General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. I intend, in my call today, to reflect on New Zealand’s WW100 programme. The centenary of the First World War officially commenced in August last year and is going to be continuing through until 2019. It will commemorate a range of events that are international and national, and that are also community based. There are some 850 community events that have been organised so far, and the details are on the website for WW100, which comes out of my ministry.

One hundred years on, the centenary of the First World War is an immensely significant event. It was really the beginning of the Anzacs—the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps—and the ties that bind New Zealand and Australia were formed at that time. It has been said of both countries that our nationhood is built on the war effort and on the sacrifice of our forebears 100 years ago.

The effect that the First World War had on this country is apparent in very many ways, from our individual family histories to how we see ourselves as a nation and how we are seen by others. The so-called Great War is the cornerstone of our friendship with Australia. Strengthened at Gallipoli, in the Middle East, and on the Western Front, the Anzac bond is a fundamental part of the identity of both of our nations. In the official history of Australia in the Great War, the Australian historian Charles Bean wrote of the diggers—and it equally applies, I feel, to the New Zealand soldiers—that their creed was the miners’ and the bushmen’s: “Stand by your mate”. Cricket games notwithstanding, we have done that ever since. Our partnership, which was forged in adversity, is as strong as it ever was. A hundred years on, the centenary of the First World War is an immensely significant event to all of us.

💬 Hon Members: Why are you reading this?

It is something that we need to take note of, and with some respect, which is not shown currently by the members opposite. When we reflect on the legacy of service and sacrifice and on how that war made an impact on the society we know today, we need to reflect very carefully on the number of New Zealanders that went across to Europe: 100,000 New Zealand men went across to Europe. At the time, that was around 10 percent of our population. We went the farthest and our casualties were high. Our rates were something like 60 percent of those who went. They were wounded, they were killed, they came back, and some of them died as a result of their injuries. More than 18,500 men lost their lives. That is a truly chilling and staggering figure, and I think that as we commemorate the next 4 years, it is a figure that we need to keep in our minds.

The soldiers, though, who returned from the wars did not necessarily tell their stories to their families or to the people whom they knew and loved. They found their experiences far too hard to talk about, and for those people—some of them who could never share their stories—that challenge has been taken up now by some of the commemorative events that are being featured in New Zealand over the next 4 years.

I give you one example: Sir Peter Jackson’s The Great War Exhibition, which is going to be at Wellington’s old Dominion Museum. I have seen a preview of it. It is a truly sensational exhibition and there is much in that to be proud of. It tells the story of the individual men and women—the men who went away to the war, and the women who stayed behind and kept the home fires burning. When you look at these unspoken stories through the theatricality of the Hollywood creative genius of Sir Peter Jackson, we see, essentially, that our nation reveals itself as the men and women who were the way we were, and who are the way we have become.

So we look at the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park in Wellington. That is officially opening on 18 April 2015. I was at the dawn ceremony last week. It is a very special place, and in it there will be a context of what we call the war memorial gardens. The Australian one—it is fitting—is the first of those. We will have the Prime Minister of Australia, along with our Prime Minister, present at the official opening. That will be followed by gardens and memorial tributes from the United Kingdom, from the United States, from Canada, from France, and also from other countries that we are in discussion with. Expect over the next 4 years, and then beyond, that many of the conflicts that our New Zealanders have been involved with over a very long period of time will be commemorated there.

The ceremonies that will take place on 20 April really set the tone for what will happen through an action-packed Anzac week, when people will come from all over the world to stand with us to commemorate our role and our experiences in the war. As the Minister responsible for the World War I commemorations, I have been deeply impressed by the work that has been done at Pukeahu. It is our major commitment to the legacy projects of World War I, but it not our only project. More than $10 million has been spent on the programme—

The member’s time has expired.

It is a privilege to be back, as the member of Parliament for Northland. Five weeks ago the PM said that we would not stand. Then, when we did, he said that we had zero chance of winning. And then some of my media friends said that it was a joke and a stunt—some have had the good grace, of course, to recant since then.

So let us start with an olive branch to Mr Key and the Government. If their Resource Management Act reforms are in the interests of New Zealand’s growth and environment and the hard-working people who make up our brilliant primary industries and the forgotten regions, then we in New Zealand First will give them serious consideration.

The problem is that they have never—not once—had the decency to call us, despite their Michelle Boag’s deplorable attempt on Q+A to say otherwise. So we warn them that if these reforms stoke the Auckland property bubble that is keeping interest rates high, and with it the New Zealand dollar—a dollar that is crucifying our productive sector, being close to parity with the Aussie, at record highs against the euro, at 8-year highs against the yen, and stuck in the high 70c range against the greenback—then, Messrs Key, Smith, et al. We will not, and we cannot, help you.

Last Saturday Northlanders went up to this Government’s flagstaff and chopped it down. In doing so, they sent a message on behalf of Southland, the West Coast, Marlborough, Whanganui, Manawatū, Wairarapa, Hawke’s Bay, Gisborne, the Bay of Plenty, the Waikato, and elsewhere. That message is this: “It’s the economy, stupid.” It is not a two-tiered economy. It is not all about Auckland. New Zealand excels when our regions excel, but if they are treated like second-class citizens despite generating this country’s wealth, they are going to rebel.

Look at Northland’s neglect: the lowest median income in New Zealand; over 778 one-lane bridges; 1,100 kilometres of unsealed roads in Kaipara, with 70 percent of the roads in the far north unsealed, and with the people who complain being threatened by bully-boy National MPs; a rail line that is so bad that it takes almost 5 hours to shift goods south to Auckland; and a place where you can forget 4G because a simple cellphone call is itself a trial.

While billions of dollars are being poured into the commuter rail in Auckland and Wellington, this Government cannot spare $6 million to fix the Napier to Gisborne line, or to join the north line with Marsden Point. What that says about the regions in this Government’s priorities is not lost on them. Although we know about Northland’s bridges, the West Coast has over 49 of them on State highways, and, yes, we will ask the district councils how many are classed as local roads—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Don’t be silly, Winston.

Do not shout here like Maggie Barry did at our meeting in Dargaville, in the Methodist church. She came up. She was shouting. She had to be stopped by the chairman and all the crowds. There she was, like all of the National Party, and I said to her: “Look, Maggie, we can paste you any day in the House. Don’t come up here, where we are loved, and expect to be getting a decent audience.” She got told off by everybody, including the chairperson, and she was driving there in a ministerial car—all a waste of taxpayers’ money.

All these other Ministers and backbenchers were making phone calls and putting up hoardings, and when I saw them putting up hoardings I thought to myself: “You guys are finished.”—you guys are finished. When I see hard-working men like Alfred Ngaro and I see Mr Mark Mitchell from next door putting up hoardings, I know that the National Party has collapsed up north.

Look, we asked the good people there to send a message and, boy, they did. And now we have got the National Party in so many days—just 4 days—later, it cannot remember it.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: What’s the message, Clem?

The message, Gerry, is that it is over time for you. The message, Mr Brownlee, is that they have had enough of your neglect. They have had enough of your arrogance. They have had enough of being forgotten. They have had enough of being marginalised, Cinderella-ised, and forgotten, and those hundreds of thousands of people who have created our wealth, not just in Northland but around this country, are going to make sure they get a fair go in New Zealand’s political and economic future. They cannot wait for the next election, and—you know something—nor can I.

Mr Key was asked all those questions yesterday and today, and it may as well have been—as they say in the information technology industry—vapourware. Our message to rural and provincial New Zealand is this: help is on its way. Help is on its way. I know that the National Party has tens of thousands of members, maybe hundreds of thousands of members, who are now also very pleased to see that we are back.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I deliberately waited to raise this point of order so as not to interrupt the member’s speech.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Can I have the point of order?

The point of order is—and I am looking to you to protect the House and the Opposition—that there is a Standing Order that states that members cannot move from their own seat to another seat to better interject and break up another member’s speech. You sat there and you did not deal with Mr Brownlee.

The member is right. If a member had moved, I had not noticed it, so it may have actually been helpful if the member on this occasion had raised the point of order when it happened. [Interruption] Order! I am still on my feet. I do not think that it in any way disrupted the performance by the Rt Hon Winston Peters. He was enjoying the interjections as much as most of the rest of the House.

I just want to apologise to the Rt Hon Winston Peters for interrupting his speech. I was merely trying to defend myself from the vicious attack I was subjected to!

💬 Mr SPEAKER: We will now return to the debate.

Today is a very, very good day for New Zealand families. There is an increase in the minimum wage, the sixth in a row under this Government, even in straitened times, and this now means that those who are on the minimum wage have $5,700 a year more in their income. Paid parental leave now goes up, and I will be introducing measures to broaden and deepen the well of people who will benefit from paid parental leave from next year. There have been increases in superannuation and veterans’ support payments, as announced by the Minister for Social Development, one of many, many more benefits still to come. The increase in the payment for GP visits for those under 13 will be coming in this year, along with free breakfasts in schools, and warmer, drier homes. This Government cares for New Zealand families.

But I want to touch briefly on the crime statistics that came out this morning. For the fifth year in a row data released today shows that recorded crime has dropped again. If we had continued on the trajectory we were on in 2009, there would have been 100,000 more crimes. That is a reduction of 100,000 victims and their families compared with where we were heading. There has been a 7.8 percent drop in Canterbury and a 9.4 percent drop in Waikato. There are concerning trends around sexual and family violence and it is very hard to discern between an increase in the incidence of reporting and an increase in the incidence of crime. And this is a very poignant backdrop to acknowledging that there are challenges in many ways in respect of that, but I want to acknowledge the New Zealand Police for further reductions in reported crime.

I want to touch today on the spirit of Anzac. The Cricket World Cup has come and gone. The din has died down. The Northland by-election is over, and to the victor the spoils. We are going to go into an adjournment. During that adjournment we are going to have one of this country’s most poignant commemorations—the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings on 25 April 1915. It was my great honour as the then Minister of Veterans’ Affairs in 2014 to attend the 99th anniversary of Anzac Day at Gallipoli. It was a remarkable experience. The Dawn Service, which commenced at around 5 a.m., was against the backdrop of what was exactly the weather on that day 99 years earlier. It was calm. It was sombre. It was completely incongruous to the sort of mayhem that must have faced New Zealand and Australian soldiers as they approached what is now known as Anzac Cove. The incongruous nature is due to the fact that we have been brought up with an image of Anzac Day and the Gallipoli campaign that is from grainy, black and white and sepia photographs of a barren land and emaciated and injured and unwell soldiers dug into the side of mountains. But those who have been to Ҫanakkale in the Gallipoli Peninsula will know it is a beautiful place, a peaceful place, a place where thousands of Australians and New Zealanders lie buried and are looked after and looked over by the Turks, who are now our friends—once our enemy.

We are going to go into a commemoration that does not glorify war, and indeed we should not, but it does acknowledge the tremendous sacrifice that thousands of young men and women, who went and never came home, made for this country. I think we need to stop and reflect on that, and on the theatres of war that are resplendent around this Chamber, and just remember the heavy burden that we have to bear when we make decisions to send our young into harm’s way. Those challenges remain—

💬 Ron Mark: And sometimes you shouldn’t. Sometimes you should say no.

That is right. Let us just remind ourselves that the same number of soldiers who will be deployed in Iraq, to support freedom and to control a heinous threat to New Zealanders here and abroad, died every 3 days on the Gallipoli Peninsula. I think we need to reflect on that and pay an appropriate tribute. I really look forward to the centenary commemorations.

Debate interrupted.