General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Women do not have pay equity yet, and it is not improving. Even if the Minister of Women’s Affairs prefers the yearly New Zealand Income Survey to the quarterly employment survey, the picture remains bleak. In the 21st century, as of today, the pay gap is 12.8 percent. When the Government axed the pay and employment equity unit, it ensured that years of work that substantiated discrimination was not going to be implemented. The problem the Greens have with using the New Zealand income survey data is that it is an annual figure based only on April to June in any given year. The value of the quarterly Statistics New Zealand data is that it is based on payroll and it is every quarter, so we can speak authoritatively about a pattern—a pattern that is getting worse.

A fair society is better for everyone and it must start with the basics, such as honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi and ensuring that 50 percent of the population has equal pay, and pay equity. It is disturbing that we are still litigating an issue so fundamental in terms of human rights. Last year the Minister of State Services, Tony Ryall, told this House and the media that because of the recession we cannot afford pay equity for women. I ask what the excuse is this year. Apparently we are sort of out of the recession but women should still be patient while we build more motorways, and somehow that will help to give us pay equity. How? Without a rigorous commitment from the Government and a requirement in law to make specific gender pay gaps public in both the public sector and private sector, we are living a lie of a free and equal society and we do not even know the scale of the lie.

Many young women whose mothers fought for the Equal Pay Act are deeply shocked when they find that pay equity is not a given, and that the gap is 12.81 percent and rising. They have logically assumed that all the rhetoric around equal opportunity included economic equity. But, au contraire, the occupations where pay inequity remains are not just the caring professions, which the Minister of Women’s Affairs has kindly told women they should abandon for jobs with a higher average pay; they are also unequal for women tertiary graduates, who are now 6.8 percent behind their male colleagues at the end of their first year of work. That statistic about the tertiary graduates comes from the New Zealand Income Survey, which is favoured by the Minister, and it is relevant from that research because it is an annual statistic.

So far the Government programme for addressing the gender pay gap is quoting selective statistics and getting women on boards. I am all for getting women on boards but for reasons other than to do with pay equity. Where is the evidence that getting more women on boards results in higher pay for the bulk of women workers? With the best will in the world, the board employs the chief executive officer and can adjust his or her pay, but the board does not set the pay rate for whole groups of workers, and in many industries there is no board. There is no evidence that helping individual women to succeed impacts on the pay of marginalised groups of employees such as social workers and school support staff, let alone marginalised women from Māori and Pacific nations.

Everyone deserves decent work and a living wage—everyone. And we deserve to be treated with respect. A widening pay gap short-changes more than half the population and their dependent children. Often when we see women’s pay we need to remember that those women are the supporters of the next generation. We can turn this situation around with better leadership and with better law. It is not good enough to just continue ignoring the findings of the pay equity inquiry. I am drafting a member’s bill to improve the situation because a fair society is better for everybody. If we continue to treat the gender pay gap as a side issue, as an irrelevancy, or as something that can be dealt with by boards and by flexible working hours—both issues are important but completely irrelevant to the issue of closing the gender pay gap—we will make no progress as a country. All of us—men, women, and children—benefit when women, who hold up half the world, receive what we are due. At the moment, there is a gap in the public sector, so I urge this Government to listen seriously when we talk about legislation and to support gender equity, because at the moment it is doing nothing about it.

Today we are all saddened to hear of the death of Lieutenant Timothy O’Donnell, killed in action in Afghanistan, and, of course, of his comrades who are wounded. It was right that earlier this afternoon the House unanimously passed a motion reflecting on that.

The reason I have taken this call is that the National members will be looking at New Zealand’s role in the provincial reconstruction team, why we are there, what we intend to achieve, and how it serves our own security. This House, across the political spectrum, has supported the provincial reconstruction team since it was first deployed in 2003. Its mission is clear. It is to help rebuild the province of Bamian so that the people within that province can be free from the extremism that clouded their future through to 2001.

Let me be clear on this: we are in Afghanistan because we are defending New Zealanders and all free people against the evil of international terrorism. It is worth noting that several New Zealanders have lost their lives in the terrorist events that were directly related to al-Qaeda, in New York, London, Bali, and Jakarta. Under the Taliban, Afghanistan had become the haven for al-Qaeda terrorism. The United Nations, in a series of resolutions, has approved the actions of the international community to enable Afghanistan to redevelop and to take its proper place among nations. That is so that it will not become a haven for terrorism. That affects all of us.

Our soldiers, now for more than 7 years, have been working alongside the people of Afghanistan in Bamian. A number of people in this House, including the Leader of the Opposition, have visited Bamian. They know full well how the vast majority of people in that province have welcomed our presence. I noted myself last year that children in the town of Bamian would wave at our soldiers, 7 years later. That says something about the way we are received.

But it is also clear, and we have had a stark reminder of it in the last 24 hours, that this place is still fraught with risk. Even in Bamian Province not all places are safe and secure. The north-east part, which is riven by ethnicity and ethnic division, has proven to be problematic. We go there because we want those people to be part of the wider civil society within the province. That has been difficult, which has been proven on a number of occasions.

I want to briefly mention the role of the Defence Force, and, more particularly, the character of our men and women in uniform. Their professionalism and their work with the local people have brought real credit to themselves and indeed to our nation. They follow in a proud and long tradition forged over a period of time. In this new era they serve our nation proudly, drawing on the traditions of the past but building on the concepts of current conflicts.

Let us be clear about what terrorism does. It has reached out beyond Afghanistan itself, across the world, and it strikes at innocent civilians. Today is a time to reflect on the price of freedom. There is always a price: readiness, vigilance, and commitment. We also know today that there is a further price, and that has proven to be the life of Timothy O’Donnell. In this Chamber we owe our freedom to him and to those members of the New Zealand Defence Force who serve our country.

Before I begin the substantive nature of my speech I want to join the Minister of Defence and others in passing on my condolences to the family of Timothy O’Donnell, and also our thoughts to those soldiers, his comrades, who were injured. Briefly I just want to say that as a Minister, along with other colleagues, I attended the farewells for soldiers that the Minister of Defence has referred to. I also recall welcoming soldiers back at Christchurch International Airport. I recall seeing two emotions in the eyes of family members. On exit, it was an emotion of fear for their loved ones and of hope that they would return, and, on return, there was a look and sound of sheer joy that their loved ones had returned home. I simply acknowledge that.

I want to talk briefly today about what I see as some of the great things about this country that we need to preserve—our jobs, our health system, and looking after our elderly folk. But to do that we require something called a plan and something called a vision. Today I was going to start by saying that the National Party had no plan, but it has articulated one plan in the House today. It was articulated by that spin doctor extraordinaire Steven Joyce and it is called “the brush-off”. It is the brush-off to the 160,000 New Zealanders who now do not have a job. Middle-class men and women, as well as working-class folk, now, some for the first time in their lives, are bucketed out of work, facing a mortgage foreclosing on them, and not knowing how they will make ends meet as they look their wife or husband and their children in the eye. The plan for them, as articulated by Steven Joyce and this Government, is the brush-off.

I know Gerry Brownlee well. He was a woodwork teacher at St Bede’s College, and a builder, I am told—of what, I do not know. It could have been an outhouse, a hen house, or a doghouse. As a practitioner of the workings of wood, even he would know that in order to build a solid structure one needs something called a plan. Gerry Brownlee, of course, was restricted at St Bede’s College to the chopping board; that was the nature of his skills. But one needs a plan and one needs a vision.

What is National’s plan and vision? It ain’t got one, apart from today, called the brush-off. We had the Job Summit—a fizzer. We had the cycleway. It was going to be the nirvana for New Zealand and create thousands of jobs, we were told. How many did it create? Seventy. National has brushed off that one, and swept it neatly under the carpet. It does not want to mention that one again.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: She’s saying it’s not even 70.

The member down the back says it is not even 70. I stand corrected.

Then Gerry Brownlee articulated that the great plan for New Zealand, the great aspirational vision, was not a cycleway or a Job Summit; it was to dig big holes where no one wanted them, and dig up gold as if there were gold in them there hills. What happened to that plan? It got brushed off. It got swept right under the carpet real quick—reversed, ditched, and gone even before lunchtime. The only reason for that, of course, was that New Zealanders said no.

There is no Job Summit, there is a cycleway to nowhere, and mining is gone. So what do we have? Do members remember National articulating its plan to reverse the trend of Kiwis going to Australia and overseas? In the last 3 months, more Kiwis have gone overseas; we are almost in danger of depopulation if this trend carries on. What is National’s vision for that? Nothing.

Then there was the plan to close the wage gap between Australia and New Zealand. This was a centrepiece of National Party policy. Gerry Brownlee and John Key articulated this live-or-die stance day after day. What do we see now? After 18 months of a National Government the wage gap is growing—it has grown by $50 a week, and it is exceeding that as we speak. What have we had as a plan, a vision, or some sort of aspiration to deal with the problem that has arisen? Gerry Brownlee got up in the House like a human jelly whom we are trying to nail to the wall with a sledgehammer. He minced around the place and tried to get himself out from under the rock he put himself under. He tried to disembowel figures, get any statistics, and put anything on paper to try to explain why he failed, why there was no plan, and why there was no vision. But the Government has one plan, which it has articulated today: to brush off all the bad news, brush off 160,000 unemployed in New Zealand, and sell out every Kiwi that it made a commitment to before the election.

I, like other members on the Government side of the House, will focus on New Zealand’s place in the world today, reflecting on the tragic news that we all heard this morning. I join the many eloquent statements that have been made by members on all sides of this House, in extending my deepest sympathy to the family of the late Lieutenant O’Donnell and to his friends. I remind them that the wishes of New Zealanders right around the country are to be beside them, and I also do not forget the obvious grave concerns of the families of the two injured soldiers, news of whose recovery we await with keen interest. I think that in this country there is a very strong appreciation of the role of our armed forces, and of the invaluable part that they play in defending New Zealand’s role in the world. I think there is particularly strong support for what I call the quasi-political role that some of our soldiers play, probably better than any other soldiers in the world, in supporting stability and peace, and in working closely in very complicated political and social situations, particularly in the South Pacific. They obviously put themselves on the line.

I was very much struck by a comment that Mr Anderton made, and I associate myself strongly with it. He reminded us that the gravest responsibility that anyone who has the privilege of being a Minister in any Cabinet has is to take part in a collective decision to send our New Zealand citizens abroad to potentially risk their lives in the defence of our values and interests. I strongly associate myself with Mr Anderton’s comment, and I know that that was very much in the minds of our Ministers, just as I am sure that it was when he had the privilege of being a Cabinet Minister himself. I am sure that it will always continue to be the case.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where the conflict of ideas still has the capacity to erupt into almost mindless violence. Like many others, I can see enormous progress being made in terms of limiting the competition amongst nation States in the last 30 or 40 years through elaborate understandings involving disarmament, closer trading agreements, and diplomacy. In 1989, when the great dividing barrier in Europe finally fell, we thought we might be able to put the clash of nation States behind us, at least substantially. Although we have to acknowledge that there are one or two trouble spots like Korea where that traditional threat still exists, the new menace of international terrorism has arisen to threaten us in our homes, in our own countries, or when we are visiting other countries. It is a threat against the very basis of civilisation.

Unfortunately, although I strongly associate myself with those who believe that armed force can never be the final answer to the threat posed by international terrorism, it is, regrettably, part of the final answer. We just cannot escape that. Clearly we will be relying on social change, change in attitudes, better education, and better development opportunities to deal with the roots of international terrorism. I see it as the death rattle of those who are resisting modernity. But at the end of the day, we simply could not tolerate without response a situation where a country was being used as a training base for international terrorists, who then turned the very forces of globalisation against people in New York. I think that although it is a very grave issue to commit our people to a collective response to that situation, it was an appropriate decision of the previous Government, and I think it was an appropriate decision of this Government to continue that contribution.

Obviously, we all look forward to a day when that contribution will not be necessary: when the Afghan people, as the Prime Minister has said publicly today from Vanuatu, can look after their own security. That huge challenge faces the people of Afghanistan. In the meantime, we are trying to make a contribution there, and although New Zealanders are obviously deeply concerned about the safety and welfare of the New Zealanders who are involved in that collective effort, I think now is the time to stand behind our people on the front line. I strongly support their efforts.

I agree with about 90 percent of what the preceding speaker, Tim Groser, said. To highlight the differences would not be appropriate today. I think that today a lot of New Zealanders will be in some shock. As the Hon Simon Power and I have been discussing today, in a small country like New Zealand there are always cases of really one degree of separation, as in this particular case.

I think it is important, though, that we get back to the general debate and start asking what happened to the fundamental purpose of John Key’s Government. John Key said before the last election that the fundamental purpose of his Government would be to close the wage gap with Australia. We have been asking what has happened to the purpose, the raison d’être, the plan for that Government. That plan does not exist. We know that it does not exist, because there is a web page with the National Party’s plan as its header that shows a completely blank page for the rest of that plan.

It is not a matter of National moving to close the gaps, or making any decisions that would cause the gaps to be closed. What has happened is that the gaps have opened up since that time, when comparing average weekly earnings from Statistics New Zealand’s series, available from the Parliamentary Library. I am sure that a very specific series will be made available yet again from members here, because we are not afraid to give the source of our figures. We are not afraid to have our figures analysed. We are prepared to stand by the truth and not to massage figures in our offices, because those figures from the library show that the wage gap with Australian workers has increased by more than $50 a week since National was elected to Government.

We have had question after question on this issue in the last couple of weeks, and I will not go into a lot of the detail of an answer given this afternoon, because that is not the proper way of bringing up that answer. But I will say that last week when Gerry Brownlee was asked whether there were milestones, he said yes. Gerry Brownlee said yes. So I want to see those milestones. We want to look at them. We want to hold the Government to account. We want to see the official documentation. We want to know what stands behind Gerry Brownlee when he made that assertion. We want to know what the Prime Minister means when he says that that gap is being closed.

We have just about accepted that there is not a plan, but let us see which goal we are aiming for. It is a bit like the All Whites, really. I have a feeling that the All Whites knew which way they were playing, but that the Prime Minister and Gerry Brownlee do not know which way they are playing, at all. I might say that I found it interesting to get feedback from the people who were away and at the soccer when a particular match occurred. At the Italy game a fellow in a white jersey stood up in the crowd and people started booing. People started booing our Prime Minister; they thought he was trying to take advantage in a political way, and in a way that was inappropriate.

I ask National members to think about whether they want to have the Rugby World Cup before or after the election next year. It is a very real question for them. But most of all I want to ask about the plan. Seventy-eight percent of Australian companies will lift salaries this year; only about half of New Zealand companies will do that. We are closing some gaps. The unemployment gap has closed. We used to have a lower rate of unemployment and Australia had a higher one. The gap closed, but now it is opening again. Where is the plan?

The newspaper cries out today that Tim O’Donnell was just a “bloody good bugger.” I associate myself with the comments made by party leaders earlier in the House today.

This brings back memories of a close shave I had something like 10 years ago, when bullets ripped through the skin of the helicopter in which we were flying, and the co-pilot started screaming for more power for the rotor that was trying to claw us up and over a ridge. Those sorts of thoughts will have gone through the heads of all of our people in Bamian over the last few days. Why, when we think about these things, do we end up thinking that luck was with us or against us? Unfortunately, luck was not with O’Donnell yesterday afternoon in Bamian.

The roots of democracy can be traced back to England and its Parliament, a precursor to the place we stand in today. I reckon there are about 116 democracies in the world. Members of this Parliament have witnessed the swiftest advance of freedom; if we go back to the 1970s we see that there were about 40 democracies. I think we have seen the fastest growth in democracy across the globe.

For more than 100 years generations of young New Zealanders have served with courage, with selflessness, and with endurance, often in appalling conditions. I met someone last weekend in Dannevirke; a 92-year-old, Ian McCulloch, was given an RSA gold bar. Tim O’Donnell leaves us with a legacy of courage: the putting down of one’s own individuality and the commitment to a wider cause. His untimely sacrifice is proof that this country is not immune from global pressures, and that we are not so remote as a country that we are not in some way a beneficiary of global democratic traditions. I think it is also important to understand that his death confers on us the reality that we are not isolated from other world events, even from our distance. I think that his passing reflects the fact that we come from a country that has stood by its allies and interpreted our obligations generously, and we have fulfilled those obligations very promptly.

The loss we feel today does not in any way cancel out the need for us to stand for principle, and to confront those who flout the struggle for international order, whether Taliban or al-Qaeda. That is why we are working in Afghanistan today, with our NATO and International Security Assistance Force partners, to build the capacity of the Afghani Government and people. Our soldiers and civilians are working to create the conditions in which new a democracy can take place and flourish. Our people are working in Bamian to provide inspiration for people oppressed by the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Bamian is an example of an area where liberty from Taliban control and influence would be a powerful trend, because prosperity, social vitality, education, and the progress of people in a technological sense are all related to their freedom and their liberty. We are intending to hand that area and those skills back to the Afghan people.

Freedom, we know, unleashes human creativity, and Tim O’Donnell has lost his life defending that freedom. He knew that if freedom is not defended, it can be lost. As the Prime Minister said, we owe it to the thousands of New Zealanders who have served in Bamian to see that the job is done, and that we create a situation where we can hand back control to the Afghani people.

The success of what our forces are doing in Afghanistan rests on their willingness to sacrifice. Our commitment to democracy is tested in the Middle East, and it was also tested there in the Second World War and earlier. It has been tested in Europe, and it has been tested in the Pacific—in Bougainville, in Timor, in the Solomon Islands, and most recently in Fiji.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker Roy. I join with others in paying my condolences to the family of Tim O’Donnell. In thinking about that young man I think of my niece’s husband, who died about 2 years ago. He too served in many battalions overseas, and then came back to New Zealand. He was back for a matter of weeks when he collapsed and died at his home at only 39 years of age. Did we honour that young man? No. He was only days away from having served this country for 20 years in the army, but today his widow is still fighting to get his pension paid to her. Sometimes I think that when we pay homage to the people who serve us so well overseas, we need to make sure that we remember those whom we do not honour but whom we should.

In a place like this, sometimes it is easier to focus on the points of conflict than to focus on a vision of what could be, yet it has been so incredible in the momentum that has swept us up in the philosophy of Whānau Ora to realise the extent of optimism and determination that is a driving force in our w’ānau and in our communities. I have met amazing New Zealanders who are catalysts for great change, combining action with vision to make things happen. I met one of those New Zealanders yesterday: Sir Stephen Tindall. Those New Zealanders are inspired by the potential of their own to be all that they can be. They believe that they are limited not by their abilities but by their vision. They are committed to nourishing their dreams and the dreams of others. They are committed to sharing their ideas, knowing that together they can accomplish more than they have ever dreamt possible on their own.

I return to the hope of those everyday leaders every time I hear another story of grief on the news, and I wonder who was there in the life of that w’ānau to nurture them through the darkness, and to give them hope that one day they too would dance in the light of the moon.

We all know the home-grown advice that every child deserves to know that at least one significant adult totally believes in him or her. No doubt all of us in this Parliament can recall the influence of at least one adult who has helped to shape our own pathway. We may have forgotten what that adult said to us, but we will never forget how he or she made us feel. That adult helped us to live in the world around us, and to participate effectively in all worlds.

We must embrace a sense of literacy that is not only about reading the word but also about learning to read our world, and learning to know the geography of our landscapes, our history, our carvings, the tukutuku in our meeting houses, and the relationships that bind us together. Literacy is about taking part in the fullness of our environment. It is understood in the recognition of our atua and in the respect and meaning that we acquire from Ranginui and Papatūānuku me ōna tamariki.

Our mountains, rivers, lands, and streams have been desecrated by the hand of mankind in the name of progress. I only have to think about our river claim, the Whanganui River claim—which is one of the longest sets of legal proceedings in Māori claims history—to recall a history where the riverbed was expropriated and its use, ownership, control, and management were fragmented. Fishing rights were denied, and water and gravel were extracted without compensation. There has been environmental degradation, riparian lands were wrongfully acquired, eel weirs were destroyed, and so it goes on. We must continue to fight to protect and preserve te awa tupua, which we describe as our aortic artery—the central bloodline of that one heart. While we are pursuing justice in one realm, we must take that same passion to confronting the injustices and barriers that confront too many of our families every day.

One of our greatest challenges is that we must not let others define us by default, focusing on our perceived deficiency to the extent that we lose our sense of self and cannot have hope and aspiration. I want more for my mokopuna. I want them to have a future based on my actions today. Only my attitudes and behaviour can give them that. It is my lifelong ambition to invest in the power of their potential, to remind ourselves to always believe in our abilities, our ideas, and our talents. We do not need to change the world; each of us needs to change only ourselves.

May I place on record, along with other colleagues in this House, my condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of Lieutenant Timothy O’Donnell. I will spend my time focusing on the things that we can change here today in this Parliament. Sadly, we cannot change what occurred to Lieutenant O’Donnell, but one of the things we can change is the future of our country. What we need is a plan. We need a Government with a plan going forward so that the people in this country can have every opportunity that they need.

This Government told us that its fundamental purpose would be to close the wage gap with Australia. That is what it would do, but now we are discovering that that was just a bumper sticker slogan. That was just a brush-off, because no plan underpins that ideal, that bumper sticker slogan, of closing the wage gap with Australia. We are finding, in fact, that the wage gap is increasing, and it is increasing not just by a small amount but by more than $50 a week. That is how much the wage gap between Australian wages and New Zealand wages has increased since National took office. That means that either the Government has a plan that is failing, or it has no plan at all. It would seem today, and in the previous days this week and last week in the House, that we are discovering that there is no plan. There is talk of milestones and talk of brush-offs, but there is no actual plan. I think today that it was evident again, when we heard the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Pansy Wong, going into complete denial and complete spin overdrive by saying that there is no problem with the gender pay gap in this country, when clearly there is. I would like the Minister of Women’s Affairs to spend her energy and time actually creating a plan to close that gap rather than denying that it exists, because that is the sort of change we need going forward.

It is all very well to talk about the statistics and for members to have a fight in this House about whose statistics are right and whose are wrong, and which series is right and about what year they start from, but we are talking about real people. I will talk about a couple of real people: Paul and Bronwen Neely in Hamilton. They went to the Waikato Times last week and said that this country is not working for them and that they would have to move to a country where there is a plan. The country that they have found where there is a plan is Australia. Hobart, Australia is where they are moving to, because Paul Neely, who is a landscape architect, was made redundant 15 months ago at the height of the recession. Some 15 months later, he still has not been able to find any work in New Zealand. I met him the other day. He has scoured the entire country looking for work, but he has not been able to find any. He stated in the Waikato Times that if he had found a job, they would have stayed here. He said that he thought the Government has not put enough money into the economic stimulus package, and that a national cycleway does not cut the mustard.

That is just the beginning of it, because the Neelys have worked out that they are currently living in a country where the Government has no plan to fix their problem. It has no plan to increase the number of jobs available. The Neelys are picking up their two young children, taking their future away from New Zealand, and taking that future to Australia. Because of the stage the Neelys are at in their lives, they are taking their specialist skills. Mrs Neely is a registered nurse. They are taking the skills of an architect and a registered nurse, and taking their two young children, and they are relocating to Hobart. They will not be back for some time. That is sad, because they very much want their future to be in New Zealand. That is what they told me, but there is no future for them here in New Zealand. Once they take their children overseas, at the age that those children are, they will start school in Hobart. They will not be back until their children have completed their schooling, because they want to make sure that their children have some consistency in their education.

This Government right now has no plan. There has not been the investment in infrastructure that would have allowed Mr Neely to continue with his good work as a landscape architect. Because this Government has no plan, we are losing that family and hundreds like them to Australia, where that Government has a plan. I think that what is exposing this Government is that it said it would close the wage gap with Australia, but clearly it has no plan. It promised New Zealanders a brighter future. It promised New Zealanders that it would deliver that. New Zealanders are finding that the brighter future is not here in New Zealand under this Government, but in Australia.

A press release from the New Zealand Defence Force website from 2006, entitled “Pre Deployment Training in Tekapo”, eerily foreshadowed what happened in Afghanistan overnight, in the incident that resulted in the death of Lieutenant Tim O’Donnell and the injury of two other soldiers while on patrol in Bamian Province. The New Zealand Defence Force article describes how in pre-deployment training: “Gunfire erupts as a man carrying an assault rifle storms into a remote Afghan village and opens fire on a group of New Zealand soldiers conversing with locals during their routine patrol. The New Zealanders quickly withdraw, covering each other just as their sergeant has instructed them to in a situation such as this. The mock exercise, carried out in Tekapo … was one of many worst-case scenarios the next rotation of the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Teams [undergo] before their deployment in Afghanistan …”.

The pre-deployment training is designed to prepare New Zealand troops for whatever scenarios they might face during their deployment. It includes advanced combat training, group exercises, and the development of an understanding of the culture of the people of Afghanistan. The training is realistic, progressive in intensity, and difficult. In the words of one soldier: “As we left for Afghanistan, I personally felt well-prepared and confident to do the job required.”

The job is to assist the Afghan Transitional Authority to extend its influence beyond Kabul, by promoting stability through the provincial reconstruction team in Bamian Province. The provincial reconstruction team is tasked with maintaining security in Bamian Province, and it does this by conducting frequent patrols throughout the province—patrols such as the one Tim O’Donnell was leading last night. The provincial reconstruction team also supports the provincial and local government by providing advice and assistance to the provincial governor, to the Afghan national police, and to district sub-governors.

Lastly, the New Zealand provincial reconstruction team identifies, prepares, and provides project management advice for New Zealand aid projects within the region. These projects are often contracted to Afghan companies, which then hire local workers to assist with the completion of these projects. Each project provides new amenities, and also provides employment in the region. The projects undertaken are extremely significant to the local people. A new well may be a small construction project, but it can provide clean water for a village for many years.

In other deployments, including those in environments as diverse as Timor-Leste, Bougainville, the Solomon Islands, Bosnia, and the Middle East, New Zealanders have been respected for their professionalism and their ability to engage and relate to the local people. I am very proud to say that both my sister and my son in the New Zealand Army have served in Timor-Leste, and I would further add that my son would “bust a gut” to do a tour to Afghanistan.

These types of tasks are indicative of the wide-ranging and increasingly complex nature of modern peacekeeping operations. New Zealand’s international commitment is to cover a range of operations, including enhancing State stability and securing operations in weak and fragile States, and aiding humanitarian and disaster relief efforts. We can be proud of New Zealand’s contribution in places like Afghanistan. The New Zealand provincial reconstruction team aims to ensure security in the region, to help with the distribution of aid, and also to promote nation building.

In my contribution to this debate I wish finally to extend my condolences to the family of Tim O’Donnell, and to the families of the two injured soldiers. I wish them a speedy recovery.

He tīmatanga kōrero māku, e hiahia ana ahau ki te tāpiri i ōku mihi, ōku kupu poroporoaki ki tērā o ngā hōia kua hinga i te mura o te ahi, arā, Rūtene Timothy O’Donnell. Ka mihi hoki ki tōna whānau me wāna hoa e noho ana me tēnei kapua pōuri kei runga i a rātou. I begin by adding my condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of Lieutenant Tim O’Donnell, who, as we know, was the first soldier to lose his life in Afghanistan.

I come to the substance of my speech, which is that New Zealanders are looking for a plan. New Zealanders want to know what plan this Government has in place to make life better for us all, to improve our economy, and to close the wage gap between New Zealand and Australia that has spiralled out to over $50 a week—not only that wage gap but also the disparity of income between men and women in New Zealand.

I get the feeling from the way that Minister Wong avoided a question today that her plan to close the gap between the incomes of men and women in New Zealand is to allow the unemployment rate to continue to spiral so that more men lose their jobs, so that our wages decrease, and therefore the gap will be closed in that rather negative way.

New Zealanders want to know what plan this Government has that will make it easier for mums and dads to buy food, to buy clothes, to pay the rent, to pay the bills, and to provide just the essentials and the necessities for their families. We have not yet seen a plan from this Government, and we are not holding our breath in the hope that we will see one soon.

I have to say, though, that there is a plan for education: the much-vaunted national standards. The only trouble is that this National Government does not actually believe that the national standards plan will be very effective. How do we know that? What is the evidence of that? Let me tell members that if I was the Minister of Education and I explained my flagship policy for education, that policy would make sure that achievement rose, that kids when they graduated from school had better prospects, better opportunities, and higher qualifications, and that they would go on to lead productive lives and contribute to their communities.

Unfortunately, 2 weeks ago we heard the Deputy Prime Minister tell the country that over the next 5 to 10 years the biggest organisation that the Government will have will be the Department of Corrections. The Deputy Prime Minister saying that the Department of Corrections will be the biggest organisation over the next 5 to 10 years tells me that National has absolutely no faith in the effectiveness of its flagship education policy. That is the plan that a Government has when it actually does not have a plan.

We can see that the fact Labour members are telling Government members that they do not have a plan, and that the country believes us, is getting under their skin, because we can see it in their eyes and we can hear it in their speeches. I sat in this House last night and listened to the 10-minute speeches, which started off with 30 seconds of the members opposite telling us that they had a plan, and then the remaining 9½ minutes going on to criticise and condemn the previous Labour Government, but failing to tell us exactly what their plan was. They stuck to the petty, they stuck to the irrelevant, and we still have not heard the plan—unless, of course, that plan is to heap misery upon misery upon hard-working New Zealanders.

I would like to read an email I received from Mrs Rita Howard, who said: “Out of concern for my daughter who lives in Auckland. She, I feel, has been unfairly treated as part of this new regime by National. She’s been employed and then re-employed by a firm. I won’t say the firm’s name, but on Monday she arrived there to be told she no longer had a job. How fair or unfair is this that this new Act has been created for young people who are trying to get ahead in life? She was informed when she arrived at work she had no job.” We are told that there are 70,000 young people under 24 years of age who are unemployed. This mother, Rita Howard, went on to say: “I am extremely irritated by this as she, my daughter, has no firm leg to stand on in terms of arguing the point of unfair dismissal.” This Government believes that the plan forward is to make it easier for employers to sack their employees. Its plan to close the wage gap is to take away work so that employees do not have a wage. We are waiting to hear the National Government’s plan.

I rise in the House today to show respect to Lieutenant Timothy O’Donnell, the 28-year-old soldier in the New Zealand Army who was killed overnight in Bamian Province in Afghanistan. Lieutenant O’Donnell was an experienced soldier who had represented New Zealand with distinction in Timor-Leste and in Afghanistan. He has been described as a free spirit, and a committed and loyal friend to his fellow military personnel. The newspapers today have said he was a “bloody good bugger” and a man who loved his family. There have been messages posted on websites throughout the country. One reads: “Anyone who dies in military service for our county deserves our gratitude and respect.”, and another states: “Our thoughts and feelings go to Lieutenant O’Donnell’s mother and his wider family.” I want her to know that her son has our gratitude for his sacrifice. He has our respect, and New Zealand shares in her loss today.

New Zealand is working with NATO and our International Security Assistance Force partners to build capacity and security for Afghanistan’s Government and people. New Zealanders are active in rebuilding schools to bring education to a people for whom education was reserved for the elite, and to a country where women were repressed and treated like third-class citizens by the Taliban. New Zealanders are building hospitals to bring medical care and attention to a people who have never experienced help, in many cases, from doctors and nurses. The work that our defence forces are doing in Afghanistan is extremely important.

We have a proud history of helping in parts of the world where oppression and catastrophe are present. New Zealand Defence Force and police personnel have been present in East Timor, the Solomon Islands, Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, and Tonga, to mention but a few countries, following natural disasters. Much of their work is in the Pacific, in countries close to our home and to our heart. They go there in defence of our values, and to bring peace and fairness to others less fortunate than we are. The role that New Zealand plays is valued by other nations. In many countries that we are present in, Australia is also there. Former Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer said: “We’ve had some difficult times in East Timor and the Solomon Islands. Who is always there with us? Who can we always rely on? I’ll tell you who we can always rely on. New Zealand. You can always rely on them.” The Afghan President said in 2007 that it gives his people a huge boost in confidence that New Zealanders came to Afghanistan from so far away to help build peace and stability.

Our forces have done work that the world has recognised and that we are very proud of. In Bougainville we were stationed on the ground not as peacekeepers but to provide support to a destabilised and dislocated community. Health services showed a presence there on the ground, and our New Zealanders played a large part in stopping a small island from going back to civil war. That was the first long-term regional peace initiative in the Pacific that New Zealand was involved in. In East Timor our soldiers kept Timorese people safe from militia and provided security by carrying out patrols, protecting a local population that had been brutalised for many years. In the Solomon Islands, a small country that had been wrecked by infighting and civil unrest, we brought law and order and trained local people, along with police from Australia, the Cook Islands, and other Pacific countries, to build stable governance and provide normal lives for the people of the Solomon Islands. Private Sam Howie, in his “Reflections on the Solomon Islands”, which was published earlier this year, said “It’s been evident throughout this deployment that the Kiwi ‘can do’ attitude has reflected positively in the Solomon Islands. Any given task was thoroughly completed, no questions asked.” He went on to say: “This deployment has also made me realise more than ever … how important the relationship between nations can be.”

New Zealand has given, and will continue to give, much to the less fortunate in other parts of the world. We are extremely proud of New Zealand’s record in supporting those less fortunate than us in other countries. We are very proud of the life of Lieutenant Tim O’Donnell. Our thoughts are with his family and his friends at this time.

I pay my condolences to the family of New Zealand Army Lieutenant Tim O’Donnell.

This country is becoming more and more economically insecure, and I ask what the Government is doing. It is doing nothing but making New Zealanders’ lives harder and making them more afraid. I would like to talk about people—real people—and how they are feeling. Over the last few weeks, I have been doorknocking in Dunedin South, one of the poorest and most densely populated parts of our country, and I am pretty angry about what I am hearing. People are insecure and afraid. They either have jobs that are not paying much and they have not had a pay rise for a long time, or they do not have jobs and they cannot find jobs. They cannot make ends meet. They are not turning their heaters on. I have talked to countless elderly people who have either lost or are confronting losing their hour and a half per week of home help. Doing a bit of housework, preparing some meals, and helping with some chores around the house is actually not a great deal, but it makes a lot of difference to them. That home help means doing work that they can no longer do and it allows them to stay in their homes. God help us that those elderly citizens who have contributed to our country by paying taxes—many of them went through the Great Depression—and bringing us all up now get treated like this at the end of their lives. Helping people stay in their homes and lead a life with value is actually more cost-effective than taking away their independence and requiring them to be put in a home, and it does not take much brains to realise that.

This Government has no vision and no plan to improve the lives of ordinary New Zealanders. This Government is deliberately chipping away at the assistance to vulnerable people who need it the most. I will tell the House about Marie, who is a single mum who contacted me and told me that she had her heart set on gaining a Bachelor’s degree in health science to get a nursing degree. She believed that because of the shortage of qualified nurses, she would be guaranteed a job. But she has a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old, so childcare is a major barrier to gain that qualification and a barrier for her to get back into work. She cannot work weekends, because of the lack of childcare. Public holidays are a problem also. On top of that, she has to deal with rising childcare prices and a serious lack of job vacancies. She said that she knows that she will get there eventually, but there are so many obstacles. She said: “Yet, here is National planning to punish us if we don’t find work, label us as breeding for business, calling us unemployable, and has generated maddened groups of benefit bashers.” I tell members that she does not have the ability to go to Australia, like so many others. She is stuck here with no brighter future.

Then there is the latest example of the fight to keep neurosurgical services in Dunedin. The absence of those services will be of great detriment to the people of Otago, and I will state the obvious: Dunedin should not lose neurosurgical services. People will die, families will suffer, and our hospital and medical school would both be put at risk. And all the while, the Minister of Health, Tony Ryall, is sitting on his hands doing nothing. It is clear that this Government has no vision and no plan. What is the cost? Recently, one family said to me that they could not afford to eat meat, but they used to be able to. A lot of families say that they do not know what they will do when GST goes up. Any gain from tax cuts will be taken away by the GST rise and the predicted 6 percent inflation.

My colleague Carmel Sepuloni’s bill is coming before this House. It seeks to overturn National’s attack on workers’ rights. Labour will show our commitment to the rights of workers by voting for this bill. I encourage any National MP who cares about his or her constituents and their livelihoods to do the same. So instead of attacking people’s rights and chipping away at assistance to people who need it the most, we need policies that address inequality and help Kiwis stay afloat. We need some fresh ideas to put more money in the pockets of people. We need honesty and vision, not distractions and sideshows from a do-nothing Government. We need a vision and we need a plan.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.