Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

It is great to be back for what will doubtless be another action-packed year, especially in the area of Treaty settlements. Just last Friday I signed a deed of settlement in the far north with Ngāti Kurī, and I want to acknowledge the support and presence of Mrs Turia, Shane Jones, Hone Harawira, Claudette Hauiti, and Mike Sabin at that very important ceremony, and I ask Mr Harawira to pass on to the troops up north that the Te Hiku Claims Settlement Bill is going to be introduced to the House within the next couple of weeks.

Over the break a number of my colleagues indicated they were intending to retire from Parliament, and I want to wish them all the very best. They are fantastic colleagues and friends, and I am sure they are going to do very well in a post-parliamentary life. Before the year gets too partisan, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson, I also want to acknowledge your contribution. You are, beyond doubt, an outstanding member of Parliament, have been a great Assistant Speaker, and I want to wish you all the very best for the future. There are a number of others whose retirements are being reported about at the present time, and so, in advance, may I wish Dave Clendon, Steffan Browning, and Rajen Prasad all the very best for the future.

I hope honourable members are pleased with the progress on the National War Memorial Park—I certainly am. The concreting of the floor has started and it should be covered by August, and the tunnel will be open by September. In fact, it is hard to believe that Helen Clark was going to have a highway going through the park right next to a school—

💬 Grant Robertson: Always nasty!

Oh, the unpleasant member for Wellington Central cannot contain himself. Every statement he makes is unpleasant. I do think it is most unfortunate.

We had a very busy end to 2013. Just before Christmas the Prime Minister, the Minister for Economic Development, and I announced new film incentives and that the next three Avatar sequels will be filmed in New Zealand. It seems that the Leader of the Opposition was apparently opposed to this wonderful announcement, though Jacinda Ardern, at least, appeared to be pleased. I have heard it said that Labour supporters in Rongotai are saying that Annette King had a role in getting the Avatar sequels here. Well, that is, of course, a complete falsehood. The self-styled “MP for Weta Workshop” had nothing to do with that announcement, just as she did nothing in 2011 when trade union thugs were trying to destroy the film industry.

💬 Hon Annette King: What a lie. Your nose is growing, Chris, and I’ll beat you a third time.

I hear the honourable member interjecting. I think she is saying that she knows something about James Cameron’s films. She remembers the film The Abyss. I think she thinks it was a documentary about what happened to the Labour Party when she was deputy leader and Phil Goff was the leader, but I am afraid that is not correct.

On the subject of these two venerable members now in their fourth decade here, it is worth noting something about their careers. In the 1980s they were zealous Rogernomes in a neo-liberal Government. In the 1990s-2000s they reinvented themselves as social democratic spendthrifts. Now in their fourth decade here, they are tribunes of the working class in a far-left Labour Party. In fact, it has been quite a journey. It does not matter whether they are administering liberal policies, or social democratic policies, or far-left policies—so long as they are the ones administering. They stand for nothing except for self-interest. They are the worst form of careerists.

But looking at the Opposition today, as I do, one is left with one conclusion: Labour members are heading for an extinction event when they sell out their party’s great heritage to a coalition with the Green Party. One has only to look at the experience of Tasmania. Having entered a coalition with the Green Party in Tasmania, the Labor Party in that state is morris dancing its way to oblivion. Listen to these words from the national secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union. He said: “There’s no advantage in Labor and the labour movement being aligned with the Greens. The Greens’ … views and ideologies are contrary to the views and ideology of the labour movement. … I can understand why Tasmanian workers would be concerned about the destructive and negative role the Greens have played in destroying parts of the Tasmanian economy when they go to the ballot box,” because that is the experience in Australia of a coalition with the Greens.

The current stewards of the Labour Party are betraying their party. I think of some of the greats from the Labour past—people I greatly respect: Peter Fraser, Norman Kirk, Michael Bassett, Roger Douglas, Fran Wilde, Paul Swain, and that wonderful, wonderful friend of mine Winnie Laban. One could never imagine those people walking out on the traditions of the Labour Party and doing a deal with the Greens. The Greens are out to destroy them and the Greens regard them, as Lenin would have said about the kulaks, as nothing more than “useful idiots”. That is going to be the fate of the Labour Party as it turns away from its traditions and betrays its traditions.

In the last couple of weeks there have been a few articles in the press about my outstanding style guide. The style guide is actually very helpful. It is modelled on, actually—in fact, someone sent to me—Tom Shand’s style guide from 1967, which was very, very similar. The key points about speech writing are these: use plain English, avoid waffle at all costs, get to the point quickly, state the point, and move on. That, as you can see from this speech, is exactly what a style guide should be—where there is a need for clarity.

Of course, elections are about choice and elections are about clarity. The people deserve to know where the parties stand on various issues. Waffle is of no use, as Mr Cunliffe found out last week when he tried to be tricky over the “baby bonus” announcement. Among the policies dumped by Mr Cunliffe has been his policy of letting Dr Norman have a podium next to his at announcements. But do not be fooled; everything is not as it seems Members opposite are listening very carefully because they are worried. What we see now is a Labour Party that is selling out on every single policy.

So we need clarity on some of these points, for example. The Greens support internet freedom whereas Labour wants to shut down Facebook. The Greens want to legalise cannabis but Labour is opposed. The Greens want to print money; Labour does it the old-fashioned way through borrowing and raising taxes. Russel Norman wants to be Minister of Finance; David Cunliffe says no, but there could but a role for him in some of the broader economic portfolios. We are entitled to know what the true position is on these and other issues.

My advice to the Labour Party—friendly, constructive advice—is that as we approach the election season, use plain language, get to the point quickly, state the point, and then move on. That is certainly the approach that I am going to be adopting in the great seat of Rongotai later in the year, when the venerable Annette King and I front up for another fight. She just about lost the party vote in 2011—

💬 Hon Annette King: But she thrashed you, Chris—11,000 votes.

She did thrash me in the electorate vote, but so what? As the great Judy Kirk said, it is the party vote that matters. I say to Annette King—fond of her as I am on a personal level—that she is hopeless. I am very much looking forward to a good scrap in Rongotai in 2014 as she stands there for the 40th time.

I was worried there that the previous speaker, Christopher Finlayson, was slipping into a catatonic slumber as he began to speak more and more slowly as the minutes dragged on. The House is mercifully released from that last contribution.

I want to talk about National’s housing crisis. The entire country is talking about it, so it is right that this House talks about it too. The reason that everybody is talking about the housing crisis is that it is corroding away things that we care deeply about in New Zealand. Under the National Government, first-home buyers are shut out of the housing market and homeownership is dropping more quickly than ever before. Our children are being hospitalised because that Minister of Housing, Nick Smith, refuses to regulate the private rental market and require a decent roof over people’s heads—at least insulation and efficient heating.

Housing costs are not only squeezing middle-class families across New Zealand, they are wiping out household budgets. Interest rates are about to go up. They are going to add hundreds of dollars to the mortgage repayments of families in the mortgage belt. As the Child Poverty Monitor told us a few weeks ago, it is rising housing costs that are keeping child poverty high in this country. At the sharp end of the housing crisis, the most vulnerable families are living in tents, in sleepouts, and in garages, and Government agencies are even referring people to live on camping grounds.

Well, it is a mess. It has been brewing for several years—almost the entire time that National has been in office. National has failed to act for 4 long years. It has failed to do anything about the housing crisis. I guess that when you represent the big end of town and about half your caucus are major landlords, the concerns of young, struggling first-home buyers, of families who are living in substandard and overcrowded accommodation, and of State house tenants are not at the top of your list of priorities. I suppose, given this and given that members of the National Party caucus are major property owners in their own rights, it is not surprising, for instance, that they oppose a capital gains tax. To wait 4 long years before doing anything about the housing crisis is unforgivable.

Then what do we get? Last year we got Nick “Calamity” Smith running around like a mad thing, turning up at the unveiling of a new door handle, pretending to be Michael Joseph Savage carrying the furniture of State house tenants into their new house. There was an endless stream of photo opportunities and little schemes like flogging off broken-down old State houses to first-home buyers at a heavy discount in provincial New Zealand where there is not a housing crisis. That is what passes for a housing policy under this Government.

But it is too little too late. Not even the full force of the Reserve Bank, with its loan-to-value ratio lending limits, appears to be able to dampen the Auckland housing market. If you look at the front page of today’s New Zealand Herald, you will see that house price escalation is as rampant as ever under this Government. Not even loan-to-value ratios seem like they can put a dent in it. The latest data from Quotable Value shows that first-home buyers have been squeezed out of the market, but that has not stopped prices rising, because the speculators, both foreign and domestic, have stepped into the space. They are snapping up the houses and that Minister will not do anything about it.

The crazy thing about the housing crisis is that the National Government had the perfect opportunity to do something about it back in 2011 as the housing crisis was beginning to bite. We had low interest rates, an army of builders with nothing to do, a city that needed rebuilding after the Canterbury earthquakes, and an economy that desperately needed the stimulus. It would have been the perfect time for a Government-backed building programme to build houses for first-home buyers and to add to the State housing stock—instead of flogging it off, as this Minister is doing—but the Government did not want to know. It wasted the perfect opportunity to head off the housing crisis as it began to bite.

Why is the housing crisis such a problem? Why do the opinion polls show that New Zealanders are desperately concerned about it and so disappointed in the failure of the National Government to act? Well, I think the first reason is that the housing crisis and escalating house prices, particularly in Auckland and Christchurch at the moment, are a major cause of the yawning gap between rich and poor in New Zealand. Under the National Government there are basically two classes of people. There are those with assets, who are the property owners who are raking it in from tax-free capital gains. Most of the National Party caucus are in that category. Then there are the rest: the people who contribute to the prosperity of this nation from the sweat of their brow. They pay tax but are struggling to get ahead because this National Government is content to run an economy that rewards the speculators.

And because National has allowed Auckland house prices to get away on it and because it mismanaged the roll-out of loan-to-value ratios, it has failed to protect first-home buyers. The Prime Minister in the middle of last year was crying crocodile tears for first-home buyers, saying that he was going to sort it out with the Reserve Bank. He said he would organise a carve-out for first-home buyers so that they would not be affected by loan-to-value ratio lending limits, which have imposed a 20 percent minimum deposit on first-home buyers in this country. The National Government said that it would do something about it, but it did nothing.

In fact, under the Official Information Act, what we know is that Bill English did not ask for advice from Treasury about the effect of those lending limits on first-home buyers until after he had negotiated an agreement with the Reserve Bank to roll out those limits. What we know is that he did not even ask Nick Smith, the Minister of Housing, for advice in writing on the impact on first-home buyers. They simply discussed it at one of their regular catch-ups. That is how much National cares about first-home buyers. It has allowed these loan-to-value ratio lending limits to shut first-home buyers out of the market and, as a result, Generation X and Generation Y are becoming a nation of renters under National.

But perhaps just as bad, just as depressing, is that the housing crisis and Nick Smith’s inept, chaotic mismanagement of housing policy is blighting the life chances of hundreds of thousands of Kiwi children. When a youngster in Te Atatū, in my electorate in west Auckland, is living with her family and her four siblings in an uninsulated, one-room garage, as was reported in the Western Leader recently, it is inevitable that that youngster will get sick in the winter. She is not going to be able to do her homework properly when she is sharing a one-room Skyline garage with the rest of her family. When that family moves from place to place, as it inevitably will—to relatives, crammed into a spare room or into a sleepout, or to emergency accommodation, if they are lucky—that young girl is going to be moved from pillar to post, from one school to another, and that is why in west Auckland there are a number of primary schools that report a wildly fluctuating roll. It is because of housing insecurity. It is because of the housing crisis and this Government’s failure to do anything meaningful about it.

The Bay of Plenty Times reported today that a desperate family were forced to live in a tent for 5 weeks as they waited for the Housing New Zealand Corporation to find them a house. Housing New Zealand has apologised for that. It has apologised for the fact that it took a story in the Bay of Plenty Times before it even visited the family. Housing New Zealand statistics themselves tell us that there are 77 vacant properties in the Bay of Plenty at the moment, but Housing New Zealand staff could not even visit a family living in a tent in a park by a river because a house was not available to that family.

So even though National’s housing crisis is widening the gap between the rich and the poor and even though it is driving families into poverty and making our children sick, that Minister, Nick Smith, refuses to regulate the standard of housing in the private rental market. National is denying ordinary New Zealanders a decent start in life for their children. It refuses to tackle the fundamentals of the housing crisis. It refuses to tax speculators, even though Auckland has become a speculators’ paradise. Speculators both foreign and domestic are driving prices higher and higher and out of the reach of ordinary New Zealanders. National refuses to build affordable starter homes for first-home buyers. It refuses to set minimum standards for private rental properties. All we get are photo opportunities, tinkering with the Resource Management Act, and the running down of Housing New Zealand, the last part of the housing safety net for New Zealanders in need. It is a disgrace.

Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson, a happy New Year to you and to the House. It is, in fact, with great pride that I speak in this debate, because I am also privileged to be the Minister of Justice, the Minister for ACC, and the Minister for Ethnic Affairs. I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge my colleagues in the justice sector, the Hon Anne Tolley, the Hon Christopher Finlayson, the Hon Chester Borrows, and our chief executives, for the very hard work and concerted work of working together that they have done over the last 2 years. Can I also acknowledge in the ACC area the Hon Craig Foss, who is the Associate Minister for ACC. Craig and I work very well together, and he has done sterling work, particularly over the last 2 years. In the ethnic affairs area I would like to acknowledge Melissa Lee, the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister for Ethnic Affairs, and all of our ethnic affairs team in National, which, I have to say, is a fantastic team, working together for the people of New Zealand.

The member who has just resumed his seat, Phil Twyford, made some very interesting comments about what he had learnt in his local newspaper about what was happening in his local electorate. Let me give him a piece of advice. As an electorate MP, he should not be getting his stories out of his local newspaper. He should be giving the stories to the local newspaper. He should be getting up off his chuff, getting around to the garage, getting the story, helping these people to get their home through the Housing New Zealand Corporation or some other provider. That is what electorate MPs do. They do not sit around waiting for the newspaper to give them the stories.

💬 Sue Moroney: That’s Simon Bridges’ job in the Bay of Plenty.

I understand that there are a couple of list MPs over on the other side of the House who do not agree with me. Well, let me just tell them that that is how it works in the real world when you are an electorate MP and you want to stay one.

Today is the first day that I have been able to speak in the House this year, because I have been representing New Zealand at the United Nations Human Rights Council at Geneva. I have to say that it was a very proud experience for me because New Zealand’s record on human rights is, frankly, second to none. I would like to say that the good thing is that the Labour Party was still on holiday, so it could not actually put out a press release attacking New Zealand or our record on human rights. However, the Greens were not. So Jan Logie from the Greens put out a press release and made many other comments, and you would have thought, if you had listened to them, that New Zealand was one of the worst countries in the world for human rights. Actually, we are pretty much the best.

The response that we got from other nations to our report, where we acknowledged, for instance, that we want to do so much better as a country when it comes to things like domestic violence, and where we acknowledged that children still live in relative poverty—but, having said that, look at our immunisation rates. Look at our rates of early childhood education. Look at the way in which people are given a chance to get ahead. We acknowledged those as well. We are never going to be perfect, because nobody ever can be in the real world, but we are always going to keep trying to be.

Instead, what did we get from the Greens, these people who want to be in Government with the Labour Party and however many other parties that they would need to put together? Well, we got that the next day, after that. This week, what did we get? We got them bullying Nauru—Nauru—and refusing to apologise for bullying Nauru on its record. For goodness’ sake! Why do these people not just get to work and do a decent living, instead of attacking every country in the world except those that they think are going to do whatever they want? So Nauru. Nauru has its challenges; so do all countries. But we should applaud where people get ahead, applaud where they improve their human rights record, and applaud where there is democracy. These are the things that we want to applaud.

One of the things that we need in the country is a lack of corruption. This country has been recorded by Transparency International as being the least corrupt country in the world, by the perception of the public of our Public Service, for the last 8 years in a row—either first or first equal. This is a fantastic record, and what it does is it says to New Zealanders that when you want to get a passport in New Zealand, you do not have to pay a bribe. What you do is you go through the normal process and, in New Zealand, that is something we should value.

Crime generally—5 years after we came into Government, recorded crime is down to the lowest level it has been in 33 years. When I came in as the Minister of Police in 2008, I was told that we could do nothing about the crime in the Counties Manukau Police District in South Auckland, where my electorate of Papakura was. I was told that this was all demographics. That was utter rubbish—utter rubbish. What it needed was policing. It needed smart policing, it needed preventive policing, it needed strong morale, and it needed a Government that backed the police, and that is exactly what we did. All these years later what have we got? Five years later crime is down to its lowest level in 33 years. We have set Better Public Services targets and results. Our targets are to reduce by 2017 overall crime rates by 15 percent, violent crime by 20 percent, and youth crime by 25 percent. Where are we at the moment? Total crime is down by 12 percent, violent crime is down by 8 percent, and youth crime is down by 19 percent, and we have still got 3 years to go on these targets.

So what we are seeing is that things are changing. We got the alcohol reform legislation through. We changed the law on alcohol. In fact, just before Christmas, what did I get from the Green Mayor of Wellington? I got condemned by her because we did not think it was all right for people to be out drinking on the streets until 6 o’clock in the morning. She wrote to me and said that was dreadful; it was stopping business. These are the same people who rail day in, day out at alcohol—apparently, all other drugs are all right—except, of course, when they are running for local government or to be members of Parliament.

What else did we do? Well, we brought in maximum jail sentences with no parole for the worst serious violent offenders under the three-strikes law. One of the other previous Labour spokespeople on law and order and on justice said Labour was going to get rid of that. That was about four people back, so I am not quite sure whether that is still its position. It certainly is the Greens’ position. We brought in tougher sentences for crimes against children. Now it is a crime to stay silent if you know that a child or a vulnerable person is at risk. We brought in tougher sentences for involvement in gangs, and we have brought in 24-hour GPS monitoring for highest-risk and child sex offenders out on release in the community. We have toughened up and strengthened the bail laws. We have done this with the support of other parties in the House that believe that this is important. We have also made 17 to 19-year-olds subject to adult tests for bail if they have served time.

What we have done is make it a lot easier for the police to do their job. We know there are 600 extra police on the front line. We also know, and we heard again today from the Hon Anne Tolley, that the technology that police are now using means they can spend more time on the front line and less time back at the office. We had 70 percent more police foot patrols in 2012. The police now have Tasers, lock boxes in their cars, DNA testing of offenders, smartphones, and tablets. What we now have is a much safer New Zealand.

The police are not just getting tough on things; they are getting smart on things. We have got pre-charge warnings: 41,000 of them in the 24 months up to May last year. That means actually dealing with issues straight away rather than waiting 6 or 7 months for a court case. We have rolled out the smartphones. Illegal street-racing offences—remember them? Remember how the Labour Party said our law would not help? Well, by the way, they are down 35 percent. There are huge changes: a clamp-down on gangs, organised crime, and methamphetamine.

The big thing that is different from all the years that Labour was in office is we have put our victims first. We have put victims first. We have brought them back into the system and we have said that we will not censor them when they want to say what they want to say in their victim impact statements. We are bringing in the Harmful Digital Communications Bill, the Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill, the Parole Amendment Bill, the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill, the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill, and the Victims of Crime Reform Bill.

This is a Government that works very seriously and works very well on justice and on law and order issues. I would like to say thankyou to my colleagues for the support and the backing you have given us, and thank you to the people of New Zealand for giving us the privilege of continuing to do this work.

Could I take this opportunity, as well, to wish you, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson, and the House a happy New Year. In a few months the Minister of Finance, Bill English, is likely to present his first Budget surplus—his first Budget surplus in 6 years. It will be the last Budget that he presents to this House and—good for him—it will be in surplus. It must be galling that after nine surpluses under Labour it has taken 6 years in order for him to be able to deliver one Budget surplus to this House. He is obviously getting the hang of it. Nine years of surplus and 5 years of deficit, and finally we get a Budget surplus, or that is what we are led to believe. A Budget surplus, to the Labour Party, is a given. That is what we do when we are in Government: we produce Budget surpluses. That is what we do.

Here is another statistic. Ever since the first National Government came into office, the average GDP growth under all National Governments right back through history has been 2.9 percent—the average GDP growth. The average GDP growth under all Labour Governments throughout history has been 3.7 percent—3.7 percent. Every Labour Government has been able to produce better growth than any National Government. So, despite what this Government says about Labour Governments, they are the most economically prosperous Governments, and they have been able to deliver what New Zealanders want. We have been sound financial managers and we have been able to do that every time we have been in Government.

Our economy has gone through the global financial crisis, as has the rest of the world. We have had the rebuild of Christchurch, which has helped with half of the GDP growth that we are seeing at the moment. Our commodity prices are doing very well, and that has obviously contributed much of the rest. But although our economy is starting to move again, along with the rest of the world, the question is whether New Zealanders are any better off. Are New Zealanders any better off? Are they doing as well as the New Zealand economy is said to be doing? I know that many of those people out there who might be watching this now will say no, because 50 percent of them will not have had a pay increase. Fifty percent will not have had a pay increase in the last year.

House prices are unaffordable. I ran into a couple the other day and we were talking about their particular plight. They lived in a rented house, saving hard for a house. They made improvements to their rented house because, to be quite honest, the couple wanted to live in good accommodation. So they painted it, they put in a sandpit for their kids, and they even put in a barbecue. As soon as they did that, the landlord moved them on. They are now in more expensive accommodation, renting, and still trying hard to save for that house, but finding it more and more difficult to be able to do that because this Government completely ignored the cost of housing and the price of houses in the economy.

As a result, young couples who have spoken to me say they go along every week to yet another auction and they are always outbid. They just cannot seem to be able to get to that price. A father of a young woman I know said to me that it makes him angry that his daughter, his son-in-law, and their three kids cannot do what he did when he was young—move into their own house and be able to afford that. That is the opportunity those people had back then and young people today simply do not have. The opportunities for young New Zealanders are simply not there and have slipped away under this Government.

In fact, you were telling me today, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson, that a house in a street that I grew up in, in your electorate in Papatoetoe, the other day sold for a million dollars—a million dollars. That is a house for hard-working New Zealanders, middle of the road, middle class—it went for a million dollars. To buy that house, because this Government has brought in the loan-to-value ratios, you would need a $200,000 deposit. What sort of family can afford a $200,000 deposit? Absolutely nobody. Not a young couple—

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: You can.

Maybe you, Mr Bridges, but certainly not a young couple who are aspiring to own their own home. Who has that sort of money?

And, while we are on the subject, power prices have continued to climb. House prices and electricity prices have continued to climb. I will not forget a woman who has come to see me and said to me that she gets so sick in her stomach every time that she goes out to her letterbox, just in case her electricity bill has arrived—just in case her electricity bill has arrived. Yet she reads in the paper comments from Mr Bridges and from everybody else and all his friends that we have one of the most competitive electricity markets in the world. It is just that it does not bring lower prices—that is all. Everybody is changing companies, but it does not bring the price down. Last year the inflation rate was 1 percent and the electricity rise was 5 percent. You tell that to Kiwis—that somehow their competitive market is making them better off—and they will laugh in your face, because they are turning their driers off, their heaters off, because they cannot afford to pay their bills, and this Government will do nothing about it.

That is why people want a Labour Government—because we want a fair society. We do want to see opportunities. We want New Zealanders to have opportunities—the same opportunities that I had when I grew up, the same opportunities that I want for my kids as they are growing up, as well—where New Zealanders can afford a house, where they can afford to pay their power bills. That is the sort of country that I want to live in; not a country where this Government is so out of touch and so arrogant that it does not actually understand what real New Zealanders actually want. The Government believes that somehow the house prices can be cured by Mr Nick Smith’s pixie dust that he sprinkles around all over the place or Mr Bridge’s plaintive cries that we have somehow got a very competitive energy market. It is absolute nonsense and people out there know that.

Yet Government members are not listening to ordinary New Zealanders. They are so arrogant and they are so out of touch that they do not actually understand what it is that New Zealanders want. They are not listening. They are not listening to the fact that this Government is about to sell off yet another power company. Genesis Energy is soon going to be on the block—Genesis Energy, which no mums and dads will invest in. Let us face it. When was the last time that you heard about mums and dads investing in power companies? They do not. Only 1.5 percent of New Zealanders actually invest in these power companies, and I can tell you what. They are not ordinary mums and dads—not the people whom I speak of. That is how out of touch this Government is. Does it really think that mums and dads are buying them? No, the corporates are buying them. The financial companies are buying them. The overseas companies are buying them and shipping the proceeds and the profits off to other places outside of here.

This Government is out of touch. It is out of touch, it is arrogant, it has lost the plot, and that is the reason it will lose this year. I congratulate Mr English on his last Budget being in surplus. I am so sorry that the other five were in deficit, but at least his last one is in surplus. His days are numbered and so are this Government’s.

I do not think that the last member who spoke in this debate, David Shearer, believed anything that he said there, but at least finally we have received an apology from the Labour Party for the atrocious mess that New Zealand was left in when we took office, and it was a heartfelt apology to the New Zealand people. In fact, as I looked across, it was almost like that was a speech from the latest member of the former leaders’ club, and there are two of them sitting there together. It used to be so very, very exclusive, but it is not that exclusive any more—almost as exclusive as the membership of former chiefs of staff of leaders of the Labour Party—numbering around about five now.

But both of those men over there are better than their current leader, because they are genuine men who believe in making a difference for New Zealanders. They are not tricky. They do not go to one audience and say one thing and then go to another audience and say another thing. The one thing I would say that I learnt in my 5 years in this time about Phil Goff and David Shearer is that when they stood up in the hustings and said something, they meant it. They might have been wrong every single time, but at least they meant it.

That cannot be said for the new leader of the Labour Party, “Mr Tricky Dickie”, who actually likes to go to parts of Auckland and stand on top of buses with a microphone, putting on funny voices and telling people what they should do and how they should vote. I have got to tell you, on behalf of those people whom he was speaking about, that that was an outrageous thing that he did. He was condescending to them. He was horrible to them, and I bet you that he then went to another audience, changed his voice, was oh so very tricky, and gave them such a different idea of what the country would be like.

I actually say that there needs to be another member of the former leaders’ club, and that is their current leader on that side, “Mr Tricky”. He should go and join them. On behalf of the Labour Party and New Zealanders, I say that either of those last two gentlemen, David Shearer or Phil Goff, who actually did a great job on behalf of the Labour Party and who were let down by the Labour Party, should come back and actually fill the great void that sits over there.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: Now who’s being tricky?

I am not being tricky at all; I am being genuine. Anyway, enough about them, because that is it. What I want to do is congratulate my friend and colleague and our newest Minister, the Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga. What a great thing it is—and such a diverse party we have here in the National Party—that he becomes a Minister in our Government. Indeed, the great thing about this Government, compared with that party opposite that governed for 9 very long years when New Zealanders were left in the cold, is that it is about what is best for New Zealanders going forward. I think that having Sam Lotu-Iiga become a Minister says so very, very much.

Indeed, I read in a newspaper the other day that when we come to the election later this year, there will be 13 people who were members of this Parliament from the National Party, as it stood at the 2011 election, who will have resigned. Some have already gone. Some are retiring and going back to their lives—great service to New Zealand—and they are going on. As I skimmed down that article and had a look, there was only one person from the Labour Party who actually has done a great service to Labour over many years, who has decided to retire and who can be very proud of what they have done. I think the reason that that person has decided to retire is that they have just had enough of the trickiness and they want to go back to their life—and some members are nodding their heads—and they said that the Labour Party they are in today, which they have served dutifully for all of those years, is not the Labour Party that they joined all those years ago, which actually seemed to care about New Zealanders at the time but now will just say anything to any audience to get any vote so it can get over on this side and start ruining the country again.

Can I say I am grateful to our Prime Minister not only for the leadership he has shown over the last 5 years but also for giving me the honour of doing a little bit of extra work, as part of his Government, as a Minister.

I want to pay a tribute to another very hard-working member of this Parliament who, I think, has many, many years of good service ahead of him, and that is the Hon Peter Dunne. Can I say that when I took on the revenue portfolio, I thought there were very big shoes to fill, but I can say honestly, with my hand on my heart, that there is a man who did a great job on behalf of New Zealand taxpayers to make our tax base fair so that New Zealanders would comply and pay their taxes, and to make sure that we had a broad base and low rates, compared with most countries of the world. I know that he had to fight tooth and nail when he was part of a previous Government under the Labour Party to try to get those tax rates down to be fairer to New Zealanders. If you work hard and earn income, we want you to actually be responsible for spending it yourself, rather than taking it off you, spending it on your behalf, and expecting you to be grateful. I think that Peter Dunne has done a great job and I look forward to working closely with him in his new portfolio areas.

I can also say that in the 6 or 7 months that I have been Minister of Revenue, I have had a chance to get out and meet so very many people who work for the Inland Revenue Department—our staff—and they are hard-working individuals who actually also come to work every day to serve New Zealanders and to make their lives better.

Here is the great thing about tax: we all have to pay it, but we know that lots of people do not want to. I heard a story not so long ago, during this term of Parliament, about somebody who had a bank account in New York who was keeping money there. That would not be so that they did not pay tax on it at all. It must have been because they wanted to save up that $200,000 deposit that they are now saying they need to go and buy a house on the old street that they grew up in. But the thing about tax rates is that when they are lower, when they are broad, and when New Zealanders see that they are fair, then they will pay them. As soon as you start tinkering with these things—if you try to be tricky, if you try to move the rates around and put them up in some areas—then people look for ways within the law to avoid those taxes.

The great thing that we have in New Zealand is that our tax base is broad, the tax income that the Government is getting is going up, and we are doing so in an extremely fair manner. New Zealanders expect to pay their fair share and they are happy to when they see that their Government is using that money well and using it to good effect to better things in society. They do not want to pay their taxes when the rates are far too high, when they are unfair, or when the money is being used and squandered. Let us say, for example, that you put the tax rate up as far as you can and then you take that money and you give it back to a couple who might—I do not know—earn $300,000 a year. The wife decides to have a child and not work, and their income goes down to $150,000 a year, and you give them 60 bucks a week for that child.

💬 Sue Moroney: They have a child and they stop work.

I guarantee you that there will be hard-working people—hard-working plumbers and builders in Hamilton, the seat that that member opposite has continued to fail to be elected in—who are earning $60,000 or $70,000 a year. They go to work every day, and they do not have any kids. The Labour Party wants to be tricky and take their hard-earned taxes and give them to somebody down the road—from the really expensive houses like the Leader of the Opposition owns—who earns $150,000 a year. Labour wants to give them $60 of the hard-earned taxes that that builder has paid. I think that that is ridiculous. It is sad and it is disgraceful that members opposite will say and do anything—by being quiet when their leader makes things up and is tricky—to get any vote so that they can get on this side of the House and ruin the great record that New Zealanders have worked hard on over the last 5 years.

Here it is as easy as it gets. Most other countries in the world have an unemployment rate higher than ours and it is going up. Our rate went down. Labour does not like that because it wants people to be dependent and miserable, and that is why the number of people in the country who are members of the Labour Party is at a record low.

💬 Sue Moroney: The unemployment rate was the lowest under Labour.

Here is the thing about the member opposite with the loudest voice on that side. It sounds good when she is on TV but every 3 years, when it comes time for people to vote for her, she is too tricky and it never works out. Here is a prediction: if she does not swap seats and go somewhere to help out another National Party candidate to get a bigger majority, Tim Macindoe, up and down his electorate, will tell people what is going on. The people of Hamilton are very, very intelligent people. I give you an absolute heartfelt guarantee that her result will be worse than that of the member opposite who is really tricky, the leader of their party, who is trying to convince people all over the country. It will be. Tim Macindoe will continue to be the hard-working MP for Hamilton, as David Bennett is. The Prime Minister was right: if those guys want to be tricky, I cannot wait for the election this year. Let us bring it on.

That was an extraordinary contribution from Mr Todd McClay. He spent the better part of his speech talking about himself and thanking people. You were not winning an Academy Award, Mr McClay. It was meant to be a debate on the Prime Minister’s statement, but most of the first part of the speech was talking about himself and all the people who have supported him throughout his career and thanking them.

The take-home messages from Mr McClay’s speech were these. One, I want to justify tax cuts for the wealthy. His first message was that tax cuts for the wealthy, which overwhelmingly go to people who do not need them and did not ask for them, are good for this country. That was his first message. His second message was “Do not support children.” He said it is a bad idea to ensure that every kid in this country gets the best start in life. This is coming from the party that taxed paper boys on their income. We know that National does not want to support children—those little bludgers—it just wants to tax them on their paper routes. National does not want to see a Government that is going to take the tax cuts that were given to the wealthiest New Zealanders and distribute them to the most important people in this country, who are our future: the children of this country. His final message was that, you know what, everything is great. Everything is fine.

Well, you know what, Mr McClay? Everything is not fine. Everything is not great in New Zealand at the moment. The National Party might think that just by saying the Crosby/Textor playbook lines over and over again they are going to fool New Zealanders into thinking that everything is great, but every time that Kiwi families open the power bill, or go to the supermarket, or have to pay their rent, they know that things are not great. They know that this Government is not listening—that it arrogantly just wants to tell them that they are wrong. Do you know what? In the big end of town things probably are pretty good at the moment, but most New Zealanders are struggling to keep their heads above water, and too many are going backwards.

I want to talk about a young single mum I met who came to tell me her story in my office. She said to me that she was on the DPB. She is trying to do good by her kids so her bills are paid automatically—they come out before she sees the money hitting her account. But then one week that did not happen, so one week she ended up with a whole lot of money in her account. And she got a rush of blood to the head—she is human—and she spent it. She should not have. She rang the Budget Advisory Service because she was so upset. She knew that she had to pay it back. She did not know how she was going to do it. She was scared that she was going to get into trouble.

The Budget Advisory Service staff went to see her. When they went around there they were expecting that she had spent the money on alcohol or cigarettes. Do you know what she had spent that money on? She had spent it on non-perishable food. She had filled her pantry with that money. She said to me that she knew that she should not have done it, but she said that she just wanted that security—to feel that security that she had not felt for a long time of knowing where the next couple of weeks’ meals were going to come from. And she said that she wanted to say to her kids: “Tonight you get to eat until you are full.”

When did food become a luxury item in this country? Because, I tell you what, it is under this Government.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Rubbish!

In New Zealand food should not be a luxury item and for too many families it is. Nick Smith can say “Rubbish!”, but I was moved by that young woman who came to see me, because it shows that New Zealand has changed. And it has not changed for the better. Todd McClay and Simon Bridges can laugh, but the fact is that that is the reality out there for too many of our families. That is the reality out there for too many of our children, and you tell me that $60 a week is not going to help. I tell you that it will, and I am proud of that policy. I am proud of that policy.

I want to talk a little bit about power prices—a little bit about power prices. Simon Bridges and John Key constantly tell us that power prices are competitive; that power prices are not too high. We know that that simply is not true. We have flattening demand for electricity in this country. We have an over-surplus of generation. We have a collapsed carbon price.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: That’s right, and you want to ramp it up. You want to ramp it up on poor Kiwis.

If power prices are not going to go down now, Mr Bridges, they are never going down. So this side of the House is saying we are going to do something about that. We are going to bring down power prices.

What is Simon Bridges’ response to this? That people can go on the website, if they have a computer and access to the internet, and use the What’s My Number campaign to change power retailers. That is your answer, Mr Bridges. Well, you know what, Mr Bridges? For a lot of families, they are lucky—

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: Why don’t you just ask me a question in the House?

You do not need to scream at me. I know this is sensitive because you know that you have failed in this area. But most families I deal with are lucky if they can get one electricity retailer to pick them up. The idea that they have a choice, Mr Bridges, is pure fantasyland, la-la stuff, and shows how arrogant and out of touch this Minister of Energy and Resources is—just how out of touch the Government is. They are lucky if they can get one power retailer.

Most of the difference in power prices actually comes from early payment discounts. That is the big difference. Well, an early payment discount does not matter if you cannot pay the bill, Mr Bridges. You do not get the early payment discount if you cannot afford to pay the power bill. Oh, a little light bulb goes on over his head. So the What’s My Number campaign does nothing for the poorest families in this country. It actually does nothing for many of the middle-class families in this country. But that is this Government’s solution to power prices. That is this Government’s solution.

So I want to come on to the issue of housing, which my colleague Phil Twyford talked about. I want to talk about social housing a little bit, because in the provinces what we used to have is a waiting list of categories A, B, C, and D, in declining need. And what this Government did is it said “You know what? Anyone who is category C or D, we’re going to kick them off the waiting list. That category no longer exists, because they’re not needed.”

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: That’s not true.

That is absolutely true. In the provinces—and I know in Gisborne—80 percent of our waiting list was categories C and D. And it is not that these people are wealthy; it is that the rents, on which we base the income-related rents, are lower than they are in the cities. So it is not that these people’s incomes are high; it is that the average rent is low. But we do not have enough landlords in provincial New Zealand to meet the need.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: You haven’t been in provincial New Zealand in years.

That is where social housing fills an incredible—I live in Gisborne.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: No you don’t.

Oh, for God’s sake! That is how pathetic it is. I do not live in Gisborne when I live in Gisborne. That is what Simon Bridges is choosing to focus on. This is a man who in his electorate had a family living in a tent for 5 weeks. For 5 weeks they were living in a tent. What did you do about that?

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: I didn’t know about it.

Nothing. Why do you not just talk about how I do not live in Gisborne? That is how seriously this Government is taking the difficulties facing families in this country.

So, if I go back to it, what happens is we have State houses sitting empty right across New Zealand—3,500 houses sitting empty right across New Zealand—while families are living in tents. How does that make sense? We have 4,500 people on the Housing New Zealand waiting list, and that is ignoring the 5,000 people it kicked off categories C and D. This Government’s social housing plan is to kick people off waiting lists, stop putting people into houses so it can then pretend that there is no need, and then have an excuse to flog the houses off. That is what National did the last time it was in Government, so we should not be surprised. We should not be surprised. It hocked off nearly 13,000 State houses in the 1990s.

When we were in Government we managed to rebuild nearly 8,000 houses, and that was despite the fact that we were going through a building boom, and you could not get a builder for love or money, because we had to rebuild that housing stock. We brought income-related rents back. We started the maintenance programme that had stopped under the National Government. You know what? In 9 years we did not get to repair all the damage wreaked by 9 years of a National Government—we did not. And had we won again in 2008 we would have continued to repair the damage done to social housing by the 1990s National Government.

But, unfortunately, all we are seeing is history repeating itself. It is dressed up differently. Crosby/Textor has put a different spin on it, but it is the same old Tory policies—kick people out of social housing. They do not deserve to be there. Kick them while they are down, rather than using social housing and seeing social housing as the one opportunity that Governments have to provide security in a family’s life. We do not get to do it with any other intervention that we have as Governments. But with housing we do. We can give people a home. We can give them a community. When there is social housing, we can connect them to the support that they need. Because, let us be honest, Housing New Zealand is often the landlord of last resort—it is. But if we just keep kicking people out of social housing, where do they go? They do not disappear. They do not suddenly vanish and not be a problem any more. They just become someone else’s problem and we never ever get to the root of that problem.

You see this with what you saw in Gisborne with an 80-year-old man who had a stroke. He was living in a Housing New Zealand house. Housing New Zealand approved his nephew moving in to look after the house, do the maintenance, and look after the gardens while he was in hospital. Well, the nephew planted some dope on the property. The police came in. There was an investigation. The 80-year-old man was completely incapacitated after his stroke. He got evicted from his Housing New Zealand house because this lot are so inflexible when it comes to housing that they could not see that it was not that elderly gentleman’s fault. He had been in that home for 50 years. It was his home. Housing New Zealand staff locally were distraught that they had to evict him, but they said that there was no wriggle room. They were no longer allowed to take—thank you, Mr Heatley, for that, by the way—the personal circumstances of those tenants into consideration when making these decisions. That is the New Zealand we now live in. That is going to change this year when we elect a Labour Government.

Fancy living in a Housing New Zealand home for 50-odd years. Fancy not going and buying your own house. Fancy not asking the Government for assistance to buy your own house but rather staying there for 50 years. It is a State house. It belongs to the State. It is there to help those in need, for goodness’ sake. That is the reason for a State house.

💬 Moana Mackey: He was in need.

And while we are talking about State houses, Ms Mackey—before she goes—cast your minds back to 1936 and Michael Joseph Savage. Phil Goff was there, but I was not. Cast your mind back to that day when Michael Joseph Savage was given a broken gold watch, three huia feathers, and a pounamu tiki. They represented the deal done between Rātana and Labour. Four years later, Mickey Savage died. Since then no one has seen these taonga, these artefacts that supposedly bound the Labour Party and Rātana together—or, I should say, that supposedly bound Māori together with the Labour Party in 1936. You would have thought that Labour would keep hold of them. You would have thought that they were so precious and they meant so much to the Labour Party and to New Zealand, in fact, that these taonga would be kept on display for the rest of the nation to see.

So let us talk about relationships and where they go. Let us talk about Treaty settlements and the 67 Treaty settlements since they were established. Out of 67 Treaty settlements, 41 were settled under National in the last 5 years. Billions of dollars were created out of those just settlements, and the Tūhoe settlement is still to come. There were 26 of those 67 settlements in the 9 years—9 years—of the Labour Government. When I delivered the Muriwhenua report as Minister of Māori Affairs, way back last century, some bright spark on the other side said: “Er, mate, what we’re going to do is wait for Labour, because they’ll give us more.” Well, they waited for Labour, and Labour came and went. In those 9 years Muriwhenua still had not been settled. It is only through the good grace of our Cabinet and of our Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, the Hon Chris Finlayson, that on the weekend a deal was signed with Ngāti Kurī, part of the Muriwhenua conglomerate.

What have we done in terms of land use? Well, let us have a look at Te Ture Whenua Maori Act / Maori Land Act. There is around $8 billion worth of land that actually sits idle because nobody had thought of trying to unlock it. Who is out there now trying to unlock that? Who is out there doing the business to review Te Ture Whenua Maori Act? None other than National and the Māori Party. That is what we call “engagement”—engagement. You know, I love to go to huis and listen to how Labour has a great relationship with Māori. Labour members talk a good game, but who delivers on that relationship? It is the National Party. Who funded kōhanga reo first and foremost? Oh, that is right, it was actually Muldoon who funded kōhanga reo way back. But anybody would have thought that it is this relationship between Māori and Labour that does all of this. It is not. It is not. It is a lie.

The previous speaker, Moana Mackey, talked about housing. Well, here is something that all New Zealand should know about. At Rātana there are houses—State houses, even—that were in need of some work. And who was the Government member who sat down in a relationship with Rātana about this? My colleague and my friend the former Minister of Housing, the Hon Phil Heatley. All of those homes have been fixed, they have been made warm, and they have been made safe for that community. You would have thought that over a 70-year period Labour would do something along the lines of a real relationship, but oh no. The real relationship comes when there are people who are interested not in talking a good game but in playing a good game. That is the difference between Labour and National. National does not just sit there and pontificate and talk a good game; our Ministers get in and get their hands dirty and do that—$100 million has been spent on the insulation project. Many of those homes that have been insulated are Māori homes. There was nothing under Labour.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: 45 percent.

Forty-five percent of those homes are Māori homes.

I think that what we are seeing today is the realignment of where history should sit—that is, that National has been good for the relationship with Māori. Have a look at education, for goodness’ sake. In terms of early childhood education, there are more Māori in early childhood education than ever before. The uptake of early childhood education for Māori families is hugely significant—hugely significant. There are more Māori achieving now under national standards and under the National Certificate of Educational Achievement than ever before. They are staying at school longer. There are more graduates from wānanga, from universities, and from polytechs. Out of 9,000 places under the Youth Guarantee scheme, 4,000 are Māori students—4,000 are Māori young people.

So when it comes to talking about relationships, the delivery of service to Māori under a National Government is beyond reproach. We have done our fair share. I implore the community to think very seriously about where their vote goes. It is OK in the individual vote. I mean, people have their own individual preferences. But, as my colleague said, the most important vote is the party vote, because that is the party you want to see in Government. Who do you think—no, not you, Mr Deputy Speaker; them folks out there—should govern this country on behalf of the country? That is why I say to those who have been duped over the last few years—Māori and others, and the Pacific Island community as well—by this touchy-touchy-feely-feely way of handling politics where members have empathy with the poor old Pacific Island community, they have empathy with the poor old Māori community, and they even go to lengths like I saw at Waitangi the other day, with David Cunliffe trying his best to pull the waka on board, trying to say—

💬 Hon Phil Goff: Where were you?

Where was I? Actually, I was planning my father’s unveiling that day, Mr Goff.

💬 Hon Phil Goff: OK. We’ll let you off, then.

Oh, you will let me off. That is the attitude—

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: Sanctimonious.

—the sanctimonious attitude, with something like that. When somebody tells the truth, they go back into their little shell and—

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: “We’ll let you off.”

Yes, “We’ll let you off.” Well, thanks very much. Thanks very much, Phil. I am sure my father feels great at this moment, 6 feet under or wherever he is.

You know, the fact of the matter is that we have delivered on our relationship with tangata whenua and delivered so much that we will keep delivering because it is good for the country—not because Māori want it and not because we think that Māori want it but because it is good for the relationship between the Government and tangata whenua. Kia ora.

It is with great delight that I get to speak in support of the Prime Minister’s statement to this Parliament.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: This could go viral.

This could go viral, yes. What I can say to the House is that given that it is an election year, I think it is worthwhile trying to nail down here once and for all what it is that voters actually use to make their decision about how they will vote. I think it is as simple as this—just two straight things. Is it: “Time for a change.”, or “Do not change a winning formula.”? For nearly every election I have been involved in over many, many years, and before that just working as a member of the party, there were times when you could see that it was time for a change, that there was a stale, old Government that needed to be changed, and there were other times when people said that the last thing this country could afford was to change to the alternative and therefore create mayhem again.

So on that basis I am going to raise some issues along the way. The first one is for the voters of this country to try to get to understand what the other side’s policies would actually be, because, for the first time ever in an MMP Government, if there was to be a Labour-Green coalition it would not be one enormous big party with the vast bulk of things and a couple of smaller support parties of one or two or maybe four or five; it would be Labour only fractionally bigger than the Greens, and the Greens having a huge amount of say—a huge amount of say—in the coalition policy. Whether I agree with some of Labour’s views on economic policy or not is irrelevant. The fact is that you would not know whether you were getting that or not, because the Greens have an off-the-planet view about what the economy should look like and how it should be run. Voters should be very afraid of putting at risk the fragile gains that have been made. And they are fragile.

Let us go back to when we came into office. We came into office in 2008 with the global financial crisis just beginning to break. I accept that on “Planet Labour” the global financial crisis did not occur. Those members quite regularly get up and say “Look how much higher unemployment is under National than when we were in office.”, or “Look at National having run deficits when we ran surpluses.” Well, guess what! In 2008 the financial world changed. Some countries went into bankruptcy. The United States fell out of bed, as did its sharemarket. We were lucky that the Western World’s economic structures stayed in place. To then say “Well, look, you’ve got a deficit and not a surplus like we used to.”, and “You’ve got higher unemployment.” is not the question.

What is so good about the general voting public of New Zealand is that they are not stupid enough to fall for stupid rhetoric like “You’ve got deficits now and we had surpluses.” In fact, the vast bulk of the voters whom I talk to now are terribly, terribly positive in the fact that Bill English, as the finance Minister, took us through some of the roughest, toughest times that you could ever possibly face and did not do it with a slash-and-burn mentality of throwing out everything that was trying to keep the ship afloat. He did take up some big borrowings—and, yes, we have got a lot of debt on the books—but he still was very careful and very frugal about new spending and about what we did in terms of trying to get some economic growth back. So I think that the public will judge the economic situation that we are in now as a real plus for the current National-led Government. They will also know that it is terribly fragile. Even if the economic situation was very robust and guaranteed, some of the extreme lunacy that would come from a Labour-Greens Government would blow it out of the water. They have got these absolutely crazy schemes. They have opposed just about every measure we have taken—in fact, I put it that they have opposed every measure we have taken—to try to settle the economy down.

💬 Dr Cam Calder: And so have Labour.

Well, I am actually talking about both lots. They have opposed the lot. I am talking about Labour, the Greens, and whatever other Uncle Tom Cobbleigh they would have to pull together to try to make the thing work. But what I find really interesting—and we have got another example today with the Trans-Pacific Partnership—is just how their institutional memory seems to have been wiped. The public will not fall for that. The public will not have a bar of it. They will not have a bar of it, for example, in terms of the sale of land to foreigners. Let us take that one—it is a cracker. Phil Goff has even got a member’s bill because he is so opposed—he is so opposed—to selling land to foreigners.

However, let us have a look at the track record. In 9 years in office, Labour sold five times as much land to foreigners as we have—five times.

I will give you the best year, the very best year—it was 2006. This is my personal favourite. Winston Peters was foreign Minister in the Government of the day, and he cannot deny that. He was foreign Minister in the Government of the day. In that one year alone, the Labour Government, with Mr Peters as foreign Minister in it, sold 300,000 hectares of land. We have not even broken 120,000 hectares in our whole time in office, and yet Labour is coming along with what I think the general public would say—and I cannot use the “h” word; I will go with something else—was a double standard.

It is a double standard for a party that presided over the Government of this country for 9 years and sold 666,000 hectares of land to foreigners to then say: “We’re opposed to selling land to foreigners, and this dreadful National Government has sold just over 100,000, about 120,000.” They are not laughing, but they should be. It should be so embarrassing that that is Labour’s policy. Then you get some more, like David Cunliffe saying: “John Key came back from Australia with nothing in his hand, and didn’t get the rights for New Zealand residents over there—didn’t get them.” What he should have said was that it was the former Labour leader, the former Labour Prime Minister, who signed away on that when she went over there. Oh no, not a mutter, not a murmur, not a whisper on that one. What sort of a double standard is that?

If I had done something, and then some years later claimed that it was wrong for the person who did it, and it turned out it was me, I would be so red in the face it would not be funny. Mr Goff is rabbiting on about something else. How about the free-trade agreement negotiations with China? They were kept under wraps, for very good reason, until they were finalised. It is the same with the Trans-Pacific Partnership right now. They were kept under wraps, for very, very good reason—because they are in negotiation.

It is a little bit like asking: “How much did you pay for your house?”. Well, I would be happy to tell people what I paid for my house once I had signed the deal and the bank stuff had gone through and the mortgage had been set up. But I would not be telling anybody what I was currently negotiating with the seller of it, because I would be hoping to get a little bit more here, or get them to leave the chattels in here, or put in some furniture, and, of course, negotiations are normally always confidential. But, again, it is to do with double standards. If everything Labour did when it was in office was transparent, Labour members would have every right to come to this House today and say: “That Government over there isn’t transparent, it doesn’t tell us, and we always did.” But the bizarre reality of it is that they do not.

So here is my last bit of advice to Labour. I should not be giving Labour advice, but I will. The voters of this country actually make a decision based on the things they talk about at the breakfast table—not the sideshows and the bizarre stuff about Kim Dotcom, or who leaked what, or whatever. There is not a single family that sits at the breakfast table and says: “What do you think about the secrecy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership document?”. They do not. What they do is they get up and say: “Will I still have a job? Will our income pay the bills? Will my kids be getting a good standard of education?”. In the case of every one of those headline elements that matters—in the case of every one—this National Government has delivered fantastic outcomes, be it the lowest crime rate in 30 years, be it a surplus coming in the Budget, or be it a number of things, like standards in education and the national standards, which are giving parents some good information. Every one of the things that parents talk about at the breakfast table with their families, every one of the things that matter to them, is heading in the right direction. The general view of the public will be that we cannot afford to put this at risk while we have got the lunatics wanting to take over running the asylum. That is it.

Can I take just a few moments of my first speech in the House this year to deliver some pleasantries. I hope everyone had a good break, and I wish everyone the best for election year.

There are two things on which I do agree with the previous speaker, Maurice Williamson. The first is that people will make their decisions on how they vote around things they talk about at the breakfast table or the dinner table, if they are lucky enough to have dinner that night, and they will decide whether the formula for a party is a mood for change or not. So let us talk about what people do talk about at the breakfast table. The power bill comes in. I want to talk specifically in terms of the community I represent, and that is the Pacific community.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: It went up dramatically more under Labour than us.

The power bill comes in, Mr Williamson, and a Pacific family will be wondering how they can pay that power bill. If you look at the Salvation Army report last year, it shows that in the period between 2007 and 2012, although the average weekly income for every household in this country went up by $54 during that period, for the same period a Pacific household’s income went up by $2 a week. So when that family looks at how they are going to pay the power bills, they will make a decision about whether or not they feel better under this Government and the track record, when someone else’s average household weekly income goes up by $54 a week and a Pacific Island family’s average weekly income goes up by $2 a week. Twenty-seven times more is the national average than for a Pacific Island family. That is from the Salvation Army report released last year.

They will also sit around the breakfast table wondering whether Johnny is going to have a job. They will talk about that, so let us look at the Pacific unemployment rate at the moment. It is 13.7 percent, which is twice the national average at the moment. They will do that maths in their head, Mr Williamson, as to whether they think they are getting a fair deal and whether it is time for a change. You will see the Pacific community mobilise this year, because they have felt the rough edges of the recession. This Government has done nothing for them. Their average weekly income has pretty much stayed the same for the last 6 years under this National Government, and the Pacific unemployment rate means their families are twice as worse off than any other family in this country. So they will do that maths, sitting around the breakfast table, and they will make a very wise decision to turf this Government.

We are speaking to the Prime Minister’s statement. John Key, the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon John Key, the National leader, call him what you like, but over the course of this year you will find that he will have another title and that will be Nigel-no-mates. Over the rest of the year he will realise—and he is already starting to realise—that his friends around this House will soon disappear and he will not have enough, when it comes election time, to cross the threshold and have a majority in this House. He has already started making signals around that to other parties that he would not accommodate in the past because it goes against everything in his political judgment—he would not go into coalition with these parties. But now, all of a sudden, Mr Key is Nigel-no-mates and has to start thinking about who his mates might be post election.

Look at his mates who are propping up the Government at the moment. We have got John Banks, who will spend most of this parliamentary year in the dock, facing electoral fraud charges. That is a really good look. That is a really, really good look for this Government. And who else have we got? Oh, the United Future leader, Peter Dunne, who was asked in this House today whether or not he has the integrity as a Minister who is responsible for the security of documentation and security of information in this country, whether he is the person who should be in charge, whether or not he leaked sensitive documents, and he will not give a straight answer. Well, I think the people of New Zealand will read behind the lines of that and realise that this Government is being propped up by two MPs who are, I guess you could say, tricky or dodgy in that respect, and as this year progresses old Nigel-no-mates over there will realise that his parliamentary term will come to an end whenever he calls an election. This Government is being propped up by two MPs whose time will soon come to an end.

Also, we are seeing this Government trying to gerrymander its way back into Government, but not necessarily making the decisions around MMP that it should, and trying to make sure it has got its mates back in this Government by making sure that the coat-tail rule in MMP stays in. It is a piece of law that 70 percent of New Zealanders say sucks. But, no, this Government is so out of touch that it will keep it there, just to make sure that in the faint hope that one of those two get back in, National can still be the Government.

Who are the other options? Colin Craig. Even Maurice Williamson cannot have a straight face. I did not even say anything about Colin Craig. I just mentioned his name, and Maurice Williamson cannot even keep a straight face. This is the man whom this National Party wants to do a deal with in order to stay in power. This Government will do almost anything—almost anything—to stay in power. That is not a Government that we should be keeping.

We are looking forward to this election year, actually. As Mr Williamson said, there is a mood for change out there. We are looking forward to going out there and telling our story about how this Labour Party will bring in policies that will help Kiwi families. We have already announced one piece of policy, and that is our Best Start policy, which will look at investing in Kiwi children to make sure that we give them the best start in life. We will, as Sue Moroney’s member’s bill is proposing, extend paid parental leave for 26 weeks. I think you will find that most families out there in New Zealand who are looking to start families, or to have another child, really support making sure that there is a good period of time, when they do have young kids, when mums or dads can spend time with them in that first 6 months. We will also look at making sure that those families are getting $60 a week for the first year of the baby’s life to make sure they can meet the needs of those kids and that those kids can get the best start in life.

In terms of early childhood education, there is something that Trevor Mallard introduced, with 20 free hours early childhood education. That will be extended from 20 hours to 25 hours. When I visited the Discovery kindergarten in Whitby about a week ago, those parents to whom I spoke about that part of our Best Start policy were more than happy to make sure that they could have some more hours available to them, so they could either get more work or look for more part-time work, as parents of young children. The Best Start policy is about investing in our children and I am proud of it. I am really proud that we have laid the platform of what this campaign will be about for the Labour Party. It is about investing in our children.

We have heard too many extreme stories about children in New Zealand—horror stories—to sit here in this Parliament and not take action. I think my colleague Poto Williams spoke of one extreme case in her maiden speech, James Whakaruru, who was beaten to death by one of his caregivers. We hear too many horror stories of children living in poverty. I understand that the statistic is that roughly about one in four children in New Zealand lives in poverty. In this House that is not good enough. So the Best Start policy, which David Cunliffe introduced a fortnight ago, is one way that this Labour Party is going to go out there and tell its story in an election year to garner support.

That Best Start policy will help a lot of families locally in my community. Around 1,500 new babies are born in the Mana electorate every year—roughly 1,000 in Porirua and 500 in the Kāpiti area. So that investment will be a good investment for children locally. Every one dollar spent in those early years of a child’s life results in $11 of taxpayers’ money saved later on in their lives, in terms of education, health, and keeping them out of the justice sector. That is a good investment. If you told anyone on the street that you would give them $110 if they handed over $10, they would certainly take those odds. What have we had from the Government on this policy? Well, it has just been scaremongering and more out of touch rhetoric from the National Party. It is so out of touch that even in what you would call a relatively strong National Party area of my electorate in Whitby, they quite like that policy.

So, as you can see, this Government is full of rhetoric and is out of touch, and the people of Mana know that, especially when you ask them their opinions on policies like that one, and on policies like stopping asset sales. The Government tried to hide the last referendum result but it was a resounding victory for those New Zealanders who did not want this Government to sell assets. Around 70 percent of people in the Mana electorate said no to asset sales. But what did this Government do? Did it listen? No, it did not. This is a Government that is out of touch. We are looking forward to this election campaign, when people will make their decisions around what they discuss at the breakfast table, as Mr Williamson said. This Government has a poor track record on incomes and jobs.

It is a huge pleasure to get up and take a call on the Prime Minister’s statement. I cannot believe that the previous speaker, Kris Faafoi, who is normally a man of some rectitude, and who has been known to contribute on the field to the parliamentary rugby team, was talking about power bills. Mr Faafoi, power bills went up 77 percent under your watch—77 percent. The people in your electorate will be just giving thanks that there is a fine National Government there that is taking control of this situation, which was out of control under your watch. They probably enjoy having you there briefly from time to time visiting them, but on these matters of power bills, Mr Faafoi, they are very happy that there is a National-led Government.

This is a National-led Government that is producing results. These are results for our most vulnerable, results for our newborn, results for our young people, results for our families, results for our seniors, and results for Māori, Pasifika, and our recent immigrants. These are results for all New Zealanders. I will come back to this in more detail because the Prime Minister’s statement reflects our deep understanding of the global financial situation and our success in navigating our way through it. It is a statement that reflects our steadfast resolve to cushion the most vulnerable from the worst edges of the recession, and an appreciation that we as a nation have to work together in a smarter way and formulate intelligent and innovative policies to facilitate this.

This is a Government that respects New Zealanders. What a contrast to the recent announcement from the third Labour leader in 3 years, David Cunliffe. That was the announcement of a scheme to pay money to virtually any fertile New Zealand family to have a child. It is a poorly targeted spray of dollars, loopy largesse, and unfocused, loose thinking, and is giving money to thousands of high-income families who have no need of it. How would this be paid for? Here, the Prime Minister has pointed out that the third Labour leader in 3 years has been very tricky. Has Mr Cunliffe been cunning? Perhaps he thought he had been. Who does not like being given money? But New Zealand voters are more insightful that that. Has Mr Cunliffe been conning the electorate with his explanation of how this cadeau would be paid for? Cancelling policies that are not in force saves nothing. Has he been conning the electorate? Many believe he has.

Labour is living in an economic Middle Earth and the voters of New Zealand are underwhelmed and cynical at an opening salvo in the 2014 campaign that portrays the author as both “Disingenuous David” and “Devious David”. Instead of a Best Start, it is a stuttering misfire, which underlines the fact that Labour has learnt nothing in the last 5 years in Opposition—nothing, nada, nil—and has disregarded the global financial crisis completely. It is firmly stuck in the same old mind-set of tax more, spend more, and hope. The 2014 parliamentary year is just a few weeks old and already the Labour Opposition is promising $750 million in more spending—$750 million. That is three-quarters of a billion dollars in money that it does not have, and it has no idea where it is going to get it from.

This speech by the third Labour leader in 3 years was an opening pirouette in a dance of the desperate. It is only early February in an election year and Labour is already promising $750 million in the hope of buying voter support. But he was not done there—he was not done there. The very next day he complained that the majority of New Zealand meat exports were frozen carcasses. That is wrong. The fact is that well over 90 percent of our meat products are cut and prepared in New Zealand before export. Anyone who has been overseas and seen our meat products on display will know how well we do—how well we do and how well they have been presented.

Where else has the Labour Party been wrong, I hear you ask. Labour members would have us believe that income inequality in New Zealand is getting worse. That is wrong, wrong, wrong. The figures of long-term Ministry of Social Development research statistician Bryan Perry are clear that over the last 10 years or so the numbers have barely changed. Interestingly, Australia is less equal than New Zealand. Labour members would have you believe that the wage gap between Australia and New Zealand is widening. That is wrong, wrong, and wrong again. The fact is that in real, after-tax terms, the gap between wages in Australia and New Zealand is narrowing under this National-led Government. Labour members constantly complain and claim that more and more New Zealanders are going to live in Australia. That is wrong, wrong, wrong. We have got the Minister of Immigration saying it is definitely wrong, right here in front of us. The fact is that according to Statistics New Zealand the number of New Zealanders moving to Australia has been falling steadily since December 2012.

Labour members would have you believe that National ignores older people—wrong, wrong, wrong. The fact is that, under National, superannuation for a married couple has increased by well over 25 percent since 2008—25 percent since 2008—which is far more than compensating for the increase in prices from inflation over the same period.

There have been well over 40,000 more elective surgeries, improving the quality of life for over-65-year-olds. Our older people are doing better under National.

So far, the third Labour leader in 3 years has been caught out in a web of inaccuracy, a slew of untruths, and a comedy of errors. You can understand why the Labour caucus is so ambivalent about supporting him. You know, if this is the Best Start possible, it is going to be a long slide to virtual irrelevancy by the time the election comes around—and that is just the leader, “Devious David Cunliffe”. What other innovative ideas has the Labour Party developed as it enters its sixth year in Opposition? How many ideas? Well, actually, not many. Its spokesman on revenue, Dr David Clark, normally a man of sober thought and mien, obviously gave the matter a little bit of thought—a little bit of thought. Possibly he was texting Kim Il Sung of South Korea for inspiration, because Dr Clark has been on the record as proposing to ban multinational—

💬 Hon Phil Goff: Kim Il Sung is North Korea.

—of North Korea—corporations like Facebook from the internet. Closing down Facebook is certainly a left-field suggestion, even from a party of the left, and certainly seemed to take his caucus colleagues by surprise. So Labour members in their first days back after the rejuvenating summer break have proved themselves bereft of new ideas, instead serving up ill-conceived, poorly costed, ill-directed, middle-class welfare, and plainly risible fantasy—and that is just Labour.

The possibility of a Labour-Green coalition would pose a very real clear and present danger. The Labor-Greens have left the economy of Australia a virtual train wreck. After years of Labor-Green misgovernment there, Australia is facing huge deficits and rising unemployment. Globally, the recovery from the worst recession in decades is still very gradual. I heard my erstwhile colleague here, the Hon Maurice Richardson, point that out himself. The Greens would have a more dominant role in New Zealand with the Labour Party than they do in Australia and they are philosophically opposed to farming, to manufacturing, to exportation of oil and mineral resources—the major underpinnings of our economy.

This is a Government of fresh ideas that is willing, ready, and able to provide principled and pragmatic leadership for New Zealand so that all can share in a brighter future and seize the growing opportunity our burgeoning economy provides.

In that extraordinary theatrical performance, the member who has just resumed his seat, Dr Cam Calder, accused our side of the House of being a bit loose with the facts. He then rapidly promoted Kim Il Sung to be the leader of South Korea. That will come as a bit of a shock to many, many people living in that country. Then, in a bit of a revival of the “mother of all Budgets”, he referred to his colleague Maurice Williamson as “Maurice Richardson”. I think it is a bit rich for that member to tell us we are a bit loose with the facts; he cannot even remember his own colleagues’ names.

I am very pleased to be speaking in this debate in support of the amendment of David Cunliffe to the Prime Minister’s statement, which reads “this House expresses no confidence in this National led Government because New Zealand has become more and more divided, because those in the middle are struggling, and because the poor are going backwards.” The facts speak for themselves on that amendment. That amendment is absolutely accurate and every member of the National Party knows it. They can come into this House and spin their lines as often as they like, but the facts will, in the end, get in the way of their story. The reason that will happen is that outside this House people are living their lives and they know how their lives are. They know when they hear John Key speak that he is arrogant and that he is out of touch with the reality of how hard they work and how little they earn compared with the effort that they put into their jobs.

I remember Bill English saying at the time he cut the tax for the highest income earners in New Zealand that if people were not earning enough money they should work harder. That is an example of the arrogance of the National Party members and how out of touch they are with many, many New Zealanders who work much harder, frankly, than many people in this House and who cannot get enough money from their wage or salary to give their families the opportunities that many of us have just taken for granted, like the opportunity to get a higher education and the opportunity to get into a job that is challenging and satisfying and gives people value in their wage packet that is comparable to what they are putting into our economy.

Many people have had that opportunity taken away from them by the National-led Government. Its members are out of touch with many, many New Zealanders and that is where the truth will come to bite them, because those are the New Zealanders who choose our Government. Later on this year, whether it is September, October, or November, they will cast their ballot in favour of the party that they know represents their voice and understands their lives—and that certainly is not National. I know that it is Labour.

Labour wants an economy that works for all New Zealanders. We do have growing inequality in New Zealand for retired people, for middle-income earners, and for young families. It is now harder and harder for them to pay their bills and live a quality life. They do not want to go to Hawaii for a holiday, necessarily. That would probably be the icing on the cake, but what they would like is at least one layer of the cake, one slice of it, to give their life some added value, to have some good times, and to not have every day with just enough to get by, or perhaps not even that much. At the same time, they are seeing people on really high incomes getting massive pay increases and bonuses. That does not equate to a fair or a just society.

In New Zealand we used to be so proud of so many things. We used to be so proud of being an egalitarian society where it did not matter where you were born or what state your family was in at the time—you would have access to early childhood education, you would have access to a high-quality local school, a public education system, and you would be able to afford to go to a polytechnic or a university and have a really good chance at a decent job in the future. For many people, that is just off their menu now. This National-led Government has taken that chance away from so many people—that opportunity for everyone to be the best they can possibly be because of the collective services that we provide them with, whether it is through the education system, whether it is through the health system, or whether it is through social housing. Those supports give people the chance to give back to their country everything that they are capable of, and that is the opportunity that is gone.

One of the other things that New Zealanders feel very passionate and proud about is our environment. I have been just appalled at the lack of passion from the National Party for anything in the environmental space. We used to boast about our clean, green image and John Key even dissed that. He said: “Forget about that. It’s not real; it’s just a marketing slogan.” He told the world that we did not have a clean, green country, that it was just a marketing slogan. And, actually, it is getting closer and closer to the truth. We have seen our water quality standards degraded. We have seen the lack of protection of our national parks. We nearly had mining in our most precious parts of the country. If it was not for 40,000 Aucklanders who cared passionately about Great Barrier Island and Coromandel, mining in the most precious parts of New Zealand would have gone ahead. Thank goodness that the Government listened—just that single time—to the voices of New Zealanders.

We have also seen a complete undermining of the principles of the Resource Management Act in some areas. We have seen it in the exclusive economic zone, in the lack of passion and commitment, and certainly in the lack of action from the fisheries Minister and the Minister of Conservation for protection of the Māui’s dolphins. There are 55 Māui’s dolphins left—not just only around New Zealand but on the planet—but this Government has failed to take any decisive action in order to protect that species. I think that is a disgrace. What will happen to the New Zealand reputation that we have been so proud of in the past if this Government oversees the extinction of that species? It is a disgrace. It is so irresponsible, it is so arrogant, and it is so out of keeping with the pride and passion that New Zealanders have in their society and in our environment.

Labour has been putting up some good alternatives, and I was delighted to see David Cunliffe’s first announcement—and it will be the first of many this year—being a strong commitment to New Zealanders who have young families. That is a very good place to start, and it was very appropriately named Best Start, because that is what Labour wants to give every child who is born in New Zealand—the best start. I am sure that “Maurice Richardson” would agree with that commitment. I am sure that he would agree with the principle of giving every New Zealand child the best start, so that is an important package.

I just want to conclude by looking at the state that the National-led Government is in now. I remember John Key boasting about how he would provide New Zealand with a stable Government. We have got the Māori Party, which has been roundly criticised by its own supporters for propping up a Government that has done so much damage to Māori around New Zealand. The party itself is very torn about that. It thinks it gets more by being in coalition, but, actually, the price of that support is far too high, in my view. The price of supporting damage to your own constituency is a price that I do not think should ever be paid.

John Banks is up in court for forgetting he got massive donations from Kim Dotcom, who is a very big man. He lives in a massive mansion—an extraordinary place—with his wife. John Banks flew in a helicopter to have lunch with this very large German man with a really unusual name, got the cheque, and then forgot it. Perhaps he does that quite regularly. I actually do not go out to lunch at a mansion in North Auckland to get a cheque from Kim Dotcom very often, but perhaps John Banks does it so often he forgot about it. So that is another coalition partner, and now we have got John Key giving Peter Dunne back his job.

Again, today the question and answer session at Parliament at 2 p.m. provided very little relief about what Peter Dunne actually had as his involvement with the Kitteridge report. John Key is now reneging on his previous criticism of Winston Peters and offering him a lifeline. This is not the stable Government that we were promised. It is arrogant and out of touch.

That speech by Ruth Dyson is not worth commenting on, but we have got a changing world out there. It is especially heartening to see the public of New Zealand understand the change that is going on in New Zealand and around the world. They see a Government that understands that change, is part of that change, and is leading that change in a positive and constructive way. They see a Government that is getting its house in order, that has got through the worse recession in our generation, and that has started on the rebuild of Christchurch. They see a Government that understands what needs to be done for its people and that has a wide ambit of knowledge and understanding of what can be done for New Zealanders going forward. It is a positive, future-looking, and aspirational Government. It is what the people of New Zealand have demanded for years and they have finally got.

On the other side, we have an Opposition that cannot get out of the trenches. The members look behind themselves all the time. They have no vision, no understanding, and no comprehension of the modern world. They live in an environment where they think everything should be protected as it was in 1950. They think that everybody should have the same job that they had 20 years ago. They think that everybody should have the same income that they had 20 years ago. They do not live in the modern world and that will be the difference at this election. The public will go out there and look at a Government that will deliver and build a stronger future or an Opposition that will try to attack and demean New Zealanders going forward, and the public will not accept the approach of the Opposition.

Often we hear in our city, like other cities, about the loss of jobs, and people say that it is terrible that there has been a loss of jobs. Well, it is. Nobody wants to see anybody lose their job. But there is the development of the workplace and there is the development of new jobs that come into each city, like Hamilton, for example, where the number of people employed has increased in the last few years and where the participation rate in the workforce has increased over the last few years. There are more people working, more people looking for work, and more people getting jobs. That does not mean that there will not be any change in employment in the state of where somebody has been working.

A great example was a few weeks ago: Kodak. Everyone remembers Kodak, that great company that just filed for bankruptcy recently. It had 145,000 people working for it in its heyday. It was huge. It was a world brand. Everybody knew Kodak. But it did not understand the digital market. It did not pick where the market went in the products that it provided, and it went under. Something like Instagram, which Facebook has just recently bought for about a billion dollars, shows the development and change that you see in a modern society and in a modern economy. We cannot all maintain those jobs that were there in 1950. We have to look forward to a country that goes forward, is competitive, and can take its place in the modern world. That is the change and the direction that we need to look at. We need to be innovative, we need to work off our strengths, and we need to look forward, not look backwards. Our public does not want us to look backwards; they want us to give them that direction going forward.

When you see the policies of the Opposition, they are all negative policies. It wants to tax those people who are earning income. It wants to increase the taxes on those people earning income. We will see that later in the year when it comes up with its tax policy. It wants to tax and tax and tax. Then it says that it is bringing in this parental policy, this Best Start policy. That is a policy that is a trick for New Zealanders. Most New Zealanders will not get it. We did not know the detail until 2 days later. Even Mr Cunliffe did not know the details until 2 days later, which counted out basically half the people who would be getting paid parental leave. When you actually bring the taxes in that will go on those middle-income earners to pay for these policies, there will be nothing in it for them. They will actually be losing money to pay for more money to be spent on the core vote that the Labour Party seeks to get. That is not a progressive policy. That is not a future-forward policy that looks at building a stronger economy or country. That is a policy of going backwards and trying to keep people under the control of the Government. That is where the Labour Party stands, and it has always stood that way.

You will hear things about the minimum wage, and even the Green Party will talk about living wages and things like that. How the Government of the day will suddenly be able to tell people what their income level should be and then make it work will be great to see. I would like to see where it sits on that number, because the Green Party has certainly got a higher number than the Labour Party in terms of what it sees the minimum wage should be. Where that will actually go in the end is something that is yet to be seen.

When you look at the other party on the other side there, you have got the New Zealand First Party. That is an anti-immigration party that is against the changing face of New Zealand. It is a party that is stuck in the past. It does not understand the future of this country going forward. It is disgraceful that we have a party like that in this Parliament that says the things it does and attacks those New Zealanders who come here and build their future in this country. That party should be ashamed of what it says. It is a disgrace to this Parliament that it says those things when we have a country that will go forward. Those people who come here and migrate here to build this country to be stronger should be encouraged. We should be encouraging those people. We should be rewarding them for making the choice to come to New Zealand. We should be making it easier for people to make that choice, and not be listening to the 1950s rhetoric of a party that has no understanding of the modern world going forward.

Then the Green Party is here—the Green Party that used that mantra of the clean, green image that it stands for. The Green Party does not stand for environmental reasons. The Green Party is the far left of socialism in this Parliament. It seeks to have a socialist agenda. “Communism” is too good a word for the Green Party. It is to the far left of socialism, and it will not be successful. Look at the countries around the world that have gone left in recent years: France and Australia. How are those two economies doing? They are in the mire because they have listened to the people who are talking of the past policies that you see from the Labour Party and the Greens. When you look at countries that are going forward, they have been progressive right to centre-right Governments. This Government is looking at building a stronger economy, giving everybody the opportunity through the education system, and making sure that we look after all New Zealanders, regardless of their country of origin. Thank you.

I have spent the afternoon in the House listening carefully to the speeches made by the Government members, and what actually surprised me more than I thought it would was the sheer arrogance and out-of-touch nature of what they have been saying. You know, this is a Government that is so out of touch that when two-thirds of New Zealanders vote in a referendum to say that the Government’s policy is wrong, the Prime Minister gives them a two-fingered salute. That is how arrogant the Prime Minister is. He totally ignores the clearly expressed views of New Zealanders on the question of asset sales. New Zealanders do not want to see their country asset-stripped. They do not want to see the assets, the institutions, that were owned by all of us as New Zealanders now being owned by 1 percent of New Zealanders and a whole lot of foreign investors, and that is what is happening.

Then they consider the Prime Minister on another set of recommendations, from the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission is an independent body. It made recommendations that included that there should be no more coat-tailing—an MP who wins an electorate seat being able to bring a whole lot of other MPs in with them even though the MP’s party does not get to the threshold level of 5 percent. It was the Electoral Commission that made that recommendation, yet this National Party relies on two discredited members of Parliament, one facing electoral charges before the court; the other who deliberately leaked a document contrary to the ministerial oath that he took to preserve the confidentiality of the Executive Council. And National wants them back. It wants them back, despite the fact that the public does not want them. That is arrogance; that is out of touch.

But what is also out of touch is that I have not heard a word from the National Government on the sorts of issues that I hear my kids, my family, my electorate, and my friends talking about and that actually worry them. You know, when you consider it, I come—and you come, Mr Assistant Speaker—from a very lucky generation. Our fathers went to war. They went through a Depression. They did not get a chance for an education, but, by God, they worked hard to give their kids a chance. They really worked hard to do that. Their goal, with the helping hand of the State, was to enable their kids to achieve the Kiwi dream. What was the Kiwi dream? The Kiwi dream was that everyone had opportunity—not just a lucky few but everyone had opportunity. I and my benchmate here, David Shearer, went to a school called Papatoetoe High School, a public school just down the road from King’s College. We got an education that was the equal of a private school education. It gave us kids from a working-class background a chance to go forward.

We had a health system that meant that when we were young, my parents never took out health insurance for us, because the health system was there when we needed it. You could get a prescription. You could get in to the doctor. You could afford that. You could get into hospital. Of course, we had the aspiration that we wanted to own our own homes. That is part of the Kiwi dream. At 23 or 24 I was able to buy my own home. It was fantastic. When I look at my kids, two of them—the two boys—have now got a home of their own. They could not buy in Mount Roskill. Why not Mount Roskill? It is a working-class suburb. Yeah, like hell it is! The median price of a property is $650,000. You know, they are on good wages. They are tradesmen. They work hard for their living. They got their skills, they do their overtime, and they were looking at paying seven or eight times their annual income for a house. For my generation—I paid two and a half times my annual income; I could realise the Kiwi dream.

In each of these cases the State was there to give us a helping hand. We did not rely on it. It was not dependency, but, if you wanted to get into your own home, your parents might get a loan from the State Advances Corporation at 3 percent, or they could capitalise their family benefit. You could realise that dream. Eighty percent of Aucklanders could realise that dream; now it is barely touching 60 percent. More people are being locked into renting because the Government does not care about those who are struggling to get ahead and who are working hard to get ahead. In fact, it is going backwards.

We have heard all the fine words from the Government and from Maurice Williamson. We did not hear anything about the fact that in the last 5 years New Zealand educational standards, compared with other countries in the world, have gone backwards. What is this Government’s answer? It is to give charter schools five times the payment per student that it gives public schools—the charter schools. It is not interested in public education and strengthening it; it is not interested in the majority of New Zealand kids, but it will give the big handouts to the private schools and to the charter schools. That is not the answer.

I worry about my kids. I worry about their generation because they are going to have to meet the cost of us baby boomers going into retirement, and there are a whole lot of us. When dad came back from the war, you know, he wanted what he had missed out on for 5 years. He decided to have his family and to expand his family—and good luck to him—and thousands of other New Zealand men did the same thing. But we are all retiring at the same time. My kids, who will not be able to retire at 65, will be supporting me for a very long time. My dad turns 93 the week after next. He has been retired for 33 years. He knows, and my kids know, that that sort of policy is unsustainable and that we have no intergenerational equity.

What I think Labour did that was a really good idea was to give a helping hand to those having families. None of my kids have kids yet. How can they have babies of their own when both incomes are going to pay off the mortgage? So Labour comes along in a family-friendly way and says that, OK, instead of the mum having to go back to work and put the kid in a creche when the baby is only a few weeks old, she will have the opportunity to have paid parental leave for 6 months. What a great idea—help thousands of New Zealanders and encourage our kids to have kids of their own because they can afford it and it can give them the chance and the opportunity that they need. What is wrong with giving that benefit of $60 a week to the families that are middle income as well as to low-income families for the first year, and then targeting the lower-income families to help them with those basic costs—the napkins and the food? It just gives them a helping hand. Mum and Dad got six bucks a week from the Government way back in the 1950s. That is at least $60 now. This is not generous; this is just acknowledging that having kids is expensive, so you give people a helping hand. That is what the community is about. That is what the State is about.

Those are the positive things. We can create a really good New Zealand. You know, I am in this place because New Zealand gave me a chance. I want to see our kids in the next generation get the same chances that you and I did. That is what we should be here for, but it is not happening.

I just want to finish by talking about the Prime Minister’s trip to Australia last week. There were two big issues on the agenda. One was that the monopoly supermarket system in Australia of Coles and Woolworths, which together control 80 percent of the retail trade, are not selling New Zealand products as part of their home brand, simply because they are made in New Zealand. They are banning New Zealand - made products. You know, Mr Assistant Speaker, you and I can remember that 30 years ago we brought in Closer Economic Relations. What does Closer Economic Relations say? Well, I have got the agreement here in my hand. It says that it is about eliminating “barriers to trade between Australia and New Zealand”. That is article 1(c). It is about developing trade between New Zealand and Australia under conditions “of fair competition”.

The Aussie supermarkets have done what our Government wanted the opposite of. They have put up new barriers—not tariff barriers, not quota barriers, but behind-the-border barriers—that stop our producers selling their goods in Australian supermarkets. John Key said that he does not think that that is against CER. Of course it is against CER. CER was explicitly about gaining entry and about fair competition. I wanted to see my Prime Minister go across to Australia and stand up for the rights of New Zealanders. Instead I saw on television that Tony Abbott stroked him like a cat—stroked him like a cat. He flattered him, and in return the Prime Minister behaved like a pussy, a wimp. He did not stand up for New Zealanders. He forgot one thing: the only thing the cat gets is to swallow dead rats. That is what New Zealand has had to swallow because John Key did not stand up for the rights of New Zealanders.

There is another set of New Zealanders. It is the 300,000 that he has chased to Australia because they could not get opportunities here. The Australian Government last year passed the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and every New Zealander paying tax in Australia is levied specifically to pay for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. That is fair enough. There is one thing wrong. They pay the levy but they are not entitled to the benefits. It is like you, Mr Assistant Speaker, paying your premium to an insurance company but not being able to claim when you need help. How can that be fair, and why did John Key not stand up for the rights of New Zealanders? That is not too much to expect from our Prime Minister. He failed, and he has failed to do the right thing by this country here and abroad.

I am going to speak today in the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement and focus on the things that do matter to New Zealand. I am not going to resort to the sorts of comments and offensive remarks made by the speaker who just resumed his seat, Mr Phil Goff. I am really surprised at the Labour women sitting in the House, who did not violently object to the phrase that Mr Goff just used about the Prime Minister.

💬 Hon Phil Goff: What phrase?

I am not repeating it, Mr Goff, because it does not honour this House. No, no, I refuse to use that word, and I am just shocked that none of the Labour women did anything about using such offensive language in this House.

Anyway, this side of the House, this Government, under John Key’s leadership, is creating a New Zealand that is better today and better tomorrow, a stronger place for today’s families and tomorrow’s families. If you think about the things the Prime Minister covered in his address at the opening of Parliament, they are the issues that matter to Kiwis up and down this country: a stronger economy, more jobs, better front-line health and education services, a safer New Zealand, and, of course, rebuilding Christchurch and Canterbury.

But, actually, all of this stuff comes from having a stronger economy. We have Labour members who instead speak about the need or desire to interfere with a private company’s business and think that that is going to solve the problems of the New Zealand economy. Well, we have spent 5 years—this is our sixth year—focusing on what does make a difference in the economy, and we are reaping those rewards. We do not reap those rewards for our benefit; they are for the benefit of every single New Zealander. In the first week in the House the Opposition was instead already talking about spending three-quarters of a billion dollars that is not even sitting there. So we have an Opposition that just wants to go back to the old ways of the past, thinking that just because we are getting the books balanced this year, we then go off on a lolly scramble, we go out and spend when we still have a fragile economy. Yes, it is growing, and, yes, things are looking up, but, actually, we should not go out and spend all of the benefits of what has been a very tough period of time.

One thing I am really encouraged by, though, is visiting the different towns, the smaller towns in the Taupō electorate, whether it is Cambridge, Tīrau, or Tūrangi. It is really, really encouraging to see the number of new businesses that are opening, whether it is in retail, manufacturing, or tourism. There are new businesses opening every week, which is really fantastic. That comes from the confidence of an economy that is growing, because no one in their right mind would go out there and start a business, start employing staff, and take on those sorts of commitments if they did not think that the economic environment was one that could sustain that opportunity. So I want to say congratulations to those small businesses in the Taupō community that are out there doing it and taking risks to employ people in this environment that is growing. Business confidence is clearly up.

So what we are seeing is that the signs are there and it is looking positive, but we should not basically be putting that at risk. We have still got to be cautious. We have still got to be careful and not basically just go out and spend everything that we have in the strength of position we have got to. If you look at business confidence, it is the highest it has been since 1999. That is a phenomenal result. We often have conversations in this House about wages. Well, the average weekly wage has gone up 2.8 percent in the last year, and that is compared with an inflation rate of 1.6 percent. So, yes, the gap is small, but it means that in terms of wages we are heading in the right direction.

One example, Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, that I wanted to speak about today, and one that you will be very familiar with, is the Cambridge section of the Waikato Expressway. One of the platforms of the Government’s Business Growth Agenda is infrastructure and its role in helping to fuel this economic growth and opportunity. We are talking about a 16-kilometre section of the Waikato Expressway that I visited just yesterday. It is really fantastic to see the number of people who are employed as a result of that project. But, more important, the real benefit that I am immensely proud of is that, as a result, out of that project’s 300 jobs, 20 are done by people who were on benefits in the local Work and Income office and who now have jobs. That is 20 people who, before this project, did not have jobs, and now do. Not only do they now have a job and a pay packet to take home each week; they are getting skills, they are getting certifications, and they are passing the rigours of the work environment that is in place on that project, which is fantastic.

So it was fantastic to see that this is another section of the Waikato Expressway that, when finished, will carve something like 20 or 25 minutes off a trip from Tīrau to Auckland, which is great. I know that the Greens will always talk about the fact that they do not want more roads and they do not want roads of national significance, but people in my electorate still drive cars on roads, trucks are used to get their export goods to market and to the ports, and, although it is great to see the increase in cycling, good luck if you wanted to try to cycle from one end of my electorate to the other any day soon.

In terms of other opportunities or other things that this Government is focused on, one of the other aspects of the Business Growth Agenda is, of course, around education and skills. This is an area that members on the other side of the House absolutely get wound up about because we are getting results in areas where they did not when they had the chance. So I was proud to accompany the Prime Minister at Ratana and at Waitangi. I am enormously proud when he stands up and speaks to audiences and gives the results that this Government is achieving in Māori education. We often hear that Māori are disadvantaged, that they turn up in all the statistics we do not want them in, but, actually, education is one of the main areas where we get to improve those statistics. We are getting higher levels of participation in early childhood education, lifting achievement in National Certificate of Educational Achievement, and increasing numbers in trade training opportunities and apprenticeships. They are the things that count. They are the things that count in terms of getting results, getting achievement, and getting opportunities for the rest of their lives.

One of the highlights for the start of this year was the Prime Minister’s announcement about the opportunities for high-quality teaching and principals, because it is an issue, particularly in some of the rural areas. We do sometimes have difficulty attracting teachers and principals into the small rural areas, and that has been an issue that some of the schools and the boards of trustees have raised with me over and over again. Well, this way we get to have the teaching excellence shared amongst a group of schools in a small community. They get to share that with one another. I think that is absolutely superb and, again, is one of the very practical, sensible things this Government is doing to lift educational achievement. The group that will really benefit in the Taupō electorate more than any other is those Māori students. We are unwilling to have them left behind.

So I am very proud that the Prime Minister’s statement to the House this year talked about the priorities and where we are heading as a Government as we lead into election year in a very, very strong position with a growing economy, raised achievement in education, quicker attention in terms of health requirements, and safer streets and communities.

💬 Meka Whaitiri: Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker.

You must ask for the call. Meka Whaitiri.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou katoa. E ngā mema o te Whare nei, ngā mihi o te Tau Hou.

[To the members of this House, greetings of the New Year.]

I join with others on this side in wishing warm greetings to you and all members of the House and of this complex for the new year of 2014, and I hope you have all had a good rest. I join members on this side of the House in support of David Cunliffe, the Leader of the Opposition, and his motion that this House express no confidence in this National-led Government because New Zealand has become more and more divided, because those in the middle are struggling, and because the poor are going backwards.

I stand as the proud member for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, an electorate that has raised and nurtured many fine people, some famous and some infamous, all of whom in their time have etched their mark on the unique canvas that makes up Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. It is an electorate of fertile lands, prime coastline, and majestic rivers, where an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay is the norm, where having fruit trees and vege gardens and the ability to go to the river or to the beach to gather food is a normal way of life. For many, the prospect of an honest job for honest wages and for gathering food from our beaches and our waterways is no longer the norm. In fact, it is under serious threat. I may be a new member to this House, but you can rest assured that I come with some 25 years of serving our people, creating employment opportunities, and creating platforms to grow capacity at the local, regional, and national levels, for supporting initiatives that work, and for calling out those that clearly do not.

This National-led Government is failing the people of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. I have sat on this side of the House for some 6 months—hopefully, not on this side for too much longer, come the general election—and I have heard what this National-led Government has done for the people of New Zealand and for the people of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. Well, I am here to put the story right. I am here to give you the real low-down on my electorate. I am here to do what the people of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti have asked me to do, and that is to be their voice in this House. This National-led Government is arrogant. This National-led Government is out of touch. This National-led Government is in it only for its mates.

One of my first questions in this House was to the Minister for Economic Development, Mr Steven Joyce. When I asked what he was doing about the high rates of unemployment in Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay, did I hear “more apprenticeships”? Did I hear “a greater focus on transition from schools to jobs to further training”? Did I hear “enterprise development support”? And did I hear “unlocking potential opportunities in partnership with iwi”? No, I did not. The reason why I did not is that those are Labour policies. What I heard from Mr Joyce, in terms of his addressing unemployment in Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne, was three things: cycleways, mining and drilling, and—wait for it—a dam. That is right—a dam. I can report to this House, as I stand in front of you, that there have been no jobs created in Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne in those areas. Again, that is a legacy of this National-led Government.

But do not listen to me. Let us look at the statistics. Let us look at the unemployment statistics. The household labour force survey statistics for December 2013 say that since National has been in office, the number of unemployed 20 to 24-year-olds has increased by 11,300. A total of 27,600 20 to 24-year-olds are without jobs in the Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne region. That is not a record to be proud of. It is not a record to be laughed at or to be jeered at or to be flicked aside. Youth not in employment or training or education—since National took office, the number of 15 to 24-year-old “neets” has increased by 5,000 to a total of 72,000. That is an indictment on this country when we have 15 to 24-year-olds, 72,000 of them, with no hope, with no platform, and with no opportunities to seek what they have every right to have as citizens of this country, be it employment or education or training—72,000 have been forgotten. Long-term unemployment is 44,600—an increase of 29,800 since National came into Government in December 2008. In my region specifically—the unemployment figures in Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne—when Labour was last in Government there were 6,900 people who were unemployed. By December 2013 that number had grown to 8,100. Again, on these statistics you cannot argue that many more of our people in my region are not suffering—and the jobs are simply not there.

One of the burning topics in my region has been the management of our fresh water. It is to that area that I turn the House’s attention, to talk about the Tukituki catchment proposal, which has been undergoing a board of inquiry for some 28 days. I was fortunate, before I joined the House of Representatives, to be the chief executive of Ngāti Kahungunu Iwi Incorporated, which took a very strong stance on water quality issues and water management, not only in the catchment of Ngāti Kahungunu but also throughout the country. So before coming to this House I was well aware of what was happening in our particular area.

Coming here to this place and hearing the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management from the Minister for the Environment, Amy Adams, I have been really quite interested in some of the responses to what clearly are very complex issues: water quality, water use, and water management across the nation. I want to acknowledge, first and foremost, the work of all the stakeholders in the Land and Water Forum, who have committed to undertaking this critical issue.

💬 Jacqui Dean: Who set up the Land and Water Forum?

Yes, I know. I know who set it up, but I am also aware that there were some very significant recommendations that the forum put to the Minister, and it is very upsetting to see the Minister cherry-pick—cherry-pick—some of those recommendations to accelerate the building of the Ruataniwha Dam. So I stand here, having sat in on a majority of those hearings, where iwi were clearly calling out the lack of consultation through this process. Clearly, the fact that a lot of our safeguards, in terms of the work of Fish and Game—incidentally, a lot of the members of that organisation are with the National Party, who themselves say that this has been a shoddy process. Also, we have the Environmental Defence Society, which also says that due process has not been accorded to something as complex as water storage. So this is why I stand here to say to all those Government members that we could do better. We absolutely need better processes, but, unfortunately, under this National-led Government we have not got them.

So, in closing, I want to say, with reference to the Prime Minister’s speech, that there was only one line that actually got me listening, and that, actually, was the last line, where he said: “We are going to say to New Zealanders that they can trust what we say, and they can trust us to deliver what we do.” I can assure you that when I go around all the communities in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, “trust” is not a word they align with the National-led Government and its coalition partners. So I look forward to what the year presents. Tēnā tātou katoa.

It is a privilege to speak on this, the Prime Minister’s statement to this House, and to speak for the first time as the Minister of Pacific Island Affairs. I am honoured and humbled to be entrusted with that particular title, as well as that of Associate Minister of Local Government. I am honoured that the Prime Minister placed his trust and his faith in me to deliver for those portfolios. I am honoured to have a Prime Minister who has led a Government that has stabilised the economy, that has grown this economy, and that has grown jobs in this nation of Aotearoa New Zealand. It has also provided an infrastructure, educational services, and health services that all New Zealanders should be proud of.

Just on education, last Friday I attended an opening ceremony for a unique school in my original home community of Māngere. The Rise UP Trust is a not-for-profit community organisation that provides educational services for Pasifika and Māori whānau. This was the first—but it will not be the last—partnership school with Pacific leadership, with Pacific governance, with teachers teaching Pacific values within the New Zealand Curriculum. Those programmes were designed by teachers who have grown up and worked in South Auckland schools for many years. This school started in a Māngere garage, culminating last week in the opening of this second partnership school. I consider this school to mark a small but significant milestone for this country’s youngest and fastest-growing population in and around Māngere. It represents a promising new approach to teaching Pasifika children, and I am proud that this National Government has poured resources into Pacific people, into Pacific communities, and into the communities of South Auckland so that they can have opportunities, they can have hope, and, ultimately, they can have financial freedom and self-reliance. The Pacific community, which makes up 64 percent of Māngere, has mobilised itself and is taking charge of its own children’s futures. It is going to be a bright one.

In the last 5 years we have seen big results based on the commitments and the promises that the National Party electioneered on—the platform that we came in on in 2008, which we are delivering on. It is about building a faster-growing economy with more jobs, raising incomes, and supporting New Zealanders and their families. It is also about being fiscally prudent so that a Budget surplus is forecast for the next financial year, 2014-15. Why would New Zealanders risk that with a Labour-Greens coalition, which is prepared to tax and spend at exorbitant and reckless rates? Our economy has grown 3.5 percent, and it has been picked up by leaders around the world as a role model for developed nations. Our wages have outpaced inflation, as Mr Simpson knows.

💬 Carol Beaumont: Tell that to all the people who haven’t had a pay increase.

Ms Beaumont might scoff, but here are the facts. We have had a 16.1 percent rise in wages since 2008, and inflation has gone up only 10.8 percent.

💬 Carol Beaumont: Forty percent didn’t get a pay increase last year.

I suggest, ma’am, that you do your homework and find out—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: Was that the median wage, Sam, or is that just rich people getting richer? Sam, is that the median wage, or is it the rich people getting richer?

—that wages have increased faster than inflation. This morning—and Mr Lees-Galloway knows this—66,000 more people went to work in New Zealand than this time last year. There are 66,000 more New Zealanders currently employed than this time last year. As the last 5 years have shown, this National-led Government has delivered stable leadership and put New Zealanders back on the right track.

The future success and prosperity of Pacific people will influence the outcomes for New Zealand as a whole. We know that they currently represent 8 percent of the population. It is estimated that by 2026 they will represent 10 percent of the population. They predict that by 2050 Māori and Pacific people and other ethnic groups will form approximately 50 percent of the population. So we need to have our next generation of Pacific people in prominent positions, not just as doctors, lawyers, teachers, scientists, and accountants but also in trades. The most important thing, which this Government has stated, is that they are employed and that they have better skills to meet the demands for the 21st century—a century in which we are competing with nations in not just Asia and Europe but also the Americas. Our Government is working hard to prepare young people for the future, giving them the educational foundation to succeed in life.

Last year I attended the Prime Minister’s Pacific Youth Awards scholarships right here in Parliament. I was proud to see seven young people given awards for leadership, creativity, technological flair, and educational promise. Each of them was a tertiary student, and I would offer the view that each will go on to great success. A common theme was the tribute that each of these students paid to their families and the support given to them by their whānau and families in their educational endeavours. It is not just about education, programmes, buildings, sports fields, and the like; it really is about the support that whānau can give. It is about the support that their families can give outside of school. It is about the support and encouragement and love that they can give to whānau in order that they can succeed, not just at school but in the workplace and in our communities. Without exception, they credited education as fundamental to that success. That is why our Government is focused very much on standards in education. It is focused very much on achievement levels. It is focused very much on our kids gaining the skills that they need to succeed in the future.

In 2012 Minister Parata released the Pasifika Education Plan 2013-2017. It is an overarching plan to increase Pasifika achievement and participation in education, from early childhood education right up to tertiary-level education. One of the goals is to raise National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2 pass rates in ways that are connected with entering employment or further training. Already I can report to this House and to our country that Pacific achievement in NCEA level 2 has improved from 56.5 percent in 2009 to 64.8 percent in 2012.

Last Friday I attended a breakfast for Pacific students at Rosmini College on the North Shore. These Pacific students achieved a 100 percent pass rate at NCEA levels 1 and 3 and a 91 percent pass rate at level 2. So we have got some stars out there. We have got young kids who are really performing and achieving. Although we accept that these achievement levels are going up, there is still more to be done out there.

We have introduced programmes like Pasifika Power UP, with Minister Parata leading the charge to help Pacific students prepare and study for exams. It takes a whole-of-family approach. Pasifika Power UP is a 12-month engagement programme with an intensive 8-week challenge delivered through eight Pacific community - based study hubs, predominantly in South Auckland. The young people receive support and advice around their studies. Parents are informed about the structure of NCEA and its significance. The hubs provide advice around family support for their children’s success. These Pasifika Power UP programmes help give effect to the energy and the desire in Pacific communities for young people to do better in NCEA levels 1, 2, and 3. We had over 1,600 Pasifika students, parents, and families attend these programmes right across the country—as I said, predominantly in South Auckland. That is a great sign that Pacific people are passionate about education and eager to be part of the skilled workforce.

Just on employment, I have said that there are currently just under 2.3 million people employed across our country. Forecasts show that these trends will continue this year as the Government’s Business Growth Agenda leads to expanded export markets, more innovation, better infrastructure, greater skills development, and improved resources. Our Pacific community is sharing in the employment gains. The unemployment rate for Pasifika is down 2.3 percent from a year ago. Since 2011 Pacific Employment Support Services has assisted providers to help raise NCEA level 2 success in 25 schools throughout Auckland.

I just want to sum up by saying that we are approaching a general election where New Zealanders will have a clear choice.

💬 Carol Beaumont: That’s true. That’s very true.

Through difficult times, this Government—and Ms Beaumont knows this—has put New Zealand on a strong financial footing. The economy is growing, we are creating jobs, and we are having higher incomes. That is for all New Zealanders. This Government will continue to deliver those results going forward.

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.