General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

What a great day for the Government, as we come towards the end of the first 100 days of this Government. On this side of the House, we see a Government cohesive and united in our desire to improve the well-being of New Zealanders. One hundred days of success: a Families Package that’ll boost incomes for 385,000 families; an extension of paid parental leave; a minimum wage of $16.50, starting on 1 April; KiwiBuild being set up; contributions to the Superannuation Fund restarted, nine years after that Opposition stopped them; a mental health inquiry established; free first-year training and education for secondary school students and for those who have never had that before; the end of national standards; the increase of student support; the establishment of the Pike River Recovery Agency, alongside those families; the setting of a zero-carbon emission goal; and even things that might not seem significant to the great majority of New Zealanders, like justice for Teina Pora, to make sure that he finally got the payment that he deserved.

A huge amount has been achieved by this Government in 100 days, and we are proud of that. But then we look across to the other side of the House to the desperate and divided Opposition. The problem with the seven stages of grief is that they affect people at different times. For instance, one of the stages of grief is shock. I believe that Sarah Dowie is exhibiting that at the moment, when she told Newshub today that there’d been “a bit of talk” about who would replace Mr English as leader—“a bit of talk”, from Sarah Dowie. Perhaps a slightly career-limited meaning. Who is it that she is talking to?

Another one of the seven stages of grief is guilt, and I believe that that is currently being carried by Steven Joyce. He is the man. He’s done the numbers to see if he can become the leader, and he’s counted 11.7 billion votes. So we know for sure that he’s in the running.

But the person who we all know is mainly in the running here is Simon Bridges. Now, there is to be a National Party caucus meeting in Tauranga, or, as Simon calls it, home advantage. That’s what he’s got at the moment. All summer we saw the behaviour of Simon Bridges. It didn’t exactly look like a loyal servant. He popped up in all kinds of puff pieces. He was on Matinee Idle, talking about Nina Simone coming to him recently—whatever that might mean.

But the sure sign when you’re in Opposition as to whether something might be going on: Simon Bridges grew a beard over summer. On this side of the House we know all about that. I want to clarify that Kieran McAnulty has grown a beard recently, but that’s only so he can get into pubs. But Simon Bridges, he grew a beard over summer, and we know for sure what that means: that the manoeuvring has started.

Simon Bridges is also suffering from another stage of the seven stages of grief, and that is anger. Anger is what we’re seeing from Simon Bridges, on a daily basis.

But the other seven stages of grief, particularly the ones around depression, reflection, and loneliness, belong only to Bill English. Today, we heard a state of the nation speech from that member that actually wasn’t about the state of the nation. The state of the nation is positive and optimistic and ready to see the impact of the Government’s policies. The speech we heard today was about the state of the Opposition: desperate, divided, in denial, tired, out of ideas, and carping about things that New Zealanders know are going to eventually lead to their wages rising and to their well-being increasing.

This is an Opposition falling apart. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think it would happen this quickly, but it has. And Sarah Dowie is right—there’s a little bit of talk going on right now. I’m going to suggest to her there’s going to be a lot of talk going on in her direction sometime soon.

But what I can assure New Zealanders is that this Government is committed to implementing our 100-day plan and then, in the next 1,000 days, to improving healthcare, improving education, raising living standards, lifting wages—

💬 Hon Phil Twyford: Building houses.

—building houses, Mr Twyford, and giving New Zealanders the confidence to know they have a Government that backs them 100 percent. We’re united; they’re divided—end of story.

Can I add my words of congratulations in this, the general debate, for the first time this year in the House. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m proud to be here. On one negative note—in the past I would normally follow one of the members from the other side, and I relished the opportunity because the contrast was great. That’s my way of complimenting the Minister of Finance on a fantastic contribution today.

I’m proud to be part of this New Zealand First - Labour Government, with the support of the Green Party. I want to congratulate all of these Ministers, all of these members, for the herculean work that they have undertaken in the last 100 days. We have worked incredibly hard for the benefit of all New Zealanders, whether they are business owners, whether they are employees, or whether they are struggling every day just to get by. Cheers to this Government.

I wanted to use the example of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). I am proud to stand up now and talk about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or what is now called the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is a new deal, and it is really important for the people of New Zealand to understand that one of the huge principles—one of the guiding principles—that New Zealand First took into negotiations was to work with a party that understood what we were trying to achieve with trade, because New Zealand First is a party that absolutely supports trade. The problem we had was when that party was in power, they weren’t interested in trade, they weren’t interested in people; they were just there to sign a deal and sell it to the public as a win. That was the problem with the TPP under that party on that side of the House.

So I would like to commend the new trade Minister, because not only has he taken on board the angst that the Labour Party itself had with the TPP but he listened to New Zealand First, and here we are today, where I am able to stand up and congratulate, and say this is a new deal—this is not the old TPP that was being forced down the throats of New Zealanders by that party over there.

There are only a few distinctions that need to be made, because they are huge and they are vitally important. New Zealand First spoke to the sovereignty of our country. We railed against the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions that that Government just flippantly accepted in their negotiations in the TPP. They just took what was given, but credit to this Minister: he went and he said to those parties, those partnership countries, that we don’t think this is acceptable to New Zealanders. In fact, we know this is not acceptable to New Zealanders.

So what we have now is—yes, we still have an ISDS provision, but what we have is a clause where multinational corporates cannot sue the Government, in terms of their work with the Government. We have an ISDS clause where this Government will tell multinational corporates to go and use New Zealand courts, like New Zealand businesses have to do. They don’t get, and they shouldn’t get, special privilege. So, in that, sovereignty in New Zealand has been hugely boosted by the work of this Government.

Can I also congratulate the Minister and his team on his work in terms of protecting New Zealanders and the very basic need—and right, I would put it to the House—of being able to own and afford their own home. What we have done in our negotiations—and we’ve actually taken a win on this—is something that that party wasn’t even interested in attempting: to protect the sanctity of the New Zealand home, and to say to overseas investors that New Zealand homes are not your investment tools to be used to make profits on. These are Kiwi homes, and they need to be protected for Kiwis. So I am proud to be standing here and congratulating the Minister on his work and taking up the message of New Zealand First and all of your supporters.

Pharmac biologic issues, in terms of protections there, are no longer an issue for New Zealand. Copyright and patent laws remain the same. This is not the same deal, and I congratulate this Government. Thank you.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I’m not going to speak to the specificity or sections of the bill that comes up for vote later today, but I will, however, speak to the general thrust. Yesterday, in the reading of the Government’s bill—which, obviously, concerns a similar topic, that of medicinal cannabis—I heard a number of National Party MPs stand up and critique that Government’s bill. Today, they have the opportunity to fill those gaps. I heard Dr Jonathan Coleman refer to the Government’s bill as “half-baked”. I heard Dr Shane Reti refer to a conversation that New Zealanders want to have, saying that they, the National Party, wanted to have it as well.

All members in this House have experienced the pain and the suffering of a loved one—of a family member or of a close friend—and I ask the members of this House, in considering the bill later today, to put themselves in another person’s shoes. This issue is bigger than politics or the likes of the political suffering, with regard to the wounds of political pride that are so often dashed across the headlines in the media. What we are talking about today is the House of Representatives’ role as a gatekeeper to a broader conversation that New Zealanders can have at the select committee stage.

I ask the House: is it better, in the current situation, under the current legal framework, to be a bystander to the pain of a loved one when the only medicine that works for them is medicinal cannabis, or is it better—is it more ethical—to break that law? The reason that I mention this is because I think it is crucially important to raise the point that the law is not natural when people are in pain or are suffering—indeed, the law is man-made, and we in this House have the opportunity to make that law; to put it right when it is wrong.

Today I had the privilege to meet a number of patients, those who could benefit from legalisation around medicinal cannabis use, as is outlined in my bill, and those who are currently breaking the law in order to get the relief that they need. I spoke with a young woman, Grace, whose family currently is able to access medicinal cannabis only by way of fund-raising the $1,200 a month that it costs to get the product through the Ministry of Health. Her family believes that the best course for this House to chart forward is to vote my bill through to select committee so that members may hear their case.

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. I know that the member has been briefed on anticipating debates. I’ve been listening very carefully, and this is about the third or the fourth time that she has referred to her bill and asked members to consider matters relating to it. Can I ask her to stick to the general principles of the issue and not to refer to the bill again?

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Absolutely, Mr Speaker. I will then refer to the point of conscience. This, as you have confirmed, will be a conscience vote. I ask that members consider their conscience. There have been many issues before this House where members have been asked to vote in conscience: the likes of gay marriage, for example. I think it’s important to note that our former Prime Minister Bill English mentioned recently—last year, I believe—that he probably would have voted differently now, knowing the impact that the passage of that law has had on society: that the sky did not fall in, that people had access to equality. I simply ask that members consider their conscience and vote in line with that. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I think members across this House come to Parliament because they share in a very real desire to see New Zealanders have stable and happy and prosperous lives with good health and education, live in safe communities, and have a beautiful environment. But one of the differences, I believe, between this side of the House and this new, weak, disparate Government that we have is that, on this side of the House, we understand that all of those ambitions and desires we share for New Zealanders and their families require a strong economy—they require a strong financial base to pay for those things. The interesting thing is that things like the Family Income Package that this party developed and delivered in the 2017 Budget and that has been adopted by the new Government are possible only because of that strong economy.

At its very core, a strong economy comes from courageous New Zealanders who are prepared to get up, work hard, invest their money, put their own assets on the line, work 16 to 20 hours a day, and, hopefully, grow from that ambition, that hard work, and that confidence into creating jobs. It is the New Zealanders who take that chance who are our economy. They are assisted by a Government that creates rules and settings that encourage them to do that and give them the confidence to invest in New Zealand. That, fundamentally, is what determines how many jobs we have in our society, how high the incomes are in those jobs, and how good those jobs are. The most important thing to any New Zealand worker, I would suggest, first and foremost, is that they have a job. You have to have a job before pay rates or pay conditions or anything else are even relevant. So we must always ensure that what we do supports the creation of new jobs.

Now, let’s look at New Zealand’s record in this regard. In this regard, under the National Government, we’ve seen New Zealand creating jobs—new jobs; extra jobs—at the rate of 10,000 a month for more than two years now. That means New Zealand now has the third-highest employment rate in the OECD and New Zealand has the highest employment rate it has ever had. That is the reality of a strong economy and good—

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: How many jobs a month?

That is 10,000 new jobs a month. Those are the conditions we have right at the moment.

But what have we seen since the change of Government? Well, interestingly enough, in the first 100-days, we have seen what I would have called a remarkable plummet in business confidence. My colleague Jacqui Dean, our spokesperson on small business, knows this very well. Up and down the country, what we are hearing consistently and what’s reflected in those business confidence surveys that Steven Joyce has been talking about in this House is that businesses are scared. They are scared of investing, they are scared of growing, and they are scared of employing people, because they know this Government is going to make it harder and harder to employ people. I’ve lost count of the number of businesses who’ve said to me “Why would we invest our money? Why would we put our own assets on the line to employ people when we can’t have any confidence that we’re going to be supported in that ambition?” If we have settings that are going to cost jobs in this country, the only people who lose are the New Zealand workers. Why would you do that?

Yet we now have a Government that is so determined to look after their union mates that they want to take us back to the dark old days of the 1970s, when it was all about block, rigid employment conditions, when businesses were punished for taking on workers, and when the taking on of a worker was done only if it was absolutely unavoidable, because the cost and the difficulty was so overwhelming. I find it so disturbing that the labour reforms announced by the Labour Government are, not surprisingly, going to take us back to a situation that will see, I’m telling you now, more strike action. You will see more strike action as unions get more and more militant—you’re seeing it already. You will see fewer jobs. I asked the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety whether he could commit to maintaining 10,000 new jobs a month. No, he can’t, because he knows that these changes will see fewer jobs created, and that will hurt New Zealand workers.

At the end of the day, if we want New Zealand to continue to be a prosperous, growing, positive country with opportunities for our workers and opportunities for our families, they have to have jobs, and the more jobs there are, the more choice they have. Good jobs are created when New Zealand businesses have confidence that their Government backs them. It’s very clear that New Zealand businesses have no confidence that this Government will back them. That will hurt New Zealand workers, and we’re going to make sure New Zealand knows about it.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is an absolute joy to stand here as this Government gets to the end of 100 days where, in that time, we have achieved more than the previous Government did in nine long years. We have passed our Families Package; we have passed an extension to paid parental leave to 26 weeks; we have increased the minimum wage, starting on 1 April; we have announced changes to strengthen workers’ rights; we have announced legislation to set child poverty reduction targets into law; we’ve introduced a law to ban overseas speculation; we’ve started setting up KiwiBuild; we’ve set zero-carbon emissions goals; we’ve set up the Pike River Recovery Agency—and the list goes on. It is 100 days that, on this side of the House, we are rightly proud of, because we know we are bringing about positive, progressive change for our country.

The last 100 days haven’t been quite the same picture on the Opposition benches. While we’ve had 100 days of action, those guys have had 100 days of roaring up the barbecue. I think it’s very apt that tonight at midnight we are going to see a super blue blood moon, because I think that very aptly describes what is happening on the opposite benches. And we’re not naive to the ways of the world. We’ve seen this movie before, a couple of times. We know how it ends. Just doing a textual analysis of the comments coming out of the National members: “Look, there’s been a little bit of gossip.”—that means “The battle lines are drawn, the factions are forming, the barbecues are roaring, and winter is coming.” The fact that there have been “frank conversations”—I can’t even imagine what that one means, and we’ve seen some stuff over here. But it has been 152 years since we have seen this phenomenon of the super blue blood moon—I’m looking forward to seeing how it ends.

But I think I would like to send a message to Bill English: don’t worry, by 5 a.m. tomorrow morning the moon will be back in the full light of the sun. I think it’s worth him remembering that, but I think that it will be only a very short-term reprieve for the leader, because last night in this House we saw one of the National members literally seize the Iron Throne: we saw the Hon Nikki Kaye give a speech on a bill from the leader’s chair. Now, I have seen some stuff in my time, but I have never seen someone seize the Iron Throne in such a fashion. I know she probably imagines herself more as the mother of dragons, Daenerys Targaryen, but I would like to say that it’s more of a Cersei Lannister kind of move that’s happening over there on the Opposition benches.

What we are going to see is an Opposition that gets itself obsessed with itself. The factions will form. All we will see is—

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: That member knows a lot about self-obsession.

—inward-looking things—and, yes, Ms Barry, I do remember those days. That’s why I said I know how this movie ends. Now, what you will see in that same period while National gets obsessed with itself—the knives are out. On the day the leader gives his state of the nation address, we have a leak within the National Party caucus about the ructions that are going on. Instead, what you will see on this side of the House is a Government that is intent on bringing about more progressive change for this country. We have only just begun with our first 100 days. We have many, many more things that we need to achieve to put this country on the positive track it needs to be on to face the 21st century, where everybody gets a fair go. We have launched a mental health inquiry. We know there’s further work to be done on that. We know that we need to continue working to make sure that New Zealanders can have access to affordable, warm, dry housing. We know we need to keep working to make sure that our kids are getting the best education system. And we are committed to New Zealanders, not firing up the barbecues. Thank you.

Well, it was interesting. [Interruption] Can I say, it’s great to hear my fans on the other side. It was interesting to hear the Minister of Finance just now. He is clearly fascinated by me. He spent half his speech talking about me, but what I found fascinating was watching him over the last 24—

💬 Hon Phil Twyford: Did it make you feel good?

Well, you speak for yourself, Phil Twyford. I spent the last 24 hours being fascinated by him, watching him squirm at question time as he struggled to answer questions on why business confidence in this country is plummeting.

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: Here we go, talking down the economy.

And there’s absolutely no—well, the member over there says “talking down the economy.” I think he’ll find his buddy, now the Deputy Prime Minister, did that on the night he decided to go with them. He’s the one talking—I say, actually, if you look at the fundamentals of the economy, there’s absolutely no reason to talk down the New Zealand economy: 10,000 jobs a month for the last two years, some 245,000 jobs; I think, as my colleague Amy Adams said, third in the world for employment. We’ve got an economy that’s diversifying into many areas, whether it’s ICT, whether it’s all manner of new food types, or whether it’s rockets. We’ve been lifting benefits under the National Government—no reason whatsoever for confidence to go down. And you have a look: the major economies of the world at the moment, from America to Japan to, actually, throughout Asia and Europe, are going gangbusters—the first time in a very long time when all the major economies in the world are growing. So you have to say—we have to say—that if business confidence is down and if this economy starts to dampen, there’s only one place to look—

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: Well, why’d you lose?

Chris Hipkins—it is on your side of the benches, Mr Hipkins. That’s where we’ll be looking.

And you have to ask yourself: why is it that that’s what business is thinking? Is it just because they don’t like the other lot? I don’t think it’s that at all. I think it’s the policy settings that they’re changing, it’s the uncertainty that they’re creating.

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Ha, ha!

And Iain Lees-Galloway, he’s excited, but he’s the little pawn in all this, doing some of the worst things as far as business is concerned. We’ve heard from Amy Adams about the courage that it takes to get a business going, to take on that extra person, and what we’ve got from Iain Lees-Galloway, coming, I think it is, tomorrow, is a ragtag wish list of union wishes that he is putting into place, undoing a whole lot of things that made this a more flexible economy, a more exciting and a more vibrant economy to be in, with very strong growth indeed.

Worse than that, though, are the changes in immigration—or, in fact, the non-changes, at the moment, because what we know is that every single party on that side—

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Make up your mind, Simon.

Well, I’ll give you the real view. Every single party on that side is very scared about migration, wanting to slash the numbers, and now Iain Lees-Galloway says, “Oh, we’re not fixated on the numbers.” Well, what is the policy? Businesses need to know, Mr Lees-Galloway. They need to understand, to have the confidence to plan and to grow their business. I can tell that member I’ve been out in regional New Zealand, all over the country, and what they are telling me is, given they don’t have a plan from Iain Lees-Galloway, given they don’t know that they can take on the new workers that they need, they are planning not just to stay the same; in many cases—a bus-builder company I went to in Tauranga—to shrink their businesses. So if that member wants to know why business confidence is down, it’s a fear of their policies.

Out in regional New Zealand, we’ve seen, when this last Government finished, 12 of 15 regions growing incredibly strongly, and what have we seen in its place? Rather than regionally led growth, we’ve seen pork-barrel politics. But we’ve got a situation, as we have heard today. We’ve got a situation, as we’ve heard again today, from Mr Shane Jones: a billion trees that, as of today, is—how many trees? No trees; mother Nature’s going to take care of it sometime in the next decade. He’s keeping the promise as an aspiration now, not a commitment. Work for the dole—he got rumbled by Willie Jackson. If he loses to Willie Jackson, he’s in real trouble—and project blowouts all over the show, I’m being told by officials. That makes you very worried, actually, about that billion-dollar fund and what a lack of progress is going to mean in regional New Zealand.

So it’s embarrassing for this Government—a Government, Mr Hipkins, with no real agenda, that’s going to run out of work in this House quite soon. No wonder business confidence is down. We’ll be fighting the things that are stupid, for the best of this country.

I am proud to stand and speak on behalf of this Government as it comes to the end of its first 100 days in office—a period of time in which this Government has done more to progress the ambitions, the hopes, and the dreams of New Zealanders than the National Party did in nine long years in Government.

We’ve passed our Families Package to increase the incomes of 385,000 New Zealand families. We passed the extension of paid parental leave to support parents to be able to stay at home with their children and improve that bond between themselves and their kids. We increased the minimum wage to $16.50 an hour. We announced changes to our employment law to strengthen workers’ rights, to return the workers’ rights that were stripped away by the previous National Government. We’ve announced legislation to set child poverty targets in law and we are under way to get on with the tasks that it will take to reduce child poverty.

We’ve introduced a law to ban overseas speculators—something the National Party said could not be done. We did it within weeks. It just took willingness and intelligence. We’ve stopped the mass sell-off of State houses, so that this Government can once again focus on ensuring that people have one of the basic, one of the most fundamental rights: that is, a roof over their head and a warm, dry home to live in.

I could spend more than my five minutes talking about the things that this Government has done in office. But it’s not just the Government that has had a busy time since the election. We know that the Opposition has had a busy time as well. They say they’re worried about jobs. Well, of course, the jobs that they’re worried about are Bill English’s job and who gets to take his job from him.

We’ve heard a lot about Simon Bridges—mostly, from Simon Bridges, or, as his parents like to call him, “that guy that used to sit next to Jacinda on the telly”. He’s best known for wanting to be the leader of the National Party, for his contributions to the hair products industry, and for repeatedly introducing legislation that needed to come back to the House, time after time after time, to fix up the mistakes that he made as Minister. And, of course, he’s well known for promising bridges that never came to fruition. Perhaps that might be a foreshadowing of his leadership bid.

We also heard today from contestant No. 1, Amy Adams. Amy Adams is too boring to talk about; something that I’m sure she will come to realise in the coming weeks, despite her unshakeable belief in her own abilities.

Then we have, of course, Judith Collins, aka the “Nuclear Option”. The polls would have to be at Bill English 2002 levels to get Judith Collins over the line, so, you know, possibly just around the corner. Eschewing the traditional barbecue with colleagues, Judith Collins’ leadership campaign will involve dinner with Chinese border officials, dinner with National Party donors, and visits to any car salesman prepared to give her a free car in return for marketing and promotion. And she’ll do all of this on taxpayers’ time.

One of the outside hopes is, of course, Nikki Kaye. Some people think that Nikki Kaye is the only one in the National caucus who can take on Jacinda Ardern, and there might be some sense in that logic. Unfortunately, she will never get the chance to go up against Jacinda Ardern, because as a staunch advocate for marriage equality, a staunch advocate for end-of-life choice, and a loud and proud advocate for drug law reform, she has shown that she’s in touch with the New Zealand public and completely out of touch with the National caucus—the majority of which are backward thinking and increasingly conservative.

Then, of course, we have the real outside hope, the future of the National Party, Todd Muller. Very, very popular within the National Party, he’s a middle-aged Pākehā man with no obvious philosophy or original ideas. No one knows what he stands for and no one knows what he’s done in his time in Parliament—in other words, the perfect National Party leader. Don’t hold your breath, though, because he doesn’t want to be cannon fodder at the next election.

The Opposition’s busy, but the Government is busier. At the end of our 100 days, we look forward to getting on with the next round of our programme of advancing the hopes and aspirations of New Zealanders.

Debate interrupted.