General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. I want to begin by addressing my comments to the member for Wellington Central. It is just about 10 years ago that I came in here, and I always remember having a chat with his predecessor, Marian Hobbs. She said to me: “Look, when you’re in Opposition, it’s a really good time to read and to think.” I took on her very good words of advice, and I did a lot of reading and thinking and mastering of my portfolio responsibilities. But the trouble with the Labour Party, and with Mr Robertson in particular, is that there is no thinking and there is no working. That is a great disappointment from Mr Robertson, who has gone from rising star to elder statesman with no intervening period.

I say this to Mr Robertson: what the Labour Party seems to be saying these days is—these are the broad themes of what those members are thinking about. The first is to look at the future of work, which is great coming from a party that has no work ethic—

💬 Grant Robertson: You used to be so nice.

—I am being nice—and the second thing is that they want to get up a theme that we are neglecting the regions. But the member for Rongotai would know—because she had a very nice statement in The Chatham Islander the other day—what a tremendous Budget it was for the Chatham Islanders, in the farthest part of our Realm. It was a very good article, if I may say so. What we were doing—

💬 Hon Annette King: Did you read the bit that said it was 12 years too late?

I only read the good bits. There is the very substantive effort that been made by this Government in the farthest part of the Realm to do something about its infrastructure, and I personally want to thank the Minister of Finance for his kindness.

The second thing that we heard the other day—and Jonathan Young, the MP for New Plymouth, referred it to me—was this extraordinary article by Labour’s arts spokesperson, Jacinda Ardern, who was in New Plymouth with a group of Labour MPs—

💬 Hon Annette King: It’s “Ja-cinda”, actually—Jacinda.

—Jacinda—and she stood in front of the new Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and she said that this shows why the Government is neglecting the regions and why money needs to be put into regional projects, conveniently overlooking the fact that the Government, through the Regional Museums Fund, had put several millions dollars into that very project. So that was a week’s work for her, and it was a very disappointing week’s work.

I come back to what Marian Hobbs, the former member for Wellington Central—a very nice lady—said to me, and I say it to the Labour Party: there is no substitute for hard work. There is no substitute for knuckling down and thinking through the issues—

💬 Grant Robertson: What about nastiness—is there any substitute for that?

Instead of hurling abuse across the Chamber, Mr Robertson should be at his desk, thinking through the issues from a social democratic point of view, but he is not. Instead, we have the rising star of the left, the Greens’ Mr James Shaw. It is going to be a very interesting tussle in Wellington Central. I am predicting that in 2017 Paul Foster-Bell is going to storm through the middle, because this is—

💬 Grant Robertson: Join in—come along. Run in Wellington Central. Come on, Chris. Run here—run where you live.

Mr Robertson is always wanting to have me stand in Wellington Central.

I compare that do-nothing attitude of the Labour Party with the very positive agenda of this great party because we are building, we are building, we are building. I have been a student of politics since the fourth term of the Holyoake Government and I can honestly say that I have never seen such talent on the backbenches. I have never seen such a vigorous third-term Government, building infrastructure.

I congratulate my colleague Amy Adams. Someone told me the other day that broadband is faster in New Zealand than it is in New South Wales, and the Australians are marvelling at it. We are building law reform, thanks to Amy Adams’ good work.

We are building houses, thanks to Nick Smith. We are rebuilding—

💬 Phil Twyford: Almost nothing. You’ve blown your credibility.

—and all Phil Twyford can do is snipe on the sidelines. We are rebuilding a strong environment, thanks to the work of people like Nick Smith. Look at the Environmental Reporting Bill debate last night. All Labour could do was indulge in pettifoggery and nastiness because the reality of the matter is that that is legislation that will greatly advance our environmental agenda.

We are rebuilding Christchurch. Gerry Brownlee has got many, many fine qualities, but what he is going to be remembered for more than anything else is the work that he has done in rebuilding Christchurch.

As Mrs Thatcher said, I could go on and on and on, but I have to have a meeting on the town belt with Mr Robertson.

There are times when the House has to do a number of things. The first is to not to reduce itself to comic entertainment, such as the last speaker, Christopher Finlayson, did. Secondly, there are times when it is entirely appropriate for this House to put aside the robust cut and thrust, which is the bearpit that this Parliament is, even during the weekly general debate, in order to focus on those things that unite us. This country and this House had that experience just a few years ago with one of the worst workplace accidents we have seen in this country’s history. That was the Pike River disaster. As a consequence of that tragic disaster, the country was united in the need to do better on workplace health and safety. Even within this Parliament, parties united around the need to do better when it came to workplace health and safety.

This Government did the correct thing in assembling a high-powered royal commission of inquiry, which investigated the causes of that accident. It went very widely and it looked at the systemic causes, the regulatory causes, and the things that the Government itself contributed to. It was an honest appraisal and it was a royal commission that came up with some very serious recommendations. This Government did the next important thing and the right thing to do. It drafted legislation and brought to this House a bill that truly reflected the issues raised by the royal commission. It was part of that growing consensus amongst workers, employers, politicians, civil servants, and the entire community that we needed to have something better to protect workers at work.

I sat on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I had the privilege of sitting on the select committee where we received many submissions. Some submitters, however, did not speak to their submissions, such as Talley’s, but then there was a reason for that, possibly—that they were not part of the consensus. Perhaps now they will be. That piece of legislation inched its way forward, and there were contests of ideas. There was push back, but in the end the broad consensus remained—until it went back to the National Party caucus, and then something happened.

Something has happened in the National Party caucus in the last few months. We cannot put our finger on it—and Maurice Williamson sits there rubbing his hands; I am not sure whether with glee or with concern—but something has happened in that National Party caucus. The consensus that has gripped the rest of the country, that once gripped this Parliament, has fallen apart, and we are entitled to know why because there is a very serious issue. There continues to be a very serious issue about our health and safety performance, and we must be able to put longstanding differences aside. The National Party has always seen itself as an ideological warrior for some in the employing class, but it has never seen to have a sense of pragmatism and unity when it comes to workplace issues. It has lost it completely. We must find the way to redraw that consensus, to bring it back together.

It was encouraging last night to see Amy Adams, the Minister of Justice—spoken of so fondly by the Attorney-General just now—come out and say that it is time for a corporate manslaughter law. She said she wanted to see it as part of the Health and Safety Reform Bill. What a pity that it was not in the first reading, in the first draft that came to the House. It would be a pity if it just appears as a Supplementary Order Paper, because it is an issue that ought to have been the subject of public submissions. But what a positive step for a Minister in the National Government to take, until, of course, a few hours later when we saw the response. It was not from us, not from members of the community, and not even from members of the employer community, but from her own National Party colleagues who then started a process of pouring cold water on the idea.

Well, it is time that this National Party in Government understood the importance and the urgency of getting our workplace health and safety performance to improve. What is it with this National Party? Why is it so divided, not just on this issue but on others as well? Why are those members trying to lead a breakdown in the national consensus that we have on such an important topic? What has gone wrong?

Let me be very clear. On this side of the House we stand firm and true for better workplace health and safety and for proper accountability. We must never repeat the situation where directors sit round a board table and just positively ignore their obligations and their responsibilities. Bring that bill back, bring it back unchanged, and give us better health and safety across New Zealand.

I had a very interesting trip yesterday to the Manawatū, Rangītikei, and Whanganui areas to make sure that they were coping reasonably well with the big storm and flood event that occurred. I must say that the devastation in that area is very dramatic. A lot of roads—in particular, in the rural communities—are suffering through slips and road closures, and there is a lot of debris around and a lot of silting.

I went on to one particular farm yesterday in the Whangaehu Valley, and on his hayshed one particular farmer had a flood marking of the water level of the 2004 flood and one of the 2015 flood. There was not too much difference—probably about a 250 millimetre - odd difference between the two water levels.

What is slightly different this time is that this event has occurred in the winter months, and the last event in 2004 occurred in the summer months. So we all know what that means: soils are already waterlogged in the winter, and once they have a significant rain event occurring upstream above Whanganui, of course that water had to go somewhere. So that meant that my officials sought a lot of advice and said to me that this met a medium statutory declaration. As a result of that, $100,000 of extra funding has been made available to supporting the rural support trust.

Also, we are going to have a recovery facilitator on the ground working very closely with the likes of Fonterra, Federated Farmers, Beef and Lamb New Zealand, and other industry groups, and linking closely with the councils because the Government has already indicated that it will provide $250,000 for an enhanced Taskforce Green. These are the people who are going to get out there and help farmers in those rural communities clean a lot of the debris that I saw yesterday off their fences, and stand up some of those boundary fences that have been decimated by this significant flooding event.

Also, if needed, there will be rural assistance payments. What I have often said to the many groups that I have spoken to is that farmers are not interested in a handout. They are actually more interested in knowing that the Government cares in the period of hardship that they find themselves in. This is not a new event for rural communities. They have been through events like this before and, unfortunately, they will go through them again, whether it is droughts, whether it is snowstorms that are occurring in the South Island, or whether it is a very prolonged drought period like that which North Canterbury is having to deal with right now. Fortunately, it had 25 or 30 millilitres of rain this week, so there is some positivity there. The Government is doing what it can, the Minister is on the ground, and officials are helping the councils to get through what is a significant event there.

Also, it is very timely to mention that for our dairy farmers in particular this is a tough time. Not only has the flood impacted on this particular area but prices are very, very volatile. That is why I reached out, with Minister Coleman, and announced $500,000 where both of our ministries are going to be focused on mental health and wellness into rural communities. There are a lot of initiatives out there already, and farmers just need to know who they should turn to. Whether it is Dairy New Zealand, which is running an initiative called Tactics for Tight Times, or whether it is Farmstrong, which is all about “Live well farm well”, it is about rural communities knowing who to turn to in times that are pretty tough for them.

The outlook for the primary industries is extremely bright. The outlook for dairying is very good. Beef is having a record year right now, and the outlook for beef farmers for the next couple of years is strong. Horticulture products are going extremely well. Exports for viticulture—that is, the wine industry—avocados, kiwifruit, and apples are also having a great year. Also, seafood is going pretty well, and there is the ability for it to grow, going into the future as well. Forestry is looking at having some growth as well because of the US housing market recovering, and, of course, there are also big demands on its products here in New Zealand in the Christchurch rebuild and for building more houses in Auckland.

Tonight we are celebrating success in the primary industries, and that is with the Ballance Farm Environment Awards. I salute all of the finalists who are coming to Parliament tonight. I congratulate the winner, and we do not know who that is yet, but I look forward to shaking hands with them and saying what a fantastic job they do of actually looking after the environment sustainably. More consumers around the world are demanding more from our farmers, and tonight we are going to celebrate the success of farmers focused on sustainability and celebrate how they get a premium product into the market and do extremely well, whether it is by planting riparian planting zones excluding cattle from waterways—and cattle are now excluded from about 96 percent of waterways under dairy farms. That needs to be acknowledged.

Our farmers have come a long way and they have challenges in front of them, but we should celebrate the success of our farmers tonight and say what a fantastic job they do. I invite everyone to get involved—

The member’s time has expired.

New Zealand is facing what may well be an unprecedented attack on State and social services. Just this past weekend we found out from the Minister for Social Development that she is open to considering Serco and, we must assume, other transnational corporations to provide community care for our most vulnerable children and young people, as well as victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Serco is the company that is running Mt Eden prison, which has the highest inmate-on-inmate violence in the country, according to a recent UN report; Serco, in early audits, was found to have failed to reach 40 percent of its targets. But this is not an isolated announcement. This is part of a pattern of the implementation of an ideology of this Government.

Last week we found out that the Government is looking at using people accessing mental health services as a cash cow for its mates in the form of social bonds, a model where businesses are encouraged to invest in the provision of something that we used to consider a core function of Government—a role, a service, for some of the most vulnerable people in this country. To be able to turn this into an opportunity for profit for a business is this Government’s agenda. Only 2 weeks ago we saw the largest counselling provider in this country close its doors because of funding pressures—after having been required to cut $4.5 million from its operating budget. This is a service that had existed since World War II. Relationships Aotearoa has been quite blithely criticised by this Government, without being given a chance to be able to stand up and defend its good name. And I must say that what I heard in the community was roundly positive about that organisation. But, no, that is not what the Government said. It has just been happy to see it close.

These three cases are just part of another stage of a significant attack on services. We have seen Child, Youth and Family operating under a differential response model for a while, where two-thirds of notifications for Child, Youth and Family are put out to community organisations, community organisations that are struggling to survive, organisations whose staff members have not had a pay rise in 6 years, who are saying that their skills are undervalued and they are struggling to cope with the massive increase in complexity of the cases that they see—children like we have seen in front of the courts in Auckland this week—because the Government is reducing its role in providing these essential social services. We have also now seen a review of Child, Youth and Family. Rather than having a response to the reports that are telling us it has been underfunded and understaffed for a long time, we have a review happening, headed by Paula Rebstock.

We have seen functions of Work and Income also contracted out to the community and businesses, which are no longer under the same level of democratic scrutiny. We cannot see what is going on, and it is much harder to get the stories from those communities in order to be able to hold the Government to account. And now we hear the Government’s Better Public Services model is going to be applied on to our community sector. Whereas before the community used to identify its needs, do its research, come together as people, and provide the best responses, now the Government is going to be reducing its funded work down to this Government’s political goals, not the democratic political needs of that community.

This is part of the sale of State houses into the community, the privatisation of prisons, ACC contracts going to businesses, Australian insurance companies picking up services for specialist sexual violence services, charter schools—the list goes on. This is a comprehensive, unprecedented attack on the role of the State and the undermining of our communities. It is something that this country should be very, very wary of. We are being told it is all about better services, but this is the most significant and pernicious political agenda we have seen in decades.

If ever there was a party mired in ideological claptrap, it would be the New Zealand Green Party. I will look forward to refuting the prophecy of doom that we have just had from Jan Logie. But before I do so, could I just put on record my endorsement of the words of the Hon Nathan Guy for the victims of the recent flooding in Whanganui, Rangitīkei, and surrounding districts, and also note that the people of Dunedin South went through a similar experience just a few weeks ago. It has been a difficult time for all of them. We send them best wishes and, though it may not seem like it just now, I am sure that there will be better times ahead.

This is, as we said in the Budget just a few weeks ago, a Government that is sticking to a plan that is working. What I want to suggest to the House today is that there is a fundamental difference between National and our support parties on this side of the House and Labour and its allies on the other side. The fundamental difference is this: Labour believes that the success of a Government is measured by how much money it takes from the taxpayers and then splashes around—the more the merrier—without ever worrying about the results of that expenditure. National, on the other hand, says that taxpayers’ money is hard-earned, much of it by people on low incomes. Therefore, we must never take a dollar more than we can justify, and every dollar that we spend has to be spent with the best possible impact, with the best possible evidence behind it. That is where I come back to the point that Ms Logie was making before. This is a Government that is firmly focused on looking at the evidence of how the money is spent, and finding better ways of spending it. We have made a priority for the last 7 years the delivery of Better Public Services, and across the board it is working—across the board it is working. Better Public Services does not automatically mean more expensive services; it means delivering value for taxpayer investment and constantly looking for ways to improve.

At the end of the Budget debate the Minister of Finance made a comment about the Labour Opposition that I think bears repeating. He said: “This lazy Labour Party, this uninspiring Labour Party, this Labour Party that sucks hope from those who need it most has been waiting around to be able to say: ‘The nasty Tories cut everything. Vote for us; we’re kind and caring.’ ” Well, it has not happened. We have not been cutting. We have certainly been pruning in certain areas in order to ensure reprioritising in ways where the expenditure will work better, and the results are there in crime, health, education, and welfare, right across the board, showing that it is working. This is a Government that has been firmly focused on striking the right balance between responsible management of the economy, managing a growth phase in the economy—and does the international community not look at it and say “Well done, New Zealand.”; all the commentators say that—while keeping our own expenditure under control. Remember that Labour saw expenditure go up like this. It went out of office saying “We’ve spent the lot. You guys have got a decade of deficits to look forward to. Good luck—make good with that.”

Well, we said that that was not good enough, and that we would get things back under control much faster than that, and we are. But we also said that we would do it while protecting the most vulnerable New Zealanders. Of course this was all before the global financial crisis, all before the Canterbury earthquakes—nobody could have seen just how bad things were going to be—and yet, in New Zealand, here we are with a record that all the economic commentators and all the international observers say is the model to follow. The Labour Party members, of course, have got no answer to that. They say no a lot of the time, but they do not like saying “Well, let’s look at what National has been doing that’s working so well and see whether we can adopt some of it.” They just have not got the wit to admit that.

We are, without doubt, looking at further and further improvements. As Chris Finlayson mentioned earlier on, what a talented team National has, because right across the board the Ministers, and snapping at their heels are a group of people on the backbench, focused on delivering things that matter for New Zealand—not little, ideological claptrap - type things, but they are really getting down and saying this could be done better. That is why the Community Investment Strategy is so worthwhile looking at hard. I wish that Ms Logie would take her blinkers off and say: “We can do things better.”—and the Government will do better. One final point that I want to leave with the House is that it is worth noting right across the land that the total annual cost of initiatives in the Government’s last six Budgets has been an extra $2.9 billion. It is a lot of money but it has been manageable and it has been measured. In comparison the extra cost in the last six Budgets of the Labour Government totalled $20 billion. That is unsustainable. Ours is the plan that is working.

I want to join with other speakers in acknowledging the hardship that the people of Wanganui and the South Taranaki are going through at the moment in recovering from the devastating floods. It is quite clear for many people in those areas that this will be a long road back, and they deserve the support of everybody in this House. It was pleasing to see the Minister of Civil Defence and the Minister for Primary Industries showing up in those regions in recent days. In the community that I grew up in, down in south Dunedin, people were not feeling quite so much love from some of the authorities there. I think—I hope, certainly—that some lessons have been learnt there, as they should have been from the Northland floods last year, when an awful lot was promised but not a lot was delivered. So I do hope the Government will apply its largesse evenly across those who have been affected.

When I look at the floods that have affected the people in south Dunedin, it gives me cause for thought to reflect on my upbringing in that community. South Dunedin has never been a particularly wealthy community. It has got a lot of elderly people; it has got a lot of low-income families. But when I grew up there I got a fantastic start in life. I went to some great schools. I lived in a community that was tight-knit. There was not a huge amount of money around, but all of us growing up there felt that we had the same opportunities living in St Kilda as someone who was living in St Heliers. There was nothing that held me back in terms of achieving what I wanted to growing up in that community. I ask myself today whether that is still the case in New Zealand today—that it does not matter where you grow up, that you will still get the opportunities to succeed and achieve your potential.

I would say for Emma-Lita Bourne that was most definitely not the case. She did not start her life in a situation where she had the same opportunities as somebody else to achieve her potential. Her life was ended so tragically early in large part, as the coroner has told us, because of the house that she was growing up in. I look at the case of Bonnie and William Moa and their family in South Auckland and I ask whether they are getting the same opportunities as I got when I was growing up in south Dunedin, when they live in a home that they have had to describe to the public as covered in faeces, graffiti, and mouldy and rotten floorboards. I look at the opportunities for Melissa Nganu and her family, where she has had to move her children out of a rodent-infested house with mice faeces and rotting floorboards through which the mice get in. I ask whether her family is getting the same opportunities as other New Zealanders, as we pride ourselves on in New Zealand, and the answer is that they are not.

We are told by members opposite that this is compassionate conservatism. Well, I would hate to see the hard edge of conservatism, when people are being made sick and are dying because of the homes they are living in. Then we have Nick Smith, the Minister for Building and Housing, whose response to this was to say that people dying of pneumonia and other illnesses is not new. That is not an acceptable response from this House. It is not an acceptable response from a Minister who claims to be part of a so-called compassionate Government. There is nothing compassionate about people growing up in houses that make them sick and that they die from.

I watched on the news the other night a story in the Good Sorts section of the Television One news. It was about a lovely man in Kāwhia who was giving technology to the schools there—a decile 1 school. I thought what a fantastic thing it was for that man to do.

💬 Chris Bishop: What a good guy.

But by the same token, Mr Bishop, how is it that we now come to rely on the charity of one man to make sure that kids in a decile 1 school are getting the same opportunities as kids in a decile 10 school? That is what this country has come to under the National Government.

We need to focus as a country on giving everybody the opportunity for success. Every New Zealander deserves to grow up in a warm, dry home. Every New Zealander deserves to be part of a school that has got the technology and resources that will unlock their potential. Every New Zealander deserves to be able to get a job where they are paid well and where they can support their family. The Labour Party’s focus is on giving every New Zealander a fair shot at success—a life where your success is not based on your parents’ wealth but on how we as a community can support all New Zealanders to achieve their potential. That is the focus of the Labour Party, whether you grow up in St Kilda or St Heliers or South Auckland. Every New Zealander deserves the same chance. They are not getting it from this Government.

Listening to that member, Grant Robertson, the current member for Wellington Central, and hearing the advice from the Hon Marian Hobbs, a predecessor of that member, that the Attorney-General gave earlier in this debate—that when in Opposition, you should use that time to be thinking and investing in policy and hard work: doing the thinking and the hard work—clearly, that is not occurring from either that member or members of his caucus. Here they are, 7½ years into Opposition, and there is not a new idea amongst them—no thinking, no new ideas, and certainly no new work.

The speech just completed by Grant Robertson was a good classic example of how bad the situation is within the Labour Party. It is bereft of ideas, bereft of new thought, bereft of good thinking, and bereft of any sense of wanting to do the hard work that should be done in Opposition in preparation for returning, eventually, to the Government benches. Looking at its efforts so far, 7½ years into its term in Opposition, it is clearly nowhere close to being ready for Government. It is a party that says no. It is the party of “no”. It says no to everything. It has no new ideas, no new vision, and it is a party of no change. About the only thing that it changes is its leader, and it does that with monotonous regularity. There is a very high chance, in my view, that it will change its leader again before we go to the polls in 2017, because the performance of its leader this afternoon would have left the Labour members feeling very concerned indeed about the coming election in 2017.

A party that has recently changed its leader—or, indeed, half of its leadership—is the Green Party. This is the first opportunity I have had to congratulate James Shaw, who was another candidate for the Wellington Central seat, along with Mr Robertson and my good friend and colleague Paul Foster-Bell. James Shaw has now become the co-leader of the Greens, and one would have you think that all is happiness—that the morris dancing is being danced with vigour and the singing of “Kumbaya” is all happy and loud. But, actually, we know that it is not, because it was a tightly fought contest—it was a tightly fought contest. The protagonists all said that it was a tightly fought contest. Actually, I have to say that most pundits expected the hard-working and diligent Kevin Hague to win that election, and that he did not was cause for considerable surprise amongst the political commentariat. I think that those who follow politics were genuinely surprised that James Shaw came through in the end.

The Greens have a system of electing their co-leader whereby each of their branches elects a delegate and the delegates then go and vote by secret ballot at their AGM, and a winner emerges. I know that all is not well in the Green Party when members—active members; members of longstanding in the Coromandel Green organisation—go out of their way to come and tell me how unhappy they are with the decision that was made and how disappointed they are. I suspect their concerns are about how that process of voting actually took place and occurred, because the news that is reaching me is that, clearly, some of those branch delegates did not vote in the secret ballot according to the directions of their branches. That would account for the surprise result that occurred in terms of the co-leadership of the Greens. I am not one to get too concerned about the internal machinations and the democracy of the Green Party, but it strikes me as fundamental that if the branches give to their delegates a direction on how to vote and then those delegates do not vote as they have been instructed, then that causes great concern amongst the rank and file of the Green Party.

We on this side of the House are part of a Government that has a plan that is working, and, unlike members of the Opposition in both the Labour Party and the Green Party, we have a functional leadership. We have a functioning, organised caucus. We have new ideas and new plans, and the plan is working.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we set out to deceive. Yesterday in this House we heard the Minister in charge of Māori Television stumble over undoubtedly well-rehearsed and closely scripted lines. Then there was some inadvertent honesty after a litany of denials blaming everyone but himself. That honesty lasted just as long as Mr Flavell or his staff realised they had made a big mistake and they cack-handedly sought to falsify the Hansard record.

He said yesterday, on the issue of his awareness of staff involvement, the following—and I quote him—“of which I was aware,”. Yesterday’s video of Parliament clearly has him saying that, but in last night’s Hansard, all of a sudden, the word “not” was put before the word “aware,” so that in the Hansard last night it reads “of which I was not aware,”. Yesterday Mr Flavell uttered the truth, before a cover-up that must not be allowed to succeed. Now the word “not”—you would not believe it—is back out of the Hansard. What on earth is going on with the leading institution of this country when it is claimed that the Hansard people put the word “not” in there? Who would do that?

When you saw the video or you heard what was said, there is no way there could have been a mistake. He tried to change the record, but in doing so he more deeply implicated himself because what he denied before the Māori Affairs Committee on 17 June in the afternoon in Parliament, then this week in Parliament, and again today was caught out by his Hansard record—now corrected—which reads “of which I was aware,”. And how can a Minister get by making denial after denial when it was said by the Prime Minister: “I’m a Prime Minister who believes in standards—high standards.” Well, these standards are so low you could parachute out of the bottom of a snake and have room to spare. Over and over it goes on.

I want to say to the National-led Government, and more particularly to the Māori Party and Māori members over there, that we will never have equality in this country if substandard performance and second-class standards is the benchmark for Māori politicians. We will never have equality if that is what is accepted by your European colleagues in the National Government. It is inverse racism of the worst sort. The last thing that any Māori wants is this paternalistic treatment that says: “Well, he’s a Māori Minister; we don’t expect better.”

Well, we in New Zealand First do expect better. We have always opposed Whānau Ora. The only party in this Parliament that has opposed Whānau Ora because of its corruption is New Zealand First. But the Minister sought, and his staff sought, to interfere and break the law and to spike—stop—a debate because he did not want to face New Zealand First. That is enough for the Minister to go, but the denials over and over and over again, and the circus we saw in the House today on points of order about that Hansard change, tell us that he should go. I regret saying that—

💬 Tim Macindoe: No, you don’t.

I do regret saying that. I know him better than you do. I know him far better than that member over there does, but I am sick of those members over there telling me they believe in equality. They are telling me they believe in one law for all, but when it comes to standards and performance and accountability, they clearly do not. Again, I say that that Minister, in the interests of Māoridom’s integrity, let alone that of this country and of this Parliament, should resign.

You know, Marama Fox got involved within hours of the programme being shut down to try to convince Mihi Forbes that the Māori Party was not involved. Why would she do that?

Do not forget that on 22 June, 2 days after the shutdown, you had the chief executive officer for Māori Television—namely, this man, Paora Maxwell—saying that content was discussed. The Minister kept denying it. What is this photograph here about? Well, this is a photograph of him being taken on to the marae to welcome him as the new chief executive officer of Māori Television. What is fascinating about that is this: when this event happened, Te Ururoa Flavell was not the Minister in charge of Māori Television. He did not get that job until 8 months later. So the question is: are the allegations true that Māori Party interference in Māori Television was happening a long way back and that it is happening still? The answer is palpably, demonstrably yes. Mr Te Ururoa Flavell should be resigning.

I again thank the whips for giving me another slot for the drive-time audience of Auckland. In fact, I almost feel I should be like Selena on breakfast TV and have my iPad out and take you through a traffic forecast for Auckland. But I am not going to do that.

What I am going to do today is give a little lesson to the Labour Party members. It is a genuine lesson. It is not going to be rude. It is not going to be nasty. I want them to listen carefully. I am going to throw a bit of mathematics in it. For example, I am going to talk about monotonic functions. Most people do not know—they think monotone is a dreary, dull speaker—that a monotonic function is a graph that heads in one direction and keeps doing it. Here is my lesson. I have gone back and I have looked at the two main parties, Labour and National, right back into the 1930s, and I have looked at general elections and what has happened when there has been a change of Government. We know there is a famous statement here that Oppositions do not win elections; Governments lose them. In fact, all you need to do—and I suggest to people on the other side that they get their research people to do it—is to draw these graphs, because it is just so factual it is not funny. Every time there has been a general election in the past that changed the Government, from that point on the Government’s support has started to drop, and the Opposition party started to grow in a monotonic fashion—that is, a general increase.

So we go back through history. Take 1975, when Rob Muldoon won. By 1978 National had dropped dramatically. By 1981 it just got there by about one seat from the Springbok tour. Three years after 1981, by 1984, there was a complete and absolute clean-out. Why am I telling the Labour Party members all this? I am telling them this because what has happened now is that history has somehow changed the political landscape.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Tell us about 2002. Bill English—22 percent.

It is no good for Mr Mallard to keep yelling and screaming about this. He really should listen, because he just needs to look at the graphs. This is not the National Party’s view. This is not whether the Labour Party thinks this is a great Government or not. This is what the public think of the performance of their politicians. Once the John Key - led Government had won the election in 2008 what should have happened after that—actually, I hear Mr Mallard say: “Tell us about 2002.” Actually, Labour dropped in 2002 from what it had got in 1999. Yes, there was a huge aberration. For the first time in the history of the country an Opposition party—National—went down in 2002. It is the only time in the history of the graphs that that has happened.

But let us come back to the last 3 years, because this is where it gets interesting. This is where it gets frightening for the Labour Party. After the 2008 win by the John Key - led Government, Labour should have expected its poor performance, reflected in 2008, to start lifting and by 2011 be within sort of striking distance, and certainly by 2014 to be right knocking on the door and if it does not make it, well, you know, it is a little bit like the Brash-led party of 2005 when it did not quite make it but on the night you could not tell. But that is not what has happened—that is not what has happened. My lesson to the Labour Party today is that you should be very, very afraid of what is going on, because you are not making any traction in the polls. You can get up and blame this Government and say that we are useless and we are hopeless and so on. I do not mind you doing that. But why are the public not responding to the Labour Party, as they normally would in Opposition? Labour members say: “We’re coming back; we’re coming back.”. They are not. They have got very limited time. Elections are not won in the last 6 months of the 3-year period. You cannot do it. The history of it is that unless you have got yourself well back in the polls, you cannot do it.

My lesson to Labour members is that they need to really scurry around fast and say—the polling is showing it. Our polling is showing it—I am sure they are doing the same sort of polling—and the general polls are showing it: Labour is actually lower in the polls now than it was 3 years ago or 6 years ago. The Labour leader is lower in the polls than previous other leaders, before Cunliffe and so on. So they have got a limited time frame. Instead of carping on about what a useless Government we are or how the National Party is not building enough houses, Labour members should go back to first principles and say: “What is it we need to do to turn these polls round?”. If they do not, they are guaranteed a fourth term in Opposition, and right now, the way they are polling, that is exactly where they are destined.

Referring to the fact that Mr Williamson said Labour cannot do it, I just want to say: “Watch this space, Mr Williamson. Watch this space.” We can, and we will, Mr Williamson. Let us see what happens in 2017. We have listened to a few National Party speeches today. We had Tim Macindoe telling us that the Government is sticking to a plan that works—the Government is sticking to a plan that works. Well, if the plan is to sell out New Zealand, then it is doing a good job of it. If the plan is to sell out the most vulnerable New Zealanders, then the Government is doing a good job of it. Mr Macindoe said that good public services do not necessarily mean expensive public services. Well, actually, $140,000 for a TV screen at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Mr Macindoe, is expensive in our minds. At least, Mr Macindoe, on this side of the House we want to put taxpayers’ money into people, not into $140,000 TV screens, not into $74,000 reception desks, and not into $1,000 seats for people to sit on. We want to put our public money into the New Zealand public.

We listened to Scott Simpson saying that Labour likes to talk about “no”—that the word on this side of the House is “no”. They think that we are “no, no, no” to good ideas. But let us reflect on what National has said no to over the 7 years that it has been Government. When National first got in, it said no to apprenticeships: “We can take money out of that. We don’t need that.” Then what happened? We had an earthquake, and we did not have the expertise here. The Government had to ship it in. The Government said no to things like healthy food in our schools. One of the first things that the Government did was cut the policy of healthy food in our schools, and now we see the Government struggling with the issue that we have with obesity and our children. Why did the Government remove that policy? We see the Government saying no to building houses in Auckland. There is a demand for housing in Auckland, and that Government says no to new houses.

That side of the House has said no to healthy homes. We put up a healthy homes bill, and the Government said no to it. The Government does not care about the health and well-being of New Zealanders, even when we have instances like the one we had recently where a small child died because of the fact that she was living in an unhealthy home.

The Government said no to extending paid parental leave. The Government said no to the paid parental leave bill that my colleague Sue Moroney put up.

A few years ago the Government said no to adult community education. It cut all the funding to adult community education, which for many people was their first step back into the education system.

The Government said no to the training incentive allowance, not wanting to support sole parents to be able to increase their earning capacity—to increase their chances of getting a better-qualified, higher-paying job.

The Government recently said no to KiwiSaver, thereby denying children who enter into the scheme the $1,000 incentive. The Government says that we are the party of “no”, but its track record says that it is the party of “no”.

I think the whole country should be concerned about the things that the Government has said yes to. It has said yes to foreign property speculators being able to buy our houses. Here we are with a housing market that it is difficult for New Zealand families to get into, and the Government still allows non-residents, non-citizens, to come here and buy our New Zealand houses, thereby driving the prices up and making it impossible for families to be able to get into their own home. The Government said yes to experimenting with our most vulnerable New Zealanders. The Government is now looking at introducing social impact bonds, when there has been no research done here that qualifies or justifies the Government being able to implement them. The Government said yes to selling out our social services to big multinational corporations. On Sunday we had the Minister for Social Development on Q+A confirming that she would contemplate the idea of selling out our social services to a company like Serco, which has an international reputation such that no New Zealander would be happy about handing their social services over to it.

What else has the Government said yes to? It has said yes to the Conservative Party, despite the fact that the whole board walked out on that party. The Government has said yes to asset sales. That was not a very good economic strategy. The Government has said yes to Rio Tinto. The Government has said yes to Nick Smith, even. We have got all the evidence in the world to suggest that he is not doing a good job. The Government still says yes, and we have the Prime Minister saying that Nick Smith is outstanding. We might be saying no to some of what the National Party is suggesting, but we are justified in saying no to what it is doing. The Government is not justified in what it has said no to over the past 7 years.

That speech has definitely proved that it is that side that is the “no” party. This side believes in yes. It is under this National Government, under the leadership of the Rt Hon John Key, that our economy is growing, wages are rising, there are more jobs out there, inflation is negligible, and interest rates are staying lower for longer. This shows that our plan is working and that we are sticking to a plan that is working.

This National Government is a very efficient and fair Government. For example, our tax system is fair to all. We believe in a low-rate tax system that responds to our needs in a planned manner. We believe in rewarding people for their hard work, not punishing people for their hard work. We believe in low compliance and administrative costs. It is this National Government that is working hard to minimise tax avoidance and evasion opportunities. Since 2008 it is this National Government that has given a reduction in the personal tax rate and a reduction in the company tax rate, and it is this National Government that has just announced firm rules around property taxes.

This has been possible because we have a plan that is working. We want to keep our taxes to the minimum, and that is why we rejected Labour’s capital gains tax idea. Yes, we rejected the capital gains tax idea, which was Labour’s idea. This is with the target of getting our net debt below 20 percent of GDP by 2020—net debt below 20 percent of GDP by 2020. This is without putting any extra burden on taxpayers. Again, this has been possible because we have a plan that is working.

It is under this National Government that the number of people who are under the age of 20 and who are not in any employment and who are not in any training or education is the lowest since 2004. Yes, the lowest since 2004. Is it not a great achievement of this National Government? Yes, it is a great achievement of this National Government. This National Government is working hard to reduce welfare dependency. We are working hard to uplift skills in our people. We are working hard to reduce crime, and we are working hard to improve interaction with Government. By working in these areas, we are getting better outcomes for our people.

When you talk to people, what do they want? They want, firstly, good educations for their children, and they are getting that under this National Government. They want jobs. Yes, they are getting jobs, because there are more jobs being created under this National Government. And the next thing they want is to be safe, and that is another great achievement of this National Government, because under this National Government crime is the lowest since 1978. Yes, and this has been possible because this National Government is hard on crime. This National Government is hard on criminals. We have more cops on roads. Yes, we have more cops on roads because we have provided them with modern-day technology: smartphones and tablets. So instead of sitting in their offices, they are on roads. Each cop is saving 30 minutes of their office time, and that equals 354 additional cops on roads. That equals half a million hours of cops on roads New Zealand - wide per annum, and that is how we have the lowest crime since 1978 under this National Government.

Our justice system is focused on the rights of victims. New Zealand families deserve to feel safe in their homes and communities, and our strategy is working. Our approach is working. Our plan is working, and that is why, in Budget 2015, $218.6 million was allocated to do that, and $40 million was allocated to improve services and efficiencies in targeted areas in justice and courts. By investing in these agencies, we are getting better outcomes for New Zealand families.

Our money that is allocated for the Serious Fraud Office shows that we are really serious about our international reputation, because New Zealand is known as a safe place to do business and invest. This National Government takes any kind of misuse very seriously. This National Government has already saved $60 million of taxpayers’ money since we started the national benefit fraud reform initiative over 2 years ago. Yes, $60 million of taxpayers’ money was saved by this National Government. There are 9,500 people off benefits, because they were on because of benefit fraud. They are off benefits. There are 9,500 people off benefits. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to finish, certainly, the debate from this side of the House. As I start, I would like to acknowledge Norm Berryman and his passing, and pay my respects to him. I played club rugby with Norm Berryman in the far north, and he will be sorely missed amongst the people in the north. Our prayers and our thoughts are with him and his family. Norm Berryman was able to slice through the middle of some of the best rugby teams in the world. He was able to pick out some of the smallest gaps and exploit their weaknesses. You do not need such a keen eye as Norm Berryman’s to find the weaknesses in this current Government.

What we are seeing from this Government is confusion. The campaign picture of all rowing in the same direction is but a distant memory. Housing—let us take housing, for example. We have two Ministers in particular engaging in what seems like an icy cold stare. That icy cold stare is around the right of first refusal. It seems to me that what this Government is doing is trampling on the integrity and the so-called good faith that was entered into with the iwi of Tāmaki-makau-rau in making sure that they have the right of first refusal on land to allow them to develop it for the well-being of their people. You do not need to look too far to know that it is probably strategic that Minister Smith is behind Minister Finlayson, so that they are not able to engage further in that long, cold, icy stare.

You throw into the mix, into that whole right of first refusal, the Māori Party—the Māori Party, which since getting into bed with the National Government has claimed that “We are at the table; we are able to influence these decisions.” Well, what happened when the right of first refusal came around? All those members could say was: “Well, we’ve written a letter to the Prime Minister.” What happened to this solid relationship that they claim out in our regions? What happened to this “We are getting the benefits for our people.”? What it showed me is that they, just like anyone on this side of the House, only have the power to write a letter to the Prime Minister. And what has been the answer? Silence—exactly.

I want to talk a little bit about poverty, too. Just not long ago, all this Government talked about was how it was focusing on poverty, how it was pouring all of this money into identifying what poverty is and how it was going to fix it. Well, at the moment, just like the previous question I just asked, what is the answer, and what is it doing now? Nothing. It slipped entirely off the radar. The Government has forgotten about poverty. It has forgotten about the regions. Why? Because it does not know how to invest in them. It does not know how to solve these issues.

To some of the more positive economic things—tourism. Just before I came down here, I was in my office with the chief executive of Tourism New Zealand, who was giving me a great conversation and a great presentation about how well tourism is doing. So then why, when members of this Government attended particular seminars and conferences with the tourism industry, which clearly said to them: “We do not want a tax for people who are coming in and out of this country.”—what did this Government do? It turned its back on that industry. It was a complete surprise, in the Budget announcement, to the tourism—

💬 Hon Annette King: They deceived them.

They deceived them. It was a complete surprise to the tourism industry when that announcement was made during the Budget. In fact, I have received numerous complaints about this Government not listening to the tourism industry. It is such a valuable industry in this country, and this Government turns its back on it. This is not a Government with a plan, or a future, or a hope. I have already mentioned the campaign picture of rowing in one direction. Well, it looks like not everybody is wearing a blue T-shirt. In this case, they are all rowing the wrong way.

Finally, we talk about the holes and the party falling apart. If there is one thing that sticks together in this party—I am reminded of a dag on the rear end of a sheep. We know just how sticky that can be, and just how unified that can be, but we know just how important sheep are to this particular Government. A little bit of sand might be able to help with those dags on the back of a sheep. We hope that this Government actually wakes up to its own arrogance, but it is a little bit difficult when all you do is talk to yourselves about all the important matters facing New Zealand.

Finally, we here on this side of the House have a positive look for the future. We are looking with aspiration for the future of New Zealand. Māori Television will see better days. Housing will see better days. Tēnā koe.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.