Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

It is my pleasure to speak on the Prime Minister’s statement to Parliament for 2016. The National members are delighted to be back. We are full of energy and bright ideas and are ready to roll up our sleeves and get on with the work. We are absolutely focused on our ongoing plan—our plan to grow the economy so that we create jobs, raise incomes, and support New Zealand families.

Our agendas are full this year. We are committed to policies to make New Zealand a better place to live in, a better place to work in, and a better place to enjoy. I think all New Zealanders understand the benefits of living in a confident and prosperous nation, because that is where New Zealanders can get the best opportunities—opportunities for people to get ahead. I think we are making real progress. The figure that came out for the unemployment rate just last week, at 5.3 percent, is a great result. That is better than Australia, it is better than the OECD average at 6.6 percent, and it is significant because getting a good job is the best opportunity for anyone to get ahead.

It is also why the Government’s four priorities are so important. The first, responsibly managing the economy, and the second, building a more competitive and productive economy, go hand in hand. And it is not about growing the economy just for growing the economy’s sake; it is for what it can do for Kiwis. It is what it can do in creating new jobs, building more businesses, increasing incomes; and, most of all, increasing our tax take, which underpins the third priority of this Government, which is better public services—better public services. That is about quality health care; better education and training, particularly for our young people; investing in social development; investing to support families and giving them a hand up; and building the infrastructure—the roads, the trains, the bridges, the sewers, and the pipes—that all New Zealanders use.

And that brings us to our fourth priority, which is supporting the rebuild of Christchurch, which, of course, is very close to my heart as the member for Christchurch Central. That rebuild has probably been the Government’s biggest challenge since 2010 and 2011. International research tells us that it takes about a decade—about 10 years—for any community to recover from a major disaster like our earthquakes. And I think almost 5 years later, with the enormous amount of effort that has been put in locally and, actually, right across New Zealand, and with $17 billion of commitment from this Government, we have broken the back of it. I think we have broken the back of it because just last week the Earthquake Commission told me that it has repaired 68,000 homes and it has got only a couple of thousand more to go. Sixty-eight thousand homes—that is the number of houses in Nelson and Invercargill combined. So it just gives you an idea of the scale of that work.

Eighty five percent of the infrastructure in the city has been repaired, and we are on the positive side now. Most of our demolition has been completed, and we are beginning to build. In fact, our building expansion is going gangbusters. In the middle of last year we completed the Christchurch Bus Interchange. The interchange is a particularly important facility for Christchurch because it is going to enable us to revolutionise how we use public transport in our city.

Over the last year or so we have cleaned up the Avon/Ōtākaro River and we are developing attractions along the side of that river and public spaces. The most exciting public space that opened just before Christmas is the Margaret Mahy Family Playground, and I just want to take a moment to celebrate that playground. I take my hat off to the people of the Share an Idea process, who came up with the idea of a playground. The idea was that it would bring children and, therefore, their families back into the city, and it has worked a treat. Christchurch people—Canterbury people, actually—have taken it to the heart. It helps that it is the biggest and the best and the most glamourous playground, probably, in the southern hemisphere, and the fact that it was designed by kids, for kids. But do you know that over 100,000 people have used that playground since Christmas? They are using it day and night. One of the loveliest stories is that it is not enough to have the kids during the day, but the big kids and those who are young at heart are using it at night. And I think that is a really good sign, because it has so much light and it is so secure with its closed-circuit television cameras that people feel they can use it in the evenings. And the best thing about that is they are using it without alcohol, without drugs, and without violence.

It is an absolutely wonderful family facility. It has actually catalysed families coming back into our city. In fact, several families have told me they had a staycation this year. They stayed at home so they could enjoy the attractions of the central city: the new art gallery that has opened, the museum has had record numbers, the Re:Start mall, and everything that our city has to offer.

Let us just have a look at some of the more serious buildings, like the Christchurch Justice and Emergency Services Precinct, which will be completed this year. And that is important, not only because it is a fabulous building but because it is a new way to deliver services in our city. The police, the Department of Corrections, and courts are all working together in the justice precinct, and that will make it much easier to coordinate their approaches and to manage crime. In terms of emergencies, the police, the Fire Service, the ambulance, and civil defence are all working together as well. I think this hubbing of services will provide a far better service in a cost-effective way, and I think it will be a new model for other cities around the country.

Coming up following that are the Metro Sports Facility, the East Frame residential development, and the conference centre, and they are all progressing. When I look at all the development and design work that is going into these buildings I am sure that they are going to be absolutely world class and that they will be beloved by the people of Christchurch, just as they liked the facilities that they had pre-earthquake.

So I think I can, in all objective ways, say that we have broken the back of the tough stuff, but let me explain that there are still some people who are managing the issues of the earthquake. It is still difficult for them, and so it is really important that we put in support for those people, things like the All Right? campaign, which is to do with well-being and supporting people through this process and through mental health issues; the In the Know Hub, which provides information for people and connects them up to the services; and also the Residential Advisory Service, which gives people who are still struggling with rebuilds and repairs some help.

But I think it is also time that we look to the future, and I think the part of our future that is coming along is the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Bill. That is sitting in the House at the moment, and it ushers in a whole new wave of redevelopment and commitment to local involvement and local leadership as the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority is wound up. The Regenerate Christchurch board will be jointly appointed by the Christchurch City Council and the Government, and it will bring local leaders with the skills, the expertise, and the passion to carry on that regeneration. They will focus on regenerating the central city and the residential red zone, which will be a wonderful swathe of green through the centre of our city, four times the size of Hagley Park, and they will focus on the rebuild and renewal of New Brighton.

It is a whole new phase for Christchurch as it looks to a vibrant future. This will drive new thinking and new ways of doing things, and really regenerate so that our city can grow and flourish. I think it is really important that Regenerate Christchurch helps us make the most of every opportunity that is coming along for us, to make sure that our city really fulfils its place for future generations.

So to recap, the National Government is energised. We are leaping into 2016. There is much for us to do but we are up for it, and we are looking forward to making a real difference to New Zealand and New Zealanders. Thank you.

Ā, tēnā koe, Mr Speaker, tēnā koutou ki Te Whare, koutou i haere ā-tinana mai ki tēnei Whare ki te whakatutuki i ngā mahi o te tau, kai te mihi atu ki a koutou ōku hoa mahi. Anō na te pai te tuku whakaaro ki a rātau kua mene atu ki Te Pō, i ngā rā, i ngā wiki, i ngā marama kua hipa atu nei. Tēnei te mihi atu ki a rātau kai roto i ngā ringa o Te Atua i tēnei wā, tēnā koutou.

[Greetings to you, Mr Speaker, and to you as a collective, the House. To you who came here physically to this House to complete the year’s tasks, I salute you, my fellow work colleagues. How nice it is once again to give a thought to those assembled in the void of recent days, weeks, and months. Those in the arms of God at this time, my tributes to you collectively.]

We are here to speak about the PM’s statement—the PM’s statement about the future of this country. I want to say clearly and loudly to the people of this nation that the Māori Party is here to add value not only to this Parliament but to our nation. We add value to this Parliament when we work with the Government of the day to ensure that the rights guaranteed under the Treaty to Māori are upheld, and that is not just for Māori; that is for the benefit of this entire nation.

Those people who stand up and say that to do so is divisive need to think about that, because in 1835 a collection of Māori chiefs declared this nation a sovereign nation. Under He Whakaputanga we declared this nation a sovereign entity on its own, and 5 years later we gathered at Waitangi, the birthplace of this nation, to enjoy a duality of nationhood, where two partners come together to celebrate living together in a pristine country.

When we talk about pristine, let us have a conversation about the Resource Management Act. Let us have a conversation that starts with Māori rights under the Resource Management Act, guaranteed to them in that Treaty and upheld by this Government, not put down as divisive and not put down, as some members and some parties would have us believe, as excluding others. This is not about exclusiveness; this is about inclusiveness, and under the Resource Management Act, if we can guarantee the rights and the protection of kaitiakitanga in section 6 and section 7, then that is not just for the benefit of Māori. That is for the benefit of this entire nation, and it needs to be celebrated.

That brings us to the argument over fresh water. Much we have heard in the last couple of days from a particular party in question that says that this is a divisive element, that we are “brownmailing” the Government, and that the Māori Party is not serving the interests of this country. I tell you that that is not us being divisive; that is that party being divisive. To go back to Ōrewa and to make those speeches in front of a crowd of sympathisers and to come out not 2 days after being at Rātana and to say that is divisive.

If those members want to make those claims over the Treaty having to be pulled out of the Resource Management Act, then why did they not say those things at Rātana in front of the Māori people? They need to stand up and own that, because, actually, do they vote on Treaty settlements? No, they do not. Do they support the Treaty? No, they do not. They use it as a tool to drive a wedge in this country and to split our nation. It is not exclusive; it is inclusive.

When we recognise the rights of Māori people and fresh water, we recognise the rights of all of us, because, actually, the Government will say that no one owns fresh water. Well, I tell you, if the regional councils in this country allocate fresh water, then they act like owners. When they allocate fresh water for the corporate needs of our farmers, of our industry, of our horticulture, and of those who want to bottle it and sell it for profit, that is corporate welfare. When we stand by as the observers of the degradation of our rivers, that is corporate, that is welfare, that is benefit fraud. That is exactly what that is. If we have to spend more of the public purse to clean up the rivers in this country so we can go back to the places where we spent our childhood, swimming in the rivers of this nation, and enjoy our time with our family, then that is corporate and benefit fraud, and that is what they are committing.

The Māori Party is not advocating for the rights and interests of Māori so that we can be exclusive; it is so that we can be inclusive. This country needs to stand up and recognise that recognising Māori rights, as guaranteed to them under the Treaty, ensures that our people can live in the duality of nationhood in this country. That is value added to our nation, not the deficit theorising that is going on over in that quarter of the House. It is not deficit theorising. When we realise that to include Māori is inclusive, we sit together in this country in the true understanding of what partnership means, and that is what we advocate for every single day when we come into this House.

I say to all who are listening that you have no need to fear because of Māori having rights and interests recognised. There is no fear in that. That was the irrational fear that the Labour Government tried to perpetuate over the foreshore and seabed. What? That we could not go to the beaches if you dared give some rights to the Māori? Well, lock up the doors, shut them now, keep your daughters locked away, because the Māori are coming. And we should fear that? That is the fearmongering that goes on in this place when we do what is popular and not what is right. What is right is to recognise those values, those things, those privileges guaranteed under the Treaty that we came together to sign at Waitangi—a partnership agreement.

So let me tell you about that, because 60 years ago Māori lived in this country next to its riverways as their source of life, as their mana o te wai. We lived there in a pristine environment, and since the allocation of water we have been merely observers to the degradation of our rivers, and we have sat on the sidelines while it has been allocated to the corporate benefit of those who produce our food. That is not a bad thing—people need to produce food, we need to eat, and we understand that—but it needs to be done in fairness. So if anybody thinks that that is exclusivity, it is not. It is inclusivity, and it allows all of us to live here together.

Actually, I think we should hold back 40 percent of water allocation for the good of our community so that we can never over-allocate our waters, so that our waters will be pristine and we can live in a country where we value our green, clean New Zealand.

💬 Hon Te Ururoa Flavell: That is just the start.

That is just the start. The Māori Party is not here just for the benefit of Māori, as people think. Yes, we advocate for Māori, but that is a good thing because we want Māori to be independent, not co-dependent on the Government. The Resource Management Act is one area where we can do that. The fresh water is another area where we can do that. And we can work on the Marine Reserves Act because, yes, we need to have places that are held in posterity for all of us, but not if it then further takes away the rights and privileges of Māori that are guaranteed under the Treaty.

Yes, we go on about the Treaty all the time, and people say “Oh, you’re only about Māori.”, but it is about value-add to this country. What is wrong with a kaupapa Māori model of practice that upholds everyone’s rights? When we guarantee the rights of Māori, we guarantee the rights of all in this country. That is not exclusive; it is inclusive, and we need to get that right.

This brings us to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. We have been vocal over the TPP agreement for a long time. Actually, in Pita and Tariana’s day they sat and put out a press release with the Greens objecting to the TPP agreement because we did not know what was in it. Now we know—6,000 pages of it. Now we know.

Well, I tell you we are not against free trade; we are just against unfair trade, because if there is not a greater distribution of wealth to all peoples in this country, then what good is it? What good is it to have a free-trade agreement if we have poverty in this nation? What good is it to have a free-trade agreement if we have homelessness in this nation? We have to have structural intervention in our system so that all people can realise the benefits of free trade—so that it becomes fair trade. Our people should not be struggling to buy a loaf of bread, a block of cheese, and a bottle of milk so that they can feed their children. That is the real struggle that people feel today.

The TPP agreement has a clause in it called the Treaty clause, as everybody has come to call it, and it guarantees the rights of our people. But, actually, it is up to the interpretation of the Government, and we only need to look back at the 175 years gone by to see that that is not always conducive to the thoughts of Māori. So if we have to rely on the Government to interpret it, well, we have seen what the Labour Government does—it just changes the law. We want to say to the National Government, be careful. This may be the same clause that has been in every free-trade agreement, but all those free-trade agreements did not extend to intellectual property, to biodiversity, to environmental issues, and to the Wai 262 claim still remains unrecognised today.

So we say to the Government that we do not support anything that breaches the rights of the Treaty, not just for Māori, but for all New Zealanders. That is what realising the duality of nationhood is. Thank you.

Can I, first of all, wish members who are in the House a happy New Year, and also a happy Chinese New Year, which we are celebrating in this Parliament this very evening.

💬 Fletcher Tabuteau: Ni hao.

Ni hao. Most of us enjoyed our Christmas break with our family. We had fun, we had food, and some of us look like the emphasis has been on food. With the weather that we have had, with our victories in sport—and I have to say to the Prime Minister, none of them was he responsible for. It was all our great teams’ work. With the weather, the sport, the beaches, the activities, the grandchildren, and the holidays some of us have come back with recharged batteries. We have come back energised and excited about the year ahead.

What I found is that when you spend time with your family it often brings out some wonderful memories of days gone by. And it certainly did that for me over this Christmas period when I was around my family. It brought back memories of my own upbringing. I have to say, I was lucky enough—as I believe you were, Mr Assistant Speaker—to actually live what we call the Kiwi Dream. We actually got to live the New Zealand Kiwi Dream.

You see, my parents built their first home with a State Advances Corporation loan, and they were able to capitalise their family benefit to put a deposit down on that house. My old dad said to me: “You need to have a freehold home when you retire, then you will be safe.” I have had the chance to do that. I do own my own home. I have to say, not all our children do. I got that chance because my income related better to the cost of the house I was going to buy, which is not the case today. And my old dad, he was in the same job for 40 years, then he retired. He never had to change his job. His wages supported a wife and three daughters.

I got paid to train for my first job at the dental school. I got my first job from that training. I never paid for it; they paid me. I got a free tertiary education from Waikato University. I got the chance to get the jobs that I wanted.

I had the freedom of the outdoors—of family holidays, of clean rivers, of close family, and good food. I had my grandparents, who lived next door to us for most of my young life, and we had neighbours who looked out for us. The Kiwi Dream for many of us was a reality. That was our life. It was what made New Zealand unique—unique in the world.

The Kiwi Dream was central to who we were as New Zealanders. In this country we had the highest rate of homeownership in the world. That is what we aspired to. Around 80 percent of New Zealanders owned their own home by the time they retired. We had job security. We had jobs to go to. You could go from one job to another. You could train and retrain for a job. We had free education, and we had affordable health. We led the world in living the Kiwi Dream.

What saddens me is to see that dream slipping away for thousands of New Zealanders. It is like the Government is saying: “It’s not possible to have that dream any more. It’s not important. It’s a bygone era. It’s not needed.” Well, I have to say, I do not accept that. I will not accept that. I will not roll over and give up on New Zealand being the best place in the world to live, to love, and to work in.

What worries me is that I believe we have become a meaner country. We have become a more selfish country. We are a country that is more about me, me, me than about us. And our Kiwi values, I believe, are being changed at this very moment. It seems to me that what we celebrate now, and what we worship as success, is money. We see spoilt rich kids who have no concept of how thousands of their peers live just down the road. More and more people are being shut out of the Kiwi Dream, and this Government is closing that door. It is creating a new reality for New Zealanders.

You see, our economy is increasingly weighted in favour of those who already are doing well. I believe it started in 2009, at the height of the global financial crisis. It was tough for the world. New Zealand was a little luckier because the previous Labour Government had left this Government with no Government debt. It had paid down debt. It had the lowest unemployment rate in the OECD—and that is on record if the members want to go and look at it. But what did the National Government do in 2009? It gave tax cuts to the wealthiest percentage of the population in New Zealand. In the middle of a global financial crisis, its response was to give a tax cut.

Billions and billions of dollars have been given to those who did not need it, and those who had the least were told to suck it up because they needed to tighten their belts and they needed to ensure that we got out of the global financial crisis. The burden was placed on those who had the least. Now we are told that there are going to be tax cuts again, for the very same people. Surprise, surprise! The tax cuts are a promise for next year. Some of us know that next year is election year. So in election year, when there might be some money that could be spent on far better things, a few at the top are going to receive a tax cut. Not for our kids, not for those older New Zealanders who are looking to have the health services they need, not for free education after New Zealanders leave school—no, not for that. We are told by the Government that that cannot be afforded.

Well, it is all about priorities, is it not? Houses are now unaffordable for thousands of Kiwis. If you have got one and you live in Auckland, you probably feel you are a millionaire because your house is now worth a million dollars. But it is a house for a house, so if you change your house you are not going to be much better off unless you shift to Reefton, or somewhere like that. If you live in Auckland, you are living in the fifth-dearest city in the world for housing. Imagine that—in New Zealand. We now know that houses are the playthings of speculators, those who often live offshore, who come to buy up houses here to be able to sell them again and put the cash in their pockets and take it away.

We have a Government that turns a blind eye to poverty amongst children in New Zealand—and “poverty” is a word that must not be spoken. You may call it “hardship”, or “hard times”, but never say “poverty”. We have got health care that is stretched to the breaking point, and anyone who was at the Health Committee today would have heard how tough it is on an area like Auckland, with a bulging population, or on an area like Christchurch, where they are still suffering from the impact of an earthquake, particularly in mental health.

The Labour Party does not believe in that future. We have a different future for New Zealand, based on the inherent beliefs of Kiwis. They are beliefs that need to be rekindled by leadership and by a Government that is in touch with New Zealanders and believes in a chance for a decent, secure job, for a warm, affordable home, and for education for the future. We will make that happen.

The first part of our announcements came when we announced that we want to ensure our children and our grandchildren have the opportunity to have post - secondary school education, and the first 3 years of that education free—the same as I had and the same as Mr Joyce had, as Mr Key had, and as Dr Coleman had. We took it, but that Government does not want to give it back to our children. If we want a future for them, education has to be the future. As our job market changes, as we know that around 47 percent—is it 47 percent? No, I will not go there—I cannot find it in a hurry. We know that we have got a changing job market and that we are going to have many people out of jobs in the next 20 years. They need to be retrained into the new jobs that are coming. This is not our future. Our future is to rebuild that Kiwi Dream, and we intend to do it in Government.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and happy New Year to you and to all our colleagues across the Chamber. It is the first week back in Parliament in 2016. Xin nian kuai le. Hou nian da ji. It is Chinese New Year—the last couple of days have turned over the Chinese New Year—and tonight we celebrate that in Parliament with a function here, which I will be hosting.

It is a new year, and it is another year in which this Government—this John Key - led National Government—continues to focus on the issues and the matters that are important to all New Zealanders. It was interesting to hear the speaker who just sat down, Ms King, talk about the Kiwi Dream and talk about what is important to New Zealanders around education. What is important is education and jobs, and she referred to jobs. That is why this trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, is such an important agreement to get signed and get implemented, because we know that free trade with our partners across the globe helps to eliminate poverty. It helps to raise living standards, it helps to employ people, it helps to put clothes on children’s backs and food on the table, and it helps to look after our families, our communities, and, ultimately, this country.

What does it mean? Well, let us talk about the figures. In 2030 it will be approximately $2.7 billion per year. It involves 12 countries—12 countries where there are over 800 million potential customers whom we will be able to sell our goods and services to. I find it rich that a party that used to support free trade, a party that used to support enterprise and endeavour, is now railing against jobs, railing against economic development, and railing against the types of benefits and jobs that it used to promote.

💬 Dr David Clark: Job losses.

I think—David Clark—that shows a lack of leadership and a lack of vision, and, certainly, it shows division amongst our opponents.

How do I know this? Visiting local businesses—and I visited a business with the Prime Minister. It is a dried meat products company. There, they were talking about how increased trade with China had led to more jobs within that company. They were talking about overtime for the workers, not just after hours but on weekends. They were talking about production runs that were looking to expand over time. They were talking about how this company, which is based in Māngere, could provide further opportunities for family members, friends, and others who were prepared to apply for jobs within that company. That came about only because of the free-trade agreement with China.

We have heard members opposite talk about the loss of sovereignty. Well, they know and we know, and the New Zealand public know, that the shared nature of free-trade agreements provides for some loss in sovereignty. You give up something in order to gain something else. These agreements, by their nature—even the one that was signed under the Labour Government, the Chinese free-trade agreement—have a loss in sovereignty. I do not get the argument that now, 8 years later, this has suddenly changed.

The second point that was raised by members opposite was around the lack of consultation. Well, these things, we know, are not done in the public gaze. There is an opportunity, through the select committee process, for the public to have a say in these matters—

💬 Dr David Clark: After it’s been signed.

—well, after it has been signed, but they have a say in these matters—and you do not do negotiation in the public sphere. We all know that if we did that, we would not have a negotiation, we would not have an agreement, and we would have bickering amongst those members to that agreement. All I would say is that the proof is in the pudding on this trade agreement.

All I will say is that in 2008 our two-way trade with China was less than $9 billion. Today it is over $20 billion. China is our largest trading partner. We have over 30,000—

💬 Dr David Clark: “Thank you, Labour.”

Yes, thank you, Labour. I will acknowledge it—thank you, Labour. But I would not thank Labour for depriving this country of a similar trade deal with 11 other countries, with over 800 million customers. I would not thank Labour for that, Mr Clark. We are talking about 30,000 students who come here every year to get their education. We are talking about 355,000 tourists—and growing—who come here and spend money in the New Zealand economy, expanding our tourism industry, and most important, expanding the job base in this country.

I just have one more example to add to what trade agreements give us. In my own electorate, Maungakiekie, locally in Mount Wellington, there is a company called Waste Management. It took a $900 million investment from Beijing Capital that led to over 400 additional jobs—400 additional jobs—for local people, for New Zealanders, where 400 families could be provided for. I challenge members opposite to argue against that and to say to those 400 extra workers that they cannot be provided for. Silence—that is all I hear from David Clark. Silence.

Jobs are important, and last week we heard the jobs figures—5.3 percent unemployment, which we are all proud of. Even the Labour Party is proud of our record on unemployment. But what I was particularly proud of were the figures around Pacific employment. Over 130,700 Pacific people are now fully employed in this country—130,700 Pacific people employed in this country. Why is that important? That is the most Pacific people to be employed in this country in our history.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: What’s our unemployment rate, Sam? It’s about 13 percent, isn’t it? Thirteen percent of Pacific unemployed.

Even Carmel Sepuloni likes it. Well, thank you, Carmel Sepuloni. We appreciate your support for those figures. What that shows is that in the last year, 14,500 extra Pacific people are now employed. She likes that. She has an angry face, but she still likes the fact that all those people are employed.

It goes alongside our education figures for Pacific people. Early childhood education rates are well over 90 percent, and it starts in the home. It starts at early childhood and goes right through the education system. Annette King asked why it is important, and these are the facts—these are the figures that show this National Government is good for all New Zealanders. But I am particularly interested, as the Minister for Pacific Peoples, to show that the record has actually improved the well-being and the welfare of Pacific people in this country. That is a record that we stand proud of every day. What does it mean? The National Certification of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2 rates—not just early childhood education but the NCEA level 2 rates—have gone up 46 percent since National took power. That is over 5,000 Pacific people who now get NCEA level 2 or above every year.

This year my focus is not just on ethnic communities and Pacific peoples. As the Minister of Local Government, I am looking to improve local services and improve the provision of local services by local government. I will work alongside local government, the mayors and the councils, with some reforms that will allow them and enable them to better utilise local government assets in order to provide better infrastructure, especially around water, around transport, and around the provision of utilities. I will be working alongside them to better monitor their performance to see what works in various local government bodies and what does not work. We know that there is some really good work being done in local government, but we also know that with a little bit of tinkering and a little bit of tweaking of local government, we can get it working better.

I think we are all in agreement that ratepayers demand services that are effective and efficient but also quality services that they can use and they can utilise. I will be working alongside those councils and Local Government New Zealand to improve those services. What does it mean? It terms of infrastructure it is over $110 billion over the next 10 years, between central government and local government, for the provision of infrastructure that will support jobs. So what does that mean? It means broadband outlay. It means bridges, roads, and various other infrastructure projects. I am particularly proud that the Prime Minister announced 2 weeks ago the $1.25 billion project in the East-West Link, which is in my electorate, in Maungakiekie.

So this is a Government that is moving forward. This is a Government that—

The member’s time has expired. I will call Julie Anne Genter, but just before the member speaks, I say to members that I have indicated a couple of times to members in the last day or so to wind up their speeches. Basically, I do that when they run out of time, and I do not appreciate it when people—I think we have had three—keep on going until I stand up. If members persist in doing that, I just will not give them any time to wind up. Julie Anne Genter—a 5-minute speech with a bell at 1 minute.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. The Prime Minister’s speech really highlighted for me the wasted opportunity of the last 8 years. It was rich in the usual rhetoric about responsible financial management, paying down debt, delivering benefits to New Zealand, and growing the economy. We always hear a lot about that from the Government, but the reality does not quite match up with the rhetoric.

Credit where it is due—things are ticking along. This National Government is very good at focusing on the short-term and protecting the status quo. That much can be said for it, and it is true what the Prime Minister said, for example, about wages rising. They are rising just faster than inflation. So real median incomes, since National took power, has increased by about 2.8 percent. But for many New Zealanders they are not actually better off, particularly many who are living in Auckland, where house prices have increased by 80 percent during that time. So, obviously, some property investors are much better off than they were 8 years ago, but many people, particularly young people and low-income people, are going to find it that much harder to find a decent place to live that is close to jobs and education.

After 8 years, it is pretty clear that National is not going to do anything to reduce our shocking levels of inequality, which go back to the 1980s and the 1990s. There has been no plan to increase the supply of social housing. There has been a very half-hearted attempt to close the tax loopholes on property, which is unlikely to have much impact given how full of loopholes that particular legislation is. There is not even a plan to feed lunch to hungry kids in schools, even though we could easily afford it.

National has also shown that it is not going to do anything to rapidly increase the diversification and innovation in our economy. Our exports are a smaller percentage of GDP than they were when National came to power. Back in 2008, exports were 31 percent of GDP. Now they are back down to 28 percent. Over the last 8 years the export of low-value, unprocessed primary products, like milk powder and raw logs, not only have not declined as a share of our exports but they are actually growing faster than any other value-added category. So we have more of the same and no diversification, no innovation—and this is from Statistics New Zealand’s Global New Zealand - International trade, investment, and travel profile.

If we look at the breakdown of our exports we can see that total primary products have increased. Unprocessed primary products have increased, and in the processed primary products, the only thing that has increased is milk powder. Out of our total manufactures, the elaborately transformed manufactures and simply transformed manufactures have not increased at all. In fact, they have declined slightly since National has come into power, and, of course, the answer to that is to incentivise more research and development. Of course, we hear from the Government that that is what it is doing, but New Zealand’s overall investment in research and development has started to decline as a proportion of the overall economy. We invest less than half the OECD average.

National has also shown it is not going to do anything to substantially clean up our rivers or to reduce dangerous carbon pollution. So after 8 years of governing, not much has changed, except that Auckland house prices have gone up, we have more children in poverty, net debt has increased by $60 billion, and, of course, our carbon pollution has gone up considerably and is on track to blow out. But there is an alternative.

The Green Party knows that we can have a New Zealand where every child—every single child—grows up in a warm, dry, safe, secure home; a New Zealand where they can swim in our rivers without fear of getting sick, where they can walk and cycle safely to school, and where they can learn and succeed because they have access to healthy food in school. This is not a pipedream. It does not end there. We know we can have a New Zealand where those kids will grow up and be able to find meaningful work that makes the world a healthier and happier place and that does not simply rely on extracting more commodities from our land and water, and where they can get paid a living wage for that work, and if they fall on hard times or get sick or decide to start a family the Government will be there to back them. We know that looking after our people is the most fundamental key to having a healthy, happy, successful society.

National will say we cannot afford this; the truth is we cannot afford not to do it. The Green Party has the practical, costed policies that will deliver this, and we know that they work because they have worked overseas. This is the vision that we have and will deliver for New Zealand when we are in Government.

New Zealanders value in their Prime Minister someone who has a sense of humour and who has a self-deprecating wit, but they also value someone who applies gravitas and sensitivity when those are appropriate and who has the wisdom and the judgment to know which to use in which situation. The Prime Minister’s personal poll ratings have been increasingly lagging behind the Government’s level of support from New Zealanders, so it is evident that an increasing number of New Zealanders now believe that the Prime Minister we have now does not have the wisdom and judgment to make an appropriate call about which mode he should be in. No doubt their opinion would have been bolstered by his speech in the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday. It was unfortunate. It was a series of try-hard sporting references, dad jokes, and then a gallop through platitudes about the economy, when New Zealanders are crying out for courage, wisdom, and leadership.

I was reminded of a Fairfax piece that I read recently about words used in this Prime Minister’s state of the nation speeches. He has given eight of them so far, and in those state of the nation speeches he has used the word “economy” 94 times, he has used the word “growth” 63 times, and he has used the word “businesses” 54 times. In those eight speeches he has never used the word “poverty”; he has never used the phrase “climate change”. The evidence is that this is a Government that does not care about poverty and does not care about climate change.

In this House, repeatedly, day after day, we have seen Government Ministers bat away challenges that they adopt a measure for child poverty. On our side, we have said “We do not care which one it is you choose. Just choose one and monitor that.”, and they consistently refuse to do it. When it comes to climate change, just days after the ink was put on to the Paris Declaration, our Prime Minister, John Key, was out there saying to New Zealanders: “It’s OK guys, it’s still business as usual as far as we’re concerned.” They do not care.

So it is tempting to think that this could be a traditional National Government—one that just muddles along and actually does not do very much—because it interprets action as being political risk. That is certainly the pattern that National Governments of the past have had. But, actually, this is not a Government that is bereft of ideas. It is just a Government that is smart enough to know that it needs to hide its ideas, because if it exposes them it will not be popular with New Zealanders. It is a Government that fetishises economic growth. We do not know whether that is because of ideology and that Government members simply believe the old trickle-down theory that everyone will benefit—you know, a rising tide lifts all boats, and the rest of it—or instead whether it is because they genuinely believe that their job as Government is to advantage the wealthiest few. But, actually, it amounts to the same thing. The effect is the same.

The effect is that they put economic growth as the entire goal of their Government, and people and the environment are forced to serve that goal. What that means is extracting as much value as they can out of labour and extracting as much value as they can out of the environment, which they think of as raw materials and waste disposal. New Zealanders deserve more than that. New Zealanders deserve long-term thinking from their Government. New Zealanders deserve a Government that delivers a fair society and a sustainable relationship with the natural world and understands that it is the economy’s job to serve those goals. And, above all, New Zealanders deserve a Government that will deliver leadership and a long-term vision. They do not have that now.

It is somewhat surprising to follow a Green member—well, actually, no, it is not—when, actually, they think the worst thing a Government could do is focus on growing the economy. Well, guess what? A growing economy is good for families, it is good for communities, and it is good for our country.

It is always fascinating to follow the Greens when they focus on lifting children out of hardship, which is absolutely what this side of the House is committed to and focused on, and that is absolutely why we focus on growing the economy. Until we are focused on growing our incomes, improving the quality of life for New Zealanders, well guess what? We will still have children in hardship.

It is why on this side of the House we have fed more than 6 million children breakfast in schools. But, as the Prime Minister said today, every single child in New Zealand has that opportunity. This is a Government that is absolutely clearly focused on growing the economy because of the benefits it delivers to hard-working New Zealanders. It is just staggering that the Opposition forget that actually you cannot have a growing income and you cannot have families who have more in their pockets every week and each week without having a growing economy.

So we are focused on—yes—creating more jobs, creating higher incomes, providing greater opportunities for each and every New Zealander. So it is interesting—[Interruption] I do not know where those members have been over the Christmas break, but I want to talk about some of the comments that have come from constituents in the Taupō electorate, because the real kind of attitude out there is a really positive, confident attitude. Whether you are a business owner, whether you are a mum, or whether you are an exporter, that is the common thread. Whether it is Cambridge or whether it is Tūrangi, the atmosphere is one of just quiet confidence.

They like the stability. They like the fact that this Government has a clear plan and that we are delivering on it each and every day. And when the Prime Minister stood in the House yesterday, gosh, that list was long. Yes, he had to rush through some of it because he would not have been able to get through all of it in the 20 minutes allocated, so I want to cover a few of those that are particularly pertinent to my electorate and the people I represent and also to touch on some of the plans of work for the constituency.

Of course, I would start, given that in my electorate the majority of the jobs are in farming, forestry, and tourism—well, guess what? The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is a very good deal for the constituents in my electorate. It means they get to export more, they get to create more jobs, they get to employ more locals, and they get to take on more apprentices from our community. And, actually, I think that is fantastic news for families in my electorate, because that is what they want. They want to have a clear plan from the Government, which is exactly what we have, and they want to be able to have a plan for their young people in terms of education and training. They want to go into a career that has fantastic prospects, and absolutely we do have a plan.

But I am staggered that members on that side of the House have quite happily crowed about the benefits of the New Zealand - China free-trade agreement—and even in this very debate they have done that—and yet they are sitting there saying: “Oh, we won’t support the TPP agreement.” Well, if I look at businesses and families in my electorate, what do they want? They know that we grow the economy by selling more to the world. So whether it is a tourism operator who is running a jetboat in Cambridge, or whether it is a new geothermal forestry plant that is doing value-add for our wood processing in Taupō, that is what counts, because until we are growing our markets overseas, we are not going to grow our jobs and our incomes at home.

I want to touch on a couple of specific things in the electorate that I think are worthy, because we have heard it here—this is the infrastructure Government. It was really interesting last year when I surveyed all of my constituents. The top issue that they talked about was infrastructure. So, of course, on 15 December it was fantastic to open the Cambridge section of the Waikato Expressway, because that is about jobs for locals, but, more important than that, it is about safe transport and it is about getting our goods to market faster, and that is just one of the sections of the Waikato Expressway, which is one of our roads of national significance. But you would not get that road if the Labour Party was in Government. I do not know about you, but if you have not driven on it yet, I would encourage you to. It is a beautiful stretch of road.

In terms of infrastructure, broadband is also incredibly important. If you look at the Waikato, over 250 schools—whether it is new entrants, intermediate, or high school—are now connected. So, as a mother of three teenagers, I know how connected they are both from a social perspective and from a learning perspective. There is absolutely no way that we can have schools in our country that are not connected and providing that learning opportunity for our children. So it is fantastic to see the ongoing investment that is coming but also the anticipated 4,000 jobs that come from that level of investment.

I think one of the other things I want to touch on, given the Waikato, is also the unemployment rate. The national figures have just come out at 5.3 percent; Waikato is at 5.1 percent. But the particular aspect of it is that we have seen in the last year that women have the highest levels of participation ever. I think that is really fantastic, because if you are talking about what makes a difference to families, it is the income that comes in the door to support each individual family. So I think that is a fantastic result that we have had in the last year.

We have talked about export. Another key part of growing our economy comes from attracting investment. So one of the pieces of work that I will be progressing this year as the Minister for Land Information is the Overseas Investment Office fees review. As I have said in the House before, we have got to make sure that we are maintaining that balance of New Zealand being open for business but also protecting the rights for New Zealanders and making sure that those investors who are looking at the opportunity understand that it is a privilege to own land and assets in New Zealand.

So an extension of that is the tax compliance work that we put into place last year to make sure that everyone—whether they are a foreigner or a New Zealander—who is investing in residential housing is paying their fair share of tax. I object to the comment from the Greens member before me, Kevin Hague, that suggested that this side of the House is not tightening up on property taxation. I would struggle to list fewer than 10 things that we have done to tighten up tax compliance for a whole range of areas, but very definitely at the top of that list is property compliance. We think that if you are due to pay tax, you should pay it. That is fair and square. So whether you are earning a lot or a little, we want to make sure that you are paying your fair share of taxation.

The other thing I want to touch on, which is not something that gets aired a lot in this House, is the Open Government Information and Data Work Programme. As the Minister for Land Information, I am proud to lead this piece of work. And it is really important because, as the Prime Minister said in his statement yesterday, our focus is on social investment for public services, which is getting better results through evidence-based data. So whether it is the Data Futures Partnership or whether it is the Statistics New Zealand Integrated Data Infrastructure programme, it is about making more of the Government data available to others—public sector, private sector, and civil society—because it is actually the use of that data that we will use to grow our economy.

The final point I want to touch on is the 1 April changes, which I think are incredibly beneficial for New Zealand families. Yes, we focus on a growing economy. Why do we do that? Because at the end of the day, we want to provide more for those hard-working families. On 1 April we are increasing paid parental leave, but, more important than that, we are actually making it far more flexible so that it will work for more New Zealand families and there will be more families who are entitled to get support in those first critical weeks and months of a baby’s life.

National is focused on supporting families, whether it is increasing paid parental leave, whether it is extending free GP visits, or whether it is helping more Kiwis to get into their first home. We are focused on increasing our exports and growing our economy, but we do that so we can better support Kiwi families. We are still focused on what matters to New Zealanders.

New Zealanders have simple aspirations. We want to lead a good life with the people closest to us, and we want the chance to own our own home. We want an income that means we can look out for the people we love. We want time to spend in the outdoors, enjoying the best that our clean, green country has to offer. That is the New Zealand that I grew up in. It is the stuff of the Kiwi Dream, a dream that is central to our country’s identity. Unfortunately, the current Government’s obsession with the interests of an in-crowd is crowding out those very aspirations for an increasing number of New Zealanders.

Inequality is growing in New Zealand. We know this because we are told we have a rock star economy, yet real household incomes in some parts of New Zealand are still lower—and that is over half a decade since the global financial crisis ended—than they were when this Government came into office. We know this because homeownership is now at its lowest level in 60 years. Our economy needs to work for Kiwis, not just for a handful of National Party in-club cronies.

As I said, things used to be different. We have had an economy that worked for us before, and on this side of the House we know that under an Andrew Little - led Labour Government we can have that again.

I grew up in the land of milk and honey, knowing that New Zealanders could foot it with the best in the world. Our living standards were better then; we measured better on the scales than those countries we like to measure ourselves against. Back then, success was not guaranteed. My father built his own small business. He had to learn new skills to make that happen. Around the same time, my mother went back to high school, and then eventually she went on to study to become a doctor. Both of my parents made sacrifices for their successes, and things were tight at home when I was younger. But in our country of opportunity, when the Kiwi Dream was real, talent and persistence paid off. Plenty of kids I know had far more difficult childhoods than I had, and plenty of them have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Back then, it seemed like anything was possible. The Kiwi Dream involved the possibility of the poorest kid in the neighbourhood succeeding and becoming one of the wealthiest people in the country.

Now we see an economy that is increasingly weighted in favour of those who already have privilege, those who are already doing well, and we see an economy that puts up barriers to stop other people getting ahead. Of course there are Kiwis who continue to succeed today, but we all know that conditions are tougher, particularly under this Government. Fewer small businesses are being created. The income tax changes have ensured that the wealthiest portion of New Zealanders have a higher income than they used to while middle New Zealand is going backwards. We need a Government that backs the Kiwi Dream. We need to make it possible for more Kiwis to succeed. The truth is that our economy does not work for us like it used to. Those of us who are doing OK are uncomfortable with the fact that in the sandpits our children play in there are other kids who do not have food, necessarily, for school, who do not have shoes, and who do not have raincoats.

This is not the New Zealand that we aspire to. This is not the New Zealand that we all dream of. It is not the Kiwi Dream. It should not be like this, and it does not need to be like this. Nobody I know thinks that the growing inequalities under this Government are a good thing. Nobody I know thinks that this harsher reality is OK. It is not what New Zealand is about. When I grew up, most Kiwis dreamt of owning their own home, but for many today this is just a pipedream. A lot of households have two parents working just to meet the rent. It did not use to be this way. Things have become unbalanced, and we need to face up to that fact and say what needs to be done to put it right. If today’s New Zealanders are to enjoy homeownership again, we need decent incomes. If people are to spend time with their loved ones like previous generations did, we need a credible plan for our economy.

Unfortunately, this Government’s silver bullet at the moment is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. It would have us believe that prosperity will flow and all the economic crises and difficulties that the country is facing, the challenges we are facing, will diminish—will be gone. But that deal was a long time coming and it has delivered a lot less than would be expected ordinarily. The deal was, in fact, for dairy. It was rubbish.

💬 Chris Bishop: Oh, rubbish.

Yes, that is right—rubbish. The member is correct. An independent study shows that the portion of our country’s wealth going to working people will decrease and 6,000 job losses will eventuate in the first 10 years of this agreement. That is the only independent study that has been done on the labour market. This Government has not even researched what the TPP agreement will do to the labour market. It does not care that the wealth will not go to working people any more. It does not care that jobs will be lost.

New Zealand failed to even ask for the homeownership sovereignty protections that Australia, Malaysia, and others achieved in the agreement. Why was it good enough for Australia to have protection from foreign speculators not resident in its country and not good enough for New Zealand to even ask for it in the deal—why on earth? So we have Tufts University, the Peterson Institute, and the World Bank estimating that New Zealand’s economy will benefit very little from a ratified TPP agreement—less than a rounding error in Government forecasts.

This Government could have—and should have—done so much better for Kiwis. This Government has already broken plenty of promises. It promised to grow exports as a proportion of our economy to 40 percent. Well, the figure has dropped below 30 percent, and it is dropping further every year. This Government is failing to set goals for itself that it can achieve. The reason that it is failing to achieve those goals, though, is that it is not taking the steps to deliver on them. Seven years on from the global financial crisis exports as a proportion of our economy are below 30 percent and trending down, and overhyping the benefits of one trade deal has done nothing to halt this decline.

You do not need a textbook to know that having a wealthy elite prospering at the expense of a dwindling middle class is a recipe for economic stagnation. The signs are all around us. Drifting is not working. The current Government seems content to roll from one dairy price cycle to the next, under-investing in regional infrastructure and content to blame the farmers when things slide. Well, it will not do.

We need a diversified economy with deep skills if we are to realise the Kiwi Dream again. We need a Government that creates the conditions for high-value jobs and plenty of them. The number of people out of work, which went up before, is up 15,000 in the past year alone. We need to better support the small businesses that create the jobs that will make the change that we need. There is much to be done to make our economy work for New Zealanders. If only there was the will to do it—the will to make our economy benefit all, not just a few in-club National Party cronies. The solutions are obvious. The research and development tax credits, tax simplification, red tape removal—the possibilities are endless. We have heard them in this House before, but they are not the recipe this Government is offering.

This Government is offering more of the same—more of the same—and no new ideas. But solutions are not coming. The OECD estimates that New Zealand’s economy is about 15 percent smaller as a result of inequalities growing in recent decades. Inequalities have been a 15 percent handbrake on our prosperity, yet this Government seems desperate to continue down the same track, ignoring the warning lights on the dashboard and the increasingly sickening smell of burning rubber. It is locking more and more middle New Zealanders out of the Kiwi Dream, and it shows no compunction whatsoever.

To conclude, the story of my parents’ success shows what was once possible. It shows that plenty of people once did it. The Labour Party is determined to see the Kiwi Dream become a possibility for more people again. Labour’s Working Futures Plan of 3 years’ free post-school education is in stark contrast to National’s tired approach to leading the country. We need the Kiwi Dream, and we need a Labour Government to deliver it.

Greetings to you, Mr Assistant Speaker Mallard, in this Chinese New Year, and greetings to my fellow members in the House today. I have said publicly that there are a few—a very few—good people sitting in those ranks of the Government’s seats over there. It is just a shame—it is a real shame—that none of them is in a position to contribute to the Government’s policy settings. If those few people had been in a position to contribute, maybe we would not have this farce that we are calling a flag referendum. Perhaps we might have seen some forward thinking and actual direction applied to our economy. Perhaps if they had been allowed to speak on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), we may have had an actual exchange of ideas—an actual debate—about trade. But, no, instead there was a complete and utter blackout.

Just so that people stop—please—comparing the Trojan Horse that is the Trans-Pacific Partnership to the China free-trade agreement, I point out that that document, at 121 pages in its main agreement, including annexes 1 to 15, totalled about 1,000 pages. The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, totalling about 6,000 pages, speaks to me about being a document of control, a document of manipulation and corporate protectionism, rather than actual free trade. National’s plan—which is working; that has been mentioned so many times today—is really working only for those members, because many poor souls saw that spin and said “Oh, they’ve got a plan. Oh, it’s working. Fantastic!”. The last general election result suggests that that party has fooled just enough of the people. It just got itself just over the line. But the last by-election result suggests that people have woken up to the spin and the manipulation. This National Government literally has no plan other than to clutch to the old-school thinking, repeated already so many times this afternoon, that if giant corporates are making profits, then everyone else must be doing just fine.

I say to the Prime Minister that poverty keeps growing by the day, and the statistics are an indictment against this Government, which keeps talking about a plan. Try to get some detail as to what that plan might be and silence is those members’ reply. More and more households in New Zealand are no longer living from pay day to pay day, which we saw as being a terrible indictment back in the day. No, that is not bad enough. They are now taking out loans to survive from week to week.

I am talking about working families—good, hard-working families; good people who want to do well by themselves and their children—who must borrow money and manage greater and greater debt just to get by. They are not servicing debt to invest and multiply their wealth, Prime Minister. Rather, they are servicing greater debt simply to put food on their tables and pay the rent, the doctor’s bill, and their children’s education bill, which gets bigger by the day. Right now those people are blaming themselves. Soon enough they will realise it is the National Government’s lack of economic foresight, dominated by old-school thinking, that allows this travesty to exist in the first place and, in fact, to grow day by day.

I spoke last year about the Prime Minister driving the metaphorical bus that is the TPP over a cliff and taking the country with it. Today I say that he has added turbo-chargers to that bus. He races to take us all to the bottom of the international heap—to a low-wage economy where big businesses make ever bigger profits, shared out amongst only the top 1 percent. That is this Government’s definition of success. As this Government scrambles to allow for more rules of trade and a disputes process that is available only to international corporates, the rest of the country watches as this country’s income inequality gets larger and larger. The only plan I can see from National is to keep the people in the dark about the facts—the fact that this Government is borrowing so, so fast just to keep the New Zealand economy standing still.

Debt has grown in excess of $100 billion since National became the Government. That is a sinfully scary number. These puppeteers who call themselves prudent money managers literally have no clue, as our country’s debt to foreign investors gets bigger and bigger by the second. I say to those members opposite who have spoken today that it is time to actually get a plan, a modern plan, and it is time to modernise our trade deals. The fact that the Government’s only plan for the economy is to call its ad hoc, fairy tale approach to the economy a plan that is working is not enough for more and more New Zealanders, especially in our regions.

This National Government talks about being aspirational, and yet the only solution Minister Joyce presents to this country is more and more foreign direct investment and more and more sales of New Zealand assets. Never mind, as that number grows, that the profits those companies generate literally keep pouring out of this country. They are not for reinvestment into our country, not for the sharing of wealth with New Zealanders, not for investment in our schools or investment in our health system, but as returns to shareholders in foreign lands—those who care not one whit about New Zealand and its people. I will concede that GDP is going up, but that is not the debate any more. It is time to get a clue.

Despite its spin, this National Government has a problem on its hands and it is a big one. Wealth and income inequality just keep growing in New Zealand. I say to those across this room that the TPP agreement will exacerbate and increase this inequality problem. It will not do as claimed and repeated again and again as part of the spin by those members. It will not help this economy. Many international mainstream economists, trade specialists, have come out and agreed that this trade deal, for New Zealand, will lead to between 6,000 and 7,000 job losses and an increase in income inequality.

Minister Woodhouse and Minister Lotu-Iiga mentioned that the tariff removals would see huge gains for New Zealand exporters. They seem to imply that all the forecast gains will come about because of the tariff reduction schedule. Are they aware that the tariff removals represent only 23 percent of the Government’s fairy tale numbers? It assumes that all of the tariff reduction gains, as tiny as they are, will accrue to New Zealand exporters. I am not sure whether they are aware of how markets work, but what is more likely is that the processors and the wholesalers will reap those benefits whilst the supplier of those primary ingredients, which is New Zealand, will gain little to no reward.

I conclude by saying again that New Zealand First supports free trade, but the TPP is anything but.

💬 Chris Bishop: Oh, rubbish!

I am proud, Mr Bishop, to be a staunch advocate for New Zealand business. I respect and admire those who create and those who take risks—those who would take New Zealand goods beyond our borders. In so doing they do create jobs, and, hopefully, those profits of New Zealand firms circulate amongst our economy and we share in those gains. This trade deal will not enable any of the lines sold by this Government to the business community. Without doubt, I look forward to a robust debate in the House on the TPP. The ability to provide actual, real detail to those who have just assumed it will be good for them because this Government has simply said so will, I hope, enable better decision-making and more questioning engagement from the New Zealand business sector. Perhaps the truth will set us free.

Ā, tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā, tēnā koutou e ngā mema o Te Whare Pāremata, ngā mihi o te Tau Hou ki a koutou katoa.

[And so, greetings and acknowledgments of the New Year to you, Mr Assistant Speaker, members of Parliament House, and to you all.]

I am proud to stand and take a call to support the Prime Minister’s statement for 2016. This is a split call, so I have only a few minutes to make my contribution. I want to concentrate on the Government’s investment in Christchurch, and particularly in Christchurch East, where I am the National list MP. As we all know—some may know; some may not— Christchurch East was badly affected in the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes. We lost a large number of our suburbs. We lost all of Brooklands and we lost all of Bexley. One whole side of Avondale was wiped out. A lot of the North New Brighton area has been turned into residential red zone. It is part of the green areas that the Hon Nicky Wagner talked about in her contribution this afternoon on Christchurch, to do with the rebuild and the regeneration.

All of those people who suffered left Christchurch East. The east suffered a big reduction in its population. We saw school rolls reduced in number. I am sure the people there thought at the time that it was going to take quite a lot to bring Christchurch East back. But I am pleased to say that the work of this Government and its investment into the Christchurch East electorate has been amazing. The area is developing northwards, so a lot of the Southshore residents who lost their homes—and some of them are still under negotiation—have left. We have new people coming into the northern area of the electorate. When I say the northern area I am talking about Marshland and the Parklands area. We are finding whole new residential areas just popping up overnight. That is good for the electorate.

We have seen the hard work of the Minister of Education on consolidating education in the east, and the hard work on the Aranui community learning campus. That proposal went through. It merges three primary schools into the high school at Aranui. Just last year they employed their new principal. His name is Andy Kai Fong. Just recently, over the Christmas break, we were catching up with my husband’s cousins. One of them is a very good friend of Andy Kai Fong. He said that Andy will make an amazing contribution to the east. Andy was interviewed by the newspaper. One of the things that he said, after his appointment—he saw the advertisement, he applied for the position and got it—is that it is a chance for Christchurch East to be at the forefront of educational developments locally, nationally, and globally. The Aranui community education campus is going to be just that, because it is going to start from preschool and go right through to secondary school. It is like an area school within a city. For that whole area of New Brighton and Aranui, it is going to be a godsend for many of the parents who have young people getting ready to go to either preschool or high school. That is a plus and one of the major investments that this Government has made into the eastern frame.

The other areas have been the merging of primary schools. We have seen three new primary schools emerge out of about six other primary schools. That has been an amazing project as well. I was pleased to attend the Waitākiri Primary School opening just recently. There has been $17 billion of Government investment into Christchurch, and the east has reaped its rewards there. Regenerate Christchurch is going to be an amazing project for New Brighton, and I look forward to being part of that. Thank you very much. I support the Prime Minister’s statement.

A previous New Zealand First speaker referred to the Government as not having a plan. The Government does have a plan. It is called the Business Growth Agenda. It is the Government’s programme of work that will build a more productive, confident, and competitive economy. The bits that make up that growth agenda are around skills, around export, around infrastructure, around innovation, and around natural resources and investment. Today I want to focus on the infrastructure part of that.

The New Zealand First member talked about old-school thinking. It is not actually old-school thinking; it is new-infrastructure thinking, because there was a massive announcement in the Prime Minister’s first speech of the year around infrastructure for State Highway 3, bypassing Mt Messenger and Awakino, which run through my electorate. It was great to hear the Prime Minister refer to that yesterday in the House when he spoke, as well.

I was driving along the other day and I just said to the person in the car with me: “I love roadworks.” You know, we have a massive new roundabout at Waitomo. It is keeping tourists and residents safe. It was a horrible piece of road before, and now we have this fantastic, safe roundabout.

We now have one in the beginning phases that is on the way to Hamilton Airport, which is also in my electorate. It is the main road in and out to the national fieldays at Mystery Creek, which, as the southern hemisphere’s biggest agricultural function, Minister Guy will be well aware of.

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: Yes. Huge.

And so it is really fantastic that by June, Minister, the roundabout will be ready for all the visitors who are coming into the Taranaki - King Country electorate.

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: Good local member.

Absolutely. So the State Highway 3 thing—I do want to mention, as a new MP, that there are a lot of people who have done a lot of advocacy and preparation for that in the past. A couple of people whom I do want to mention are former Taranaki MP Roger Maxwell, who has been a key driving force on that piece of road, and the Road Transport Association member Tom Cloke.

Secondly, I want to touch on the significant investments going into our urban and rural cycleways. Over the holidays, my husband Louis and I actually biked the Timber Trail, which goes between Benneydale and Ōngārue, which is almost in Taumarunui, and it is just amazing. It is environmental, it is historical, and there is a whole lot of information there. It is actually very steep—up and down—but it is jolly good exercise, and it is a fantastic venture for all of those local people who are providing farmhouses and meals. The tourism in that space is actually booming, and I am pleased to say that, actually, 85 percent of the people who are coming down to bike that trail are coming from Auckland. So, as we get a better road, we will be able to attract more people into the electorate. I am very excited about both of those things.

I am also very excited that the Government this year is going to progress legislation to reform the Resource Management Act. It will reduce costs and delays not only for homeowners but also for businesses. It does not matter if they are small or medium sized, because in our electorates, particularly the provincial ones, they are made up of huge numbers of small to medium-sized businesses. What I am finding at the moment is that people get very frustrated with red tape. It costs a lot, it takes a lot of time and effort, and we need to find a way to simplify that so that people can get on with starting new businesses, employing skilled people, and creating employment, without the hassle of having to go through the whole rigmarole of trying to get their consents through. So I am very, very happy about that one.

The other thing that is also going to really improve my constituents’ lives is the gains that will come from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is a fantastic agreement. It is going to cut a whole lot of tariffs off for our primary producers, and it will give our provinces a real boost.

So I am really excited about 2016. It has got off to a really good start in my electorate with the roading announcement, and I have been very proud over the last 18 months to be part of a Government that is really focused on making a difference for the people of New Zealand. Thank you.

The previous speaker, Barbara Kuriger, might be proud of the Government’s accomplishments, but there are a lot of people in this House who are far from proud of the Government’s accomplishments—if you can call them accomplishments at all.

On Saturday night I was in Auckland City—I am seldom in Auckland City—walking down Victoria Street, from the TVNZ side down to Queen Street. I have not been in the city for a long time, but I was saddened by the number of homeless people who were out on that street. The last time I was in the city, walking down that same street, I cannot recall seeing a number close to what I saw on Saturday night. I think, perhaps, that I might have seen one or two homeless people on the street, but not one after another along the side of the road. Walking along that road, I just thought: “Where have we come to as a country?”.

It is not just Auckland City that has this problem; it is so many other areas, including even my own electorate. Often we show up to our electorate office in Glen Eden, and there is a homeless person sleeping outside of the office.

💬 Peeni Henare: In the provinces.

Even in the provinces, my colleague Peeni Henare is saying, that same thing is evident.

Even 5 years ago when I was a member of Parliament and I had an office across the other side of the road from where my current office is, we did not have the level of homelessness that we are seeing every day. Even 5 years ago when I was a member of Parliament, we did not have the number of constituents walking through our electorate office every day with the housing issues that we are seeing New Zealanders faced with now. So for the National Government to say that it is proud of what it has accomplished over the last 7 years—I find that shocking and I think that, in fact, it should be ashamed.

New Zealanders are not used to this level of homelessness. We did not grow up seeing homeless people begging on the street every day. This is not the Kiwi Dream that we were all raised to believe in. In fact, this is a nightmare. It was a nightmare walking up Victoria Street and seeing homeless person after homeless person lining that street. And all I could think of was: “Actually, National Government, you can take responsibility for this.” We have moved so far away from the Kiwi Dream that it concerns me as a politician and it concerns me as a New Zealander. I am sure there are many New Zealanders out there who are thinking: “How are we ever going to be able to find our way back to that Kiwi Dream that we all had envisaged?”.

My father was a migrant to this country, and his dream as a new migrant was not that different from the stereotypical Kiwi Dream that many of us share. All it was was a family, a home, a job, and a better life, actually, for his children as well, so that his children would not have to work the factory floors like he did, and like many of his generation who came over did.

I have to point out that it has been very interesting in the House today watching the reaction of John Key, Steven Joyce, and Bill English to Labour’s announcement about 3 years’ free tertiary education. The fact that they are outraged by it; the fact that they have said it is unaffordable despite the fact that they are considering offering tax cuts; the fact that they say that it is unfair to the waitress who would have to pay for that tertiary education, despite the fact that that waitress quite possibly could be studying herself; and the fact that they say that they are aspirational for New Zealand, and yet Steven Joyce talks about the need to curb the demand for tertiary education—I find it really interesting that they would make statements like that. Actually, they got their tertiary education free, off the backs of people like my working-class, freezing worker father, who paid, with his taxpayer dollars, for them to get their tertiary educations for free.

The thing that really is unfair is that those taxpaying, working class New Zealanders paid for people like Steven Joyce, Bill English, John Key, and others over there to get their tertiary educations, but when their children got to that age when they were able to realise their parents’ aspirations for them to get tertiary educations—like I was able to for my own father—actually, we were not afforded the same opportunity, and we had to fork out thousands of dollars to pay for our tertiary education after our parents had paid for their tertiary educations. So I think it is a little bit unfair of people like Steven Joyce, John Key, and Bill English to say that this is completely unaffordable, that this is unnecessary, and that this is unfair to New Zealanders—like John Key pointed out in regard to the waitress.

I think back to the 2008 election, when we had to constantly listen to the key lines being run by the National Government—and it continues to run them now—about wanting a brighter future for New Zealand, being aspirational for New Zealanders. I look at those two phrases and I think: “Well, how much brighter is our future, when all we see are homeless people lining the street up Victoria Street in the city, and how much brighter is our future when we see constituents coming into our office every day because of the fact that they are homeless, and homeless in the nastiest of ways?”. There are pregnant women living in cars, who are not sure where they are going to be when they go into labour with their children, whole families living in garages, and whole families having to couch surf from home to home. That is not the Kiwi Dream; that is the Kiwi nightmare that we have been introduced to by that National Government over there.

I have had the privilege for the last year and a bit of holding the social development portfolio for the Labour Opposition, and when I look at people here who are in the position where they need to seek assistance from our welfare system, all I can see is the fact that National is actually anti-aspirational for these people. So many things have been cut. You would think—or we would think—that during times of unemployment that is an opportunity for any Government to make an investment in people, so that not only can these people go on to more secure employment but they can increase their earning capacities so that they can better take care of themselves and their families.

But that has not been the case. Instead, what we have seen is a National Government that sets a Better Public Services target that is all about benefit reductions but not about employment outcomes, and we see it doing anything it can to cut people off from the benefit system, with no care whatsoever about whether or not they are going on to something else.

I think some of the things that the National Government has done in this area are dangerous, and the treatment of people who have had to access welfare has been disgusting. I want to talk about some of those, and then I want to look at the National members over there and see how proud they are of their track record. Let us start with cancer patients on the benefit. No longer do we have an invalids or sickness benefit; the Government has decided that, actually, people with cancer or potentially terminal illnesses can go on jobseeker support. And regardless of whether or not they are well enough to, there is an expectation that they go and regularly check in, and that, for some of them—despite the fact they are getting radiation and chemotherapy—they have to constantly go in and prove that they are still unwell and also show that they are actively seeking work.

I want to talk about grandparents raising grandchildren and how they have been treated by that Government. We have had a number of cases reported to us by the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust where they have been told by Work and Income New Zealand, under that Government, that they are not entitled to anything to support their grandchildren. And what we have been left with are grandparents who, actually, have ended up being owed in the thousands of dollars by that Government because they were not given what they were entitled to.

Labour is about giving back the Kiwi Dream. That is what we are here to do. I am disappointed every day by the things that I see out and about, and by the way in which that Government has turned everyday reality for so many New Zealanders into a nightmare. If I have to listen to another National MP say that they are proud of the National Government’s track record, then I think I am going to have to exit this House today, because I have simply heard enough of that rubbish. Thank you very much.

Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this debate on the Prime Minister’s statement for 2016. First of all, I would like to touch upon the issue that is very close to my heart, which is law and order. Today we had Commissioner Mike Bush in front of the Law and Order Committee, and he mentioned that the crime rate is lower. He joined the Police Force in 1978, when the crime rate was at the same as today, which means that we are doing very well on law and order. I would like to congratulate the New Zealand Police, which is well respected not only in New Zealand for doing a good job but, I think, it is well respected overseas also.

Recently we saw that more than a hundred police officers were called to Australia to support the G20 summit over there to protect the VIPs and the dignitaries who came to participate in G20. The New Zealand Police were there to support them.

I would like to touch on some of the points that the previous speaker, Carmel Sepuloni, has raised on the National Government’s achievements. She mentioned cancer patients. We were sending our cancer patients to Australia for chemotherapy, but under this Government we are making sure that our patients do not go anywhere, and they get the health facilities in New Zealand. She also mentioned that we do not care about the people who are on benefits. We have raised the benefits, which has not happened in the last 43 years. These are the things that are happening under the John Key - led Government, and I am proud of it.

Some more things that I would like to say have happened under this Government include the highest number of houses being built in Auckland. There is a real shortage, but we are trying to fix it. Billions of dollars are being invested in roading projects in Auckland to reduce congestion on the roads. We are also putting in billions of dollars to make that rail loop that has been talked about for a long time. These are the things that are happening under the John Key - led Government.

The interest rate, which is at its lowest level in the past many decades, is benefiting households who have more money in their pockets and more ability to service their loans. These are the things that are happening, and we should not be deluded: the Government went through a very hard time during the world recession.

I would like to touch upon the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which has been talked about a lot, and which is not only going to benefit the exporters but is also going to benefit all the small to medium sized enterprises who are participating and helping the exporters to manufacture products or produce products that we export. With the TPP agreement, ultimately we will benefit by more than $2 billion a year, having invested it in this economy. These things will not only benefit us by creating jobs but they will improve our lifestyle, which we look forward to.

As the previous speaker, Carmel Sepuloni, mentioned, when her parents migrated to New Zealand, they had the dream. I also came to New Zealand with the same dream: that future generations would feel that the economy is growing, that they are in a safer place, and that they have opportunities to grow themselves. We have to take steps from time to time to ensure the economy grows.

Opposition members keep on complaining that the Government is not doing enough to create jobs. When we try to do something, then they also criticise us that we are doing something that is not right. So they have to take a side—whether they want the Government to create jobs and grow the economy, or whether they do not want it. That is what the Prime Minister said yesterday when he talked about the “TPP”, or the “Two-position Party”. They have to be fair in saying what they want and what they do not want.

With the Trans-Pacific Partnership, we know that 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product is among those 12 countries, and we have signed an agreement to have access for our exporters to that market so that we can benefit in the long term. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to participate in this debate.

Thank you for this opportunity to rise in support of the Prime Minister’s statement. And what a fabulous vision he outlined for us just a couple of days ago. Sometimes I wonder, listening to the Opposition, whether the Opposition members are in the same country.

This dream—the New Zealand Dream—is alive and well. This place is better off than it has ever been before. The standard of living continues to rise. Incomes continue to rise. There are more schools—in fact, every school in my electorate is now connected to the world through ultra-fast broadband. Whether it is Martinborough or Pongaroa, those schools and those kids are now connected to the world. We have more children in early childhood education than ever before. More children are being immunised, and more children are reaching National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 than ever before.

This place is in good shape. The New Zealand Dream, the Kiwi Dream, is alive and well. Those members say that we do not care. Well, I have outlined a couple of things that have supported the Kiwi kids of today, and, of course, my colleague Mr Bakshi has already mentioned the $25 a week that demonstrates that we do care for those who are less well off. The superannuation level has outpaced inflation; real incomes have outpaced inflation. People of all walks of life are better off than they were in 2008.

Alternative party policies have been, and continue to be, confusing and conflicting. Flip-flopping is what you can best describe it as. Those members say they support small businesses, they say they support a stronger economy, and they say they care about jobs for the ordinary New Zealanders, but their actions speak louder than words. They choose not to vote for the free-trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, but, funnily enough, they were the architects of the Chinese free-trade agreement, which, of course, we support on this side of the House.

Much has already been spoken about the flip-flopping nature and the indecisiveness of the Labour Party. I would like to spend the next couple of minutes discussing the Green Party’s conflicts, as well, which are not quite as often publicly displayed, if you like. There are two factions that I see in the Green Party, and they conflict with each other, which is why they will never be part—in my view, at least—of a coalition of any Government, whether it be with Labour or National. On the one hand, we have those members who claim they support and protect the environment. These are the people who actually want to rip apart the economy. These are the guys who want to take away the dairy farms. They want to close the dairy farms, they want to take the cattle off the land, and they want to take the sheep off the hills. That would be fair enough if that was a policy and they were consistent through their party, but, of course, they are not.

On the other hand, the Green Party has a faction that wants only to redistribute the wealth created in New Zealand. These are the people who want to pay a minimum wage of $19 or $20 an hour, but they forget that it has to be paid for. So you can see the irony: the second group is in direct conflict with the first. The first wants to rip down the economy—it does not want to support irrigation projects, it does not want to support free-trade agreements, and it does not want us to trade with the rest of the world—but then, of course, the other side of that party needs a growing economy if is to achieve what is its aspirational goal of increasing the minimum wage to, say, $19 or $20.

We are on the right track. There is a Kiwi Dream. It is alive and well. It is being supported by a strong National Government, led by Prime Minister John Key. Thank you.

The next call is a split call. David Clendon—5 minutes.

I must begin by thanking the previous speaker, Alastair Scott, for devoting such a lot of his time to talking about the Green Party. That rather jumbled, misguided analysis of what the party is and does will do nothing but good for our standing with our supporters, so thank you for that.

It was interesting that the Prime Minister ad libbed a great deal in his speech, as other people have noticed, and I think it is because, had he read the statement as it is written, the fact that this Government is completely devoid of passion or imagination or, indeed, vision would have become very obvious, and I think his ad libbing was, in part, to disguise that fact.

I think there are one or two aspects of this statement that I would like to speak to that he did not mention, dropping out of the Government’s much talked about Business Growth Agenda, which has an admirable intention: to build New Zealand business, and particularly to build regional growth—to build business capacity and capability and to restore the regional economies back to where they should be. That is an important programme to pursue, because most of our wealth, indeed, is derived from the regions. Our food exports, our fibre, our timber—a lot of our manufactured goods come from the regions. This Government has talked a lot about the regions—there are any number of documents, including one I will refer to at some length that was released just a few days ago—but we do not see much in the way of actual action or outcome. We do not see the real commitment or the investment that would actually allow the regions to fulfil their potential.

A year ago the Government put out a Northland growth strategy, because Northland is one of the five regions this Government apparently is focusing on. The growth strategy, about a year ago, was a useful snapshot of what Northland looks like today, socially, economically, and in other ways. A year later, almost to the day, this wonderful document, Tai Tokerau Northland Economic Action Plan, was launched by Minister Joyce. He chose the Marsden Estate as the venue for the launch, out in Kerikeri, and I can honestly say that is my local. I recommend it. An unsolicited plug for Marsden Estate: an excellent place to have a 3-hour lunch at the weekend.

For the first time I left Marsden Estate feeling unsatisfied, after having heard Mr Joyce. Normally I would leave there very replete; on this occasion I was left wanting more. Mr Joyce’s action plan—58 points, as we have heard earlier today, but actually not much in the way of any commitment, and not much in the way of any indication that this Government is going to do anything. One of the points made in the plan is that “Northland as a region has potential that is not yet … realised.” That is a song that has been sung for decades, and it is time, actually, a Government got real about seeing that potential fulfilled.

We are told that one of the key matters, one of the key keys to unlocking the potential, is around transport, particularly better connectivity with Auckland, and that is a fair comment. There is an odd sort of a statement in this document that Northland is a “place-based economy”. I have no idea what that means, and I suspect the authors of the document do not know either, but, whatever it means, it leads them on to say that “Roading in particular is critical for Northland”. That is not wrong; our roads are in an appalling state. It is costing us economically, to say nothing of the environmental and health effects of some pretty shabby roading.

One of the “work stream: enablers”—I do love the language in this document; it is the sort of language I used to discourage my students from using, because often jargon disguises lack of substance. We are told that we need to address issues around shipping, around roading, and around air transport. Rail does not get a look-in. In this entire document, the word “rail” does not appear. It talks about infrastructure as though it is something that appears when one expresses good intentions to make it appear. We are told that in 20-odd years’ time there will be a four-lane highway from Auckland to Whangarei. What we actually need is a reliable, resilient roading network. We need the Mangamukas to be accessible 365 days a year, so the far north can connect to the rest of the world. We need the south side of the Brynderwyns to be improved. We need Mangakāhia Road to actually be brought up to State highway standard, which it patently is not at present. Despite the Government’s commitment almost a year ago to do something about that, it is continuing to shuffle and to make promises and to pretend to be doing work that, in fact, is not being done. This is an unfortunate lapse of the—

Sorry, the member’s time has expired. I call Steffan Browning—5 minutes.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. The Prime Minister failed us yesterday. There was no organic target. There was no target for a bright economic and clean, green future. Instead, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement was his mantra.

It was just at the end of last year that we did the first reading of one of the bills that is one of the ones listed as needing to be changed to suit the TPP, and I said then that it was a TPP bill. That is the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill. That was when I pointed out that this Government has allowed in so many new pesticides in its term compared with the Government ahead of it. Under the previous Government, 687 chemicals actually went out, and 906 new ones came in. Under this Government, 239 were out, but there are 1,100 new ones.

But what the Government is doing under the TPP is moving down to make more pesticides available into New Zealand, and with less transparency—more pesticides and less transparency, and we are awash with pesticides in this country already. What for? Why are we doing this? We are extending the patent time—that is the intention that is in front of the Primary Production Committee from tomorrow on. The intention is to increase the patent time from 5 to 8 years. It rings a bell, like some of the other TPP bills, with the patents rights and intellectual property rights. It is for the USA and other countries’ big pesticide industry giants and those that are stuck in unsustainable production methods.

But there is an alternative, and it is around organics. The world is clamouring for it. Yesterday, the Minister for Primary Industries, Nathan Guy, was extolling the US, his No. 1 TPP market. He did not mention organics. Organics has been growing there at double-digit figures for more than 10 years, and in dairy there is something more like a 20 percent demand. What is this Government doing around promotion of organics and moving to a sustainable economic future by going down towards something that people actually want, something that the markets actually want?

Fonterra is not keeping up with it either. For the third time in less than a year, it is adjusting prices for an organic premium because it has been bleeding some of the organic farmers because it did not look after them. There are not enough organic farmers in this country for the demand. Those conventional ones, who are right up against the wall at the moment, need the Minister, Nathan Guy, to get in there and support them in transitioning to organics.

Fonterra is said to be lifting its price on a floating scheme, balancing up against the market, up to something like $8 a kilo of milk solids by hang; $4.15 for its other farmers. Its price for organic whole milk powder out there at the moment, if it can supply it, is $14,000 per tonne. It is 4.5 times—450 percent—more than conventional rubbish with pesticide residues and all.

There is a way to go. There is a way to actually improve in this country, and it is about taking a stance around organics, moving towards organics, and progressing that very fast. Fonterra is even using a plant in Australia to make some organic baby milk powder, and it is not even their producers over there. They do not have any organic ones; they have got to get it off others. We have opportunity here. We must take it.

Just a last point: another thing that stood out for me with the TPP was the International Union for New Plant Varieties 91, which is a plant-patenting type-thing. Who is that for? It is for Agria, the Chinese-owned PGG Wrightson Seeds, and their unsustainable products like herbicide-tolerant swedes, which kill cows. We will be working on this bill—

Sorry, the member’s time has expired. I call Kris Faafoi—5 minutes.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is a privilege to take a call in this debate on the Prime Minister’s statement, and I think it is the first time I have spoken with you in the chair, so happy New Year to you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Happy New Year.

It is always dangerous to quote oneself, but recent events have led me to look at some of the first words I uttered during my maiden speech in this House. Quote No. 1 is potentially a no-brainer cliché, but none the less it carries weight. I said that “I know that education is the game-changer.” Quote No. 2 was much more forward-looking. I said: “We want our children to have the education and opportunities to succeed in jobs we haven’t even dreamt of yet.” So that is why I am excited about 2016 and 2017. I know that side of the House has said it is excited, but on this side of the House we have actually got something to be excited about.

A Labour Government that takes over the Government benches next year will put a stake in the ground, to make sure our young people are ready for work in the 21st century, with the right skills and training, and without the fear of being saddled with debt. Our Working Futures plan, announced a fortnight ago by Andrew Little, will ensure that all Kiwis will have a chance of living the Kiwi Dream, to support their families to live in their own home, in a safe community, and I think that is something that most Kiwis want.

Education is that game-changer, and I think that every New Zealander, and our country, needs to ensure that we tackle the challenges that the rest of the world also faces with us, with the changing nature of work. And, from our end, it is pretty simple. Our policy is 3 years’ free post-school education, whether it be university, polytech, industry training, or an apprenticeship, because, unfortunately, in the future those without skills will be left behind. The nature of work is changing rapidly, and our education system must keep up with it if we want to seize opportunities for the future.

I believe it is also exciting in my electorate of Mana, where I want to see people from the colleges of Porirua and Kāpiti move on to Whitireia Community Polytech to do that industry training, to do the apprenticeship modules, the Bachelor’s courses—all doing that locally, supporting our local polytech, and supporting our local economy. Free tertiary education will allow families who have seen tertiary study as too expensive, or who did not want to be burdened with debt, to change the course of their lives for the better. It will give them higher skills, they will have higher incomes, and will seek out loftier opportunities, and I think that is something that most families want for themselves.

I am biased, so, please, do not just take my word for it. I put this policy on Facebook, and I would like to quote from one local, Kylie Welch, who said the following on my Facebook site: “My daughter is about to start 3 years’ study at Massey University in Palmy and I hope to help her pay for a lot of it. I don’t like the idea of her starting her adult life in debt, but wouldn’t it be a wonderful world to have her education paid for during those first 3 years?”. Kylie finished off with a pretty simple statement: “I’m keen”. Imagine if we could do that for Kylie and her daughter. Her daughter would study for 3 years for free, and that money that Kylie was going to invest in her daughter’s education would go into the local economy, it would go into paying off her mortgage, and I do not see a downside to that, at all.

But what about this changing nature of work that we have been speaking about? It is a reality that we have to address. I think it is the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research that says that in the future 46 percent of the jobs that exist now will be gone, because of automation. It is not just those manual jobs; it is the likes of accountants, who are also worried about the future of their work. It is a challenge that we know we have to face, and it is a challenge that that side of the House, the Government, completely ignores. It laughs about it, and it makes gibes and jokes about this side of the House, but we know it is something that has to be addressed.

If it was such a joke, why did the World Economic Forum in Davos have as one of its key points on its agenda the fourth industrial revolution? Is it such a joke now that we have got the foresight to look forward 10 to 15 years and say that half of the jobs that exist now may not exist, and that if you want to retrain, our Government will help you do that so you can continue to live that Kiwi Dream, and so you can support your families?

It is not a joke to us; it is real. But every time that side of the House discusses this issue, they think it is a big joke. It is not a joke. It is reality, and it is going to hit us hard soon, if we do not start doing something about it. That is why our Working Futures policy is built for the future, and that is why this side of the House has something to be excited about, as we head into the next election.

I call Meka Whaitiri—5 minutes.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. E ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā koutou katoa. Greetings, salutations, and best wishes for 2016, Mr Assistant Speaker and members of this House.

Can I briefly acknowledge those who may have lost a loved one over the Christmas break. I particularly want to acknowledge the sudden passing of my dad on 13 November 2015—Sergeant Wīrangi Wīremu Whaitiri, who fought for this country, in Korea, for its sovereignty and for its lands that we enjoy. That is a contribution I would like to make today in the short time that I have.

Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993 is a statute of Parliament that aimed to reform the laws relating to Māori land in accordance with the principles set out in the preamble. These principles reaffirm the Treaty of Waitangi relationship between the Māori people and the Crown and the recognition that land is taonga tuku iho of special significance to Māori people. To that end, the principles promote the retention of land in the hands of its owners, their whānau, and their hapū, and the protection of wāhi tapu.

It is interesting to note that it took some 17 years to work on that piece of legislation. That shows the complexity and the consideration required if you are going to do any major changes to Māori whenua. Yesterday the Minister for Māori Development spoke about ture whenua legislation as “coming around the corner”. “I am looking forward”—he said—“to having an introduction early this year—3 years on, more than 100 hui, an exposure draft, and 20 hui currently in action as we speak.”

The Crown and the Minister for Māori Development assert that the bill will result in better law, better support, and better outcomes for Māori landowners, with greater opportunities for the exercise of tikanga in land management. I strongly oppose that assertion. The bill will weaken judicial protections and see people lose meaningful interests in fractionally owned Māori land through corporatisation and the changing of Māori freehold land title. The current Ture Whenua Maori Act, which I just read out, is about land or whenua as taonga tuku iho, to be protected and enhanced. The bill will do nothing to uphold, protect, and maintain whenua.

There are some members in this House who have spoken in the press around scaremongering. I put it to this House, and to the public who may be watching today’s debate—is it scaremongering and alarming that the process has been rushed, that consultation has been negligible, and that the proposed reforms will not solve the complex issues around fractionally owned Māori land, particularly where a large number of people hold small interests contained within the current Act? Is it scaremongering and alarming that in the four consultation hui that I attended in my electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, with over 400 people present, there was no value seen in rewriting Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993? Is it scaremongering and alarming that a consistent concern of Māori landowners was the potential for Māori freehold title land to be turned into general title, with it then being either mortgaged against or, worse still, sold?

Is it scaremongering and alarming if the Waitangi Tribunal’s draft report criticised the review process and supported the claimants’ view that there has not been enough consultation and consensus to alter the existing law? Is it scaremongering and alarming that the Māori Women’s Welfare League president and lawyer, Prue Kapua, has backed the tribunal, or that the Tairāwhiti District Māori Council chair, Owen Lloyd, has said Government officials have not visited marae in his rohe? Or that the New Zealand Māori Council co-chair Maanu Paul supported the tribunal’s recommendation, and disagreed with Mr Finlayson that the report had got some of its facts wrong?

Lack of consultation, lack of support, lack of independent legal advice, and lack of respect for the Waitangi Tribunal tells me that this bill is heading down the wrong track. It is unnecessary. It is poorly written, and the Minister for Māori Development needs to take heed of the people who will say—and come to Parliament to say—that the bill is not properly written, it has not been consulted on, and it lacks support. I say to the House and to the Minister that we need to take cognisance of the views of the Māori landowners. Kia ora tātou.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and happy New Year to you and to the House. I just want to acknowledge Meka Whaitiri’s loss in November last year. Thank you for sharing that with the House; we do send you our sincere condolences. I know it is a particularly hard time for you and your family.

I also want to acknowledge the earlier speaker from the Labour benches, Kris Faafoi, who stood up for his electorate. I have to say that that is quite a refreshing position to hear from Labour members of Parliament—that they acknowledge the places where they live, their electorates, and that they stand up for them in this House. Well, I am going to do exactly the same thing today in my speech, at the commencement of this year. But, first of all, I want to say what an exciting, energised start to the year it has been for this National Government. We came together last week for our 1-day caucus event, where we talked about the year to come, what each and every one of us hoped and wanted to achieve, and what we are excited about achieving for us in this coming year and the years ahead—not just for our own electorates and our own communities, but for people throughout New Zealand. I believe we all came away from that 1-day caucus excited, we came away united, and we came away very excited about the year ahead.

I can tell you something that I am particularly excited about this year, and that is going to the Wānaka A and P show. That is the showcase, in March, for rural New Zealand, rural Otago, and the rural South Island. Everybody who is anybody will make a beeline to Wānaka for the Wānaka show. I will tell you what is so exciting about that. It is that the farmers, the rural folk, and the small-business people will be talking about what matters to them. They will take the opportunity to talk to me, to the other visiting members of Parliament—of which there will be many—and they will take that opportunity to talk about what is exciting to them. And we already know what that is. That is the opportunities that are presented to New Zealand—for rural sector New Zealand, small business New Zealand, and as a whole—as the result of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I am so excited on behalf of primary producers, because they are going to benefit from the opportunities of open markets to around 40 percent of the global economy—increased access to over 800 million consumers. That is increased access, when the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is fully implemented.

We are an outward-looking country—well, we certainly are in the primary production sector. We already enjoy the benefits of the New Zealand - China free-trade agreement. Thank you, Phil Goff, for initiating and signing that. More laterally, we are the beneficiaries of the New Zealand - Korea free-trade agreement. The cherry growers down in Central Otago are enjoying an increased and stellar season in the cherry product, but also are enjoying the huge exposure that they now have to Korean markets. That is significant not just for the local economy around Cromwell and Central Otago—the benefits do not just fall to the growers themselves; they also fall to the transport companies, and they fall to the whole economy, which is growing more robust because of the opportunities that these free-trade agreements are providing to us.

As the Hon Craig Foss noted during question time in the House today, the most recent statistics in the New Zealand Business Operations Survey show that the number of small businesses and the rural sector engaged in export sales has increased from 14 to 21 percent since 2007. So for the whole time that this Government has been in power, more and more small businesses have engaged in export sales. We are truly an outward-looking country, and so we should be.

In areas such as Southland and Marlborough, in places like Hawke’s Bay—and, indeed, in South Canterbury, Central Otago, and North Otago, which is the area that I proudly call the Waitaki electorate—up to 40 percent of jobs in those regions are in the export sector. You do not need to wonder why there will be so much conversation around the benefits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement will provide huge opportunities for businesses in my electorate. You know what? I agree with Helen Clark. I agree with Helen Clark that it would be unthinkable for New Zealand as an export-orientated, outward-looking country, and as a small trading nation—let us face it, we are a small trading nation, floating around in the South Pacific. It is “unthinkable”, in Helen Clark’s words, for us not to be part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. I absolutely agree with her, and I am sure that our Labour colleagues do, too.

I want to turn specifically to some of the sectors that will be benefiting from the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. I am turning to a document from New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and I am sure this is freely available. I just want to pick out some of the highlights, and I want to look at some of the outcomes by sector that we will be enjoying as a result of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. This document really highlights only tariff savings and benefits for current trade. It does not take account of the exponential growth in the volume of trade that will come about as a result of the agreement. And how do I know that is going to happen? Because we saw it with the New Zealand - China free-trade agreement and we saw it with the New Zealand - Korea free-trade agreement, and other free-trade agreements with places like Taiwan and so forth.

So in terms of beef, there are big beef producers in the Waitaki electorate. So what is going to happen? The United States, which is New Zealand’s largest beef export market, will eliminate all tariffs and quotas on New Zealand beef, and this is over a period of 5 years, which will allow unrestricted duty-free access into that extremely large market. I can imagine that Alliance Pukeuri, which has one or two beef chains probably running at the moment; Silver Fern Farms, doing exactly the same; and smaller companies such as Lean Meats, based in Ōamaru—my home town—will already be seeing the opportunities and the benefits of just that one example of tariff-free access into the United States. That is huge for those sectors in my electorate.

I turn now to sheep meat. Again, it is exactly the same story. If I think about the sheep farmers in Central Otago: those merino flocks, that beautiful merino meat and wool—but we are talking about sheep meat at the moment—and the Corriedale sheep from North Otago and other South Canterbury producers. Those producers will be benefiting hugely from the introduction of tariff-free access into Trans-Pacific Partnership countries’ dairy—right from Clearwaters Organics Dairy. A member from the Green Party asked what this Government is doing about organics. Well, I can tell them that we are providing exactly the same conditions of entry into these markets under the Trans-Pacific Partnership—and if you have not tried their yoghurt, you really should; it is delicious. Oceania Dairy, based out at Glenavy, which has made a huge investment into our region, will already have an eye on how they can utilise the benefits that are coming about under this new regime.

With regard to fruit and vegetables—cherry growers and apple growers, for example—all tariffs for apples will be eliminated within 10 years. Growers based in Roxburgh, in Millers Flat, in Alexandra, and indeed all around New Zealand are hugely excited about the opportunities presented by that. Cromwell, with its well-known iconic large fruit—there is an apple sculpture up there—and all of those growers will be excited by this opportunity.

I go on to wine, and it is exactly the same story, from the Pasquale and Ostler wineries up in the Waitaki Valley, down to Roaring Meg wine, Bannockburn, Mt Difficulty Wines, Felton Road, Wooing Tree Vineyard—fabulous producers of very high quality wine. Again, there will be tariff reductions. It is the same with forestry. The Waimate firm Laurie Forestry Ltd will already be seeing the opportunities. Wool, leather, textiles—again, those very same companies will be enjoying many, many opportunities. I will just finally, in my roundabout of my electorate, talk about Barker’s of Geraldine. They are a wonderful high-end producer of cooking sauces, and they will benefit. The greater Otago region, under the leadership of John Key, and this country is in very good hands. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Can I welcome you and everybody else back to the House. I wish you all a happy New Year, as for many of us this has been the first opportunity to gather together again. Many of us are not just returning to work; we are returning to Parliament. It has been an interesting start to the year. For myself, I came back to work on 6 January, to my office at Warkworth, where case after case after case walked into my office, because there seems to be some difficulty with members of the public actually gaining some action from many of the Government MPs. It seems to be that if your problem does not quite fit the policy direction of the National Government, then your local representative is not necessarily going to stand up for you. I think that is a problem we have got happening.

💬 Paul Foster-Bell: That’s not true.

That is a problem we have got happening in our democracy, Mr Foster-Bell.

💬 Paul Foster-Bell: It’s not true here in Wellington.

It is true where I am, Mr Foster-Bell, and many of the other electorate offices of New Zealand First are finding the same thing. Members of the public in our areas are going to see their sitting MPs and are being declined assistance. It shocks and horrifies us. I am assuming that it is not the case with all MPs who sit on the Government benches, but I am telling you that it is becoming more and more common—people coming into my office tell me—and it is something that we need to address in this country. We are all paid, no matter what party we are with, to help the people of New Zealand when they have an issue with a Government department, and I would hope that, no matter what the politics are of any person who walks into any MP’s office, they will not be declined assistance merely because the assistance they need may not fit a certain box that is the policy of the current Government.

One of the other reasons why I am looking forward to 2016 is that, as deputy leader Ron Mark outlined in his contribution, New Zealand First has a particularly strong caucus currently—a particularly strong and cohesive caucus. Unlike the members of the National Party backbench, the New Zealand First caucus members have several portfolios each, and every single portfolio they have, they work hard to make sure that they are up to date, upskilled, and ready to take every opportunity to make sure that they hold this Government to account. In every portfolio area, the New Zealand First caucus members hold this Government to account.

I do not know where the quote came from, but there is a quote, and I am sure it is by some very famous politician, and it says that when the opposition in a debate starts shouting personal insults, it is because they have lost all political argument. I think that what we can see in contribution after contribution—and you will probably see it in the National members’ contributions after I sit down—is that it becomes a personal attack. That is because they know that this Government is losing its grip.

We saw it at Waitangi. We saw it in a Prime Minister who decided to celebrate our national day by going to a sports game instead of attending a service anywhere—anywhere—in this country. He could have gone to a commemorative service on 6 February but he chose not to. He chose to go nowhere but to a football match. This is the gentleman who leads our country and supposedly represents the whole of the nation. Although I totally accept that mixed messages and confusion were given to him up at Waitangi and he chose not to go on 5 February, why on earth on the 6th did he choose not to take part in any service anywhere to acknowledge the Treaty in the history of this country? It exists. It was signed. It is his place to acknowledge it, but he chose to go nowhere.

I think that is an indication, New Zealand, that this Government is losing its grip. Northland was a beautiful indication last year that this Government is losing its grip. This Government misread Northland so much that it thought it could dazzle Northlanders. After 70 years of National Party MPs being their representatives and getting absolutely jack—nothing—they drove up there in Crown car after Crown car after Crown car, thinking they could bedazzle Northland. Northland was not bedazzled—and it is spreading. I think that is really interesting—it is spreading. In region after region, starting in the north and moving down, this Government is losing its grip.

We had Mr Joyce go up there, after 70 years, as I said, of a National Party MP representing the north, and within months of the Rt Hon Winston Peters becoming the representative for Northland, Mr Joyce is up there with a 58-point plan. There is no funding behind it, but there is a 58-point plan to deliver for Northland. Is it not odd that none of the other National Party MPs who represented them for so long, for decades, was able to get that? But the Rt Hon Winston Peters, within months, managed to make sure that this Government got the message that Northland has been so neglected that it needs to be looked at.

The Rt Hon John Key likes to make jokes. I think it is a sort of urban type of a joke really, an inner - city slicker joke, that the Rt Hon Winston Peters does not spend much time in his electorate. Mr Key opens himself up to criticism because, of course, he never goes anywhere near Helensville. He does one public meeting closed to people during an election year and the rest of the time they never see him. However, Mr Peters and New Zealand First has offices in Warkworth, in Dargaville, in Kerikeri, in Kaitāia, and in Whangarei—[Interruption] and Government members hate it. They hate it. Here we go, New Zealand. The move is coming down. Northland is the flagship for the country and next will be Whangarei. [Interruption] Next will be Whangarei, Mr Reti, and then down into Rodney. Then down into Rodney, Mr Mitchell, and on we go, down the country—on we go down the country.

There have been some other things that have been very interesting, and I am going to look forward to them. Whangaruru school—I am looking forward to seeing how this Minister, the Minister of Education, creates commercial negotiations to get back a farm that cost millions upon millions of dollars of New Zealand taxpayers’ money after she signed a contract that had no clause in it stating that if it failed, taxpayers would get their assets back. Commercial negotiations are now being entered into by lawyers and the Ministry of Education to try to recoup what anybody reading a contract that they were paying for with other people’s money might have made sure there was a clause about. This smacks of Novopay—it smacks of Novopay and the same Minister signed off on Novopay.

What is it about this Minister and contracts? What is it about this Government and contracts that it does not seem to realise that if the contract fails it should have an out clause? Figure out how to get out just as well as figuring out how to jump in. It is not the Government’s money. It is the New Zealand public’s money. There must be a way back.

I was pleased at the select committee this morning that the Ministry of Education was able to outline quite clearly that the statements that the Minister has made that the Whangaruru school assets would go through the disposal process just as those of State schools would is a farcical, erroneous statement—absolutely erroneous and it is misleading. It misleads all parties. So I am pleased that the Ministry of Education was able to clarify that today. I will be looking forward to the Budget, the 2016-17 Budget—

💬 Rt Hon John Key: It’s going to be a cracker. It’s going to be an absolute cracker.

—because, Mr Key, there was a member’s bill supported by the National Government that promised a budget to come in, in 2017-18, for grandparents raising grandchildren. Mr Key looks a bit confused; perhaps we will talk to Paula about it later. But it is about clothing allowances for orphans and unsupported children. This Budget 2016-17 should show the 4-year projections going on—going on—and that will show whether this Government will keep its word for those grandchildren.

💬 Rt Hon John Key: We will.

I hope so, Mr Key, because it is worthy, and I hope so, but I will be watching for that in this Budget.

There are so many other things that are very interesting. I am looking forward to the flag referendum because I am looking forward to Mr Key realising that the country never asked for it, the country does not want it, it will lose, and $26 million of taxpayers’ money will be gone on a flag referendum. I am looking forward to that and I am looking forward to seeing how affordable education will become in New Zealand if this Minister finally gets something right around education.

I move that this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.

Debate interrupted.