General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. The backroom deal with China Southern Airlines should set alarm bells ringing loud and clear. We used to have an enviable record of probity and transparency. That counts for nothing with this Government. Cutting a deal is what counts—any sort of deal—and, if possible, cutting a deal away from public scrutiny. [Interruption] I tell you, Mr Banks, that that issue will be dealt with with speed and with honesty and integrity, not like the way he is being handled in this House—OK? Cutting a deal away from public scrutiny, giving special visa privileges to gold and silver card frequent flyers on China Southern Airlines would be laughable if it did not have such serious implications.

The covert deal with China Southern Airlines is a major wake-up call, and it stinks, like most of the things this Government is currently doing. What is going on behind closed doors? People around the world are asking. Is New Zealand that desperate? A banana republic? Is everything for sale in New Zealand? And it leaves all other airlines, including Air New Zealand, outraged and bewildered that China Southern Airlines should get such special treatment.

Did money change hands to sweeten the deal with China Southern Airlines? Enter Skycity Entertainment Group. Big money is involved, and big money has a way of greasing the wheels of the Key National Government. Enter Neil Morrison, who wrote in his annual report: “Finally, the opening of China Southern Airlines services between”—

💬 Hon Member: Who wrote that?

I am able to write my own speeches, not like the moron over there. He wrote that the opening of China Southern Airlines services between—[Interruption]

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! I think the House is getting a little disorderly here. Members must be careful not to insult each other. That is not acceptable. But I accept the level of interjection was getting unacceptably high, and I do apologise to the Rt Hon Winston Peters for having interrupted, but I think things were getting a bit out of hand there.

Neil Morrison was boasting about a special arrangement. Let us pause for a moment. He says: “our successful partnership with Auckland International Airport to offer airside clearance”—what does that mean? Since when did we have an airport company get to set the rules around processing visitor arrivals? There is the Minister of Immigration. He thinks it is a joke. He is laughing about it. That is the preserve of the New Zealand Government. Oh, did he look embarrassing last week? He looked hopeless on his feet. He could not answer any questions. He even had the Prime Minister allowing him to get away with the statement that he did not know.

The Prime Minister, in a written answer to me this week, said he had no knowledge. That is what the Prime Minister said. This is what the Prime Minister answered to a question of mine: “To the best of my knowledge, no such discussions have taken place.” That is what John Key said in a written answer this week. In the House today he gainsaid that, he recanted, he admitted it. In short, this Prime Minister cannot tell the truth for 5 minutes—for 5 minutes. Today he said he did know. That Minister said last week he did not. Remember that? The Prime Minister last week, in a written answer, said he did not.

The fact is that what you have got here is a sordid deal with a Chinese airline and the casino in Auckland with the pokie machines—500 extra machines—and they think they are going to get back in 2014. They have got to be joking.

💬 Jacqui Dean: What does Grey Power think of that?

What Grey Power thinks of all this is that they flock to my meetings, unlike that member’s. That member cannot fill a telephone booth. When we go to a hall, you cannot get into it. It means a thing called political market demand. It means the law of supply and demand. We supply the message, they demand it, and they turn up. That is what it means.

I want to close by just saying this. This issue has got a long way to go, but the day when we start doing special deals with any country that will not allow us the same privileges in that country means we are guilty of cronyism and sordid toadyism.

That was a ramble from one of the central figures in the so-called, media-proposed “Coalition of the Losers”. There was a time when Winston Peters would have come into this House and delivered a speech totally off the cuff, and not have had to stand there somewhat sadly protesting that he had written the speech himself and then nominating himself as a moron. I think that was an appalling speech, and it totally misunderstands the modern nature of the New Zealand economy and the opportunities that we need to take in order to deliver to the friends that he has in Grey Power. So here is a man who is telling us about people flocking to his meetings, Grey Power members flocking to his meetings, all held in telephone boxes, seven or eight people crammed in there, setting a Guinness Book of Records new status as they listen to Winston Peters. Well, what he does not tell them is that in the 9 years that he supported a Labour Government, they got very little increase in their incomes. In just 4 years—just 4 years—under National, the married rate for superannuation has gone up by $200 a fortnight, $100 a week, $5,000 a year. That is what Grey Power members really understand about the current Government. So smarten up the message, and the member might have a chance of being that central figure, but it will still be a “Coalition of the Losers”.

Today is a great day of celebration here in Wellington and throughout the country, as we are going to witness the premiere of The Hobbit, directed by Peter Jackson. What a great occasion it is, where the whole world is going to look in on New Zealand and see the work not only of the creative genius Peter Jackson but also of the 3,000 New Zealanders who worked on that production, who are involved in the creative industry, and who would not have had that work had Labour been the Government. Let us make no bones about it. If you go back to 2010, when the movie was being proposed, Mr Simon Whipp, an Australian unionist, came to town riding roughshod over everybody, getting the unions in the United States to back him—and they backed off him in the end because they thought he was so extreme—telling them that unless that was a unionised picture, those contractors who have worked on it, hard-working creatives who do struggle from time to time to get work and wanted the long tenure that these three films have been able to provide them, would not have jobs unless they joined his Australian union.

And who backed him? Who backed him? The Labour Party—the Labour Party backed him. Did Labour members care whether or not this film would be made? No, they did not. But I want to know whether, if the premiere today had been held in Edinburgh, or if the premiere today had been held in London, would Grant Robertson have gone? Would David Shearer have gone? Would Annette King have gone? Oh, she is nodding. Of course she would! Any Eastern bloc country with a big red flag would be a place where that woman would be happy. Can I say that I think it is great that they have finally seen the light, that they will attend that premiere tonight, and that they will celebrate along with the many creators who are responsible for producing that great work. But it does smack of a party so bereft of ideas that when something its proposes goes wrong, it suddenly grabs a flag and gets in front of a parade that is going the other way. That is David Shearer, and he is no better than any of the other Davids. I want to give the House a bit of a prediction this afternoon: once Labour members get to the realisation that they cannot get a real leader from the three Davids, they are bound to go for a Clayton. That is my prediction—the leader you get when you have not got a leader.

The central figure in this whole sad, sorry saga was the unions. If we look at the Labour Party conference held in the last couple of weeks, that party has now formally—or even more formally—cosied up and handed over its whole political agenda to the union movement. It is a sad day for this country when a political party that should be free and open to new ideas locks itself up so much with an ideology that is about yesterday’s world, about having shop floor rules for every job that goes, and ends up in a position where it cannot offer a reasonable economic policy. Nor can it count.

That speech reminded me of something that John Key said this week. He said that the National Government’s “100% Pure” marketing plan was not unlike the marketing plan of McDonald’s. Well, I think it is probably true, because the thing they have in common is that they are both run by clowns.

I think I would like to remind the National Party members that they actually opposed the big-film production funding that we in Government put in when they were in Opposition, which led to the Lord of the Rings films. They were opposed to it then, but I noted that they did turn up on the red carpet—not that we said a word about it. We thought that was their position—fair enough. But, of course, they are making meat of it today, the fact that I am proud to go to The Hobbit because it is made in my electorate. The workers are in my electorate, they are proud of their work, and they are not making politics of it. But this Government has done everything it can to ingratiate itself into every part of The Hobbit, to get every bit of a vote out of it that it can, which I find quite disgusting.

But I tell you what: we have got the National Party members rattled. They are in a hyper, uber-political spin. They are turning out the press releases. They are hitting the airwaves. Look at them! Look at them! They are huffing and they are puffing. Do you know why? It is because Labour has hit a real chord with Kiwis because we are going to build 100,000 affordable houses over the next 10 years. We are going to build 100,000 houses over the next 10 years, building them up in our first term so that we are building 10,000 extra houses a year. Can we do it? Yes, we can. How many houses were we building in 2004 in this country? Well, those members do not know. They make statements about it and they have not got a clue. In this country we were building 32,000 houses a year in 2004. How many are we building now? Fifteen thousand. So add 10,000 to 15,000 and you get 25,000 houses a year, and you are still short of what we were building in 2004.

We are going to build them where there is a housing problem. We are going to build them in Auckland, in Wellington, in Tauranga, and in the Bay of Plenty. We are going to build them in Christchurch, in Queenstown, and in Nelson. They are going to be affordable houses. They are going to be houses that the first home owner can buy—not the 200 square metre houses, but houses around 100 or 140 square metres. They will be on smaller lots of land. There will be mixed development. Some will be affordable, some will be higher prices, some will be social housing—much like the plan that we had for Hobsonville. It was for 3,000 houses: 500 were to be State houses, 500 were to be affordable, and the rest were to be a mixture.

You know, we are not building those affordable houses today. Only 5 percent of houses that are being built are affordable houses. We know that people can buy houses at around $300,000 to $350,000 right now and that can be done. We got those figures from the Department of Building and Housing. We are going to build them, not the Housing New Zealand Corporation but the private sector. We are going to take Bill English’s advice when he said this year that Government land holdings are the key to affordable housing in Auckland—“government land represents the biggest opportunities to [build affordable housing].”, said Bill English. Well, we are going to use Government land. We are going to use council land. We are going to use greenfields, brownfields, and private holdings. We are going to develop mixed communities and there will be blind tenure in those communities. You will not know whether people own their own home or they are renting their home or it is social housing.

You see, it has got the Nats in a spin because their response to affordable housing was pathetic—absolutely pathetic. There were words, more words, a few reports, another inquiry, a little tinkering with the Resource Management Act, more words, some blame-shifting, and more hot air. Then they tried to throw a bucket over our proposal. They said it cannot be done, it is impossible, we are dreaming, we are out of touch. Hang on—what have they just announced at Hobsonville? They suddenly can build affordable houses at Hobsonville—600 of them, 65 metres square, subsidised by the other people at Hobsonville.

What we heard then was Annette King trying to promote Labour’s wonky, shonky housing policy. I think it was a policy pitch that came out of Labour’s conference. What we did not hear this afternoon from Annette King was talk about the internal machinations at the Labour Party conference. What we did not hear from Annette King was how she and Trevor Mallard had to get on the phone on Saturday afternoon and call in all the favours that they possibly could in their caucus to get a vote for David Shearer.

What happened at Labour’s conference was that its wide-ranging constitutional review actually ended up in the power of the unions. Now the unions will be able to elect who the Labour Party leader is. Why would you want to have the unions being able to elect the Labour Party leader, and why would you have the caucus being diluted in the way that it currently is? This is a shambolic proposal that came through on the floor of the conference. I cannot believe that Labour members allowed this to happen.

Now, of course, we have David Cunliffe, who got a little bit crazy on the evening of the Saturday night, because he could not believe that the proposal went through in its current form, so he could not turn up in front of the TV cameras and say that he was supportive of the current leader. David Cunliffe found within the space of about 24 hours that he was standing in a bit of liquefaction. He thought that he had the numbers secured to roll David Shearer. But when Annette King, Phil Goff, and Trevor Mallard got on the phone and called in a few favours, and actually pressured people in their caucus—put on a lot of pressure—[Interruption] Yes, indeed, it was threatening. I heard from one of my contacts over there that Trevor Mallard was threatening on the phone: “You need to back Shearer, or else!”, with all the power that Trevor Mallard supposedly has in their wonky, shonky caucus. I cannot believe that this deal was allowed to get through.

Of course, what we have with David Shearer now is we have him sitting on the right side of the caucus, and that is the problem with the party membership and the union affiliates who want to drag Mr Shearer across to the left. What we have heard recently is that Mr Shearer’s problem is that he came out actually endorsing the welfare reforms that Paula Bennett is proposing. He talked about a sickness beneficiary on the roof painting his house, and he said it was not fair. He said he had little tolerance for people who do not pull their weight. This is the right side of Mr Shearer. Of course, he got hammered in the left-wing blogs for those comments.

The other classic comment—wait for this—is this: “We need every teacher in our classroom to be a good one. The vast majority are. But the truth is some are not. … we can’t afford to have bad teachers in our classrooms.” This came from Mr Shearer, the leader of the Labour Party—well, the current leader, maybe until February. He finished off by saying: “As a parent, I want to put badly run schools on notice.” Well, Mr Shearer should be over this side of the House, supporting national standards.

We are all waiting for the big jackpot in February. It will not be anywhere near Waitangi Day; I do not even know whether it will be near Valentine’s Day. But you wait—you wait for the phone call from the middle part of January onwards. I do not mean you, Mr Speaker; I mean the Labour caucus. You can bet your bottom dollar that from about mid-January onwards the cellphones will start ringing. You know it will be one of the Davids, trying to work the numbers before the February vote.

Right now, though, importantly, in Wellington is the showcase of The Hobbit. I think it is an outrage that Labour members voted against our proposals to ensure that the contractors were able to stay as contractors and not employees. They rallied against that. They still rally against it. They want to reverse that if they get the opportunity, and let us hope they do not get the opportunity to do that. If Labour had been on this side of the House, the likelihood is we would not have got The Hobbit. It would have gone offshore, the $3 billion would have gone from our economy, and we know and the New Zealand public know that Labour members are truly the hobbit haters.

This National Government has failed. It has failed on jobs, failed on asset sales, and failed at looking after our environment and our rivers. The National Government has failed our children and failed New Zealand families. In the lead-up to the Christmas break, many New Zealand families are struggling to find the light at the end of a long and dark financial tunnel. Families are preparing for the Christmas break, bracing themselves for the costs of Christmas Day and the traditional Christmas camping holiday. But these usual preparations will be so much more difficult for so many more families this year because of the National Government’s failures.

National’s failed economic management has again been highlighted with the most recent linked employer-employee data report, which confirmed yet again that tens of thousands of jobs have been lost under its watch. John Key has been cherry-picking the numbers for quite a few weeks now, finding the numbers that suit him best for the story he has made up in his head. But the facts from the Government’s own reports show that the number of people looking for work has increased in the 4 years of his Government. Thousands of jobs have been lost. Unemployment is up. John Key’s deliberate ignorance of these facts means that the families who are suffering from his economic failure are invisible to him and to his Government.

Perhaps this deliberate neglect by John Key of these families is because the Government is far too busy attacking the people who are slogging their guts out to keep New Zealand clean and beautiful. It is far too busy attacking the people who are working to protect our environment in order to protect our economic future. If we want to create decent sustainable jobs for those thousands of families who clearly need them, we must invest in making the “100% Pure” brand a reality. No one expects it to be absolutely perfect, but they do expect that we will make progress. In fact, we are going backwards.

Let us not attack those who rightfully point out that the Government is putting New Zealanders’ jobs and New Zealanders’ incomes at risk by undermining the brand and allowing our environment to be polluted. We have to take these warnings from our own people seriously, and it certainly is true that the international markets are.

Let us not forget that even in this country families with very little money can still take great pleasure in the Christmas camping holiday at their local river, but only if it is not polluted and only if it is safe for their kids to swim in without getting sick. Sadly, that is too rarely the case now in New Zealand. We protect our rivers not only because of the economy, but because clean rivers are the birthright of our children.

New Zealanders will fight for the birthright of their kids. That is why over 300,000 New Zealanders have signed the Keep Our Assets petition for a referendum on asset sales. John Key’s pet project, the Government’s asset sales plan for the year, has been a complete disaster for him and his Government. It is deeply unpopular with the New Zealand public. We are very hopeful for a referendum next year so that every adult New Zealander can have their say on this crucial issue. Our grandparents built these assets for the long term, and expected that they would continue in the ownership of their children and grandchildren as part of their birthright.

The Green Party will continue to work for the rights of children to a family with a decent income and decent housing, to an environment that is clean and safe for them to play in, and to an economy that truly invests in their future. Kia ora.

This week over the course of the news cycle and through Parliament we have seen clear examples of how the Opposition in this country has become increasingly delusional and dysfunctional. The speaker who has just resumed her seat, Metiria Turei, is an excellent example of that. There seems to be a belief that if you are a minor party in this Parliament, you can come down here, you can appear in the media, say anything you want, and if you say it often enough, that must make it true. Well, let me tell the speaker who has just resumed her seat that the reality is that after 4 years in office this Government has turned this country round. Instead of facing a Crown debt of somewhere near 50 percent in 2020, as Cullen’s legacy left us, we are now in track for a mere 18.5 percent. The reality is that over the last 2 years this Government has created 54,000 new jobs, we have a growth rate that is the envy of the Western World, unemployment benefit numbers are down and continue to fall, and health and education outcomes are as good as they have ever been. So I would say to the previous member who has resumed her seat, Metiria Turei, that saying it alone does not make it true—

💬 Dr David Clark: Worst economic record in 50 years, though.

—and you can continue to have your head in a delusional and dysfunctional space, Mr Clark, but that is the reality.

The truth is—if we are dealing in facts; as it seems to be the phrase of the week, let us deal in some facts—MMP Government gives us a system where minor parties who have never had to deliver on a single thing can stand in this House and promise everything to the country and pretend there are no consequences of their actions. That is simply a fallacy. The real world tells us that all our decisions have consequences. The truth of the matter is that more red tape, higher costs, and more bureaucracy means fewer jobs, less Government spending, less opportunity for Kiwi families to get ahead, and reductions in health funding, law and order funding, and education funding, and even fewer academics having the privilege of commenting on it all.

In this Government we take our responsibility seriously, and we know that everything we do has consequences. It is incumbent on us to balance the decisions we make with the outcomes of those decisions and to be mindful always of the impacts the decisions we make have on the jobs of real New Zealanders, who are out there every day working hard to feed their families. We take that seriously, and we are not going to trifle with the jobs of New Zealanders.

That is as true in the environment space as it is in any space. We take our environmental responsibilities incredibly seriously. I will stand here today and back our record on what we have actually done in the environment space against the record of any other party in this House, and I am absolutely confident we will come out on top. This is a Government that acts on the environment, that does not just talk about it. This is a Government that puts water reform at the front of our programme and that, for the first time in New Zealand’s history, is taking the reform of our water management system seriously. But what we have, unfortunately, is an Opposition that would rather score politically motivated points—scaremongering and destroying our international reputation if it scores it a couple of points domestically. I think that is reprehensible. I think it is cowardly, and I think it is absolutely disloyal to the country that it claims to represent.

We have seen Green Party members this year travelling around their country, through their self-confessed vandal advocate Jolyon White and ramping up hysteria about the practice of hydraulic fracturing. They run around telling people that it will cause earthquakes, it will pollute their water supply, and it will poison their children. They demanded an inquiry—they demanded an inquiry—and we agreed: let us have a look at the practice. Let us see what the truth is. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment carried out the inquiry. The difference is the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment bases her opinions on facts, on substance, on science, and on objectivity—a few criteria that, frankly, the Green Party could learn a little bit about. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment considered the practice. She considered it in some depth over some period of time, and she found no basis—no basis—to call an end to the practice. Were the Greens satisfied? Of course not. There is no win for them in that—let us carry on the scaremongering, and let us just attack the inquiry, attack the commissioner, and demean it all on the simple basis that in the Greens’ world, on “Planet Green”, if you do not agree, you must be wrong, and the system must be broken. If it does not come out with the outcome that we have been preaching from our privileged basis, it must be wrong. So I would say to the Green Party: stop attacking your country, stop being careless with the jobs of real New Zealanders, pay attention to the facts, and grow up.

The last speaker, Amy Adams, claimed credit for New Zealand’s debt position. This Government has borrowed more money than any other prior Government in New Zealand’s history. I am not blaming it for all of that—I am not blaming it for all of that. It has had the Christchurch earthquake and it has had the global financial crisis. It has been appropriate that after more than a decade of surpluses, New Zealand ran a deficit during that period. But the deficit, it has to be said, was made worse by National’s income tax cuts, 40 percent of which went to the top 10 percent of income earners. It also has to be said that the criticisms of Dr Cullen’s management of the books are arrant nonsense. Under his stewardship, New Zealand reduced gross Government debt from 40 percent of GDP to 18 percent of GDP, and net debt went to zero.

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: Got your figures right this time?

Have I got my figures right? Yes, I have on this occasion, and I do apologise for my error yesterday, when I did get them wrong, which I acknowledge. This Government has failed in a number of ways. It was going to stem the tide of people going to Australia; 180,000 have left. It was going to make unemployment better, and that is why it had the Job Summit; it has since got worse—the worst in 13 years. It was going to proceed with asset sales—always a flawed policy—but it hasn’t worked even in its flawed form. It is on the wrong side of tax policy. We need significant tax policy. It is on the wrong side of changes to monetary policy. It is on the wrong side of savings policy, and now it is on the wrong side of housing policy.

New Zealand is not building enough affordable houses. The power of the State needs to be used to remedy this problem. Homeownership rates in Auckland, as Annette King said, have dropped to under 60 percent. Homeownership rates for people who are younger than 40 are now under 50 percent. We are going to have rising rates of elderly poverty in New Zealand unless we get on top of this problem. The Productivity Commission said that we are not building enough low-cost, affordable housing—smaller houses that the market is not causing to be built—and not just in Auckland. The commission said that we have got extreme housing unaffordability also in Wellington, in Tauranga - Bay of Plenty, and in Christchurch. In addition, there are some smaller localities like the Queenstown Lakes District and Nelson, where we have got a similar problem. The answer to that is to use the power of the State to build these things in bulk. We are not saying they are going to be shoddy houses. They will be quality houses. They can be built for around $300,000 on average across the country, and for the Government to deny that—again, it is on the wrong side of that debate. There will be a combination of apartments, terraced houses, and stand-alone houses, and, overall, they will be able to be built for a cost of around $300,000 on average throughout the country. In Auckland it might be slightly more, but it will not be a lot more. We know this is possible; the Government denies that it is.

The second part of this, of course, is that we need to free up land. So how do you do that? The Government says that you actually truncate fair processes under the Resource Management Act. We actually say make them work—a national policy statement under the Resource Management Act to make it easier to consent affordable land projects. The Environmental Defence Society and planning lawyers have all come out and have said that this is the way to go. We know it works. We did something similar in respect of a national policy statement to help the consenting of renewables. Indeed, it works even before the document has statutory effect, because local government and developers see what is coming and they see where the opportunities lie.

The National Government’s criticisms of this have been pathetic. Who does it get out of the blocks first? Well, it is always the person who misleads. It is actually Mr Joyce. Mr Joyce got up and said on National Radio that the $1.5 billion—which is what the total capital cost is at the maximum; none of it on the operating account—was a subsidy of $15,000 a house for 100,000 houses, or whatever it was. He did not get it. That was the opposite of what was said in the papers. The next attack that was made on it was that the land cost is ridiculously underestimated by the Labour Party, which, again, is untrue. The next criticism was made that this number of houses can not be built, when that number of houses—more than that—was being built less than a decade ago and, indeed, back in the 1970s, in times when more affordable housing was being built. These sorts of houses were being built to market.

Then National said the Labour Party was proposing to have low interest loans. That is not correct. The Labour Party is using the power of the State. All costs will be passed on to those who are purchasing these properties, including interest as a small margin over the Crown’s costs of funds. These houses will be affordable.

Yesterday at question time this House witnessed the full Shakespearean theatrics. It started as a comedy, it moved through to the area of a farce, and it finally ended in a tragedy for the previous speaker, David Parker. Let me explain.

The first part was the comedy, where one of our Ministers was answering a question and David Cunliffe had the gall to call out, from the back of the House: “He can’t do his numbers.” Based on what had happened to Mr Cunliffe at the Labour Party conference at the weekend, there is only one person in this House who should never make the claim to someone else that you cannot do your numbers.

But wait, there is more, and it gets so deliciously more. On the front bench one of the other Davids—and believe me, there are lots of them—is this almost savant-like, almost sort of phenomenal brain those members have now to be their finance spokesman, and I understand that. That is what he should be. He has got this genius tag to him. He is their finance spokesman, and you would expect the finance person to be really good at numbers—you would.

I am not asking him to do Fourier transforms on convoluted series functions, or use Laplace transforms to solve differential equations. They are quite hard. I did them at university. But what I would like to know is that a finance spokesman could multiply two numbers together. OK, so I want the House to follow me with this, because this is what Mr Parker told the House yesterday. He said to my colleague Phil Heatley: “I would hope that the Minister had checked his arithmetic before coming down to this House, because by my reckoning”—so it means he had obviously checked it, and he had calculated it—“if you were to build one house every hour, every day for 10 years, it would come to 613,000 houses, and Labour is only advocating 100,000.”

I was really embarrassed by this, because I had told my caucus that morning that 100,000 houses in 10 years worked out to be just on one house an hour. I went: “Oh boy, am I embarrassed. I’ve done my numbers wrong.”, so I grabbed the calculator. No, I had not. So I will take the House through it. I will take Mr Parker through this really complicated calculation.

💬 Michael Woodhouse: Go slowly.

I will take it slowly, and I will draw big pictures as we do it. How many hours are there in a day? It is easy.

💬 Michael Woodhouse: 24.

24 hours. How many days are there in a year? There are 365. I will not do the leap year one, as the leap year is too hard. So now let us multiply those together: 24 times 365 comes to 8,760. And do you know what? The next bit is really easy. We now want to do it for 10 years. Most kids, even at primary school, can multiply by 10. Mr Parker, you just add a zero on the end. So the 8,760 becomes—oh, my God—87,600. But he said it was 613,000. That is the man who is the head of the brains trust of the Labour Party, who had done his calculations, who tore my colleague Phil Heatley to shreds for not having checked his mathematics. He was not wrong. He was not slightly wrong. He was not even sort of off course by about 50 percent or 35 percent or 75 percent. He was 700 percent wrong—700 percent. So God knows what a Labour Budget is going to look like, if he ever presents it.

You know, he is sort of a Stephen Hawking - like character over there. He sits there looking like: “I really know my numbers, when I am just frightened.”, and that is why I say it has turned from a farce to a tragedy. Labour is bereft of a leader, it is bereft of any sort of direction, and now it is bereft of the one anchor it had left, the person who could get up and use some numbers and who we thought would at least have some credibility. Now whenever David Parker—this is the tragedy of it; I feel sorry for him—gets up in the future and quotes any numbers, the immediate response will be: “Are you sure you checked your arithmetic? Are you sure you have?”, because if you can get that wrong—and there are kids in the gallery today who could multiply 24 by 365 and come up with the answer. They are primary schoolkids—primary schoolkids—and he would not even have to force national standards on to them, and yet that member got up in this House and questioned the veracity of a member because he had used the numbers I had done that morning. He has wiped himself off the planet for credibility, when it comes to numeracy. Leave him—

I would like to speak today about New Zealand’s profoundly disturbing levels of domestic violence, sexual violence, and child abuse, all of which are symptoms of a very deep societal problem in this country. Violence against women and children is at a crisis level in this country at the moment. Deaths from domestic violence have increased by more than 50 percent since 2008. One in three women is likely to experience domestic violence in her lifetime, and right now well over 15 percent of women in this country are in a violent relationship. The police and Women’s Refuge are responding to domestic violence call outs every 6 minutes in this country. Up to one in three girls, one in seven boys, and, possibly, one in three people with disabilities are likely to experience sexual abuse in their lifetimes. We need to stop covering up, get to work, and start cleaning this up. This is a problem that has never been properly addressed in this country. Sexual abuse support services, in particular, have never been adequately funded.

So what is this Government doing to improve the situation? Well, in Auckland today we saw a flash mob out to demand funding for the Auckland sexual abuse helpline, which has lost over $100,000 in funding. Auckland is likely to lose its only 24-hour helpline. This Government has cut funding to sexual abuse support services, resulting in a third of them having to reduce staff and services. This Government has more than halved the money going to ACC through specialist claims. This Government has reduced the number of counsellors prepared to work for ACC by around half.

This Government has produced a White Paper for Vulnerable Children that does not once mention domestic violence or sexual abuse. This Government has shelved the Law Commission work on alternative pre-trial and trial processes, which offered the only hope of increasing from 1 percent the conviction rate for sexual abuse in this country. Instead of delivering on the promised 18 specialist court advisers, this Government has delivered on only 10, and not even one of these court advisers is based in the South Island. This Government has changed the Solicitor-General’s guidelines for prosecution, which have increased the evidential threshold for crimes to be prosecuted, and which means that in cases where it is a situation of “he says, she says”—typically, in domestic violence and sexual abuse cases—the prosecutor is less likely to go forward with the case.

This Government has reduced funding to women’s refuges. It has reduced access to legal aid. It is now changing the Family Court processes, which will severely disadvantage women in undisclosed violent relationships—which are many. This Government is currently looking at altering the child support formula to make it easier for ex-partners not to pay child support and to reduce how much they need to pay. This Government has increased work testing for the DPB and refused to inform women of the exemption available for women leaving violent relationships. This Government—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! I hesitate to interrupt the member, because I wanted to hear—the member may resume her seat for the moment—how technical this speech got, because it is clearly being read. We have made it very clear in the past that we do not read 5-minute speeches, unless they are particularly technical. Just criticising another political party is hardly technical, and so I would ask the member, by all means use her speech notes to refer to, but please do not just read a speech to this House criticising another political party in the House. That is not in the spirit of the general debate. I apologise for interrupting—

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Actually, each one of those points that I am reading is a distinct point—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will now resume her seat. She will not argue with me. The Speaker is the sole adjudicator on these matters—whether members can read speeches. Forgive me, but just criticising another party is not the kind of technical thing envisaged for when members should be able to read a speech. She is most welcome to refer to notes, but just standing there reading a speech will send all members to sleep.

Well, I am sorry if it offends the Speaker that the amount of harm this Government is doing requires reading through a list because the list is so long. I will continue—

💬 Maggie Barry: Use your memory.

—not reading—on some of the things that this Government has done. It has allowed the family violence task force not to report for over a year. It has taken, in effect, to turning the unit within the Ministry of Social Development into a secretariat. That unit has not released any of its research or one piece of research over the last year, and it has refused to release information under the Official Information Act.

This Government has changed the criteria for the Housing New Zealand Corporation, which means that victims of domestic violence are no longer able to access Housing New Zealand Corporation housing. It has changed its policy, and that means that when ex-partners are damaging the houses of the women who have tenure, those women are held accountable for the cost of the damage done.

This Government has introduced the Crimes Amendment Act (No 3), which, in effect, is punishing women for not being able to protect their children against the violence of their partners. This Government is deeply patriarchal and has been attacking and rescinding women’s rights ad nauseam. I believe that sexual abuse can destroy lives and that everyone needs the right help. It is the Government’s job to ensure that is possible, and it is not delivering.

I confess to feeling a bit like a mosquito in a nudist colony, such is the exposure of all of the three Opposition parties that we have seen over the last fortnight. You see, Labour has had its worst conference in a generation. You have got a party at war with its own caucus. You have got the David versus David leadership crisis, and you have got the other David muffing his numbers over Labour’s most important policy announcement this year. Then you have got the hobbit hatred hypocrisy. Having damned the deals that enabled The Hobbit to be made in New Zealand, having demonised Warner Bros and Peter Jackson, Labour now wants to—Grant Robertson wants to get down there and hog the red carpet, like he has been a hobbit lover all the way along.

Actually, The Hobbit is the perfect end to National’s year. It is about jobs. It is about our creative industries. It is about giving the New Zealand brand the freshness that our visitor industry needs when it so much needs a boost. It is about highlighting how John Key and his Ministers are prepared to make bold punts to give New Zealand an edge and to give New Zealanders a job.

But it is not just Labour that has had a nightmare run over the last fortnight. The Greens’ big play of the year has been the “Don’t frack with New Zealand” campaign. They demanded an independent inquiry. They got it but then disagreed with the conclusions and have bagged it. A fig leaf cannot hide the extent to which the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment found that the Greens had gone wrong. You see, the Greens demanded a moratorium, saying that New Zealanders’ health, safety, and environment were all being put at risk by a negligent Government. The environment commissioner said that a moratorium cannot be justified on the evidence. The Greens have gone on and said that fracking cannot be done safely—that is what Mr Hughes has said—and must be banned throughout New Zealand. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has concluded that the risks from fracking are manageable if they are done to the proper standards, which is the exact position that this Government has taken and that the very well-respected Royal Society of London in the UK has taken.

If the Greens had any class or any sense, they would have accepted the report of the independent Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Instead, they have stooped so low and become so desperate that they are now telling us that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has been heavied by the oil industry.

💬 Maggie Barry: Disgraceful.

Disgraceful. How desperate can they get? It is just like it was over genetic modification a decade ago. The Greens ran a scare campaign exaggerating the risks. They demanded an inquiry, but when the evidence before the royal commission of inquiry came to a different conclusion, they would not budge.

The Greens have seriously damaged themselves over the fracking issue. They have shown that, far from being an evidence-based environmental party, they are doctrinaire, they are anti-science, and they are an anti-progress, protest party that will cynically exploit people’s fears of new technologies for political gain.

But it is not just Labour and the Greens. New Zealand First’s end to this year is no better. This is a party that prides itself on championing the cause of older New Zealanders, but it is ending the year consumed in allegations from family that one of its MPs ripped off his elderly mother for tens of thousands of dollars to support his gambling habit. Mr Peters and his colleagues are always the first to demand inquiries, answers, and openness. Imagine the furore if this was a Government MP who was not prepared to front for the answers and answer the questions. Imagine the furore if a Government MP was hiding away.

New Zealand First, the Greens, and the Labour Party are in a mess, but they have done New Zealand a great favour over the last fortnight, showing that they cannot govern themselves let alone ever govern this country.

The Kiwi dream of homeownership is dying, and the hope for resuscitation by this National-ACT Government looks very bleak. I must congratulate Annette King and David Parker, who both in their constructive contributions addressed the issues, not politics. KiwiBuild, following on from KiwiSaver and Kiwibank, together with other Labour policy initiatives, will play a very positive role in helping make our future brighter for all New Zealanders.

One flow-on issue will be building law reform. It is fitting for me, as Labour’s spokesperson on building and construction, to emphasise that in order to avoid a repeat of the leaky building crisis, to restore confidence in the building sector, and to lift the game, we must have concise and competent building legislation. Ever since the Building Act 1991 we have had a huge problem with leaky buildings. As emphasised many times, we are talking about the issue not to apportion blame but to make sure we all have learnt the valuable lessons from the past. Has the Minister for Building and Construction, the Hon Maurice Williamson, who delivered a thunderous speech just now, learnt his valuable lessons? No, if the two building bills he introduced are anything to go by; they are nothing more than gimmicks.

The Building Amendment Bill (No 4), which is listed on the Order Paper and waiting for its second reading, is the second of two bills to implement the Building Act review policy decisions. The Building Act review, initiated by the last Labour Government, has won cross-party support. The review found weaknesses in consumer protection and a need to better allocate responsibility and accountability among building consenting authorities, building practitioners, and consumers. But the answer from that Minister for Building and Construction was to fail almost the entire sector and the relevant parties, which will now be exposed financially, to some extent.

The Building Amendment Bill (No 3), now the Building Amendment Act 2012, shifted responsibility and accountability away from building consent authorities and on to consumers and builders. The code compliance certificate is no longer what it used to be. Mr Williamson has said that changing the code compliance certificate to the consent completion certificate will help change building consenting authorities’ position as the last man standing in those cases. However, in their submissions, two of the largest city councils in this country—Christchurch and Wellington—have strongly rejected the rationale, simply because without introducing a mandatory warranty and looking at the liability models, they argued, there is no way to help the city councils through the situation and avoid a repeat of the leaky building crisis. Worse still, homeowners will have fewer remedies, if any, if they are left in the lurch by unscrupulous shell companies.

Let us look at some other issues, such as insurance premiums, which are a huge problem in the Wellington region. The Dominion Post reported earlier that some businesses have faced insurance premium increases of up to 200 percent.

💬 Dr David Clark: 200 percent?

200 percent. Earthquake-prone buildings, product warranties, consumer protections—the list can go on and on. But for the Minister, all important matters were referred to the Law Commission, less important matters are looked after and taken care of by his officials, and further, less important matters will not concern him at all. So adopting his National-ACT Government’s hands-free, hands-off approach, the Minister is hands-off, and New Zealanders are suffering.

The celebration today of The Hobbit is a celebration of talent, it is a celebration of creativity, and it is a celebration of all of the fun and excitement of the film industry in Wellington and New Zealand. All the eyes of the world are on us today, and we should enjoy it. But it is also a celebration of the tough stuff, the stuff that needs to go on behind any glamorous result: the long hours of hard work, the training and honing of skills, the persistence, and the absolute commitment to tenacity in hard times. It is the ability to be flexible and pragmatic, and to identify, snap up, and make the most of every opportunity.

It is thanks to the drive of Peter Jackson and his team that The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit can be made. It is thanks to the thousands of actors, film-makers, technicians, and artisans that Middle Earth and Hobbiton have been brought to life. And it is thanks to the pragmatic flexibility of the Prime Minister and the National Government that the films are being made here in New Zealand. It was a close call—too close. As a country—a small country—at the bottom of the world, we cannot afford to let these opportunities go by.

Everybody loves a success, and everybody wants to climb on the celebration bandwagon today. Even the Labour Party’s naysayers will be out there on the red carpet, and, actually, I do not blame them. The Hobbit has brought thousands of jobs to New Zealand. It has attracted young, skilled people here, and it will continue to bring visitors and investment to our beautiful country for years to come. But one success is not enough. We need to build on these successes. If our country is going to go forward, if we are going to have jobs for our young people, and if all New Zealanders are going to have a decent standard of living and quality of life, we need to be actively promoting every possible opportunity in our country.

Success comes in many forms, but it always starts with a yes—yes to giving stuff a go, yes to being flexible, yes to change, yes to believing in people, and yes to getting on with it. And that is the problem we have in our Parliament right now. The Opposition talks about jobs and how much New Zealand needs them, but every time an opportunity like The Hobbit comes up, it says no—no to mining, no to oil and gas exploration, no to more farming, no to better management of our assets, no to overseas investments, no to probation for jobs, no to youth wages, no to new marine legislation, and no to a reorganisation of local government. No, no, no. It says no to change, no to new ways of working and thinking, no to innovation, and no to a better, brighter future.

Well, National is absolutely committed to doing the tough, hard background slog so that organisations, businesses, and people can be successful. We are committed to being creative and flexible, to finding ways to encourage industry to create more jobs, just like The Hobbit, and to supporting young people to engage in upskilling so that they can make the most of every opportunity. So today let us celebrate the success of The Hobbit, let us celebrate the fact that we have taken an opportunity, and let us celebrate the National Government’s commitment to support the success of all New Zealanders right now and into the future.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.