Imprest Supply Debate

I move, That the Appropriation (2013/14 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2014/15) Bill be now read a second time. These two pieces of legislation ensure that the Government has supply from Parliament to conduct its ongoing business. It will be interesting to hear from the Opposition members just how they expect to debate these pieces of legislation. We could have a wide-ranging discussion about the recovery of the New Zealand economy and the way it is generating more new jobs and higher incomes, but, alongside that, we are going to have a discussion about the core business of Government, which is funded by these pieces of legislation.

Can I note that just 3 months out from an election the inherent laziness of the Labour Party is becoming increasingly obvious. It has, for the last 3 or 4 years, waited for the time when the issues of inequality and public service cuts would fall in its lap. New Zealand’s best and brightest, its finest and best-trained political intellects, have been sitting around waiting, doing no thinking and no work on how Government works in the 21st century because they hoped, as we saw in one pathetic example today, that the Public Service would by now be covering them, burying them, in a deluge of leaks about the terrible National Government that has been cutting services, hurting communities, and dealing harshly with New Zealanders, and about how a grateful electorate would then turn to the nice Labour Party because it knows how to do these things better. Labour has been hoping that there would be a deluge of data that would demonstrate to the public at large that the sense of fairness and equality that New Zealanders hold so strongly had been trashed and ripped apart by a nasty Tory Government dealing with a deep recession and a difficult recovery. Well, Labour is still waiting because neither of those things has happened.

In the absence of the Public Service providing the Labour Party with the raw material for a robust election campaign on public services, social services, health, education, law and order, welfare, and justice for the people, Labour has got nothing to say. In anticipation, I can say that will become evident over the next few hours as we debate Parliament funding the core activities of the Government. If the Labour members want to get up and talk about inequality, they will have to deal with the OECD report that came out in just the last day or two. New Zealand is one of only six countries to report a fall in income inequality. I would not go so far as to claim that it is a fall; I would go only so far as to say that in the period from 2007, prior to the New Zealand recession and the global financial crisis, through to 2011, the middle of a difficult recovery, the rich and the poor did about equally well, which is a very surprising result, and one that is very difficult for the Labour Party to campaign on. It wanted to say that in a recession and a difficult recovery, the nasty Tories let the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.

Well, it did not happen. It did not happen. Income inequality is about the same now, if not slightly better, than it was at the peak of the last economic boom under the previous Labour Government—about the same. And is that not a surprise? It is certainly a surprise to the Labour caucus, because it has been waiting to run that as one of the big issues in 2014, just like it has been waiting for the deluge of Public Service leaks. Well, I want to take this opportunity, after 5½ years of tight budgets—

💬 Grant Robertson: Give them a pay increase. Give MoBIE a pay increase.

—to compliment and thank the Public Service for the way that it has consistently refused to play Grant Robertson’s games. He is “Mr Beltway”—“Mr Beltway”, who cannot even win the beltway, but he is expected to win the 2017 election for the Labour Party. Well, he has not even won the beltway, because in the beltway the Public Service has worked hard to provide more for less. Through a deep recession and 5 years of tight Budgets, the public rating of public services is higher now than it was when the Labour Party was pumping billions into the public sector. The reason is that this Government has made itself accountable to the public for achieving results—for achieving results. Every professional public servant wants to achieve results. It is their intrinsic motivation. It is why they work hard for lower pay than they could earn elsewhere.

I will give you just a couple of results. There are hundreds I could pick from, but I think this one illustrates a number of interesting points. Data published in April 2014 shows an increase of 23 percent in the number of National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 1 students in Kaikohe—Kaikohe, the very place that the Labour Party parades around the country, saying it is an illustration of the failure of everything that this Government is trying to achieve. As it happens, Northland is the fastest-growing region in the recent regional GDP statistics. Its economy is growing faster than the rest of New Zealand and in NCEA level 1, 23 percent more students are passing. But wait for this: in NCEA level 2 the increase is even larger—24 percent of them. And they have got to get NCEA level 2 to get access to the skilled economy. That is the start line, and one-quarter more kids—that is, hundreds more students—in one of our most deprived areas are doing a lot better.

That is why “Mr Beltway”, Grant Robertson, cannot win the beltway—because the Public Service understands what this Government is trying to achieve. That is why, despite the fact that we have run tight Budgets, we have been able to get better results. I will just explain how tight those Budgets have been. In the 5 years up to 2008 the last Labour Government pumped in $2.5 billion extra discretionary spend each year, on average—$2.5 billion. This Government has over a 5-year period pumped in an average of $250 million per year—one-tenth of the new expenditure, for much better results. In fact, the Labour Government did not know whether it was getting results, because its measure of whether it cares is how much of other people’s money it spends on a problem. Of course, what that does is fund the problems, not solve them. What we are doing is solving the problems. That is why this Government is so confident in its fiscal management. We know that when you help people resolve their issues and provide more support now for a pay-off later, you save money. What works for the community works for the Government’s books.

We have now got a couple of hours to hear from Labour about its ideas for modernising government in New Zealand. We have got a couple of hours to hear from Labour about all the deep thinking of those people trained at the best universities, and in the Prime Minister’s office and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, no less, of the best Prime Minister ever, according to them. We are waiting for the progressive, forward-looking, inspiring thinking about the core business of government that is to support New Zealanders in their aspirations. I do not think we will hear that. I think we will hear a tired recital of the worn-out slogans of the handful of interest groups and unions that still support the Labour Party. Labour needs to know that even the people who feel compelled to vote for it are going around telling their friends that National is doing a great job of running the Public Service.

In particular, I want to compliment our Ministers, who have spent a lot of time building a political consensus and enforcing accountability and responsibility. They are out there on the front line, talking to the New Zealanders who need and deserve our support because they have done a great a job. They have done a great job. So here is the challenge for Labour: can “Mr Beltway” actually win the beltway? Because if he cannot even win the beltway, he certainly cannot win the election.

Well, there is a member who should know all about the beltway. It is time for Bill English to get out of Messines Road once in a while. He should get out of Messines Road—a lovely part of Wellington Central, I might say—and actually see what is going on in New Zealand, because an out-of-touch Government is going to deliver an out-of-touch speech like that.

Here are some facts and figures for Bill English. Unemployment in Northland is at 8 percent—8 percent of New Zealanders in Northland are unemployed. If he wants to talk about statistics about how people are going, how about this for a statistic: 13.2 percent of Māori are unemployed, 13 percent of Pasifika people are unemployed, and 22.3 percent of 15 to 19-year-olds are unemployed. That is the legacy of the National Government. That is the legacy of a Government that looks after its mates and does not care about the rest of New Zealand.

Mr English talks about the Public Service and what we hear from the Public Service. Well, what we hear from members of the Public Service is that, yes, they do work hard, and they will work for the Government of the day. But if you cut the police budget year on year, you are not going to get the proper service that New Zealanders expect from them. If you cut the courts’ budget every year, New Zealanders will not get fair access to justice. If you cut the Ministry for the Environment’s budget and the Department of Conservation’s budget every year, then the environment will decline, and that is the record of the National Government.

This is not a Government that cares about spreading fairly the benefits of economic recovery. This is a Government that says: “We and our mates will hang on to that.” This is the statistic that John Key should worry about: chief executive officer pay is now 26.5 times that of the average employee in companies in New Zealand. That is up over 4 percent since National took office. That is the legacy of the National Government—the benefits are accruing to the very wealthy while others struggle. Forty-six percent of New Zealanders got no pay increase in the past year. A survey out today says that 49 percent of employers are not expecting to give a pay rise next year. That is not a fair share of economic recovery.

We on this side of the House know that what National is doing is what National always does, which is to manage the economy for itself and its mates. It is not about trying to lift the aspirations—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: That doesn’t work anymore, after Donghua.

Here is Nick Smith interjecting. How about making housing affordable for New Zealanders?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: The accord’s done in Wellington. Just did an accord in Wellington.

That is a measure of inequality. Once upon a time, Dr Smith, if you worked in a job in New Zealand and you worked hard, you would be able to come home with enough money to save up and buy your own home. That dream is gone. That dream has gone for the next generation.

There is a lot of talk at the moment about what will be the defining characteristics of a future Government. I can tell you today that the defining characteristic of a future Labour Government will be that we are for future generations. We are not looking in the rear-view mirror like the National Party; we are saying that a future generation of New Zealanders deserves to be able to buy their own home. That is something New Zealanders have held on to for years and years—the fact that if you work hard and save hard you will be able to buy your own home. That dream is gone.

Nick Smith is presiding over reports and accords, and gazetting things and consents. People do not live in consents, Dr Smith; they live in houses. He is not building enough houses to make them affordable for New Zealanders to buy today. The legacy of this Government is one where they look after the few, the wealthy get wealthier, and most New Zealanders struggle. It is only those at the very, very top who benefit from the National Government. That needs to change in New Zealand.

We need to get back to the core egalitarian values that have stood New Zealand in good stead. That means that everybody gets the right to a good education, that we make sure that State schools are the best schools in the world, and that we make sure that we invest in the best teachers in the world—not coming up with some half-baked, hare-brained scheme to take a principal out of school for a couple of days a week because it sounds good, but actually investing in every single school, and making sure that every single person in New Zealand who wants to work can get a job. Having an ambition for full employment, as the Labour Party has, is not something that John Key should laugh off and say is impossible. It is impossible only because the Government does not have the political will to stand up and say: “We will make that our priority.”

Why not pick up the Labour Party’s policy from the last election, which I give credit to Phil Goff for? Why have 18 and 19-year-olds being paid the dole when you could give a subsidy for an apprenticeship so that that person can get skills and work? That would be a policy that a Government that really cared about getting New Zealanders into work would undertake. But that government will not, because it will sit on its laurels and let 8 percent of people who live in Northland be unemployed. That is not on.

What is required is a proper regional development policy—not another set of Mr Joyce’s lovely glossy documents, but practical work on the ground that will make sure that jobs can be created. That is what the Labour Party is committed to. It is about getting alongside regions and saying: “We’ll support you to create those jobs.”

What it is not is, from on high, in Steven Joyce saying: “I have got a silver bullet. I have got a silver bullet, and I am going to put that in play—the oil and gas industry.” That is not enough. Disaster recovery is also not an economic plan, Mr Joyce. Disaster recovery is what is driving the so-called economic growth in New Zealand. If Mr Joyce was actually committed to this, he would be supporting a region like—I do not know, Dunedin—and making sure that it has still got a manufacturing capability at Hillside, and making sure that it has still got research and development under way at Invermay. But, no, he washes his hands of those regions because it does not fit his narrow ideological frame about what makes for a silver bullet.

The Labour Party is interested in innovation, investment, and industry in the regions. We are going to make sure that we invest in the infrastructure. Those members do not care about the people of Gisborne. They do not care about keeping a rail line open up there. They do not care about the people of Ōpōtiki and making sure that they have got a wharf where they can take their aquaculture products and bring them back into port. They do not care about that because they want to dictate from on high what they think will work, and it will not. We want to see industry development plans. We have already announced them in manufacturing and in forestry. There is more coming in information and communications technology and other areas. We know that a Government should be an active partner in the economy, not sitting back, deciding that the market will look after it all. That does not work. That does not work.

💬 Hon Steven Joyce: Hang on, make up your mind. Either I’m running it or market is.

This man over here said “Make up your mind.” He should make up his mind about whether he actually supports New Zealanders or whether he wants to dictate to them from his little, narrow ideological frame, and we know that it will not work.

We are debating the supplementary estimates. I want to say this about the Government’s Budget. Bill English has been quite fond lately of making comparisons with the All Blacks in terms of how we do things around here. Well, if you put off your ACC premium reductions of nearly $500 million for a year, that is a little bit like saying that the points the All Blacks scored in the second test in Dunedin are going to be fast-forwarded to the game in Hamilton because we want to make that result look a little better than the one in Dunedin. That is the kind of smoke and mirrors in this Budget. The Government reduces the Canterbury recovery budget by $500 million and finds a never-seen-before $375 million loan for a transport project in Auckland, all to get itself to its wafer-thin surplus to make it look good. That is the National Government—smoke and mirrors; making sure it looks good without the substance being there.

What we need is a focus on the core Kiwi values: work, home, and families. We need to make sure there is an opportunity to do the job. If the jobs are there, they should be done. We need to make sure that New Zealanders get access to homes—access to buy homes and to warm, dry rentals. We need to make sure that families and children, in particular, have the best start in life.

We heard from Bill English today that, apparently, inequality is not getting worse. Well, how about this from the Salvation Army report? We know that between the last two censuses, the median income of somebody in Mission Bay or St Heliers went up by $6,100 in that period of time. If you were living in Māngere or Ōtāhuhu, it went down by $200. Up by $6,100 in the wealthy and rich bits of Auckland and down by $200 in South Auckland—that is how inequality grows. It grows because a Government lets that happen. It does not lift the minimum wage. It does not work towards a living wage. It does not introduce a capital gains tax. It does not make those paying the top tax rate pay a fair rate. That is what National has done. It has created those two Aucklands. New Zealanders need to know that wherever they live, they have a fair chance at life and a fair chance of getting ahead. That is what they will get with a Labour Government.

Where does one begin after that speech by Grant Robertson? I have not heard such an empty pile of baseless rhetoric in a long time—in fact, not since I heard my last David Cunliffe speech. Where do we start with Mr Robertson? Mr Robertson tries to lecture a National Government about the Budget when he has opposed every single expenditure-saving initiative that this Government has done over the last 6 years. In areas that I have some interest in—for example, in tertiary education—the only new policy Labour has announced is to stop the reductions in adult and community education that we made back in 2010. The news in tertiary education is that if Labour was re-elected, it would reinstate Moroccan cooking class subsidies. That is the extent, as Bill English was talking about, of the deep thinking that has not been occurring in the New Zealand Labour Party. It is empty, baseless rhetoric, and it is actually quite sad.

The other one is ACC—declaring somehow that the National Government has given insufficient cost cuts to people from ACC. It was the Labour Party that made the ACC’s costs blow out. Now Robertson is lecturing the National Government about how to behave responsibly with ACC. That, I am afraid, is one of the reasons why Labour is struggling to connect with New Zealanders—it is that New Zealanders know the record. They know what the Labour Party was like. They have not forgotten. Mr Robertson can stand up and pretend that things were not the way they were, but, actually, New Zealanders have a longer memory than that.

The good news is actually that all these views that the Labour Party has of New Zealand and New Zealanders are wrong. All of them are wrong. All of them are massive exaggerations—and, in fact, delusions—about how New Zealand actually is. Is there an export crisis? No. Is there a regional crisis? No. Is there a current account crisis? No. Is there a manufacturing crisis? No. Is there an immigration crisis? No, there is not. And if this is a housing crisis, explain to me how you can have a lift in construction of housing of 17 percent in one quarter in New Zealand—an increase of 17 percent—to the biggest level of activity since 2002. I sense that crisis is receding as well. What is actually happening is none of those things. It is a crisis crisis. There are insufficient crises for the Labour Party to be able to convince and bamboozle New Zealanders that somehow it should be given another shot.

The true story is that the New Zealand economy is going very well. It is one of the fastest-growing economies in the OECD. The balance of payments was asked about earlier in this House this afternoon. It is down to 2.8 percent of GDP, which is the lowest figure by a long way in a long time. We inherited, by the way, nearly 8 percent. What we owe the world has dropped down a good 20 percent of the economy. Is that not amazing? This country owes the world 20 percent of its economy less than when National first came into office. That is a very impressive figure, which is a tribute to the hard work of New Zealanders.

Our goods exports have just passed NZ$50 billion in 1 year for the time. Not only is that a good thing but also it is at just about the highest New Zealand dollar rate that we have ever seen, which means that the amount of goods going offshore is even greater than that number suggests. We have seen another interesting statistic, and that is the drop of outward migration to Australia. That, rightly, worried New Zealanders for a long time. In 2008, when we came in, 35,000 New Zealanders in that year in net terms—a net 35,000 New Zealanders—moved off to Australia. Then it dropped a bit. Then it went up a bit after the Christchurch earthquakes. Now, last month, just 200 New Zealanders moved across to Australia in net terms. The month before, just 200 moved. That is 400 over 2 months. That is an annual rate of 2,000 or 3,000 a year. New Zealanders are voting with their feet, all right. They are voting with their feet to stay in this country and experience the job opportunities in this country.

I want to touch on regional New Zealand. Mr Robertson has made at least one trip now to the regions, I think, since he has been the Labour spokesperson on regional development. That is very exciting for him, I am sure. He got very excited. He went to Rotorua, I understand, and met Tāmati Coffey, apparently, who is apparently a normal “Rotoruaian”. I am not sure about that. But anyway, let us talk about regional economies, because regional economies have led New Zealand out of the global financial crisis. We have got a range of policies in our Business Growth Agenda, which Mr Robertson would do well to read. It is 120-odd pages. It will keep him up for about a month. It is 120 pages, but here is what is not in it: there is no reference to a carbon price at five times the world price in National’s economic policy. There is no reference to high water levies, like Mr Parker wants, in National’s economic policy. There is no reference to banning oil exploration in the Taranaki Bight, which both the Labour Party and the Green Party have declared they want. There is no reference to a capital gains tax that would hit 100 percent of New Zealand businesses, but—whoops—hits only 25 percent of New Zealand houses. And there is no mention of a wacky monetary policy that would have the whole world confused.

Those are not in National’s economic policies, and regions around the country will breathe a sigh of relief about that because 13 of our 16 regions are dependent on the natural resources economy—13 of our 16. The Greens can pretend that is not the case, but it is, and this Government understands that. We understand you have to balance the jobs of regional New Zealanders against environmental constraints, and if you do it well, you can get improvements in both outcomes, but not if you treat the whole thing like a cartoon and look to ban oil prospecting and knock the dairy industry over, as is proposed by the Greens and even Labour. That is what we are dealing with.

The other thing that is really important to regional New Zealand is trade deals. They are very important. Access to other people’s goods markets is crucial to regional New Zealand. If you look around this House, the weirdest thing about that at the moment is there is only one major party in this House that is unambiguously in favour of doing more trade deals for New Zealand exporters, and that is the National Party. The Labour Party does not know what it thinks. The Green Party, as always, is opposed, and that is the reality of it.

💬 Hon Phil Goff: Oh, rubbish—just rubbish.

Mr Goff, you are, sadly, in a party that has moved to the left around you. That is the reality of the situation—the unambiguous support for trade deals in the Labour Party has gone. Mr Goff has been rolled by his mates. Shane Jones knew it. That is why Shane Jones left. He knew all these things that I have just laid out.

That is why regional New Zealand ain’t going anywhere near the Labour Party. The Greens can talk about promoting exports by buying everybody a 3-D printer—apparently that is the gig; a 3-D printer is what you need to succeed in the Green world, so they must be printing 3-D money—but all these other things get the knock. All these other industries get the knock. New Zealanders know it is not real. New Zealanders know that you cannot do these things. New Zealanders know that you cannot have the attitude of the Opposition, which is to push a whole lot of imposts on New Zealand businesses, and expect them to keep growing jobs for Kiwis.

💬 Sue Moroney: Oh, what rubbish. Talk about your own policies.

That is what we have done and are doing—84,000 jobs in the last year, Sue Moroney. Think about that for a minute. That is because this Government is supporting the growth of businesses with policies that enhance their competitiveness on the world stage, not reduce their competitiveness on the world stage. Our job now, now that the economy is growing well, is to ensure that we remove those capacity constraints, and that is what we are doing. Our job is to ensure that we are encouraging skills growth in the New Zealand economy, that we are encouraging engineering and information and communications technology and science, that we are encouraging innovation with big investments in the innovation space, that we are encouraging more free-trade deals that work for New Zealand exporters, that we are encouraging the growth of capital in New Zealand, and that we are encouraging the natural resources sector by working with iwi and Māori and getting Treaty settlements done so that there are stronger investors in regional New Zealand.

We are encouraging all those things through our Business Growth Agenda and through the financial decisions of this Government. That is why New Zealanders are supporting not just the economic policies but the fiscal policies of this Government. It is because they know what it means in terms of great jobs and great growth for New Zealand. Thank you.

I rise on behalf of the Green Party to talk in this imprest supply debate, which is rather a broader debate about the Government’s economic and social policy performance and about what the alternatives might be. Contrary to the Government’s position, the world is changing. Climate change is becoming a central issue for Governments around the world, if not for the New Zealand Government. Many Governments around the world are investing in sustainable transport and putting their investments towards that, rather than in the direction that this Government is going. People all around the planet are embracing the importance of the environment and protecting the environment, even while we have a Government in New Zealand that is hell-bent on destroying the environment.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Rubbish.

This is the kind of world we are inheriting. It is changing. Of course, the Government members say “Rubbish.”, but the world is changing, even if the National Party does not realise it.

It is also important to realise that the issue of inequality, which characterised the policies of Government in New Zealand through the 1980s and 1990s, driving an increase in inequality, has now become a global problem. Even very orthodox organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and the OECD are both very concerned about the impacts of inequality, even as our Government increases inequality and does not consider it to be a serious issue.

In a world where we have these new challenges, and issues that were once put to one side have come to the fore, we have a Government stuck in the last century. It is most unfortunate for New Zealand because, instead of embracing the opportunities for the 21st century, we are kind of locking ourselves into the 20th century. We need some new ideas and we need some modern thinking in order to take advantage of the opportunities and the amazing innovation that is going on around the planet. We need a Government that can recognise that and can see that we need new ideas to solve these old problems and that we need some new ideas to solve the new problems as well. The Green Party is very much oriented towards that. We will, in Government, focus on investing in children and our environment. We will help New Zealand to embrace the economic opportunities that are coming our way, rather than turning our back on them, as is the current Government’s practice.

Let us compare some of the reality against the current Government. National’s focus is on coal and oil. That is one of its major economic development strategies. On “Planet Key” the Prime Minister goes and opens the national headquarters of Bathurst Resources coal, which is a coalmining company that wants to destroy a beautiful natural ecosystem on the Denniston Plateau, where we have a kiwi habitat, in order to extract coal. The Government is very focused on supporting the oil industry, so it has opened up a marine sanctuary to oil exploration, even though it is likely to drive those last 55 Māui’s dolphins towards extinction as a result of the impact of seismic surveying, which is like a very loud noise underwater, which deafens the dolphins and drives them towards more dangerous places. There is also the risk with exploratory drilling of oil spills. This is not about the existing production facilities in Taranaki; this is about new exploration. That is National’s focus. So you would think that what must be happening around the world is a huge focus on the oil and coal industry.

In fact, the fastest-growing sector in electricity generation right now, globally, is the renewable electricity sector. The International Energy Agency is the organisation that keeps the statistics on this on behalf of the New Zealand Government and other Governments, and it says to us that the fastest-growing sector internationally is renewable electricity generation. Yet we have a Government in New Zealand that is firmly focused on the 20th century—even on the 19th century, when coal was king—and is very focused on coal and oil, as in the 19th and 20th centuries, while the whole world is embracing renewable energy. Of course, New Zealand could be a global leader in renewable energy, particularly in electricity, because we have considerable experience in it. We are, in fact, world leaders in geothermal electricity generation, but it is very difficult for those companies to take advantage of that situation because we have a Government that directs all its support towards the fossil fuel industry, rather than supporting the renewable electricity industry. Where New Zealand could be taking a lead, we are instead facing and supporting the industries of a bygone century. We are getting locked into what the Secretary-General of the OECD called stranded assets, as we lock ourselves into these very old, carbon-intensive industries. So while the National Government is heading down a coal and oil path, the reality is that the rest of the world is going towards renewable electricity.

Let us think about some of the other issues where this Government is heading down a different path—climate change. When you look at the Government’s own projections on greenhouse gas emissions, New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions are to increase by 50 percent in net terms over the next decade, and that is according to the Ministry for the Environment’s projections under current policy settings. There is no other country within the group of advanced countries that is planning to increase its net greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent in the next decade. You would struggle to find any country on the planet that is going to increase its net emissions by 50 percent in the next 10 years. There will be some countries, but no other advanced, industrialised countries. So New Zealand’s climate change policy is deep denial. The Government, as in so many things, is in denial about the science, and does not want to confront the science around climate change. So it is proposing to increase New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent over the next decade. When you think about it from the point of view of the planet, of course it is a disaster. When you think about it from the point of view of New Zealand’s economy, it is a disaster as well, because we are locking ourselves into carbon-intensive industries, which over time will become stranded assets and will be extremely poor-quality value producers for the New Zealand economy in the future.

The Green Party, by contrast, has looked to the world. In the rest of the world we are seeing action on climate change. In the rest of the world many countries are introducing real prices on carbon. The Green Party has put forward a climate tax cut plan, whereby we would introduce a price on greenhouse gas emissions in the New Zealand economy in order to drive innovation. The revenue that is raised from that climate tax cut, from the carbon tax, is returned to taxpayers in the form of a tax cut. Households would be better off because the first $2,000 of income would be taxed at zero percent—that is the tax cut for households—and companies would face a lower company tax rate, with a reduction in 1 percent in the company tax rate, from 28 percent to 27 percent.

The climate tax cut is all about saying that we do need a price on greenhouse gas emissions. The OECD is absolutely clear that this is a cornerstone of any country’s climate policy. So we need a price on greenhouse gas emissions. But we want to make sure that the revenue that is generated by that price on greenhouse gas emissions is returned to households and companies in the form of a cut in income taxes—so the first $2,000 is tax-free—and a cut in the company tax rate. That means that New Zealand businesses that are innovating and are becoming less carbon-intensive get a double win. On the one hand they get an advantage over their competitors because they face a carbon price. If they are carbon-efficient, they get an advantage because of that. In the second place they get another advantage because they have a lower company tax rate. So it is a win-win for the New Zealand economy and pushes our economy in an ever - so very gently way, at a pretty low price, towards a more efficient economy in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, which prepares us for the economy of the 21st century, where those who have low carbon-intensive economies will prosper, and those who lock themselves into very carbon-inefficient economies—like New Zealand’s, where we have much higher greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP—will suffer, as the world starts to clamp down on greenhouse gas emissions.

Unfortunately, the Government is looking backwards to the 20th century and the 19th century by locking New Zealand into this high carbon - intensive economy, while the Green Party is very much focused on innovation and on taking advantage of the opportunities that are in the world. The Green Party looks out to the rest of the world, while National looks inward and does not understand what is going on in the rest of the world.

There are a few other, I think, salient points with regard to the Government’s economic strategy. If you look at tourism, Tourism New Zealand is currently seeking ideas for how to protect the “100% Pure New Zealand” brand because it is being degraded by all the stories about the degradation of New Zealand’s natural environment—in particular, the extensive pollution of our fresh water. Our rivers and our lakes are highly polluted. There is another way other than propaganda, or public relations, to protect “100% Pure New Zealand”, and that is to actually take action to clean up our rivers and lakes. The Green Party will take action to clean up our rivers and lakes. It is entirely doable. It is not easy to do, but we will do it. Under the current Government, it is literally subsidising increased water pollution to the tune of $400 million, so the taxpayer is having to subsidise more water pollution.

When you look at transport, the Government is increasing spending. Tens of billions of dollars are being spent on new motorways while the rest of the world is embracing public transport—that is, buses, trains, and ferries. The rest of the world is also embracing walking and cycling to make more livable cities with lower carbon emissions and much cleaner air. That is the opportunity for New Zealand. We have a Government heading in the wrong direction. It tells us that we must have more cars and more roads. Actually, the reality is that the whole world is heading towards having much more carbon-efficient transport, much more livable cities, and much greater support for public transport, walking, and cycling. The Green Party will take New Zealand down that path.

When it comes to the primary sector, of course, our entire primary sector exports are built on being clean, green, and safe. The Government is intent on destroying that brand by undermining the environmental foundations of it. The Green Party will clean up our natural environment, and hence protect our “clean, green, and safe” brand, which is the foundation of our food export sector.

In all these different ways the Green Party, I think, is demonstrating the way forward, while National has its face to the past and does not understand the opportunities and the realities of the 21st century globe in which we live. Thank you.

I find it a bit galling to have a lecture on being outward-looking from a member from the Green Party, which is the well-renowned protectionist, anti-trade party in the House that does not want to engage in globalisation with the rest of the world. It turns its mind inwards, and yet Russel Norman gives us a lecture on being outward-looking.

I stand for a genuinely open, outward-looking, dynamic economy that is able to foot it in an internationally competitive world, can generate the sorts of living standards to which we all aspire, and can provide the opportunities so that New Zealanders of all shapes and sizes and ages can gain the best for themselves and for their families. I stand for an economy that is able to give them great opportunities in the world, so that they do not feel that they have to make a lifestyle choice or a second-hand choice to live in New Zealand, but can really achieve their potential.

It is only through having a strong economy that people can have access to the best health care. I have never met anybody in my travels around Epsom or anywhere else in New Zealand who is not interested in having access to the best cancer treatment that money can buy and the latest medicines that money can buy. All these things cost money, and that can be obtained only through having a strong economy. A strong economy allows you to invest in quality education and to pay teachers properly, it enables you to pay for pensions for elderly people and to take care of the vulnerable, and that is why I am firmly of the view that this Government is taking this country in the right direction. After 6 years we are heading in the right direction, but there is still a long, long way to go. It is my hope that in the next 3 months New Zealanders will make the right decision to enable us to continue with this progress.

New Zealanders also want a Government that they can trust, a Government that keeps its promises, and a Government that is working together with all New Zealanders to build that stronger economy. Under the strong and stable leadership of John Key, who has the unanimous support of a united caucus behind him—and it has certainly been an eye-opener for me to come into a political party with 59 members. The natural state of affairs in any political environment would be infighting, competition, trouble, and strife. That is the natural state of affairs in politics, and yet I am part of a caucus of 59 that is united and has one vision, behind a strong leader in John Key. That has led to a period where we have had an extended time of predictable, consistent, and stable Government, and that is so essential for growing the economy.

Before I came to Parliament I spent much of my time writing business history, and the main thing that I learnt from looking at successful New Zealand companies was just how difficult it is. One of the last books I wrote was on Bill Gallagher and his company, which exports electric fences all around the world. I caught up with him down at the Fieldays a couple of weeks ago. Although the company managed to produce the best electric fences in the world one year, every year somebody from somewhere else—from Taiwan, or Sweden, or somewhere else—was coming up with something better, and if it stayed still it would be left behind, so there was the constant, relentless business of staying one step ahead of the competition. The business would be hit from the side from one thing or another, the exchange rate would go up, or you would have earthquakes in Canterbury, which meant that insurance costs in New Zealand went up. The consumers in Germany who buy the products do not care a hoot about insurance costs in New Zealand. They just want their things at the same price, so companies are relentlessly encouraged to innovate in order to find better ways of doing things and maintaining their competitiveness.

So to maintain a business—whether it is out in the country or is one of the countless services businesses in Epsom and Parnell that are exporting services all over the world—and to employ people, businesses have to take risks. They are more inclined to take risks if they have confidence about what the Government is doing. If they have confidence that there is a basic stability in the environment in New Zealand, then there is an element of predictability. Confidence leads to investment, investment leads to jobs and wealth, and that is what grows the economy. The latest data from Statistics New Zealand shows that economic growth is indeed picking up, providing further evidence that our economic programme is making the country more productive and competitive.

The main measure that we use, GDP, has increased by 3.8 percent in the year to March. That is a tremendous performance in the international context, compared with only 3.5 percent in Australia, 2 percent in the United States, and 0.9 percent in the European area. Statistics New Zealand data also shows that the economy grew by 1 percent in the 3 months to 31 March—a very strong, reasonably broad-based approach, with positive contributions from construction, mining, agriculture, retail trade, and accommodation. So these are the latest in a run of encouraging economic indicators.

The challenge for us as a country is to extend this period of growth that we have seen over the last couple of years, and that, indeed, is fundamentally the object of the Business Growth Agenda, which is a work in progress. So the six areas that we have been working on over the last 6 years—and we will continue to have a very substantial work programme if we have the opportunity over the next 3 years to continue in Government—are dealing with all the areas that enable New Zealand businesses to be more competitive internationally. So it is opening up access to export markets, and I reiterate the concerns of Steven Joyce that we are now in a Parliament where free trade is very much a questionable thing. We think that Labour is still with us, but it equivocates more and more. The Greens are implacably opposed. New Zealand First is implacably opposed.

Then we look at the capital markets, where we have made so much progress with the mixed-ownership model, and the strength of capital markets in New Zealand. There is a lot more work to be done there. In terms of innovation, this latest Budget led to a huge amount more investment in encouraging New Zealand firms to be more innovative and in providing them with the research capability through Callaghan Innovation and the many programmes that it offers. We hear constantly about the area of inequality, notwithstanding the inaccuracy of so many claims, and I do note that the OECD announced just today that New Zealand was one of only six developed countries in which both income inequality and disposable income inequality was flat or slightly better between 2007 and 2011, which really shows just what nonsense we have been hearing about the so-called growth of inequality. We have been very successful on that score.

But what I would say is that the fundamental driver of inequality is the gap in skills that is emerging. You know, 30 or 40 years ago in New Zealand, if you had only your muscles to offer to the market, you could still do quite well in many industries. That is not the case today and it certainly will not be the case in 20 years’ time. So, fundamentally, the most important thing we can do to reduce inequality is make sure that everybody gets access to a good education, and that is what has been very much the focus of Hekia Parata’s work.

If we look at infrastructure, the thing that concerns Aucklanders most, I think, is that we live in a city that is growing, dynamic, and doing well, and people want to come here and they do not want to leave. That is great, and the city is growing, but when you have a situation like that, you do have to invest in infrastructure so that the city keeps moving. We are making a significant contribution around the public transport area, but you cannot ignore roads, and we do not. Certainly in my area the continuation or the completion of the Waterview tunnel will make a massive difference to congestion around the streets of Epsom and throughout the Auckland isthmus. That is the sort of investment we have to make, to make the city grow.

When you take the overall picture and see the progress that the country is making under the leadership of John Key and this National Government, you have to ask yourself why on earth, given all this progress we are making, the country would want to lurch off in a strange direction under the leadership of David Cunliffe, overturn monetary policy, and introduce a whole lot of new taxes. I have never believed that all the problems of the world could be solved by the introduction of a capital gains tax, but that seems to be David Parker’s view of the world. Then we hear Grant Robertson talking about new, higher rates of taxation. Have they not learnt from France’s most recent example, Hollande’s high 75 percent tax rate, that high taxes redistribute people, not income and wealth? People will just move to avoid taxes.

So we are going to overturn the electricity market and become a world leader in carbon taxes—why on earth would we take such a risk when we are making good progress? And why would we risk contrasting a stable Government under John Key with an unstable Government with Hone Harawira, Dotcom, and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all with David Cunliffe? On that basis I commend this legislation to the House. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora tātou katoa. About a month ago there was a fair bit of excitement in the debating chamber, that was indirectly associated with an event of actually national significance. It may well have been reported upon by Al Jazeera, because her grand auntie is a reporter at Al Jazeera, and I suppose I need to tell the House that Te Hare Makarini Te Ōhaere Flavell Fox on 31 May at 1.15 a.m. came into the world. Can you give me a clap, please, Mr Deputy Speaker. I think it is absolutely awesome that I am a koro now—I am a koro now. You have probably had a few shots—10? Oh, my gosh! Well, I am happy to have just one right now. So I just want to report to the House that that’s what has happened. Congratulations to me—thank you very much. You are probably asking the question: what the hang has the Appropriation (2013/14 Supplementary Estimates) Bill got to do with the birth of my moko, my No. 1 moko, my beautiful moko? Well, I will, hopefully, be able to tell you about that over the next 10 minutes or so. It is linked because I suppose, in the end, like any koro you want the very best for your mokopuna, for your children, and that I suppose is basically what I want to talk about for the next 9½ minutes or so.

As the House will know, this legislation seeks authorisation of the individual appropriations and changes contained in the supplementary estimates for the year ending 30 June 2014. Encompassed in the volumes is the landscape for the world that I hope Te Hare, my beautiful mokopuna, will inherit. I am not thinking just about her, about my mokopuna, as stunning as she is. The truth is that according to a report done by Statistics New Zealand our nation is blessed with far younger populations in Māori electorates than in the general population. In figures released today the 2013 census revealed that although the median age for the Māori population in Māori electorates was 24.4 years old, the average age in general electorates is much older, at 38 years of age. So in the priorities in policy, Budgets, and legislation that the Māori Party has always followed, we have unashamedly been focused upon our mokopuna, our rangatahi, and the central role of whānau, of families. It makes sense. These young majorities are the foundation of our future workforce.

We really need to get that part right, and not wait for the latest political party gimmicks, or try to bedazzle the young as vote-catchers. The Māori Party has heard from many, many young leaders who resent the implication that their vote can be bought by a costly social media campaign or glitzy marketing. They have told us that they want the difference to be about whānau now, and about health, education, employment, training, warm housing, opportunities for innovation, and for inspiration to flourish.

So let me take a look at the world we have committed to for my beautiful moko, Te Hare, to grow up in. At this point in time her health and well-being are our primary concern. As a result of negotiations the Māori Party entered into with National, she will now benefit from free visits to the general practitioner and free prescriptions until she is a thriving teenager of 13 years. Thank goodness Koro does not have to pay.

Te Hare has been born into a nation in which rheumatic fever was not identified by Governments in the past as the health crisis it has now become. Addressing rheumatic fever is a recommendation from the Ministerial Committee on Poverty, which was negotiated in the relationship accord between the Māori Party and the National Government. Just a month ago Budget 2014 invested an extra $20 million to combat New Zealand’s high rate of rheumatic fever, bringing the Government’s total investment to more than $65.3 million over 6 years. When the free clinics open up later this year, over 200,000 children and young people in high-risk areas will have access to prompt care and treatment for sore throats, and it is about time, too. For too many years previous administrations neglected the health of our most vulnerable children, and I, for one, am proud that the Māori Party has stood up and pointed out the obvious—that health matters.

Another priority for us has been to focus on the close relationship between health and housing. As a result, again, of the pressure brought to bear by even having a Ministerial Committee on Poverty, the Government has now agreed to expand healthy homes initiatives in Northland, Waikato, the lakes area where I am from, Bay of Plenty, Tairāwhiti, Hawke’s Bay, Capital and Coast, and Hutt Valley district health boards.

Another aspect of health for our mokopuna is, of course, her niho—her teeth. During Budget 2014 Tariana Turia announced $10 million was being invested into supporting whānau, ensuring they are enrolled for the free local dental service and given lots of support to maintain great oral hygiene. The Māori Party is going to go even further though, and we are encouraging all of our whānau—indeed, all of the nation—to eliminate sugary beverages from their diets, in the interests of a healthy lifestyle.

What is really exciting about that is that in Budget 2014 we also provide ourselves with an opportunity to launch an initiative that will definitely help shape the world of our mokopuna, and that is Moving the Māori Nation. This is an approach that will support whānau to take a collective approach to health and well-being by participation in sporting, recreational, and cultural activities. One only has to look at the amazing number of families that are involved and getting into things through waka ama, Iron Māori, Tri-Māori, ki-o-rahi, and tribal cultural activities like pā wars to see the whole new level of energy amongst our communities.

That energy was given further steam through Budget 2014, by the focus that we have given to innovation, entrepreneurship, and investment. The burgeoning Māori economy was given an injection of goodwill through an extra $8 million fund to support innovation and investment readiness, as well as $6 million for building the capability and branding and leveraging of Māori tourism and trade.

In order for Te Hare to take advantage of all these opportunities, firstly, she needs a top-quality education for her knowledge, and then her attitudes to be refined with a full range of training skills to open the door really wide. In the weekend I had the privilege of attending the Te Ranga battle site service and ceremony at Pyes Pā in Tauranga. In particular I was moved by “Ngā Roimata O Te Ranga”, a recounting of the events of 21 June 1864 in haka and song. It made me appreciate just how significant the announcement by my colleague Dr Pita Sharples of a new educational initiative to support and strengthen the teaching of Māori history in years 1 to 13 in schools and kura is going to be. We need our stories and our knowledge to be valued, and that is where the new investment in establishing a Māori centre of research excellence takes that concept even further.

Bringing the debate back to my beautiful, magical little mokopuna, once she has flourished in her insulated home and benefited from a quality and culturally competent education system, she will be strong and well, and of course a champion in every sporting event, and then we will need to look at what employment and training avenues are in front of her. And there is a wonderful surprise ahead of her. The Māori Party, in collaboration with the Government, has invested $43 million in the Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative, to help younger people develop skills in trades that are needed right now and in the longer term. That is 3,000 places by 2015, to encourage young Māori and Pasifika people to gain qualifications, New Zealand Apprenticeships, and employment.

The Māori Party is proudly whanau-centred—every day of our political term, and in every aspect of our lives. Whānau ora is a way of being. It is not a line in a manifesto or a substance of a press release. It is a transformation of whanau, which results in long-term vision, determined by the whānau themselves, by the family members themselves. Our basic approach to Budget 2014 and, indeed, to our portfolios right across parliamentary and ministerial responsibilities is underpinned by the knowledge that if we do not transform our families, we will not see the difference that we really want to see. The system, in every sector, serves to fragment families, to put them in silos, and to segregate them. It puts them in compartments and individual components, while all of the time there is a steady focus group of nannies, aunties, mums, and dads who are all watching keenly on every sphere. In closing, the Māori Party is distinguished by our focus on whānau, our determination to take a collective approach. We are proud that our party has delivered on our commitment to create a world that is going to be fit for my beautiful, beautiful moko, Te Hare.

It is a delight to speak after the speaker from the Māori Party, particularly as he speaks with such pride of his mokopuna. In fact, I look forward that she may be here in 20 years’ time, sitting behind you as we continue to cooperate between the National Party and the Māori Party.

💬 Jacqui Dean: Very optimistic.

I am very optimistic, yes—very optimistic. I am optimistic because we have heard nothing good from the Opposition speakers—in fact, Opposition speakers who are very much in the practice of theory, rather than practice itself. We heard from the last speaker from the Māori Party about practice versus theory. There are others, particularly those trying to capture the Māori vote, who are just about knocking things down and who have very little experience. They just want to throw theory about.

What we have heard from the Māori Party, in cooperation with the National Government, has been real, practical gains for this country. We heard about the whole health programme—the fact that if you are up to 13 years of age, you can get free health care through your general practitioner. We have heard about the work on rheumatic fever. It was a shocking statistic when we came into Government. It was something that we wanted to address, and we cooperated with the Māori Party to bring that about. It is the difference between theory and practice. All we hear from the other side is theory. It is the National Government reality versus a sort of utopian viewpoint, if you like, particularly from the Green Party, although as I begin to think about its policies, it is more of a dystopia. It is quite a breakdown.

The Opposition talks about being forward-thinking. The only irony, particularly from the Green Party but from the Opposition in general, is that when it talks about being forward-thinking, it is forgetting the lessons of the past. It is from the lessons of the past that we are able to competently move into the future. One need look no further than this whole talk around equality and what is wanting to be pushed forward there. One of the lessons we know from history, particularly when it comes to equality and socialism, is that socialism—communism is probably more accurate, from what we heard from Dr Russel Norman—relies on restraint to bring about its ends in equality. Tocqueville mentioned that. I mention him, as I might a few other academics, not simply because they are names but they are people who have lived, experienced, and written about this. We in the current day and age can learn. It is from restraint.

The best example is something around transport. We heard a whole lot of talk around transport—more public transport and cars. We are against cars! A society that is based on freedom first and then equality allows people to have the choice. On this side of the House we believe that Kiwis are smart enough and able enough to make the decisions that are best for them and for their families. A restraint model, a socialist model, decides what is good and what is bad, and ultimately makes the choice for other people. The search for a supposed equality in this case, say, around public transport, instantly reduces the freedom of people. Another thinker, Milton Friedman of all people, said that if you have equality before freedom, you get neither. Freedom is ultimately incredibly important, and it is something that this Government is focused on.

You see this throughout this Government’s policies. It is backing Kiwis to do the best for themselves, their families, and their community. It is about setting up an environment in both senses of that word—an environment that helps Kiwis prosper, now and well into the future. It is about, ultimately, theory versus practice, and on this side of the House it is about walking the talk and not just simply talking. National is promising to do good things, and it has been over the last 6 years. The difference in what we have heard today in this discussion and debate is a lot of talk from the other side, but no promises being delivered. When we start to look at the economy here in New Zealand, we have 2 to 4 percent economic growth over the next 4 years and an economy currently growing at 3.8 percent. We have got a $372 million surplus next year, growing to $1.3 billion the year after. These are real facts.

What have we heard from the other side? What is Labour’s primary suggestion around growth? It is a capital gains tax. I think my colleague Paul Goldsmith put it right. That is the one and only golden policy, silver bullet, bronze medal idea to try to move this economy forward. Capital gains taxes have not worked overseas. They are unnecessarily complicated, and they will not work for years.

💬 Hon Annette King: That’s a ridiculous comment.

Annette King says that is ridiculous. [Interruption] Exactly! We are back to theory and practice here. Some of us will read the facts and will look overseas. Let us have a look at Australia. We know what works in practice, but in the little theoretical world over there—no, no—those members say that it is the panacea that will solve all things. It has been the panacea for almost 30 years. And now it is stupid. Now we move into the ad hominem arguments. We really should have just sat down. The predictability of the Labour Party—it is tiresome, if not boring.

There is $1 billion of dollars of new spending in the Budget. It is not reckless spending. We heard the Minister of Finance note that billions of extra dollars were being spent by the Labour Government before, thankfully, it went out of Government in 2008. Moving into the unproductive sector is not going to help the economy at all. We have been very prudent in our approach—as I said, $1 billion. What do we hear from the left instead? It is about more spending, massive spending. The solution to everything is more spending on welfare, more spending on superannuation, more spending on housing, more spending on parental leave, more on health, more on youth, more on Māori, and more on the environment—more magic beans for everybody. That is the left’s approach. Taxpayers in this country know that every time there is a push for more, it is coming out of hard-working taxpayers’ pockets. That is what they understand.

Once again, some in the Opposition say we are spending more on roads. Yes, we are spending more on roads, in cost line, and within a budget that is restrained—that is restrained. That is called balancing the budget and working appropriately, which is something that Labour never understood in Government and still does not understand. It still does not understand it.

We are also seeing the Government working towards a net debt of 26 percent. That is the Crown’s debt. There is a whole issue with private debt from New Zealanders. [Interruption] Oh, we have upset the left now. We come right back to that whole theory and practice. They talk a lot, but in practice they cannot match the record of this Government. Government debt will peak at about 26 percent, and over the next few years will drop down to 20 percent of GDP. That is something we can rightly be proud of. Average wages are going up. They are expected to rise by about $7,600, to $62,300, by 2018. These are real facts. These are real happenings.

On the other side, Labour policy basically talks of an arbitrary, legislated change. Labour members think this will actually make a real impact. The experts say that if you just arbitrarily raise the rate because some Anglican reverend has come up with an idea, it will just cost thousands of jobs. But, again, the theory is what matters, not the practice. They do not care. We want to bring about—actually, we have about 170,000 new jobs in the next 4 years. What do we hear from the other side, particularly from the Greens? We hear talk of a smart Green economy. It sounds nice. It is a good theory. It just does not mean anything. Give us one example of this smart Green economy. In some ways, to me, it always sounds like we are taking money out of the productive sector and simply putting it into blue-sky research. It is really not smart Green jobs but jobs solely within the academic field. It is just a little nuts.

We have invested in education. We know of a lot of the wins we have had here. I am very proud of what has been happening in Tāmaki. I mentioned before the new school buildings we put at St Thomas’s school, the work at Selwyn College, and so forth. I am happy to report to the House that what we are really proud of lately, actually, is that one of my schools—Stonefields School—has now got a green star accreditation. That means that the building of this public school is in that high ranking of environmental quality. That is a green school under National. But did we hear anything from the Greens about this? Of course not. The Greens are much better at knocking things down than actually building them up. We on this side are very proud of our environmental record. But also with regard to our cooperative side, Stonefields School has just opened a cooperative agreement, if you like, in the new hub for the Sommerville Special School, helping some of our most vulnerable in that area. That is absolutely fantastic.

💬 Carol Beaumont: How are the evictions going in Glen Innes north?

I am hearing someone from the other side yelling about Glen Innes. We have an incredibly proud record there as new homes are being built. Our people are engaging with the various dental and health initiatives through the schools. They are setting up gardens in the schools. They are positive for their community. And the fundamental difference between this side here and the other is that we go into those communities and we tell them that they are worthwhile, they have quality, they have opportunities, and we are there to support them—not continue to make excuses for them and to hold them down. We are very different.

I want to finish on that note because I am conscious that the bell has gone. The Opposition is holding them down in theory and practice.

Last week this House almost unanimously passed the Vulnerable Children Bill. I acknowledge the Labour Party’s support for this. It is a bill to protect our young people with things such as screening people who are going to be looking after our kids. Do you know who voted against it? The Greens and Mana. I am absolutely shocked at that behaviour.

I am very happy to be speaking in the Appropriation (2013/14 Supplementary Estimates) Bill debate.

💬 David Bennett: You don’t even know what a Ponzi scheme is.

Yes, I know what poncy is, and I was talking about the Minister of Health. However, in terms of what I want to do today, I want to use this opportunity to actually speak about Health Benefits Ltd. I believe—and this has been sent to me in many leaks now—that Health Benefits Ltd is becoming the Novopay of the health system. In fact, I have been told that Health Benefits Ltd is going to make Novopay look like it was just a little problem indeed. I believe that the Minister needs to front up on this issue and tell New Zealand what is happening in the Crown organisation that he set up that was supposed to save money in the health sector.

Tony Ryall has been pouring money into a scheme that is now being described by those in the district health board sector as a Ponzi scheme. So where did it all start? Tony Ryall launched his flagship project—the centralisation of services and supplies, all around reducing back-office costs and duplication—called the Finance, Procurement and Supply Chain programme. It was to be run by Health Benefits Ltd. Originally, we were told it was going to save $500 million over 10 years. District health boards were required to put $88 million of their health dollars into Health Benefits Ltd towards the cost of running it.

By September 2012 Tony Ryall was meeting resistance to the programme from boards throughout New Zealand. They could see their health dollars going into Health Benefits Ltd and saw very few rewards coming out for the money invested. Any rewards that were coming out were coming from their own efforts, not from this fast-growing empire, which now covers four floors of two buildings in downtown Auckland.

Tony Ryall then threatened to use special legal powers to force the hospital bosses to do his bidding. He now wanted them to save $700 million. The threat came after flaws in the plan were exposed in a high-level review that questioned where the savings were coming from. This review came from Ernst and Young. It found that any savings—and this was in 2012, so we are talking 2 years ago—were based on assumptions that were out of date and that the basis on which they were calculated was not clear. Documents obtained under the Official Information Act showed that the path has been very rocky indeed, with communication breakdowns between the boards and Health Benefits Ltd. District health boards repeatedly told the Ernst and Young review panel that they felt Health Benefits Ltd was doing it to the district health boards rather than doing it with them. So Tony Ryall then wrote to the boards, not contemplating any resistance from them at all, and said he would force the boards into a partnership as a last resort if they did not do it voluntarily. He could do that if he wanted to because he had granted himself new powers 2 years before that in a law designed to streamline health board purchasing and administration. So there we have it set up for what has happened over the last 2 years.

I have had many reports released to me, many leaked letters, and the most significant came only a few weeks ago. It is significant because it is a letter written by the chair of the district health board national chief financial officers to the chair of the district health board executives. So, in other words, the chair of all the chief financial officers of all the district health boards wrote to the chair of the chief executive officers of all the district health boards. This is what they had to say in their letter: “The DHB CFOs as a group are writing to express profound concern at the mounting risk to the delivery of health services brought about by the Finance Procurement and Supply Chain ... work programme, and the lack of transparent and timely information from Health Benefits Ltd (HBL) to District Health Boards in relation to material changes to the programme, including to costs, benefits, impacts and risks.” They went on to say “we are increasingly concerned at advice we have received from HBL in relation to benefits erosion,”. They are unable to qualify what the benefits are at this time.

They go on in the very, very sobering letter to say that “After careful consideration at our recent national meeting, [we] consider it necessary to formally bring to the attention of national [chief executives] our grave and collective concerns about the FPSC work programme, its cost escalations, implementation delays, benefits erosion and escalating risk profile.” They say that “DHBs are well advanced in restructuring processes associated with this programme and are now facing significant risks in relation to the retention of the staff necessary to enable the continuation of current service ...”. They say: “The confidence of CFOs in the FPSC programme has been severely diminished.”

I brought that to the attention of the Minister of Health. He was not the least bit interested. As usual, he batted it away.

I have to say there has been a pattern to this, because I first started asking questions and putting in Official Information Act requests last year. It has been almost impossible to get any information out of Health Benefits Ltd. It has been almost impossible to get a single answer out of the Minister—smoke and mirrors—and now I believe that what we are seeing is a huge cover-up of a programme that has gone badly awry.

The latest document given to me and to Radio New Zealand National on Friday, following questioning of the Minister last week, was written by a senior manager within district health boards. It is called “Exposing the Myths of Health Benefits Ltd: the Risk to the New Zealand Health System”. It says that the New Zealand health sector is pursuing through Health Benefits Ltd a path of centralisation that is creating the biggest single risk to the delivery of public health services in New Zealand in a generation, at a time when the system is under extraordinary cost and service delivery pressure. It says that despite the apparent logic of the centralisation rationale, not only does the work programme of Health Benefits Ltd manifest all the hallmarks of large-scale, high-profile public and private sector failures but its similarities with Ponzi schemes are striking. The document goes on to say that despite its veneer, it is destroying significant value and bringing about extraordinary risks to the health system.

That document said that the costs have ballooned from $88 million to $130 million, and they are growing. The benefits have been reduced by one-third, the payback period of investment has gone from 10 years to more than 60 years, there is nothing of substance that has been delivered 2 years into the investment, the programme is now running 2 years late, and there are close to 400 jobs that are in a state of flux throughout provincial New Zealand as a consequence. The district health boards have been alerted to the prospect that Health Benefits Ltd will not seek re-approval from district health boards for increased commitments. In other words, it is going to take the money, whether the boards approve or not. It is not going to seek approval for reduced benefits and extended payback periods. This is a travesty. This is a disaster. This is health money that should be going into health services, and I believe that there is a cover-up that has to be exposed.

That was great drama from the member Annette King. I can assure you that the picture in the three health boards that are covered by my electorate—the Wairarapa, central Hawke’s Bay, and the Manawatū—do not reflect the picture that has just been presented to this House by that speaker. Mind you, what would one expect this far out from an election?

I want to focus my comments on the topic today, which is around the supplementary estimates, and to focus on three areas: foreign affairs, trade, and defence. Over the past 5 years the National Government has significantly strengthened New Zealand’s international footprint, enhanced our international reputation, and established a base for long-term prosperity based on stronger trade and economic partnerships. Looking ahead, there are significant opportunities for New Zealand as countries in the Asia-Pacific region develop rapidly and demand more of what we produce. Our Business Growth Agenda is putting in place reforms to help businesses perform well, particularly with the tradable and export sectors. That is how people in my community earn their living. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr McCully, has also strengthened our leadership role in the Pacific and he has made New Zealand a formidable candidate for election as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2015-16 term.

The integration of NZAID—this will get them going—into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to ensure greater efficiency and coherence has created a model that is now being followed by others, for example, Australia, as other nations seek to achieve more with constrained budgets. Having held the development budget at around $550 million a year as we coped with the twin impacts of the global financial crisis and the Christchurch earthquake, there is now room for future growth, and the supplementary estimates support steady increases from 2015.

Investment in the Official Development Assistance programme is going to increase by nearly $220 million for the 3-year period starting in 2015-16. Total expenditure over this period is going to be $1.89 billion, compared with nearly $1.67 billion in the current 3-year period. This Government is making a commitment of major proportions to our neighbours. This increased vote after the recent pause because of the Christchurch earthquake will be spent primarily addressing the challenges faced by developing countries in our Pacific neighbourhood. The additional investment in aid and development funding will also support new strategic investments in the region, particularly in agriculture, food security, renewable energy, and disaster risk management. As with the current aid programme, investment will have a focus on delivering results that make a tangible difference to the lives of people, and, as our Budget in 2014 has already proposed, the increased forecast expenditure under Vote Official Development Assistance has increased to nearly $550 million.

The key features of our development policy under a re-elected National Government—which is looking increasingly likely—will be to maintain a focus on the Pacific, with over 60 percent of our development budget committed to that region. We will also use partnerships to ensure that our aid funds are leveraged, as was the case with a brilliant initiative from Minister Mr McCully when he led in March last year the Pacific renewable energy programme, which generated a partnership with other countries around the planet and provided $635 million of new capital for energy projects just in the Pacific. We are also seeking more flexible instruments to add to the tool kit to ensure strong development outcomes. We are working and creating strong relationships between our aid programme and other Government agencies, New Zealand businesses, and Trade and Enterprise to ensure a “New Zealand Inc.” approach.

This week’s papers have reported that our Prime Minister has just returned from a visit to New York and Washington, where the main focus was to reinforce New Zealand’s bid to secure a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council for 2015-16. He reported this morning in our caucus that he had received a very strong, positive response. We never see the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr McCully, because he is working hard to campaign for a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Last week he was in Iran, Ghana, and America. He is absolutely the peripatetic Minister of Foreign Affairs. He has boosted New Zealand’s profile internationally and, as a result, has demonstrated that New Zealand is a committed and collaborative multilateral player. McCully has reinvigorated New Zealand’s links with countries from emerging regions for the long-term benefit of New Zealand.

Early in the term of the next Government—I think on 18 October—New Zealand will face this contest for a 2-year term on the Security Council, a role we last held over 20 years ago. Our country has a strong international brand, recognised for being fair-minded and constructive in our behaviour. The National Government under John Key’s leadership has worked really hard to build a case for New Zealand’s election to the Security Council through a campaign designed to provide lasting benefits for our reputation and influence overseas.

In recent years we have enhanced the relationships with our partners, as I have said. We have continued the momentum with our traditional close partners—and I am thinking here of Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom—including in this year, 2014, becoming a guest of the G20 when it meets in Australia. We have focused on the Asia and Pacific regions, consolidating relationships in the ASEAN area, and we have recently appointed an ASEAN ambassador, who will be based in Jakarta. We have increased our ambition in our relationship with China, and the Prime Minister has set new trade targets by 2020. Tim Groser, our Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs, has led 31 high-level trade missions to Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific. Under McCully’s leadership, we have opened new posts in Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Myanmar, Barbados, and Honolulu, and we are soon going to open a new consulate-general in Chengdu, China. We have strengthened our ASEAN relationships, including with the establishment of this new ambassador in Jakarta, who will be separate from the New Zealand ambassador to Indonesia.

What we are doing is seeking new diplomatic and economic opportunities for New Zealand and we are taking a “New Zealand Inc.” approach across all Government agencies. We have been doing this in China, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Australia, and ASEAN. We have particularly strengthened our key partnership with Australia. We have transformed our diplomatic and security relationship with the United States. Just look at what was on our television sets last week. We have reinforced China as our largest trading partner and we have enhanced our leadership role in the Pacific, which, as I said, now gets 60 percent of our budget.

Before I end, I would just like to make a few comments about defence, because if I do not, nobody else will. We have allocated $535.5 million in ongoing extra operational funding over the next 4 years, and the Government’s investment of $100.9 million in 2014 and 2015 is the first stage of an allocation of the $535 million in operational funding. This will enable the New Zealand Defence Force to maintain and improve its current mix of capabilities, it will help us sustain and grow numbers over time, and it will allow the Government to continue to modernise and upgrade the New Zealand Defence Force’s capability. These are good pieces of legislation, and I fully support them. Thank you.

I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First in the debate on the Appropriation (2013/14 Supplementary Estimates) Bill, which sets out a great array of financial figures and projections. There are, in fact, hundreds of cost figures in this bill.

The probity of financial figures is vital; indeed, it is central to any discussion involving Government finance, so it is all the more egregious that the Government made its so-called surplus the centrepiece of its 2014 Budget. Yes, balancing the Government’s Budget is an important economic objective, but it has to be real balancing, not the manufactured, phony fiddling of the books that National did in the 2014 Budget to create a surplus.

The 2014 Budget took the expression “smoke and mirrors” to a whole new height. For example, the Budget is not really balanced when all sorts of creative accounting has been applied to the Christchurch rebuild costs. The Government has forecast a surplus of close to half a billion dollars in the Budget. At the same time, it was reducing the current budget for Canterbury earthquake matters by about the same amount. Recently, the Prime Minister indicated that the Government will have to spend a further $5 billion because the Christchurch rebuild costs will escalate. So on the one hand costs for Canterbury earthquake matters were written down for the 2014-15 Budget, whilst on the other hand the same Government was forecasting an additional $5 billion for Christchurch over coming years, which leads to the conclusion that the almost half-billion-dollar surplus comes at Christchurch’s expense, or is the worst form of creative accounting.

The people of Christchurch know they have been sacrificed so the Government can boast about its books. Holding back vitally needed money to rebuild Christchurch in order to generate the so-called surplus amounts to being a crime against its own people, or another example of the Government fiddling the books. The facts are clear: the Government has jacked up the numbers from an insurance deal when the remains of AMI Insurance were taken over. AMI, you will remember, was turned into Southern Response Earthquake Services, and that is where the fiddling started. The proceeds from this sale amounted to $252 million, which is placed in Government bonds rather than in settling insurance claims. A Government deal with Southern Response required it to thereafter put surplus cash on its books into Government bonds, as well. This has been boosted by money coming in from reinsurance companies—all going into Government bonds. So, hey presto, magic, we have another deception against Christchurch and an impacting on the Budget surplus. It is shameless deception.

Other areas of Budget duplicity include police funding, which has been frozen. Now we have the police having to face an impossible choice: do they deal with vulnerable children or go after organised crime? Also, border protection is reduced despite all the risk to biosecurity that that entails. Nothing has been learnt from the Psa incursion that struck the kiwifruit industry. Also, defence capability is being undermined. Conservation is being cut, despite all the environmental risks. The only genuine way to balance the Budget is to grow the economy and, most important, that requires a realistic and sustainable exchange rate.

New Zealand First has a bill to reform the Reserve Bank to give it powers to take account of employment and exports, not just the inflation rate. A flexible monetary policy will give a realistic exchange rate that will allow many regional industries, including manufacturing, to survive and thrive. New Zealand First also has policies, including tax incentives, research and development support, and accelerated depreciation to support a broadly based manufacturing sector and not just rely on an increasingly narrow range of dairy, agricultural, and log exports. Dairy and forestry now account for 40 percent of export receipts. That is a highly vulnerable position for this country’s economy.

New Zealand First also has policies to support regional development, such as our royalties for regions policy, whereby we would return 25 percent of Crown royalties back to their origins—the regions where the original mining or extraction was done. This would greatly benefit many regions throughout New Zealand by returning that 25 percent of Crown royalties directly back to where mining has an effect. We will tighten the rules of foreign ownership of land and housing, something that this Government is afraid to do. New Zealand First will ensure that businesses stop draining New Zealand wealth by investing in speculating on New Zealand land and housing from abroad.

What New Zealand needs is a comprehensive economic strategy and plan. New Zealand does not need a “smoke and mirrors” Budget that is taking money out of Christchurch, that is fiddling the books, and that is removing money from the likes of the police, border protection, defence, and conservation just so that the Government comes up with a paper-thin surplus of $270-something million. There is no sign of that coming from the National Government after 5½ years of office. This is simply rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, and it is not going forward. New Zealand First has policies that will do so.

I just want to put a few things straight for the public out there who were listening to the speech from the member who has just resumed his seat, Andrew Williams. The New Zealand economy grew by more than 3.8 percent in the year to March. That is the third highest among the world’s most developed countries, and growth is forecast to reach 4 percent next year. This is a far cry from what we inherited in 2008, it is a far cry from what you would get under a Labour - Greens - New Zealand First Government, and it is a far cry from what the Australians see happening in their country at the moment.

There are a couple of policies that have been mentioned by other speakers today that I think we should talk about. The last speaker touched on one. It is one policy that has come through from the Greens, New Zealand First, and Labour, and it is the attack on the productive sector of New Zealand. They do not want New Zealand farmers to deliver the products that the world wants on the world stage. They do not want New Zealand to be a strong agricultural producer going forward. They do not want that to happen, and they are going to bring in a series of policies to achieve that purpose. The first of those is carbon pricing. This is not a carbon tax. Everybody would expect some kind of carbon tax to raise money and for that money to then be spent on environmental initiatives. Carbon pricing does not do that.

All that is proposed under the Greens’ policy, which would be favoured by Labour and the New Zealand First Party, is to tax the productive sector of New Zealand. The farming sector of New Zealand would have to pay more taxes so that they can redistribute that as tax cuts for New Zealanders. That is all it is. It has got nothing about achieving any environmental purpose. It is pure politics. It is a transfer of income from the productive sector to the sectors that are in the rest of the New Zealand economy. That is what the Labour Party, the Green Party, and the New Zealand First Party will stand for at the next election.

💬 Andrew Williams: Come on—are you joining us?

See, either they are joining them or they are not. That is the question for the Greens. Are they going to them or not? They do not answer, do they, because they know they are. That is what New Zealanders have to be aware of. That policy will mean that the productive sector of New Zealand, the agricultural sector that has been delivering great economic returns for New Zealand in the past few years, will be hamstrung by carbon pricing, and that will reduce its competitiveness, which will reduce the competitiveness of the New Zealand economy in total.

The next policy they want to do is around a capital gains tax. Again, it is another policy that does not achieve its purpose. It is a policy that attacks the productive sector of New Zealand. The one part of the New Zealand economy that will be paying for a capital gains tax is New Zealand businesses and farms that generate the income for this country going forward. It will—

💬 Dr Rajen Prasad: What’s wrong with that?

“What’s wrong with that?”—that is what Rajen Prasad said. What is wrong with that? What is wrong with attacking the productive sector of the New Zealand economy? That is exactly what the Labour Party thinks. It does not believe there is any problem in attacking the productive sector of New Zealand. Labour believes that the productive sector is a cash cow that you can hit until the cows come home, does it not, Mr Prasad? Labour believes that you can go after that sector all day and all night and it is not going to make any difference to the New Zealand economy. That is the fundamental misunderstanding that the Opposition has.

The Opposition does not understand where the bread is buttered in New Zealand and where the money comes from to pay for our schools, to pay for our roads, and to pay for our hospitals. That money has to be earned overseas. New Zealand is a great agricultural producing country, and to attack that productive sector through a capital gains tax and a carbon price will hurt that sector. You will see, as Mr Goldsmith said earlier, that those increases in taxes will not lead to what Mr Prasad and others are saying will happen. They will lead to capital being moved out of New Zealand, less capital investment in our productive sector, and, therefore, less revenue for our country as a whole and less economic growth for our economy.

The third area that I think New Zealanders need to be aware of is the anti-immigration stance that will be taken by those three Opposition parties. They do not believe in having a free and open New Zealand where we make the most of the opportunities we have in the modern world. They believe in an isolated island that can put up barriers and that it is not good enough to have anybody else coming in; the people who are here now are the limit. That is what the New Zealand First Party has always stood for. [Interruption] That is what the New Zealand First Party has always stood for and will always stand for, because it is against immigration, it is against an open and free New Zealand. It is a disgraceful day for the Labour Party to agree to that. They are so silent over there now because they know, in their heart of hearts, they do not agree with it either.

💬 Chris Hipkins: We’re bored.

You are not bored; you are listening, mate. You will be listening to the end of the election campaign as well. When we look at New Zealand going forward, New Zealand has an economy that is growing. This is something that we did not inherit when we came into Government. In the last 5 years of the Labour Government there was a 50 percent increase in Government expenditure. We have got that under control. Mortgage rates for those homeowners about whom the Labour Party members were talking were at 10.9 percent under Labour; under National they are at about 6 percent.

Food prices were up about 10.9 percent in the last year of the Labour Government. They are up 1.5 percent under this Government here today. House prices went up 96 percent over the 9 years of the Labour Government, but they have gone up only 28 percent under this Government. Electricity prices went up 72 percent under Labour, but only 20 percent under this Government. The current account deficit—the thing the Greens always talk about—was 7.9 percent under Labour, but it is only 3.4 percent under this Government. Many New Zealanders left and went to Australia at that time because they understood what the Labour Government would mean to them and to this economy going forward.

💬 Denis O’Rourke: What about $60 billion of debt?

The debt that New Zealand has accumulated has been to rebuild Christchurch, a city I thought you would have been most comfortable to see rebuilt, and to keep this country afloat in the most difficult of economic times. So the New Zealand First Party obviously does not want to rebuild Christchurch. But I have got news for all transport lovers in New Zealand. When you see the New Zealand First transport policy, you will be amazed. New Zealand First wants to have passenger trains going from Wellington to Wanganui. Every other city in New Zealand will be serviced by a passenger train network.

Trevor Mallard is smiling and nodding and saying that is great as well, so it is good to see that the Labour Party is supporting that as well as New Zealand First. That is the kind of rhetoric that those parties will engage in during the next 3 months. They will be reckless with their promises. They will not have costed out their promises at all. They will make a lot of promises to New Zealanders that will not be held up.

This is an economy that is doing well. This is a country that is doing well. It has got good strong leadership, prudent economic management, and a willingness and desire to make its way in the modern world. We need to celebrate our successes in agriculture and other trading industries, which provide a lot of the mainstay of income that is generated in this country. We do not need to attack them and see them as some kind of cash cow that will enable the Opposition parties to deliver their election promises.

We should be looking forward as a country that grows and makes the most of its opportunities, not one that looks back and tries to hijack and take advantage of the hard work of New Zealanders that has gone on before. This is an important election for New Zealanders because they have that choice. At that election they will choose a progressive country that looks forward, takes advantage of our opportunities as a food producer, and openly embraces immigration. They will choose a country that does not say no to people coming into this country. They will choose a country that does not look backwards, does not try to redistribute money, and does not try to move the deckchairs around to try to achieve the Opposition’s election promises. That is the choice New Zealanders will have, and it is a choice that New Zealanders will hopefully make the right decision on. Thank you.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I do believe that New Zealanders will make a positive, progressive choice at this year’s general election, and I think that that will result in this National Government being turfed out. I think New Zealanders have had enough of this arrogant Government telling them how good they have got it when they are watching their wages go backwards, when they are watching future generations being shut out of the housing market, when they are watching the education system and the health system being run down under this National Government. I think New Zealanders are ready to make a positive, progressive change at this year’s election, and I think that that will see the election of a Labour-led Government.

We are seeing under this Government that although National tells everybody how good their lives are, wages have stagnated. New Zealanders are not getting ahead under National. In fact, wages are barely keeping pace with inflation, while people look across at Australia and they see the Australian workers getting paid more. John Key stood in the Westpac Stadium a few years ago and decried the exodus to Australia, and yet he has done nothing—done nothing—to address that. Unemployment doubled under this National Government—doubled under this National Government—and remains disgracefully high in this country. Bill English and John Key go around and say how getting unemployment down is a hoax and it will never happen. That is National’s vision. Those members do not care that unemployment is high. They do not care about the fact that we have literally 147,000 unemployed people in New Zealand. John Key and Bill English say that doing something about that is unrealistic.

Well, we in the Labour Party have a more positive attitude than that. Our attitude says that every New Zealander who can get out there and work should have the opportunity to do so. That means they should have a job they can go to, and it should not just be any old job; it should be a well-paid job, as well.

💬 Phil Twyford: With a living wage.

💬 CHRIS HIPKINS: With a living wage, where they can be well supported, and where they can support their families. That is the aspiration of this party. The aspiration of that Government is all about making sure the people at the top of the economic pile are well looked after. They have completely shut out any concerns being raised by those who are struggling to make ends meet. We in the Labour Party simply do not think that is acceptable. We will make sure that all New Zealanders get their fair share of the recovery.

When future generations of New Zealanders, the generation that will vote for the first time at this year’s election, go to the polls, they will be asking themselves what kind of country they want to inherit from the current generation of political leadership. Do they want to inherit a country in which they have no prospect of buying their own home? Do they want to inherit a country where large numbers of them will earn lower wages here in New Zealand than if they move overseas, move offshore? Do they want to inherit a country where all of the valuable assets have been sold off—sold off—by the Government and nothing is left for future generations? I think that they will decide that is not the type of country they want to inherit and they will vote for a positive, progressive change at this year’s general election.

I want to talk particularly about the education system. If there is one sector that needs a positive, inspirational vision at the moment, it is the education system. In the education system at the moment we have got a Government that is obsessed with narrowing down the focus of the whole system on to a few measurable targets—a few measurable targets that do not bring out the best in every child, that do not place high trust in the teaching profession, that tell schools and teachers they are not to be trusted; they are to be treated as factories and they are to be measured on their outputs, as if kids were units of economic production rather than the unique individuals that they actually are.

The Government wants to implement this new policy of expert teachers and executive principals, which will take the really good teachers out of the classroom and will take the really good principals away from the schools that they are currently working in. I used an example in question time today of a school principal who said: “How on Earth am I supposed to continue to manage my own school and oversee 10 others at the same time? It’s simply not feasible.” The teaching profession is saying this is not feasible and it is not workable. This Government is too arrogant to listen to that, and it is going to plough ahead. Hekia Parata, when she was interviewed about this on television a couple of weeks ago, refused to rule out legislating for this change to take place. So even when the entire teaching profession puts up their hand and says “We have got concerns about this. We have got concerns about the workability of it.”, the Government will not listen. It will say “We will railroad over the top of feedback from the profession”—the feedback of the experts in the classroom—“and we will say ‘Thou shalt do this.’ ”, and it will legislate it.

But that, of course, is not surprising from this Government, because this Government does not even trust the teaching profession enough to have a say in how its profession is governed. The Government is proposing legislation through this Parliament that will mean that the teaching profession has no say over who forms the board of its own regulatory body. We would never do that to lawyers or to doctors or to nurses, or to any other profession. In fact, I have got speeches, and I have quoted them in the House before, of the National Party decrying the real estate industry’s lack of influence over its own governing and regulatory body. And yet National was willing to stand up in the House and defend the real estate agents. But when it comes to the teaching profession—no, nothing. National is quite happy to ride roughshod over the teaching profession and say that it is not to be trusted.

I think that is wrong. I think we should trust the teaching profession. I do not think there is a single teacher in this country who goes into the classroom every day and thinks “Gosh! I am really aiming to do a bad job today.” Every teacher who goes to school does so because they want to make the future better for future generations of New Zealanders. I congratulate them on that. I say on behalf of the Labour Party that we trust in the teaching profession and we respect the teaching profession. In our case it is not hollow sentiment; we actually believe it. It will be absolutely evident in the policies that we will be promoting.

We have a Government here that wants to remove the requirement for registered and qualified teachers in charter schools. National does not want these schools to be accountable to the same accountability mechanisms as every other school in the country. They do not even have to teach to the curriculum in the way that every other school in the country does. And National is willing to shovel millions—tens of millions of dollars—of taxpayers’ money into charter schools with very little accountability, even to the point where if someone establishes a charter school, gets millions of dollars in Government funding, and then closes before the end of their supposed contract, there is no ability to recoup that money. There is not a single clause in that contract that allows the Crown to recoup that cost. So these schools can go and splash cash, buying huge assets, and the Government does not have a leg to stand on if one of those schools were to close. That is simply wrong.

We have got a Government here where its solution to student achievement is to introduce national standards, which are neither national nor standard. They are no measure of benchmarking student performance, because the way they are assessed at schools varies dramatically and they are no basis of comparison whatsoever. Now the Government is talking about using them as the precursor for performance pay and for making school funding decisions based on national standards results.

Well, most teachers in the country would be pretty happy just to be paid their current pay on time, let alone performance pay. At the moment some of them are struggling to be paid at all because of the absolute debacle that is the Novopay payroll system, which nearly 2 years after it was implemented still does not work. We have still got people struggling with historical problems and not being paid, because of the disaster that is Novopay. “Mr Fix-it” has quickly morphed into “Mr Excuses”, because he has not got any answers to the Novopay problem other than to pretend that nothing is wrong any more. It has all been fixed, according to Steven Joyce, yet there is feedback on a daily basis from within schools that teachers still are not being paid on time, they are still struggling, and they are still being distracted from the valuable work that they have to do in teaching the future generations of kids. It is time to fix the Novopay problem.

There is a better way in the education system. It starts with quality early childhood education and runs right the way through the whole system. The Labour Party is committed to quality early childhood education, to funding centres that have 100 percent qualified staff for those qualified teachers, and to making sure that kids get access, no matter where they live, to quality early childhood education. It means recognising that we have a huge diversity of students in our education system, from those who have special learning needs and who are falling behind to those who have special learning needs because they are well ahead. It was Gifted Awareness Week last week, and we want to make sure that all of those kids are supported so that they can achieve to their full potential. What this Government does not get is that underachievement is not just about kids who are falling behind; underachievement is any child who is not achieving to their full potential. They could be incredibly bright, well ahead of their peers, but if they are not achieving to their potential, then that is a waste as well, and they are underachieving as well.

We have to support every student in our schools to make sure that they are achieving to their full potential, and that starts with a much higher trust in the teaching profession. We have got to set the teachers free, cut the red tape, and allow them to get on with the job that they are there to do. They are passionate about teaching. They are passionate about future generations of New Zealanders. Let us let them get on with the job. Let us put some trust in them. Let us stop bagging them in the way this Government does.

Well, the Opposition’s speeches in the House today, fact-free and filled with inconsistency—as, indeed, are many of the members on Opposition benches—have clearly illustrated to us yet again that they are totally unaware and out of touch with what New Zealanders really need and want. The day-to-day reality of how most of us live our lives—not spending more than we earn, saving for our retirement, and working hard so that our families can get ahead—is almost a totally unknown quantity to these Opposition parties. We have heard a surfeit of evidence to support that this afternoon.

Labour and its big-borrowing, big-spending, dogma-driven mates the Greens are determinedly ignorant about the issues that matter to us. The Prime Minister today in question time—just to remind you, Mr Speaker—called it the Greens’ “economic lunacy”. Bill English, in leading this debate on appropriations today, raised many good questions and challenged the Opposition members to show us their plan, their new initiatives, instead of adopting their usual approach, which is to fund the problems and not solve the problems, which I thought was a very neat phrase he came out with. Opposition speakers today have not delivered anything new, but let us look closely at the prospect of change.

What would New Zealand have to lose if they elected that motley crew, maybe with the “IMP Party” thrown in to boot, the “Hone and Kimi” unholy alliance? Let us add up the risk to the voters if they embrace these deviant couplings. For starters, they would destroy the fragile recovery and squander all the hard-won gains—gains that have been fought for by hard-working New Zealanders and led by our outstanding Prime Minister, John Key, and the Minister of Finance, Bill English. The alliance of the hard left would rule the show and, I would imagine, totally torpedo our steadily climbing economic growth. To seal their shonky deals would cost all of us in this country in the billions.

Let us just take one recent example that emerged today in the House and was last week mentioned in the House in question time. This is the nonsense specifically that the Greens are peddling around the Māui’s dolphin. They are trying to scaremonger and to ban all oil exploration in an area off the cost of Taranaki, where there has not been one single incident involving the Māui’s dolphin over the past 44 years. That is despite 23 oil wells being drilled—not a single incident, not a single sighting, not a single problem. There have been more than 700 fishing trips where there have been independent observers on board—not a single sighting of the Māui’s dolphin.

However, it has been very clearly and scientifically documented that some 95 percent of the risk to the dolphins is from set netting, which is a practice that has resulted in the Minister of Conservation, Nick Smith, doubling the area of protection, because he does take that threat seriously. We do care as a Government, because we do care about the real threats to this endangered species, but we do not make up imagined threats to suit the political agenda, as the Greens are doing. They would—and we have heard it today and repeatedly—make up these imagined threats. Really, what they are going to be doing is sacrificing the economy of Taranaki and, I reckon, the whole country, actually, in order to attract the oxygen of publicity that they need to survive politically. If they get their way, what would be the likely outcome for Taranaki? The Prime Minister started to spell it out today, as did Nick Smith. By shutting down the Pohokura gas field, which is essentially what the Greens are trying to do, they shut down 50 percent of New Zealand’s gas resources. It would cost around 5,000 jobs and it would cripple our ability to produce the gas we need to function as a country. That would mean we would probably have to turn on the coal-fired power station at Huntly. That would mean that our greenhouse emissions would go through the roof. We would end up having to import more of the fuels, which would have a very bad effect on our balance of payments. New Zealand would not earn the nearly $1 billion in royalties and taxes that we get every year off those industries. It is precisely that sort of “loony tunes”, reckless, and irresponsible behaviour that would send New Zealand down the wrong economic path.

There are, on an upward-looking note, many good reasons to measure the success of the economy as has been managed by Bill English and this John Key - led Government over the past nearly 6 years. If you measure the success of the economy by our GDP, our gross domestic product has increased by a very healthy 3.8 percent. That is just in the year to the end of March. That makes New Zealand the third-fastest-growing developed economy in the world. Our 3.8 percent annual growth compares very favourably, indeed, with the 3.5 percent they have managed to get in Australia, the 2 percent in the United States, and around 0.9 percent through Europe. Our economic growth, understandably, is the envy of many other countries because it is broad-based. It has positive contributions from the construction industry, from mining, from agriculture, and from the retail, trade, and accommodation sectors.

There is even more to celebrate as that growth in the economy is matched by even higher levels of consumer and business confidence—business confidence being at around a 20-year high. So for those who do not evaluate their economic prospects in terms of GDP, if they want to bring it closer to home and measure it more in terms of jobs and higher incomes, the good news is once again delivered by this Government. In the past year alone, 84,000 more jobs were created. The Budget last month forecast an additional 170,000 jobs by mid-2018. More jobs equal more opportunities for New Zealanders, and then we will all be better off. If we stick with this Government’s programme, even more New Zealanders will see the gains in their own wallets. The average full-time wage is expected to rise by $7,600. That would mean that the average wage would be about $62,300 over the next 4 years. This follows, you will recall, around a $3,000 increase in the average wage over the past 3 years.

To see how much progress we have made, you need only look back to the previous Labour Government’s record. Maybe I will not dwell on that, actually; I think enough time has been spent on its failed policies. The previous speaker, Chris Hipkins, spoke about education. Let us look at some of the initiatives that we have managed to put in place. Hekia Parata and the Associate Minister of Education Nikki Kaye, despite the tight financial constraints, have increased total spending on early childhood, primary, and secondary education. It is going to come out at around $10.1 billion this year. National, as a Government, is investing $155.7 million over 4 years in early childhood education. This is an area, I think, where we have had noticeable success and we have really made some gains. We did not just talk about it; we delivered on it. That is a hallmark of this Government. Giving children the best start in life is something that this Government believes in very strongly, indeed. It is, we believe, one of the greatest investments we can make in the future of our children.

With early childhood education, we have targeted around 98 percent participation by next year to 2016. We have already hit 93 percent. We are looking very likely to achieve that goal in rapid time. I think the amount of money that we have spent on early childhood education is almost double that—$800 million under Labour and $1.5 billion under this Government. When it comes to health, as many know, that was one of the big spending areas in this Government, and it is something that I think the Hon Tony Ryall has managed particularly well over the past 5½ years. Bringing in the policy of free general practitioner visits for under-13s—extending it out to that—has cost around $90 million, but it is money very well spent. The earlier a child can get to the doctor, the better their health will be ultimately. As I have said in speeches in my own North Shore electorate, some things are priceless, and children’s health is definitely in that category. The ability for parents not to have to worry about the money and to be able to get their children to the doctor in a timely fashion is an enormous addition to strengthening families. That is something very close to the heart and soul of this Government.

Budget 2014 is going to deliver more than $32 million over the next 4 years to further improve cancer services, and for the 20,000 New Zealanders each year who are given the sentence that they have cancer, that they have to live with it, and that they have to go through the treatment, the measures that we are putting in place to allow psychological counselling and support, I think, are going to make an enormous difference to their quality of life.

Paula Bennett has also continued to deliver, and in this Budget there have been huge gains for the most vulnerable. This Government is determined to protect the most vulnerable—particularly those who suffer from abuse and neglect. The tragic statistics are, indeed, sobering. I think that when you look at the fact that more than 50 children have died in the past 5 years because of extreme abuse, it is imperative that we step in with policies, with money, with backup, and with rigorously thought-through and well-argued support structures for families and always putting children at the heart of the equation, which is something that the Hon Paula Bennett does very, very well.

So I am very proud of this Budget. I am very proud of this Government. That is why I commend the Appropriation (2013/14 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2014/15) Bill to the House. Thank you.

I want to talk about housing in this estimates debate. Housing was the gaping hole in the Government’s Budget. In the face of great expectation from the public that the Government would use the Budget to do something constructive about its housing crisis, very little was forthcoming. I want to start by drawing the House’s attention to a story that ran in the New Zealand Herald on Saturday about a poll that it had done of New Zealanders who own their own homes. This is interesting, because for a long time in this country it has been the conventional political wisdom that house prices going up is a good thing. The idea has always been that when house prices go up, it means people are getting richer. They are acquiring extra value from that. For that reason I think Governments, for a long time, have thought that it is fine to just let house prices go higher and higher.

Well, something really interesting has happened in the last few years. The New Zealand Herald poll showed that half of the homeowners whom the New Zealand Herald polled said they were either worried or very worried by rising house prices. That, I think, is remarkable, because these are people who, on the face of it, are benefiting from the fact that their house values are rising, but they told the New Zealand Herald poll that they were very worried about this.

I think this explains why housing has become such an explosive issue in the last few years. What the people told the New Zealand Herald poll was that they were worried that their kids would never be able to own their home—that they were locked out of the dream of homeownership—and, secondly, they were worried that the housing crisis and ever-escalating house prices could lead to a housing bust that would threaten the economy and could lead to people losing their shirts, as they did when the global financial crisis hit the United States.

I think this is very, very significant. It is clear to the people here. Half of the homeowners told the New Zealand Herald that they were worried or extremely worried that we have a housing crisis. The symptoms are there for everybody to see. Let us look at what those symptoms are. We have rapidly falling rates of homeownership. That was very clear from the census data that came out a few months ago. House prices in Auckland are skyrocketing. The median house price in Auckland is now over $700,000. If you look at house price inflation over recent months—annualised—it amounts to house prices in Auckland going up by $72,000 every year. Is it any wonder that people cannot save fast enough to keep up with house price inflation?

A year ago the Reserve Bank was so panicked by the housing crisis that it introduced these loan-to-value ratio lending restrictions, which mean that no matter where you are in the country, even if you are in Balclutha, Dunedin, Wanganui, Palmerston North, or Gisborne—places where there is no housing crisis—you still have to find a 20 percent deposit. Depending on where you are, that could be $60,000, $70,000, or $80,000 before you can even get in the door and talk to the bank manager about a mortgage.

In Canterbury, because of this Government’s near-criminal negligence in failing to deliver a speedy residential rebuild after the earthquakes, rents have gone up by more than 30 percent since the earthquakes. People are living in the most disgraceful conditions because this Government has taken a hands-off approach to the rebuild. Fewer than 1,000 of the 12,000 to 15,000 houses that are needed in Canterbury right now have actually been built.

We have seen the running down of Housing New Zealand. There are 700 fewer State houses now than there were a year ago. There are around 3,000 vacant State houses around the country, while people are shuffled off to the private rental market, and living in often substandard conditions.

The OECD says we have got a housing crisis. It pointed out that we have some of the most overpriced housing in the world. The IMF said the same thing. The Reserve Bank noted the other day that the housing crisis in Auckland poses one of the biggest threats to our economy, but John Key and this National Government are in denial about this. They do not believe that there is a housing crisis. Well, the first step to addressing the problem is actually acknowledging you have a problem, but National has not even got to the first step.

By contrast, Labour has a positive agenda for change, and if you look at our housing policy, it has so many bold, constructive elements to it. The next Labour-led Government will take serious measures to address the housing crisis. With KiwiBuild we will build 10,000 affordable houses every year and sell them to first-home buyers. What is National’s solution? It is drawing lines on a map with its housing accords, hoping that if it changes the zoning rules, somehow the market is magically going to build these houses. We can see that that is not happening, because in Auckland, where the Government announced a housing accord more than a year ago, Nick Smith has not built a single new house in the special housing areas that anyone is living in.

Labour will tackle the speculative forces that are driving house prices higher and higher in Auckland. We will do something about the demand side. A capital gains tax that excludes the family home will dampen down the out-of-control, frenzied, speculative activity that the IMF report proved conclusively is responsible for driving up housing prices in Auckland. National, on the other hand, refuses to do anything about the demand side. It will not even collect the facts on the effect of offshore speculators outbidding New Zealand first-home buyers and driving up house prices in Auckland. Even though the Reserve Bank says it would be helpful if the Government collected the data, National refuses to do it. Well, Labour will change the law so that only New Zealand citizens and New Zealand residents can buy houses in this country. There is no benefit to New Zealand from having offshore speculators buying houses in New Zealand and farming them for capital gain.

Labour has a policy, which David Parker has put out there, that will tackle monetary policy reform, that will lower interest rates, and that will benefit New Zealand homebuyers and homeowners, as well as New Zealand businesses. Labour will tackle the structural imbalances in our economy—the lack of savings, and the lack of exports, which mean that we have not paid our way as a country for more than 40 years. We will tackle those. Those are the very causes of the risk premium, which means that when foreign banks are lending to New Zealand banks, they charge extra. That explains why New Zealanders are paying higher interest rates on their mortgages than homeowners in Australia, the US, and the UK.

Labour will tackle the surge in net inward migration.

💬 David Bennett: Shame on Labour.

That is going to mean that in the next year, David Bennett, with a projected 42,000 extra migrants coming to New Zealand, Auckland alone will have to build an extra 14,000 houses.

💬 David Bennett: So what’s the matter with that?

Well, Mr Bennett, do you know how many extra houses are being built in Auckland? It is about half that. We are on track to build only about half the number of houses that are needed to house the surge in inward migration that is happening under this Government. John Key refuses to even acknowledge that that is an issue. That is negligent. Labour will fine-tune the flow of skilled migration coming here, so that New Zealand gets the benefit of skilled migrants without putting unsustainable pressures on our housing market.

Labour will set minimum standards for rental properties, to guarantee that every rental property in New Zealand is warm and dry. National refuses to do that. The most it can offer is this lame commitment by Nick Smith to carry out a pilot scheme of the warrant of fitness of State houses. It is not needed. State houses are already all insulated. What we need is action to set standards in the private rental sector, to make sure that those 285,000 children who are growing up below the poverty line, and living in largely private rental properties, at least have a warm, dry home to grow up in. Labour will guarantee that they get that. Instead of running down State housing in the middle of a housing shortage, as National is doing, Labour will actually build State houses. We will increase them. That is the obvious thing to do; National refuses to do it.

Labour will solve the housing crisis. We have done it before, in the first Labour Government’s massive programme of State house building. In the 1950s and 1960s successive Governments intervened on the side of first-home buyers and gave us the highest rates of homeownership in the world. We have done it before, and we will do it again.

The next call is a split call.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Well, that was a very enlightening contribution by the member who has just resumed his seat, Phil Twyford. He was able to tell this House about Labour’s housing policy, which is going to magic up houses into being. It has an aspirational target of 10,000 houses a year over 10 years, so it is going to build—it is going to magic up—100,000 houses in New Zealand. Let us just think about that, because magicking houses just by saying you are going to do it is not actually achieving the building of those houses. So the member who just resumed his speech says it is going to happen—

💬 Denis O’Rourke: Resumed his speech?

💬 JACQUI DEAN: —resumed his seat, thank you—but he did not say how. I can tell the House why he did not say how, and that is because he simply does not know.

💬 Hon Member: Hasn’t got a clue.

💬 JACQUI DEAN: He does not have a clue. It sounds good. It sounds like a great sound bite, like all the rest of the hyperbole we are getting across the House from a more and more desperate Labour Opposition as it sees its support ebbing away across to the Greens, New Zealand First, and some other minor parties. The language is getting more and more heated and fanciful, but you cannot simply magic up houses into being for people who need them.

So that is why, today, I was very pleased to read that the Queenstown Lakes District Council has now become part of the housing accord legislation. That is a piece of work undertaken by the Hon Nick Smith that, far from just magicking houses into being, is making some pretty critical steps, amongst many others, into making houses happen. You see, another thing that Labour does not quite understand is that although the Government might build social housing, it is not the Government that is going to magic up those 100,000 houses over the next 10 years. It is not the Government that is going to do that—no, it is not. It is the developers, those people who are prepared to take a stake in New Zealand’s future and provide houses. It is they who are going to be building those houses.

Let us have a look at Queenstown and its region, which have experienced very strong provincial growth. My colleague from Otago might be able to help me. Growth in the Otago region—is it around 4.5 percent?

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Over.

💬 JACQUI DEAN: Over 4 percent. Growth is extremely strong in the Otago region. We are going to need houses in Queenstown, as well as houses in Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington, and the Bay of Plenty, so it is very pleasing to see that what is actually going to make the houses get built is being put into place under the housing accord legislation. So what is going to be provided for in Queenstown is the fast tracking of the planning process. The member who has just resumed his seat is absolutely kidding himself if he discounts, as he seems to, that getting the planning process right and getting it done in a timely fashion is absolutely critical to the ability of developers to put their money where their mouth is and build houses for New Zealanders.

The housing accord legislation also provides councils with consenting tools that will make those developments possible to happen. That is such good news for Queenstown. There is so much growth in the region that we need to anticipate that growth. That is something that Labour has always failed to do. “Oh, woe is me!”, those members said, “We’re going to fix it.” Well, when will they ever acknowledge that they were a large part of the problem because in the 9 years that they were in Government, they absolutely ignored the growth in population in Auckland. So that member who has just resumed his seat has no credibility in this area.

This is a good Budget. As part of the work this Government is doing is around affordable housing for New Zealanders, it is a good Budget. Nick Smith is a good Minister, and we are tackling this problem.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Brendan Horan—5 minutes.

Today I want to examine what the Government is doing in the supplementary estimates for a once-proud and burgeoning industry that is now, after successive Governments’ neglect, in dire need. I am talking about some of the hardest workers in the country—grassroots New Zealanders who are up at 4 a.m. and on the job. I am, of course, referring to the New Zealand racing industry. Currently, trainers are talking about shutting up shop. Many top trainers have left or are leaving the country and becoming top trainers overseas. That is an export that we do not need—

💬 David Bennett: Good on you—going after Winston’s trade. Ha, ha! What a double-cross—excellent.

—there is one we do, though. Look at the Moroneys, Stephen Gray in Singapore, Paul O’Sullivan in Hong Kong, to name just a few.

We need a Minister for Racing who is dedicated to racing—one portfolio, one Minister—and for that Minister to have the guts and determination to lift stakes, centralise racetracks, cut the number of race days, and supply tax cuts for breeders of broodmares, especially the hobby trainer and the smaller breeder. Currently, over one-third of broodmares, both thoroughbred and standardbred, have disappeared. Breeders are finding they are getting less for their foals than the cost of servicing, growing the foal, and getting it to the market. In 2 years’ time we will have such a shortage of young horses that our $1.6 billion industry, which is teetering now, will fall over the brink.

There is the equivalent of some 17,000 full-time workers, the heart and soul of racing. There are some 52,000 workers involved actively in racing on a daily basis. Earlier today I spoke to a trainer. For him to send a horse to a midweek meet costs him some $700 in transport, feed, grooming, and staff. Those are his direct costs. If the horse does not win, the trainer comes home with nothing. You know that something is seriously wrong with racing when our top trainers are struggling to make a dollar and leaving our country in droves.

I urge the Minister, as I have urged him before, to raise stakes within a year. Weekday meetings should have a $15,000 minimum, and Saturday races should carry a minimum of $30,000. By cutting out the Monday and Friday races in the thoroughbred industry, we will have extra money that can go straight into stakes. We need a Minister who will do the hard yards and either extract payment from offshore bookies, or legislate and enforce that and punish people who gamble with those offshore bookies. They contribute nothing to the New Zealand racing industry. But I think the Minister will find, if he talks to these bookmakers, that they would rather contribute to our industry than lose the big-money punters from New Zealand. There are more things that must change, but I reiterate that stakes must be raised.

Tracks must be maintained to a safe and reliable level. Last year we had a record number of abandoned race days, and this year we are on target to beat that. I would remind the Racing Board that it is its duty to look after the interests of stakeholders, and that includes track upkeep and safety.

Moving on, race fields legislation must be introduced, and the Racing Act must be made fit for purpose. Section 16 has to be changed. I do not mind if other parties plagiarise or steal these ideas, because it is racing that is suffering, and racing will survive if we implement these ideas.

Racing needs heroes. It already has them, but it is just a question of presentation. Harness racing needs heroes. They need to be given more incentive to ply their trade. We need vision from the Minister and innovative thinking. I suggest that the top 10 drivers from each island be contracted and paid a base fee. The top 20 drivers would compete throughout the country with four 10-horse fields as part of each premier race meeting.

There are other things we could do. The industry needs to evolve. The Government needs to move with the times, and value and retain people in the industry and attract those from outside. The racing folk, who I know are some of the hardest-working people in the country, deserve a strong voice. The industry should be exciting, energetic, and vibrant, but, sadly, it has steadily declined. However, we can turn it round. It is just a question of vision and leadership—inseparables that the New Zealand Independent Coalition provides. The New Zealand Independent Coalition is determined to save the racing industry.

I rise to take a call on the supplementary estimates on behalf of the Green Party. I came to Parliament because I am really passionate about the opportunity that New Zealand has to become a much smarter, greener place to live. I think it can be an even better place to live. Before entering politics, I worked as a transportation planner because I was interested in finding smart solutions to some of the traffic problems that we face in Auckland, and also because I know that, in 2014, it is the time for us to be investing in the infrastructure that is going to help future generations reduce climate emissions and respond to the many challenges that are facing us. I can tell you that there is no technical barrier to responding to the challenge of climate change, to resolving some of our worst congestion problems in our biggest cities, and to reducing the costs of transport, and yet for some reason there is a big political barrier.

This National Government has shown us in its Budget that it has no vision for New Zealand; it is here simply to defend the status quo and look after its mates. The solutions that it is providing for us are going to do nothing to reduce the transport costs that households face every day, they are going to do nothing to reduce our reliance on imported oil or reduce our $8 billion oil bill, and, most of all, they are going to do nothing to help us respond to the most pressing issue of our time, which is, of course, climate change.

Recently, Lord Stern, the world’s most authoritative climate economist, issued a very stark warning that the financial damage caused by global warming will be considerably greater than the current models predict. So we have a very stark choice. We can continue to do things the way that we always have, in which case we will get more greenhouse gas emissions and catastrophic climate change, which is going to cost us a whole lot of money. But it is also not just the economic costs that we are worried about; it is actually the threat to our children and their children. So the reality is that we have to face up,

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

We live in an interesting time. The world is changing and we need fresh ideas and modern thinking to solve old problems and to seize new opportunities. The biggest change that we face, of course, is climate change. Before the dinner break I mentioned that Lord Stern, the world’s most authoritative climate economist, recently issued a stark warning that the financial damage caused by global warming will be considerably greater than the current models predict. So we have a stark choice here in New Zealand. We can continue to do things as we have always done, in which case we will get more greenhouse gas emissions and catastrophic climate change, and that is going to cost us a huge amount of money. And it is not only that; it is a threat to the future of our children and their children.

Unfortunately, this National Government is definitely on track with its Budget to continue the status quo. Its vision for New Zealand stopped in the 20th century. For example, its vision for New Zealand is a few more motorways—which will just lead to more congestion and more pollution, more mining and drilling—and an economic strategy that is linking us to increased carbon emissions in the future, right at the time when we need to be decreasing them.

National likes to talk down New Zealand when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. Little New Zealand is only a small percentage of global emissions, so we do not have to do our share! I have news for John Key. A group of 4.4 million people anywhere in the world would be only a tiny percentage of emissions, but in most parts of the world outside New Zealand 4.4 million people generate far fewer emissions than we do here in New Zealand. We are the fifth-worst in the rich world per capita, and we are second-worst in terms of the growth of our emissions since 1990. That is down to a failure of successive Governments through the 1990s and the early part of the 2000s. But we are now on track to have a major emissions blowout, and that is down to the lack of vision from this National Government.

We know that the countries that embrace a low-carbon future first will enjoy the greatest benefits—the greatest economic benefits, social benefits, and environmental benefits—of embracing that change. I believe that New Zealand can be a leader. We are small but we punch above our weight. The truth is that we have nothing to lose and everything to gain from greening our economy, and it takes just a few simple steps.

How do we do it? Firstly, polluters have to pay the cost for the damage that they cause. If polluters do not have to pay, they will free ride on the rest of us. That is just Economics 101. If businesses are making a profit off greenhouse gas pollution or water pollution or any other type of pollution, they have an unfair advantage over those businesses that are trying to make a living responsibly, which is not fair. That is why the Greens proposed the climate tax cut, which has been praised by a wide range of commentators. We put a price on climate pollution, but we give the revenue back to households and business. So polluters pay for the damage that they cause, but, most important, they have an incentive to clean up their act. Households and businesses get to keep the rewards if they save energy and reduce climate pollution. It is win-win.

But it is not enough just to put a price on pollution. The Government needs to be supporting business and itself investing in infrastructure for the future—infrastructure that is not going to tie us in to high carbon emissions. For some reason this National Government is completely stuck in the 20th century, particularly when it comes to transport. Just when everyone else in the world is starting to realise that more motorways just cause more congestion, this Government is throwing a colossal amount of money at a few expensive, uneconomic motorways that will only make congestion worst and increase overall transport costs to households and businesses.

I do not know what the worst part of these motorways is. Firstly, they are not going to reduce congestion. We know that. That is a fact. It has been proven all around the world that new motorway lanes do not reduce congestion in the medium term. Yes, sure, you can build a road and for a few years there might be a reduction in congestion, but if you make it cheaper and easier for people to drive, more people end up driving and, ultimately, there is no reduction in congestion. You can look at any city in the Western World—anywhere in the Western World where they have put money into roads—but the congestion reduction lasts, at best, only a couple of years, so it is a total, total waste of money.

But the worst part is that motorways increase the overall costs of transport to the economy because households and business without other choices are locked in to the high costs of having to pay for vehicles and fuel to run them. The motorways are not going to reduce congestion. They are not going to help business. They are not going to reduce carbon emissions or our huge $8 billion oil bill, which contributes to our current account deficit. They have a huge opportunity cost because that is billions of dollars we are not spending on the infrastructure that Kiwi families need to get around.

The National Government likes to say that the Greens are against everything. I have to say that that is entirely untrue. We have been campaigning for smart, cost-effective solutions across a range of areas. Perfect examples are our solutions for home insulation, which this Government has unfortunately discontinued, but they did manage to insulate hundreds of thousands of homes. That was a Green idea that had not only energy efficiency benefits and job creation benefits but, most of all, health benefits. Those are the kinds of smart Green ideas. The Greens have been campaigning for the City Rail Link, which is the next essential step in completing Auckland’s transport network. We are here and we have practical ideas for the future that are not only going to look after the economy but actually going to create a better planet and a better place for all New Zealanders, a fair society where all children have a go. We have practical solutions to address child poverty, to address some of the failures in our education system, and to build the infrastructure that is going to enable us to respond to the challenges of climate change and to have a successful future for all New Zealanders. Thank you.

Well, I think it is a pleasure to take a call on the Appropriation (2013/14 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and Imprest Supply (First for 2014/15) Bill. I want to say this: we on this side of the House look forward to the change of Government in September this year. The people of New Zealand, especially those in the regions, are looking for a positive message and are looking for positive change in the days and the months and the years that follow September this year.

You see, this Government is in a desperate bid to sell a myth to New Zealand that average wages have gone up under this Government. National has done it in its quite extensive piece of publicity material that has gone around to households. This what it says: “Our growing economy is creating more jobs, and is seeing average wages rise faster than inflation.”—a proposition that so far every National Party speaker in this debate, and in just about every other debate, has failed to substantiate. Those members cannot justify it and cannot explain it, for one very simple reason: it is not true. It is not true. Those members cannot sustain it.

Of course, if it was correct that under this Government, magically, wages inflated themselves and people felt better off, then you would have to wonder why it was that Bill English, in January this year, after 5 years of a National Government seeing no real change in the back pockets of working New Zealanders, stood up and had to say that Kiwis should expect pay rises this year after years of belt tightening. He went on to say that a lot of households would be looking for benefits through more job security, which they have not had, and through pay rises that households have not had much of through the last 3 years or 4 years. “So, yeah,” he said, “they have a right to expect some of the benefits.” That is what Bill English said. Well, he did not say that today in his contribution to this debate. What he has done today in question time and in the debate is peddle an OECD report that is 3 years out of date. That is the best that National can come up with—information 3 years out of date. But it has not stopped—

💬 Jonathan Young: They only released it last week.

Jonathan Young raises a good point. That report came out only last week, which is the reason why this Government has been desperate to peddle it, and it hopes that everybody does not notice the date that it closed off on, which was 3 years ago.

Of course, that report does not take account of a number of very important facts, including the fact that last year, 46 percent of New Zealanders did not get a pay rise. Funnily enough, National says that the average annual pay rise has gone up. It actually claims that it is 3.2 percent—it is not—but 46 percent of New Zealanders did not get a pay rise last year. That must mean that there are some people getting whacking great pay rises, and of course they are. It is around about the top 1 percent, or maybe the top 1.5 percent, but it is not ordinary working New Zealanders, who now, 6 years after this Government came in, are looking around and asking where their fair share is. They may well ask where their fair share is, because they ain’t going to get much from this Government if it carries on much longer. So we have this myth being peddled that average wages are increasing.

It gets worse than that. The thinking members of the National Party know that they cannot possibly justify that. The virtue of being a backbencher is that you can actually depart from what the Ministers are saying because you are not saddled with Cabinet responsibility. The thinking backbenchers—and, sadly, I have to say that there are only a few of them, but Maggie Barry and Simon O’Connor may well rate amongst them—try to look ahead and, rather than look at the historical record, they have done some crystal ball - gazing. We have had a bit of that in Parliament this afternoon. But, anyway, they have looked ahead and they say: “Oh, listen. Don’t worry, working New Zealanders. It’s all right because your pay is, on average, going to go up by $7,600 in the next 4 years.”, and nobody believes them. Nobody believes them, because it has not happened in the last 4 years, and it is not going to happen in the next 4 years. Things are going to get worse because every piece of employment law that this Government has passed has been about making it harder and tougher for hard-working New Zealanders to get a better deal.

The National Government still has law changes on its books. Its majority was found guilty in court a few weeks ago, so the employment law will have to go out. It was put on ice until after the election because the Government’s majority got found guilty and he left Parliament, but this Government still has it on its books. It still has on its books law changes that will make it a lot, lot harder for good, hard-working New Zealanders to get a decent pay rise.

So, in their heart of hearts, even though the thinking backbenchers of the National Government try to peddle that myth, they know that no one—no hard-working New Zealanders; certainly not the two-thirds who earn less than the average wage—is going to be getting a $7,600 pay increase over the next 4 years. That is absurd, and those members know it. It is not going to happen because there is nothing in this legislation or in this Government’s plans that is going to do anything across the board to improve the lives and the value for working New Zealanders. They will continue to suffer, and they have had enough. They have had enough, which is why they have rapidly gone off this Government. They have rapidly gone off this Government, and that is why this Government has to use figures that are 3 years out of date. That is why some members opposite have to look to figures that cannot be justified when trying to predict what is going to happen 4 years hence. That is the pity of it.

So we have 46 percent of wage and salary earners who cannot get a pay rise, and we had a private sector survey come out just yesterday. The MP for New Plymouth, Jonathan Young, said to me about the OECD report: “Well, it came out only last week.” Its figures are 3 years out of date, but the private sector survey of New Zealand employers is as current as last month. It came out yesterday and it is very telling. Just as the Government’s own figures tell us that 46 percent of workers could not get a pay rise in the last year, this survey says that 49 percent of employers say that they do not expect to give their workers a pay increase this year. So the figures more or less line up. The figures match up. Welcome to New Zealand today. If you are a hard-working Kiwi and you are not in the top 20 percent, you are going to struggle to get a pay rise. It is OK if you are in a union, and it is OK if you are covered by the Remuneration Authority—which we members all are, of course—but if you are a hard-working New Zealander and you are doing your bit to help your boss and raising the nation’s productivity, do not bother asking for a pay rise, because the employers have already told the surveyors that they are not going to give it to you, and this Government does not care.

This Government does not care that at a time when, according to David Bennett, the economy is growing by 3.8 percent after March this year—3.8 percent in the year to March this year, David Bennett said. And why would David Bennett, a man who has been in this House a long time, not know? He knows his figures. Why would we baulk at it? But half of New Zealanders cannot get a pay rise. That is the crying shame of New Zealand today. That is the crying shame of this Government. Paul Hutchison might look mournfully at me. I know that he thinks that that is an appalling indictment on the Government that he is about to depart from, but the truth is that half of working New Zealanders cannot get a decent pay rise. That is what the surveys are telling us and that is what workers are telling us.

The attempt by Simon O’Connor and Maggie Barry to try to cajole people into believing that it is all jam tomorrow is not going to work. What New Zealanders need is a change. They need a Government that is serious about making sure that working New Zealanders share in the benefits of a growing economy, and not what we have at the moment, which is concentrating ever-greater wealth into the top 1 percent. That is what the National Party stands for.

New Zealanders are looking for a Government committed to the regions, not like this Government in Taranaki, where, for the third successive year, the GDP per capita has fallen because this Government is not concerned about making investment in the regions. Oh, those members all turn up there, Minister after Minister, and cheer on all the things that they have absolutely no responsibility for, but the minute it starts turning to custard, they are out of there. So when 250 highly skilled engineering jobs went out of New Plymouth in the first 4 months of this year, you did not hear a bean from this Government—not from any representative of it. When more than 100 public sector jobs were sucked out of Taranaki in the last 3 years, you did not hear a thing from any member opposite because they do not care about the regions. When you have got one of the most dangerous public roads and most utilised roads in the country in the form of State Highway 3 North, and it is now killing people, you do not hear anything from the Government opposite about more investment being needed to upgrade that road and make it safe for the travelling public.

This Government has forgotten about working people, it does not care about them, and it does not care about the regions, and there is nothing in this legislation that is going to make a blind bit of difference to that. Nothing that New Zealanders hear from this Government in the election campaign this year will mean anything for workers or for the regions in this country, which is why people are desperately keen for a change.

The last National call is a split call. Does the member want a bell or is he just going to rely on the whip?

💬 Jami-Lee Ross: Rely on the whip.

Righto.

I would like to address just a couple of comments of the previous speaker, Andrew Little. Yes indeed, we have known some difficult times for some of our engineering companies in New Plymouth and North Taranaki. The day that I received a phone call at 8 a.m. from Fitzroy Yachts, I was down there at lunchtime with the Ministry of Social Development. I was told that the Amalgamated Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union representative would be there by the end of the week, and he did not show up.

💬 Hon Member: Rubbish!

He did not show up. There were only two union members there. I wonder whether that had anything to do with it. But that previous speaker needs to know that this Government cares for workers, that this Government is there supporting workers in all sorts of different ways—

💬 Hon Members: Ha, ha!

—that this Government is there supporting workers in all sorts of different ways. They can laugh, they can throw it back, but I was there and their representative was not. You know that is true.

It is obvious that Taranaki, a region that has led GDP per capita, is a region that has done that on the strength of its dairying and its agriculture and on the strength of its petroleum exploration and production. I think what the people of Taranaki know and understand is that a Labour-Green coalition Government would bring a recession to our region like none other, because what it would do is it would stop any new exploration offshore. That is what we have heard today from Russel Norman. We have heard it day after day, week after week. That is what it would stop. I know—and probably most of the members on the other side do not—that unless an exploration company can continue to find resource, then it is in a diminishing market and there is a continual need to replace what it produces and what it sells.

What we would find as the Green Party, putting pressure on the Labour Party, started to bring an end to petroleum exploration and production in Taranaki is that confidence in our region would evaporate.

We would find that the engineering companies that have supported those industries would have zero confidence that a Labour-Green coalition Government would be able to support their industries. All the talk, all the rhetoric, about being the worker’s party would be brought to nothing, because of those policies that they would push. What we would see is that the most productive region, which, by the way, has a beautiful, pristine environment that we love and care for, would go into recession and go into high unemployment. Labour members sit there and they scoff and they laugh at that. It shows how much they really care—it really does. It shows that they are indifferent to the mums and the dads, the kids, and the employment prospects of young people in the region that I call home and obviously they do not.

We need to understand that this Government, the National-led Government, holds the balance well and right. We want to see economic growth and development, but at the same time we also protect our environment. We protect the way of life of New Zealanders, which is not only about enjoying the environment but also about having a quality of life that they can afford. This means operations, it means good schools, it means that we have good roads, and it means—Minister Brownlee a week ago released the Government policy statement on transport—that we invest in our network for years to come, to ensure that we are able to build the export quantity and volume that we can get to the world. Everything that we have in Taranaki, everything that we sell from it, goes either on a road or out through the port. We know that transport infrastructure is important. We know that this Government is working very hard to ensure that we can do that.

I just want to say that a number of measures that we have put in place for a particularly important sector, which is the start-up sector around innovation, have been released in our Budget 2014. What we see is that for many companies that are start-up companies, which spend a lot on research and development, it takes quite a while, sometimes years, before they come into profit. During that period of time they are obviously expending their resources. They are developing a great tax loss, which they cannot recover until they come into profit to write off their loss. What this Government is doing is enabling them to cash out their tax losses, so that at 28c in the dollar in the first year they can claim back from $500,000 an amount of $140,000 and it brings the cash flow back into that start-up company. Today, as I was talking to some of these men and women involved in that, they said that cash is king. This is what they need. We are a nation that knows how to innovate, and we want to support this sector. We want to ensure that we are not just working harder but working smarter. This Government is putting plans and policies into place, which I believe this country understands and accepts and embraces. Thank you.

I am pleased to take what I think is the final call in this appropriations debate. I am pleased to take the final call to talk about the good work that the Government is doing and the funding that will come from this appropriations legislation and how it will assist the Government to continue to deliver the results for New Zealanders. We are delivering results for New Zealanders. New Zealanders know, when they head to the polling booths in less than 3 months’ time, that they can trust this Government to keep delivering the results. I think when they look at which side of this House they can trust to deliver, trust to keep their word, and trust to do the right thing for New Zealanders, they know that the John Key - led Government can deliver for New Zealanders.

I have been listening in the House through most of the debate and have listened to the speakers from the other side. You would not think, when you listen to speeches from the other side, that in this country we have one of the fastest-growing economies in the OECD. You would not realise, listening to speeches from the other side, that 84,000 New Zealanders in the last year gained jobs and in the next 4 years 170,000 New Zealanders will be gaining jobs. You would not realise, from the speeches from the other side, that in the last 2 years average wages have increased by $3,000 and unemployment is on its way down. Unemployment will continue to go on the way down, and wages will continue to rise as well.

I see the Minister of Education is in the Chamber. Let us just remind ourselves that 6 years ago the Labour Government left one in three children leaving school having been failed by the education system. Minister Parata and Minister Tolley before her have changed the education system in this country and now New Zealand children are achieving at higher rates than they ever did under the Labour Government. Those National Ministers of Education who have delivered for New Zealand children need to be congratulated. Crime is coming down. Unemployment is coming down. Reoffending is coming down. Wages are going up. More people are coming off the welfare queue. This Government can be trusted—trusted—to deliver on the things that we say we are going to do.

All of a sudden, the Labour Party has decided that it wants to focus on the issues that matter. We have been focusing on the issues that matter for 6 years now—6 years now. All of a sudden, Labour decided 2 months ago, when its members were talking about cups of tea and short trips to the airport, that those were the things that mattered. Now, all of a sudden, when the trust and the integrity and the problems of the Labour leader are called into question, they change their tune. They get back in their boxes. They want to start talking about the issues that matter.

💬 Sue Moroney: Oh, smear campaign! National Party smearing—as they do.

I see that we have Sue Moroney squawking over on the other side. In the last couple of days the Labour list came out. The people on the other side, through this appropriations debate, will probably be hoping that they will be able to participate in the appropriations debate next year. I have got a bit of news for Sue Moroney, because at her list ranking, on current polling, she will not be here next year to speak in the appropriations debate. For Sue Moroney to be here next year, Labour would have to achieve 25.6 percent. At current polling, this will be the last time Sue Moroney can squawk in this appropriations debate. Raymond Huo is up the back. He is actually not such a bad guy. He should have a higher list ranking. Certainly, I am sure he thinks so. For Raymond Huo to be able to participate in next year’s appropriations debate, Raymond Huo and the Labour Party would have to get 29 percent—

💬 Sue Moroney: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is a debate about the estimates. I know that the Government has not got much good news of its own to trumpet—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Look, I have cautioned the member before about using points of order to make an attack. That is quite out of order. The member started by making a point about the relevance of comments. That was a good point of order. Then she spoilt it. I will let the member continue, but it is the estimates debate.

That point of order is probably the last contribution that member will be making in an appropriations debate.

We are delivering. We can be trusted. In health, in education, in law and order, and in the economy this Government is delivering. I know Sue Moroney is having a difficult time, because the party in this Parliament that is delivering higher paid parental leave for New Zealanders is the National Party. The National Party is delivering higher paid parental leave. The National Party is the party that is delivering an extended period of weeks for New Zealand families to get paid parental leave. That just does not sit too well with Sue Moroney because she knows she will be leaving this place in a few months’ time, having failed on that particular policy.

I want to touch on housing briefly too, because Mr Phil Twyford, before the dinner break, wanted to talk about housing. Apparently the Labour Party talking about delivering 10,000 houses a year is a great big achievement that it is going to be able to deliver. We are already delivering consents at an average of 13,000 per year. The interventions the Labour Party is promising in Auckland will not work, so the extra regulatory requirements it will be putting in place will actually harm the housing system in Auckland. The best way to deliver on housing, which Mr Twyford has not worked out, is for the Government to put the regulatory framework in place for the private sector to deliver more houses, and that is what we are doing.

This country is enjoying higher growth. New Zealanders are seeing that they are coming off the welfare queue, getting into jobs, and being able to deliver for their families, because they are having higher wages and a more productive economy—an economy that supports regions like Taranaki to be able to have strong economic growth. When we look at the other side, those members are opposed to growth, they are opposed to supporting the regions, and they are opposed to New Zealand being a fast-growing economy. New Zealanders know they can trust the National Party and the John Key - led National Government. I am looking forward to seeing what New Zealanders come up with in the polling booths in less than 3 months’ time.