General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. This week is, of course, Budget week 2016. By this time tomorrow, Bill English will have delivered his eighth Budget, and it will be a fine Budget indeed. By tomorrow afternoon, he will have almost reached the number of Budgets that he has children.

As a public service in Budget week, I thought it would be appropriate for me to go in search of an alternative budget from the Opposition. It has been saying a lot over the last few weeks, and I thought it would be helpful to draw it together into a cogent narrative as to what the alternative budget would be in 2016. [Interruption] I think we could start. There would have to be a budget story, and I was thinking it would probably say there was a crisis. I think it would be a crisis, because it has indeed been a crisis for the Opposition every year since this Government has been in office. Manufacturing, exports, the regions, Christchurch housing, milk prices, fresh fruit and vegetables, too many people leaving, too many people arriving—these are the crises that the Labour Opposition has been seeking to deal with in its budgets, and I am sure it will come up with one tomorrow in the alternative budget.

The Opposition will also need some statistics. Unfortunately, those members are not proving to be particularly good at statistics. For example, on Sunday Andrew Little went out and said that New Zealand households’ share of GDP has dropped dramatically—except that he was wrong. He was wrong. If you look at households’ share of GDP, it is higher under this Government than it was under Labour. Then, of course, in his latest today, the Labour Party is talking about homeownership. It is saying that homeownership is dropping under this Government. Well, here is an interesting statistic: according to Statistics New Zealand, homeownership in New Zealand has actually risen slightly over the last 5 years. So that is rather fascinating. But that is OK; they will move on.

Labour members cannot do statistics; they will have to talk about, maybe, tax. There is an interesting subject, because, presumably, Labour must have a coherent position on tax. That would be a good thing. After all, in 2014, when Andrew Little became Leader of the Opposition, he took the capital gains tax off the table. He cited it as “the reason people didn’t vote for us.” Well, not to be put off his plan, finance spokesman Grant Robertson this week slapped it back on the table. “We need to look at a range of options.” says Robertson. “A capital gains tax clearly has to be one of those options.” Well, he obviously has not told Mr Little.

But, then, what about personal tax? Well, on Monday Grant Robertson said Labour is planning to announce tax increases before the next election to help fund its spending plans. That is what he said. When asked what Labour’s tax increase for the top rate of personal tax would be—I think it was on ZB—Andrew Little said it would not be as high as 39c in the dollar. That is what Andrew Little said. But Annette King and I were on the radio this morning, and she was asked about tax and said: “We’ve made no decisions on tax.” This is about as consistent as Phil Twyford on the metropolitan urban limit: “That’s what we’ll do, but that’s all right. We don’t know what we are doing on tax, except we know we are putting it up in the alternative budget.”

What about spending? What is the plan with spending? Well, it is interesting. I have not had time to go back through all the press releases, so I have just done the Labour and Green press releases from the past few days. So what do we need? We need half a billion dollars for the police. Right, OK. We need 26 weeks’ paid parental leave by April 2018; anything less is not good enough. For the Greens, it is a billion dollars nearly, to electrify rail between Auckland, Hamilton, and Tauranga.

Then there is the health budget. The health budget is an interesting one. Robertson says it needs to be at least $600 million, according to the Greens and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions it needs to be nearly $700 million, and according to Andrew Little there needs to be $1.7 billion. Then there is conservation funding. The Greens want a lot more money in conservation. And then, of course, Bill English has to stop disciplining Housing New Zealand. So that is another couple of hundred million. On top of that there is the KiwiBuild programme, which is billions and billions of dollars.

So all we know is what we have always known: the alternative budget is: tax more, spend bucketloads, and send the country down the road to rack and ruin. And that is why tomorrow this Government gets to deliver its eighth Budget.

We have had 8 years of Mr Joyce speaking to his own backbenchers rather than to the country. We have had 8 years of crowing and self-congratulation rather than talking about how this Government plans to solve the great challenges of our time. Seeing as Paula Bennett raised it in her response to my questions in question time earlier today, let us talk a little bit about the population of New Zealand.

In 1973, when I was born, the population of New Zealand was just shy of 3 million people. Today, 43 years later, it stands at a little over 4.5 million. In other words, we have added half again to our population in the time that I have been alive. By the time I die—and there are some benign assumptions in this equation—our population will have doubled. In other words, we have gone from being a country where we could pretty much carry on as we liked—we could take whatever we wanted from our forests, our rivers, our aquifers, and our seas, confidently believing they would replenish themselves naturally—and we could dump our waste into our atmosphere, into our rivers, into our oceans, and into our land with little visible consequence.

Today we have a Government that carries on as if that were, somehow, still true—as if it ever was true. It stopped being true some time ago. For 8 years now we have had a Government that has actively invested public money in the pollution of our rivers, our aquifers, and our oceans. For 8 years now we have had a Government that would rather run a Budget surplus than save our endangered birds. For 8 years we have had a Government that believes stopping climate change will be more expensive than living with deeper droughts, worse storms, and rising seas.

Tomorrow, just as Mr Joyce did now, the Government will sit and crow as it delivers its second-to-last Budget. There will be the usual smattering, I guess, of headline-grabbing announcements designed to make it look as if it is doing something whilst doing absolutely nothing at all—or as little as possible, rather than everything possible in order to solve the actual challenges that face us today. When I say that we have a Government that has put public money into the pollution of our rivers, our aquifers, and our oceans, I am speaking of its active involvement in converting New Zealand farmland into intensive dairying, which has led to a situation where two-thirds of our rivers are now unswimmable without the risk of catching some horrible disease. I expect that in tomorrow’s Budget the Government will crow, as Mr Joyce has just done, about some minor clean-up programme but that in another year our rivers will be just as polluted as they are today, if not more so.

When I say we have got a Government that would rather deliver a Budget surplus than save endangered birds, I am speaking of its consistent underfunding of the Department of Conservation (DOC) for the last 8 years. In every year of the National Government’s tenure, Government funding for DOC through Vote Conservation has been, on average, $55 million less than the last Labour Government’s. That is $336 million that DOC has had to manage without for the last 8 years. As a result, 142 species have had their threat status increased towards extinction over the last 8 years of this Government’s watch. DOC huts, bridges, and tracks are in disrepair. I expect that in tomorrow’s Budget there will be another gimmick designed to make it look like the Government is doing something about it, but in another year’s time our endangered birds will be just as at risk of extinction as they are today.

When I say that we have had a Government that believes stopping climate change is more expensive than letting it happen, I am talking about the fact that New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions are 19 percent higher since this Government came to office and since we put in place an emissions trading scheme, the purpose of which is to reduce our emissions. Every year the news carries stories of record storms, floods, fires, and droughts. The 2013 storm—the worst in 60 years—left 30,000 Wellington houses without power and $31 million of insurance claims. The same year’s drought wiped $1.5 billion off our economy. Last year there was catastrophic flooding in Whanganui and in South Dunedin.

This year the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment mapped out tens of thousands of properties that will be at risk from rising seas over the coming decades. In tomorrow’s Budget, I expect yet more platitudes from a Government that wants to be seen to be doing something whilst at the same time is continuing its polluting industries. After 8 years of “a brighter future”, we have declining water quality, more at-risk endangered species, and more greenhouse gas emissions. Change is coming.

Just for anyone who was watching, that was Mr James Shaw. He was pretty much saying, if I sum it up in one sentence, that New Zealand would be a better place if only it were not for the people—damn the people, damn the businesses, damn anyone who—[Interruption] And damn the cows. Damn anyone who—

💬 Richard Prosser: And the birds.

And damn the birds—no, they like the birds. What we hear, of course, from members of that party is that it is kind of easy to sit there and make all of those grandiose statements and then not actually have the means to put them into play or to raise the kind of revenue for the kind of spending that they would like to do. And, of course, it is all rubbish.

What we have got from this Government instead is, of course, the kind of pragmatic and fiscal responsibility that is actually driving this country forward. We see rising wages all the time. Middle New Zealand is doing better than ever before. We are seeing an increase in jobs that is pretty outstanding, and things are really moving along there. As you can see, we are getting 40 houses a week built in Auckland alone. In Auckland alone, there are 40 new houses a week. There are 17 new social houses coming on board in any given week. In any given week, on average, the Ministry of Social Development places around 134 tenants and their families into social housing. Yes, there have been changes. There have been changes in the way that we place those people, where they are, and how long they are there for: the right person in the right place, for the right duration, and at the right price.

Yes, we have introduced tenancy reviews. I heard the Prime Minister mentioning them today. I heard the Opposition and the uproar about how dreadful it is that we might be moving tenants out of their social housing even though they are paying market rents and even though more than 10 percent of them—more than 10 percent of them—have gone on to purchase their own homes. In respect of those we spoke to about paying market rents and about the need to free up their houses for someone who is more needy than they are, more than 10 percent of them have gone on to purchase their own homes. This is not surprising when you have got numbers like—what was it—12,000 families going into their first homes through KiwiSaver HomeStart grants. That is outstanding. That is 12,000 families that have had their lives turned round. A portion of them have moved out of social housing and into that kind of homeownership. That, ladies and gentlemen, is aspirational.

Yes, just a week ago we announced $41.1 million more going into emergency housing. We wanted to step in for some of those operators who were saying they were going to have to close their doors unless they got certainty of funding. Anne Tolley and I also announced the special-needs grant and the fact that you could see that too many were having to borrow. That is simply unfair. The computer systems and the technology that were needed behind it meant that it was not going to be available until 1 September, but what we can announce today is that from 1 July we can start doing some of those things manually, to make sure we can give those grants at that point.

The other thing we have talked about today, which I think is quite important, is relocating people out of Auckland. The reality is that we have got quite a lot of people who have said voluntarily—and it is voluntary—that they would like to live in other parts of New Zealand. We see it for people who are not in social housing. They are making the decision to move to some of our fabulous towns and cities around the country—

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: Like Gisborne.

—like Gisborne, says the Minister from Gisborne—and understandably they want to move. I think there are people who are in social housing right now who want to move but who do not have the savings or the means to actually do it. So today we have made the announcement that they can get a grant of up to $5,000, depending on their circumstances, the size of their family, and how far they are moving. They can get that kind of assistance to move out of Auckland and into the regions. Some will have retired and will be looking at other opportunities in other parts of the country. Others may or may not be looking for work. There is quite a cross-section there. It is voluntary, and I think that is really important—before the naysayers all get too upset about it.

The world does not stop and start at Auckland. We have got a wonderful country, and we are opening up those sorts of opportunities for people—making them available. You might ask where. A quick TradeMe search tells me that in Whangarei there are over 50 houses available to rent. You can get accommodation supplement assistance of up to $120 a week, which makes it quite affordable for those who are in those circumstances. There is always more we can do, but this Government is making a huge difference for our most vulnerable.

There we have it. The Government’s solution to the housing crisis in Auckland is to give up. It is to give up and say: “We can’t solve the housing crisis in Auckland, so we’re going to pay people five grand to get out.” Well, newsflash, Minister: all of those places you are sending people have State house waiting lists. Where are you going to put them, Minister? The Government cannot wish the problem away, write out a cheque for five grand, and say: “We’ve solved the housing crisis.” That is an admission of defeat from a Government that is thoroughly out of ideas and out of touch.

This morning I thought that maybe, just maybe, the Prime Minister had worked out what was happening in New Zealand. He told Paul Henry this morning that he slept like a baby. If, by that, he meant waking up every hour, crying his eyes out, then he was right, because that is how he should be feeling about New Zealand today. He is like a less cool version of the Fonz, who could never say the word “sorry”. He used to go “s-s-s”. He could not say “sorry”. John Key cannot say “crisis”. He just cannot get the word out. Well, there is a housing crisis. Everyone in New Zealand knows it, 75 percent of New Zealanders have come out and told the National Government that it is failing on housing, and 61 percent of its own supporters have told the Government that it is failing on housing. And yet this Government will not open its eyes.

We have the lowest homeownership rates in 65 years and there is a shortfall of 40,000 houses in Auckland, and all Nick Smith can give us is a cemetery and an exploding substation. It takes nine times—nine times—the income of a typical person to buy a home in Auckland. We see the crocodile tears on the other side of the House about homelessness. Well, what would have been done had the Government not sold off 2,676 State houses since it has been in office? And every single time that a Labour-led Government comes into office, we have to make up for the National Party degrading social housing. There were 13,000 homes sold in the 1990s, and another few thousand have been sold under this Government. This Government has an appalling record on housing and is refusing to face up to what every New Zealander knows. After 8 years, there is no one else to blame. It is the National Government’s fault. It has got to take responsibility instead of trying to look back to the past. Its members should be the ones fronting up to New Zealanders about what it has done.

There might not be a fiscal deficit in tomorrow’s Budget, but there will be a social deficit: people living in cars and garages, people for whom it takes 6 years longer to get an operation than it used to, mental health in crisis, 300,000 kids in poverty, 144,000 people unemployed. Anne Tolley might want to answer to the people of Gisborne, where unemployment is now 10.9 percent. More than one in 10 people in Gisborne, Mrs Tolley, are out of work under this National Government. Around the country, 87,200 young people aged between 15 and 24 are not in employment, not in education, or not in training. That is the future of New Zealand that National is creating. That is the problem that a Labour-led Government will have to clean up, because this Government is letting a generation down.

There are four things that should be in the Budget tomorrow, and one of them is very simple—Jonathan Coleman will get this. Three words, Mr Coleman: build more homes—build more homes. That is what this Budget should be focusing on. We should also be funding health properly to keep up with the demographic pressures, not playing around with the numbers—not denying reality, as Dr Coleman would do. We need a real commitment in this country to a free education system: the bedrock of opportunity. Parents are facing more and more costs. Tertiary students are in more and more debt. We need to invest in decent work opportunities. Wherever you live in New Zealand, there should be the chance to earn a good living and raise your family.

One more thing: should we not see a Budget where everybody pays their fair share? Like a lot of New Zealanders, we on this side of the House are sick of the Government standing up for the tax evaders and the tax avoiders. It is time for every New Zealander to pay their fair share so that every New Zealander gets a fair go. This Government is out of touch. It is arrogant. What New Zealanders need in this Budget is hope and opportunity, and that is what the Labour Party stands for.

What a lot of bluff and bluster from Grant Robertson. That is all it is: the usual lack of substance. No work done all year, and all he has got is to try to shoot down the Budget tomorrow. And, of course, he does not even know what is in it. The one fact that we got out of that speech is that Labour will raise taxes. He said it there. He is going to raise taxes for all New Zealanders.

What I think is going to be very interesting when you see Grant Robertson produce some alternative budget—which, of course, he has not bothered to do—is to total up those spending promises, because Annette King has already said that Labour is going to put $1.7 billion in over the next 3 years, if it gets the chance, before it even puts new money in. So if you listen to its figures where it is saying $600-700 million of new money, it is talking about $2.4 billion into health. Frankly, that is unaffordable. There will be no surplus; there will be ongoing deficits. It will be bad for New Zealand internationally in terms of our credit rating. And I can tell you what: the voters will not like it. Because the only way that Labour can fund that is with higher taxes.

The problem for Labour is that it is just about more money. It is not about results. It is not about doing things better. In the health portfolio, all it did was spend more and more and more, and yet, at the same time, it delivered 2,000 fewer operations over that period. It was sending people to Australia for cancer care, waiting lists were blowing out, Annette King was acting as a one person - culling machine, people were kicked off lists—it was a mess. What we have done is bring the health system back to where we are now focusing on results. So, yes, there is more money going in—$4 billion more under this Government—but, more important, we are focused on the results that that actually delivers. So you can see an extra 50,000 operations a year, another 110,000 appointments per year, no one going to Australia for cancer care, and over 6,000 more doctors and nurses. More money has gone into mental health. More money is going into the disability sector. We have had a focus on consistently providing more services to more Kiwis.

I am not sure whether members saw the TV news on Sunday night, but at about item 6 it flashed to a gathering of what looked like an old Socialist Unity Party meeting from 1981. There, amidst the pompom hats, the nylon raincoats, and the mugs of tea, somewhere in the back there, you could see the odd Labour MP. Annette King was too smart to be there. Kris Faafoi, of course, found himself in the front row. Trevor Mallard was trying to hide behind an umbrella in the fourth row. And then, on came a man who looked nothing like a Prime Minister—he could not even get a tie on. I can tell you, to describe Andrew Little as dull does not do justice to the experience, because, frankly, he had that crowd in a catatonic thrall. They just could not get away. All that came out of that speech was, actually, that Andrew Little thinks that Kiwi families are $50 a week worse off.

Well, the facts just do not bear that out, because wages have been growing faster than inflation, unemployment is below 6 percent, tens of thousands of jobs have been created, and export sectors—the wine industry, the IT industry, tourism—are taking off like a rocket. These are actually great economic times for New Zealand, providing great opportunities for New Zealanders. If you get out and you talk to the average person in the street, they know that. We focused on what matters. You will have heard James Shaw before, you know, calling for all sorts of restrictions and taxes and all sorts of things, and it is just ironic that the people who want more spending on health and education and all public services are the same people who want to limit the ability of the economy to grow. Fundamentally, that is the problem that the Green Party has.

We have spent our time in the last 8 years focusing on what is important to New Zealanders. It is the economy. It is economic growth. It is jobs. It is the health system, where people are getting access to the treatment that they need. It is the education system. We have brought in national standards where parents can actually understand what their kids are getting out of the education system. And it is law and order, where, actually, we have done a very good job on bringing down serious crime. So when you get outside this Chamber and speak to real New Zealanders who talk about the things that matter to them, they tell you that the National Government is delivering. And we will continue to do so in Budget 2016.

That Minister, Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman, was talking about another member in this House being dull, and I actually think that that Minister needs to go back and re-watch his speech to get the true definition of “dull”.

I want to concentrate today on the issues that we have with emergency accommodation and with Work and Income New Zealand debt, but to set the scene, I just want to point out how out of touch that National Government is, by touching on some of the statements it has made around housing. John Key says: “If you’re homeless, go to Work and Income New Zealand. They’re going to resolve all the problems.” Nick Smith says: “Homelessness is a figment of their imagination.” And Paula Bennett says: “Get out of Auckland. That’s the answer. We can’t fix it here, so we’ll pay you to get out.” That goes to show that, actually, they have no plan for the housing crisis that we are facing, and they have no plans to address the homelessness that we have in Auckland or in any part of the country.

I think that that side of the House has underestimated how much middle New Zealand actually cares about this issue. It is clear that it is the most vulnerable New Zealanders who are in this situation, but everyday, middle New Zealanders—the ones whom National members are chasing for votes—are confronted with this issue. They are confronted with this issue because there are 305,000 children living in poverty, and some of those middle New Zealand children are attending school with them. They are confronted with this issue because some of those parks that middle New Zealand goes to visit early in the morning have cars with people sleeping in them. They are confronted with this issue because every day they go to their shopping centres, every day they go to the mall, and they see people begging outside. They see homelessness, it does affect them, and that side of the House has underestimated to what extent.

I got some numbers back recently that showed that debt for Work and Income New Zealand clients has gone from $377 million in 2011 to $417 million now. Our poorest New Zealanders are being thrown into debt by Work and Income New Zealand, and we know that a large chunk of that debt is because of emergency accommodation. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the ministry can do this, the Minister and the ministry refused to pull that information apart so we could find out exactly how much the Government has had to spend on emergency accommodation, at least in the last 2 years. It says it is not willing to commit the resource and the time to collate that information, but this is a matter of public interest. This story has been running on Radio New Zealand and in other forms of media for the last 3 weeks at least—non-stop, consistently—and it will not stop, because there is public interest in this.

It is disappointing when we see in the Official Information Act request that I have here, received in January, that that Government was made aware back in September last year of the incoherency in respect of emergency accommodation. Those members were told that they needed a plan, they were made aware of it, and since then, they have done nothing. It is only now that it has come to public light that they are starting to act on it. Meanwhile, what we have seen is increasing numbers of New Zealanders showing up homeless to our electorate offices, having gone to Work and Income New Zealand seeking emergency accommodation. And what do they get? They get told that there are no social housing places: “There is no State housing for you, but we will put you in a motel. Unfortunately, you will have to pay it back.”

💬 Darroch Ball: Stupid.

It is stupid, Darroch Ball. In one of the cases that I have seen recently, a couple with four children now owes $26,000 to Work and Income New Zealand, and a big chunk of that is because of the motel accommodation that they have been put in. For 2 months—2 months—they have been in motel accommodation. Another family that I had come into our office is $45,000 in debt to Work and Income New Zealand, and when they were told that their only option in terms of accommodation was going to be motel accommodation, they said they would rather sleep in their car with their children. That Government should be ashamed of itself. We are hoping for some big announcement tomorrow around emergency housing, but, unfortunately, we think that all we are going to get are more pitiful announcements like Paula Bennett’s admission of defeat—that people should be paid $5,000 to get out of Auckland because that Government has no plan to solve the housing crisis.

Well, what an exciting week to be a member of the Government. There is a Budget to look forward to—a Budget that will set the trend for the next 3 years and beyond. It is a very exciting time to be a part of this Government. We live in a country with local communities that are seeing a lift in provincial activities. Small towns are turning round. Populations are now growing, albeit slowly—a considerable change from 3 years ago. To listen to James Shaw, who has a very jaundiced view of our rivers, and Mr Robertson, who has clearly read the Mary Poppins serials too often, in that he is perfect in every way, you would think that the country was coming to an end.

We are doing better and are competing effectively, because we are an economy that is based primarily on food production and tourism, in a part of the world where we have unique advantages that we must protect. Our isolation gives us some valuable protection from air- and land-borne pests that may enter the food chain. The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) has a vital role in ensuring that these are not carried into the country by those tourists who are the other part of our economy’s current strength. The other considerable advantage we have is our “100% Pure New Zealand” slogan and the magnificent environment that underpins this. We must continue to protect and enhance this through great science and investment in new and sustainable farming practices, investment in pest control in our conservation estate, and continued investment in the freshwater clean-up. Doing so will ensure that our tourism industry, which relies so heavily on the environment, will continue to prosper and grow.

There is another strong driver of our economy, and that is the IT sector; whether it is innovative new products coming to the market, such as Orion Health or Xero’s accounting packages, or people and families who are able to work from home, running very successful businesses both internationally and locally because of the Government’s drive to improve rural connectivity—one of the great secrets of New Zealand’s future prosperity. It is also important in our ability to grow our rural populations, which is absolutely essential, and we need those people in the workforce in order to support our tourism industry and the agricultural food production sector. This year’s Budget will provide some $14.4 million to further promote apprenticeships, enabling a further 5,500 people to train in a vocation that will lead to work opportunities. The very exciting thing about the growth in apprenticeships can be seen clearly in places like Taumarunui, where Universal College of Learning has invested in providing a certificate in carpentry to young people, getting them started on the pathway to an apprenticeship and work. It is resulting in a near 100 percent success rate.

This leads me to the opportunity we have, as a country, to enable people to live and work in more isolated parts of this beautiful country. We already have the infrastructure—not perfect in some cases, but there. We already have the houses—again, not perfect, but there. We now have the opportunity for work, and in many new areas as a result of worldwide demand for quality food, tourism, and lifestyle opportunities. Only this morning in this House, we heard the first reading of the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Bill, which will further increase the opportunity for work and, consequently, for people to return to live and work in places like Pipiriki and Taumarunui, on the river’s edge. It is very exciting for provincial New Zealand. If we concentrate on providing environments that people want to live in, opportunities for jobs and the tools they need to work, we do not need to continue to follow the route to urbanisation that the rest of the world has followed. We do not need to continue to fight to live in Auckland. The policies of this Government will give people the incentive to live and work in provincial New Zealand. This, in turn, will eventually take the pressure off the enormous growth that Auckland, Tauranga, and Hamilton are seeing at present.

💬 Tracey Martin: How many people are going to leave Te Atatū, do you think? Where are they going to go?

Go to Northland and have a look—go to Northland and have a look. I am pleased to report that the house prices are moving in the Rangitīkei. There is opportunity for new work. New Zealanders are seeing opportunities to move back home, not only from the two great A’s—Australia and Auckland—but also from other parts of our great country. Thank you.

Using the Mary Poppins theme, that speech was meant to be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, but the sound of it was really quite atrocious. To use the Rolling Stones theme, it was enough to make a grown man cry. This is meant to be Wednesday’s backbenchers’ debate, but National led off with three of its Cabinet Ministers—all from where? Auckland. Why? Because Auckland is in crisis. As for the cling-ons in the ACT Party, the Māori Party, and the United Future Party, they did not want to hear the debate—not at all.

Tomorrow what you will see from the Budget will be like a smattering of snow on the Southern Alps. It will appear to be good, it will appear to have substance, but when it is subjected to some sunlight, it is going to evaporate away. It is quite sad to be in this House to see the backbench in the National Government shut out, dejected into despair, watching these polls and knowing that their obituaries have been written for them. They know that.

This Budget will lack substance. It will be full of spin and well-managed public relations on a plethora of statistics, as a misconception that all in New Zealand is well. We all know that this country is cowering at the feet of foreigners these days. We know that China sets the tune and National dances. In the Budget tomorrow National will ignore the regions and the provinces. It will be obsessed with the nightmare it has created in every area in Auckland. Roading, rail, houses, hospitals, schools—everything is under stress in Auckland.

National is panicking at last, and the backbench knows it is too late. Out in the provinces, which National represents, there will be no money. There will be a dog-whistle. It might even announce a motorway all the way to Whangarei, but it has not yet put in 1 metre of the Pūhoi to Warkworth highway—not 1 metre after 8 long years, which is the time that Mr Mitchell has been here. This begs the question: Mr Mitchell, when are you going to stand up for Northland?

The Budget will ignore the fact that a foreign corporate like Facebook, for example, pays a lousy $42,000 a year tax—$42,000 a year tax for that massive international corporate—and Tegel pays 0.38 percent. Not 1 percent—no, 0.38 percent. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to ask this question: will it stop a tsunami of money flooding out of New Zealand? Will it stop foreign corporates taking our water to make millions of dollars in profits? Will it stop this country being a tax haven for the mega-wealthy—a tax haven for money-launderers and criminals, putting our nation’s reputation at risk? No.

Will it stop our society becoming more fragmented, more dislocated, and the gap between the rich and poor becoming an even greater chasm? Will it stop middle New Zealand suffering to an extent we have not seen in generations? And on the question of law and order, will it have more police so that at least three out of 10 burglaries—not just one—get an investigation when nine do not? Will it do anything for the thousands now living rough in New Zealand, on streets, in parks, in cars—not as a lifestyle choice but because John Key’s Government can offer them nothing? Will it do that? No.

I want to say very clearly that after 8 long years this country wants a vision from the National Government tomorrow. We have waited long enough. The Government has said enough. Crikey, it has cut down more forests to print its propaganda than for building homes in this country. It has cut down more forests to put out its propaganda than for building homes in its own country. The public has had a gutsful of wishful thinking, overoptimistic forecasts, and this man who always says that he is aspirational—“Mr Spray and Walk Away”. You have had 2 days of classic examples: he makes a statement and he gets asked “Did you say that?”, and he says “No.” It is his quote. [Interruption] Do I have a minute to go?

💬 Mr SPEAKER: No, a lot less than that—14 seconds.

Fourteen seconds? Well, in my closing 14 seconds, I want to say this: every Budget should contain facts that are counted against the numbers that they apply to. This Budget will not. Last of all, let me say this: the so-called rock star economy is now well and truly a snowflake melting away before our very eyes. The great news for New Zealanders out there, though, from the meetings we have had in places like Pukekohe—

The member’s time has expired.

I stand to take this call in the general debate. To be honest, I do not feel, as a National backbencher, that I have been left out and that I have been cut back, because I feel like I am at the front of all the Ministers, thank you very much.

So because the hot topic is around the housing area, I want to focus my contribution today on the things that are actually happening in Christchurch to do with social housing, because it is really, really important. It is really important, because I am focusing on the area that I am based in, which is Christchurch East. Did we know that Christchurch East has received over 108 social housing homes in the Aranui area? There are over 108 social housing homes in Aranui, which suffered from the amazing number of homes that were destroyed—that is Housing New Zealand homes that were destroyed—because of the earthquake.

Recently, the Minister for Social Housing, Paula Bennett, went to Aldershot Street, which is in Aranui, if you know where that is, and she opened 15 of those houses—15 of those houses—which will house a number of families and which are three-bedroom, four-bedroom, and two-bedroom homes. In Christchurch 970 homes will be delivered there—970 homes. That is an amazing number of homes, and 600 of those new homes will be based in Riccarton once legislation has been completed. This is amazing—amazing for a city that was virtually brought to its knees, and the housing issues there were absolutely astronomical. I cannot say that we will fix everything, but we are moving along.

I can tell you that housing issues in this country have been here for many years, within this Government and within the past Governments, but it has been this Government that has addressed, and is addressing, the situation of homelessness. It is doing an amazing job. The announcements that the Minister has made about making $5,000 available to relocate homeless people from Auckland to the provinces: that is not a horrible thing to do. Recently, I was in the Bay of Plenty and there were some people whom I met there in the Bay of Plenty who had moved from Auckland to Tauranga. They thought that by moving there they would be able to save a little bit more money and be able to invest it in the education system for their children. They love Tauranga—they absolutely love Tauranga—and they said to me that they wished they had done it earlier.

When we start looking at these housing areas, I start to look at the Māori Housing Network, and this is getting an amount of $12.6 million over the next 4 years. Do we remember when the Opposition members ever gave funding for Māori housing? They did not give money for Māori housing. This Government has given $12.6 million to the Māori Housing Network, to be delivered over 4 years so Māori whānau too will be able to have safe and warm homes in which they want to live. Housing New Zealand in Christchurch has carried out over $150 million worth of repairs to homes that tenants are currently living in, as well as spending $200 million on building 700 new homes. To date, 300 of those are ready to be moved into. By 2017, 700 homes will be completed.

As I said at the start of my contribution, there have been many things to do with housing going on with this Government. We are responding. Opposition members have never responded to the housing issues that this country has faced in the past. In fact, as I sit here and I listen to the contributions from the Opposition members, you would think that they have a monopoly on poor people in this country. It is disgusting that they would want to bandy around and punch around poor people. I can tell you, we have a lot more respect for the people of this country than to use them and bandy them around this House like they are just absolutely nothing.

So, in closing, I just want to say that this has been a good opportunity here for me to speak about the housing issues in Christchurch and the remediation work that we have been doing for the people of Christchurch, because they are important to us. The people of Christchurch East are important to us, and I can tell you that I am looking forward to that Budget tomorrow because I believe there will be some amazing things that will come out of it. Thank you.

Look, every Kiwi family knows that setting budgets is about making choices. And for most Kiwis, it is a pretty simple task; we want pretty straightforward things. We want a good job, we want a home that we can call our own, we want a good school to send our kids to, and we want health care if we get sick. It is not rocket science, but this Government, unfortunately, has lost its way.

People in the middle cannot rely on this Government to support their priorities. It is increasingly arrogant and out of touch, and we have seen it with the Panama Papers, where it has looked to defend the interests of the ultra-wealthy and where it has looked to defend the interests of those who are speculators from abroad. Its instinct has not been to stand up for middle New Zealand. It has let down its guard, and New Zealanders see that its priorities are different to ours. This Government is too focused on those at the top. It is now sticking up only for the super-rich, and in the meantime, for middle New Zealand, the Kiwi Dream is slipping away.

This week some research has brought to light the fact that economic development under this Government has not shared the gains that have been made. There has been very little gain, but what little there has been has been shared unfairly, too. Under the last Labour Government, more than 50 percent of the gains from the economy went to working people. Today, that proportion has slipped to just 37 percent. Again, we see where the priorities lie for this Government, and they are not with the people in the middle in New Zealand. It works for those who are ultra-wealthy and who are speculating from offshore. Under National, that Kiwi Dream is slipping away. We can see it in so many areas, not only where the housing market has become a plaything for speculators, locking a generation of Kiwis out of homeownership, but also in the health sector, where $1.7 billion—$1.7 billion—has been cut from the health budget over 6 years. That is from independent analysis.

We have an education system that is burdening our young people with debt; an education system that offers only debt and no promise of homeownership and involvement in society. Labour, of course, has a plan for that: our scheme to have 3 years of free education or training would see middle New Zealand have the opportunity to get ahead—and, of course, we know that that kind of common sense would pay itself off quickly. We know that a nurse, for example, who goes back and trains would pay 16 times the value of those course fees over the course of a lifetime in taxes and so on through increased earnings. We know that kind of situation makes sense, but this Government is not acting in the interests of middle New Zealand. It is too busy defending the interests of the mega-rich.

So when we see this happening—when we see the housing crisis, where New Zealand has the lowest homeownership rates in 65 years and where we see that house prices have shot up by 90 percent since 2008—we ask what the Government is going to do about it. Tomorrow is the big day. We will see whether those members have a plan to stop New Zealanders living in cars and garages, whether they have a plan to tackle the housing crisis, or whether they can even say the word “crisis”, because we know it is getting worse.

We know it is getting worse. GDP growth per person in the last year has been zero. The only thing that has funded growth in New Zealand’s economy is immigration—that is the only thing that is pushing up our income figures as a country. On a per person basis, as one Westpac economist describes it, the economy is “sluggish”. We have 40,000 more Kiwis out of work than when this Government took office in the midst of the global financial crisis—40,000 more. We have 26,000 more kids out of employment, education, and training—26,000 kids who are the workforce of tomorrow.

This Government has no plan, and it has no idea. It is out of touch with middle New Zealand. We put down the challenge to the Government to deliver on it tomorrow, but I fear we will not see the solutions that middle New Zealand deserves to see.

I am very much looking forward to tomorrow’s Budget, and I just want to reiterate a point that my colleague Ian McKelvie mentioned before, which was that small towns are turning round. He talked about Taumarunui, and he and I share the King Country together. I have been in Taumarunui with him recently, and we have been looking at some fantastic options around health, which I am going to touch on in a minute because I am going to talk today about health.

But before I do, you know, small towns are turning round, and I am really excited because we have got a fantastic road happening right in Taranaki - King Country that is going to open up a lot more tourism, productivity, and people coming through between Taranaki and the Waikato. We have also had a pre-Budget announcement of 80 more beds on the Timber Trail, at a little place called Piropiro. It is a wonderful place in the Pureora Forest—that, again, is going to enhance tourism.

But today I want to speak about health, and I want to speak about small towns turning round. Recently we had the Prime Minister in Te Kūiti, and the Taumarunui Community Kokiri Trust came across and talked about the work that it was doing in health. The work that it is doing is an indication of how primary health care close to home is changing in our electorates. So what it is doing is it is actually becoming a group of navigators who are able to help people not only with their health but also with their social housing and with directing them to all sorts of places that they need to go for their health and well-being.

If I look at what is going on now, we have got extended free GP visits and prescriptions for under-13s and we are immunising more children, but there is even better than that to come because $39 million is going to be invested this year to enable Pharmac to provide more New Zealanders with access to new medicines. The biological examples that we are starting to see now—like Opdivo, which has come to the fore in the debate around melanoma and the advanced melanoma treatments—are starting to do some wonderful things for people, so I am really rapt to see that there is $39 million that will be invested this year, and an extra $124 million over 4 years. I actually have a very dear friend called Sarah, who was on trials of the Opdivo drug, and she was not supposed to be alive—she was not supposed to be alive for probably about the last 18 months to 2 years. Sarah is thriving and well, so I am really pleased to see that we have got extra money to go to Pharmac, which is going to allow it to look at these new medicines that are really coming to the fore.

I am also really chuffed to see a $97 million extra increase over the next 4 years for health research, because health as we know it is changing, and not only in the way we provide essential health services and medicines but also in the way we deliver it. It was a real buzz a couple of weeks ago, in the last sitting week, to have all the health buses lined up on the forecourt of Parliament. A lot of those things like breast cancer diagnosis, small, 1-day operations—there is dentistry, there are kidney stone buses. But the exciting thing about this is, as we start to look at the way health is delivered now, we can start to do more diagnostics. So I am really excited that this money that is going into health research is going to be able to help us find new ways to deliver health that may not be focused around the hospital. It is a big effort for some people to travel a very long way to hospital, so if we can get the health care to come to them, that is going to be fantastic. It is going to be great for the regions.

The other thing we did, we had the Rural Health Alliance down there. There is a whole collective of people coming together, and we had some fantastic opportunities—I think, right across the parties in this House—to interact with those people. They did a whole lot of strategising, and they have been to our offices and talked about that. So there is a vibrant community out there.

The mental health work is going on with the extra half a million that was given last year. I am really excited about the regions, and I am really excited about the way we are starting to deliver health care to those regions. Thank you.

Here in Aotearoa New Zealand we have got the know-how and we have got the resources to reduce climate pollution, to clean up our rivers and lakes, and to stop intensive farming making them any dirtier. We can protect our wild places and the threatened species that we love, but that is not what we will get in National’s Budget tomorrow. We have got climate change—the greatest issue facing humanity—yet in the last 7 Budgets the Minister of Finance has not mentioned it once, and I doubt that it will be any different tomorrow.

And that is because National takes nature for granted. It fails to recognise that a healthy environment is the basis of life itself, is the basis of our economy here in Aotearoa, and is a key part of our identity for so many New Zealanders. National’s agenda, which we will see in the Budget, is one of extractivisim. It is handing out millions of dollars to irrigators, subsidising the deep-sea oil drillers, but just giving crumbs to conservation. We have got legislation like the Resource Management Act, which is supposed to protect the environment while allowing use and development. Yet here is National gutting the Resource Management Act, throttling public participation, and overriding councils with the new ministerial powers to make it easier for high-impact development.

And National is also failing to protect the environment by failing to enforce our laws. We have seen that just in the last week with the release of the Simmons report, which showed massive dumping and misreporting and wastage of fish in the commercial fishing industry. It showed that by 2013 New Zealand commercial fishing boats were dumping around 20 percent of their catch on average, and foreign-flagged vessels around 50 percent of their catch. What did the Minister for Primary Industries say? He said he was “very, very sceptical” of the Simmons report, and that is despite three top-flight universities being involved in that report, over 300 interviews with stakeholders, industry experts, and official information contributing to that. So we had the Minister saying he was sceptical.

That means he must have been mightily embarrassed when Operation Achilles and Operation Hippocamp—and the reports of those two investigations—were released to the media, because they showed that between 20 and 100 percent of the catches in the inshore trawl and set-net fisheries were being dumped overboard. The reports talked about substantial quantities of quota fish being discarded in those boats operating out of Timaru and Ōāmaru—in excess of 30 percent of elephant fish and all of the small gurnard.

Fisheries are a precious resource. We have got a $1.7 billion industry. To safeguard that, to safeguard our oceans and their health, the law needs to be enforced. The Ministry for Primary Industries had clear evidence of substantial dumping. It should have rung alarm bells. Yet, what happened? It was just dismissed. Certainly, the Minister has announced an inquiry, but he and the ministry have got very deep questions to answer. What is the point of speeding up the roll-out of video cameras on fishing vessels when there was video evidence in both Operation Achilles and Hippocamp that would have allowed those fishers who were dumping substantial quantities of fish to be prosecuted? No prosecutions were done. What is the point of having observers if the information they see is not used to enforce the law?

So what we have got is the Ministry for Primary Industries either shutting its eyes to illegal activity or being too close to the fishing industry and just not wanting to enforce the law. The Green Party, if it was in Government tomorrow with opportunities to have a Budget, would make sure that there was more research into how a marine system functions so that we have thriving oceans. It would ensure there was deep-sea marine protection—not like this Government, preventing that happening through its changes to the marine protection legislation—and it would ensure that it was enforcing the law so that we have a thriving fishery, not one where the Ministry for Primary Industries ignores illegal dumping.

The time for this debate has expired. Honourable members, the Wednesday general debate is meant to be a debate, not an opportunity to come into the House and read speeches. We are now halfway through this parliamentary term, and I think everybody has had a fair chance to become accustomed to delivering a speech in the general debate without having to read it. If members want some guidance, I suggest they refer to Speaker’s ruling 53/4 and 53/5. This is the second occasion that I have mentioned that I want the general debate to be a debate, so I am issuing a warning to all members, and particularly to party whips, that if any member comes into the House and simply stands to read a speech throughout that 5 minutes, I will be terse, tempted to terminate the speech immediately, and simply invite the member to seek leave to table his speech if it might be of information to the members. I hope we can see the general debate now become indeed what it is designed for—a general debate.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.