Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

I rise to support the motion moved by the Prime Minister yesterday and to defeat the amendment to that motion moved by the Hon David Cunliffe. If there is anything that typifies the way in which this election year has started, it would have to be the ill-named start that the Opposition leader added to his programme last week.

It has been a bad start. If we are to see this year progress on the same sort of basis, then I think by the time we get to the election we will see David Cunliffe dressed in a plaid jacket, white shoes, and sunglasses, going around and peddling his policies to New Zealanders. The one thing that they have learnt this week is that when it comes to this guy, whether it is his CV or a policy, it pays to read the fine print. It pays to understand all the nuances that are in it because, apparently, whether it is policy or a CV, it is a living document.

The other extraordinary thing that we have come to learn this week is that you do not have to have money to spend it or save it. It is going to come as a huge revelation to so many New Zealanders who go out every day to work—to earn a little bit more, to hopefully get into a better tax bracket because they have a Government that respects what they do and what their contribution to the community is—that, in fact, they do not have to do that! They can simply go around anywhere, observing something that they would like but not acquiring it, and then assume that that is a saving that they can go off and spend somewhere else. I talk, of course, about the $1.5 billion that David Cunliffe has now said he has available to him and his caucus for policy initiatives.

The other thing that sits behind that is the suggestion that tax and taxation is an amount that sits there and you decide how much of it you require. Well, that is not how it works. Taxation is money that comes directly out of the pockets of working New Zealanders. Whenever he says that we gave away tax cuts, he is trying to say, in fact, that his party felt it had some entitlement to have its hand deep inside the pockets of New Zealanders who work hard every day, every week, every year, to try to get ahead. That will not wash. Sooner or later he and his colleagues are going to have to come out and tell New Zealanders, beyond the head-shaking that they did today in confirming this, how much extra tax they are going to require of them, how much extra borrowing is going to be done on their behalf, and how much turning of a blind eye to New Zealand’s current debt picture is going to go on under any regime that might be led by Labour.

The contrast yesterday was between a Prime Minister outlining the programme that the Government has embarked on, outlining the work that the Government is doing, and outlining the intentions that the Government has for the betterment of all New Zealanders in the year ahead, noting that we have an election where there will be other policies put in front of New Zealanders to consider—that was contrasted against a Leader of the Opposition who spent his time making a semi-coherent attempt, I suppose, to bring together every lefty cliché that you could possibly imagine, and also making what you might describe as second-rate comical contributions along the way. There was very, very little content, if any, about what his proposals for New Zealand’s future might be. It was simply a list of what he sees as being wrong, in his very jaundiced eyes. New Zealanders are aspirational people. They will not be moved, in my opinion, by those who simply want to be negative all the time and talk down the good things that are happening in their lives. That, I think, will become very, very evident as the year progresses.

I want to make a couple of comments about the Government’s commitment to Christchurch, which I have considerable involvement with. It is well supported by every Minister in Cabinet and well supported by every member of caucus. People seem to forget how big that disaster was. We announced today that more than 50,000 houses have been repaired since those disasters occurred. When you consider that that is the equivalent of every house in Napier and Hastings having a substantial repair done to it, it gives a little bit of context to what we are dealing with. That is only two-thirds of the task that is in front of the Fletcher EQR office at the present time, that Earthquake Commission - managed repair.

In addition to that, there are another 30,000-odd homes where private insurers are currently engaged in getting progress for those people. There will be MPs who come out, along with other people, who say those people are being ill treated or mistreated or whatever. All I can say to them is that since September I have repeatedly said to bring those cases to us and we will look at them. I want to put on record today that I have had no member of Parliament bring a single case to my office where there is an allegation of mistreatment by an insurer or by the Earthquake Commission. It is quite an extraordinary thing. I have had lots of letters to me personally, and they have all been dealt with as they have arrived.

The point, though, is that Christchurch is a very, very good example of the resilience that New Zealanders instinctively call upon. Over the last 5 years, while the Labour Party has been in denial over the difficulty of our economic circumstances, New Zealanders have got on with making things better for themselves, alongside a Government that has supported them through it. It is extraordinary that having spent all those years in Opposition saying there is no economic problem, Labour is now out there claiming that the problem has gone and that it can start spending the gains that come from better management of the economy. People will not be fooled by that.

Can I make a couple of comments too about some of the investment that National has made in our economy. Any economy is driven by the quality of its infrastructure. We have those commitments in broadband, we have those commitments in education, and we have those commitments in the transport sector as well.

I can report that the biggest project in New Zealand’s history, the western ring route in Auckland, is under way, it is on target, and it is tracking to its budget. The Tauranga Eastern Link is under way. It is under construction, it is on target, and it is below the projected budget. The Waikato Expressway continues to be developed. It is a work in progress. Everyone can see it when they go up and down that road. It is also tracking below budget. The Christchurch motorway—and there are two big projects there; one is completed and the other is starting—is also tracking on its original budget path. Further, we have the Wellington Northern Corridor, a road that has been promised for a very, very long time, and that is also looking as if it will start some time towards the end of this year.

Governments are elected because of the way in which they connect with people. I would remind our colleagues across the other side of the House that one of their great leaders, Norman Kirk, once said that there are five great rights that people expect from a Government: the right to be well housed, the right to have good education, the right to be healthy, the right to have a job, and the right to feel secure in their homes. On every one of those points our record outstrips them and their past history by a very long shot. I strongly support the Prime Minister’s motion.

I follow the member from Christchurch Gerry Brownlee, who has been giving the one-finger salute so often in Christchurch that he has had an occupational overuse injury and has had to seek medical advice.

Having a lecture from Gerry Brownlee on fiscal surpluses is just the same joke that it is when we get it from Bill English or from John Key. They are fiscal virgins. Five years into a Government and they have never run a surplus—they do not know what it feels like. We did that every year. The first year of our Government, the second year of our Government, the third year of our Government, the eighth year of our Government, the ninth year of our Government—every year we ran a surplus. We know how to balance the books; we know how to run a surplus, so we do not take lectures from the National-led Government implying or saying otherwise.

This is a disreputable Government, increasingly desperate to hang on to the baubles of office. We have got it propped up on the one hand by John Banks—in the dock for electoral fraud, and the National Party is hanging on his vote. He got here only because of the tea party stunt, which was orchestrated by the Prime Minister and which he should be ashamed of.

On the other side we have got Peter Dunne. Peter Dunne, whom the Prime Minister did not believe and whom he stripped of his ministerial office merely months ago, is this year being brought back into the ministry because of the desperation of the National Party. So much for those high standards from the Prime Minister. Not only that but those members are giving him a soft deal once again in Ōhariu in order to try to take advantage of the MMP rules, which this disreputable Government has twisted again for its own benefit. The MMP review recommended that the one-seat lifeboat be removed, but National ignored it, and we see why. Now there are soft deals available all throughout the country as this desperate National Government tries to cling on to power. The polls are agin it, it knows that this election looks like it is going to go to the Opposition parties, and so it is trying to twist MMP to its advantage.

The cronyism does not end just in Parliament; we have got crony capitalism rife in this country. Last year it was all over the news, and this National-led Government will try to make New Zealanders forget about that this year, but we are going to remind them: tens of millions of dollars for Rio Tinto; a shady deal with the casino operators in Auckland, which was criticised by the Auditor-General; and the sale of our State-owned enterprises from the 100 percent to the 1 percent—hundreds of millions spent on National Party cronies in order to flog off assets. Those are but a number of examples.

We have got reduced opportunity in New Zealand because National refuses to deal with the causes of inequality. There are tax cuts that go to the most wealthy, asset sales that go to the 1 percent, and a refusal to rein in excessive profiteering on our hydro power using public water resources, to name but three examples. No wonder we have got reduced homeownership rates in New Zealand, because we have got rising inequality. The only time that income inequality has gone down in the last three decades was under a Labour Government, under Working for Families, which gave tax cuts to families with children. It was opposed by National, which voted against it and called it communism by stealth.

We have got rising asset inequality, which grows every year when you have got inequality in incomes as high as we have in New Zealand. The OECD pointed out that we have got higher rates of income inequality than is average, not just in the world but in the Western World, and it is shameful that National’s policies make that worse, not better. Even if that income inequality did not get worse in a year, it gets worse over time as it causes the concentration in assets.

Homeownership rates are now the lowest that they have been in New Zealand in 60 years. When do homeownership rates decrease in New Zealand? Under National Governments. It happened under the Bolger Government, and it is happening again under the Key Government. We have got rising inequality. We have got New Zealanders who are being denied choices. They cannot buy a house. They cannot get decent wages. Who benefits from having some people not being able to buy one house but other people buying lots of houses? The National Party cronies—the National Party cronies. Those people can afford to own lots more houses, and we get this concentration of wealth.

Not only that; we have got people in insecure work and we have got wages at the bottom end not keeping pace in the way that they do at the top. I heard the Minister of Finance saying that the Government is doing well on wages. Well, for the past 5 years real wage growth has been less than 1 percent per annum if you are an average wage earner. What has happened to chief executive officer pay? In 2010 it was 21.9 times the average pay. Now it is up to 26 times the average pay, just 2 years later, and that was 2012 figures. So over 2 years under National, chief executive officer pay goes up hugely, while ordinary New Zealanders’ wages stay static.

We have got rising rates of inequality. We know that the Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty to the Children’s Commissioner, an arm of the Government, said that one in four children live in poverty. The Government is willing to spend another $3.5 billion on superannuation over 5 years every year from now on, but it says that it cannot afford more money for the Best Start programme for children. That shows where its priorities lie. There are tax cuts for the wealthy and universalism for superannuation, but an objection to universalism of support for children. Those members cannot have it both ways. They cannot tell us that the economy is doing well, but then tell us that we cannot afford money for children in need.

The policies that have been put forward by Jacinda Ardern, Annette King, Sue Moroney, and Chris Hipkins—all announced by David Cunliffe on Monday—really are a holistic solution to intergenerational welfare dependency, for income support for those who need it, for early interventions through Plunket, and for better education. It is a very sophisticated package, which the Labour Party is proud of.

Those members send the chief spinner for the National Party, Steven Joyce, out to criticise the numbers and, once again, he is wrong. We have dumped our earlier policies on taking GST off fresh fruit and vegetables and on the first $5,000 of income being tax-free. Our fiscals are clear that we collect more money from a capital gains tax and a higher rate on the highest earners in New Zealand. Having collected that additional revenue and having abandoned some of those other expensive policies, we have got more than enough headroom to run surpluses and fund this package.

💬 Hon Annette King: And even they’ve got a billion.

Yes, that is right. National members say that they are going to introduce a pale version of paid parental leave and some other changes. You know, when we do things, it is called bribery, but when they give tax cuts to the wealthiest in society, disproportionately benefiting them, and when they refuse to close the tax loopholes that the OECD criticises, which both increase inequality and make the economy go slower, no, that is not seen to be some sort of preference for a sector of society. No, they say that that is fair. Well, we do not think it is fair that the wealthiest people in New Zealand get capital gains free of any tax.

Neither do we think it is fair that some of the multinationals that plunder the New Zealand economy—like Google, like Apple, and like Facebook—take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the New Zealand economy, compete with New Zealand - based companies, and pay virtually no tax. We in the Labour Party are willing to move on that, but the Government is not because, once again, it is preferring the interests of the wealthy. It is not willing to take on the multinationals, despite the fact that there is a glaring unfairness there. They should pay their fair share of tax too, which they do not, and there are mechanisms that could be used.

Returning to the Best Start package, I would be proud to be part of a Government that says that the fair allocation of resource should not see it all going to the wealthy and that it should not all go to older citizens, worthy though they are. We do believe in universal superannuation made sustainable, just as we believe in proportionate universalism when it comes to the support of children. It is a disgrace that in New Zealand we have one child in four living in poverty. It is one of the reasons, and it is only one of the reasons—I do not pretend it is the only reason—that we have got declining educational standards in our compulsory school sector. It is a major reason, if not the only reason, and we in the Labour Party are absolutely up for fixing that problem.

I rise with much pleasure to support the Prime Minister’s statement and his speech. In doing so, I rise absolutely sure that this Government continues to implement its plan to build a faster-growing economy with more jobs and higher incomes and to support New Zealanders and their families. There are so many different examples that I just cannot wait to tell you. I am going to start, however, with something that is an absolute example happening in my electorate, announced today by the Minister for Social Development. You see, this Government is the Government that does not just talk about things. This is the Government that actually has action that eventuates in outcomes that are good for New Zealanders, and that is the way it should be.

Today the Hon Paula Bennett announced the results of a recruitment partnership in mid-Canterbury, in my electorate of Rangitata. The TerraceView Retirement Village opened back in November and it needed at least 25 new staff—probably closer to 30—most of them working part-time hours. What it did was it went to Work and Income and said that it was going to need some more staff, and got itself into this recruitment partnership. The people who were actually successful in going into work from Work and Income numbered 11, and there were others as well whom the retirement village recruited. This was indeed a partnership made in heaven, because some of these people were beneficiaries who were referred for the job openings. Some of them had been on a benefit for a while. Some of them had never worked. But, in fact, there were jobs—real jobs, not imaginary jobs—there for them, and this has been very, very successful. This is about case managers who actually understand what their job is—not just to simply have people trundling in and out through the office but actually to take these real people and assist them into jobs. So what have we got? We have got thousands and thousands of New Zealanders now in jobs who had been relying on benefits for some years. They also do a New Zealand Qualifications Authority - approved caregiving course. They are getting qualifications. Over 1,500 people are leaving the benefit every single week and becoming financially independent as a result.

Actually, this is where we have got another disconnect because, apparently, we have huge amounts of poverty in New Zealand. What is the way out of poverty? There are two ways: education and work, and they are very intricately linked. What we have got on the other side of the House is something that this week was called a Best Start. Well, I would have to say that it was a mediocre start, maybe even a worst start, but Labour is calling it a Best Start. What I would suggest—

💬 Mike Sabin: Possibly a false start.

A false start?

💬 Mike Sabin: Yes.

A false start. What I would suggest to the Opposition is that when it tries to sell this policy—when it decides what this policy actually is, when it has determined how many people might actually be able to apply for it and receive this $60—it actually hands out free magnifying glasses, because, by golly, any policy under this Labour Opposition is going to need the fine print read very carefully. So free magnifying glasses out of the Labour Party budget would be a really, really good idea.

It is evidence-based policies that actually create real change for New Zealanders that will continue to keep this country humming. And it is humming. What did we have last year? We had 3.5 percent growth. It will be at least that this coming year. Boy, that must be hard to swallow for a Labour-Greens Opposition, which is wanting to convince New Zealanders that they are going backwards when they do not feel like they are. Business confidence is soaring. It is at its highest in how many years? Thirteen years?

💬 Mike Sabin: 20.

Oh, 20 years, is it? Well, there you go. This is what we have got happening under this Government. It has been steady as you go because, actually, although the Opposition trumpets surpluses, what it has forgotten was the sorry end to its surpluses: a tradable economy going south before the global financial crisis even arrived. Opposition members have forgotten about that. Their short-term memory—there must be a bit of a health problem there. Presented with 10 years of deficits, they wonder why we have not experienced a surplus—their 10 years of deficits, left on a plate for us, before the global financial crisis really even kicked in. And then there was a small thing like, oh, a couple of large earthquakes and the biggest hit on a GDP basis, or the second-biggest, I think, for any sort of Western nation around the world. So from an insurance perspective, yes, we now have the opportunity for lots of jobs, but that has been a significant fiscal thump that this Government has had to negotiate its way through.

What happened during the global financial crisis? Did this Government cut benefits? No. Did this Government protect New Zealanders from what we called the potential sharp edges of the recession? Absolutely we did. And one of the things I am going to go on to is older New Zealanders, because one of my responsibilities is older New Zealanders and they give me lots of feedback. They are very good at giving feedback. Not only do they engage in voting but they engage with politicians. That is great because we know what they are thinking. They are actually pretty comfortable with the fact that their superannuation has increased by 25 percent since 2008. It is not a bad story that under this Government we actually enshrined in legislation that they would get superannuation from the age of 65 at 66 percent of the average wage—not the ethereal 65 percent it must be or maybe 66 percent this year, but we cannot promise it ongoing. One would think that the Opposition could have done that while it was in Government.

Older New Zealanders care about crime. They really care about being safe in their communities. And I tell you, the country is outraged when we read about crime against older people. So it really does help their sense of security to know that crime is at its lowest in 33 years. Do we still need to make more inroads into that? Absolutely we do, but we have now tougher bail, sentencing, and parole laws, and we are keeping the worst of the criminals behind bars.

Older New Zealanders disproportionately are the people who are requiring elective surgery. That is just the nature of growing older. We know that. So when we tell them that although there are some people who are still waiting for their surgery—and nothing has changed since the Opposition was in Government, I might remind those members. So there was no one waiting for surgery back then? Actually, we had 30,000 people who were sent off the list. Nobody was interested in them. We did not send them back to their GP. We did not engage them in exercise classes that would help them until their surgery came along. None of that happened under the previous Government. So what have we got? In 2007-08 we had 118,000 people who got elective surgery. Any way you put it, 158,000 this last year is a—what have we got—34 percent increase. It is a 34 percent increase. That is reassuring. What is more, we are giving certainty that when you go on that list for your appointment, when you go on the list, you know you are going to get your surgery. You are not going to be on—

💬 Hon Annette King: Yeah, but what about the 170,000 who don’t get surgery?

Oh, I can remember the stories about waiting lists. People were on them for a year, for 2 years, for 3 years. They never knew when their surgery was going to happen, but they were reassured because they were on a list. They thought that it was actually going to happen.

The other thing that older people care about is their children and grandchildren, and particularly about their grandchildren getting a good education. What they will tell you is that they remember the schoolteachers who made a difference for them. I absolutely remember the principals who made a difference for me. Unfortunately, I also remember the ones who did not, but that is the way it is. We know the ones, and we watched it with our own children when they were growing up. We saw which teachers inspired them, and we wanted them to stay in that class for every year. That is because that is where they really learnt. That is where they loved education. Those were the subjects—goodness, I can remember one subject that I sat at high school where the whole class failed.

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: Oh!

I know. Fortunately, that person left teaching. Older New Zealanders are also really keen to know that their children and grandchildren are going to be getting jobs. We have reduced unemployment by 53,000. If you talk to an older person and they say that their child, their son or daughter, is out of work, it breaks their heart because they know that they want to be in work.

We are heading, as a Government, in the right direction under the stewardship of Prime Minister John Key. He has an absolutely united caucus, with everyone doing their bit. We have got fantastic things happening in primary industries, and I am proud to be associated with that. We have got irrigation happening in my constituency. We have got the Irrigation Acceleration Fund and we have also got the irrigation investment company. We are not resting on our laurels. We are not throwing cash around in a lolly scramble. What we are doing is getting absolute, real results out of New Zealanders. They come up to me in my electorate every week. They come up to me and they tell me that they appreciate the fact that we understand fiscal responsibility as a Government—this National-led Government. Thank you.

John Key has presented New Zealand with an election year message. It is a triumph of corporate spin that pretends to deliver for New Zealanders, when in reality it does nothing of the sort. It pretends to deliver on jobs, on health, and on our environment, on our rivers, and on our oceans when it does nothing of the sort. I can assure you that the voters are not pulled that easily. That is the message that I am getting from Mount Maunganui beach, from Papamoa, from Greerton, from Ōtūmoetai, from Arataki.

Yesterday, for the first time, that party demonstrated that perhaps it can think long term in its headlong rush to congratulate Lorde, who will not be able to vote until the election after next, which is in 2017. So clearly that is National’s idea of long term, anyway.

But in the Prime Minister’s statement where is the vision to take our children, our people, to 2020—2020—in terms of trade and education and people’s health, welfare, and well-being? Where are the educational programmes to teach children to learn, to learn, to learn? Where are the educational tools to bring our schools into the 21st century and to inspire teachers to teach, to teach, to teach, and to learn? Teachers touch lives for ever, but we do not need executive principals, lead teachers, so-called expert teachers. We simply need democracy—openness, honesty, and transparency; inseparables—and it has to come first and foremost from the leaders in our society.

We have the ludicrous situation where here in Parliament the Government changes the constitution, but parliamentarians and those who work within Parliament do not enjoy or live by those rights, or work by those rights. How can we have one rule for Parliament and another rule for the rest of our nation? Party politics have provided platforms for party leaders to construct sense-making frameworks that constrain MPs to do their party’s bidding, not that of their electorates—the very people who elected them.

I will read a quote from Plato: “One of the penalties for not taking an interest in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” In the last election over 800,000 people voted with their feet, so disheartened were they with the succession of parties that have led New Zealand and that have written legislation that has affected every waking and sleeping moment of every New Zealander’s life. The sad fact is that if I constructed a “Let’s Not Vote Party”, it would probably get more votes than the one million votes that National got in 2011, and that shows just how disenfranchised New Zealanders truly are.

I take this moment to thank New Zealand First because there is no way that I would be able to stand here and speak on democracy—to talk on true, inclusive democracy—if I had not been so undemocratically dumped by the New Zealand First Party. It is a tragedy of our political system that such a party can be captured by one man who did not even stand in an electorate. I can hear the cult screaming now: “But we voted for him.” But what of those people who voted for the principles of New Zealand First, which include an MP’s first duty being to the people of New Zealand and their electorate, and having an open and accountable Government, and what of the fact that New Zealand First campaigned for a fair go? What of those voters who believed that that party would give people a fair go? Ask Ben Craven, the party’s youngest candidate in 2011—

💬 Andrew Williams: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement. This honourable member is not speaking at all to do with the Prime Minister’s statement.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a very wide-ranging debate, and the member is certainly speaking within the Standing Orders.

Thank you. As I was saying, ask Ben Craven, the party’s youngest candidate in 2011, and ask Josh Van Veen whether they got a fair go when they were sacked on a rumour, with no investigation, no disciplinary hearings, and no chance for them to say what really happened—just sacked. This breaks every labour law in the real world, but not here within the walls of that political party.

So what really happened? Well, like most victims of workplace bullying, neither of them will talk. But people who know the full story will not be silenced. It turns out that they dared to question the integrity of Mr Peters’ director of operations, Apirana Dawson. There was a promising young man who was led to the dark side, taken astray by his leader.

Mr Williams, you must remember this article here: “MPs trade slurs over blog ratings”. Here is a beautiful picture of the honourable Richard Prosser—he looks young and vital—and also a very good-looking Denis O’Rourke. “MPs trade slurs over blog ratings”. I am talking about the same Apirana Dawson who leaked confidential emails between New Zealand First MPs to his friend working for the Christchurch Press—

💬 Andrew Williams: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Surely, this is not within the Standing Orders, to be getting into personal matters relating to individuals and individual Parliamentary Service staff—surely not.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Well, I am afraid that on this occasion, when we are having the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement, it is a free-ranging debate. The member making these statements needs to do so responsibly. I cannot in any way cease a speech or rule it out of order at this stage.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is the same Apirana Dawson who not only leaked confidential emails between New Zealand First MPs to his friend working for the Christchurch Press in 2012 but also traded expressions with the media, using the false name of Bruce Bayliss, and also filed Official Information Act requests about an MP, using that same false name of Bruce Bayliss. Would taxpayers approve of their money being used in this way—this dabbling in the dark arts? What happened to the principles of that party?

One asks what the New Zealand First MPs are doing for Ben Craven and Josh Van Veen, the two young researchers unceremoniously and unfairly sacked on hearsay, the innocent victims of plots and subterfuges, all overseen by the leader of that party. What have New Zealand First MPs done about this injustice? How would one describe a New Zealand political party that would unfairly sack its most loyal staffers in favour of keeping its dodgiest? Is this another demonstration of a political party leader’s serious lack of judgment? How can anyone in that party speak on workers’ rights and be taken seriously or believed?

Look closely: you are witnessing the demise of New Zealand First. The question is, will New Zealand First MPs have the courage and conviction to take the step that was forced upon me and then broadcast their points of view? I remind those New Zealand First MPs of a quote from Albert Einstein: “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”

But there is a change coming—a fresh, new, welcome breeze on our political landscape, a breeze that promises hope, strength, integrity, and a democratic voice for all New Zealanders. The New Zealand Independent Coalition is being formed, and we realise what the rest of the world realises, which is that ultra-fast broadband will revolutionise trade, education, and people’s health and welfare—occupational welfare, individual welfare, employment welfare, spiritual welfare, health welfare, and wealth welfare.

In 2020 there will be 75 billion devices connected to the internet, and over 6 billion users. The New Zealand Independent Coalition will prepare our children to learn, to learn, to learn; to exercise imagination, knowledge, vision, wisdom, and judgment; and to pave pathways of prosperity for our people here in our country, New Zealand. We would dramatically increase the pace of the ultra-fast broadband roll-out so that New Zealand can compete on an equal basis worldwide. In 2012 at Skycity, at the Commerce Commission conference on ultra-fast broadband, the statement was made that, at current rates, in 2017 New Zealand will be where North America was in 2010—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

I support and endorse the motion from our very good Prime Minister, Mr John Key, “That this House express its confidence in the National-led Government and commend its programme for 2014 as set out in the Prime Minister’s statement to Parliament.” We will continue our hard discipline and transparent work as we build a much brighter future for our wonderful, wonderful country.

The Leader of the Opposition, David Cunliffe, is an invisible man leading an invisible party, spending invisible money on invisible problems due to some invisible crisis that will inevitably lead Labour to invisible poll results. Invisible money is being spent on invisible problems due to some invisible crisis. How often have we heard about a manufacturing crisis, an economic crisis, a fiscal crisis, an education crisis? I heard the other day from the Leader of the Opposition that there was an early childhood education crisis, for goodness’ sake. The Leader of the Opposition’s very bad start to this year and his leadership continues. I believe that his polling results are still under those of the previous leader, Mr Shearer, and have not yet reached his dizzying heights of about 13 or 14 percent, I understand. We will wait and see over the coming weeks.

Labour’s big announcement, David Cunliffe’s tricky announcement, the other day is continuing to unravel—absolutely tricky. His bad start continues. He left New Zealand with the impression, and he sold a policy to New Zealanders, that said, that regardless of who they were and where they were, and as long as they were under $150k of income—but Labour is unsure now whether that is a single or a double income—for every child born, every family would receive $60 for the first year of that child’s life. In no uncertain terms he told New Zealand that, he told the gathering in Auckland that, and he told the media that again and again and again.

Well, Patrick Gower has called that quite dishonest—deceptive and dishonest—because New Zealanders were left with that impression, and Labour knew that that was the impression it gave out, and no one corrected it. No one corrected it until Labour was found out because the fine print was read. The tricky policy was unravelled and continues to unravel as the fine print is read. I imagine that David Cunliffe is now kicking himself and furiously trying to back-pedal, knowing that he should have understood that policy, he should have understood the details, and he should have read his very own fine print when the policy was released.

I know that Mr Cunliffe is very interested in fine print. I quote Mr Cunliffe—because this is, in fact, what is happening right now under this National Government as we unravel the fine print of Labour’s policy and discover what is in it. This is what Mr Cunliffe said in this House a couple of years ago: “this debate to uncover some of the hidden traps, the fine print, and the places where the gloss is not as good as people were led to believe”. That is what the current Leader of the Opposition said a couple of years ago in this House. Well, that can apply to this exact policy, which if it was applied under the Fair Trading Act or advertising would be misleading and would be deceptive, and someone would probably be held up before the courts.

Our Prime Minister, John Key, continues to lead the National-led Government and our coalition friends and partners through tough times in New Zealand, but we continue to work for all New Zealanders, regardless of where they come from, regardless of their parentage, regardless of the definition of their family, regardless of how their parents or birth parents ended up, and regardless of the state of their caregivers. We govern and work every day for all New Zealanders all the time, regardless of where they come from. We do not grab the short-term highlights or whatever; we make every decision for the medium and long-term betterment for this wonderful, wonderful country.

We are open, we are transparent, and we will lay out our policies before the electorate, as we did last time. There will not be any fine print. There will not be any hidden details. Our leaders, our Cabinet, understand their policies, our policies, which have led this country to a position where we are so much stronger than we were, albeit just 5 years ago. We will continue the hard work and the discipline, making some tough calls. You have got to do that in Government, and you have to do that even more so in an environment around the world where there has been a global financial crisis. When National came into Government New Zealand had been in recession for a couple of years, and our export sector had been collapsing since 2005. For an exporting nation, that is tragic.

We will continue our prudential management of our Crown accounts, the taxpayers’ balance sheet, while maintaining our dedication to the betterment of social services, and that will lead us to deliver what we said we would, so that every New Zealander, regardless of who and where they are and why they came into the world, has an opportunity to realise their awesome potential for our awesome country—regardless. If they trip up along the way our social conscience and our social help will be there to assist them. That is who we are, but that must be balanced with our economy, with our social conscience, and, of course, with our environmental aspirations. There will be no tricky nonsense or silly details hidden in the fine print way down in the bottom somewhere—no stuff that, hopefully, no one will notice until after the election.

The National Government has had a first 5 years that have been quite challenging, with the Christchurch and Canterbury earthquakes and the tragedies around those socially, in a human sense, and, of course, economically. We have had an export crisis, which we inherited, as I spoke to earlier. But we have got through. We have got through. We have built a platform where New Zealand can begin to fly. The platform for growth for a better New Zealand, even better than we have now, is ready and waiting. We cannot put it all at risk. We cannot put it all at risk. Just as the global financial crisis is starting to really step away, just as Europe, the United States, Japan, and Asia are starting to come right out of the global financial crisis, we cannot put it all at risk with silly things such as invisible spending, invisible money, making our country more vulnerable to global waxing and waning around the world.

Just as confidence in New Zealand reaches a higher level than it has been for many, many, many years—which means hiring one more person, which means investing in our country—we cannot put it all at risk. The policies articulated and the track record of a Labour-Greens - far-left Government would be tragic for New Zealand. It would put at risk every single hard call over the last 5 years, just as things are coming right not only for New Zealand but for the world. We cannot put it all at risk.

We are just about to reach surplus in 2014-15. We cannot put it all at risk with printing machines, invisible money, and uncosted spending promises to try to grab electorate gain. We cannot put our awesome decline in crime statistics at risk. A Labour-Green coalition, if it were ever to get into Government, would continue the old policies, forgetting about victims and doing the catch-and-release policies we inherited from them in 2008. We cannot put our health gains at risk. Just as we are now gaining 40,000 extra elective operations every year, a Labour-Greens Government would put it all at risk. It would put it all at risk because every time it is pushed, it would go back to the situation where people were lying in corridors, bleeding into buckets.

We cannot put at risk 3.5 percent growth in New Zealand—3.5 percent growth, some of the best growth in the developed world—with Labour and Greens policies. We cannot do that. We cannot put at risk the progress we have made in Treaty settlements. We cannot put at risk the gains in after-tax wages. And, of course, finally, we cannot put the gains of internet and information and communications technology at risk in New Zealand by crazy, silly policies such as trying to ban Facebook, ban Google, or whatever Labour is trying to do over there—just ban it and that will fix it.

This is a serious, serious game. New Zealand has turned the corner. We are about to take off. The platform for growth and a much brighter future has been built. We must be able to continue the work. We cannot put it all at risk with a far-left - Labour-Greens Government.

Well, that was the arrogance of the National Party personified, was it not? There was Craig Foss of the National Party telling New Zealanders that their problems do not exist. “Invisible problems”, he said—“invisible problems”. When one in four children lives in poverty, Mr Foss said that that does not exist in his or the National Party’s world because it is invisible to them. It is an invisible problem. Then he went on to talk about invisible money. Well, is it not interesting that when the Labour Party has an idea that really resonates with the community, one that it really needs, then that is funded with invisible money, but when the National Party finds $360 million to give some bonuses to a few principals, somehow that is not invisible. Well, I say to Mr Foss and his colleagues in the National Party: “Open up your eyes and stop being in denial about some of the very real issues and challenges that exist in this country.”

I think the National Party is just demonstrating how arrogant and out of touch it has got, talking about problems that New Zealanders have, that we have as a society, and pretending that they do not exist—invisible problems. One in four children is living in poverty in this country and National members laugh about it. They think it is pretty funny but actually these are the issues that schoolteachers are dealing with day in and day out. If they think that the expert principal with $50,000 more in his pocket is going to be the answer to the problem of children who are constantly on the move from school to school to school because their family is staying one step ahead of the bailiff—if they think the expert principal is going to change the course of that child’s life—then they need to start remembering that these are not invisible problems; these are very real problems.

But it is a Government that is clearly out of ideas, because what has its members been talking about since the beginning of the parliamentary term? They have been talking about extending paid parental leave, because they have so run out of ideas about what to do next that they have come looking to the Labour Party for their inspiration. It is absolutely clear that it is Labour that has been setting the agenda from the beginning of the year, because what has the conversation been about? It has been about children and it has been about prioritising children and it has been about extending paid parental leave. That Government is out of ideas because it is out of touch with ordinary New Zealanders.

In the Labour Party we do not have to do the focus groups and the constant polling research that the National Party does to find out that paid parental leave and extending it is a very important thing for most New Zealanders. We are in touch with most New Zealanders and we knew that that was actually something that would make a real difference—a real difference to families. We do not have to do the constant polling that suddenly has given National a bit of a fright after years now of voting against any form of paid parental leave. National members voted against it in 2002, they voted against it when Labour extended it three more times during the course of our term, and they voted against it when my bill, the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill, was drawn out in 2012.

These are really interesting issues because suddenly they have had an epiphany. Not only have those in National voted against it every time that it has been in this House but also we had a Minister of Women’s Affairs on her feet before who is the first Minister of Women’s Affairs in New Zealand ever to vote against paid parental leave. She was standing up here trying to lecture this side of the House on what she thinks is right for New Zealand, but they have voted against extending paid parental leave or even introducing it in the first place. It is in their genes to be opposed to it. It is absolutely in their DNA.

Not only that, when they realised that they had lost the majority support in Parliament and the majority support of New Zealanders over their stance on this issue, they threatened a financial veto to stop New Zealanders from being supported in this way. Well, I welcome their backflip on this. I actually think that despite the fact that it is not because they firmly believe in this policy—it is a bit of electioneering that is going on; but come and talk, the door is always open—the National Party is not going to get away with saying: “Oh yes, we’ll do this sometime after the election.” New Zealanders are not going to buy that. They know the National Party’s record on this. They know the track record of the National Party.

The National Government needs to put its money where its mouth is. There is a bill before this Parliament right now that they should be supporting. If they absolutely believe in prioritising families and children, then they will do the right thing and support my bill, which is due back in this House very soon for its second reading to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks If they really believe that then they will come and start discussions through the Government Administration Committee to support this very good Labour bill. And, yes, it does happen to be in my name, but it is the Labour Party that in the last election pledged to have 26 weeks’ paid parental leave and now we have confirmed it. We have confirmed it and we have wrapped around it a much more comprehensive policy.

I almost want to apologise for the National Government if it cannot understand comprehensive policies, because I think that is the problem here. If it cannot understand the very comprehensive problems that exist in New Zealand and the comprehensive policies that are needed to fix them, then I think that tells us we have got a Government that is way past its use-by date—way past its use-by date.

My bill is simple but it is effective and it is actually putting money where it needs to be, and that is with children and with families, not into your casinos, not into your Rio Tintos, and not into the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on your consultants to flog off the country’s State assets. That is where that Government has put its money. That is where it has put your invisible money, Craig Foss. If you are looking for it, it is actually in the pockets of the consultants whom you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on, flogging off the State assets.

Well, we do not want to spend money on that. Our priority in the Labour Party is different. Our priority is with children, and we have said: “Here is a Best Start package.” It is not just a one-off thing; it is actually a Best Start package. Children are going to benefit because their families will have $60 more a week in their pocket. That is $60 more a week in their pocket to actually help with all of those things in the first year of life, when that money is so desperately needed—$60 a week more.

Mr Foss seemed confused. He wanted people who were on paid parental leave to be able to double-dip and get it as well. Well, Mr Foss, here is news for you and your National Government cronies. The Labour Party is not going to support double-dipping. It will not support what you are wanting. Instead, for the people who are actually entitled to, and eligible for, paid parental leave, we are going to extend that by another 12 weeks for them. So do the maths—$488 a week times 12 weeks extra is kind of a little bit more than $60 a week for the 12 weeks that they are not going to be allowed to double-dip under Labour’s policy.

National members might be crying out for double-dipping. That might be in their DNA, but it is certainly not in our DNA. But we will make sure that all of those children are well supported in the first year of life, and that is what is important. They are going to benefit, because either their parents will be entitled to $60 a week that they have not got now to help them out with buying nappies, food, and all of those things that come with having a new baby; or their parents will be entitled to extended paid parental leave under Labour. It is as simple as that. It is not that complex, but it is important to get every one of those families having better support under a Labour Government. It is really clear that it will only be under a Labour-led Government.

This year, fortunately, New Zealanders get a chance to actually say what they want to see as priorities in this country. You know, I reckon they are going to pick children over casinos.

I am very proud to be part of a Government that focuses on the things that matter to New Zealanders, and I think it is somewhat ironic to have Mrs Moroney claim that she is, when she is in the party that wants to ban Facebook. I do not know whether anyone saw the train wreck of an interview on television last night with the once up-and-coming member for Dunedin North, Dave Clark, where he was just wound in and ended up committing Labour—and, actually, it was Labour’s policy. He said he had been talking about it for some months—allowing Labour to ban Facebook. Honestly, is that what Labour is about? It is on every media site, every TV channel, banning Facebook. That is not concentrating on the things that matter—that is not concentrating on the things that matter. It is actually just being stark bonkers to make those sorts of things.

So, anyway, what we are doing on this side of the House is really focusing on the issues that matter for growing a fast-growing economy for the betterment of New Zealand families. That stands in really stark contrast to what we have seen from the party opposite, which is really just back to where it always used to be, which is tax and spend, wasteful spending, bureaucracy, and spending money that it does not have. That is what it has always done and it is what it is always going to do. But on this side of the House, because of our very prudent and careful financial management of the New Zealand economy, we are on track to get the country back into the black. We are on track to be able to keep New Zealand moving forward. Although countries all around the world are struggling with debt and deficit—the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, and even Germany; public debt is at levels like 100 percent of GDP in some of these countries—we are peaking at around 27 percent. So we have got this plan. We have been sticking to it. It is about controlling spending and it is about taking the sharp edges off the recession to benefit the most vulnerable families in New Zealand and protect our social services, and that is what we have done. It is a programme that really works for New Zealand.

We are focused on our key priorities. I think that the Prime Minister’s statement, which we are debating this afternoon, continued to build the country’s prosperity on those four platforms. The first is about managing New Zealand’s finances responsibly, just like people would expect us to do. Secondly, we are building a more competitive and productive economy, because in the end creating jobs, incentives, and reward for effort is what makes a strong, growing economy. Thirdly, we have been delivering better social services, Better Public Services for New Zealanders within very tight budgets, because that is what the public expects of a National Government—careful spending and a focus on results and services for New Zealanders. And, fourthly, surely one of the greatest responsibilities of our Government is leading the rebuild of one of our great cities, Christchurch. On the very first day of the earthquakes, that is the commitment that our Prime Minister gave—that we would stand with that city. And we are, and we are investing strongly in the support that we are offering and working with them on.

So, look, our economy is growing. More jobs are being created. Family incomes are rising. Crime is down. We know that more elective surgery is being provided for New Zealanders and more preventive health care is out there. Long-term welfare dependency is falling, and we are continuing to help New Zealand families with a very generous income support system. So our Government is focused on the business that New Zealanders have sent us here to do, and that is to get New Zealand through the recession, get our country going forward, get our country in the black, and make sure that we have a strong, growing economy for New Zealanders. But month after month we see the Opposition parties attacking what our Government is doing, and policies that Labour and the Greens in Opposition continue to push on New Zealanders—stuff that will not make jobs and stuff that will not benefit families in getting ahead, like a capital gains tax, which will punish people who work hard to grow their businesses. You are out there and you have got a small takeaway, you have got a small bookshop, you have got a small dairy, or you have got a small kiwifruit orchard. You work hard, you increase its value, and you grow the wealth—bang! They will take a big dollop of that when you come to sell your business.

Opposition members want a big gap between the company tax rate and the personal tax rate. They want a more punitive emissions trading scheme. So they stand up every day and worry the country about electricity price rises, which are half what they were under Labour, but they will not say what they will do and what impact their punitive emissions trading scheme will have on prices. It will push up their power prices way beyond what they ever saw before. They want to nationalise the power industry. Look, no country in the world that has moved to anything that Labour and the Greens are proposing has reduced power prices. So they say: “Oh, this is the sort of system that they run in Ontario.” If only they knew the power price rises that the people of Ontario are facing. They are significant.

They have got this half-baked plan to become the country’s biggest property developer. They are against the International Convention Centre and all of the jobs that they are going to have there. And now they are going to become the insurer of choice for New Zealanders—the 97th insurer in New Zealand. So, really, Labour and the Greens are not focused on what really matters. Their record is rejecting everything that this Government has done to speed up and support the economy. They are against every Resource Management Act change that makes it easier for jobs to be created. They are against everything that means that more houses will be built. They are against everything that means more jobs—unless, of course, they are Government jobs. They are all in favour of Government jobs but not private sector jobs. They are against the International Convention Centre. They hate the investment in The Hobbit and they hate what we have done with Avatar as well. So they are against all of that.

They are against other international investment from overseas. They are against what we are trying to do with aquaculture in the Marlborough Sounds. They are against what Bathurst Resources is trying to do to create jobs on the West Coast. They are against the increase in jobs, wealth, and opportunities that irrigation and smart water use can provide for New Zealand. So time and time again we see that when push comes to shove the Opposition parties cannot support anything that will actually create jobs and opportunities for New Zealanders. But we see it as the major job of our Government to continue supporting the wealth creators, the families, the small businesses, and the individuals who are trying to keep New Zealand moving ahead. That is the reason why, for example, we continue the reduction in ACC levies. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being returned to New Zealand businesses.

We continue with the Business Growth Agenda and all of the initiatives there, research and development, and the ultra-fast broadband investment. These are all of the things that build the nation and build an economy and that is what we are doing, because that is how we pay for important health, education, and social services in New Zealand. It is not by doing some tricky things, like saying: “Ah, in the last election we were promising $1.5 billion worth of stuff that we could not afford, but now we are pulling back on that and we are just going to spend another $500 million.” That is not actually responsible finances. We need to have a strong, growing economy. That is what creates jobs, but it is also what funds the better public services that New Zealanders want. It is what is going to fund what is already budgeted, like these excellent education announcements that have been made by John Key and Hekia Parata—excellent. For years we talked about incentivising and rewarding the best teachers and the best principals, but the people who have opposed it the most are the teacher unions and their handmaidens in the Opposition. They have always opposed anything that would reward and incentivise the best teachers in New Zealand. And it is coming, as Simon Bridges says, because this Government is delivering it.

This Government is also delivering better health services for New Zealand. There are 1,300 extra doctors in our public hospitals, 3,000 extra nurses, and 1,000 fewer managers and administrators. We have put the resources on the front line and, by golly, they are delivering. There were 40,000 extra elective surgeries this last 12 months compared with when we came to office. It is a really significant investment in elective surgery. More of our kids are being immunised than ever before. More of our New Zealanders are being discouraged from smoking. That is a fantastic investment and a huge turning point that our Government has created in the fight against tobacco. This is a Government that is focused on what matters, which is a strong, growing economy, and we are making a difference to New Zealand families.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Where was the inspiration and the hope for our kids in the Prime Minister’s speech? Where was the compassion and the humanity for our kids in the Prime Minister’s speech? It said nothing about making life better for our children; nothing about them deserving a good life or having a fair future. Children just existed in that speech as outcomes and outputs and, even more horrifyingly, as targets. Children just do not exist for John Key and for the National Party. And if we would like another example of that, after that miserable speech from John Key, I think we can see it in the answers that he gave to questions in the House today.

I note that John Key talked about how he was a child who grew up in poverty and how he was able to escape that poverty because of the support that he got from the State and the great, free public education that he received. When I asked him whether he will guarantee that all of today’s children will have access to exactly those same services, to secure State housing, to a universal benefit—remember the family benefit—and to a free public education, he said no. He said no and he sat down, because he will deliberately deny today’s children the same opportunities that he had as a child to escape poverty and to do well.

That is John Key, the Prime Minister. That is the National Party. That is the stark choice that New Zealanders have at this coming election: between John Key and the National Party, who say no to children, and the Green Party, which will put children at the heart of all of our policies and our political decisions. That is how we began this year, with the launch of our school hubs plan to put children right at the heart of the education system and to put children right at the heart of the Green policy—to deliver directly to families and children on the needs and issues that they have. While National will focus on rewarding a few individuals or, as in the tax cuts—they cost $1 billion dollars—rewarding the very wealthy, the Green Party will invest in families and children and focus on the needs of many. This is the stark choice.

I want to briefly describe the school hubs plan for members and those listening. We have proposed a number of services for all decile 1 to 4 schools that those schools will be eligible for and entitled to as a matter of right. The first is a school hubs coordinator. This is a person employed in that school—paid for not by the operations grant but by new funding—to take the burden of organising and facilitating social services away from the principals and the teachers who currently have it. Instead, the school hubs coordinator will engage with their school community on what the issues are that the school community faces and what the solutions are that that school community wants to put in place. That full-time person will have the job of going out and finding the services that meet the solutions that the community itself has decided are right for them.

There are lots of examples of this. There are many schools in the country that are providing free food in some way—they have got community gardens or they have got relationships with organisations that surround them—but it is the teachers who are having to do this work; it is the principals who are having to do this work. They cannot do that and concentrate on their core expertise, which is teaching our kids, educating our kids. So if we provide this resource—it is a full-time person—to these schools, that person can take on that responsibility.

What are the other services that that person can then bring into the school? Well, one very important one is free after-school care and holiday programmes for kids. The expert advisory committee set up by the Children’s Commissioner was very clear that there are serious issues for poorer children who cannot access after-school activities, who cannot access holiday care. For after-school activities, it is very important because these are the activities that can often best explore their talents—musical talents, sporting talents, creative talents. If poorer children cannot access those kinds of programmes because they cannot afford it, those talents are wasted.

We have seen just this very week what happens when a child has access to what they need to explore their talents—what success is possible. That success is an entitlement of every child in this country. Just by doing something as simple as opening up and making freely available after-school care activities to all children in low-decile schools, we can have many more of those kinds of success stories.

Free holiday care for a maximum of 3 weeks is another proposal. It is particularly important from an educational point of view because it means that kids maintain their standard of education—their standard of reading, their standard of maths, their standard of engagement in the institutions—over the holiday period. The expert advisory group was very clear in saying that there is a slippage that happens over the school holidays, particularly for poorer kids. One of the best ways to prevent that slippage is to provide free holiday programmes for children in decile 1 to 4 schools. The Green Party has heard that. We have heard the evidence. We agree and we will provide it, should we be in Government.

We have also talked about dedicated school nurses in decile 1 to 4 schools. There is no dedicated school nurse programme operating in this country. We surveyed low-decile schools in New Zealand and we found that most low-decile schools get, at best, a little under 2 hours of nursing time each week. That is the average—2 hours of nursing time each week. Most of those schools complained that the nursing support that they got would often be called away. National has a national programme for rheumatic fever, which is a good idea, but it takes away the school nurses. So schools can lose access to their nurse for a month, for 2 months. Some said they had not seen a nurse for 6 months. We need dedicated school nurses in the schools so that families and children know they can access the health care that they need, so that we know that those children can get to a doctor because there are good quality referrals, and so that a nurse can build trust with that family and deal with those continual complaints that every parent knows about, whether it is nits, scabies, school sores, skin infections, bronchitis, or asthma—all of those things that parents have to deal with daily. If they can find their health service and support—their nursing support—at the school, where the kids go every day, we know that their kids’ health will improve. And if their kids’ health improves, their learning improves. That is why we will put dedicated school nurses in the schools.

Finally, as part of the core service under our school hub there is the school lunch fund. This is a national fund. It will average at about $3 a child per school, per week, and is based on the average number of children who we understand go to school without sufficient food. That is around 9 percent of the school population. This fund will be available to the schools. They will automatically be entitled. They can use that fund to provide lunch to their students in any way that they see is best for them. This is the job of the school hub coordinator: what is the best way to provide lunch for their schools? There are some great examples where schools have a community garden, and what they need is a little bit of money to support some volunteers, or maybe employ somebody part-time, to come in and gather that food, to help with the kids, to cook the food with the kids, and for the kids then to share the food amongst their school community. It builds a sense of sharing, a sense of community within the school. It reduces inequality because all children can access the food if there is enough to go around. And it means that our kids have a decent meal in the middle of the day, so that they can learn for the rest of the afternoon. It improves their education.

The Green Party will put children at the heart of everything we do. We have shown that with our policies to date. We will continue to do so. This is why I believe that the country will choose the Greens to be part of a great progressive Government in 2014. Thank you.

It is a tremendous privilege to be speaking in election year in this debate on the Prime Minister’s statement. It is interesting, of course, to follow Metiria Turei, who has outlined her schools policy for the Green Party. But I have got news for Metiria Turei: we are already doing most of it. We are actually already doing it. The only difference I could detect between what we are doing on the ground today in New Zealand’s low-decile schools and what she proposes is that she says “Well, we’ll throw more money at it, and we’ll do that without targeting it in any sort of way.” And somehow that ill-disciplined kind of approach means they care more in the Green Party—they care more. Well, no, they do not. This side of the House cares passionately about children and our future in this country, and we have seen that with recent announcements made by the Prime Minister this year.

What a great start to the year for the Prime Minister and the New Zealand National Party. It has been our privilege to be the Government of this country. We are offering this country—and we have seen this outlined in the speech from the Prime Minister—stable, good Government. We have done that through very difficult and actually somewhat tumultuous times in New Zealand and around the world. With disasters, we know about the earthquakes and, of course, the worst global financial crisis in some 70 or 80 years, but we are coming through that in very strong shape. No one would say we are entirely out of the woods or that things could not go back with the wrong governmental policies—with the sort of ill-disciplined approach that we have heard about from Metiria Turei—but we are on the right track in this country.

The Prime Minister has talked about our several options for coalition or certain agreements after the election, on the basis that what New Zealanders actually want this year, given the maturation of our system of MMP, is some straight, matter-of-fact transparency about whom we can work with, whom we prefer to work with, and whom we cannot work with because their policies are on the far left and are incommensurate with the kind of New Zealand we are creating day by day, month by month in Government.

Giving the lie, really, to Metiria Turei’s speech was the Prime Minister’s announcement last week on education, on training and retaining our teachers with $359 million more—dollars well spent. We are rewarding the best and doing a great job there, and, by so doing, we are ensuring a higher attainment of our children so that they have a brighter future in this country. Of course, we have heard from members of Opposition parties that they actually did not have any criticism of substance about the policy. Frankly, as far as I can see, they think it is good policy, but they could not bring themselves to say that as yet.

But they do say poverty is increasing. Well, it does not matter how often they say that, it is not increasing. Inequality in this country is not increasing. That is what independent people and the Ministry of Social Development have made clear. It may arguably be diminishing. Indeed, the speech by the Prime Minister and the policies of this Government ensure that New Zealanders in those low-decile schools that Metiria Turei talked of actually have equality of opportunity in this country. It does not matter whether they come from parts of West Auckland, like I do, or parts of South Auckland, like Jami-Lee Ross does; they do not have to suffer from the soft bigotry of expectations that some on the other side have. Frankly, they can have the best teachers—who are rewarded for their efforts and who will have the training that they need—they can get ahead, and they can learn as well as at any other school, private or otherwise. Those are the sorts of policies that we stand for and that we believe New Zealanders stand for.

Of course, we have a very busy agenda in election year, focusing, as the Prime Minister has outlined in his speech, on the things that matter. Those things really are, when you boil it down, fourfold. The first is an economy where our disciplined policies over time are ensuring all the economic indicators that should be going up are going the right way up, and those that we want to go down—like unemployment, although it is still too high—are going down. We have excellent policies in education. We are spending more than ever before, but spending it right. With national standards, we understand where children are at, and we now have policies aimed at probably the most important thing in schools: the quality of teaching that is provided.

We have a health care system that focuses on results. There are some 30,000 more elective surgeries, I think it is, in hospitals around this country each year because of this Government and the magnificent job that Tony Ryall is doing. I see it in my electorate. When I first came into office in 2008 as a slightly slimmer, no-grey-hairs backbench member of Parliament, I would see people every week who had issues with elective surgeries and delays. I just do not see them in anything like the volume that I used to. We are getting results from the focus that Tony Ryall is providing there.

In law and order, there is the lowest crime rate we have seen in some 33 years. I think one policy really is a metaphor for what we are doing: the introduction of smartphones and the thousands of hours that is saving bobbies on the beat.

💬 Phil Twyford: A metaphor? Blimey, that’s a bit highbrow for you, isn’t it, using metaphors?

Every so often I can pull that out—every so often. I grew up in Te Atatū; it is a great part of the world, actually. The tablets and the iPhones are saving police officers thousands of hours, and I think, from memory, the equivalent of some 345 additional police officers a year are on the street rather than back doing paperwork.

The Prime Minister spoke about oil and gas and the terrific opportunities we have there. I think he talked about some three-quarters of a billion dollars being spent on exploration. Actually, on some measures out there from commentators, it is more like $2.5 billion. But contrary, actually, to what the Green Party says, we are not all about non-renewables. I am just as excited about our renewables opportunities. We are focusing on all of these things and exploring all of our opportunities. It is not an either/or, like the Green Party thinks. We can explore all of those things.

We are, I think, third in the world at the moment for renewables in our electricity system. Look at Germany—23 percent renewables, despite spending trillions of dollars, I think it is, and, actually, last year, through very perverse policy outcomes, more coal was being used than before. We have a great system. It is renewables focused. We have a target of 90 percent. I believe, actually, that we can reach that. We are investing in bioenergy in many things. We have a balanced, mixed approach. The Greens could not be more wrong.

Of course, we have seen from the Labour Party that it now supports oil and gas while saying that it has to be at world’s best practice. Well, let me tell the Labour Party that we have done that. We have gone from the Wild West, actually, that the Labour Party had when it was drilling through its time in office under Prime Minister Helen Clark to a much more regulated regime. It is a great thing to see. I am excited about 2014. Bring on the election.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First in reply to the Prime Minister’s statement to this House. The Prime Minister has not been frank with the New Zealand public. He has not told New Zealanders the truth: what is actually happening to this economy. Let us put aside all the spin and let us look at the reality. Right now the sun is shining on the New Zealand economy but these are good times for the dairy and agricultural industry. However, this has nothing to do with John Key’s Government. It is just the beneficiary of record prices for dairy products. It was not of its doing. Yet despite this massive advantage, what is the reality?

The reality is that we have 150,000 unemployed in this country. On top of those 150,000 unemployed, we have a further 60,000 underemployed women and we have a further 30,000 underemployed men. That is another 90,000 people in New Zealand who currently are not getting sufficient work to justify their daily existence. Under our unemployment statistics, if you work for more than 1 hour, you are deemed to have employment. Many people are struggling because they cannot get full employment, and therefore, as a result, their children and their families suffer. Particularly in this category women are suffering, Māori are suffering, and Pasifika people are suffering.

We heard during the manufacturing inquiry, for instance, that at Summit Wool Spinners in the South Island, many of the women who were working in that factory were laid off but many of their husbands had work in the district. As a result, those women could not find alternative work and they were not deemed to be unemployed. They simply had to go home with their family incomes virtually halved. As a result, many of those people from Summit Wool Spinners now are in hard times and looking for alternative work. They do not appear on the statistics.

One million New Zealanders live overseas. Further to the Government’s statistics, there are many, many of those—particularly young graduates. I know so many young graduates from the Auckland universities and from the North Shore universities who simply have not been able to get work in this country and have had to go abroad to find work because it is not here. So the spin that this Government puts on that everything is rosy—it is not. Ask young New Zealanders, particularly those under the age of about 28 or 30, who are really struggling to find jobs. There are graduates who have spent 3, 4, or 5 years earning a degree and are now struggling to get good gainful employment to cover the ever-spiralling cost of housing, particularly in the likes of Auckland, Christchurch, and Wellington.

Ordinary Kiwis are still dealing daily with the pain of zero or minimal wage increases. The chief executives and top people are getting significant gains, but good, ordinary New Zealanders are not necessarily seeing that. So many of them are on minimum wage or very low wages, and they are not going up by any great steps at all. Meanwhile, New Zealand has ended up with $150 billion in total overseas debt. Some $60 billion of that is Government debt. When the National Government took over in 2008, Government debt was at $6 billion. It is now at over $60 billion. That is not a record of success. That is adding to this country’s debt, and now New Zealand has one of the highest debt-per-capita ratios in the world.

Auckland, at the same time, is in the grip of a speculative housing bubble because this National Government will not address the situation that foreigners are coming in and buying houses, buying property, and buying land, and are speculating on that growth in the Auckland demand for housing. As a result, good, average Kiwis are finding it increasingly difficult to find housing that they can afford in the Auckland area. And it is happening. It is happening all over Auckland. Any member should ask young Aucklanders—and I have got three in their 20s—how they are going to get into housing in the Auckland market. They will get into housing only because their parents assist them or their families assist them. How can they put a deposit of 20 percent down on a $700,000 property? It is impossible. It is impossible for young graduates coming out of university, and you know it, Dr Coleman. New Zealand First will fix this because when we are in Government, we will ensure that speculative purchasing of houses and property in New Zealand by foreigners is stopped. It will be stopped under New Zealand First.

On top of this, we are seeing speculative trading of New Zealand’s currency. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act is some 26 years old, and this Government will not review it. This Government will not review an Act that was brought in before computers were even here, before cellphones were here, and before fax machines were here. It will not review an Act that at the present time constrains the Governor of the Reserve Bank to working within tight inflation rate criteria, ignoring all the other factors that are driving the value of the Kiwi dollar up. We are now at nearly 95c to the Australian dollar, one of our second major export markets, and New Zealand exporters to Australia are really, really finding it tough because this Government will not step in and review the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act. Well, New Zealand First will. The Rt Hon Winston Peters has had a member’s bill twice in this House in the last year, which the Government has knocked back, but we will review the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act and we will give the Reserve Bank more means to address the situation and run the economy in a better way that does not drive the New Zealand dollar even higher.

The Prime Minister also did not mention the State asset sales programme—the programme that instead of getting some $7 billion or thereabouts, which the Government sold to the public when it first put forward that programme, ended up at much less than $5 billion. On an annual basis now New Zealanders are losing close to $1 billion in dividends each year. This year, next year, and every year thereafter, there will be a loss of nearly $1 billion in dividends from those State assets as a result of the National Government selling our beautiful dams on the Waikato River, selling our beautiful dams in the South Island, selling our geothermal power stations, and selling our iconic airline, Air New Zealand, down the river. Well, New Zealand First will also address that. We will buy back those power stations and those power companies and we will merge them into one State entity for the generating of power in this country. We will ensure that power is put under one State-owned enterprise. We will get on top of that situation.

We are also seeing, through this, power prices escalating. Residential consumers are now paying in excess of 27c a unit, while commercial users are paying 15c a unit, and industrial users are paying only 10c per unit. Meanwhile, the Government gives $30 million to Rio Tinto, and it will be paying less than 10c per unit. Again, New Zealand First will sort that out by bringing those entities together so it will bring down the wholesale price of electricity. We will ensure that the likes of grandma in her cold house, in the middle of winter, will receive discounts from those State-owned enterprises and ensure that there is cheaper power for our seniors in the winter months.

New Zealand First will give support to the export sector, which this Government is not doing. We will ensure there is far greater diversity, in terms of going away from agricultural products and into a far stronger base for manufacturing. We will also support—and give meaningful support to—our veterans. We will give meaningful support, as we have always done, to those who have served this country. We will also give meaningful support to the health system and social services. For instance, New Zealand First brought in medical checks for children under 6, and again we will ensure that those sorts of areas are extended and added to. We will also bring in a community wage. New Zealanders who are underemployed or unemployed will work for their local communities, will work for their local councils. They will be encouraged to work in areas in their communities, to receive money back from the Government, and, in turn, will be providing assistance to their communities but being paid to do so. New Zealand First will be doing a lot more as well. Thank you.

There are some interesting characters in this Parliament, and you have just heard from one of them. That was the New Zealand First MP from the North Shore, Andrew Williams. I tell you, it will be really interesting to see him front up to Korean Day in a couple of weeks’ time and tell the Korean voters of the North Shore that he does not want them to be able to buy a house on the North Shore. I do not think he will be invited to Chinese New Year at Northcote this weekend because they will not want to hear that sort of xenophobic rant, either. There was so much wrong with that speech that it is hard to know where to start. But one thing I did pick up is that New Zealand First has today announced a community wage. Of course, it is completely uncosted, but you could heap that on to the other heap of $750 million of uncosted promises that Labour, the Greens, and New Zealand First have announced, and we are not even at Waitangi Day.

Of course, there are some other pretty interesting members in this Parliament, as well. I was sitting in my electorate office the other day, doing my electorate work, when this red van went by with “MP for Te Atatū” on the front of it. I thought: “This is a long way from Phil Twyford’s stamping ground.” But what I found out is that Mr Twyford has been doing a kayak tour of the Waitematā Harbour to test water quality, when, really, all he needed to do was log on to the council website. But I guess when you are in Opposition there are very few ways to productively use your time, so you may as well just go kayaking and pretend it is work.

But neither of those two are quite as interesting as that shaven-headed whack job who was on the TV last night. He is a member who, frankly, I once thought had a great future, but for him the future ain’t what it used to be. It was the member for Dunedin North, David Clark, who was there. He looked like he had just drunk Jim Jones’ Kool-Aid, and was pronouncing that Labour would ban Facebook. It would ban Facebook. So if you do not comply with what Labour wants and if you are not falling into line, it will ban you. Labour will ban Facebook. It will probably ban the North Shore because the North Shore is not going to fall into line with what Labour wants. Labour will probably ban 50 percent of the National electorate because National certainly does not agree with the Labour Party, either.

But none of those three members are quite as interesting as the leader of the Labour Party, who yesterday announced the “Worst Start” policy—that is, the worst start for Labour’s year in Parliament. It was a couple of days ago—his state of the nation speech. David Cunliffe has actually misled the public of New Zealand, because he said that anyone having a baby and earning a household income of less than $150,000 a year would get $60 a week in the hand. I guess a lot of people thought, well, that was pretty good. But, unfortunately, the fine print was not included with that policy. As Patrick Gower has written today, his opinion is that Labour has been “dishonest”. That is Patrick Gower’s word, not mine. His opinion is that Labour has misled the electorate, because, when you look at it, if you are getting paid parental leave for 26 weeks, you do not get the $60 until after that is over. That was yesterday’s revelation. Today we also find out that on top of that, if you are getting the in-work tax credit for Working for Families, you do not get it.

So David Cunliffe went out there yesterday, and he was here, doing his opening address for the year, being all sort of faux blokey, leaning on the desk like this—like he is leaning on the public bar leaner. I do not think they have public bars in his part of the woods—that is, Herne Bay, which is not actually his electorate. But he has been misleading the public of New Zealand. So the more David Cunliffe talks, the more the public is going to find out what is going on.

You see, the real problem for David Cunliffe is that, fundamentally, I do not think he believes in a lot of the policies that he is being forced to announce. He came in with this big, left-wing backing from the unions. He knows that $60 a week—do you know what? When my child was born when I was a backbencher, I would have qualified for that $60 a week payment. That is ridiculous. That is not targeted, good public spending. That is crazy stuff. The electorate is not going to be impressed with that.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, we have got the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday. It was a very coherent, concise, and well-reasoned explanation of the Government’s programme, and that is the truth of it. We have focused on the things that matter to New Zealanders. We have had our four priorities—growing the economy, sound fiscal management, better public services, and rebuilding Christchurch. We have focused on those relentlessly. In the end, I can tell you—take a tip—the public will vote on those things that really matter to them. It is the economy, it is being able to get to the hospital when you need to, it is being able to feel safe in your own home, and it is being able to ensure that your child is going to a school where you feel confident in the educational management. That is what we are focusing on, and that is where Labour has lost the plot. I tell you what. Those members know it, because, actually, they are not united on the approach they should take. They have gone further and further to the left, over time. Actually, if you are going to grab those middle New Zealand votes, that is not going to work. I can tell you that.

So it is going to be very interesting to see what happens this year, because there are two clear sides to the argument. There is a Government that has stuck to its priorities and that has presided over 3.5 percent economic growth over the last year, that has a firm plan for the way ahead, and that actually does what it says it is going to do. Then, on the other hand, you have a Labour Party that will be in cahoots—in coalition—with the Greens, who are going to be there, if they ever get on the Treasury benches, spending and spending and spending more money that they do not have. It is going to be bad.

I will give you a couple of examples. David Cunliffe has already said: “Well, we’re going to scrap the GST off fruit and vegetables plan, and we are going to scrap getting rid of that tax-free first $5,000.” He reckons that is going to free up $1.5 billion, to spend. Well, that is about as silly as someone walking down the street here in Wellington, seeing a nice suit or a nice dress, or whatever, in the window of a shop and saying: “I’m not going to buy that, and by doing that I’ve actually saved the amount of money that I would have spent otherwise.” So it is false money because, actually, there is no GST revenue to spend. There is no tax-free threshold to remove. So these guys are playing with phoney money, and they do not understand that.

What they also do not understand is that, actually, when you make spending promises, the money comes from somewhere. I can tell you where it comes from. It comes from taxpayers’ pockets. What these people do not understand—because this is the best job they will ever have, being backbench MPs in this Parliament—is that the wealth in New Zealand is created by entrepreneurial people who go out there, who take a risk, who create jobs, and who actually stimulate the economy.

What the Greens want to do is saddle the average New Zealand household with a $500 increase in the energy bill that that household will have every year, OK? These guys over here in the Labour Party want to put up the top personal tax rate. I tell you what. This “Bad Start” programme will be paid for by increasing taxes. In the meantime they are going to be increasing the gap between the company tax rate and the top personal rate, and what that will do is it will encourage tax avoidance.

So I can tell you that on the one hand you have a very coherent set of policies, you have got a very solid record, and you have got a brilliant Prime Minister in John Key, who understands the electorate and who understands what is needed to get the economy going forward. If you do not believe me, look at Moody’s rating yesterday on the New Zealand economy. We are in the top 10 developed economies in the world and we are progressing on the right track. The alternative is an incoherent, tax and spend, profligate group of people with vastly different approaches to life. There is Hone Harawira, the right wing of the Labour Party, the left-wing core of the Labour Party, and, frankly, the crazy Green Party. Who do you think the public are going to choose? The future for New Zealand is with the solid, dependable path to growth that the National Government under Prime Minister John Key represents, and I totally affirm his statement.

It is my pleasure to take a call in this debate on the state of the nation. I guess we have already seen the territory be defined by some of the realities of our country. We have growing inequalities in New Zealand. We have children living in poverty, and as a consequence of that reality we have seen the Prime Minister announce a policy that is really trying to say that the Government cares about children. The reality is, however, that under this National Government more families and more children are in poverty because the priority of the Government has been about giving tax cuts to the rich and it has been about ensuring that its mates are better off. So I think that the big challenge for New Zealanders is to see past the policies that have been announced and really look at an alternative, which is what we in the Labour Party want to present. We make no apologies for prioritising children. We make no apologies for ensuring that those most in need receive the services that they need to run their families in a way that means that, ultimately, our children will have the best start in life.

I want to highlight particularly our Best Start policy and our focus on mothers and children. One of the policies that I particularly want to talk to is our antenatal initiative, which will see us provide free antenatal classes for every expectant mum and also ensure that 80 percent of pregnant mums are booked in for antenatal checks by 10 weeks. Why is that relevant? Well, it is incredibly relevant in South Auckland, where we have approximately 13.5 percent of births of children in this country. That is, over 9,000 of the babies who are born in this country every year are born in South Auckland. I want to congratulate Ron Paterson and the Counties Manukau District Health Board on their report and inquiry into maternity services, because the reality in South Auckland is that only 16 percent of expectant mothers actually have that 10-week antenatal check.

People make assumptions and judgments on the face of it about why mothers do not go to see a lead maternity carer—so either a midwife or a general practitioner. What we found out through the inquiry before the Health Committee, which was focused on improving health outcomes and preventing child abuse, with a focus on pre-conception until 3 years of age, was that, in fact, in South Auckland we have only 5.5 percent of the midwives in New Zealand. What does that mean in reality? It means that we are 200 midwives short. So when I look at initiatives like setting a key performance indicator for the health system to ensure that 80 percent of pregnant mums have an antenatal check, the relevance of that particular policy is that we are going to see the distribution of midwives and of general practitioners into areas where we most need them.

Why should we care as a country about setting policies with that aspiration? Well, what we know is that in South Auckland over 110 babies die every year before 28 days of life. That is called perinatal mortality. What we on this side of the House know is that unless you redistribute resources—midwife and general practitioner resources—those statistics will continue to be negative. So we will set this policy agenda based on that evidence because, for us, evidence is what drives the policy that we will take to the electorate.

In terms of addressing the whole inequality that is currently faced by some members of our community, the way that we have seen fit to do that is, obviously, to have initiatives such as this one providing for 80 percent of pregnant mums to be booked in for antenatal checks by 10 weeks, but also to have an emphasis on early childhood education. I want to focus on a quote from Professor Mike O’Brien, who is the spokesperson for the Child Poverty Action Group, where he talks about the Better Public Services outcomes framework and this obsession by the National Government for home-based care or playgroup services, which is somehow supposed to mean that every child gets a good start in life in terms of their education pathway. What we know, because the City of Manukau Education Trust has done some research, is that we have only 34 percent provision for under-5-year-olds in South Auckland. We do not have quality early childhood education opportunities for all our children.

What does that mean? It means that a lot of our children are going to school and they are already in deficit—5 and 6-year-olds who have had no early childhood education and who, in terms of the national standard, are already 18 months to 2 years behind. If this Government were really serious about improving educational outcomes, it would be providing quality early childhood education opportunities for all New Zealand children. The reality is that it does not have the solutions and it does not understand the circumstances of a lot of our communities, and so it has not got the solutions to help us address the growing inequality issue here in our country.

Before Christmas I made an appointment to see Professor Graeme Aitken and Professor Elizabeth McKinley. I wanted to go and see them specifically because they run an initiative called Starpath. Starpath is an incredibly ambitious but also concentrated and targeted initiative, because what it does is fundamentally accept that the biggest obstacle to student achievement is social inequality. So what do they do? They work with decile 1 and 2 schools to create opportunities for students at those schools to get into university. What is the relevance? Well, actually, if you want to move the agenda from identifying what the problems are, you actually have to create solutions and you also have to look at equality of outcome, which is also something that this side of the House is preoccupied with. It is not good enough just to identify that we have problems; you actually have to have solutions.

What Starpath does is work with principals and work with students, families, and communities to provide clear pathways into university. The relevance of that discussion to the Government’s prioritisation of the teaching profession and creating more bureaucracy is that the reality is that if you come from a decile 1 or 2 community, one of you will go to university for every three students from a decile 9 or 10 community. So if we want to fundamentally address social inequalities, then we actually have to look at equality of outcome. Starpath has been created specifically to address the underachievement that I believe comes from the lack of clear pathways to university for children from decile 1 and 2 schools. So we are committing to continuing to work with initiatives like Starpath. Actually, I think that Starpath, as a specific initiative currently concentrated at the University of Auckland, is something that we should be looking at rolling out to other universities and to other communities.

I would also like to talk about the teaching profession and also the principals and teachers in communities like South Auckland and Manurewa specifically, who I know are excellent teachers. They are passionate and committed to their students, but the reality for those teachers in some communities is that addressing the social determinants of educational achievement is actually about making sure our children are fed. There is without question a direct and clear correlation between our children fulfilling their potential and, within the context of all schools in my electorate, those schools providing some form of nutrition for children. Whether it be breakfast clubs that are provided by external agencies—a lot of church groups and other community groups in the community—or the schools taking responsibility themselves, the reality is that that is the biggest issue for a lot of our families.

So that side of the House may make light of the fact that we want to commit to every parent of children in their first year getting the $60 a week payment—and for some families it will extend to years 2 and 3—but we know that parents need support, and that $60 a week will go a long way to ensuring that our children have a better start in life. I am incredibly proud to belong to a party that has prioritised children, and we will go into this election being very clear that our biggest challenge into the future is addressing the inequality, the growing inequality, that we have particularly seen under this National Government. So, yes, I agree with the previous speaker, Jonathan Coleman: bring on the election and let us fight it out in the communities. Kia ora.

I am very pleased to speak in this debate on the Prime Minister’s statement. I must say that yesterday I was very sad to listen to the Leader of the Opposition’s speech, and I want to tell you why. I reflected on the fact that I had been in Parliament for 5 years, and there are times in this House when we hear the rhetoric, when we hear the same arguments. But when I reflect back on us coming into Government, I think it is important to remember the situation that we were handed and where we are now. This is important because this year New Zealanders will go to the polls and they are going to have to ask themselves some fundamental questions. One of those questions is about the record. I am proud that when we came into this House 5 years ago, we inherited a current account deficit that was almost 9 percent of GDP and it is now 4.3 percent. Net external debt had blown out to 84 percent of GDP and it is now 71 percent of GDP. Inflation was running at 5.1 percent; it is now 1.6 percent. Mortgage interest rates averaged 10.9 percent; they are now 5.9 percent. The list goes on, from an economic perspective.

But what made me sad yesterday was that we heard this rhetoric from the Labour Party—that our party has not done anything for children. That is not true. Our record in the area of helping some of our most disadvantaged is outstanding. Part of it is a philosophical difference. On this side of the House we believe that fundamentally one of the greatest things that you can do to enable children to get the best start in life is, actually, to have their parents in work, because the life chances of a child are much better if their parents are in work than if they are on a benefit. Our welfare reform under the Hon Paula Bennett has done everything that it can to see more New Zealanders in work.

The second area where we have invested in children is in immunisation and our health system. The other area that obviously I am intimately involved in, as Associate Minister of Education, is education. I want to acknowledge the Hon Hekia Parata because when you look at our record in education, what you will see is that, under this Government, every year we have increased the education budget. That is extraordinary when you look at the deficits that we came into Government with. We have prioritised, fundamentally, for the young people of New Zealand.

I think that the second question that New Zealanders should ask themselves this year is if you look at the record, then what are the policies that each political party is going to fight on? We saw the opening shots, and I think they were very telling. I think that when New Zealanders sit back and decide at the end of this year whom they are going to choose to lead, they should ask themselves this: are the policies costed? Where is the money coming from? Are they well researched? Are they targeted at those who need it?

If you look at our education policy that was announced by the Prime Minister and the Hon Hekia Parata, it is costed and it is targeted at our students who need the most in terms of lifting achievement and improving their life chances. It is not a blanket “Let’s hand out money to people who don’t need it.” It is actually focused on those young New Zealanders who need help, from an achievement perspective. That is why, when we look at the people who have really stood out there and said that this is a great policy, they are diverse. They are from across the political spectrum. They are everybody from business people to unions, and if we look at the Principals’ Federation President, Phil Harding—and I believe that the statement has already been quoted in the House—he said it was “a pleasant surprise and he was certain principals would be keen on it” and “It’s hard for me to say it but I am pretty damn impressed.”

This is a policy that is about taking our country to another level. We have shown that we have the record, but now we are showing that we have policies in areas like education and the economy that will take New Zealand to another level in terms of being a smarter nation and a more open nation. What I say to New Zealanders is that we are the only party that has the vision and the policies to take New Zealand to that level. The reason for that is that in two key areas there is a massive contrast and difference between the two sides of the House. Education is clearly one of those areas. We believe that through areas like technology there will be more of an opportunity for honest conversations about children’s learning, and that will happen online with parents and teachers and students.

We have spent $200 million last year, and that is saying that our Government is committed to uncapped data and fast connections funded to every State school in the country that wants it. That is incredibly significant because, again, what we are saying is that this is about providing more learning opportunities and also resolving traditional issues of equity. So when members opposite say that this party does not care about children, well, how about you go and have a look at that policy. The $200 million is saying that we will finally be able to provide some opportunities that mean that every child, wherever they grow up in New Zealand, will have access to drive their own learning and other learning opportunities.

This is a party that has not only the economic policies but also a very strong heart, but our idea of a strong social conscience is not a whole lot of welfare dependency. It is not a whole lot of schemes whereby we say to middle New Zealand at the election: “Yeah, here’s a little bit of money and everything will be sweet, mate.” It is about turning the country into a place where we value work more, where we actually see real opportunities for young people. We have shown with this policy at the beginning of this year, and with the fact that it is accepted by so many different parts of New Zealand, that we are serious about investing in young people.

Again, if we look back through history, we contrast that with what I think we are seeing: a Labour Party that has not learnt the lessons of the “noughties”. In that era—and I do give credit; there was a level of economic management. The problem with it is that Labour spent everything. That is why we had the deficits that we had. So we were in a situation where we have had to have careful economic management to get to the situation that we are in. But what Labour has shown again is that it has not got fully costed policies and that it is prepared to give out lolly scrambles again, that it is also prepared to have, basically, middle-class dependency. That is what we saw with their first policy this year.

My belief is that this election will be fought on record, this election will be fought on vision and policies, and, finally, this election will also be fought on leadership. We have seen from Prime Minister John Key an ability to lead the country and have a caucus that is united and that backs him. So in all of the areas from policy to record to leadership, I think that our team, our National Government, should be given the opportunity to have another term, to be able to take the country to another level and not go back to the old big-spending policies of the past. Labour has not learnt.

I am delighted to make a contribution to the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement, because what it does give me is an opportunity to show the stark differences between that side of the House—the National-led side of the House—and what Labour will do, what this side of the House will do, in Government. Although the last member, Nikki Kaye, paints that in a particular way, it actually is very far from what is needed and what this side of the House would do. What that side of the House does is preach a particular brand of politics, which is the politics of arrogance. What this side wants to do, under a David Cunliffe - led Government, is something quite different. I will explain that as I go. The John Key - led Government is arrogant. There is no doubt about that. There has been plenty of that on display in the House today by the bucketload by new Ministers and a few others. But that arrogance is palpable, and Ministers show it. The Minister of Labour shows that every time he gets up, and today those bounds were breached by the Minister of Immigration just a couple of hours ago.

I was reading Rebecca Macfie’s Tragedy at Pike River Mine over the holidays, and it is a good read. Anybody with a social conscience ought to read that. It is a classic case of how capitalists design spin around greed and actually drive it mercilessly to produce profit. That is what Pike River was about, when you follow the 10 to 15-year history of the company that set Pike River up. It was around greed and spin, and it drove it. It drove it with guile, it drove it with dishonesty, and it drove it with spin. It did not care a damn about what was going to happen, either to the environment in that area or to those men who went down the mine. And look what happened—look what happened. People paid for that with their lives. That is the politics of arrogance and the politics of spin that that side of the House internalises, and this side of the House will expose it every time.

Whenever we come up with policies, as indeed we have, the National Party will do what it has displayed in the House today. Its modus operandi is clear to see—find the little holes, find the little bits that do not quite synchronise, find the bits that it does not understand, but apply spin to it. [Interruption] I say to the member from the back—many of them are quite new; members are learning spin already. But there is so much spin. I say to that member that there is little truth to it, and they do not care a damn. That is nowhere more palpable than when it comes to the most vulnerable.

The Prime Minister’s statement used three words. One was “desperate”. Yes, the Government is desperate. It is desperate to match Labour on education. Education has been a mess. We have come up with policies. We are looking at it. What has National done? It has now moved from that big thinking about national testing to what is now really performance pay by any other name. So by a small number of teachers going around schools getting paid $50,000 more each, the whole education system will change! Actually, it will not. We will see plenty more of that. National is not putting our children first. I am sure National will do that, as well. It will become desperate with our childcare policies, and it will come up with something similar.

It is quite interesting. Whenever this side of the House comes up with a policy and it costs some money, that is unaffordable according to the National Government. That is unaffordable. But the same day—the same hour—it comes up with hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of expenditure. Oh no, that is investment! That is the spin that that side of the House puts up. When it spends it, it is investment; when this side of the House talks about spending, it is unaffordable. That is intellectually dishonest. But those members are used to that. That side of the House has been doing this branding for a long period of time. None of that is convincing. We know what those members have done. They have given a billion dollars of tax cuts. They have to sell State assets to pay for them, and now everything else has to take its place. Those members have made so many mistakes. Now the desperation that they have is coming to the fore.

Secondly, I will talk about the divide. Yes, indeed, the Government has divided this society. That is what it has done. The Prime Minister used the word “divided”. National takes away from the poor. Look at much of what the Government has done. It has taken away from the poor. It has divided our society. Look at all of the welfare reform programmes. They are punitive. They are punitive towards the most vulnerable in our society.

The Prime Minister also talks about “delusional”. Well, indeed, the Government is delusional. It talks about running a surplus. It talks every day about running a surplus. But this is the Government that has borrowed $55 billion in the last 5 years—$55 billion. When it came into power, national debt was $10 billion. What is the national debt today? It is $65 billion. Oh no, but that is all the recession! That is on everything else!

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Ask the member to your right why we did it.

I will come to the Minister of Immigration in a minute, and I promise the Minister that I will, because he was part of the arrogant brigade this afternoon, and I will show him why that actually is not the way to do things. That side is delusional. Those members are the ones who created a huge debt for this country, and it will take a Labour Government to come into power and change that.

This side believes in the politics of conviction. It is a very, very different approach to that side of the House, and it is most evident when we look at the approaches to children. Indeed, when you look at this side of the House—and National might try to find real chinks in the armour. But there is no doubt about it: $60 a week for the most vulnerable with young children under 1 year old will make a huge difference. There is no doubt about it. There are many outside here who are confirming that and, actually, looking to raise early childhood education. There is no doubt about it. It is going to make a difference in the lives of parents with young children—25 hours. That needs to be included. We will fund the building of early childhood centres. That is going to make a difference. We will reverse the cuts of qualified teachers in early childhood education. We will reverse that.

When it comes to paid parental leave, it is quite interesting. Those members are not interested. We know that it is paid parental leave that makes a difference. Parents with children make a difference. We know that an early start for children makes a difference, which is why Best Start is designed by David Cunliffe. It will make a difference, and we know from the best science. We know that it is from the beginning, from the start—what children get at home, the communities in which they live, the resources that are provided, and the commitment that society shows. If that is not done, then they suffer. But what that side of the House is happy to do is to discount the children. Somehow those members present this spin that we can do it through work. Well, it is going to take a long time for the parent of a child born today to actually get a job to make the difference. So there is a lot more that this Government needs to do to convince anybody that it is not just the politics of spin.

I want to come to immigration for a moment. Here is a Minister of Immigration who is presiding over one of the worst rorts we have ever seen in New Zealand, and that is the job selling that is going on right now. Campbell Live exposed that, and there are many, many like that. There are people who are working in immigration—professionals, parents, businesses—who have come to many of us to display those. But when that evidence is presented to that Minister, the Hon Michael Woodhouse, what does he do? “Oh, well, they can come and complain.” That Minister shows no understanding of how that system works. How will a person right in the middle of that system come and complain, Minister? What is going to happen to them? So there is no appreciation. We have called for an inquiry. Have the conviction, Minister—have the conviction—to have an inquiry into that, made up of smart people. Get people the protection so that that Minister can then learn what the actual rorts are. That Minister is presiding over the destruction of the reputation of a good country and a good system.

Finally, I say to that Minister that he is very used to throwing rocks today. But I say to the Minister to have a look. There is nobody in this caucus who has been investigated for selling jobs—nobody in this caucus. So do not go far from home. If you live in a glass house, do not throw stones. I say to that member that there is a lot more that that member has to learn about immigration.

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Pick up the phone. It’s not hard.

Nobody will call you, Minister, because the moment they do, what happens? Immigration currently does not have the resources to do the job. Immigration cannot do this work. So I say to that side of the House that spin will get you nowhere, and we will expose that throughout the election campaign. Thank you.

Debate interrupted.