Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

I move, That this House express its confidence in the National-led Government and commend its programme for 2016 as set out in the Prime Minister’s statement to Parliament.

Mr Speaker, is it not great to be back? I hope that you had a good holiday and members did, and what a wonderful time it was for New Zealand. What a great display of cricket yesterday afternoon by Brendon McCullum in the Chappell-Hadlee series. New Zealand up against Australia one more time under a National-led Government—what a wonderful result. And, of course, the Sevens—a tremendous result by the Kiwis, not only just here in Wellington but in Sydney; the Warriors, of course, at the final; and then Lydia Ko back in New Zealand on Friday to defend her New Zealand Women’s Open title.

But it is not just sport that has the country in good heart; so it is in so many other economic forums. We had a record number of tourists come to New Zealand this year—3.15 million tourists came to New Zealand to enjoy our country. No wonder they are coming, because many of them are coming to live here as well. They can see New Zealand is a great place to live under the policies of a National-led Government. We are seeing more carriers flying direct to New Zealand. Emirates has decided that it is not enough to fly all those times through just Australia to New Zealand, but it is coming direct to Auckland. Of course, Air New Zealand is doing tremendously well, bringing people from the United States through its new Houston leg and through Buenos Aires in Latin America.

Let us just look around and see what is happening in the data that we see in the early part of the year. The ANZ business confidence survey saw confidence rise to an 8-month high, with a net 23 percent of firms being confident. When it came to consumer confidence, we saw record sales over Christmas, and the ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence survey had us up at 121.4—a very strong result for consumer confidence. For manufacturing activity the December business numbers were stronger than in any other month in March of 2015, and the BNZ-BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index saw the fastest rate of expansion since October 2014. In fact, when one looks at the BNZ - Business New Zealand Performance of Manufacturing Index and the expansion of manufacturing, this has gone up every single month since the moment Labour declared there was a crisis—38 consecutive months in a row. And was that not great?

Of course, when it comes to business optimism, look no further than the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, which said: “What a great result. What’s happening out there? Very strong—people looking to hire.”—and hired they were. Last week we were greeted with a new unemployment rate here in New Zealand: a dramatic fall to 5.3 percent. That is a very strong performance. We have the third-highest employment rate in the OECD, we have very strong results of growth for young people, and, of course, wages are rising faster than inflation. That was greeted with absolute joy by New Zealanders, with one exception—one exception. It was a great annoyance to the Labour Party and, in particular, to Grant Robertson, the doom merchant when it comes to employment.

Grant Robertson is worried about a robot taking his job. A cynic could say: “Too late, one already did.”—the job he wanted—but, never fear, he has got his people working with every editor of every women’s mag around the country, getting Jacinda Ardern nicely positioned on the front of all of those, just waiting. Grant is so worried about work he decided that when Parliament packed up he would go off to Paris to the OECD to learn about work and the future of work. He is going to base his commission that he is setting up on that. Here is how it went. It started at 10.30, a nice little break of an hour and 45 minutes for lunch, then a quick 20 minutes for afternoon tea, all done and dusted by 6 o’clock, and an hour and a half for cocktails. That is the future of work under the Labour Party. Job done—it was a big day!

Of course the big issue—the big issue—is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. What a tremendous trade deal this is for New Zealand. What a tremendous trade deal: 93 percent elimination in tariffs, 40 percent of our markets covered, 800 million middle-income consumers, $2.7 billion of value to New Zealand. So it had, the TPP, significance for the members of the Labour Party. Do any of us know why? Well, when we think “TPP”, we think Trans-Pacific Partnership; they think “Two-position Party”—that is what “TPP” says to them. That is because when it comes to David Shearer, he rightfully said to the New Zealand Herald—this is before he got a good spanking from the leader—“I’ll be voting for it. There’s no change there. Nothing’s changed my mind, and the national interest analysis—fantastic.”

Phil Goff is definitely voting for it, because it is, to quote Phil, the same as the China free-trade agreement that was signed under Labour. Helen Clark is a tremendous supporter of the TPP agreement. In fact, every Labour leader in the last 20 years supports the agreement except the current one. Well—that, actually, is a bit debatable.

So when you look at Andrew Little’s positions—and, granted, he has had more positions than the Labour Party has had leaders in the last 5 years—he says he hates the TPP agreement. He hates it. He got asked a pretty simple question by Mark Sainsbury: “Will you withdraw New Zealand from the TPP?”. Do you know what his answer was? “We won’t.” He is going to kick up bobsy-die, but no, no, he will not. So then they asked him: “Will you vote against it?”—a pretty simple question. He went: “Yeah, well, we already said—aah—if there—yeah—er—aah—if this legislation—aah.” He said: “We don’t get to vote on TPP.” What about pulling out? That, apparently, is incredibly difficult to do, even though the text, of which he has read 500 of the 6,000 pages, says you can just do it by simply putting in notification for 6 months. When he was asked “Why won’t you pull out of TPP?”—this was my particular favourite for the summer—he said: “Because we’re the free-trade party.” Yeah, right—“We’re the free-trade party.”

So when you look at his opposition it seems to be around sovereignty. So what he thinks is the problem is that other people, other corporations, other Governments can come to New Zealand and they can put a submission in against our law. That is apparently the problem. Here is a little technical issue. The first issue is, quite right, they can do that. In fact, anybody is free to come to New Zealand and put in a submission to our select committees. It is called open and transparent government. But what did Andrew Little do at the end of last year? I know—he rushed off to Australia to go and put a submission in against its legislation, and last night he was telling me to give David Cameron a ring, so I could put in a submission about his legislation. So he has got a massive problem with everybody else doing it—except himself.

So let us just go through one or two of the myths of the TPP. Sovereignty, I think you will all agree, we have covered off. Anyone is free to come and put in a submission about New Zealand, but this Parliament determines its law—and this Parliament on its own. There is a theory out there that somehow this affects Māori. Well, it does—positively—because the text says the Treaty of Waitangi is specifically excluded, and when it comes to Wai 262 that is excluded as well. And, by the way, the wording in the TPP agreement is basically the same as the wording in the China and Korea free-trade agreements. There is nothing new and you did not see the protesters out there then, but funnily enough you see them now.

Apparently, the problem is that it was negotiated behind closed doors. That is what Andrew Little said at Rātana: the whole problem was that it was behind closed doors. Except the only minor technical problem was that it was exactly the same in one form as any other free-trade agreement we have done, including the China free-trade agreement that was concluded by Phil Goff, sitting over there, and the Labour Government. But what is more than that, for years the Government has been undertaking consultation on the TPP. We did not wait for the text to be completed. We did not actually wait for the national interest analysis to come out. What we actually did was we went up and down the country, including to substantial groups of iwi, including the Federation of Māori Authorities. In fact, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade tells me that there has been more consultation on the TPP than on almost any other free-trade agreement that it can see—or any other things that we have done.

The last issue is that theoretically we can be sued under the provisions of investor-State. Well, do not accept my word for how difficult that is. Let me quote this for you, from Phil Goff, who said, and quite rightly so because he actually understands what he is talking about when it comes to this area: “The barrier to get investor-State dispute is very high, and the chance is very unlikely.” We have had investor-State in this country for 30 years. Forget about a case being won. There has not been a case taken in 30 years.

Andrew Little came out with quite a little doozy when he was trying to summarise his position—and, granted, his press secretaries must have had quite a field day with that. He put up: “TPP highlights divisions in New Zealand.” The right heading, I should have pointed out to them, was: “TPP highlights divisions in the Labour Party.” David Shearer and Phil Goff might be prepared to say what they think, but quite a lot of MPs are out there talking to people in the business community. Names are getting named about who is quietly supporting the TPP in the Labour Party ranks. We know why Andrew Little is not. It is because every single union came out pretty much in opposition to it. We know who elected the Labour Party caucus. It was not the people sitting over there but the union movement of New Zealand. And they are opposed, and that is why it is.

Labour is the “Two-position Party”. It is not just when it comes to the TPP. I remember in this House a very spirited debate about sending our guys, our men and women, over to Iraq to train people. I remember that spirited debate. What great work they are doing. We saw Ramadi taken back over Christmas—by people trained by our men and women. I remember that debate. At Christmas, despite Andrew Little telling us he did not want to send trainers, by Christmas he wanted to send the SAS. Labour is the “Two-position Party”. When it comes to the flag, I am not even going to bother. It is still on Labour’s website. Its position is still to change the flag by a referendum.

Let us get to the Government’s agenda. It is long and varied. Employment law will be an important piece of legislation passed this year, and important work done by the Government. When it comes to pay equity, the Government is dealing with the issues of TerraNova Homes and Care—the court cases there. We are working with the stakeholders. I think we are working very constructively there. We are looking for sensible and practical guidelines that can be implemented, and good progress is being made. Good progress is also being made on the minimum wage. There is more to come from the Government on that front, but every year this Government has encouraged and put up the minimum wage, and of course we are seeing wages growing faster than inflation.

When it comes to legislation around minimum employment standards, that too is going through this Parliament in 2016, along with work around the zero-hour contracts. When it comes to the costs for employers and employees, we are going to see ACC costs fall by $450 million in 2016. There is great work being done by the Minister and by the ministry. When it comes to average motor vehicle costs for ACC, they are being cut by a third, down to, on average, about $130.

The Business Growth Agenda—it was good to see Winston Peters coming along and supporting Steven Little, our man—well, Steven Joyce. That would be Andrew Little. I forgot his name; he has had so much attention recently. But what is the Business Growth Agenda going to do? There will be more of the regional programmes, more initiatives around tertiary education, more for ICT, more graduates in ICT, the roll-out of three graduate schools around the country, and the lifting of the number of engineers. It is about skills and innovation.

When it comes to apprenticeships, there has been a big increase in both the number of apprenticeships—those being trained—and, particularly pleasing, a very big increase in the number of Māori and Pacific students doing well in our education system. We can see that with the increase in the National Certificate in Educational Achievement levels; we can see it through the numbers going through our universities, in the successful completion rate; we can see it in our apprenticeships; we can see the growth in the Māori economy—and all of this happened on the back of the Business Growth Agenda, with more science and innovation, and certainly the National Science Challenges are helping to drive that.

I do not have a huge amount of time to go through all of the initiatives for education and health, but it is fair to say that the Government will invest more money this year, more money in both the infrastructure supporting our education and health systems, more availability for drugs in our community, more choice for people when it comes to education, and better opportunities to equip youngsters for modern New Zealand, providing access to not only world-class education but world-class health systems.

Infrastructure will be a big part of the Government’s programme for 2016. This year the Government will spend $6 billion alone in infrastructure. What it is fair to say is that we build the infrastructure, and the Labour protesters lie in the middle of it—but at least it is providing some use for them from time to time. But we will be at the table with the City Rail Link; we will be there with the East-West Link, doing work on that; with the Waikato Expressway; with more roading for Christchurch; and with more regional roading projects. They are still cheering in Taranaki about the Mt Messenger tunnel—still cheering about what has been happening there.

When it comes to housing affordability, Resource Management Act reform is high on the Government’s agenda. And for those parties who want to talk about housing affordability, the costs on business, and the costs on households, there is a simple solution: come to this Parliament and support sensible resource management legislation, and the Government will work with you.

Connectivity is a big part of this Government: with the world with free-trade agreements, but also with ultra-fast broadband—for that initiative of 80 percent—and also with rural broadband.

As I said, when it comes to housing there will be work in a number of areas, including more land being released; work on withholding taxes and their implementation—and almost certainly for foreigners—and, of course, more work on the special housing areas. When it comes to rental properties, legislation will be introduced in relation to the installation of smoke alarms in rental properties.

When it comes to the environment, there is the important legislation around the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary: 620,000 square kilometres going into an ocean sanctuary that is twice the land mass of New Zealand and the equivalent of the land mass of France. What a great way to preserve our environment.

For the least well-off in our community, benefits will rise by $25 per week for beneficiaries with children from 1 April; there will be more obligations on sole parents; and a major review of Child, Youth and Family—the review has been completed, the work has been done, and the Minister is now working on that. When it comes to social housing, we will see the transfer of social housing providers in Invercargill and Tauranga, and new places in Auckland. When it comes to Māori, there will be more work when it comes to Treaty settlements so that by 2017 all iwi who want to settle with the Government can. There is enormous work happening in the Te Ture Whenua Māori Act reforms.

When it comes to security legislation, the Government is working hard on the reforms being proposed in the new report by Patsy Reddy and Michael Cullen in relation to the Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau. There will be the small issue of the flag referendum in March.

This is going to be a very, very busy year for a National-led Government. We are hungry, we are energetic, we are ready to go, and unlike the Opposition we are united. We know what we stand for, and we know what we stand against. We have many policies but we are on the same page. We are the “One-position Party”, and with great momentum for New Zealand. Meanwhile, the “Two-position Party” can spend the rest of 2016 arguing with each other, because they are the only people who are going to be listening to them—themselves.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for getting my name right. I move, That all the words after “That” be deleted and replaced with “this House expresses no confidence in this National-led Government because this is a Government that has given up on the future, that has no plan to prepare New Zealand for the future, that is more interested in scoring political points than solving the big problems facing our country, and is letting the Kiwi Dream slip away.”

It is great to be back after a wonderful summer. It is a bit disappointing to see that the Prime Minister is less tanned and is more red in the face, but that is what happens sometimes with a Christmas break where you fret about what is actually going on. I am very pleased to see that Michael Woodhouse has returned—that we have got through a summer with not a single worm farmer suffering a fatality or a serious harm incident and that the lavender cutters have got through their summer in good shipshape as well.

I want to congratulate Judith Collins. What Minister of the Crown has come back to Cabinet, made such a return, and in such a short space of time had such a dramatic impact not only on New Zealand but internationally? Within a month of Judith Collins coming back to Cabinet, our ranking in the Corruption Perception Index went down two places. And so for a Minister who knows all about conflicts of interest, it is amazing to see the contribution that she has already made.

The Prime Minister made a reference to Taranaki and the roads. I was very pleased to be in Taranaki this year swimming at Ōākura Beach, driving on its roads—and it does need better roads, because if there is one thing that the unemployment figures have told us about Taranaki, it is the rapid rate at which people are leaving that province because there are no job opportunities there, and 4,000 people have left in the last year alone. Thank you, National Government—thank you, National Government!

I was very pleased to be at Waitangi on the weekend just gone. They are very pleased, actually, that we had an extended Waitangi weekend. Thank you to the fine work of David Clark MP, Grant Robertson, who drafted the original bill, other MPs on this side of the House, and, of course, Peter Dunne, who very generously supported that bill. He, at least, is in touch with middle New Zealand and the holidays that they need. It was very good to be there, because that was a very important place to be on a very important occasion, and I say, Prime Minister, that it is a place for the head of Government to be on the day that we celebrate the founding of this nation and the founding document. I would repeat Te Ururoa Flavell’s plea—prayer, in fact—he gave that the Prime Minister return there to be part of that important national celebration.

That was a statement—if you could call it that—that has absolutely no vision and no plan for New Zealand, at a time when we desperately need one. It was reheated, recycled, and nothing new. We had the big announcement. The big state of the nation address was the City Rail Link—it is the City Rail Link; it does not go by any other name. It is a policy that the Labour Party has supported from the outset, championed, argued for, and supported. And the new Mayor of Auckland at the end of this year will be the next great champion of it, and he will do a fantastic job in it. But as that cause has been put up and argued for, it is interesting to see what former Ministers of Transport from that Government have said. Well, let me count the ways—let me count the ways. There was a Mr Brownlee, who was a transport Minister, and he said at one point: “I take big issue with the suggestion that the City Rail Link is helpful or popular.” And then he went on to say: “this valiant attempt to make the City Rail Link stack up struggles to make the case.” Well, something has happened in the meantime, because the case has been made and the City Rail Link is on its way.

There is another position, from another Minister, a Mr Joyce—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Or Little?

Steven—I think it was a Mr Joyce, not a Mr Little. No, it was Mr Joyce—a Steven Joyce—and he is the master of flip-flops, let us face it, after Friday. Mr Joyce, the master of flip-flops, said: “That’s not smart transport; that’s pouring money down a hole.”—“That’s pouring money down a hole.” The man who took 21 years to get his degree in zoology—he knows about pouring money down a hole, so he would know all about that.

So there is no plan, there is no vision. The National Government has reheated the City Rail Link policy because it knows that that is what Auckland desperately needs. And it knows that the right-thinking people—the sensible-thinking people—have been championing that cause for many years now. And at long last the Government has been dragged, kicking and screaming, up the purple cycleway of Auckland to get to the point where it now has to support it.

But that is not the first flip-flop. That is not the first flip-flop from this Government, either in Government or in Opposition. We know what its track record is like. Remember its opposition to interest-free student loans? It was absolutely diametrically opposed to it, and, mysteriously, once it is in Government, nothing happens. Then it was opposed to KiwiSaver, that thing that 2.5 million Kiwis are now signed up to and that is helping millions of Kiwis build up their little nest egg.

💬 Grant Robertson: “It’ll never work.”, he said.

“Never work”, “don’t want it”, “deeply opposed to it”. What happened when National got into Government? Nothing changed.

Then there is Working for Families. Remember “communism by stealth”—remember “communism by stealth”? Shocking stuff—vile stuff that was going to be gone by lunchtime. National got into Government and 8 years on its members are still waiting. They know that it is good for New Zealand. This is the multi-positional, flip-flopping National Government. It does it all the time, and it is doing it again. It is time we had a Government of visions—not the visionless, passionless lot we have got over there but a Government that understands the issues facing New Zealanders. What New Zealanders are looking for now, more than ever before, is a Government that is principled, a Government that can look out to the long-term future, see what the issues are, and understand what needs to happen today to build a better future for tomorrow. That is what New Zealanders are looking for, not the pussyfooting around, the mincing, the politicking, or the point-scoring all over that we get on that side.

Those members crow about the unemployment rate. What they will not tell New Zealanders is that the reason unemployment has gone down is that thousands and thousands of New Zealanders have just given up. They have stopped looking for work. They are no longer part of the labour force, according to the household labour force survey. They have just given up; they have lost hope. That is one easy way to reduce your unemployment, but what a dreadful way to treat New Zealanders, hard-working New Zealanders who want nothing other than to get an opportunity to work and to get ahead. Well, that is what Labour is about. The single biggest issue facing us is the issue of the future of work, and the conference that Grant Robertson went to was, funnily enough, the same conference a senior Ministry of Social Development official went to.

💬 Grant Robertson: You paid for that, John. Paid for them to go.

They went to it and the Government paid for them. They went only after weeks of asking the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety and whatever else he is whether they were going to go, whether they should take this issue seriously. He was not going to go, and somebody from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment was not going to go, so the Government sent somebody from the Ministry of Social Development. But that is an important issue, and countries around the world are getting to grips with it—Germany, the United States, and other wealthy countries with good progressive leaders who are thinking about what it means, thinking about what we need to do today to build a better future tomorrow so that our people can fulfil their dreams. That is not what that Government cares about at all—it does not care about it at all.

It was interesting when we announced the first of our major policies, which is about investing in people and investing in their futures: our education policy. Well, if you want to talk about multi positions, let us go through them. Mr Joyce, the Mr Joyce—first of all, he says: “Well, spending on tertiary education won’t do anything.” Whoops! He is the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment, so that line did not last long. Then he had to change his position again; he had spent over a billion dollars on it already, so he had to change that position. Then he said: “Oh, it’s going to cost too much—it’s going to cost too much.”, but then he realised, of course, that the Government wants to buy tax cuts. It is going to pay for tax cuts somehow, so that argument was not going to wash. So then he goes on to the third position, which was: “But the money’s not there.” But Bill English knows that it is there, because he has set it aside in future budgets—$1.5 billion. They are all over the place: no plan, no idea, do not care about the future of New Zealanders.

Then, of course, the Prime Minister’s response is to talk about waitresses, because, apparently, waitresses do not have a future. Apparently, they do not get tertiary education, in spite of the fact that a good quarter of them are already people who are studying. Apparently, on “Planet Key” waitresses do not do education or training. Fortunately, he has now promised to never ever talk about waitresses again for the whole time he is Prime Minister. I simply make this point: it is not the talking about them that has been the problem.

I want to comment briefly on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, because there are a lot of misleading statements coming out of the Government. If there is one thing that is absolutely clear, it is that the Government does not want a genuine public debate on that agreement. I want to point out that the TPP agreement is not a strategy. It is an agreement, and there are experts now around the world who no longer even describe it as a free-trade agreement. They are calling it a “managed” trade agreement, because at the end of it—15 years into the agreement, if it comes live—we will still have tariffs, we will still have quotas, and we will not have free trade throughout that trading bloc. The genuinely independent economic analysis says the benefits for New Zealand are slim. Whether you look at the Tufts University economic analysis or the Peterson Institute for International Economics analysis, the benefits for New Zealand are slim. Let us not kid ourselves. It is interesting that the Peterson Institute for International Economics says that the bulk of the value of that agreement will go to the US, but even in the US it is not expected to generate any new jobs. It is saying: “Let us get prepared for the transition: there are a lot of people who are going to be out of work.”

One of the more dismal analyses for New Zealand even said that we should expect about 6,000 jobs to go, under the TPP agreement. I hope that does not happen, but here is the point: there has been an absolute and abject failure of political handling of the TPP agreement by that Government. It has been diabolical. It would not keep New Zealanders informed while it was being negotiated—would not keep New Zealanders informed while it was being negotiated—and it dumped it on New Zealand at the end of last year. Anybody who raises the most mild criticism is shouted down as somehow not knowing what they are talking about. The Government is a disgrace. For a Government that has been in office for 8 years, it lacks the confidence of the people to know what is going on and to have a genuine debate, and that is no good at all.

Let us just remind ourselves too about the promises that were made about the TPP agreement: we are going to have a great deal on dairy. There is no deal on dairy, which is why the value to New Zealand of the TPP agreement has been downgraded so much. And it is not much better on meat. It is a managed trade agreement. It locks in agricultural subsidies for the big powers for a longer period of time. That is just the economic stuff, but it is not the economic stuff that is of greatest concern to me. It is the stuff that is nothing to do with free trade. It is the fact that we now have to sign up to other people from other countries having a say on our lawmaking; the fact that under the TPP agreement our Parliament cannot pass a law to deal with land sales, which, we know, is a major issue for many, many New Zealanders. It is not just the economic stuff; it is the non-economic factors.

And I make no apology. I make no apology for drawing a clear distinction between economic interests and non-economic interests, and they are not tradable. You cannot set one off against the other. There is no such thing as trading off the constitutional rights of every New Zealand citizen against the economic interests of others, sparse as they are. Statecraft has two dimensions to it. It is about the nation State that the Government of the day is in charge of, and it is about our relationship with other nations. Statecraft does not involve selling out the interests of the nation State that you are responsible for, for the interests of other nations that we interact with. It is a failure of statecraft, and there is not a good thing about it.

I want to say this. I am proud to say that on this side of the House there is a new generation of leaders now emerging who are principled and who reflect the demands of a new New Zealand, who are looking for leadership that is about doing the right thing for all New Zealanders—[Interruption] And that just demonstrates how sadly out of touch that miserable Government actually is. It does not care about the people. It is a party of the elite; it is a party of the self-interested. It is not a party of New Zealand’s best interests. New Zealanders are looking for a party and for a leadership that will talk about the real issues, the long-term issues, the dreams that Kiwis hold dear, and their hopes, and their ability to get ahead and to get an education and to look after themselves and their families, and to be part of strong communities so that they can continue to be part of a great New Zealand.

New Zealanders are looking for a new leadership that is about governing for physical and personal security and for economic security as well. Doing that does not require selling out to other more powerful States than our own. It is a generation that understands democracy as a process that involves and engages all citizens and that does not capture it for the special, the privileged, and the elite. That is the challenge we have.

I am proud to lead a party that does have a vision for New Zealand, that is positive about the future of New Zealand, and that does care about the people of New Zealand and the future that they face. The single biggest issue facing us is the future of work, and we are going to deal with it. New Zealanders want to know that we do have a process, that we do have a plan to deal with those whose jobs are facing obsolescence. The experts tell us that 46 percent of jobs today will be gone in 20 years’ time. This Government knows that; it is getting the same advice. It does absolutely nothing about it—in a last desperate measure. We are seen to take the issue seriously. We are talking to our international counterparts, we are talking to international experts, but the Government does not care. And its failure to do anything about it, its failure to rise to that issue and to that occasion, speaks volumes. It tells New Zealand that National does not care about ordinary New Zealanders and their future. Work is changing: technology is emerging now that is going to affect every job, and we need to be doing something about it now. We need an education system fit for the 21st century—and we will make that investment.

We need an economic strategy that is focused on New Zealanders and what they can do, that attracts investment, that does not kowtow and tug the forelocks to the powerful in the hope that some crumbs might fall off the table of other countries, that actually supports New Zealanders and their ambitions—and that is what we are doing. We need a country whose economy is strong enough to make sure that New Zealanders do get the health care that they need; that everybody does have a warm, dry, and safe home to live in. You cannot work, you cannot excel at work, you cannot fulfil your dreams, and you cannot look after your family when the roof over your head leaves you cold, damp, and sucking in bacteria and mould because you have a Government that does not care about the quality of our housing.

That is the difference between our two parties. That is the difference between the Labour Party and the National Party. Ours is a party that understands New Zealanders: their ambitions, their hopes for the future. Ours is a party that is prepared to invest in that future, to rebuild New Zealand, to rebuild the dreams of New Zealanders and give them confidence and hope for the future. I look forward to that debate. I look forward to the debate over the next 2 years, as New Zealanders see that there is one party that not only talks to New Zealanders but understands New Zealanders, and reflects their aims and ambitions—and that is us. And I am looking forward to this year.

E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. Ki a koutou ōku hoa Pāremata huri noa i Te Whare, ngā mihi o Te Tau Hou ki a koutou katoa.

[Mr Speaker, greetings to you, and greetings of the New Year to you all, my parliamentary colleagues throughout the House.]

I would like to agree on behalf of the Green Party to the amendment placed by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Andrew Little. The Prime Minister’s statement was notable only for its lack of notability. At least Auckland ratepayers do not have to fork out $4,500 to listen to that one!

Today I would like to talk about leadership, and I would like to start by talking about a subject that many National MPs are going to become very familiar with next year. I would like to talk about retirement. One of the big challenges that this Government has promised not to fix is superannuation. Most of the people in this room know the numbers. Over the next few decades our population will age and retire, our tax revenues will go down because there will be fewer people working, our health care costs will go up, and our superannuation commitments will double to $25 billion a year by 2028.

We know that the Prime Minister is very relaxed about all of this. He is so relaxed that I sometimes wonder whether he has got a special dispensation from the associate health Minister. Former finance Minister Michael Cullen was not so relaxed. That is why he set up the Superannuation Fund: to meet the cost of retirement for the current generation of New Zealanders. Almost the first thing that this Government did when it took power was to suspend payments to that fund. The finance Minister, Bill English, said at the time that this was a prudent, sensible thing to do in the face of the great global financial crisis.

We all know about the finance Minister’s values and his background, that he comes from a farming family, that he learned his frugal values as a young man growing up in the vast, desolate landscapes and the cruel frozen winters of the New Zealand Treasury. It is a shame that he did not learn back then that the bottom of a crash, when assets are undervalued, is the best time a fund like the Superannuation Fund can possibly invest. The Superannuation Fund has estimated that his decision to suspend payments to the fund has already cost New Zealanders $18 billion. This is one of the most expensive blunders anyone in the history of New Zealand could make. This is the party that congratulates itself on being good at business, good at managing the economy, sensible, and prudent.

So what did they do instead, these sensible, prudent people? What did they do instead of paying into the Superannuation Fund, a fund to provide for all New Zealanders? They gave us the great tax switch, which has cost billions of dollars, and they are still making the same mistake. They are putting aside funds to deliver more tax cuts next year. Why? Because it is an election year. The extent of National’s economic vision is to stay in power.

This economic mismanagement also extends to housing. National knew years ago that there was a looming housing crisis, but for a small group of property investors this crisis is a boom. Their properties are earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year through the mere fact of their existence. But, now, many New Zealanders are locked out of the property market. This is not just a problem for people who cannot afford a decent house. It is also—as the Reserve Bank says again, and again, and again—a serious risk to stability. It is a risk to the whole economy, to the well-being of the country and to the people in it, and over the years National has pretended that it has solutions.

National members insist that it is a supply-side problem, but then they confuse their loathing of the Resource Management Act with an actual solution. They insist it is not a demand-side problem, but then they implement demand-side policies copied from this side of the House, albeit in such a watered-down way that they make zero difference. By choosing not to fix this crisis they have allowed those with a large property portfolio to profit while burdening the rest of us with spiralling house prices and an unstable economy. It is a bait-and-switch that this Government loves to play—and they are playing it again with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement.

The story that this Government tells us about the TPP agreement is that this deal is good for New Zealand—we can all relax. It is all upside and no downside. But everyone in this room knows that trade negotiations do not work like that. It is a compromise. There are gains and there are losses, winners and losers. National did not get the deal that it wanted on dairy access to the US. National said it would walk away if it did not get it. Well, it did not get it and it did not walk. It folded. But I see from the US elimination schedule that New Zealand did win a tariff reduction on boneless meat products—and so Tim Groser is off to Washington.

What this Government needs to do is acknowledge the reality. It needs to stop telling us that it is good for all New Zealanders and start being honest about who gains and who loses. As usual with this National Government most of the gains, most of the profits, are privatised and most of the costs are socialised. Exporters get lower tariffs, which is a good thing. Taxpayers pay more for our health care, which is not. We have been hearing for years that this is a good deal. Well, we can see it now, and it is just not that great. I already know what the Government’s answer is to that. It will say that this deal is good for exporters and that means it is good for all of us. But that is not entirely true. The stuff that we export is mostly raw commodities and milk powder—industries that, right now, come with a huge environmental cost. And they do not pay for it, the rest of us do: with beaches and rivers we cannot swim in, the loss of native species, and clean-up costs paid for with tax money.

And we are not even that much of a trading nation. Compared with other nations our size, our exports per capita are low. What we are, really, under National, is a gigantic property market with the most unaffordable houses in the world. Our economy is based on sourcing overseas debt to buy and sell our own properties back and forth to each other at ever inflating prices. Or we sell them to investors from countries that are awash with cheap credit and hot money, which few Kiwis can compete with. We have $821 billion invested in the housing market while our exports bring in less than a tenth of that in revenue every year. Under National that ratio is getting worse. The more National talks about openness and free trade and congratulates New Zealand on being a trading nation, the more insular our economy becomes.

Yes, we are the most remote developed country in the world. Yes, we should be a trading nation, one that sells high-value exports to the rest of the world—not a gigantic property bubble that ships mostly milk and logs. But the way that we get there is to fix the internal imbalances in the New Zealand economy; fix the tax system, which is broken by design; fix our environmental laws so that polluters pay the real cost of their damage to the environment; shift the incentives towards businesses that create high-value products and jobs instead of property speculation; create an economy and a trading system that is designed around the well-being of the people and the environment.

The other thing I want to say about the TPP agreement is that this Government is hugely committed to it. It has been a focus of our diplomatic service for many years. In a list of this Government’s great achievements, it ranks somewhere up between playing golf with Obama and that panda that we still do not have. What do we get out of the TPP agreement in economic terms? No one can say for sure yet. Some studies estimate that it will cost thousands of jobs in return for a tiny increase in exports. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is more optimistic. It predicts an extra 1 percent of GDP growth by 2030. That is a couple of billion dollars a year, so over time that adds up to real money, right? And that is why this Government is so committed to the deal.

Something that we know the Government is not committed to is addressing climate change, because it thinks it is going to happen way off in the distant future, if at all. It is kind of like the housing market or the New Zealand Superannuation Fund—it is somebody else’s problem. But climate change has been happening for years. The world is already getting warmer. New Zealand’s weather has already altered. We are now living in the climate-changed future that National thinks will never happen, and that has actual economic costs that are going up year by year. In 2013 and 2014 the combined costs of droughts, floods, and insurance payouts was between $1.2 billion and $2 billion a year—coincidentally, 1 percent of GDP. That cost to the economy has increased a hundredfold since the early 1990s. It is still going up in line with the level of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, and the same costs from droughts and storms and floods and fires are happening all over the world.

So the gains that National hopes to win from the TPP agreement in 15 years’ time are already being wiped out by the economic damage of climate change—today. By the time we even get to 2030, any wins from the TPP agreement are going to be rounding errors compared with the costs of adapting to climate change, and yet National is doing nothing about it. We are not transitioning to a low-carbon economy; our emissions are still soaring. We could be leaders in the new high-value, cleantech, low-carbon economy. Instead, these guys treat our atmosphere—the air that we breathe—like an open sewer into which they dump 220,000 tonnes of gaseous waste every day, most of it sourced from within this room. We are still mining coal; we are still desperately trying to get the big petroleum companies to drill for oil in our seabed, even though there is no future for oil.

In December I attended the historic COP-21 accords in Paris as part of the New Zealand delegation. New Zealand signed a commitment to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees. It was an historic event, but, unlike the TPP agreement, the Paris Agreement is non-binding. Apparently it is more important to safeguard the rights and profits of big pharmaceutical companies than it is to safeguard the air of the planet that we live on. The day after—the day after—the Paris Agreement was passed, our Prime Minister announced nothing would change. It would be business as usual. We will keep on polluting and we will keep on drilling.

What should he do? What would a real Government do? What will the next Government have to do? It will have to lead—to actually lead. We have regions that depend on fossil fuels for their local economy. The National Government should be starting the conversation with those regions now about how to lead the transition to a stronger, more resilient, sustainable economy. The longer we delay, the harder it is going to be—the greater the damage to businesses and communities and families and lives. We are going to need to stop developing farmland in drought-prone areas. We need to stop property developments in flood basins. These are huge challenges with huge costs, and it has to happen. The only question is whether we start now while it is cheaper and easier, or later with more cost and more pain. By choosing to do nothing this Government has chosen the high-cost, high-pain option, so we have big problems in the future.

But, you know, we have economic growth now, right? That is what we hear from the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance and the Minister for Economic Development—that last year we had one of the highest rates of growth in the OECD. They mentioned it a few times—every minute. The Hon Steven Joyce is in charge of growth. He is personally committed to growing the economy by repeatedly restructuring his own ministries to boost GDP. I reckon that by the year 2025 one in three working New Zealanders will be management consultants working for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. OK, to be honest, that is not true. It is the least frightening statistic today, and I made it up.

National is very proud of its management of the economy and its delivery on economic growth, but it should not be, because when you look at what is creating that growth, it pretty much comes down to our record high levels of immigration, which is also driving the Auckland housing crisis. If we look at GDP growth over the last 7 years of this National Government and we take out population growth and the Christchurch rebuild, the growth vanishes. It is close to zero—7 years and the real economy has gone nowhere—after all this Government’s talk about growing the economy, focusing on the economy, the Business Growth Agenda, all those handouts and those bailouts, all those sweetheart deals like South Canterbury Finance, the Saudi eco-farm, Warner Bros, Rio Tinto, Skycity, and Serco. I tried to list them all, but I ran out of space on my whiteboard. Take away the effect of immigration and the Christchurch rebuild, and all of that adds up to a big, fat zero. National has delivered nothing.

Time is running out. The superannuation shortfall is getting larger. Our climate is getting warmer. This Government is into its eighth year. It has collected $510 billion in tax. It has spent $555 billion, or over half a trillion dollars, and it has nothing to show for it—no real economic development, no ideas, and nothing to say, except that it is all Labour’s fault.

Next year its own 9 long years in Government is going to be up and the next Government, a progressive Government, is going to accept responsibility and show some leadership. We will address the problems this Government ignores. We will fix what it has broken and provide leadership for a smarter, fairer, cleaner future. I started out today by talking about retirement. I came into Parliament only 18 months ago, so, hopefully, my own retirement is still some way off. In those 18 months I have noticed that it is very easy to fool yourself that all of the talking and all of the shouting and all of the meetings and the press releases and the speeches make some kind of difference in the real world. Well, it does not.

I once worked on a microfinance project in the Andes. It was high desert country, and one of the farmers whom I was working with said to me one day: “Don’t try to cross the desert by walking in circles.” I think that that is the mistake that this Government has made. It is lost in the desert of the real. It is leading us in circles and telling us how far we have come.

When I do retire and I look back on my time here, serving as a Green MP, I know that we will not have achieved everything that I want us to achieve because politics is hard and change is hard. But I do want to be able to say that we tried—that we took on and confronted the greatest challenges of our time and we tried to solve them; that we were brave enough to lead and not just follow the focus groups—because it is better to try and, if we fail, to learn from our mistakes and to try again than to do nothing. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

It is always wonderful to have applause before you start your speech. This is the Prime Minister’s statement that was put out today, and it reads nothing like the pathetic speech that he made as the Prime Minister—very embarrassing in the extreme. In this document he says that the Government is “taking the public with us by clearly outlining our actions and priorities.” Is there any New Zealander, including the backbench of the National Party, who thinks that that is remotely true? There is not a maramara murmur, no confirmation at all, because they know it is false, demonstrably false.

Look, he is taking us down the road to low wages against leading economies.

💬 Hon Member: What rubbish.

No, it is not rubbish. Rubbish is your speciality. These are the facts. He is taking us down the garden path of outlandish claims about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement—all sorts of claims. The Prime Minister said it was going to be worth $5 billion by 2025. Who in trade and foreign affairs is saying that now? Oh no, it is $2.7 billion—almost half. By when? Five years later, some time, never.

Of course, that does not concern people like Mr Goldsmith, because just getting a ministerial car is all he has ever wanted, just to be able to call himself somebody. Of course, if you have got that sort of character you are really starved of recognition. In fact, it is a burning hunger, which compels you to do what? To never stand up for the people who voted for you in the first place. That is a condition so bereft in the National Party backbench today. You have got all sorts of members here from the regions, from the provinces, from zombie towns. There is no infrastructural investment—no, no. It is all going to Auckland. Oh, sorry. Taranaki got a farm. Taranaki got a road. That is all—it got just that. But what about the economy in Taranaki and around New Zealand or, for that matter, in Northland, going down the pathway towards police numbers going down not up and crime in—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Oh no, they’re not.

Oh yes, they are, and, more important, somebody very close to you, Minister, knows it, so do not ask in this House whether I know who that expert is. He is very close to you. He understands the regional police numbers. Minister, you do not and never will.

💬 Hon Member: Are you talking about me?

Well, you ask him whom I am talking about. I do not want to get too close to the family here, but those are the facts. Here we go, down the pathway to no growth after the Christchurch earthquake and massive consumption immigration. I am glad the Greens mentioned that because, you know, when I and my colleagues used to talk about immigration and its massive costs if it was not focused, we used to get accused of being racist or xenophobic. Sometimes it is better late than never, but the costs have been huge.

Then, of course, it is down the pathway to separatism that this National Party has taken us. Remember the slogan “Kiwi not iwi”?

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: Here we go.

Oh yes, Hekia Parata and all those ones over the back there are all looking down now, all with their knees knocking. They went along with that campaign and when they got in what did they do? They threw it in the rubbish bin and pulled out their separatist pathway down which they are now taking us.

Look at the Resource Management Act. The Resource Management Act is meant to be an Act that is going to change the economic future of this country. Everybody knows that it is necessary. But what did National promise in 2013 and what is it delivering now? Well, go and ask the Māori Party because it wants iwi to own the water.

💬 Hon Te Ururoa Flavell: Not all of it.

Oh, here we go. The Minister for Māori Development says “Not all of it.” Well, Minister, we thought that the water belonged to everybody: European and Māori—whoever is here. Whatever their background, be that person Korean, Chinese, or Indian living here legally, the water would belong to all of us. But here we go straight down the pathway to separatism. [Interruption] It is no use shouting out like that because, first of all, it bespeaks a bad education and a lack of ability with the English language. It is no use screaming out like that. The National Party is down there. It has had a deal with the Māori Party and if you go on to the website you will see all sorts of iwi saying what is going to happen.

I want to say this: one party is going to stand in the way of that nonsense and that party is New Zealand First. We have been prepared to deal with any political party if they are talking common sense, and we say to the National Party that it is high time it stopped going down this pathway of division and dissension based on race and started to plan.

💬 Marama Fox: What does your Treaty negotiator think?

No, no. Forget about Marama Fox. Marama Fox, of course, is one of those people who have been here 5 minutes, but in that short, truncated time she has become—what—an expert on everything. She is an expert on everything. There is no problem, be it legal, constitutional, environmental, geological, or spiritual—Marama is an expert on everything. Oh, I wish that we in Māoridom all had a mother like that, because our economic and social demise would have stopped a long, long time ago—a long, long time ago. It is unbelievable. [Interruption] I know you almost look Māori, but you are not.

What did John Key promise when he first became the Prime Minister? He said that he would promise to deliver the brighter future. Remember that? It seems so long ago—

💬 Ron Mark: To who?

A very good question: to who?

💬 Hon Members: To whom.

To who or whom, and in which country? He surely did not mean his backbench or his Cabinet colleagues or, for that matter, the Minister of Immigration and whatever other job he cannot do properly. He promised a brighter future. Well, what has happened? Debt has increased massively. Debt is something you have to pay off. Every home knows that. Has the economy been growing? No, it has not. Apart from Christchurch and massive consumption from immigration, it is static. Even New Zealand First and the Greens agree on that because they have come around to seeing the wisdom of our economic analysis.

💬 Ron Mark: That’s right. It took a while.

It took a while. He said he would close the gap with Australia by 2025. There are 9 years to go, and he is not saying a word about it. And then, of course, he talked about police numbers and law and order. He has got a Minister of Police who does not know what is going on. His brother does, of course, but he does not. He will not listen to his brother. He just goes on thinking he knows everything, like so many of the people over there, and the rest is history. Sometimes in provincial New Zealand towns, like Motueka and Kaitāia, over the weekend there is just nobody available at all. There is no one available at all.

Then, of course, he got on to the TPP agreement. If the TPP agreement was so good for New Zealanders and if there had been so much discussion, as he claimed, with Māori, how come 99.9 percent of Māori do not know about it? If there has been so much consultation—[Interruption] Oh, did he mean with Marama? Oh no! Marama claims to know nothing about it, which would be the first thing and the only thing she knows nothing about. Her colleague and cousin, Hekia Parata, apparently knows all about it.

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: I do.

Oh, she does—just like the school up in Whangaruru. I knew a lot about that. Tell me this. How much was spent up there? No, not $1.8 million. It will be about $4.4 million when it is all over. And who owns the farm? Now that this experiment has gone belly up, who owns the farm that the Minister gave to those people up there? I can tell you this. Whether it be South Canterbury Finance or that deal up there in Whangaruru, now collapsed, I can tell you that you have to be a commercially illiterate incompetent to give people a farm and when the arrangement does not stack up—[Interruption] No shouting out. If the Minister is negotiating to get the farm back, then she most definitely gave them the farm. She gave them the farm; otherwise what would the negotiations be about? What sort of incompetent Government gives South Canterbury Finance an uncapped guarantee so that it blows out $800 million, or gives a group of Māori with no record in education a school and a farm to go with it, and when it goes belly up they own the farm?

💬 Hon Member: Disgraceful.

It is just disgraceful. [Interruption] I thought you were making a sign, Mr Speaker. I just wanted to make sure it was not true.

All over the Western World, in the United States and elsewhere, experts are saying: “What’s wrong with the TPPA?”. They are in the Republican Party and they are in the Democratic Party. But, of course, the National Party is so struck with the latent genius that it knows more than everybody in Congress. Government members went out and said, last week, that we have got a deal. Demonstrably we have not. If anything is changed in Congress, which it will be if they go ahead with it—[Interruption] Oh, forget about Anne Tolley. What does she know about anything? This is the former Minister of Education who said her qualification was that she had two children. Well, on that basis there would be 500,000 women in this country who would be capable of doing that job. Back to my point. You have got a Congress that is seriously doubtful of its benefits for them. Then you have got massive Japanese subsidies, massive subsidies in Canada, and massive subsidies in the EU, with whom they want a trade deal shortly. Tell me, what is the benefit of that?

As the farmers in New Zealand find out just how bad this National Party is, there is going to be a voting shift. There already has been, in the north. Come along to the Dargaville field days, on the 3rd, the 4th, and the 5th. Come up there, National Party members, and start flying your flag. Explain to those people what happened to the four huge promises in the by-election. [Interruption] Which flag? Good point.

💬 Clayton Mitchell: Which one?

I suggest the white feather—the one the Prime Minister wore to the trade deal.

Come up and talk about the 10 bridges that were promised in the by-election. Where is the money for seven of them? What happened to the super-highway from Wellsford, down to Warkworth, and to Pūhoi, which is not even started yet. What happened to this big promise that Steven Joyce and all of his colleagues, including the very innocent and naive Mr Bishop, made when they turned up? It seems that when it comes to the naivety shower the National Party wants all the water. Mr Joyce went up there and promised that they were going to get 10 bridges and a super-highway all the way to Wellsford. Any engineering reports so far? Any in the Northland plan announced last week, of the 58 things that were given, up in Northland, which Mr Reti was up there to applaud and acclaim? Which one included the 10 bridges? Which one included the super-fast highway all the way to Wellsford?

What about the Government’s taxpayer-subsidised cellphone coverage, cell tower coverage, also promised by his National colleagues in the Northland by-election? Not a word—not a word. No wonder the Prime Minister got confused. He got confused when he mentioned the man who gave that speech—knowingly, the man who is the political Samson without hair—Steven Joyce. He went round and round the country, regurgitating rubbish, thinking that a whole lot of words would go a long way. But everyone up in Northland is rubbing their chins and saying: “But what did you promise in the by-election?”.

Here is the rub. At the meeting Steven Joyce was asked by the member for Northland one fundamental question: “Mr Joyce, is there going to be a monetary and fiscal policy change in Wellington to back up your 58 point plan?”. His answer? Have a guess. It was “No.” It is all window dressing. But whatever happened in Northland, it is not going to stop there. It will be going to Whangarei, as we all know, because in Whangarei they do not like being called “zombie town”, and the Gisbornes, and the Wanganuis, and elsewhere around the country.

💬 Hon Member: Who called them that?

Who called them that? It was the leading economist whom the National Party keeps on quoting.

💬 Hon Member: They don’t.

Oh yes, they do. Fancy their being so out of touch. [Interruption] I know the member for the ACT Party has fallen in love recently. That was his last big item. I always find it really amazing how his politics have changed. This is the party of big money. Usually big money has two things that go with it: a sense of class, a bit of reserve, a sort of natural reticence. But no, just like the member from out that way who used to be the Minister of Justice, from the National Party, appearing in women’s magazines—no, the biggest feature item of his political achievement lately is that he has fallen in love. With the greatest respect—the greatest respect to the ACT Party member—look, it happens to everybody if they are lucky. It happens to everybody if they are lucky. It is not a selfie occasion. Frankly, get over yourself and start thinking about ordinary New Zealanders, because they are who put you here. The fact is that the ACT Party is down to one member of Parliament and it has had more money than any other political party for the time it has been here. I know that he is in serious want of advice: get over himself, take the personal stuff out of the media, and start on policy, passion, and people, and he might have a chance—a bit late but he might have a chance.

Five minutes to go—can I just say this here. What is very clear from the Prime Minister’s speech and so many of the speeches for the National Party is that the Government is out of touch now with ordinary New Zealanders. It is not so strange really, when you think about it, because the median wage today is enjoyed by not even 70 percent of the New Zealand people. There are a whole lot of people in this country, in the tens and their hundreds of thousands, old and young, who are up against it just to get by. That is a tragedy for a country that used to be a world leader and used to be able to claim, like no other country on earth, a greater disbursement of wealth and egalitarian equality and performance, and social and economic delivery. But now it is dog-eat-dog—everybody for himself—and, under the National Party, it is: “If we can get enough money to sell our propaganda we will try to fool the people one more time.”

Well, we have got a message for the ACT Party, the National Party, and their cohorts the Māori Party over there. They had better enjoy it for a little bit longer, because they are not going to make the next election. That is for certain—they are not going to make the next election. That is for certain. In the next few months, and if it takes a year or a bit longer, there is one party and its name is New Zealand First, and we are going to go out there and turn this country’s politics upside down, like we did in Northland and like we are going to do in March on the flag when we prove how out of touch this Prime Minister really was—prepared to spend $26 million—

💬 Marama Fox: What about Treaty settlements?

Oh, what about Treaty settlements? I will tell you what we will do for the Māori people—I will tell you what we will do for the Māori people. We will stay with housing, with health, with education, and First World wages, and we will leave Treaty settlements to the Māori Party and those academics who are having a most rich, wealthy, affluent life on the backs of their own people’s numbers and have forgotten about their people. Go to Moerewa and ask any Māori up there: “What have you got out of the Treaty?”. Go down to Ngati Porou and ask the average Māori: “What have you got out of the Treaty?”. So here we are in a most un-Māori way seeing Māori members of Parliament screaming out when they hear common sense. It will not save them. Our message, as we close with this speech today, and as it was in the Northland by-election, and as it will be as soon as the flag option choice goes down in March, is for the New Zealand people to hang on a little bit longer. Do not give up, because help is on its way.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker, kia ora tātau katoa e Te Whare. Hei wāwāhi i taku kōrero i te tīmatanga mai o tō tātau Pāremata ka whai wāhi ki te hunga mate e kōrerohia ana i runga i ō tātau marae. Arā, ko te āhuatanga ki a Hera Johns o roto o Ngāti Tūwharetoa i kawe nei i ngā take mātauranga, te āhuatanga ki a Andy Sarich o Te Tai Tokerau, pērā anō te āhua i te māmā o Rāhui, i tēnei rā tonu nei i tukuna atu ai ki Te Kōpū-ō-Papatūānuku, ā, ki Te Pirihi o Te Hāhi Katorika, a Hēmi Harward kei Taranaki i tēnei wā, otirā, tērā pea i nehua i tēnei rā. Arā noa atu rātau! Ka tangi atu te ngākau mō rātou kua ngaro atu i te tirohanga kanohi. Koutou i Te Pō, e moe, e moe, e moe! Tātau te hunga ora, ki a koe, Mr Speaker, ngā mihi o te Tau Hou, otirā, tātau e noho nei, ngā mema Pāremata, ngā kaiārahi o ngā rōpū, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, hapi New Year ki a tātau katoa.

[Greetings to you, Mr Speaker, and to us all in the House. As an opening to my address at the start of our Parliament, I take the opportunity to acknowledge those who passed away and were accorded tributes on our marae: in other words, the situation relating to Hera Johns from within Ngāti Tūwharetoa, who was involved in matters concerning education; the circumstance related to Andy Sarich of Northland; the situation with Rāhui’s mother, who may have been buried today in the bowels of mother Earth; and, similarly, the Catholic Church minister Hēmi Harward, who is presently at Taranaki but at the same time may have been buried today too. There was a host of them. The heart is in grief for them who are lost from view. To you in the void, sleep, rest, slumber! To us the living, to you, Mr Speaker, but at the same time to us seated here, members of Parliament and party leaders, New Year greetings, acknowledgments, and salutations to you collectively, and a happy New Year to us all.]

The last speaker talked about something like: “Help is on its way.” The Māori Party says: “Do not wait! Help is here. Right now! Help is here right now. The Māori Party is in the House.”

Just yesterday many of us enjoyed some time to commemorate and think about Waitangi Day and the change to the legislation allowing for public holidays—awesome. In fact, those workers at the AFFCO meatworks in Rangiuru managed to get over the line to have a holiday despite having to challenge legally that issue, so I want to give a big ups to them for taking that take on. Waitangi is a day when you see the good, the not-so-good, the confused, the theatrical. Everybody gets a chance to express their views; I suppose, get an understanding of our country’s founding document, our history, and the challenges that face us. The conversations about Te Tiriti o Waitangi means to us an ongoing dialogue. Dr Hirini Kaa described our journey as Māori for the restoration of Treaty rights as a “patient movement for justice”.

So the Treaty, aside from the fact that it has passed us these past couple of days, does provide us with a foundation and a touchstone that we hope shapes our unique cultural identity. Can I suggest to members that to give respect to both Te Tii and to the marae at Waitangi, we should—you should—consider coming at 6 o’clock on 4 February. What is significant about that? Well, actually, that is the time when we go in and pay our respects to those who have gone on, who are passed away. We have done that for the last couple of years. You know—no police, no problems—it is calm at 6 o’clock. It is a beautiful thing that happens. We go to the marae and pay our respects to those who have passed on. There are no hassles, it is a time to reflect on the Treaty, as it should be. I ask that, in that situation, in giving respect, you receive respect. So members might like to consider that.

On the lips of many people is the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, or TPP—call it what you like—as mentioned by the Prime Minister. As the only independent Māori voice in this Parliament, in the Māori Party we have definitely focused our attention on the impact of the agreement on Treaty rights. It is no secret that our party was born out of the whole notion of the protection of Treaty rights and obligations, and that will always be the tāhuhu of our whare: the ridge pole of our whare. We want to make it absolutely clear today that the Māori Party recognises the benefits that may come from these sorts of agreements—the economic benefits that flow, particularly for those large Māori exporters in the primary sector. Our people have a whakapapa in trade overseas. That does not scare us. We have listened to the debate carefully—the pros and cons—we have sought independent advice on the impact on Treaty rights and obligations and on mātauranga Māori, which is intellectual property rights for Māori, and under those circumstances, if it is that there is any possibility that the Treaty rights and obligations are threatened, then we will not support those in any way, shape, or form.

The two mighty members of the Māori Party—my sister Marama Fox sitting right here—we have got a huge work programme on, focusing on whānau, whenua, whare, and whakapapa. Whānau, families; whenua, land; whare, housing; and whakapapa, cultural revitalisation. As a party, we will continue to work to keep up the pressure on measures that eliminate poverty, and as of 1 February, beneficiaries with dependants will get $25 more in the pocket—a Māori Party initiative supported by National. That is right. I heard last year that this New Zealand First lot tried to claim that—whatever. The Māori Party put that on the table with regard to our committee, the committee on addressing poverty in this country, moved by Tariana Turia. We claim it; it is ours. New Zealand, enjoy. This includes the work that Marama has also been doing with regard to advocacy around education, around health, around economic development, and so on. That will continue.

We will continue to work in good faith with the Government over the resource legislation—the amendment bill. Mr Paraone says we need to consult with Māori; Mr Peters says we should not have any Māori involved. Mr Paraone, sort it out. What is going on? If you need a hand to get you fullas’ position sorted, see the Māori Party.

💬 Pita Paraone: Just do your job.

We are. We are. We are helping our people out, and that is the difference. There is no use being on the sidelines; you have got to be there to help out our people. We have been criticised in some quarters for our relationship with the Government, but, all along, as the Prime Minister spoke about, we have acted in good faith with a view to being constructive, something that other parties could well learn from the Māori Party. I take my roles and responsibilities as Minister for Māori Development, Minister for Whānau Ora, and Associate Minister for Economic Development very seriously. We want to contribute to the bigger picture, not just chuck bombs and not just chuck little stones over here to try to make the bike wobble—kāo. We want to contribute positively, and we will continue to do that to have impact for whānau, hapū, iwi, and the wider nation.

It would be no surprise that our pou tokomanawa, our central pole, is whānau. Whānau are vital for nurturing our children. Our whānau are critical agents of change. In last year’s Budget, an additional $49.8 million was made available to build on the successes of Whānau Ora navigators and maintain the volume over coming years to provide support and advocacy for whānau. Since its establishment about 6 or 7 years ago, Whānau Ora has undergone considerable evolution. We now have three commissioning agencies that act as brokers to match the needs and aspirations of whānau. We also have a partnership group made up of Ministers and iwi chairs and representatives to develop an outcomes framework. We have a clearer vision ahead and a dedicated workforce that provides direct support for whānau capability building. So I will continue to work with my ministerial colleagues to expand and develop Whānau Ora.

In the Reo space and the whakapapa space, sustaining and strengthening Te Reo Māori in this country—and indeed in my portfolio—is vital to reviving and strengthening our cultural identity. I expect to complete the passage of the Māori Language (Te Reo Māori) Bill into Parliament this year—fairly shortly I hope—with the establishment of Te Mātāwai, an independent sector entity to oversee the Māori language sector. That is going to be pretty helpful. The bill will place iwi, hapū, and whānau at the helm of Māori language revitalisation. Can I thank the members of the Māori Affairs Committee for their support in that.

The second string to my bow is, of course, with regard to Māori regional development. Strong Māori and regional economic development are essential elements in realising whānau success. So I see whānau, hapū, and iwi at the forefront of our regional economic development renaissance. And last week, in the north, we were a part of the Tai Tokerau Northland Economic Action Plan, in particular Northland College was a great day, a wonderful launch of that particular activity. The current Māori economic asset base is now $42 billion and ready to grow if we give it the right recipe and the right watering to let it bloom. We want to make sure that that happens.

Te Ture Whenua is coming around the corner. I am looking forward to having an introduction early this year—3 years on, more than a hundred hui, an exposure draft, and 20 hui currently in action as we speak. We are back on the road and ensuring that it is well consulted. Everybody knows what is going on in that particular space. There were plenty of written submissions. We have moved on them, we have listened to the people, and we intend to carry out and move on those recommendations from our people.

The last pou, of course, is strong communities. As I wrap up my speech, strengthening Māori communities is usually necessary to support their capacity as a strong resource base for whānau, hapū, and iwi Māori development. I have got a couple of things in that particular area that I am looking forward to contributing to the Government programme. There is so much happening.

I want to close by simply saying that as we commemorate that Treaty partnership, it is timely to remind my ministerial colleagues that I am but one cog in the machinery of the State. As part of the broader response of fulfilling our Treaty obligations, I will be encouraging my ministerial colleagues to embrace Māori development and Māori approaches as a core object of their portfolios. I am looking forward to the great amount of work that we are going to carry out this year, and to the outcomes that may come to Māori communities. Transformative gains require alignment of policy and services with Māori needs and aspirations. We are definitely heading in that direction. It is going to be a great year and I am looking forward to the work.

I want to begin by paying a tribute to the late Rt Hon Bob Tizard, who died just a few weeks ago. I am one of the very few members in the House today who had the privilege of being here when he was a member. I see the Hon Annette King, and I acknowledge her. I am sure she will agree with me that Bob gave the appearance of being permanently irascible. As someone once said, he was the most balanced man in the House; he had chips on both shoulders. But that actually belied a considerable intellect, terrific ability, and a form of warmth that meant that he did have a very strong sense of compassion for the underdog.

I think he was a parliamentarian of an era that we no longer have, and I think it is important to pay tribute to people like that—to span, in Parliament, from Walter Nash through to Mike Moore as Prime Minister. As a parliamentary candidate, he first stood in the 1951 waterfront election, so I pay my tribute to him and express my sympathy to his family on their sad loss, and my appreciation, for one, of his tremendous contribution to our country.

The debate on the Prime Minister’s statement is a chance to talk about the direction that the country is heading in over the coming 12 months, and it is very difficult to do that without reflecting upon the immediate past, the last few days—the events at Waitangi. I want to say this: I believe that commemorating the events that happened on 6 February 1840 is extremely important and is foundational to understanding this country’s past and contributing to its future, but I am also reminded of the words that Norman Kirk uttered at a time when the Waitangi commemoration first became a national holiday, in 1973. He said that this is a day for all New Zealanders, not just the people of Northland—for all New Zealanders—to celebrate the unique gifts we possess by virtue of the fact that we are New Zealanders. It seems to me that in the controversies that have surrounded the day almost interminably in recent years that phrase has been forgotten. Waitangi Day is for all New Zealanders. It is not for the hotheads. It is not for the activists. It is not for the protesters. It is for all New Zealanders to celebrate what it means to be a New Zealander.

I think that means that if the Prime Minister feels it inappropriate to go, so be it, but I think then we need to look afresh at the nature of what goes on at Waitangi on Waitangi Day and the day beforehand. I, for one, do not accept the proposition that the best way to celebrate a national day is to protest. I do not believe in sweeping things under the carpet, but I think that the idea that our national day is somehow less about celebrating who we are and more about protesting our differences has gone too far.

Every year we have this debate, and every year nothing happens. It may well, therefore, be time for the senior leadership in this House, across the parties, to get together and try to nut out a pathway forward that prevents us from being back here next year, the year after, and in years to come, saying: “If only we had a national day that wasn’t marred by what went on at this most recent occasion.” In that respect I acknowledge Mr Joyce. I thought he handled a very unusual situation with considerable calm and pride, and I guess we will wait and see whether John Oliver and co. followed what he had to say.

I do think that the risk to New Zealand of not getting this right is that the sense of national cohesion that we all like to feel will be diminished. It may well be that the outcome is to have, effectively, two national days: a day we celebrate the commemoration of the signing of the Treaty and a day we set aside to be our national day. It may well be an event around Matariki or some other significant occasion in the year—I, for one, would scrap Queen’s Birthday and turn that into a national day for New Zealand—but I think that continuing as we are simply gets us into a position where more and more people each year will feel alienated and left out, and simply want to get on with what comes next. I hope that there can be some constructive progress before we face this situation 12 months from now.

I want to talk this afternoon about a very important aspect of the Government’s programme that sits under my portfolio of responsibilities. I think one of the big changes that this Government has made for the better has been the investment approach to the provision of public services—the fact that we actually seek to figure out what the cost of providing a service will be and what the gains to come from that will be before we simply plough money into it. The development of the Better Public Services result areas has been very important in that regard, and I refer particularly to Result 10, which comes under my responsibility.

Under Result 10, our ambition is to have 70 percent of the 10 most common Government services provided to New Zealanders carried out online by 2017. We are just under 50 percent at the moment, and are tracking well towards that. That puts us in a very strong position internationally.

I had the privilege last week of giving the annual digital leaders network lecture at the House of Commons in London, and it was very interesting to see the high regard in which New Zealand is held for the progress that we have made in terms of the delivery of Government services in a way that is much more convenient to people. Most of us live our lives these days governed by these things—mobile phones. Most people do their banking, their travel, their insurance, and a range of other transactions watching the television at night, and they want to know more and more why their interaction with Government, in terms of Government services, cannot be carried out in the same way.

We have already made a start. The recent change to 10-year passports has seen the rate of passport renewal online go up by almost half, from somewhere in the low 40s, in terms of percentages, to somewhere in the mid-60s now. People are getting used to the idea that you can do things online. We have a very high rate already of tax returns being filed online, but there are many other things we can do to suit a citizen’s convenience—to tailor Government services in a way that meets the citizen’s needs rather than the rigid structures of Government. That is quite a radical change.

I am very proud that New Zealand is part of what is known now as the “D5”—the Digital 5, the five most digitally advanced Governments in the world. It is a very eclectic mix: Estonia, which leads because of its particular circumstances post the Soviet invasion, when it literally rebuilt its entire bureaucratic system online; Britain and New Zealand, similar sorts of States making good policy progress; and Korea and Israel, for whom the pre-determinant of better online services has been national security. But the Digital 5 is becoming more some form of international working together and cooperation than just a talk shop.

We have had a couple of meetings over the last 2 years. We are now planning to expand that process of interaction between our officials, to make sure that the sorts of things we are doing both gel with what our citizens require and also create opportunities for our IT industry locally. It is far more of an issue in Britain than here, because of its much larger size and capacity, but there is scope for doing that here—for bringing Government and industry closer together in terms of the way in which we progress the development of key services for New Zealanders. That will be a big priority this year. It is consistent with the transformational approach that this Government is taking to the provision of services, and it is in line with what public expectations seek. Most people, when you talk to them, expect to be able to make contact with Government online, expect to be able to do their business that way, and enjoy a measure of frustration when they find that they cannot.

I want to end with a little anecdote. When I was the Minister of Revenue, one day the geeks in the department came to me on a Friday afternoon and said: “We’ve just developed this little app that shows you your student loan balance online.” It was about 3 o’clock on a Friday afternoon. We had just launched it. Saturday morning I was in my electorate office and a constituent came in complaining about student loan repayments, so I smiled and said: “I can help you here. We’ve got this little app that now does all these things, and shows you exactly where things are.” She looked at me stone-faced, and she said: “I know, but I can’t pay online, can I?”.

The point of that story is this: the app was barely 12 hours old, launched without fanfare. This person already knew it was there and knew what it did not do. I think that is the challenge we have got to keep in front of us. It is not so much what we can do but that the customer’s expectation is always for that step more. As we go through this transformation process Governments are going to have to put themselves in a position where they can meet that “Yes, but what I want is this.” type of argument. So that is going to be an important priority this year.

I simply conclude by welcoming all members back to the House. I welcome Maureen Pugh to the House, and I am sure we will all have many robust debates over the next 12 months.

It is great to be back, and in the spirit of the beginning of the year, I would like to begin with some agreement. I agree with Andrew Little that the National Party is, by and large, managing the policies that Labour put in place, but I want to agree with the Prime Minister that the National Party is managing those policies so much better. Such is the history of these two parties over the time that they have governed our country.

I want to pay tribute to the outgoing member, Tim Groser, and the fantastic job that he has done with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is extraordinary that a small economy of $240 billion at the bottom of the world has managed, over the period of a decade, to draw in 11 other economies with a collective GDP of $27 trillion and create a free-trade zone and an agreement that will have inestimable benefits for New Zealanders and New Zealand exporters. And I say “inestimable” because the argument for free trade is often very much like the argument for freedom generally. The reason that we want freedom is that we do not know exactly how people will use it and how big the advantages of having freedom, including freedom to trade, will be. So I say to all of those who naysay and say “We don’t know, and can you name it, and can you show us exactly how valuable this thing will be?” that I do not think they really understand the true purpose of freedom.

While we are on the Government’s agenda, I have been enormously proud, of course, to work with my good friend and colleague Hekia Parata on the partnership school kura hourua policy. The members opposite must be getting worn down opposing this policy when they see 93 percent and 100 percent pass rates announced, and when they see that this policy has the guts to do what none of them would ever do, and that is to actually close a school when it is failing children.

They will whinge and whine and cry, but they know that in reality this is a policy that is not in danger of failing. Oh no, what the members opposite and their supporters are terrified of is that this policy is succeeding, growing, and multiplying. On that, I want to thank my colleagues Marama Fox and Te Ururoa Flavell from the Māori Party, who have made this policy possible. Here is the real kicker for the members opposite: this is overwhelmingly a highly positive policy for Māori.

As I was listening to the Prime Minister’s speech I was asking myself: “Where is the highlight? What is the thing that I should focus on in reply?”. The truth is that, really, there was not one. There was just a large review of well-managed policies, many of them introduced by the Opposition.

Once upon a time we had a National Party that would have told you that tax cuts were critical to a centre-right Government. This Government says it may cut taxes in 2017. What sort of centre-right Government does not talk about tax cuts for 8 years? It is too difficult, it would seem, in a period of low inflation to index tax thresholds to inflation. Since the last tax changes, all that time ago, the failure to index tax brackets to inflation has cost the average family $500-plus every year from now on, and has cost some over $1,500. That is a small change that would be good for working families and good for New Zealanders, which is a bridge too far for this centre-right Government.

The OECD tells us that we have one of the highest tax rates on capital of any developed country, and yet it would be too difficult to have a policy of deliberately dropping the company tax rate and harmonising it with the Māori authority tax rate over a period of time, and so we actually find ourselves in a situation where we are spending more money trying to stimulate the economy with a partnership here and a regional plan there than we are prepared to give back to the businesses that made the profits in the first place. They are two issues where a centre-right Government should be making movement to improve the policy settings and improve our productivity.

Our productivity matters, or at least it used to in the rhetoric of centre-right Governments, because we used to talk about being the Switzerland of the South Pacific, we used to talk about being in the top half of the OECD, and then things got choppy around the world and we forgot all about it. In the last year those chickens have started to come home to roost in unexpected ways. In the last 48 hours and in the last year we have seen foreign Governments telling us that they will cut benefits for New Zealanders. It would be easy for us to retaliate by cutting benefits for nationals from those countries coming here.

The reason that that is not an effective strategy is simply this: other things being equal, people want to migrate to higher-productivity economies. Other things being equal, on balance, people have moved from lower-productivity economies to New Zealand, and from New Zealand to places such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and so on. They do not want to come here as much as we want to go there, and we are finding ourselves at a loss in these negotiations about entitlements in each other’s countries.

Aside from the agenda of improving the tax and regulatory environment and raising productivity for all New Zealanders, we have also taken our eye off the ball when it comes to improving our country in the long term. Everybody knows that in Australia, in Canada, in the United Kingdom, in Germany, and in practically every other developed country with which we would like to compare ourselves, Governments are recognising that people live longer and it is time to adjust superannuation. These countries are raising their ages of entitlement to reflect that very basic reality.

We know that although there are presently five taxpayers per superannuitant, by the time current university students retire there will be only two, and they know it as well. A sensible country that wanted to look into its future and confront its long-term challenges would very simply open up a debate about raising that age. It is not a question of if it will happen, but when, and this Government has denied us the ability to have that conversation, which is far, far worse than denying us doing it—denying us even being able to openly discuss it.

If the Labour Party had really wanted to reach out to millennials, it could have confronted one very simple fact, and it is this: in the last year the average student loan has been $28,000 and in the last 3 years—roughly the average time that people study—the median house price in New Zealand, forget Auckland, has risen $78,000, or almost three times as much. If the Labour Party wanted to deal with that issue, Labour members would not be reading out and counting the Chinese names that they find in the property data. What they would be doing is actually confronting the supply side determinants of house prices and the difficulties that have led to Aucklanders building 40,000 homes in the last decade compared with 50,000 in the 1990s when the city was much, much smaller.

I could go on, but, in summary, what we have is a nominally centre-right Government that is tied down by an MMP reality and cannot make the types of reforms that would confront New Zealand’s long-term challenges, that would improve productivity for all New Zealanders, and that would actually do more of the type of partnership school kura hourua reform that actually improves the quality of social services for those who most need it. In this environment, I think the ACT Party has a huge amount to offer, and I am looking forward to offering it all year. Thank you.

Mr Deputy Speaker, firstly, may I say that I hope you had a good summer break. I hope it was relaxing. Mine was, thank you. I rode a horse, grew my vegetables, and went to the Wairarapa and to the Hawke’s Bay and Coromandel. I went up north last week—pretty relaxing up there. I had the launch of the Tai Tokerau Northland Economic Action Plan. We had a visit from the occasional visitor to Northland, the current MP, Mr Peters.

I also had, it is fair to say, a reasonably well-reported experience with an unmanned aerial vehicle. It was an interesting day indeed at Waitangi. I have been thinking about that day on the odd occasion since, and I have been thinking about the protesters. I have been thinking about them because they have had, obviously, a lot to say—and fair enough, too; it is the nature of protest.

A lot of what they have had to say has been very interesting. Primarily, they have accused this Government of not opening up and giving information. I think the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is very important. I think it is one of the political fault lines about whether we are going to be forward-looking as a country, embracing the opportunities that the world provides to us in an open, competitive environment, which gives our exporters and farmers a chance to succeed; or take a backward-looking, defensive position, where the world is out to get us and we should just try to crunch down and hope the world goes away, which is what some of the other Opposition politicians promote.

So I would like to devote a small amount of time this afternoon to making a few points about trade and the TPP. I would like to make the point that trade access is hugely important for a small country like New Zealand. It is not just important; it is hugely important. Without fair and equal trade access, we cannot sell as much of our goods, we get less for them, and that means fewer jobs and lower incomes.

In particular, it is about jobs in regional New Zealand, in our small farming communities like those in the far north that I visited last week, who are rightly looking for opportunities for their young people to be employed. It is about the people who know it is really hard selling meat into Japan with a 38.5 percent tariff over what the locals are able to sell it for. It is about the people who are trying to sell kiwifruit or ice cream into TPP countries. I heard the Leader of the Opposition pooh-poohing the dairy benefits of the TPP today. Well, there is a small ice cream company in the Hauraki Plains that has been started by international investors and is providing jobs to those people who would appreciate the opportunity to sell ice cream into the US and Japan.

I am told by the protesters about investor-State dispute resolution provisions. Well, that is hugely more likely to help New Zealand than hinder it. We already have an independent justice system that protects the legitimate activities of all sorts of companies, including large multinational ones, which, if they feel wronged, can go to court in this country. Nothing will change for us, unless we start doing something like nationalising companies at, I do not know, 5 percent of their value—and then we would have other problems anyway. But the investor-State dispute settlement provides opportunities for New Zealand companies in countries where the court system is perhaps not quite as independent.

Some people have been really loud in this debate, but reject the whole concept of trade. Why would you listen to Jane Kelsey if you are actually interested in trade? Give Jane her due; she hates trade agreements. She would roll back the China free-trade agreement, she would roll back the Korea free-trade agreement, and she would roll back the South-east Asia free-trade agreement—any one of them. So why would you get advice from her? She is hardly likely to provide advice that is reasonable and balanced. I would like to point out that without the China free-trade agreement we would have been a quiet country after the global financial crisis, a country that would be able to afford far fewer of the medicines that those protesters claim to be concerned about having access to.

Then there are others who say that they support free trade, but not this deal. They try to say “This one is worse.”, but yet they cannot point to why it is worse. They keep talking about all sorts of things. It was negotiated by the same officials—including Tim Groser, who used to be an official—who negotiated all the other deals. It has similar trade-offs, similar clauses—and it is just not good enough, apparently. Perhaps they are grumpy that their lot did not sign the deal. I do not know. But that is a ridiculous way to approach the arrangement.

Then there are those who say it sacrifices our sovereignty. I had an experience, as we know, with somebody who said that—well, not quite in those words—last week. How can that be so? We have the sovereign right to withdraw from any trade deal at any time—any trade deal at any time. I understand that with the TPP it is 6 months’ notice, then you are out. We never do withdraw, but why not? Because we would have to give up the benefits as well as the costs, and every single Government has said that the benefits are worth having, and they have not walked away.

Then there are those who even say it is anti-democratic, though the current Government has been elected—I do not know, once, twice, three times on the TPP, and the elected Parliament has to approve the legislation. That is democracy. I have got an idea: if it is about democracy, why do the protesters not persuade the guy who is trying to sound like he agrees with them to actually go to the country in 2017 with a commitment to pull out of the TPP, a commitment to leave the TPP? He should stop waffling around, and wander out there and say: “I’m with you, protesters. I agree with you. I’ll pull New Zealand out of the TPP.” Then we can have a further democratic test about the future of this legislation.

The most important point I want to make today is the reason why this Government is doing this: because everyone on this side of the House cares about the future of this country. We want to provide good jobs for our people, security for our families, and a big enough national income so that we can afford the best health care, the best education services, and so on, which my friend the toy-thrower was worried about. It is our sincere belief that this agreement will help do this for this country, otherwise we would not be here.

So I say to Andrew Little: at least the protesters have the excuse that they maybe do not know all there is to know about the agreement, but if you have been in this House and if you have been in the debate, you should be prepared to stand up for your country. He can stand up either way. He can stand up in favour or stand up against, but enough of this mealy-mouthed going out—he spent half his speech, nearly, saying how much he hated the TPP, but on the radio this morning he was saying that he would support it and would not withdraw from it.

Well, I say that if you really want to show any sort of leadership, then step up and say you will pull out, sunshine, because your rhetoric does not match what you are actually doing. You are playing politics with the future of New Zealanders. His colleagues know it, and it is not good enough.

This will be an important year for New Zealand. They all are, but this is an important one. In this year this Government—the John Key Government—will focus on building the opportunities for New Zealand, growing the skills, growing the innovation, building our infrastructure, improving our natural resources allocation, attracting investment in this country, and, most important, providing export access to our farmers and to our businesses to be able to sell overseas. That is crucially important.

So for any naysayer on the other side who has a speech-writer trying to write up stories about this Government having a vision, I say: look in the mirror, it is you who is playing politics and who has no vision for this country. Thank you.

There is no more important investment any Government can make than the investment that it makes in its people. I would hope that that is something that there is universal agreement about around the House.

I want to go back, back to the future a little bit, back to the past, to the Labour Party’s heritage, in a quote from Peter Fraser and Clarence Beeby back in the 1940s, when they stated, in revolutionising New Zealand’s education system at the time, that: “The Government’s objective, broadly expressed, is that all persons, whatever their level of ability … whether they live in town or country, have a right as citizens to a free education of the kind for which they are best fitted and to the fullest extent of their powers.” That vision that they articulated for our education system then is just as relevant today as it was back when they were introducing universal free access to secondary school education, one of the lasting achievements of that first Labour Government, because the Labour Party has always stood for quality free public education. We have had free quality public education in New Zealand in the past, and we can have it again.

There are some other aspects of that quote that I want to pick up on. When they talked about “of the kind for which they are best fitted”, Fraser and Beeby recognised that one size does not fit all, and that there does need to be differentiation in the education system, as opposed to the standardised model that the current Government preaches, which suggests that every child should learn the same thing at the same time and that the education system should act, effectively, as a pipeline—a production line, as Hekia Parata so regularly describes it. One size does not fit all. And we have had successive Governments throughout New Zealand’s history that have taken pride in boosting participation at all levels of our education: boosting participation in early childhood education, boosting participation in schooling, and boosting participation in tertiary education.

I think that now, for the first time in New Zealand’s history, we have a Government that is proud of lowering participation. Steven Joyce actually boasts about the fact that there are fewer people in tertiary education—post - secondary school education—now than there were previously. That is the first time in New Zealand’s history that we have had a Government that has been proud of something like that. Every other Government, be it Labour-led or National-led, has been pushing to extend participation in all levels of the education system, and we have now got a Government that is doing the opposite and actually trying to say it wants fewer people in education, and I think that that says everything about this National Government.

Contrasts abound when it comes to education. Let us look at the respective track records. I am proud to be a member of a party that capped the cost of tertiary education—post - school education—as opposed to this Government, which has seen massive increases in the costs students face. I am very proud to be part of a party that removed interest on student loans, as opposed to the Government on the opposite side, which cut eligibility for student loans. I am proud of a party that extended access to student allowances, as opposed to the Government on that side, which cut access to allowances. I am very, very proud to be part of a party that introduced a universal entitlement for every child, every 3 and 4-year-old in New Zealand, to 20 hours a week of free early childhood education and quality early childhood services.

Of course, one of the first things that this National Government did was cut the word “free” from the 20 hours of early childhood education a week. I am very proud to be part of a party that consistently increased school funding so that parents were not having to reach into their pockets as much to chip in all the time for the cost of their kids’ education—as opposed to this Government, which has seen that money blow out to over $100 million a year that parents are now paying in supposedly voluntary donations for their kids’ schooling. Those are the donations—on top of that there are all the extra costs that parents now face, which this Government is blind to, and technology is one of the biggest. The current Government seems to turn a blind eye to that. There are some brilliant initiatives happening around the country to ensure that kids can get access to the technological devices that they need for their schooling, and the Government is doing nothing to pick those up and ensure that they are spread throughout the country.

I want to turn to the big announcement that Andrew Little made in his state of the nation speech, where he recommitted the Labour Party to the principle of free education and made a particular pledge to 3 years of free post-school education for all New Zealanders. I think that that is very, very important.

Let us turn the clock back a little bit. There was a time when I was a long-haired student protesting about student debt and rising student fees, when student debt was about to clock $3 billion. That seemed like a lot of money at the time. Does anyone want to hazard a guess as to how much student debt is now? Fifteen billion dollars is the total amount of student debt amassed. But here is the interesting thing about student debt. Since the student loan scheme was introduced, at no point has the Government ever reached the stage where it collects more money in repayments than it is lending—for borrowing—every year, and it is not likely to do so at any time in the near future. In other words, every year we continue to lend out more money than we are recouping, and the student loan scheme has been in place for decades. The mountain of debt continues to grow. Student tuition fees continue to grow. The average amount borrowed per student continues to grow, and this Government simply turns a blind eye to that.

We can do better than that, and introducing free post-school education is going to be an integral part of the agenda of the next Labour Government. John Key decided to pooh-pooh that and say: “Why should the waitress have to pay for the lawyer?”. Well, what if the waitress wants to be a lawyer? What if the waitress is actually working part-time while studying to be a lawyer? Waitresses have ambition as well. Let us also remember that they are part of a wider society and receive the health care paid for from the taxes of others, drive on roads paid for from the taxes of others, and will receive superannuation paid for from the taxes of others, and, yes, they too will have access to a free education paid for from the taxes of others. That is called living in a society. We contribute to each other’s welfare, and we do not simply look at our taxes as a personal contribution that we all benefit from only in personal terms. Our taxes are the contribution we pay for living in a civilised society, and our society benefits from higher levels of education.

Then the Government tried to say, of course, that our policy was elitist, but it ignored the fact that it extends to all levels of post-school education, not just university students. We are talking about the people doing apprenticeships. We are talking about the people doing block trades course in polytechnics. Those people will also benefit from 3 years of free post-school education under a future Labour Government, and I think that is a very good thing. Schooling is no longer enough. In the days of Fraser and Beeby, when they articulated that great vision, they were talking about schooling, in the large part because it was a quantum leap, then, to extend free universal secondary school education. Well, that was then, this is now. Now we need more than just a secondary school education and most New Zealanders know that. To have Steven Joyce taking to Twitter immediately afterwards and saying that increasing participation in post-school education would achieve—in his exact words—“absolutely nothing” is an indictment on that Government and the value it places on education.

We should have a free education. Education is opportunity. Education does provide the ladder on which people can reach their full potential, and it is an investment in our future. For those who say that we cannot afford that, the answer quite simply is we cannot afford not to do that. We are reaching the point where, as Grant Robertson and Andrew Little have both pointed out, 46 percent of the current jobs that people in New Zealand do could become obsolete in the next few decades. We simply have to invest in education so that all New Zealanders have the opportunity to continue to be productive members of the society in which they live.

How is it that the Government can find money to give away a farm, as Hekia Parata did when she funded the Whangaruru charter school? The Government effectively gave away a farm but it cannot find money for people who want to increase their skills through post-school education. It can find money for tax cuts but it cannot find money to invest in our country’s future in a way that I think would deliver far bigger returns not only to the society as a whole but also to the Crown.

Bear in mind one simple fact: the higher someone’s level of education, the higher their average levels of earning, and the higher the tax they pay so the more money that flows back to the Crown and does allow investment in those other public services I have mentioned. I am very, very proud to be part of a Labour Party that is firmly fixed on the future and is looking at investing in the future by investing in our people. That is what the next Labour Government will be all about.

Ā, tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā, huri noa i tō tātou Whare tēnā tātou i te tīmatanga o tēnei tau hou. Ngā mihi nui ki a tātou katoa.

[And so acknowledgments to you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and to those throughout our House at the beginning of this New Year.]

Our country is in pretty good shape. It is a country that we can be proud of, it is a society that is inclusive, and it is an economy that is strong and growing. It is being led by a Prime Minister with a Government that respects, understands, and supports New Zealanders in all facets of life. It is a Government that has an agenda that is comprehensive, both in terms of its social agenda as well as its economic agenda. It sees that the role of the Government is to provide opportunities for all New Zealanders of whatever age, stripe, or regional location to take advantage of a better life and pathways forward for themselves.

It is a Government that, taking that agenda, understands what practically has to occur. That includes, for instance, as my colleague Steven Joyce said so persuasively earlier in the Chamber, signing up to trade agreements, recognising that we are a small country a long way away from our markets and that we trade to do well and to provide the quality of life that we want for ourselves. So joining this trade partnership is something that I stand squarely behind.

Like him, I have been thinking over the weekend: “What is it that is being protested against, and most particularly by Māori, who came out on the streets to demonstrate their opposition?”. I absolutely support their right—everyone’s right—in an open democracy to be opposed or to take a point of view and to express that point of view. But here is the thing: if we want to enjoy a quality of life, whatever that is—as Māori, Pākehā, Asian New Zealanders, whether we came to this country last week, last century, or whenever, and however we came here, we want the best possible opportunities for them.

That means having the skills and qualifications to be able to participate, having the kinds of homes and families that support that participation, seeing the opportunity of jobs and building businesses so that they are free to make choices for themselves. This Government on this side of the House does not proclaim to itself the right to make those decisions for New Zealanders, but rather to create an environment in which New Zealanders can exercise those rights and choices.

For me, as Minister of Education, I see my job as a very simple one—not an easy one, but a very simple one—which is to ensure that we get the participation at early childhood, which sets up our youngest learners to participate and be successful in their compulsory education, which allows them to then go on to tertiary choices, whether that is to university, whether that is to polytech, whether that is to participate in some kind of workplace internship, or whether that is to go into employment.

So I have been surprised to sit here and listen to the nonsense that the member who spoke before me, Chris Hipkins, spouted about what it is we are doing in the education system in New Zealand. For a start, we have the highest participation in early childhood education we have ever had, and what is more, we have been a Government prepared to put itself publicly on the line and say that 98 percent of all new entrants should have participated in early childhood education before they go to school. And where are we now? We are at 96.1 percent. That means that we have got to get at least another 2,500 under-5s into early childhood education. Where are Māori at? They are at 94 percent, the highest ever early childhood education participation.

And has the Government shirked on that responsibility or cut costs there? Listening to the Opposition, you would think so, but, in fact, early childhood education now accounts for $1.6 billion of Vote Education, which is a 75 percent increase in the 7 years we have been in Government. That is significant. It is not a cut, but if you listen to the Opposition you would think that, which shows how important it is to have national standards so that everyone can learn to count, add, and subtract, and to know the difference between an increase and a decrease.

In schooling, we now have more kids being successful. Look, we do not want them to arrive at Year 12, after they have had 12 years of education, and discover that these young people do not have the skills to participate in a 21st century economy. We have invested significantly to ensure that all young New Zealanders get our minimum qualification of National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2. And what is the record there? Well, at the end of 2014—the 2015 results are not yet available—we are at just over 81 percent, heading towards our target of 85 percent. That means that 6,500 more young New Zealanders have our minimum qualification than when we came into Government, and a good number of those are Māori and Pasifika.

When we came into Government, Māori—the previous Government, that, according to the previous member, was so caring about education it was prepared to preside over a system that saw Māori languish at 43 percent and Pasifika at 51 percent. What does that mean in real terms? In real terms it means that 13,000 Māori 16 to 18-year-olds had the opportunity to sit and pass NCEA. When we came into Government 6,000 were achieving NCEA—fewer than half.

At the end of 2014, we are now up at just over 9,000. That is 3,000 more, that is a 50 percent lift, and it is because this system, with its teachers and principals, has focused on everyone succeeding. The only thing that has changed is expectation, an expectation that this Government has been emphatic and relentless about. The schools have not changed. The teachers and principals, by and large, have not changed. The curriculum has not changed. The Education Review Office’s review has not changed substantially. What has changed is this Government’s relentless expectation that every young person will get the best education possible and will leave with skills and qualifications that allow them to participate.

There is not one pathway; there are several. It is this Government that introduced the possibility of alternative pathways, of vocational pathways, of building skills. This Government introduced trades and services academies that recognised that not all young people go to university. Those who want to go to university, we do support them, and I speak absolutely in favour of student loans.

I come from a family of 10. I come from a family where, with student loans, had they been around, we would have seen more participate in tertiary education. What our student loan programme offers is the possibility for everyone, and what the compulsory schooling system offers is the possibility that almost every young person will have the qualification to make the choice of which pathway they go on.

Our Government has not done this in isolation. We have also invested in a social programme of extending paid parental leave, of extending visits to GPs to 13-year-olds, of helping those families living in the most hardship by increasing the benefit from 1 April. We have decreased ACC levies, we have done a whole range of things, including providing breakfasts at no cost—not free, but at no cost to schools—to any school that wishes to take them up. So this Government has made very practical investments in all of the policy intentions that we have placed before New Zealanders, and we are seeing them work.

We are seeing more young Kiwi families get into their first homes through the HomeStart programme. We are seeing more young New Zealanders being immunised through a comprehensive approach to health. These are not in isolation from our investment in economic development. I had the pleasure of being in Northland last week at the launch of the action plan for Northland, a place that is a cornucopia of opportunity with the right levels of investment. My colleagues Minister Joyce, Minister Guy, and Minister Flavell have invested considerable time in identifying what specifically needs to be invested in in order to realise that potential, in order to grow that regional economy, in order to provide more jobs for young people.

Only one example that I can give, of many, was attending the Northland College launch of a mānuka plantation and the opportunity for the kids at that college, as well as long-term unemployed, to have the opportunity not only to plant mānuka but also to see the science of mānuka and why it is that that flower produces natural antibacterial properties that in turn infuse our mānuka honey, which in turn gets harvested and sold overseas at a far higher level than would be the case here, in order that it can come back and help invest in the roads and the bridges and the plant that is necessary to grow the economy.

The kids at Northland College recognise and, more and more, understand how getting a great education translates into a possibility of jobs, and why it is we want the markets that the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, along with China and Korea, will open up for them. They see themselves as participants now under this Government, not as victims or as casualties, but—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

“Whakarongo ake au ki te tangi a te manu e rere runga rawa e, tūī, tūī, tūī-ā! Tui-ā i raro, tui-ā i runga, tui-ā i waho, tui-ā i roto, tūī, tūī, tūī-ā! Ka rongo te ao, ka rongo te pō, tūī, tūī, tūī-ā!”

E Te Kaihautū o Te Whare, tēnā koe. He rawe te kite i a koe i tēnei wā o te Tau Hou. E rere haere ngā mihi ki a koutou katoa huri noa i tēnei Te Whare o Ngā Raiona. E mihi hoki ki ngā mana whenua o tēnei whenua, arā, ko Te Āti Awa, Taranaki Whānui me Ngāti Toa Rangatira hoki, tēnā koutou mō ō koutou manaakitanga ki a mātou, ngā mema Pāremata, ia tau, ia tau, ia tau, tēnā koutou katoa.

Ahakoa ngā ngaru hukahuka mōrearea o te wā, kua tae tātou ki te rau tau rua tekau mā tahi, ā, ko ngā tikanga me ngā akoranga ā kui mā, ā koro mā ka kawea tonutia e tātou. Rua rau tau kua hori, kua pakangatia, kua auētia, kua moea e tātou, e wai atu, e wai atu kia oraiti ai ngā whakatipuranga. Nā tēnei, kua puritia ko Te Reo me ōna tikanga. Kua whaia ngā kupu a Apirana, kua toro atu ō tātou ringa ki ngā rākau a te Pākehā hei oranga mō ō tātou tinana. He whāinga nui, whakaharahara tēnei i te mea, i te mura o te ahi o korehāhā tātou e haere ana. Kua toro atu tātou Te Māori ki ngā hangarau, ki te ipurangi, ki hea, ki hea, hei aha? Hei oranga mō tātou!

Hēoi, kāore anō tātou kia tae ki Te Ana-ō-Ora! Kua puritia kētia tātou e ngā herehere taumaha o te wā. I tēnei rau tau, e mate ana a ngāi Māori i ngā kāinga makariri, i ngā kāinga kore haumaru, i te kore kāinga. I ēnei rā, e mate ana a ngāi Māori ki te rapu mahi hei whāngai i te whānau. I ēnei rā, ka māuiui tonu ā tātou tamariki i ngā mate i te wā i ō rātou tīpuna. Ahakoa he uri rangatira tātou, he uri tokoiti, ā, ko te kōrero Māori he wero tonu ki ētahi o tātou.

Nā reira, he aha ngā mea e ngaro ana? I titi kaha ngā kupu a Pīhopa Justin Duckworth ki taku manawa i te hui i Rātana i tēnei tau. Ko āna kupu, e kōrero ana mō te matekaitanga o te wairua, ā, e kitea ana tēnei āhuatanga i te toiora o te whānau, o ngā tamariki hoki. Ko tāku, e matekai, e takarepa ana te wairua. Ki ahau nei, ko te wairua takarepa tērā e ārahi ana i te apo kia tūkinotia a Papatūānuku, kia whakatuma hoki i ngā uri whakaheke.

Me pēhea tātou e noho ki tō tātou whenua whai rawa nei, whai mātauranga me te mōhio he tamariki kei tua e mate ana i te hiakai i te kura? Me pēhea tātou e noho whai rawa nei me te mōhio, he whānau kei tua e mate ana i te whare mākū? Me pēhea tātou e noho nei i Te Pāremata, e whakatakoto tikanga ana mō te painga o ngā tāngata katoa, e kore e rongo i te haehaetanga o ō tātou wairua i ngā mahi mōrikarika o tēnei Whare, e rongo ana i te mamae? Ko te hiakaitanga tērā o te wairua, ā, ko tēnei wairua hiakai nei, e hiakai ana i te tika! Ki te kore koutou e hiakai ana i te tika, he moumou wā tō noho ki Te Whare nei—moumou wā!

Kei te hiakai ahau, kei te hiakai i te tika! Kei te hiakai au ki te ārahi i a tātou, e kore a āpōpō e mahue i a au! Koia nei taku tū i konei! Koia nei te tū a Te Pāti Kākāriki! Kua kauria ngā moana mōrearea o te wā, kua mau ko Te Reo me ōna tikanga. E hiakai ana ahau kia mihia ko te ata hāpara. Kei te hiakai koutou? Ka waiho ake ngā kupu ā Matiu, ūpoko tuarima, whiti tuaono hei kai mā koutou! Ka koa te hunga e hiakai ana, e hiainu ana i te tika, ka mākona hoki rātou, tēnā koutou katoa.

[“I listen to the cry of the bird soaring above; sew, sew, and sew it up! Sew it from below, sew it from above, sew it from the outside, and sew it from the inside; stitch, stitch, and stitch it up! The world and the void, hear, sew, sew, and sew it up!”

Greetings to you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is so wonderful to see you at this time of the New Year. Acknowledgments are flying around to all of you throughout this the House of the Lions. An acknowledgment as well to the mandated iwi authorities of this land: namely, Te Āti Awa, Taranaki at large, and Ngāti Toa as well. Thank you collectively for your kindness to us, the members of Parliament, each and every year. We thank you all.

Despite the foaming and tempestuous difficulties of the time, we have arrived at the 21st century and continue to persevere with the protocols and teachings of our elderly women and menfolk. Two hundred years have passed, and we have fought, lamented, and married, to ensure the survival of our future generations. As a result, we have maintained the retention of the language and its protocols. The words of Apirana have been pursued; our hands have reached out to the implements of non-Māori as sustenance for our bodies. This indeed is an extraordinary achievement in the face of intended and near extinction. We of Māoridom have reached out to technology, the internet, in every nook and cranny, and for what purpose? As a livelihood for us!

However, we have not yet reached the momentum of life. We are held back by what are very mundane burdens of the time. During this century Māori are sick as a consequence of cold, unsafe homes, and some without homes. In these times Māori are suffering because they cannot find jobs to feed the family; our children remain sickly as a result of diseases that existed in the time of their ancestors. Although we are of chiefly lineage, we are small in number and speaking Māori continues to be a challenge for some of us.

So what elements are missing? The words of Bishop Justin Duckworth at this year’s conference at Rātana were unwavering to my heart. His words talked about the hunger of the spirit and that this condition can be seen in the soundness of the family and children also. My view is that there is a spiritual hunger and a spiritual deficit. To me, it is the deficient spirit that is leading the avaricious to violate mother Earth and to antagonise successive generations.

How can we remain aligned to this productive, educational, and knowledgeable land of ours, knowing there are children over the beyond suffering from hunger at school? How can we, who live with the resources and know-how sit by, when over yonder, there are families suffering as a consequence of damp homes? How can we, who sit here in Parliament setting down protocols for the betterment of all, not feel the lacerations of our spirit as a consequence of the repulsive actions made in this House, nor feel the pain? That is the hunger of the spirit, and this spiritual hunger craves the justice! If you do not hunger for the justice, you are wasting time sitting here in this House—wasting time.

I am hungry; I am hungry for justice. I hunger to lead us; I will not miss out tomorrow! This is my stance here; this is the position of the Green Party here. We have swum the apprehensive seas of the time and the language; its protocols have been retained. I am hungry to greet the first light of day. Are you hungry? I leave you with the words of Matthew, chapter 5, verse 6, to digest. Those who hunger and thirst for justice, they will rejoice and be satisfied too. Thank you all.]

Mr Assistant Speaker, can I wish you a very happy New Year, and can I wish the whole House a happy New Year—2016 is going to be a very, very busy one for the Government, and our work programme has been laid out in the 2016 Prime Minister’s statement here this afternoon.

I have started the year by moving around the country a fair bit in the last few weeks, after I went down to the Marlborough Sounds and had a very good holiday. I managed to check out the blue cod fishery there. I must say it is in pretty good shape. I managed to catch a few—all sized legally, of course—and they were delicious, I might add.

Importantly, I have been cruising around the country. With Minister Smith and Minister Barry, I announced the reform of the Marine Protection Authority and all that work that we are doing there in the two recreational fishing parks in the Marlborough Sounds and in the Hauraki Gulf, which have been well-received. Ultimately, that will mean that mum and dad will be able to get out there and enjoy catching a fish.

Importantly, what we have also done is—I have been down to North Canterbury. Of course, it has been struggling through a prolonged period of drought there that is into its second year now, so we have extended that declaration for another 6 months. But I must say that El Niño has not gripped the country like we did once think it was going to. There has been quite an amount of plentiful rainfall on the east coast of most of the South Island and the North Island. So we all breathed a sigh of relief there, but there are certainly still some tough times to come for those farmers in North Canterbury.

As Minister for Racing I also attended the Wellington Cup, the Karaka Million—which was a huge success again—and also the New Zealand Bloodstock Yearling Sales. It is very pleasing to see that the overall turnover in its sales is up by 27 percent. There are some positive signs there, showing the strength of New Zealand breeding stock and attracting a lot of international investment as well as New Zealand investment.

And then, of course, as Minister Parata has just outlined, with my colleagues Minister Flavell, Minister Joyce, and Minister Goodhew, we were all in Northland the other day to announce the Northland regional economic development there. The action plan of 58 initiatives was well-received by the local community.

💬 Tracey Martin: Seventy years it’s taken for National to do something for Northland.

In fact, I am not even sure that the local member could bag it, because a lot of those 58 initiatives across the primary sector are going to be well-received. Also, just on the weekend, I was down at the Hilux New Zealand Rural Games in Queenstown. What a fantastic event that is. It is showcasing New Zealand’s primary sector and the hard work that our farmers do, and, actually, also showcasing that we can have a bit of fun with those activities. My cowpat did not go that well. It got to about 25 metres before it exploded. My left arm needed a bit of work there.

Then, of course, I went out and supported the Ministry for Primary Industries with its response on the Tau fly from South-east Asia, in Manurewa. I want to thank the people in South Auckland for their support, because we have just stepped that operation down and closed it off over the last couple of weeks because we did not have any further finds. So it just shows that the Ministry for Primary Industries can step up a good response with the New Zealand public’s support.

But, importantly, I want to talk about the Prime Minister’s statement, which outlined that over the next 5 years economic growth is going to be at around 2.7 percent. Of course, on this side of the House we are very buoyed that the unemployment figure came out last week—5.3 percent. It just shows that the Government is doing something and is working closely with New Zealand businesses on attracting and ensuring that they can take on more employees, and with the hard work that they do, often businesses are working 7 days a week. Also, incomes are going to be growing faster than inflation. ACC levies are dropping by $450 million this year, which is fantastic. That is the equivalent of a massive tax cut, and when you drop that down to every individual who owns a vehicle, that is around $130 per vehicle. Then we get into the regional economic development space—the five plans that we have got. We are working our way through, working closely with those regional leaders.

I have talked about Northland, and there is some great work happening in Minister Tolley’s patch of the East Coast and the Bay of Plenty. There is some great work starting to happen in my area, in Manawatū and Whanganui, and working closely with those regional leaders down on the West Coast of the South Island as well.

But the big issue and the big talking point over the last few weeks has been the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). I thought the Prime Minister summed it up very, very well this afternoon in his address, where he talked about Labour having two positions. So we will not be talking so much about the TPP agreement; we will be talking about Labour’s two positions. It is the party of two positions—

💬 Hon David Cunliffe: Don’t abdicate the real issue.

—and now Mr Cunliffe interjects because he knows that when he was leader he backed the TPP because it was very important for the productive part of the New Zealand economy. Mr Goff, sitting next to Mr Cunliffe, also backs the TPP. Every Labour leader including Prime Minister Helen Clark backs the TPP.

💬 Tracey Martin: Perhaps you just stuffed up the negotiations.

💬 Hon David Cunliffe: You guys screwed up. Admit it.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member will resume his seat for a second. It is a robust debate. A bit of interjection back and forth does not hurt but I just ask the two members who have been pretty constant to settle down a bit and especially to not accuse me of screwing it up. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. What I would really like to hear concisely and clearly from Mr Cunliffe when he stands up and makes a contribution this afternoon about Labour Party policy is what their position is on the TPP, because there is so much confusion. Even today they are talking about ignoring bits of the TPP agreement if they were lucky enough to get into Government. How on earth can you have an agreement that is ratified through the New Zealand Parliament and you are saying to everyone here in New Zealand: “Oh well, that’s a bit that we are actually going to ignore if we ever come into Government.” How on earth can you do that? How is it that Labour and New Zealand First members can turn their backs on the most productive part of the New Zealand economy with the TPP? How is it that New Zealand First members can turn up at the Northland Field Days and say that this deal is terrible for those Northland farmers? There is $274 million of tariff elimination almost overnight—almost overnight and this deal is worth around $2.7 billion by 2030.

So how is it that Labour and New Zealand First can turn up in the regions and say, in Labour’s particular case, that they are a party that supports free trade? Well, if you go out on the street in Lambton Quay or go into Oxford Street, the main street in Levin in my electorate, with a camera and a microphone and say “What do you think of Labour’s position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership?”, people would not have a clue because Labour is sending out mixed messages.

We on this side are very supportive of free trade. Even Helen Clark realises that this agreement is hugely important for the New Zealand economy, and when we think about what it means for New Zealand, ultimately it means more jobs, it means more money. We will not get rich as a country unless we can sell products to the world. We are talking about 800 million consumers. We are talking about 36 percent of the global population. We are talking about the No. 1 economy in the world, the US; the No. 3, Japan. We have been trying for 20 to 25 years to get a free-trade agreement with these countries. This is fantastic. What is not well understood is that we get a level playing field with our biosecurity and food safety regime across all of these countries. Members will be aware that from time to time we get products held up at the border. Now we will have a streamlined approach across these 11 other countries with food safety and biosecurity. This is hugely significant.

Also, in the Prime Minister’s statement for 2016 he talks about the importance of biosecurity and how we are working together with industry to manage and respond to important risks. We are doing a lot in this space, it is my No. 1 priority—more money in last year’s Budget, an extra $27 million, more X-ray machines, more people on the front line. I was there with the Ministry for Primary Industries saluting and celebrating with the 51 biosecurity officers who were sworn in just coming into Christmas last year. We are doing a huge amount in this space.

The statement also talks about the importance of Resource Management Act reform and that is hugely important for businesses and, actually, for mum and dad as well if they are just extending their deck or putting a fence up. So we are asking the House to get on and support the Resource Management Act because it is hugely important, particularly when you start focusing on housing affordability. We are doing a lot in research and development: about $300 million invested across the primary industries and research and development. The Primary Growth Partnership—we are doing a huge amount in this space.

As a final comment, a huge amount of money is invested in infrastructure. About $6 billion over the next year and a big part of that is in roading and a huge amount of that, 2,000 jobs, is in the Wellington region for Transmission Gully and for the Kapiti Expressway, which is going fantastically well. Maybe at the end of the year we will be driving on that 18-kilometre route. It is very exciting and I endorse the Prime Minister’s statement. It will be a busy year in Government. We are going to get on and do things and make this great country a better place to live.

Ka tika, me tū ki te tāpiri atu i āku kōrero tuatahi i Te Whare nei mō tēnei tau, ki ērā ā Te Minita i waihotia, rātou kua wehe atu, aua ingoa kua whakahuahua mai ki roto ki tēnei Whare. Tēnei anō, ka whakatakoto i tērā ingoa o te kuia ki Taranaki, arā, a Mereiwi Broughton, ā, ki tērā ki Ngāi Tahu ki a Linda Gwennell. E kore e warewaretia rātou katoa, kua hipa ki tua o te ārai. Ko te tūmanako kia whai whakaaro ki ngā whānau pani i noho i raro i te kapua pōuri, nō reira, e te hoa, e Rāhui, tēnei te mihi atu ki a koe me tō whānau, kei runga i Te Marae o Pōhara. Nō reira, tēnā tātou katoa.

[It is fitting that I rise to add my first sentiments in this House for this year to those that the Minister for Māori Development left here, in regard to those who have departed and those names that were mentioned in this House. I also put forth that name Mereiwi Broughton, elderly lady at Taranaki; and that one of Ngāi Tahu, Linda Gwennell. All of them will never be forgotten. They have passed beyond the veil. The hope is that we think about the grieving families beneath the gloomy cloud. And so to you, the colleague Rāhui, I acknowledge you and your family there on the marae of Pōhara. Therefore, acknowledgments to us all.]

For those listening to the debate, they could be forgiven for being really concerned about what the year ahead holds for them. The tone of the Prime Minister’s statement was reiterated at the first political meeting at Rātana, which many of us turned up to. He was dismissive and defensive, and there was an 8-year creep of arrogance in the tone of his presentation there towards issues regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. But, more significantly, if in the last 8 years prosperity has been seen throughout many communities in this country, why is it that the Prime Minister did not mention the growing rates of inequality and poverty?

At the hui at Waitangi—although it was the Prime Minister’s decision not to turn up, and for whatever reason that was the case—when we talk about the sovereignty of New Zealand and what is important to us as a country, there is no better place than Waitangi to actually demonstrate that New Zealand has moved on. And, yes, Waitangi is a symbol of where our nationhood began, but it is also a place where we can say, as a Parliament, that New Zealand has moved on in its thinking about that partnership relationship. However, that has not been the case, simply because of the way that the Prime Minister has treated that whole discourse about sovereignty and the Treaty. I am really concerned because the tone of the Prime Minister’s statement has not provided the level of balance that is required and that all New Zealanders deserve. On the one hand there is the promotion of a growing economy and the lowering of an unemployment rate, yet the reality in many communities is that it is very difficult to find a job, and to hold a job beyond 90 days. There is growing youth unemployment.

The issues around the TPP agreement are significant and cannot simply be dismissed as a group of Māoris protesting. In fact, on 4 February over 20,000 people rocked up to say that they were not happy with the process that the Government had undertaken, which had diminished any sense of public consultation or information, and it was only at the last minute at the end of last year that the documents were released. The national interest test will be debated before the select committee, but those people who turned up to protest were nurses, they were doctors, they were workers, they were grandparents and parents, they were teachers, they were academics, and they were employers. They were not just a bunch of Māori who are unhappy about the Treaty, and it was wrong of the Minister of Education to try to classify and diminish the broad-ranging interest and concern about the TPP.

This is why it matters. This is why the concerns about the process matter, and how New Zealanders will ultimately judge whether or not the Government is acting in its best interests. Why is it OK to spend $26 million on consulting on a flag, but not on a trade agreement as significant as the TPP? It is not OK. The process will matter when many New Zealanders walk towards 2017.

If you have a Government that rides roughshod over the interests of New Zealand, that spells trouble because it is a blatant, dismissive treatment of legitimate concerns of a broad range of New Zealanders who are just saying: “Look, we need to know how this agreement affects us.” For the Māori sentiment, yes, there is a Treaty clause in there. Yes, it is based on the China free-trade agreement. But, for example, when the Minister talks about these young children learning about mānuka honey and all the pharmaceutical benefits of it, I ask her this. Will the intellectual indigenous property rights of Māori be protected through that Treaty clause? Will mātauranga Māori be protected through that Treaty clause? Can Steven Joyce quantify what the benefit to the Māori economy is?

Even if you talk to Māori who are actively involved in exporting, what they will tell you—many of their relationships are with Korea; take ginseng, and the production of that from a small business in Maniapoto—is that that benefit was really forged on a relationship and it took a lot of hard work. Simply saying that the reduction in tariffs will deliver to the Māori economy is, again, not the full truth. So the Government needs to be accountable if it is to convince New Zealanders that this TPP will deliver the types of benefits that they are happy to promote, in a very glib way, in a public forum. But when you drill down to the detail, exactly explaining it and how that happens, it is very, very difficult—very, very difficult.

I am really concerned about the way in which the Government is treating New Zealanders through poor process, but it does not stop with the TPP. Take, for example, the Minister of Māori Development outlining some of the key issues ahead of the Government that it is wanting to put through—Te Ture Whenua Māori. If this was such a good process, why is it that Māori have had to take the Government to the Waitangi Tribunal and hold it accountable, again, on another poor process, and on being totally dismissive of concerns of Māori landowners with regard to what the impact of that law will have on Māori landowners, on the Māori Land Court, and on a range of many issues that affect those Māori landowners? Poor process—another poor process—again, in the domain of the Minister for Māori Development. Te Reo Māori bill—well, he did not start that bill, and to some extent he could have had a way out, but he persevered. That is his choice. But the poor process has meant that through the prolonged effort of trying to promote something that all Māori would want to do, which is to preserve and uphold Te Reo Māori, you have got a mishmash of a process. He has badly handled this.

Water—I was at Waitangi and heard a number of interests from the iwi leaders group with regard to how they thought they were acting in good faith with Ministers on progressing an agenda that, at its forefront, challenged the “first in, first served” consenting regime. Underpinning some of the Māori concerns is that the first allocation should be back to the environment—back to the water system. They worked with farmers and with all users. The Ministers gave many undertakings of what they would do, yet did not deliver. So here is a Government that has the full process in the TPP, Te Ture Whenua Māori, Te Reo Māori, and water reform. There are some significant issues this year.

But Labour wants to look to the future because it is important. We do not want a future of indebtedness. We want to tackle the issues of inequality and poverty. I am really pleased with our Working Futures Plan, which sets out and opens up the pipeline and the horizon for a number of young people. It says that the first 3 years of tertiary education will be free. It will provide a range of opportunities to those young people who never ever thought that post - secondary school education would ever be achievable and affordable.

The Minister got up and glibly said that so much is being achieved in the education space. She has omitted to address the issues of those young people not in education, employment, or training. There are significant numbers, and that is the hardest group to get to. This policy, which Labour has alongside the rest of the pipeline of educational opportunities, looks at challenging how we invest in that next generation to lift their skills, invest in their opportunities, and open up their pathways to education and training so that they can participate in a modern economy.

Andrew Little did well when he promoted this policy. He said that we are not afraid to tackle this, head on. We are not afraid to change priorities. We believe that investing in the next generation will be a signature of the next Labour Government. Kia ora.

Mr Assistant Speaker, can I wish you a happy New Year. I trust that you and all colleagues have had a very good break and are feeling refreshed, with batteries recharged, and ready to go. For myself, I spent a lot of time in the beautiful Central Otago, deepening the mountain bike tracks, trying to keep the rabbit population down, and otherwise relaxing and doing a little bit of reflecting on, and reading about, new responsibilities, having now taken the Minister of Revenue portfolio off the Hon Todd McClay and passed back the police portfolio to my successor, the Hon Judith Collins. I am sure she will do a great job of that.

I was listening very carefully to the replies to the Prime Minister’s statement, including from Andrew Little, the Leader of the Opposition, who in his first—just about breathless—intonation mentioned me, which is rather interesting. Of all of the very important burning issues of 2016, apparently he is still exercised by worm farms and lavender growing, never mind that the regulation that that referred to has been changed and has not even been brought into law yet.

I do think that despite the levity around all of that last year, one of the things that that conversation did, in the passage of the Health and Safety Reform Bill, was that it shone a light on workplace health and safety in a way that has not been done in this country for many, many years. I was very, very pleased, albeit I did not make any public statements about it at the time, to note in December the Statistics New Zealand release of the 3-year moving average workplace death rate. Bear in mind that the Government set what we know is a reasonably challenging goal of a 25 percent reduction in death and serious harm in New Zealand by 2020. I am pleased to report that we are well on the way to achieving that. The death rate has now reduced by 25 percent. It is a 3-year rolling average, and one swallow does not make a summer, but I think that is a very good indication of both the importance that this Government places on workplace health and safety and also the response, the very pleasing response, from industry to that call.

I also note that the Forest Industry Safety Council mentioned late last month its very good performance in halving the serious harm rate since 2013. As we know, that was the annus horribilis for forestry deaths, with 10 that year. We had one death in 2014 and three in 2015. One is one too many—I certainly accept that—but I think that the trajectory of improving workplace health and safety in this country is very much on track. That is before the Health and Safety at Work Act has even been brought into effect, on 4 April this year.

The Prime Minister also mentioned employment standards. I think it is very important that we have a fair and flexible employment framework. I know that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee is working extremely hard, under the astute chairmanship of Jonathan Young, to bring that bill back before the House in the next couple of weeks. It will provide for extra paid parental leave, including—thanks to David Seymour and the ACT Party—extra support for parents of severely premature babies, on top of the generous increases that the Government is putting in place. It will increase the sanctions on employers for poor record-keeping and other failures to meet minimum employment standards, and, importantly, it will address the issue of zero-hour contracts. I know that the committee is working productively, but it does not agree on all aspects of that bill. I will be looking forward to the debate in the future. This is a very, very clear indication that the Government, as the recovery continues to improve, wants to make sure that all workplaces are fair, flexible, and safe.

I want to touch on revenue for a moment. This is one of the areas where, for a new Minister, the work programme is pretty much set in stone—there is not a lot of wiggle room for me to come up with too many pie-in-the-sky ideas, which I think the Inland Revenue Department will be mightily relieved about—with, of course, the Business Transformation project occupying a significant part of its change programme over the next 5 years. The commitment by the Government is about $900 million, on top of the investment that the Inland Revenue Department is already able to make, into what will be about a $1.5 billion change project. I think that, together with the tax simplification and tax administration changes that the Government will be making, will leave us in a much better place to collect the revenue that we need to ensure that we have the health, education, and social supports required.

I do want to touch on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. And before I go into the substance of that, I want to acknowledge, as the previous Minister of Police, the very good work that the New Zealand Police did, particularly in Auckland last Thursday. I read a number of comments and anecdotes about the fact that the police should have been harder on the protesters, that they should not have allowed them to close motorways and intersections, and so on. I want to remind this House that there was actually another country that probably does not have the reputation for freedoms that this one does, and that is Hong Kong, where, in September and October 2014, a protest shut down the main thoroughfares into Hong Kong for 6 weeks—6 weeks. For the New Zealand Police to deal with that protest in the way they did—calmly, fairly, and without a single arrest—I think speaks to the very, very important role of protest in our democracy. Yes, it is important to protest and to make the point; but, actually, it is also important that people go about their business freely, and I thought that our New Zealand police did an excellent job last Thursday in enabling that to occur.

But I must say I am absolutely none the wiser for Mr Little having said that he was going to unequivocally, today, for all time, clear up Labour’s position on the TPP agreement. I must say I am absolutely none the wiser. This is very much a “dollar-each-way” response. In fact, I sit and watch the “Dollar-Each-Way Davids” over there—David Cunliffe, David Clark, David Shearer, and David Parker—all advocates of free trade. There are others, like Clayton Cosgrove and Phil Goff. We know that these MPs understand and support free trade. So my question is this: how on earth can a party support free trade in this country, and the reducing of barriers to trade, and not support the TPP agreement—the largest trade agreement ever negotiated in the world.

A lot has been said about dairy not being as good as it could be. Let me get this straight: anybody who opposes the TPP agreement because dairy was not good enough is basically saying that because the upside was not good enough, that is a downside. Well, I am sorry, but I will take the bird in that hand anytime. And that is particularly the case with regard to primary products, which is very good in terms of the upside, in spite of the speed with which they dismiss $2.7 billion of net benefit, when we also know by comparison with the New Zealand - China free-trade agreement that the very, very conservative estimates of net benefit in that trade agreement—the single best thing that the previous Labour Government did for this country—were well understated, and the actual benefits are many, many times more than that.

So let us take it at just $2.7 billion, and let us think about what that means if we do not go in, because we know that the upside is very strong, but the downside is very, very dangerous. I think the Prime Minister mentioned this at Rātana a couple of weeks ago. I was not there, but I will paraphrase because I think the analogy is very important. If one is a freezing worker producing lamb for export into countries that presently have a 30 or 40 percent tariff put on it, and if our neighbours sign up to a free-trade agreement that eliminates their 30 to 40 percent tariff, and if you are the consumer in that receiving country seeing a New Zealand lamb and an Australian lamb, and your New Zealand lamb is 30 to 40 percent more expensive because of the tariff—which lamb are you going to buy? I think the question answers itself.

For all of those who oppose this agreement because of what it might do for Māori and the Treaty, let us think about how many young Māori men and women work in those industries—those primary export-focused industries—whose jobs would be lost if Australia’s lamb tariffs were reduced or eliminated, and New Zealand’s were not. The upside is very good, but the downside is dramatically bad for this country. I do not think that deep down Labour disagrees with that, but it is so deeply, deeply in debt to the people who put its leader into power—into the Leader of the Opposition’s place—that it cannot publicly state its strong support for free trade. I know that if, in a very, very distant future it becomes a Government, it would not touch this trade agreement. In fact, it would be singing a very different song. This is a very, very good agreement. I think we start this year with a very clear understanding about who supports New Zealanders.

It is a privilege to be able to stand and rise and speak on behalf of New Zealand First in this debate in reply to the Prime Minister’s statement. I guess I would start by saying to you, Mr Speaker, welcome back to the House, and to all other members, likewise. I hope you enjoyed the summer break. I hope you took the opportunity to reconnect with communities. One of the things I noticed when I returned to Parliament after a 6-year semester is that people who spend too much time in this place do get disconnected from their communities. They may make wonderful speeches like the one we have just heard by the Hon Michael Woodhouse, but the reality as to how connected they are pretty much comes home when one is attending a barbeque or a community event back in the community and people start telling you what is really on their mind, and telling you, as an MP, what they think about the business of this House and the way in which it is being conducted.

Before I get into those comments from folk on the street back home and around the country, I do want to take the opportunity to say thank you to the police, to the Fire Service, and to the council staff and district health boards for what they have done in supporting the country during our summer holiday period. One tragic accident in Masterton that saw the loss of two young lives, which is totally needless and pointless, severely tested police officers, emergency crews, and ambulance staff on that evening. I think we will hear more about that as it goes on. The bottom line is that these are kids who have died—a couple of kids are in hospital—and the people who bore the brunt of that are the emergency services who had to attend on the day, and, of course, the grieving families. So, again, congratulations to the police, and thanks for their work, and thanks to the Fire Service, which attended countless calls throughout the country over that holiday period while we were enjoying our time off.

Back to the business of the House, and I am going to say right from the word go that New Zealand First is looking forward to this year. I am looking forward to seeing our members of Parliament, like Tracey Martin, asking some very pertinent questions like: “Who is Andrew West at Lincoln University, why did Steven Joyce promote his appointment, and why is Lincoln University currently undergoing such a serious set of investigations, and is there a Serious Fraud Office investigation?”. Tracey Martin will probably also be asking questions like: “Why is the Minister of Education allowing the people of Rangiora who supported the Rangiora High School to be asset-stripped?” I guess it is probably something to do with propping up the flagging Government funding so that it can generate a mythical surplus somewhere along the line by ripping off the people of Rangiora, who actually funded that school through a farm and through the earnings of that farm. But it seems to me that Tracey will be asking some serious questions.

I am really looking forward to hearing Clayton Mitchell talking to the House about the wonderful attributes of the occupational safety and health legislation that went through the House, because all we heard out there over the Christmas break from farmers and from small-business people was moaning, whingeing, and bitching about this Government and how out of touch it is and how it simply does not understand the consequences of what is now being visited upon them by WorkSafe. We went up to Waitangi, along with Winston, and New Zealand First got—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The Rt Hon Winston Peters.

Oh, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, and, actually, the finest leader of any political party known to—I think, probably, he will go down in history as the most astonishing and outstandingly successful political leader of all time in New Zealand, without a doubt. I thank you for raising that, Mr Assistant Speaker, about the Rt Hon Winston Peters. So we went up there, and what did we hear?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member will resume his seat. I corrected the member gently, but the member has had a couple of sessions in here and should know that he does not bring the Speaker into debate.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is so interesting to hear small-business people and medium sized business people asking us, New Zealand First MPs: “What the hell has happened to the National Party? What has happened to it? Has it become the party of the corporates? Has it become the party of the globalists?”. It certainly does not understand the consequences of the occupational safety and health legislation that it has visited upon us and, of course, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement.

Well, Fletcher Tabuteau is our spokesperson on the TPP agreement, and I am not even going to attempt to try to address some of the nonsense that we have heard in the House today. The one thing we do know is that Minister Woodhouse just said that the benefit gain was $2.7 billion and yet all of his leaders on the front bench have been telling everyone it is going to be $3.5 billion. So someone is right—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: The leader’s definitely right.

—someone is not right, someone is accurate, and, as Mr Woodhouse is now saying, the left hand in the National Party does not know what the right hand is doing, but that is because the left hand and the right in the National Party are probably kept in the dark, like him. He is too far back on the benches there to really know.

I will certainly be asking questions about defence, and, I have got to say, that will bring in Darroch Ball, who will be asking about the Limited Service Volunteer scheme. After all the denials and after all the Official Information Act gaming that has been going on—you would actually think some of these Ministers have been on an Xbox, the amount gaming skill they have and how they are able to manipulate the Official Information Act. National went into an election in 2008 telling the whole nation that it believed in boot camps, that it believed in young people being put into military training, and that this was going to be the saviour of our youth, and yet what has it done?

💬 Darroch Ball: Cut it.

It has cut it, slashed it, and burnt it, and it is closing it down. Instead of having the three Limited Service Volunteer operations in New Zealand—three centres: Burnham, Trentham, and Auckland—we are now going to have just one in Auckland. And here is the irony—well, no, I will not tell you, because Darroch Ball has been doing some homework and I will leave it entirely over to him. But there is more to come, so watch out for Darroch Ball as he puts the questions, once again.

Mr Speaker, I have got to say that I do, on occasion, get a little bit grumpy in the House, and you have probably noticed that. When our first-term MPs are acting as front-bench spokespeople and taking on Ministers who refuse to answer questions and do not tell the whole truth, the exact truth, and nothing but the truth in their answers to questions, you know, I have to say that our first-term MPs in this House have more than delivered what they were expected to. These people are punching way above their weight. By comparison, we have got a whole bunch of National Party first-term MPs who sit there, stand up, and read out an oral question, a patsy question that has been written for them—they probably did not even know what it said until they walked into here—and then they have got the embarrassment of reading out the real patsy supplementary questions to go with it. There is none of that over on this side. There is hard questioning for the Ministers on the facts and on the details, and there will be more of that throughout 2016.

Let us talk about the one thing that the Prime Minister did not want to talk about: the Middle East. You know, Iraq, Afghanistan—hardly a mutter or a murmur about it. And what did we see over the summer break? Well, we saw the Minister of Defence, Gerry Brownlee, telling everybody: “victory in Ramadi”. Within 2 days we found out it was not actually a victory in Ramadi. In fact, they are still fighting in Ramadi right now as we speak. In fact, it would appear, when you look at the bluster, the propaganda, the bumf, and the rubbish—which, you would think had been written by Comical Ali, who was the propaganda Minister for Saddam Hussein—that we had had a stunning victory and it was all over. Well, the fact is that it is not. What we know over on this side of the House, because we do have connections, we do know the facts—

💬 Clayton Mitchell: We do our homework.

We do our homework; that is right, Mr Mitchell. Ten thousand police and Iraqi defence force personnel are up against a couple of hundred Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters. And they are still fighting there. They do not have control. They are dealing with an insurgent that knows how to fight, despite the fact that it has no air cover and that the combined power of the world’s air forces have absolute, unequivocal, unchallenged air superiority. If we had seen the same sort of fortitude, tenacity, and leadership out of the Iraqi officers at Ramadi, it would never have fallen.

And whilst we are focused on a big victory in Ramadi and talking about an impending attack on Mosul—my connections tell me that planning has not even started at Mosul; they are still trying to figure out how they are going to finish Ramadi—what are we hearing in Helmand? What are we hearing in Afghanistan? I will read you a little line: “Security conditions in Helmand witnessed a considerable deterioration over the course of early November”—and this is an older report, I am not going to give you the later one—“as an expanded Taliban assault on northern central districts occurred alongside defections and withdrawals of Afghan National Security Force personnel.” I will go right down to the paragraph that mentions attrition and desertion—and this is one of the things it says: “On investigation it was reported that only 70 of 520 Afghani national police assigned to Sangin remained at their posts in early November. The risk of further deterioration remains high.” And what do we now know? Despite everything, we are suing for peace against the Taliban, the very force we said we were going to destroy.

It is my pleasure to speak as part of the Government’s response to the Prime Minister’s statement at the start of this parliamentary year. What a great summer it has been in this wonderful country that we live in, with the sun shining and so much optimism as we go out and about and talk to people around the country. One of the first things I did politically for the year was go to Rātana Pā with the Prime Minister, to support the Prime Minister there and go on to the marae and hear the speeches. I have to say that one of the things that surprised me was the question “Well, what’s in it for Māori from the TPP? What’s all this TPP about, and what’s in it for Māori?”. And I thought the answer to that was pretty obvious: most Māori, like most New Zealanders, want access to a job when they leave school, access to earn a good income for them and their family, to be part of a country that can afford the best quality health-care and education, and to afford a living standard that is good for them and their family. And that is why this Government continues to focus on doing the basics well. The basics are about providing that strong, stable, sensible, and economically sustainable environment, which is what a Government can deliver. If we do that over an extended period, which we have done in this Government for the last 7 years, then that leads to higher levels of confidence, as we see in every review of consumer and business confidence that comes through. And it is that confidence that leads to investment, and it is investment that leads to the jobs that employ young Māori and young New Zealanders from all around this country.

One of the problems that we have had in New Zealand—and if we go back, when I grew up we often heard that New Zealand was one of the three or four richest countries in the world back in 1951 and in the 1950s and the 1960s, and it has all been downhill since then and woe is us as a country. That is a negative way of looking at New Zealand’s history, but there is an element of truth in the fact that we were a highly prosperous country back in the 1950s and the 1960s, and the primary reason for that was that we had open access to the UK market, which was one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We lost that in 1973, and we have been out in the wilderness ever since looking for access to markets to sell our goods. We are living in a big, bad world. Nobody has to take our products, nobody has to receive things that we sell them without putting tariffs on or making life difficult for us.

Why do we have to sell our goods? Well, most people would notice that we do not build cars in New Zealand, we do not build TVs or iPhones. So there are things that we import, and in order to pay for them we need to export. That is why we have to have access to international markets. It is not written in stone. There is no rule out there saying that every country should accept New Zealand’s goods. They do not have to, and they make life difficult for us and they have made life difficult for us over many decades. Over the last few years they have put high tariffs on New Zealand products, and right now New Zealand farmers, or producers of all sorts of materials who employ New Zealanders, compete against other countries that have tariff-free entry into markets such as Mexico or the United States. New Zealand producers have to pay tariffs, and so we are at a competitive disadvantage. That is why it is so important that we continue our efforts to break down those barriers.

So for me I struggle to understand why any New Zealander would not be fully supportive of the massive, massive progress and breakthrough that we have had with the TPP and the opportunity for New Zealanders to have better market access to markets with 800 million people there to buy our products. That will enable us to sell more of our products more effectively, become a wealthier country, and be able to employ more New Zealanders, whether they are young Māori near the Rātana Pā or New Zealanders from all over the country, and provide them a better opportunity to do well in their lives. It is a cause for great celebration. It astonishes me that the Labour Party, the once-proud Labour Party, the once - free trading Labour Party that Phil Goff represented so well when he was trade Minister, has now lost its way entirely. It does not know what it stands for, in my view, and has retreated back. From the point of view of a New Zealander, it worries me that the main Opposition party has lost its way to that extent, and that that consensus that we had in New Zealand about the importance, as a small country at the bottom of the world, of gaining access to international markets has been undermined under this current leadership. I just hope the Labour Party will—and I encourage it to—rethink and get in and support that.

I was also pleased to see the Prime Minister’s announcements on the huge investments going on in and into Auckland, a city where I live and am proud to call home. As every Aucklander knows, the place is booming. It is growing fast, and we have all the challenges of growth that you would expect. We need to build more roads and transport infrastructure to move people around, and we need to facilitate the more rapid development of housing so that our Aucklanders can afford good housing in their city. So I was very pleased to hear the Prime Minister advancing the City Rail Link, which will be an important part of the overall Auckland transport package. At the moment we have a dead-end there at Britomart Place; if we can get that circle going we can massively increase the throughput in the rail corridor in Auckland, and you can expect over the next 20 or 30 years, as the city continues to grow and continues to be prosperous, that development will cluster along those railway lines and the city overall will be more efficient. I was also very excited to see the announcement that the East-West Link will be advanced. For those who are not sure what the East-West Link is, it connects the motorway going from State Highway 20 around the Māngere Bridge across to the southern motorway, and that, again, will be very important basic infrastructure work. The National Party, as the Prime Minister said this morning, is the party that develops the infrastructure for the city; unfortunately, the Labour Party supporters are the ones who sit in the middle of it and block the traffic, like they did last week. We are trying to make some progress, and that is important.

In terms of the broader atmosphere, I am not surprised that New Zealanders are feeling confident. We continue to grow well; the New Zealand economy grew 2.3 percent last year. If we look around the world, that is rare; that is good-quality performance. We have had annual wage growth in New Zealand: the average annual wage is now $57,000, an increase of $10,000 since we came into power in 2008, and employment is growing rapidly. So we have got 175,000 extra jobs that have been created over the past few years. In my role in the commerce space, one of the sorts of things that I will be focusing on over this year that I think is very important for New Zealanders is that we are reviewing the financial adviser space. New Zealanders have been very strong in the habit of seeing investment in private property and residential real estate as an important way to save. That is fine, and very good, but we should also encourage New Zealanders to invest in financial markets and to broaden their asset base. KiwiSaver has made good progress in that area over the last few years, but the most important thing we can do as a Government is maintain confidence in the conduct of financial markets in New Zealand, so that New Zealanders can feel confident to invest and grow their wealth. That is why we have had big changes in that area in the last couple of years.

One of the areas that we are looking at very closely this year is the review of financial advisers. At the moment we do have a system where the average man or woman on the street looking to invest is having to navigate the way through authorised financial advisers or registered financial advisers or qualifying financial entities, and it is a bit confusing. So we have been out working hard trying to work out how we can have a system that is easy to understand and enables New Zealanders to get better access to financial advice. We are working very closely with the industry over the course of the year to get that right, because it is an area that is very complicated, and we want to regulate in the best possible way so that we are facilitating good advice.

The other area that I might just mention briefly is competition law. Here we are in a small economy, an isolated economy at the bottom of the world. It is very important for New Zealanders to make sure that we have a robust competition regime for the domestic market, so we can get access to the best possible prices. That is why we have been reviewing section 36 of the Commerce Act at the moment, and we will be looking very closely at that over this year. Thank you very much.

I understand the next call is a split call. Jenny Salesa—5 minutes.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for this short call in response to the Prime Minister’s statement. New Zealanders are not a greedy people. Most are highly aspirational for their kids. Their dreams are modest, such as owning their own homes and having a secure future for their children, a well-paid, secure job, and some time to enjoy life with their family and friends. Together, these make up the Kiwi Dream.

However simple these aspirations may appear, this Government is not doing much to keep them within the reach of the majority of New Zealanders. This Government does not value the dreams of middle and low income parents, and more and more of my constituents in South Auckland, as well as thousands of New Zealanders, are being shut out of the Kiwi Dream.

Inequality, for which we all pay the price in due course, is on the rise here in New Zealand. The economy is increasingly weighted towards people already doing well, and blocking others from getting ahead. In spite of protestations to the contrary from the other side, the reality is that this Government has turned a blind eye to the appalling rates of poverty blighting the future of many tens of thousands of our children—the kind of poverty that we see on a daily basis in our electorates in South Auckland. Research highlights the close links between poverty and underachievement from preschool onwards, creating bigger and bigger problems for our children and our society well down the track.

A genuinely forward-looking, forward-thinking Government should be doing everything it can to make sure that the Kiwi Dream is within reach of every single person. My colleagues and I have been out on the road in the last few weeks with the Future of Work Commission, talking to businesses, teachers, educators, and ordinary New Zealand citizens. We have had a great reception to the issues papers and the plans that we have. We plan to modernise our education system, so that every child is better prepared for jobs—even the jobs that have not even been invented yet—in our country as well as globally.

Our leader, Andrew Little, has committed the Labour Party to a new principle—a new principle that I wholeheartedly support—we will not tolerate poverty in New Zealand in the 21st century. In Government, action against poverty will be nested at the heart of everything that a Labour Government will do. We will work towards making sure that every early childhood education teacher is fully qualified, so that every child gets the best possible start in life. We will make sure that hungry children are fed. We will make sure that children grow up in healthy, warm, and dry homes, not ones that are cold, full of mould, and in winter contribute to children passing away. Every decision our Government will make will be checked against its impact on child poverty.

Education is one of the keys to unlocking future prosperity for those on low incomes and for those who are not able to find work. They need education, they need training, and they need the barriers to education and training to be eliminated. We would not continue the current governmental neglect of education. National refuses to properly invest, shifting more and more costs on to parents and students while wasting valuable time and resources trying things on our kids, copying experiments that have failed elsewhere. We plan to make sure that our children are ready for work in the 21st century with the right skills and training, without the fear of being saddled with debt. The nature of work is changing rapidly and our education system must keep up with that to ensure that the opportunities of the future are such that we in New Zealand are able to compete in a global economy. The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research estimated that 48 percent of New Zealand jobs are at risk from automation within the next 24 years.

Our new policies are bold, and they will open the door to higher learning for people who have never studied beyond high school. We will ensure that every New Zealander has the tools that they need to be able to have a share of the Kiwi Dream. Thank you very much.

Adrian Rurawhe—5 minutes.

Ā, tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te W’are, otirā, ki ngā mema katoa o Te W’are nei, tēnā tātau katoa.

[Greetings to you, Mr Assistant Speaker, but at the same time to all members of this House. Acknowledgments to us all.]

It is a pleasure for me to rise in this debate. I think there are some really important issues that have been raised and need to be addressed as well. A number of people have mentioned Rātana Pā. That is where I come from. That is my marae—the centre of my universe. It never ceases to astonish me to see the number of politicians who come to Rātana Pā, say what they have to say but do not listen to what we have to say. And I have to say that some of the comments from the Government benches today about what was said at Rātana bear only a resemblance to what they said, not what they should have heard.

I endorse the words of Rāhui Papa who spelt out quite clearly why Māori are against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. The Government benches would do well to take note of that. It is not every day that you get 20,000 to 30,000 people walking up Queen Street, and a large proportion of them were Māori. They were expressing their disappointment with the Government, because we as Māori know what partnership is. I can tell you that the process that was used for so-called engagement with Māori on the TPP agreement was sadly deficient. That was spelt out by Rāhui Papa and I endorse those words. He also talked on behalf of not only Rātana but also the major Māori movements that were on that paepae, and I think that the Government members have misread what they have heard at Rātana, and they would do well to start doing some listening, because if they do not, then I think that the actions of the people who expressed their frustration on the roads of Auckland will become more common. As the people who participated in those protests have said, it is not over yet.

I think that that is a warning to the Government that any Government that thinks that its policy is so great, that this partnership deal is so wonderful, should be able to take the people of New Zealand with it, and it has failed to do that. It has failed Māori and it has failed ordinary New Zealanders, who not only do not see any benefits for them but are happy to come out and express that. If the benefits are so good, then why is it that the Government cannot convince ordinary New Zealanders that there are benefits for them? I will tell you why. I think it is because, say if you ask the ordinary people a simple question like “Are you better off since a National Government came into power or are you worse off?”—I can tell you that, as my colleague Jenny Salesa has spelt out in her speech about poverty, there are huge numbers of our w’ānau who continue not only to live in poverty but to have a decrease in their spending ability at the local supermarket, and these are the things that really matter for them.

I also want to look at one of the fundamental building blocks to ending poverty, and that is education. That is why we believe that our Working Futures Plan and having 3 years of tertiary education is good for all New Zealanders. It is fair, it addresses issues like access to education, and I personally have received a lot of good feedback from our people on this issue. So I think there is some positivity coming into the future and I will leave it there—2017, bring it on. Kia ora.

It is a privilege and a pleasure to rise in support of the Prime Minister’s statement made in this House earlier this afternoon, and to oppose the amendment presented by the current Leader of the Opposition.

Before I commence my contribution I just really want to pass a quick comment on the contribution of the Labour member who has just resumed his seat, Adrian Rurawhe, because it epitomises the problem and the woolly thinking that the Labour Party has right at the moment. He was praising the actions of protesters, many of whom clearly had absolutely no idea what they were protesting against, who were just there for the day out and the loudspeakers and the parade, and then demanding from the Government that we provide solutions to economic problems and challenges, but providing no alternative or plan about how wealth can be created to invest in creating those solutions so desperately needed by so many people. And that really sums up the problem that the Labour Party has in terms of its position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, because the party is split, it is divided, it is not unified, and it is all over the place.

It has been a very good summer for the Government. Economic indicators are looking good, our economy is growing, and forecasts are that over the next 5 years or so the economy will continue to grow at about 2.7 percent per annum. Unemployment is down. We now have unemployment at levels not seen for the last 7 years and we are amongst a very small elite number—I think it is only one of three OECD countries with lower unemployment than ourselves. ACC levies have been reduced and will be reduced further this year. Tourism numbers are up by a staggering percentage, with 38 percent growth in the last 12 months in terms of international visitors.

This is a Government that is united, that is focused, that is energetic, and that is disciplined, and, what is more, amongst the Government caucus we all like each other. We all get on. It is a strange concept for some parties in this House, but we actually enjoy each other’s company. We had an opportunity today in our caucus to hear a very fine contribution from the Hon Tim Groser as he made his final contribution and speech to the National Party caucus. I really want to just acknowledge with grateful thanks, as a rural provincial MP, the work that Tim Groser has done on behalf of all New Zealanders, but in many respects it is the rural and provincial areas of the country that will gain the most in the years to come from the work that he has done. On this side of the House we support our leader, we support the Prime Minister, and we support his Cabinet. We are focused on the work we do and we are determined to bring even better outcomes for New Zealanders than have been achieved over the last few years of this Government’s administration. We do get on with each other and we like each other’s company.

Contrast that with those members who sit opposite. They are ill disciplined, they have no focus, they are low in energy—as one American political aspirant might describe them—and they are people who are divided, split, and do not have any sense of unity of either thought or purpose. Those are not the signs of a party that is ready for Government in any way, shape, or form. There is no sign of any bold new thinking. There is no sign of any intellectual rigour. There is no sign of any planning or forethought about what might be done. The only solution they come up with is more spending of money, of hard-working taxpayers’ money, and no plan at all about how to generate a greater level of wealth so that economic wealth can be spread around for the entire nation. How is it that in that divided Labour Party opposite, the Hon Phil Goff can be granted a special dispensation to support the TPP, while David Shearer, apparently, even though he does support the TPP, is granted no such dispensation? And what about Clayton Cosgrove, Stuart Nash, and some of those other free-thinking, right-thinking people in the Labour Party caucus?

The TPP will benefit primary producers and manufacturers in my electorate. These are people who understand trade, they understand the necessity for us to make our way in the world, and they understand and support what this Government is doing because they know that it means more jobs, more money, and better, brighter futures for us all. They understand and know that only good things come from trading internationally, and that Labour’s position is not only confused but, on this issue, is very wrong.

I concur with the comments of one of my colleagues earlier this afternoon—I think it was the Hon Paul Goldsmith in his contribution—when he said that he is actually very disappointed and saddened by the once-proud Labour Party, which actually was supportive of free trade, which actually had a fine free-trade principled position. Its former leader Helen Clark, of course, said it would be unthinkable—unthinkable—for New Zealand not to be part of this agreement. Voters in my part of the country know that, and they now feel let down by this Labour Opposition.

I just want to spend a minute or two talking about my electorate, because it is one of the most beautiful parts of the country and it has been a very good summer. There is grass that is green in parts of my electorate where normally at this time of the year there is not green grass growing, and so the effects of El Nino have not been as harsh or as dramatic as we were concerned about before Christmas.

But it would be remiss of me, when I am speaking of my electorate, not to note the passing of one of the Coromandel’s great iconic characters. Barry Brickell OBE, passed away a couple of weeks ago. A potter, artist, railway builder, visionary, and absolute true Coromandel character, he will be much missed in Coromandel and much missed in the region. As I walked past some of his wonderful clay pots that have been a feature of the Beehive since it was constructed and opened all those years ago, I was moved to just touch a pot and think fondly of Barry. I will miss his wonderful, long, typewritten letters. He used to write letters to me on a manual typewriter, covering a whole range of subjects. I learnt very quickly that it was much easier to engage him in a conversation—or, preferably, go and visit him—in order to engage and respond to those wonderful letters that he used to send me. As I say, our region is the poorer for his passing, but his legacy will absolutely live on.

Over the adjournment I was able to visit most parts of the beautiful Coromandel electorate, and I have got to report that people are in good heart. We have actually been, in my electorate, the net beneficiaries of much of what is called the Auckland property boom. So much focus has been paid on how much houses are selling for in Auckland and who is buying them, but, actually, very little attention has been paid to what happens to the people who have sold their homes and where the money does go.

Well, I am pleased to report that an awful lot of that money has been coming to regions like mine. In towns like Thames, Ngātea, Paeroa, Te Aroha, Whitianga, Whangamata, and Katikati—these are the towns that are reaping the rewards of the Auckland property boom, because people are selling their homes in Auckland and they are coming to live in one of the most beautiful parts of the country, where they can buy property that by Auckland standards appears to be of remarkable value. They get a terrific community, they get wonderful services, they get great schools, and they get—naturally, of course—a terrific quality of parliamentary representation. But I would say that, would I not?

They are coming in their droves. What happens then is that often they are buying houses that mean that maybe they have got some surplus cash, so they are ripping out bathrooms and putting in new kitchens, and that is keeping the tradespeople happy. Then the appliance dealers and sellers are selling new fridges, new stoves, and new freezers, and so the economy in the Coromandel is actually doing very well. Because so many people do visit the Coromandel over the summer, I want to thank those people who have kept us safe over the summer: the police, ambulance, search and rescue, the coast guard, fire service, and all the volunteers who have done such a terrific job when we have so many visitors.

This is going to be a very busy and good year for the Government. We have got a very full agenda of work ahead of us. I chair the Local Government and Environment Committee, and on our agenda alone we have got a very big piece of work, which is phase two of the Resource Management Act reforms, which will be coming before my committee shortly. We will continue working on the suite of Christchurch-related legislation that is currently before us, and we are working on changes to improve the safety of young children in terms of swimming pool fencing. That will be coming to the committee and the House later this year. It is going to be a good year for the Government, it has been a very good summer, and I am looking forward to getting back into it. Thank you.

The next call is a split call—Catherine Delahunty, 5 minutes.

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare Pāremata. I would like to address the Prime Minister’s speech on the theme of leadership, but before I do that I would like to acknowledge the loss of two extremely visionary leaders in our region over this summer: Gordon Stephenson, an extraordinary man who developed the Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust and also the Queen Elizabeth the Second National Trust; and also Barry Brickell, whom the previous speaker Scott Simpson mentioned, who was a friend of mine for 42 years. He was a unique master craftsman and conservationist who had fought very hard for the conservation values of our area.

But back to the Prime Minister’s speech and the issue of leadership. Leadership is critical at all levels, and leadership is not about going to the rugby when things get tough. The Prime Minister’s leadership has actually raised eyebrows and questions in this last week, and after Rātana I think there are some important issues that the Prime Minister did not want to hear about but should listen to.

When we went to Rātana, on the paepae there was a very clear message to the Government. The message was that it has failed to listen to the concerns and failed to engage with Te Tiriti relationship seriously. It could not have been laid down more clearly by people such as Rāhui Papa—and I acknowledge his family’s recent loss as well. Respects to his whanau, but also respects to him for the kōrero, and the kōrero of others on that paepae who made it crystal clear that they could not support the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement when it had been imposed on them in this abusive way—let alone the content of it, which my colleague Marama Davidson will address shortly.

Rātana was the beginning, and the Prime Minister did not like it. It was obvious that he did not like it. So when he was challenged by Te Tii Marae about the TPP agreement, instead of saying “I will support the kawa of the marae.”, he threw his toys and said: “No, I’m not coming.” I have been to Waitangi every year for 15 years, and so far no one has thrown a squeaky sex toy or replica phallus at me, yet, for undermining sovereignty—but there is still time! Who knows? However, if they do, I will still be coming back, because, actually, we are there to listen. Whakarongo ki Te Tiriti o Waitangi [Listen to the Treaty of Waitangi] and the people who hold it in their hearts in Tai Tokerau.

It was very disappointing to see the Prime Minister refusing to acknowledge protocol. A protocol was offered to him: to not politicise the pōwhiri and to speak elsewhere. He could not abide by that, so he went to the rugby and had a sulk. That is not leadership. We need visionary leadership in this country that will face up to the challenges, and if we put out challenges that others disagree with, we should face those challenges.

Politicians—we have protocols here that all the citizens who come to Parliament have to abide by. Metiria Turei made this excellent point, that when Ngāpuhi or any other tangata whenua iwi come to Parliament, they have to abide by our protocols. When we go to marae, it is our responsibility, as politicians as well as citizens, to abide by the kawa of those marae. What is more, particularly at Waitangi on Waitangi Day, our job is to whakarongo—to listen.

So the Greens actually went to Waitangi to listen. We had a warm welcome at Te Tii Marae. We stuck to the kawa. We did not politicise the pōwhiri. We went to the political tent, and we listened in the political tent, where we heard about the TPP agreement. We heard about indigenous voices from COP-21. We heard about water and the importance of protecting water by not pretending no one owns it. We listened and contributed; that is what leadership is about.

Leadership is not about being in the club internationally, imposing your will upon a country, and then turning round and saying: “I’m not going to engage because I want to set the rules.” That is not Te Tiriti o Waitangi, it is not respectful, and it is not the way in which leadership takes place. I am proud to be a Green member, because I think we demonstrated leadership at Waitangi and we received the benefit of others’ leadership. I honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Kia ora tātou katoa.

I call Marama Davidson—5 minutes.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, huri noa ki a koutou ngā mema Pāremata katoa.

[Greetings to you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and to all of you, members of Parliament throughout the House.]

My tūpuna understood trade, and they understood economy. Being savvy economists and savvy traders is in our Māori whakapapa. I was just in Kororāreka in the Bay of Islands over Waitangi weekend, looking out over the very bay where Māori and Pākehā trade was a flourishing infrastructure by the early 19th century. This was so all around Aotearoa, I know—I cannot resist this, but our people once were traders. But despite iwi becoming involved in a new trading economy with Pākehā, they did not fundamentally change the way they organised whānau and hapū, and there lies the difference. The power structures that were necessary in order to maintain our honest care for each other, our whenua, and our wai had to stand strong. I am thinking about the words of Ani Mikaere, who talks about the word “rangatira” and who says that “with ‘ranga’ coming from the word ‘raranga’ which means ‘to weave’ and ‘tira’ referring to a group, it is apparent that the task of [a] rangatira” was to weave together a group.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, as we have heard from many learned experts from around the world and from here, is not about trade. This crappy deal is not about weaving people together. The learned experts in all sorts of fields and stakeholder groups, alongside mass movements—including 250,000 in Germany—of caring citizens around the world, are opposed to this deal and are standing up strong to say so. As the spokesperson on Māori affairs, I am proud that the Green Party stands strong with those caring citizens and learned experts, and certainly with the vast majority of tangata whenua, who feel super-excluded by the process and who know that the driving force behind this deal is not to weave people together. It is not to sustain Papatūanuku, our big mother.

The Federation of Māori Authorities may not have been on the anti-TPP hīkoi, but, Mr Key, there were many more Māori on the hīkoi—Māori taking claims to the Waitangi Tribunal, Māori on the front lines of commentary about this deal, and Māori collaborating internationally with other opposed groups—and I mihi to Moana. I want to say to Mr Key: “You just keep holding on to your few allies and holding them up to be the majority—and they are not.” They are not. There are so many other voices who need to be heard in this House, no matter how many times this Government ignores them.

I have been hearing from previous speakers from the Government, who have obviously been ignoring those voices when they say they cannot present alternative visions. They are not alternative visions; they are what we need to survive in this world. This here and now that we have got—this is the alternative that we need to change. Those voices are not just opposed to this deal—those people, like the Greens, have visions for better trade, for fair trade, and for better industries that are not going to die a painful, excruciating death and take our people with them. Along with the voices who need representation in this House, who oppose the TPP agreement, I want to also support the tribunal report that said the Crown does not have widespread support for Te Ture Whenua Maori Act reforms. Minister Finlayson came out over the weekend and dismissed the tribunal’s response. I want to say it is Ture Whenua Maori—it is Māori land. If Māori are not collectively rushing and driving these changes, then our job is to turituri, to taihoa, and to whakarongo [to be quiet, to wait, and to listen].

I am always mindful of the honour it is for me to stand in this House, represent the voices, and represent the Green Party. Kia ora.

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.