile coastal fringes. We call for absolute protection for Te Moana Hau o Tama-te-Kapua, the maunga, and we included every scrap of land we could, because that is how we create real ecosystems and improve biodiversity. None of it is open for mining in our area; members should just come and ask the people.

I asked the people what they wanted this summer at public meetings from Ōpoutere and Onemana, which are outside schedule 4, right up to the Coromandel township, which is surrounded by old gold reefs and stewardship lands. Every public meeting was the same. People wanted to take action to oppose any mining. They were not convinced by boutique mining, which could become “maul-size”. They know what mauled land looks like, because we have been through all this before, and the land is only just starting to heal.

As for surgical mining, it sounds like some ghastly procedure to disembowel the earth. If that is the name for what has been happening on the West Coast recently, then we are all in trouble. And do not get me started on the new language of offsetting biodiversity, which Landcare and the Ministry of Economic Development are busy trying to trade off. However, there will be a consultation phase, which John Key appears to have pre-empted in his speech yesterday about his expectations to amend schedule 4. The Green Party looks forward to this, as hundreds of people have indicated that they want to participate, even if the Prime Minister will not listen. They have told us that areas from Murihiku, Southland, to North Cape are not open for coal and goldmining by multinationals.

John Key stated in his address to Parliament yesterday that if there is an increase in mining activity, New Zealand’s natural environment will also be improved. My co-leader Russel Norman said that that sounded like George Orwell, but it also reminds me of George Bush. In the age of the big lie, the Minister of Tourism attempts to sell destruction as protection, and he thinks that this country will swallow it. Well, I say to the Prime Minister, pigs might fly and the Earth might be flat, but we will not surrender our treasured places. Whatungarongaro he tangata, toitū he whenua; people persist, but the land remains. That is what we have to pass on to our mokopuna, not toxic tailing dumps.

More and more people understand that we live in the 21st century, not the 19th century, but it seems that this Government will have to be educated. I tell National members to look to their vote before they start on this reckless demolition. I ask whether their focus groups told them that mining in forests and national parks was a public relations winner, or have they missed the essential component of our national identity: economic uniqueness and survival as a species, the need to protect the integrity of the Earth.

I will also comment on the Prime Minister’s statement in terms of education, where there were some very interesting signals. That is as it should be, because we have some serious challenges in this area, not the least being the Government’s declaring war on many teachers and principals. We will not meet many people who do not believe that quality learning is a human right for our children, but how is this achieved? It must be a matter for dialogue and negotiation.

The Government has signalled that early childhood education will see some changes to increase the number of poor, Māori, and Pacific children participating. It does not say how that will be done, and the Green Party would love to know how the increase in GST, which affects childcare fees, will help people to pay for early childhood education, especially when unemployment statistics for Māori and Polynesian families are at a record high and when their wages are so low. Perhaps free quality child care will now be made available to the poor, but we are not holding our breath.

As for primary schools grappling with national standards, we would love to know what the Prime Minister meant by “we will intervene more aggressively” in consistently failing schools. Does he mean the kind of aggressive intervention experienced by Aorangi Primary School, which has now been closed without there being any of the conventional hallmarks of educational failure? It is great news that the Government will provide more professional development for teachers, but to what end? We all agree on the need for quality education, but the across-the-board adoption of standards without a trial or pilot sends the worrying signal that this is an ideologically rigid process in response to a genuine recognition of a problem.

We have a deserved reputation for educational success at the primary level, but we also have the frightening statistic that many Māori and Pacific children leave the education system without sufficient literacy, unless they are Māori and go to kura kaupapa. The issue here reflects a harsh combination of the effects of social inequity in the way that our Pākehā designed and managed education system fails to engage children from other cultures, notably tangata whenua. But when a child comes to school without breakfast or any lunch and carries the neighbourhood social damage on small shoulders, their teachers cannot work some Hollywood miracle.

What about children with a wide range of disabilities? How does a generic standard help them to become confident learners at their own pace? That is why national standards will not help. It has been tried, in the No Child Left Behind programme, which the Bush Government attempted in the United States. President Obama is now withdrawing from that approach because he has seen that literacy and numeracy have not improved. The United Kingdom experience is similar. Teachers started teaching to tests in order to protect themselves and their schools before the label of “loser” undermined their resources and their reputations, and children have suffered. It is a sorry business when the education academics have to attack the Minister of Education.

The names Snook, Crooks, Flocton, and Hattie sound like a Dickensian law firm, but they are actually quite diverse professors of education, all of whom are warning the Government that standards without a pilot could create disaster. Professor Ivan Snook also points out that the rationale for introducing national standards ignores the detail in the 2009 Education Review Office report on the use of assessment tools, which showed major improvement across the country.

We need action across the whole community if all children are to have access to culturally appropriate, quality education, but, as young teachers have said to me in the last few weeks, the real losers from national standards will be the classes of children whom no one will want to teach because they will never meet the standard for reading and maths. Dedicated teachers can lift them from where they have started to much higher standards, but for many it will not be possible to reach the standards set in the current national standards. It will not be an easy journey for those children, unlike the middle-class children whose parents loved school themselves, read to them constantly, and live amongst peace and plenty.

It is pretty alarming that the national standards are being rolled out when the Government conceded in its address to Parliament yesterday that “policy will be developed” this year. Most great educational ideas are based on policy that has already been developed, but this one fails on this count and on many others. The Prime Minister’s speech also had some worrying threats to students about performance and punishment.

We are very concerned that the education and the mining messages in the Prime Minister’s speech spell trouble for the environment, for the tourist dollar, for the future of this country as a home for biodiversity, for the integrity of the Earth, and for the education of our children. The Green Party will be challenging these issues in the year to come. Kia ora koutou katoa.

Yesterday we heard the Prime Minister outline the Government’s plan for the year. He touched on a number of areas, one of which I would like to focus on this afternoon. He talked about the possibility of increasing the rate of GST from 12.5 percent to 15.5 percent. What did we hear from the Opposition members? One after another we heard Phil Goff, Annette King, David Cunliffe, and Shane Jones stand up and pretend to be concerned about people on low incomes.

From Phil Goff we heard about the people on the minimum wage who will pay more for their bread, their milk, their power, and their block of cheese. David Cunliffe said they are “right to be sceptical that they would be fully compensated. Mums who are trying to feed their 3 or 5 kids on a medium or a low income are frightened about the cost of bread and milk, let alone power and rent.”

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: This is a better speech than Rodney’s.

I did not hear Mr Mallard’s introduction, but he was a member of the previous Government, which voted for a tax on power. He voted for a tax on power, and if the people of New Zealand had not had the good sense to vote for a change of Government 15 months ago, the cost of electricity in this country would have gone up on 1 January this year. I say to Mr Mallard that that is right: we would have had a 10 percent increase in the price of electricity from 1 January—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: What’s the member been smoking over Christmas?

The member may not like to hear that criticism, but it is exactly what would have happened. In November 2008 the people of New Zealand voted against a tax on electricity. The cost of electricity would have gone up by 10 percent on 1 January this year.

So when Mr Goff talks about the mother who has to meet the cost of bread, milk, power, and a block of cheese he is misleading all New Zealanders, because he and his colleagues voted for an emissions trading scheme tax that would have increased the price of electricity by 10 percent on 1 January this year, and the price of petrol by 5 percent. Those increases would have percolated throughout the whole economy. There would have been increases in the cost of food.

David Cunliffe talked about the cost of a block of cheese. Electricity is required to manufacture a block of cheese. Farmers have to produce milk to go into a block of cheese. The previous Labour Government was the first Government in the world to put a tax on its farmers: a tax on cows and other animals for doing what they do naturally, which is to burp and to digest food.

One after the other the Labour members stood up yesterday afternoon and talked about the price of electricity going up. They pretended to be concerned about low-income people. That is right; they pretended to be concerned about low-income people.

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: Oh, John, that’s so disappointing.

I ask Lianne Dalziel why, if Labour members were concerned about the price of electricity, they voted for an emissions trading scheme that would have increased the price of electricity by 10 percent.

Amendments were made to that scheme last year, and what do we have as a consequence? The good news is that we do not have a tax of 10 percent on electricity; it will be only 5 percent, and it will be going on 6 months later than had been intended, on 1 July this year. So we can thank the National Government for agreeing to halve the amount of the increase in the price of electricity and delay its introduction. But I ask why we are allowing the price of electricity to go up in the first place. Why do we come here and make speeches and pretend to be concerned about people on low incomes, when we know full well that we are prepared to see significant increases in the price of electricity?

The interesting thing about the increase in GST is that the Prime Minister made it very clear yesterday that people on low incomes will be compensated. He will be increasing the rate of New Zealand superannuation. He will be making sure that the people who are most affected by the increase in GST, because it takes the largest proportion of their income, are fully compensated. Was there to have been any compensation for the low-income people who were to face a 10 percent increase in the price of electricity from the Labour Government on 1 January this year? No, there was not. Sadly, I have to say the National Government too is not arranging any compensation for those low-income people who will have to pay for the increase in electricity from 1 July this year.

Mr Cunliffe talked about people being sceptical. The Prime Minister made the point very well that people will be fully compensated for the increase in the rate of GST. I ask why we have to increase the price of electricity. And if we are to increase the price of electricity, I ask, what about providing compensation for those people who have to pay for that?

I raise the issue of the emissions trading scheme tax because we were told by the Minister for Climate Change Issues last year that we had to have a tax in place before he went to the Copenhagen climate change talks. We were told that we had to keep pace with Australia, and that our emissions trading scheme tax would be consistent with the scheme that the Australian Government was going to pass. The Minister for Climate Change Issues was convinced that the Australian Government would pass the scheme before the end of November, so that the Australians could go off to Copenhagen with their tax in their bag. Well, there is no emissions trading scheme in Australia. That proposal was defeated. New Zealand is the only country outside Europe to have an emissions trading scheme. It is the only country in the world to tax its farmers. Less than 6 months ago the Minister for Climate Change Issues sat in his seat in the front row there, and he gladly and proudly told parliamentarians and the people of New Zealand that the Rio Tinto Alcan aluminium smelter, Comalco, would be the first aluminium smelter in the world to be taxed. It was to be the first aluminium smelter that would bear the cost of an emissions trading scheme. And we wonder why we have problems in creating job opportunities in New Zealand!

But the situation is worse than that. Australia tried to introduce an emissions trading scheme, but it could not pass it. In fact, I understand that it has been introduced into the Australian Parliament for the third time, but it is expected to be defeated. Over the last 3 months we have also had a total lack of credibility from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. First, we heard in November that climate data had been manipulated and hidden. Our own National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research has also adjusted New Zealand’s climate change data and does not have records or adequate proof of the adjustments made, despite constant requests for that. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the supposedly reputable scientific body that tells the world that we are warming, made the claim that the glaciers in the Himalayas will be melted by 2035. It said in 25 years those glaciers would be melting. But over the Christmas vacation we learnt that it had made a mistake. It was supposedly a peer-reviewed document, but we have learnt that the glaciers in the Himalayas will not have melted by 2035; it will be 2300, if that.

The ACT Party stands alone in this House. We are the only party that recognises that this is a country with two classes of citizens. We have the privileged and the underprivileged: the people who pay tax, and the people who avoid paying tax. There is the chance to introduce genuine tax reform into this country. The Prime Minister has laid out only the bare bones of it in what he has done. This country needs to go further. I was very interested to hear from John Howard, the former Prime Minister of Australia, when he visited to attend the ACT conference in November. He said he and his Liberal colleagues used to sit on the other side of the Tasman and look in awe and wonderment at New Zealand’s GST, because it was so inclusive. We have the chance to make some major tax reform, and all I ask is that the members of the Labour Opposition speak more honestly to the people of New Zealand and acknowledge that if it had not been for a change of Government, we would have had an emissions trading scheme that resulted in the price of electricity going up by 10 percent on 1 January this year. Members opposite should not stand there and give speeches that object to the price of power going up. Thank you.

I will just take a moment to acknowledge the contribution of Jeanette Fitzsimons. Mrs Fitzsimons will soon be making her valedictory speech. Although I do not think we have ever agreed on anything other than, possibly, the need for insulation in people’s homes, I have to say that in the almost 8 years I have been here, Jeanette Fitzsimons has always been a remarkably well-mannered member, who has brought a degree of sanity to debates, particularly on issues on which we do not always agree. She has always been a very responsible member of Parliament. I think we should all be very pleased for Jeanette that she has been able to find a way to come to retirement, but also that she will be replaced, as that is what happens in political parties.

The Prime Minister’s statement, which he spoke on yesterday, was reasonably unusual for Prime Minister’s statements, in that it talked about issues that were controversial and important. It took all the headlines, both today and yesterday, and probably will for some time. That is in stark contrast to the contribution from the Leader of the Opposition, whose great remedy for the economy is to cap the salaries of 16 of our top public servants. He seems to have forgotten that a Labour Government signed off on a formal policy in 2005 to increase salaries for chief executive officers by 5 percent a year for 5 years. The National Government, on taking office, cancelled that. It seems that he has had a little memory lapse. But we are not here to talk about the Leader of the Opposition, because, frankly, why would we? I am here to talk about the speech that the Prime Minister gave from the Throne—in Parliament, here—and about the need to talk about some of the big issues.

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: From the Throne! He’s “King John” now.

Ms Dalziel suggests “King John”. Well, there have been sillier names, and I am glad she agrees that he is a fantastic Prime Minister.

Let us look at law and order. When we came into Government we took over from a Government that did not accept that methamphetamine—P—was a major issue in New Zealand. We have had to clamp down on gangs and P. We have taken action on violent crime, introduced tougher sentences for crimes against children, given police extra powers in respect of DNA, boosted police funding by almost $200 million, and we are well on the way towards the extra 600 police that we promised by the next election. We have passed anti - boy-racing laws, which include the ability to crush the cars of repeat street racing offenders, and we have approved the roll-out of 720 Tasers to our front-line police, which will get under way in the next month or so. We have passed laws that put victims first with on-the-spot protection orders and a victims’ levy. We have a Fresh Start programme for young offenders, with initiatives and programmes to steer young people away from a life of crime. Those are some of the things we have already done in just one year. One would have to say that generally last year was a very big year for law and order in this country—and it is about time.

This year we have some great things happening. The police have been trialling some very good new initiatives, particularly in Counties-Manukau, and that has led to quite a dramatic decrease in crime. We always like to be a little bit careful about making statements like that, but it does seem to have been working, certainly for the last few months since it has been trialled. If we can stop people committing crime, it means we will have fewer victims, which means ultimately we will have fewer people in our jails and fewer dysfunctional families, and that is a fantastic thing.

When we took over as Government, I took over a corrections portfolio that was in some disarray after the “fine” work that had been done by Mr Goff as the former Minister. We took over a prison system that was at crisis point. We were fast approaching the situation of not having enough beds for our prisoners. The probation service had had huge amounts of work put on to it, but without extra funding for staff. It was appalling to find that in September 2008, just before the election, the Department of Corrections had put in an emergency bid for extra funding for its probation and parole staff. The department knew that it was in dire trouble. That request was not even replied to by the then Minister. Frankly, we inherited a real mess. In 1 year—and I pay tribute to the great work of Department of Corrections staff—we have had a huge turn-round. That has been made with the assistance and support of our colleagues in Cabinet, the Prime Minister, and our caucus to give the Department of Corrections the help and funding it needed, but also the support it needed to do the right thing.

Part of that right thing was not just housing prisoners, because we do that already—and, by the way, we are going very well with our double-bunking and container cells, so we have enough beds for quite some time yet. But in terms of rehabilitation of prisoners, we are doubling the amount of positions available for rehabilitation of our prisoners, and that is extraordinarily important, particularly when it comes to drug and alcohol addictions. There is one thing that seems to flow right through our prisons, and that is drug and alcohol addictions. That seems to be one thing that most prisoners have in common with each other. Of course, those addictions affect not only our prisoners but also, most important, their victims and their families. Every time that we send someone to jail a family is deeply affected. In many cases, a victim is also deeply affected, and the victim’s family too—and, by the way, those families and victims never get out on parole.

One of the things we are doing this year is bringing back to Parliament the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill. It will be very interesting to see how parties line up on that. I acknowledge the work of the ACT Party, which has worked long and hard with National over the last year to get that bill into a form that we believe is reasonable, fair, and balanced. At the same time, the bill sends a very strong message of our support for victims and our condemnation of repeat violent offenders who do not care about the rest of society.

Of course, none of this is possible without some money to pay for it. That is why it is very important to get this economy going. I am one of those people who believe very strongly that a strong justice system helps an economy. Frankly, if we look at some of the countries around the world that are very violent and not law abiding, their economies very seldom work very well. That is partly because of corruption, fear, and the fact that a lot of very talented people will not go to work or live there. So it is important that we deal with the economy. The Prime Minister has suggested that there could be an increase in GST. He suggested as well that anything like that would be accompanied by a great deal of support given to our lowest-income earners, so that they are not unduly stressed financially. I think it is important to acknowledge that we are in a competition in this country; we are in a competition with other countries for the best and most talented people, for people who want to come and set up businesses here, and who want to live here and be part of our Kiwi way of life. We have to understand that. We do not agree that we should give up just because Australia has more minerals that are closer to the surface than we do. We actually have lots of minerals in this country. We have water, as well. We have an agricultural industry that is, frankly, second to none in the world.

We have people who are highly educated and who are doing very well, but we also know that about 20 percent of our New Zealand children are not achieving anywhere near the level they need, should they wish to join a modern economy. That is simply not good enough. I do not agree with people who say to me that the parents of those children do not care. That has been put to me just recently, and, frankly, I think it is a disgrace. I have seen in my electorate of Papakura, in some of the schools where there has been a real effort to engage with parents, particularly of very troubled children, that the more parents are engaged with by the school, the more they are brought in, the more they are told about how their child is progressing or not progressing—what they are doing well at, what they are having trouble with—the more that parents are empowered, and the better the outcome for children. I do not believe for a moment that we should ever write off children because of the poverty their parents may live in. We should never, ever do that. To do so is actually to write off people from before the time they are born. I am not prepared to do that, nor is the Prime Minister, and nor is this Government. We believe very, very strongly that every child has the right to the best education. We also believe in parents, because, frankly, if our parents do not love us, who will? We see parents who are empowered, and who will take this very seriously. I am very proud to stand in the House and support the Prime Minister’s statement.

We came back yesterday to a new year and to the Prime Minister’s statement, where he asserted that he was looking for a step change in the New Zealand economy. What did we get in that statement that would lead us to believe that those words are at all realisable? We got nothing. We got no plan. We got the usual National Party mantra, its only mantra for the last 20 years, of lower taxes for the rich and an increase in GST to be paid for largely by the poor. The dropping of the tax rates for the wealthy is meant to try to give us a step change in the economy. Where will we get a step change in this economy if there is no investment into tertiary education? I will make that one of my particular themes today because in the absence of a plan, we are left with threats and veiled threats over tertiary education that do not augur well for the future of this country.

First of all, I pick up on a comment yesterday from Bernard Hickey. National has been trying to dismiss Bernard Hickey’s commentary but usually they like to hug him to death. Bernard Hickey is no particular friend of mine, or of the Labour Party, but he has said in his commentary: “John Key has just sent Generations X and Y a clear message: Leave the country now. … He is saying all those too poor to own a home now will never be able to own their own home. He is accepting the poverty and the hopelessness that is often attached to the working poor in rental accommodation. He is saying tough. My backers own property. We won. You lost. Eat that.” The same thing could be extrapolated from Mr Key’s comments about tertiary education. Where this Government appears to be taking tertiary education will not lead to the kind of economic improvement and the productivity that is required if everybody’s aspirations, including the Prime Minister’s, are to be met. John Key will never get us anywhere near Australia if he does not invest in tertiary education or young people in the way that Australia has.

Another long-time commentator has asked John Key to prove the Reserve Bank governor wrong. He has challenged him to say that Alan Bollard is wrong in his assessment of our ability to catch up with Australia. The future the Prime Minister mapped out yesterday in his statement will in fact prove Alan Bollard right. But this is not about personalities. This is not about Key versus Bollard. This is about ideas. This is about plans. This is about the imagination and the courage to invest in young people so that they might acquire the skills they need to achieve the high-income-earning jobs they aspire to and continue to contribute to New Zealand’s productivity.

Mr Key said that the Government intended to “take a careful look at the policy settings around student support …”. Now, what on earth does that mean? We are left to fill the gap ourselves because clearly the Prime Minister either did not know what to say, or was not prepared to say it. For example, will students be able to access student allowances only if they pass all their subjects? What if they need more support to pass, not doors being closed on them? Who will decide if students have made a genuine effort, and have not simply chosen the wrong course initially and changed their mind about their course of study? It seems to me that when Mr Key talked about those people “who refuse to take their tertiary studies seriously,” he was probably only talking about rich kids because it seems to me that only rich kids can afford not to take their studies seriously. The reality is that most students, whether they are enrolled in a polytech or a university, are working hard and juggling challenging study with part-time work—usually on low rates of pay—to support themselves and supplement their allowances.

Those young people are about to be clobbered with an increase in GST. They are not the ones who will benefit from tax cuts for the rich. They will only get the other part, which is the increase to GST. They are not superannuitants; they will not get any imagined compensation from the Government. They are not beneficiaries; they will not get any imagined compensation from the Government for increased GST. They are simply students. They are the ones on whom our future depends. They will be clobbered with an increase in GST with no tax cuts for them, and, I anticipate, greater difficulty in accessing loans and allowances. The Government is clearly—whether by intention or ignorance, I have not yet discerned—setting up tertiary education to once more become the domain of the well-off few, not the less well-off many.

The step change that needs to occur in the economy in this country is absolutely dependent upon raising the skills of everybody. So when we talk about trades training in schools, and we look at what the Government is proposing, it has outlined a plan for five trades academies around the country. One needs to look for another policy, but one where it talks about the few rather than the many. It will be hard to find one. Our policy in Government was Schools Plus. It extended trades training and flexible high school programmes to every school in the country, not simply to five selected trades academies. The investment that needs to be made in education beyond the school gate will be the thing that makes the difference. That will be the thing that causes New Zealand to prosper.

For mature students with families, or for redundant workers trying to upskill for another job, this double whammy of higher GST and harder-to-get loans and allowances will be especially difficult. In addition to that, another gap in the Prime Minister’s speech that we are left to fill is the veiled threat of the raising of the fee maxima cap at tertiary institutions. If fees are raised, if increased GST is added to all necessary consumer goods and services, and if access to loans and allowances is made harder, what is to become of our world-standard education system? The Government clearly wishes to create an increasingly elitist tertiary education system for its rich friends. We know what has happened to its view of the underclass in New Zealand; it does not like listening to stories about the underclass any more.

From the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday, it is entirely apparent that any investment in a step change in the economy will result in a wider gap between the skilled and the unskilled than we currently have. That means there will be a system of tertiary education that is accessible to the few and not to the many.

What a great delight it was to sit in the House yesterday and listen to a Prime Minister’s speech that was actually full of substance about what would get this nation’s gross domestic product per capita—I know that is a ghastly phrase; the vast bulk of people out in ordinary television land do not really care about GDP per capita, but it really translates for them as our wealth per person—back on track with comparable jurisdictions. Those are the countries we like to compare ourselves to.

We remember that back in the early 1950s we were about second or third in the world; we were literally on the sheep’s back. With the Korean War raging and wool at a great price, we were a wealthy country, and back then New Zealanders had a level of expectation about the things we could afford as a nation. Sadly, that expectation has not decreased along with the decrease of our wealth per person. So the plan yesterday was to get that wealth per person back on track to growing and eventually, hopefully, by 2025—we might not hit the target but we can at least have it as a target—getting back to being comparable with Australia.

People like the Greens will say that we should not be focused on the economy and money; we should be focused on environmental outcomes. Others will say those outcomes are not so important, but that social outcomes are. Well, I ask any member of this House to look around the world and see the unbelievable correlation there is between fantastic environmental outcomes and wealthy nations. Members should go to the wealthiest countries and look at the fantastic clean water, fresh air, and clean rivers they have, and then go to the poor countries, the bottom-of-the-heap countries, and look at the filthy rivers with sewage pouring down them, the filthy air, and the lack of infrastructure. I am really happy to say that by being a supporter of growing the economy, I am also a supporter of getting better environmental outcomes.

Indeed, as Judith Collins said before in our law and order area, there will also be better social outcomes. We get way better outcomes if we have an economy that is booming and that can employ people. Those people need to be employable to start with; therefore, I will talk about what I think was great in the Prime Minister’s statement. There was a focus on lifting innovation and productivity. It is no good if we just keep doing the same old thing in the same old way; we will get left behind. Here is a little trick for the House. We think that we are not doing too badly in the world for our wealth per person, our GDP per capita, because we are about 24th in the OECD—the rich man’s club. However, heaps and heaps of countries are not in the rich man’s club but are way wealthier than us already. It will not come as a surprise to members today to hear that Singapore, which we used to help through the Colombo Plan because it was so poor, has wealth per person that is nearly twice ours. That will not come as a surprise. Nor will the fact that Hong Kong is also wealthier. But what do members think about Puerto Rico passing us 5 years ago?

💬 Paul Quinn: 5 years ago?

The wealth per person of Puerto Rico, its GDP per capita, passed us 5 years ago, and Slovenia’s passed us 3 years ago. We are not 24th in the world; we are 24th in the OECD. We are about 49th in the world for wealth per person, so we have to lift innovation and productivity. We have to invest in commercialising good ideas—our good scientific ideas, and our good views about what will make wealthy products that the world wants. I am delighted that there was a focus on that in the Prime Minister’s statement.

There is another collection of portfolios and policies that make a nation work: labour laws that are fair and that give the worker some coverage and some protection, but that do not discourage employers from taking on new staff. I have to say that if some of the lunatic left of this country got their way they would put labour laws and protections in place that in theory would look brilliant, but not a single person would be employed, because no employer would take those risks. I have a view about the minimum wage. There is the idea of putting it to $15 and everybody being wealthy, but I ask why we stop at $15. Let us make it a hundred bucks an hour for everybody and we will be exceedingly wealthy. Of course, everyone is starting to laugh; even Labour members are starting to laugh at that. They know that the moment we make an artificial per hour rate we stifle the ability for employers to employ, so I am delighted that we have made only the small move we have on that issue.

We need to ensure a well-educated population. I find it absolutely gobsmacking when I go around this country and talk to employers who say that they have got jobs, and that they have signs out the front saying they will take on a general labour force, but they have not been able to employ a number of people because those people cannot fill out their application forms. They cannot read and they cannot write. That is a national disgrace. We have compulsory education to the age of 16, and we are paying billions for an education system, so it is a national disgrace that we are turning out people who cannot read and write. Twenty percent of school-leavers have no educational qualification up to the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 1 and, believe me, even NCEA level 1 will not be enough to get them through.

Again, I am delighted with the emphasis on national standards—on identifying for all young children in this country where they are up to in their reading, writing, and arithmetic, and how well they are progressing. I like Anne Tolley’s analogy. We like to have Plunket graphs for children’s weight and health. We want to know whether they are getting stronger and taller, and we monitor that. If they are not, we do something about it. So why do we not do that about their educational standards and their achievements so that we can spot where they are not making the grade and provide the necessary support and assistance? I am absolutely delighted at some of the things that have come out of those standards.

In relation to the taxation system, I have never heard anything like it. Who introduced GST to this country? Who was it? The Labour Government introduced GST. I will pay a tribute: I think that Sir Roger Douglas did one of the best things for this country. I like GST. I tell members that I like it, and I think that David Lange’s quote that now even drug dealers have to pay tax means that it is right. I like the idea of a tax system that taxes bad and rewards good. I think that spending and consumption—buying new big plasma screens—are bad, and investment and savings are good. Income is good. So I do not understand why we keep taxing the good things that we want people to do more of. I am a big fan of shifting the base to put more money into the hands of individuals by reducing the tax they pay, and then starting to move that money—so that the revenue does not get totally eroded, because the Government needs the money—by way of GST. It is so hilarious that Labour put GST up from 10 to 12.5 percent, and back then—

💬 Paul Quinn: When was that?

I think it was back in 1989. So it was OK then, but now, somehow, it is not OK. Well, I like GST.

The other thing I really, really find galling is the Opposition’s claim that tax cuts are for our rich mates. I will give a little analogy. Ten people go to a restaurant. The bill is $1,000 for the meal, and one guy says that he will pick up $900 of it. The others say that that is fantastically generous. Another person says he will pick up $100—just two of them will pay. Then the maître d’ comes over and says that the manager was so delighted with their behaviour and how much they had spent that he would give a 10 percent discount. So the guy who was to pay $900 gets 90 bucks back, and the guy who was to pay $100 gets 10 bucks back. All the others whinged that they were not getting anything back. That is what is going on here. The wealthy will be taxed less because they pay so much more to start with. People at the top end of the income stream are paying thousands and thousands of dollars—sometimes a week—more than others, and they will get a fraction of that back. But the left-wing, Labour, green-eyed envy monster comes up and says that this is tax cuts for the rich. Actually we will take slightly less tax from those rich people than they were paying in the past, and we will still reward people at the bottom end to make sure they are compensated for changes to GST.

I was delighted also that the Prime Minister’s statement talked about things like getting a world-class infrastructure investment going. All one needs to do is come to our great city, Auckland, where what we used to use for lighting, before candles, was electricity. Members will think I have that round the wrong way, but I do not. What we used to use for lighting, before candles, was electricity. We cannot rely on the electricity system any more. Sometimes it can go down for hours. It can cause major chaos to whole businesses, to whole sections, and even to the whole city. We have to lift this country’s investment in electricity networks and in roading networks to get the productive sector functioning. I am delighted that those things will be done by the Government.

We must dramatically reduce the overheads and the burden of a Public Service bureaucracy that absolutely ballooned out of control under Labour. I have the numbers but I do not have the time to go through them. We need to rein it in. We need a well-performing, efficient bureaucracy but we do not need the massive explosion that happened under that lot.

I rise today in this Parliament for the first time this year to say that I was completely and utterly underwhelmed by the Prime Minister’s opening gambit yesterday.

💬 Paul Quinn: Happy New Year, Sue.

I say a happy New Year to the Government, too. The speech was a shame for New Zealanders, because they were looking for a plan to take us forward in 2010. We know that 2009 was a difficult year right around the world. It was a difficult year internationally, and New Zealanders felt they had to tighten their belts, but for far too many New Zealanders that meant losing their incomes, that meant losing their livelihoods, because of the very sharp rise in unemployment. So New Zealanders are looking for some solutions in 2010, because they know that in 2010 our economy is recovering, as it is all around the world. All of the G-20 countries are now out of recession, as is New Zealand, and New Zealanders are thinking: “Great! In 2010 we can look forward to some of the damage being undone.”

What did they get from the Prime Minister’s statement? There was not one word about unemployment and not one word about job creation. That was the Government’s response, coming into this year, to those thousands of New Zealanders who suddenly last year, through no fault of their own, found themselves on the scrap heap. Now they hear from their Prime Minister that there are no opportunities going forward and no plans for job creation. They will just have to sit and wait until some miracle happens, because there certainly is no plan going forward on job creation.

I was listening very carefully to the Prime Minister’s statement, and I was looking out for the areas for which I have some responsibility in this Parliament as the Opposition spokesperson on both early childhood education and women’s affairs. I thought those were areas that the Government would really highlight. Certainly, last year the Prime Minister, John Key, in many of his official speeches, said right upfront that improved participation in early childhood education was a top priority for the Government. Well, that seems to have slipped right down the list this year, because although it was in the written statement made by the Prime Minister, it did not rate even a mention in his speech yesterday in the debating chamber. So it has certainly slipped right down the agenda, and it is no wonder.

I became momentarily quite excited when the Prime Minister started talking about “unlocking resources”, because I felt sure that when he talked about unlocking resources he must have been talking about the human resources in this country. I thought that he was going to come forward with a significant plan to get hold of our young people, particularly in their early years of education, and actually give them a better boost through early childhood education. I felt sure that he would go on and talk about a skills agenda and a programme to maximise the potential of our most important resource in this country—our human resource, our people.

But, no, sadly, when the Prime Minister talked about unlocking resources he was talking about digging up our playgrounds, digging up our national parks, and digging up our backyards. Certainly, for the area I come from, the Coromandel Peninsula, where most people from the Waikato spend their Christmas holidays, that was a direct threat. That is what “unlocking the resources” means when the Prime Minister gets up to speak.

It is a great shame that when he thought about the sorts of resources that really do need unlocking in this country, he was not focused on the early childhood education area. All he had to say about that—well, there was no speech referring to early childhood education, but there was a written statement at the beginning of the year—was that this year the Government will focus on increasing the number of children in our poor communities, and in Māori and Pasifika populations, who attend early childhood education. He went on to say that children who do not attend any form of early childhood education start school at a significant disadvantage. Then I think he really gave the game away by saying that despite funding having been poured into early childhood education in recent years, we are still not picking up and supporting enough of those children. Well, if the Prime Minister actually looked at the statistics, he would know that the introduction of the 20 hours’ free policy—when it was free; it is not free under this Government—which was put in place under the previous Labour Government, significantly improved and increased the participation of Māori and Pasifika children in early childhood education.

That is what one calls step change. That was an example of step change; it is not what the Prime Minister had to say yesterday. He kept talking about step change and I kept waiting for it. But there was not one announcement that meant the type of step change that had been achieved under the previous Labour Government. None the less, the Prime Minister set himself a target of going further than that and that is a very admirable target, but it was also the target that the Prime Minister had at the beginning of last year and absolutely no progress was made on it, whatsoever. In fact, I would say that the opposite happened.

We all know—or I hope we all know; I hope we all understand in this Parliament—that the importance about early childhood education is not just what it costs but the quality of that early childhood educational experience. All the research tells us that it is about children getting access to it but not access to any old early childhood education; it is about access to quality early childhood education. What has this Government done in that regard so far? Last year it spent all of its time dumbing down the sector. It spent all of its time dropping standards in the sector—actually dropping standards. Members on that side can talk all they like about national standards in education, but when it comes to early childhood education the standards have been dropped by this Government.

The very first act that the Government took was to scrap the planned improvements in child-staff ratios that were set to be introduced in May last year. In May 2009 children aged between 2 and 3 were set to get more teachers per child in early childhood education. All members in this House should know that that would improve the quality of the experience of early childhood education. But what did the National Government do? It scrapped those planned ratio changes. It pulled them at the last moment. So early childhood education providers who were gearing up for that change, and who had employed the qualified staff to enable them to meet it, suddenly did not have the funding to go with it. The rug had been pulled from underneath them.

Then the second act the Government took that dropped standards in the early childhood education sector was to stop the regulations going ahead that were going to ensure that facilities had to meet certain regulations. I do not think that it is too much of an ask for our very young children that they should go to facilities that are appropriate for them—for example, to have appropriate sleep facilities for very, very small children. I do not think that that is a big ask, at all. But what did this Government do? It said “No, we do not need any of that sort of quality in our early childhood education sector. Anything will go.” So they dropped that.

Late last year the Government also surreptitiously dumped the target of having 100 percent qualified staff in early childhood education by the year 2012. It did not just shuffle it backwards and say it was not quite ready, or that it would do it at a later time; it completely got rid of that target. The Government is dumbing down and dropping the standards in early childhood education—there is no doubt about that.

With regard to women’s affairs, apparently Pansy Wong said in the House yesterday that the Government will spend more money on investigating pay equity, or on some such illusion that she is under. The truth is that under Labour, $2 million per annum was spent through the Department of Labour on a very, very good pay and employment equity unit that was doing excellent work. But that sum was canned by the Government and replaced with $500,000. I am not sure what school of accounting Pansy Wong comes from, but cutting spending from $2 million in that area to just $500,000 per annum is not an increase in funding; it is a significant cut in funding to that area.

I think the best part of yesterday for me was that while the Prime Minister was giving his address, the Waikato Times was being delivered to most households in the Waikato with a front-page headline that screamed “Promise on road project broken”. That was on the day that the Prime Minister was trying to set out his strategy for the next 12 months for this country. He was saying what a fantastic Government it was, while it was breaking the only election promise it had made for Hamiltonians—that the Waikato Expressway would be completed within 10 years. The Waikato Times reported yesterday that the Transport Agency had come to town and said “Actually, folks, it is not going to be completed until the year 2024.” That was an election promise broken.

There is no plan for the next year. There are no jobs. The Government is not keeping true to its word for the people of Hamilton. That is a disgrace.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak within this debate and to support the statement that the Prime Minister made yesterday. It is no surprise that New Zealanders vote against Governments that they feel have been duplicitous. Duplicitous is an explanation or an identification of people who do not do what they say. In this case, it is a party that did not say what it did. Under the previous Labour Government we had, for instance, a number of years of good growing seasons, strong commodity prices, and a relatively low dollar for most of that period of time. It was a time when we had huge economic opportunity, and we had huge economic growth, but not a single cent of debt was repaid. Our debt-to-GDP ratio went down, because we were doing so well. Now, as the National Party has come into Government, we are finding ourselves with the boot completely on the other foot, yet those on the other side of the House stand and accuse us of not sticking to campaign policies, of not sticking to campaign promises, and of not sticking to things that we had said in Opposition.

What we found, of course, is that when we came into Government a number of changes had occurred, not only internationally but nationally, as well, and that the other side of the House was not clean on its side of the books when they were eventually opened. When we think about things like the accident compensation scheme, and when we think about the debt within Housing New Zealand, as far as programmed refurbishments go, we find that there are big holes there and there are big holes all over the place.

The previous speaker, Sue Moroney, talked about situations where National had, for instance, withheld Labour’s planned programme for teacher-student ratios within schools. Yet Labour’s policy year-on-year to reduce pupil-teacher ratios within the primary sector, particularly in new entrant classes, was never met. Labour campaigned on promises in 1999 of running a truancy register for the whole of New Zealand. It campaigned on that in successive elections and it never did it, either. The fact is that the previous Labour Government left us in a position where we are playing catch-up not only economically but socially, as well. It is a very, very difficult game to play.

Yesterday we heard the Leader of the Opposition say that he did not believe in GST. He did not believe in GST and he did not support GST, yet of course he was in the Government that not only introduced GST but also raised the rate of GST from 10 percent to 12.5 percent without any compensation at all for those people most affected by it at the bottom end of the tree. Now, apparently, it is a huge crime to indicate that GST may go to up to 15 percent, even given the levels of compensation that would be available to those who do not have the discretionary dollars to be able to choose how and when they spend their money, whose income is spent completely on the necessities. Under National’s programme, those people will be looked after, particularly, for instance, superannuitants, who will have four different legs up, in a way, to raise their income.

I have a real problem with social standards that have dropped over the last few years. To be fair, they have dropped over significant periods of time to a level where we have 20 percent of our young people leaving school without the educational qualifications to be able to function in a modern world. That is a real concern, and it is good to know that it has been a real concern for others in the education sector for a long time. No one is going to try to pretend that it is not. Our colleague on the other side of the House, when he was headmaster at Kaikohe Intermediate School—I think I have got that right—

💬 Colin King: Kaitāia.

What did he do when he turned up there—Kaitāia, was it? Sorry about that. He had a test. He found out where his students were in relation to other parts of the country. What did he find? That the vast majority of them did not hit the test. What did he do? He focused his priorities within that school on the ability of those children to be able to meet what was, in fact, a national standard—in other words, to function where they should be in relation to other students of their chronological age across New Zealand. When he did that, what happened? It lifted the game, as I understand it, from 4 percent to 76 percent. That is absolutely excellent—applause all round. Good on him. What do you know: now, of course, doing something like that is evil and nasty and we should walk right away from it!

I cut my teeth in another trade, dealing with people who failed in our society in the area of law and order. One thing that I noticed was that when police finish taking a statement off an offender they have got to get him or her to write on the bottom of that statement a sentence. The sentence is: “I have read this statement and it is true.” or “I have had this statement read to me and it is true.” I can tell the House that about 2 percent of all the people that I took a statement from could write that. The rest needed virtually every word of that small sentence spelled out for them so that they could do the same thing. What that should say to people on hearing that is this: if a person fails in education, he or she fails in every other social area in this country. So if a person fails in education, he or she fails in welfare, he or she fails in law and order, and, what do you know, he or she fails in health, because a person is forced into a situation where he or she is most greatly exposed to those negatives that will impact on his or her health. The person is consigned to a low-wage income and so is his or her family. To get out of that trap is incredibly difficult.

Nobody in this House and no one in this country would say that we should not concentrate on raising the levels of education with a view to increasing the prospects and the potential of those people who at the moment fail. Every one of us takes that seriously. How we get to that place is probably the reason for debate, and obviously will be over the next while. But just because one side of the House believes that we need to know where we are before we start the journey, that does not mean that we do not care and that we do not know what we are about.

Yesterday’s statement from the House touched on a large number of issues. Our focus this year will be on supporting national standards, with further reforms to ensure that children who need extra support get it. Along with an acceptance that national standards will have a cost to it, there is also an undertaking from this Government that schools will be given the resources to fund it and schools will be encouraged to hit their targets, and good on them. We will make legislative and funding changes to modernise our secondary schools. We will encourage those people in secondary schools now who are in danger of dropping out and being forced to cut a different track away from one that would lead them on to higher skills, and therefore on to higher hourly rates and a lift in their earning potential, and thereby improve the future for their families. We will encourage them to recognise the skills they have, and to apply them while they are in school to a career path that will take them somewhere.

We have also looked at the situation within our prison system, and in law and order generally. This Government has continued down the path Labour started, by increasing numbers within the police, but we have targeted those police into South Auckland. It is interesting to note that crime trends in South Auckland are starting to come down. We have looked at new ways in which the Department of Corrections’ services will be delivered. We are looking at the roll-out of a public-private partnership model within that department, and, yes, that is a hot potato. No doubt we will see the Department of Corrections’ union movement kick against that, and we would expect it to because it is change. We recognise that no one, particularly those in the public sector, likes change. People within the private sector have had to get used to the fact that change is upon us. But we do know that this system worked incredibly well for those people in the Auckland Central Remand Prison.

It is good that that tender is up again, and that tenders will be called for the private provision of those services. That is bearing in mind the rehabilitative and extra help that those who are on remand received within the private sector, which was never open to them within the public sector. When National came into Government the situation within the prisons, as far as rehabilitation was concerned, was that prisoners received no help and undertook no courses unless they had been in jail for at least 2 years or unless they had served two-thirds of their sentence. Most of the people in prisons were imprisoned for fewer than 2 years. We cannot write people off for 2 minutes or 2 hours, let alone 2 years.

I am proud of where this National Government is going, and I am sure, as is the rest of the public, that we will be in a better place at the end of this term than where we set out from. Thank you.

Tourism was, at least until the recession hit, New Zealand’s biggest export earner. One in 10 New Zealanders was employed in a tourism-related job. Tourism makes a huge contribution to our economy. The Prime Minister, who is also the Minister of Tourism, must have been aware when he announced yesterday a likely increase in GST and also mining in conservation areas that there would be repercussions for New Zealand’s tourism industry. This is an industry that he is meant to be listening to, and advocating for.

Raising GST and mining in conservation areas in national parks are two of the issues that most of the people I speak to in the tourism sector have grave concerns about. One of the features of the tourism industry, especially for inbound tourist operators, is that they have to set itineraries and pricing schedules 2 years in advance so that the wholesalers overseas are able to publish travel brochures and magazines advertising tourism products, experiences, and costs. Because of this advance pricing, tourism operators here in New Zealand will be especially hard hit by an increase in GST. Over the year that GST is increased they will have to absorb the increases and possibly wave goodbye to very slim profits.

The Prime Minister must be aware that the timing of any increase in GST is crucial to minimise the impact on the tourism sector. Already slim margins will disappear and many in the tourism industry will struggle. In order to survive, the quality of the tourist experience may be jeopardised as operators will cut corners to save costs. Some may not be able to provide the experiences that they promised in the brochures, and our reputation as a leading tourist destination may be tarnished. If we add to that the fact that we will be seen to be more expensive than a destination like Australia, where GST is only 10 percent, it is highly likely that we will see a drop in tourism numbers as tourists, especially long-haul tourists, do the maths and opt for less expensive holidays across the Tasman. New Zealand’s competitive edge will be blunted.

Instead of a plan to increase wages and create jobs, this proposal to increase GST may jeopardise wages and jobs, especially in the tourism industry. Some in the tourism industry are calling for the Government to consider introducing a GST refund scheme for international visitors, to help protect their contribution to the economy. International visitors currently contribute about $633 million a year in GST payments, and increasing GST to 15 percent will increase their contribution by about $14 million annually. Regardless, tax cuts for the rich, paid for by increasing GST for all, is not an economic plan.

The second issue the Prime Minister spoke about that will impact on tourism is opening up parts of the conservation estate to mining. Although the Prime Minister told us that new mines would be subject to strict environmental tests, the very fact that we are even considering this proposal damages our international reputation and again tarnishes our “100% Pure New Zealand” brand.

None of what was announced yesterday is the death knell of the tourism industry in New Zealand, but there has been a steady accumulation of policies from this Government that are eroding our desirability as an iconic and unspoiled holiday playground. Aside from raising GST and undertaking mining in conservation areas, the Government’s position on climate change, the number of recent assaults on tourists, the deaths of tourists on our roads and also in the adventure tourism industry, amongst other things, means we need to be careful not to start down a slippery slope.

Although I support the speedy and comprehensive settlement of Treaty settlements, Māori got very little out of the Prime Minister’s speech. The Māori Party campaigned hard before the last election on a platform of removing GST from food. It is ironic that the Māori Party is now part of a Government that is making food more expensive, not less expensive, for our people. It is our people who will really feel the effects of an increase in GST. It is our people who will have the greater percentage of their income spent just on putting food in front of their kids, clothes on their backs, and a roof over their heads. Economic commentator Bernard Hickey said that it is the young and the less well-off who will be hardest hit. Well, that describes Māori. We are younger, and we are less well-off. If life was hard before, it will get harder. Many of us have family living on the other side of the Tasman, and even more will be there this time next year.

Education will become more expensive with GST added to the cost of bread for school lunches, school shoes, uniforms, and books, and school trips will be more expensive because the cost of petrol will rise. Fewer hard-working Māori will be able to afford the extra educational activities that many others take for granted, and by not being able to afford to participate in these extracurricular activities, the curriculum will become much narrower for our people.

Then there is the national standards debate. Let me be clear from the start. There is not a principal or teacher in the country who is opposed to either high standards or giving parents the information they desire about their children’s achievement. If there is, that principal or teacher needs to leave the teaching profession. Educators’ main opposition to the national standards is that there is just no evidence to show they make a difference. Maybe if the Minister just fronted with the evidence, the debate would be over.

The achievement expectations and the national standards are almost identical to those that we set at Kaitaia Intermediate School. But we did not raise achievement simply by setting a standard. We raised achievement by investing in teachers’ professional development and learning, so that they had the skills and the research-based best-practice teaching strategies to help students to achieve those standards. As an example, in the year 2000, the year before I became principal of that school, the professional development budget was less than $1,000. In 2001 we raised it to $26,000. We need to invest in teachers and give them the skills, the attitudes, and the knowledge that will help them to raise achievement.

There will be teachers out there who are great at teaching many things but will be weaker at other things. The Best Evidence Synthesis says that professional development in specific areas raises achievement a lot faster and a lot further than just generic professional development. If the Minister is serious about raising achievement, she needs to implement a system where the specific teaching needs of teachers are identified and specific professional development is given to those teachers to meet those particular needs. For example, we can talk about raising literacy, but in literacy there is oral literacy, reading, and writing. In writing alone, there are four or five different styles of writing. If we want to raise achievement in any one of those writing styles, teachers need to have specific professional development in that particular style. Raising achievement is a complex, technical, practitioner-specific art that simply cannot be encapsulated into the five words “national standards, plain English reports”.

To pretend that lifting achievement is as simple as repeating a political mantra is an insult to teachers and principals nationwide, and probably is much of the cause of the resistance to the standards. Throughout my educational career, and now as I visit schools as a politician, I see principals and teachers who throw their hearts and souls into making kids learn, but the disdain that has been shown to them by denying them an opportunity to contribute to the formation of these standards before imposing them on schools flies in the face of all best-practice, change-management strategies. With respect, if the Minister tried to work with those in the education sector, she may not be experiencing quite the resistance she is now. Just as Russell Bishop’s highly praised Te Kōtahitanga project looks to improve educational outcomes through improving relationships, so too the Minister may be better able to achieve educational outcomes by improving her relationships with the education sector.

As I have said before in this House, research shows that there are few things a teacher can do that will make students dumber. Almost every strategy works to one degree or another. So when the Government says in 12 months’ time that achievement has risen, it will be difficult to tell whether it was because of national standards or in spite of national standards. A question I have for the Minister is will she invest $60 million on even the top 10 percent of strategies that are known to be most effective at raising achievement, just as she has invested $60 million on national standards that have no research evidence to show they raise achievement. It is one thing for the Prime Minister and the Minister of Education to tell the country what they hope national standards will do, and another thing again to produce the evidence that proves they will make a difference.

Yesterday the Prime Minister gave a speech in this House that outlined the priorities of the National-led Government for this year. However, his speech was an abridged version of the 9,000 word - plus address that members will find tabled in the House. I can assure all New Zealanders that those 9,000 words are certainly worth a read. It is a very good and reassuring read. It is a good read because it is a plan that sets out to improve the lot of all New Zealanders. There are no winners and losers; all New Zealanders are taken into account in that plan. It is a plan to move New Zealand into maximising the opportunities we have to have a much more economically sound nation. The plan also addresses aspects of our nation that have been, metaphorically speaking, holding New Zealand back for many years, and we know under whose stewardship that was, do we not?

This afternoon I intend to dwell on the aspects of that plan that have particular resonance for me and for my electorate of Rangitata. The year 2010 is when New Zealand needs to accelerate out of the remnants of the recession. We have turned the corner, but there is much further to go. This is the year when those New Zealanders who have lost their jobs need to feel uplifted by a confidence in a Government that is willing to change some of the baseline settings that have seen this country languish in recent years when quite massive surpluses allowed us an opportunity to strive ahead, but we did not manage it. We did not achieve it; all of those opportunities were squandered under a Labour Government. The National Government has a different plan for New Zealand. We will not be able to utilise vast surpluses, as Labour did, but we have a plan that addresses the reasons why we, as a country, have been performing below our potential. We can do so much better and we are ambitious enough to get on with the business.

This afternoon in question time we saw a pitiful display from an Opposition that just does not get it. It slates national standards, the very chance we have to address the woeful record of one in five students getting to National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 and not making the cut. We cannot continue to deliver that sort of future to approximately 150,000 young New Zealanders. That is a failure that Labour might be happy with, but we on this side of the Chamber are not.

In the course of last year I visited almost all of the schools in my electorate. I went to 34 schools and to some of them more than once. National standards were on the agenda for discussion and when principals or teachers did not raise it with me, I raised it with them. You see, I am not scared to talk to schools, to educators, and to parents. I certainly am aware that the parents of our nation, some 73 percent and more, want national standards. They want to know how their children are getting on at school and they want to help in making it better. I acknowledge that many of the schools in my electorate are reporting to parents on student achievement, and I was heartened to hear and see examples. National’s plan to implement national standards will not change good practices in schools, but it will set a benchmark that is consistent across all schools and an expectation that the current level of school achievement is absolutely not OK. We can do so much better.

I have been constructively working with the schools of Rangitata to answer their questions about national standards, and we are doing so in a very constructive manner. We absolutely do not ignore the fact that there are some students, one in five in New Zealand, who are not achieving their potential; the educators admit it. The concept of national standards, to measure achievement then educate students so they make progress, is sound. The issue is not where the student starts from; it is how far he or she progresses. We need to use all of the resources at our disposal, and that includes parents. Children spend a whole lot more of their day at home with their parents, so let us use that resource to help them progress. We have always acknowledged that there is some uneasiness about national standards, but now is the time to commit to our kids. It is about the students and it is about New Zealand’s young people, and we need to get on with it.

The Prime Minister uttered some words during his speech that were music to my ears. John Key talked about unlocking resources that can aid our economic recovery, and, what is more, this Government has the guts to get on with it. The natural resource that is most important to the Rangitata electorate is water. The people of mid-Canterbury and South Canterbury know it, and, since making my maiden speech, I have been promoting its importance. When the Prime Minister said that we will unlock resources for economic benefit to create better-paid jobs for New Zealanders, where this is also consistent with our environmental, conservation, and other objectives, my heart warmed. When the Prime Minister went on to reiterate that National will continue the reforms of the Resource Management Act, I could hear the cheering in the sheep yards, in the cowsheds, and on the tractors in my electorate.

When John Key went on to say that this year a National Government will remove particular regulatory roadblocks to water storage and irrigation in Canterbury, I could hear the cheering in the streets, the banks, the businesses, and the paddocks of my electorate. But wait, I then saw an article in the newspaper. It was an interview with the “buddy MP” Ruth Dyson, who seems to have had an epiphany. She was cheering on irrigation in mid-Canterbury. I was scratching my head, and I thought to myself: “Surely not. This can’t be coming from the former Labour Minister who presided in a Government that sat idly by while resource consents got harder and harder to get, not to mention much more expensive.” It is the same group of Labourites who spent most of their time decrying farmers for ruining the environment. Under Labour, farming was still considered a sunset industry. I can tell members that if Labour’s approach to issues like tenure review, the heavy impositions of costs under the Labour emissions trading system, and the added compliance burden that appeared to be unstemmed under Labour had continued, farming might well have become a sunset industry. Fortunately, in our caucus we have a strong, sound base of people who understand agriculture, and none more so than our Minister of Agriculture, the Hon David Carter.

Another issue of importance to me is the social issue. When I was elected I vowed that anyone who could work deserved the satisfaction of having a job. Anyone who could work should work. The ill-conceived headline of the time read “Beneficiaries beware Goodhew”. But this view is based on the constituents who told me they felt trapped in welfare and wanted so much more for themselves and also for their families. “Give me a job, just any job will do”, some of them said to me. I have heard that before and I have heard it quite recently. I have heard it from our Minister for Social Development and Employment; that certainly is her mantra. The mantra is to get a job, any job—get one’s CV in order, to achieve the good feeling of being in work.

As we move out of this recession, now is the time to take on that mantra and to say we will deliver jobs to New Zealanders. Part of that will be achieved by lifting educational achievement in our schools and building opportunities for New Zealanders. We will also work to increase the number of children from poor communities participating in early childhood education. It is fair to say that that start to their education is vitally important and one that National shares a commitment to. But it is more than that. We need trades and skills as well. We will introduce changes to give secondary schools the flexibility to run trades training programmes, and we will progress the Youth Guarantee so that 16 and 17-year-olds can get vocational training outside of school. School is not the right place for all of our young people. If we trap them in school, all they will do is interfere with the education of students who actually want to be at school. We need to give them options that improve their future chance of getting a job and having a life that they deserve.

In tertiary education we need to drive policy that ensures tertiary providers deliver quality courses that are relevant to the job market, and, by golly, we have seen some amazing examples of courses that are not relevant to the job market. We need to work with universities to support excellence.

This National Government has a huge agenda for 2010. We on this side of the Chamber are really excited. New Zealand deserves to get these things going, and under a John Key - led National Government it will happen in 2010.

Listening to that contribution from my colleague Jo Goodhew and then hearing the interjections from the other side made me realise that 16 months on from the last general election that Opposition still has not woken up to the fact of why it lost so decisively at the election of 2008. Labour voters left in droves and decided that the then Labour Government did not have a strategy to deliver for New Zealanders. They were fed up with the Helen Clark proposals of recklessly spending their hard-earned taxpayer money in a benign attempt to buy votes, simply to stay in power. Yesterday’s statement was all about the National Government, led by our Prime Minister John Key, putting a very firm stake in the ground as to what this National Government will be branded for. This National Government will be branded for a genuine effort to engender economic growth and prosperity for all New Zealanders. So I suggest that New Zealanders get hold of the full statement of John Key—the 9,500 words—and read it carefully. [Interruption] That member calls out “job creation”; well, job creation was throughout the statement, with the amount of money that we are spending on infrastructure and the progress we will make with irrigation. All of that will deliver prosperity and jobs. It seems to me when we talk to New Zealanders that the only people who have not woken up to that are the Labour Opposition members.

Last night when I left this place I was walking home and got talking to a guy who said to me: “I didn’t vote National at the last election.” I said that that was his choice. He then immediately said: “But I wish I had.” He sees that this Government is intent on trying to do something for that sort of person, who I suspect was very much a blue-collar worker and the sort of voter who traditionally would never have considered voting for any other party. But after yesterday’s statement by the Prime Minister we have got him and locked him in as a National voter, and that is what the Labour Opposition has to wake up to.

The economic plan that the National Government laid out yesterday is ambitious. It has to be ambitious if we are going to encourage our young New Zealanders both to return from overseas and then to stay in New Zealand. They left in droves during the last decade and we cannot blame them. They were driven out by policies of high taxation and reckless spending, which did not deliver prosperity. To the day I die I will never forget the images of Michael Cullen on the pre-election fiscal update release, gloating that he had left 10 years of deficit for whoever was to be the incoming Government. He achieved that through a period of international buoyancy. Then we came into Government and struck the worst economic conditions that we have seen since the 1930s. We spent last year fulfilling and delivering our election promises, and no New Zealander can say that we did not do that. This year we outlined a strategy to deliver real growth.

I will concentrate on the part that I was significantly involved in and that is the irrigation development that will occur in this country. I will read two paragraphs from John Key’s statement. He said: “The Government will also take action this year to remove particular regulatory roadblocks to water storage and irrigation in Canterbury. This will be in addition to the work already being carried out by the National Infrastructure Unit and the Land and Water Forum on progressing water storage infrastructure throughout the country.” The Prime Minister went on to say: “Overall, the Government is committed to ensuring that water storage and irrigation projects which meet environmental standards, and which are good economic propositions, can happen in a decent time.”

That is a far cry from what was done by the previous Labour Government. It is all very well for buddy MP Ruth Dyson to come in 2010 to say she supports irrigation in Canterbury. Where was she through the 9 years that she was in a Cabinet with a chance to do something? She was silent, as was Darren Hughes. What did he do to develop the Canterbury water strategy? He did absolutely nothing.

We often hear the comment that Australia is the lucky country. We have all heard that. Well, New Zealand is the lucky country. We have the minerals. We had just previously never decided to use them, and that will change under a National Government. But more important, we have one attribute that Australia will not have and will never have, and its precarious situation will get worse, and that is water. At the moment in my home province of Canterbury, 96 percent of that water goes down those major rivers and into the sea. We can harvest that water. We can utilise it and deliver substantial profitability, productivity, and buoyancy to the economy, not only of Canterbury, but also to the whole of New Zealand. We have identified 500,000 hectares currently irrigated in New Zealand. Much of that irrigation is actually unreliable at the moment, yet we also have identified potentially a further $1.9 million worth of hectares that could be irrigated.

I think it is a crying shame that our Government had not done this many, many years ago, because the opportunities are there. So we are determined to unblock those roadblocks that exist at the moment. We will make sure that we deliver that profitability. In my portfolio area of agriculture, when I was asked by the Prime Minister where could we quickly get some economic gains, the obvious answer was water. I am pleased that the Prime Minister, Cabinet, and my caucus colleagues have accepted that challenge and have prepared to move so decisively on it.

I will just touch on one other issue, and that is the global alliance that the National Government delivered to the world at Copenhagen. It was the only success that came out of the Copenhagen conference on climate change last year. This initiative has been recognised throughout the world. It has been praised by everybody. It has been joined by 23 countries, with the Americans giving US$90 million and New Zealand giving NZ$45 million to it. I have seen one sole criticism of the global alliance, and that came from a little-known Labour backbench MP called Charles Chauvel. Charles Chauvel travelled to Copenhagen, and the sum contribution from his trip to Copenhagen was to criticise the New Zealand initiative, the global alliance.

I have been at conferences last year around the world selling the concept. Every time it is spoken of, it is spoken of as the New Zealand initiative. New Zealand has recognised this as an opportunity—that with money spent on science, we can do something to lessen and mitigate the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. New Zealand cannot do it alone, and the rest of the world will not be able to do it alone, but if we get cooperation between the scientists around the world, then we can make real progress. I congratulate John Key as Prime Minister on announcing that initiative at Copenhagen, and I severely criticise the Labour Opposition, and particularly Charles Chauvel, as being the only people whom I know of who have managed to find criticism of the initiative.

Not only did we tidy up a number of issues around economic growth but also we clearly signalled that we are serious about reforming the tax system. There was concern about land tax and capital gains. John Key took the opportunity yesterday to say that those are not part of this National Government agenda. There is a lot of work to be done now on finalising a tax package, and I look forward to being involved in that. But I was surprised by Mr Goff’s response immediately after the Prime Minister sat down, when he said that he was against GST—because he introduced GST; Mr Goff was a close colleague of Mr Caygill at the time when it was introduced. He then corrected himself and said that he was against increasing GST. Well, the last time that GST was increased, from 10 percent to 12.5 percent, guess who was a Minister in Cabinet? It was none other than Phil Goff. So it is no wonder Mr Goff’s speech yesterday had no credibility whatsoever.

I begin my remarks today by paying tribute to the 40,000 New Zealanders who, through no fault of their own, found themselves joining the unemployment benefit ranks last year—40,000 extra New Zealanders. They are real people who previously had real jobs. They have real families, real homes, and real mortgages. Too often in this House when we talk about unemployment, we talk about numbers. We saw that with John Key last year, when he said that he was happy with the increase in unemployment rates last year given the economic conditions. I do not think that anybody should ever be happy with an increase in unemployment rates. I pay tribute to those 40,000 New Zealanders for the work that they have done and the work that they are doing to try to get themselves back into work.

I pick up a point that Jo Goodhew made before. She talked about the fact that those who can work should work. Well, the news is that they can work and they should work, but there are no jobs for them. If there were jobs for them, then they would be working. Three thousand people lined up outside a Countdown supermarket to apply for 150 jobs—3,000 people want to work in those 150 jobs, yet this National Government is looking down on the people who are unemployed and telling them that they need to lift their game. It is doing nothing to create the type of environment where there are real jobs for them to get into. It is all very well to say that those who can work should work, but if there are no jobs, then they have no choice. This National Government talks a lot about choice, but there are no choices for people who are on the unemployment benefit if there are no jobs for them to go to. What is this Government doing about creating jobs? It is doing very, very little.

I also acknowledge those elderly people who have found that their home help has been cut in the past year, and those people who previously undertook night classes and who have found that those classes have been taken away from them. I acknowledge the low-income earners who have found that the tax cuts promised to them at the last election were taken away by the National Government last year. I also acknowledge our police force, which has found that its police cars have been taken away by the National Government, whose members said before the election that they were pro-police. This Government has taken its eye off the ball already. It has already taken its eye off the ball, and it has no vision for New Zealand.

John Key’s speech was all sizzle and no sausage. There was absolutely no substance to John Key’s hollow rhetoric about aspiration for New Zealand. It was a regurgitated list of announcements that National had already made last year. There was nothing in there to give New Zealanders hope that the future will be better. As Tom Scott pointed out in his cartoon this morning, the message to New Zealanders who want to catch up with the wages in Australia is that they should just move there. If any New Zealanders want to earn the types of wages that people are earning in Australia, the message from this National Government is that they should get on a plane and go there. They should join the Australians, because this Government has no plan to lift wages in New Zealand. In fact, the best thing that this Government can promise is that it will increase the price of a basket of groceries when people go to the supermarket. It will increase the price of a visit to the doctor. It will increase the price of day-to-day living for ordinary New Zealanders so that it can give tax cuts to those at the top of the heap, to those who earn the most money. It is doing that so that John Key can get a big, fat tax cut and so that the chief executive of Telecom can get a big, fat tax cut. That is what this Government wants to do. It wants to increase the cost of day-to-day living for ordinary New Zealanders so that it can give tax cuts to those at the top of the heap. I do not think any New Zealander should look forward to that. I do not think it will give any New Zealander hope for a better future. It does not deliver on John Key’s promise to be ambitious for New Zealand.

I will talk mostly about John Key’s other big idea in his speech, which is national standards in education. The Government’s plan for education appears to amount to little more than turning teachers and parents against each other. The National Government’s goal to lift standards in education is to completely destroy any relationship of trust between teachers and parents, and to create the impression in all parents that teachers are simply out to rort the system and that they are not there for the good of the kids. It wants parents to think that teachers are out there to hoodwink parents and to pull the wool over parents’ eyes. Well, I have news for the Government. I visited every single school in my electorate during last year. I spoke to all of the primary teachers in their staffrooms. Having visited every primary school in my electorate, I did not find one single teacher who thinks that having national standards is a good idea. Every single teacher whom I spoke to thinks that it is a bad idea and that it will actually lead to worse outcomes for the kids.

Ultimately, that is what this should be about: what is best for the kids, not what sounds best on a bumper sticker, which is all the Government really cares about when it talks about national standards. It does not really care about the research. What does the research, the evidence, say about what works? The research is from people like John Hattie, whom John Key used to hold up as a shining example and whom he used to listen to. John Hattie thinks that the national standards policy is a bad idea. He thinks that it is a bad idea and that it is badly implemented. Anne Tolley is shaking her head. She clearly has not been listening. This Government does not listen to the experts, because Anne Tolley’s superior knowledge of all matters to do with education is apparently far more beneficial—according to this National Government—than evidence put together through tested examples, through tried and true examples, and through careful research!

I know that there are kids in our schools who need to do better—absolutely. We have to focus on them, and we need to focus on the quality of teaching. We need to focus on putting more resources into the kids who are not doing very well. But, as my colleague Kelvin Davis has said so many times before, weighing the pig over and over again will not make the pig fatter; giving the pig more food will make it fatter. This Government is doing nothing to do with that. Instead it is spending millions of dollars on a massive public relations exercise to promote the National Party. It is spending millions of dollars on little flyers with the National Party logo on them and putting them into people’s letterboxes to tell them that national standards are a good idea. Parents are wising up to it. They are talking to the teachers, sitting down with them, and realising that these national standards add nothing. They do not actually improve the quality of education; they do not tell them anything that a good sit-down and a discussion with their kid’s teacher could not tell them already. In fact, what they do is narrow the scope of what kids will be focused on and what kids will be learning in school.

💬 Hon Steve Chadwick: Self-paced learning—gone.

Self-paced learning will be gone. It is a one-size-fits-all model that is designed to drive out creativity and innovation from our schools. It is designed on the assumption that every kid learns at the same rate, but we know that they do not. All the evidence tells us that different kids learn at different rates, yet the Government is turning its back on all of that evidence.

The Government seems to have ignored the fact that some of our most innovative people and some of our most successful entrepreneurs were driven away by the one-size-fits-all education system. A lot of our most innovative people did not actually make it through the education system, because it was such a one-size-fits-all education system. The Government wants to exacerbate that problem with its national standards policy. It has no comprehension of what it will actually take to lift student achievement, which is a focus on quality teachers and a focus on giving teachers the resources and the acknowledgment that they require. The Government’s launching of a $20 million - plus campaign up and down the country to tell teachers that they are rubbish and not doing a good job will not do that. To somehow think that by telling parents that they should distrust the teachers in their school and that the teachers are not giving them the information they should get we will raise the standard of education in our schools is just rubbish. Yet that is what this Government is focused on.

John Key’s speech to Parliament yesterday was simply a rehash of announcements from last year. It contained no new ideas, and it contained no hope for the future—no real agenda to catch up with Australia. To conclude, I say that I can find one example of where the National Government has caught up with Australia. We had a much lower unemployment rate than Australia did before National came into Government, and now we have a much higher rate than Australia. It caught up with Australia on only one measure: we now have more unemployed people.

There is too much noise and there are also many people moving into the gallery. I ask that we give the speakers some respect.

I will address the Prime Minister’s statement and I commend the comments of my Green colleagues who have spoken earlier in the debate. I also commend my colleague Rahui Katene, whose contribution I heard last night about the social and equity issues faced in this country by Māori, in particular, and about the failure of this Government to address those in any form. I will pick up on some of the themes of what she was saying, from a Green Party point of view.

The Prime Minister said in his speech that he worried about the emergence of an underclass in Aotearoa—he said New Zealand—

💬 Sue Moroney: “New Zillun”.

—in “New Zillun”. How fantastic that the Prime Minister would worry about such a thing, but obviously he must be blind to the reality of hundreds of thousands of New Zealand families who already are part of an underclass in this country. Not only has the Prime Minister displayed his blindness and his failure to understand what it means to be a low-paid vulnerable family in this country. Everything he said yesterday in his statement, every plan that he has for this country, will further create that underclass. It will add more and more New Zealanders to that underclass; it will add more and more children to that underclass. I will discuss some of the plans to increase the underclass in Aotearoa.

We have some 200,000 children living in poverty in this country. Many of them are the children of beneficiaries, identified as the children most likely to be living in serious and significant hardship. The social security system on which these children and their families rely is simply too poor to support their needs. Families cannot live on a benefit.

I have had to live on a benefit—on both the unemployment benefit and the domestic purposes benefit. I know what it is like for those families to have to provide for their kids while finding a way to get themselves out of that situation. The people I have known over many years who have been on benefits, and the people I have worked with who have been on benefits, are fighting every day just for survival. They are fighting every day to find a way out. What they need is support from the State, not cuts to services like the training incentive allowance, which, of course, make it extremely difficult if not impossible for most people on the domestic purposes benefit to get a university degree, when we know that a person with a university degree will earn a higher income than with any other kind of tertiary education qualification. Yet this Government has shut out domestic purpose beneficiaries—solo parents who are struggling to find a way to get themselves out of that situation—from being able to get the kind of degree that will enable them to earn a high income.

What is this Government’s response to the increasing numbers of unemployed and beneficiaries? It is to blame and attack those families; to blame and attack the children of the poorest families. The benefit reforms highlighted by the Prime Minister in his statement simply entrench the inequality that this country faces. They simply entrench the poverty gap between the rich and the poor by forcing solo parents, ordinary Kiwi mums and dads who for whatever reason find themselves in need of social support, into a job market that cannot cope with them because there are no jobs for them to go to. That will not work. It will do nothing for those families and it will severely interfere with the ability of those solo parents to properly parent their children. It will force them away from their homes and families and away from their kids, who need them. It will impose greater costs on those families. Looking for work, alone, costs money. It costs money in childcare and in transport, and in a whole range of areas that John Key obviously has no concept of. He does not understand that and he has never understood that.

Sickness beneficiaries are being subjected to constant assessment. People who are paraplegic, people with severe illnesses, and people who are unable to work and who, therefore, need the social security system to support them—as it should—are being pressured by State agencies, which increases their stress and increases the likelihood that their illnesses will get worse. But it is not only that, the Prime Minister is isolating those families and people from the rest of the New Zealand community through the abusive language that is used to describe them. We heard the abuse from this Government last year with its continual series of attacks on beneficiaries, and we heard more of it yesterday. There are no jobs for these people to be forced into. The jobs simply do not exist. There are 40,000 extra people unemployed. There are no jobs, so why would any Government with any sense of compassion choose to attack those people who have the least amount of choice, the least amount of political power? Perhaps it is because it benefits the Government in its votes. The process by which this Government is undertaking that work will create even further the underclass that Mr Key says he is so worried about.

We know that the Government intends to persecute those New Zealand parents who are doing their very best for their families in trying personal circumstances. But what about the working poor? Just because someone has a job it does not mean that person has enough money to survive on. We know that people who work a 40-hour week on the minimum wage, which is now $12.75 an hour, will earn somewhere around $400 a week. Families cannot survive on that kind of money. We know that 450,000 New Zealanders are earning less than $15 an hour on the minimum wage. That is 450,000 New Zealanders who are earning a miserable wage. They are working full-time and they cannot support their families. Sometimes we hear the rhetoric from the Government that these are young people, students, or part-timers, but these are people who do full-time jobs and have families, and who struggle and struggle to find the support they need to take care of their families properly. What do they do? Well, they have no choice. They use Working for Families, for example, to try to top up that income.

If this Government chose to put up the minimum wage to a rate that was able to support a family—at least $15 an hour—this country would save $1 billion in Government social support. The Government could save $1 billion in social support if the minimum wage was raised to a reasonable level. That is $1 billion that could be invested in our schools, which are desperate for funding to support the children. It is $1 billion that could be used for housing or for other forms of social support, which could support both economic development—building more State houses—and the environment. But, no, this Government chooses not to support the families but to subsidise business, because that, in effect, is what Working for Families does. By keeping the minimum wage low and having Working for Families or some other social support behind it, what ends up happening is that this Government subsidises businesses, and families suffer as a result.

Housing was raised in the Prime Minister’s statement. There is no plan from the Government to increase the number of State houses. It is talking about selling off State houses. There is no plan; it will just sell off State houses in wealthy areas and buy cheap State houses in poor areas, ghettoising those vulnerable families who need a place to live. Because there is no plan to build any more State housing, we will have a continual round of families who are in the State houses, then back on the waiting list, being shifted around the country. There will be no consistency and no ability for kids to stay in the schools that they have become attached to, and no ability for people to get secure work because their housing is so insecure. They will be separated from their families.

Thousands of New Zealand families are still on the Housing New Zealand Corporation waiting list. They are waiting for a State house, and those people will stay on that waiting list, going through the cycle of poverty that keeps them poor, vulnerable, and out of society, and which keeps their kids sick and out of school. This Government has no plan to fix that. It would like to keep it that way. It will not even fix the issues in the housing market to make sure that housing is affordable for New Zealanders. Perhaps it is in the interests of the Government and its voters to do that. It is not in the interests of the families of this country, who are desperately in need of jobs, living incomes, and basic housing.

There is no plan from this Government to fix that. The Green Party is here for a smart economy and for a sustainable and prosperous country, and we have the plan that will do that.

I welcome the contribution from the co-leader of the Greens, Metiria Turei, but I must say I disagree with a number of her statements. Just to take, for example, the housing issue, I say the Government is doing a tremendous amount of work on how to make better use of a $15 billion asset owned by the New Zealand taxpayer. The Government has found that all the performance measures that the previous Government had been using focused on the houses, and not on the people. There are 10,000 people on the waiting lists. Some of them do have quite serious housing needs, and we need to make better use of what is the taxpayer’s largest single asset. The member will be able to watch that process unfold over the next few months.

Ms Turei also raised the issue of welfare reform. I think there are a number of aspects of this issue on which we could agree. Despite New Zealand having experienced 8 or 9 years of pretty strong economic growth and strong growth in jobs, 250,000 New Zealanders are currently on so-called long-term benefits; that is, the sickness, invalids, and domestic purposes benefits. That is a quarter of a million people, and I have to say the system does not pay a great deal of attention to them. Their capacities are unknown, and their potential is untested. It is a significant human waste, which the Prime Minister referred to yesterday in his statement. The Prime Minister signalled in his statement that for the current Government, that is not good enough. There is a lot of unrealised potential among those 250,000 people, and there is a very large long-term fiscal cost. One of the things the Government can do to deal with the long-term fiscal issues in New Zealand is to have a pretty hard look at how we deal with the large group of people who are on long-term benefits.

Those things were covered yesterday by the Prime Minister in his statement. They are part of a comprehensive agenda that the Government has laid out, and it includes significant reform of our social services. The reasons for those significant reforms are pretty straightforward. After large increases in spending on housing, health, and education, New Zealanders are not convinced that they have the outcomes that they hope for when they hand over their tax every week. In addition to that, we also have constrained fiscal circumstances, looking ahead. Regardless of whoever is in Government, the reality is that the Government’s books, because of the recession, are not in good order. We will have small growth in expenditure over the next 4 or 5 years. That means the Government needs to rethink how it delivers front-line services, because it is critical that New Zealanders enjoy good front-line services despite the fact that the Government’s books are not in very good order. That is just one example of the reasons why the Government is focusing strongly on economic growth.

If we want to have better public services, have new jobs created, and have higher incomes, that can happen only if we have a sound economy, where businesses have the confidence to invest, employ people, and make enough profits to pay tax. Those are the raw facts of it. We cannot do that in the same way as was done in the last decade. A fair chunk of the growth in this economy in the last decade was growth in the Government sector. In fact, Government expenditure grew at about twice the rate of the economy between 2003 and 2008. Because we have significant deficits and are having to go to world markets to borrow large amounts of money—I think in total we are borrowing about $240 million a week—the Government does not have the opportunity to drive the growth of the economy over the next 10 years. Growth needs to come from the private sector, and particularly from our export sector. Those are the terms that the Prime Minister outlined in his speech yesterday.

The results of the boom times of the early 2000s, followed by the New Zealand recession that began in late 2007 and early 2008, followed by the global recession that turned up in October 2008, have left us with an economy that is out of balance. Essentially, we spend more than we earn. We became pretty good in the last 10 years at spending, both in the Government and in households. Households have ended up with significant debt, and the Government is growing its debt quite rapidly. We owe the world $160 billion; the world has lent us $160 billion. We have to service that debt, which will continue to grow. So it is important that we now focus on the earning side of the economy. The Prime Minister laid out a range of measures that are designed to boost the earning side of the economy. Among those were a number of sectoral measures that he outlined in respect of water storage, aquaculture, mining, and the tax system.

There will be plenty of ongoing debate about the contribution that changes in the tax system can make, but the motivation behind them is straightforward. Tax is a pervasive incentive in the economy. Everyone makes decisions based on the taxes that they face. The Tax Working Group pointed out a number of weaknesses in our tax system. In respect of people on higher incomes, it is inequitable. For instance, a survey of the top 100 asset-owners by the Inland Revenue Department showed that only half of the wealthiest 100 people in New Zealand were actually paying the top tax rate. The opportunities for structuring to avoid taxes are too great, and that is eroding our tax base. I think there is another aspect of that, too, and that is New Zealand’s skill base. The fact is, we have next door in Australia an economy that can compete for our skilled people and does so vigorously, and we need to create every advantage that we can for ourselves.

So the context in which the Government and the Prime Minister are considering tax changes is the need to create the right incentives in the economy, so that we have the incentive to invest, to save, and to export. In the last 10 years we have had too much consumption and borrowing. We have had too much of spending more than we earn. Our political opponents may regard that as sustainable; we do not. The reason is not ideological; it is straightforward. We cannot keep doing it, because people will not keep lending us money, and more important than that, it means that by the time we get through this cycle, we will be leaving for the next generation of workers about twice as much public debt as the Government currently holds. That is simply not good enough for future generations of New Zealanders, because it means that we are using their earning capacity to meet our needs now. That means they will have less of that earning capacity to meet their own needs. I know the co-leader of the Green Party Jeanette Fitzsimons will refer to sustainability, a word that can have many meanings. But one thing that is not sustainable is policy that leaves the bills for our consumption to the next generation.

I just finish my time by acknowledging the role that that co-leader of the Green Party has played in the last 13 years in this Parliament. I know the Greens will feel her loss, but I think Parliament will certainly feel her loss. I share with Jeanette Fitzsimons the regret that she did not have the opportunity to be a Minister in previous Governments, an opportunity that, had her political allies offered it to her, she would have taken. She would have been an excellent Minister. I acknowledge, from a political point of view, her expertise and professionalism, and her ability to get her message across. There are very few politicians who display total coherence in what they themselves believe, how they represent that, and how they articulate it. In my view Jeanette Fitzsimons was one of the few, in the time that I have been here, who represented that total integrity of message. It was not always a message I agreed with, but that is the business. I think it is something that the whole Parliament has respected. I do not want to take away Jeanette Fitzsimons’ opportunity to speak—she has her valedictory statement coming up now—but I just offer those words of respect. Thank you.

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.