General Debate

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

You can’t claim success about a surplus if you haven’t paid the bills, and that is the legacy of the last nine years. We wouldn’t ever do it at home. You could make your bank balance look fantastic if you didn’t pay the rates, if you didn’t pay your power bill, if you didn’t fix the washing machine. Your bank balance could grow, so that’s exactly what the previous Government has done, and we have seen the impact of that in so many areas.

We have seen the impact in health, and we know on this side of the House that if you underfund the health sector by $2.4 billion over nine years, that’s going to have some effect. It’s going to see leaking hospitals. It’s going to see sewage in the walls of our hospitals. It’s going to see frustrated health professionals, who we owe an awful lot to in New Zealand—the professionals who work in our health system, who have been stretched beyond belief by that underfunding. But you know what? Simon Bridges—do you know what he calls those issues? He says they’re an accounting issue. Simon Bridges says that sewage in the walls of our hospitals is an accounting issue. Well, you know what they say about accountants, with due respect to them: accountants know the cost of everything and the value of nothing, and that is the legacy of the previous Government.

We’ve also seen that in Christchurch, with the blowout in Earthquake Commission repairs. Gerry Brownlee called that “an unquantified liability”. It’s a little bit like going to the doctor and being told that you won’t be able to run a marathon tomorrow. Yep, it’s unquantified, but you kind of know what it is, don’t you. Christchurch knows all about a quantified liability—it’s called Gerry Brownlee. That’s what they know about.

We can see it right across all of the social sector. In early childhood education (ECE), we heard from Chris Hipkins today about ECE centres losing $105,000 since 2011, of parents being asked to pay more and more—the cost of basic public services shifting on to parents because the previous Government wasn’t prepared to invest the money that they needed to.

On this side of the House, we have a very different set of priorities. That party wanted to manufacture a surplus and give tax cuts that favoured the wealthy. On this side of the House, we want to invest in critical public services that New Zealanders deserve. We want to give every New Zealander a fair shot at success, and we have a plan to do that.

Much of what has been discussed this week we already knew, but there’s no way that a bland set of Government accounts can show just how badly rundown our public services are. The $2.4 billion underfunding of health will take time to turn around, but we have a plan to do it: a six-year plan to invest in health. We knew about the education gap and we will reinvest in education. In our mini-Budget, we have already reversed those tax cuts. We have a Families Package that will deliver, on average, $75 per week to 385,000 families. We made sure that there was room for an investment in our future, and that means making sure that we invest in giving people the skills that they will need for tomorrow—the ability to train and retrain.

It means restarting contributions to the Superannuation Fund. We hear about the great economic management on the other side of the House, and they didn’t put one cent into the Superannuation Fund from 2009 onwards. This side of the House is proud that we are investing in a future that is sustainable for all New Zealanders.

In the Budget in May, we will begin to address the social and infrastructure deficits that have been left to us by the previous Government. Our priorities are around health and education and housing and giving New Zealanders the public services that they have come to rely on in the past and that we will rebuild again. I have said it once and I will say it many times again: it will take more than one Budget to undo nine years of neglect. But on this side of the House we have a determination that we will invest in the future of New Zealanders. We have the allowances in the Budget to do that, and we balance those with being fiscally responsible. This is a Government that is committed to making sure that every New Zealander enjoys prosperity and success, unlike the previous Government, who were prepared to sit there like accountants, feeling good about the numbers on their spreadsheets but failing entirely to deliver to New Zealanders. That now changes.

Well, there you have it: Grant Robertson is more red-faced and moving faster than the last time he was in a hot yoga class, spinning. Because that’s exactly what you just heard from him—it’s from a confused Government that is still surprised that they’re in Government. They’re doing what they did every day in Opposition, which is to manufacture a crisis. But the difference here is Grant Robertson has stood before this House today and he has started to rewrite history. Well, the thing that Mr Robertson can’t get over is that he’s now in charge, and he needs to step up and stop making excuses and actually show some leadership—and he might share that with the Prime Minister.

Because, you see, the reality is starting to sink in. They promised everything during the election campaign, and now they cannot deliver. That’s why they’re resetting expectations. That’s why they’re starting to spin. That’s why we’re starting to see fake news all over the place.

Today, you’re going to hear from some of our spokespeople who were Ministers, who actually know what was going on, and who are actually the authority here about the record of the last Government. They’re going to peel back the covers of the rewriting of history that we just heard.

Jacinda Ardern stood on the platform in front of the television and she said she would be a different type of Prime Minister. I’ll give her this: she is already, after six months. She’s taken a new Government of six months and she’s turned it into one that looks like it’s been there for three terms. The reason for this is she can’t control Winston Peters, she is actually taking the Greens for granted, and Kiwis are starting to see the cracks. There are distractions everywhere, and Grant Robertson is trying to fix them.

So what have we seen over the last five weeks? This Government has just had five weeks of terrible news where they’ve been off message, just six months in. We had the Russian debacle, where we’re still waiting for the Foreign Minister to actually say it was the Russians. We had the Labour study camp issue. We had Clare Curran, who’s the gift that keeps on giving for everybody but the Prime Minister and her leadership. Then we have Jenny Marcroft and Tracey Martin, who were threatening a local MP over local problems—and, actually, they’ve been avoiding the media every single day. We had, last week, a decision that the Greens like, that every single New Zealander is going to have to pay at least $15 extra each time they fill up their pumps, just so Aucklanders cannot use a tram. You’ve got Shane Jones threatening commercial entities. And then, last week, we had a new MP, Paul Eagle, who’s either swearing at a panel beater or a constituent, but either one of those actually doesn’t work.

You see, there is no crisis other than leadership in Government. Grant Robertson realised they’ve overpromised, they’ve already spent it all, and now there’s none left. You see, they gave Shane Jones $3 billion during the negotiations to form the Government—a regional slush fund. They’ve just delivered $2.8 billion so that students can study for free in their first year, and the universities and others are saying there are no extra students coming. You’ve got Winston Peters, who said there’s a lot more money coming for Pacific aid, and then you’ve got the Greens, who have made the Government rip $5 billion out of the regions for those Auckland trams.

So when they say there’s a crisis, it’s because there’s no money left and Grant Robertson can’t deliver on those promises. There will be nothing for the teachers or the nurses or the midwives or the others they promised before the election, because they just didn’t think that they were going to be in charge. So Grant Robertson’s spinning as fast as he can. He’s dampening down expectations. It just won’t wash and it won’t stick.

Nikki Kaye, today, will speak about the great record that we have in education, where we went from $8 billion to $11 billion a year—an increase—and great results for Kiwis up and down the country, young New Zealanders who now have a better chance. In health—an extra $5 billion a year in spending, 50,000 more operations per year, 800,000 children are getting free doctors visits. That was a hard-working Government.

What I want to say is that a competent Government deals with issues when they come up. This Government needs to stop making excuses, stop manufacturing crises, stop spinning, stop lowering expectations, and just do their job.

Thank you very much. We have seen the polls. I want to make it very clear to the National Party that all the bombast in the world and all the effort without essence doesn’t cut it any more. Their leader’s in trouble. That speech from Todd McClay was probably an audition for a future challenge very soon.

Can I just say, I picked up a tribunal report from the Human Rights Review Tribunal on 26 March and, I’ll tell you what, it’s an absolute disgrace. They found, of all people, Kim Dotcom to be a sincere and honest witness—traits which were not common when it came to the Government and their senior law officer. It’s all in this report. It’s a disgrace.

💬 Chris Penk: You’re a disgrace.

It’s no use junior shouting out there—nobody gives a rat’s derrière about what you think.

We know from court decisions that illegal activities were used to assist attempts at extraditing Mr Kim Dotcom. Astoundingly, though, activities were coordinated and sanctioned by the former Attorney-General, Mr Finlayson, the man who poses as the Blackstone of the Antipodes.

There was a raid, you remember, on 20 January 2012, and later that year, Justice Winkelmann found that the warrants used were invalid. This proved to be just the first of a series of poorly orchestrated examples of Government malfeasance. Time and again under the National Party they demonstrated malice and an incompetence in those raids, and they couldn’t even handle the fallout after it. Now, in 2015, Attorney-General Finlayson accepted a transfer for Mr Dotcom’s request for information—

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: Not true.

—ostensibly pursuant to a Privacy Act. Here comes the gardener who’s now the lawyer—ostensibly pursuant to the Privacy Act 1993.

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: Say it outside the House.

I’m saying it anywhere.

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: Say it outside.

I’ll say it outside. I’ve got the report. It’s from a QC, not some junior weedeater. As expressed by the Human Rights Review Tribunal, this is what they say—

💬 SPEAKER: No. I am going to ask the Deputy Prime Minister to withdraw that description of the member.

I withdraw that description. The rationale, they said, of the Attorney-General was non-existent. So what was the real reason? Mr Finlayson, as a law officer representing the Crown, was the person responsible for litigation with Mr Dotcom. Thus, as discerned by the Human Rights Review Tribunal, Mr Finlayson’s motivations were likely—and listen to these words—“for the purpose of coordinating the response to the request with the Crown’s litigation strategy.” So he had a duplicitous purpose from the word go. This dodgy governance is unbecoming of an Attorney-General, the Crown’s chief law officer, and, as stated by the tribunal, “Sight must not be lost of the principle that those who seek to uphold the law must themselves obey it.” It appears the most basic constitutional duties were not followed. It’s unacceptable behaviour. It was blatant, and he got found out very badly.

You know something? This is the same member of Parliament and Attorney-General who, when he got a bill in front of him saying we should move the age from 10 years to 25 years to qualify, gave a certificate saying it was against the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

💬 Chris Penk: You can’t fill out your own forms correctly.

And then he stood, and then, junior—then, junior—he stood by while that member and others campaigned on 20 years. So if 25 years was against the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, how come 20 years wasn’t?

💬 Chris Penk: You can’t fill out your own forms.

There you go—he’s marvellous. I can see why they got you. Obviously all the rest of the sheep were busy. Everyone might as well have got—see, shouting like that, that’s so typical of these neo-liberal twits they bring in in a certain political party.

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

I didn’t use his name.

💬 SPEAKER: Order! I know, but members might be neo-liberal, but they’re honourable members and not twits.

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I was going to wait until the Rt Hon Winston Peters had resumed his seat so as not to interrupt, but you yourself have interrupted. The member we’re talking about has shouted out on three occasions around dishonesty, suggesting dishonesty of a member of this House. That is unparliamentary language.

💬 Chris Penk: I pointed out that the member who was speaking had not correctly filled out his own forms, so shouldn’t be casting aspersions on others’ ability. It was nothing to do with dishonesty. The people of New Zealand may regard him as dishonest, but that was not something that I was saying in the House today.

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: Speaking to the point of order—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! No, no. The member has misused the point of order process.

💬 Chris Penk: She has?

💬 SPEAKER: No, the member has misused the point of order process, which has a much higher standard than the debating standard, to make an allegation against a member, one which those of us who know the record and have followed it—and if the member had followed it, he would have known that his allegation was incorrect. But in any case, whether or not he knew it was incorrect, he misused the point of order process and will withdraw and apologise.

💬 Chris Penk: I withdraw and apologise. I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Will you be requiring that member to withdraw and apologise for having used the word “twit”?

💬 SPEAKER: I have dealt with that matter—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Hear, hear!

💬 SPEAKER: —already, and if it wasn’t for the support and advice of Mr Jones there might have been more serious consequences for bringing up a matter after the Speaker had dealt with it.

Mr Finlayson is a man who famously commanded his staff not to use the Oxford comma, and I suggest that he focus on developing an ethical compass before he starts dabbling in intricacies of grammar. In the case that he will return to practice as he leaves this Parliament by the end of this year, retaking a university legal ethics course should be a prerequisite, rather than posing around here as someone who knew the law when this report is a damning indictment of his misbehaviour in the highest office that this Parliament has where law officers are concerned. It was an abject disgrace, and he should be apologising to this House.

I am very pleased to speak in this general debate. If that speech from Winston Peters wasn’t an example of a distracted Government focused on conspiracy theories, attacking the backbench instead of talking about the issues that matter to New Zealand, I don’t know what was. This is a Government that was an accidental Government and already, within six months, is engaging in spin because they don’t have an agenda and because they promised far too much.

Let me take my colleague Mr Hipkins—or shall I call him “Trumpkins”—engaging in fake news. The facts are under our Government the education budget went from $8 billion to $11 billion. In early childhood education (ECE) it doubled—it went from $900 million to $1.8 billion. And school property—does Mr Hipkins remember the fact that when we came in, we had no idea of the state of school property or of condition assessments across every school in New Zealand? The Auditor-General report shows that. We then went and invested a third more. We went from $3 billion to $5 billion. That member can start to release lists like unusable buildings, but until he provides the detail he is just engaging in spin.

But let’s talk about the other issues that we know that this Government is focused on, and what they say and what it actually means. Here are my top five Labour lines of spin. The first one: “It’s not a tax; it’s an excise.” You try and tell the families in west Auckland that it doesn’t mean increased costs for them. You try and tell families in South Auckland that their food isn’t going to go up. Tell the people of Great Barrier Island, who have $3 at the moment for their fuel, that that doesn’t mean increases.

Then we heard about the billion trees: “We are going to plant a billion trees—but, actually, we haven’t planted any, because it’s winter. It’s winter, so we haven’t planted any trees yet. And half of them are going to be delivered by the private sector.”

“We’re going to deliver 100,000 houses—but, actually, we haven’t built any houses yet. And half of them are going to be delivered by the private sector.”

“We had the numbers for the Speaker.”—we had the numbers for the Speaker. On the first vote of this Parliament, to show their amateurishness, their inability to run this joint, we saw them fail on that first vote. And what did they do? They then handed us most of the chairs of our select committees and numbers of select committee places.

Again, this Government is totally focused on spin. They don’t have an agenda. They realise that they promised far too much, and they have now got Treasury and a whole lot of public servants—we know; they talk to us, also—in Wellington saying to them that you promised too much—

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

—that the Government promised too much. The numbers don’t add up, so what they’re having to do is engage in spin. They’re having to create fake news. They’re having to rewrite history. They’re having to ignore the fact that we had the Canterbury earthquakes, ignore the fact that we had a decade of deficits, ignore the fact that we increased the education budget every single year that we’ve been in office, and create these stories to make up for the fact that they have to manage expectations in the Budget, that they can’t deliver on their promises.

It’s a Government of broken promises. It’s a Government of spin. If you wanted to leave yourself with one final line which, again, many New Zealanders are saying, “What are going to be the costs to my family as a result of this Government?”—because we know that they are looking at increasing taxes across the board. They said there would be no new taxes, but the reality is that when they said no new taxes, what they actually meant is no new additional taxes. The reality is that they are going to increase a range of existing taxes that are going to hurt people in their back pockets.

We’ve heard, in terms of business confidence, that business confidence is slumping. What businesses are saying in Auckland Central and Waiheke and other parts of New Zealand is that between the minimum wage going up, between the 90-day trial period going for businesses with over 20 employees, and the additional costs in terms of fuel, people can’t cope. So this Government has to front up, deal with the problems, accept that they overpromised, and stop spinning to New Zealanders, because they deserve better.

I had a whole speech written out, but I’ve just thrown that out the door after listening to that speech. Can I just go to what the last speaker, Nikki Kaye, referred to, and that was a reference to five political spin lines from this side. Well, if that member wants to play that game, let’s play it back. Five political spin lines from that side—very easy to identify, just from the two speakers that have already stood in this debate today.

Let’s start with number one that they like to spin, and they’ve been spinning in this House already, that we’re an accidental Government—an accidental Government. Clearly, the Opposition has still not worked out how MMP works. People did not go to the polling booths and accidentally forget to tick National. This is not an accident. We did not accidentally get the majority of votes. The public is not silly. They knew who they were voting for. They were voting for change, Nikki Kaye—that’s what they were voting for. They’ve got that change. They’re not thinking it’s an accident. It’s exactly what the majority of New Zealanders asked for, and that, Nikki Kaye, is how MMP works.

Number two political spin line: fake news. This side of the House is spreading fake news! Trumpeting the fake news line! Well, it’s not fake news. Everything we come to this House with is based on evidence. Fortunately, we have more access to information now that we are in Government, and so, actually, the picture looks bleaker than what we could have even imagined when we were in Opposition. Fortunately, though, we’re ready, because it’s not an accident that we’re in Government. We are prepared. We’ve had nine years to think about this. We’ve got policies ready to go. But the reality is we’ve got a lot of fixing up to do first because, unlike what the Opposition is saying—which is their third political spin line, where they’re saying there is no crisis—actually, everyone in New Zealand is increasingly seeing the fact that there are crises in far too many areas; in fact, more than what they had originally thought.

Don’t tell us on this side of the House, or the general public, that sewage going through the walls of Middlemore Hospital is not a crisis, don’t tell us on this side of the House that homeless New Zealanders and a lack of housing for New Zealanders is not a crisis, and please don’t try and tell us on this side of the House that the fact that we have an overwhelming number of children still living in poverty is not a crisis. The Opposition needs to own up to the fact that they did nothing to address these issues, and that’s why we’re at crisis point now. Fortunately, it’s not an accident that we’re in Government, and we are ready to fix these situations. They are our reality.

The fourth political spin line that I want to throw out there is that we’ve overpromised. Well, actually, there’s no such thing, because we put on paper what we could do. We have fiscal responsibility guidelines that all of the political parties that are in Government now agreed to. We didn’t do the irresponsible thing that that side of the House was proposing when they were in Government, which was offering up $400 million of tax cuts to the top 10 percent of income earners in this country. In fact, we’re doing the responsible thing and we are re-diverting that money to where the need is: health, housing, and education—areas that were incredibly underfunded by the previous Government.

We can see that by the fact that we have situations—which that previous education Minister should take some responsibility for—where we have schools falling down around us, or we have schools that don’t have the capacity to take the population of children that live in those areas, because not enough of an investment was made where it should’ve been. Instead, we had the previous Government trying to offer $400 million of tax cuts to the top 10 percent of income earners in this country.

The fifth political spin line that they are still rolling out, that they tried to roll out to win the election—before the 2017 election—is that we are the tax demons that the public should be worried about. Well, actually, it’s not the case at all. There is nothing that has been proposed by this side of the House in the last five months, nor will there be moving forward, that we did not put on the table before we went into that election. It’s about honesty. It’s about being honest with the public.

There have been nine years of neglect—and that’s the truth—under the previous Government. Thank goodness we are here. Thank goodness we have a plan. Thank goodness we are in a place to fix this.

The member has cleared something up. They’re not the tax demons; they’re the excise demons, because that’s what they’re calling it now. Apparently, it matters to the Government. Well, as Nikki Kaye said, it certainly doesn’t matter to the people of Auckland, who have to pay 25c a litre more for their fuel—and wait, it’s coming to a region near everybody—because that’s what the Government wants to change. But it’s not tax; it’s an excise.

I want to start by stating that the issues at Middlemore Hospital are very concerning. But any doubt that the Government was manufacturing a crisis to cover the panic that they have over the promises was removed emphatically by the Prime Minister in question time today when, in answer to a question about why she didn’t use the very healthy surpluses left by the previous Government, it was because, apparently, of Middlemore Hospital and Dunedin Hospital.

Well, here’s the thing. We know about Dunedin Hospital, because the previous Government committed unambiguously to a $1.4 billion rebuild. If it’s a crisis, it’s a crisis entirely of the Government’s making, because they chose to put that money back into the Government’s balance sheet by—and Mr Peters will be very interested in this—borrowing from overseas banks, instead of using the very good equity interests that were coming from people like the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund, iwi, and others. ACC, potentially, could have invested in Dunedin Hospital as part of a public-private partnership. Their crisis is entirely of their own making, because they decided that that was ideologically flawed. But the only quantum of the extra money that we’ve now heard—and I think it’s highly exaggerated, but even if it wasn’t—is $200 million for Middlemore Hospital.

Now, they campaigned on adding $8 billion more into the health sector alone than a National Government would have over the next four years—$8 billion. They’ve got it in their fiscal responsibility statement. They know how they’re going to spend it, and, apparently, new revelations so far totalling $200 million are completely upsetting the applecart. I want to know, actually, what this extra $10 billion of capital spending is. So I asked the Minister, who is a member of what they purport to be the most open and transparent Government in parliamentary history, whether he will release the details of the advice given to him and the Minister of Finance, and the answer was “We’ll consider it.”—we’ll consider it. Apparently, there’s a crisis, they’ve got advice, but they don’t want to release the information.

So I asked: give us one example—one example—of something that was unexpected, and the answer was Nelson Hospital. Well, newsflash for the Government: we knew about Nelson Hospital, because we asked for the work to be done. There are serious seismic issues at Nelson Hospital, and they need to be remedied—hardly unexpected, hardly a crisis. That’s what Governments do. They replace things, they invest in things, and they fix things—and we did. Waikato Hospital, Wellington Regional Hospital, Burwood Hospital, and Christchurch Hospital were all rebuilt in the term of the previous Government as part of the multibillion-dollar investment in the asset stock that we made and the $5 billion extra—more than that, actually—that we put in to Vote Health for operational spending.

And what did we get out of it? Did we get the crisis that they’ve just manufactured? No, we got 50,000 more surgeries. We got no gurneys in the emergency departments. We got no cancer patients being flown to Australia. We got record levels of immunisation rates. We got 323,000 homes insulated under Warm Up New Zealand. We got results and, apparently, that’s a crisis.

Well, I suggest that it’s a manufactured crisis, and I’ll stand very proudly on that record. The Government needs to understand that when one is managing a nearly $17 billion vote in health, there will be issues like Middlemore Hospital. There will be things to deal with on a day-to-day basis, but that is not an excuse to repudiate the promises that they made to the nurses, to the midwives, to the allied health professionals, to the doctors, but most of all to the patients, that they would do something better. Because I can see what comes after a manufactured crisis. It’s those other two words we’re going to hear a lot of over the next few months: broken promises.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. So I just sat and listened through Michael Woodhouse’s debate speech about all the hospitals that the previous Government—his Government—apparently fixed and ran so that they are functional. What else are we here for if it is not to ensure that our hospitals are running and functional? So all of the hospitals that are running and functional in this country—and they know this, and that’s why they’re spinning off the list of the hospitals that are running and functional—cannot ever take away from the sewage and mould in Middlemore Hospital in South Auckland, in my community, where I gave birth to my babies, where my community families go to to be healed, to be cared for.

So that’s why they know this. That’s why they’re spending this debate time talking about how they managed to keep some hospitals afloat—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! I apologise for interrupting the member. Interjections are meant to be rare, reasonable, and, preferably, funny, not a constant, mindless barrage, Mr King.

It’s all right. I wasn’t listening to him anyway.

So it is indicative that this previous Government are very aware of the mess that they have caused, and it is exactly what I am thinking about in my first general debate speech as the newly elected co-leader for the party—the particular crises that we have facing us, and the reason why it is going to be so important that we turn our country in a new direction, because the one that the nine years of the previous National Government put us on has resulted in and has worsened the very crises of inequality, climate change, and environmental degradation. They are the result of a flawed and broken economic system which concentrates the wealth and power into the hands of the few, while everyone else is left scrambling for the rest of the crumbs.

Having grown up in South Auckland and in the country communities of my whakapapa in the North and on the East Coast, I saw first-hand the devastating effect that the economic model that is currently operating had on those communities, including intergenerational poverty and the tragic and lasting effect of suffering and suicide in our regions also and in our urban centres. That is the impact that we are feeling here.

And that was the worsened situation, that very economic model that the previous Government pushed hard and drove hard and ended up in worsening impacts for people every day, to the point where in Aotearoa right now, two men—just two men—own more wealth than the 30 percent who are the poorest, the lowest-income New Zealanders in this country. That’s totally unacceptable in this country and it is also not sustainable. It is not economically sustainable. It is not morally sustainable. Half the nation’s wealth is concentrated into the hands of the richest 10 percent, and the whole other half of the nation’s wealth is fought over by the rest of the 90 percent.

We are losing our indigenous biodiversity at an alarming rate. We’ve got to understand the connections. We have got the highest rates of homelessness, child poverty, domestic violence, suicide among young people, and incarceration in the developed world. This is unacceptable, and what we need to do here in Parliament is turn our faces to the streets. We never do that. We hardly ever do that in this place. We need to turn our faces to the streets and be honest about the struggles and the challenges that New Zealanders, up and down our country, are facing.

It is in our confidence and supply agreement with Labour that the Green Party committed to working towards a transformational Government that would truly address the systemic causes of those crises of climate change, inequality, and environmental degradation. That’s why I’m proud to stand as co-leader, to be working with my Labour and New Zealand First colleagues towards that transformation, alongside my co-leader James Shaw. It is particularly exciting that between the two of us we are able to reach a broad cross-section of New Zealanders in this work—in this work of exciting New Zealanders that there is a way that we can be different, that we can change the direction that we have been heading in, so that all of our children can grow up in livable cities with enough to be able to live dignified lives with their families—where we can swim in our rivers and not even have to think about the safety of the water that is coming from our taps.

This is what we have set out to do. This is what inspired me to put my hat in the ring to become the co-leader of the Green Party. This is what I’m proud of working towards with the Government. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

There has been a not so subtle change in tune from this Government of late, because the tune of relentless positivity has been swapped out for something far more downbeat: relentless excuse-making. In less than six months, we see a vulnerable Government who are desperately trying to cover up their own shortcomings by lashing out, by deflecting attention away from problems of their own making, by turning to the classic but totally predictable manoeuvre of negative trash talk and manufacturing of crises. It was completely predictable because it’s a problem that they find themselves in of their own making: their massive over-promises to their support partners, their raising of expectations, their utterly ridiculous spend of $2.8 billion on free tertiary education, and their billion-dollar per year slush fund to Mr Jones. And despite finding themselves $700 million better off because of the fantastic economy that we delivered them, they simply have to dampen down the expectations of the public of their upcoming Budget because they simply can’t deliver on their promises.

Over the last nine years in the National Government, New Zealand developed into somewhat of a global star. When our leaders went on tour they were lauded for our rock star economy—our ability to raise social spending, to raise infrastructure spending, and to spread the tax burden more fairly, all while paying down debt. New Zealand’s record under our stewardship of nine years is not just a great record; it is a greatest hits record: 10,000 jobs created every month, putting unemployment well under 5 percent by the time we left office; 60,000 fewer children living in benefit-dependent households, the first time a Government has raised benefits in over 40 years; an education budget that went from $8 billion to $11 billion, with 85 percent of 18-year-olds now achieving NCEA level 2; early childhood education participation at 97 percent; $5 billion invested into school property; and the health budget increased to $17 billion, with 11 percent per head of population increase in funding, with 50,000 more operations per year, 800,000 children under 13 receiving free healthcare, with 97 percent of our children immunised, and with 6,900 more doctors and nurses. Hit after hit after hit single, and through it all, we brought back the fans. In 2007, a 747-load of people were leaving this country every week for better opportunities, and now they’re coming home because the opportunities are here.

In a shock move prior to the election, Labour took a break from their inherent negativity to swap out their grumpy old leader for a house DJ to play a hit they called “Relentless Positivity”. Well, to be fair, no one saw it coming, and on the back of this they cobbled together a line-up including a veteran one-man band on his farewell tour, playing the greatest hits from the 1970s, to act as producer, and an experimental, new-age, alt-indie, somewhat implosive act who almost missed the tour bus to play support. “Relentless Positivity” did OK. People got on board—well, 35 percent of people got on board—and now this new Government, they rode this wave of success with this somewhat short-lived single. They smiled. They enjoyed the sun on their backs. People were buying what they were selling. They were confident. They felt they had the wind at their backs. Their shoulders were back. Their heads were held high. Their posture was great—because if there is one thing that this Labour Government is good at, it’s posturing.

We can see from the formulation of this second album already, named “Relentless Posturing”, featuring the emo single “But you had nine years”. Well, while we had a greatest hits album of hit single after hit single, all they have is something that is sounding more like a broken record of complaining, working groups, broken promises, and raising taxes. This is an album that this country will pay for over and over again. So their second album is already looking like a flop. They’re sounding like a very different group because this PM’s bandmates are all playing from a different playbook. I don’t think they’re going to be getting much airtime on Radio New Zealand, but perhaps a tour in Russia may go down quite well. It turns out that this new Government is very much a one-term wonder.

I would like to, first of all, thank my cheery friend Erica Stanford on the other side of the House there. We recently took a trip over to the United States of America together on a political exchange, and what we did was that we went around and we saw one of the most impoverished neighbourhoods that they have in America. There were people lining the streets. They had no homes but also they had no hope, and, unfortunately, we have communities like that here in New Zealand. Unless we do something really real to turn it around, we will be going down the same track that that Government had been on for the last nine years, which was allowing the homelessness to happen, allowing the lack of hope to continue, and growing a problem instead of facing up to the problem and trying to do something about it.

So, to my friend over there on the Opposition benches, I say cheer up, my friend, because Labour is here and we are going to sort things out. And we’re going to do such a good job in our first term that we will be elected to a second term, and maybe even a third term as well. So you’d best get comfortable over there on the Opposition benches.

I echo the sentiments of our Minister of Finance when he said that it was easy for the previous Government to run a surplus because they didn’t pay the bills. They didn’t pay the bills. So, unfortunately, when they talk about all of the promises that we’ve made, yes, we have made promises, but, no, we didn’t realise that we would have to take 10 steps back to be able to get to what we need, and that’s exactly what’s gone and happened.

Slowly, the wheels have started falling off the National Party bus—that’s right. What’s happened is that the bright blue that we’ve seen for the last nine years has started to become a very, very dull grey, and that’s something that we’re going to step up to. Labour are here. We’re in a coalition Government with our friends over here in New Zealand First and also our friends over here in the Green Party, and we are here to help solve some of the social problems that this previous Government has absolutely neglected.

The previous speaker also talked about education, and she was talking about how much of a mistake it was that Labour stumped up for free post-secondary education in the first year for those people that are going on to do vocational training, or even go to university as well. Now I know she doesn’t fully believe that because, in fact, we went to university together, and she was just as much of a fighter for rights—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! I am going to ask—when I stand up, the member resumes his seat. Members cannot say that members do not believe what they say in the House—all right—for very obvious reasons, because when you make that accusation, you are making an accusation which is much more serious. If a member has said something that they do not believe, then they are misleading the House, or even lying.

Thank you for that clarification. What I meant to say was that our tertiary policy is sound. There are plenty of ex-student politicians in this House right now that believe in the prospect of young people going on to further themselves—and their families—to be game-changers by accessing higher education. That was what I was getting at.

Let’s talk about housing, because, as I travel around—and I’ve done quite a bit of travelling in the six months that I’ve been in this job—what I hear, time and time again, is the issue of housing and how much the last Government dropped the ball completely on housing. So as I travel around the rohe of the Waiariki, which includes Tauranga—which is absolutely bursting at the seams and in real need of some solutions—then I feel sorry for them because, unfortunately, they weren’t served well by the last Government. They spent a lot of money on a very big road, and that was good, but all these years later, and after that big investment, Tauranga is still gridlocked. In fact, if we don’t start sorting out the transport woes of Tauranga, very soon they’re going to be the Auckland—the gridlocked Auckland—of the future. So we, as a Government, have to step in there, and I’m glad that we’ve got initiatives on the table to make sure that we’re looking after some of our local roads and also looking after the safety of our people on our roads, as well.

I also want to just talk about some of the work that we are getting on with, right? It’s not been easy, but we in our select committee have been sitting there talking about how we’re going to make sure that if you’re a New Zealand citizen and you want to buy a New Zealand house, you have the right to. We have been committed to banning overseas speculators, and that’s not been an easy task. We have had to sit there and go through submission after submission, but we’ve come to a very good point where we’re ready to, very soon, report back to the House about that one goal of banning overseas speculators, and the reason that we want to do that is so that we can create opportunities for New Zealanders to get themselves on the property ladder.

We’re hoping that we can create opportunities for getting more State houses into New Zealand and to also help to fix up the homelessness problem, which has become terrible in my electorate. As those members are not able to stand here and say this in the House, I’m going to stand here and say it: we are going to fix this problem together. Ka pai.

Well, I think we had a revelation from the previous speaker, Tamati Coffey. We now understand why there’s a manufactured crisis, because we’ve learnt the name of the new tagline for the Budget that’s coming up: the “10-step-back Budget”. I think that’s a fantastic name, and it actually explains why we’ve got these manufactured crises and this fake news coming out. It’s quite astounding, really, when you consider that it’s just recently been announced that a half-billion-dollar tax windfall has come up, because the economy is doing extremely well, mainly through the tail of the management of the National Government, and companies pay more tax when the economy is doing well.

There’s half a billion dollars more available for the Budget that Labour have been working on than when they started, so there’s a considerable amount more money to spend than they think or than they realise or will admit. I think that’s quite interesting. When we’re talking about the education budget, as has been pointed out already, under National it went from $8 billion per annum up to $11 billion—a significant increase in education funding through that period.

Also set aside was $4.85 billion dollars for infrastructure funding in the education sector. That’s a phenomenal amount of money. And actually the Auditor-General last year was quoted as saying that under the time of the National Government, management of school property strengthened significantly, yet the rhetoric we’re hearing from the other side doesn’t match up to that at all. In fact, the Minister said the other day that $200 million of school buildings are not fit for purpose. Well, according to the ministry, a school building has a life of 50 years—50 years—so you would expect, given the number of school buildings around the country, that they will roll out of their lifespan during that time and that would be a regular occurrence.

I can tell them about some school buildings in particular. In the Marlborough colleges, where there has just been announced the $63 million co-location of those colleges, Marlborough Boys’ College and Marlborough Girls’ College, on to one site, the Minister has put that on hold.

💬 Erica Stanford: No.

He’s going to do a review. Yes, he has. I know, it’s unbelievable. He’s put it on hold. He’s going to do a review and it’s going to take five weeks and then he’s going to consult the community. Well, the community’s already been consulted. A plan was made and the overwhelming public view was to relocate two schools on to one new site for better education outcomes for those students.

Marlborough Boys’ College was originally Marlborough College, built in 1920. To put that in context, there are two stairwells in the old part of the school because in those days they had a stairwell for the boys and a stairwell for the girls. I mean, that’s strange, but that’s the way they did it. In 1963, they shifted and built another school because they’d outgrown the property, and put the girls’ college on the other side of town. Why they put the boys on one side and girls on the other, who knows, but that’s what they did. And now we have the girls’ college—a much newer school, but it has leaky buildings. Leaky buildings. We know about this; we planned for it. In Marlborough Boys’ College we have earthquake issues and plumbing that is outdated and will cost a fortune to fix. Also, it doesn’t have the flexibility to put modern learning environments in, if that is the case. So it would be a waste of time to fix those schools, so the right education outcome was to build two schools on one site, giving the opportunity for more flexible outcomes, so that—particularly in the arts and languages—you can offer more choices for students, because it wouldn’t really be viable to do otherwise because of the small number of students on that site.

They are also looking at putting in a tertiary aspect. This year, Marlborough boys’ and girls’ colleges have a school of wine that they’ve started, which will take students through level 2 and level 3 NCEA, getting all the credits that they need but with a focus on wine. So, for example, their literacy credits are gained through doing geography on the geography of wine.

So I’m calling on the Minister to actually man up and do his job. When you’re a Minister of the Crown, you are there to make decisions and move things forward. The community expects an outcome. They don’t want to be left hanging, they don’t want another review—there’s already a decision been made. They’re only in this position because they have a philosophical hatred of public-private partnerships and they’re going to pay for it themselves, and now they’ve found out a massive hole that they were warned would be in their budget. They were warned well ahead of time, and now they’re back-pedalling and trying to find a way out of it. So, Mr Hipkins, man up and do your job.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou katoa. Well, my colleague David Clark used to say “Nine long years” but he actually should have said “Nine long years of neglect and underfunding by the then National Government.” Neglect—what is neglect? It’s a failure to care properly for something. What neglect has been highlighted recently? The neglect of Middlemore Hospital—the neglect of the assets of Counties Manukau District Health Board.

It’s a shame that I had to hear about the Stachybotrys, the black mould that is in KidzFirst, from the media. I think it’s absolutely abhorrent that the last Government did not know that there were seven buildings within the asset management of Counties Manukau District Health Board that were not fit for purpose. I think it’s absolutely outrageous that the Ministry of Health and the previous Minister can say that they had no idea these issues existed. How can you deliver health services when your hospitals are compromised and when, actually, the state of the asset where we deliver our services can hurt, if not kill, our people?

So I was absolutely horrified to get a ring from Phil Pennington—and I want to acknowledge him and Radio New Zealand, actually, for following through and finding out that this black mould existed in my buildings, my facilities, as a member of Parliament in South Auckland. He asked me: am I happy that these things have happened? Am I happy? Of course I’m not happy. None of us should be happy that our district health board (DHB) assets are so not fit for purpose that patients, including children and including people at surgical wards and the burns units, have been in a building that if one of those walls was exposed, they would be at risk.

You go to hospital to get better; you do not go to hospital to get sick, and I think that typifies the lack of investment by the last Government in the health sector. Congratulations to my colleague the Hon Grant Robertson, who progressively and consistently highlighted the underfunding in the health sector.

Why has this happened? Because those DHBs’ chairs, boards, and members were held accountable by the Minister for returning surpluses, and so they neglected to repair and maintain those buildings because they chose to deliver services to people. Now, we all know that people are the most important, so the fact that our DHBs chose to focus the money they got from the Government on delivering services is something that we should applaud. But, at the same time, there were obviously barriers, and that National Government, through their Minister of Health, didn’t enable those DHB board representatives to communicate—based on what they’ve told us—that they had problems with an asset that was not fit for purpose. It’s an absolute scandal, and I think, over a period of time, we will know when the Ministry of Health told their Minister about what was happening.

I also want to focus on the issue of homelessness. I went to a forum earlier this week hosted by a group called LinkPeople, who are part of the Housing First initiative. LinkPeople have been working with homeless people living on the streets. We have this misconception that homeless people like living on the streets. Well, can I tell people, they don’t. Homeless people want homes. Homeless people want to be treated with respect and dignity. When you work alongside people who are living on our streets, talk to them, and find out the circumstances that have driven them to be on the streets—what you need is a responsive housing sector delivered through Housing New Zealand that can provide those houses to our most vulnerable New Zealanders.

At this morning tea the other day, I was with Shiloh and Lewis. Shiloh and Lewis have been living on the streets for seven months. They’ve engaged proactively with Housing First. They’ve been to the Ministry of Social Development. They’ve wanted a house and been patient. They got notified that they had a house—fantastic news. But there’s over 30 other homeless people in Manurewa and over 250 families in Manurewa waiting for a house to be built, and that’s the neglect of this National Government in not taking responsibility for providing houses to those most in need.

I, again, think that if we want to measure the success of a Government, it’s whether or not they can house every single New Zealander who’s in a vulnerable situation. Kia ora.

I’m very pleased to round off this general debate today for the National caucus, and what we’ve heard is a party, or, actually, a combination of parties, that started with big promises that have now moved into backing down on their promises and have quickly moved into broken promises. So what do they do? They manufacture a crisis to distract the New Zealand public from their lack of action, their lack of ability to govern New Zealand, and that’s exactly what’s happened.

One of the things I guess they’ve realised in the last six months is that it takes more than talk to lead a country. It takes more than talk to respond to whatever challenges come a Government’s way. I’m interested in the member that spoke before me, Louisa Wall. If she was the member of Parliament responsible in the area of Middlemore Hospital, why didn’t anyone at Middlemore raise it with her? And, if she did know, why is it only coming to the attention of this Parliament in the last month? That would be a question I would ask.

One of the other comments that was made by an earlier speaker was about delivering for New Zealanders. Well, actually, that speaker suggested that the last Government focused on the top 10 percent, so I want to focus my time on what our Government did for low and middle income New Zealanders. One of the first things that that Government did when they came into office was to scrap the pay equity legislation which would have increased incomes for lowly paid women workers. We delivered $2 billion for women on low incomes. They scrapped it.

The other thing that members opposite have wanted you to focus on, or wanted the public to focus on, is anything other than what the Government did for low and middle income New Zealanders. So I want to go through some of those things, because that side just wants to leave some fake news out, whether it’s in education, where we actually increased early childhood funding—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I know I may be making a fool of myself up here, but I’m struggling to understand how one of our members was told that they can’t suggest or imply that one member is making something up, and then in this House it’s OK, it seems, to accuse the Labour side of giving fake news. The connotations of fake news are pretty serious.

💬 SPEAKER: OK, the member can resume his seat. I’m listening carefully to the member. She’s skirting up to the line, but not going over it like members did on this side.

Mr Speaker, thank you.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: One’s true; the other’s not.

It’s interesting. They want facts—

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

—so I’ll give them facts.

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. Mr Brownlee, you are well aware that you don’t comment on my rulings from your seat after I’ve made them. The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I withdraw and apologise.

So in the areas of income, what’s important is the delivery of new jobs. We delivered 180 a day—10,000 new jobs a month—which provides families with incomes. Reducing the number of people who live on benefits—60,000 fewer children are living in benefit-dependent homes.

So what does that side do for low-income families? Oh, they don’t give them the winter energy payment—“Oh no, no, we won’t give it to them. They don’t deserve that.”—whereas if it had been a National Government, they would have got to have kept more of what they earned.

What else do they do? Oh, they’re not going to put any taxes in—definitely not before they go back to the 2020 election. What’s one of the first things they do? Increase the petrol tax. Who does that hit the hardest? Some of the low-income families that you purport to represent—

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

—and you hit them hard.

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

Sorry, Mr Speaker—that the Government purports to represent.

This side of the House increased benefits for the first time in 43 years. I’m sorry if that side of the House don’t like to hear the truth of the results that this side of the House delivered for low and middle income families, whether it was free GP visits, whether it was focusing on rheumatic fever, whether it’s lifting educational achievement and increasing early childhood education participation, whether it was reducing the number of youth crime across the country, or whether it was reducing the number of victims of crime—38,000 fewer victims of crime—and reducing the number of assaults on children.

But what that Government is priming this country for are cuts, and I want to give the House one example: the rescue helicopters in Rotorua and Taupō. That Government is proposing to cut a vital, vital service because they’ve finally figured out they haven’t got enough money to deliver the big promises that they started off with. So they’re just getting the territory right to cut services and to cut programmes, and it’s a myth that that side of the House is delivering.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.