Address in Reply

It is a pleasure to participate in this, the Address in Reply debate. May I first congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on your reappointment to the office of Speaker, and, secondly, may I congratulate all new members who are part of this, the 50th Parliament of New Zealand.

The Prime Minister has laid out clearly our Government’s four priorities. The first of these is to responsibly manage the Government’s finances. In a world as it is today—and last night we saw Moody’s downgrade both Spain and Portugal, and we saw the Greek Parliament pass austerity measures in order to combat the evils of debt—it is important that our Government controls the debt path our country is heading on. It is about budgeting carefully and deciding which things are important and which things to prioritise. As with our own personal finances and our household finances, we would not go for years spending more that we earn. So this Government is committed to returning to surplus in the 2014-15 financial year.

Secondly, we are about building a more productive and competitive economy. We have seen under this Government, for the first time in many years, a trade surplus, and when we look at the record of the last Government, we see 5 consecutive years of diminishing export levels. We know that the focus of a brighter future and the focus on jobs and opportunities must come through the export-focused economy. What does it mean? It means selling more of what the world wants. It means selling at a competitive price and building on a solid base of innovation. In both 2012 and 2013 our economy is forecast to grow more strongly than the eurozone, the UK, Japan, the United States—

💬 Hon David Cunliffe: Still!

—as well as Canada. It is good to see you back in the House, Mr Cunliffe. I do not know about the beard, but it is good to see you, anyway. Again, the European crisis offers some lessons. It offers lessons because it is about—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I would actually like to hear what the member is saying, so keep the interjections low.

It is about competitiveness, as I was saying. The second reason is that our competitiveness has declined over the period of the 2000s. As a result, industries and sectors that were competing internationally have gone into recession, and we have to do something about that. So what has this Government done? It has turned that round with a 120-point economic plan. I hold here, in my hand, some of the answers to peeling back some of the poor performance that the Labour Government gave us over the 9 years. What does it include? It includes a Future Investment Fund. It means investing in our future and investing in our kids. The schools and the early childhood centres that have been built across this country are part of the solution going forward. It is about a 120-point plan that will bring us into the 21st century.

💬 Simon Bridges: What’s it about?

Mr Bridges wants to know what it is about. It is about some of the roads that go into Tauranga, Mr Bridges.

💬 David Bennett: And Hamilton.

That is right; and Hamilton. What else is it about? It is about broadband and connectivity between our cities as well as with the world. We are able to live in this country and make goods and services, and export these across the world. That is what it is about.

When I talk to our businesses in Maungakiekie, they ask about the exchange rate and they ask about access to capital. This Government in the last 3 years has reformed so much of the capital markets. We created the Financial Markets Authority—admittedly with the help of the whole House; it was a policy that had cross-party support. We created a regulator that actually has teeth, has resources, and will enforce some of the really dreaded parts of financial markets where so many mum and dad investors were taken for a ride.

We will reform the Securities Act, which is 34 years old and needs refining. We will ensure that our capital markets operate with confidence and trust, but also that the regulatory authority has the resources to enforce those matters in our capital markets.

We are also looking at furthering our Resource Management Act reforms. When we talk to users of council facilities, they say that one of things about consents is that they take too long, they cost too much, and there is so much uncertainty as to when and how a resource or building consent may be issued. So we are introducing a 6-month time limit for some of the consenting of medium-sized projects.

We are encouraging oil and gas exploration, and that is with a new system of processing permits. Whereas Opposition parties will look at our Australian cousins, brothers, and sisters, and they will compare us with that country, when you look at that country, though, you see how effectively they use their minerals and their resources. If we are going to be competitive not just with Australia but with the rest of the world, we really need to get our act together in terms of exploration and in terms of using our minerals, oil, and gas resources in this country.

We are also negotiating free-trade agreements. Although I admit that we are carrying on the good work of the last Government, we are working on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, including the United States, as well as other free-trade agreements that will increase our access to markets around the world and increase our opportunities for job growth in our export sector. Of course, we are talking also about the mixed-ownership model, and extending that to four State-owned enterprise companies, which will make better use of New Zealand’s balance sheet. It is about providing investment opportunities for our mum and dad investors, because they cannot just invest in Telecom. They cannot just invest in a few top public companies. But these investment opportunities will provide some solid returns going into the future.

Also for a company like Mighty River Power, which needs access to more resources with its geothermal technological expertise, and its ability to expand across the globe—it is in Chile, in Germany, and in the US, but it is looking to get further into South-east Asia—these investments will provide Mighty River Power with the capital and expertise to extend those exports overseas.

The final bit of reform that will be important, especially this year—and I sit as the chair of the Social Services Committee—will be reforming welfare. Welfare is about getting people who can work to work. Welfare will be about providing a safety net for those who need help, but providing incentives for those who need to go out and earn a living.

I have set out the Government’s priorities. I am proud to represent this second-term National Government. It is a Government that is about action, it is a Government that is about producing jobs and opportunities, and it is about a Government that will deliver on its promises. Thank you very much.

I could spend 10 minutes deconstructing the arguments around the State-owned enterprise sales. They are just ridiculous. This idea that New Zealand will somehow become wealthier by changing who owns what already exists is an absolute nonsense. I will leave that to others of my colleagues.

This is the Address in Reply debate, which is the first formal set of speeches after the election. I suppose I should start by saying congratulations to the National Party and its colleagues in Government. You have won the Treasury benches again, but I would note that New Zealanders are very fair-minded, and in my lifetime there has never been a one-term Government—indeed, except once. That was when the then sitting Prime Minister Norman Kirk died in office.

So the fact that National has won a second term should not be seen as some great endorsement of the National Government. Indeed, to achieve that, National has gobbled up all of its coalition partners. All of them are either at 1 percent or lower, if you round them. The Māori Party got slightly more than 1 percent, but closer to 1 percent than 2 percent. The ACT Party is decimated. It is here only because of John Banks. Its vote has collapsed to 1 percent. Why? There was this litany of disasters around the ACT Party. It was seen by the electorate to be bankrupt.

What happened? Well, we had the perk-buster Rodney Hide busted for perks. We had the ultimate act of hypocrisy of David Garrett, having railed against shorter sentences and name suppression, being found out to have sought name suppression and a discharge without conviction for his earlier passport fraud. We then had the takeover of the ACT Party from outside its ranks by John Banks and Don Brash. Despite the endorsement that we had of this cosy little deal, with Paul Goldsmith for the National Party saying: “Please don’t vote for me; vote for John Banks.”—that was essentially his campaign—it looked like Paul Goldsmith was still going to win.

So what did they do? They had this tea party, and within the tea party were planted seeds of discontent in the minds of the media and wider New Zealand that the Prime Minister was not quite all the smiles, good nature, and goodwill that he had previously pretended were his making. In the tea party we saw this act of political engineering. In fact, someone said to me it was an act of political pornography, where they went and they showed themselves off to 30 or 40 cameras. But the problem is when you agree to be a centrefold in an act of political pornography you lose your right to privacy. So New Zealanders and the media started to look askance at the Prime Minister when he called in the police. He had the temerity to say that the police had the time to inquire into this because the police had lower burglary rates. Well, we know that around New Zealand there are lots of uninvestigated burglaries and other crimes, but the Prime Minister used an arm of the State. The media were under attack by the police, who were called in by the Prime Minister to witch-hunt as a consequence of this tape, which was taken at this public event.

Since then, following the election, we have had the Prime Minister saying that the rosy promises he was making just a few weeks ago he now no longer will be held to. That was the first act of the Prime Minister in this new Government, backed up by the Prime Minister saying that he went to the election with the Government’s own forecast, but now he is coming back, weeks later, and saying it is going to be even worse than that. As a consequence of that, we have now seen, in the Sunday Star-Times in the weekend, a slow decline in the popularity of the Prime Minister, because this forever telling people “It’s rosy, it’s rosy, it’s rosy.” and then saying “Oh, look, it’s all too hard; it’s not going to be that good.”, is starting to wear thin with middle-class New Zealanders. They are tired of waiting for this nirvana, which never arrives but which is forever promised by the Prime Minister.

In the last term of Government we had Bill English saying that all that went wrong was the fault of the Labour Government. The Labour Government was blamed for increasing Government debt. Let us have a look at those figures. Does history bear that out to be true? Well, in 1999 New Zealand’s gross Government debt was 35 percent of GDP. That is when the Labour Government came to office. By the time we left office we had reduced that figure to 17 percent of GDP—an incredible decrease in Government debt. Every one of those Budget surpluses that the Labour Party ran under Michael Cullen was opposed by National.

Net debt went down even further, and, depending on the measure, it was either zero percent or 5 percent of GDP. It went down because the Government was investing in assets like State-owned enterprises and Air New Zealand, and was pre-funding superannuation. We were building up the assets of the Government at the same time that we were reducing Government debt.

Since that time, Government debt has increased—up from 17 percent of GDP to, in 2011, 36 percent of GDP. Where does it go from here? Can the National Party members tell me whether it gets better or worse from here? Silence! Well, I can tell you that National, in its own Treasury forecasts, show that that debt continues to increase and, by 2014, the end of this parliamentary term, Government debt is projected to increase by another $16 billion—$16 billon more of Government debt.

Now, if there was some hope in terms of some of the structural imbalances in the economy being unwound, and New Zealand making economic progress by then, then maybe New Zealanders would forgive that. But the reason that middle-class New Zealanders are starting to go off the Government was amply illustrated by Steven Joyce when he answered on behalf of the Minister of Finance in the House today. The question the Government asked of itself—the first question—was to Mr Joyce on behalf of the Minister of Finance, and asked what progress the Government is making in implementing its economic growth agenda. Well, you would think on that basis that there was good news there, but the reality is—and we explored this in our questions—that New Zealand’s structural economic problems remain, so much so that if this Government was still in office in 2016, by which time it would have been in office for 8 years, what would be happening to New Zealand? Well, in that eighth year, and in the years prior, New Zealand gets poorer, because every year New Zealand runs a current account deficit, and we effectively import more goods and services, and pay more interest out overseas, than we earn. And every year we do that—every year that we have a current account deficit—we get poorer, because we bridge that gap and we bridge that gap through more borrowing.

So what happens? This year the current account deficit is projected to be $5 billion. Bill English pretends that the Government has changed structural imbalances in our economy to improve exports. Well, you would think if that was the case, then that balance would get better, but it does not. Every year from here, the current account deficit is projected to get higher, so much so that by 2016, the current account deficit is projected to be $17 billion in that year alone—$17 billion of current account deficit, which can be bridged in only one of two ways: selling more of our assets, which the Government is big on, whether it is land sales or State-owned enterprise sales, or borrowing more money, which the Government is also big on.

So what does that mean in terms of New Zealand’s balance sheet? Well, our balance sheet is measured by what we call our net liabilities, and, again, it is bad news. By 2016 New Zealand’s net international liabilities relative to now—not years past, but now; the Government is responsible for now, and it has been in power for 3 years—increase by 10 percent of GDP. New Zealand’s net international liabilities go up from $140 billion now—it is already a big number—to $200 billion in 2016.

The Government responds and says “Oh, we have got a 120-point plan.” You look through that plan and about most of those things it says “Oh, we’ve already done that.” In the list are things like investing in transmission infrastructure. That is part of its 120-point plan. Look, there is nothing wrong with investing in transmission infrastructure—that is how we get electricity—but it was going to happen anyway; it is not the Government that has changed that. There is nothing substantial in its plan to address the structural imbalances in the economy. Why not? Treasury says it should. The briefing to the incoming Minister from Treasury says, according to the New Zealand Herald interpretation of it, that it was calling for an introduction of a capital gains tax—a Labour Party policy that the Government refuses to adopt, despite recommendations from Treasury, the OECD, the IMF, and just about every other country in the world. It recommends changes to savings and it recommends raising the age of superannuation. These are structural changes that only the Government can bring about, but this National Government refuses to acknowledge them, and we go backwards until 2016 as a consequence.

Can I just begin my contribution by congratulating you, Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, and your fellow presiding officers on your re-election to your roles, and can I welcome all new members to the House.

That last contribution, from Mr Parker, tells us very clearly that Labour is still labouring under the illusion that somehow New Zealand got it wrong: they did not really mean to vote National; it kind of somehow slipped by them when they were not looking. The reality is that New Zealand has once more comprehensively rejected the Labour programme of debt and disarray. What New Zealand actually told us on 26 November was that they wanted a National-led Government with John Key at the helm, and that they understood that in challenging times you need the sort of economically responsible, strong, stable Government that we have proven ourselves to be over the last 3 years, and that we will continue to be over this next term.

The last 12 months in particular have seen the global situation continue to deteriorate. I know that over the break in January I was looking at one of the reports that came out of Europe that had been entitled “Euro-geddon”. That is certainly a graphic way of describing the very real and very serious nature of the deteriorating situation in Europe and around the world. We cannot put our heads in the sand on this. We cannot keep continuing to believe that we can just keep spending and say “Don’t worry about where it will come from; it will all come out all right.” We have to take the necessary steps to protect ourselves from these international shock waves and we have to continue to diversify our trade routes. Excellent work has been done—and I acknowledge that that work has been done by a number of Governments—on diversifying those alternative trade routes, making sure we are not as heavily reliant on the traditional European and US markets, and recognising that the great growth areas for us are in the Asia-Pacific region. And all the work we are doing in that area is certainly fundamental.

We have to also reflect on our domestic situation, and recognise that when you are a country the size of New Zealand, we have to be better, leaner, and more resilient than perhaps our larger neighbours. If we are going to move towards the sort of New Zealand that this Government wants to deliver—one of higher incomes and better opportunities—we have to have a plan in place to weather this situation and build towards our future, and that is what this Government is focused on. It is not always going to be easy. Some of the decisions and some of the discussions will challenge some people, but we cannot keep carrying on pretending everything is rosy while the world gets weaker and weaker around us.

Looking across the 3 years of this term, the Prime Minister set out in his introductory statements to the House that in this term there are four key areas in which we see important progress needing to be made. The first of those is around the management of Government finances. Both this National Government and National Governments historically have proven themselves to be Governments of economic rationality, economic prudence, and very careful management of taxpayers’ money. We understand that every cent we spend, we take out of the pocket of a hard-working New Zealander. We are very, very mindful of that. We are not going to throw money away or throw it around recklessly. We have to respect the people who have earned that money, and we owe them the courtesy of ensuring we spend it well. So we have to manage the Government finances well.

We are focused on getting New Zealand back to surplus by 2014-15, and we are still on track to do that, even though the times are getting tougher. Why is that so important? It is important because being in surplus means we have choices. We cannot keep spending money we have not got. You have got to earn money before you spend it. Now, that sounds pretty simple; it sounds pretty trite. Every family and every business in New Zealand knows that, but for too long Labour and left-wing Governments have forgotten that. We are going to get back to a basis that you have to earn money before you spend it. So we have to keep the Crown debt to a manageable level.

Debt has become an issue over years gone by, and dealing with the impact of the Christchurch earthquakes and other disasters, we are going to keep debt peaking under 30 percent. The Labour Opposition, over the campaign, went out and promised $15 billion more in spending than this Government did. Labour did not worry about the debt, it did not worry about the long-term resilience of this economy; it just kept promising to spend your money and rack up more debt, which your future generations were going to have to cover. This Government will not do that. We will keep debt peaking below 30 percent.

Let us look back on the legacy of the Labour Government. We hear Labour members harping away over there from the Opposition benches; let us look at what they left us. From 2004 to 2008 Labour increased Government spending by more than 50 percent—50 percent increases in core Government spending. That would be fine if things were going well in the real sector—

💬 Hon Annette King: We got rid of all the consultants that National employed.

—but over that same period, Mrs King, that party presided over a recession in the productive sector well ahead of the rest of the world. While Labour kept spending, our productive sector—the people in this country who earn stuff, make stuff, grow stuff, and sell stuff—was going backwards, and the Labour Government did not care. It just kept spending. It did not understand that it is the productive sector in this country that creates jobs. You do not create jobs and you do not create better opportunities by Government spending; you create them by setting up the conditions in which business can thrive, in which investment will come into New Zealand, and where entrepreneurs are prepared to put their own capital on the line.

That is the next part of what we need to do. We need to make sure our economy is resilient, and we need to make sure it is productive and that it is competitive with the world. You have heard my colleagues Sam Lotu-Iiga and others talk about our 120-point plan. That is a comprehensive document recognising that the best thing the Government can do—the best thing the Government can do—is create an environment in which business can thrive.

We are in the season of maiden speeches in the House, and it makes me think back to my maiden statement. In that I talked at some length about the fact that we needed to wake up to the fact that in this country business is small to medium enterprises, more often than not. It is not the big, ugly corporates that the Green Party likes to attack at every opportunity. Actually, more often than not, it is a mum and dad running their own enterprise, struggling to employ a few staff; it is a dairy owner; it is someone working out of his garage. It is small business. Those are the people who create jobs in this country; those are the people we have to support.

We have to do that by doing a couple of things. We have got to create the right infrastructure. We have to get the road, rail, electricity, and, very importantly, broadband networks in place to ensure that they can conduct their business easily. We have to ensure that we have got the skills coming through our education system to support that business, and there is some tremendous work happening through my colleague Minister Joyce’s portfolios in tertiary education and skills. There is some tremendous work happening in the information and communications technology space around the entrepreneurs scheme to ensure that we are supporting our New Zealanders. They are incredibly innovative, and we need to ensure that those skills are harnessed, nurtured, and retained in New Zealand. That is what this strategy is designed to do: to make New Zealand a place where young New Zealanders coming up come out of our system with the skills to lead the world, and with every incentive to stay here in New Zealand.

Obviously I have taken on the portfolio of broadband and communications and information technology, and in that space alone over the period to July of this year we are going to see 58,000 premises, including 211 schools, connected to ultra-fast broadband. The impact that is going to have on our education system, our health system, and our way of doing business will be revolutionary. It is due to the investment of this Government, which the Labour Party opposed, that we are going to see world-leading connectivity for New Zealand households, New Zealand Government services, and New Zealand consumers.

Better public services are a core part of what we need to deliver. We have to have a welfare system that incentivises people to get back to work, because that is the path out of poverty. You can talk about poverty all you like; the path out of poverty is to get people back into work. You have to create the jobs and you have to have a system that incentivises and rewards them for getting back into that system. We have to have a world-leading education system, and my colleague Minister Parata is doing excellent work, building on the good work of Minister Tolley in that space. And we have to ensure that the Public Service provides value for money.

I know that my time is coming to an end, and I do want to touch on the rebuilding of Canterbury. The rebuilding of Canterbury is a significant priority for this Government. The people in my region have shown incredible resilience over the past 18 months. We are now up at more than 10,000 earthquakes, and I want to pay tribute, in particular, to the residents of suburbs like Parklands and those out east who, on 23 December, when everyone else was settling back for Christmas, looking forward to hanging up their briefcases and their suits, were once again having to be out there digging out tonnes of liquefaction from their homes. The way that they get up time and time again, keep going, and stay committed to their province is absolutely heroic. I cannot speak too highly of them, and this Government is going to walk with them every step of the way. We are going to build a temporary rugby stadium to get the Crusaders back there, and I look forward to seeing every member of this House down there supporting the Crusaders on 24 March.

Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, may I take the opportunity in this, my first, contribution in the new Parliament to congratulate you on your elevation to the Chair and to congratulate, through you, Speaker Smith. May I also offer congratulations to the Government on the election results, as it begins its second and last term of this Government.

Can I acknowledge the member who has just resumed her seat, the maiden opposite, Amy Adams, who has become a Minister through reciting key lines, it appears. I would like to deal with just three of them before commencing my material. The first one was that you cannot spend it before you earn it—a fair enough point. They reckon their Government has reduced debt. Well, as my colleague Mr Goff interjected, quite rightly, it was the previous Labour Government that reduced debt. But do not take our word for it; look at Treasury’s numbers: debt was 35 percent of GDP—35 percent of GDP—when Labour took office in 1999, and 17 percent, in gross terms, in 2008. In net terms it went down from 18 percent to zero, forming the first credit since Sir Julius Vogel borrowed to build the railways. New Zealand’s Government books were in credit under Labour. Where are they now? I ask the member whether she really wants to stand on a record of debt reduction.

The second point was Government spending, which was 29 percent of GDP, on average, under the Labour Government. It started at 29 percent and ended on 30 percent. Guess what it is today: 33 percent of GDP. It has gone up 2.5 percent under National, not gone down. Every year the Government reduces the tax take because the economy has fallen in a hole, and every year it promises restraint to get the books back in order. National is chasing its tail. It is chasing its tail because we all know that when in a recession, retrenchment and austerity prolong it. It is time for a growth strategy. It is time for jobs. It is time for getting New Zealand moving again.

There is one thing I agree with the member opposite on: I do want to extend the condolences, the sympathy, and the empathy of members on this side to the people of Canterbury. Ten thousand earthquakes is an appalling thing to have lived through, and we do, I think, offer solidarity in respect of Canterbury. But I would say this: there is $25 billion to be invested in rebuilding that wonderful city—and it was my home province for many years too. But I tell you this: if we do not sort out the insurance situation down there—where insurers will not insure new builds, new plants, new homes, or new businesses—the recovery will not occur. I commend my colleague Lianne Dalziel for leading the charge on the insurance fiasco. Where is the Government? And more to the point, where are the Government’s books if Canterbury continues to subside into a policy liquefaction?

The Address in Reply debate—for people listening in or watching at home—is the triennial free-for-all that goes on after the Governor-General gets the privilege of reading out the Prime Minister’s Speech from the Throne. I have a huge amount of respect for His Excellency Lieutenant General The Rt Hon Sir Jerry Mateparae, the new Governor-General, but I have to say I felt a tad sorry for him reading out, during his first time in that chair, what has to go down in history as the smallest, the shortest, the meanest, and the most vacuous Speech from the Throne that this Parliament has ever had the misfortune to hear. There were no ideas—

💬 Simon Bridges: Did you write it? Did you write it, David?

—no new ideas. Sure as hell Paul Goldsmith did not write it; it would have gone to 1,000 pages if it was from that member. I think John Key must have written it on the bus on the way to the office.

💬 Hon Annette King: What bus? Do you mean the limo?

Oh, the limo on the way to the office—good point. No, he would not be taking a bus. It was remarkable. Why was it so short? Shortness is sometimes something to be admired, but not in the case of this Speech from the Throne, because it was short on achievement. Gone was the aspiration. Gone were the sunny uplands of the brighter future. Gone was the target of the first term of catching up with Australia. It was a 30 percent wage gap when it started; it is close to 40 percent today. It would be a joke if our young people were not leaving in droves, if in 2011 we did not have the highest net out migration of New Zealanders in our history, and if more people had not voted with their feet and told their children, their families, and their workmates “I’ve been trying for years. I’m sick of it. I can’t do it any more. We’ve got to go.” They have got to go because this Government has got no ideas.

There is a 120-point plan. If you have got 120 points of everything, let me tell you, members opposite, it is not a plan; it is a laundry list. It is not a plan; it is a laundry list. There are no priorities and no performance measures. It has given up on catching Australia. There is no strategy. That is why. Do not ask the Labour Party; ask Business New Zealand. Three-quarters of chief executive officers surveyed before the election said National did not have a plan for the economy. Three-quarters in Business New Zealand—how would we put it—manured in their own nest by saying that the Government had not got a clue on economic management, and they were right.

This Government has ballooned debt, just like the Republicans in the United States: come in, preach balanced Budgets, blow out the deficit, and then blame the Democrats. It is the same thing here: preach free markets; implement sell, cut, and hope; and blow out the deficit because tax revenue collapses. What happens? Very little—very little in terms of growth and very little in terms of recovery.

Where did that leave the Governor-General? It reminded me of the American senator who had rather annoyed his speech-writer. In the opening page of his address to the Senate it said: “In my speech I will grow the economy—”

💬 Simon Bridges: This is as old as the hills, David.

“I will solve world hunger”—or child poverty, in the case of Mr Bridges; he will worry about world hunger when he grows up. And on page 2 it said as follows: “Now you’re on your own, you bugger.”—“Now you’re on your own, you bugger.” That is how His Excellency the Governor-General must have felt when he got to page 4 of the Speech from the Throne and there was no plan. All he had was the dismal results of a failed 3 years, thousands of broken lives, and New Zealanders who have rushed for the exit because they have given up hope in their own country.

They say that Oppositions do not win elections; Governments lose them. Well, the Government is on track to lose the next one, and Labour will be doing its little bit to help. We will be doing our bit to help in two ways. No. 1 is by holding the Government to account. We will not put up with rubber numbers. Here is today’s latest rubber number from the Ministry of Economic Development: how much does the Ministry of Economic Development think tourism has given to the New Zealand economy in Rugby World Cup year? The answer is $320 million, plus or minus 20 percent, according to its survey. Plus or minus 20 percent? The ministry has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the Rugby World Cup, and it cannot get the figure on the tourism spend to within 20 percent.

What is worse, figures out today from the Ministry of Economic Development show that the tourism spend was only 3 percent higher than the previous year, lower than the year before that, and lower than 2 years before that. In other words, the much-vaunted Rugby World Cup—fun as it was; I loved it too—did absolutely nothing for our economy. It did absolutely nothing for our economy. If that is the Government’s idea of an economic plan, it proves what the Opposition has been saying for the last 3 years: they are platitudes in search of a plan—platitudes in search of a plan—and gimmicks in search of a strategy.

Those ragtag members over there are here for one reason, and it is not a very secure one. They are here on the coat-tails of John Key. Now, John Key is currently setting a record: a record reduction in personal poll ratings. He is down 9 percent in 2 weeks—

💬 Hon Amy Adams: He’s still got a rather large lead over your leader. Who is your leader?

—down 9 percent. The parrot opposite has got a problem. I feel sorry for the backbenchers in the far rows of Mongolia or Bulgaria or whatever they call it up there in the back row. They are here because of Mr Key’s personal popularity—personal popularity—and they will not be here long, because it does not look like it is going to last to the next election. They will not be here long, so it was nice to know you guys. Have fun back on the farm. Have fun back on the farm.

And so says David—a Sermon on the Mount, Mr Cunliffe. It is good to see you back in the House. I suggest that next time you stand a little closer to the razor, though. A few things have changed over there in the Labour Party, but some things do not change whatsoever. I do note there were some changes, although listening to the speeches, I do not know. I think some of them maybe had been written in about August last year. What did we see just yesterday? They have changed leaders over in the Labour Party, and that is fine. Mr Shearer is now leading the assembled masses over there, if you like. But I did see a picture of him being led by a poodle, in the paper or online somewhere, so that is not particularly encouraging, I think, for his leadership thus far.

First of all, though—I do digress, and I apologise to members—is the acknowledgments of other members for the election results. Congrats and otherwise to the National Party for its winning of the election—thank you—are taken on board. But I return the compliments to those whom I contested in my electorate of Tukituki, who ran a pretty good campaign and kept it clean. I think respect was gained for all parties concerned. I also welcome new members to Parliament and welcome back returning members. I am sure we will get to know some of the new members a bit more, and I look forward to seeing you from time to time, particularly around the House. I, for one, quite enjoy discussions outside of this Chamber, around committees and things like that.

November 26 does seem quite some time ago now, but I would just like to point out that if one looks at the map of the North Island, say, from Wairarapa all the way up to somewhere near Auckland, one sees it is a nice shade of blue—National Party blue. I feel a little bit sorry for the Hon Parekura Horomia, who has quite a burden on his broad shoulders to look after that whole part of the country. But the people have spoken. The people spoke on November 26, and they resoundingly rejected the policies that the Labour Opposition put up to the public. They resoundingly rejected those policies, to the tune of the lowest poll result, I think it is, for the Labour Party ever—27 percent, or you could say 73 percent against. [Interruption] I do not know what the issue there with that one is—27 percent. Did I miss half a percent or something? I do not know; I will give it to you. But it was 27 percent.

The people of New Zealand gave this Government a mandate. They gave this Government the permission to continue working towards such a brighter future. They gave us permission to continue to manage the country’s finances in such a better way, to prudently manage every single taxpayer cent, every single dollar, so as to get the best outcome possible, because we fully and honestly acknowledge where that dollar comes from in the first instance. As we all know, it comes from taxpayers in one way, shape, or form.

As we saw, previous speakers were talking about structural issues in the economy. Well, yes, we were in Government for the previous 3 years, but much of what we are still trying to tidy up was set in train from about 2004 to 2007, when Government spending and Government revenue doubled.

💬 Kris Faafoi: This is the speech from last year.

That is right, but I am responding to the other speeches that were written last year.

New Zealand voted for the mixed-ownership model. Interestingly, all the rhetoric aside, the former Labour finance spokesman Mr Cunliffe—and, I think, the Hon Trevor Mallard when he was commerce Minister or thereabouts—used terms along the lines that their ambition was to unleash the power and potential of State-owned enterprises. A speech Mr Cunliffe gave at Victoria University in November 2010, I think it was, used that exact term. Funnily enough, I think it got taken out of some online versions, but unleash—

💬 Hon Amy Adams: What?

Well, yes, I think that is what we may be doing. I cannot quite understand why they are still arguing about it now, having ignored the mandate and what New Zealand said. If I listened carefully to what Mr Parker said, essentially he said the National Party’s victory at the election was some kind of statistical error—

💬 Hon Amy Adams: An aberration.

—an aberration, because there has only been one other one-term Government, the one where unfortunately the Hon Mr Norman Kirk passed away. I actually fully encourage members opposite to continue in that vein, because if I recall the rhetoric before the election, apparently it was about policies—I do remember that bit. If it was about policies, and Labour put its policies out there, National put our policies out there to the public, and only 27 percent or so of the public voted for Labour’s policies, think it through a little bit. Remember the old GST off fruit and veges? Perhaps Labour members have thrown that out, to be fair; I do not know about that. I will be interested to hear. Remember not paying PAYE on your first $5K? I do not know whether they have thrown that one out. I would be interested to hear. They have changed leader, they have changed some of the front bench around, to be fair, and good luck to them all. I am looking forward to what they have to say in that space.

I would also particularly like to acknowledge, in my new role as Minister of Commerce, that I do intend to work as closely as I can with Mr Cosgrove, who is the new commerce spokesman over there, continuing the heavy regulatory reform work that the Hon Simon Power started, of necessity, in the last 3 years. But I fully acknowledge that it was assisted generally, in a bipartisan way, across the House, and, hopefully, we can continue down that track. I look forward to working with him quite closely, where and when possible. I am sure there will be policy differences, but on the whole I suspect we are all heading to the same place as far as that regulation and legislation coming up is concerned.

I noted before the mixed-ownership model, and I noted what Mr Cunliffe and Mr Mallard had said previously. I recall that the history of the new Leader of the Opposition—I think it came up when he was the candidate for Mt Albert 2 or 3 years ago—includes writing a paper proposing that defence forces were contracted out. I think it was to Sandline International or something like that. I do not really mind—I have not read the paper—but I was just thinking about this the other day. I do not really mind, but I am just quite interested to hear—if it was good enough for that member to write a paper or thesis about that and propose it, fair enough—if he has changed his mind, how he reconciles that with his current position on the mixed-ownership model as we try to unleash the potential of New Zealand, and therefore the Crown’s balance sheet, to try to realise our awesome future.

New Zealanders see on TV every night what is going on in Europe. We see what is happening in southern Europe, across Greece, across Spain, etc. I do note that the previous Labour Party leader in one of his speeches essentially announced that the global financial crisis was over. He may have changed his mind, to be fair. What is going on over in Europe is a threat to this country—regardless of the reason, for the moment. It is indebted to the tune of $180 billion. We are reliant on the world’s capital markets to fund our aspirations. Regardless of the policy stuff around that, actually, it is right that New Zealanders and this Government are prudent and very cautious to try to avoid down here what we see is going on up there. If we do not, unemployment will indeed go through the roof if the Government finances are out of control—if that in fact happens. Interest rates will go through the roof, inflation will go through the roof, and the whole thing will start to collapse.

Little old New Zealand, which is doing its best to try to punch above our exporting weight around the world, actually has to do so well, even so much better, I think, than many people realise, just to tread water as we try to realise our expectations, as we start to grow our exports, particularly to Asia. Again I freely acknowledge the generally bipartisan nature of free-trade agreements, which have been ratified by different parties and Ministers of Trade and Prime Ministers over the years—absolutely—and that is great. You know, when we exit New Zealand we generally speak as one, and most members understand how necessary that is to help pay for our aspirations. I heard a speaker say this quite recently. It is simply this: “New Zealanders, I think they understand that if we want more, better schools, if we want more, better health, if we want those things that we expect of an OECD developed country in 2012, do you know how we do it? We simply have to export more, grow more.”

Thank you for the opportunity to speak. That last speaker had difficulty believing what he was saying about the mandate. That was an unbelievable gesture, because he said that National has a mandate from New Zealanders to sell off State assets when he knows full well it has got only 59 members in a 121-member House. National is going to rely on Mr Banks, who is a National Party member masquerading as an ACT Party member; it is going to rely on Peter Dunne; and it is going to rely on the Māori Party, which by all accounts is not going to be part of that Government. How can it have a mandate with 59 members in a 121-member House when over a million people did not vote—a million people did not vote? National needs to be worried. It does not have the mandate—none, whatsoever—from the public of New Zealand. It does not have the mandate, at all, to sell off the assets that it intends to sell.

Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, I want to congratulate you and welcome you to your role. I look forward, no doubt in the not too distant future, perhaps, to recognising and congratulating you when you are wearing the full regalia of the office of Speaker of the House. I also want to acknowledge and welcome all the other new members who are here, and I particularly acknowledge also Asenati Lole-Taylor.

We have heard from that side of the House—from the Government. We have been promised a brighter future, more jobs, and higher incomes. Only last week, the household labour force survey for the final quarter of last year was released, and it is not a brighter future. Last Friday, for many workers and for many small businesses, it was not a brighter future. This is what the Government has said in the speech that it has given us, and it has been repeated by many of its members, but I want to say what the community is saying. Those members are working on the basis that they can fool some of the people some of the time or all of the people some of the time, but we are going to work on the basis that, in the next 3 years, they cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

When they say that they are going to provide a brighter future, I would ask that they go out and talk to workers in Manukau and talk to small businesses up and down this country and ask them how they are feeling about what they are experiencing at the moment. Last Friday I met with workers from Criterion, an East Tamaki manufacturing company that has gone into receivership. One hundred and eighty workers are affected. Some of those, after 20 or 30 years working in the same job, have lost their jobs. There are no jobs out there. Yes, this Government promised 170,000 jobs over 4 years. If it is to be on track, it has got to create 36,000. So far we can count only about 10,000, so it has not done it. That is due to the struggles and the battles of small businesses, which are the backbone of this country. These people who lost jobs last Friday through no fault of their own—do they feel that they have got a brighter future? The answer is no. There is no brighter future for many of these families, particularly those with schoolchildren and teenagers whom they have got to support.

There are no jobs out there, but that is what we have been promised. There is no plan, yet the Government attempts to make out as if it has got a plan. When you look at the 120 points that the Government keeps throwing out, none of that makes sense to ordinary people—hard-working workers, and small businesses that are struggling to pay their bills in the face of a rising cost of living and in the face of uncertainty in the future. Those who have lost jobs are having to struggle, because when they get re-employed, for the lucky few, they are having to be paid lower wages than they were paid before.

We have got to hold this Government to account. If it is going to be making those promises, then we—yourself, every member of this Opposition side—have got to make sure that it honours those words, because when you consider that over a million people did not vote in this election, you have got to ask yourself why that is. Just because National is in the Government seats does not mean that it is trusted. Just because it is holding the offices of power does not mean that the people accept what it is going to do for this country.

I say that we have all just heard a lot of hogwash from this Government. National made promises that just do not turn out to be the reality for many, many families the length and breadth of New Zealand. The world has changed, but National’s answers have not. It still thinks that by sitting on its hands, the economic forces that are there will simply create the jobs that it is promising it will create. Sitting on your hands is not going to do it. It has got to come up with a comprehensive plan that all of us can follow, that all of us can see, and that all of us can make a contribution in. It is just not enough for it to simply say these jobs are going to appear out of thin air.

It is just not acceptable when it says that it will sell off the assets and all will be well. That is not prosperity. Selling off our State assets, the assets that members of our country own—the elderly, and those who have contributed significantly over many, many years. Those assets belong to the New Zealand public, and if the Government took the time to read the many, many polls that have been made available, it would know that just because it has a seat in power, it does not mean that it has the right to flog off those assets. That is right.

Over 113,000 New Zealanders have left our shores for Australia. Over 113,000 New Zealanders have left our shores to go over to Australia. Why is that? They have given up under this Government. They have given up hope for a brighter future. For them, going across the Ditch to Australia provides a brighter and a more confident future for their families than hanging around here with Mr Key at the helm of power. [Interruption] Those members do not like hearing that, but it was they who said that they would reduce the number of New Zealanders going across the Ditch to Australia—113,000, all under their particular watch.

The Government has said to us that it is focused on the young people of New Zealand, particularly Māori and Pacific. We have not seen any of that. There is 41 percent unemployment among young people aged 15 to 19—not in education, employment, or training—all under Mr Key’s watch, all under the National Government’s watch. Close to 65,000 people aged 15 to 24 are not in education and are not in employment or training. The Government thinks that by allowing these young people not to be in education or training, or by sweeping them under the carpet, all is going to be well. It is wasting our young people. It is wasting the potential of this country. It is wasting the potential of our communities—people who want a brighter future, who want to be able to work, who want to earn higher incomes, who want to have their children get an education, and who want to get into a house of their own.

But so far all that we have heard from this Government are empty promises that things are going to get better—empty promises that it will be brighter round the corner. It has been in power for the last 3, going on 4, years and all that I have heard, all that my community has heard, are empty promises—empty promises. So we will hold the Government to account. We will hold it to account in the next 3 years. I move that we support the amendment that my colleague David Shearer, the leader of the Labour Party, has moved: “and the National-led Government will sell New Zealand’s assets against the will of the public; the Government has no ideas to create jobs or a clean and innovative New Zealand; that the Government is widening the gap between the very rich and the rest and therefore this House has no confidence in the National-led government.”

New Zealanders are battling to stay afloat, New Zealanders are battling to make ends meet, and all we get are empty promises. I say to you that the people of Māngere are sick and tired of empty promises from Mr Key and the National Government.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I would like to greet all members in the Chamber, congratulate all those successful members, and commiserate and acknowledge all those unsuccessful members. I would like to acknowledge you, Mr Deputy Speaker, in your returning role, and I guess it is fair to acknowledge the Government. Good on you for forming a Government. I think that this side of the House would have preferred it differently, but I would like to acknowledge that you did have the numbers. What I would like to touch on is what your plan is for this next 3 years. I am happy to take a call in this Address in Reply debate responding to John Key and the Speech from the Throne.

I want to touch on what the Prime Minister touched on, which is the four key priorities: trying to get the Government’s books into surplus, trying to get a competitive economy, trying to reform the Public Service, and trying to rebuild Christchurch. I want to look at what they mean for this country, and why this Government is asking the right questions but is providing the wrong answers to those four priority points—surplus, the economy, the Public Service, and Christchurch. I want to ask the Government why, when there are 120 points in the plan, it still does not make the grade. I want to ask the Government where the vision is with all those 120 points. I want to show the Government benches that we do have options available. We do have options. If we keep our assets Kiwi, if we invest in our valuable “clean, green” brand, and if we invest in a compassionate economy, we can build a richer New Zealand—a New Zealand for everyone.

So, firstly, let us look at the first Government priority: trying to get the Government books back into surplus by 2014-15. It might surprise some of the members, but the Greens support it in this aspect. You know, we support sustainability when it comes to the environment and we support fiscal and environmental sustainability as well. It is clear that the country has got a debt problem. We have got a gross Government debt of around 33 percent to 36 percent of GDP and you only have to look at Europe—what is happening in Portugal and Ireland, and the riots on the streets in Greece—and you see that we are on an unsustainable track. So we are asking the right question, which is about Government debt, but we have come up with the wrong answers. John Key’s speech talked about announcing only $800 million of new Government spending, cuts to the public sector, further cuts to the Government, and departments like the Department of Conservation getting gutted, yet what we are seeing is more wasteful spending being announced by the Government.

Take the motorways. We have got $19 billion being borrowed by the Government to pour on these motorways, with negative benefit-cost ratios. We have got the Government subsidising risky deep-sea oil ventures with $25 million - plus and direct subsidies to foreign offshore drillers. We have seen the new irrigation fund. What we are seeing is this Government cherry-picking: picking the winners in our economy. We are seeing motorways for truckies, we are seeing special deals for Warner Bros, we are seeing more pokies for Skycity, we are seeing the Government picking the winner when it comes to the economy, but it is the taxpayer picking up the tab. We see fiscal austerity as the watchword, but the Government is selectively borrowing billions to back these supposed winners, which are going to have huge impacts for our economy and country. When there are 120 points, and there is no point when it comes to revenue, you have got to ask some serious questions. Raising revenue has to be part of the question if we are trying to return the Government books into surplus.

The Government said yes to more obscene bonuses. We saw the Government say yes to more tax cuts for the super-rich, but we saw the Government saying no to capital gains tax, we saw the Government say no to the temporary earthquake levy, and we saw the Government say no to the small irrigation levy, which would have helped our farmers and our waterways. We were the only party in the last election to go to the public with a plan to actually pay off debt faster. The Green Party went to the public with a plan to pay off $6 billion in debt over the next 3 years. But what we see from the Government benches is members playing politics, looking out for their mates, and taking our economy down the wrong road.

When it comes to the competitive economy priority of the Government, this again is another area where we agree with the Government. To help the sustainability of our economy and our environment we need to be reducing debt, and to do that we need a competitive economy. But again what we see is the wrong answers given to the right question. The 120-point plan can be summarised in four words; I think they would be “drill it, mine it”.

Oil is the biggest strategic risk to our national economy. It is 16 percent of our imports. That is the largest single share of our national imports. We are seeing wealth directly flow offshore. Every US$1 rise in the price of oil wipes $40 billion to $60 billion off our GDP. It is the key area in the Ministry of Economic Development energy outlook analysis of the country, so if oil is the problem, why is drilling more of it the answer? The pathway to prosperity is not drilling new, risky oil wells in deep, hostile environment. It does not stack up when New Zealand sells itself far too cheaply. We see hardly any royalties, hardly any taxes, hardly any jobs for Kiwis, we see the profits flow offshore, yet it is the taxpayer who is picking up the tab when it becomes a mess.

We see the Government with its insurance liability say: “Sure, you are liable, but you need only $30 million in insurance.” We see the Government quite happy to see New Zealanders, who love their marine environment, pay 100 percent of the environmental costs, yet for only 5 percent of the value of the oil. What we saw with the Rena tragedy off the Bay of Plenty was that the country is not prepared to deal with a moderate spill, let alone a risky, deep-sea oil well blowout. The only way to achieve oil exports, which is what the Government wants to achieve—net oil exports, as in its briefing for the incoming Minister of Energy and Resources—is to encourage risky deep-sea oil drilling, more hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and digging up the lignite, the lowest-grade coal in the country.

When it comes to the deep-sea wells that the Government plans to dig all over the offshore environment in New Zealand, there is simply no way to plug a well blowout. What we saw in the Gulf of Mexico, even with all of those rigs in the environment, were 40,000 people ready to respond, but they still could not plug the well for weeks and weeks. I do not know how the Government thinks it is going to plug a well with its new legislation, the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill. Yet where it is planning to be allowing these permits for these deep-sea oil rigs is between what is known as the “roaring forties” and the “furious fifties” off the Raukūmara Basin, one of the most seismically active parts of the country. And when it comes to the bill supposedly giving Kiwis and taxpayers protection from these risky deep-sea oil wells, the “EEZ Bill”, it is really more of an “E-zee Drilling Bill”, for the way it simply facilitates more risky deep-sea oil drilling.

The second part of the plan relies on fracking—more fracking across our country. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is drilling vertical and horizontal wells, letting off explosives, and then using drilling fluids, which are proprietary, secret, and often very toxic, to extract oil and gas. What we know from fracking overseas is that it pollutes the groundwater, it pollutes the air, there are significant health worries, and then we also know there is growing evidence, including from prestigious UK and American scientific bodies, of its links with earthquakes. So I do not know why the Government is embarking on this risky and very controversial fracking practice. It is no wonder that New South Wales, Quebec, France, and many states in America have put moratoriums on it. And that is what this Government should be doing: if it wants to look out for the taxpayer, if it wants to look out for Kiwis, it should encourage the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to be doing some more research into the risks, and, until then, put in an immediate moratorium.

Now the nexus of the Government’s so-called economic development plans of “drill it and mine it”, is its “sell it” approach. When it comes to the State-owned asset Solid Energy, one of the State-owned assets on the books, it is its plan to be bringing in billions of dollars of capital to dig up the lignite. The lignite coal—[Interruption]—I could not hear the interjections, but I am sure they were not any good anyway. But anyway, when it comes to the lignite, we are going to see the taxpayer pick up the bill—hundreds of millions, maybe up to a billion dollars, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment reports—for subsidising it through the emissions trading scheme. This is the forefront where we should be using our expertise, investing in innovation like in efficient wood pellet products, other wood products, and biofuels, for which, again, the Government has not announced an extension of the grant. This is where we should be planting our effort and our focus to get innovation for prosperity for Kiwis.

Like selling the State assets, which the Government wants to flog off, it is simple madness. These are assets returning a dividend of 18.5 percent to pay off debt of only 5 percent. It does not make any sense. It has no mandate. There is massive opposition in the country. Yet on the flip side there is a massive opportunity cost as well. We could be using these assets to drive our prosperity, to drive our innovation. We have got world-leading expertise in renewable electricity generation already. If we, using our State-owned assets to drive export growth, could capture only 1 percent of that $800 billion industry, this could bring $800 million per annum into the country and 67,000 jobs.

So, in summary, I ask where the vision is—“drill it, mine it” is not enough to lift Kiwis’ living standards. Slashing the public sector is not enough to lift 200,000 Kiwi kids out of poverty. The wasteful spending on the motorways, and subsidising polluters, is not enough to protect our wonderful environment and our valuable “clean, green” brand. And the Green Party will be supporting the motion that this House has no confidence in the National Government.

It is my pleasure to take a call this afternoon. I would like to congratulate you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the other presiding officers on being re-elected in this Parliament. I would like to begin my address this afternoon by talking about three very inspirational groups. We have heard a lot of negative talk in this House this afternoon, and I just want to talk about these three groups I have met in the last couple of weeks.

The first one I want to talk about is Maria Johnson. Maria Johnson is the founder of the Little Schools programme in Wellington. She is an entrepreneur, she won the Her Business award in Wellington at the end of last year, and she is absolutely passionate about early childhood education. In fact, she is so passionate that she is in the process of breaking through into China and the markets over there. She is totally aspirational for business, and business women in particular, in New Zealand.

I would like to talk about the sanofi cyclists. The sanofi cyclists are a group of world-class cyclists who suffer from type 1 diabetes. They are elite athletes who can prove to and inspire other diabetes sufferers around the world that they can go out and live their lives to the full. They were recently in New Zealand competing, and they became first or second, I believe, in the races they ran around Palmerston North.

The third group is the Johnsonville and Newlands volunteer fire brigade. Like these volunteers and all other volunteers in New Zealand, they give day after day, week after week, year after year to their communities. They are the backbone of our community and our country. I went to their awards ceremony, and it was great to be part of that. Annette King was present as well, it was good to see. It is always good to celebrate people who go out and make a difference in New Zealand.

These three groups of people represent Kiwi ingenuity, Kiwi spirit, and the Kiwi way of life. We have heard in this House from the last couple of speakers from Labour about failures, about how badly the country is going, and how there is no hope for the country.

💬 Kris Faafoi: What happened to the positivity?

Well, actually, you are absolutely wrong. Su’a William Sio just sat down, and he had said “I’ve just been around my businesses, and I can tell you”. Well, I just went to Maria Johnson’s business yesterday, and I can tell you we have got some wonderful entrepreneurs out there doing some great work. Not often do we hear from the Labour members about solutions—solutions to the problems that face New Zealand, solutions to our challenges—and about any innovation or inspiration at all.

Well, lucky this National Government has a solution. We have a plan, and it lies in the spirit and the ambition of entrepreneurs like Maria Johnson. The role models of our cyclists, and all those who work hard for our communities—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: The plan, the plan, I want to hear about the plan.

National is committed to building a brighter future. It is so good to hear, actually, the Opposition talking about the brighter future that we have. I am going to look in Su’a William Sio’s Hansard, because I believe he talked about the brighter future, most probably, 10 times in his 10 minutes. It is great to see he believes in a brighter future for New Zealand, where New Zealanders have opportunity, where they are going to have jobs, where we are going to have higher incomes, where we are going to have better public services. When I talk about better public services, what do I talk about? I talk about more elective surgery, I talk about ensuring that our Māori and Pacific Island children have access to early childhood education—actually, that we provide early childhood education that they want to access.

We are going to ensure that we have high targets, like the 95 percent target for the immunisation of our children before they get to school, like rheumatic fever—reducing that, instead of it increasing under the Labour Government—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: How?

How? Oh my goodness, you know exactly how we are going to do it, because we have got our 120-point action plan. It is funny—Clare Curran is now sitting in the back there, and last week Clare Curran said to us “You have no plan, no plan at all.” And we said we have got the 120-point economic action plan, and Clare Curran goes “What 120-point action plan?”. Well, actually, it is on the internet—www.national.org.nz—and anybody can go and have a look at it. It is a very comprehensive plan, and it takes us through the next 3 years.

Unlike the Labour Party, which has no plan, no vision, no aspiration at all, we have four main priorities over the next 4 years. The first is responsibly managing the Government’s finances. The others are building a more competitive and productive economy, delivering better public services, and, of course, rebuilding Canterbury.

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: How?

OK, so how are we going to do it? A great question—I am pleased you asked. What we are not going to do is, we are not going to borrow more money, like Labour would have done if it had got into Government, because we are all sitting back and watching Europe and seeing all those countries that are heavily indebted, and knowing that we cannot borrow any more money. In fact, I believe that in the election Labour campaigned on borrowing billions of dollars more money. We are not going to do that; we know we are not going to do that. We are thinking of other ways of raising capital, and one of those is through our mixed-ownership model.

But we alone as a Government cannot reduce the debt of the country. People have to take responsibility for reducing their own personal debt, as well. We know that the tax switch was significant in ensuring that New Zealanders got to find a different way to look at how they are getting their money and what they are going to do with it. We know that before the tax switch, for every dollar that was earned, $1.10 was spent, and after the tax switch, for every dollar that was earned, 99c was spent. So we know that New Zealanders are changing the way they are saving and spending their money. In fact, in 2008 personal loans were $13.25 billion. Now, personal loans are $12.5 billion. That is a significant decrease for New Zealanders in how they are spending and saving their money.

This Government is committed to returning to surpluses in 2014-15. We are looking at $300 million in surpluses in our forecasts. We know that we have to be financially responsible—fiscally responsible—to ensure that we keep the pressure off interest rates, because we know that one of the biggest pressures on households is interest rates. We need to keep those low so mortgage repayments stay low. Also, we have to be responsible for our exporters, to ensure that our exchange rate is stable and as beneficial to them as it possibly can be. But we know the only way we are going to grow our economy is through our exports: being productive, and being a competitive exporter in overseas markets. We know that we need free-trade agreements, and successive Governments have worked towards that. We know that our biggest trading partners are Australia and China, and they have to be our biggest trading partners because they are the growing partners. We cannot afford to go back to our traditional partners, which are not growing. If we want to grow, we need to ensure that we hitch our wagon to the economies that are growing as well.

I am excited about the future for our families, our businesses, and our organisations in New Zealand. I am excited that Maria has the opportunity one day to expand her business into China, because of National’s commitment to business. I am excited about the future of sanofi cyclists and about how they inspire others in New Zealand, and in their communities, to overcome adversity day after day. I am proud that so many people in New Zealand are willing to put their hands up to help each other, to help their communities. I am excited about this Government having its second term, and that we can deliver the brighter future that we promised. We believe in opportunity, personal freedom, and the ambition to succeed. Thank you.

Let us have a bit of a look at that plan, because when I heard the news yesterday that John Key’s Government was going to take us to a brave new world within the public sector, my ears pricked up with interest. Could it be that this Government would use its purchasing power and its considerable influence and resources to drive technological change in the public sector in a way that would lead to innovation, job growth, and resurgence in our private sector? Could it be that it would invest in the skills required to ensure that we have a highly skilled technological workforce, and that the pathways from school into that workforce were being considered and were being seen as a priority, so that kids coming out of school could get into high tech jobs? Would it ensure that the growing digital divide in this country, and the closing of that digital divide, would be seen as a priority? No, sadly.

After looking a bit more closely at what the Prime Minister actually said, it is all about slashing—slashing budgets—and using technology as a cover, not to drive job growth or innovation but rather to cut jobs and make front-line services automated, and maybe even send them offshore. Labour is all for efficiencies: making our public services better, improving New Zealanders’ access to services using technology, and data sharing among Government agencies. There is no question about that. But Labour is also about a productive, high tech, innovative economy—a clean, green, high tech economy. An innovation society is what we want for New Zealand.

Unfortunately, with this Government—and this is a tragedy—the technology argument is being used as an excuse for services to be diminished, and if the driving reason for doing it is to cut budgets and to cut staff, then you have got to wonder what on earth the thinking is. Delivering core services through a call centre, maybe not even in this country—or, even worse, via an automated service—is not a public service. Duncan Garner has written about this today, describing it as Treasury-speak from the 1980s. That is not future talk; that is talk very much from the past.

Then there is the spectre of user-pays. Here we have the same old story about cuts and diminished services. That is what underlines the Government’s 120-point plan. I see that John Key is not going to be pressed on how many jobs are going to be cut, but I ask him how he thinks New Zealanders are going to receive a higher quality of service for their complex issues if they cannot even speak to a person. I see that he is reported as saying that people will be able to use their smartphones to apply for passports and other things, rather than having to wait in lines in offices. Well, there are two things. Firstly, many people do not even have smartphones. They cannot afford them, and they are not likely to be able to afford them if they do not have a job. Secondly, just how many services will be taken off the front line? I bet it is more than just applying for passports.

Technology is critically important to this country’s future, and innovation is critically important to this country’s future, but so is direct contact. Technology should be about bringing people and their Government closer together, not taking them further apart and then making them pay for it. That is why we pay taxes. As anyone knows, if you take away the personal contact between people and an organisation, then the organisation suffers as much as the customer. You cannot trust an organisation you cannot talk to, where you cannot talk to an actual person when you need to. Taking the people out of Public Service will affect the service.

New Zealand should become an innovation society—an innovation society in a country that uses innovation successfully to create jobs and to create exports. It does not use technology as a means to slash them and create even more inequality. This Government has no plan to grow the economy. It is short-term, dumb thinking, just as is its agenda to sell assets. New Zealanders do not want their assets sold.

This fits with some of the other agendas of this Government, which are equally disturbing but are definitely deliberate. The first is that our public broadcasting sector is being reduced to a shell—a shadow. We need a strong public media that is independent of any Government—any Government—and that provides critical analysis, discussion, and debate in our country. We should be proud of our public broadcasters. We should hold our public broadcasting service up as an example of a truly functioning democracy just like most of our fellow OECD countries. It should be part of the fabric of our democracy. Instead, what has the Government done? It has frozen Radio New Zealand’s funding. It will not be able to provide its current services under its current funding model. It has stripped Television New Zealand (TVNZ) of its charter. It has made it become fully commercial. It has axed funding to TVNZ 7, which is our digital public TV station and which punches enormously above its weight.

This has happened at the same time as cosy and dubious relationships are emerging between the Government and its corporate media mates. There was a $43 million soft loan to MediaWorks so it could pay its TV licences. There is a refusal to consider or discuss the glaring need—the glaring need—for some regulation in the broadcasting sector, which is happening everywhere else except New Zealand. Why? Because that would affect its mate Sky television, which dominates the pay television market. It is now doing deals with TVNZ to put even more content behind the pay wall, meaning that great tracts of TV will not, and cannot, be seen, because people cannot afford the subscription.

Meanwhile—and most disturbing—this is all shrouded by the growing scandal of political interference. There is clear evidence emerging of overt political interference by this Government in our media to promote its own agenda. You have heard my colleague Grant Robertson, today in question time, question the Prime Minister about his free hour on Radio Live. The Prime Minister became strangely silent today on the extent to which he was directly involved in determining the content of what he described as an election-free zone, but which could be described as a free hit.

I know that many people are grappling with the extent of these issues out there in our community, and more and more people are starting to speak out about them. Many people are asking how this sort of thing can be happening in New Zealand. Why is the Government doing it? It does not have a plan, and it does not want public scrutiny of where it is failing. And it is happening. It is happening in our country, and more and more people are waking up to that. We should be fighting against any perception of Government interference in broadcasting. This Government does not seem to give a toss. Broadcasting programming matters should be the responsibility of NZ On Air; they are not the business of Government Ministers, Prime Ministers, or anyone attached to a political party. In any other country, where the Prime Minister’s electorate chair is involved in programming, where the Government gives soft loans to broadcasters, and where the Prime Minister gets a free hit on air time, this would rightfully be regarded as corrupt, and I agree with that sentiment.

Just before the election a programme was screened on TV3 called Inside Child Poverty. It was controversial. It provided an evidence base for an issue that we all know is very important and concerning for our country right now. Too many children are living in poverty. Yes, it invited debate and discussion, but it was a good thing to have that discussion out there. But in January we discovered that the Prime Minister’s man did not like it and had complained to the board chair and the chief executive officer before that programme—

💬 Hon Annette King: Before?

—before that programme was even aired. Now we have that man, the Prime Minister’s own electorate chair, on the board of NZ On Air, deeply involved in making decisions about funding and the content of programmes that are promoting the Government’s own agenda—Whānau Ora; the Government’s own agenda—and is scrambling around inside TV3 and NZ On Air to cover its back.

How could this happen in our country? Is NZ On Air not charged to be independent and fearlessly protective of public broadcasting values that are independent of politics? Is NZ On Air funding propaganda? How can someone so close to the Prime Minister be allowed to be involved in these decisions? The new broadcasting Minister, Craig Foss, has the extremely difficult job of reassuring the public that the Government has credibility—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Time has expired.

Congratulations, Mr Deputy Speaker, on your well-deserved elevation to the position you hold in this Parliament, which I know you will serve with grace and dignity. I have to say, in talking about the speech I have just heard from Clare Curran, that maybe it is just me but there is a deep and twisted irony in what she is saying about broadcasting. On the one hand she talks about freedom and the need to let freedom reign within the broadcasting world, but on the other she is straight in attacking the Sky TVs—the ones who are doing well in this area. Ultimately—and I am pretty sure I am right in terms of the policies Labour espoused on broadcasting before the last election—it comes down to the same old, same old from that party, and that is more regulation, more State regulation, and, ultimately, more State control, with the State controlling broadcasting. And if she wants to know about a State inappropriately deciding what is on television, all we need to do is go down the road that Clare Curran wants us to go down, which she espoused and which was roundly rejected at the last election.

You see, in National, we believe in freedom, and we want to see people out there in the free marketplace of ideas talking about these things and not being bullied down because their idea does not fit with someone’s view. I want to give you a quotation I read in this morning’s New Zealand Herald from Greek finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos. He said: “Our country has an acute issue of survival. The question is not whether some salaries and pensions will be curtailed, but whether we will be able to pay even these reduced wages and pensions. When you have to choose between bad and worse, you will pick what is bad to avoid what is worse.” I am no economist, but I chair the Finance and Expenditure Committee; I am literate in these matters. But, ultimately, what happened in Greece is pretty simple. For way too long it spent more than it earned. I think that New Zealanders roundly rejected that sort of approach, which we saw from the Labour Party opposite in the election campaign. You see, Labour wants to take this country down that route. Now, Phil Goff, in campaigning at the last election made—I think at last count Amy Adams was saying it was $15 billion more in spending promises than National; I thought it was more like $20 billion. But what I do know is that it is a whole lot of money that Labour—

💬 Hon Annette King: It was just made up.

Well, it was made up; I agree with Annette King. That is exactly what it was. It was made up by Phil Goff. He was shown up in the debates for making it up, because he did not know where his figures came from, and he just kept on promising. Actually, just as we have seen in Greece, it does not work, and it does not work here either. So we are determined to be fiscally conservative and to get our spending and our debt down in this country and to return to surplus in 2014-15. When National talks this way, many of the members on the other side—and David Cunliffe committed this crime, if I can put it this way—say: “Oh, but we got debt down.” Well, let me explain something to the Labour Party. There is a fundamental difference between spending and debt—right? They are different concepts. And yes, that is right. In the best economy the world has probably ever seen, it is true that Michael Cullen was able to return surpluses, arguably, I would say, by taxing more than he needed to. But he was able to return big surpluses. But how did he do that? Well, from 2005 we know that he spent like a drunken sailor. Every day, day in, day out, he was spending much more than he needed to do, and he was not spending it on productive stuff, on the kinds of things Clare Curran harped on about before—innovation this, innovation that. No, he put it into the non-productive economy. And why did he do that? Well, a cynic might say he did that to buy elections. But, fortunately, New Zealanders woke up. They knew it was a hopeless set of policies that Labour was selling. They did not want the “Greek-onomics” - styled stuff that Labour was putting in place.

I was talking to a top economist just last week. He said to me that doing a good job by the economy comes down to two things. You can dress it up in all sorts of ways and you can talk about 15 things, but it comes down to two things. Firstly, it comes down to spending less and having less debt. They are different things, but related. Secondly, it comes down to building a more competitive and productive economy. And that is precisely what National wants to do. He also said this to me on the competitive and productive economy: “Actually, it doesn’t come down to one big thing; it comes down to lots and lots of little things done right, over time, incrementally. That is how you make a difference in an economy.” [Interruption] I hear Rajen Prasad, and I know that on that side of the House, Labour, and probably the Greens as well, says: “Actually, it does come down to two or three things. You can just have some big bang. You know, the innovation economy, or the green economy, and we just do all these magic little things.” Well, that is exactly what it is; it is the magic theory of economics. It is the idea that the Government can just magic up industries, and suddenly, hey presto, we are billionaires. Well, let me tell the Opposition that that is actually not how the real economy works.

💬 Hon Annette King: How are you going to magic the 170,000 jobs?

There is no magic on this side of the House, Annette King, or Kris Faafoi. What there is, is lots of things—a 120-point plan that adds up over time to making a step change in this economy. I know; I understand; Labour does not like it. Labour members are good people. They are well-meaning people, but they are wrong fundamentally on the economics. [Interruption] Well, I am being generous. I wanted to be generous. They do have the magic wand theory of economics. As I say, just dream up an industry. For Clare Curran it is innovation, and for the Green Party it is a green economy. Actually, we just want to build a more productive and competitive economy, and we do that by reforming the economy day in and day out, with lots of things. Labour says there is no plan—well, here it is. They can get it on www.national.org.nz. I will go through some of these things: connect 58,000 premises to ultra-fast broadband, including 221 schools.

💬 Hon Annette King: How?

How? Well, we put them in the ground, Annette. They dig them up and it works kind of well. Also, there is changing ACC to allow choice in the work account, reduce business costs, and promote growth. We will pass legislation to implement the start-out wage to ensure our young people are not locked out of the job market. It is all of these things, 120 things, that make a substantial difference to the economy and do mean that we can deliver a brighter future for this country.

I also have to say that there is something else that is needed to deliver a brighter future. It is basically attitudinal; it is not being a misery guts like some of the members opposite are when they stand up—“Woe is me!”, and all this and that. Not that I have done it often, but when you have been to South-east Asia to the so-called tiger economies and you read their newspapers, you see that they focus on “can do”, on what can be done, on how a road can be built. They do not, as Steven Joyce pointed out in what I thought was a stellar column in the New Zealand Herald, focus on all the “can’ts”, all the things you cannot do. They do not say: “There is this problem, and that.” They do not shut off things here, there, and everywhere. Their papers are relentlessly positive. They talk about economic growth, the things they are doing, the broadband plans, and this and that, and we could do with a dose of that attitude and that optimism, because there is room for optimism. When we look around the world, at Europe and its issues, at America, which is doing better than it was but has its issues, and we look at where we are next to the Asian economies—and I include Australia in that, which is arguably the richest per capita country in the world right now—there is much room for optimism in New Zealand, because we have a great spirit, we are optimistic, and we have a wonderful Government leading us at this time of trial.

The first thing I want to say to the member who has just sat down is that clearly he is not an economist. Because he chairs the Finance and Expenditure Committee he might like to think that he is an economist, but he is not. He believes only the two things that the friend of his, the economist, said were important—only those two things. I say to that member there are many more things that a responsible Government has to address, and it cannot be just those two things.

That is the problem with the Speech from the Throne. This society has, as a right, to look at the set-piece speech from the Government about its strategic intent—its statement of its aspirations—and to find a place for itself within this statement. This is a statement for all New Zealanders, and one that we all should be able to look confidently at to see how the Government intends to advance our interests—everybody’s interests. So it is a fair test of this particular statement to see how it addresses the needs of all New Zealanders and how it reflects their point of view.

In the Speech from the Throne the Government states that its driving goal is to build a more competitive economy with less debt, more jobs, and higher incomes. We should hold those three things in our minds. That was the goal of the Government throughout the last 3 years, and here it is restated in a slightly different form, but it is the same statement. Over the past 3 years we have not seen less debt; in fact, debt has ballooned under this particular Government. No matter how it tries to explain it, and no matter what reasons it finds, the fact is that the debt under this Government has mushroomed. It has borrowed like there is no tomorrow. There is not any less debt and there will not be for some time.

We have not seen more full-time jobs; full-time jobs are down. No matter how the Government tries to package that fact, the fact is that full-time jobs are down. The number of hours worked is down, and 100,000 people need more hours to make ends meet. Maybe the Government does not care that some people are job-weak, in the sense that they do not have the hours. They work less time, they do not have enough money, and they live, in a sense, suboptimal lives. We have already been told in this debate that 83,000 people are not in education, work, or training. How could that be a judgment of the aspirations and performance of that Government over the last 3 years?

As for higher incomes, that applies only to those at the very top of the income scale. Ordinary people have not seen any meaningful increase under the stewardship of this Government, and the programme it has outlined in this document will not do it for them, either. Tax cuts notwithstanding—that gave advantages to one side. So by the Government’s own statements—less debt, more jobs, higher incomes—it has failed.

This was a Government that promised it would make the boat go faster; it borrowed that from the America’s Cup challenge. However, what it intends to do is actually sell the boat. That ain’t going to make it go faster. The Government knows that it does not have wide support for its asset sales programme, and yet it intends to persist. It has no mandate. That has been well established, and just because it won an election that does not mean it has a mandate for this one policy.

There are two points about the Government’s asset sales programmes that need to be made. The first is to ask when a Government takes the views of the public into account in setting such a major policy goal. Does the lack of wide support for the asset sales, currently reflected in surveys and opinion polls, demonstrate to the Government that the level of support for such a radical policy is just not there? The Government knows it is just not there. It tries to say it has a mandate, but it does not. Clearly, the support is not there and it has no mandate. If it wants to test that, then perhaps it should have a referendum and test that out, and we know that the majority would not support it.

The second point is that there is no agreement that selling State assets that currently produce a good rate of return for the Government is a no-brainer. It is a no-brainer, selling those? Not many people see the logic of this policy, expect perhaps those who would benefit directly from it. Many more will pay, through higher prices for electricity. Many ordinary New Zealand families cannot afford it at the moment, but the Government does not care for this particular group. The policy is entirely driven by ideology. This is the belief that the State has no business owning strategic assets for all New Zealanders. The Government will drive this ideology, no matter what, because only its supporters are likely to benefit. Why does the Government not govern for all New Zealanders? Certainly, it is not there for the average citizen, and this does not benefit them. The same applies to the privatisation of accident compensation, in a sense, or opening up those accounts. Charter schools are the same sort of stuff. It is ideologically driven, and the facts are not there.

Clearly this Government does not have a plan to meet its own goals of less debt, more jobs, and higher incomes. When challenged about this last November, it hurriedly put together a 120-point plan in the last days of the election campaign. That seemed like a desperate act at the time, but somehow it was promoted as a new idea. I have had a look at the 120-point plan, which many speakers opposite have spoken to, and see that only 21 percent of the 120 are new proposals. The rest have already been completed or are under way, and many of them are the ragtag group of ideas that the Government promoted over the last 3 years. It has put them together, and now it is a plan. This confirms that there are few ideas; selling State assets does not constitute a real plan for growth and progress towards a smart, clean, clever country.

This country has already been judged as one of the most unequal in the OECD. This is a terrible indictment, but where in this statement is there a real commitment to change that, a real commitment to move much faster to make this a more equal society? There is a whole raft of anti-worker legislation, which reduces their incomes. How does that create a fairer society? How does that create a more equal society? There is nothing in this plan that addresses our low-wage economy. In fact, the Government policy is designed to make that even more difficult. I wonder how members of the Government go to bed comfortably at night, knowing there are many others out there living lives of quiet desperation, who have not been fed well that night, and whose children are probably hungry and not looking forward to the next day. Yet this statement is the Government’s plan to address that. Those who are hungry and poor cannot wait.

One of the changing aspects of New Zealand’s society is its culture and ethnic diversification. There are almost half a million people who identify as an ethnic group other than Pākehā, Māori, or Pasifika. They play a critical role in New Zealand society and, given the social capital they represent, they are well placed to make a difference—a real difference—to this country’s growth and well-being. But there is no reference to them in this particular document, at all. These people are faceless, and you would have thought that in the strategic statement from the Government to guide its 3-year programme there would be a reflection on at least the diversification of New Zealand society, and what new ideas this Government had that might address them much more directly.

This country has to invest much greater thought than it has to date in harvesting the potential of the ethnic sector. This is the new New Zealand, particularly in Auckland, but in other cities as well. Given this, one would have thought that there would be some reference to their interests in this plan. So far we have become familiar with ethnic celebrations and ethnic elements or culture, like food and entertainment, but their interest in New Zealand is much greater than that. There has to be a much deeper level of engagement and involvement with the ethnic sector and with all New Zealand society about our ethnic diversification. I thought, as this change is so important, that in this strategic statement it would be addressed. There has to be a greater level of dialogue with and regarding the ethnic sector, as well as with all New Zealanders.

We are all reasonably well informed about the plight of our children in this country. This document says very little about our most vulnerable. We know that there is a correlation between abuse, neglect, and poverty, yet this document is quite silent on many of those factors. There is a belief that somehow the trickle-down will trickle down to their interests as well.

In conclusion, this is a disappointing and bland Speech from the Throne. It will not give comfort to the many or reward them, because their interests are not addressed. Instead it will advantage only the few who are already advantaged. I guess New Zealand will have to wait for a Labour Government to, once again, lift all boats through a clean, green, and clever programme. Thank you.

I appreciate the opportunity to once again lay out for New Zealand and for interested colleagues the National-led Government’s plan for a brighter New Zealand, and what we are laying out for the next 3 years. Our four main priorities, of course, are, first, responsibly managing the Government’s finances. We have no particular interest in borrowing more and more and more from overseas, such as other parties are peddling to the New Zealand public at the moment in order to fulfil their election promises.

Secondly, we want to build a more competitive and productive economy. Part of that, of course, is investment in very important infrastructure, whether it is electricity transmission and generation infrastructure, whether it is roading or rail, or whether it is broadband or other forms of telecommunications, which is important for New Zealanders, particularly in the provinces, to communicate with the rest of the country and the world. All those areas of infrastructure investment are important to us.

Thirdly, we want to deliver a better, more effective, and more responsive Public Service so that New Zealanders can more readily engage with Government and Government departments and agencies right throughout the country. Lastly, of course, is that all-important rebuilding of Christchurch. Those are our goals over the next 3 years, ones that we will be measured on, and, fortunately, ones we have already made considerable progress on.

In terms of building a more competitive and productive economy, I have already outlined that the importance of infrastructure is so very, very high. It does not matter whether we communicate by rail and road, physically travelling to places; through transport links delivering goods and services from one place to another; or in the virtual, travelling through broadband or telecommunications. The point is that New Zealand, being a long, narrow nation, needs to ensure that our communications and transport links are world class.

I was stunned, for instance, when we had a region that historically has been isolated from the rest of New Zealand—I am talking about Northland. I am sure Southland, Mr Deputy Speaker, where you are from, has never experienced this, but Northland, in the far reaches of the north of New Zealand, has historically—100 years ago—been isolated from the capital and other parts of the country. I was stunned to see the Leader of the Opposition beating the drum for no more investment on that State highway network north of Auckland. He was beating the drum saying that State Highway 1 from Auckland to Whangarei should not be upgraded. In fact, in a condescending manner he called it the “Holiday Highway” and said that the Labour Party would rather pull the $1 billion committed to that and spend it on everywhere else but Northland. It is very disappointing for Northlanders—very disappointing for Northlanders.

For colleagues this will come as some surprise, because my colleagues on this side of the House do not actually realise that the Labour Party leader at the moment ran for the seat of Whangarei.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: No.

No, you did not know that, did you?

💬 Hon Amy Adams: No.

Many colleagues did not know. He ran for the seat of Whangarei in 2002 as a proud Aucklander. The Labour Party usually sends Aucklanders to Whangarei to stand. He came to Whangarei and actually said, back in 2002, that he would stand up for Whangarei, would stand up for Northland, and wanted more attention to be given to Whangarei and Northland. That is what the Labour Party leader said in 2002. In this general election we found that he wanted to cut ties with Northland, and did not want to invest more in that highway, State Highway 1 to Whangarei. Whangarei residents were aghast at the change of fortunes—the turn, I guess, that the Leader of the Opposition has made in that time.

So Labour Party members might want to continue to call State Highway 1 north of Auckland to Whangarei and Northland the “Holiday Highway”, and mock it, but, actually, we will accept that. We are delighted that Aucklanders want to come north. We are pleased, actually, that it is a tourist destination. If Aucklanders want to travel north, pull out their credit cards, and spend money in Northland’s capital, Whangarei, then we are absolutely delighted about that, but we want to see that sort of investment in the north. We have seen decisions made on the Waterview Connection, and, of course, on the Kōpū Bridge, and other important transport investment infrastructure right across New Zealand, and we celebrate it. And there is much, much, much more to come.

Roads are not the only area where we are investing significant finances for the benefit of economic growth. The electricity network across New Zealand is also looking at a massive upgrade. People would have read in the last 2 weeks that there is going to be a marginal increase in electricity prices due to the investment in Transpower’s network for the national grid right across New Zealand. I recall that when the National Party was in Opposition, the Government of the day was talking about upgrading the national grid. It was concerned at that time that should there be power blackouts it would be unfortunate if that occurred because Transpower’s grid throughout New Zealand had somehow failed. I remember the Labour Party talking about that in the year 2000. In 2000 or 2001 they continued that discussion, and I believe—and Maurice Williamson will correct me on this—in 2002 the Labour Party did what it did best, and the Government of that time, I think, formed an officials committee.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: That’s right.

That is right. It discussed that for 12 months, and then was it not in 2003 or 2004 that it decided to get expert advice? I think some members called for a select committee inquiry, so we had 5 years of Labour Government discussion about whether we should, or whether we should not, upgrade the transmission lines throughout the country. It probably issued a discussion document—a discussion document. I am not sure whether Labour surveyed, but, as was its habit when it governed during that period—it did not matter whether it was building a road, electricity generation, electricity transmission, broadband, rail, or whatever investment it was—it simply did a number of things all in a row. It would have an officials committee, discussion documents, select committee inquiries, expert advice, and royal commissions—anything but make a decision. It would do anything but make a decision in case it isolated someone. Unfortunately, as is the case throughout the world, yes, constituents like to be heard, like to be loved, and like to be agreed with, but, in the end, if year on year you show no leadership and you show no decision-making prowess, they will toss you out, and that is what has happened.

That is why we are saying, quite clearly—nailing our colours to the wall—that we are about responsibly managing the Government’s finances and building a competitive and productive economy. We will invest in roading, we will invest in electricity generation and transmission, we will invest in broadband, and we will invest in all these infrastructural opportunities. We will do that and make those decisions.

That, of course, leads me to the investment in housing. Members will know that the previous Labour Government was very proud of increasing the number of State houses in its stock. When we took over we made a very distinct and clear decision that we were enthusiastic about having State houses that were fit for purpose, warm, dry, and livable, as well as increasing their number. So we decided that our investment would be upgrading the State housing stock and increasing it—doing that together—and that has been a very wise decision, indeed.

The previous Government, interestingly enough, looked at the issue of State houses being on quarter acre and half acre sections and being, sort of, 1940s and 1950s houses—being old, cold, and mouldy pieces of infrastructure. It discussed for many, many years doing something about that, but never actually did it. National has decided that we will subdivide large sections, and we will demolish old, cold, and mouldy State houses and build new, modern, insulated ones. We will make better use of those assets. That is what we are doing. So although members on that side of the House might have increased the number of old, cold, and mouldy State houses, on this side of the House we have decided that we need to invest in the quality, not just the quantity, of housing. That is what we are doing.

We are very proud of the goals that we have outlined in our four main priorities: responsibly managing the economy, building a more competitive and productive economy, delivering better public services, and rebuilding Christchurch. That is what we will be doing, that is what we will be measured on, and we are pleased that that, in fact, will be the bar we have set for ourselves and for New Zealanders to judge us by in 3 years’ time.

Mr Speaker, I congratulate you on your election. Support for your appointment extended across the House. That is testament to the success of your efforts during the first term of the current Government.

I have the honour of being the 12th member of Parliament to represent the Dunedin North electorate. The seat of Dunedin North has a proud history of strong representation by the Labour Party, both in Opposition and around the Cabinet table. The individuals who have held the seat have contributed to Labour holding it for 80 of the past 83 years.

My predecessor, the Hon Pete Hodgson, can lay claim to a quarter of Dunedin North’s history with a Labour Party MP—more if you count his involvement before that. Pete pursued the integration of honest, transparent, and accountable economic policy with honest, transparent, and accountable environmental policy. He said so in his maiden speech. The year was 1990, and he argued for a price on carbon. He sought to make New Zealand “the first country in the world to have an economy that is truly sustainable”. Well, we are not a truly sustainable economy yet. It was fully 18 years after Pete’s maiden speech that New Zealand finally legislated for a price on carbon. He played an important part in shaping that carbon debate. Pete got stuff done. His animal welfare private bill caused the Government to rewrite animal welfare legislation. It made New Zealand law amongst the best in the world. He did heavy lifting across 14 portfolios during 9 years in the Cabinet of the Clark Government. And he worked hard locally too. In his constituency work Pete wore his political colours lightly, and was well-liked, as his sizable majorities attest. As Pete makes good on his promise to withdraw from political life, his talents and vigour are missed.

The electorate of Dunedin North includes the northern coastal settlements of Waitati, Warrington, Karitane, and Waikouaiti. The southern boundary is formed by the Otago harbour, while the bulk of the central city and hill suburbs form the south-western boundary. But what of its flavour? Well, Dunedin North is shaped by its Scottish heritage. Many of its important educational institutions, including the University of Otago, have Presbyterian roots. Manufacturing enterprises are important, especially heavy engineering, and the electorate contains a port with a skilled workforce that serves all of Otago. Dunedin North has more young people than any other electorate, therefore the most who are single, the most on lowest annual incomes, and the highest proportion employed in education and training. It also has the highest proportion of people employed in the health care and social service sector.

Those who made my election to the House possible have placed trust in me to represent this fine electorate. To them I extend my sincere thanks. In 2011 Dunedin North was the only general South Island seat where Labour won both votes. That is a credit to the hundreds of volunteers who helped out during the campaign and on election day, and a tribute to the wisdom of the voters. To my wife, Katrina, I express gratitude for the support provided during the transition from my previous role of service at Selwyn College, to one that will surely afford less reliable and frequent engagement in duties properly the responsibility of a father and a husband. Although my previous engagement in the parliamentary environment was short, it was long enough to engender real understanding of the corresponding personal cost borne by wider families of the members of this House.

Government will always be with us, and as citizens we must decide what kind of Government we want. In my view Governments are elected to provide moral leadership, not just to manage the economy to achieve things like market discipline and efficiency gains. Markets make excellent servants, but terrible masters. Good regulation can harness markets to support people and their needs, rather than the other way round. We must take our destiny into our own hands and shape the economy to benefit all of New Zealand. In recent decades those benefits have been shared too unequally.

Politicians are elected to a life of public service; the service they are elected to is leadership. Leadership involves listening, discerning, assisting, and decision making. Service should never be confused with servility. Politicians ought not to hide behind the term “service”, awaiting a mandate of majority support on every issue and forgetting, or perhaps never realising, that the public have elected the politicians to do a job in good faith on their behalf. Politicians do not exist to rubber-stamp what the electorate has already decided, but to articulate and share a vision of a better society.

I will describe the better society to which I aspire. It has similarities with what founding members of the New Zealand Labour Party described as an “applied Christianity”. It is a society where accident of birth does not dictate one’s station and prospects. It is a society where every citizen can get ahead by dint of hard work that builds on their natural endowment. It is one where all have free and equal access to high-quality education, a society where all have the ability to develop their talents sufficiently to ensure fulfilling and enriching lives. It is one in which choices are not driven by fear but are afforded by opportunity, and in which everyone has access to legal representation, regardless of their means. The society that I wish to live in recognises that prevention is better than cure. It has a health system with universal access: a trip to hospital does not require insurance or a cheque book. I believe that more careful attention needs to given to the prophylactic benefits of public health, as compared with the resources required to attend to the illnesses of the dying and the diseases of the “worried well”.

To support our objectives, our economy must change and grow. We must recognise our dependence upon the primary sector, and treasure and enhance it. But we must also diversify if we wish to be a prosperous nation. As a small country far from markets, we must make some strategic decisions about the types of industries we wish to promote and support. The OECD recognises that we educate our kids well. We must leverage this learning for research, for innovation, and for New Zealand’s commercial gain. Dunedin is already a base for firms with a strong technology component. Taylormade Productions and Scott Technology are two of the most well-known, but there are other weightless exporters locally, like Pocketsmith, Trunk.ly, and 1000Minds. Squid gel, DNA sequencing, and probiotics illustrate the potential to commercialise science developed at Otago. We need more of this if we are going to prosper as a country.

I have written and rewritten this speech several times. Allotted more time, I would assert the benefits of placing a happiness index alongside our GDP metric as a way of measuring our progress as a society. I would suggest that a society is best judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. I would canvass the importance of New Zealand retaining a strong and independent voice in the Pacific. I would extol the benefits of universal provision of Māori language education, both to brain development and to national identity. I would argue for appropriate financial instruments for the management of fresh water. I would emphasise the responsibility of current generations to hand over the planet in better shape than we inherited it. I would describe how we might reconsider financial transactions taxes, gift and estate duties, and a capital gains tax, in order to broaden our tax base. And I would describe the nature of public services supported by a progressive taxation system that would drive greater social mobility. These topics are all close to my heart, but I wish to concentrate the burden of my speech on one thing that is something of a precondition to good progress—that is, greater equality.

Sadly, New Zealand has rushed towards greater inequality over the last 30 years. The truly wealthy have grabbed a disproportionately large slice of the economic growth pie, at the expense of other New Zealanders. There is an urgent need to level an evermore slanted playing field. We need a broad-based and progressive taxation system that preserves the Kiwi dream of a country where a little talent and much hard work provide real opportunities to better one’s lot. My Christian upbringing instilled in me a strong sense of social justice. My theological education and my time as a Presbyterian minister have cemented that. That some people have many opportunities while others have few just does not feel right. For me, this is a gut-level response rooted in firmly held values. A growing body of literature shows a correlation between societies with large inequalities and poor health, longevity, and other social statistics. A more equal society means better quality of life.

Generating the conditions for a more equal society is the right thing to do, but it increasingly seems that it is also the pragmatic thing to do. I believe that a fairer society also makes economic sense, and here are four reasons why. First, resources shared across society mean that all people are trained and available to make their best contribution to society. In New Zealand more than one in five children is born into poverty. These kids have to battle against the odds. They are more likely to suffer from diseases of poverty, less likely to succeed in the education system, and have higher chances of ending up in our prisons. For our country to get ahead, we need all our children to realise their potential.

Greater equality is good for a second reason. If we remunerate talent by valuing professions that support the whole of society, rather than those that preserve the interests of a wealthy few, we all benefit. Neurosurgeons and teachers give more to society than great brains wasted on exploiting distortions in poorly regulated financial markets.

A third reason that greater equality makes pragmatic sense relates to public investment. Infrastructure is an example—witness growth in China’s high-speed rail network. It is 12 times bigger than it was in 2008, four times larger than that in any other country, and is still growing at an astonishing rate. It is hard to imagine this happening in the USA today. Where a critical mass of the truly wealthy exert undue influence on the political process, investment in infrastructure, education, research, health care, and other matters related to the common good dwindles, and we all suffer. In any society with extremes of wealth and poverty, the truly wealthy cease to value common assets. Able to buy what they desire, they have no need for them.

A fourth reason why more equal societies tend to be more successful is that people work harder when they know that the rules of society are fair. When everybody who does a fair day’s work can live well, and when it is always possible for someone born in a family of modest means to be successful in their chosen field, they are more likely to strive so to do. In New Zealand today the poverty of spirit that can result from birth into deprivation often has more far-reaching social consequences than those symptoms measured more immediately and with greater statistical ease.

A more equal society that shares the benefits of a Western economy across its citizenry avoids unrealised potential, wasted talent, and a kind of selfish behaviour that results from distorted incentives and despair in the face of unfairness. Not only are the conditions for a fair society the right thing for Governments to busy themselves with but also they appear to provide for a better quality of life and the conditions for economic success. A more equal society is healthier, wealthier, and wise.

Tēnā koutou katoa. I acknowledge the first people of this great country: the original stewards of lands and waters. I pay respects to those who have gone before us: our ancestors and those who have passed through this House and whose wisdom and achievements we inherit. Mr Speaker, I congratulate you on your re-election to the role of Speaker. I knew you more than 20 years ago when I was a student leader campaigning on tertiary education issues, and you were approachable and generous with your time then. I know you have established a reputation as a Speaker who acts without fear or favour and with much integrity, and I look forward to playing my part in this House under your guidance.

It is a great honour and a privilege to be in this House, and to be here under the Labour banner. This year marks the centenary of one of the most bitter and violent industrial disputes in New Zealand’s history: the Waihī miners’ strike. It is an important part of the Labour story. A young Scottish union organiser was witness to that dispute and saw how workers who wanted nothing more than decent pay and a fair go were intimidated, divided, and—after a striking miner was beaten to death by those opposed to the strike—run out of town. Those dark events led to that organiser and many others realising that justice would be achieved only when working people reached beyond the workplace for influence and had a direct say on the laws and policies they were subject to. The union organiser was Peter Fraser, who later became a Labour Prime Minister. He and others set about organising the first of the unity conferences in 1913, which drew in progressive elements, brought together a social democratic programme, and eventually led to the formation of the New Zealand Labour Party in 1916.

I enter this House as a first-generation New Zealander. That means two things. I am born of a land that is steeped in natural beauty but also settled by our forebears under our foundation document, the Treaty of Waitangi, which was conceived in a spirit of peace, collaboration, and respect. And I accept my responsibility to give honour to that. The second aspect is that I am closer—if only by birth—to the other strand of our founding values: those brought here from a distant land; values that go back to the Magna Carta; values of respect for people, of freedom, of constitutional government and citizens’ rights, of the rejection of arbitrary power and “might is right”, and of due process and fairness—and I pledge to honour these traditions too.

My parents settled in New Zealand 50 years ago this April. My father had a background in the military services and retrained as a school teacher, eventually taking a post at New Plymouth Girls’ High School. My mother had a background in professional secretarial work. They arrived here with my eldest sister, and with my eldest brother on the way, and settled in the brand-new suburb of Marfell. By 1965 the Little household had grown to five children. I was fourth—or fourth equal—arriving with my twin sister, Valerie, that year.

I look back on a great Taranaki childhood. Ours was a home that was far from wealthy, dependent as it was almost entirely on my father’s teacher’s salary, but what we lacked in material wealth was made up with in the rich experiences the region had to offer: the mighty Mount Taranaki—my maunga—the many beaches with the pounding west coast surf and black sand, the beautiful parks and gardens, and an emerging arts and cultural life. My brothers and sisters and I enjoyed a home filled with love, good guidance, strong educational values, and supportive parents.

Ours was a political household too. Dad was a staunch member of the National Party, but one of his life experiences set him apart. As part of his military career he served in the Middle East after World War II. He observed how powerful Arab States tried to exploit and intimidate the stateless Bedouin people, and he saw the world turn its back on the Palestinian people. The sense of injustice my father felt affected him deeply, and it was impossible not to be influenced by it. Dad was a prodigious writer of letters to the editor. He railed at the TV whenever a political foe appeared, the fiercest reactions being reserved, as I recall, for union leaders of the day. But there was much humour and irreverence in our house. Above all, we were told to think for ourselves and make our own way. Mum would say to us: “To thine own self be true.”

I enjoyed a good education, and at New Plymouth Boys’ High School we were inculcated with very strong values of self-discipline, respect, and courtesy. Around this time Taranaki was beneficiary of the much-derided Think Big economic programme, but that programme was instrumental in boosting the region’s heavy engineering industry. I remember in 1982 being fascinated by the huge heavy loads of process modules that had been fabricated overseas being hauled from the port to the east of the city. But it was with huge pride during last year’s election campaign that I stood with thousands of New Plymouth residents to watch a giant module being hauled in the opposite direction, from one of the city’s leading and highly unionised heavy engineering firms, Fitzroy Engineering, to the port, to make its way to Australia. It confirmed Taranaki’s strength as a world-class engineering centre.

New Plymouth is a great city with, I might add, a great mayor, and I enjoyed campaigning there last year, although I remain intrigued by a question I was asked at one of the first meetings I held: what my position was on the merger of Air New Zealand and NAC. I said that Labour was taking a “wait-and-see” approach. I acknowledge the successful candidate and now my parliamentary colleague Jonathan Young and thank him for a clean and worthy fight.

In 1992 I started work in Auckland as a lawyer for the organisation that would dominate my life for the next 19 years, the New Zealand Amalgamated Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union. My work for the union brought me into contact with many thousands of working people, hundreds of companies and important industries, and many managers, good and bad. I started then with a reasonably clear view about the world and society I lived in. I did not accept the reductionist view of humanity that lay at the heart of the neo-liberal Washington consensus, Friedmanite, Thatcherite, Reaganite, and “whatever else - ite” style of public policy that was inflicted on us. I am not particularly religious, but my driving values are neatly encapsulated in the biblical question in Mark 8:36: “What benefits the man that he gains the world and loses his soul?”. My work for the union made this conviction stronger. My time at the union gave me insights about the New Zealand economy; about how we create wealth; about how we ensure those who help to create wealth share fairly in it; how we ensure we rise to the greatest challenge we face today—the safe keeping of our environment—and how we protect and care for our most vulnerable: our young, our elderly, and our sick. From the time I started at the union I saw abuses of power, a growing intolerance of difference, and the rise of a managerial class that thought it knew everything. I saw the frustration of skilled and experienced workers who had much to offer management but whose voice, even if it was heard, was often ignored. I formed the view then that it was not just enough to secure and enforce contractual rights and benefits, but that working people needed to be—were entitled to be—involved in all decisions bearing on their working life. Thirty years of the neo-liberal policy programme have been a disaster for working New Zealanders. Unfortunately, not even the welcome arrival of good-faith laws and better collective bargaining rights in 2000 has been enough to ameliorate the damage that has been done.

In 1991, when the Employment Contracts Act brought radical change to workplace relations, the promise was that no one would lose conditions without their agreement. But workers did lose conditions. The promise of 1991 was that there would be freedom. Workers were told they would have the freedom to choose. But when the choice made by many workers to belong to a union was unacceptable to an employer, they would find their choice challenged and undermined and obstructed. Many employers welcomed workers having freedom of choice—providing the choice was the employer’s. We were promised that the nation’s wealth would rise on the back of new flexibility and better opportunities for investment, and that the wealth would be shared around through higher wages. None of this happened. The opposite did. Working life in New Zealand got harder. Median and average real wages have gone down. The gap in earnings between New Zealand and Australia has grown. Inequality of income has now become so great, it is an injustice keenly felt. And resentment is real and growing. New Zealand workers now work some of the longest hours in the developed world. Too many people just cannot get ahead.

And then there is the most insidious development of all: contracting out. Whenever managers are in retreat or just lack skill and competence and creativity, they contract out. Contracting out is seldom good management. It is usually the absence of management. And so at Ports of Auckland we should look sceptically at claims about the need for contracting out. The people of Auckland City should demand that management do its job—fix the problems, using their management skills. That is what they are paid to do.

In training and skills formation we have performed poorly. The numbers signing up for apprenticeships have fallen, and completion rates have dropped. A new business culture has emerged in New Zealand—a culture of dominance by management, and increasing servility by workers. We have forgotten the social contract of business—that through limited liability, investors will be protected from full liability for the misfortunes or incompetence and wrongdoing of the company they own, and that communities upon which business depends for people and resources will be respected. We have a culture in our commercial sector that says bare legal compliance is OK. Never mind whether it is right or wrong. And never mind the impact on people. The ultimate product of years of a culture of management dominance, deregulation, poor enforcement, and bare legal compliance is surely the tragedy at Pike River Coal. A year before that dreadful event, the union approached management about collaborating over health and safety. The occupational safety and health manager took this up with the chief executive, and, as the royal commission has now heard, the reply was this: “The ‘union’ … does not come into any consideration. Please do not use the union in the same sentence as anything at Pike.”

In the last 30 years some in New Zealand have done very well. But many more today struggle to survive. In our rush to gain the world we have left many behind and we are losing our soul. We have a massive challenge ahead for New Zealand, and a new way is essential. Against a background of growing poverty, of a rising threat to our standard of living, the primary challenge today is to lift the nation’s income so we can afford our future and enjoy a decent society. The challenge is harder than ever before because our planet, the only one we have got, is struggling to cope with the demands of a growing world population. So we will not recover our standard of living by doing more of the same. And if we do not make change, we are destined to a life of continual cutting, slashing, scrimping, and grinching. We will just get poorer.

My leader, David Shearer, set out his vision for New Zealand at the very beginning of this Parliament, just before Christmas. It was about rejecting “business as usual”. It was about seeing new opportunities and connecting with the rest of the world, offering new products and services. I am excited to be working with David and all my Labour colleagues to realise the vision of lifting the value of what we do and what we produce, by being smarter with technology and lifting our national income. Our future must involve investment, not disinvestment, which is what State asset sales amounts to, and investment in new activity and investment in people. There must be local investment and foreign investment.

Although our agricultural sector is vital to our economy, and is something we lead the world in, we will need to do more than agriculture to secure our future. Our future must be in making stuff. Manufacturing and fabrication involve more technology and more skilled people, and, as a result, generate more wealth. We have some great businesses harnessing the latest in technology, making amazing products they are selling around the world. We can do this stuff. We need more of it. But our goal cannot just be about gaining a bigger share of the world. We must look after our people and we must look after our natural world. We must preserve our soul. At the heart of economic change must be a different attitude to people. We need managers to involve their workforce, actively seek out knowledge from the front line, and open up management decision-making to hear what the workforce has to say.

In the project to save Air New Zealand engineering jobs in 2005, the alternative proposal that was ultimately accepted by management was developed by front-line union members. The courageous men and women of Air New Zealand provided the ideas. In the nation’s largest and most important corporate, Fonterra, the unions and management have been involved in a long-term project to improve productivity in the maintenance function. The front-line unionised maintenance engineers have taken on more decision-making responsibility, have less supervision, work fewer hours, are some of the top-earning fitters in New Zealand, and the processing plant and equipment is some of the world’s most reliable. In both cases, management had to surrender some control and hear from the workforce about what would work practically. This Government knows there is a better way.

Before concluding, I want to pay tribute to the people who have supported me and brought me here. I acknowledge the members, delegates, and officials of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union—you are the heroes of a generation and you have taught me much; the New Zealand Council of the Labour Party—president, Moira Coatsworth, and secretary, Chris Flatt; my fantastic campaign team and supporters in New Plymouth, who worked so hard last year and ensured we all had a great time; to my family—my mother Cicely, my brothers and sisters, Jennifer, Leighton, Patrick, and Valerie, my half-sisters, Nicky and Fiona, half a world away, my in-laws, all of whom have been so loving and supportive, and my wife, Leigh, and son, Cam, without whose love and support and forbearance I would not be the person I am. Because it is Valentine’s Day, let me channel Whitney Houston and say: “I will always love you.” I am inspired by these words of John F Kennedy: “I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.” I hope to leave here secure in the knowledge that we are a people gaining our fair share of the world, preserving and protecting it, and with our individual and community soul intact. Thank you.

Mr Speaker, I join with my colleagues in congratulating you on your re-election. Like my colleague, the last time we spoke, it was in a less formal situation. It was the 1990s, you were the Minister of Education, I was a student, we were at the University of Canterbury, there were megaphones, and it was said you made your getaway through a window—I am sure you remember those days well.

Tēnā koutou katoa. It is with great honour that I rise to give the first speech in this House as the Labour member for Wigram. Maiden statements from members from Wigram are rare—so rare, in fact, there has never previously been one. Wigram and its precursor seats, Sydenham and Yaldhurst, are both steeped in history. The story of Wigram and its representation is an important part of New Zealand’s social and political history. I feel the shoes I have to fill are truly huge. Sydenham has been the seat of giants: Mabel Howard, Norman Kirk, and Jim Anderton. All three have shown an absolute commitment to social justice and equality.

And Wigram is a seat where constituents have high expectation—and, like David Clark’s constituents, they are very wise—as they are already reminding me. One of the most vivid memories of my campaign came on a hot October Saturday afternoon, doing street corner meetings. Robert Watson, my friend and campaign volunteer, and I were flagging a little at street corner meeting 100 and something and about the sixth of that particular day when we pulled up on a corner in Hoon Hay. An older gentleman came striding down the road towards the small crowd that had gathered. His stride was ripe with intent and his first comment showed he meant business: “I am here to argue.” “Good,” I replied, “that’s what it’s all about.” This being heartland red territory, lest he be mistaken for someone of a different political hue, he was quick to inform me: “I am a Labour man. I have been going to street corner meetings in this electorate for donkey’s years, first one was Mabel Howard in Church Square, and I want to get the measure of you.” The meeting went on. The striding man was as good as his word. He argued with me, he argued with the others present, and at one point I am convinced he argued with himself. But, meeting done, he came over to me, shook my hand, and informed me: “You’ll do.”, and with this, he strode home.

But there is one predecessor I want to pay special tribute to, and that is Jim Anderton. Although I did not know it at the time, growing up in the 1980s in the Sydenham electorate, I was witnessing the everyday reality of new-right reform. I had friends whose parents lost their jobs at the Addington rail yards. I saw people lose their homes, and I saw the local post office disappear. Ordinary people were stripped of their jobs, their dignity, and their security. But then there was the local MP, who stood shoulder to shoulder with us, his constituents. For nearly three decades Jim Anderton refused to accept that there was no alternative. Jim, as your successor, I thank you for the high bar you have set in terms of political courage and for standing up for what you believe in and for the people you represented.

Maiden statements are a bit like a note to self about why you are here and what you want to achieve. My note to self is simple: I believe in the power of an active New Zealand Government and State to make a real difference in people’s lives, and that is why I am here. I was selected to be Labour’s candidate in Wigram on 19 September 2010—women’s suffrage day—only 2 weeks and 1 day after the first of Christchurch’s devastating earthquakes. On 22 February that rebuilding task ahead of us became mammoth. There are buildings, homes, roads, sewage pipes, and businesses to be rebuilt. Institutions with long histories now face uncertain futures. This is something we all feel on a personal level. My former school, Catholic Cathedral College, a school that once stood in the shadow of the mighty Catholic Basilica, is now behind a crumbling building and a pile of rubble. The University of Canterbury, where I spent a decade of my life, faces an uncertain future with falling student numbers. It is imperative that broad, research-based excellence is retained. Engineering, commerce, and science are undoubtedly crucial to our rebuilding, but the humanities and social sciences are essential, too. We need critical thinkers now more than ever.

We have lost so much in our city, and I want to acknowledge the people whose lives were lost and their families. We are all thinking of you. There is no doubt that people are struggling with the devastation of the last 17 months. The sense of loss is so much more than the physical; we lost the locations of so many of our memories—the school steps we scaled with trepidation as 5-year-olds, the homes we toiled to build and make our own, the churches where we worshipped and were married, and the list goes on. This is hard enough, but there is an even bigger job ahead of us, and that is rebuilding hope—hope that we will have a vibrant and thriving city again; a city where people will not be looking for the nearest exit to terra firma; and, of course, a city where the Crusaders will continue to win every game they play. But some of that hope is embedded in a tension as people search for the right answers. When 4,000 quake- and battle-weary people gathered in the centre of our city earlier this month, collectively we were demanding fairness, accountability, preservation of our democratic rights, and our right to participate in our future. These are the same sentiments and feelings that are driving the amazing community and grassroots responses we are seeing all over our city. These values are the future and are the solid foundations on which we will rebuild our city. These are also the very values that drive me politically, and these are the values that have brought me to this House.

There is no rabble at the gate that needs quashing and silencing. This is not something to be feared; it is quite the opposite. This is an engaged public, and this is something I celebrate. An active and engaged Government must work with this public. Controversially, in the wake of the 22 February quakes, this House granted what amounted to wartime powers to the Government to rebuild our city. I am here today to remind those who wield those powers that with these powers comes great responsibility. The Act granted the Government the rights and responsibility to be active—and active it must be. It is an active State that will rebuild Christchurch. If we think about moments of greatness in our history—moments when we have taken a great leap forward as a country—it has been an active State and a belief in the power of communities that has delivered that reform, not individualism and a rampant free market.

In the 1870s Sir Julius Vogel had a vision and committed the colonial State to investing in the infrastructure essential for economic development. In the 1880s the Liberals intervened, with the old-age pension scheme, industrial legislation, and the genesis of our public housing scheme. New Zealand was a progressive and world-leading social laboratory. In the 1930s the first Labour Government committed the State to creating constructive employment and a housing programme as a way out of the Great Depression, and shaped our very present. Today, in the 21st century, I am proud to stand here as a Labour member, an heir to those who have had the courage to reform. As in the past it is together, collectively, that we can solve the pressing issues we face as a nation. Government needs to facilitate this and empower people and community. “Look mum, no hands”, laissez-faire, trickle-down economics based on individualism has failed.

Christchurch may be a city currently on an active fault, but it is simply cannot be a faulty city. We must believe that out of this destruction we have a unique opportunity to create something special, and, once again, take that great leap forward. But it will take an active State that is willing to intervene. We have the opportunity to train a generation of young people with the necessary skills to be active participants in this work. Currently we have 83,000 young people aged 15 to 24 who are not in any form of work, training, or education. This is up 4,000 from last quarter. We cannot sit idly by and watch this figure continue to climb. I finished high school in 1991, when youth unemployment was at 20 percent, so I know firsthand the fear of leaving school and there being no jobs. We had two choices then: further study or go on the dole. I made a decision to go to university—I was the first in my family to go straight from school—but the hopelessness felt by my friends who were looking for work is something I will never forget.

There is an alternative. By 2013, 36,000 additional workers will be required in Christchurch. Bringing in skilled trades professionals from overseas simply cannot be our solution. We need to invest in our young people and let them lead the way. Such a commitment is not a leap into the unknown; we have done this before on the scale that is necessary now. Following World War II, New Zealand faced both a critical housing shortage and the underemployment of young Māori. Labour Prime Minister Peter Fraser showed the necessary vision to resource trade training schemes for young Māori workers. This scheme was the subject of my PhD thesis and I saw both the positive opportunities this scheme provided individuals and the benefit the nation received in having a generation of skilled tradespeople—not to mention a stock of well-built houses.

Real aspiration cannot come to mean policies and measures that make life a little bit more bearable for those on the lowest incomes. If we want to be aspirational for all New Zealanders, if we are to raise wages, if we believe in the right of all New Zealanders to get ahead, if we will not tolerate poverty, and if we believe in fairness, then we need a commitment to an active State that believes it has an active role in creating a productive economy. In my previous role at Plant and Food Research, I observed firsthand the real difference science and innovation can make. We need more businesses to access and utilise the exceptional knowledge that is being created in our Crown research institutes and universities. And we need a proper commitment to the fundamental research that underpins this. To improve this we must commit to adequately fund science and innovation to create jobs and lift wages. We must abandon the view that it is OK for someone to toil for a wage that is insufficient to make ends meet. This needs to be replaced with a belief that people have a right to be paid a decent wage for a decent day’s work. We need to move beyond quibbling about a few cents’ rise in the minimum wage and the constant questioning of whether the wages of the lowest paid are affordable while ignoring the excesses of managerial salaries. A living minimum wage must be an immediate priority and we must see it as just that—a minimum. We must have an environment where workers not only have the right but are encouraged to join unions and bargain collectively, they have the right to have a voice at work, and they have the right to be protected from unfair or unsafe treatment at work. We need to recognise that this does not mean that business is harder to do.

As a proud member of the Service and Food Workers Union and the New Zealand Public Service Association, I believe that decent wages and effective employment relations will enable New Zealanders to lift productivity and to perform well. It is not OK for me to stand in this House representing people who cannot afford to put food on their tables. Last week I met with a constituent who is on a sickness benefit. After his rent and fixed expenses, he had $27 a week left for food. He was hungry. Neither is it OK that in my electorate there are homes that last winter had bedrooms that were monitored as being 9 degrees overnight, with 90 percent humidity. I have not come here to stand idly by and watch this happen. It is not tolerable that in the OECD’s recent findings inequality has grown faster here than in most other countries. This is not an OECD table that we can accept being in the top half of. We need to reject the notion that tough economic times necessarily mean greater inequality and injustice. Selling publicly owned assets, cutting spending, low wages and benefits, and ravaging the environment is neither a strategy for a healthy economy, nor a recipe for a healthy, vibrant, and fair society.

Growing up in the Sydenham electorate, I learnt that selling assets is not the answer, no matter what the question. It just does not make sense. Attempting to shroud the sell-off and the ideological commitment to privatisation under the rhetorical cloak of mixed-ownership models does nothing to change the simple fact that our current Government plans to sell off assets that have been built up by generations of New Zealanders. Let us call this what it is—selling them is selling them.

No one comes to this House on their own, and like all new members there are many I owe a huge debt of gratitude to for their support and encouragement. Firstly, to my family, especially to my parents—to Gordon and Maureen Woods and my sister Melissa, thank you for your belief and your encouragement over many years. It is humbling as a candidate to have so many people give so generously of their time and skills. My campaign team and the many volunteers wrung the towel during an incredibly trying year in Christchurch, and for that I am incredibly grateful and proud of what we achieved together. The experienced hands were joined by a fantastic Wigram Young Labour team, who together created a creative and energetic team who did not neglect the tried and true basics of campaigning.

In conclusion, it is with great pride that I stand in this House representing the people of Wigram. I am a New Zealand historian by training who has worked in science and innovation. I am a former community board member who believes in the power of communities and the grassroots. I am a Christchurch native who grew up in the ravages of a user-pays world. Despite being glued to the royal wedding in 1981, I believe in the desirability and inevitability of our country becoming a republic in my lifetime, and I celebrate the diversity of modern New Zealand. I am here because I have a strong belief in social justice. I am here because I believe that there are always real alternatives in working to ensure that hope, opportunity, and being all you can be are not accidents of birth for the privileged few but the birthright of all New Zealanders.

Ka rere taku manu ki te Tāhuhu-o-te-Rangi topatopa ai, ko muritai tokerau āta rangaranga hei hiki i ōna parirau. Tau ana ngā kanohi ki te pito o te Tiriti ki Waitangi ki roto o Ngāpuhi nui tonu, te kāinga o taku whaea, te ūkaipō.

Tere tonu te haere tae noa ki ngā tai o te uru ki te Pā o ngā Ariki, ki te papa i tūria ai, te temepara i kauhautia ai e Tahupōtiki Wīremu Rātana, te Māngai, te tangata nāna i hāpai te Tiriti me te Paipera ki ōna ringa. Korōria, hareruia ki a Īhoa o ngā mano, Matua, Tama, Wairua Tapu me ngā ānahera pono—me te Māngai hei tautoko mai. Āe.

Whakawhiti atu i Te Ikaroa a Māui ki Te Wai Pounamu makere noa ki ngā maunga hukahuka o te tonga. Tau ana te mata ki ngā taonga i Arahura, ōku pānga tūpuna. Huri noa ki Kaiapoi, ki Murihiku, te ure tārewa. Piki rawa ki te tauihu o te waka, ka rongo te ao, ka rongo te pō—tihei mauri ora!

E ngā iwi, e ngā reo, e ngā mana, e ngā mātāwaka, tēnā koutou katoa. E te Kaikōrero o te Whare Pāremata o Aotearoa, tēnā koe. E rau rangatira mā, e mihi tonu atu ki a koutou e huihui mai nei tātou i tēnei wā. Nō reira, tēnā anō tātou katoa.

[My bird soars high to Tāhuhu-o-te-Rangi, its wings uplifted by the northern sea breeze. The eyes gaze upon the part of the Treaty founded at Waitangi among greater Ngāpuhi, my mother’s home.

The flight continues quickly down to the western tides, until it reaches Rātana, the place where the temple was established and where the Mouthpiece, Tahupōtiki Wīremu Rātana, the man, preached and held up the Treaty and the Bible in his hands. Glory, hallelujah to God of the thousands, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, the faithful angels—and the Mouthpiece endorses. Yes, indeed.

My bird crosses over from the North Island to the South Island to alight upon the snow-covered mountains of the south. The eye gazes upon the treasures at Arahura, my ancestral ties, and turns to look upon my paternal heritage at Kaiapoi and Murihiku. Eventually it ascends to the prow of the canoe, where the day hears and the night hears—behold I speak.

To the people, voices, authorities, and many races, greetings to you all. Greetings to you, Mr Speaker of the House of Parliament of New Zealand. I particularly acknowledge you, the many leaders, as we gather here at this point in time. Greetings to us all once again.]

Mr Speaker, I join with my colleagues in congratulating you on your reappointment in this 50th Parliament.

It is gratifying to be here as the member of Parliament for Te Tai Tonga, representing the largest electorate in the country and the many diverse iwi and Māori communities within it. It goes from our capital city, Te-Whanga-nui-a-Tara, or Wellington, to the entire Te Waka-a-Māui, the entire South Island, and extending to the outlying islands of Rakiura, or Stewart Island, and Wharekauri Rēkohu, or the Chatham Islands. To the people of Te Tai Tonga, thank you for your tautoko.

I wish to acknowledge my predecessor, Rahui Katene of the Māori Party, and her work and service to Te Tai Tonga during her term. I extend my heartfelt personal thanks to the many helpers and volunteers in the Labour whānau across Te Tai Tonga for their generous support, and, in particular, my small, dedicated team, many of whom are here today. To my new caucus colleagues, I look forward to working with you all and making my contribution as a paddler on the Labour waka. To my tuākana Parekura, Shane, and Nanaia, thank you for your support, mentoring, and encouragement. To all other members of Parliament from all sides of this House, and all Māori members of Parliament, I congratulate you all. My hope is that Māori will see the benefits of our presence here.

Finally, to my family, my beautiful children and extended whānau, thank you for your unwavering love and belief in me. I dedicate this occasion of my maiden speech to my late father, Te Rino Tirikātene.

Mr Speaker, 80 years ago, in this room, maybe even in this chair, my grandfather Sir Eruera Tirikātene stood before this House as the MP for Southern Maori. Forty-five years ago, in this room, maybe even in this chair, my aunt Whetū Tirikātene-Sullivan ONZ stood before this House as the MP for Southern Maori. Today I stand before the House as the MP for Te Tai Tonga.

At the time my grandfather rose to address the House for the first time, the Māori population numbered a mere 82,000. We were at that time a rural people, still recovering from the ravages of land sales and the scourge of introduced diseases. We existed at the very margin of the country’s economy. What income we were able to earn as unskilled labourers in the agriculture and forestry industries was supplemented by gardening and foraging. The land development assistance programme introduced by Sir Apirana Ngāta in the 1920s, which eventually gave rise to the Māori incorporations and trusts of today, was in its infancy, and poverty was all pervasive, especially among those communities that had been left landless by confiscation and land sales.

Statutory recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi, the claims of Ngāi Tahu, Waikato, and Taranaki, and poverty were my grandfather’s main concerns. As a Rātana Independent member of this House, he presented T W Ratana’s Treaty petition, and took every opportunity to press for its adoption. He drew attention to Māori unemployment, and to the need to remove the discriminatory rates paid to Māori for relief work, pensions, and family allowances, and pressed for a Māori housing programme. Unfortunately, the Treaty petition languished, and it would be another 33 years, in the time of the third Labour Government, before his efforts in this area bore fruit. But the issues of discriminatory treatment of Māori in the social assistance area were addressed after the election of the first Labour Government, as were Māori housing and education.

By the time that my aunt, Whetū Tirikātene-Sullivan, entered Parliament, the Māori population had grown to 201,000 Māori. Urbanisation had quickened in the intervening years, reaching a peak in the 1950s and early 1960s, and 62 percent of the population was now living and working in towns and cities. Lack of educational qualifications meant most Māori were employed in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs in factories and freezing works, and on the wharves—industries that were sensitive to boom and bust. Nevertheless, the incomes they received were considerably higher than what they might have received had they remained “at home” in rural areas, and the overall standard of living of Māori improved.

Urbanisation, however, was not without its downsides. On the one hand, many Māori found it difficult to adjust, and social problems, now much more visible given the proximity of Māori and Pākehā, began to emerge and grow; on the other, the retention of Māori culture was being threatened. I understand that Norman Kirk used to refer to urbanisation as a movement as significant to Māori as the Great Migration in terms of distance and socio-cultural impact. And he conceived of that impact from two perspectives: from that of the people who had migrated to the towns and cities, and were now in danger of losing their bearings through loss of culture; and from that of their whānaunga left at home and still struggling with the legacies of colonial land laws and practices. It was these issues—those afflicting urban migrants and those afflicting the rural sections of their whānau—that my aunt, Matiu Rata, and the other Māori Labour MPs sought to redress in the shaping and passage of the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975. It was a watershed moment in the history of our people.

Fast forward to my time. In 2011 the Māori population was estimated to be 673,000. The urban component at the time of the last census, 2006, was 84 percent. With urbanisation has come deeper and deeper integration into New Zealand’s economy. In 2006 more than 78,000 Māori were employed as managers, professionals, technicians, and trades workers, and, for the first time, workers in these occupation groups combined outstripped the number working as plant and machinery operators and labourers. More than 70,000 Māori held a qualification above National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 3, and more than 45,000 received a personal income of $50,000 or more. In terms of household income, more than one in every two Māori was living in a household with a combined income of more than $50,000, and well over one in every three in a household with a total income of $70,000 or more. What we are witnessing is the steady growth of a Māori middle class.

On the collective front, we are witnessing the rise of the Māori economic authorities—Māori land trusts and incorporations, and iwi authorities. It has been my good fortune to have held positions that have enabled me to work either alongside or within some of these organisations, and I have found the experience exhilarating. I began my professional career as a commercial lawyer, but after a few years I transitioned from the law, as I wanted to broaden my scope and become involved in the emerging Māori business sector. It was through trade promotion work with Trade New Zealand that I became involved with Māori businesses and Māori exporters—in particular, working alongside them in trade development and promotion. I then took up a position with Ngāi Tahu to help in the expansion of its seafood business. All this work has allowed me to become involved in Māori economic networks, such as the Federation of Māori Authorities, and to develop greater awareness of the potential for Māori to continue to improve on the contribution they are already making.

The rise of the Māori economic authorities is something that goes largely unnoticed by New Zealanders. Not only are these organisations contributing to national wealth; they also contribute to the economies of their local regions. In some local body districts, Māori authorities are already the largest single employer of labour—and, I might add, not just Māori labour. Many have reached out to Asia and the Pacific, and as they continue to do so, that contribution will become even more significant. In the not too distant future, I can see at least five of these authorities breaking the $1 billion mark in their own right—something my forebears could not have dreamt of. And what is more, sustainable development is not an option for these organisations since the principles of sustainability are already spelt out for them, either in Māori land law generally or in their enabling legislation.

There is a saying: the more things change, the more they stay the same. The origin of this saying is thought to be French, but I am pretty sure it is Māori. Life and prospects for Māori are so much better than they were 80 years ago, but Māori know better than anyone that much remains to be done. We are still overrepresented at the bottom of the wealth pyramid. We will, on average, die sooner than our Pākehā mates. We will, more so than our Pacific cousins, end up in prison, and, unlike any other group in Aotearoa New Zealand, we now receive more in transfer payments than we pay in tax. Too many of us remain locked into a cycle of dependency and poverty.

The issue of Māori poverty is exacerbated by the deficit approach to the measurement of our progress, and the eagerness of the media to capitalise on Māori failures and to ignore our successes. We have travelled a long way towards socio-economic parity with Pākehā, and we have a fair way to travel yet. Our people are not helped by being constantly framed as a problem to be fixed, or by a growing climate of opinion that positions inequality as a signal of market success rather than market failure; that attributes underperformance to rocky economic conditions rather than the structural settings of our economy; and that maintains it is too costly to change the present, even if a change made now might save the future.

For me, Māori development, as Māori conceive of the idea, has always been about enabling Māori to live the life that they want to live by extending the range of opportunities and choices open to them to do so. Mana Māori motuhake, a concept that Pākehā have feared and some Māori have misconstrued, was the term that was used in my grandfather’s day. It has little to do with secession but a lot to do with freedom. Until very recently, for example, Māori had little or no choice about the type of schooling they received or about how their health services should be delivered. It was the mainstream or nothing at all. Today some, but certainly not all, Māori have a choice between kōhanga reo and mainstream at the preschool level, kura kaupapa and mainstream at the school level, wānanga and mainstream at the tertiary level, and Māori or mainstream primary health care delivery.

I stand in awe of the succession of Māori MPs and of Māori leaders from outside of this House who never lost sight of the goal, despite the hardships and frustrations that must have been involved in challenging mindsets and winning majority support for change. Incremental, ad hoc, and opportunistic though these initiatives might appear to be, there is no mistaking their direction. Although I might differ from them in outlook, priorities, and experience, I nevertheless share with them a commitment to the fundamental idea of Māori living the life they want to live, and, as well as ensuring that the safety net is set at a high enough level, of working to extend the range of opportunities and choices open to those among us who are falling by the wayside.

We are no longer as homogenous as we were in the past. Indeed, increasing diversity and differentiation are the hallmarks of modern Māori society. It is this diversity—of ethnic and iwi affiliation, of cultural proficiency, of attachments to the past, of the composition of our households and families, of knowledge and skills, of occupations and incomes, and of values, beliefs and opinions—that we as members of this House will be challenged by. It is not our place to tell our people how they should live their lives or to marginalise those who do not fit a prescribed picture of what it is to be Māori. As I see it, our job as elected representatives is to embrace the diversity, to give fair hearing to all interests, and to ensure that the range of views are voiced and weighed fairly when it comes to decision making. This is my commitment I give to my electorate, to Māori generally, and to my parliamentary colleagues. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

Waiata

Sitting suspended from 6.04 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

I move, That the debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.