Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

I move, That this House express its confidence in the National-led Government and commend its programme for 2015 as set out in the Prime Minister’s statement to Parliament. Mr Speaker, can I take this opportunity to welcome you and other members back to the House for the parliamentary year and to remind the House that New Zealand went to the polls on 20 September 2014. For the third time the New Zealand public delivered a clear mandate to this National-led Government. The message was pretty simple: carry on. Carry on making the country wealthier, carry on making this a more vibrant country, carry on making this a more multicultural and globally connected country, and carry on making New Zealand a successful little nation we can all be proud of. That is what they said. And for the third time the public allowed us to work with our friends in the ACT Party, United Future, and the Māori Party. I want to take this opportunity to thank them for being part of what is a strong and stable Government. It has been for the last 6½ years and will be for a further 2½ years for the 9-year period, and then beyond, hopefully, in the years ahead.

We went into the election campaign last year with a pretty simple slogan: “Working for New Zealand”. Working for New Zealand. We went there because this is a Government that is working for New Zealand. Growth last year was at 3.2 percent; on average, it will be 3 percent or more for the next 3 years. Wages have gone up 15 percent over the last 5 years. Employment: 80,000 new jobs were created in the last 12 months and 217,000 more New Zealanders are in work than 5 years ago. When it comes to Kiwis and the decisions they make, very, very few of them are going over the Tasman to Australia—in fact, we had the smallest net loss across the Tasman since 1994. It has got to the point where the Government is now running job fairs to make sure that New Zealanders in Brisbane and in Melbourne who left under the previous Labour Government know to come back to New Zealand because there are jobs here for them. On the weekend we had the Sevens here in Wellington. They could not fill that stadium, but Helen Clark could—every single year she could fill the Westpac Stadium with Kiwis wanting to leave.

The cost of living is good for New Zealanders. Inflation is at 0.8 percent—it is low. Interest rates are half of what they were when this Government took over. The balance of payments deficit at 2.6 percent is a third of what it was under the previous Government. We are getting close to surplus, and when it comes to the debts that this nation has, by 2020 they will be under 20 percent of GDP. That is a third of what they were projected to be when we inherited those terrible policies of the free-spending, free-wheeling Helen Clark administration of 1999 to 2008.

So how can we summarise all this? Quite simply. New Zealand is a country of people who now live longer, earn more, are better educated, have better health, and are less likely to be victims of crime. That is why the New Zealand public, when they went to the polls, resoundingly asked us to come back and to be the Government for a further 3 years, and that is the programme that I want to lay out for you today.

But just before I do that, let me make the contrast that is on display between this active, busy Government and the do-nothing Opposition over there. Andrew Little has been the leader of the Labour Party for 84 days—84 days. In 1873 Jules Verne thought you could get around the world in 80 days. Well, in 84 days Andrew Little has not even got around his caucus let alone the world. He has not even got around the four people who voted for him. He is not Andrew Little; he is Dr Dolittle. This man does absolutely nothing. Granted, his predecessors whom I faced managed to stagger from gaffe to crisis and back again in 84 days, but this is a man who has done absolutely nothing. No—I am wrong. He has had two ideas—two ideas—in 84 days.

No. 1 has been to give Māori sovereignty. Under Andrew Little they can write laws only for themselves, but they are not allowed to buy an ex-State house. They are not allowed to buy a State house but under Andrew Little they will be allowed to write laws only for Māori. The other great idea he has had in 84 days is to hold a workshop about what a job is. That is a novel concept for a Labour MP—I am prepared to admit that—but it is hardly the stuff that sets the electorate on fire. No, this is it. This is the summary of 84 days of Andrew Little. It is a success. Why? Because he is not David Cunliffe. That is it. That is the reason why “Project Little” is working. But we are a busy Government; they are a do-nothing Opposition.

So let us move on to what the Government is planning to do over the course of 2015 and the years ahead. Resource Management Act reform: this is a House that so often talks about the cost for New Zealanders of buying houses. Let us see how many of them are prepared to stand up and back the Government’s agenda to make the Resource Management Act work better for our country and for New Zealanders.

The Business Growth Agenda—350 initiatives that make it easier to do business with the Government, that see more money invested in science and technology, that see our export markets grow. It will see a Food Safety Science and Research Centre established at Massey University to educate young New Zealanders. It will see four additional centres of research excellence and three information and communications technology graduate schools there for young New Zealanders.

When it comes to the workplace, this is a Government that will be advancing legislation that will balance the need for the creation of jobs with the safety of those who go to our workplaces each and every day. In those critical areas of forestry, construction, and agriculture, this will be a Government that will champion legislation over the course of the next 12 months to make it safer.

When it comes to wages, this is a Government that will raise the minimum wage in 2015, as it has done every single year that we have been in Government—every single year. We already have the highest minimum wage to average wage ratio of any country in the OECD, but in 2015 the minimum wage will rise.

💬 Infrastructure: when you want a country that operates efficiently and effectively, you need infrastructure. That will mean more roading projects. The Waterview Connection in Auckland—Alice, that massive, big machine that is digging the tunnel through there at Waterview, has already turned around and is heading back towards Auckland. That will see that $1 billion - plus project completed over the course of the next few years. The Waikato Expressway: my friends in Hamilton there talk so wonderfully about the commute from Hamilton to Auckland now. Christchurch motorways are being built. Northland, that place we love so much; Northland, those people we respect so much—they need to get to Auckland on the road, and this Government will be supporting Pūhoi to Wellsford, not just with planning but with a road. That is on top of the 11 regional roading projects I unveiled last year and the $100 million going into urban cycleways, because we know that people want to get around their cities on their bikes.

Ultra-fast broadband: this is a Government that is getting New Zealand wired for the world. Five hundred and seventy thousand homes can already connect to ultra-fast broadband—69,000 of them have taken it up. And if you live in Whangarei or Te Awamutu or Ōāmaru, your city or place has been fully fibred under a National-led Government. Labour was opposed, yet National is getting New Zealand wired up.

We on this side of the House know we are not going to get rich selling things to each other. We are, as a nation, getting rich if we sell things to the world, and our trade agreements will reflect that. In a few months’ time there will be the signing of the free-trade agreement with Korea—a very important partner for New Zealand. The Gulf States are looking much more closely at a free-trade agreement. And the Trans-Pacific Partnership—what does the Opposition actually think? Does it want a free-trade agreement with the United States, a $17 trillion economy? Dr Dolittle does not know. Half the caucus says yes; half the caucus says no. You would not have a clue. Its political support partners, the Greens, do not want a bar of it. They do not want to sell goods and services on an unrestricted basis to the United States. The active, busy, National-led Government says yes; the Opposition says no.

Climate change—an issue that this House cares about. This is the Government that will be taking to Paris later in the year a target that New Zealand can adhere to when it comes to climate change, along with solutions in science and technology when it comes to agriculture.

Housing is an issue of considerable concern to New Zealanders. Who does not want to own a home? But this is the Government that has not sat around and done nothing. Under this Government, 100 special housing areas have been approved—100 special housing areas; 84 of them in Auckland. Last year 2,000 new homes per month were constructed under a National-led Government—24,000 homes in the last 12 months. That is double the rate from when we took over, and you can see it in the GDP and employment activity. In 2014 residential construction alone was $10 billion, and there is plenty more of that to come.

And when it comes to social housing, this is not a Government that thinks Housing New Zealand has to own every home; this is a Government that is prepared to go out there with community housing providers, as I announced earlier in the year, and say to people: “We will supply more income-related rents. We will allow iwi to actually own homes. We will allow the Salvation Army and Presbyterian Support and other community groups to have the homes. There will be more homes available. The bottleneck and logjam that are there will be unblocked with a far more sensible scheme.”

New Zealand has voted in the Government because it does things for them and their families. And foremost in that is the creation of jobs. No one is more proud than when their youngster gets a job or when they make sure they can keep their job or get another job. Two hundred and seventeen thousand jobs have been created under this Government in the last 5 years. And what the effect of all of the stronger economy means is that the Government has more money, even in these very challenging conditions, to spend on things that matter to New Zealanders. This year—free doctors’ visits for 400,000 New Zealanders under 13 years of age. This year there will be an extension of paid parental leave from 14 weeks to 16 weeks, and a year after that, on 1 April, an extension from 16 weeks to 18 weeks, and for those who are not eligible for paid parental leave, the parental tax credit will increase from $150 a week to $220 a week.

When it comes to ACC, with good management we have sorted out the mess we inherited from Labour, and we will see motor vehicle ACC costs drop by $130 per car, and the levies on employers and the self-employed will also drop. When it comes to the most deprived kids in New Zealand society, look to the Budget of 2015 for some ideas on what the Government will be doing in that area.

💬 Education: we all know that nothing is more important than helping young New Zealanders to get an education. This is the Government that is putting $359 million this year into a series of initiatives that will keep good teachers in the classroom for longer, that will mentor teachers and principals. When we see a failing school, we will not do what Labour and the Greens and others in this House have done and turn a blind eye and imagine it does not matter; we will attract a good principal to go to that school and turn it round. And this is the side of the House that supported national standards and the roll-out of technology to our schools. We see more kids in early childhood education and more Māori and more Pacific students coming out. Education is working under National, but there is a lot more to be done.

When it comes to our corrections facilities, Wiri prison will be opened, I think, in 2015, and by 2017 every prison in New Zealand will be a working prison where our prisoners will be expected to get skills and get the opportunity to take a job when they ultimately leave prison.

When it comes to Māori, this is a Government that is actually doing something for Māori in New Zealand—46 deeds of settlement signed under this Government; under the previous Labour Government, one to two a year were signed. At the rate that Labour was going, it would have taken until 2060 to achieve what I think National will achieve by 2017. This will be a Government that will reform and rewrite the Te Ture Whenua Māori Act, which will see 1.4 million hectares of land available for development, $8 billion worth of value to the economy, and thousands of jobs. The Government will not forget those who are vulnerable in our communities. There will be more work done on child abuse, domestic violence, community security and safety, and on using technology to enhance the police.

In 2015 there will be a review of the intelligence agencies to ensure that our laws are fit for purpose and that we have intelligence agencies that can keep New Zealanders safe. When we have seen intelligence legislation in this House that makes New Zealanders safer, far too few political parties have been prepared to step up and support it, but when we saw the crises in countries like France, recently, in Canada, and in Australia, we did not hear a word from the Opposition. They are not prepared to support legislation to make New Zealanders safer, but they are as quiet as little lamb chops when things happen outside of that.

It will be a busy year for foreign affairs. We are on the Security Council in 2015 and 2016. Issues like Ukraine and Iraq and Syria, the Middle East, and the war on Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) will be all important for us, as a good participant on the Security Council, to debate and discuss. This will be a Government that will take seriously its responsibilities when it comes to standing up to ISIS. As I said in Waitangi, I will not, as leader of New Zealand, stand back and see Jordanian pilots burnt to death, I will not see young children beheading soldiers, I will not sit back when people are thrown off buildings because of their sexuality, and then be lectured by the left about human rights. They do not care enough about human rights to do something about it. No wonder they are looking down in shame.

When it comes to Christchurch, the big job of the rebuild of Christchurch will continue. The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority will become a departmental agency.

This is going to be a busy year for the Government. We were elected by the people of New Zealand and were given the biggest mandate in the history of MMP to carry on the work we have done in the past and want to do in the future. We are not here to fill in the green seats; we are here to do a lot for New Zealand. It is a pretty simple message: it is a lot over here, and it is a little over there. And I tell you what, New Zealand is hungry for a lot, and only four people over there wanted “a Little”.

I move, That all the words after “That” be deleted and replaced with “this House express no confidence in this National-led Government because this is a government that has lost its moral compass and turned a blind eye to the deplorable actions of its MPs; that is fixated on selling off our state houses rather than building more homes; that is leading us into a war with no clear goals and no exit strategy; that has more Kiwis out of work and in poverty today than when it came to power; and that now has no greater ambition for New Zealand than changing our flag while leaving the real issues to fester.” Apparently, that was the speech of a leader of a nation. Apparently, that was the sort of speech that we are all meant to be inspired by, rise up to, and feel good about. But it was typical of this Prime Minister—nasty pettifogging, with no direction and nothing to offer. He has had 2 months on the beaches and he has come back with nothing more to offer.

Before I go any further I want to say how pleased I am to be back, and to wish you, Mr Speaker, and all my colleagues a happy New Year. It has been a great summer break. Some have had a good holiday. Todd Barclay went on a voyage of discovery. He discovered his electorate—“Oh yes, there is a deep south!”—after years of living in Wellington. Chris Bishop went kayaking in the Hutt River and he wound up a bit like his political career: hard up on the rocks, with no future. Amy Adams spent her holiday going around and unpicking everything that Judith Collins did not do. So it has been a very successful summer for some.

This is a Government that has mastered the art of something very, very special. Kirkcaldie and Stains and Smith and Caughey’s would be very proud of them. This is a Government of window dressing. This is a Government that has mastered the art of window dressing: giving the appearance of doing something—giving the appearance of doing something—even though what it is doing is something completely different; or repeatedly promising something that it never delivers on, like the fiscal surplus. How many years now, Mr English, has the Government promised a surplus and not delivered? How many more years are we to go? What is it now—2017 before the surplus, before the great fiscal managers of the National Government produce something, produce a tangible result? That is the window dressing.

Let us talk about housing and housing affordability. Those members talk about housing affordability. Their plan, their magic plan, for housing affordability—get this—is to sell State houses. Not a single extra house, but the selling off of State houses.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: What about Homestart?

Poor old Nick Smith, the “Dr Strangelove” of the National Cabinet. Poor old Nick Smith, with his great plan to help housing. He is going to reform the Resource Management Act in ways that we do not know about—because he cannot tell us. There is great talk about section 6 and great talk about section 7, but we do not know what it is. What is the change? And if he does have change, what difference is it going to make to the people trying to get into a house? What difference is it going to make? Not a single difference. Not a single new house will be built because of their policies on that side of the House—not a single new house.

Low-income and middle-income Aucklanders are struggling to get into a house. I heard a story this morning about a professional Auckland couple in their 30s—probably a little younger than Simon Bridges. They have done their OE and they have come back. They have done very well on their OE, because they could afford a deposit. That was one thing. They had no help from their parents. But they now have a mortgage. They have a modest Auckland house with three bedrooms, and do you know what the mortgage is? It is $750,000—$750,000 for first-home buyers in Auckland, a young professional couple. That is what the National Government has given us when it comes to housing. And it will talk about: “Oh, we want more houses. Oh, we’re going to change the law to give us more housing.” It is just more window dressing—just more window dressing from the “Dr Strangelove” of the National Cabinet, Nick Smith.

The Government has done nothing to add housing supply. Oh, that is not quite true. It has the special housing areas.

💬 Hon Member: How many houses?

Fifteen houses—

💬 Hon Member: 15.

—or 50? Am I over-estimating it? I might be—15 houses. Oh, that will help. That will help the poor old Aucklanders trying to get into their houses. That will help the Aucklanders who can no longer live near where they work and who have to live in the far north, north of Auckland, or even down in Hamilton now if they want to work in Auckland. That is the product of this Government: just more window dressing. No idea, no plan, no policy, and no plan to do anything that is going to make a difference. It says that selling 8,000 State houses will make the difference. And it says, and here is the other bit of window dressing in selling the 8,000 State houses: “Oh, they will all go to the community housing groups.” There is not a single community housing group that can afford 8,000 State houses. The community housing groups cannot afford to buy up those 8,000 State houses.

John Key knows that when he makes that promise he is promising thousands and thousands of State houses to his mates, the property developers, because that is what this plan is about. It is not about adding houses. It is not about making housing more affordable. It is not about helping those who cannot afford to buy or cannot afford to rent in the private rental market. He is about just flogging them all off, because that is what National did last time it was in Government, and John Key is no different to the last lot. This mob just sells State houses because that is what it does—looks after its mates. More window dressing.

And then we come to unemployment. You know, the weird thing is this. You look around the rest of the world—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: 80,000 new jobs.

You look around the rest of the world, Dr Smith, and unemployment is going down. Unemployment is coming down. We all got through the global financial crisis. We all got through it. At the time at the start of the global financial crisis, we were No. 1 in the OECD in terms of our unemployment—the lowest level of unemployment at the beginning of the global financial crisis. When I gave my state of the nation speech 2 weeks ago, we were ninth. Two weeks on, we are now 10th. We have slipped when it comes to employment. Unemployment in this country is going up. Unemployment in this country is going up because this Government has no plan.

💬 Hon Paula Bennett: You left it at No. 11.

It has got Paula Bennett. She will massage the numbers and she will shove people off the unemployment queue, but the Government has got no plan to create jobs, to add jobs, to reduce unemployment, and to get people living in dignity.

Unemployment has gone up. Unemployment has gone up by another 3,000 people in the last 3 months. You know, these are the spring and summer months, when employers take people on. These are the good months, and unemployment has gone up by 3,000. That is why the Reserve Bank is holding interest rates. It has no confidence in the future of this economy under this Government. That is what is happening in this country, and that Government gives us more window dressing. It will spin the numbers. It will spin the numbers, but the people who are living it know what it is like. They cannot afford to make ends meet. They cannot get a job. The families are struggling. That is New Zealand today for far too many New Zealanders, and that Government does not care, because that is the nature of it. It will just dress it up. It will just make it up as it goes along and hope that nobody notices. Well, I have got news for John Key: people are noticing. People are noticing because they are hurting. When unemployment goes up in the prime months when employers take people on, then they know something is wrong. When people are struggling to make ends meet, they know there is something wrong, and there is—and there is.

Has this Government given us anything? Is there a single measure it can point to that is going to add more jobs? You see Steven Joyce sitting there, and his single biggest contribution as Minister in charge of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is zero-hour contracts—the nastiest, most brutal form of employment, which only ever happened in the time he was the Minister. Even employers come to me and say: “This is appalling. We can’t have this. We shouldn’t have it—zero-hour contracts where people can be obliged to turn up to work, and work not be given and no pay be given.” What an appalling state of affairs that Steven Joyce has led the employment market into. People look at it and they are horrified, their parents look at it and they are horrified, and their grandparents look at it and they are horrified. Employers come to me and say: “How is it that a Government could allow this to happen?” The good, responsible employers who are looking for good, responsible people say “We would never touch zero-hour contracts, but those people down the road, they are doing it, and this Government shows no interest in doing anything about it.” Well, we will in Labour, and you will see our member’s bill that will actually deal to that issue. Steven Joyce’s single biggest contribution is zero-hour contracts.

💬 Hon Annette King: Then there’s Skycity.

And then there is Skycity. I am glad you asked, Mrs King, because the convention centre is very important. Remember how important it was to New Zealanders? We must have a convention centre—we must have one, because the market for international conventions down at the bottom of the world is so big, apparently. They are falling over themselves to come down here—never mind that Rotorua and Hamilton cannot fill their convention centres. Pay that no mind, because the National Party knows best and they went off and did a deal—they went off and did a deal. Who did the deal? Oh, John Key. He had a dinner with the Skycity executives, and here were all these other people lining up, all these other people thinking it was going to be a fair process, an open tender, and they thought they would have a chance to put up their proposal and say: “Yes, we can build a convention centre.” But no. Not under the National Government, not under the masters of the universe. The masters of the universe, John Key and Steven Joyce—oh dear, not them again. They got around the negotiating table, and what a deal—what a deal. The masters of the universe, John Key and Steven Joyce, negotiated the deal of the century. Well it sure was if you are Skycity. But for the taxpayer, what have they done? What have they given us? What have they given us?

This is what Treasury said when it looked at it. Treasury said that it had “strong concerns that the private benefits to Skycity will exceed public benefits to New Zealanders.” Whoops! The masters of the universe did such a fantastic deal that their own officials have trounced it—their own officials have trounced it. What did the Auditor-General say about the process and about John Key’s negotiating skills and Steven Joyce’s negotiating manner? What did they say about that? They said “we do not consider that the evaluation process was transparent or even-handed.” But that is all right because when you are the Prime Minister promising the nation a free convention centre, there are no bounds.

But whoops! It is not free. Oh no! The free convention centre is going to cost us. Will it be just a little bit? Oh, we can afford the odd million here and there, just a little bit, just to get it over the line. How much do they want to squeeze out of us? It is $140 million—$140 million for the casino, for the gambling experts in Auckland who have had this exclusive licence for so long. The deal that John Key and Steven Joyce, the masters of the universe, negotiated—the free convention centre—is going to cost us $140 million. Well, that is what they call economic development. That is what they call a plan for the future. Well, it is a plan for Skycity’s future. It is doing very well. It has got the licence for 2048 and, mark my words, that mob will not walk away from it. They have put too much into it. There is too much at stake—there is too much at stake. Those are the economic issues.

What about the standards of the Government? What about the promise of 2008 that “The Government I lead will be a Government of good standards.”, and its chance to do something, its chance to demonstrate that National actually is a party of standards in Government? It was confronted with it at the end of last year. One of National’s MPs was under a police investigation. One of its MPs—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! I invite members throughout this debate to be very careful. We know that there was a court case, and we know that all details were suppressed. [Interruption] Order! There is Standing Order 115. Should any members think I should consider this matter differently, I invite them to use that Standing Order and write to me. At this stage no member has done so. I invite Mr Little to continue.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I understand and appreciate the caution you are expressing. I make no reference at all and make no comment beyond the fact that it is on the record that a MP was under a police investigation. He is not the first. That Government well knows, because it has drawn the attention of the public to other MPs under a police investigation—a police investigation that led to no outcome at all.

But here is the point. We had an MP under investigation, who was then allowed by this Government to chair the parliamentary committee—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I have given a ruling that I had given considerable consideration to. If the member continues in this vein, I will have no choice but to terminate his speech. I have given a ruling whereby we acknowledge there is a court case of which all details were suppressed. [Interruption] Order! This is a time when this Parliament has a responsibility, a duty, to respect the jurisdiction of the court, and I expect that to occur today. I invite Mr Little to continue.

I absolutely understand the principle of comity between Parliament and other branches of government. That is absolutely crucial. I have made no reference to any core process. I just want that to be on the record—none whatsoever—but standards of public life are important. Standards of public life are important, and the way we, as MPs in this House, conduct ourselves is important. Whether or not we are party to a conflict of interest and whether or not our parties and our party leaders know we are subject to a conflict of interest—that is important to every citizen in New Zealand. Every single one of us is required to exercise proper and appropriate standards of conduct, including, when we are in conflicts of interest, to declare that and act appropriately. If our leaders know that we are in a conflict of interest, it is incumbent on the leader to act appropriately and properly. I just say this to Michael Woodhouse and Anne Tolley: the truth will set you free. We will come back to this. The truth will set you free.

I want to go on to this very important issue that the Prime Minister has correctly raised, although in rather an unfortunate manner, and that is the challenge that the world faces in dealing with an outfit like Islamic State, or ISIS as it is known. It is brutal, it is horrific, it is ugly, it is revolting, and it has appalled every single citizen who has seen it. Every person who respects democracy is appalled by it. The challenge is this: after 10 years of training of the Iraqi army by the best-trained, best-equipped, best-resourced army in the world, what is it that we can do now that is going to make a difference? After US$25 billion of training for the Iraqi army, what is it that our people and those around the world who are invited to join might do? Let us not be panicked. Let us not be panicked into a response to deal with the most brutal and the worst outfit, which does not operate to any rules, does not operate with any borders, and does not observe any conventions, but is nasty and brutal. Japan tried it and dealt with them, and their hostages were killed brutally. Jordan tried to deal with them, and their pilot was brutally killed in the ugliest, most appalling fashion. What is it we are going to do? What is the mission, Mr Key? What are you asking New Zealanders to agree to—to put our people in harm’s way—that is going to make the difference? That is the question.

New Zealanders are sensible, practical people. We all see it. We all feel the urge to do something, but we want to know that what we do is going to make a difference. That is the challenge that the world faces: not to rush in there, hoping that we might find out what to do when we get up there, but to know what it is before we get there and to understand that the most and only effective measure so far has been air strikes by other forces, which is something we cannot do.

Labour’s focus is very clear. We are about an economy that is going to generate jobs—real jobs, good jobs, jobs that mean good living standards and good incomes for people. The right laughs at us. The members laugh at us because they do not care about the people who are struggling to get jobs at the moment. They do not care about those who are on the unemployment queue because it is going up because this Government does nothing about it. We will take that challenge on. We will work with the sector that is generating the most jobs at the moment, the small business sector—the most ignored business sector in the country. It is funny how you talk to members of that sector and they say: “This Government has done nothing.” What do they want? They want access to easy, readily available education—stuff that tells them how to get started and what to do. For those who have been in business for a while and are wondering how to take advantage of better economic conditions and how to expand, they want some assistance to do that readily accessible. Those dealing with the multitude of Government agencies want to know how to do that efficiently—to have one point of contact to do it. It is all possible. It is all achievable. This Government does not care. It does not care about the small business sector, because that is not where its mates and the donations come from. That is the truth of it.

We will be a party that is serious about housing, about affordable housing, and about adding to housing—10,000 houses a year over 10 years. That is our policy. That is our measure. That will make a difference. That young professional couple in Auckland are now saddled with a $750,000 mortgage and are terrified if either of them loses their job, because that will be it, that will be their lives gone. But no one else will be put in that position.

We will address the single biggest issue that New Zealanders are concerned about: the growing inequality. If the Prime Minister wants to talk about separatism, I will talk about it to him. I will talk about those who are being kicked out of the housing market—obstructed—and those who are living in palatial residences. That is the separatism that I am concerned about: those whose incomes are getting less and those whose incomes are getting stratospheric. That is the separatism I am concerned about, not the stuff that the Prime Minister is concerned about.

New Zealand deserves better. New Zealand deserves leadership, a real leader who is prepared to confront the real issues, prepared to deal with the issues that New Zealanders have, with respect and with dignity, and to deal with them in a way that is going to make a difference, generate jobs, and give dignity to people who need it most. That is the challenge facing New Zealand, not what this Government is talking about: fiddling and faddling and more window-dressing, which is what we have got under this mob.

Before I begin my formal speech, I would just like to acknowledge the death of Dr Apirana Mahuika. This is a moment of great sadness for the Green Party, and we would like to join with Ngati Porou in sharing their sadness at the passage of Dr Mahuika. He was a leader like no other. He was unashamedly ambitious for his people, as well as for all Māoridom, and he had friends right across the political spectrum. In my own dealings with him, I always found he had an amazing capacity to take on new ideas. He was interested not only in the Māori economy but also in how the Māori economy could benefit from the growing green economy. We will miss him very much.

It has been an extremely hot summer in Wellington. All over the country it has been hot—even in Wellington. All across the country green fields have been turning brown, rivers have dried up or slowed to a trickle, and, unfortunately for our farmers as well as for our native plants and animals, the threat of drought now hangs heavy over the land. Will 2015 be another record year for the climate?

Last year was the warmest year on record around the world. Nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000. I hear the Prime Minister making jokes about it because he is a science-denier. This is the 38th consecutive year that the average annual temperature has been above the long-term average—38 consecutive years. The trend is pretty clear: our climate is heating up, and we are facing, in the words of the climate change Minister, Tim Groser, “the great challenge of our age”. He is right; climate change is the greatest challenge of our age. Runaway global warming hangs over us like the threat of a nuclear winter did during the height of the Cold War. Just as they did during the height of the Cold War, parents are looking into the eyes of their children and are asking: “What kind of a world are we leaving behind for you?”.

But I am not going to focus this speech on the dire consequences of doing nothing on climate change. I am sure all of us have heard the science—at least most of us have. We have read about the wicked storms, the wild fires, the droughts, the risks to agriculture and forestry, and the threats posed to our homes and wildlife. We have probably even seen some of the changes firsthand in our own backyards.

We have known about climate change for some time. Margaret Thatcher gave speeches about climate change in the 1980s. Simon Upton, as part of a National Government no less, came close to passing a climate tax in the 1990s. And the Kyoto Protocol came into force in the 2000s, promising concerted and coordinated global action on the climate. We have had a few more false starts since then, but we have seen how a polluting industry can organise powerfully to secure its own short-term interests at the expense of our children. As a result, carbon emissions have continued to grow unabated around the world, but particularly here in New Zealand.

As a people we have one of the highest carbon footprints in the developed world, and the Ministry for the Environment has stated in its annual report that our country’s net emissions will continue to go even higher—up a further 50 percent by 2020. People often think that I have made a mistake when I say this. They say: “Oh, you mean to say New Zealand’s emissions are going down 50 percent by 2020.”—but sadly, no. The actual truth is that since John Key has been Prime Minister, New Zealand’s net emissions have increased by 20 percent, and according to the Ministry for the Environment climate pollution will increase by 50 percent by 2020 under the current policy settings—because, of course, the current policy settings subsidise climate emissions.

If climate is war, the New Zealand Government is fighting on the wrong side. It is on the side fighting for global climate catastrophe. Two decades after Simon Upton’s courageous, but ultimately failed, attempt to get action on climate change, it is time we changed sides and joined those trying to cut greenhouse emissions, instead of continuing to dramatically increase our own emissions.

In New Zealand one does not have to look very far to find conscientious objectors to the Government’s war to accelerate climate change. We are a can-do country. New Zealanders generally look forwards, not backwards. We are a people who do not fear the future. When faced with a challenge New Zealanders protest, we invent, we forge ahead with practical solutions. I am thinking of people like the New Zealander Ian Wright, co-founder of Tesla Motors, an electric vehicle manufacturer, who is now developing electric drivetrains for trucks in California. I am thinking of people like Dayle Takitimu, an indigenous rights and environmental lawyer, who has led her iwi, Te Whānau-a-Apanui, in their struggle against deep-sea drilling off the East Coast, working alongside Dr Apirana Mahuika. And I am thinking of people like Mike Bennetts, who is taking liquid fuel company Z Energy from being in the middle of the problem to at least the start of the solution by investing millions of dollars in the development of sustainable biofuels here in New Zealand. And there are many, many more.

Some of our best and brightest are realising that our prosperity relies on a thriving environment and that the threat of climate change brings opportunities to be smarter about how we do business, smarter about how we can create and conserve energy, and smarter about how we organise to create social change to mobilise in the face of climate change—smart green economics and smart green thinking in action.

And then there are those in Government who are stepping up to the climate threat. Dunedin City Council has taken the first steps to divest from fossil fuels, realising that dirty energy has no place in our prosperous future. At an even smaller level, the community board in Eastbourne, Wellington, is pushing its local council to fund a cycleway around the bays—one that will double as a protective sea wall to help repel increasingly severe, climate change - driven storm events and storm surges, which threaten to close the only road in and out of Eastbourne. Victoria University has divested from fossil fuels.

Overseas an increasing number of corporations have taken up the challenge. They are recognising both the threat that is climate change but also the opportunities of a low-carbon economy. The massive Norwegian pension fund, worth over a trillion New Zealand dollars—yes, that is $1,000 billion—has recently divested from 32 coal mining companies as well as tar sands producers. The fund argues that these companies face a grim future as action on climate change limits their future production. Stanford University in the United States has divested from coal, and, my personal favourite, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, established by the heirs to the famous oil magnates the Rockefeller brothers, is getting out of oil and fossil fuels.

Having understood that change is inevitable and that first movers have the advantage, companies like Walmart, Mars, and Procter and Gamble are helping to create a revolution in the power sector by switching to 100 percent renewable energy. Forty-three percent of Fortune Global 500 companies now have clean energy targets, and some corporations have even set an internal price on carbon to drive innovation, despite the fact that Governments have not set one. Unilever’s chief executive office, Paul Polman, a global leader in sustainability, recently said: “Our share price is up 25 percent in the past 4 months alone, showing the world that you can address tough issues without touching the economic viability of your business model.” However, no one person or business—not even one the size of Unilever, a €50 billion company—can win this climate war alone. Business relies on clear signals from Government about the long-term price path of carbon before it can reasonably be expected to commit the large amounts of capital needed to shift to a low-carbon future.

It is now time for this House to play catch-up and to work with those who are helping the transition that the New Zealand economy needs to make to a low-carbon future. We need a partnership approach linking individuals, communities, non-governmental organisations, businesses, and Governments across the globe. Dealing with the threat of climate change is not only going to define us as a people, it is going to define the very nature of leadership.

This House’s record on climate change has been weak. The last two New Zealand Prime Ministers of our times—Helen Clark and John Key—will be remembered as expert political managers, as indeed they are, but neither really got on top of the big one: runaway climate change. To be fair, towards the end of the Clark Government it did manage to get an emissions trading scheme implemented despite significant resistance, but the Key Government immediately weakened the scheme.

When you look at New Zealand’s actual emissions over the course of the 21st century they have consistently increased. And when you understand that New Zealand’s emissions are set to increase by 50 percent in the next decade, you realise that there is a huge historical cost to the managerial style of politics that has dominated New Zealand politics for the last decade. How will we manage the sea when it is lapping at our doorstep?

The enemy of climate change will not be defeated by coal-driven political management and business as usual. Abraham Lincoln, Kate Sheppard, and Michael Joseph Savage achieved remarkable victories for slaves, women, and the poor, in moments of great political courage and conviction. Our great leaders—the ones we remember—stepped outside the current of history and showed how we could live better, how seemingly impossible hurdles could be overcome with effort and ingenuity. They defined the spirit of the age and expanded the definition of what it means to be human. Their inspired leadership was a gift of love—no less.

When it comes to the war against climate change we can no longer live in denial by saying we are so small that we do not matter—the mantra of this Government. That is not the Anzac spirit. That is not the spirit of the Māori Battalion. If you excuse the sporting metaphor, imagine if the All Blacks believed that when they ran on to the pitch to face a country ten times as large as theirs. The climate crisis is a universal call to arms, and we in this House need to play our part.

In John Key’s post-election interview with John Campbell on TV3, he said: “I will lead a Government that leads for all New Zealanders. I don’t want to pass everything 61 votes to 60. It’s a really bad place to end up as a Government, just passing everything with the barest of majorities. I don’t think that’s the right way to govern.” I was heartened by his statesmanship, his sense of inclusion, and his offer of good will. Surely climate change, the greatest challenge of our times, is one issue above all of them that we need to find a way to work on across the House. Our children’s livelihoods are too important to play partisan politics over.

National plus the Greens plus Labour plus New Zealand First plus the Māori Party—if we voted on legislation that halted our growing carbon emissions and made polluters pay, it would send the strongest political signal that we mean business on the climate. To whom, besides ACT, could the climate science deniers’ lobby turn to look after its interests? It sounds deceptively simple to choose collectively an energy-efficient, low-carbon path for our economy rather than the Government’s current choice of an energy-intensive, high-carbon pollution economy, one that at some point—we do not quite know when—is going to end catastrophically. Once we get the price on carbon right and we have the supporting incentives in place, we have the dynamic market economy, the scientists, the business people, and the social innovators that can do the rest.

This century will be the century of sustainability. The countries and the businesses that lead the shift to sustainability will dominate this century. How much harder could New Zealand push in crucial climate negotiations if we could show the world that we have our own house in order, instead of it being in a mess, and that we are beginning the necessary transition and the world has not collapsed? But if this Government continues with the business-as-usual, pollution-economy approach to the climate, we will fight it all the way. Our children’s future demands that we do so. The Green Party will work with the Key Government if this Government changes course and introduces policies to actually cut emissions, but we will fight it with everything we have got if it continues down the current path of increasing emissions.

This climate fight should unite us in this House against a common enemy, climate change, rather than divide us between the lines of short-term expediency versus long-term prosperity for our children and for our country. The Greens remember which side we were on in the battle over apartheid in 1981, and we know which side of the climate fight we are on in 2015.

Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that we are the last generation that can take steps to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. But he also said we are the first generation that can end poverty. Alongside climate change, tackling inequality is the Green Party’s other main priority. Like climate change, inequality denies our children the opportunity of the prosperity that they deserve. Inequality denies our children their health, their education, and the simple hope for a better future.

We have been waiting 30 years under economic orthodoxy—the spell that economic growth will deliver us out of inequality and poverty. How many times have we heard from this Government and Governments past that we just need to grow the economy first to enable us to address inequality and child poverty? Well, per capita GDP has grown by 40 percent since the late 1980s, while child poverty rates have doubled. New Zealand went from a child poverty rate of 11 percent in the late 1980s to 24 percent today. There are 35,000 more children in severe poverty in New Zealand today than there were when this Government—this National Government—came to power. That makes a total of 205,000 New Zealand children living in severe poverty. One in four Kiwi kids lives in poverty. Somewhere we have gone terribly wrong. These are children going without the basics like fresh fruit and veges, raincoats, and medicine. These are kids three times more likely to be admitted to hospital, five times more likely to die of cot death, and 27 times more likely to have rheumatic fever. They are likely to stay sick for much of their lives and die young. Our rates of child poverty are unconscionable. They are immoral.

The costly interventions and wasted potential also have a dramatic impact on economic performance. In what is likely to be a seminal finding, the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the world’s leading economic thinktank, found late last year that inequality hurts economic growth significantly. The OECD showed that New Zealand—one of a handful of developed countries where inequality has grown fastest since the mid-1980s—has experienced the biggest loss of economic growth as a result of inequality. The OECD estimates that New Zealand lost 10 percentage points of growth over the last 20 years due to our record levels of poverty and inequality. No country besides Mexico has had a worse record than us.

The OECD has found that “The gap between rich and poor is at its highest level … in 30 years.”, that “inequality has a negative and statistically significant impact on medium-term growth.”, and that “Policies that help to limit or reverse inequality may not only make societies less unfair, but also wealthier.” Put positively, policies that limit or reverse inequality in our society will not only make people’s lives fairer, they will make New Zealand, as a whole, wealthier. Doing the right thing about inequality will reward us economically. And why is it like that? It is pretty straightforward. The OECD and many others have confirmed that income inequality undermines educational opportunities for disadvantaged people, especially children, lowering their chance to upskill and break out of the poverty cycle. We are not talking just about 1 percent or 5 percent of people missing out on the basics, this is about the bottom 40 percent of families.

The Green Party’s “Feed the Kids Bill” is having its first reading in the first weeks of Parliament. It is a small, possibly imperfect, response to the fact that hungry kids cannot learn at school. Let us govern in the interests of all New Zealanders and vote to send this bill to a select committee, to turn it into the kind of legislation that will leave a significant legacy for our children.

In 2015—in this year—we can end child poverty and take steps to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Are we going to see in this political term a resumption of business as usual, a style of political non-leadership that manages its way through the next 3 years doing whatever it takes to stay in power? Or can we escape the trap of the perfectly human instinct to protect our short-term interests, and provide real leadership?

We have done it in the past. The year 1981, with the anti - Springbok Tour protests, was the defining year in which many New Zealanders provided leadership on racial equality and opposed apartheid. In 1987 the passage of the nuclear-free New Zealand Act was the culmination of years of leadership by many New Zealanders on going nuclear-free. The year 2015 is the year for leadership on climate change and inequality. The Greens are ready to provide that leadership, and we look forward to working with many other New Zealanders who also are providing leadership on these critical issues. We sincerely hope that the New Zealand Government is one of them.

Mr Speaker, Happy New Year to you and all other colleagues. Our respects from New Zealand First to Api Mahuika—it is indeed the end of an era; he was an outstanding Māori leader and a great New Zealander—and also to Rex Pollock, who recently, sadly, passed away in Tauranga.

To begin this parliamentary term let us ask three seriously pertinent questions. What condition are we in as a country? Are we moving in the right direction?

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Yes, we are.

We will leave Gerry out of that because any answer Gerry gives is not worth the air it passes on. And are we building a fair, stable, and prosperous society? Right now the backbench members of the National Party are beginning to have their knees knock because they know we are not. First of all, what about the quality of public discourse in New Zealand? You see, National is about shutting down public debate. One of our most brilliant literary people wins the Man Booker Prize, makes a comment about her country, and what happens with this highly educated, liberal National Party? Well, it comes out and attacks her, not because of what she said but her right to even say it. How shallow is that? And that goes for the political debate as well, because what those members want is the kind of blind obedience that certain in the financial sector love if it is serving their minority interests. And of course the types like Gerry Brownlee are only too happy to serve them because that is what they have always done. That is what they have always thought of—themselves and their own privileges. And we have got public sector—

💬 Simon O’Connor: Name the book, Winston.

The Luminaries. Do you want me to read it to you? [Interruption] See what I mean? Tell me. That is the kind of arrogance that the backbench of the National Party is going to have to deal with very shortly because it is going to be sent a message. The message will come with great clarity, and it will know that not long after that it may be doing what the backbench of the Australian Liberal Party is doing—standing up for itself for a change, apart from being wanton puppets.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: Oh, like yours do.

Oh, New Zealand First is a party of dynamism, as you can see—of experience, of youth. Which other party went up by 62,000 votes at the last election?

💬 Denis O’Rourke: We did.

I know. That party had millions of dollars and went up 72,000, and we had nothing and went up by 62,000. That tells us that when it comes to efficiency of spending money, New Zealand First is the party to back. But then I know that about 30 or 40 percent of the National Party supporters are themselves beginning to think that now. We get the correspondence. They are beginning to get worried, especially the farming sector, especially the dairy farmers of this country.

But the point is that National members are about creating a myth—and using Government departments—that all is well. And the sad thing is that so many in the commentariat have gone along with them and this mainstream myth that New Zealand has been doing exceptionally well. When you look at our growth in GDP, exporting—no, that is down; manufacturing, no, that is collapsing. No, but, apparently—[Interruption] Oh, there is the lady from Christchurch. She looks at me with a curious look. I know she is very wealthy, but when manufacturing goes from 33 percent of GDP and is now heading towards 26 percent, I think you in Christchurch should take notice, not nod your head as though you do not know anything about it. And what is the export imbalance with imports right now? Got any idea? Is it heading to $12 billion? Well, where are you going to be when that happens, when you are coming to getting a job and keeping your business sustainable?

Now back to reality here. The idea that you have got a competent Government when inequality and poverty are growing at a greater rate than in nearly every other developed nation, and homeownership is now being denied to a whole generation of Kiwis—before the election there was no housing crisis; after the election: “We’ve got the solution. We’ll change the Resource Management Act and all of a sudden we’ll have all these houses. We’ll change the Resource Management Act and all of a sudden, by some miracle, the housing crisis will be settled.” What has happened to public debt? Well, our debt is up six times now to $65 billion under those people who claim to be managers of the economy. The truth is that the National Party—if you want to really understand the National Party—no longer works for ordinary New Zealanders; it works for a well-off, moneyed bunch of cronies both here and overseas. And, boy, does it pour the money into propaganda. I mean, for every dollar that we had at the last election, it had $40. It sprayed it around like confetti and just got home. We have got to take our own responsibility for that, because we could have stopped it. It is not our fault, of course. We did our best—make no bones about it—but the reality is that this expenditure from here and overseas to buy elections is going to come to an end. What we have seen is the wholesale transfer under National of New Zealand’s wealth into the hands of the few—and many offshore. Whether selling power generators, flogging State houses now, or decimating the Resource Management Act, the underlying agenda is always the same: the favoured few will benefit at the expense of the many.

But sooner or later New Zealanders will wake up. Sooner or later in Northland you will see them respond. Sooner or later they are going to send you a message. Mr Foster-Bell, are you in or are you out? Come on, put your hand up and tell us. Are you going to run, son? Tell me, are you going to run? This will be fascinating. Oh, I know he is keen—I know he is keen. Do not worry, gentlemen and ladies over there, if there is one party that is thinking seriously about it, it is New Zealand First. I know that numerous comments have been made by the Prime Minister. He is getting a bit nervous himself. He had the audacity to talk about a thing like age. Well, Mr Prime Minister, we do not dye our hair and we are not losing it—we do not dye our hair and we are not losing it. And if I was you, I would just get on with trying to run the country.

Whilst we are at it, he is also giving away the country’s birthright. Look, 95 percent of the banking sector is owned by Australia. That is the Ned Kelly policy. A torrent of profits and dividends and other payments every year go offshore to foreign-owned banks and you have got not one single policy from National to stop this outflow. The media is massively owned offshore—Fairfax and APN are both Australian. Insurance companies are nearly all overseas owned. And farmland and business and residential property are being sold like confetti.

💬 Hon Member: Who wrote this disappointing rant?

Unlike that member over there, we are able to write our own speeches. We do not need a dumb researcher to write it. We can do it ourselves—always have done, always will be able to. Do not ask questions about who wrote this speech. What you are trying to say is: “Who will have the brains to interpret it for me?”. That is what you should be asking: “Who on my side has got the intelligence to interpret it for me, because, clearly, sitting over here and putting my hands up for somebody in the Mafia will not do any more.” National members, of course, do not want to know the truth. National members do not want to know where the sales are going to. They do not want to know how many of our houses are being sold. They do not want to know how many houses Bayleys are selling in China every day now. They do not want to know whether the buyers are coming from Luxembourg, United States, Canada—they just do not want to know.

Meanwhile, we have got people struggling with stagnant wages in a now growing high-cost economy. Ask any person coming back from London or elsewhere, and they are quite shocked to find how expensive it is—[Interruption] No, not for Gerry, because Gerry has always had it good. Gerry has always been on the pig’s back—he has always been on the pig’s back and it shows. I am talking about ordinary New Zealanders.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Must be a very big pig.

Well, actually, it is a hippopotamus. It is not a pig; it is a hippopotamus. But the reality is that I am talking about ordinary people struggling to make families work in this country. Overseas buyers have an insatiable appetite for our land. Do you know why? With the world’s massively growing population, they know that arable land is going to be more and more a high-price product. Do not blame them; blame the dumb people in politics who do not get it. Look, even Michael Field, who used to write for the New Zealand Herald—here it is: “NZ farms eyed as ‘boltholes’ for world’s super rich”. It is all there on 20 January in the New Zealand Herald. Then you go to the next one, on 7 February, 1 week on. Here is Bayleys putting out its press release saying—this is just what is happening, according to Bayleys real estate, in Canterbury—that a bevy of foreign landlords is now at the Overseas Investment Office, and that is what New Zealand wants. We have enough landlords of our own overseas investment and talking about creating jobs, but it goes go on to say that they are snapping up properties in Canterbury and all over the country because rentals are going through the roof. The member from Christchurch over there, of course, will not do a thing about it because he is in their league. Exploitation of ordinary people’s needs, desires, and wants is what National members are about, by their silence, because in failing to act, they are saying: “This is good enough for us.” There are those two articles, and we are saying that we need a register. We need to know what is going on, just like Australia, which has one, and so many other countries.

And then, on immigration, over 50,000 a year came last year, in the last 12 months. All where to? Auckland. Needing housing? Most desperately. What is my Samoan friend who is now the Minister for Pacific Peoples doing about that? He knows that the people who are missing out are his people, that they are being squeezed out everywhere, but no, no; he is probably like the Māori Party. He wants to go to the airport and give them a pōwhiri and make them all welcome. Well, you know, charity begins at home, and it begins with the Māori Party recognising that the biggest losers in all this argument are the people they purport to represent. That is why the Māori Party’s vote is in decline. That is why it is all over, Rover, because when it had a chance to put its people first, it decided to go for the baubles of office. How tragic is that—how tragic is that?

💬 Hon Member: That’s a bit rich.

I know, son. I have resigned and walked out of office more often than you have had hot dinners. So do not say that it is a bit rich for me. Only an ignoramus would say that. Learn some history, righto? What sort of Government would allow an influx of that many—over 54,000 a year—with no jobs, no accommodation, or say, as Mr Key did today, that 81,000 is a record for new employment in New Zealand? How stupid is that? We have had record employment every year for the last 55 years, because it is axiomatic, is it not? If you increase the population, you might just get more and more employment, but what is the level of unemployment? It is 140,000 who cannot get 1 hour of work a week because when you get 1 hour of work a week, you are off the register. Well, invite that sort of deceit into your own mental processes, but we think it is a fraud on the population and we think it is repugnant in our society. Incomes are stagnant. There is a chronic housing crisis—140,000 cannot get 1 hour of work a week, and the health system is straining at the edges. There is massive immigration and growing inequality.

And then, of course, a key issue, mentioned by my colleague Mr Norman in the previous speech, is climate change. Well, you know, we were the first party to say that the emissions trading scheme is a rort, and it is.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: You voted for it.

We said that the emissions trading scheme was a rort. Yes, son, we voted for it when it was $25 per unit. We did not drive it down to $2.35. That is what Mr Nick Smith did. So do not make that stupid statement, because some of us remember what we voted for, and he destroyed the forestry industry all at the same time. Mr Smith, of course, is famous for running with the hares and hunting with the rabbits. That is what he is famous for. This is the guy who said: “ACC is in absolute crisis. I must do all this and this and this.” It was a total public relations fraud of course, and then, of course, ACC found it was in serious surplus.

But back to the point. Today we learn that Skycity is going to be an eyesore. Second question—how is Skycity going to improve it? The Prime Minister says that the taxpayers of New Zealand will, and the ACT Party wants to support that.

💬 David Seymour: Absolutely.

Oh, absolutely. No doubt about it. The ACT Party is so dumb, of course, that when it announced that it was going to change the Resource Management Act, it did not wait to find out what the details were; it just said it would support it. This is meant to be the most intelligent party in Parliament, with all this experience, and that member is asked: “What do you think about the Resource Management Act changes?”, and he said he will support it. Do you know what is in it? No. Do you know what its content is? No. “But then again, I don’t have to because I am a puppet.” That is what he really said. “I’m there because the National Party put me there.” Oh, we know that. Even New Zealand First got more party votes in Epsom than they did. True—we got more party votes in Epsom than they did. Look, how can you possibly predicate a political career when you are a puppet and when, every time John Key says “Jump” you say “How high?”. He is now in charge of the alternative school system and yet he knows nothing about education. He knows exactly nothing about education, but, then again, his predecessor was one John Banks and he knew even less. So that is the ACT Party’s contribution.

Then we have the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In June last year we were all told, 3 months out from the election, that we were not going to the Middle East. The election was hardly over and all of a sudden the Prime Minister is concerned at these massive breaches of human rights. Did you see his posturing in the House today? He went into a fit of concern about human rights abuses by ISIS. What did he say about Boko Haram? Not a murmur, not a mutter, not a syllable, not a sound. His concern, and the Government’s concern, is to be in the club—the club that says that if you go to Australia and you work there for 21 years and you get tipped out of your job you do not get the dole any more, you do not get fundamental rights any more. Or if you are in the UK they have changed all our privileges there. Is that the club he is talking about? Or is it the club that belongs to the United States, which says: “We’ll give a free trade agreement to Chile and Morocco but we won’t give one to New Zealand.”—this great democracy for the last 155 years. Only nine of us have that great, proud tradition, and that is the club he wants to suck up to every day?

Prime Minister, we need somebody to stand up for our country’s interests and our values. The Prime Minister should not think he can walk on to the stage of New Zealand politics and, with no parliamentary debate and no consensus, send people into danger, and maybe imperil this country as well without the decency of a democratic decision by this Parliament. On the issue of the two flags—we have got Hone’s flag and we have got the Prime Minister’s flag, until, of course, it looked a bit like the ISIS flag, and now the Prime Minister has changed his mind and he wants the silver fern. What a diversion that is! And as for separatism, well, who signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples? Who has got the two-prison system, the two flags, and race-based local government now sweeping throughout New Zealand, and Whānau Ora? They are policies based on race. That is the National Government’s legacy. That is what it has done, and to criticise Mr Little—well, I cannot use the phrase, but it is a bit like some utensil calling the other one black. It is pretty sad, is it not, really?

Then, of course, we have a $1 million by-election in Northland that should not be happening. It was avoidable, because the Prime Minister and many of his colleagues knew the circumstances well before 20 September 2014. They knew the circumstances, and the Prime Minister is going to be found out. Anybody who knows Northland knows it is a rumour mill, and if they know the National Party they know it is an even bigger rumour mill, and the very idea that the Prime Minister did not know until December 2014 is utterly preposterous. When the police commissioner says he did not drop the ball, well, whom did he tell? Anne Tolley? I think so. I know Northland. You know Whangarei. News gets out there before it even gets to the court. News gets out there before it even gets to the police station. If you get picked up on a driving charge at 1 o’clock, and at 1 minute past 1 everybody knows. But the only person who does not know is this inveterate Minister famous for, as Enid Blyton would say, “forgettery”. The Prime Minister, the No. 1 Minister, does not know about all the great serious crises happening in this country. Whether it be the Coatesville raid, the SIS, the Government Communications Security Bureau, he just does not know. On this issue, which will be extremely embarrassing to the National Party—and its hypocrisy will know no bounds when it comes to fundamental human rights—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

I am not concerned about the sub judice issue. I am talking just about the political issue.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): No—the word that member used.

Yes, that is right. Thank you very much. I am glad you grasped that, Mr Assistant Speaker. That is very important, because the sub judice rule does not mean that this Parliament is constrained in a way that I fear we might be. But it is going to be deeply embarrassing, and our message to the people up north is: “Hang on, because help’s on its way.” Our message to people up north is: “Had enough? Send them a message. You won’t change the Government but you sure will make them listen for the very first time.” And to the people in Kaipara paying all those rates for the disaster on the Mangawhai Heads, and Kaikai, Kaitāia, Kaeō, Kawakawa, and all those forgotten territories, our message is: “Don’t give up. Hang on. Help’s on its way, and the campaign will start soon.” Thank you very much.

E Te Mana Whakawā, nei rā te mihi mahana ki a koe, otirā, ki Te Whare katoa. Ā, te tihi o Hikurangi Maunga, te pāpā, Tākuta Apirana Mahuika, whārikihia ngā kupu ātaahua o Tākuta Hōhepa Tamehana, ka mātānawe te manawa, ka haehae taku kiri. Ka noho nei mātou, ka tangi, kua hinga he tōtara haemata. E te pāpā, waiho mā mātou āu mahi whakahirahira e kawe, āu wawata kia tutuki. Haere atu rā koe ki tōu Kaihanga, ki ngā ringa mahana o Te Atua. Ā, i a koe e takoto ana kai tō marae o Tikitiki, ka rere ngā mihi whakanui i a koe, ka tika. E te pāpā, moe mai rā, moe mai rā!

[Mr Speaker, warm greetings to you and indeed to the entire House. To the summit of Mount Hikurangi, fatherly figure Dr Apirana Mahuika, I lay out the beautiful words of Dr Hōhepa Tamehana. The heart is scarred and I am lacerated. We sit here and lament that a strong growing tōtara has fallen. Oh fatherly figure, leave your magnificent work and your aspirations for us to address and fulfil. Go forth to your Creator and to the warming arms of the Lord. And while you lie in state upon your courtyard of Tikitiki, tributes extolling you fly about, and rightly so. Rest, fatherly figure, rest!]

As we mourn the loss of a great leader of our nation, I rise today in quiet reflection on the work of this significant man. The calibre of this man will not be seen again in Te Ao Māori. He belonged to the ilk of a grand and noble generation. His legacy reminds us of our very foundation as a nation. In this 175th year since Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed, it is right to formally acknowledge the sacred covenant that our nation is built on and that he and his kind fought so hard to uphold. With the week of celebrations and commemorations complete, this is our moment to dream big, to dream loud, and to be proud. This is our time to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi as the founding unification document of our modern nation, and to consider the partnership between Māori astangata whenua and the Crown.

What does it mean to live up to the promise of Te Tiriti? When Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed we had a strong and vibrant community based around our marae and our culture. We were developing a robust economy, trading with early tauiwi visitors and settlers, and traversing the Pacific to trade on foreign soil. The Māori Party challenges this Government—indeed, every Government—to honour the obligation it has in exercising kāwanatanga to support partnership with iwi and ensure that Māori retainrangatiratanga, or self-determination.

In 2014 we heard a lot about the rock star economy. The Prime Minister has outlined much about that rock star status today. The thing about a rock star is that they build their success on their fan base. In order to keep it at the top of the charts, a true rock star must keep the fans happy. In essence, they must be accountable. Some here may remember Sid Vicious—

💬 Hon Member: Who?

—Sid Vicious—who once said: “You can’t arrest me, I’m a rock star.” But in real life, his status meant nothing. When it came to doing what was right, he should have been doing the right thing. And so when I compare our economic status as Māori 175 years ago, and I look at all the posts that flood our Facebook accounts, I have to wonder who constitutes the fan base being propped up by the rock star economy. The thing is if we are to dream big and live up to the aspirations of those who invested in Te Tiriti o Waitangi, we have to insist on doing all that we can to restore our communities to the state of relative prosperity they enjoyed at first encounter in 1840. We owned 100 percent of Aotearoa. Māori were compared by health standards to the richest of European royals. We must restore our fan base. We must take decisive action to tackle poverty and its insidious effects. We must leave no stone unturned, and in this I welcome the opportunity to work with the Government to tackle the crippling effects of poverty.

We can start with putting greater income in the hands of those who need it. According to statistics, between 2009 and 2014, a couple with children had their benefit increased by a mere $31 a week over that period, while a single superannuitant had their income increased by $56 per week. We absolutely agree with the Children’s Commissioner that we must take a wide lens to this issue. Targeting benefit levels to bring them in line with the cost of putting healthy food on the table is a start. Let us be clear: the establishment of a ministerial committee on poverty—the Budget packages the Māori Party has consistently negotiated since 2008—has established that the elimination of poverty is our top priority. We are duty-bound to take poverty seriously, to make poverty a thing of the past, and to avoid getting distracted by token simplistic approaches. It is evident to us that poverty of the hand is in fact surpassed only by poverty of the mind and poverty of the spirit. It is simply not sustainable to say all our answers will come when we have school cafeterias in place to feed the kids. We need to raise benefit levels and extend the in-work tax credit to families living on a benefit. We need to create ongoing employment and to continue to support the amazing initiative established by the Māori Party for Māori and Pacific trade training, cadetships, apprenticeships, building school scholarships, and recruitment incentives for teachers.

We are thrilled that trade training schemes like He Toki ki te Rika in Christchurch are producing fantastic results. Graduates are in paid employment or are undertaking further study. Partnerships between iwi, industry, and training providers are game-changers, resulting in industry and training providers reviewing the way they work with Māori. Ninety-six percent of the graduates from the Māori Affairs cadetship programme have remained in paid employment or have gone on to further studies. All this leads to the Māori unemployment rate being the lowest it has been in 7 years. Do not get me wrong. We are utterly delighted with the investment we have been able to create in successful futures for so many of our young people through these schemes, but there are two areas of ongoing priority we cannot ignore. We must increase benefit levels and, at the same time, we must continue to lift the minimum wage.

The Māori Party asks the question: what gain is there by retaining the income abyss between life on a benefit and life in work? Professor Jonathan Boston suggested that the gap between those in work and those on a benefit has increased by 25 percent in a generation. What we want to know is why the gap needs to be so huge in order to incentivise people to work. We have to remember that two out of five families in poverty are also in work, so simply getting into work is not in and of itself the answer. Both benefits and wages are too low, and more direct, immediate action is required.

The Māori Party is not afraid to ask the hard questions. We do not want any piecemeal solutions. We do not need any tokenistic apologies or suggestions of constitutional change without sound policy or strategy to make sure that it is not just media-grabbing rhetoric. We believe in a value-added future—a future where the investment we make today will create optimism for tomorrow. We welcome the difference being made in social housing. So many poor families are paying far too much for their housing. We are pleased that those with high housing needs who live in properties run by approved community housing providers can get the same support that people in Housing New Zealand properties do.

There is more to do. A warrant of fitness on social housing will ensure the Government does not abdicate its responsibility to protect the most vulnerable whānau. I was grateful to attend the launch of the Te Tai Tokerau economic development strategy, working to build on the development of the Northland area for Māori. That strategy recognises that $2.4 billion was the contribution that Māori in Northland made to that economy every year. Māori in the Northland area, in Te Tai Tokerau, are the highest numbers of Māori entrepreneurs in the country. We must recognise that there is value added in Māori strategy. Working with iwi, as the Government has agreed to do, will ensure that we can bring to pass the actions of those strategies and not just the dreams.

If the promise of Te Tiriti o Waitangi is to come together in a unifying way, we need to uphold its principles. It is time to make a tangible difference to the lives of our tamariki mokopuna; to recognise that we need to do so to ensure, instead of flinging abuse from the cross benches, that we can work together with the Government tirelessly and relentlessly to recognise Māori as value added to this country through real recognition of Te Tiriti o Waitangi; to find ways to enable all of our tamariki to thrive without fear of abuse, without embarrassment of disparity, and without hunger; and to ensure they and their whānau are housed in warm and safe homes.

E Te Mana Whakawā, nei rā mātou o Te Pāti Māori e tū ngātahi ki te taha o te Kāwana i runga i te wawata o Te Tiriti, hei hiki i aua wawata o ngai tātou te iwi Māori, hei hāpai i ngā hiahia. Tēnā koe, tēnā tātou.

[Mr Speaker, we of the Māori Party stand in unison with the Government upon the desire that the Treaty will raise those aspirations of ours, the Māori people, and elevate the needs. Thank you and us.]

One of the benefits of being a younger member of the House is that sometimes you can learn a thing or two from some of the older members of the House, and from one, who may be the oldest of all, we got three very good questions.

What state is the country in? Well, it is an interesting fact that if you look at the polling data across the world and you look at Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, and you ask the people in each country: “Is your country heading in the right direction or the wrong direction?”, New Zealand is the only one of the five where people persistently have said the country is heading in the right direction, for the last 6 years straight. When the member asks the question: “Are we heading in the right direction?”, the people have answered the question. Maybe he thinks they are stupid. What he will find out—what he will find out if he stands in Northland—is that the people there have moved on too. That place has changed since the 1960s. If he stands there it will be a very sad political death. However, I have heard that he may be leaving me a couple of backbenchers in his will, so it may not be all bad.

Are we getting towards a fairer society? That is a question that I would like to address in this speech. The country is in a good state, and we are heading in the right direction. I learnt this on the 175th anniversary of our nation’s founding, up at Waitangi just last week. I probably speak for many New Zealanders when I say that I had stayed away all of my life because of the acrimonious pictures on the TV screen that put me off visiting Waitangi on 5 and 6 February. What a warm and pleasant experience. I had to say a prayer on a marae—almost two new experiences in one day.

What I found when I watched the TV at the end of that day was something astonishing and surprising. I thought Andrew Little had wanted to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand—I really did. All his behaviour up until that point had suggested that he wanted to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand. We heard from the co-leader of the Green Party that he knew which side of apartheid he was on in 1981. But does Andrew Little know the answer to that question, or is he actually trying to bring it back right here in New Zealand? Perhaps he agrees with Sir Tīpene O’Regan, the normally sensible and respectable man, who said that Pākehā New Zealanders do not know their history. Well, let me remind Andrew Little, and anyone else who has any doubt, of what some of our history is.

Perhaps we should start about 400 years ago when Martin Luther challenged the Inquisition and nailed his theses to the door of Rome. Perhaps we should talk about William Wilberforce, who campaigned valiantly for years to end slavery in England, or Abe Lincoln, who did it across the Atlantic, in the US. Perhaps we should talk about Kate Sheppard, who said that both women and men should be able to vote equally here in New Zealand. Perhaps we could come forward a little way, to Fran Wilde and Louisa Wall, who said that people should be treated equally before the law, regardless of their sexuality.

Our heritage and our history is the creation of a free and equal society where everybody is equal under law, and that is one of the greatest achievements any country has ever made. If Andrew Little really wants to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand, he had better back-pedal quickly on the idea that we should be backing down on the wonderful achievements that our country has managed in becoming one of the most diverse, free, and harmonious societies that this world has ever seen.

When we come to the question of housing affordability, it is worth thinking how far we have come on that topic. The Demographia index has been comparing median household incomes with median house prices every year for 8 years. When it started doing it, Helen Clark used to say: “If only they would put some unaffordable European countries in, New Zealand’s housing affordability might look a little bit better.” Well, how far we have come—we now have a Government that accepts there is a housing affordability problem in New Zealand. We have a Government that is actually addressing the root causes of housing unaffordability in New Zealand. What are those causes? If you study the phenomena, it is not the tax system. Sydney, Vancouver, and Los Angeles have much more unaffordable housing than us and they also have a capital gains tax. It is not the banking system or the interest rates. Many, many markets across the United States and Canada all have the same banking system. They all have the same interest rates, but only some markets are deeply unaffordable.

We now have studies of the approach of hundreds of urban housing markets to urban planning. What do we discover? It is those that take on constrictive urban planning regimes, and say: “Thou shalt not build there.”, that find themselves with a shortage of land on which to build, and, as a result, a shortage of houses. It does not matter, as the Labour Party would have it, if the Government builds the houses, because even builders working for the Government cannot build houses on no land.

The initiative that this Government will take up is to clean up the Resource Management Act, take out the vagaries, and make the Resource Management Act about science—science: physics, chemistry, and biology. The Resource Management Act should be about biodiversity. It should be about air, water, and soil. It should be about the physics of noise, of traffic, of shading. But it should not be about vague concepts that lead to ephemeral goals pursued by urban planners denying an entire generation of New Zealanders the opportunity to own a home. How far we have come—we are now reforming the root cause of housing unaffordability. I give the support of the ACT Party to National on reforming the Resource Management Act at its roots, at sections 5, 6, and 7, and focusing them on science rather than the kind of ephemera that we hear from the other side of the House. The first step towards building more houses is to free up land upon which to build them.

Another thing that happened over the last couple of months that I would like to add to the Prime Minister’s address is that a number of partnership schools have opened. I have got bad news for the Opposition: boy, are they performing off the charts. The number of students enrolled is going through the roof. It is 440, up from 360 last year. The Post Primary Teachers’ Association is terrified of the ongoing success of these schools. Vanguard Military School—96 and 100 percent pass rates at level 1 and 2. [Interruption] The member there should go and visit, and see what it does for the kids who choose to attend this school. But her ideology is more important than those kids getting skills, getting qualifications, getting jobs, and feeling good about themselves. That is why she is going to be staying over there. You could visit any of the other schools where the results are outstanding, in particular for the context of some of the challenges that they face.

Next month we are going to see Sir Michael Jones and Willie Jackson opening partnership schools. This policy has momentum. It is diverse. It is unstoppable. You wonder why the Labour Party is in so much trouble in this House. It is because the ACT Party is now doing its job for it. We are delivering what Peter Fraser promised as education Minister in 1949. I know it is hard, Tracey Martin, but you need to accept this. If you really care about—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

I beg your pardon, Mr Assistant Speaker. If the member really cares about delivering on the promise that every child will develop to the full extent of their powers by our education system, then we must be able to let in new methods. I actually agree with one of the things that Eleanor Catton said. She said that when you have success, too many people are there to beat up on you unless they can collectivise it for themselves. Imagine a world in which the approach of the teachers union, in which the approach of the Opposition, and in which the approach of even Tracey Martin, was such that we admired people who have taken risks, gone out on a limb, been creative, and enrolled their kids in order to find ways to address one of New Zealand’s most urgent problems.

Would it not be nice to live in a country where Eleanor Catton’s concern about tall poppy syndrome was addressed and we could actually try new things to make kids’ lives better without such negative wailing from all over the Chamber. But, unfortunately, we fight on, and I am very proud to do so with my colleagues from the Māori Party, from United Future, and from the National Party. We are going to deal to the Resource Management Act because when you see that child poverty numbers rise from 130,000 to 285,000 as soon as you include the figures for housing affordability—or the effect that has on family budgets—then you know the No. 1 thing we can do for child poverty is expand the supply of housing for New Zealand families, and have we not come a long way in addressing that?

We know that we are coming into a world and a century when the premium on skills will be larger than it has been at any previous time, and it is going to be more important than ever that all New Zealanders have the skills. We are unleashing social entrepreneurship in order to achieve that goal. Thank you.

I am pleased to support a large proportion of what is contained in the Prime Minister’s statement, and generally to work with my colleagues in National, ACT, and the Māori Party towards its attainment. But there is one area that my predecessor, David Seymour, outlined that I could not disagree with more, and that is his argument about changes to the Resource Management Act. The suggestion that that is a silver bullet to our housing crisis is risible, fatuous, and unbalanced, and those that proclaim it deserve that title as well.

I think that before people put the Resource Management Act into its grave they ought to think about what it replaced. No one wants to go back to the days of 54 different pieces of planning law and of the Town and Country Planning Act, which was derided up and down the country as cumbersome, ineffectual, inconsistent, and chaotic. There is a majority in this House, I believe—a clear majority—for making sure that the Resource Management Act is fit for purpose in terms of its procedures and practices. That can be achieved, and it could have been achieved as long ago as 2013, when the National Government first proposed changes, if there had not been the intention at the same time to change the purpose and principles clauses—particularly, clauses 6 and 7—of the Resource Management Act. There is no need to tamper with those provisions to achieve the efficiencies in the legislation that the vast majority of the members in this House would seek.

I say to the Minister for the Environment that he should look to every editorial writer in New Zealand; he should look to everyone who has expressed impartial concern on this—not the developers and the commercial interests, but people who have expressed an impartial concern. They have all urged him to move with caution. I say to the Government that if it chooses to do as the Prime Minister himself said last year and proceed with moderate and pragmatic changes, it could well attain significant support in this House. But if it continues with the attitude that it has shown to date on this issue, it will get it through at the very best by one vote. That would be a travesty and that would be a mark of inconsistency, because all of the case law built up over the last 20-odd years of the Resource Management Act would go out the window. The certainty that is being proclaimed for change would be replaced by the uncertainty of having to start all over again. It is a simple nonsense, and yet the Government could resolve the matter fairly quickly were it not prepared to want to have its cake and eat it too.

I want to talk about a couple of other measures that were contained in the Prime Minister’s speech that I think deserve the House’s paying some attention to. In the statement there was a reference very late in the day to the appalling situation now developing as a result of the barbarous activities of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. No one can condone what has been occurring. No one can say that it is in any way acceptable or meets any reasonable standard of human behaviour. The difficulty comes in what an effective solution is. When one looks at the Middle East generally, the immediate conclusion to be drawn is that Western intervention over the last century, be it from the time of the Balfour Declaration right through to now, has had one universal outcome: failure, division, and more intense bitterness and rivalry than was in place before it started. So when we determine as this country what our response to that appalling situation should be, we need to be guided by the history. Maybe Sir Tīpene was right and Pākehā often do not know their history if we seem determined to blunder in and repeat the mistakes of the past.

We need to be working alongside responsible Governments in the area, encouraging them first off to seek solutions to their own issues and to seek their own solutions, not have them imposed upon them by us acting in a “We know best” sense from the outside. It is a difficult balance because we cannot stand by and let barbarism continue, but at the same time we cannot act in a way that is simply going to fuel those fires more strongly for the future. One of the challenges that New Zealand faces is to draw that responsible line.

I must say in this regard that the intervention last week of the British Foreign Secretary on his visit here was anything but helpful. This Chamber carries the plaques that remember the consequences of the last time the family acted together: Gallipoli, and the mindless slaughter of Australian and New Zealand troops in the pursuit of a British objective; Passchendaele; and the Somme. So to come here and say to New Zealanders today: “We love having you on board. You’re part of the family, but you’ve still got to queue up at the aliens gate at Heathrow.” is unacceptable in the extreme.

I would have thought that a well-briefed visiting politician would understand the sensitivity of New Zealanders on these issues. After all, in the 1980s the more the United States administration of Ronald Reagan told us what our anti-nuclear policy was not to be, the more we embraced the stand that the New Zealand Government was taking. We are like that as a people. Here is this patronising figure from abroad loftily telling us that we are in the club, that we are part of the family, and that it would be lovely to have us along for the next round of unmitigated slaughter. It is simply unacceptable. New Zealand should draw the line very strongly when it comes to that.

There is one other area that the Prime Minister touched on that is also extremely important, and I think we can actually start to make some progress. There is to be a review this year of our security legislation. I think that is good. It is proper. But it needs to be conducted in a transparent and open way. There are two steps that I think need to be taken sooner rather than later. The review has to be established by 30 June this year. I think the form of the review needs to be made public well before its establishment, and I think the draft terms of reference need to be published and socialised around this House, in the first instance, and more broadly before they are adopted.

This is not a political issue; this is a New Zealand issue. We are talking about New Zealand’s security interests—New Zealand as a nation, our domestic security, and our international security. It is not a game of political one-upmanship but a game of ensuring that those who operate in that very peculiar world are accountable, are transparent, and have very clear lines of operation that Parliament has ordained for them. Last year the then-director of the Government Communications Security Bureau gave an extraordinary speech where he spelt out the objectives of his agency as he saw them. One of them was advising the Government on military strategy. That is not the role of an intelligence agency. It might be the belief of those who like wearing trench coats and walking around in the shadows and what they think is the role of an agency, but it is not the role of a responsible agency today, particularly against the backdrop of the revelations that people like Edward Snowden have made and that various other whistleblowers around the world have shown about the way in which these organisations operate. No one is actually saying you do not need them, but everyone seems to be saying they need a more open and accountable environment.

The review this year provides that opportunity, and I sincerely hope that the Government takes the chance to ensure that what arises is a robust, credible set of organisations that can meet both the test of public scrutiny and the test of time, because increasingly, as tensions grow, the challenges that they will face in terms of providing credible, independent intelligence to the Government of the day will also grow. If there is any doubt about the competence of that, then I think we are in a very sad way.

So 2015 is the centenary year of the forging of our first nationhood, really, on the rugged hillsides of Gallipoli and the start of the campaign where New Zealanders first became part of the world through their participation in World War I. The year is shaping up to be an extraordinary one. I think that an improving domestic economy and the opportunities that that will provide in terms of jobs and future opportunities for young people in particular are important. But the whole rate of technological growth and the way in which things are changing—I saw a thing before I came down here today that said that the top 10 jobs in industries in Australia did not exist 10 years ago. That is the rate of change. We are positioned on the cusp of that. Broadly speaking, the measures that the Government has been following over the last few years position us well to take advantage of the new opportunities that will arise. There are no blank cheques in politics and, as I have said, there are issues that I think are important that do need to be addressed along the way.

Mr Assistant Speaker Mallard, can I begin my contribution this afternoon by congratulating you on a recent significant event in your life. We all, I am sure, wish you well from this point. I also want to offer greetings and best wishes to the House as we start this new year.

More important, I want to support the motion moved by the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon John Key, and oppose the amendment moved by the Leader of the Opposition. The Prime Minister outlined in his very extensive speech the very wide programme that the Government is currently running. He outlined some of the achievements of the last few years, but, overall, I think he indicated that this is a Government that is responsive to the needs of New Zealanders, that does recognise the difficulties that are in people’s lives, and that also wants to encourage New Zealanders toward the sort of prosperity that this country can enjoy on the current policy path that we have.

There were a number of things that have come through in this afternoon’s contributions and they seem to focus both on national security and on the issues of jobs and housing. I want to make a couple of comments. Firstly, there were 217,000 new jobs in the New Zealand economy in the last 5 years under the leadership of the National Government. That does not happen because a Government has policies; it happens because people are able to respond to the policies a Government has. It is the private capital inside our economy that creates the opportunities that provide the jobs.

The Business Growth Agenda, with its 300-plus initiatives, is about opening markets for New Zealand. It is about getting rid of unnecessary red tape from businesses and creating an environment where the free flow of capital goes into the productive sector to provide those jobs—80,000 new jobs last year alone. That is the sort of progress that we want to see year on year on year. It contributes to the overall3-plus percent economic growth that we can expect for the near future. It will make a difference to the prosperity of New Zealanders. I did not hear one thing from the Leader of the Opposition today that would convince us that there is anything more that we should be doing. But I can tell you that if there is more, we will find it and we will do it.

On the issue of housing, which has been brought up by almost every speaker, I think there are a couple of things that I would take an adverse stance to Mr Dunne on. His belief is that the Resource Management Act simply needs a little bit of change but no change to the purpose because if you change the purpose, you destroy a whole pile of case law. He actually says that the case law now drives what you can do under the Resource Management Act, and that is the very problem that we are trying to solve.

It must be great if you are a developer hearing the likes of the Labour Party, New Zealand First, the Green Party, and now Mr Dunne saying they do not want to see changes to the Resource Management Act, because it is that Act that creates the scarcity—the unnecessary scarcity—of land for development that ensures that you do have that price moving upward. We have seen that there is now a quantifiable gap in the amount of housing that is needed in New Zealand to get to a steady state, to get to a state where places like Auckland will have to put in only about 14,000 to 15,000 houses a year to keep pace with things. That gap is what forces the price, and that gap is largely created by scarcity of land and by Resource Management Act rules that ensure that those who are in a position to put big capital into their developments can sell them at a premium. We do not mind people making a few quid, but we are not going to have the sort of soft protection that a law like this provides in the guise of it being environmentally friendly. It is utter rubbish and Mr Dunne is in the wrong space on this.

I also found it fascinating that when the Leader of the Opposition started talking about affordable housing today, he started out by telling us about the terrible story of a young couple who had just bought their first home and had to take on a $700,000 mortgage. Well, let me tell you, I did a bit of quick calculating. What that would mean is that that young couple had to have an income between them of somewhere in the vicinity of $207,000 a year to be able to afford the repayments on a 40 percent mortgage. If the Leader of the Opposition is actually telling us that people on joint incomes of $200,000 a year are their target, then he has failed before he starts. We have a programme that will start in April of this year allowing young people to combine their savings by way of KiwiSaver and their own resources at much, much lower levels to buy into housing. What he also says is that because he does not want Resource Management Act change, he accepts that there is going to be this massive escalation in first home prices. That is the sort of thing that you are getting out of the Opposition members. It is never going to take them anywhere because it will not provide opportunities for young New Zealanders. It is totally the wrong face.

The other issue that has come up this afternoon, somewhat repeatedly, has been the issue of the nation’s security. People will have heard the “passioned” way in which Mr Key spoke about his reaction. I think that typifies the reaction of most New Zealanders watching on their screens, seeing in their social media, learning about the evils of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or, as it is better named, Daesh. Giving it the title of being an Islamic State is unreasonable to everyone who proclaims the honest and peace-loving aspects of the Islamic religion. So let us call them Daesh, these evil people who have desire to take over a significant part of the world, if not the whole world.

When we look at their tactics, it is ridiculous for anyone to say that a country like New Zealand would be immune from that type of activity; we are not. No one can accuse this Government of rushing to war, as one or two speakers have suggested today. We have been extremely cautious in the way we have gone about things, and we will continue to be cautious. There has been no decision made about what sort of contribution we might make, but I do want to inform the House this afternoon that I have asked the Chief of Defence Force to begin some preliminary training of troops who may be asked to assist in a capacity-building mission in Iraq. That is one of the things that we are currently considering, but I want to make it very clear that the request made of the Defence Force today does not pre-empt any decision Cabinet might be making about a contribution. It is simply recognising that things are moving very, very fast in this regard and that we do not want to be caught on the back foot.

Since the initial decision we have had some of our military people in the Middle East go into Iraq to have a look under their own reconnaissance at what the situation is. Then, of course, we have had an interaction with the Australians, considering what a wider mission might be. But that mission, if it were to be approved, is very much to have a focus on the training of Iraqi troops, on increasing the capacity of the Iraqi security forces. To those who say: “Well, look, that’s no good because the Americans spent all that money over those 10 years and it failed.”, all I will say to them is this: it failed because there was a corrupt Government there that allowed that military security force to fall apart. There is a Government there now trying to bring all parties together, and I want to make it absolutely clear and repeat the view of the Prime Minister that it would take an invitation from the legitimate Iraqi Government for us to be involved in any capacity-building exercise. So, to sum up, no decision has been made. There is a lot more work to be done, but there is a preparedness should we get caught short, and I think that is perfectly reasonable.

I want to reserve my final comments for the Rt Hon Winston Peters, who keeps doing this dance of the seven veils about perhaps going to stand as the candidate in Northland. Well, I want to say, and if I can quote to you, that he said of a former member of Parliament who was then a list member of Parliament going to stand in a seat that the member was a carpetbagger who conveniently forgot his pledge to serve diligently as a list MP and that he took taxpayers for a ride by not resigning in order to campaign for the by-election seat. I want to say, then, that if Mr Peters stands by everything he said, when is he going to resign?

Well, he will not be resigning because he will not be standing. He did not stand in Helensville. Everyone remembers in 2010 that he was out there and was going to be in the 2010 election challenging the Prime Minister. He was the guy who was going to take him down, but what happened? He limped off into the corner and nothing happening there. In 2011 he ended huge amounts of speculation when he kept saying he was going to stand against Simon Bridges in Tauranga. There was big loud noise and lots of headlines—Winston was going to do it—but what happened? Off in the corner again—off in the corner again. Then, of course, there was the same old act in the last election. As soon as Colin Craig was in the picture, Winston was up there standing alongside him on the hustings, saying: “This is the seat I’m going to stand for. I’m going to take Mr Craig down. I’m going to take the National Party down. I’m the man.” And what happened? Straight back to the corner. Well, Pita Paraone, let me tell you that you are likely to be the New Zealand First candidate. Good luck to you. See you on the hustings.

I wish to begin by joining those who have acknowledged Ngati Porou’s loss. There are certainly some leaders in this country who will not, and cannot, be replaced, and “Uncle Api” was one of those people.

I also want to welcome you back to the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker. You could be forgiven, though, for feeling like you never left, especially listening to the Prime Minister’s statement at the beginning of the sitting of this Parliament. He started with a motion of confidence, as is the practice in this House—a motion of confidence in his Government. He claimed that his Government is working for New Zealand.

I decided to listen quite keenly to what evidence the Prime Minister had to back up the statement that his Government is indeed working for New Zealand. The first thing that he mentioned in his speech was—amongst the poor-taste jokes—job creation, and this notion that this has been a Government that has somehow focused on creating employment. But just because you say it does not make it true. Of course no one is denying that there have been new jobs created in New Zealand. Of course there have been. Every time a new start-up employs a new individual—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: 80,000.

Yes, 80,000 new jobs—but how many jobs have been lost? How many jobs have been lost? How many unemployed individuals are there as a result? I think we need to correct your figure, Mr Smith. There are 46,000 more New Zealanders unemployed today compared with when that Government came into office—46,000 more New Zealanders unemployed. Surely that is the number that matters. That is the number that represents individuals who find themselves seeking employment, cannot get into work, and have been in that situation as a result of lax policies around job creation. In just the last quarter the number of Kiwis out of work grew by 8,000. The thing that is most devastating about those numbers is—as Andrew Little pointed out in his state of the nation speech at the beginning of the year—it does not have to be that way. If you make employment, job creation, and work a focus of your Government, it does not have to be that way.

The last Labour Government, for instance, maintained unemployment levels at 4 percent or lower for 4 straight years from 2004 into 2008. We had the lowest unemployment in the OECD. Today we are 10th. [Interruption] In amongst all of the other countries, Mr Smith, that have experienced the same global financial crisis, we are 10th. That is not something to be proud of, but we personally believe that we can be the lowest again if we focus on job creation. It is not just about the jobs we create, though. It is also about the jobs that we hang on to. There are a number of jobs in sectors like manufacturing, where we have had extraordinary job losses, and it did not need to be that way. If we work with business, if we work with unions, if we work with entrepreneurs, then it is possible to attain the goal that we are aspiring to as a Labour Party.

We have put a particular focus on small business, and for good reason: 41 percent of new jobs are coming from that sector. It is an incredibly important sector in the business community, and yet we have had a tendency to pay mere lip service to the issues that are quite unique to that sector of the business community. The Inland Revenue Department is particularly focused, for instance, on consulting with larger corporates when their needs and their way of doing business are entirely different from those of the small to medium sized enterprise community. That is just an example of how we could be making sure that we tailor our response to not only policy but the basic day-to-day filing of forms. Interaction with the Government could be improved enormously if we just listened directly to that sector.

There are some new challenges that we need to focus on as well. What are we doing to support businesses—not start-ups—that have actually been here for 10 years or more and want to go to the next level but do not have the time or the energy to ensure that they have the capacity to do that? What are we doing about them? What are we doing about businesses of the baby boomers, who have not had the time to even form a succession plan, and when they leave their business, their business goes? What are we doing about them? There are so many opportunities that we just need to tap into and that is what Labour will be focused on over the next few years.

The second piece of evidence I heard from John Key that this Government is apparently working on for New Zealand was the mystery higher incomes that everyone is meant to be experiencing. Notice that he always refers to “on average” when he uses that statistic. My one simple question is: higher incomes for whom? Because if, for instance, your income is outstripped by the cost of living and your ability to put a roof over your head, does it count? Well, the average New Zealander certainly does not feel better off. That is particularly exacerbated by the housing situation in Auckland in particular, and there is no denying it.

My challenge to Mr Key, and, actually, to all of the National Government, is to take five, maybe 10 young people aged between, say, 20 and 35 and ask them how they feel about housing in this country. Ask them about the prospect that they have of owning their own home, how daunted they feel about the possibility of their ever entering into the property market, and how that threatens their financial security for the rest of their lives. This is not something being beaten up by the Opposition. If the members on that side of the House were talking to those young people, they would know that it is, genuinely, in their minds, an absolute crisis. How could a real, genuine response from that Government be to simply sell State houses?

This is something I also do not understand. State housing is one of the biggest issues that I have people coming into my office about. It is one of the most significant. There simply are not enough houses. I would really like to hear—genuinely, hand on heart—National members tell me that the lack of State housing in their areas is not an issue. If they genuinely believe that it is an issue, how is selling these houses going to improve the situation? I would wager that there are as many members on that side of the House who have as many qualms about this policy as we do. It is not just the tragedy of housing for those who are most vulnerable, for my entire generation, and for those who are yet to come into the housing market who are suffering under the lack of action from this Government.

There were the other bits of evidence that the Prime Minister rattled off in his speech that were somehow meant to convince us that this Government is working for New Zealanders. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—international issues—was one of them. I take great offence at the implication from the Prime Minister in his speech that by challenging his plan, somehow we do not care about human rights. We cannot shut down debate on the question of whether we send our troops into conflict to face dire consequences like death on the battlefield just because the Prime Minister thinks that by raising the debate we do not care about human rights. That is insulting.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Just turn the other way.

That is insulting. Of course we care. The issue is not whether or not ISIS is brutal. That is not in question—of course it is brutal. The question is not whether or not the international community should react—of course we should. The question is what the most effective course of action is. That is the debate that we are under an obligation to put before that Government, and it is yet to satisfy that question as to what the most effective course of action is. It is insulting, Mr Smith, that you think that by challenging the grounds on which you are putting this—the explanation and evidence under which you propose putting our troops into battle—we somehow do not care about human rights. That is absolutely insulting.

Finally, the Prime Minister mentioned that under the banner of helping children in poverty and vulnerable families—something we have been waiting 6 years to hear more from the Government on—the Government is finally “looking at ways to help families and children in material hardship”. Material hardship is only one of five measures of poverty. It is one of five. He has clearly used the words “material hardship” on purpose. If he were genuinely interested in looking at the poverty children are living in, he would not exclude income poverty. That is where this crucial debate lies. Until we address that, we will not address the hardship our families are living in.

The Prime Minister may claim that National is working for New Zealanders, but for which ones? Housebuyers? Those on zero-hour contracts? Children without enough to get by? Families working hard but going nowhere? Any Government that genuinely wanted to work on behalf of all New Zealanders should be doing something about them.

Mr Deputy Speaker, it is a great pleasure to be back in the House for 2015, and it is certainly a pleasure to welcome you back to your role in the Chair, a role that you have taken to with some gusto and are performing very well. Look, I am delighted to be back and looking ahead to another year of the whole National-led Government delivering genuinely better outcomes for New Zealanders. You heard it from the Prime Minister today. We were elected with the strongest mandate this country has seen under the MMP system of Government. Every single one of us is committed to using our time here to make New Zealand a better place for its inhabitants. We are not here to think about how we can preserve our own political careers, how we can further our agendas, or how we can last the longest in this place. Most of us have come from successful careers in the wider world. We have come here because we are passionate about this country, we are passionate about making a difference, and we believe that under John Key’s leadership and with the team we have, we have a team of people who absolutely can do that. That is what gets us up every morning. That is what we are committed to this year and throughout this term.

This year you are going to see an incredibly busy programme of action from the National-led Government. You have heard the Prime Minister talk about it this afternoon. My colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith will be right at the forefront of that with some of the most important reforms that are facing New Zealand, I think, particularly reform of the Resource Management Act, which anyone who looks at it sensibly knows is fundamental to getting the outcomes this country needs, both economically and environmentally. It is not serving anybody well. I wish my colleague the very best with advancing those reforms that he has worked very hard on. Similarly, in the freshwater space where excellent progress is being made, in the housing space, in the creation of more jobs, and in the creation of better healthcare for all of our community and particularly for those under 13, we will be working to provide better outcomes for all New Zealanders.

As well as doing that, we understand that it is our job to play our part in the international community. The security of our people is fundamentally any Government’s first concern. In the world that we inhabit we all understand that security is no longer just a domestic issue. Security means taking our part in the international community, taking it with great caution and care, but knowing that it is not enough to sit at home and say: “Gosh, isn’t it terrible what’s happening to those people?”. Sometimes action is required. It is a very difficult decision and one that is taken with extreme care, but we know that playing our part in the international arena is a core part of what keeps our country safe.

I want to take the rest of my time this afternoon talking about some of the areas that I am going to be focusing on in my portfolio. I want to start with the issue of connectivity. I am passionate about the fact that New Zealanders’ connectivity to each other and to the world is an absolute foundation stone of our success. I can tell you that over the time we have been in Government we have seen a step change in New Zealanders’ ability to connect with each other and connect to the world. Just recently Statistics New Zealand has announced that we have now seen a 34 percent increase in the number of Kiwi homes connected to the internet since 2006. We have seen significant increases in average speeds and we are moving up the OECD rankings. Last year Akamai noted that New Zealand’s speeds had increased over that year by 37 percent, placing us now well ahead of Australia, which is always comforting. TrueNet also for the same period noted that our average speeds are up 34 percent. So whatever measure you want to choose, one thing is being noticed internationally, and that is that New Zealand is making incredible steps forward in both its connectivity and the speeds available to New Zealanders. We are now second in the OECD for the growth of fibre subscriptions, so in 1 year we have seen 144 percent growth in fibre subscriptions.

This has not happened by accident. It is not just the inevitable march of technology. It has happened because this Government has committed now $2 billion to the roll-out of better broadband for our cities, our towns, and our rural communities. We do it because—

💬 Tim Macindoe: And what a difference it makes.

Exactly that. We know that connectivity means that every town—the smallest village, the smallest rural community—can then trade with the world and build their own futures. That is what this Government believes in: providing the tools for regional, provincial, and rural New Zealand to access the world from wherever they are. That is why we have committed $2 billion, and that is why you are seeing from us a big move now to go beyond our first target of 75 percent of New Zealanders connected with fibre to the home to now 80 percent of New Zealanders as the goal we are working on this term. We are spending $100 million more than we have already committed to rural broadband infrastructure and another $50 million to ensure cellphone black spots are filled. This is why New Zealand is increasingly seen to be at the forefront of connectivity. This will be our agenda to continue that rapid pace.

Let me talk now broadly about what is happening in the justice space. Again, we have a story that I think every one of us on this side of the House is rightly very proud of. We are seeing crime at the lowest level for 35 years. I want to acknowledge the Ministers who have worked before me, yourself included, Mr Deputy Speaker, the Hon Judith Collins, the Hon Simon Power—all of those Ministers who have worked over the last 6 years in this space. The record that we now stand on is a very strong one. But, as ever, there is more we can do. We are not going to sit back and say: “Isn’t that great? We can now put that one in the ‘done’ box.” There is more work we have to do. This Government set itself a very bold goal of better public service targets across all of the areas of service that matter to New Zealanders.

💬 Tim Macindoe: And we’re delivering.

We are delivering, but they are hard. We deliberately made them hard targets because we wanted to stretch the Public Service and ourselves. In the justice space all of our four targets around total crime, youth crime, reoffending, and violent offending are on track to meet those targets. But if there is one area where I think we have to make better progress, it is under that broad umbrella of violent offending. The thing that makes me sit up and really look at these figures the most is that half of our violent offending is related to family violence. We have one of the highest rates of family violence in the OECD. That is not something that I am prepared to accept and I am sure every member in the House would agree with me that as a country we cannot continue to accept this level of family violence. Fifty percent of our homicides are family violence - related. That means that on average we lose 14 women, seven men, and eight children every year to family violence. Every 6 minutes there is a notification to the police for family violence. This is not something that New Zealand should put in the too-hard basket. It is not something we should simply accept. All of us have to take steps to change this.

I would love it if there was a simple initiative—well, it would not be simple—that the Government could run that would simply fix it. I am certainly open to all suggestions from around the House and around society as to what the Government can do. It is not just an issue for the Government; it is an issue for every neighbour, every friend, every relative, and every colleague when they see someone and think about how they can reach out.

Some of the things that we are going to be doing in this space are certainly building on what has been done before. We have seen the roll-out of the victims’ offender levy, which I remember our opponents across the House said would never work. They scoffed and said: “You’ll never get it paid.” There has been $16.5 million raised already—a 75 percent collection rate, which is far and above anything that we had predicted and certainly yards ahead of what the doomsayers on the other side said would happen. Those funds are now providing better services for victims so that they can play their part in the justice system. We are going to go further than that. We have to look at more intensive case management for those most at risk. We are going to be appointing a Chief Victims Adviser and rolling out the safe home programme nationwide. We are just kicking off a comprehensive review of the Domestic Violence Act and how protection orders work in this country, because there is room to do that better.

We have to look more closely at how the court system provides for the victims of domestic and sexual violence. In my view there is not a system that will make appearing in court, telling your story, and having that evidence tested simple or easy, but absolutely we can do better and I think we must do better. We cannot have a country where we have senior members of our society telling women: “Don’t come forward because the process is too horrific.” We will never get on top of the problem if we are telling victims not to come forward. We have to encourage them to come forward and we have to build a system that supports their doing that. That is going to be at the forefront of my time in the justice sector. I believe that we can do more. I have said before in this House and I will say it again that my door is open to anyone in this House who wants to work constructively with me on that.

That is just one of the issues under way in the justice sector. We will be doing a lot of work this year around continuing the good work to ensure our courts work faster and more efficiently, and that cases are progressed quickly. We will be looking at the ongoing review of our privacy legislation to ensure the right information is being supplied to the right people at the right time. And, as I have been talking about just recently, we are going to have to take steps to address the issue of deported criminals coming back when we do not have a good record of that, so we can monitor them. We have a busy programme of work. It is a Government I remain incredibly proud to be a part of and I want to wish all members a successful 2015.

I note that this call is taken by the Green Party and will be a split call, 5 minutes each. I call Denise Roche.

I want to join with previous speakers in the House to send my condolences to the people of Ngati Porou for the sad passing of Dr Apirana Mahuika. A great leader has fallen and we acknowledge that.

I have been perusing the statement that the Prime Minister tabled this afternoon in the House, which outlines the programme of work that National is looking at introducing this year. I note that in his opening statement the Prime Minister outlines the four priorities of the Government. One of them is to responsibly manage the Government’s finances. This comes hot on the heels of the Prime Minister’s comments today that he has not ruled out putting more taxpayers’ funds into the supposedly free convention centre that Skycity is building in Auckland. That does not strike me as responsible fiscal management. For a Government of so-called business people, this Government has got appalling negotiating skills. It cannot even negotiate a cost-neutral deal. New Zealanders were supposed to be getting a free convention centre. The Government’s own papers show that the original deal negotiated goes $67 million in favour of Skycity for that deal. Right from the start this Government has bent over itself to give Skycity every opportunity to squeeze more profits out of New Zealand taxpayers and to pass those profits on to its shareholders. Skycity posted a profit of $69 million this year and it is coming back and asking the taxpayer for a bailout so that it can increase those profits.

The deal that this Government originally negotiated with Skycity is set to deliver it $35 million a year so that the $402 million convention centre will be paid off within 10 years. These earnings result from the concessions that this Government gave to Skycity, including the changes that this Government brought through legislation through the House the year before last, and that legislation was passed by only two votes. This Government is saying that it wants to govern for all New Zealanders. That is a woeful track record so far.

Skycity is obviously the better negotiator. The concessions it got for the convention centre deal include an extension of its casino licence for another 25 years, effectively ensuring that Skycity has the monopoly on gambling at casinos in Auckland, and that concession alone is worth millions of dollars. The free convention centre is also paid for with the addition of 230 pokie machines, 12 automated gaming tables, which will accommodate up to 240 gamblers, and 40 additional card tables. All these gambling concessions add up, essentially, to a whole new casino added on to the one that Skycity has already got. The Minister for Economic Development, Steven Joyce, said in 2013 that for little, if any, investment by taxpayers, the convention centre would be built. But even before this latest approach by Skycity for more money, the taxpayer would still be paying for this deal. The Government’s own papers show that there will be 6,500 children impacted by problem gambling as a result of that deal, and the misery that we will make these children suffer is the price that we will pay.

We have a Prime Minister who is not ruling out bailing out the cost overruns that Skycity says is the result of its latest design for its hotel, its casino, and the convention centre. That overrun is about $140 million—a 25 percent increase—and you cannot blame Skycity for coming back to the Government to do this because a snake is a snake, after all. But it is time that we cashed in our chips and walked away from this deal. As Kenny Rogers says: “You’ve got to know when to fold them.” It is time to walk away. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. It is great to be back. Happy New Year to all the members. I would actually like to congratulate the Prime Minister, John Key. I mean, what is it, his seventh Prime Minister’s statement, and I think this is the first one where he did not try to blame Helen Clark for everything going wrong in the country. He had to look in the mirror a bit himself. But listening to some of the speeches you can see exactly why young Kiwis are tuning out of our country’s politics. What they heard was negative name-calling, pointless point-scoring, partisan—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: He’s the expert!

We know that Nick Smith was one of our country’s youngest ever members when he came in and he has got to ask the question why Kiwis are not participating. They tune into this House and they are sick of all this partisan point-scoring they are seeing. What they want to see is less of the Dr Strangelove, less of the Dr Dolittle comments, and what they got instead was Dr Norman, who actually finally gave them what they want, which is a real debate about the issues, a real discussion, a real focus on solutions, which is not what we heard from the Government side.

What Dr Norman spoke about was the issues, and he talked about our priorities, which are climate change and inequality. This is something our Prime Minister could not mention even once in his speech. We have seen the Pope, the US President, and the Chinese President all make climate change—the greatest threat of our generation—their priority this year, but our Prime Minister could not mention it even once. It was in his written speech, but it did not make it into the Prime Minister’s comedy set, but the extra funding for oil and gas in New Zealand—extra subsidies from New Zealand taxpayers for what is already one of the wealthiest industries in the world—did.

At a time when we have seen the oil price bottom out at around 50 bucks a barrel, when investment is declining all around the world, at a time when we know that climate change is one of the most important threats facing us, and even the International Energy Agency says we cannot afford to burn two-thirds of the oil we have already found, at a time when you see Stanford University, the Norway sovereign wealth fund, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Victoria University, Dunedin City Council, and the Anglican churches all divesting away from fossil fuels, we see our Prime Minister wanting to invest in more of it from taxpayer subsidies.

We know that climate change and inequality are environmental, social, moral questions and challenges, but they are also economic and, as we know, when it comes to inequality the OECD has estimated that 10 percent of New Zealand’s gross domestic product has been slashed as a result of our growing inequality. Likewise with climate change. We have seen from the Stern Review that we could be at risk—10 to 20 percent of our global GDP. What we heard from the Prime Minister and National, as a party that cannot get a surplus, is flogging-off of the assets, and now it is looking at people’s homes.

Under National, Kiwis work some of the longest hours for some of the lowest pay and pay some of the highest costs of living in the world. It is a sign that the National Party does not have a plan for our economy. It is a gambling plan, as we heard from Denise Roche, when it comes to Skycity, and as we hear with its big picture, its big plan for the New Zealand economy: hope that someone foreign finds something in the bottom of the ocean, it is oily, we can export it, and they do not leave too much of a mess. That is not a plan for our economic future or a richer New Zealand.

A future for New Zealand is a smart Green economy, one built on innovation. The latest statistics from the Parliamentary Library show that research and development spending from the Government has actually declined 3 percent. It is great it has got a target. It has got a target for business to spend 1 percent of GDP on research and development, but the way the Government is going about it, it could not spend any less, because we already spend less than half of what average OECD countries do. If we want to have a richer economy, we need to invest in innovation and research and development to kickstart a smart Green, innovative economy.

Another area totally ignored by National is the clean energy phenomenal economic opportunity—a sector that Bloomberg has just said has almost reached a bumper year, with more than $310 billion in capital investment last year, an area PricewaterhouseCoopers says is a $22 billion economic opportunity for New Zealand. In New Zealand, our solar sector has grown 300 percent in the last 2 years, despite the uncompetitive barriers in the market that National has put in the way. Every 2½ minutes another American business or house goes solar.

When it comes to the IT sector, sadly, under National, a quarter of New Zealand families still do not have internet or computer access. At the current rate National is addressing it, it is going to take 227 years for all New Zealanders to finally get online. But at least the Minister Amy Adams is not standing still. I saw she put out a very important press release today urging Kiwis to change their passwords. So we have got changing passwords and changing the flag but no plan for a richer New Zealand, just a plan to gamble when it comes to dodgy deals, trying to bet against the house with Skycity, and hoping someone finds some oil, when the world is moving to a smart Green clean energy sector.

This is the challenge we issue to the Government. We are going to stand up for a smart Green economy, one that tackles the challenges of inequality and climate change. We are looking forward to the next 3 years. We are excited about the opportunity because, ultimately, our vision is one shared by tens and hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who do want a richer New Zealand.

It is great to be back in Parliament as part of John Key’s team, which is implementing its ambitious programme for New Zealand. Today’s speech from the Prime Minister said it all. New Zealand is going well. We have got a plan to keep New Zealand moving forward, and we are getting on and delivering the things that we got such a strong mandate in September to deliver on.

A quick rebuttal to a couple of the comments. Disappointment—I live in hope that one day we will have a Green Party in Parliament that actually is concerned about improving our environment. A change of leadership I note is well overdue, but I just hear the same old, same old. I also have to note that there is going to be a by-election in Northland, and I read on the wires that Mr Peters is going to be having a crack and he has been saying that this is the opportunity for Northland to get help on its way. Well, let me just put the facts of the record straight, because the way that MMP works is that if Mr Peters does succeed in Northland—and I have got far more faith in the good sense of the people of that region than to elect that has-been, but if they do elect him—guess where help is on its way from. It is from Invercargill, because what would happen would be that if the people of Northland vote for Winston Peters, they would elect to Parliament a Ms Ria Bond, the next New Zealand First member on the list, from Invercargill. I know that there is some unusual Winston-speak, but I do not think the people of Northland will be voting for a new member of Parliament from Invercargill, which has a great member of Parliament in Sarah Dowie.

The focus of my contribution on the Prime Minister’s statement is our environment and housing programme this year. But, first, can I rebut the litany of negativity we have had from members of the Opposition this afternoon. You see, New Zealand is doing well, and members opposite hate it. In fact, I cannot recall a time in my 25 years as a member of this House that New Zealand’s vital economic statistics were in such good shape. Let us have a look. Economic growth—3 percent per year projected by Treasury, another 3 percent next year, and another 3 percent the year later. The cost of living was running at 5 percent when we became Government. New Zealanders were going backwards in their standard of living. Inflation is under 1 percent—the lowest in the 25 years—

💬 Denis O’Rourke: Interest rates are going up.

—since I have been a member of this House. The member from New Zealand First has got the cheek to mention interest rates. Well, as housing Minister I have got an interest in that. Do you know that interest rates are at the lowest level they have been for 40 years? In fact, I saw in an ad in the paper that you can get a first-home mortgage at 5.4 percent. The last time you could do that was in 1967, when I was in nappies. I look at job growth—80,000 new jobs in the last year. That is something of which we should be proud. I have a simple message for the whingers opposite, and that is “Tell me a country right now that is doing better than New Zealand. Tell me a country right now that is doing better than Godzone, here in New Zealand.” Kiwis know it—Kiwis know it. I will tell you why Kiwis know it. Do you know that in the last quarter—the last quarter of 2014—for the first time in 25 years, more New Zealanders left Australia to live here than the other way round. People are voting with their feet with confidence in the programme of this Government.

Those growth challenges I spoke of in jobs and in terms of the number of people living in New Zealand bring with them growing pains, and housing is one of those that I want to talk about. This Government is on the case with a comprehensive and considered programme of reforms to increase both the supply and the affordability of housing.

💬 Hon David Cunliffe: Hasn’t got a clue—hasn’t got a clue.

Well, here is a clue for you, Mr Cunliffe. If we look at the Productivity Commission report, what did it say was the biggest increase in the price of housing? The price of sections. In fact, it said that the price of a section since 2000 has gone up from $100,000 a section in Auckland to $300,000. That is an increase of 300 percent. But if you look in terms of the price of a building, that has actually gone up by half that. Another way of looking at it is the fact that where a house used to be made up of 40 percent for the section price, today in Auckland that is 60 percent. And if we look at the report that has come out from the Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Trust this year, the report from the Registered Master Builders Federation of New Zealand—all of them say that the core issue is dealing with the issue of land supply.

So I am aghast when I hear members like the Leader of the Opposition saying “What’s the RMA got to do with the issue of housing affordability?”. Well, let me tell him. What is the law that governs the creation of sections and land price? It is the Resource Management Act. And I say to this Parliament that if there is a member in this House who is seriously concerned about housing affordability, knowing that the biggest increase has been in section price, you need to look at the law that governs the development of sections, and that is the Resource Management Act. That is the Resource Management Act, and when I hear the Leader of the Opposition and other members in this House steadfastly refusing to consider change to that Act, I say that they are the enemy of the young family who aspires to own their own home. Let me give just a simple example: a 29-hectare block of unimproved land in Auckland—29 hectares—going from a value of $890,000 in 1998 to $115 million since then solely because of the metropolitan urban limit that has put a rigid barrier around the growth of Auckland, which has enabled that landowner to make over $100 million at the expense of young families who want to aspire to own their own homes. And members opposite refuse to deal with the regulatory issues that are at the heart of that issue.

💬 Su’a William Sio: How many houses?

The member opposite has just interrupted. He said “How many houses?”. Well, let me tell you about the number of houses. When we came to Government in November 2008, 1,000 houses were being built per month. Do you know how many houses last year were built? It was 2,000 houses per month—24,000 houses. Residential building investment in 2014 was $10 billion. That is the most that this country has ever invested in residential housing both in dollar terms and real terms, and it shows the progress that we are making as a Government. I say—

💬 Denis O’Rourke: That is not nearly enough.

The member says: “It’s not enough. We need to do more.” We agree, and that is why on 1 April we are introducing the most generous support for first home owners since the days of the State Advances loans and the days when you could capitalise your family benefit. That programme worth $430 million, the biggest new expenditure that this Parliament and this Government have planned, is going to help 90,000 New Zealanders with a grant for them to be able to pull together a deposit to own their own home. When members opposite say: “What’s the Government doing?”, I say that actually investing $430 million and helping 90,000 young, modest-income families get their first home is the sort of programme that we need to pull forward.

There are changes that we are doing around the Building Act. There are changes that we are making. Do you know that last year more apprentices in the building industry were supported by this Government than ever before in the history of New Zealand? I originally put in my speech that there were 5,000 extra new apprentices last year. I just had a phone call message through, saying that they actually had a record month in December and the number is, in fact, 5,500—another step that we are taking in terms of growing that industry. So I say, yes, I am looking forward to bringing resource management reform to this House. I suspect it will be one of the bigger bills that come before the Parliament this year, and it will be a litmus test as to whether members opposite are full of noise or whether they are serious about addressing the long-term affordability issues for Kiwi families, and whether this Parliament is prepared to give Kiwis a fair go in being able to own their own home.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker, and welcome back. It is lovely to be back again in the House. It is unfortunate, however, to start the year with a senior member of the Government being so confused as to think that when the Rt Hon Winston Peters wins the seat of Northland—should the board decide that that is what it will do—somehow the overhang in this Parliament does not just disappear. Mr Nick Smith seems to have been misinformed by his researchers, and I suggest he goes back and has a look at the Act, and he would see that it has nothing to do with Invercargill. It is actually what the people of Northland would get. Should they see the light and make sure that they elect the Rt Hon Winston Peters—should he stand—they would get the whole team of New Zealand First actually up there in Northland fixing Northland College, for example. Northland College is a school where this Government tore down half of its buildings and did not bother to go and rebuild them, so its students have to sit their exams in the hallways. Or there are the other schools.

One of the other things that the people of Northland will get—and let us talk about the area of education—is that failing schools like Te Kura Hourua ki Whangaruru would be shut. Those students would be pulled out of Whangaruru and appropriately resourced in the current alternative school programmes, the teen parent units would be increased and monitored more effectively, and all these other things are what would happen for Northland, should Northland finally say to National: “We will not give you a free ride.”

Tell me how many members of Parliament have come out of the north who have been members of the National Party, and name the things they have done for that area.

💬 Denis O’Rourke: None.

There you go. And actually, I think what is more important is that the only person who answered that question is my colleague behind me, because no member of the National Party could say a single thing that any of its representatives have done for the north. So all I can say to the north is that if the board of directors of New Zealand First decides that we will stand a candidate in that electorate and if the Rt Hon Winston Peters is that candidate, the north will finally—finally—have a person, have a candidate, and have a representative who absolutely would stand for them, and finally they would get some voice in this House. That would be all I would say about Mr Smith’s inability to actually understand the Electoral Commission and the rules around MMP—not that National likes MMP.

Can I just take a moment and acknowledge that this is Safer Internet Day and acknowledge the work of NetSafe. The Hon Amy Adams there has also tweeted out about Safer Internet Day. It is an issue, a growing issue with regard to our young people or even just our communities in general. The Prime Minister made a small statement—a small acknowledgment of the legislation around cyber safety and cyber-bullying that will be coming back into this House. Could I say to the Minister that if she would like to take a moment to have a good look at new evidence and new information that has come to light since that bill left the select committee, she might like to consider making a wise move such as Nikki Kaye did around the Food Bill and send it back to the select committee. There is some very, very interesting international information that has come to light since that bill left the select committee and it really should be sent back there for some more comment. But I will leave that with the Minister. I know she has been spoken to about it by other parties.

Let us take another single sentence that the Prime Minister made in his speech. He said: “Good progress is being made on Better Public Services results.” Really? Do we think that the reason the Prime Minister made a single cursory mention at all in that statement about violence against women is that this Government does not actually have a single target to address what is one of the most major issues affecting 52 percent of the voting public of New Zealand? This is a major issue because 52 percent of our population is female. Violence against women, which then leads on to all sorts of consequences for children, was not even mentioned, or it had a cursory mention. There were two words, I think.

I want to acknowledge that the Minister of Justice, Amy Adams, actually stood up and was very passionate about things that she was doing in her ministerial role. But they are all things that are going to be done after a woman has been beaten, after a woman has been attacked, after a woman has been raped, and after an incident has happened. Where, oh where, is the plan from this Government to actually move this along—to change these social circumstances?

We had a Minister sent by this Government. In 2012 the Minister of Women’s Affairs—the previous Minister, not Louise Upston—went to the United Nations and in a speech there, when she was reporting back under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, she made a statement that the National Government was working on a successor to the 2004-09 action plan on gender equality. So I wanted to know how this was going. What was in that action plan, Minister, that you told the United Nations about—stood up at the United Nations and said that your Government was addressing this issue for women? So I wrote a question for written answer. I asked the current Minister for Women, Louise Upston, what was the successor to the 2004-09 action plan that she said to the United Nations this Government was working on. The answer was the Better Public Services targets, specifically the following: to reduce the number of people at working age who are on a benefit, to increase participation in early childhood education, to increase infant immunisation, to reduce assaults on children, to increase the proportion of 18-year-olds with National Certificate of Educational Achievement, level 2, and increase the number of 25 to 35-year-olds with advanced training qualifications. That is the plan.

That is the plan to address the issue of violence against women in this nation—one that the Government fully admits is an issue, one that Amy Adams just positively, passionately spoke about. That is the plan: to immunise more 2-year-olds. That is unforgivable. What that says is that the Government does not have a plan. The Prime Minister slides over the top of it when he makes that statement because not a single thing there is going to help those women who are out there being paid less than their male colleagues who are doing the same job. I do not know whether this Minister was deliberately being obtuse or whether this is actually the policy of this Government, but perhaps some of the other speakers might like to take it up.

We have seen that domestic violence has risen as an overall share of violent offending over the last few years under this Government. The Prime Minister stood up and suggested that everything is good and well and lovely and that we are on the right track. I have to say that the Prime Minister’s speech and parts of the speeches that followed reminded me of speeches back in the 1990s. Mr Smith mentioned growing pains a minute ago and said that of course we are going to have growing pains. What it reminded me of was when the New Zealand public was told: “No pain, no gain. Hold on, New Zealand. Keep letting us do this to you. Keep letting us cut your services. Keep letting us drive you down. Keep letting us sell your assets and make you dependent upon charity, because at the end of the day it will be good for you.” That is what we continue to hear.

While we are talking about relying on charity, let us not fool ourselves. This Government is going to sell the housing stock of New Zealand, which belongs to us—to New Zealanders. It is going to sell those houses, it says, so it can provide more flexibility, and so on and so forth, in the housing market. Let us get real about this. Right now those houses are assets on the Government’s books. It has to maintain those assets. It has to make sure it monitors them and looks after them. The moment the Government sells them, all we get is a budgetary item that says the Government will pay somebody else for the ability to actually rent a house.

What will the Government do next? It will cap that amount of money when the Salvation Army, or whoever else, has got that asset and needs to maintain it. Then the Government will say: “Well, the maintenance is your problem. That’s your problem. We don’t own it. It’s your asset now, and we’re capping this amount of money.”, and the Salvation Army will go out of its way to continue to try to provide housing for people because that is what the Salvation Army does and that is what the other NGOs do.

That is what this Government works on—emotional blackmail. It is making more and more people look after their fellow New Zealanders on a charitable basis because it refuses to pay for it, at the same time as it opens profit-making schools and hands over hundreds of thousands of New Zealand dollars to people making a profit out of children who have to go to school. That is the true state of this nation. That is what should have been in the Prime Minister’s original speech.

New Zealand First will take this fight to any place in New Zealand that it is required to take it, but we will fight for it. We will continue to stand up for New Zealanders and we will continue to stand against the policies of this Government. Kia ora.

I am rising to support the confidence motion. I rise in support of a confidence motion about a Government that has the privilege of leading a very confident country. I think that the positive mood of this country—it is obviously a subjective matter in part—is very obvious. It is based on a number of things. Some of them have absolutely nothing to do with whoever is in charge of the Treasury benches. We have had some great sporting successes that we all celebrate. The weather has been great—probably too great for some of our farming folk; let us hope that the rain gives them a little bit of relief. But there is a sense of confidence around the country.

I think that that is reflected, first of all, at the political level. The people have spoken. I listened to some of the speeches today wondering what on earth is going through people’s minds. Is it a “the public have once again made a terrible mistake” scenario? The reality is this. As the Prime Minister said in his opening statement today, we have been given a very clear mandate to carry on in a third-term Government, and we are just brimming with new ideas. We have got some wonderful fresh talent, which has come into the House at the last election, and I think that those members will serve whoever forms the leadership of the National Party in a generation ahead of us. They will be a tremendous base on which to renovate and keep the country and the party moving forward. We are in a very confident position.

In terms of results on the street, first of all, we can clearly see those in a number of areas. I do not have a great deal of professional input into those areas, but I know that crime rates are at a 35-year low. People are safer on the streets. Is this good enough? Absolutely not. What are we going to do? We are going to carry on and try to drive that trend line even better. That is the theme of our third-term Government. As you listen to the speeches that will inevitably be made over the next 2½ years about tired “third-term-itis”, just look at the facts. As somebody once said, everybody is entitled to their opinion, but they are not entitled to their own facts. This is where we will be coming from.

I want to talk now about the economy, because it is absolutely central to what I think is the confident mood of this country. I think it is central to why we were re-elected by the New Zealand people for a third term, and I think it is central to why we feel very confident about what we are doing. We have a very clear idea about what the next steps in this process are. Economic fundamentals lie at the heart of this. There was a famous, very hard-line Treasury secretary in Australia called Dr John Stone, inevitably giving rise to the phrase “the Stone age”. He said something along these lines: many politicians decry economic fundamentals and believe that these are the concerns only of ivory tower academics, but the history of Western democracies is littered with the political bodies of those who said those things. Ultimately, economic fundamentals will impose themselves on people.

I am well aware of the old dictum “The public wouldn’t know a deficit if they fell over it in the street.”, and you could say the same thing of a number of these issues, like total factor productivity. Probably not many people sit around at dinner parties worrying about trends in total factor productivity and whether we are in surplus or not, but finally, actually, Governments need to be concerned about economic fundamentals because these will impose themselves on things that people very much understand. They will impose themselves either positively or very negatively. Right now we are seeing a drama unfold in Greece around the issue of “Grexit”, which is all about economic fundamentals. Successive Governments on the left of centre in Greece spent like drunken sailors. Admittedly, it was not just their fault. The people who lent them money were also reckless in lending them more and more money to the point where debt to GDP ratios exceeded 200 percent. But the reality now is that the poor Greek people in the street are suffering from a lack of attention to economic fundamentals, and it is a long, hard road back up from there.

If Governments do not discharge their premier responsibility on the economic front and do not pay attention to the fundamentals—maintaining sound books, keeping competitiveness in check, making sure there is discipline on public spending, and trying to protect people who are vulnerable while also maintaining incentives to work—the people in the street, who, yes, may not know a deficit if they fell over it, will find out the hard way. What we are seeing now, I think, in New Zealand are very clear signs—and I do not think they arose just in the last few months; I think we have been seeing them for at least 12 to 18 months—that the sound attention, led by our Minister of Finance, Mr English, is starting to produce things that people in the street really can feel and really can relate to.

On the fundamentals, I think the key issues are that we are moving away from the projected very large surpluses into what will be, we think—we hope—a paper-thin surplus. It has been a very tough ask. It has been very difficult to manage the books without slashing and burning. All the talk about slashing and burning is just fantasy and political rhetoric. We have done exactly the opposite. We borrowed heavily during the global financial crisis to protect the poor and vulnerable people of this country, but we have somehow managed to get through that and still get the books back to a very sensible position. We are quite happy that Crown debt is projected to be 20 percent by 2020.

We have also, thanks to the very able leadership in the Reserve Bank, got monetary policy into an interesting position. The fact that we have an official cash rate at the moment of 3.5—I think it is 3.5—is actually a sign of strength. It is way above other people’s interest rates, but, actually, the countries in serious trouble are the countries with either zero or close to zero interest rates or essentially negative interest rates. They have run out of any capacity to use monetary policy in a creative way.

I recall a very important hedge fund manager saying recently in the Financial Times that there are certain things we all wish could be un-invented: nuclear weaponry, chemical weaponry, and boy bands—I leave it to members to speculate on why he added boy bands into that. He said then, crucially: “I confidently predict we shall add quantitative easing to that list.” So the United States is now starting to deal with the realities of essentially zero interest rates, which have massive distortions, and this will not be easy. Europe is now going to go down that same track. The fact that we have got a relatively high interest rate—although still the lowest for many years—is actually a sign of the underlying strength of this economy. It is another reason that will translate into things that people in the street can understand.

What we now have is—let us start to look at what the people have. First of all, the people have more jobs, a huge number—I think from memory the figure that the Prime Minister quoted in his speech was 217,000—and I think 83,000 people have been employed in the last year. The really intriguing thing about this is, by the way—even that well-known right-wing commentator Rod Oram said it; I heard it on talkback—that the important thing to focus on is not the minor flick up from a very low 5.4 percent to 5.7 percent, but the extraordinary growth in the participation rate, which means that finally people who have been a bit marginalised feel confident enough to come back into the workforce because they know that there are jobs there.

I was very intrigued over the weekend. The United States job market figures are very interesting in terms of the political debate here in New Zealand because in spite of the vast difference in size—US GDP is about 100 times larger—there was a tremendous increase in the number of jobs created in the United States in January, and this is extremely positive. But, actually, exactly the same thing happened. The unemployment rate flicked up a tick or two, by, I think, 0.3 percent, but all of the commentators in the United States said that the really important thing is that the participation rate also increased. American working-class people who have been marginalised by this crushing situation in the United States economy have now got enough confidence to come back and look for work. Yes, it has flicked up the unemployment rate a little bit, but it is a great sign for the United States that its participation rate went up to 62.8 percent. That figure is interesting—our figure is 7 percentile points higher than that. We have got an amazing job record. This Government has got an amazing job record.

You know, although we will hear rhetoric over the term of this Parliament about “third-term-itis”, we are dealing with a country that is confident, with a Government that is confident, and with a very clear vision of what needs to be done. We are going to carry on, as the Prime Minister has said.

That was a speech that rivalled the Prime Minister’s in that it was skeletal, I think, in its lack of substance. It was, at best, underwhelming; at worst, barren of any plan or substance apart from a fleeting reference that life is good in New Zealand because we have had one hell of a good summer. And that is true—the weather has been great. Mr Groser even managed to take credit for that. I thought that belonged to the Deity and mother Nature and other powers that be, but Mr Groser seems to think that the weather is within his gift to give.

Mr Groser talked about the fact that the Government had been accused of “third-term-itis” and he asked for some facts to back up that thesis. Can I give him a few: Richard Worth, Pansy Wong, Judith Collins, and the former member of Parliament Mr Sabin. I will say no more. They are facts that bear out that the standards that the Prime Minister went to the country with—and it is true, he won a phenomenal election; he does have a mandate; his Government does have a mandate to govern—and people, it would seem, did, and do, believe the promises that the Prime Minister and the Government made. When the Prime Minister talked about higher standards, when the Prime Minister talked about lifting Parliament beyond the place it had been for some time, the community indeed believed him and voted for him. Sadly, in recent days, what we see playing out within our judicial system in respect of a former member of Parliament does not bear that out. It does not bear that promise out; in fact, it is contrary to the commitment that the Prime Minister made. But I am sure the facts around that situation and around the various Ministers involved within it will come to pass, as they always do, in the cleansing nature that is the parliamentary Chamber.

Mr Groser also talked about employment and waxed eloquent about how wonderful things were. He made a point, which I thought was stunning in its arrogance. He said that people, the communities, do not understand the fundamentals of an economy. That was his thesis. A number of Ministers have made that comment over a number of years. I think that comment is made at their peril. People do indeed understand the fundamentals of an economy. They understand that, fundamentally, in order to gain security for your family and in order to gain wealth and have a good and decent life, you need a thing called a job. That is a fundamental that the communities in New Zealand, like the 46,000 more people who are unemployed since this Government took office—there are 46,000 more people unemployed since this Government took office—and the other thousands of people who are unemployed do understand very clearly that the fundamental thing you need to survive, let alone prosper, in our little economy is called a job.

I note that our leader in his state of the nation speech was quite fanatical about the notion that the Labour Party—its very being—will be devoted to providing low and the lowest unemployment rate on our globe, and I note that the last Labour Government, of course, achieved that. We had the lowest unemployment in the OECD from 2004 to 2008. That is a fact. That is not hyperbole; that is a fact. And that is something that Andrew Little has committed himself to return to, not what we have today.

Communities also understand the fundamental proposition that in order to survive and grow with your family and achieve wealth and have a decent life, even if it may be a modest life, you need a roof over your head—something called affordable housing. That is something that this Government has been in denial about since it came into office, and we now have the grand plan in respect of housing, which has a couple of elements to it. One is the special housing unit, and Dr Nick Smith got up day after day last year, talking about the number of consents that had been granted in respect of housing. That may well be a factual truth, but, of course, a consent, as Dr Smith would know, is simply permission to build. It is not the completion of a built dwelling. We know that, I think, 15 houses—15 houses—have been built as a result of the Government’s special housing unit. By “built”, I say for those opposite, I mean built and certified so that people can move into them, you know, and not a piece of paper that says: “You may build a house, developer.”, and that developer or whoever else it is might sit on that piece of land for 2 or 3 years. A piece of paper called a consent, I would argue, would not keep the rain off like an iron roof on a built house would, but maybe that is a fundamental that the Minister for Building and Housing does not quite get.

So I would disagree with Mr Groser. People do get it. They understand that to have a good life, fundamentally, you need access to a decent health system when you need it. We know what is happening there, and we know of the stripping of resources that has occurred over time, thanks to the Government. We all know that because people come into our offices for assistance. It is very rare that people come into your office when you are an MP to dish out a bouquet of flowers and say that everything is wonderful. It is more often that people come into your office because they have an issue or because they have a problem. So, fundamentally, people know that if they are to survive and they are to prosper in, you know, the nation that Mr Key outlined—the prosperous society, or whatever the slogan was that he used—they need a house. They need a job, and a sustainable job. They need a job that does not allow them just to tread water—because I have never met people who say that this is as good as it gets; especially parents wanting better things, as every generation does, for their kids to be better. They need not just any old job, but a job where they can grow, where they can gain promotion, and where they can gain a higher income. They want to do better in life. They believed this Government, as far back as 2008, when Mr Key and his then shadow Ministers talked about the prosperous society, ambitious for New Zealand—those sorts of things. That ambition seems to have crumbled into mediocrity, crumbled into sort of treading water, and lapsing into going from crisis to crisis, bout of amnesia to bout of amnesia.

The people who are lost in all of that, in the internal machinations of the National Party as it embarks on “third-term-itis”, off the back of, yes, a large mandate, but “third-term-itis” has taken effect pretty quick, are the people whom this Government and this Parliament are charged with serving and paid to serve—our communities, the lost and lonelies, and those people who struggle each day to survive. They hope that the promises John Key made over three elections will at some point come true, if ever they leave their preoccupation with their own foibles, their own discredited Ministers, and their own MPs and former MPs who do not bring, as we sit here today, a great deal of credit to this Parliament.

The Government needs to come up with a plan that is outward-looking, not some sort of battle plan to hold the line, as it has done since the election, which is inward-looking and myopic. It does centre on jobs. It does centre certainly on housing. Cities and towns up and down this country—every night you watch the news and there is another series of stories about younger people, and not so young people actually, who just cannot get into that property market. What we hear from the other side is that the best shot for those at the bottom of the heap is to transfer ownership from the State system to the community sector or the private sector. Changing ownership from one entity to another, selling a house from one entity to another, does not build one additional house and it does not increase the housing stock one iota. It may do if the guarantee was that the proceeds from those sales, all 100 percent of them, went back into a regenerated housing stock. But we know, and at least I suppose the Prime Minister has been honest about this, that he has said he will in no way guarantee that the proceeds from those sales will go back into the housing stock.

I suppose that is slightly better than the Bolger Government, pre-1999, which sold thousands of them and never made any commitment, never said anything, and frittered the money away, and not one dime went back into renewing the housing stocks. I suppose there is a bit of honesty. Now we know that the money is up for grabs. But I say this. I would like a member to explain to me how transferring the ownership of a house from entity A to entity B adds to and increases overall the housing stock one iota. All it does is relieve the Government of responsibilities, and that seems to be the biggest policy plank—the relieving of responsibilities that we see time and again from this Government.

I understand the next call is a split call.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker, and welcome to the new year. It is very good to be back here, refreshed and invigorated after the summer break. I, like many of us, enjoyed time at the beach, swimming, making sandcastles, and just mucking around in a boat. Those are some of the great Kiwi pleasures. That is why it was encouraging when the Prime Minister’s statement said that National proposed to develop policy to improve the responsible use, management, and conservation of New Zealand’s ocean environment. But how can National improve the responsible use of our oceans when at the same time it is promoting risky deep-sea oil drilling? What the Prime Minister says and what National actually does are two different things.

New Zealanders love their beaches. They enjoy them over summer in particular and they want them open for swimming, for fishing, and for boating, not closed because of oil spills. That is what National is risking by its subsidies to the oil exploration industry and by opening up so many of our ocean areas to permits for more deep-sea drilling. The deeper you go, the riskier it is. So National is prepared to allow drilling even in areas that are supposed to protect Māui’s dolphins. We have got only 55 Māui’s dolphins left, yet National is prepared to allow exploration in an area that is supposed to protect them. It is paying only lip-service to protecting our oceans. The Prime Minister also talked about having a policy for a greater range of marine protected areas. At the moment we have got 45 marine reserves. That is less than 0.5 percent of our marine environment that is protected, and that is tiny given that this National Government has opened up more than 12 percent of our marine environment to oil and gas exploration.

What National seems to be proposing now is not legislation to really protect our biodiversity through no-take marine reserves, which are safe from oil exploration, which are safe from fishing, but simply recreational parks. We may need some recreational fishing areas, but we really need some no-take marine reserves where our distinctive biodiversity is genuinely protected. We have not heard anything from the Prime Minister about that. We need those reserves, not just around the coast but in our deep oceans beyond the 12 nautical mile limit.

But National’s lip-service to ocean protection is most evident in relation to climate change and its failure to take real action to reduce our emissions. There was a significant study on ocean temperatures that was published last week in Nature. It showed that ocean warming steadily increased between 2000 and 2013. It showed that the increase in the temperature of the Earth’s oceans was equivalent to putting 2 trillion 100-watt continuously burning lightbulbs into the ocean. What is most worrying is that not only is this temperature increase happening on the ocean’s surface but it is happening up to 2 kilometres deep. The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research has been involved in those studies through it putting out some of the Argo floats that help to measure the temperature.

But what the Prime Minister and what the National Government do not seem to be recognising is that this increase in ocean temperature will affect our weather patterns. It will contribute to more frequent and intense tropical storms. We are a coastal people. More than 65 percent of New Zealanders live within 5 kilometres of the coast. More intense storms, combined with sea-level rise, will expose more areas to coastal hazards and to coastal erosion. The cost of this to our country will be immense. The human misery will be immense. Just last year we had seven severe weather events. They cost the insurance industry $135 million.

We can take action to arrest our emissions. We can take action to be on the right side of history in tackling climate change. The Green Party has a platform and a comprehensive programme of action to arrest our emissions. We will be working this year to promote those policies, to convince the Government to take its head out of the sand, to take action to reduce our emissions, and to tackle climate change so that we can bequeath to our children a stable climate.

Today the Prime Minister John Key said that this year the Government will establish a food safety science and research centre at Massey University. He said that it is to protect consumers, enable innovation, and minimise costs for business. The Government will also introduce legislation to strengthen the framework underpinning our food safety system. There are great opportunities in this but I fear—and there is a lot of history behind what has happened around food safety in this country—that it will not go far enough for New Zealand consumers. Effectively, this is a response to the melamine scare and the botulism scare in our dairy industry. It is absolutely important that we have a food safety regime that does make sure our exports meet the standards that our export markets expect.

But, increasingly, there is a very sad picture of our rural environment. It is a high input, high pollutant model of farming that leaves farmers exposed on the global market, especially when the price of milk falls. If there is any hint of a food safety issue, we stand to fall and fail a lot, lot more. The Government’s endless fixation on growth at any price, and exporting away our riches, is hurting our people and our planet. The environment that we travel through when we go through the country is rarely anything to be particularly proud of, and it has changed. It used to be diverse and it gave a feeling of safety around the food produced there, and some sort of sustainability, and it is going rapidly in the other direction. The great experiment—an industrial model of oil dependence and chemically based food—is clearly unsustainable.

I use, as an example, Roundup, which used to be advertised with “You can drink the stuff”—glyphosate being the active ingredient. We do not even seem to test for it in our waterways. We are using it increasingly, hectare after hectare. Massive areas are being used for various farm management systems. The reality is that this glyphosate is damaging the microbiology of our soils and deteriorating the sustainability of that very soil. It becomes less porous, it cannot handle the rain the same, and it cannot handle the drought the same.

A story in Stuff today that has just come through from Washington shows a report saying that people eating organic food are exposed to only half the level of pesticides as in non-organic food. Other reports show that there are at least four times as many pesticides in non-organic food. Sometimes people see organics as unaffordable. Do we really want a tiered society where only the rich who can afford to eat it—or choose to in that sense—are the only ones who can have a healthy diet? This Government and the previous Government of National chose not to advance the organic system. It chose not to help the Organic Advisory Programme, which was so successful in helping people convert to organics. What does it do? It has done away with environmental monitoring in many, many cases.

What we could have is some very good progress indicators if we move towards organics. Glyphosate is showing up in breast milk. But where is the Ministry for Primary Industries even looking to see how much glyphosate is coming through in food? We have to remember the herbicide-tolerant swedes in Southland, using a chemical that is banned in China. How much of that chlorsulfuron went into those swedes and turnips that the cows ate? In the swedes’ case, some died. In fact, a lot of cows died. That material, that information in its full form, has not come out yet.

We think the Government should support the organic sector and move towards a more sustainable society. Thank you.

Happy New Year. Welcome back to the House. I am very pleased to stand in support of the Prime Minister’s statement and support the confidence that this side of the House has in his leadership and also in where he is taking this country.

I just want to comment on some of the statements that one of my fellow members of the House, Eugenie Sage, made that will, I think, demonstrate perhaps why New Zealand, though holding the issues of the environment as a very high value, also trusts our Government in terms of its development of our resources. She raised the issue of Māui’s dolphins and the marine reserve off the west coast of the North Island and decried this Government because of permits that it has granted that touch on some of these areas. We know that over the last 40 years of exploration offshore there has been no detrimental effect on the Māui’s dolphin population. In fact, it is a population that many people do have concern about, because, as she said, there are only 55 adult members of that species who are of breeding age.

But as science has shown us, the greatest threat to the Māui’s dolphin is not, in fact, human intervention and exploration offshore by the oil industry. At Massey University, where they do biopsies of beach-cast Māui’s dolphins or what they consider to be Māui’s dolphins, they have discovered that, especially on the west coast of the North Island, every one that they have found beach cast has been infected with toxoplasmosis, which is a parasite. Of those that are infected, just under half suffered death because of that. It is a parasite that affects the Māui’s dolphin and it is something that comes off, I guess, the water and the streams that come off the land. It affects them in a very detrimental way. In fact, what they have also discovered is that the dolphins they have done biopsies on are actually Hector’s dolphins and not Māui’s dolphins. So there is some research, in fact, around this on their mortality. Suffice it to say that it is not actually petroleum exploration that is the great threat to the species.

Of course, let us keep it to the science, because we also know that Labour, in its election conservation manifesto, made a determination that it would not allow any drilling to occur in a marine reserve. We know that that was speaking specifically of the west coast of the North Island in a particular area where the Pohokura field is. I am sure that, by now, Labour would understand that in order to develop that field, which is producing 40 percent of New Zealand’s domestic gas supply, and in order for that field to continue, it would have to, at some point in time, go into a second tranche of exploration and drilling to get what is called the side pockets of that field to keep producing. This is absolutely critical to the New Zealand economy. Gas is one of the best hydrocarbon fuels. It is three times better than coal in terms of its carbon footprint, in terms of its reduction of impact. It is considered to be a transition fuel.

When the Māui Pipeline sprang a leak in 2010, over 1 week of repairs while that pipeline was shut cost the New Zealand economy $200 million, and agriculture $40 million as part of that cost. So we do understand that gas is very important for the New Zealand economy. It fuels industry as well as fuelling homes. So we understand the issues around the environment, and we do have policies that protect it, but at the same time I believe we have a responsible attitude towards using our resources and our reserves. I think that this is why the general public has confidence in this Government. We hold those things in balance. We do not say we are going to go and explore the oil fields and the gasfields of New Zealand and produce at the expense of the environment. In fact, you will find that the explorers, as well as the fishermen, are all environmentalists. They all care for the environment. They are very protective and very careful, and they have the highest health and safety records, perhaps, of any industry that operates in New Zealand, because they know about the issues around social licence.

All of this is to say that I believe that this Government under the leadership of John Key understands the complexities of these issues and handles them for the betterment, the progress, and the building of the economy of New Zealand in such a way that we do not compromise on our environment. You would have to say that the Taranaki region—the region that has petroleum exploration in it—is one of the pristine environments as well. Tourism goes hand in hand. It is a great environment that people come to and enjoy. So we demonstrate that we do it very, very well.

I just want to say that is the reason why I believe we have had a Prime Minister, a leader of our party—in fact, we have had only one leader of our party over the last 8 years, whereas the Opposition has had five over the last 8 years. So I think that sort of solidarity, that sort of consistency, and that sort of confidence, not only from the public who has voted in National for three consecutive terms now, but a caucus who stands solidly behind him, demonstrates that we know where we are going, we have a vision, we have a purpose, we have a plan, and we are making great progress along that.

We have a Cabinet stacked with experience, talent, and energy. We have 14 talented new MPs, unlike that lot who struggle to find one or two new MPs, but found five new leaders over that same period of time. We have rejuvenation. We have new ideas, fresh ideas, fresh energy, and great representation in our country. We have had effective relationships with our confidence and supply partners over the last 6 years—ACT, United Future, and the Māori Party. Wherever I go people talk very positively about our relationships, particularly with the Māori Party. I think that what it demonstrates is the breadth of our ability to relate to New Zealanders. In fact, you go around New Zealand and people always talk about the Prime Minister as somebody who is very approachable. He is the sort of person you could speak to in a pub, yet, at the same time, he is very comfortable talking to world leaders. So he is approachable. I think this is where people feel this Government is successful; we are connected to them. We hear them and we translate their aspirations into policies.

We have seen some tremendous advantages as we have been in Government. The economy is growing. We have all heard those figures. Average wages increased 15 percent over 5 years. Look at the last year. Look at inflation and see wage growth in comparison. It is three times higher than inflation. That is a great indication that this economy is strong, it is growing, and it is offering a future to New Zealanders. We have 80,000 more people employed than a year ago; 217,000 more people employed than 5 years ago.

💬 Tracey Martin: 80,000 employed; 70,000 work visas—how’s that work out?

They squawk and bark from the other side of the House, but I think what we are seeing is that New Zealand is becoming one of the most attractive places on this planet to live. It is a great place for us to enjoy. But let us be sure that all of this happens because of a good plan, a strong plan, strong leadership, stable Government, and a policy set that is consistent with the aspirations of New Zealanders. We are not lurching one way or the other way; we are making steady progress. I am very happy to support the Prime Minister’s statement and where we are going as a country.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a Labour call and a split call.

Can I extend to you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and to all other members of Parliament a happy New Year, and also to the officers of Parliament who look after us. I wish all my parliamentary colleagues varying degrees of success over the next 12 months.

We have heard a lot about the Prime Minister. That party across the way trades very much on his brand. There is a lot to be said about a back story. The Prime Minister John Key’s back story is all about the State house boy who made good—went to university and went away to the US and made $50 million. It is a great back story. It has done him well and National has got a third term in Parliament. But there is a problem with that back story now, because John Key—who was raised in a State house, who had the benefit of a State house upbringing—wants to sell off 8,000 State houses. So the very opportunity that the Prime Minister took for himself—the help of the State—he wants to take away from over 8,000 families around this country. There is a difference of political ideology here, and right now there is a stark difference. We did not hear a peep out of this Government about the wholesale sale of State houses before 20 September, but as soon as we have a state of the nation address this year, John Key says 8,000 State homes are on the block. Do not forget, this is a man who had an upbringing in a State house and the opportunity of a State house and he does not want the most struggling families in our country to have the same opportunities that he had—of a State house—because he wants to sell off those State homes. This is a Prime Minister who has forgotten where he has come from.

I grew up in a State home, too, Prime Minister, but when I get to this place, I am going to fight for those families who need a State home, not sell them off. I have not forgotten where I have come from. I have not made $50 million but I will fight for the State homes that those families, who are in desperate need, need right now—need right now. I heard Nick Smith, a former housing Minister, say that the problem is the supply of land. Well, Mr Smith, come to Porirua, where you demolished 16 or 17 houses about 5 years ago and that land still stands empty. Your department has done zilch for the last 5 years to increase—that Minister’s department, that Minister, and this Government have done nothing over the last 6 years to replace those 17 homes that were taken away from that community. Where are the replacements? Where are the State homes that those families were living in? Where are those replacements? This is a Government that says: “Oh, we can’t get our hands on land.” There have been plans for 22 new units for that land. Where is the Government? Is it building them? No. It has not done one single thing. Then in Hazard Grove and Esk Place—right in the heart of Cannons Creek, where some of the lowest-paid people in this country live—it plans to demolish more homes. Is there any plan to replace those homes? Not one. It is going to sell that land. It will probably go to a developer, who will make a tidy little income out of that.

This is a Government that will sell off State homes and take away opportunity from those people who need it. It will sell that land off to developers and it does not care. I am not going to sit here and listen to Nick Smith or the Prime Minister say they are going to give opportunities to the most vulnerable Kiwis when they have done nothing to replace the homes—the 17 homes—that the Government made a decision to demolish and that it made a decision not to replace. This Government has done nothing for those families who need more homes, and then it has its Housing New Zealand officials say: “Oh, there’s no demand in Porirua East.” Well, come spend a day at my office, where we get a deluge of people. Two-thirds of the work that comes through my electorate office is Housing New Zealand work, and this is a Government that has its officials say there is no demand in Porirua East, just like there will be no demand in South Auckland.

And you say, Mr Young, that you are connected to the communities. You guys are so out of touch when it comes to State housing. You can snigger, Mr Young. You can snigger, but that side of the House does not realise just how deep the hatred of your State house policy is, because there are a lot of good people who have done good—just like that Prime Minister there—who do not like what you are doing. They live in their own homes but they got a start in a State home. They do not like what you are doing because the opportunity that they got, and that some of the people across that side of the House got, you are taking away from them and you should be ashamed of that.

Mr Assistant Speaker, I would like to wish you a wonderful year and I would like to wish all my parliamentary colleagues a wonderful year for 2015. The state of the nation speeches from the leader of the National Party and the leader of the Labour Party draw a clear line between the two parties. Labour stands for jobs whereas National stands for selling off our State houses. Labour’s vision is that New Zealand will once again have the lowest unemployment rate in the developed world. Having a job provides people with a sense of purpose, whether it is a paid job or an unpaid voluntary one. When people have jobs, they have more dignity, they have more self-respect, and they are better able to pay for rent and better able to afford the basic necessities of life. They are better able to give their families the best chance for a good future.

When the National Government came into office in 2008 the unemployment rate was 4.5 percent. But let us go back a few years to late 2004 and 2005 when the unemployment rate was 3.8 percent. It went up slightly to 3.9 percent in 2005 and it went back down to 3.8 percent for the last three quarters of 2005, where it stayed. This was a time when here in Aotearoa New Zealand we were proud of having the lowest unemployment rate in the OECD. That was under the Labour Government led by Helen Clark. Now the very best that this current Government has done in 7 long years is bring the unemployment rate down to 5.2 percent—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: What?

5.2 percent. And now we are beginning to go in the wrong direction, with unemployment that has risen from 5.4 percent to 5.7 percent, according to the household labour force survey from the last quarter in December. In addition to the rise in the overall unemployment rate, we have gone from having the lowest unemployment rate in the OECD to being the ninth in the OECD late last year, and now we have slipped further down to being the 10th in the OECD for the lowest unemployment rate. This is simply just not good enough. Labour’s goal is to ensure that New Zealand has the lowest unemployment rate amongst OECD countries once again, where we used to be just over 10 years ago. It is harder for Kiwis to find a secure, good job that pays a decent wage nowadays. This shows that the current Government cannot make the rock star economic recovery work in a way that delivers fairly for all New Zealanders.

Kiwi families have gone without and done it tough for far too long. The economic recovery that we constantly hear about from the National Government is a jobless recovery. Why is it a jobless recovery? Because it is an economy that is apparently growing, but at the same time unemployment is also increasing. Currently there are 38,000 more unemployed people than when National got into Government in 2008. There is something wrong with this picture and with how our economy is being managed. Labour is focused on jobs and we have put creating jobs at the top of our priorities. The long-term economic plan to create jobs and to assist businesses to grow is at the top of our agenda, through the Future of Work Commission. The Future of Work Commission has five work streams, for technology and security of work.

Labour has always been and will continue to be the party of work and for workers. Contrary to what the Prime Minister stated earlier on today, the work of the commission is not to define what a job is—no, not at all. Labour knows what a job is. We are all about jobs. The more relevant question is when, if at all, this current Government is actually going to deliver on an unemployment rate that is as low as it used to be when Labour was last in Government, and why it is taking ever so long to get there. By the way, Labour got the unemployment rate down to 3.5 percent in 2007. The question is: can you do it? Is it possible for you to deliver an unemployment rate that is lower than that? Thank you very much.

People in future generations will look back and curse the Key Government—not because of the massive debt that they will inherit, not because of a lack of genuine economic development, not because of the legacy of a 1960s-style transport system, not because of the failure to diversify the primary sector, not because of the stratification of Kiwis into a have-not and have society, and not for the many other negative results of a backward and neglectful neo-liberal Government, which future generations will be left to cope with. It will be because the worst legacy of the Key Government will be the impacts of its resource management reforms. Those impacts will have a very long-lasting effect and will be largely irreversible.

It was a National Government, actually, that finally enacted the Resource Management Act, although it was the Palmer Labour Government that really can take credit for it. For the first time it meant that modern, forward-looking legislation put environmental security first and it made the assessment of environmental impacts on development proposals effects-based. In so doing it provided a sound basis for planning in New Zealand. This was especially so for local government, which then produced district and city plans to ensure that land and other resources were well used, which avoided significant degradation of that land and those resources and provided a sound basis for continued economic development. All of that is now under threat from the retrograde policies of the current Key Government.

New Zealand First agrees that the Resource Management Act processes need significant improvement. We agree that there is too much silly red tape. We agree that there is too much unnecessary delay. We agree that costs are far too high. We agree that there is too much duplication between territorial and regional councils, and we also want the Resource Management Act processes to be much easier to use, so that the need for lawyers can be minimised. We pledge our support for anything that will put forward those objectives. For example, proposals directed towards reducing and simplifying planning documents do have merit and so do fixed time limits for the processing of straightforward non-notified consents. So would approved exemptions for technical or minor breaches be helpful in the case of urban land use consents.

But—and this is the big but—the Government wants to go much too far by undermining the effects-based decision-making under the Resource Management Act and it wants to put economic development equal with environmental security. That, of course, is actually impossible. One must logically have priority over the other. What it really means is that the Government is going to have poorly restrained economic development in priority, in effect, over environmental security. That is actually, fundamentally, what it is doing. It is bad and it is wrong.

Nick Smith’s recent media stunt—in which he stood before a stack of district plans to announce his attack on the Resource Management Act—convinced very few thinking people that the proposals will in fact do anything at all to solve the housing crisis, while at the same time stripping away too many of the Resource Management Act provisions for environmental security.

In particular, a number of the probable changes will substantially limit the ability of submitters to put forward evidence as to the environmental impacts of proposals and for that evidence to be properly considered. Even more troubling are the probable proposals for greater central government intervention in planning and consent processes. That really means that the Act will become activity-directed instead of effects-based. So that is a fundamental and very negative change to the Resource Management Act, which I hope people out there in the community are really starting to understand.

We are expected to believe, somehow, that these dangerous and fundamental changes will result in a fast build of the homes the country needs. The Minister for Building and Housing used the Motu report to try to convince us that there are 40,000 fewer homes than there would have been had the Resource Management Act already been amended as proposed, and that the lack of such changes adds $30,000 to a new apartment or $15,000 to a new home. That document was not a cost-benefit analysis of the Resource Management Act. In fact, it was nothing more than a review of how developers felt about what the additional costs were. It is non-scientific and is utterly meaningless, and yet the Minister used it as his justification for the proposals. In fact, all planning and regulatory imposts, including the Resource Management Act processes, account for only 4 percent of the cost of a new home, according to Local Government New Zealand.

So the Government wants to unnecessarily compromise the fundamental working of the Resource Management Act without doing anything positive in those methods to solve the housing crisis. People will not save anything like $30,000 on the cost of a new apartment, nor $15,000 on the cost of a new home. In fact, Nick Smith has not even claimed that they would. In fact little or nothing will be saved, and no more land will be made available than under the existing provisions of the Act, under which social and housing needs are already perfectly adequately accommodated.

So what we are seeing on one level is just more incompetent National Government, willing to compromise the Resource Management Act with no benefit to go with it. On another level we are seeing an elaborate smokescreen—a hoax—to cover the fact that housing has become unaffordable to a very large sector of first-home seekers, because of a failure of Government to actually intervene in the housing market. In actual fact, this Government did absolutely nothing for 5 years while the housing crisis developed.

It reminds me a little bit of the past Argentinian dictator Juan Perón, whose Government built elaborate facades to be filmed and shown to the masses without any actual substance behind them—a very good analogy, I believe.

💬 Stuart Smith: A very boring one though.

This is in sharp contrast to what a New Zealand First Government would do. If anyone wants boring, just look at that member over there. He is the epitome of it.

New Zealand First would ensure not just sound planning but also that the Government was involved directly in the housing market. We would have a State agency to buy land and see that it was appropriately developed, and sections would be sold on concessionary terms. There is a lot more that we would do to make sure that something genuine was done to assist New Zealanders into homes. There is absolutely no excuse for this country to attack the provisions of a well-working piece of legislation, the Resource Management Act. We should improve its processes, but there is no need at all to change the fundamental provisions of the Act.

In a nutshell this Government is simply not doing enough. It waited 5 years, as I have said, before it did anything at all and then it has done too little. Now it wants to put the Resource Management Act up as a straw man to knock down and to use as a smokescreen to pretend that it is doing something about the housing crisis. But the last laugh will be on the Government itself as more and more Kiwis see the magnitude of the Government’s ineptitude over Resource Management Act reform and its utter failure to deal effectively with the housing crisis. Shame on Mr Key. Shame on his Government for even considering that path.

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.

Debate interrupted.