Address in Reply

I move, That a respectful Address be presented to Her Excellency the Governor-General in reply to Her Excellency’s speech.

Ko wai rā te ta-ngata nei, ko wai?

Ko Tū pea, ko Rongo pe-a, aku matāra!

Tahia te kī, tahia te wānanga, he aro mā ki te hē,

aro mawhiti, ko mawhiti kura, ko mawhiti awa.

Ko te wehi ki te whare,

he whare mātahi e hui te rangi ora e tū ake nei ki runga,

ūhi, wē-ro, hara mai te toki,

haumi ē, hui-e, taiki ē!

Ā, ko te mihi tuatahi, ki tō mātau Matua Nui i Te Rangi, ā, ko ia te tīmatanga, ko ia te whakamutunga o ngā mea katoa. Ā, Te Whare Mīere, Te Whare Pāremata, ā, Te Whare i manaaki nei i ōku tūpuna o nehe o te rohe o Te Waiariki, ā, tū mai rā, tū mai rā!

Ki ngā mate huhua o te rohe o Te Waiariki o nā noa nei puta noa i te motu, arā, ko tōku kuia, ko Annie Lucy Coffey, kātahi kua wehe ki Te Pō i tērā wiki i Wanganui. E kui, moe mai rā ki Te Pō oti atu ai, e oki, e oki, moe mai rā!”

Ka huri ki te kanohi ora hurihuri noa i tēnei Whare, ā, tēnā rā kōtou katoa! Ko Tamati Coffey tōku ingoa, ko au te mema Pāremata mō te rohe o Te Waiariki katoa, nō reira, mai i te waka o Tauria Mai Tawhiti, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui: e Te Whare mihi mai rā! Mai i ngā iwi o Mātaatua waka, Ngāti Pūkenga, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Manawa, Ngāti Whare, Ngāi Tai, Te Whakatōhea me te iwi Upokorehe: rau rangatira mā, mihi mai rā anō! Mai i ngā iwi o Te Arawa waka, ko Ngāti Whakaaue, Tūhourangi, Ngāti Wāhiao, Ngāti Rangiwewehi, Ngāti Pikiao, Tapuika, Ngāti Moko, Waitaha, Ngāti Tūwharetoa-ki-Taupō, Ngāti Tūwharetoa-ki-Kawerau, Ngāti Tahu, Ngāti Whaoa, e te kāhui o tēnei Whare, kai te mihi, kai te mihi, kai te mihi. Nōku te hōnore nui, nōku te whiwhi i whai wāhi ahau ki roto i tēnei Whare hei māngai, mō te iwi o Te Waiariki, nō reira, tēnā kōtou katoa!

Ka huri i nāianei ki te reo parāoa, ka māramatia katoatia nei te okooko o te taringa ki aku kōrero, tēnā rā koutou, tēnā rā koutou, tēnā rā tātau katoa.

[Who indeed is this person, who is it?

It might be Tū and Rongo, my obsidians!

Clear away the saying and the knowledge to be heeded by the wronged,

a quick glance, a feathered and furrowed one!

Let the awe be to the house,

a first one where assembles the healthy sky that stands upright above,

cover and jab it, come forth the adze.

Join up, gather together, it is done!

The first acknowledgment is to our Great Father in the Sky; He is indeed the beginning and the ending of all things. Therefore, to you, the Beehive, the House of Parliament, the House who took care of my ancestors of the Waiariki electorate in the past: arise, stand up!

To the many and recent deaths of the Waiariki electorate and throughout the country, namely my grandmother Annie Lucy Coffey, who has gone to the void just last week in Wanganui. Oh, elderly grandmother, sleep there in the void, rest, rest, and sleep there forever!

I turn to the living throughout this House, acknowledgments to you all! Tamati Coffey is my name, I am the member of Parliament for the whole of the Waiariki electorate, and so from the canoe of Tauira Mai Tawhiti and Te Whānau-ā-Apanui: acknowledge us, the House! From the tribes of the Mātaatua canoe, Ngāti Pūkenga, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Manawa, Ngāti Whare, Ngāi Tai, Whakatōhea, and the people of Upokorehe: acknowledge us once again, esteemed ones of a hundredfold! From the tribes of Te Arawa canoe—Ngāti Whakaaue, Tūhourangi, Ngāti Wāhiao, Ngāti Rangiwewehi, Ngāti Pikiao, Tapuika, Ngāti Moko, Waitaha, Ngāti Tūwharetoa-ki-Taupō, Ngāti Tūwharetoa-ki-Kawerau, Ngāti Tahu, and Ngāti Whaoa—we acknowledge, greet, and thank you, the collective of this House! The great honour is mine to be able to participate in this House as a representative for the Waiariki tribes, therefore, my appreciation to you all.

I turn now to the language of flour, so that what the ear scoops up from my comments will be understood totally, and so I acknowledge, applaud, and commend you collectively, and my appreciation to us all.]

My name is Tamati Coffey, and as the new member of Parliament for the Waiariki, I bring with me the hopes and the aspirations of all Māori who live scattered across my electorate. It’s my job to advocate for them in this House, to ask the questions on their behalf, to create positive change for them, and to fight for opportunities that will get them ahead.

The Waiariki is a large electorate covering six general electorates, and I maintain that it is the most beautiful electorate in New Zealand, where the birds fly over the misty rugged mountains of Te Urewera, of the Kaimai Ranges, of the Mamaku Ranges too. They glide over the panoramic beauty of our lakes Taupō-nui-a-Tia, Te Roto-rua-nui-a-Kahumatamomoe, and the pristine and untouched lake Te Waikaremoana te kaukau a ngā tipuna [the bathing place of the ancestors], to name but a few.

Our birds soar high above the sandy beaches from Mount Maunganui in the west to Papamoa, Maketū, Ōhope, Ōmaio, and the many other beaches that we prefer to keep secret. Our creatures roam the soils, which grow our forests, and our bees pollinate the flowers of our kiwifruit vines, which keep our country alive. Our rivers are both a source of food and a source of fun, all at the same time. So while I bring the luxuries of our rohe to the House, I also bring our concerns too. And they go a little something like this: Edgecumbe/Pahipoto have sent me here to make sure that we don’t forget about them. There was damage and devastation when the Rangitaiki River flooded and broke the stopbanks, and I’m here to say they still need our help.

Te Whānau-a-Apanui have sent me here to make sure that they get the new school that they were promised, because the last Government closed down three of their schools on the promise of a new one—that was a while ago. I’m here on their behalf to say that Te Kaha would like their school, please.

Kawerau have sent me here to ensure that our new Government follows through on getting forestry going again, so that towns like Minginui and Kaingaroa and Murupara can prosper once more, and Murupara would also like the new Minister for Sport and Recreation to know that they’d like some lights for their rugby fields so they don’t have to train under the lonely light outside the clubhouse.

Tauranga Moana have sent me here to help them navigate the tricky cross-claim process with Hauraki iwi. They asked for help and I pledged that I would advocate for them: mana moana, mana whenua, mana tangata [sea, land, and individual jurisdiction].

Ōpōtiki have sent me here to find the funding for their aquaculture development that they so desperately need to create jobs and industry for their people. So to the Minister for Regional Economic Development, Shane Jones: I hear you’ve got some money; I’m ready to talk when you are.

In Ngāti Tūwharetoa, they’ve finished their settlement process and they want to take advantage of whatever opportunities there are for them as well. And although the ariki, Tā Tumu te Heuheu, can’t be here today, he sends his regards too.

And then there’s Rotorua that have sent me. In Rotorua, our whānau need houses—emergency houses, State houses, big houses for whānau and small houses for our kaumātua—to buy, to rent. Homelessness isn’t what we want for our people, but it’s what we’ve inherited, and I’ve been put here to help those people get their mana back.

These are just a few of the issues that I bring from my region, and they’ve chosen me as their representative, and I carry their issues, their kaupapa, right here on my shoulders. These may or may not be the issues that define my time here in Parliament, but if I’m able to leave here knowing that I helped tackle some of these issues on their behalf, then I’ll leave a happy man.

Although I stand here representing my electorate, my story starts about half an hour’s drive from here, at 6 Welch Grove in Taitā, Lower Hutt. And to understand how I make decisions, you should understand the world that I grew up in. You see, I’m the son of factory workers, who grew up in suburban Lower Hutt around a sea of Labour. We played basketball at Walter Nash Stadium. My sister played touch rugby at Fraser Park. Everybody had a Labour-built State house, and some were lucky enough to capitalise on the family benefit and buy their own, just like my mum and dad.

Our neighbours, the family over the fence, the Collins fanau—fanau with an “f”, because they were Samoan—always looked beautiful in their outfits as they went off to church every Sunday. It was a multicultural community that I grew up in and we were better people for it. We were also a union family. My dad was a union rep for the Amalgamated Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, my mum for the Service and Food Workers Union. My dad did the night shift, working from 7 p.m. at night till 7 in the morning at his factory out in Seaview, and my mum worked at Unilever in Pētone, starting at 8 o’clock in the morning and finishing at 5.30 in the afternoon. They worked long, hard hours and for not much money. But it was through them that I learnt the value of hard work.

They always told me that they worked hard so that I wouldn’t end up on the factory floor beside them. They saw education as the key to success, which was a privilege that they never had. Although, it never really mattered to my mum, because she always says that she was educated at the school of hard knocks and still to this day scowls at university graduates that think they know it all.

It was a beautiful upbringing, but I wouldn’t be lying if I said that we were a humble whānau that lived from pay packet to pay packet. I was the first in my whānau to go on to university and while I was there I studied both politics and history, which I was to find was pretty much one and the same. Having not been brought up in a Te Reo Māori - speaking household, I still became the president of the Māori Students’ Association, and I started working in local government for the Auckland Regional Council in the iwi relations unit. My desire to enter politics started then. It was my wish to make sure that past wrongs were made right and that I became a soldier for social justice.

Life took a small turn at that point, when I was thrust into the national spotlight after landing a dream job on live national kids’ TV. Therefore, I was also the first celebrity in the whānau too. But that part of my life has been played out in living rooms all across New Zealand, so it’s nothing that I intend to cover here.

They say that in politics, timing is everything. In 2014, I stood in the Rotorua general seat, and, long story short, it wasn’t my time. Following that, I set up a small business in Rotorua, which allowed me to see the reality of what owning a small business in regional New Zealand was really like—and, let me tell you, it’s tough.

One day I was given a tip-off by an older, very intelligent person, who told me the story of a man who stood for the Rotorua seat and also lost, and then he changed the electorate—he stood for the Eastern Māori seat, and he won it. He held the seat for five terms and also became the Speaker of the House. So Sir Peter Tapsell was my inspiration for persevering. He mihi aroha ki a ia me tōna whānau, ā, moe mai rā e koro.

[A loving tribute to him and his family, so rest there indeed, oh elderly man.]

So here we are, in 2017, and the timing is good. I come in at a time when Labour is fortunate to be leading the Government and New Zealand. We have new life and a new, beautiful, intelligent, female Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, who, I’m proud to boast, is younger than I am—and I’m only 38. I’m fortunate to be walking in alongside 18 new MPs in Labour, and I’m proud to be one of 13 Māori MPs in the Labour Government caucus. Our people wanted more Māori representation in Parliament, and I’m happy that they’ve chosen us to be their voice here in the hallowed halls of power.

My whakapapa spreads far and wide. I’m a Faulkner from Tauranga, I’m a Ngamotu from Taupō, and I’m an Ehau from Rotorua. I’m also a Glover from Tolaga Bay, and I’m a Coffey from Taranaki. I come to Parliament to be a voice for New Zealand at the highest decision-making table in this land. I will be a voice for the people of my electorate, but I will also be a voice for the many young people out there who need a role model and need some guidance. I will also be a voice for those Māori that are still trying to find their place in the world. I will also be a voice for those 80 percent of Māori who don’t speak their own language and who are often made to feel less Māori than those who do. I will be a voice for the kura kaupapa Māori kids in my electorate who want an active role in looking after our environment. I will be a voice for workers like my mum and dad, who only ever wanted the best for their kids. I will be a voice for the LGBT community, who need someone to make sure that we’re making young gay kids into the best possible kids that they can be. I will also be a voice for the union movement—and do we need a living wage? Hell, yes. Let’s treat our minimum wage workers with some respect, starting with their pay packets. This country is my passion and it is my home, and I’m here to make New Zealand the best little country in the world.

I can’t finish this without acknowledging my beautiful immigrant husband, Tim—Timmy, widely known as. Thank you, my love, for everything that you do for me. I love the life that we lead. It’s a rollercoaster, but it’s infinitely more fun with you. Let’s have some kids some time, eh?

Hai herenga i te kete kōrero, kai aku nui, kai aku rahi, e ngā hau e whā o te motu, koinei aku kupu. He whakataukī mutunga māku, ā, “Whaititiri ki te rangi, ko Te Waiariki ki te whenua.”—like thunder is in the sky, so is the Waiariki rohe down on the land. Hoake tātou; e tau ki raro. Ka pai!

[To tie up the comments kit, to you, my illustrious, my innumerable, and the four winds of the country, these are my words. My closing aphorism is, “As thunder is to the sky, so is Waiariki to the land.” Let’s go; let’s do this. Good!]

Waiata

I second the motion that a respectful address be presented to Her Excellency the Governor-General in reply to Her Excellency’s speech.

Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. Mr Speaker, tēnā koe. First, may I offer my congratulations to you on your election. To the Prime Minister, tēnā koe. I offer you my congratulations and my thanks. It is under your strong leadership that we have found ourselves forming a strong, proactive, and durable Government. I also want to thank you for your personal encouragement. I remember a conversation we had when you visited Timaru close to a year ago now. The kind words of encouragement you gave me really made me believe in myself and that I had something to offer and knowledge to share, and now here I am today. I would also like to offer my congratulations to the new Ministers.

It is with immense pride and honour that I stand here in this House with all of you. What a privilege we have been given by the people of New Zealand to represent them and their hopes and dreams for the future. May we make decisions wisely, ensuring that we keep the people of New Zealand at the heart of every decision we make. We must remember that we are not here for our own personal gratification but to serve the people of our nation who have put their faith in us to make New Zealand a better place.

I am the eldest of three girls born to Jim and Margaret Thompson in Rotorua. I had a happy upbringing. Dad was a builder and Mum was a stay-at-home parent. We shifted around a lot for Dad’s work. I had lived in four different towns by the time I had turned 10—Rotorua, Paeroa, Whakatāne, and Gisborne—but the majority of my time growing up was in Gisborne, where I attended St Mary’s Catholic primary school and Campion College, and, finally, Lytton High School.

My parents owned their own home with the help of the State Advances Corporation scheme, and we were able to survive on one income. We weren’t rich, by any means, but we had the security of our own home and always had food on the table and wonderful gifts at birthdays and Christmas. Those things now seem like privileges to many families. I hope to make them normal, achievable expectations during my time in this House.

I shifted to the South Island in 1996 and live in the Rangitata electorate in a township called Hinds, where I owned and, up until recently, operated a small business, an early childhood centre. I established the business in 2008, and we have been growing from strength to strength, even extending the premises to keep up with demand.

I employ nine amazing staff, and I am so very proud to also be a living wage employer. Owning a business, particularly in a rural area, does not come without its challenges, and it hasn’t always been easy. However, one of my greatest commitments has been to be a living wage employer. It is possible to be a successful small business and pay an increased minimum wage, and even a living wage. A living wage allows families to support themselves better, to pay the bills, to put food on the table for their children, and to live with some dignity. I will always support that principle, for all of those reasons.

Together, small businesses employ the greatest number of New Zealanders, and their presence in the regions is the difference between survival and poverty for many. My experience allows me to contribute with some first-hand knowledge to any discussions about economic development in the provinces. I look forward to being able to contribute to this Parliament as a living wage employer and small-business owner, to ensure that we constantly recognise and acknowledge the role small businesses play in the economic landscape of New Zealand.

The Rangitata electorate is made up of four main towns—Timaru, Temuka, Ashburton, Methven—and several smaller townships, with Hinds being one of them. It is a beautiful place to live, with hunting, fishing, skiing, lakes, and the gorgeous Caroline Bay right at our doorstep. It is the agricultural hub of the South Island, if not New Zealand. But before I talk about that, I want to acknowledge the former member of Parliament, Jo Goodhew, for all the work she did for the electorate. I also wish to acknowledge Rangitata’s newly elected member of Parliament, Andrew Falloon. Thank you for being so good-natured along the campaign trail. I enjoyed our banter at the candidate meetings, where we joked about which one of us was likely to be slaughtered that night and about the copious amounts of water we drank. I wish you well.

Rangitata faces several challenges, with some very different to other parts of the country and some not so different. One of the big challenges is the difficulty finding people to fill the numerous jobs available there. We rely heavily on migrant staff, and that is why I am so supportive of this Government’s policy of developing a regional skills shortage list. A national, blanket list does not work for our region. Our needs are different to those in Auckland and other cities, and I commend this Government for recognising this and being proactive in its approach to this issue.

Bringing people into Rangitata and paying them decent wages will help us all grow economically, will offer the goods and services that people require in provincial New Zealand, and will develop cohesive and caring communities. We need the skills to keep our strong economy moving along, but it is important that we look to encourage our young people to train and undertake the jobs available in our regions. It is time to actively promote the regions and invest in them properly in order to make them thrive and be places that people want to move to and settle down in with their families. Investment in infrastructure is needed. Roading and better connectivity is vital for our businesses and communities to grow. These issues are not just campaign issues, but living, breathing, everyday issues.

Becoming an MP is not a pathway I intentionally headed down, but it is a result of the many directions, twists, and turns that my life has taken. My background is in education. I qualified as an early childhood teacher, and went on after some years to run my own childcare centre. I am extremely passionate about education and, in particular, early childhood education. As a centre owner, I have seen first hand the issues we are faced with. We need to focus more on quality rather than quantity for our youngest learners. This is largely my motivation for putting myself forward as a candidate, but it is not solely about that. I want to see our tamariki thrive. I want to see child poverty eliminated in my time here. I want every child who comes through my preschool door, or any other preschool or school, to grow up with the same opportunities as the child next to them, regardless of the type of job their parents do or where they live.

I said I wanted to see our tamariki thrive. Too many of our young people are living in despair, suffering depression or other mental health issues, and unable to ever see a positive future for themselves. This has to change. Our beautiful young people need to know that they can look to us to be a Government that shows kindness, compassion, empathy, and support. I want our young people to grow up with a sense of hope, to know that they can be that shining light, and to stand up and be whatever they dream they can be. We will give them the opportunity to have a world-class education that will set them in good stead for whatever direction they may take in life.

Education has enabled me to get where I am today. It needs to be free and accessible to everyone. It is the one thing that overcomes every disadvantage with which a child might begin life. It could mean the difference between living a decent life and contributing to society in a positive way, and ending up in our overcrowded prisons. Whether it is first, second, or third chance education, it remains the most transformative influence in our lives, and that transformation benefits everybody, not just the well-educated individual. To that extent, education at any level is a public good. Education, commercial entrepreneurship, decent wages, appropriate health services that are available when they are needed, and security for families are issues dear to my heart, arising from my own experience and values.

I want to take the opportunity to thank some people who have been an integral part of my journey to Parliament. Thank you, firstly, to the voters—the people who voted for the Labour Party and who voted for me. Thank you to the Rangitata Labour electoral committee and local Labour branches. I acknowledge your support, fund-raising efforts, and friendship. To my fantastic campaign team, Glen Cameron, Phil King, Marie MacAnulty, Carol Brown, Janine Watkins, John Everist, John Gardner, and Matt Luxton, and to all our awesome volunteers, I owe you a huge amount of gratitude.

I want to acknowledge the Christchurch Labour team and the Hon Megan Woods, Poto Williams, and the Hon Ruth Dyson for all your wonderful support, and to the Hon Damien O’Connor, who offered me his words of wisdom and warm advice—in particular, the advice he gave me when I phoned one day to talk about my nervousness about addressing a particular group at a candidate meeting. His advice: “Harden up.” So I thank you for that. It is advice I will always remember.

Maryan Street, you have been worth your weight in gold as a mentor. You have been invaluable. I don’t just consider you as a mentor anymore but also as a friend, although I will still harass you often for advice.

To my new colleagues and friends—“class of ‘17”—congratulations to you all. I am so lucky to be part of an amazingly talented team of people.

To my dad, Jim, whose political views are the complete opposite of my own, our phone conversations over the past year have allowed me to work on my debating skills, so I thank you for that. Thank you for your love, support, and encouragement. I love you dearly.

To my sisters, Melissa and Teresa, thank you for your support.

To my husband and family, who have put up with my absences over the campaign and now you do it all over again, I thank you.

To our children, Levi, Kelsey, Matt, Ollie, and Cam, I do this for you and for your children in the future. I want to leave this place knowing that I have given it my all and that New Zealand is a better place for it.

My husband, Matt: you are my rock—my greatest support. You have been there for the highs, the lows, the tears and grumpy moods—and yes, there’s been a few of those. You encourage me when I need it and push me to believe I can do it. I know this hasn’t been easy for you, but I am so thankful to you. I love you.

To my stepdad, Tony: I adore you and thank you for all your support.

I especially want to acknowledge my mum, Margaret, who, due to her health, can’t be here today, but I know she is watching. I dedicate my maiden speech to you. I am who I am today because of you. I have watched the battles you have so bravely fought over the years and continue to fight now. You are the strongest, bravest, most determined person I know. Nō reira, tēnā koe e taku whaea. Aroha atu.

[And so to you my mother, thank you. Love you.]

I hope I make you proud.

I move, That the following words be added to the Address: “That in the context of a strong economy and strong government books the government be held to account for its progress based on improvements it delivers for New Zealanders beyond the impressive achievements of New Zealand in the last decade. They will be held to account for delivering economic growth faster than is forecast. The rate of job creation faster than it is occurring. Growing real wages faster than the last nine years. Reducing debt and maintaining surpluses and reductions in poverty and benefit dependence rates and those supported by the previous government’s Family Incomes Package and its programme of social investment. The Government will also be held to account on progress for lifting the number of new houses built and first home buyers assisted, lifting measured improvement in water quality, lifting Māori and Pasifica NCEA achievement rates, lifting numeracy and literacy levels in year 8, and reducing reoffending and substantiated child abuse.”

Mr Speaker, I’ll come back to the substance of the amendment in time, but can I congratulate you on your election. As I said yesterday, you have the opportunity in this unique MMP Parliament to be Parliament’s man. It is absolutely clear already that the speed and complexity of the Government’s programme is going to require strong parliamentary scrutiny, if only to save the Government from itself—as we saw yesterday—but, more importantly, to ensure that the legislation that it passes through this House does, in fact, benefit New Zealand.

In that context, I agree with the comments, Mr Speaker, you made earlier this year about the role of select committees, and the unique situation we now have with four or five—five, I think—select committee chairs with the Opposition. That is a capacity we will use responsibly and robustly. Can I welcome, in particular, the new members to this House—those of all parties, in fact, but particularly our own new National Party members. Coming into Parliament in Opposition is actually a better opportunity than coming in, in Government. You will develop fast and enjoy the experience.

Can I congratulate the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and Deputy Prime Minister, Winston Peters, on forming a unique MMP Government with the consequence of a unique MMP Opposition. I note, reflecting the uniqueness of the Government, they have kept New Zealand First and the Greens far enough apart that they hope each of them will forget the other is there. In that context, we do look to the Greens, in particular, to be true to their kaupapa of being monitors of the procedures of Parliament, because when a Government comes in with a new programme they do want to push this place pretty hard, and I suspect this Government is looking for a lot of urgency. I note that the Greens in the past have always opposed that, and this is their opportunity through this term of Parliament to demonstrate consistency with the many statements I have heard from them over the last 20 years that they’ve been represented here in Parliament.

Can I particularly, for the benefit of the Prime Minister, acknowledge the privilege it is to become Prime Minister. I am one of those who know that privilege, and the Prime Minister will be experiencing the great respect New Zealanders have for the office of Prime Minister. Equally, they expect the individual in that office to earn the respect for themselves, and I wish the Prime Minister well in that task. And it is an indication of our goodwill. We also wish the Prime Minister and her team well in the job she has to go and do just in the next day or two at APEC to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is really important for New Zealand and for the stability of the Asia-Pacific region that that agreement is completed. We understand the new Government has domestic policy concerns it has to meet, and it does have the job of making the trade-offs required to achieve what is a complex and demanding agreement but one that is critical, given the general level of global instability.

The Government will, of course, in carrying out its programme as laid out in the Speech from the Throne, have the benefit of starting with a country in great shape. New Zealand is more confident and more aspirational because of all the efforts and good government over the last 10 years. But we have found, just as indicated by the Speech from the Throne, the Opposition is more aspirational about New Zealand than the Government is. We have greater confidence in New Zealanders’ ability to maintain their economic strength and deal with long-running social and environmental challenges than the Government has, and that is going to be one of the distinguishing arguments of this term of office. We fundamentally believe in the ability of individuals and families and communities to know what the problems are, to grapple with them honestly, and solve them where they can.

What we heard this morning in the Speech from the Throne was the fundamental belief in the power of Government to do good; the fundamental belief in the good intentions of Government. And they don’t even know that that’s a completely different thing, and I’ll come back to that in some detail. But the Government needs to keep in mind that the kind of New Zealand they are inheriting is the result of an accumulation of a whole lot of decisions over recent decades that have made us a confident country, open to trade, investment, and migration—confident that we can handle our path in the world and bring everybody along on that journey. That has become a comparative advantage for New Zealand. It’s one of the reasons why so many people have stopped leaving and so many people want to come here—because we’ve had the cohesion and stability of a country that has been able to continue to make progress, and I’ll talk about some of the measures of those.

The early indications from the Government are that they believe so much in their own rhetoric that, rather than try to build on that progress, they want to fritter it away. That’s the early indication. Well, we are here to hold them to account, to ensure that all the hard work done by New Zealanders—not just in the last 10 years but previous to that—building this confident, aspirational country is not frittered away, that it turns into real gains for every New Zealander who wants the opportunity to be able to realise their dreams.

So we heard it this morning, a speech dripping with good intentions. We are not going to hold the Government to account about its intentions; we share many of them. It would be a bit difficult to find many New Zealanders who didn’t, which is precisely the danger of relying on your good intentions, and this is a Government that does. I have heard the Prime Minister say it. I have heard her say, when you’re leading the pack “intention is reality.” Well, no—reality is reality. Reality is homes and businesses and individuals who need decisions that are going to enable them to realise their dreams. Well, here’s a good example, just from the last couple of days, of good intentions. Let’s go to Australia and show them how firm and fresh the new Government is by talking about retaliation for their tertiary fees policy. Well, that was the intention. Guess what actually happened: Australians found out we’re offering them free domestic tertiary education in New Zealand.

Now, some of my best friends are Australians, and I would have to say New Zealand is now less credible. We went to push back and we got rolled over. That’s actually what’s happened. So that’s the gap between intentions and reality. Well, of course, the reason we’re in this position—I guess it wasn’t intended; I agree it’s the product of the free tertiary education policy, which is just a wrong policy. If you look at the needs of today’s young people, the next half billion would certainly not go on helping lawyers and accountants get through university more cheaply. It certainly would not. And I hope the Government enjoys explaining to the checkout operators and the truck drivers why they are paying more when the tax cuts are abolished—paying more to make tertiary education cheaper. Well, here’s a simple question for the Government: what will be achieved from that half billion, apart from giving Australians free tertiary education in New Zealand? Well, all we’ve heard is it will “make New Zealand more prosperous”. That’s it. Well, I am waiting and would be interested to hear the answer about what that is. So that’s the good intentions.

Well, we’re going to have to look in detail about how those good intentions roll out, because there are some benchmarks these days. People want Governments to work for them. So here are a few—here are a few: 2.6 million people in work, more than ever; the third-highest employment rate in the world—in the world. The last two years have seen job creation at the rate of 10,000 per month. Now, I can concede it could be better. Well, let’s see. Let’s see if the rate of job creation is going to pick up—if the rate of job creation is going to pick up. And, by the way, what’s a “quality job”? I heard the Minister of Finance talking about, “We don’t want low-quality jobs; we want high-quality jobs.” Let’s find out what a high-quality job is, because the Government’s going to have to do a high-quality job.

So the Government says it’s going to do better. It’s going to do better. OK, there are 60,000 fewer people in benefit-dependent households today than there were five years ago. Let’s just see what happens. Let’s just see what actually happens with those numbers. The gender pay gap—well, it’s just dropped from 12 percent to 9 percent. So the test is: can it drop faster? Can it drop faster? Well, we will see. We will see whether it can drop faster. More houses—31,000 building consents. Housing matters; people need houses. In the last 12 months there have been 31,000 building consents. I assume the Government wants to be held to account for delivering more—more than that. [Interruption] Don’t you get the sense that they’re already thinking this sounds a bit unfair? Don’t you get that sense? Well, it’s not. It’s not.

OK, incomes. The Government’s talked about incomes, and when they talk about incomes, of course they generally mean some incomes—well, some particular incomes. Well, let’s see how that goes. The average annual wage is now at $60,000. It’s gone up 28 percent in the last nine years, twice the rate of inflation. Well, it needs to go up faster for a Government that’s promised higher incomes; that has to mean faster real wage growth. Let’s see what happens with faster real wage growth, because New Zealand is ahead of Australia, the USA, Japan, and the UK. They’re getting a lot of their ideas from the UK, apparently—zero wage growth since the global financial crisis.

💬 Hon Steven Joyce: Zero.

Zero. So we’re doing a lot better than everybody else. So let’s just see how that goes. And they’ve got to do all of this and reduce debt and maintain fiscal surpluses. The Government accounts just came out yesterday. Government debt is $59.5 billion. It used to be lower. We ran up debt rebuilding Christchurch, cushioning the economy through a recession, so let’s see what happens to that number. Let’s see what happens. Let’s see whether debt goes down. We answered questions for years about whether the nominal level of debt should be dropping. Well, let’s see. It starts at $59.5 billion.

Let’s move on to one or two others. Child poverty—now, this is going to be interesting, because, you see, we have a Government who think that all you have to do to reduce child poverty is decide you don’t like it and have the intention to reduce it. That’s what they think. OK, well, we’ve ticked off “Don’t like it”. I think everyone agrees on that. We’ve ticked off “We’d like to reduce it”; that’s the intention. Now the question is what they are going to hold themselves to account on for actually achieving for actual children—like, real ones in real households. Well, there’s already quite a bit of work in train. They’ve got an incomes package coming along. They’ll cancel the tax cuts—the right of a new Government—and implement their own package. I think the figures are that that will reduce the number of children living in a household below half the median wage by around 50,000.

But here’s the benchmark. In the campaign, we said we’d reduce that number by another 50,000 within two or three years, because under good fiscal management the country could do it. Well, on the face of it now, that Government can’t do it and meet the fiscal constraints that they—not us; they—imposed. So there’s the benchmark. Can they reduce it by 100,000 from today? Because there was a plan in place to do that, just on that income measure. Now, you can argue about whether it would actually have happened, but let’s be aspirational. Why can’t they say, “We could do what the National Government said it would do.”? Or maybe that’s not aspirational enough; maybe they want to do more than that. Well, we’ve got the Prime Minister getting up in a couple of minutes to tell us what is going to be the legislated child poverty target, and there are a whole lot of different measures, so she’s got to pick one.

💬 Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern: There won’t just be one.

Oh, there are going to be several, so that you can shift around—oh, yeah.

That brings me to the other half of the poverty equation, and this is somewhere where we will also hold the Government to account. New Zealand under the last Government developed the best tool kit in the world for understanding the context and culture of poverty and disadvantage. It has the label “social investment”—that’s the label it has.

💬 Hon Dr David Clark: It’s never been implemented.

Well, I disagree with that. The Government needs to understand that higher incomes are part of what you need to reduce poverty, but the other part of it is to create some stability and framework in a household, with a family working with someone they trust in order to have the behaviours that can sustain the benefits of better incomes or getting into a job. The sad reality is that the work done by the previous Government shows a hard core of chaotic, very challenged households where they need individual attention. But you know what the Government’s doing already? It’s going to give away—it said so in the paper yesterday or today—the tool kit that enables you to know who those families are. So, oh yes, great intentions—“We’ve got great intentions. We want to help these people. We’re just going to make sure we don’t know who they are.”

The case in the New Zealand Herald today—Marie, is it?—the domestic violence death, Marie. It’s the same story—the one we tried so hard to fix, and this Government could fix if it starts where we left off. It is a case where a terrible death occurred when lots of people knew a bit of the story, and if someone had known the story they would have stopped it. That is what social investment delivers, and if the Government gives that away, they will cost children and families a start in life and, in fact, in some cases, their lives—in some cases, their lives. So I just say to the Prime Minister: we will back her on child poverty, provided she gets over Labour’s problems with social investment and uses the tool kit with the intention for which it was meant, and that is to assist our most vulnerable.

That is going to be a challenge for them, because there’s a whole lot of other ways of telling, so I just want to ask them this. We had a target there for reducing hospitalisations for children under 12 with preventable conditions. That’s built into the system. Is the Prime Minister going to get rid of it?

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: Is that an intention?

No, no, no. [Interruption]

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! I just want to remind people in the galleries of something I know well: you’re not allowed to intervene.

Or the one that’s in place for the reduction of substantiated child abuse? Here’s a test for the Labour Party.

💬 Clayton Mitchell: Why don’t you talk about predator-free?

I think you should listen to this, because right now there are public servants all around Wellington putting their feet up on their desks, leaning back on their chairs, and thinking, “Thank God we don’t have to think about what we actually achieve any more. All we’ve got to do”—this is what they’re thinking—“is keep the Minister happy. Shovel the money out the door and it doesn’t matter too much what actually happens, because the Government has already said it doesn’t want to know.”—it’s already said it doesn’t want to know. Well, the point of those targets, which we accounted for, for five years—about what actually happened—we measured it, published it for five years. So here is the challenge to the Prime Minister. Please tell us she’ll keep that system, because if she gives it away, 25 percent of the economy loses its focus on actually achieving things and will fall into the Labour trap of just shovelling the money out the door. I could go through any number of those.

💬 Hon Member: Attack, attack, attack.

Yeah, attack. Here’s one: housing—housing. [Interruption] No, listen to this. Apparently, first-home buyers are really important, so here’s the first question. Are the 100,000 KiwiBuild houses additional? Is that over and above? [Interruption] OK—we’ll get the answer to that sometime. The Labour Party have chosen a policy—[Interruption] Hang on. The Labour Party has chosen a policy that helps fewer people than the existing HomeStart scheme—fewer people. HomeStart was going to do 80,000 first-home buyers over the next four years. The latest figures I’ve seen say KiwiBuild will do 16,000, and I don’t think they’ll do that. It sums up the differences. You see, the Labour Party want people to be grateful that the Government built them a house. So the bureaucracy will decide where they are, what they look like, and then they’re going to run the ballot where you’d feel lucky if you got one, and they’re going to do this at scale. HomeStart gives them the cash to go and find their own house, and—better than that—it’s not luck. You can earn your way to it. You know the criteria; if you meet them, you get the money, and then you get the house. But they want to run it differently—they want them to be grateful for getting a house built by the Government.

You see, what’s at the heart of the policy is not actually the individuals and families; it’s what Labour would prefer as the delivery mechanism. That’s their driver, and it’s always the Government system. We’re going to be the only country in the world, I think, reliant on a State-owned monopoly for social housing. No-one else does it. Why? Because it doesn’t work in the long run.

But here’s another example. If children really are at heart of what the Government’s on about, why are they abolishing national standards? Why? Parents didn’t ask them. Kids didn’t ask them. The only people who asked them to do it were teacher unions. We agree with progression reporting, but if you want progression reporting, it’s got to be based on a standard, and I’m just saying to the Minister: don’t re-enact the shambles of the start of NCEA where they tried to have assessment with no standards. That’s exactly where you’re headed. I’m warning the Minister right now. He’s in for two years of torture, not from us but from the system.

But the core of it is this: we don’t care about the average or the sample. Parents say, “My child’s not average. My child’s not a sample. I want to know about my child, and I want a report on my child, and I want to know that that report means something.” It can only mean something—[Interruption] Well, actually, national standards work best for those kids for whom public education matters the most. There’s never been more attention on Māori and Pacific achievement than in recent years, because the standards showed us the truth. We were honest, we wanted to know it, and we wanted to grapple with it. The Government has already decided to hide the truth—to hide it because it’s inconvenient and, more importantly, because you have to change things to get it fixed.

Well, here’s another challenge. I invite the Prime Minister to go to Vanguard School and stand in front of those kids and tell them the Labour policy, which is that they’d shut them down if they could, and then ask them her famous question—ask them her famous question. Say to them, “But how do you feel?” Ask the 15-year-olds, in the letters, “How do you feel?”—the young people whose lives were turned around because it’s just a little bit different, that school; one of half a dozen, or 10—just a bit different. Not every kid fits the mainstream system—that’s reality. Reality is what a 16-year-old says about what changed their life, and if the Prime Minister doesn’t go there, then she never really meant it, did she? She never really meant that those children were right at the heart of the Government’s considerations, because 15-year-olds know.

I know what they’ll tell you. They’ll tell the Prime Minister, “That’s changed my life”, and she’s going to have to say “I don’t care. You’re wrong. Your parents are wrong. Your teachers are wrong. You, aged 15, whose life is better—you’re wrong, and we’ll shut you down if we can.” Well, maybe she can do it. Let’s wait and see—I’m looking forward to it.

One other issue that was debated—I’d say, on partnership schools, just don’t go backwards. Don’t steal from the kids who depend on—

💬 Hon Members: Oh!

Well, if they’re doing badly—here’s the other question for the Prime Minister: if they’re doing badly at their State school, what are you going to do about it? And I don’t mean your intentions; I mean this child in this school—what is the Government going to do about this child?

And here’s one that’s just a bit off the social issues, and that’s fresh water—much discussed. The Government will be forced to follow the policy of the previous Government, because, again, with fresh water they think it’s just a matter of political choice—you just choose to have high-quality water. OK, so here’s a measure, or two measures. One is: we will track the measure of quality in the Avon River in Christchurch—right? The measure of this Government’s success is the Avon River in Christchurch. And one other: the number of spillage days of raw sewage and stormwater into Auckland Harbour. According to the mayor, it’s 160—an event you’d be prosecuted for in rural New Zealand. So we’re going to track it, and I wonder, if you can just choose fresh water quality, then that will be better by next Christmas. So there’s a benchmark; next Christmas, we’ll go back and have a look, and see if they chose it or not. I know what their intentions are—that’s to clean it up—but let’s just see what they’re going to do about it.

There’s so much that we could talk about from that Speech from the Throne, but, as I’ve outlined, good intentions aren’t enough. New Zealand’s done so well—it’s done well—and we are going to hold the Government to account on two things. One is maintaining the strength and vigour and resilience of the New Zealand economy, because however you measure it—whether it’s jobs, it’s incomes, it’s improvement in people’s lives, or it’s opportunities and dreams. Secondly, we’re going to hold them to account on their own social policy, and I don’t think we’ll have too much trouble embarrassing them, because it’s pre-internet. These are people who haven’t thought about it. They’ll be held hostage by lobbyists and laziness, and so many vulnerable New Zealanders need us to keep their feet to the fire.

Today is a new beginning. It’s a new beginning for you as our Speaker, and I congratulate you again, Mr Speaker. It is a new beginning for this Parliament. It’s a new beginning for our new members, and I acknowledge Tamati Coffey and Jo Luxton for your wonderful introductory maiden speeches. I am incredibly proud of each and every one of you and the fact that you will be joining an already incredible team of representatives in this House.

But it’s so much more than that. It’s a new beginning for everyone who hopes to own a home of their own. It’s a new beginning for our children. It’s a new beginning for our education system and for our health system and for our environment. And on this side of the House, it’s a new beginning for a coalition Government.

Perhaps it would be more accurate though to say that this is a Government that is, yes, both a coalition Government and a realisation of the alignment of three parties who, while we come from different perspectives, share important common values, policies, and intentions. At its core, this Government believes that our people come first, that our environment is a precious taonga, and that we must reject the narrow selfishness that has pervaded our politics for far too long.

I want to specifically say to Winston Peters and the New Zealand First Party, I thank you for your decision to back a Labour-led Government. As coalition partners, we know you will bring strong advocacy for all New Zealanders, but especially those in the provinces longing for a Government that gives them a fair go.

To James Shaw and the Green Party, we know that your forthright advocacy for the environment has shifted the entire political discourse in New Zealand. I am so pleased that you now have the ability to keep driving that work and other important work in this Government.

To my Labour colleagues, new and not so new, I am so delighted to be here with you on this side of the House. We have fought long and hard to get here. I know we will make the most of the opportunity, and indeed the privilege, that we have in front of us to make New Zealand an even better place. It is a new beginning for this most MMP of Governments, but it is founded on the oldest of ideas in our democracy—that a Government represents the will of the majority of our people. We are committed to respecting that will.

It can also be a new beginning for the new Leader of the Opposition. I acknowledge the Leader of the Opposition and the important role you have, and I understand the Opposition’s desire to defend their record. I would simply remind them that in defending their record they must also defend record homelessness. They must also defend dirty rivers and lakes. They must also defend inequality, and yes, child poverty. So, by all means, defend the record of the last nine years while we get on with fixing it.

Before, however, I move on to my more substantive comments, I do want to reflect on some of the Leader of the Opposition’s constant rhetoric in a couple of areas. Allow me to vent some frustrations, if you will, particularly around the issue of tertiary education and, more to the point, this Government’s policy of extending free education into the natural next step, and that is post-secondary.

The Leader of the Opposition has continually claimed that a checkout operator will be paying for others to learn. At what point did the Leader of the Opposition lose his ambition for New Zealanders so much, that that checkout operator themselves could not aspire to go on to tertiary education? At what point did that checkout operator themselves not have children that they have aspirations for too? I can tell you that on a checkout operator’s wages, you’d be hard-pressed to save for the fees required. This Government has aspiration for the checkout operators of New Zealand, and we are proud of that, and we stand by them. I say to those checkout operators, having been one myself, “You too could become a Minister of Finance or, indeed, the Prime Minister of New Zealand.”

I also want to reflect on the rhetoric that the Leader of the Opposition has used to refer to lawyers as being the only ones who will take up the ongoing year of free education. Again, this demonstrates to this side of the House how out of touch they have become. One-third of school-leavers go on to university. The rest will become our builders, our plumbers, our electricians. This policy is as much—nay, I would say, more—about them than it is anyone else. It is about furthering education. It is about this Government’s belief that education should be about lifelong learning. Education, if we are to succeed, will not be a destination but it will be a constant movement for each and every one of us through our lives. That is why one of the short-sighted decisions of that last Government will be overturned by this one, and that is returning night schools to New Zealand.

Finally, the Leader of the Opposition talked about his willingness to cooperate on child poverty, if we continue to collect individual client’s data through our social agencies and our NGOs. It sounds like the trade-off that he gave to NGOs as well. The difference here, on this side of the House, is that we have listened to those concerns. Yes, we will be an evidence-based Government. Yes, we will use data in the way we inform policy. But we will not do so in a way that jeopardises individual people’s privacy. When domestic violence groups tell you that what you intend to do puts a service at risk, this Government will listen, and that is the difference in the way that we will govern.

On education, the Leader of the Opposition made reference to this Government hiding data. Well, here’s a wake-up call. National standards, if that indeed is the data that we’re apparently hiding, are neither national nor standard. Our intent is to provide information to parents. But, again, we will listen to the evidence. We will listen to our educators, and we will do best by our kids, and that means dumping national standards. If you want to talk about hiding data, then there will be a lot of time in this House to talk about what we’ve discovered in the school properties portfolio, but that time will come.

So yes, on this side of the House we do have intentions. We have many intentions. I was pleased to see the Leader of the Opposition discovered some intentions on child poverty. It’s a shame that it only happened a few weeks ago.

Members, as I always argued during the campaign, winning is not the final destination; it is just the start. It is the moment when the faith that voters and the public have placed in you as a party is actually tested, and it’s tested every single day for three years. Now, the Opposition have a role to play in the testing side of the ledger. I know that role well. I know it a little more than I would’ve liked to have known. I know how important it is that we be held to account, that we be questioned, and that we be cross-examined—that we say what we mean and we do what we say, and we be challenged if we don’t.

But knowing all of that about the role of Opposition, I want to say this: no one will hold us to account more than we hold ourselves. Every day this team will remind ourselves of why we are here and who put us here. The moment we forget that is the moment that we are gone. Secondly, we intend to challenge this Parliament too. I’ve often said I would like to do things differently. I’m going to start on a few issues dear to my heart. There should be no politics, for instance, in child poverty and child well-being. It should be a source of pride for all of us to strive to be known to be the best place in the world to be a child. That does mean I will take up the Leader of the Opposition’s offer. I will extend to the National Party and to ACT the chance to work together on tackling those issues that matter most. What they do with those offers is, of course, each party’s call. But sometimes, in the people’s Parliament, Opposition is about more than being oppositional.

We believe there is a larger role we can play too, as the people’s Government. We believe in using the power—here it comes—of the State to achieve things together that we cannot achieve alone. We believe in using the power of the State to do things for the common good that the private market cannot, because when you’re in the Labour Party with a long history, the State is not a dirty word. It was the State that gave tens of thousands of New Zealanders an affordable home. It was the State that put generations of young people through high schools and universities. It has been the State that has protected people from poverty in old age. These are all things to be proud of.

There are moments in time when we recognise that things could indeed be better, and it’s time we did that again. There is a difference. We do need to do things together. Of course we will not shy away from our leadership role, nor will we ignore the voice of our communities. We know that many of the ideas and challenges that we face, and the spirit to seize the opportunities of an ever-changing world, actually lies in our NGOs, iwi, educational institutions, businesses, and backyard workshops. Our job is to be a partner, to be an enabler, and to be a champion for good ideas wherever they are found, even if they’re found over there. Ultimately though, whenever and wherever we face a new challenge, no one should ever be left believing that the problems we face are just too hard.

Market failure should not be closely followed by political failure too. That’s why it’s our job to step in when the housing market becomes dysfunctional. That’s why it’s our job to step in when our rivers are dying and climate change looms large. Just like it’s our job to know that when we act, social return is as important as a financial one. And that is perhaps where our greatest challenge will lie as Government.

Since coming into Government, I and my Ministers have been briefed by officials on almost every issue you can imagine, and I must say, at times, it has been sobering. It is clear from these briefings that we are facing almost a decade of chronic underinvestment, and it is also clear that it is far worse in some areas than we even imagined. The chronic underinvestment means our hospitals and our schools are groaning under the pressure of a growing and ageing population. It means our roads are gridlocked and we’ve inherited a widening gap between what needs to be spent—for instance, on public transport and roads—and what has been set aside by the previous Government. It is going to take my Government time to get these vital services and infrastructures back to where they need to be, but it is a challenge we will take on.

Our country is a wonderful country, but undoubtedly it could be better, and we will do what it takes to make it so. For too long, housing, health, mental health, our environment, child poverty, and the soaring prison population were put into the too-hard basket, and I do want to expand on that. I want to give you one stark example. During the campaign, we didn’t hear much on the soaring prison population, but we need to talk about it as a country now. It is simply not good enough that we have one of the highest imprisonment rates in the developed world and that Māori make up 50 percent of the prison population. It is not good enough that the prison population has gone up 28 percent since 2014—all this at a time when the crime rates are static.

This is a waste. It is a waste of lives. It is a waste of families. It is also a waste of money. I’m also going to be frank. If the prison population continues to grow at current rates, taxpayers will be forking out for a new prison, at a billion dollars a time, every few years. That previous Government knew it, and what did they do? And what did they do? The status quo is not good enough and we will not settle for it. And I happen to agree with the Leader of the Opposition: it is a moral and fiscal failure, but it was also a failure of that last Government.

We won’t settle for the status quo on housing either. We are under no illusions that the dysfunction in our housing market does indeed have deep roots. But New Zealanders deserve a home of their own. They should not have to pay extraordinary amounts of money to get one. And we have already acted. We heard for years from the former Government that helping New Zealanders into the housing market by banning foreign speculators from buying existing houses was too hard—that it would breach our international trade agreements. Well, guess what? It was all possible. Our Government, within days of gaining office, has banned foreign speculators from buying houses. It was the right thing to do.

It does go to prove what can be done with energy and a desire to get things done, and it shows that things can be done differently, and I promise you that things will be done differently. But it means meeting a massive social deficit with the investment it deserves, and then we will reap what we sow. I’m talking, for example, about the social return we’ll see from making that first year of tertiary education or training fees-free. I’m talking about the social return we’ll see from lifting student allowance and living costs for students. I’m talking about the social return we’ll see from requiring all rentals to be warm and to be dry so that our families are healthy and well. I’m talking about the social return we’ll see from the winter energy payment, from Best Start, and from increases to paid parental leave, because, after all, what better investment is there than investment in children, in families, and in homes? But the public doesn’t just expect us to make investments; they expect us to right wrongs. They expect us to even out the playing field, to stand up in the space that exists between what should happen and what is happening.

That is why we committed to reviewing our mental health services and making sure that people are getting the help and the care that they need when they need it. That’s why we will hold an inquiry into the abuse of children in State care. That’s why we will lift the minimum wage, and it’s why we’ll bring fairness into the workplace. It is even why we inflation adjusted Teina Pora’s compensation today. And that is why we will tackle child poverty.

Poverty is what a person is left with when all other options are extinguished. Now, I’ve often talked about it being a motivation for my entry here into Parliament and into politics, and it’s been what has kept me here too. I am happy for this Government to be measured on what it does for children, which is why we will legislate not just the measures we will use for poverty but the targets to reduce it too. And we’ll do that using a bill that I’ve had in the ballot for probably about six years now, to prove that we’ve long held the view that we need to measure and target child poverty.

I am also happy for us to be held to account, to show the public where we are now and where we have moved. I also want every one of those Māori seats, for instance, which we are honoured to hold, to ask us at the end of three years: what have you done to improve housing? What have you done to give our kids better prospects, to lift whānau out of poverty, and to build the relationships we need to do all of that together? It is an honour to lead a party in a Government that holds all of the Māori electorate seats and has the largest representation of Māori in any Government in our history. My pride is only matched by my sense of enormous responsibility to our tangata whenua. It will be our relentless focus to support Māori across the motu to achieve whatever they set out to.

There is a new beginning here too. The Hon Kelvin Davis will be our first ever Minister for Crown/Māori Relations, working alongside Nanaia Mahuta in her role as Minister for Māori Development also. The role that the Hon Kelvin Davis holds will look ahead as the major Treaty settlements come to an end and we move to the next phase, where we seek to see whānau, hapū, and iwi thrive and prosper.

We’re not only looking for better relationships, better outcomes for our kids, and better social returns; we are also looking for better financial ones too. We have set ourselves some rules when it comes to financial management. We called them the budget responsibility rules and they exist for this reason: we know, and we have always known, we cannot achieve the outcomes we aspire to for New Zealand without a thriving economy. But we’ve also never believed that a thriving economy required some of the trade-offs that the last Government seemed happy to make. We will not make progress by suspending problems. We’ll not make progress by standing back and waiting for problems to go away. That is why we will resume contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, because that fund has been an unqualified success and we intend to make the most of it.

It’s why we are absolutely committed to resolving the housing crisis and taking a multitude of steps and levers to make that happen. That’s why the mass Housing New Zealand sell-off ends. That’s why there will be a housing commission, there will be KiwiBuild, and there will be a tax working group. These measures aren’t a means to an end themselves. They are part of our solution because New Zealand deserves a different, better kind of economy: one with higher incomes, one that is more efficient, one that is more productive.

Over the past 30 years, the share of the economy going to wages and salaries has declined by billions of dollars. But have we seen the more robust economy that we were promised? Instead, we have a GDP per capita that is barely growing. We have too many kids who are unemployed now. Our economy has become geared towards speculation and extraction, rather than value-added exports. I want to see an end of the race to the bottom on wages. You can only go so far working longer and longer, harder and harder, squeezing more out of your workforce. Low wages aren’t simply a problem for low-wage workers, though. They’re a problem for businesses. They’re a problem for the economy as a whole. I want us to have the kind of economy where businesses are able to compete on innovation, on offering the best product, not by keeping wages low. But I’m under no illusion that this is why we need to do things differently. We need to build partnerships that involve the Government, business, employers, employees, and we need that now more than ever.

Astonishingly, a child born this year may well live to see the year 2117. It’s a huge challenge to imagine how different that world might look: a world where robots have left billions without work, perhaps, to take just one popular dystopian example. But a more optimistic point of view might ask: if so many people today are doing jobs that hadn’t even been heard of 50 years ago, is it not possible that in an automated world the opportunities will be as wide as those that followed the factories and the mills and the industrial revolution? And is it not possible that a Government that takes an active role in exploring those future possibilities might help transform our economy to take advantage of them and to make sure they are widely and fairly shared?

This Government believes, without question, that it has a role to play in asking these questions, and looking ahead and formulating ideas for a changing world. We did it with the Future of Work; we’ll keep doing it as a Government.

And those ideas must extend to every challenge of our future, particularly the ones that future generations come up against. The environment, for example, is in too precarious a state for us not to take action. We cannot afford one more degree of warming, not if we want to, hand on heart, tell our Pacific neighbours that we did everything that we could to not just be advocates—to not just be advocates—but that we ourselves took action on the challenge that is lapping at their feet and at ours. So yes, under this Government there will be a zero carbon Act. There will be an independent climate commission. There will be action on climate change. This will not be done by edict. It will be done instead in careful consultation with communities, particularly those that will be affected, and we’ll ensure that we assure them of the just transitions that are needed.

But, of course, as much as change will have to happen simply to ensure that we protect the environment, there’s also undeniably enormous economic impact. This administration has committed to exploring economic possibilities for green economic transformation. I acknowledge James Shaw and the Green Party for the work I know that they’ll do alongside us in that area.

We’ve also agreed—all of us in this governing arrangement—that New Zealand needs to measure success differently. We need to move beyond narrow measures and the views of value, and broaden the scope and definition of progress. Our economic strategy will focus on how we improve the well-being and living standards of all New Zealanders. This Government will develop a comprehensive set of environmental, social, and economic sustainability indicators to better show how we are going as a country. It will be world leading, and it will make us a Government of transformation. There will be a clear focus on sustainable economic development, supporting regional economies, increasing exports, lifting wages, reducing inequality, and there will in that be talking, listening, and proposing.

You know, I think when New Zealanders voted for MMP, it was clear that they had had enough of change being pushed through without discussion and consultation. I would suggest that one of the messages of MMP was on just that. So I warmly welcome that this election’s evolution of MMP has brought us to a necessary culture of cooperation. Every sector of New Zealand society—every party, every organisation, every individual—can play their part. We’ve had, as the saying goes, nine long years to watch and weigh our options. We take up our role now with clear plans, with clear strategies—strategies we will communicate with New Zealanders every step of the way.

It is possible. It is possible for us to have the kind of debate that brings New Zealanders with us. But I do acknowledge that New Zealand has changed. It’s not quite the place it used to be. Some people feel more isolated, less connected. It’s possible for us to live in our own familiar pockets and have very little experience of the lives of other people in cities and towns, suburbs and communities. The less well we know one another, the easier it is to make false assumptions and have less inclination to support one another. I believe the kind of Government we have just formed is a good example of the kind of cooperation we need to see more of. And perhaps there is no better thing to help us find common ground than knowing what we are capable of.

We aren’t afraid, as a nation, of problem solving, even if our solution is different to everyone else’s. We are fair minded. So now, with all those values in mind, we need to have a plan, one we can feel proud of, one we can get behind. This Government has a plan. We do not just have intention; we have a plan: one to build a better New Zealand with decent homes for all, with the schools and hospitals we need, with an environment we can cherish, and with decent, well-paying work for our people—one we want to build together.

I cannot fix the housing crisis alone, but we can together. I cannot end child poverty alone, but we can together. I cannot generate higher incomes alone, but we can together—together, alongside NGOs, businesses, council, iwi, and other community groups. Each and every one of us has a role to play in building a better New Zealand. I’ve always said that I believe what unites us is stronger than what divides us, and the campaign only confirmed that to me.

So here is my final promise to all New Zealanders. Whether you voted or not, and no matter who you voted for, I will be a Prime Minister for all and this will be a Government for all. I hope we can focus on what unites us, rather than what divides us, because there is so much to do. We can be better. We will be better. And this is our chance to prove it.

Before I call the next speaker, I would just like to remind members of the rules of the House with regard to taking photos. While members are allowed to use their phones in the House, they’re not allowed to use them either for phone calls or for taking photos. I decided not to interrupt the two previous speakers when that was happening, but I make it clear that it was discussed by the Standing Orders Committee and, like a number of decisions there, it was contested, but the decision was that photos could not be taken.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a privilege and an honour to be able to stand and speak on behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister—our leader—the Rt Hon Winston Peters, and that I do today.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Could we, first of all, congratulate the Rt Hon Trevor Mallard on his election as Speaker of this House. Congratulations also to the new Deputy Speaker and the Assistant Speakers. We look forward to maintaining the harmonious relationships that have begun, and to which we are accustomed. We want to congratulate all the MPs who have been elected to this House, whether newly elected or returning and, most especially, my colleagues from New Zealand First.

We in New Zealand First are greatly appreciative of the support we received across the length and breadth of New Zealand—from Kaitāia in the Far North to Stewart Island in the South. New Zealand First voters signalled that they had had enough. We here in New Zealand First heard their message. It informed our subsequent negotiations, and then our decision to enter into a coalition with the New Zealand Labour Party. We will not forget our voters or their expectations of us over these next three years. In many respects, it was a difficult campaign for all of those parties not labelled Labour or National. We all felt the squeeze as the media chose to frame the election contest as a straight two-horse race, which it was not. So let me pose this question: how, after our eighth post-MMP campaign and election, can the political media still be lagging so far behind the reality of New Zealand’s multiparty politics?

But in another respect, we could call the 2017 general election the “keystone election”. Former Prime Minister Sir John Key’s decision to abandon National—as we knew he would—left it vulnerable to his lieutenant’s judgments, and so National ended up running around during the campaign like keystone cops. Self-styled campaign maestro, the Hon Steven Joyce, tripped up in a hole of his own fevered imagination—a pretty slight, indeed, just like his pretty legal defence of lifting Eminem’s music from three years earlier.

The decision by National to tell the public to cut out the middleman was designed to kill us off here in New Zealand First. Well, that short-term tactic, the electoral arm of National’s all-pervasive “short-termism”, didn’t succeed, and New Zealand First and the country has emerged the stronger for it.

But enough of the past—well, almost—maybe. New Zealand First ultimately succeeded because National was tired. It was tired of the public. It was tired of criticism. It was tired of cooperating with anyone but its mates. The maestro’s strategy was always going to lead to a cul-de-sac. All could see it, bar the honourable member and his colleagues. But for the remnants of its third-to-last victim, the hapless Colin Craig and his Conservative Party’s nearly four percent, National had no more votes left to feed on, so its electoral fuel was spent. So National put themselves there, where they now sit.

The campaign also revealed that Labour leader, Jacinda Ardern, had a personality and had skills that voters found refreshing and appealing and encouraging—the Prime Minister has some serious game. The rise in support for Labour that followed the Prime Minister’s elevation was historically significant. That is a fact we are now very happy to acknowledge, even if at the time that it was happening we felt somewhat less inclined to do so.

MMP is about learning how to compete hard for a party vote share within an overall strategic framework of cooperation with like-minded parties, so that once the dust has settled separate parties with unique identities can come together in the public’s interests. During our history of proportional representation, parties that have remembered that wisdom have succeeded. The parties that haven’t remembered it have only repeated their same old mistakes. On election night, with still over 15 percent of the vote to come in, the media once more fell over themselves to declare the Government formation a done deal.

The public, however, understood better than their fourth estate that the election night result was only a provisional one. There was no panic. There was no capital flight. In fact, New Zealand seemed to survive it all right. The sun kept rising in the morning and setting in the evening, and the All Blacks carried on winning in our absence. The people went about their business undisturbed. No one fainted during the tiny window of uncertainty while our democracy’s votes were fully counted, at least not on this side of the House. Then once the final results were declared, with each party now being delivered its final hand of cards by the people, the process of Government formation began.

We in New Zealand First entered into negotiations with National and Labour in good faith. We maintained that good faith throughout with both parties, and we will continue to maintain and honour the confidentiality agreements that we made. We believe that good faith was reciprocated. Our focus was then, as it is now, on policy. We wanted as a coalition partner the party that would share our policy vision going forward. We knew we couldn’t win everything, but we wanted to work with the party that, having committed to an agreed-upon policy vision, would work with New Zealand First to translate it into action, to make New Zealand a demonstrably better place. We wanted as a partner the party that, like us, believed in the potential of all New Zealanders from all walks of life to be the best that they can be.

This positive view of the New Zealand people, their strength of character in good times and in bad, their resilience, their hope every single day for their children to do better, be better, and reach higher than they had, was always on our minds as we worked through negotiations, policy area by policy area. For far too many New Zealanders, the neo-liberal forces of the past three-plus decades are seen as having left too many of their countrymen and women powerless to shape their own futures.

In another similar age, when wealth was also grossly unequal, the same forces of avarice, greed, and rampant inequality saw individual pitted against individual in a Darwinian struggle for economic survival. Brother was arrayed against brother, father against son. The warmest ties of love and fraternity were disregarded. In that previous gilded age, old leaders were cast aside when they refused to give expression to the sentiments of those whom they would lead, and new leaders sprung up to give direction to the cause of freedom—and I’m thinking of a few on that side.

In reaching the decision to join in our two-party coalition with the Jacinda Ardern - led New Zealand Labour Party, the New Zealand First Party found in Labour the party most willing to share our vision of building a more prosperous, fairer New Zealand to help restore old verities. Our party is committed to making this coalition work. Our supporters in the wider New Zealand public need it to. That is also our track record.

The New Zealand First Party’s word is our bond, and we have given it. We ask for the same in return. We acknowledge here too the confidence and supply agreement entered into between Labour and the Green Party. While we in New Zealand First come from different traditions and ideas, we share a love of land, of the sea, of the air, and that is a solid foundation for our majority moving forward. And make no bones about it, we are the majority, supported by over 50 percent of the voting public.

The Speech from the Throne outlined the goals we have set for ourselves for the next three years. It is a challenging but realistic programme that will bring to a halt the prolonged nine-year period of drift under the previous Government. Instead of avoiding the hardest problems, the coalition will confront them. Instead of denying that problems exist, the coalition will solve them. Instead of cronyism, we’ll have the enthusiasm and confidence to bring everyone along with us, because all of us here share the same ambition to forge a better country. We believe the people will be with us.

The coalition agreement between Labour and New Zealand First reinforces our commitment to effect transformative change. The regions are our primary focus, because provincial New Zealand has missed out for far too long—nine years too long. We are proud to play our part in restoring vital infrastructure. We will work with the regions to identify and prioritise how best to utilise our investment approach. The $1 billion per annum regional development fund will fuel provincial growth. It’s a significant investment, and we are proud to have secured that. New Zealand First has also secured the commitment to regionalise some Government services, such as the New Zealand forestry service. But we will not wait for people to catch up with our active approach. Our sense of urgency will drive us, and our commitment to a new planting programme—a hundred million trees a year, one billion over a decade—will have a triple purpose; a triple purpose. It will help regenerate the regions; it’ll help create vital jobs and new opportunities for any who want to work. Our initiative also links directly to the Government’s actions on climate change.

New Zealand First also secured as part of its regional development strategy a rethink into the country’s wider port strategy, examining whether the Ports of Auckland should be moved to Northport near Whangarei. It was noted in the Speech from the Throne. There is also a win-win strategy at play here: more vital infrastructure, more jobs for the regions, and freeing up capital development in Auckland’s most sought-after real estate.

The Labour - New Zealand First coalition has taken bold and wide-ranging choices across a large number of policy areas. We are proud to have played our part in securing an immediate rise in the minimum wage, rising to $20 per hour by 2020, and we will tackle the scourge of homelessness head-on. It is not right that in this bountiful and beautiful country of ours we have economic refugees sleeping in door fronts.

We support also the move to help New Zealand’s most vulnerable people, our mentally ill. There has been too much neglect, and it stops now. We will help people to buy an affordable home and create more choices for our young through educational or vocational opportunity. We will support all of these policies, and more, that aim to restore dignity and opportunity. We are very proud to confirm that a new-generation SuperGold smart card will be introduced. New Zealand First is pleased to help older New Zealanders, who have contributed so much to their country, through a free annual health check and an eye check, as well as other new entitlements and concessions that will come with that smart card. Probably one of the smartest things that is going to happen in this Government is that we’ll be looking after our elderly.

Younger New Zealanders, after nine years of enormous opportunity costs, billions and billions of dollars forgone by National—we’ll see contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund restored, protecting older New Zealanders by safeguarding the provision of superannuation at 65, alongside of restoring super fund contributions. It offers greater intergenerational fairness than from the previous Government.

The Hon—and this is from the Rt Hon Winston Peters—Ron Mark, Minister of Defence and Minister for Veterans, will ensure future defence procurement is of high quality, giving taxpayers the assurance that their hard-earned dollars, their hard-earned taxes, are being spent wisely, while also providing funding certainty and greater rigour to assist defence with their vital planning forward. We will also ensure that the interests and well-being of the men and women of our New Zealand Defence Force, and the veterans who have served our country, are once again heard within the heart of Government.

The Hon Tracey Martin, in her role as Minister for Children, will work closely with the Prime Minister to help lift children out of poverty. As the Governor-General so eloquently said, if we put child well-being at the heart of what we do, then the well-being of all New Zealanders will be lifted. We have to do better—it’s a moral imperative.

The Hon Shane Jones will drive New Zealand First’s and the coalition’s regional strategy. He will also, in his role as Associate Minister of Finance, work with the Minister of Finance in the upcoming review of monetary policy.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Rt Hon Winston—and, by crikey, aren’t they so pleased to have him back over at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, eh?—will be working tirelessly to advance New Zealand’s interests. Whether with our near neighbour Australia, in our home in the Pacific, or beyond, we will be unapologetic about helping to create opportunities for our exporters, whatever opportunity lays, be it in bolstering trade opportunities in the Commonwealth, the post-Brexit European Union, or with Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, customs union—oh, yes: crisis, what crisis? We will ensure that in any future trade agreements that this coalition Government launches, the protection of New Zealand’s sovereignty and its ability to determine its own future, free of coercion by global entities who care nothing for us, is front and centre.

Last but by no means least, we share the sentiment from the Speech from the Throne: we stand with the families of Pike River. We are already working closely with the Hon Andrew Little on honouring our commitments to those families. We understand our moral obligation, and we will not shirk our duty and our responsibility to them.

New Zealand is a nation whose values have been forged by a long history of shared sacrifice with like-minded nations. Those traditions will be respected in the deepest and most tangible ways. We are also an independent, sovereign country, an energetic people whose best days are still ahead of us. It may be a cliché, but it is nonetheless true that there is nothing wrong about New Zealand that can’t be put right by the best of New Zealand and its peoples. Democracy matters, but it only flourishes when we treat it with the reverence it needs to flourish.

For too much of the last nine years, democratic processes have been ignored or abused. No more shonky processes. The coalition intends to enhance the integrity of our electoral processes and to ensure that Parliament’s processes better reflect multiparty politics—I’ll say that again: that they better reflect multiparty politics. We will also ensure, as a matter of priority, that the make-up of Parliament continues to reflect the expressed preference of voters.

As we said on the day that New Zealand First made its decision to enter into a coalition with the Labour Party, there were great risks in whatever decision we took. We could’ve taken an easier choice, committing to only a slightly modified status quo. The markets, whether financial, political, or in the media, would’ve approved. Our egos would’ve been stroked. We would’ve been called wise and pragmatic. But we chose a harder path—a harder path, one of regeneration and change. We could’ve gone for the baubles—no, actually, we couldn’t. Policy gains drove us from the beginning, and they pointed us in a more challenging direction.

We do not for one second, however, resile from our choice. We are pleased we made it. Change was required. Change is happening. Change is here. The Labour - New Zealand First coalition firmly stands here to represent people who are equals before the law. There will be no favourites. We want business to understand the needs of the poor, just as we want Kiwi battlers to understand the contribution of business in creating opportunities for work and prosperity. We are all in this together equally. To paraphrase what was said long ago, the man who is employed for wages in Kerikeri is as much a businessman as his employer. The lawyer in Feilding is as much a business person as the corporate counsel in Wellington.

The merchant at the crossroads store in Rotorua or Sanson is as much a business person as the financier in Auckland. The Southland farmer—who goes forth in the morning, toils all day, begins in the spring and toils all through summer, and, by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of this country, creates wealth—is as much a business person as the futures trader or the ticket clipper in the city playing roulette with other people’s money.

We are entering a challenging phase of history, and we need to carry the best of our traditions forward even as we strive for new understandings. We are looking forward to it. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

Kia tau te rangimarie o Te Rangi e tū nei, o Papatuānuku e takoto nei, o te taiāo e awhi nei, ki runga i a tātou. Tīhei mauri ora! E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. Ki a koutou huri noa i Te Whare, ngā mihi o te wā ki a koutou katoa.

[May the peace of the Sky Father standing here, Mother Earth lying here, and the embracing environment be upon us. Behold the breath of life! Salutations to you, Mr Speaker. Acknowledgments of the moment to you all.]

I’d like to start today by acknowledging our new Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. I first met Ms Ardern about 10 years ago in London, when she was the newly minted president of the International Union of Socialist Youth, and straight off the bat, I asked her if they still let socialists into the Labour Party these days. Clearly, she has forgiven me, because otherwise she would’ve never made me her Minister of Statistics. I did ask for that—I did ask for that, in more ways than one.

Anyway, not too long after that, she had to head home to New Zealand to become a member of Parliament, where her values and her shrewd judgment and her warmth and her empathy gained a much wider audience. So “Jacindamania” did not come as a surprise to me, but it was only truly after this election, during the negotiation process that led to the formation of this Government, that I came to appreciate just how formidable those qualities are. They played a key role in forging the bonds of respect and trust that bind the parties that form this Government together. This is—and it’s been said before—a true MMP Government, and I can assure the people of New Zealand that its leadership is in good hands.

I’d also like to acknowledge the Deputy Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, who also knows a thing or two about negotiations, and his colleagues in the New Zealand First Party. Our parties, as has been documented, do not agree on everything, but we do agree—as has not been documented—on far more than we disagree, and we do look forward to working with them over the course of the coming years to find common cause and to deliver the best for New Zealand in what will be a historic and transformational Government.

I would also like to acknowledge the Rt Hon Bill English and his horde. Although we disagree on, you know, everything, I do respect Mr English’s service to his country and the fact that his party was nearly as popular after nine years in Government as it was when it was first elected. I expect National to be a formidable Opposition. I welcome that, because I believe that our Government will be better for that. So, you know, we were off to a good start yesterday, with Simon Bridges flexing his muscles, which he works on so hard in the gym every day, and we look to see more of that in the future.

It is 27 years since the Green Party was first founded, with the goal of bringing the principles of ecological wisdom, social responsibility, appropriate decision-making, and non-violence to New Zealand politics to solve the problems that traditional politics could not. It has been a very long and a very winding road, but today the Green Party has arrived in Government.

I’d like to pay particular tribute to the long-serving founders of the Green Party and, in particular, Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons. It was their courage that set us on this path, it was their vision that guided us, and it was their strength that sustained us. I know that their eyes are on us, weighing our actions and holding us to the highest ethical standards of behaviour that they expect from their successors, and I know this because Jeanette Fitzsimons keeps telling me this. I’d also like to acknowledge our former leaders of the Green Party Russel Norman and Metiria Turei, and all of our current and our former members of Parliament. And I would like to thank our staff and our many volunteers, and all of those who stood as candidates, who voted for us, and who supported us. Our country and our world will be the better for your support. We carry your support and your work and your expectations with us into this Parliament, and now into Government.

On the night that the formation of this Government was announced, the Rt Hon Winston Peters said that “too many New Zealanders have come to view today’s capitalism, not as their friend, but as their foe. And they are not all wrong.” Two days later, our new Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, said that when it comes to housing the poor, capitalism had been a “blatant failure”. Now, I agree with both of those statements, but I know that many in this House do not, and some of their supporters do not. They believe that the Government should not interfere with the economy. They believe that people’s life outcomes are the fair and just results of market forces and that what they earn is a fair and true reflection of their value in the economy. They believe that government cannot create value and that government is not the solution to the problem; it is the problem. That has been the prevailing view expressed in this House earlier.

Amongst many politicians and economists in this country and across much of the developed world for the last 30 years, our politics, our economy, and our society have been dominated by a belief in the efficacy of free markets, but there is a fatal flaw at the heart of that argument: you cannot exclude government from the market, because it is the Government that enables the market to function. To say that you want a free market without Government interference is like saying that you want a house but you could do without the roof or the walls or the floor, which is perhaps why so many Kiwis are living in cars these days.

The State creates and enforces the laws by which our economy functions. When people say they want less government in the economy, what they’re really saying is that they want different rules, and usually they’re saying that they want different outcomes—ones that favour themselves and the interests that they represent. But they’re also trying to create the illusion that the economy can be neutral, that it can be fair, and that it can be impartial, when what we’ve had in New Zealand in recent years is anything but that.

What we’ve had is an economy with high inequality, low wage growth, low productivity, and runaway inflation in our housing market; an economy that has poisoned our rivers and threatens the extinction of thousands of native species; an economy that is failing to act on climate change; and an economy that is failing to deliver for far too many New Zealanders. And the market itself did not decide to do any of those things. Previous Governments set laws that allowed those things to happen. The market was an excuse for those Governments to hide behind while they did it, and to claim that the unjustness and the unfairness of the rules that they set were somehow fair and just, just because they were the will of the market.

Well, while the Green Party is in Government, we will be open and we’ll be honest with New Zealanders about our values and our goals. We are here to support families and to lift children out of poverty. We are here to save our rivers and our endangered species. We are here to solve problems that the market cannot, and the first and the greatest of those is climate change.

It is a great privilege and a great responsibility to be the first Green Minister for Climate Change and Associate Minister of Finance for the Green Infrastructure Fund. All of the things that we care about, whether it’s a better society, a fair economy, conserving our environment, or sustaining our future—all of those things intersect on this one issue, which is the gravest and the most formidable danger to our country, our society, our economy, and our environment that we currently face as a society.

In New Zealand, previous Governments have been noteworthy only for their inaction on climate change. We had a previous Prime Minister who actually took pride in saying that he was not a leader but a follower on climate change. Instead of actually reducing our emissions, New Zealand purchased fraudulent carbon credits offshore and claimed that this somehow met our obligations. Since that time, the previous Government budgeted hundreds of millions of dollars to buy more offshore credits, instead of investing that money here at home, in our economy, and solving our problems first.

Under this Government, that commitment to do nothing—that commitment to be a follower rather than a leader—ends now. As of this moment, today, New Zealand shall join with those countries that seek to lead the fight against climate change. The previous Government’s approach to dealing with climate change was to say, “Look, we’re a small country. We can’t make a difference. Why do we even try? Let’s do nothing.” Our Government’s approach is to say, “What can we do? Let’s make that happen.” To coin a phrase: let’s do this.

So what can we do? Well, New Zealand is in a unique position in the world to make a global contribution to this great cause. We are a small but advanced economy, but we have the emissions profile of a developing economy. If this country can solve the technological and economic challenges of transitioning our transport and our energy and, yes, agricultural sectors over to a low emissions model, then we are solving that problem for the rest of the planet—and that is intellectual property. We are a small part of the world and we are a remote part of the world, but we are still a part of the world. It is in our strategic interests to save it. We can make a difference, and we will.

Now, one thing I learnt in the private sector is that you can only manage what you measure. This is at least as applicable to the public sector, and that is why I am also very proud to serve as the Minister of Statistics. As one wag on Twitter pointed out, the Greens have seized the production of means. The previous Government also knew that measurement is important. That is why they fought so hard against measuring child poverty in New Zealand, because if they didn’t measure it they couldn’t, therefore, be held accountable for it. This Government will make the measure and will take the measure of child poverty. This Government will take responsibility for child poverty, and this Government will reduce child poverty.

This Government will also take the measure of our economic performance beyond the measure of gross domestic product. Now, GDP is a useful tool, but the economic output of a country’s economy is not the same thing as the well-being of the people in it, or of the environment that sustains us. We have had 29 quarters of real GDP growth, but wages are not keeping up with the cost of living; 29 quarters of GDP growth, but two-thirds of our monitored rivers are unfit to swim in; 29 quarters of GDP growth and the most unaffordable houses in the world relative to incomes; 29 quarters of GDP growth and 29 quarters of traffic gridlock in Auckland City; 29 quarters of GDP growth and about 3,000 native species at extreme risk of extinction; 29 quarters of GDP growth, and climate pollution levels that are 19 percent higher than when the National Government came to power; 29 quarters of GDP growth have not filled the bellies of the kids who go hungry to school.

Governments have got to aim higher than that. Governments have got to aim higher than merely increasing the market output of their economies. High levels of population growth have delivered economic growth, because when there are more people there is more economic activity. We have been listening to Messrs English and Joyce, you know, pretend that that, somehow, is real growth for the last decade. But that population growth was not matched by investment in infrastructure or regional development or emissions reduction or environmental management or, frankly, any kind of coherent plan to lift or improve the wages and well-being of New Zealanders. Mr Joyce famously said, “We don’t do strategy.” Well, that’s clear.

This will be a Government of change. Some people are afraid of change, and that is understandable. It is natural to want things to stay the way they are, especially if you’re doing well out of the status quo. But we don’t have that choice. Change is already here. Our climate is changing. Our environment is changing. Our economy is changing. And our society is changing. That change can either be unplanned and catastrophic or it can be anticipated and well managed. Simply sweeping the great challenges of our time under the carpet and hoping that they will go away or that nobody notices is the kind of expedient and short-term thinking that gives politics and politicians a bad name.

In my maiden speech, three years ago last Wednesday, I said that “I enter Parliament as a member of our country’s loyal Opposition. My role is, in part, to hold to account, to challenge, and to speak truth to power, but I am not committed to partisanship for its own sake. Political tribalism is, I believe, the single greatest barrier to creating enduring solutions to the great challenges of our time. I know that the first step in finding the answers is to work together. Time is too short for resignation. Things are too bad for pessimism. It is too big a task for petty politics. It is too important for partisanship. These things we must transcend and transform. If any other member of this House from any political party or any member of the public hears this challenge and wants to rise to it, my door is open.”

When I said those things, it being a maiden speech, I was speaking for myself. But to me it also sums up the Green Party’s way of doing politics when we are at our best: seeking to solve the great challenges of our time, putting solutions above partisanship, and focusing on the long term. Being in Opposition or on the cross benches for the entire 18 years of our parliamentary history gave us a lot of time to get good at that. It is my hope that the new Opposition takes a similar approach—and a similar time scale. If we as a nation are to restore and replenish our forests and our rivers and our birds, if we are to end child poverty, and if we are to lead the global fight against climate change, it will take longer than three years. It will.

Today is just the beginning of the beginning. Today is the day that the Green Party has to take up the responsibility of Government and to deliver on the promises that we have made over successive decades to the people of New Zealand. And it is time for New Zealand to again show the world that although we are small we can be a great nation who can play a great role in a great cause, and that role starts today. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I didn’t want to interrupt any of the leaders’ speeches—I know we’ve got the leader of the ACT Party coming—but I did just want to check with you, given, I suppose, your position as Assistant Speaker prior to this about the reading of speeches. Without going into the gory details, I think we have seen some very significant reading, and so for the rest of the debate I just want to get some guidance from you on that on what the position was.

Sure, I’m happy to do it. There was one leader in particular who—one person acting for a leader—read a speech that had been supplied and had been approved by the party leader. So I was made aware of that fact beforehand and was deliberately looser than I would have been. But there have been some discussions between myself and the Deputy Speaker, and we will be, with the notable exceptions—you know, a bit of leniency for new members, or certainly leniency for new members, and for Ministers who have technical bills where the detail and the wording is very important. But I think all of us know that if members make speeches from notes and from their heart, you have better-quality speeches than reading out things that have—and I’ve seen it on both sides of the House—been very obviously drafted by research units. That wasn’t the case today.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in reply to the Governor-General’s speech. I think we have seen today the birth of E! channel politics in New Zealand. The Prime Minister’s delivery was the best that I have seen in this House before and after I entered it myself. I thought Ron Mark’s speech showed the voice of somebody who had been to a speech therapist and said, “Make me sound like Winston.” I think the problem with those speeches is that the substance in this Government lies elsewhere. We’ve just seen one doddery man whose own electorate voted him out of office win the prize after conducting a bizarre sealed-bid auction with a twist.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. I’ve reflected on the comment that the member had made with regard to another member. He will withdraw it.

I withdraw it. The fact of the matter is that in normal auctions the person who makes the bid pays the bill. In this particular sealed-bid auction Winston Peters won the prize, the Labour Party and their hard-working Ministers get to carry it home, and the Green Party will get to watch while the poor hard-working—but in this case hapless—taxpayer gets to pay and pay the bill. This throne speech contains a major contradiction: this Government is going to spend much, much more money while paying down debt and keeping taxes the same. They’re not offering to reduce spending on anything—not one mention of reducing spending in the Speech from the Throne—and yet they’re going to pay down debt and maintain taxes. How will they do it? Well, the answer is very simple: it starts with bracket creep.

Last year, New Zealanders paid $744 million in extra income tax thanks to bracket creep. The tax rates didn’t change, just as the Speech from the Throne promises they won’t, but New Zealanders found themselves forced by inflation into higher and higher tax brackets, leaving more of their money for the taxman. Over the next three years, New Zealanders will get a surprise $3 billion tax bill, if inflation stays about where it is, thanks to bracket creep under this Government. That is $1,500 of extra tax for the average household in this country and in the Epsom electorate, I’m afraid to say, we’re going to be paying a lot more than that for this Government.

But $3 billion in extra tax is nowhere near enough to make up for even one of the areas of promise that this Government has made in health, in education, in regional development. So how else will they do it? The surplus. This Government is lucky enough—let it not be forgotten—to inherit an $18.5 billion surplus over four years. I can’t think of a Government in the world incoming this year or any recent year that would be lucky enough to inherit a surplus of that size. The contradiction in the Speech from the Throne, though, means they’ve already spent this too. The problem is it’s not going to work because the real power behind the throne has already foretold dark clouds on the economic horizon ahead and he’s probably right. How long can a 10-year post-global financial crisis expansion so far continue as quantitative easing eases and inflation returns along with higher interest rates around the world?

New Zealanders have got used to—over the last nine years of ACT-National Government—low mortgage rates, low unemployment, strong growth. The new Government seems to take those things for granted but history tells us we’re heading for a crash. And how will Grant Robertson balance a Budget in just seven months’ time if the welfare bill is up, the Government’s cost of borrowing is up, and the tax take is down? We are going to experience Australian-style Budget cuts and tax increases, which have been—thankfully—foreign to New Zealanders for the last decade, because the problem with socialism is that soon enough you run out of other people’s money.

But that’s not half of it—that’s not half of it—because New Zealand’s economic vulnerability is not actually on the Government’s books. In fact, coming out of nine years of ACT-National Government we’ve got one of the best Government balance sheets in the world: about 23 percent of GDP public debt—that’s nothing. The real problem that we have is on the private balance sheets of New Zealand households. It’s the mortgage debt, it’s the private debt that leaves us vulnerable. That is why New Zealand cannot afford a profligate Government that is going to stealthily raid the chequebooks of New Zealanders with its stealth tax—$3 billion over the next three years—and a Government that is going to spend every last bit of cushion it had as we head for global economic difficulties that they themselves—that the Deputy Prime Minister himself—have predicted.

So who to blame? Well, some people will blame Winston Peters for forming a Government with the left. Some people think MMP isn’t fair because it allowed a coalition of losers, so to speak, to form a Government. But those aren’t the real problems and I’m sorry to say to my National colleagues that the real tragedy of the last Government was not that it lost power but it didn’t use the power enough when it had it.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: So it’s everyone except your fault. Is that right?

That’s absolutely right, Amy Adams. The truth and the light are here. You had the opportunity to do something about it and you didn’t. But the fact of the matter is that we find ourselves with an incoming Government’s agenda that is almost entirely in response to one fundamental problem: it’s too hard to build homes in New Zealand, and we build half as many as we built in the 1970s when we had vastly inferior technology. A Government that had the opportunity, Amy Adams, to reform the Resource Management Act—had the opportunity, didn’t do it, and that’s the problem.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: Well, you and I both know why that was.

The problem, Amy Adams, is that we find ourselves facing a Government that actually has some better ideas—that actually will do some of the things that we didn’t have the gumption to do. And I actually support Phil Twyford when he says he’s going to remove the urban growth boundary, when he says that he’s going to find new ways to fund infrastructure, because those will be essential to solving the real underlying problems that New Zealand has, not simply trying to paper over the cracks with more spending.

The Speech from the Throne says this Government will be one that has children at the centre of everything that it does. I’m very confused as to why they choose to exclude those children who choose to attend a partnership school. I have to say I’m very grateful that my colleagues in the National Party are now coming to the aid of partnership schools. However, let’s not succumb to historical amnesia the way politicians often do when the boot moves to the other foot. Partnership schools are a core ACT policy that would not exist otherwise. We fought for them every step of the way, and when I first arrived in this House we had Hekia Parata saying the Government had no plans to open any more.

I have been much more disappointed, however, with the new Minister of Education, who has not been a Minister for a couple of weeks, it is true. He is new, and perhaps he deserves some forgiveness, but he has to understand that being a Minister, everything he says has an impact, and people assume that his utterances—even casual chat to an old journalist mate—are reported as being Government policy.

My challenge to the Minister of Education with respect to partnership schools is to be a professional and come clean. He must release an official statement to clear up the uncertainty around the schools’ future. It should tell them what to expect for the 2018 school year and what further discussions with what scope they should expect in the future. He must undertake to visit any school he intends to shut or alter the contract of so he can actually say that he understands what he is dealing with—not just hide here in Wellington like a coward. He must stop spreading misinformation about the schools, such as that they are funded to a larger extent than other schools, which simply is not true. With that challenge to the Minister of Education, I retire and resume my seat. Thank you.

Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you for that, and what a pleasure it is to be able to address you in the Chair. I look forward to working with you in your new role. Madam Deputy Speaker, members of Parliament, we heard today, of course, the Speech from the Throne, in which the new Government gets to set out its vision for the next three years, its plan, and exactly what it is going to deliver, but the only thing I could take away from that speech was that this is a Government that just isn’t ready. They’re not ready, and you can see that so clearly, because they have no legislation.

Earlier today we had a debate about the fact that almost the entirety of the Order Paper consists of National legislation, which Labour and the Greens and New Zealand First have spent the last nine years telling us how much they hate and how they would do it all better. They left it all there because they have nothing to replace it with. Later on this afternoon we’re going to be debating a bill that has been part of Labour’s plan for some time around paid parental leave, and yet they still don’t have a bill. Here we are just an hour or so before we debate it. The bill is not in the House, it is not ready to go, and I can tell you the only reason we going to be taking urgency is that they’re not ready to do the job properly, so they’re going to ram it through without the process.

As the Leader of the Opposition said this afternoon, the Greens, whom we have had nine years of sanctimony from, about good parliamentary process and not rushing things, are now allowing this new Government to put legislation through on the hoof with no advance notice—it is not even tabled in this House mere hours before we are going to debate it—and no select committee process, for no reason other than they’re not ready.

It is clear from the Speech from the Throne that there’s no detail. I listened to the speech very carefully, and the Leader of the Opposition made these comments as well. Very carefully we listened, and we heard lots of great intentions about world peace and feeding the children—I didn’t hear “cure cancer”, but it was almost implicit—but there was no detail. This is a party that has had nine years to think about how they would do it differently, to think about what they would prefer to see happen, and yet there was nothing in the way of details. As we’ve heard from Bill English already today, simply having a good intention is not enough, and they will find that out soon enough.

We’ve seen that they have very few costings of the long shopping list of expensive promises we heard about today in the Speech from the Throne. I was sitting there next to our finance spokesperson, and we were just mentally nudging each other about how we could see the debt rising and rising and rising. All of this is spending promises that weren’t costed and weren’t put to the people of New Zealand. The people of New Zealand weren’t told that they were going to get in there and spend like drunken sailors. What we did hear—the one concession that they did make in that Speech from the Throne—was they absolutely admitted that they will pay back less debt than National was going to pay back. So already, on the very clear measures that we’ve made it clear we’re going to hold this Government to account on, how have they performed versus where National was already taking this country? They’re paying back less debt and they’re spending more of the money that they will take out of the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders.

That has been the problem for so long with parties on the left. They honestly believe they can spend your money better than you can—that they can spend the money of hard-working New Zealand families better than those families can. Every single dollar of spending that we heard about in that speech today—and there were hundreds and hundreds of millions; in fact, billions of dollars—down to the last cent, isn’t their money. It’s not. It is the money of every single New Zealander who gets up and goes to work every day, and we’re not going to sit here, over the next three years, and not remind them that that’s not their money and that they are not best placed to spend the money of hard-working New Zealanders.

They simply haven’t yet moved beyond platitudes. They got that down pat during the campaign, but I would expect a Government to be in this House ready to lead, with legislation, with costings, with detailed plans, with measures, but there is none of that. We had platitudes, we had good intentions, we had open-ended spending promises with no numbers on them, but we had nothing that looked anywhere near tangible.

This is, I think, one of the very simple realities that you understand when you’ve had the privilege of being in Government, when you’ve had the privilege of being a Minister: spending money is easy. That is the easiest part of the job you have as a Minister, and if all I had to do in Government was spend money and give in to everyone who wanted everything and throw money around, it would have been very popular and would have had screeds of wonderful headlines and happy people. Here is the reason we don’t do it—well, the reason the National-led Government didn’t do it: actually, you are bankrupting the future of this country and the future of our children, and I wasn’t prepared to do that.

We understand, in a way that clearly the parties on the left don’t, that you’ve got to earn it before you spend it, and that’s something that every business and every family in this country knows. Yet Labour and the Greens and New Zealand First seem to think that they can just keep spending and buy themselves popularity and the chickens will never come home to roost. I simply don’t think that that is credible.

So today’s speech, as I say, was just a long list of all of the ways they’re going to spend other people’s money, without any honesty about the cost of that and how they’re going to pay for it. That was the interesting thing. Again, I listened carefully, and 99 percent of that speech was about the spending. I heard nothing about how they’re going to pay for it. Is it the magic beans? They must have one of those magic money trees at the bottom of the garden that just shoots out free money, because there was nothing in that speech, for all that they’re going to run surpluses and manage the books and yada, yada, about how they’re going to pay for it.

💬 Andrew Falloon: More debt, more taxes.

Here’s the interesting thing. Here’s the interesting thing. Well, we already know there’s going to be more tax, Mr Falloon, because they’re cancelling the tax cuts that are in place right now, meaning every New Zealander will pay more from 1 April.

One of the things that is absolutely, abundantly clear to those on this side of the House and is hardwired into our DNA is the understanding that jobs and incomes and a good standard of living and the prosperity that this country wants do not come from the Government. They don’t come from us sitting in this House. They come from people who get up every morning, who go to work, who put their own money on the line, and who say, “I’ve got the confidence to spend money to start a business and to employ staff.” If we are going to have a prosperous country, if we are going to create jobs that have better incomes, and more opportunities for our young people, and if we as a Parliament and the executive, whoever that is from time to time, are going to have the luxury of having money to spend on the best in healthcare, the best in education, the best in rehabilitative treatment and mental health and a good, strong environment—all of those things cost money—we have to have a strong economy.

When we talk about the economy we don’t talk about it because it’s some esoteric thing that’s a “nice-to-have”. It is at the heart of a prosperous, successful country that can afford the standard of living we all want and can lift kids out of poverty. The No. 1 thing that benefits families, that speaks to the life they’re able to give their children, is whether they have a job and a good income. And jobs and good incomes don’t come from the Government; they come from businesses. We have to have a system that encourages New Zealanders to want to invest, to put their money on the line, and to go out and hire staff.

I have to say I’m really worried for our economy in this country when the first things that we’ve heard from the new Labour - New Zealand First - Greens Government are the sorts of things that are going to terrify the average small business in this country. Straight away, they came out and said 90-day trial periods are, effectively, gone. So one of the core things that has put us in the position where we now have the third-highest employment rate in the world, and has been giving our businesses the confidence to take a punt and employ someone and see if they can make it work, is gone. It has been a remarkable success, and yet Labour is killing it.

They’re going to get rid of youth rates. They’re going to get rid of the ability to take a chance on a young person, bring them in, and train them up. These things are working. It’s not an accident—we don’t have the third-highest employment rate despite it. We have this successful economy and we have the 10,000 jobs a month being created because we’ve set up the conditions where businesses know that they can invest, hire, and take on workers.

And yet this Government, straight away, has gone back to its unionised roots—back to the 1970s where now unions will be able to force their way into workplaces, force the employers to go into discussions with them, and then force them to reach agreement at will. You tell me which employer is going to want to start a business, grow their business, take on more staff, and invest their capital when they’re under that sort of a threat? It is going to be the beginning of the end of the strong, growing, successful, prosperous country that National worked so hard on for the last nine years and will continue to advocate for.

The Speech from the Throne today was about building a culture and country of dependency—a culture and a country of welfare, of handouts, of reliance on the Government—where whether you work or not, whether you make any damn effort or not, you’ll get looked after. Well, this side of the House stands for people who get up every day, who work hard, and who put effort in. We want everyone in New Zealand to have the opportunities, but what you do with those opportunities, how your outcomes are delivered, is down to your own efforts. This side of the House backs aspiration and success; that side is all about dependency and welfare, and we’re going to make it very difficult for them.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and can I start by congratulating you on your appointment as Deputy Speaker of the House. I was just saying to colleagues over here how strange it feels to be standing up and saying this speech as you, the Deputy Speaker, are the former Minister of things I will be talking about. But anyway.

Can I also acknowledge the former speaker, Amy Adams, for the work that she did in the previous Government as a Minister. I think she was a very hard-working Minister, and I do want to acknowledge that. She did take up a large amount of her time in her speech talking about her concerns with regard to our ability to handle the financial responsibilities of being in Government. I do want to remind that member, Amy Adams, that, actually, when Labour were last in Government for nine years, we ran nine surpluses; when her Government was in Government for nine years, they got one. So, Amy Adams, please don’t be concerned about our ability to be able to manage our financial obligations, because I have every confidence that this side of the House is up for that, Amy Adams, member of Parliament.

I do want to start by saying that I stand here both proud and humbled to be part of this 52nd New Zealand Government—proud because the New Zealand people have backed this team to deliver much needed, overdue change in this country, and humbled because my colleagues and I understand the responsibility that we are undertaking. We are clear on the job that needs doing, and my colleagues and I have the energy, the courage, and the determination to make that happen. Tangible, concrete change is what we will deliver, particularly in the way we support the most vulnerable amongst us. I think the Prime Minister made it very clear, with regards to her speech, about that being an absolute priority for this Government.

For too long Government has treated those asking for help as liabilities and a cost to the State. We saw that with the previous Government using tools like predictive risk modelling to determine the long-term potential cost to the State of individuals and their families. We saw their intention to shift away from the decile model in schools, which I’m not saying is perfect, towards a model that would determine the risk of the students that were at the school. My concern at the time was, really, that that Government had no understanding of the impact that that negative stigma would have on those students and those people that they were purporting to be wanting to help.

As the Prime Minister has stressed today, New Zealand needs to measure success in new ways. Reducing the money spent on benefits was considered the measure of success by the previous Government. They thought by just getting people off benefits that New Zealand would be better off, but they had no regard for whether or not those people or their families were in fact better off. We believe that simply pursuing an off-benefit approach is not sufficient—that it is simply out of sight and out of mind, particularly given the fact that that Government wasn’t measuring the outcomes of what happened to people when they did go off benefits. Were they, in fact, employed? Well, we didn’t often know whether that was the case.

As far as we’re concerned, the concept of social investment—the concept of social investment—is not bad, but the way that that Government decided to roll out their social investment approach was incredibly problematic in our view. It ran in contrast to what we see social investment being in European countries that run it, where it is successful. Real social investment, as far as this Government is concerned, is about investing in people, and that was the very important factor that was missing from the previous National Government’s approach. We see it as ensuring that when people leave the benefit, they are better placed to go into secure work. We see the need to ensure that they are better placed to increase their earning capacity and that they are better placed to support their families.

There was a very important component to that side of the House’s social investment approach, and that was the complete lack of investment in upskilling and training. It was all about pushing people out into the next minimum wage job, and they weren’t necessarily going to be better off.

We want to look at the social investment approach. We want to look at whether or not our spending is making a positive difference to the lives of people on welfare, and the children and others they care for. We want to know that Work and Income is helping to support people into sustainable employment, and for many people that will mean the first step actually being to be placed or supported into meaningful upskilling and training. We want to know that the work they go into is secure, is well-paid, and is sustainable. We want to know that their mental health is being taken care of. We want to know that they’re able to better look after their families. We want to know that the social and economic gains from our interventions are seen within the well-being of these individuals and their families.

Measuring disadvantaged people’s well-being rather than measuring them by the hurdles they face, and how that well-being can be enhanced by Government interventions, must become the central focus of a reoriented social investment approach. I had those concerns about the focus on risk factors, and want to see more of a focus on resilience factors. What does enable people to get through those hard times? All of us are concerned that we are spending money in the right place. So there are, of course, fiscal concerns for any Government, but we also want an overriding concern to be about the well-being of these families and how we measure that as well.

Focusing on people’s potential can have a long-lasting effect. We want to change the focus of the benefit system from being a punitive, harsh system to navigate to one that concentrates on upskilling and training people, and ensuring that they are better off. Currently, we know that the number of people leaving the benefit to study, to improve themselves, has dropped every year for the past four years. Why is that? What in the system we’ve inherited has resulted in more and more people not believing that study and training is a viable option for them? This is just one of the questions that I’ll be asking.

The opportunity to train, to study, is a major issue for the future of the country as we cry out for skilled workers, and we will turn this around. This came up in our Future of Work programme, particularly the chapter that I worked on with Minister Lees-Galloway, on the security of work and income. We need to focus on this, particularly for people that find themselves in times of unemployment.

We do need to get our priorities right. Fewer people have been leaving a benefit to take up training and study than those who go into prison. It’s not good enough. And I have to say that it was concerning, with the former Government, that some of their initial actions showed how opposed they are, or were, to this approach. They cut the training incentive allowance as one of their first actions, stopping sole parents from being able to access study support or financial support to be able to study, and they cut access to adult community education.

Now, both of those things are so important, not just for helping the individual to get ahead, to be able to get into more meaningful employment and better-paid employment, but also because all the research shows us about the importance of particularly the mother role-modelling educational achievement to her children. Why did that party, when they were in Government, make the decision to do that? It was a silly decision.

I am concerned that we don’t know where the majority of people leaving a benefit end up, whether they are in a better position, and whether they are thriving. I am concerned that some people are making dangerous choices, placing themselves in hardship, just to avoid having to deal with a benefit system that has been designed to make people battle for help. The feedback that I have been getting over the last year or two has been, from social services, that they too are concerned that there are a growing number of families who are not accessing any income from work and not accessing support from welfare.

It was made difficult, deliberately, by the National Government, and it meant that we ended up with an increased amount of poverty in this country and more and more children living in poverty. We will be looking to mend the welfare safety net. That is a commitment from this side of the House. We will be looking to repackage what was a good concept, but was flawed in its roll-out, and that was the social investment approach. We will be looking to make some major changes over the next three years and moving forward. We are excited about that prospect.

Madam Deputy Speaker—what a pleasure it is to say those words. Can I just personally acknowledge you. I am torn. You have been an extraordinary Minister and member of Parliament; to see you in the Chair, though, is a great day for this Parliament. I know you will be fabulous.

Look, it is a time where we take stock and we take a moment to reflect. We’ve had a general election, and obviously the parties across the House have been able to form a Government. But the message that I would give to these parties—because people are coming up to me in my electorate, in the airport—is that you will be judged by that final statement in the Prime Minister’s Speech from the Throne. It is about the people. It is about the impact that your decisions have on the people of New Zealand, and the detail matters. And the message that I am getting from constituents, from business people, from people in the community sector, is that this is a Government that is in a rush, that hasn’t thought through the detail, and that is trying to dismantle a whole lot of things without reflecting on what may be some good things.

The first is where the Government has campaigned on change. I would just ask them to reflect on a couple of areas. We know that what matters in terms of young people getting a job is for the half a million small-business people in New Zealand, any costs that they have will literally determine whether they can employ a young person. So why would this Government, early on in its tenure, rush ahead with things like the fuel tax and dramatically increasing the minimum wage? We increased the minimum wage. Every year that we were in office we were increasing the minimum wage, but if you do it so dramatically—if the Government does that—then young people don’t get jobs, and that means that you are countering what your key objectives are. The costs that businesses—the reason that businesses are so worried and confidence is dropping is because of all the costs that are being proposed, whether it’s a fuel tax, whether it’s the minimum wage, whether it’s the new labour laws, or whether it’s the uncertainty around immigration. That means that young people may be hurt as a result of that. Please think through the detail and understand that it does and can hurt young people.

In the area of social investment, in the area of education, what we know, again, is that we all agree—on this side of the House we support, and in fact a Cabinet decision happened, to move to a system of progression. But every parent in New Zealand has a right to know how their child is doing. The first thing that the new Minister of Education said was “We’re scrapping national standards.” I have been inundated by parents across New Zealand who have said, “Fine, but what are we replacing it with?” There is huge uncertainty.

Please work with us to ensure that we have—look, we support national standards, but please work with us to ensure that we guarantee every parent has that right to know how their child is doing. It is not OK to send schools and families into complete chaos by saying you’re scrapping national standards, without the detail of a system of progression.

In the area of partnership schools, again we are seeing a Government that is in a huge rush, is inexperienced, and unfortunately, in my view—and I am a little bit concerned about this—is showing to be deeply partisan. When it comes to partnership schools, again we got a huge amount of conversation from the Opposition about how much they cared about disadvantaged children. Well, many of these children—many of these children—have not achieved in other areas of our education system. They deserve to have a chance to be able to do well, to be able to get an education, and to go into the future and have a great job. And what have we had from the current Government? Complete and utter chaos—complete confusion.

Initially, the Minister said—and we heard this through the campaign—we had Willie Jackson, we had Kelvin Davis, and we had Chris Hipkins all saying completely different things. We had a policy that potentially the legislation would be repealed. Then we heard that they would be negotiated on a case by case basis. Then—and I couldn’t believe it—I literally looked on my phone and Chris Hipkins had said to a journalist that four of those schools would be gone by 2019.

Lo and behold, thank goodness, he has reversed that position, and now we have a review under way, until today. Suddenly, we now have in the motion a piece of legislation that would wipe out one school. It is complete chaos. It is completely partisan. It is not about disadvantaged children.

Please work with us. Work with those schools. We accept that you want to get rid of the partnership school model. We accept that you are going to convert them into something else. But they deserve to know what exactly are the criteria that they are going to be held to. They deserve to know who is doing this review. They deserve to know, as does the taxpayer, what the costs of converting some of these partnership schools are. These are basic things and this is the basic way to treat people, and these families and these kids deserve that.

We’ve just heard from Carmel Sepuloni in terms of the area of welfare, and we’ve heard about social investment. She made some comments regarding, again, the decile system. I know that the Minister has probably only had a briefing to the incoming Minister and very few papers. But her statement regarding our risk index system was wrong.

We unashamedly wanted to scrap the decile system because it was discriminatory, and everybody that I meet agrees with that. The whole purpose of the risk index was to provide something that was anonymous and that wouldn’t be discriminatory. But, again, as we heard from the Leader of the Opposition today, one of the greatest tool kits in one of the greatest machines to be built, to actually help people, those people who have family violence, criminal justice notifications, or who are in receipt of a benefit, and to help those children who have been in State care—this Government has already set about to dismantle it.

I would ask the Government to reflect, to take a breather, and to realise it will be judged on these next few months. How about you recognise that you spent a number of years in Opposition and while you do not agree with everything that we did, if you do the slash and burn and get rid of a whole lot of things, then people will be hurt and people will remember.

The detail matters. Trying to scrap national standards without a system to replace it and trying to say that partnership schools will be gone, maybe into something else, without telling those parents whether their kids are turning up to school next year matters. The detail matters.

So whether it is education or social areas or that business is deciding whether to employ someone but is hearing about a fuel tax and is hearing that the minimum wage is going up for all of these people, their circumstances matter. In the words of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, at the heart of this Government is supposed to be people. If the members opposite care about those people, then they will not be in a rush. They will not be as partisan and they will think through the detail. He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

Kia ora, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can I first of all just say how brilliant it is to see a woman sitting in the Chair. It’s high time—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: And a competent woman, at that.

And a confident, strong, articulate, intelligent—just a well-rounded, well-deserved woman sitting in the Chair. So it’s wonderful to have you there. I did actually pitch last time for a woman to get into the Chair because I thought it was high time we had one again. I continued to get the answer that, well, we had one once. So now we have another opportunity, Madam Deputy Speaker, through you, to show them how it’s done. So thank you very much and I welcome you to the Chair.

I just want to take this moment also to acknowledge you as the previous Minister, not only as the previous Minister for Social Development but the previous Minister for Oranga Tamariki. I’ve been privileged in the last few days to have been sworn in as the Minister for Children, which has responsibility for Oranga Tamariki. As learned colleagues have mentioned, we are a new Government—I think, 12 days—and there’s a lot of absorption going on, in my case anyway. There are a lot of briefings and a lot of absorption. But one of the things I can confidently say is that the structure that you set into place, the vision that you put into place, and the people that you put at the top of that organisation I believe set it in good stead for the work that was intended.

Speaking as the Minister for Children, I want you to be confident that we will continue that pathway and the vision that you set for that organisation, and that was to put children at the heart of all decisions. So I want to acknowledge you in the work done in that area.

It’s an organisation that’s only six months old, and there is a large culture shift that needs to take place. I spoke to a gathering of 217 senior managers of Oranga Tamariki yesterday, and stayed for an hour or so to actually listen to their conversations. So I know the challenges that they have, but I believe that the people that are inside that organisation are up to the challenges.

At every level of that organisation, there is a desire and a will, and if I pick up on the desire and the will and the conversation that the member who just resumed her seat before me, the Hon Nikki Kaye, talked about, I believe there is a desire and a will across this House to actually improve the outcomes for all of our children, but particularly probably for the 5,600 in State care currently, particularly for those that are entering the youth justice system—and there are systems that we need to improve so that they don’t end up in the youth justice system—particularly for the 190,000-odd children that come to the attention of Oranga Tamariki through notifications that then have to be triaged and managed as to their level of need. So I acknowledge that, and I welcome the opportunity to work across the House, particularly in that portfolio area.

I do have to say, however, because this is a place of truth, that for the Hon Nikki Kaye to reach out and ask and request us to work closely with the Opposition—it’s a little interesting to juxtapose that against yesterday and today. It’s a little difficult to juxtapose that against the Leader of the Opposition’s statements that they will make select committee very difficult.

I want to make a request of the Opposition members. Select committee is one of the best things we do in this Parliament. It is one of the things that we do in our democracy that other nations come to have a look at. This system is the Westminster system, but the United Kingdom came here to see our select committee process because of the collegiality and the way that politics is put aside more often than not to come up with good legislation for this country. So I put out a plea to the Opposition. You may have 54; I don’t know how many members you’ve got. You may have that many members, right? Honestly, it’s not relevant, but anyway, you may have that many members, but please don’t use it as a threat.

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Numbers matter.

Please don’t use it as a threat at select committee, Mr Woodhouse, because that is what was put forward. Select committee is where we are collegial and we work for the betterment of New Zealand.

So I understand the National Party are disappointed. I understand that there was an assumption that they would rule by right and go forward and carry on on their pathway, and I understand—

💬 Matt Doocey: It’s only because you purged all your centre-right New Zealand First MPs.

—that that will take a while for the National Party to get over, but the select committee is not the place, Mr Doocey. The select committee is not the place. There is a reason why the public of New Zealand has placed you there and has actually asked you.

So if we go back to the Speech from the Throne, you are quite right. The tone is different than that of the speeches given on behalf of the Rt Hon John Key or on behalf of Bill English and the National Party. They dealt a lot with figures. Those speeches dealt a lot with money. It was disappointing to hear the Hon Amy Adams joke, in a way, about child poverty, and I think she said—what—“Child poverty, yada yada ya.”

💬 Chris Penk: Oh, come on. Give me a break.

Go on, have a look at the Hansard, young man, and you might find that that’s exactly what she said. So it’s really disappointing to have child poverty dismissed in that way.

This Speech from the Throne was about people. It wasn’t about banks.

💬 Alastair Scott: No, it wasn’t. It was about spending.

It wasn’t about money. It wasn’t about—I mean, there’s a young man sitting up the back there, from the Wairarapa, who—

💬 Alastair Scott: It was about spending—spending other people’s money.

It’s interesting. The people we’re talking about don’t have any money to spend, Mr Alastair Scott. These people don’t have any money to spend. They are the people that you forgot about. The people that we are now going to bring to the fore and out into the light are the people that your Government forgot about. That was what the Speech from the Throne was about. We are going to turn this conversation to be about New Zealanders—New Zealanders first.

New Zealand First, the Labour Party, and the Green Party have, in a mature MMP environment, got a strong and collegial working relationship. We understand the direction we are going in. We have a plan and an agreement between all of us to take this country there. What’s interesting is that this party, who could not get reform through because they couldn’t get enough friends together to make it happen, is attempting to create a narrative of discord. It will not work. We are committed and connected and collegial on this side of the House. And our conversations will always be about the people, and particularly about children—children inside homes that have not been able to afford the appropriate amount of food, and children inside homes where the stress of violence and other things have taken place.

And I do find it a little rich that the Government members stand up and criticise—let’s take, for example, this Government’s commitment to children—by talking about national standards. This was a Government who said that they believed in Māori children, but the first thing they did was take away Te Kotahitanga out of our schools, and, at the same time, they convinced the country they were replacing it with something, but the budget went away the following year and all plans around supporting Māori children inside mainstream schools were gone.

This is this Government. I ask the public of New Zealand to go back and look at this Opposition’s, or the previous Government’s, speeches with regard to the changes they made in the first 100 days when they came in three terms ago. Go and have a look at the shock that this country went into, the cuts that this country and these people, our citizens, had to endure. Go back and have a look, because there’s too many young members over there deciding that they will make some critique of the Speech from the Throne on this side, which puts people first, without knowing their own history. So go and have a look before you decide that the sky is falling, and then, once you’ve gone and looked at your own history, some of us on this side might accept a little bit more critique from those on that side. Kia ora.

Madam Deputy Speaker, kia ora. Thank you very much. It’s a privilege to stand, so soon after this House has reconvened, to speak in this debate. May I start by congratulating the Speaker on his election and appointment as Speaker of our Parliament. I have observed him over nine years in this Parliament. I believe that he has played every role here, and believe that this final one that he has before him is one that he will deliver with some aplomb and will be astute at. The reason for that is he is passionate about Parliament, and I look forward to the internal struggle that occasionally there will be—putting the politician in him aside and focusing purely on what’s good for this House.

Madam Deputy Speaker, may I also congratulate you on your appointment as Deputy Speaker, and I know you too will do a wonderful job. We share neighbouring electorates, and it’s been a pleasure to work closely with you over previous parliaments—as it will be in this one—to serve the people of the Bay of Plenty so very well. You now have the opportunity as a Deputy Speaker to do even more, not only for the people of the Bay of Plenty but, more broadly, for all of New Zealand and this House.

By the way—and I don’t want to be political too quickly—congratulations to all of my colleagues in the Bay of Plenty. We hold every seat there. It is the—one, two, three—fourth term where we hold every single seat. It does show me, as opposed to what the last speaker in this House said—the speaker from New Zealand First, Tracey Martin—that not everybody listens to everything that New Zealand First says, and that’s a good thing in the Bay of Plenty.

May I also congratulate Tamati Coffey, who I share some area with in the Bay of Plenty. Tamati, of course, is the newly elected member of Parliament for the Wairakei seat. He lives in Rotorua, and I know he’s passionate and will work very hard on behalf of his constituents.

The new Government—I want to congratulate them and to congratulate Ministers. You’ve been given a real opportunity and honour, which is something that, actually, nobody on this side of the House takes for granted or believes that you don’t have to work very, very hard for. I wish you all well. I know that—as I did when I first became a Minister—you will find many of the things you want to do much more challenging. But the solution to these things is to look for solutions; not just do what it is you thought was right before you had the ability of having the wisdom of officials and others.

To the three-headed Hydra that Tracey Martin was just talking about, which is this Government—and I must say that Ms Martin’s speech as a new Minister was the best speech I’ve heard so far from the Government and from a Government Minister, which I accept is not saying too much at this stage. But I would also say that the challenge that they will have is keeping one group over there away from one group over here, because the Government was formed before the leaders of all parties could say they had actually met each other, and I’m not sure that’s the best way to start something that will be cohesive, that will work well, and that will deliver for New Zealanders. I don’t think the issue is necessarily with the Greens, and I’m not sure you’ll hear me say that a lot during this term, but in this instance I don’t think it is about the Greens. I think the challenge will be how you put aside some of those issues that have been between these two parties in the past, and it’s not by chance that they sit so far away from each other.

The Leader of the Opposition has asked me to continue in my role for National as the spokesperson for trade, and it’s something that I’m extremely pleased to do. I’m grateful to him for that. By the way, wasn’t that a fantastic speech from the Leader of the Opposition? I’ve waited nine years for a great speech from the Leader of the Opposition and, finally, it has been delivered. It actually was good enough to be a speech from a Prime Minister. But look, we’ll give the Prime Minister some time to come to terms with, you know, speaking about content for 30 minutes.

But when it comes to trade, I hope all parties in this Parliament accept and agree that trade and our access to overseas countries is detrimentally important to our economy—without question, it’s important to our economy. We’ve heard other parties, including Labour, say that they are a party of trade, and I hope that over the next three years, as the Opposition spokesman for trade, I can actually support them in what they go to do and that they do deliver high-quality deals for New Zealand.

Now, in the last two years that I was Minister of Trade, I spoke a lot about the need for bipartisanship, and certainly from the Opposition—I can’t speak for one member of the Opposition, but for every other member here on trade I believe I can, because we’re quite a big Opposition—we will support trade deals. The Government and our negotiators—the hard-working officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade that go and do the negotiations for us—will be able to go overseas knowing that they have the support of this Parliament, and knowing that when they come back with a high-quality deal, New Zealand can actually honour its commitments.

The first opportunity for that—I don’t want to call it a challenge, but an opportunity—comes this weekend at APEC in Vietnam, where 11 countries will come together and consider the future of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. New Zealand has shown considerable leadership on TPP in the entire time it has been before this Parliament, from when it was first launched—

💬 Clayton Mitchell: You don’t have to give up your sovereignty to have a trade agreement.

—under a Labour Government until today. The member opposite for New Zealand First is already quibbling, but the challenge that he has—irrespective of what he thinks about trade—is that as part of a coalition Government, he will have to actually vote for these sorts of things. He will have to vote for these sorts of things. So when you talk about sovereignty, what it suggests is that when he says he’s from New Zealand First, what he wants to do is actually focus on only the harm that others could do to us in New Zealand—an example of that happening—instead of focusing on where you can find opportunities to deliver for all New Zealanders. Now, I encourage the new Government, when they go away to APEC this weekend, to deliver for that for New Zealanders.

A lot of work has been done by all of the countries, including New Zealand, during this year in stitching that back together after the US pulled out of the agreement. Many of the things New Zealanders were less sure about and were concerned about actually have already been removed, not through renegotiation, but through the 11 agreeing a way forward that doesn’t deliver benefits to the US, who’ve pulled out, but also offers the opportunity for them to come back and to be encouraged back at some stage.

The biologics, some of the intellectual property—those things have already been removed during the course of this year in our discussions. But I want the Government to know when they go away that they have the support of this Parliament and they have a majority in this Parliament, because that New Zealand First member has just indicated that he won’t support trade. Of course, the Greens have never supported a trade agreement in this Parliament.

💬 Clayton Mitchell: Typical—putting words into other people’s mouths.

New Zealand First has never supported a trade deal in this Parliament, and if that member is saying New Zealand First will support trade deals in this Parliament for the first time going forward, then, actually, that suggests he’s more interested in his job than in the rhetoric he has had around trade over the last nine years.

But, ultimately, TPP is important for New Zealand, as other trade deals are, and the Government goes away with our support. It’s not something that was always well-known or assumed over the last nine years, but they certainly do. And the reason for that is trade is good for New Zealand, trade is very important to the regions and to all of our country, and, ultimately, high-quality trade deals deliver for New Zealanders everywhere.

So, finally, what I want to do is just ask a few questions that others may consider as this debate unfolds over the coming days and weeks. Will New Zealand First and the Greens support the Labour Government when it comes to a vote on TPP in this House? Will New Zealand First, particularly, and the Greens support the Labour Government when it comes time to put legislation through this House for the upgrade of the China free-trade agreement that was started last year? At APEC it was announced, and it is unfolding and should be finished within a year. It is an agreement that will update what New Zealanders are able to do and will modernise. Will the two support parties of the Labour Government vote for that?

When it comes to the EU deal that we’re on track to deliver in New Zealand within the next few years—and, in fact, just a month ago, the president of the European Commission said he wanted to fast track a deal with New Zealand that was announced earlier in the year and to have that done before Brexit is completed, where possible—will New Zealand First and the Greens vote for that deal or not? If the answer is that they won’t, then the agreement that has been formed is shambolic when it comes to trade.

But Labour can depend upon a party that has always put trade before politics and delivered for New Zealanders, and that’s the National Party. They get to go away and negotiate these deals on behalf of New Zealand knowing that they can have some support. They need not compromise because they need to worry about where they will get their votes from—New Zealand First in coalition, or the Greens in confidence and supply—but they can go and do the best deal possible for New Zealand.

I commend the Trans-Pacific Partnership 11 as a high-quality deal to this House, if and when it is delivered on this weekend. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

It is a privilege to be able to address this debate here today. I do want to start by acknowledging Mr Speaker on his appointment. I first met him back in the 1990s, in the context of the parliamentary rugby side, when he was a co-captain and I was a junior National speech writer. He never selected me for the playing XV; he always made me in charge of bringing the oranges on at half-time, so I always thought he had it in for me. I’m hoping that in his new role he will look more favourably upon me, in terms of taking a debate call in the House. I want to acknowledge you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your appointment. It’s a great thrill to have you in the Chair, and I know that Parliament will be all the better for it.

It’s also nice to reflect that six years ago today was when I was fortunate to be here in Parliament and to second the Address in Reply debate, and it was a very proud moment for me and my family. Also, reflecting six years on, how proud I am to have been part of the National Government, and, more latterly, part of Cabinet, which worked very hard alongside all New Zealanders to deliver a strong economy, great job growth over the past few years, and confidence in the future, and reversing the flow of migration across the Tasman has been a wonderful thing to see in recent times. Sure, the world is never perfect at any given stage. We all have challenges, and we’ve seen the challenges of rapid growth around the country.

I must say, I was a little bit offended, like many New Zealanders, by Winston Peters’ description of the situation that he was inheriting on the night of his point of decision. One lady I was talking to in the local supermarket said to me, “Imagine if a new CEO was just taking on a job and said, ‘Oh well, the company’s all going to go down the tubes in the next couple of years, but don’t blame me because it’s all going down the tubes and I’m taking over this new role. But don’t blame me—everything’s going down the gurgler.’ ” It’s such a bizarre way to start a Government, and a bizarre way to frame the beginning of what is supposed to be a hopeful new Government. It was a deeply distressing moment for many of us. My only hope is that the leadership of the Labour Party will be able to deliver something better out of it than that.

We have shown already that we are going to be an active and vigorous Opposition, ready to hold the Government to account, but, of course, we’re also conscious of the fact that an important role in Opposition is to take the time to reflect and to think about the policies that we have brought, the progress of the country, and what we could do better in the times ahead. It seems to me that there are three challenges that I might refer to. One is the most fundamental challenge that we’ve always faced as a country, and that is how to maintain and grow our international competitiveness, because that is what our living standards ultimately rely upon.

If I had a slight frustration during the campaign trail—I heard it a lot from the Opposition spokespeople, including from David Parker, who was standing with me in the Epsom electorate—it was this idea that “New Zealand is a wealthy country, we should be able to afford to do X, Y, Z, and people should have higher incomes.”, etc., etc., as if it is somehow based on a matter of “Right, this is what we deserve as a country.” Well, there’s nothing that we deserve that we don’t earn from our own hard work, and we earn those incomes only if we maintain international competitiveness in a very competitive world. So New Zealand businesses have to go out there and deliver a better product at a better price every year—year in, year out—in a very competitive world. This idea that we can just keep adding costs to New Zealand businesses and that it will have no effect on our international competitiveness is of course nonsense. So we have to be very careful of that over the coming times, and the early indications from this Government are pretty alarming.

The second area is continuing to make progress on dealing with the long-term challenge of helping people off welfare and into work. We’ve been very successful in the past few years in creating up to 10,000 new jobs every month in this economy, which is the most powerful thing you can do for young people, particularly, and anybody wanting to find workers—to provide the jobs for them. We want to see that continuing. I do worry. We’ve also—and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, have been an integral part of this over the past few years, around working with our welfare system to encourage people to get back to work and to look for work in every opportunity. We will be watching very closely to make sure that this Government doesn’t go backwards on some of the progress that we’ve made in that area, which has enabled people to have that satisfaction of work, working on the basis that everybody can do something. Not everybody is in the position to be in full-time work—particularly with young children—but everybody can do something.

Thirdly, I think we should be thinking creatively about how we address what is a wider global issue that every developed country in the world is facing at the moment, about how you deal with wealth inequality. We have seen during the last decade—since the global financial crisis, with interest rates being at very historically low levels all around the world, an explosion in asset prices all around the world, including in housing—particularly in highly desirable countries such as New Zealand and highly desirable cities such as Auckland and Tauranga and Wellington—and that certainly has had an impact on wealth inequality. There’s no question about that, there’s no debate about it, and it is a very challenging issue. We as a Government worked very hard in this area, primarily to increase the supply of new housing to take pressure out of that dynamic, and we’ll be watching very closely the efforts made by the new Government to take that further. Personally, I think we will support things that will help, but we’ll be very actively thinking ourselves about how to make better progress in that area in the years to come.

In the areas that I’ve picked up, around tertiary—well it’s a very interesting sort of situation that we’ve got here. What we have is—it was interesting. I was hearing the Prime Minister say this morning that Labour has a clear plan. After nine years in Opposition, they’ve come in with a clear plan. But then she was on the radio this morning talking about immigration and the numbers, and was not really clear about what they were doing there. I know during the campaign they promised quite clearly that they were targeting a reduction of international students by 15,000 to 22,000 a year. That’s the specific target they had in their policy. I would make the point that last year we had about 70,000-odd international students coming into New Zealand, so we’re looking at an explicit target of reducing the international education student numbers by about a quarter. If you think about that, this is a $4.5 billion industry that employs upwards of 30,000 New Zealanders. You don’t have to be Archimedes to work out that if they do what they say they’re going to do, we’re going to have hundreds of millions of dollars taken out of the New Zealand economy and thousands of New Zealanders losing their jobs over the next few years.

They’re not just jobs in terms of just teaching these international students, but it’s the international students who come and live here and work here, it’s the service industries that support them, and the tourist industries that entertainment them when they finish their studies. So it drives me a little bit crazy to hear the Prime Minister saying how much she cares about people and how much this Government will care about people. Well, what about the people who are going to be losing their jobs because they are cutting—lopping—one-quarter off the international education market? What about those thousands of people who get up every morning and do a good job for their clients or their international students, who in their hearts want to go out and teach them and who get up in the morning and do their job with great satisfaction, who are going to have that taken away from them because this Labour Government doesn’t believe in that sector; doesn’t believe, particularly, in private education in any way, shape, or form; and is particularly targeting the private training establishment sectors. What does she say to those people?

Rest assured, we will be watching very closely and making sure that that important sector remains robust and strong and can continue to contribute to our strong economy and to deliver jobs in this country, as it has in the past few years. Like every industry in this country, there are challenges in international education, but the logical way to go about it is to focus on the enforcement of the rules and be active in that area, but do not lop off a quarter of what is an important industry for this country. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. Tuarua, ki ngā mema o tō tātou Whare, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Salutations to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Secondly, greetings, acknowledgments, and accolades to you the members of our House and to us all.]

Congratulations, Madam Deputy Speaker. I look forward to you and Speaker Mallard’s rigorous and astute guidance of this House. Can I also endorse the comments by my colleague the Hon Tracey Martin. The National Opposition has an opportunity to ensure that select committees deliver much better legislation. As a Minister, I want to see legislation that comes back to the House from select committees having been thoroughly considered, having taken on board the comments and submissions of submitters, and having been improved. There’s an opportunity now for us to strengthen our democracy by having select committees work in the way that they are intended, rather than in the past term, when Ministers used them as a rubber stamp, and it was Ministers that controlled the legislation rather than select committees. So please use that opportunity and be constructive.

It’s a very great honour to have been elected back into this Parliament by New Zealanders, and it’s a very great privilege to serve under our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, whom I have no doubt will be absolutely outstanding as Prime Minister. It’s a privilege, too, to speak as the first Green Minister of Conservation, Minister for Land Information, and an Associate Minister for the Environment. I’m proud to assure New Zealanders that, under this Government, we will have a Minister of Conservation and an Associate Minister for the Environment who believes in nature and in safeguarding the values of our species here in Aotearoa.

We believe in the right of New Zealanders to have access to clean rivers, healthy beaches, and wild landscapes where our indigenous plants and wildlife thrive and where there are adequate funds invested in predator control to get them out of the serious trouble that they are currently in. We believe that we have got a responsibility to safeguard these species, which came to these islands so many years ago and are the first inhabitants of Aotearoa, so that generations unborn can enjoy them and so that they can thrive for their own sake. We haven’t seen that under the past National Government, because they believed in nature for exploitation, not in sustaining it for its own sake, and not in recognising its importance as natural capital, as a natural asset that provides us with clean water, with the air that we breathe, with the places where we recreate, and that provides the infrastructure for critical industries like tourism and like our primary sector.

Nature is at the heart of our success as a country. It’s these wild and distinctive landscapes that are so important to Māori and that are at the core of our identity as New Zealanders. Nature is at the backbone of our economy. It’s critical to the success of our provinces. It’s where tourists go. It’s essential for jobs in the provinces, and it provides economic opportunities there. So we have got a duty to safeguard nature to ensure that our environment is healthy, because a healthy environment is the basis of a healthy economy—not the other way round, which is what we’ve seen over the last nine years. It’s our job to safeguard it, not to strip-mine it, and not to commercialise it, as National has sought to do in its previous term. That has been what has happened under National. We’ve had our rivers, our aquifers, exploited for intensive agriculture, dryland ecosystems in the Mackenzie Basin and Canterbury and elsewhere converted to farm pasture, and biodiversity values destroyed, and for what? A few dollars. We cannot have a strong economy long term if we destroy the natural capital that that economy depends upon.

It was under National that we saw conservation law changed under urgency to allow logging on conservation land, something that had never happened in the previous 30 years of the department’s existence. That won’t happen under this Government. It was under National that we saw an ambitious plan for predator-free New Zealand but no plan to implement it and no adequate funding either. That won’t happen under this Government. There are 4,000 species—indigenous species—many of them found only here in Aotearoa New Zealand that are threatened with or are at risk of extinction, yet under National only 16 percent of the conservation estate had sustained predator control, and only 338 of those 4,000 species were under active management by the Department of Conservation (DOC). There is wide agreement across the three parties in Government that National has underfunded conservation and has failed to recognise the importance of nature to our economy.

That’s why there is a strong commitment in both our confidence and supply agreement and the coalition agreement with New Zealand First that we will invest in conservation. We need to do that if we are to safeguard our security long term and the security of species like geckos, skinks, bats, and our native birds like the kea, the kiwi, and the kōkako. DOC is responsible as kaitiaki for all of these species on our conservation lands and in the marine reserves, but those species don’t know administrative boundaries. They live on private land as well, and under the former Government we had the department failing in its statutory responsibility to be an advocate for nature, to ensure that decision makers like councils knew about the value of those species, their habitats, and the impact that developments like conversion to dairying and like irrigation could have on them. Under this Government, we will restore DOC’s ability to speak for nature and to ensure that the enormous technical knowledge and expertise of Department of Conservation staff are brought to bear in significant resource consent decisions and plans that are going to impact on our native species, on our plants and wildlife, and on our wild landscapes.

Under National, we had funding for advocacy slashed to $600,000 annually. We had a reduction of 40 percent in the number of planners who could speak for DOC in those Resource Management Act (RMA) hearings. Under this Government, we want an effective RMA. We want those matters of national importance that are set out in section 6 to be taken account of by councils and to be brought to bear in decision making, not the exploitation we saw under the former Government.

There is a lot to do under this Government. We have a major challenge in getting rid of the despair and the gloom about how nature was treated over the last nine years. We are going to change that. We will be significantly increasing the funding for conservation so that we can improve the prospects for many of these 4,000 species that are teetering on the brink.

We want to ensure that we plan better for tourism. We’ve had a major increase in visitors to New Zealand, but a failure to actually plan for their impacts on areas like the Mackenzie Basin, where we have small councils with a small rating base struggling to cope with thousands of extra visitors and without the infrastructure.

We need to ensure that there are more jobs in the regions. We can do that if we develop more facilities for tourism in our provincial cities and towns, but not by commercialising our national parks and not by commercialising our conservation lands by allowing big luxurious lodges and other commercial developments there.

We will speak for nature, because we recognise that it is at the heart of our economy and that we have got a lot to do to rectify the neglect and the underfunding of the past nine years. It’s a challenge I look forward to, and I want to reassure all New Zealanders that we recognise the importance of these lands for them and we will be investing in our future and the future of these species that call this place home. We can do so much better, and we will. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

Debate interrupted.