Appropriation (2017/18 Estimates) Bill, Care and Support Worker (Pay Equity) Settlement Bill

I move, That the Care and Support Worker (Pay Equity) Settlement Bill be now read a second time. The bill was introduced and had its first reading on 25 May and was reported back by the Health Committee on 6 June. I will not dwell further on the substance of this bill, but, obviously, it is a historic $2 billion pay settlement covering 55,000 of the hardest-working and most deserving people in New Zealand. That was well canvassed in the first reading and will be revisited again in the third reading.

Tonight I just want to thank everyone involved in the select committee’s consideration of the bill: the members of the Health Committee, under the guidance of their chair, Simon O’Connor, who have worked very hard on the bill in a very short space of time; also the officials who have supported the committee’s work, including working through the night to make sure that the committee had the information that it needed; and, most importantly, the people and organisations who made written submissions and appeared before the committee.

Because the select committee process was necessarily shortened, the committee has adopted a slightly unusual procedure. The committee’s recommendations have been presented as a Supplementary Order Paper, with amendments that I will propose in the Committee of the whole House. That approach was used, as members will recall, during the Hurunui earthquake bills.

Even though the select committee process was necessarily short, the committee members have demonstrated the value of what select committees do. They have carefully examined the bill. They have invited selectors and affected organisations and people to comment, and they have carefully taken into account those comments. They have demonstrated the value of select committee consideration by producing a clearer, better bill. Most importantly, they have very carefully considered the features of this bill that impact on individual rights.

I would like to thank the committee in that regard for the suggested amendments, which I am pleased to support. They do not change the effect of what we are doing, but they do make it very clear that this bill implements an agreed settlement, and while it does extinguish legal claims, it does that only as far as is necessary to implement that agreed settlement. It will not affect claims for other groups of workers, but just the workers who will benefit from this agreement, and those workers were well represented in hearings by the unions that negotiated on their behalf and spoke in glowing terms of this agreement and the supporting legislation.

The employers raised issues about funding that the Government is well aware of and continues to work through as we work with employers to implement this settlement to ensure the workers are able to get the pay increases that they are entitled to from 1 July. I commend this bill to the House.

I am delighted to stand in favour of this bill and to have sat on the Health Committee, which the Minister has referred to. He is, indeed, correct that the work of the officials was exceptional. We were very well served on that committee, I would like to say, from the outset by the officials, who worked some long hours to make sure that there was proper scrutiny of this bill through the truncated select committee process. I just think it is worth noting when officials do bend over backwards to make good things like this happen, and the committee was well served. So thank you very much to those officials.

The settlement is, of course, an absolute victory for determination and for the unions. It will mean that 55,000 low-paid workers will get a well-deserved pay rise. They will be paid what they should always have been paid, thanks to Kristine Bartlett and her union and the persistence that they had in fighting through the court case. Of course, we know that the Government has been dragged kicking and screaming up to this point. It had lawyers at each appeal stage of the case opposing the lower court’s decision on pay equity determinations. It came to the negotiating table only because it absolutely had to. We would not have reached this point had it not been for the union, and we will see that other workers will benefit from this settlement beyond the members of the union itself. I thank them for their persistence, for their hard work, and for standing up for New Zealanders to make sure that they are paid adequately for the work that they do so caringly, day in and day out. It will be a spur to many others to push to ensure that they too receive equitable payment for a fair day’s work. I look forward to seeing how that plays out over time.

The Government itself has been, as I said, reluctant all the way through the process. It is true across the health sector. We have seen another Budget that is $200 million short in funding the health sector—what it would have required just to stand still. So, as that Budget debate has been drawn to a close with something of a flourish by Steven Joyce, I think it is worth noting that district health boards around the country will be struggling.

In the case of this equal pay settlement, it is also true that many providers will struggle, because while the settlement is right and just and good and is supported and was supported by the submitters who came to the select committee, many raised concerns about the ability of providers to make ends meet with the requirements placed on them and the lack of commensurate funding from the Government. So, while the Parliament will sit in support of this bill, the responsibility for funding rests with the Government and it has chosen to go light on the funding, and we will see over time the real effect that that has on providers of aged-care services.

To illustrate the point about how reluctant this Government has been to get to this point, I wish to traverse briefly some other measures that have been taken over the years and debated in this Parliament. The Equal Pay Act of 1972 was where this all started. That brought to an end the gender-differentiated pay rates for men and women performing the same work. That Act in 1972 was an absolute landmark. It is from that point that we have moved forward to today, but we have also seen along the way many humps in the road. Clerical workers had gained pay equity with carpenters as a result of that Act, but by the mid-1980s that equity had slipped, and the clerical administrators’ union took a case to the court against the Farmers Trading Co, and the court, unfortunately, declined jurisdiction to hear that case.

But, subsequently, the Employment Equity Act was put through this Parliament in 1990, in an attempt to describe procedures to achieve employment equity—in particular, it looked at the identification of areas of paid employment in which inequality of opportunity for designated groups existed or inequality of remuneration for women existed, and looked at the redress of the inequitable impact on women of any current or historical discrimination against women in respect of their remuneration. That legislation came into force in 1990. It was, of course, a little broader than that, but it is interesting to note that it was repealed in December 1990 by the incoming National Government—again, a hump in the road—and it is interesting to see that it is the National Government that has fought equity along the way.

In 2003-04, a task force on pay equity and employment equity in the Public Service was set up and it looked at the education and health sectors and reported back. In response, the Government established the pay and employment equity unit within the Department of Labour and a tripartite steering group to oversee the work of the unit. The point that this illustrates, again, is that we note that in 2009, a few short years later, the National Government as it came in abolished the Department of Labour’s pay and employment equity unit.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: They did what?

It abolished it. So, once again, a measure was put in place to try to achieve pay equity, and then it was removed by the National Government.

So on we go and we look at the case of Kristine Bartlett and the Service and Food Workers Union—now E tū. They lodged their claim in 2012, with the Employment Relations Authority, claiming a breach of the Equal Pay Act of 1972. Along the way, of course, as has been canvassed already in the debates, it was fought by the Government, which supplied the lawyers to fight it in the courts before finally realising it had no option but to negotiate, and that is how we have come—in a truncated version—to where we are today.

It is such a good thing that we have got here. It is superb that those 55,000 workers will now be paid what they should always have been paid, but it should never have been the battle that it has been, and I do not doubt that that battle will continue.

I want to touch briefly on some of the concerns raised by submitters, and I am sure that Poto Williams, who was present throughout the select committee process, will delve further into these. One of the particular concerns raised was around clause 18(3) and (4), which provides that the funder’s determination is final, and the effect that that could have as a result as agreements are negotiated. There was a real concern around the way in which the negotiation happened and the fact that 26 percent was a figure used by the Ministry of Health on the way through and was cited throughout the discussions as to the oncosts that employers expected to receive at the last minute. We were told that was changed to 20.9 percent and that was a different calculation, and those providers then raised, in select committee, concerns about the adequacy of that payment and concerns that care would be reduced—that we would shift more towards a ward-block style of care, rather than what is commonplace, particularly amongst charitable and church-based providers, currently.

Everybody across the board, though—providers, unions, and all other submitters—seemed very glad and pleased that the workers were finally being recognised for the work that they do. Nobody disputed that that was the right thing to do. Nobody disputed that the Parliament, by putting this bill through, was doing a good thing to recognise their hard work and what should have always been the case. It is merely the concern about the adequacy of the funding, and I think we will see that play out over time as we see some of those providers go to the wall if they are not funded adequately. We were told that the ministry has put aside a contingency within the $2 billion settlement to cover leave liability and so on, which people can bid for. That $24 million contingency is open but capped at 4 weeks for those who have ongoing liabilities.

I have heard, in recent days, from several providers concerned about their ongoing viability, and I take these concerns to be very real because I know they have come from people who are genuine people, providers in the sector, and they want to ensure an ongoing high level of care. We also heard from the bigger providers in the sector that presented to the committee that they too have concerns. They are all in this because they want to see people cared for adequately, and we hope that the Government will come to the table and ensure that there is adequate payment for those providers to provide what is undoubtedly the right thing to do.

I am very pleased to take a call in this second reading. Look, there are many people to acknowledge, and I think it is important first and foremost, though, before doing so, to acknowledge what is an incredibly significant piece of legislation.

💬 Dr David Clark: I should have acknowledged the chair—my apologies. Good work, Chair.

You can always take a point of order, Dr Clark. Fifty-five thousand New Zealanders will, from 1 July, see a significant increase in their income, and I think what we heard in the committee as well is that there will be relativities—in other words, flow-on effects to a wider group of New Zealanders, as well—particularly in the care sector. As I noted before in the first reading, these are people who are often doing the jobs in our community for our most vulnerable that many of us would not be able to fathom. So my thanks start with them for the work that they are doing and for the recognition that is coming from 1 July—recognition in the part of wages but there is something much wider too, and that is the recognition, I think, of all of us here, in voice, for what they do.

Can I thank the submitters for coming in. As the Minister and others have indicated, this was a very quick process, not for any other reason but to make sure that this agreement is in place and operable from 1 July. So to the various providers, the unions, the individuals who came in and spoke, thank you for your time in articulating your support and, in a number of instances, those concerns. Many of them sat outside the scope of the bill. We have attempted to acknowledge those in our report, but they sit with us as members of Parliament as we continue forward.

As others have done, I want to thank the officials. They did an amazing job as we sat early in the mornings and throughout the day into the evening, even on non-sitting days. They were tireless, right up until today, continuing to provide us advice. So, on the record, I want to thank the officials and the advisers and the clerks for their tremendous work. I think it is also important, if I might, to acknowledge the other members of the Health Committee. They, too, often had to give up events in their constituencies, or otherwise work with their fellow MPs to be in that committee for many, many hours last week to deliver this bill back to the House today, and I look forward today and in the coming days to progressing this quickly.

There are a number of very positive aspects to this bill, but one that sticks with me is that tripartite engagement that we have seen work so well between—in this case—unions, employers, and the Crown. We saw it a while back, actually, when we looked at the whole pay element for those who are travelling. That was a really good—not so much a precedent, but certainly my first experience of it. We have seen it here again with this carers bill, and the constructive engagement, I think, was very clear to all of us involved with the committee. So, once again, I want to thank all those groups for coming forward. I am sure we will get to various points of discussion around leave and around what was negotiated in the Committee of the whole House, and I do not want to hold things up there, but, really, I give thanks to all involved and, particularly, to our advisers.

Firstly, I want to acknowledge Kristine Bartlett and her courage in taking the original case to court, ably shepherded and supported by the unions. I want to thank the unions for continuing the battle behind the scenes for a couple of years, which got us to the point where the Government was in a position to settle, the unions were able to agree to that, and we are at the point where 55,000 workers will be paid what they actually deserve to be paid for their work. So congratulations to them.

Thank you to the chair of the Health Committee and to the members of the select committee, who were very collegial in their approach. We all want to get this bill across the line so that those workers actually get the pay, as they deserve it, from 1 July. I too want to acknowledge the officials and the advisers, Parliamentary Counsel Office, and the clerks who did work tirelessly to make sure we got the advice and the information that we required. We did ask them some difficult questions and we wanted to make sure that we examined this bill as thoroughly as we could, despite the fact that we were given a truncated time in which to do that.

But there are a couple of aspects that I do want to put on record, if I may, in the discussions that we had during the examination of this bill at select committee. The first point I want to talk about is we had fulsome discussions about what we were calling the extinguishing of future claims, which we felt was potentially the extinguishing of rights to take claims in the future around breaches of the Equal Pay Act in terms of pay equity.

We spoke about this quite a bit. We examined the advice that was given to the Minister, particularly from the Attorney-General, around the potential for breaches of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The Attorney-General wrote and said that he felt the bill was consistent with section 14, which is around the freedom of expression, and section 27(3), which is the right to bring civil proceedings.

In our discussion on this bill we actually got to a point where we felt comfortable that, rather than extinguishing rights, what was happening in this case was that the unions had bargained for particular settlement agreements. But what we felt we got to was the point where you cannot extinguish rights to take claims—everyone can take claims—and other groups will still, in the future, be able to take claims under the Equal Pay Act. So we got to the point where we felt comfortable with that clause within the legislation.

As my colleague Dr David Clark has said, the submissions were quite wide ranging. They were from providers of services and also from groups that were interested in the pay equity aspects of the legislation. With regard to the providers, many of them talked about the lack of provision within the funding mechanisms for what they were terming as oncosts. There was wording in the legislation that talked about funding in terms of being towards meeting the increase in costs. That was a point that we debated—whether the word “towards” should be taken out of the legislation.

The providers were given an assurance about the percentage of oncosts that they would be provided. As my colleague has said, that originally was stated at 26 percent, but was reduced to 20.9 percent during the course of the settlement negotiations. One of the providers actually, in their submission, suggested that the loss to the sector between what they were expecting and what was ultimately provided to them could be in the region of $25 million to $33 million. It is not insignificant in terms of the costs that providers feel that they will have to bear in order that this settlement will go ahead.

One of the issues that they quote within the oncosts is around annual leave. They suggest there is a percentage of underfunding that they will have to cover themselves, and also the issues of relativity and training. With regard to relativity, in that case we are talking about other workers within particular organisations who may have a supervisorial role or maybe a whole role, such as junior nurses, who will be paid less than the care and support workers once care and support workers receive their pay increase. While that, on the face of it, has very little to do with this piece of legislation, what it may do, in fact, is drive workers from one part of the sector into another part of the sector. That is seen as problematic by providers, unless they are able to then pay those workers—supervisors and junior nurses—increased wages relative to the work that they do.

The other issue that providers raised was about the cost to train and the numbers who would be training to level 4. They saw that as problematic. Personally, I see that as actually a strength of this legislation—that we are encouraging people to train to a much higher level, and we will have a highly trained workforce.

The other issue, of course, that we had to resolve is what is a care and support worker. There was much discussion about that because some of the workers actually hold a range of posts within the workforce. It may be that care and support is part of what they do. They may be doing other activities as part of their wider job within a service, so we had to think about how we were going to word the legislation in order to resolve who was actually eligible to be part of the legislation and part of the agreement. We decided on the word “primarily”, and that is important because it shows that somebody who is eligible to receive the pay increase will primarily be a care and support worker, and it shows how much of that work you have to do to actually qualify for the additional payment.

The last aspect that I want to cover off in terms of our discussion is about the penal rate. During the first reading of the bill I discussed the fact that the penal rate was going from a percentage to a dollar rate. One of the things we needed to ensure was that the calculation of penal rates for a worker who may primarily be a care and support worker but who may actually have other duties that are outside care and support work—we ensured that the rate for the other work was actually at the percentage rate, and the penal rate for the care and support work was at the dollar rate.

Finally, I want to say that this is not a pay equity bill. It is very clear that this is about addressing a settlement agreement to ensure that workers in the care and support industry are paid what they deserve to be paid. This is not about pay equity. We are yet to have that discussion fully.

I am very keen to support this bill. I am keen to get this legislation to the next stage. I thank those who worked hard on getting it through the select committee process, and I want to commend the bill to the House.

It is a pleasure to take a short call on the Care and Support Worker (Pay Equity) Settlement Bill. I would just like to say that the previous member, Poto Williams, summed up the process extremely well in the presentation that she has just given.

As you have all been briefed, it is a $2 billion pay settlement. It is extremely well deserved by the 55,000 care and support workers who are looking after about 110,000 of New Zealand’s most vulnerable people. So I want to commend those who have been involved in this. I too, like others, would like to make a special mention of Kristine Bartlett in this process.

I just want to really reflect on the last week or so since we had the first reading of this legislation and on what a positive and pleasurable process it is has been to be part of. Normally, our Health Committee members do work extremely well together, but I would particularly like to commend Poto Williams, and we also had another member on the committee this week, Jan Logie, who is not normally a member of our Health Committee. I commend the constructive way in which everything was handled, from the submissions right through to the questions with the officials who came in.

I really would like to thank the officials, because they have had an extremely big week because we have had lots of meetings. We have gone away and said “Look, you go away and come back and bring us back the next stage.”, and they really have had a big week. I know they have worked overtime and far beyond their expectations to get this job done for us. I think it is commendable that we have got to this point, and I am very happy to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I just want to state again, as I did in the first reading on this bill, that there are some times when I am really conscious of the privilege of this job. This is one of those moments. This is a historic settlement. These mostly women workers have been exploited for so long doing lifesaving work, engaging in the most intimate relationship with people and in just such complex work, for almost the minimum wage. It has been an absolute embarrassment. So to be able to stand in this House in support of their dignity and the dignity of their clients is a really wonderful thing.

I want to, again, along with everyone else, acknowledge my hero Kristine Bartlett and one of my unions, E tū, which took this case, for the amazing achievement that this is to get us to this point. I acknowledge that this is a $2 billion package, and while that boggles my mind in terms of the amount of money—this is over 55,000 women, and some men—it is a settlement of a longstanding case of exploitation, which the Government knowingly continued until it was forced by Kristine and her unions to have to front up to that and bring this piece of legislation and the settlement through. So it is also a privilege to stand and honour the power of collective organising and bargaining. It is amazing what it can achieve for people, and this is amazing.

I do want to acknowledge, though, that this is a settlement—a little bit like a Treaty settlement—and while we celebrate this just for the achievement, the process is not necessarily what the Greens would have engaged with in an ideal world. We understand that the Crown came to this process of negotiation with a set amount of money that had been signed off by Cabinet—we were told this by Crown Law. I am not sure that that is in the spirit of actually establishing genuine pay equity. I also understand that the cost—that set amount of money—had to cover the funding for the providers in terms of the interim arrangements and the funding for the workers. So upfront we were told that, basically, back-pay was taken off the table and was not up for negotiation.

For the Green Party, that is not the spirit in which we would wish to enter into a pay equity negotiation. I understand that the unions are OK with taking back-pay off, because if you have got a limited pool of money you are going to want to make sure that out of a set amount of money you maximise what will carry forward into the future. That makes sense in a negotiating sense, but in terms of whether it is right that that was taken off the table, actually, I want to stand here and say that I do not think it was right that the Crown took it off the table.

I am bringing this up particularly because I note that the draft legislation that the Government introduced about rewriting the Equal Pay Act into a pay equity Act also ruled out the right to back-pay in court-determined pay equity settlements. I want to make sure—and have it written into this piece of legislation—that this settlement will in no way set a precedent for other cases, because we do not want it to be a starting point that back-pay is off the table.

I do want to point out my particular concern around this in relation to the response from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety when I asked him in the House about why back-pay was taken off the table in court-determined settings in the Government’s planned bill. His response was that back-pay is a “vexed” issue and that pay equity employment agreements “have been agreed. To then relitigate those would be very difficult.” Those were his words, and he noted that it was certainly the agreement of TerraNova and the Ministry of Health to start from a point where pay equity was agreed to occur—therefore, not considering back-pay.

That was the Crown’s position, as I understood it, and it was agreed to in the context of a set amount of money. But we must not let that be a precedent, because that is a denial of rights. I do want to say that I did show that response to an expert around pay equity in New Zealand from the Campaign for Equal Value Equal Pay, and her response was: “He is talking complete nonsense.” The issue of back-pay is a vexed one when it comes to pay equity only because taking away that entitlement is gender discrimination. So I want to be very clear in this House that the select committee was of the same mind—that we did not want this to be a precedent and that there should not be any legislative response that signals that it is okay to take away the right to back-pay. I want to be clear on that.

I also do just want to go from some of the complex issues to—actually, no, there is one other thing I want to put back on the table around that. It is just to point out to people that for the Greens it was very disturbing that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet that went through on this bill—as already mentioned by the member Poto Williams—identified that, potentially, there were issues regarding freedom of expression and the right to bring civil proceedings, but I cannot understand how there was no consideration of discrimination when it related to an issue of pay equity. I think it is pretty fair to assume that the officials overlooked the context of this legislation in addressing discrimination, which is surely the core purpose of our pay equity legislation. So, in terms of these processes, the public does need to be mindful, and I do think we need to be pushing and making our intent very clear to Government that as a country we want to end discrimination. That should be our clear commitment, and I am very happy that this settlement and this agreement is a step towards it that we can all embrace.

Now, to finish the last few minutes, just to kind of go back to the joys of this. I know I have talked about some of my concerns, and I have to put those on record, but I do just want to go back to the real joy of this: 55,000 workers, mostly women, who have been paid the minimum wage for doing this incredibly important work, will—many of them—from 1 July, get paid as much as $23.50 an hour, which is just a fair reflection of the difficulty and the importance of that job.

I was incredibly lucky to spend a little bit of time with some caregivers and some of the people whom they worked with in an Enliven residence out in Johnsonville last year. It did boggle my mind, the challenge of having to juggle all of the very small tasks and stay present and be lovely to these people who are really completely dependent on you and need you, and be able to go there and take them to the toilet and then be able to talk to their family and reassure their family that they are okay, and then be able to help the occupational therapist in terms of their exercises. The complexity of it is enormous, and for us to acknowledge that, and for them to be recognised for that, is so important for every single one of us in this country. Again, kudos to them for pulling this off.

I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the second reading of the Care and Support Worker (Pay Equity) Settlement Bill. In the spirit of trying to ensure that this bill goes through in the time that it needs to go through, I will be taking a short call. Before I do get into the nitty-gritty of my allocated time, I want to—as other members previously have said—commend the advisers who worked with us. We had a limited time frame in order to get this bill from its first reading to amendments being made and then to its second reading tonight, and in the early hours, with the “go away and come back to us” procedure that the Health Committee went through, it was absolutely a pleasure to work with advisers who are really on to it.

It was also quite good—and I want to also commend the chair, who allowed open discussion across parties in the select committee—to talk about the concerns that every one of us had regarding certain clauses in this bill. So I want to say a thankyou to our advisers. Thank you to those members on the committee who did actually give up a lot of their time to come along and ensure that this bill was fit for purpose and that we were doing the right thing as members of this House.

What was quite imperative, I guess, when we took the first reading of this bill was that my colleague Tracey Martin disclosed that New Zealand First could support this bill only through to the select committee process, and that we could not actually guarantee that our support would go right through the passage of this bill through the House. Primarily, that was because we needed to hear from submitters, from the unions, from Kristine Bartlett, from the providers, and from the people inside the sector who had negotiated this settlement that they did not themselves—in terms of Kristine Bartlett and the women who are inside the sector—feel that they had to negotiate away their rights for justice. It was imperative for me, as a member, to sit there and listen to those submitters explain to me why it was so crucial that this settlement bill go through the House.

I know that it has taken 20 months of negotiation from 5 years ago, when Kristine Bartlett brought this claim forward with the court proceedings, which had, I think, from memory, around 6,000 claims. I would like to say that although it has been hard work and victories have been fought for and victories have been removed, I do want to say thank you to E tū for supporting the movement to ensure that this settlement has come to the stage of where it has come to.

I want to add a little bit of a personal note here. My mother worked within this sector. As a little girl, I would sit there and I would read the newspaper to the elderly who could no longer see. My mother worked so heartily in this sector and always put her patients before her family, so I know first-hand what it is like—the dedication that these women show to ensuring that their patients are actually turned over at the right time, bathed, looked after, and fed the right food. From memory, I know exactly the hardship being recognised in terms of equality and wages that these workers have had to go through to get here today.

We heard from, I think, approximately 40 submitters. We heard from employers who raised issues with us pertaining to certain clauses that they felt would actually, in the long-term, put them out of business. It was quite crucial that through that stage of listening to each sector through that committee process, members were actually understanding the issues that this sector has faced, currently faces, and will face in this 5-year phase-in of this settlement process. So I think it was actually quite crucial that we did at times deliberate quite a bit and come back again to find out, and if we had questions, we went back to our advisers and sought answers.

One of the things that did come about throughout this process was that some of the employers, unfortunately, walked away from this process. What I gathered from that was that this caused an anomaly in the process, because it then meant that the settlement process payouts could not actually go anywhere—they could not go anywhere. I found that quite astonishing. One side of me understood their stance. On the other side of me, I felt quite sad for the workers—the 55,000 workers—whom this potentially put at risk through this side of the settlement bill.

I also found that in order for us to move forward, and for the submitters to move forward, we actually had to acknowledge their concerns that they legitimately brought forward. Other members have touched on this as well tonight, but I do feel that I have a little bit to add in this area. The submitters—particularly the employers—spoke quite extensively on the funding provisions within this bill. Particularly, they were concerned about clause 18(3) and (4) of the bill, which provides that the funder’s determination is final and that the clause relating to setting funding levels towards offsetting the costs of the agreement relates only to funding agreements entered into before the commencement of the Act. So what we were further advised on was that this funding provision in the bill allows for extra funding to be dispersed in advance of contracts being renegotiated. That is why it was only relevant for these agreements in place before the legislation comes into force, so it was not intended at all to remove an employer’s ability to negotiate.

We also received general concerns from employers about the amount of funding associated with this settlement, and previous members have touched on that quite significantly. What that was relative to was the unfortunate misunderstanding between the Crown negotiators and the employers around that table, and we heard that some of our large providers and our small ones actually opened their books up. They opened their business books up so that advisers and negotiators could see what sort of average model they could use to determine what sort of percentage of funding would be relevant and appropriate to ensuring that businesses did not go into insolvency and shut their establishments up.

The figure that, I guess, has caused contention has been the 26 percent ongoing costs, and that was what the employer submitters were quite vocal about. From a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and talking, and for us to get our heads around this, it came down to the fact that the actual model that these costs were calculated on came down to 20.9 percent, and that was based on the statutory requirements for annual leave, statutory holidays, ACC levies, and KiwiSaver contributions.

I know that I did say I was going to be quick, so I want to say in closing that there was a statement in the first reading that my colleague Tracey Martin referred to, and that was why we endeavoured to go through this process. It was the fact that we wanted to make sure—we absolutely, without doubt wanted to make sure—that this settlement bill was anything but a State-sanctioned, emotional blackmail settlement bill. It does pull on your heartstrings a little bit that—to the women in this settlement—you have had to give so much away to get something, but it is better than what you have had to date. So on that basis, New Zealand First does support this bill.

It is a real pleasure to take a brief call on this bill. I also would like to acknowledge the collegiality from across the House. I would like to acknowledge the administrative staff and the officials for their diligence, the chair of the Heath Committee for his facilitation, and the members for their thoughtful clarity, especially around the scope of this bill as an enabler of negotiated settlement.

I know these care and support workers. I have worked with them, and I am so pleased for them. They truly deserve this. I know these people from clinical practice, where they accompany and support patients in the medical consultation, and where, amongst other things, they provide transport assistance, memory jogs, and medication checking, and convey the fuller story of a life, which is often forgotten in a consultation.

I know these people from rest homes and aged-care facilities, where their hand of compassion is evidenced above and beyond the provision of the basic fundamentals of life. I know these people from home visits—the privilege of being in a patient’s home, always under challenging conditions, where it is very apparent that independence is maintained only with the help of care and support workers. Their value is now recognised. They now have a career pathway.

As we heard one submitter say, with this bill, care and support workers have become professionalised, and so I am very, very pleased for them tonight. It is with great pleasure that I also commend this bill to the House.

It is a privilege to rise to take the second call for the Greens on this bill, the Care and Support Worker (Pay Equity) Settlement Bill. I just want to start by again acknowledging the history of where we have got to today—the decades of work that have gone into getting pay equity into any kind of settlement in the House. I also want to acknowledge the fact that it has actually taken 5 years since the first court case was lodged by Kristine Bartlett, with Peter Cranney, the wonderful union lawyer that he is, as her counsel. I just want to acknowledge the fact that he is in the Whare tonight.

It was 5 years ago that that happened, and then, by the time the settlement is actually completed and the final payments go through, this $2 billion settlement will be paid out over another 5 years. So this is a 10-year process, and I just have to say congratulations to E tū union, to Kristine Bartlett, and to all the women workers who have been involved in this, and not just those unions but also the New Zealand Nurses Organisation and the Public Service Association. Your persistence is incredible, and it is paying off.

I want also to acknowledge the Health Committee, which, in a very short time frame, has heard the 28 submissions that came through as part of this bill during the select committee process. I want to thank the chair for the committee’s focus on it. I too want to join with my colleagues and thank the officials who have worked so hard on this—probably really long hours—to get the information back to the select committee so that it could examine this bill in detail. Thank you very much to them.

I just want to acknowledge the fact, too, that the pay lift is, essentially, for 20,000 workers currently of those 55,000 workers who will be affected by this—20,000 of them are on the minimum wage of $15.75. Those first increases—and this is why the rush to get this through is so important—will lift those wages substantially.

Over the last few weeks, I have had the privilege of being able to attend delegates’ forums being run by E tū union, and I have met quite a lot of caregivers and home support worker delegates. I have to say they are ecstatic. The difference that this is going to make to these people’s lives from having to struggle to get by and struggle to support their families to actually being able to live a life with dignity is a huge achievement that we should not forget, even while we may criticise some parts of the bill. The lack of justice around the fact that it has been these women who have struggled on those minimum wages while maintaining the dignity and lives of the people whom they have cared for is just incomprehensible.

I also just want to acknowledge, within the submissions, the submission from the Coalition for Equal Value Equal Pay. I want to acknowledge their concerns about the potential that this bill may have for setting precedents around back-pay being off the table for other pay equity cases and/or the extinguishment of rights. I do not think we should gloss over that.

I have been a union official, as some of us in this room have, particularly on this side of the House, and I want to acknowledge the hard negotiation that must have gone down for this tripartite agreement, with the employers, with the Crown, and with the unions representing the workers all getting around the table to get to this point. I just want to acknowledge how hard that must have been. I also want to acknowledge the fact that it never would have happened if it had not been for the court cases. It was the Crown that lawyered up and fought back as much as possible. But here we are celebrating a happy day, Minister Woodhouse, so I will focus on that.

💬 Louisa Wall: Spent a lot of money, you’re right, trying to fight it. Let’s all get real.

It was a lot of money spent on legal cases—you are quite right. We should be honest about that.

What this settlement does represent, though, is a tripartite, arbitrated agreement like what they had back in the day, back in the 1980s, when it was not unusual for this to happen. In fact, it happened regularly as a way of setting industry standards. That is what this is a major precedent for, and it should be recognised as such because it is a major breakthrough in terms of our industrial relations practice.

I also want to acknowledge, in the submissions, that some of the employers were quite hesitant around some aspects of this settlement bill. I think in particular of some of the responses from the employers about training. Training is what will make the difference between what is just a job and what can be a career, and a very fulfilling career. We have seen some of these amazing workers who have struggled to get qualifications in order to provide a better level of care, in order for the employer to be able to say it has staff who have got these minimum training qualifications, and in order for the employer to benefit from that and, certainly, for the clients to benefit from that as well, but who have themselves not benefited at all. So it is disappointing to have seen some of the submitters from the employers’ side saying that they do not really need everyone to be trained, when, actually, this is a crucial part of the settlement. Workers—these women workers—should have access to training and the opportunity to do it, and that training should be recognised in their pay packets.

I also just need to touch on the fact that while we celebrate that this is an amazing settlement—and I acknowledge the pragmatism that goes with negotiating this settlement—I want to say the same sorts of things we say when legislation for a Treaty settlement comes into the House. There are a few things we always say. The first thing we say in a Treaty settlement, which we will say here as well, is that we acknowledge that it is not a full and final settlement. We acknowledge that it is not full compensation—we acknowledge that. We acknowledge the generosity of spirit and the generosity of the workers who are affected, who are giving up that part in order to get this amazing deal for the entire industry—not just for the union members but for the entire industry. We acknowledge that this was the best darned deal that could be got.

But this is not the end; it is just the beginning. While we will look forward to seeing this progress through the House, there will be more pay equity cases coming to this House and coming through the courts, and we should be prepared for that. We cannot, and we should not, continue to rely on the exploitation of women workers to provide services—essential services—in this country. We will be looking forward to the next stage—the Committee of the whole House—and of course we will be supporting this bill. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Many members this evening, and in the first reading debate, have acknowledged the whakapapa—the history—of this settlement, but I think it bears repeating as much as possible. I want to also acknowledge the thousands of unionised care and support workers who have fought for so many years for this settlement. I remember the days of the A Fair Share for Aged Care campaign. I remember attempts to form multi-employer collective agreements with different employers in the sector. I remember coming to this place with nurses and caregivers to appear before the Health Committee to discuss the issue. Then the unions—the unionised workers—decided to pursue legal action. That, as we know, resulted in a favourable decision for them, and finally, at that point, the Government decided to come to the table. What happened was we got that classic tripartite arrangement of Government, workers, and employers sitting round the table together and thrashing out a settlement, which today we are in another phase of legislating for and putting into place.

I think that history all needs to be acknowledged. This has not happened by magic. It has not just appeared out of thin air. It has not happened over the last 20 months, it has not happened over the last 5 years; it is the result of years and years and decades of struggle by some of the lowest-paid and most vulnerable people in the New Zealand workforce. That should be acknowledged and should be congratulated. It could not have been achieved without unions—let us just be honest about that. Those, mostly, women working in the care and support workforce would not have got to where they have if they had not unionised, worked together, and worked collectively to achieve this outcome.

I also want to acknowledge everybody who has worked over the last couple of weeks in the select committee process. I am not normally a fan of truncated select committee processes. I have seen them go badly in this House. I have seen the results of them be less than ideal, and I have seen this House have to come back and rectify the errors that have occurred during truncated select committee processes.

But I have a great deal of confidence in this one, for a number of reasons. One is that the legislation that the select committee was considering was the result of that negotiated settlement, so an awful lot of hard work and consultation had gone into getting the legislation right before it was taken to the select committee. The other is the astonishingly hard work that members of the select committee and officials for the select committee and support staff of the select committee have put into the select committee process, and also the quality of the submissions made by unions and made by employers to support the select committee in its work. So I want to thank them for that. I am not a member of the select committee, but I want to thank those very hard-working members of Parliament and very hard-working officials and submitters, who have played their part in making sure that this bill proceeds well.

The point of the select committee process, of course, is to make sure that the bill is fit for purpose and that it achieves its policy intent, and for submitters to raise any issues with it. I think we do need to acknowledge in this second reading the concerns that were raised by employers around the quantum of taxpayer money that is going towards this settlement, because I think employers did feel a little bit hoodwinked, in a way. They raised concerns about how they are going to pay for holiday pay. They raised concerns about how they are going to pay for backfilling training days when staff are away training, and KiwiSaver, and also concerns about issues around relativity—other staff members and other people working in this sector who are not covered by this agreement, and the impact this agreement might have on their pay. Those are legitimate concerns that I have not heard one Government member address. The Minister of Health did not address them, and not one of the National Government speakers in this debate this evening has addressed those entirely legitimate concerns from employers.

We as legislators have the job of passing this legislation to bring this settlement into force. The Government has the job of appropriating sufficient funding to make sure that employers can pay these wages and address all the other costs that come with this settlement. That was something the Government guaranteed to the employers when they were bargaining in good faith to reach this settlement.

I am saddened and I feel a little bit let down, actually—not nearly as let down as the employers feel, I am sure—by a Government that has celebrated this. It has been a good process. We all feel very, very fond of this outcome. We feel very positive about this outcome. We all know it is the right thing to do, and yet the Government has kind of let the side down by failing to adequately fund this settlement. And not one Government member has spoken to address that issue, to allay the concerns, or even to acknowledge the concerns. That is a failure on the part of the Government members, and it kind of takes the shine off the settlement, which is a bit sad, but I hope that that is an issue that can be addressed, either in the remaining stages of this bill or in future appropriations. Maybe after the election, when we have got a different Government, we can sort that one out.

I just want to finish by acknowledging what other members have acknowledged: this is not the pay equity legislation. This is legislation to bring into force a negotiated settlement between unions that have the legitimate right to represent people working in the care and support sector—E tū, the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, and the Public Service Association—the peak bodies representing the employers in that sector, and the Government. They were tripartite negotiations, and look at what that has done. It has achieved a settlement that will significantly increase the pay for, I think, the most undervalued and the most seriously low-paid and vulnerable workforce in New Zealand. That is something to be celebrated, but it is something that should not be cut off in its prime. This is an industry standard agreement backed by legislation, and it is improving wages for vulnerable and low-paid workers. Let us celebrate that, and let us talk about how we can extend the benefits of such an approach to wage and pay and conditions bargaining to a much wider sector of the New Zealand workforce.

I am pleased that this National Government has seen fit to participate in this process. That bodes well for the future of New Zealand’s employment relations landscape, because for too long working people have not received the benefits of productivity improvements in New Zealand. I hear the argument being made—and I actually agree with the argument—that the way to improve wages is to improve productivity, but we have to make sure that productivity benefits are properly shared. Without a robust industrial relations framework, it simply does not happen, and the evidence for that is the last 35 years of New Zealand industrial relations—the Employment Contracts Act and all the efforts that have been made by Governments of that party over there to weaken the bargaining position of working people—which has meant that the productivity gains that the New Zealand economy has enjoyed have not been shared with working people.

Well, tonight we celebrate a model of industrial relations that does share the benefits of a growing economy and a more productive economy with working people. Let us not stop here. Let us make sure that all working people get the rewards from that.

Let us celebrate this. It has not been done perfectly by the Government, but nothing ever will be by a National Government. But let us celebrate what progress has been made. Let us celebrate the incredible victory for unionised people in the care and support workforce, and let us look forward to a future where more and more low-paid workers can enjoy the rewards of a growing economy through a strong industrial relations framework.

Bill read a second time.

It is a pleasure to take a call in this Budget debate, and what a great Budget 2017 is for New Zealanders. You know, I have to congratulate the new Minister of Finance, because he has delivered a Budget that is delivering for all New Zealanders. One could say that it is about time. This country has come through some pretty tough times, but New Zealanders have knuckled down, worked hard, and been supported by a focused Government that has been determined to support and lead to ensure this country gets back on to its feet. The economy is now growing, growth is predicted to continue for the next 4 years, and this Budget makes sure that everyone gets the opportunity to benefit from that.

This Budget takes three significant steps to bring the benefits of that stronger economy to all New Zealanders. First of all, there is a massive investment in public services—$7 billion over the next 4 years in those public services like health and education and the justice sector.

I want to take this opportunity to say how delighted I am to see the reward for those hard-working care workers who are getting a significant increase in their wage packets. If ever a group deserved to see its wages grow, it is that group. I know that in my electorate I have hundreds and hundreds of women, mainly, who are absolutely delighted to see that reward in this Budget.

The second major investment, of course, is infrastructure. An allocation of new spending of $4 billion in infrastructure spend right across the sector is most welcome.

But the one that I really think is the most significant is the $2 billion a year in the Family Incomes Package—$2 billion every year to support New Zealand families. About 1.3 million families will benefit, on average, by about $26 a week—and some much more than others, of course, we know, because we have targeted that support to those hard-working people who need the help the most.

We have discussed in this House many times before how to measure poverty. There are a number of ways to measure poverty, and people do it in different ways. I have argued in this House that there is no one sufficient measure. But if you look across those complex measures, this Budget very clearly addresses two of the measures that we produce every year in the Ministry of Social Development analysis. First of all, from a housing perspective, it is going to lift 20,000 households above the threshold for severe housing stress. Twenty thousand New Zealand households will be lifted out of that severe housing stress, and I am really proud to be part of a Government that has done that.

In addition, one of the measures that the OECD uses—I do not think it is a robust measure on its own, because it is easily manipulated—measures against the median income. Of course, you can adjust the median income, but, in this case, we are seeing 50,000 children lifted above the measure of 50 percent of the median income. Again, I am very proud to be part of a Government that has done that, in Budget 2017. Of course, last year this was the first Government in 43 years to increase the level of benefit that people who are unemployed get.

We get to have these sorts of conversations only because we have a growing economy, and, as I say, the economy is due to grow for the next 4 years. Over 200,000 jobs have been created over the last 3 years and a further 215,000 jobs are expected to be created over the next 4 years. That is really, really important for the people who live in my electorate, because the No. 1 issue that they have is employment. They want jobs because they want to be able to support themselves and their families.

With an unemployment rate that is predicted to fall below 4.5 percent, the proportion of people who are now dependent on a main benefit is the lowest it has been in the March quarter since 1997. That is a phenomenal achievement by hard-working New Zealanders running businesses, expanding businesses, and creating employment opportunities for New Zealanders.

If we take a social investment lens across unemployment, the group that has the highest priority for any Government should be those young people whom we refer to as “neets”—that is, they are not in employment, they are not in education, and they are not in training. Every quarter, we have the household labour force survey, and that tells us that of the 674,000 young people aged between 15 and 24, 588,000 of them—over 87 percent—are in employment or education or training. That leaves about 86,000, they estimate—remember, it is an estimate based on a survey—who are called “neets”.

Now, Mr Andrew Little sort of generously rounds that up to 90,000, and then portrays these 90,000 young people as if they are sitting on the side of the road, waiting for a Labour bus to come along and pick them up and take them down the road to a job. Of course, we all know that that is not the case; that is reading Labour’s propaganda. When you look carefully at the facts, of those 86,000 young people, that number does include about 16,000 who are caregivers. It might be that they are caring for other members of the family, or they might have children of their own. Many of them are taking a gap year, many of them are on their OE, some of them are in between jobs or courses—because the survey is taken over a certain period of time—and some of them are sick or injured or disabled who are not on a benefit.

What we do know is that 46,000 young people between the age of 15 and 24 are on a benefit of some kind at any one point, and just 18,000 of those are work-ready. They are what we describe as job seekers, work-ready. That means they are able to be out there, working.

The Labour Party says it is going to cut immigration—tens of thousands of work visas are going to be stopped. But, at the same time, Labour is going to build more houses in Auckland, and it talks about having those 84,000 or 90,000 young people with whom to build the houses. But if we break this down even further and have a look at just Auckland City, there are just 4,083 of those young people who are available to work. Apparently, those 4,083 young people are going to build 50,000 houses. I mean, that is ludicrous. That is just manipulation of the facts. And that is leaving aside any skills. I heard Paddy Gower on The Nation say to Mr Little that you cannot turn a “neet” into a nurse overnight. So I say to Mr Little that you cannot turn a beneficiary into a builder overnight.

This Government is certainly determined to offer more than hope to this group of young people. We have a whole raft of initiatives in place that are aimed at supporting those young people into a job. We have the Youth Service. Every young person who leaves school is contacted by a Youth Service contractor, offering them specialist case management and support to get into training and education first—or employment, if that is what they would prefer, but our first priority is to get them trained.

We have a whole raft of regional initiatives in the areas of New Zealand where the proportion of those young people is the greatest. If we have a look at Northland, the Kaikohe Growing Regional Opportunities through Work trial has successfully got almost 30 young people into jobs. We have now expanded that trial right throughout Northland—the Taitamariki 500. It offers pre-employment skills, mentorship, pastoral support, skills, and work experience.

We know that these young people are not just sitting there, waiting to be picked up and taken down the road to a job. Many of them have highly complex issues to resolve, and our initiatives are part of addressing those complex issues. We have in the Hawke’s Bay, Project 1000, and we have in Tai Rāwhiti, my own area—we are supporting its own locally developed youth employment strategy.

This Government is serious about supporting those young New Zealanders into a job, because it knows that gives them the best chance of having a good life. We are not afraid to tackle those complex issues. This Budget 2017 is a great Budget for all New Zealanders, but in particular for young New Zealanders.

National cannot be trusted. National cannot be trusted to solve the serious challenges that our country faces. Everybody in this country knows that our housing is broken in this country, everybody knows that our rivers are broken, and we all well know that our climate is broken. Children in this country are still getting sick from preventable Third World diseases, 9 years after National has proved that it has failed time and time again. Let us talk about how families are doing, shall we, after 9 years of National.

Rheumatic fever rates for Pasifika children are still growing after 9 years of National. What has National done in this Budget? It has cut the budget for rheumatic fever prevention. It has gotten rid of the targets for reducing rheumatic fever. Do you know why it has done that? It is because National knows that we will never get rid of rheumatic fever in this country until we solve the housing crisis.

What has National done in this Budget? It has not done anything serious about dealing with housing. It has given money to the accommodation supplement, which just goes to landlords and increases rents—even the Government knows that; its own information tells it that. It has put more money into emergency housing, which is a declaration of failure by this Government. It is a declaration of failure to say it will fund 4 more years of emergency housing because it is not going to bother to do what is needed, to build the housing that our families desperately need to live in. Why do they desperately need that? Because their children are still, after 9 years of National, getting sick from preventable illnesses like rheumatic fever.

Up to 1,600 New Zealanders will die this winter because of cold, damp, and mouldy homes. Up to 15 of those people will be children—babies who have just been born, children who are cherished and loved by their families. Up to 15 will die this winter because their homes are damp and cold and mouldy and make them sick. National has had 9 years to make sure that every single one of those 15 kids has a decent place to live that makes them well, not sick. National has had 9 years to make sure that we do not have extra deaths in winter because housing is so cold and miserable, and 1,600 families will suffer this winter because of National’s failure. That is all that this Government has delivered to our country: more and more people getting sick, and far too many of them dying for it.

National still means families living in unsafe homes. National still means families living in their cars and in garages over winter. National still means selling off the very State houses that those families could be living in right now, keeping themselves warm and dry and healthy.

Mental health services are becoming No. 1 in the concerns of New Zealanders around health. Everywhere we look, we see more and more people suffering from mental health issues because of stress, because of all sorts of problems—poverty—but not being able to find the help that they need. Suicide rates have jumped under National. During the 9 years of this National Government, we have seen a surge in child suicides in this period, in youth suicide. In the 9 years of National, what have we seen National do in this and previous Budgets? It has been cutting the funding for the very mental health services that will keep these children, these young people, alive. We hear stories almost every week of health services that are desperately trying to provide for their communities and the families that are around them but cannot, because National has, year after year—9 years on—cut the funding for those essential health services that save New Zealanders’ lives. This is what National’s legacy will be: more and more New Zealanders unwell, and far too many of them dying because of it. That is what 9 years of National is leaving us.

What about our beautiful and pristine rivers—the rivers that are part of our birthright, part of our economy, and part of the joy of being New Zealanders in this beautiful country? You cannot safely swim in 62 percent of New Zealand’s rivers, because if you do, you risk getting sick.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Just rubbish.

And the man responsible for that is still in denial, as you can hear him squeaking from across the Chamber. Instead of cleaning up those rivers, instead of holding those polluters to account, instead of making sure that they pay for the pollution that they are spreading into our waterways and pay for the cost of cleaning up, National gives more subsidies and public money to irrigators and to polluters. Its failure to take care of our environment—the very environment that provides our health, provides for our families, and provides for our economy—is yet one more failure to add to the many that are the legacy of National’s 9 years.

Four out of five bird species in this country are at risk of extinction—four out of five. Yet this National Government continues with coalmining in kiwi habitats on conservation land, while handing out fat subsidies to oil and drilling companies to drill in the Māui’s dolphin’s habitat. The Māui’s dolphin is on the brink of extinction. National’s 9-year legacy will be the extinction of some of these species, some that we have held dear.

So now is the time, New Zealand, to rid ourselves of National’s failure, of this 9-year degradation of the things that we hold the most dear. Our families, our children, our loved ones—we hold them the most dear, so they should be at the heart of the Government. In a Greens Government—families will be at the heart of that new and progressive Government. That is why we released the “Budget for all mothers” just a few weeks ago, before the National Government’s Budget. That was a clear signal to New Zealand that we will put families and children at the heart of any new Government that we are part of. That is why we will continue to fight for the right of communities to have their rivers and their waterways cleaned up, their right to be able to drink safe water from their own taps—a right that National has degraded over the last 9 years. We will make sure that we are responsible global citizens in the fight against climate change and in the investment and the innovation and the opportunity that a 21st century sustainable economy can bring to our country.

Nine years of National have proven that its experiments on our country have been a failure, and our families and our environment have taken the cost of that. It is an experiment that New Zealanders are now tired of. It is an experiment that New Zealanders are putting aside in September, because they will not tolerate any more the degradation and harm that this National Government has caused them. They are looking for a new and progressive Government, of which the Greens are a part, that will put families and our environment at the centre of the decisions that we make. That is our commitment to this country. Thank you.

A 5-minute call on behalf of the National Party—Joanne Hayes.

What a load of codswobble that was. Honestly, at the rate that that previous speaker, Metiria Turei, is going on, we may as well all just line up and go and jump off the nearest bank and just do ourselves in, because if the Greens do ever get into Government, we may as well say goodbye to all the great economic advancement that this Government has done. We may as well kiss all that goodbye, because that is exactly what is going to happen. Our farmers, our agricultural sector, will absolutely die under a regime of Green policy—Green policy that really has no place in our society.

When I start to look at this amazing Budget from our Minister of Finance, the Hon Steven Joyce—this is his first Budget, and I must say he has delivered us a doozy, delivering for all New Zealanders four key areas: big investment in public services, record investment in new infrastructure, improvements for the resilience of New Zealand from future shocks, and, most importantly, the centrepiece of this particular Budget, strengthening families by lifting their incomes through the Family Incomes Package. My colleagues have articulated that particular piece of the Budget very, very well—this $2 billion Family Incomes Package—and I can tell you that should the Greens get in, you may as well wipe that one out, too, because it will all just go down the gurgler. Our families would suffer big time.

On 1 April 2018 we are looking at increases in the $14,000 income tax threshold to $22,000, and in the $48,000 tax threshold to $52,000. This means that those working full-time on the minimum wage will receive $11 a week as a result of tax threshold changes. Some of our families need this. Some of them will get, on average, $26 extra in their pocket. That is along with the other areas in the Budget that have gone in over the last 12 months—that is, free GP services for those under age 13. This is a Budget that is talking to our people in New Zealand. It is supporting families, because families are what makes communities, and it is the communities that actually generate the economy that we all live in.

I also want to take a little time to talk about the $434.1 million that has been set aside for the vulnerable children and young people in care package. This is an amazing piece of the Budget, because for the first time in the history of this country we have looked at and restructured the Child, Youth and Family organisation. We are coming out with a piece of legislation that will actually centre on children. Children will have a say. It will be all about them, and it will be anything and everything that they want for them, and not so much about what adults want for them. They have a voice, and this is part and parcel of this $434.1 million that has been set aside for that particular piece of policy.

When we start to look at that piece of policy and start to break it down, we are looking at $26.4 million going to support 4,500 caregivers. No doubt my colleagues will be able to delve into that even further and tease that out a bit more, but I cannot, because I have got only about 1 minute and 20 seconds left. We start looking at $28.1 million for Family Start, $11.7 million over the next 2 years to evaluate community-based remand placements, and, as I have been looking at, that piece of legislation for Oranga Tamariki. I can see that so many things are going to be invested in for the well-being of our young people in New Zealand. The Ministry for Vulnerable Children’s CEO will have a big task ahead of her. She will be made responsible for a number of activities and actions and budget allocations as part and parcel of her job, and I think that she will make an excellent go of everything. I am pleased that I am part and parcel of the Social Services Committee, which is looking at that piece of legislation.

I note $19.5 million allocated across 3 years as part of Budget 2017 for the Social Investment Package. This is expanding on intensive care support for up to 1,500 clients. There are so many things that have come out just from that piece of the Budget. As a member on this side of the House, I am very proud of the work that this Government has done for New Zealand. I know that by coming back after the next election we will continue to grow economic development in this country. Thank you.

A 5-minute call on behalf of the National Party—Shane Reti.

The 2017 Budget is good for Whangarei, good for Northland, and has been very well received in my electorate. The Budget continues to advance the economic gains that Northland is seeing as real GDP growth, as reflected by last week’s ASB scorecard, which has Northland up seven places. It is up to a four-star ranking and it is the second-highest growth region.

Many in Northland will make the greatest gains from this Budget. We always said: “Work with us through the tough times, and together, with fiscal responsibility and a stable Government, we will share in the benefits.” Well, Northland families will now share these benefits as part of the $2 billion Family Incomes Package. These benefits will flow as increases to the tax thresholds, increases to Working for Families, and increases to the accommodation supplement. We know with this Budget that 1.3 million families will benefit by an average of $26 a week. Northlanders will share that benefit. We know that 20,000 households will lift above the threshold for severe housing stress. Northlanders will share that benefit. We know the number of children living in families receiving less than half the median income will improve. Northlanders will share that benefit.

Health matters to Northlanders, and in this Budget there have been big programme announcements with direct relevance to Northland. The health budget goes up an extra $879 million. Northland District Health Board (DHB), in fact, receives an extra $21 million top-up. The National Bowel Cancer Screening Programme is further supported, with $385 million. In 2010-12 Northland had the fourth-highest colorectal mortality rate, with 20.5 deaths per 100,000 people, so this is really important to Northland. I would also like to reach out at this point of my very brief talk to my young Northland cousin who has metastatic bowel cancer, and wish her well with chemotherapy and the best possible outcome.

Mental health is important to Northlanders, and this Budget adds an extra $224 million over 4 years. A few weeks ago I was at the opening of He Tupua Wai-Ora, a million-dollar Northland DHB programme for mothers with children under 3 who have drug and alcohol addiction. They will be further supported through this Budget.

Disability Support Services receives an extra $205 million over 4 years. A few months ago in Whangarei I was able to participate in the opening of a disabled people in work programme called EmployAbility. The senior official from Silver Fern Farms, out towards Dargaville, gave a wonderful example of the benefits of employing disabled people, including the fact that they actually have fewer sick days.

Double-crewing for road ambulance call-outs receives $59.2 million. Northland DHB has some of the greatest rurality, and single call-outs have high risk, so the people of Northland will benefit from this announcement by having two sets of skills. This lets you do several things. It lets you do something called “scoop and carry”. What that means is you can have someone actually driving the ambulance and someone else resuscitating in the back. That is very important when you are looking for short transit times to get people to hospital quickly, particularly in incidents like stroke, when you have got a window to have an intervention that makes a difference. So double-crewing ambulances is going to be very important for the people of Northland.

Rheumatic fever was commented on by a member earlier. I wanted to just comment that they focused on one risk factor that serves one agenda—that is, the housing agenda—and completely ignores all the other factors that are relevant to rheumatic fever, including a higher incidence of pharyngitis with group A streptococcus, and access to healthcare. This is really important, because access to healthcare is one of the single biggest interventions that this Government has done. While we may have changed some of the targets, we have been able to do that because we have made healthcare for those under 13 more accessible, and that has been able to reduce the risk and improve the rheumatic fever rates, particularly in places like Whangaroa Harbour, which at one point, in the early 2000s, had the worst incidence of rheumatic fever outside Soweto. So we are really making a huge impact on that. I do want to say that I do accept overcrowding—so I am not diminishing what the member was saying—is a risk factor, but I am just saying let us tell the whole story.

Medicines matter to Northland. An extra $60 million over 4 years will enable access to the new medicines that our specialists tell us are important. There are so many areas to comment on, but I have tended to focus a bit on health as an area that I have an interest in. This Budget is good for Northlanders. They are telling me that, they are seeing it, and they are touching it. This is a good Budget. Thank you.

I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Vote Health call this afternoon. I am really pleased, actually, to speak on this health budget because, like all of New Zealand and members on this side of the House, we were looking forward, actually, to the Budget announced by the Minister of Finance as being the big plan to help fix the health crisis this country is in currently.

The reason why I was looking forward to that was not only did I want to know about the big Budget plan but I wanted to know about how it would specifically tackle the mental health crisis that is growing in this country. I also wanted to know about the big plan that would address the chronic underfunding of our district health boards (DHBs), and I have to say the big plan for helping everyday New Zealanders to access quality and timely healthcare was actually what I was really quite looking forward to.

But what did we learn on Budget day? We learnt that the National Government has run out of ideas. It was a wobbly Budget delivered by a wobbly finance Minister who would rather try to bribe the public and distract them with smoke and mirrors than really face the enormous challenges plaguing our health system head on. This Budget delivers nothing but cosmetic services in a cosmetic coverage. It is like lipstick on a pig.

We have had Minister after Minister and backbencher after backbencher stand up in this House and tell us how generous this Budget is and how health was a big winner in this year’s Budget. I beg to differ. On this side of the House, we beg to differ.

Some member got up and said that the centrepiece was actually the $2 billion Family Incomes Package and that it would raise the incomes of 1.3 million families by an average of $26 a week. The example given was a couple who had two children under 18, with one partner earning $55,000, who would gain $41 a week, plus any increase through their accommodation supplement. Again, we looked at this and we thought that this was an absolute election bribe, because this was funded by the cutting of key social services that the couple in the example used would have relied on the most over the last 9 years.

They may well be getting a little bit more money in their hand, but how much time and money have they had to waste on waiting lists, if they can even get on one? How much more money could this family have made if wages were not left to atrophy under this Government? Does the earning partner used in that example work in manufacturing or in an exporting industry, like many in Southland? Under this Government, that sector is losing ground against GDP, which is leading to job losses and stagnant wages.

Another member got up and said how great it was for the health budget that it is growing yet again. He said that there was an extra $3.9 billion over 4 years, taking the total health investment to a record $16.77 billion; that the Southern District Health Board would benefit from extra funding; that bowel-screening programmes would be rolled out again in the region in 2017-18; and that an extra $224 million over 4 years would be invested in mental health services, including $124 million in new, innovative approaches. Again, we say that this is just electoral lip service. Health funding under the National Government has been cut by $1.7 billion—$1.7 billion—during its three terms. This Budget is not generous when it comes to health; it is just trying to restore what is owed, and it is not doing a good job of that.

This Budget does not relieve the pressures on nurses. It fails to increase operational funding to a level that would mean nurses are adequately resourced to keep up with current healthcare demand. Last week’s health budget said that that budget increases. When the caregivers’ settlement is taken out, there is only a $500 million increase in health spending, and that is $300 million short on what is needed to keep up with the status quo with the commitments that the Government has already made.

I say that if this is what a winning Budget looks like, and what that looks like to that National Government, then those members are in for a rude awakening in September, because what we really got here was small funding increases masquerading as big funding increases. A lot of people have likened this Budget to a classic election-year lolly scramble, but I think a lot more fitting metaphor would be to say that National robbed the lolly shop through years of cuts to our essential services, especially health, and then gave the lollies back to us with a bow on top, expecting a pat on the back from the New Zealand public.

But if that just goes to show how out of touch and out of ideas this National Government is, let us look at health. I will say this again: while in Government, National has underspent in health by at least $1.7 billion. These cuts have led to a huge range of issues in our healthcare system over the last three terms. We are facing longer waiting lists for elective surgeries. People are being kicked off the waiting list.

We have GP shortages, and while we are talking about GP shortages, let us look at a snapshot of what we have got right now. The general practice workforce in New Zealand is ageing, with 57 percent of GPs aged 50 or over, compared with 16 percent in 1998. The GP workforce is also shrinking in terms of the total GP hours worked per unit of population. The average age of GPs is 53, and 44 percent of GPs intend to retire in the next 10 years. It is getting harder and harder for GPs to meet the community’s needs, when funding is required to enable at least 60 more additional GP training places.

Let us look at the nurses—the nurse shortages. We have actually heard from the New Zealand Nurses Organisation that nurses are drastically underfunded, and it has actually sent an open letter calling for this Government—pleading for this Government—to support, with proper funding, enabling the nurses to actually go through and come out the other end being able to look after patients.

The shocking state of our mental healthcare system is another issue. Overcapacity in hospitals, hospital bed shortages, deteriorating facilities—I could go on and on.

So did this big, election-year Budget address this underspending? No. According to the Ministry of Health’s own figures, district health boards needed $645 million to keep up with costs last year. They received only $400 million. Next year DHBs get only $439 million when they are clearly going to need at least $650 million. That means DHBs in this country are going to go over, and be over, $200 million short of what is really needed to meet demand.

But, sure, health is the big winner in this Budget, according to that Government. Let us talk about Southland Hospital, the hospital that my family and friends use, which operated more than 100 days in 2015-16 with at least 95 percent or higher occupancy level. This year it is well on its way to surpassing that. How can the Southern DHB be expected to survive with such a significant funding shortfall? DHBs need better funding so that New Zealanders do not suffer like they have in the last 9 years.

These funding increases are just cosmetic. There is no clearer example of this health budget than the state of elective surgery. Elective surgery has a funding pool of $27 million. That was cut to $12 million last year. Now, in this Budget, the Government has increased that funding pool by just $6 million, meaning that while it is a technical funding increase, the reality is that there is still a funding shortfall of $9 million. Is the National Government so starved of good publicity that it would call an almost $10 million shortfall a funding increase?

I have heard the National MPs stand up and say that the tax cuts for families will mean that people are better off and that up to an extra $1,000 will make all the difference, and we say, yes, sure, that is true. But when we look at how this has worked out, this Government gave up to an extra $1,000 a year to members of our public, for someone who may be forced several times to spend some time waiting on the waiting list trying to get elective surgery, or who may actually use that money being forced to go to private hospitals in order to get their treatment.

Yes, we say the public might regard that as a tax cut, but New Zealand has had a Budget freeze on the police since 2010. How many people have had slower call-out in emergencies because of understaffed police? So you could get up to an extra $1,000, but we ask whether it was worth the risk to New Zealanders’ safety to put it in the hands of this Government.

And what do people in the sector think is right with this winning health budget? Not a lot, either.

Let us talk about mental health—let us talk about the elephant in the room. The biggest stain on this Government’s health record is the crisis that has unfolded in mental health under its watch. The National MPs have been quick to talk up the $224 million on mental health spending in this Budget, and it does sound like a pretty big number until you hear the fine print. The funding is over 4 years, so it is actually only $56 million per year.

The Government also announced it would ring-fence $100 million for mental health—again over 4 years, so that is only $25 million per year. That is actually coming from money already allocated to DHBs, so they must spend additional money on mental health even though DHBs are already underfunded by more than $200 million. Mental health was also given $100 million as part of the social investment budget to target new initiatives. Again, it is only $25 million a year, so that would boil down to community groups fighting over just $1 million per year to try to innovate and find new ways to tackle the mental health crisis. That is the Government’s big election-year plan for mental health services and how to address the crisis—it is just pathetic.

Let us look at the social impact that is going on within our communities. Let us look at the fact that our police force is now, by default, offering mental health care services. Let us look at the fact that phone calls coming in to the police station through mental health care services needing police support have skyrocketed. I want to point to the recent—

I am sorry, but the member’s speaking time has expired.

Before I commence my comments about the Budget, may I, as other members have done, briefly acknowledge the terrible atrocities that we have seen in recent weeks with acts of terrorism in Manchester and London; the dreadful explosion in Kabul, Afghanistan last week; and all too regularly in other parts of Europe, America, the Middle East, and even, sometimes, very close to home, in Australia. Especially, we are all thinking of the New Zealander Oliver Dowling and his family, and we wish him a very speedy recovery from the horrific injuries that he suffered just a few days ago.

I would like to echo the words of the Hon Anne Tolley, who commenced the Government’s attack this afternoon on some of the ideas that have been put forward by Opposition speakers. I too am very proud of this Budget, especially the families package, which she spoke about in such detail. The Budget has been very well received in my electorate of Hamilton West, where I know it is going to make a very significant difference for many, many people. Family incomes will increase across the board, and we are investing in public services that will make a real difference to vulnerable children, to those who depend on our health services, to those who will benefit from the new drugs that are being made possible through the increased expenditure available to Pharmac, to the communities across the country who welcome the extra police numbers—there are 101 new police coming to my own Waikato district, and that is a tremendous thing—and so on.

The changes to tax thresholds, the Working for Families package, and the accommodation supplement will make a difference to hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders, and it is a real shame that the Leader of the Opposition failed to notice the last aspect. Around 750,000 older New Zealanders will benefit because of the link between New Zealand Superannuation and after-tax wages, and I am quite sure that at least one of those superannuitants with whom I am intimately connected will be watching right at this moment.

A few weeks ago, I was honoured to be appointed Minister of Customs, Associate Minister of Education, and Associate Minister of Transport. They are all great portfolios, and, I have to say, it was a particular thrill to be the first person to become a Minister while representing the electorate of Hamilton West in this House. This is a Budget that, as the member for Whāngarei noted in his contribution a few moments ago, shares the benefits of our stronger economy, particularly in the areas that I have just mentioned, and for which I am the Associate Minister, in transport and education.

New Zealanders have worked incredibly hard over the last 8 or 9 years, through very tough times, and we now have one of the best-performing economies in the OECD. Opposition members know this, but they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge it, particularly in this Chamber. Instead, they prefer to spread false and alarmist claims without any references to the facts. So, in the immortal words of Charles Dickens’ Mr Gradgrind, I would like to put a few facts on the table. We have seen, in this Budget, $3.9 billion invested in New Zealand’s health system, and another $1.1 billion invested in schools and early childcare centres. Metiria Turei and other Opposition speakers have repeatedly chosen to talk about that new investment as somehow being a cut. Well, if they are a cut, let us have more of them, because they are very, very significant increases.

For more of their imaginary cuts, lets us note how significantly the Government is investing in infrastructure for our growing economy. We are the infrastructure Government—there is no question that that is how this National-led Government will be remembered in many years to come. For the first time, the Government is allocating $4 billion in new capital funding—in one Budget, in just one Budget—across the education, health, defence, justice, housing, primary industries, and transport portfolios. We will also invest another $7 billion in new capital spending in the next three Budgets, taking our total additional capital spend to $11 billion—$11 billion.

Through this new capital expenditure and our existing commitments, the Government and its key infrastructure agencies will invest a total of $32.5 billion over the next 4 years in new infrastructure. That is continuing to build our nation in ways that will make a huge, dramatic difference in people’s lives. It is a 40 percent increase over the last 4 years, so if Opposition speakers want to describe those as cuts, let us have more cuts of that nature.

This Government will make the largest ever investment in our education system through this current Budget. We are committed to building an education system that caters to the individual needs of children and supports them to succeed. Our children are already starting school better prepared to learn than ever, and they are leaving school better qualified than ever, and therefore they are better prepared to go out into the workforce or undertake further training or tertiary study. In this Budget early childhood education will receive an additional $368 million of operating funding over the next 4 years. For the first time, targeted funding to support children at risk of not achieving is being extended to the early learning sector with $35.5 million over 4 years being targeted to around 2,000 licensed providers.

The Budget delivers both a universal increase for operational grant funding as well as additional targeted funding, and I am very proud of that. Schools with high numbers of at-risk pupils will receive an increase of 2.67 percent in their targeted at-risk funding, bringing the total increase that they will receive to 4 percent—that is well above the Consumer Price Index, and will make a big difference. This investment in the Budget will see more classrooms to accommodate roll growth and new schools in areas of high population growth, and those are major areas of focus for me as the Associate Minister. There is $456.5 million of investment in school property, which will bring about a significant increase in capacity. There will be six new schools, a further expansion of two schools, 11 special education satellite units, and 305 new classrooms nationwide.

We inherited a property portfolio with an average age of 40 years. We are making a priority of funding to tackle issues around earthquake strengthening, weathertightening, and major redevelopments, and of this funding—quite appropriately, given the area of greatest growth—a total of $277.6 million will be committed to projects in Auckland. There is $63.3 million of operating funding that will be invested over the next 4 years to support pupils with additional learning needs, including expanding specialist behavioural services.

Those services do a great job, and that funding will be put to very good use. It includes more teacher-aide hours and a new programme for parents and teachers of young children with autism. We are all more aware of autism now than we ever have been before, and I am thrilled to see those most deserving families getting that additional support. We have increased funding for children with additional learning needs by around 33 percent since 2009 to $633 million per year. So, again, I say that I am putting the facts on the table, and if the Opposition wants to describe those as cuts, let us have more cuts of that nature.

Moving into transport—in the very short time I have available—there is $9.17 billion of capital investment for our State highways. The Government is going to be investing in our State highway network over the next 4 years, through the New Zealand Transport Agency, in the biggest investment ever seen in our State highway network. It will be a key pillar in our commitment to building the infrastructure that we need in the future, and that too is making a huge difference.

There are many other facts I could put on the table, but let me conclude as I started by saying how proud I am to support this Budget, how proud I am of the way New Zealanders have worked collectively to achieve the very strong economy that we have, and how proud I am of the international recognition we now receive for the strength of our economy and how well we are doing. These are not cuts. This is a very good Budget from a very good Government.

I am going to begin my contribution by trying to help out the member, Tim Macindoe, who has just resumed his seat, to understand some of the basic economics that lie behind this Budget. Perhaps, to do that, we will talk about a typical family going to the supermarket. A couple of friends of mine, over the 8 years that I have been a Minister here—a Minister! If only!

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

Over the 8 years that I have been a member of this House, a couple of friends of mine have had two children. If they showed up at the supermarket with the same amount of money before they had the two children—8 years ago this year—and expected to be able to buy the same amount of produce and goods that they need to feed their family, they would come away short-changed. That is the problem, Mr Macindoe, in the health system. It is all very well to say “We’ve put some more money in.”, but the money has not kept up with population growth and it has not kept up with inflation. What that has led to is cuts—cuts in services in almost every district health board (DHB) in New Zealand.

There is a headline in a newspaper, or online, that says to us that services are being cut. We heard about the MidCentral District Health Board today. We hear about Waikato Hospital, in that member’s area, which has told people: “Please don’t come to the emergency department. We can’t take you.” That is because, Mr Macindoe, the National Government has underfunded health to the tune of nearly $2 billion over the last 8 years. That leads to cuts. It is a real-term cut, and until the Government members get their heads around that, people around New Zealand will not be able to understand why they keep standing up in the House every day and telling New Zealanders that it is all fine in the health sector. New Zealanders know that it is not.

The window dressing in the health sector in this Budget was exposed by Jacinda Ardern in Parliament last week when she asked Steven Joyce what the $100 million contingency fund for mental health was for, and he did not know. He did not know. It is a typical last-minute, knee-jerk reaction from the National Government, when it knows that it has got a problem because for 9 years it has consistently underfunded health and consistently undervalued mental health as part of that picture. That, for Mr Macindoe’s benefit, is what cuts are actually about in our health sector.

I want to actually focus most of the remainder of my contribution on my concern for what is really missing from this Budget. We saw the sugar hit. The sugar hit of the $2 billion of tax cuts—

💬 Brett Hudson: The line’s not working for you, Grant. Wait for the next poll, buddy.

—that translate out to about 20 bucks a week, and that sugar hit—well, that is the thing, Mr Hudson. You see, a sugar hit will last for a little period of time. That is the thing. You will get a little bit of a high out of that sugar hit, but it is not the solution that New Zealand needs. After the sugar hit high goes away, we will still see a grossly underfunded health system. We will still see 40,000 New Zealanders homeless. We will still see the lowest homeownership rate in 60 years in New Zealand. We will still see early childhood educators saying to us that they are tens of thousands of dollars short in each kindergarten in New Zealand because the funding has not kept up. The solutions to those things are not in the Budget. So it is a “sugar hit Budget”, and there are no solutions.

But the other element missing from this Budget is some kind of vision for the economy—some kind of vision for how we are going to grow higher-waged jobs and opportunities for people right across New Zealand in the face of a rapidly changing world of work. Go looking for that in the Budget, and it is not there. Before anyone says that this is just the Labour Party, the country manager for Xero, Craig Hudson, came out and said: “Budget 2017 lets down small businesses and the tech sector.” That is what he said. The point that Mr Hudson seems to not quite be able to understand is that right across New Zealand, people are looking for the Budget to do what it should do, to set out the vision for New Zealand, and, instead, the campaign manager for the National Party, Steven Joyce—who happens to be the finance Minister—laid down a Budget that was all about 23 September and not about the 21st century.

It is interesting to note that Craig Hudson said: “You have to be a real believer in trickle-down economics to think that this Budget is going to change [anything].” That is the reality: a tired Government out of ideas, out of touch, and relying on a tired, outdated economic philosophy. What the Budget needed to contain was a road map for the 21st century. For the Labour Party, at the centre of that, for the economy, is actually how we support education and training. We do not know exactly what jobs are going to be available in the future, but what we do know is that we need a workforce that is adaptable, that can make sure it is resilient, and that has the skills that are needed.

That is why I am extremely proud that we have a policy of 3 years free post - secondary school education and training to make sure that every New Zealander gets the chance to go ahead and get the skills that they need in the future. It is also why I am very, very proud of the fact that we as a party have a proper regional economic development policy. Go looking in the Budget for that, and you will struggle to find it. The Labour Party members have said that we want to be a partner in communities to grow jobs. We know that there is a decent life available for New Zealanders right across this beautiful country, but central government has to be a partner there. Andrew Little has already launched the Labour Party’s Centre of Digital Excellence in Dunedin, which is about making sure that the gaming industry there, which already employs hundreds of people, can grow even further. It partners between the university and the tech sector down there, to make sure that we are building those decent jobs of the future.

In Gisborne we have announced our support for another wood-processing plant, so that a region that grows fantastic wood can actually benefit from the jobs that come with processing there. It is a community that wants that to happen and is looking for help and partnership from the central government, and the Labour Party is there. We want to see those kinds of projects right around New Zealand. That is an active regional development policy. That is how we support the growth of decent jobs right across our country, and we see precious little of that in this Budget.

In fact, what we see is the Government running up the white flag on exports. This is what we all know we need: if we are going to get those higher-paying jobs, we need our export industries to be firing. This Government set itself a target, saying: “We are going to have exports of 40 percent of GDP.” That was the target. Exports have gone nowhere, and the Budget forecasts that they will go backwards. There is no investment in support for those exporters. There is a failure around new thinking and research and development—which we have covered with research and development tax credits that we will bring in—and pitiful increases forecast in the Budget for weekly income.

Real average wages are going to go up 1.3 percent across the whole next 5 years. That equates out to 8c an hour for the average worker, every year. That is supposed to be the benefit of this economy, which has gone so well? That is how we are sharing prosperity—8c an hour, a year? That is meant to be the dividend for hard-working New Zealand people? It is pathetic.

What New Zealanders have consistently said is that they want a Government that will build strong social foundations in health, in education, in housing, and in keeping our communities safe. That is why those are the priorities of the next Labour Government. We do not believe that the priorities should be a tax cut that all of us in the House benefit from, when there are people living in cars and garages. We do not think that the priority should be a tax cut that does not deliver to the lowest-income New Zealanders, when we have got a mental health system that cannot keep up with the people who end up in it.

What this Budget needed to be was a vision for how New Zealand goes forward in the second decade of the 21st century. Instead, it is a vision for what the National Government thinks is clever politics. I can look at it as a politician and say “Maybe I can see some of that.”, but we have to be about something more than that in this Parliament. We have to be about creating a future that means that our children and grandchildren know that New Zealand is the place where they want to be—that it will be able to deliver them good and decent jobs, an environment where they can swim in the rivers, a country where we look after one another. Those values that are core to New Zealand are, sadly, lacking in this Budget. It is a continuation of the failed economic policy of this Government, one that has left far too many New Zealanders behind.

We can do so much better. We can invest in our regions. We can create an economy that leads us to a low-carbon future. We can create an economy where we have higher-paying jobs, and one where New Zealanders have access to the best education and health systems in the world. We can do that when we change the Government.

I just want to open by saying that, actually, I personally am very proud to be a Kiwi. I was very fortunate that the Prime Minister appointed me the Minister of Defence, which has allowed me to travel and represent our country offshore in the last 6 weeks. It has reminded me just how lucky we are with what we have back here in New Zealand. I am proud to be a Kiwi, and, actually, when it comes down to it, we do care about each other. We do look after one another.

My own family suffered a tragedy when we lost my brother Sean to mental illness, and one of the things that I have worked on very hard myself from that date is trying to create more awareness in the police service—because at the time I was in the police service—and we have come a long, long way. I am trying to create more awareness in our communities in terms of being more accepting and understanding that a mental illness or depression is no different from a broken arm or a broken leg—it is just that it is not as visible. We have come a long way.

We now have got mental health facilities that are in the community, that are providing services to our people in the community so that they do not have to leave the community if they feel safe and happier, and 10 years, 20 years, ago we did not have that. We have got a mental health service down at North Shore Hospital that I am proud of, that delivers a very good service. Yes, we should always be looking at ways to do better. Yes, we can make improvements and we have got to keep making improvements. But, as a country, we should be quite proud at how far we have come.

On that note, I just want to point to four key elements in the Budget, and can I acknowledge Minister Joyce and his first Budget in delivering what I think is a Budget for New Zealand—for everyone to be able to participate in and to be able to enjoy the fact that, yes, we are a small country down at the bottom of the world; yes, we have to engage, we have to trade and engage in a wider global community, but we actually do very well. We are seeing good growth in our economy and, actually, when we have good growth in the economy, that is what allows us to make choices. That is what actually gives us the income. That is what gives us the revenue as a country to be able to invest into the areas that we need to invest in, to be able to assist and support our growth, and assist and support and allow us to realise our own aspiration as a country.

I want to point to the $3.9 billion in investment over 4 years in New Zealand’s health sector. My own electorate of Rodney is very well served by North Shore Hospital, which is down in Takapuna. That is the hospital that I used myself as a kid growing up, and I have to say that if we had to go to the A & E room we probably understood that we were facing anything from a 2- to a 4-hour wait before we were able to actually be taken through and seen by a doctor.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Now what—2 to 4 days?

I can say now—well, that was my experience when we used North Shore Hospital. I do not know what the member’s experience was, but I am just telling you that was my own personal experience of having used the hospital. I can say now with great confidence that every single one of my constituents who has to access the support and the services at North Shore Hospital comes away raving about the staff and raving about the service that they get. I am actually really proud of our North Shore Hospital. I am proud of the staff there and I am proud of the services that are delivered to the people of my electorate in Rodney.

There is $1.1 billion for schools and early childhood centres. Again, Warkworth is growing and will continue to grow, and it has needed some pretty major investment—not just into rebuilding, for example, the Warkworth school on the junior side and the senior side, but also there is quite a big expansion plan to be able to absorb the growth we are going to experience up there over the next 5 years. That has happened. That has happened because you have had a principal and staff, you have had a chair of the board of trustees and a board of trustees who have worked extremely well with the ministry and have been supported by the Associate Minister at the time, Nikki Kaye. We have seen a world-class school; certainly, the junior side, we have already been up there and opened that, and now there is work starting on the senior side.

We have just seen an announcement this week that Ōrewa will be getting a new primary school. We need that because we are growing. That growth, of course, comes with challenges. We have to invest in services, we have to keep up to date in terms of the development of our infrastructure, and we are, as a country, catching up on that, without a doubt. I think everyone would agree that we have got decades of under-investment, and we are catching up with that now with some big significant investment in infrastructure. But we are getting a new school.

We are getting new roads. We have seen the work now that has begun on our Pūhoi to Wellsford road of national significance. That is a $700 million investment—

💬 Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: How much is that?

$700 million. Everyone is extremely excited about that. The work has already begun and that is going to bring Northland—not just north Rodney, but Northland—even closer in terms of having access to the economy and our main port in Auckland.

There is $1.2 billion for law and order. As the Associate Minister of Justice, I have got the responsibility for our Youth Crime Action Plan. We have seen $46.9 million that has been directly allocated to reduce burglary and youth offending, and you have already heard some very good announcements from the Deputy Prime Minister around a coordinated effort from the police in terms of increased foot patrols—everyone likes seeing a beat cop out on the beat. They have got a dedicated task force combined with other measures that shopkeepers are going to be able to use to make the shop less—target-harden it, so it becomes less desirable for these offenders to go in there and actually try to commit a robbery. We have got $803 million over 4 years for other social services.

Can I just come to Defence very quickly. There is $982 million in a funding boost for Defence. This is critically important. The other thing that has become very obvious to me as the new, incoming Minister is the outstanding work that our New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel do, not just offshore, not just globally, but here in New Zealand. There has been no clearer example of that than when we have had to deal with our own challenges and struggles around the Kaikōura earthquake, the Christchurch earthquake, and adverse weather events. Our Defence Force personnel are always there to just quietly respond and do whatever needs to be done to make sure that the people, the victims, have got the services and the support that they need.

We see what they do offshore in our own backyard, the Asia-Pacific. We have got one of our offshore patrol boats up in Fiji at the moment. I was talking with the Fijian Minister at Shangri-La. I cannot tell you how much they appreciate having us up there training them, working alongside them, and giving them a capability to actually look after their own economic zone. I think, as of yesterday, they had patrolled about 2,000 square miles, they had boarded about 18 vessels, and they are making a real impact in terms of policing their own economic zone.

Can I acknowledge our troops—the troops who have just come home from our operation in Taji and the ones who have just arrived—and the work that they are doing up there, which is internationally recognised as being critically important in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). They have trained over 22,000 Iraqi troops now, who have left our camp after our training as far more effective, far more skilled units that are far more aware of the rules of engagement and their fire discipline, which is important because that is how they generate the support of the communities that they are liberating from ISIS.

So I want to acknowledge them and the work that they are doing. To give you an indication of the success that we are having up there, the Iraqi troops have been able to liberate over 60,000 square kilometres of territory that was held by ISIS. That has meant that 1.7 million Iraqis are back in their homes and 250,000 children are back at school again, all as a result of the contribution that our people are making up there at Camp Taji. So I want to acknowledge them—both the people who have come home and our troops who have just deployed up there.

I want to acknowledge David Shearer and the work that he is doing in Sudan. He has got a big job—a tough job—and he has come to us and he has asked for some more support. We have got an NZDF officer who will be heading up there shortly to go up there and get on the ground with him, get alongside him, and see what else we can do to help him up there. I want to acknowledge the four staff we have up there currently—two based in Juba and another couple who are in some outstations. They are doing an outstanding job.

I want to acknowledge our 35 army engineers who were up in Sinai recently. I see I have run out of time, but thank you very much.

A few years ago the National Party had the song by The Feelers “Stand up and Be Counted” as its election motto, or its election theme song. I thought this year, listening to Steven Joyce, it would perhaps choose “As Good as It Gets” because that seems to be its attitude to the current state of the country—that this is as good as it gets. Forget about aspiration for the future; it is as good as it gets.

But listening to that last contribution by Mark Mitchell, I thought, perhaps, actually, The Feelers were not the right people to look to for inspiration and, in fact, childhood nursery rhymes would be more to the point. I have spent a few nights just recently trying to get a baby to sleep and tonight, if he is wide awake in the middle of the night, I am just going to play him Mark Mitchell’s speech because, if it does for him what it just did for me, he will be asleep in no time, because that was the most passionless, boring contribution that we have heard in this Budget debate so far. It was absolutely lifeless.

But to return to my original point—the National Party thinks that this is as good as it gets for New Zealand, and that is the message from this year’s Budget. We have people living in cars—this is as good as it gets. We have got people on waiting lists who cannot get the treatment they need—in fact, they cannot even get on to the waiting lists to get specialist assessments—this is as good as it gets, according to National. Police stations have been closed, up and down the country. Small community police stations have been closed under a National Government, but this is as good as it gets. We have got kids learning in dental clinics, in overcrowded classrooms, in libraries, in gymnasiums, and in halls because they do not have enough classrooms, but it is as good as it gets, according to National. We have got a teacher shortage around the country because of the Government’s failure to plan for the baby boomer retirement that has been looming for quite some time and its failure to address the major issues that we have got in Auckland around teacher supply, but it is as good as it gets, according to the National Government.

Early childhood services are reaching breaking point because, for the last 9 years of a National Government, they have had their funding frozen. As my colleague Grant Robertson pointed out just a few minutes ago, if someone went to the supermarket and tried to buy the same quantity of goods that they had bought 9 years ago for the same quantity of money, they would be stiff out of luck, and yet that is what this Government is asking our education system to do day in, day out, and early childhood education, disproportionately, has been the most affected by that.

National members boast in all of their Budget contributions that they are spending more than ever before on this and more than ever before on that—well, let us just do a reality check on all of that. We have got more people than ever before living in New Zealand, so of course we are going to be spending more on public services. But let us consider, in real terms—so adjust those figures for inflation, adjust them for population growth, and suddenly we find that, actually, on a per-person or per-child basis, when it comes to education, we are spending less. We are spending less than we have spent in quite some time—probably a very long time—because the Government, despite putting more money in to cope with growth, has not been putting money in to cope with growth in costs. So it is quite happy to boost the number of people in the system, but it is not happy to put the money in that we need to invest to cope with that.

And think about that for a moment. So there are more people in the workforce than ever before. That is a good thing. That means the Government is collecting more in tax revenue than ever before. But is it actually investing that in the services that we need to cope with that growing population? And, when we have got people living in cars, one could conclude that we are not doing a good job of keeping on top of demand for housing. When we have got kids learning in facilities that simply are not up to standard, one could conclude that we are not investing enough in education. When we have got people unable to get their specialist assessments to get the treatment they need in the health system, one could conclude that we are not keeping up with that demand and the pressures of that growing population.

We have got infrastructure deficits around the country—roads at gridlock all around the country, not just in Auckland. As somebody who drives from Wellington to Upper Hutt most days, I can say that there is a fair amount of congestion on Wellington roads as well, and the Government is not investing in keeping up with that. The rail network in Wellington has been crying out for investment. I was delighted to see money put in in this year’s Budget, but it has taken 9 years for the National Government members to admit that more money is required for rail in this country when, actually, that is one of the answers to congestion on our roads, and they have taken forever to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to that conclusion.

So the centrepiece of this year’s Budget, really, is not the tax cuts. Despite the fact that there are billions and billions of dollars going out the window in tax cuts, the centrepiece, if you listen to Bill English and Steven Joyce and Paula Bennett, is social investment. So what does social investment do? Well, it is misnamed, for a start, because it is certainly not social and it is not investment. It is a form of rationing. And I want to talk particularly about what social investment means for the next generation of New Zealanders—for the youngest New Zealanders—because this is Big Brother on speed. This is the Government making predictions before a child is even born as to what their future is going to be.

So just think about that for a moment: before a child has even been born, the Government is going to stick a label on them determining whether they are going to be at risk of failing in the education system. It is going to then transfer that label to whatever school or early childhood service that that child enrols in. Think about that for a moment: before a child is even born, the Government is going to make a judgment as to that child’s educational prospects and put a label on them. Really? Is that really what we want to do? Just think about that for a moment. I hope members will think about that for a moment—putting a label on a child before they are even born, in the name of supposed social investment. It is not actually in the name of social investment; it is in the name of rationing. It is in the name of the Government trying to save money by not investing in health and education, because its form of targeting, which puts labels on people, actually makes social stigma and social problems worse rather than addressing the fundamental problems.

Actually, we have universal provision of public services like education and health in New Zealand for a very good reason—because it should not matter about the wealth or your parents or your parents’ background. You should get the same opportunities in life as any other child. But that is not what the Government is focused on. It is actually focused on differentiating opportunities for young people in New Zealand based on their parents’ economic situation. Or more than that—whether they have got a parent in prison, or whether their mother does not have high levels of education. Really? So social support for education is now going to be rationed based on parental background? That is totally against the Kiwi egalitarian tradition. We have always seen education as the great social leveller—that people should all have equal access to it because, that way, your background does not matter in education. And yet that is not what the Government is talking about now, and I think that that is something that I would really like to get into the debate about more, and I think that we will hopefully have the opportunity to do so.

It is future generations who are paying the price of this year’s Budget—no question at all. In order to pay for the tax cuts, we are seeing under-investment in social services and we are seeing under-investment in the next generation of New Zealanders. We know that because early childhood services are raising the fees that they are charging parents because they cannot make ends meet based on the Government funding that has been frozen for 9 years. We know that because schools cannot recruit enough teachers to fill vacancies, they have got kids learning in libraries and gymnasiums and hallways, even, because their facilities are not keeping up and they cannot recruit enough teachers in order to make sure that kids are in decent-sized classes.

We have got tertiary students leaving their tertiary studies with the highest levels of debt ever. Now, that is something for the Government to think about while it is boasting about its highest level of this and highest level of that. How about that one—highest level of debt ever for the people undertaking tertiary study today, and the Government is dead silent on that. Yet that is the next generation of taxpayers; that is the next generation of New Zealand workers, who we are all going to be reliant on when we reach our retirements. For some members opposite, it will be closer than it is for me. They are going to be reliant on the next generation of New Zealanders, and yet they seem to be quite content to steal from them in this year’s Budget by robbing them of opportunity, by putting labels on them, and by not investing in the social support that all young New Zealanders should have—that basic New Zealand egalitarian tradition that it does not matter where you are born, who your parents are, or who you know; you should get a good shot at life, particularly through education.

This Government has been continually and progressively undermining that during its tenure by not funding education to keep up with rising costs; by not funding other important social services like health, which young people also rely on; by not putting money aside for the future cost of superannuation through the Cullen fund or the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, thus kicking the can down the road and leaving future generations of New Zealanders to pick up the pieces. It is not good enough. We are better than this. This is not as good as it gets, and that is why we need to change the Government.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to participate in this debate. First of all, I would like to start by condemning the cowardly act of three people in London that left many dead and injured. That shows that we are in a vulnerable situation. We are lucky to be living in New Zealand, but we are not immune to such situations. That is why we keep reminding everyone that we will have to remain vigilant to see whether there is anyone or any activity that is not favourable, or whether a person might have an evil plan to act upon. We have to remain vigilant and make sure nothing of such kind happens in New Zealand. Once again, I pay my tribute to those who were affected, particularly the Kiwi who got injured. I pray for his fast recovery.

The previous speaker, Chris Hipkins, mentioned that he was listening to the Hon Mark Mitchell’s speech and he felt like sleeping, but I can tell you, Mr Assistant Speaker, that the speech by the Hon Mark Mitchell was of much better quality. Chris Hipkins started with a puff—with a high pitch. Within 2 minutes he ran out of that puff and went down, and certainly you felt the same. It did not have any content. This was the opportunity for him to spell out some of the policies on which he was going to work if he was going to plan a Government in the future, but he did not have anything, just criticism for this Government.

This Government has been working for many years—for the last 9 years—to ensure that this country progresses well. In the past 3 years almost 200,000 more jobs have been created. We had 50,000 more elective surgeries in the past few years, which is helping Kiwis to progress. There has been a 57 percent reduction in teenage mums on benefits. All these figures are the figures that are helping this economy in the long term, and we will continue to work on this. I would like to congratulate Steven Joyce on his first Budget, which has been very well accepted all over.

I would like to start by touching upon the justice sector, which has got more than half a billion in extra funding to ensure that people living over here feel safe in their home, at their work, and in their community. We will invest $46.9 million in the next 4 years as operating funding to reduce burglaries and youth offending with new initiatives. The new initiatives will include $32.9 million to improve the availability of rehabilitation and reintegration services for burglaries and those under the age of 25, who are most at risk of committing crime in the long term. We have to ensure that the people who get into these criminal activities—we have to reintegrate them. We have to ensure that they get some kind of training or education so that they can work with their mana and make some money for their families. If they keep reoffending, that shows that we are training them to be hard-core criminals, and that is not acceptable to this Government. We are providing $13.9 million for professional youth mentoring. As I mentioned, it is important that we encourage them so that they can have the proper kind of training or education so that they can go and work at a place.

We are also investing $37.2 million in operating funding to reduce the harm caused by family violence. I was speaking at a public meeting last weekend where we were trying to make awareness among the Indian community, because we have seen a great increase in family violence among the ethnic communities, and we want to ensure that nobody suffers from any kind of abuse at their home, whether it is mental, physical, or sexual abuse. That is not acceptable to anyone in New Zealand. That is why we are investing extra money to reduce family violence. Over 2 years, $12 million will be invested into the whānau community action fund, which will work hard to reach out to whānau to reduce family violence. Family violence is one problem that really is the triggering point for people to suffer, and when they see that there is violence at their home, they become, because of their trauma—they just do what they see at home.

There is $1.8 million to extend the community-based Gang Action Plan pilots to June 2018. Gangs are another big problem in our country, and we are working to reduce that. In the past few years we have seen that the police have been investigating their assets and seizing them, and that has touched more than $200 million. We hope that in the next few years they will be able to increase that asset seizure by $400 million.

We are also investing in police. Police will get 1,125 more police officers in the 4 years to come, and 880 extra police officers will be on the front line. That front line will definitely make the difference for people to feel secure. The Safer Communities Package unashamedly targets offenders to ensure they are off our streets. We want to ensure that people walking on the streets feel better. It is not the money we have already announced, but on Friday the Minister of Police announced $1.8 million more for shopkeepers to help them put extra gadgets in their shops so that they can use those gadgets in case of emergency. The feedback we are getting from shopkeepers is that they are really happy that the Government is listening to them. Up to 50 percent of funding will be provided, and the police will recommend which shopkeepers should get how much funding to make sure that those areas are safe.

I did ask the Minister of Police during question time about Operation Dukan, which is an operation that has been launched all around Auckland, where more than a thousand shopkeepers have been visited by the police to assess the security measures in their shops. They were really pleased to see that the police are taking those initiatives, and the presence of the police on the street is making a real difference to ensure that the people are safe.

Lastly, I would like to touch upon infrastructure, where we are investing $4 billion in years to come. It is very important that we have to keep up with the infrastructure. Chris Hipkins mentioned that the schools are overcrowded, and the reason is that in the last 9 years of Labour Government the investment was not properly made into the schools to keep up to make sure that the future is secure. This Government is making up for those deficits, and we hope that we will be up to the mark. We can see in Auckland that a number of schools have been built and a number of classes have been built—not only those things but we can see the construction is going on all over Auckland. We can see a number of cranes working in the commercial sector. We can see that roads are being expanded all over Auckland, so that the congestion on the roads can be reduced. There are so many things that we can do further, and we will continue to work upon those areas and ensure that the future of all the New Zealanders is safe and that we are living in the best atmosphere over here. Thank you.

I am going to begin by responding to one of the matters that was raised by the last speaker, Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, which was to herald as good news the fact that the Government is now, in this Budget, subsidising security systems in dairies in essentially low-decile areas. Does anyone think that it is a good thing that we have got to the point in New Zealand where the Government has to subsidise locks for dairy owners in order to protect them? I think it is disgraceful that we have reached the point where one of the things that the Government heralds as good news in this Budget is the fact that it has got to subsidise dairy owners to put locks on their shops.

I think that is terrible. I think that is an example of where things are going terribly wrong, because what it evidences is a society that is getting worse, because there is an increase in violent crime in these areas. That is not good news. If ever there was an example of a sticking plaster being put on a wound or an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff, I think that is it. I am not going to waste any more time on it, though, because there are more important things to talk about—not that violent crime is unimportant, but the idea that that is somehow a solution to a problem with rising violent crime suffered by people running dairies I think is very sad.

The Government heralds this Budget, saying: “Oh, look, you know, we’re about growth.” It comes along and it says we have got amongst the highest growth rates in the world. You know, that is essentially what it says—or in the developed world. In truth, once you strip out this impulse to growth that is caused by population growth largely caused by these incredibly high rates of immigration, our growth rates are pathetic. They are about 1 percent per annum. This is 8 years—9 years—after the global financial crisis. Real growth rates in New Zealand after you take out immigration are about 1 percent per annum. That is not good. What is the reason for that? It is that productivity growth is low. Productivity growth is low and therefore economic growth per capita is low.

What is the reason for that? Well, I think most of us in this House know that the problems that we have got in the housing market—ridiculously high prices, in Auckland especially, homeless people at unprecedented levels, and rates of homeownership the lowest that they have been since 1951—are related to our poor productivity. It is because, in part, New Zealanders spend far too much money trading houses—not building new houses but trading existing houses—at ever-higher prices, which means that the purchasers of those houses have to invest ever-higher amounts of money in their housing, which means that that money is being applied in this money-go-round, where it is being invested in ever-higher prices for land-related asset classes, whether they are housing, farms, or commercial buildings.

What is the flip side of that? The flip side of that is that we are not investing that scarce and valuable capital in increasing the productivity of our country—in the new businesses that need to have additional human and financial capital applied to them in order to make their way in the world. This shows up not just in that appallingly poor productivity record that we have in New Zealand under this Government but also in exports.

I found it risible that the Minister of Finance heralded this new target that the Government has got for exports, which is to have so many percent of our exports covered by free-trade agreements—it is a meaningless target. Of course we need free-trade agreements to reduce tariff barriers, but actually having a percentage of your exports covered in free-trade agreements is meaningless. You could actually have exports go down and you would still meet the export target that the Government has set. It has not achieved its original target, which still sits there, but it is risible now—it is laughable—because its ambition to lift exports as a percentage of the economy is plainly not achieved.

National came to power in 2008 promising to increase exports as a percentage of the economy from 30 percent of the economy—30 percent of GDP—to 40 percent of GDP. In actual fact, it has gone the other way. It went to 26-point-something percent of GDP and it still floats around 27 percent of GDP. The Government’s own Budget documents show that at the end of the forecast period it stays under 30 percent of GDP. If National is in power by then, it will have been in power for 14 or 15 years and its exports would still be under 30 percent of GDP, making a laughing stock of its target to increase exports to 40 percent of GDP.

What about the other aspects of the Budget? The Government heralds its families package and its tax package. Well, the Working for Families changes—we agree with those. We make the point that they largely replace the money that the Government stripped out in earlier Budgets but we do not oppose those. What we do oppose is the tax cuts, which, at their simplest level, increase inequality. Most New Zealanders know that around the Western World, including in New Zealand, we are plagued with an increase in inequality, particularly affecting the people who are at the lowest income levels. So who does worst out of this Budget? People at the lowest income levels.

I would have thought that even Minister Joyce could design a tax package that was fair to low-income people. Instead, he was so ashamed of the effect of this Budget on low-income people who are without children that he hid the effect of this on most of them. In his Budget he announced—in his speech and in the glossy information—that the low-income people who are close to the minimum wage, who currently get the independent earner tax credit, would lose it. But he almost sort of said: “Well, it’s not that significant because the independent earner tax credit is poorly designed and only a third of people get it during the year.”

Now, none of us sort of thought that this was trickery until we looked into it over the following day and we found out that, in actual fact, of the 500,000 people who are at close to the minimum wage and are eligible for the independent earner tax credit, 80 percent of them get it—not 30 percent, but 80 percent. Why did he understate that? Because he knew that that was a vulnerability for the Government and that they were giving, with one hand, $11 a week to someone in that situation and, with the other hand, they were taking $10 off them. So those people—500,000 New Zealanders—who are among the poorest working people in New Zealand get $1 a week out of this Budget, whereas someone who is a higher-income earner gets $20 a week from the tax cuts. That is simply how the Government increases inequality with this Budget.

Then the Government says “Oh, but that person gets the accommodation supplement.”, and, as we have said previously, they do not. They face these burgeoning rent costs—they do not own their own houses, this sector of society. They only get this extra money for their accommodation supplement because they are having to pay it to the landlord, so it passes through the hands of the person who gets the accommodation supplement but it does not sit there. It all goes to the landlord. They do not get it unless they have got such a level of rent liability that they need the extra money from the Government to pay for that rent cost. Even then they get only 40 percent of the increase from their costs. This just increases the maximum amount they can claim, but they can still only claim 40 percent of their rent costs over a certain threshold, and in the end it all ends up in the pockets of the landlord, not the pockets of the low-income person who is paying the rent.

In respect of infrastructure, again it is all spin from the Government. Mr Joyce stood up and said that this was a generational change in infrastructure spending on hospitals and schools. It is just not true. Annette King was sitting next to me as he said that, and she wrote out the list of hospitals—it was a page long—that were built under the last Labour Government. They were from Kaitaia to Invercargill, and included Auckland—the new hospital and the largest construction of a civil building ever in the history of New Zealand. It was built under the last Labour Government. The new hospital in Wellington was built under the last Labour Government—from Kaitaia to Invercargill, Dunstan; down my way, when I was the MP there—but that was just spin from the Government and it was the same on schools.

What is happening now on school capital spending is less than under former Minister of Education the Hon Trevor Mallard. We built schools all over the country. There are some expensive schools now being built in Auckland—that is true. Why? Because they have allowed the population to be spruiked again, because of this high rate of immigration. It was a large contributor to it. So it is catch-up but it is certainly not an intergenerational change.

The Labour Party opposes this bill because it does not increase growth, it does not address the drop in exports, and the tax changes increase inequality.

Can I say it is a real privilege to take this call in the Budget debate. Budget 2017 is a Budget that I believe is delivering for all New Zealanders. It is for a country that is growing, it is for an economy that is growing, and it is very much for a Government that is shaping globalisation for the advantage of New Zealand.

First, I just want to offer my thoughts and prayers to the people affected in London by the atrocities that we saw over the weekend. As was said in the House earlier, I have a real connection with London. I lived in London for 15 years, and I think that for anyone who lives in London, a part of their heart stays in London. I really feel for the Londoners, and all the British people throughout the United Kingdom. My first stop, when I travelled there as a backpacker, was at St Christopher’s backpackers in Borough, so I know Borough, by London Bridge, very well. My thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected. But it does hit home. We are not protected from it in New Zealand—all New Zealanders are affected, because we travel so much.

I think what is important with this Budget is in fact that point. We talk about the many people who are staying in New Zealand or coming back home, but we still have thousands of New Zealanders who take off on that great Kiwi OE tradition every year. They travel around the world and they broaden their world view. They quickly realise that in a globalised world, it is countries that are competitive and that have developed economies that go on to improve the well-being of their people and to protect their environment. I think that is exactly what this Budget states. If you develop your economy like we have done, the flow-on effect is that it then goes on to improve the well-being of the people.

If I can just rebut a statement from a previous speaker, Grant Robertson, who said that this is a tired, outdated economic philosophy—a tired, outdated economic philosophy. Yet we are in a position where we are the envy of most Western countries, most OECD countries, with the growth of our economy. We are the envy of other countries that are racking up 60 percent, 70 percent, over 100 percent of GDP in debt, and we are the envy of other countries with our job creation. It shows that this philosophy is correct. We are out there expanding our markets, selling our exports, growing the pie, and then, in return, that allows us to have choices. We have demonstrated those choices in this Budget—a Budget that pays down debt, a Budget that is reducing the tax burden on hard-working Kiwis, a Budget that is putting more money into public services, and a Budget that is putting more money into infrastructure. I think that should be celebrated.

I would just like to acknowledge the Hon Steven Joyce for his first Budget, for those reasons I have clearly outlined of reducing debt, increasing money in the public services and infrastructure, and reducing the tax burden on hard-working Kiwis. We should acknowledge the Hon Steven Joyce for that, in his first Budget. It is fair to say I was pretty impressed, so I would like to keep him on for a second Budget.

I must say, just to acknowledge our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Bill English, that that speech when he kicked off the Budget debate was, for me—I must admit, I am a first-term MP, but that was probably the best speech in the House by Bill English, our Prime Minister. It was a credible speech that was confident and competent. It clearly outlined the vision for New Zealanders and for New Zealand. It was in stark contrast to the speech by the Leader of the Opposition, the leader of the Labour Party, which was at sixes and sevens. It lacked the confidence. He could not finish his time allocation. What that speaks of is a party that is paralysed by and paranoid about the opportunities that a growingly connected world provides for a small country like New Zealand—whereas, on this side of the House, we engage that, we embrace it, and we go forth knowing that with a strong economy and a strong Government we can actually shape globalisation for the benefit of New Zealanders. That is exactly what we are doing, and I think this Budget is built on that platform.

I would also like to touch on the issue of mental health. Many will know that my background is in the mental health field. We hear this repetitive narrative of the Opposition. It is fair to say that mental health has been a poor second cousin to physical health forever. They say that what we know about mental health is what we knew about physical health 50 years ago. That shows how much we have got to catch up, and that is why I welcome this further investment of $224 million into mental health, with $116 million of that for our new social investment approach. That, as well as the increased expenditure and funding into health services—$3.9 billion—will be $1.7 billion of new money into the district health boards. We all know, with their planning and funding departments, that it is up to them to work out what is the matrix of the need of the community they serve.

I think what we need to see is that money going into mental health. We know there are three touch points. There is the age of 0 to 3, where personality is formed. There are the teenage years—if we can intervene early, it reduces mental health issues in older age. And we know the issue with dementia that we face, not only socially but fiscally as we go forward.

Could I just tell a quick story. I am just going to clear my nose, Mr Speaker. I am just suffering from a bit of man flu at the moment. I organised a cross-party visit to mental health services in Canterbury, post-disaster—we had Eugenie Sage from the Green Party, Megan Woods from Labour, and Darroch Ball from New Zealand First. We went down there and we asked the questions: what was the response for mental health services post the earthquakes, and what is still needed? In fact, the clear message was not to have more funding; it was issues around pooling funding into funding vehicles that are easier to access. It was about building resilience in the current mental health workforce. So I welcome this extra spend on mental health, and I welcome the ability for it to be put into those clear needs in that area.

This Government is a Government of infrastructure—we know that. There is $4 billion going in under Budget 2017. We know we are a growing country. We are able to capitalise on a growing economy—$4 billion now, with a forecasted $32 billion over the coming 4 years. I welcome the contribution of $812 million to the reinstatement of State Highway 1 from Picton to Christchurch. I just acknowledge the very hard-working Kaikōura MP Stuart Smith for the great work he is doing in a very affected area post the Kaikōura earthquakes. We are all looking forward to that main road being reinstated. Many from the area will have great memories of travelling up from Christchurch to Picton on the holidays—fantastic scenery. It is arguably, probably, the best roading trip in New Zealand. We are looking forward to that investment. I know that in my electorate of Waimakariri, there is $400 million going into roading projects: the Western Belfast Bypass, which will open up at the end of this year, and the Christchurch Northern Corridor, which will open up in 2 years’ time.

So it is great news that we have got more money going into infrastructure, more money into public services, and more money going into paying down debt. Ultimately, what we have done is shape the effects of globalisation for the advantage of New Zealand. We have got a growing economy and surpluses that are envy of other Western developed countries, and that gives us choice to invest in hard-working New Zealanders, because the National Party is the party for working people. Thank you.

E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. This Budget lacks vision. It lacks ambition to solve the major challenges of our time. I would like to comment briefly on some of those issues in relation to Vote Environment and Vote Primary Industries. We have seen that failure to deal with the really hard issues, in question time today and in terms of what happened with the action outside Parliament in response to Secretary of State Tillerson’s visit. The Minister for Climate Change Issues would not give any assurances, would not make any commitments to help those councils and communities that are crying out for Government leadership on sea-level rise. They want leadership, they want support to adapt to climate change. The Government has promised for several years now that there would be updated guidance and that councils would not have to rely on 9-year-old guidance about how councils should plan to address sea-level rise, yet that can has been kicked down the road once again because the Government is reluctant to tackle that hard issue in election year. That is just typical of this Government.

The Government has committed, through the Paris Agreement, to reduce our climate emissions by 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, yet it has no plan to do that. You would expect, with the fact that it has failed to bring agriculture within the emissions trading scheme and will not put a price on biological emissions, that we would see something in Vote Primary Industries that actually tries to address the issues around climate change and the way it affects the primary sector, because 48 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture—methane from cows and nitrous oxide from fertilisers and animal effluent.

Mr Doocey said that we were the envy of most OECD countries. I do not agree. We have got the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture in the OECD, yet National is just failing to deal with that. When it is not putting any regulatory tools in place, when it is not putting a price on carbon, in terms of agriculture, you would expect that there would be substantial funding in Vote Primary Industries for research on biological emissions. But do we have? We have $3.1 million for climate change research, for science research and capability, and we have another $11 million for the Global Research Alliance. There is $13 million in Vote Primary Industries for climate change work. National is spending more than five times that amount in this vote for administering and managing our forestry assets.

That shows what this Budget is about. It is about wrong priorities and not tackling the important issues. Yet it is a change in climate that is going to put major stress on our primary sector. Increased drought; increased intense rainfall events, like the one in Whanganui that caused such major erosion and distress and flooding to farmers there; more intense westerly winds—we have got the Minister saying that myrtle rust came in on the wind. Those intense winds that are coming with climate change are likely to bring more pests to New Zealand, so increased biosecurity costs. Yet in this Budget the Government is not tackling that, in terms of the primary sector.

We cannot trust National to deal with the hard issues like climate change, yet we have had the OECD report highlighting that we are reaching our environmental limits in New Zealand, both in terms of water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. It called, in its third and comprehensive review of New Zealand’s environmental performance, for the Government to get serious about some pricing measures and some stronger regulation on both climate change and water pollution.

But this Government does not recognise that we have reached our limits, in terms of intensive dairy. The Minister certainly said that dairy cow numbers cannot double in New Zealand, but we are already at the limit of dairy cow numbers. But what does this Budget do? It hands out another $63 million to the Crown’s irrigation company, Crown Irrigation Investments, so that it can continue to subsidise more intensive agriculture and irrigation development. That is on top of the $120 million that Crown Irrigation Investments got last year and the $25 million extra that the Irrigation Acceleration Fund got.

What are the priorities again? There is only $1 million extra to help clean up waterways. So the OECD is saying that we are approaching our environmental limits, yet the Government continues to invest more money in intensive agriculture. What does that mean for our rivers? What is happening with the Hurunui River is just one example of why National has got its spending priorities so wrong. Crown Irrigation Investments recently handed out $3.4 million to the proposed $200 million Hurunui water project. It is going to reduce the flow in both the Hurunui and the Waitohi rivers. It wants to irrigate 21,000 hectares on the south bank of the Hurunui River, yet that river is already under major stress and showing significant signs of being in a really bad state. It used to be graded fair for contact recreation—you could go swimming at the State Highway 1 bridge with some risk before 2011—now that has gone down to poor. The nitrogen pollution loads in the Hurunui catchment have increased from a 6-yearly average between 2006 and 2011 of 761 tonnes each year, to 900 tonnes. There are high nitrogen levels in a number of the streams that feed into the Hurunui River. There have been cyanobacteria outbreaks at State Highway 1 in 4 of the last 5 years. There was another outbreak at the Balmoral camping ground area.

This is a river under stress, and it is typical of what is happening with rivers around New Zealand because this Government is spending more money on irrigation and more money on intensive agriculture, when the OECD has clearly shown that we are at the environmental limits. Yet the Budget does not change the spending priorities. It does not invest very much more in improving clean water, but it does invest in spending more on intensive agriculture.

Again, with the Primary Growth Partnership—that has been funded to the tune of $352 million over 5 years, and this Budget puts another $244 million into the Primary Growth Partnership. But we have not seen that major boost in GDP from agriculture that you would expect with those hundreds of millions. It is just becoming a giant slush fund, with a lack of detail around what the objectives for the fund are and where that money will go.

We need to be investing in climate-friendly farming. That requires a major change in land use and a commitment to more sustainable farming. Yet again, Budget 2017 does not deliver. The Sustainable Farming Fund is stuck on $9 million, where it has been for some time. This Government is not interested in the land-use changes that we need to make to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, to improve water quality, and to protect our primary sector for the future. We need more diverse land use. We need to bring cow numbers down. We need more horticulture. We need more forestry. Yet we do not see the commitment, in this Budget, to making that change. It is more irrigation, more cows, and more water pollution.

This Government is afraid to tackle the hard issues. It only wants to continue with business as usual, and that is a recipe for more pollution, increased emissions, more inequality, and not tackling those environmental challenges that we need to prioritise. We have a biodiversity crisis. Again, this Budget cut funding for conservation. This Government is interested in coalmining on conservation land rather than protecting the environment, which we all know is the basis of a healthy economy and a healthy society. The Budget is all wrong in terms of priorities. It is a Government that cannot be trusted to tackle the hard issues.

Before I begin to talk in the Budget debate, I would just like to join my parliamentary colleagues who have spoken before me in sending my deepest sympathies to the people of London, and particularly to the family of Oliver Dowling, who is recovering in hospital. His family are, in fact, with him in London.

About a month and half ago, I was part of a New Zealand parliamentary delegation visiting London and Brussels, and it was quite pertinent that we arrived in Brussels a year after the Brussels bombing. To actually go to London after the Westminster knife attack and to hear this on the news about the London Bridge attack seems to bring everything back home to us. We do know that a lot of New Zealanders travel to London, in fact, and to many different countries around the world, where they actually face numerous difficulties, and when tragedies like this occur, our thoughts are with them.

It is my great privilege to stand in support of this Budget, and what a fantastic Budget it is. I know that there have been members from the Opposition who have risen to their feet and talked about how terrible it is, but I disagree with them. I think it is an absolutely fantastic Budget that our Minister of Finance has delivered. I believe that it is, in fact, a game-changer for New Zealand families. It is an opening up of an amazing $2 billion package—the Family Incomes Package—to lift after-tax incomes and help hard-working Kiwi families continue to be an exceptional part of our community. It has actually delivered for many, many, many New Zealanders—in fact, almost 1.4 million New Zealanders. On top of that, all of New Zealand actually benefits as a result of those 1.4 million people benefiting. This is the centrepiece of our Budget, and it is a great one.

Not only are we making changes to the New Zealand tax thresholds to put more money in the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders on lower incomes, but we are supporting the Working for Families tax credit and increasing the accommodation supplement to make things easier on households budgeting more tightly. The measures being introduced in this Budget are expected to lift 20,000 New Zealanders above the “severe stress” housing threshold, to reduce by around 50,000 the number of children living in households earning less than half the median income. That in itself is an amazing achievement by our Government, and the finance Minister has done extremely well, in my view, to have a Budget that is working and providing tangible outcomes for Kiwi families and their communities. The Family Incomes Package is a real reward for hard-working Kiwi families, which I am happy to support through the adjustment of the bottom two tax thresholds and lowering the marginal tax rates for low and middle income earners.

Supporting families with young children and growing families is an important aspect of this great Family Incomes Package, particularly those in areas with high accommodation costs who are on lower wages. The importance of families being in work cannot be overestimated. A loving family in a working household is aspirational and striving for more in life, and we need to acknowledge these great Kiwi families and help them with a leg up and more money in hand to give more to their dreams and ensure that they can, in fact, succeed. The changes will mean, for example, that a couple with two children under 13 and one partner earning $55,000 will gain $41 a week, plus any increase to their accommodation supplement. It will mean that they will have a simpler and more effective tax system to work with. Another example is that, from April next year, an older married couple on New Zealand superannuation can, in fact, expect to top around $622 a week. That is around $22 a week extra in their pocket, with over half driven by the tax threshold changes, helping them to enjoy their later years more and supporting their needs.

I have just come back for a trip to Korea in the last week, where I participated in a global gathering of politicians from around the world, and I also had the privilege of participating in the Jeju Forum for Peace and Prosperity. The governor of Jeju Island has aspirations to actually make Jeju Island a peaceful and prosperous island, as well as 100 percent energy sufficient. He also drives an electric vehicle, and one of the things that he told me was that New Zealand is his envy. New Zealand is an example that he looks to for inspiration when it comes to things like clean government, aspirational government. In fact, we care about our environment so much that he actually takes a lead from what we have done. So I took great interest in Eugenie Sage’s speech earlier, and perhaps I can have a conversation with her about some of the things that we actually lead in terms of the environmental work that this Government has put in place.

A growing economy with more prosperity is important, as it means more New Zealanders are getting well-paid jobs and good quality houses, and are able to step up and live out their dreams. To me, that means that it has to be in conjunction with everything else: not only is the economy growing, not only are people getting well-paid jobs, but we also have to care about our environment as well. We want to help New Zealand families spend more of their money and meet their goals in savings and retirement, as well as make good decisions for the future. I welcome members’ desire for New Zealand to prosper in the environmental sector as well.

Helping New Zealand seize the day and seize our opportunities is an important part of Budget 2017. Over 200,000 more jobs have been created across New Zealand over the last 3 years, and 2.5 million people are now employed. We are at the highest employment rate of adult New Zealanders, which is over 67.1 percent, and we need to acknowledge, support, and build on this amazing achievement through supporting our communities and giving them the tools that they actually need to support it. One of the biggest things is to grow this economy. When we grow our economy, making sure that our industries are growing, people can actually get employed. More people will be employed, and more people will be earning bigger money, as well, and perhaps they can actually provide better for their families. National has New Zealand investing in a growing economy in Budget 2017, and this bill, through the Family Incomes Package, will help us make the most of our amazing country and people. I am proud to be part of a Government that is making a positive difference to the lives of New Zealanders from all walks of life and for their families.

One of the things that I am very proud of is the decision that came through on that pay equity settlement package that the Health Committee has actually been looking at. It is a deal that recognises the hard work of thousands of ordinary New Zealanders who work tirelessly for the weak and the vulnerable in our society, and it is great that they will be paid a wage that recognises the skill and expertise involved in the quality of care that they deliver, in what can be very demanding conditions. The settlement the Government has come together with the unions and the workers on is something that I think we should all be proud of, and the $2 billion package is something that I feel very happy that we have actually come to an agreement on. I am happy that the Health Committee has been able to work on the legislative process that goes with that agreement.

This National Government is actually delivering for the people of New Zealand, and I have to say that the speeches that were delivered by both the finance Minister and, particularly, the Prime Minister were excellent. I commend this amazing Budget to the House and endorse the excellent job that the Minister has done.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Otirā, e ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. For Māori, this is the “one percent Budget”. Māori get only 1 percent of new spending, thanks to a party that has only 1 percent support and whose time at the table has seen things get better for only the 1 percent. I am talking, of course, about the Māori Party, the so-called independent voice for Māori.

Budget 2017 is a let-down for Māori. Workers on the minimum wage—many of them Māori—will be better off by just $1 a week, while the major investment comes in the form of nearly $800 million for prisons. It fails to deliver solutions to the housing crisis, build affordable homes for first-home owners, end homelessness, fund our hospitals and school properties, or address challenges around the environment and water quality. So much for the social investment model!

Last night I received a post from the Hawke’s Bay Samoan Rugby Sports Inc., along with the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board, and it said this: “Rheumatic fever awareness. Together with the Hawke’s Bay DHB, Hawke’s Bay Samoan Rugby is raising awareness regarding rheumatic fever. Please, family and friends, if your child complains of a sore throat, don’t ignore. Take them to a doctor or nurse straight away. A sore throat can lead to rheumatic fever if left untreated. Rheumatic fever is very serious and can cause heart damage. Groups at much higher risk of rheumatic fever include Māori and Pacific children, families living in crowded houses, and children aged 4 to 19 years old who have grown up in high-risk areas such as Northland, west Auckland and South Auckland, the Bay of Plenty, Tai Rāwhiti, Hawke’s Bay, and Porirua.”

So what did this Government do in this Budget for rheumatic fever? It sliced the budget in half, taking the $10 million investment down to $5 million—unbelievable.

Māori housing gets only $17 million, which buys 26 houses at the Government’s affordable figure of $650,000 per house. This funding is for the Māori Housing Network, which in 2 years has built only 11 units—11 units. Twenty-five percent of all Māori live in Tāmaki-makau-rau, but only 4 percent—4 percent—of Māori Housing Network funds have been spent there. This is not an effective programme for Māori.

The figure allocated to the troubled Te Ture Whenua Māori reform in Budget 2017 will leave many, many Māori land owners in limbo. This year, Te Ture Whenua Māori reform received the paltry sum of less than $2 million in new money. That funding is to educate landowners, or, in other words, persuade resistant Māori land owners that these highly unpopular reforms are in their best interests.

The Minister for Māori Development has been talking up his $31 million for the Māori Land Service in the Budget, but this is not new money. This is not new money. Still, it is ridiculous that the Minister for Māori Development, Te Ururoa Flavell, has allocated $31 million for the Māori Land Service while his highly unpopular Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill is still going through the House. Bear in mind the Minister does not have a mandate from Māori. Bear in mind that all the top Māori land judges, legal experts, academics, and institutions, Māori land owners, and the Waitangi Tribunal have been very clear in asking the Minister to put a hold on these reforms. And bear in mind that his reforms do not even address the critical barriers to land use.

I think the Minister for Māori Development picked up a few too many bad habits from his mates in the National Government. Deny what the experts say—check. Ignore what people want—check. Push through flawed reforms because you have got the numbers in the House, and that is all that matters—check.

A couple of weeks ago, our exciting Labour candidate for Waiariki, Tāmati Coffey, and I held huis on these reforms in the Minister’s own home town of Rotorua. More than a hundred people packed out the Whakarewarewa Rugby Club, and I can tell you they were amazed at hearing how the Minister is pushing through these reforms against the wishes of Māori. Like many Māori, they have a lot of questions about this complex bill, one of them being why the Minister himself has not held a hui in his own electorate to discuss the changes he has made to these reforms. But it is OK, because the Labour Party has come to the rescue and kept his constituents informed.

The Māori development allocation is largely a hodgepodge reorganisation of funds and repackaged programmes with an increasing number of low-funded programmes. I want to call it taking from Petera to pay Paora. There are things like $500 million towards new vans for kōhanga reo, $1 million towards Māori health for a mobile clinic, and a $10 million maintenance fund over 4 years to be spread over the country’s 750 marae—that is $3,300 per marae, per year, for 4 years. Of course extra resourcing for these areas is good, but I doubt an increase in small-scale programmes can get meaningful results for Māori.

So who misses out? When I look at the Minister’s own figures in the Estimates, Māori Wardens lose $1.178 million from last year’s Budget to the next Budget. The Māori Women’s Development Fund loses $1.86 million. Moving the Māori Nation—supporting Māori Culture and Sports loses $3.5 million, and the New Zealand Māori Council loses just under $200,000. It is no coincidence that announcing $6 million on kōhanga and a mobile clinic relates to the $6 million that has been removed from iconic Māori organisations like the Māori Women’s Welfare League, the New Zealand Māori Council, and likewise.

This is not a Budget that we should be celebrating for Māori. Te Puni Kōkiri should be monitoring and influencing other agencies to ensure better outcomes for Māori and ensuring fair access to Government programmes and services. For example, the KiwiSaver HomeStart grant programme administered by Housing New Zealand is worth approximately $85 million per year. Would Māori not be better served by a ministry that ensures Māori access a fair share of that fund, rather than a ministry that is promoting a range of eclectic, low-funded programmes?

After 9 years of National and the Māori Party, Māori remain overrepresented in bad statistics for health, homeownership, and educational standards. This year alone, my offices around Ikaroa-Rāwhiti have dealt with 50 homeless whānau, sleeping either in garages or cars, or in motels, with many more needing housing assistance.

Only a large-scale, transformative policy will see things change in a meaningful way, and that is why I am proud of what Labour is offering this year: KiwiBuild, which will build 100,000 homes over 10 years; refocusing Housing New Zealand on helping people and requiring all rental homes to be warm, dry, and healthy; having dedicated careers advice throughout a student’s time at school; 3 years’ free post-school education; the dole for apprenticeships—these are just some of Labour’s policies that will make meaningful differences in the lives of Māori.

A Māori development Minister from a minor party simply does not command the influence needed to get Māori a decent slice of the pie. Te Ururoa Flavell has shown in this Budget that it is OK for Māori to get crumbs.

A Labour Government with an exciting array of Māori MPs and candidates, who are likely to make up over 25 percent of the Labour caucus, is something that we are offering that will make the real difference for our people, come 23 September this year. It is important that our people register and vote, and that is a change in the way that we can address Māori disparities, which have clearly gone up under this National - Māori Party reign. It is time for change. Labour has got a bunch of fresh ideas and fresh people to take us into the next way forward. I say to our people, vote Labour—vote a Government that will care about you. Kia ora tātou.

Referring to the presentation from the last speaker, Meka Whaitiri, talking about Labour being full of new ideas—we are actually waiting to hear some. We have really worked hard through this Budget process, we are really ambitious—the National Government is totally ambitious for New Zealand—and I am going to give you some examples today of where this Budget has been really set around people. At the end of the day, in politics, all we do is deal with things that work for the people we represent.

One of the first things that was reinforced pre-Budget was the trade agenda, and launching a renewed focus on that trade agenda. At the end of the day, we do not have closed borders, and 74 percent of our income still relies on the fact that we export, so it is really important that we reinforce what is going on with trade. We are looking at getting 90 percent of our products and services into free-trade agreements by 2030. But what is more important than that—we can do that—is we have set up extra funding to go into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to look at areas of non-tariff barriers. Often you can get the trade agreements, but then when you go to get products into countries you often end up with excuses at the back door; things we have not thought of. So we actually need an office that is going to help our exporters fight their way through those non-tariff barriers and attain more market access for us. I think that is pretty important.

The second thing I think is really important, particularly for our country, is water. Every day on the agenda, in question time and through legislation, is water. It is really good to see a capital boost of $63 million towards irrigation in this Budget. Often when we talk about irrigation, everyone jumps to: “Oh well, it’s just for the dairy farmers.” Well, actually, it does help the economy. It does help the dairy farmers to a large extent, but in times of need such as a drought—such as my colleague Stuart Smith has experienced in his electorate, alongside earthquakes and a number of other devastating effects that he has had to put up with—you can actually then use that irrigation water for flushing. It can actually help the fish, you can distribute it into the rivers, and it stops them from drying out completely—and not only that. Guess what? Towns use water as well. I think the whole thing about capital investment in infrastructure for irrigation helps the whole community, and I think it would do us well to remember that and actually think about it wisely, not just jump to conclusions about where it is going. It benefits the whole community.

The centrepiece of this Budget was the $2 billion a year Family Incomes Package—tax thresholds, Working for Families, and the accommodation supplement. We have been through a number of years where it has been difficult, with earthquakes—I just mentioned earthquakes—and we have actually had a global financial crisis, but now we have got some choices. We have got some money and we are able to take it and give it back to our hard-working families. I am really proud to think that a lot of our taxpayers are now going to benefit from this tax package. I want to acknowledge the Greens and New Zealand First, along with our partners in Government here, for supporting that through, because people are very, very grateful for having those extra dollars in their pockets.

As deputy chair of the Health Committee, over the last week or so we have spent quite a few extra hours in the Health Committee talking about the settlement package for the 55,000 healthcare workers. It has been a very good process on the way through, we have brought it back to the House today, and I want to commend everybody for working so constructively right through that process. I cannot think of any better people in our country than those care workers to get a boost in their pay packets. They turn up at people’s houses, and they are dealing with people who have disabilities, elderly people, people who are very frail, and people who are sick, and quite often a lot of those people want to stay in their own homes. To do that, we need a dedicated team of care workers, and I want to commend the team on working so strongly to get that Budget legislation back to the House so that we can get on with it and pay them.

The other group of people who are going to benefit are New Zealand superannuitants, who are expecting their income to be topped up to $622 a week for a married couple. That is up around $22 a week more. They have earned it, they have paid tax all their lives, and it is really good to see them getting something back out of this Budget.

On the theme of people—everything we have done so far is about people—I think the best thing about this whole package is the money that is now going into social investment. It is something that we have trouble getting across to the House, in terms of getting people on the other side to understand what we are doing. Traditionally and historically, over a range of Governments, over many, many years, for a long time when we did not have a choice, we had paper-based silos of Government departments. Everything was paper-based, nothing could really be shared—never the twain shall meet—and they did not have the opportunity of talking to one another. Now they do; we have a digital way, we have technology that has enabled us to create a database. So if we have got young people at risk, we can ask ourselves whether it is a health issue, whether it is an education issue, whether it is a family violence issue, whether it is a social housing issue, or whether it is hearing, and the needs of that person need to come first. I commend the money that has gone into social investment, and I totally support that area.

The National Government is about giving people a hand-up; teaching them ways of doing things for themselves, breaking those cycles where three generations of some families have never worked. It is all very well for people to say: “Well, look, you’ve just got to get that young person and tell them they have to go to work.”, but for some people the reality is that they do not know what that means. So we have to get in early, we have to work with them, and we have to work with the services and wrap them around their families. I think it is really important.

We talk about $81.8 million going into community corrections and prisoner rehabilitation. I have Waikeria Prison in my electorate, and recently I went along and spent about 4 hours there. Apart from giving certificates out to those officers who had done some extremely good work—and they all do—I got to have a look at some of the rehabilitation processes that were going on in that prison. We were served coffee by those who were training to be baristas. We went to the bakery, where all the bread in that prison is made, supplied, and fed on a daily basis to the prisoners—so it is about becoming self-sufficient in some ways with certain goods. Also, they have got the farms there, so it was a real pleasure to go around the farms and have a look at what was going on with some of those prisoners in terms of rehabilitation.

So any money spent in that area is certainly well-deserved and well-earned for those people working in corrections. It is no good sending someone out on the street if they are not fully prepared and they have not got the support networks. What I also saw when I was in there is that they have got access to certain websites, so they could actually have a look and search for those support services that they can use when they come out of prison—learning how to get a driver’s licence, learning the road rules, and all those sorts of things.

I am also really pleased to see $64.4 million to support our young people into employment. I cannot speak highly enough of some of our secondary schools, and some mentoring and employment services we have going on, where there are 3 days at school and 2 days mentoring. It gives people the opportunity to have a look and see what career they might want to go into, but, more importantly, it teaches them to be work-ready—to get out of bed in the morning, to turn up with a smile on their face, and to get on with their day and earn some money.

Underpinning all that sort of stuff, when we talk about social investment, it is really good to see $37.2 million more going into family violence. We really do have to solve that issue, because it is underpinning a lot of the things that are happening in our society. It is fear, and it is the transition to work—so often you see people go out, they do good training, they learn how to do stuff, but it is really tough going back into their families and being the tall poppy. The time that most people who are in corrections or are in that type of training fear is when they go back and are at high risk of coming unstuck again. It is a real pleasure to speak on behalf of the Government on this Budget, and I certainly commend this to the House. Thank you.

Budget 2017 is a blatant election bribe. It is an election bribe because none of the sweeteners this Government has thrown out to the general public will even take effect until 2018. If a person is living in a car right now, with their family, this Budget does not help them. If a family is living in a boarding house, sharing one bedroom, sharing the toilet facilities, sharing the kitchen, hoping for their independence in a three-bedroom house somewhere else, this Budget does not help them. If families are moving into a marae for this winter because they are homeless, this Budget does not help them. If a family is living in a garage and have been for quite some time, this Budget does not help them. If a couple are working two or three jobs part time to try to make ends meet, this Budget does not help them. Nothing in the Budget delivers, as this Government has promised, for ordinary working Kiwis.

Earlier I heard Minister Tolley talk about the 55,000 aged-care workers who will receive a pay increase. She spoke as if this was something that this Government did voluntarily. That is not true. This Government was forced to pay 55,000 aged-care workers because the aged-care workers and their trade union took the Government to court. They took the Government to court and won. This Government appealed that decision and the trade union E tū and the aged-care workers took it to court and won the appeal.

This settlement is a result of the determination and the advocacy of these aged-care workers, and this Government, in the long 9 years of it being in power, refused to pay them proper wages. So that is the only reason why that settlement is part of this tax package—because those aged-care workers took the Government to court. I want to say to Minister Tolley: look, you can spin this all you want, but the aged-care workers and their families and their trade union know the truth. The truth is that your Government was forced to pay them the back-pay, and they deserve it.

It was also Minister Tolley, when this Government first came into power, who removed Pacific language resources for our schools. They removed Tupu. They removed Folauga. These were critical resources for the promotion of Pacific languages in our schools. That action was followed through by Hekia Parata when she was Minister of Pacific Island Affairs. She also removed from the Pacific education strategy the goal of Pacific language bilingual education. Since Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga became the Minister for Pacific Peoples, nothing has been done about restoring those goals. Now my friend the Hon Alfred Ngaro is the Minister and nothing has been done. He speaks well about supporting Pacific language, but that talk does not manifest with action when it comes to restoring those resources and to restoring Pacific language bilingual educational goals in our education system. That is sad, because there is huge expectation from the Pacific community that a Pacific Minister on the Government benches would be a little bit more sympathetic and would understand the value of why it is important that Pacific language education becomes part and parcel of the curriculum of our education system. But that is not to be.

In fact, what has happened in this Budget is $50,000 was cut from the ASB Polyfest—a festival that is run by the schools in Auckland off the smell of an oily rag to promote Pacific languages and cultures. Instead of renewing that money, instead of providing and manifesting that support, they decided to cut it. In fact, as of 1 July the very board that Minister Ngaro appointed only last year to the Pacific Education Centre will become disestablished. That leaves that iconic asset of the Pacific community that promotes Pacific languages and that promotes the value of Pacific languages in limbo as to what then happens to it and its ongoing funding. But as I said, this Budget is a deliberate election bribe by this Government. I would hope that New Zealanders would see it for what it is. It is a bribe. There is nothing substantial in it. The Government sprinkles some sugary stuff for the population to, hopefully, get sucked in, but the reality is there is nothing worthwhile.

There are some critical gaps that this Government has not addressed. There are gaps in the housing sector. There are gaps in health. There are gaps in education. There are gaps in our police force. Those four things are so important for building a strong and vibrant community, particularly where I come from, the south side, in Manukau City. When it comes to housing, families who are trying to save and may have saved $10,000, maybe $20,000, for their deposit will not be able to buy a house, because the rules have not changed to enable that particular family to be able to buy a house. In fact, it will be virtually impossible for somebody with $20,000 or $30,000 in savings to buy a house, because the average price for a house in Auckland is over $1 million—over $1 million—and I want to repeat that and emphasise it. Young couples who are wanting to buy their own home—this Budget does not help them right now. So we will have 41,000 people continue to be in a homeless situation, irrespective of how flowery the Government tries to promote its Budget of 2017. We will have people who will still remain living in cars, living in garages, living in boarding houses, and this Budget normalises that for these families.

With health, we have reiterated time and time again how this Government fails to adequately resource health, to the point where since 2010 there has been a shortfall of $1.7 billion. This Budget actually cuts $200 million away from what district health boards require just to stand still. Here is a personal experience that I will round things off with. It is a really sad experience. My dad—gone on 79—fell over at his local gym not too long ago. He had a big gash on his left cheek where the bone was showing. I never revealed it was my dad because it could have been anyone. What was sad was the lack of services and support that my father received—firstly, from the ambulance and then, secondly, from the accident and emergency services at Middlemore Hospital. The lack of services revealed the severe underfunding of our health services. It could have been anyone. But they are using a triage system where they would only value—they say, under that triage system: “If they die irrespective of the outcome, they are not a priority; if they live, irrespective of what service is provided to them, they are not a priority.” So after 9 hours, my father received some treatment from the doctors. But that could have been anyone in those circumstances.

That is the state of medical services that we now have as a direct consequence of the severe underfunding by this Government. And what is worse, this Budget 2017 does not address that. It does not address that. It does not address, also, the issues that many communities are experiencing in burglaries and robberies, because the police are run down to the bone. They are receiving insufficient resources to be able to respond to the needs of our community, and this Government, with its Budget 2017, continues to normalise that. Those are the kinds of services the general public will receive under this Government.

Look, I am delighted to speak in this appropriations debate. It is very humbling and good to be part of a united National Government—hopefully, going to win a fourth term. This is an excellent Budget, and I want to acknowledge both the former finance Minister, the Rt Hon Bill English, our Prime Minister, and the current finance Minister, the Hon Steven Joyce. I think the combination of not only investing more in public services, investing significantly in infrastructure—but also in this income package for so many New Zealanders who need this money and who need this funding.

What I am proud of is that we are a Government that is voting for this because we support it and we are backed up by parties like the New Zealand First Party and the Green Party. But what I have been quite shocked about is that the Labour Party members are not supporting it. I am concerned that they are turning their back on some of the most vulnerable New Zealanders, and I am really proud to be in a Government through which some families may even get a couple of hundred bucks more a week. That is a lot of money, and it is very important that we deliver that in this Budget.

I want to talk about education. Some people out there say things like: “There is a funding freeze.” What I can confirm more than ever in this Budget is that we are putting in $1.5 billion more over 4 years for Vote Education. What has actually occurred over 8½ years is a 41 percent increase, to $11.6 billion. It is not just about growth. It is absolutely not just about growth, and I want to give you a couple of examples. In this Budget we are investing more in those young people who have behavioural issues: $34 million more to enable those young people who have those behavioural issues, for which some may have correlating mental health issues, to get the specialist support that they need. That is not just about growth funding; that is more targeted funding for some of our most vulnerable children.

We are also investing more in the early childhood area. Again, we are investing more in terms of growth—and I think there is about $350 million in growth. But we are investing more in that important area of oral language and communication, because we know of the importance of both speaking and listening in those early years; they are the foundations of literacy—and that is $6 million more funding.

In this Budget we were handed a school property estate that was a shambles. It was appalling. We could not even tell what the condition assessments were for all of the schools in New Zealand. We have gone and done those condition assessments. We have spent more than any other Government—in fact, $5 billion—fixing leaky buildings, fixing cold buildings, ensuring that we have more classrooms in areas of high growth.

There has been a lot of discussion lately about growth in schools, and I just want to make these points. The first point is that we have always had issues of capacity. That has been the case in both National and Labour Governments—in fact, it has been anywhere between 10 and 20 percent—but we are very generous in our property allocation, so we are able to manage that well. But what we have been doing as a Government is not only fixing those leaky buildings but, in an area like Wānaka, we have just announced $19 million to make sure that we get ahead and we can build ahead for a community that is growing due to tourists but also due to internal migration.

In an area like Auckland, it is eye-watering, the investment and the student spaces that we are delivering. We announced in 2014 that we would spend $350 million on 17,000 student spaces. I am very delighted to confirm that we are in this Budget taking that figure—it is now going to be well over $400 million from that commitment we made in 2014 and we are going to deliver 21,000 student spaces. If you think about that in the context of the whole of Auckland property, it is sort of 8 to 9 percent of growing the property estate. It is absolutely massive. I was very proud to announce the other day that not only the new schools but, also, when I was at a school called Stonefields School—to be able confirm that it is going to get a new expansion.

In the funding of this Budget we are investing more in terms of special education but also we are investing in satellite units in parts of New Zealand. So there are huge amounts of money for school property and, I think, just again, to put it in historical perspective, we have spent $5 billion but in this Budget over a 4-year period we will spend another $4.85 billion. We are the Government that will have the strongest legacy in terms of upgrading and fixing our schools to modern learning environments.

Other aspects of this Budget that are incredibly important are around school operational grants. Again, if you look back at the historical perspective, there will be those people who will say “Well, what are you doing? Are you just investing in growth?”. What I can confirm is that if you look back over the period since 2010—I think CPI has gone up 11 percent cumulatively—we have actually increased the operations grant by 16 percent, and what is fantastic about this Budget is that not only are schools going to get the 1.3 percent increase universal across all schools, but they are also going to get targeted funding for those students who may be more disadvantaged, on top of the funding that we provided last year. So these are very significant investments.

In the area of special education or learning support, you have got more teacher-aides funded in this Budget. You have also got a programme like the Incredible Years programme being funded. For those children who are aged 2 to 5 we are interested in supporting both teachers and parents to be able to help those children with autism. So in all of the major areas there is more funding, but also we are targeting it at those children who need it most. So I am very proud to be part of a Government that is investing significantly in education, but also we are receiving the results for that significant investment. Whether it is Māori or Pasifika achievement, we have seen phenomenal lifts in achievement. Whether it is participation generally in early childhood education—again, thousands more children are starting ahead of the starting line because they have actually been in early childhood education. So we are not only investing more in our public services, we are also getting those significant results in terms of lifting achievement and also ensuring that more children are in early childhood education.

In terms of the rest of the Budget, I often give speeches—and I have been since the Budget—talking about what it actually means to be a child under a National Government. The reality is that people on the other side talk about having a strong social conscience, but when they had a whole lot of surpluses they did not go and invest it in fixing our schools. We are the Government that is doing that. They did not go and insulate a whole lot of houses. We are the Government that has actually insulated about 100,000 houses. We are the Government that is investing more in terms of Māori and Pasifika achievement. We are the Government that is investing in rheumatic fever programmes. We are the Government that is giving more money to low-income families through our family tax package. And where are the Opposition members? They are voting against it. It is extraordinary.

So when people look, over the next 3 or 4 months, I hope that they ask the question: which is the party that can deliver a strong economy, in terms of areas like less regulation, improving the Resource Management Act, improving our employment law, less bureaucracy for business—and can deliver a stronger economy. But, also, which is the party with the stronger social conscience?

I would argue in this House today that if you look at the record—the actual record—despite the earthquakes, despite the global financial recession, we have invested significantly around children, whether it is our education budget, whether it is the Family Incomes Package, whether it is more money for health, whether it is TerraNova and helping those people get more in terms of their pay packet per week, we are the Government with a very strong social conscience. And this Budget, more than ever before, demonstrates that in terms of the huge investments in health and in education. If you look at what Minister Adams has announced in terms of the significant number of more housing in Auckland, we are the Government that has put $4 million in a programme like Housing First to do more in terms of homelessness. We are the Government that is combating rheumatic fever. We have a huge record.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

I rise to speak in favour of this year’s Budget, delivered by the Hon Steven Joyce, and to speak in opposition, clearly, to the amendment to the motion put by the Leader of the Opposition. Not the least of which reason is that the alternative motion assumes that the country would have some confidence in his leadership and his party’s leadership of the country, compared with the benefits that are clearly there for all New Zealanders in this Budget. I think that is a completely wrong proposition.

Budgets are never easy things to construct. Everybody has their requirements, and everyone has their calls on the funding that a Government has available at any time. What a Government must always do is recognise that every cent it is able to expend in a Budget comes out of the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders. The Government itself, whether it is accruing its funding from the tax base or from the various entities that are owned by the Crown, must recognise that, in the end, it is the pocket of the taxpayer that is eventually funding all of the Government’s activities. So, with that in mind, it becomes very important that Budgets do focus on opportunities for economic growth, that they do encourage the expansion of employment in this country, and that they do also set out the bounds and parameters within its own expenditure for New Zealanders to share in the benefits of everybody else’s collective prosperity. That is what this Budget does.

Firstly, the changes that have been lambasted by the Opposition as being tax cuts in disguise is a completely rubbish notion. To say to people who are on incomes that they might have been receiving for some years that there is going to be a threshold movement that means that they will keep more of the dollars that they earn through their hard work is not an unreasonable thing at all. To be able to say to families “Now all of the children in your family are going to attract support at the same rate as those in the current older age group.” is also not unreasonable. It is recognising the pressures that people have.

Then there is the argument that the accommodation supplement simply feeds landlords. It does not take a lot of exercise of the brain to work out that when you have got low interest rates, as we have now, with interest rates somewhere between 4.5 percent and maybe 6 percent, the requirement for return just to meet the cost of that capital is going to be in that $4,500 to $6,000 per hundred thousand. You multiply that by the value of the premises being rented and you start to see that landlords, far from gouging in this country, are in many cases providing for people, in most cases, good accommodation at a reasonable cost. For the Government to say “Well, if people are having trouble meeting that cost, here is some assistance.” is also very, very reasonable in the circumstances.

The New Zealand economy has benefited from the approach that this Government has taken over a long number of years, and that is evidenced by the extraordinary job growth that we have seen over the last few years, with some 200,000 more jobs now expected over the next few years, and with that same number—200,000—of new jobs since 2014. Those are the sorts of achievements that can be put down only in part to Government policy, but significantly put down to the response to Government policy by people who take an entrepreneurial view of their role in society. It is about people making that effort, putting their capital and their reputation on the line and deciding to expand a business, start a business, or otherwise. It is all, when you think about it, relatively simple but high risk for people. It does have that effect of meaning that more New Zealanders are in work now than has ever been the case before.

A consequence of having a growing economy and of being able to afford higher incomes inside that economy is that, in this case, some 50,000 children who might once have been classed as living in more deprived circumstances are now living in more reasonable circumstances. That constant drive for improving the lot of people at the bottom of society is something that no Government should ever lose sight of, and most certainly this Government has not. It is, perhaps, there that we are most perplexed by the Labour Party’s idea that no one should support this Budget, because, somehow, the benefit that comes from this Budget to so many working families is unfair and unreasonable on those who are not working. That is simply not a proposition or a philosophy that will ever see the economy growing and expanding.

Another aspect of this Budget is the extraordinary commitment—biggest commitment ever seen by any Government in New Zealand—to expanding the infrastructure of the country. There will be those who argue that sometimes we get it wrong because we put money into roads, and roads, apparently, are not a good thing. But, for as long as economies have existed anywhere, roads have been essential. It seems odd that you will have, for example, one political party in this House constantly complaining about the traffic congestion and such in Auckland but at the same time refusing to support a Budget that will do something about that congestion by way of making it easier for people to move around. Whether that is the rail system or the roads, it does require investment, it does require a commitment to infrastructure, and while this Government has a very big reputation for investing in infrastructure, this Budget simply reinforces it with such a huge sum of money going into that over the next few years.

Then there are the core public services. Well, the quality of any public service—education, health, and the security services, etc.; our police, and all those sorts of things—is always going to be somewhat determined by the ability to pay. Those services will get better when the ability to pay runs ahead of the demands of a growing population. That is also something that is very evident and clear in this Budget: $7 billion extra—$7 billion extra. And to quantify that, that is $7,000 million extra over the next 4 years for those core services. You would assume that Budgets in the next few years will further add to that very impressive sum, making sure that those public services are just as sharp and just as capable of delivering to the families and other residents of New Zealand.

Another aspect of this Budget has been the commitment that we have made in areas that are not so large and not so visible. One of those areas is, of course, our commitment to the Antarctic. It is extremely important that New Zealand keeps its interest in the Antarctic. We have had that for a very long time, since the times of the first Scott expeditions down there, and, of course, then the programme that we have that was started by Admiral Byrd in the 1950s. It is a part of the world where the conservation values and the environmental values do need to be protected, and we therefore need to have an interest down there. This Budget sees money set aside for the redevelopment, ultimately, of our Scott Base down there.

I want to conclude by just mentioning one area where there is a small cost increase, and that is around the Earthquake Commission (EQC) levy. EQC is a body that is roundly criticised by people who do not appreciate its value. The first point to note in all of that is that, in 1992, the cover for earthquake in New Zealand was going to be removed. Insurers in the private sector were not happy to cover that. So the Government expanded EQC and took the first $100,000 of liability at a very low cost. To be able to meet that cost, it does, in fact, require 20c in the dollar. For some New Zealanders, where they are insuring the full $100,000—which is, practically, everybody—the increases per year will be some $69. It is not huge for the cover that is going to be available. What it means is that we will not get caught short if we have another Christchurch, another Kaikōura, or wherever we might have a disaster that EQC’s cover is required for. It is unique in the world, and it is very, very cheap. I hope that the opportunity that some might see for private insurers to leverage off that is not taken, because it is the first risk that the Government takes on behalf of New Zealanders, enabling this cover to be accessed by anyone who has a household policy.

This is a very good Budget, and I am very happy to support it. I look forward to voting against the amendment to the motion put by the Leader of the Opposition.

The next call is a split call. The first 5 minutes is Mahesh Bindra, from New Zealand First.

Given that I have only 5 minutes to share with my colleague Pita Paraone, I will try to stick to my own area of work—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: What’s that?

—which is corrections. It is not woodwork, Gerry; it is corrections. Within this Budget, the Government has budgeted $763 million to build up additional prison capacity and only $79 million for rehabilitation, which is a very important part of the whole corrections system. The Government intends to put in $763 million to build new prisons, and then the intention behind that is to hand them over to a foreign company, which will make profits out of them. So this is a “prisons for profit” Budget, and we do not support this aspect of the Budget.

The rehabilitation services are already suffering. They were not given the tools they needed. The programmes were cut down, the quality of the programmes got poorer over the years, and the beneficiaries of those programmes—that is, the offenders on sentences of more than 6 months—were not getting what it was intended they be given. That was one of the reasons why the planned 25 percent reduction in reoffending was not achieved by Corrections, in spite of that being the target many years ago.

Before that 25 percent reduction in reoffending was emphasised, Corrections was more focused on the safe, secure, and humane containment of prisoners. There was no focus at all on the rehabilitation of prisoners. However, even the reduction in reoffending by 25 percent by 2017 was not achieved by Corrections, and that is the reason Corrections then removed that target altogether, so that there were no measurements of success. Obviously, there were no measures of failures by Corrections.

Now, what Corrections has also failed to achieve is the breaking of the cycle of reoffending. In my 10 years as a custodial officer, I actually physically locked up three generations of offenders. That is the tragic part of a corrections officer’s job; when you see three generations going through the same cell door. Three generations—I locked up a grandfather, I locked up his son, and then I locked up his son. So there is no achievement by these rehabilitation services. That cycle is still going on, which is a sad thing to see. This Budget does not address that cycle of reoffending by generations—by generations.

In 2014 prison numbers went up to 8,700, which was a record then. It is well over that now. It is touching 10,000, we are told, and that is the reason the Government wants to build more prisons. However, the Government is not serious about stopping people from coming to jail, giving people education, giving people apprenticeships, and giving people job training so that they can stay out of jail and earn a living for their families, which is a sad thing. The $79 million invested in reducing reoffending is paltry. It is a paltry sum to give to rehabilitation services, out of which only $14 million is focused on reducing youth reoffending.

In recent months, we have seen that youth offenders have actually committed the majority of crimes, and the recidivism rate among the youth offender population is 71 percent. And only $14 million has been given for reducing reoffending by youth, which, again, is not adequate. We have already seen the effect of that kind of cut on funding: that every single day there are dairies and liquor shops being robbed and burgled by these youths. That is the cycle that this Budget should have addressed, and it has not. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. I want to preface my comments by reminding those members on the other side who refer to New Zealand First as supporting the Budget—what I want to clarify for them is that what we did support was the legislation that raised the tax thresholds and made a contribution to the accommodation supplements. We did not, and do not, support the Budget.

In fact, the Minister for Māori Development waxed lyrical on the amount of funding that the Māori Party has been responsible for having allocated to those programmes that the Māori Party supports. He made the comment that the figure was in the vicinity of $2 billion. I want to ask the question, then: if that is correct—and I am not doubting its validity—why is it that in this day and age, in June 2017, the non - social performance of Māori is one of the major issues affecting the Māori community? In fact, it is common amongst the general public of New Zealand, but for Māori there just does not seem to be any social performance in terms of where they are on the economic ladder.

The Māori Party made reference to the fact that it had this housing programme, and our research shows that it has provided only 11 new homes. Now, I am talking about new homes; I am not talking about the funding that it was able to get from this Budget and previous Budgets to upgrade some of the conditions of the present accommodation. But, be that as it may, Māori are at the bottom of the homeownership list, they are at the bottom of the health statistics, they are at the bottom of the employment figures, and they are at the bottom of the health statistics that are a real problem for this country. Whatever the Government may say about its Budget, this is purely a Budget aimed at 23 September of this year, and I have no doubt that as we get closer to that date the Government will offer more “inducements” to try to retain its position on that side of the House.

After 9 years with the Māori Party and National joined at the hip, what do we have in Budget 2017? We have a total of $93 million that, upon closer examination, just does not stack up. What does this Budget give for hard-working, minimum-wage Māori? One dollar a week. However, at least all other New Zealanders are in the same position—they get one dollar a week as well. This is your social investment!

What about housing? We keep on hearing about the success of the Māori Housing Network. What success? Eleven houses have been built—and they want to throw more money at it. Talking about throwing money at Māori Party programmes, I want to make reference to Whānau Ora. How many years has Whānau Ora been operating? This Budget throws more money at it, and yet they have not been able to provide a way of assessing the success, or otherwise, of that programme. I think that if it were any other programme, people would be asking questions, not least of all the Government. But because it is the Māori Party and because that is its flagship programme—no questions asked. I think it is a poor indictment on how funding can be made available in order to retain your position in Government.

This Budget does not engender any confidence, not with $1 million given to the Waka Oranga bus to drive around the Mātaatua and East Coast regions looking for sick people to heal; not with $4 million given to young Māori to get birth certificates and passports—

I am sorry to interrupt the member, but his time has expired.

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker, ā, huri noa i tō tātou Whare i tēnei pō, tēnā tātou, e whakawhāiti mai nei i runga i tēnei kaupapa ātaahua, he kaupapa mō Aotearoa whānui.

[Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and acknowledgments to us throughout our House this evening, packed together here under this lovely proposal that should be one for New Zealand wide.]

It is wonderful that we are here, coming towards the end of the debate about a magnificent Budget. It is a Budget that has taken a lot of effort from a lot of New Zealanders over these past years to get to the stage where we are now.

Economies are not magic. We can look round the world and we can see a lot of problems. But New Zealand has worked very hard to be at the place we are now, notwithstanding the challenges of the global financial crash and notwithstanding the natural disasters that have been sent to test New Zealanders and Christchurch and Kaikōura and Edgecumbe, and that test New Zealanders in all sorts of other ways.

This Budget should be seen, for a start, in the context of—or in contrast with—some of the discussions, for instance, that have been going on in the United States about their Budget. One of the items that I noted as relevant to ours was that much of it is based on the idea of the United States economy growing by a minimum of 3 percent. The commentators there are saying “How ridiculous.”, “We’ll never get to that stage.”, “This is just a fairy tale.”, or comments to that effect, but New Zealand is doing that. New Zealand is an economy that is strong and that has growth of 3 percent or more, and that has happened off the hard work of so many New Zealanders and the prudent management of this National-led Government. It has allowed us to buffer against many of the challenges against us, but it has also allowed us to lift the standard of living for so many New Zealanders, particularly those most vulnerable—but not exclusively so.

This Budget represents the use of all the levers available to us to bring about the conditions—the environment—in which New Zealanders can make choices for themselves and flourish. Unlike the Opposition, we do not spend our time here in Government prescribing what other people should do. We focus very much on what the role of Government is, which is to create the conditions, facilitate opportunity, and trust New Zealanders to make good decisions for themselves. But there are some critical elements that contribute to that. I have already mentioned the strength of the economy, and I will not go over all of the numbers—well, maybe I will—that have already been iterated by my colleagues on this side.

Suffice it to say, we have a Budget that looks both at the economy and at infrastructure, which is the backbone, or the arteries, of a nation. The previous speaker from our side, the Hon Gerry Brownlee, did mention that there are those who seem to think that roads are irrelevant, but, in fact, they are the arteries of an economy. They move people and services and goods from one part of the country to the other.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: That’s right. Almost as good as broadband.

Almost as good. In fact, I was going to get on to that. Not only are we talking about roads in terms of infrastructure but we are talking about technology. We are talking about broadband. This is a Government that has put New Zealand taxpayers’ money where our mouths have been, to make sure that we have this network across the country that New Zealanders can take advantage of.

If I may also mention that we are the biggest investors in school infrastructure, I think, well—ever.

💬 Todd Barclay: Trevor Mallard closed all the schools.

Well, yes, there were all of those. What we have done is we have invested in school infrastructure. We have built and invested in the backbone of our country. Why? And this is what I want to come to, in terms of our Budget, because we have, at heart, the well-being of New Zealanders in general and those most vulnerable, in particular.

The approach that we have taken, which we have framed as social investment, is one that we have worked away at ever since we came into Government, when we understood how important it was for New Zealanders either not to go on a benefit at all or to get off it as soon as possible so that they could be engaged in the economy and make choices for themselves. What our social investment approach does—and it is led by our eminently capable Minister the Hon Amy Adams—is it infuses all of our social sector work. It is not confined to one narrow approach. Whether in justice, whether in education, whether in health, or whether in policing, we are all about which people need what kind of help and when, and how we get the resource there to support them to be successful.

That is why you see, for instance, that we have invested in the public services. We understand completely that we have to have good quality public services to support New Zealanders. We have got one of the biggest—possibly the biggest—health investments, which is presided over by my colleague the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman. We recognise that not only do we want to be a First World nation but we want to make sure that we have health provision that is about being a First World nation. That means we trust New Zealanders to look after their primary health, but we also know that we have got significant challenges with mental health. We know that. This Government has provided for it. We are not prescribing exactly what the answers are, because we want to invite the initiative of New Zealanders about what is the best way to tackle this. There is not a family or a whānau amongst us who has not been touched in some way by mental health and mental challenges. We are cognisant of that. We are investing. We are putting funding into that. We want to make a difference in people’s lives.

💬 Clare Curran: After 9 years.

In justice—oh, through the 9 years. The members of the Opposition think we have waited until now, but that is not true. Every year, we have built on it. I will talk about education because it is something I know a little bit about. When we came into Government, in 2008, that Opposition had left the situation where about 66 percent of New Zealanders were getting our minimum qualification, Māori were at 43 percent, and Pasifika were at 50 percent. They are all up now in the top quartile. So that has not happened just in the ninth year; that has taken year on year on year of work. That is what it has taken. We understand that getting a good qualification is a critical cornerstone to economic participation, to social well-being, and to strengthening the prosperity and the backbone of this country. We are not telling them what they should do with their education; we are facilitating them to get one. We want them to make choices for themselves, and they are doing so.

We have invested in public services—policing. Every New Zealander knows that there are a range of issues that we all personally feel very passionate about, but we know the economy, health, education, and law and order are the four pillars on which New Zealanders think: “Well, if those are in good order, we can then move into the others.” Look, we know, for instance, that people want to—obviously—feel safe in their homes, on their streets, and moving about the community. This Government opened this year with over half a billion dollars of greater investment in raising policing—ensuring that there are police out there on the streets so that New Zealanders feel safe and are able to call on their services. We know, for instance, that we have a very poor record in terms of family violence, and, again, my colleagues the Hon Amy Adams and Anne Tolley have done a power of work, not just this year, not just this month; they have been working on it for so many years, as we tackle some of the hardest questions.

The Opposition wrings its hands; this Government rolls up its sleeves and says: “What can we do about this?”. We can point to measurable impacts. We have been prepared to be accountable. We are the first Government that has said: “Here are the 10 Better Public Services targets that are emblematic of the wider public services, which you can measure us on and New Zealanders can measure us on.” These are hard challenges that we are prepared to tackle because we want all New Zealanders to have the best life possible. That is what this Government is about.

The core of this Budget is the Family Incomes Package. So, again, we have not just talked about what is necessary; we are the first Government to raise benefits in 43 years. We have moved on from that—it is part of our social investment approach. We have said: “How do we help those families that need a lift up a little further?”. So what did we do? We moved the tax thresholds.

Members on that side of the House have gone on about how well they have benefited from this. Well, actually, we have seen more New Zealanders lifted from the lowest and the middle thresholds. We have adjusted the accommodation supplement. We have looked at Working for Families. We have not looked at just one lever or another; we have put together this complex system and said that these, together, will make the difference for New Zealanders.

We are not an either/or Government. We are an “and, and, and, and” Government. We have looked at the economy. We have a Trade 2030 agenda. We have a Minister of Trade, in the form of the Hon Todd McClay, knocking himself out all around the country, making sure that we have trade entry and export markets so that we can grow our economy even further, so that we can fund the public services that we know are core to the well-being of New Zealanders, so that we can continue to help those who need help the most, and so that we can grow the prosperity and well-being of all New Zealanders. That is what this Budget delivers. Thank you very much.

I would really love to see the Budget we have just heard spoken about. It is a very different document from the one that the rest of us have read in the last couple of weeks.

Budget day is a day when it becomes very obvious about Governments making choices. The Budget is, in a sense, a summary of the Government’s decisions around how to generate revenue and how to spend public dollars—in the public interest, one would hope. It is when we see, in stark relief, the Government’s priorities and its direction of travel for the next year. The Government has an almost infinite number of options in terms of how it chooses to spend its money, and for that reason alone it eludes me the reason this Government chooses to spend its money in ways that we know will perpetuate failure. It continues to put money and resources into practices and policies that have failed, are failing, and will continue to fail. Nowhere is that more obvious than in Vote Justice and, particularly, in Vote Corrections.

Here is some evidence for that. Mr Joyce, in delivering the Budget, made much of the Government’s investment in infrastructure. He told us, in fact, that Budget 2017 takes New Zealand’s infrastructure investment to another level. OK—first some good news. There is $392 million for new schools and classrooms. That has got to be a good thing. Fewer teachers and fewer students every day confronted with inadequate teaching spaces, degraded teaching spaces, and very poor learning environments. There is $392 million for new schools and classrooms—tick. We can support that.

There is another $150 million additional capital for the health sector. Yes, the health sector can consume vast amounts of money, and does. There is $150 million towards improving Kiwis’ access to health services. That is a good thing. There is $98 million to upgrade Wellington’s metro rail network. Yes, perhaps our capital city will get a bit closer to having a respectable 21st century public transport system. There is another $100 million, we are told, for the Crown Land Development Programme, to free up Government land for much-needed housing. The grand total of those infrastructure investments I have just mentioned is some $740 million. It is quite a lot of money, but not quite as much as the Government is spending on one single line item, and that is expanding prison capacity. There is $763 million this year just on expanding prison capacity—not running the prisons, not operating the prisons. The total budget there is about $1.7 billion.

This Government has made its choice to spend more money on creating more prison cells than on classrooms, public transport, health investment, and freeing up land for housing for New Zealanders. What an extraordinarily perverse set of decisions that is. We know that prisons perpetuate failure. If prisons are the answer, then it was a very silly question.

We know that many of the 10,000-plus people currently in prison in New Zealand are there because of issues around drug and alcohol abuse. It was said some years ago—in 2011, in fact—“The criminal justice system, as it is configured at present, fails to provide the treatment and rehabilitation that would ameliorate the impact of the abuse and prevent its recurrence—the abuse of drugs and alcohol. In consequence, these problems get worse, the level of offending goes up, not down. The evidence is overwhelming. What is lacking is the will to do what is necessary to make things better.” This Budget perpetuates that lack of will to make things better, which is a point I will return to shortly.

Another commentator had this to say about building prisons: “Building more of them on a large scale is something I don’t think any New Zealander wants to see. They want a safer community, and they want protection from the worst elements of criminal behaviour, but they don’t want to be a prison colony. It’s the fastest-rising cost in Government in the last decade. My view is we shouldn’t build any more of them.”

Would our friends on the National benches choose to guess what woolly-headed, liberal thinker made those comments—saying we ought not to build any more prisons? It was a gentleman by the name of Bill English. The Rt Hon Bill English said we ought not to build any more of them. In a moment of clarity, I think, Mr English got it dead right. It is a shame this Government has not taken that advice.

We will look at the distribution of Vote Corrections—66 percent of the vote, some $940 million - odd, is going towards simply custodial services, keeping people locked away. Two-thirds of every dollar in the vote is simply to keep people locked up. Just over $217 million, or 15 percent of the vote, goes to funding community services, delivering sentences and orders in the community, and electronic monitoring. Fourteen percent of the vote—scarcely more than $200 million—is devoted to case management and interventions designed to address the underlying causes of criminal reoffending.

Therein lies the problem. Two out of every three dollars—66 percent of the spend on Corrections—are simply keeping people locked away. We are devoting only 14 percent of the vote to actually try to resolve the problem—trying to heal people, trying to prevent reoffending, trying to reduce the number of people in our prisons, through that revolving door that so many inmates experience. A term in prison, a term of freedom, another term in prison—longer and longer terms in prison. We develop these things called career criminals. Our prisons perpetuate offending; they do not resolve it. The sad thing is we know there are better ways to spend what are scarce taxpayer dollars—hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

I recently visited Southland and spent some time there with people delivering social services.

💬 Todd Barclay: Good place.

It is an excellent part of the world. I can vouch for that, indeed. We missed you at the Ballance Farm Environment Awards. I was the only MP there, other than the Minister, surprisingly. That was in Invercargill last week.

To return to my point, I saw the social services in Invercargill working very hard and effectively to deal with people’s drug addictions, their mental health problems, and with men with a history of violence. That suite of services is in danger of falling over for want of a few tens of thousands of dollars, which this Government simply will not top up. They are having to draw on their reserves, and they can do that for only a very short time. If that suite of services fails, you will see more people going into jail, at $100,000 a head each year. Why not give a few tens of thousands of dollars to the social service providers?

A few weeks ago, in Gisborne—another wonderful part of the country—I was astonished to discover that Tai Rāwhiti - Gisborne, sadly, vies with Northland for the highest rates of P addiction and abuse in the country. It is not a competition that I am pleased Northland is in. I was astonished to hear that nowhere in Gisborne is there any facility to treat people who are addicts or are abusing P. There is simply no treatment service in Gisborne, the centre of Tai Rāwhiti in terms of population. Anybody with a problem with P is, I believe, looking to Rotorua, Hamilton, or further afield. What a travesty when that is one of the serious drivers of crime.

Similarly, in Northland, everywhere you look around drug and alcohol treatment centres, around mental health services—everywhere and always—there is a waiting list. Services are overextended, trying desperately hard to provide services to keep people away from offending and to heal them, and they are scratching around, trying to do too much with too little resource, too little money. Again, it is for want of a few tens of thousands of dollars, in the same year that we are spending $763 million expanding prison capacity and perpetuating the problem, which is what this Government seems determined to do.

Similarly, in our largest city, I know that, towards the end of last year, people with P addictions or abuse problems with P were waiting anything up to 12 weeks to get an appointment in a treatment programme—nearly 3 months. People either sent by the courts or self-referring for treatment for P use were being told: “Yep, come back in 12 weeks and we’ll see what we can do for you.” That is extraordinary. It is not good public policy; it is an abuse of social investment.

We know what the problems are. I recommend an excellent article in the New Zealand Corrections Journal in December last year. It is a great piece of research outlining the problems, the drivers of crime, the reasons people offend and reoffend—I do not have time now to speak to them. But Corrections and the justice ministry know what the problems are and know what the solutions are; yet this Government’s choices are all about investing in perpetuating the problem rather than dealing with it, solving it, and offering real solutions. Thank you.

In about half an hour’s time, this House is going to have an opportunity to decide whether it has confidence in the Government and confidence in the Budget we have put forward, and I am looking forward to that result. I am also looking forward to the New Zealand public deciding in about 4 months’ time whether they have confidence in this Government and the programme we have set forward. I have confidence that the Budget set forward by Steven Joyce, followed up with Bill English’s fantastic speech a couple of weeks ago, will show to the public that we are serious about delivering results for New Zealanders, we are serious about doing better for this country, and we are serious about delivering public services that will help our country get ahead.

The day of 25 May will go down in Labour’s books as the day that it knew that it was going to be an uphill battle and difficult for it to do very well in September. The Leader of the Opposition could not even fill 20 minutes on the Budget. The Leader of the Opposition could not even fill 5 minutes without resorting to the iPad. The Leader of the Opposition could not even deliver a coherent speech opposed to a Budget in election year. The Budget put forward by Steven Joyce had people on the 6 o’clock news—families; typical Labour voters, probably, in their eyes—praising the Budget. That would have been a sad day for the Labour Party members when they knew that they were going to struggle to get ahead voting against the Budget.

But they will vote against it. They will be opposed to all of the gains in the Budget for New Zealanders. They will be opposed even further to 1.3 million families getting more money in their back pockets. They will be opposed to all of the investment in education, in healthcare, and in law and order, because they are opposed to everything.

At least the Green Party and the New Zealand First Party knew that the Family Incomes Package, a package that would put more money in the pockets of those most in need, was something that should be supported. In the first reading they showed their cards, they showed their hands, and they voted for the package for families. Did the Labour Party members wake up in the second reading and think: “Well, our coalition partners, our bed buddies, our marriage partners, the Greens—they’re in favour of it. Maybe we should adjust this. Maybe we should come to our senses and decide that 1.3 million New Zealanders getting $26, on average, a week in their back pockets is fair and reasonable.”? Did they come to that conclusion? No, they did not. Did they decide that in the Committee stage, when they could see the overwhelming support out there in “voter land” for more money in the back pockets of New Zealanders? Did they come to their senses then? No, they did not. When it came to the third reading, when they had one final opportunity to prove to New Zealanders that they were prepared to stand up for the little guy who needed more support, were they prepared to support it then? No. They failed once again to stand up for New Zealanders, just as they have been failing for 9 years to represent what average Kiwis want.

Average Kiwis want more jobs. In the last 3 years, 200,000 New Zealanders have jobs.

💬 Todd Barclay: How many?

There are 200,000 New Zealanders who now have jobs created in the past 3 years, based on an economy that is growing. It does not matter how many times the Opposition members stand up in question time and talk about failure. It does not matter how many speeches they give in this House saying that the Government has got it all wrong. The bottom line is that 200,000 New Zealanders have jobs off the back of this growing economy. The Government does not create jobs, but the Government can put in place the policies that allow the economy to grow.

Living in one of the fastest-growing economies in the OECD, I think every single member of this House who votes for Budgets that see our economy grow, that see more New Zealanders get jobs, that see the average wage go up, that see fewer people in welfare-dependent homes, that see more people getting education, and more people getting healthcare—if you are someone who votes for a Budget that does that, you can be proud of yourself. But if you are a member of a party that is opposed to absolutely everything, that does not support families, that does not support more investment in important public services, and you are not prepared to stand up for 1.3 million families—anyone who votes against this Budget on that basis should be ashamed of themselves.

When the public has an opportunity to decide, in just less than 4 months’ time, whether or not they prefer jobs, whether or not they prefer a growing economy, whether or not they prefer to see more investment in healthcare and education—I believe that New Zealanders will choose to back a growing economy, and they will choose to back a Government that is putting more funding and more support in place for New Zealanders.

We heard from Hekia Parata, just about 20 minutes ago, and she will go down in history in this country as one of the best education Ministers we have ever seen. Why is that? Why is that? It is because, when Labour was in office, it left one-third of children failing in the education system. It did not care enough to assist those children to get an education. Labour members were happy with that, they were comfortable with that, and Hekia Parata, and Anne Tolley before her, stood up and said that is not good enough. They were prepared to buck the trend that the unions wanted, the trend the Labour Party was supporting. They were prepared to stand up to them. They were prepared to work with parents and say: “We need to invest in quality education. We need to invest in the quality of teaching. We need to lift achievement rates for students through national standards and through other policies that are all about supporting parents and children to do better in the education system.”

Why will Hekia Parata be one of the best education Ministers this country has had? It is because more children are achieving in the education system. More children are getting an education that they deserve, and they are going on to get jobs, they are going on to higher education. They are going on—not to live in welfare-dependent homes, not to be stuck at the bottom of the cliff with no opportunity; they are going to go on because they have got an opportunity through education to go on—and get a job and provide for their families.

Sitting next to Hekia Parata is Amy Adams. Amy Adams is the Minister responsible for Social Investment. The Labour Party members do not like talking about this, because it actually will mean that more New Zealanders will get up and more New Zealanders will be able to do well by themselves. Amy Adams and Bill English, along with the rest of Cabinet, are leading a revolution in the way social policies are provided by Government. No longer do we just ask how we can fix the problem when it has arisen; now we ask how we can ensure New Zealanders do not get themselves into difficulty in the first place.

This Budget invests a third of a billion dollars into social investment. That is important because we do not want New Zealanders to fall into the trap of being stuck in poverty. We do not want New Zealanders to fall into the trap where the State and social services have failed them. We want to get in front of it. We want to use good quality data. We want to ensure that we are gearing our social policies towards achievement for New Zealanders. That is what this Budget is about. That is what this Government is about. We see more support for that.

Every time the Labour Party members stand up and oppose greater spending in healthcare or education or law and order policies—which they will do by voting against this Budget—they are saying to New Zealanders that they do not care. Of course, they stand up in question time and in public and say that we have cut budgets. Apparently, now a cut in a budget is what Michael Cullen might have spent money on; if we have changed that budget a bit, apparently that is a cut. They talk about cuts to healthcare. We have poured billions of dollars more into healthcare. It is not just more money though; we are seeing better results: 50,000 New Zealanders are getting access to elective surgery that they were not getting under the Labour Government. Fifty thousand New Zealanders are getting access to that healthcare. We are investing another $3.9 billion into healthcare through this Budget, and we should be proud of that.

Let us talk about mental health, too, because I know Labour is going to rabbit on about it during the election campaign. Here is the reality for you: mental health funding has gone up—it is at $1.4 billion right now, and we are investing another quarter of a billion dollars into that. I do not want to hear any more speeches from members of the Labour Party saying that we have cut healthcare. We are putting billions of dollars into it. More children are getting free access to doctors; more people are getting access to elective surgeries. Healthcare is another area in which we are delivering.

I enjoyed the speech from David Clendon, as well. He is talking about law and order. He wants New Zealand to be a safer place. Good on him—so do we. Mr Clendon, please do not vote against extra funding for more police officers in the Budget, because New Zealanders want to see better law and order policies. They want to see the crime rate continue to drop, and the best way to do that is by putting more police on the street. This Budget will do that. This Budget will invest half a billion dollars into another 1,100 police staff, and I think we should be proud of that. Mr Clendon, I know you care deeply about law and order policies. Good on you. Come on board and support a Budget that will deliver better law and order policies for New Zealanders.

Labour, you talk about healthcare. Come on board and support better healthcare options for New Zealanders. New Zealand First—Tracey Martin over there cares about education. Well, she should come on board and support a Budget that will deliver better education services for our Kiwi kids. This Budget delivers more for New Zealanders. It delivers better public services. It continues to see an economy that will grow and go from strength to strength. It will continue to see more New Zealanders getting jobs and higher wages. Most importantly, 1.3 million families whom the Labour Party has abandoned will see more money in their back pockets, and that is a good thing. I support this Budget.

This is a split call on behalf of the Labour Party, and the first speaker is the Hon Clayton Cosgrove.

I did enjoy the animation around that speech. It was a good run for the next reshuffle in Cabinet, to try to get the senior whip, Jami-Lee Ross, up there. But let us deal with a couple of the issues that the senior whip in the National Party talked about. He did not talk about the half a million New Zealanders who get a dollar a week in this Budget—a dollar a week. He did not talk about that, and suddenly there is a bit of a hush and a bit of silence over the Government benches. He did not talk about that. He talked about law and order and the police. It was his Prime Minister, then Minister of Finance, who said that prisons were a moral failure, and yet the Budget allocation, of course, builds a brand new prison. There is a massive allocation for a brand new prison.

💬 Michael Wood: Social investment!

So while Mr Ross talks about—as my colleague Mr Wood says—social investment, that is the nature and the definition of the Tory social investment: another brand new prison. But he failed to talk about the half a million New Zealanders who will receive a dollar a week out of this package.

He failed to talk about the single person on a minimum wage who gets, yes, an extra $11 in tax cuts but who loses $10 from the removal of the independent earner tax credit and then ends up with a dollar a week. Oh no, he forgot about the forgotten New Zealanders. He did not mention that. And the Government members have gone silent, of course, looking down at their iPads and their cellphones and their very important papers, because, of course, they do not want to deal with those forgotten, lost, and lonely souls. That was not mentioned, as Mr Ross praised Hekia Parata, as he praised Minister Adams, or as he talked about social investment.

He forgot, of course, when we deal with healthcare in my part of the world, Christchurch, where, since the earthquakes erupted in the last 6 years, the neglect, the mismanagement in respect of mental health, the cutting of funding—go and ask David Meates, if he were allowed to speak as CEO of the district health board (DHB), if he were not muzzled, if he were allowed to tell the truth and have his own view without ministerial interference. Go and ask David Meates of the Canterbury DHB about the difficulties in mental health, the stretching of resources. Go into any school in Canterbury and ask the teachers and the principals about the symptoms that are manifest, 6 years later, in respect of the mental health of kids as a result of the earthquake and the resources that are stretched. But, of course, that was not part of the National Party script. That was not part of the sort of animated, colourful, loud speech from the senior whip. He forgot about the lost and lonelies, the half a million New Zealanders who get a buck. It is not even—I do not know, what is a stick of gum these days? It is probably worth more than a dollar.

But, of course, when we were in Government, delivering surpluses every year for 9 years, I remember, as associate finance Minister, being attacked by Bill English. I never thought I would be attacked as a Labour member for being tight on the public purse, which, of course, when they inherited the global financial crisis set these guys up royally to deal with that. But you will not hear that, as they have gone silent. Is it not interesting? It is very silent all over there. Where are the interjections? Where is the moral courage from the member for Invercargill or Queenstown or wherever he is from, Todd Barclay, who was interjecting on the back of the senior whip’s speech? Where is the moral courage and the sort of bombast? Oh no, it is not there any more—it is not there any more.

So I challenge them as we do go into an election campaign. There will be a debate about how the largesse is spread across the populace—that is always the case in an election campaign in New Zealand—but I have to say to those members: I do not think I am that good, but if I can shut them up in 5 minutes, if they cannot stare each other in the face, if they have to look down at their iPads and their papers because a few facts about the lost and lonely New Zealanders are put to them, then I hate to think how they will deal with the populace in an election campaign.

Jenny Salesa—a 5-minute call.

After 9 long years under this National Government, has it delivered a better, brighter future for all New Zealanders as it promised? Not for so many of the people in Manukau East, and not for many of the people in South Auckland. The 2017 Budget is trying very hard to patch up the huge deficits in housing, in education, and in health. My comments will focus on these three areas, but I will start with housing. After 9 years of failure in housing, does Budget 2017 deliver solutions? Will this Budget fix the housing crisis? Does it provide long-term solutions for homelessness? The answer is no, not at all, but how I wish—how I wish—that it actually addressed housing for so many of our people, in a comprehensive way.

National’s answer to the housing crisis, in this particular Budget, as far as I can see, is it will fund land that will build 1,200 homes. But when Auckland is short by over 40,000 houses right now, when the rest of the country is short by over 25,000 houses, providing funding for land for 1,200 homes will not fix the issue. This Budget of 2017 also provides the accommodation supplement. But my question is what the people who are needing help now are going to do between now and April of next year, when this accommodation supplement actually kicks in. Last winter we went through what I would call a winter of misery. So many people were living in garages. Working families were living in cars.

There is a huge increase in people who are now living in boarding houses. Just 2 days ago the Sunday Star-Times covered boarding houses in west Auckland, and, unfortunately, a boarding house that my office has been working with over the last few weeks in Ōtāhuhu in my electorate of Manukau East. Imagine this: walking up to this particular boarding house. From the outside it looks like a house that is fine. The fence is pretty tall, so it is not actually until you are close to the house that you see that over 90 percent of the windows have no glass. When you walk up to this house, what hits you first is the smell that comes out from this house. What you know from walking into the house is you see black mould. You see a kitchen that does not have a stove that works. You see the people who live in this particular house that is not fit for people to live in. This is the kind of boarding house that accommodation supplements are paying for, but my question is, what is the current Government doing to ensure that the houses that our accommodation supplement pays for are fit and proper and healthy—warm, dry, and healthy—for everyone to live in?

What we know is that in 2009 we had over 69,000 State houses. We also know that in 2016 we had only 61,600 State houses, and you add on an extra 2,700 leased houses, so within 8 years this Government has sold off 7,400 houses. On which planet is it that when we have a housing crisis where we do not have enough houses, the solution is to sell off the State houses?

We are a country that usually prides itself on serving our families who are the most vulnerable people, but right now—shame on this Government—we are not serving our most vulnerable people. We are not ensuring that they are even housed, especially our working families who work full-time but who cannot afford to pay the rent. They live in cars, they live in garages, and Budget 2017 does not provide a solution for that. Only a change in Government will provide the solution. Thank you.

Well, that member, Jenny Salesa, talked about planets. I would suggest it is time that she visited planet Earth, for there she will find a families package. That member had the audacity to stand up in this House and talk about a Budget that was not delivering—her words—for low-income people.

It is with absolute pride that I stand here in support of Steven Joyce’s first Budget and talk about a families package that is delivering literally billions of dollars into the pockets of some of our lower-income people in New Zealand. This Budget is about giving back to New Zealanders when times are a bit better—yes? It is what we do in our own households, it is what we should do as a Government, and it is certainly what we should do with the Government’s purse, for, after all, it is not actually our money that we are spending; it is the money of other hard-working New Zealanders—business out there, and small businesses, I would like to say.

So many of those businesses are taking risks, employing people, and putting a bit of money away for a rainy day. We have seen record numbers of people come off benefits in the last few years, and they are finding employment. Under the leadership of Bill English and with a Minister of Finance like Steven Joyce, we are now able to let those New Zealanders reap the rewards of their hard work and see some of the benefits of it, and, actually, we really also support those who are on lower incomes, including those on benefits—and I want to go there a bit more.

Steven Joyce has really delivered—you have got to give it to the bloke. He has really delivered on this Budget and for literally millions of New Zealanders. He has delivered a package that puts cash in people’s pockets—and here is the man of the moment now. It is easier talking about him when he is not in the room. There are families sitting in their homes right now listening to this that would have applauded with them, Mr Joyce—applauded with your own caucus. That is what they would have done.

I jest, but I do not, because this is actually a Budget that literally has been supporting families and hard-working New Zealanders. It invests in vital public services. As we see—being a really, really lucky country that people want to stay in and move to, instead of a country that people want to move from—we are now in the position of having to deliver more in public services, and that is absolutely what this Budget did.

We have heard a lot during this debate, and a lot of that talking New Zealand down—you know, talking down the benefits of being in a country that is actually as awesome as this one is, where people are doing well, where they are getting ahead, where they have got a Government that supports them, and where, out of this Budget, they are going to get more money in their pockets, which makes a huge difference, particularly for those who are on lower incomes and who are struggling a bit. This means literally a huge and significant difference for them.

So there is a family in west Auckland—you know, a good old Waitakere family. They are going to sit there after this Budget, and with the increases in the accommodation supplement and the differences in the tax thresholds, they are going to see 155 bucks a week more in their pocket.

💬 Hon Member: How much?

155 bucks a week. And I heard one of the Opposition members at one stage literally say that that was not a lot of money. Having $155 a week more in your household budget, Labour, is a lot of money. That is a lot of money in anyone’s terms.

I cannot help but talk a bit about police—why would I not? We are absolutely seeing $500 million more go into the New Zealand Police. Actually, it is a $2 billion justice package that is there. That is 1,125 more police. That is actually an increase of 10 percent—a 10 percent increase in our police numbers. That is about keeping our communities safer, and that makes a huge difference.

I do want to break that down. That means another 140 rural officers—out in the heartland of this country, working alongside those very people who are the salt of the earth and making a difference every day, policing our communities. That means 95 percent of all New Zealanders are going to live within 25 kilometres of a 24/7 working station. That is huge, that is significant, and that makes a real difference.

I want to just acknowledge some of my ministerial colleagues here, particularly Anne Tolley and Amy Adams, who are doing such great work in family violence. This money for police means they can play their part in that work around family harm. I tell you what, when police are going to more than 100,000 incidents of family harm a year and actually going in there, they are more often than not going in and sorting the situation out as it is and trying to do the follow-up work, but then they are on to the next one. Having these extra police will fundamentally mean that they can embrace the social investment approach, which means working more extensively with other professionals to get the right support in at the right time and over a longer period. It is literally going to save lives.

This Budget means an additional 74 specialist investigators for child protection and sexual assault. That work is really hard and, unfortunately, necessary, so we are putting those people and those specialists in place as they are needed. It means 12 more mobile policing units—these are cool. They go around your district, they literally get into communities, and they are doing preventative work, they are doing education work, and obviously they can also be deployed when you need a larger number of police in an emergency situation. Having 12 more of them means that all of New Zealand will benefit from those mobile policing units being able to get out there and around.

There has been a bit of talk lately about police pursuits, and that comes up from time to time. It is a tricky one. It is safety first, and no one wants to see police pursuing people in a dangerous manner that leads to a loss of life or to injury. But, equally, you cannot not do pursuits, because otherwise people will know that they can take off and that the police cannot chase them and it will be all right. Having a 24/7 Eagle helicopter is the answer to that, at some level. So this Budget is actually going to be paying for the Eagle helicopter, which can then be looking at those vehicles that are taking off, amongst other things, and ultimately stop those police pursuits, which can be a bit dangerous, because you have got that eye looking after them.

I have got a lot that I could say about policing. Equally, I have got a lot that I could say about tourism and the $100 million in infrastructure spend that, colleagues, is coming to a community near you any day now—any day now. Already, 14 projects have been funded. We have got more than 20 in the mix, with $5.5 million, and I can tell you I am so looking forward to working with local government and those local tourism operators on how we spend that money.

But it is the Family Incomes Package that I want to end on in the couple of minutes that I have got left. I mean, I was the Minister for Social Development for quite some time, and then, even as Minister for Social Housing, I worked with that accommodation supplement. I will be the first to tell you that I struggled with it, because it is expensive to give people extra money into their pocket, but so necessary. You know, through the global financial crisis, we could not do it. We had to maintain benefits, but we could not get that extra, which, quite frankly, people needed.

That extra money in the accommodation supplement is going to make a huge, huge difference for those families that need it most. The Opposition can ignore it. It can pretend that we have not delivered and keep saying that this is not actually delivering for New Zealanders, but those New Zealanders know what a difference that even 40 bucks a week can make, let alone—for some of them—well over $100 a week, for those who are worst off. Yes, the tax thresholds make a difference, but man, those Working for Families changes will help those who have got children and are really struggling to make ends meet.

But let us not finish on what I say, for my short time as I stand here talking about this Budget. Let us instead finish on some other people’s words. This is not just a Budget that has prioritised family. This is not just a Budget that has prioritised public services. This is not just a Budget that has dealt with infrastructure, and roading, and broadband, and health, and education, and the list goes on. This is a Budget that is actually delivering for everybody.

I will end with the words of others. Business New Zealand said: “Business welcomes the spending on transport and tourism infrastructure, help for exporters and co-funding for greater research and development through Callaghan Innovation. This is judicious investment in high-growth areas of the economy.” Murray Brewer from Grant Thornton said: “The Government is cutting income tax for individuals to provide greater rewards for low and middle-income earners, and this will support long-run economic performance.”, and the Salvation Army said: “Budget 2017 delivers a substantial boost to low-income working families.”

I am incredibly proud to be part of this National-led Government, I am incredibly proud to be a colleague of Steven Joyce’s, and I congratulate him on his first Budget, and what an outstanding job he has done for New Zealanders.

Can I start by thanking a few people for this Budget. I would like to thank, firstly, my predecessor in this role, our Prime Minister, Bill English, because I would not be able to give the Budget that I have given this year without his hard work leading the finance team over the last 8 years. Can I thank too my parliamentary colleagues and ministerial colleagues for the work that they have done in putting this Budget together. Can I thank too the businesses and workers of New Zealand, who have built this economy so that we get the opportunity to make the decisions that we have made in this Budget.

Since the Budget, I have listened very closely to the speeches and to the commentary on the Budget, and there have been some very interesting reactions. Paula Bennett has given some of the reactions to the Budget that have been mentioned, but, of course, there have been reactions in this Chamber, too.

I have to say some of the more interesting reactions have been from the New Zealand Labour Party members in their comments on the Budget. We have seen a succession of days when they have been—how can we put this generously—road-testing some reactions to the Budget. For example, they started off by saying: “If you only look at the tax part of the Family Incomes Package, then it doesn’t work and some people don’t actually succeed.” They then realised that, actually, people would look at the whole package, so they turned around and said “If you look only at the independent earner tax credit and don’t look at anything else, well, then, people do not win out of that.”, and some people do not—well done to the Labour Party. Then those members said: “If you don’t look at anything but Working for Families, then you will find some people who don’t win out of this package.” Then they said—and this was on about day five—“If you only look at the accommodation supplement changes, then you’ll see some people who don’t win out of this package.”

I have got a hint for the Labour Party. The clue is in the name. It is a package—it is a Family Incomes Package—and you look at the four pieces and how they work together. That is how you do it.

Actually, to be fair, I think the New Zealand public clicked on to this pretty quickly. They clicked on to it within about an hour of the speech being done. There were others who clicked on to it pretty fast—the Green Party, for example. It worked it out. It was able to vote for the Budget, and it was able to vote for the package. In fact, the New Zealand First Party clicked on to it—it was later that same day. It was able to vote for the package.

Only the Labour Party did not get it. The New Zealand Labour Party is still trying to work out how to react to this Budget. In fact, I think this is the strangest thing. It was so busy trying to work out its attack lines that the party of Michael Joseph Savage—the New Zealand Labour Party, we are talking about; the party of Michael Joseph Savage—managed to vote against lifting the incomes of low-income working people and low-income struggling people. It managed to vote against that, and I just cannot believe that. What sort of convoluted logic applied in the strategy room of the New Zealand Labour Party that it landed up voting against this package?

But that is OK, because it managed to do some other things that it got a little bit wrong as well—there is more. The New Zealand Labour Party is in a parallel universe at the moment, where it sees a $7 billion investment in public services—$7 billion more in public services—as being somehow a cut. That is its current plan. It is to announce it as a cut. It actually thinks that $3.9 billion more in health—the biggest increase in health spending in 11 years—is somehow a cut. That is ridiculous, the New Zealand public know it is ridiculous, and, actually, that is not the way the New Zealand public view this Budget.

This Budget is a Budget that is—oh, the countdown clock is now correct. This Government, in this Budget, is investing in the future of this country. It is investing in the public services for a growing country, it is investing in the infrastructure for a growing country, and Labour is still focused on the issues that do not matter—now, notably, the speech clock. That is what the New Zealand Labour Party is now focused on. It is the clock in this Chamber. Once again, those members have had weeks of opportunity to actually focus on things that matter to New Zealanders, and here they are, on the final night of the Budget debate, focused on the sort of silly stuff that they focus on all the way through, with Grant Robertson and his schoolboy debating antics. That is how they ended up voting against the Family Incomes Package.

I am proud that this Government has had the opportunity to invest in public services for a growing country in this Budget. I am proud that it has had the opportunity to invest in infrastructure for a growing country in this Budget—infrastructure that will mean we spend $32.5 billion over the next 4 years investing in the infrastructure of this country. I am proud also that this Government gets to invest in a Family Incomes Package that, in particular, looks after the opportunities for low and middle income New Zealanders, as well as actually giving all hard-working New Zealanders a return on their investment in this country.

I am also very proud that we get to do all three of those things in one Budget. There is only one reason that we get to do that in this one Budget, and that is the hard work of a whole lot of Kiwis over the last 8 years as they have taken on the challenge of the global financial crisis, as they have taken on the challenge of the challenge of the Canterbury earthquakes, as they have worked hard, and as they have saved and scrimped and done the hard yards to ensure that this country—not this Government, but this country—gets the opportunity to make some investments in this Budget here in 2017. This country has taken on the job of being responsible fiscal managers, it has taken on the job of running a good macroeconomic economy and running a good focus on supporting New Zealand companies, and, as a result of that, people have the confidence to invest, to grow, and to add jobs for New Zealanders, so that this economy actually grows and it delivers a dividend for New Zealand families.

I was most proud and most privileged on Budget night to be able to stand and watch the television and see those Kiwi families saying that this was a good Budget for them, that this would help them bring up their families, and that this would make it easier for them to succeed in life. It is not the whole answer—it is just one Budget—but I tell you what, those families made me proud. They made me proud of the New Zealand companies and the New Zealand workers who have worked hard to give those families the chance to do better in the years ahead. That is what it is all about. That is what coming to this Parliament is all about—helping New Zealanders succeed.

I am proud that not just this party and not just our colleagues in coalition but even the parties of the Opposition that were smart enough to work it out—the Green Party and the New Zealand First Party—have stood up in this Parliament and said they support a dividend from growth for hard-working Kiwi families. That is what this Budget delivers. It delivers for New Zealanders, and I am privileged to have had the opportunity to present it to this House. Thank you.

Members, the question is that the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition be agreed to.