General Debate

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

I want to congratulate the new member Nicola Willis on an inspirational and aspirational speech. I’m afraid I’m going to have to change the tone somewhat and declare that this Government is a disgrace—this Government is a disgrace. The Prime Minister simpers and smiles and purrs before the Cabinet and the cameras, but all the while her Government breaks promises, it undermines the very foundations of this strong economy that we have, and it treats the Civil Service with utter contempt.

It’s no wonder that the people of New Zealand are lukewarm in their support for this new Government. The honeymoon has been a fizzer. We have to go back to 1990 to see a Government with as little support and so weak six months into Government. Jim Bolger, of course, had the excuse of massive deficits and real tough decisions to make. But what has this Government inherited? It’s inherited surpluses as far as the eye can see—$19 billion of surpluses over the four years, according to the pre-election economic update—and more keeps coming in. An extra $500 million has just lopped on their laps in the last few months, and they’ve determined that they’re going to borrow an extra $10 billion.

They are awash in a sea of money, and yet—and yet—they still want more. Can you believe it—$19 billion is not enough; they want more. They want fuel taxes—25c on every litre of petrol in Auckland—and that’s just the start. We have just heard today Mr Robertson not ruling out the fact that they will increase taxes after Michael Cullen has finished his Tax Working Group’s report. We all know Michael Cullen was the most rapacious finance Minister in modern New Zealand history, and he has confirmed that the tax changes won’t be fiscally neutral. Nineteen billion dollars is not enough; they need more. And yet, even with all this money, this money that could’ve been in the hands of hard-working New Zealanders, that could’ve been in the hands of families so that they could pay their bills—with all this money, they still can’t keep their promises.

I’m going to give the Government some advice. It’s very simple: if you promise to do something, if you promise to make GP visits ten dollars cheaper by 1 July, you have to deliver. It’s not difficult. Poor David Clark is pointed out on the end of a stick into the crowd to swallow the rats and explain why this Government is not delivering on that promise. And why not? Don’t the families of New Zealanders deserve better access to health? A National Government was going to do it, and that’s exactly the sort of thing you do when you have a surplus.

But what have they done? Not from this lot; it’s better to spend $2.8 billion on tertiary education—for not one extra student, because all the students were prepared to borrow at interest free and it was never a barrier to going to university, and we’ll see the figures. It’s fine to spend the money on Shane Jones around the country, and nobody in New Zealand believes that with Shane Jones shovelling out the money on the Provincial Growth Fund as quickly as he possibly can in order to have results before the next election, there won’t be a lot of waste. There will be a lot of waste.

So how can the people of New Zealand trust this Government to keep their word? They’ve broken the promises over the GPs, and the whopper of the promise that they’ve never kept is immigration. They went stomping up and down the country telling everybody that they’re going to reduce the number of immigrants. It was a black and white issue. The National Government had been negligent, they said. We’d allowed all these people in with their Chinese names, and they were going to reduce the number dramatically. What have they done? Nothing—nothing. Nada. So they haven’t kept that promise, and I’m glad they haven’t, because it was a crazy promise, and it would have been stupid because it would have hamstrung this country, which is in desperate need of skills. But they do need to explain why they haven’t and how we can trust this Government to keep its word. They never had any intention of keeping that one. It was a cynical dog-whistle kind of promise which they had no intention to keep.

This Government is a disgrace, and I do say to the Rt Hon Winston Peters, when he becomes Prime Minister in a few weeks, there’s one thing he can usefully do, and that is: call a snap election so that the people of New Zealand have the opportunity to send this Government back where they came from. A Government that’s had the opportunity of a lifetime—massive surpluses, $19 billion of extra money, they’re borrowing $10 million, every week that passes more money comes into their hands—and yet even with all that money they cannot keep their promises and they are not prepared to do what they said they’re going to do. They should all collectively hang their heads in shame.

Mr Speaker, I never thought I would say this, but thank God for David Seymour, because he’s at least saved the people of Epsom from Paul Goldsmith. I would say, if a snap election were called, “Mr Goldsmith, would you try and win or not?”, because you haven’t up till now. Mr Goldsmith started his speech by changing the tone. I’m going to change it back just for a moment and say that today unemployment fell to 4.4 percent in New Zealand. Now, for all of the naysayers and the negative people on the Opposition benches, that is a sign that we are continuing to grow jobs in New Zealand—that we’re making sure that people are actually getting into work. We’ve seen underutilisation rates, underemployment, drop as well, and we’ve seen wages rise. That’s what’s happened in the last quarter. That’s what a Government that’s actually interested in growing the economy sustainably can do for New Zealand. So we’re feeling proud of that.

We’ve got a Budget coming in just over two weeks’ time, which is going to show New Zealanders the plan that we have to ensure we make up for the social and infrastructure deficits that we have been left. At the high level, the indicators of the New Zealand economy are strong, and that’s good for New Zealand. There has been economic growth, but the problem is who’s shared in that. What share in prosperity have people got in the regions of New Zealand? What share in prosperity have low and middle income New Zealanders found over the last nine years? The problem for the previous National Government is that while they made those indicators look good, they didn’t pay the bills on the way. It’s all very well to be able to claim a surplus if you haven’t paid the bills for health, if you haven’t paid the bills for education, and if you haven’t paid the bills for housing.

What this Government will do is we will do the very thing New Zealanders want us to do. They want us to show responsibility in two ways. They want us to show that we’re responsible in our management of the finances of this country, and we will do that. But there’s another kind of responsibility in Government: a responsibility to future generations to make sure that every New Zealand child gets the chance to grow up in a warm, dry home; that every New Zealand child gets the chance to enter into education and achieve their potential; that every single New Zealander knows that the health system will look after them when they get sick. Those basics of building blocks of our society have been run down and this Government is committed to turning them around.

But over on “Planet National” it’s not good, because they’re engaged in a very complicated game of “Simon Says”. Simon says “Sit still in traffic in Auckland”, because that’s what’s going to happen if the National Government decides to repeal the regional fuel tax and leave the gap in the Auckland Transport alignment plan that had blown out to $9 billion under the previous National Government—$9 billion. And there’s no plan from the National Party to be able to say how they will get Auckland moving, how they will make sure that the rail is there.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Course there is.

No, there’s not, Dr Smith. The only thing was a gap, a giant $9 billion gap, and Simon says, “Sit still”. Simon also says, “Close your eyes.” Simon says “Close your eyes.”, because he—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! That member is going to stop that now.

I didn’t say which Simon, Mr Speaker.

💬 SPEAKER: And I know which Simon the member is referring to.

A very wise man, Mr Speaker. On the National Party side of the House, there’s Simon Bridges saying, “Close your eyes.” That’s what Simon Bridges is saying. He’s saying, “Close your eyes to the future of New Zealand as a sustainable economy.” It’s all very well to just go along to your Bluegreen mates and say “We’re going to reset the clock on the environment.”, and then there’s no policy change. Simon Bridges says, “Close your eyes to climate change.” Well, this side of the House says no. We have to make sure that we do what is needed for future generations to prepare for a sustainable economy—not just say it’s going to happen, but have a just transition. I feel sorry for Todd Muller, who’s a good man, but he’s the climate change spokesperson in a party that wants to close its eyes to climate change in the future.

On “Planet National” the answer is, “I don’t know. I’m not sure what we’re going to do. I don’t have a plan for the future.” On this side of the House, we have a plan for an economy that will be more productive, more sustainable, and more inclusive. We started with a mini-Budget before Christmas that actually is going to put money in the pockets of low- and middle-income families. When we have the Budget in two weeks’ time we will rebuild the critical public services that New Zealanders need and deserve.

Oh, Mr Speaker, it’s not often that I have to disagree with my good friend and colleague the Hon Paul Goldsmith, but I’m going to. When he said in his general debate speech the words “poor old David Clark” and that he was “put out on a stick by Labour”—I think Mr Goldsmith used those terms—well, I would suggest that Dr Clark has put himself out on a stick with some of the most omnishambles behaviour that I have seen by a Minister. I would love to have been a fly on the wall after the post-Cabinet press conference on 24 April, when the Prime Minister probably hauled him into his office, after she was explaining away the firing of two Counties Manukau District Health Board (DHB) members. She said, “Of course board appointments do have to go through a particular process, so I won’t comment on that till it’s complete.” Only, the process had been completed 12 days before and the Minister had not told her and had not told the public.

That’s just one example of the many, many failures by this Minister. But the most overreach, I would suggest, is on the building issues at Middlemore Hospital. Now, they are serious. But the Minister has completely overblown the issues, and the best metaphor for that was this visual image of sewage pouring down the walls of the hospital, and Louisa Wall, in this House, saying, “Why did I not know?” Well, the answer was: because there was nothing to know. The DHB itself came out and said that this terrible issue was cleaned up with half a bucket of water and it was four years ago. Yes, they’re serious, but this is a thing that a Minister and his or her ministry has to deal with on a day-to-day basis. That is the job, and it’s a job that the previous Government did extremely well. It increased Vote Health by more than 40 percent; there was $5.5 billion more put into Vote Health.

I do accept we would not win the “who’s going to spend the most money in health” competition; Labour will always win that. But what the public want more than the amount of money that’s going in is the number of services that’s coming out, and I’m very proud of the performance of the previous Government. With that money, generous though it was to allow for population growth and inflation, we also said, “We need you to do a lot more with a little more.” This is why elective surgeries went up from 110,000 surgeries a year to 178,000 surgeries a year; the immunisation rates for our young went from 67 percent to 93 percent—and even higher for young Māori and Pasifika; our cancer treatment waiting times were shortened to world’s best standards; we no longer had gurneys in the waiting rooms; our emergency department waiting times went under six hours as the gold standard; and not a single cancer patient was flown to Australia.

The Labour Government would say, “Oh, but you did all of that and you screwed down the district health boards.” Well, financially that is not borne out by the facts. The previous Clark Government’s combined deficit in DHBs was over $600 million over the nine years.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: How much?

It was $600 million—I think it was $607 million. Under the Key - English Government there were deficits, but even without accounting for inflation and the increase in the vote, it was $576 million—a much lower percentage on a per capita basis.

So, of course, Labour will say, “Oh, well, you really flogged the staff”—really flogged the staff—only that period marked the most benign industrial relations climate in the health sector in two generations. But what’s the industrial relations climate like now? It’s extremely restless. Why? Because the Minister, in Opposition, had talked up the expectations for massive pay increases for nurses, for doctors, for allied health professionals, for midwives, and he cannot deliver.

There is no crisis in health; it is being manufactured. It’s being talked up by a Government that promised big in Opposition because they didn’t think they were going to get into Government. Well, now they are and they have to honour those promises. And the shame of it is that the people who have to pay for those promises are the taxpayers and GP patients, because the first thing that’s gone, the first major broken promise, is that GP visit fee reductions will now not take place, and that will be the legacy of this Government.

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. What a shame for poor old Michael Woodhouse to have to come down to the House and not talk about what the National Party’s plans are for New Zealand, what the National Party would do to improve New Zealand, but instead to have to defend the record of the nine years of neglect under National. The nattering nabobs of negativity from the National Party opposite have nothing positive to say about the future of New Zealand; all they can do is come up with negative things to say about the Government’s plans and defend their own dismal record.

The truth is there is a lot of work for this Government to do, because nine years of neglect is a lot to turn around. This is why the National Party is having to work so hard to defend their record, because they have been found out. The previous Government prioritised meagre surpluses and tremendous tax cuts for the people at the very, very top over investment in the vital public infrastructure that people need to be able to have a decent living standard in this country—$2.3 billion worth of underfunding in the health system. Despite the minimisation that Michael Woodhouse tries to do, the truth is Middlemore Hospital is awash with sewage, mould, asbestos, and power cuts; Dunedin Hospital is run down, and National incredibly slow to respond to that; and district health boards (DHBs) nationwide with significant capital investment shortages and deficits. So many DHBs left in deficit after nine years of neglect from National.

But it’s not just in health. We all know about the housing crisis as well. Median housing prices almost doubled in nine years under National, and then we had a homelessness crisis ballooning with 41,200 people severely housing deprived under National. The regions were starved by National: the Napier to Wairoa railway line completely left to rot, Whanganui port development dragged out. National believed that economic growth came from inflating house prices in Auckland. That was the only plan they had, and they left the regions to struggle. And, of course, the super fund—not a single contribution to the super fund in the nine years of neglect under National.

There is a lot of work for this Government to do, but we do have a plan to deal with it, and we’ve already got off to a tremendous start. We cut the tax cuts for the rich and instead decided to invest in middle and lower income families. Our Families Package sees $5.5 billion over the next four years going to improving the lives of those who need it the most. It will see 384,000 families with children better off by an average of $75 a week. The winter energy payment will go to superannuitants and the recipients of main benefits. We’ve seen an increase in the minimum wage—something I’m tremendously proud of—to $16.50 an hour, and our plan to increase it to $20 an hour by 2021. We’ve passed the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2). We’ve got $2 billion going towards our ambitious KiwiBuild programme to build those houses that people so desperately need.

And we funded our first year of fee-free post-secondary education—and it’s not, as Mr Goldsmith would have you believe, all about people going to university. Actually, hidden in today’s unemployment stats—and it is tremendous that unemployment has come down so low—we still have nearly 12 percent of people underemployed. Why? Because they don’t have the skills. They did not have the opportunity to get the training they needed to take up the opportunities that exist in the New Zealand economy, in our labour market. That’s why we need to make education more accessible, because people need to be able to get those skills so that they can grab the opportunities that are being created in this wonderful, prosperous nation of ours.

We want to see everybody benefit from economic prosperity here in New Zealand, and I say the people of New Zealand are already showing that they like what they see from this Government. Let’s look at the last Colmar Brunton poll: Labour up 6 points from election night—6 points in our first six months. The Government overall: 3.5 percent higher in the last poll than it was on election night. The people of New Zealand are telling us they like what they see from this Government. They know we’ve got a lot of work to do, but they can see that we have a plan, and that plan will be developed all that much further on Budget day later this month.

Can someone go and tell Iain Lees-Galloway that he’s way behind the times and he’s got many of his facts wrong. It’s a shame that Iain Lees-Galloway and the Labour Party research unit are still perpetuating this myth that there’s all these buildings crumbling down around them at Counties Manukau District Health Board (DHB). The fact of the matter is David Clark was found wanting. David Clark’s facts turned out to be fiction. David Clark ended up in a sticky situation where he was putting forth information to the media that was found to be wholly inaccurate.

In fact, I say to Iain Lees-Galloway that he should go and read the investigative reporting done on Stuff by Jo Moir, and the fact is that Iain Lees-Galloway’s colleague David Clark was putting forth information that simply was not true. Was there sewage in the walls at Counties Manukau DHB? No. It was four years ago. It was cleaned up with some water. It did not exist. Was there a massive building failure at Counties Manukau DHB that he wasn’t told about? He was given the documents and failed to even recognise it. David Clark has a lot of answering to this House to do, and he’s going to be challenged on that, I’m sure, in the next few weeks.

Another person that Iain Lees-Galloway talked about is negative—well, I have to say, Phil Twyford seems to be quite negative at the moment. He seems to be under a lot of pressure around transport. In fact, a Minister in the Government has put out three press releases this week attacking the Government when he’s only done one outlining positive things on transport. I should say, sorry—he’s done three press releases attacking the Opposition on transport, because that’s how much pressure he’s under, and I can understand that. I can understand that.

Phil Twyford is the Minister that’s ramping up fuel taxes on New Zealanders by 25c a litre. He’s saying to the average family in New Zealand, and in Auckland particularly, that when they go and fill up, with the fuel prices and fuel taxes that he’s putting in place they’re going to be paying about $700 more a year under policies that Phil Twyford is putting in place. And what’s he saying to the rest of the country? He’s saying to the good people in Southland, the good people in Northland, and the people in Rotorua that they’re going to have to pay and subsidise Auckland’s tram set—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: That’s rubbish—absolute rubbish.

—because that’s, effectively, what his policies are doing. His policies are doing it. Kieran McAnulty, the people of Wairarapa are paying for the trams in Auckland. I challenge him to go to the people of Wairarapa and say, “You’re paying more in fuel taxes. By the way, we’re cutting $5 billion from State highways—not going to happen around here. It’s going to go towards subsidising the Auckland trams.” He won’t be able to stand up and say that because they’ll be pretty unhappy, and that’s what we’re hearing from New Zealanders.

Iain Lees-Galloway loves that Colman Brunton poll. Which party was ahead in the Colmar Brunton poll? It wasn’t the Labour Party and it wasn’t the Government, but it was the National Party that was ahead. If Iain Lees-Galloway really wants to follow the polls, I suggest he looks at the track that the Labour Government’s going to be going down when they put in place more taxes, when they break more of their promises, and when they have a Budget that’s just doesn’t live up to the expectations during the election campaign. We have a Government over the other side that is breaking its promises. It’s ramping up taxes on New Zealanders, and New Zealanders are not going to be happy by this.

In the transport space, we’re seeing the effects that New Zealanders are anticipating with the extra fuel taxes. We’re also seeing the effects that Aucklanders are going to be experiencing when they see very little progress happening under the Labour Government because it’s all going towards that tram set. In fact, the big policy announcements that Phil Twyford had, the big roading projects that he announced like Penlink and Mill Road—they were projects that we’d announced. Simon Bridges, in August 2017, announced the Penlink and the Mill Road project. He was the one that put them into the first decade of the Auckland Transport Alignment Project. Phil Twyford came out and made out it was some big, grand idea, but, effectively, he was just re-announcing policies that we’d put forth.

We’re also seeing under the fuel tax legislation going through the Parliament that Phil Twyford’s been saying that fuel taxes under a regional fuel tax will only go up by 10c a litre, yet he’s writing a law for himself that would allow him, without any vote in Parliament and without any consultation, to go and put up fuel taxes even further than 10c a litre. Why is a law being written like that if he doesn’t intend to use it? The only answer that we have is that Phil Twyford is being a bit sneaky. Phil Twyford’s saying one thing, but writing a law a completely different way.

New Zealanders know that this Government seems to be all about tax. They know the Tax Working Group’s going to result in more taxes being recommended, and they don’t trust this Government not to ramp up taxes on them. I say to the members opposite that are outside of Auckland, go into the regions, and go and talk about the fact that their transport Minister’s ramping up taxes, because I have to say they’ll find that the locals won’t be very happy. They should come back to this House, come back to their caucus, and outline very clearly for the Prime Minister and the transport Minister that they don’t want new taxes.

This Government has a plan, and this plan is about rebuilding the social deficit left by the last Government. In all the talk we’ve heard about raising taxes, and rubbish along those lines, it is important to remember that there has been a significant deficit. I would like to talk about what that looks like in real terms—what that deficit actually looks like to people on the ground and how that hurts what those people are doing on a daily basis—and I’d like to look at some examples where I come from in the Hutt Valley. More importantly than just talking about where that hurt affects families, let’s also talk about what Labour’s plan is to fix that—to fix the deficit that has been left by the previous National Government.

There is a severe shortage of housing in this country, and that’s no secret. With winter ahead, I am quite fearful to think about what families in New Zealand will be going through, given the severe lack of housing that we have right now. At a time in the Hutt Valley when we had a 25 percent increase in property prices, we saw State houses torn down. We saw State houses torn down and land lying vacant for five years—going on nearly six years now. In that time, while land was vacant, we had families in garages. We had families living two and three to a house. We had parents put under incredible pressure, both mentally and financially, and we had children not in school and not attending school, because of the lack of housing.

What are we doing about that? What are we doing to fix that problem? Well, we’re building some houses, which has not been done previously. We’re taking land like Ēpuni in the Hutt Valley and building units on that that will be KiwiBuild and that will be able to be purchased by first-home buyers who would otherwise not be able to buy a home in this market—who have otherwise been cut out of the rental market. Right now, on the waiting list for Housing New Zealand, we have 266 families waiting for a home. That’s just the ones who get on the waiting list—just the ones who get on, those that are always still living in circumstances that don’t give them the best start in life. That’s why we need to be building homes, and that’s why I’m looking forward this year to all the processes going through for those housing developments to kick off and people to start getting into those KiwiBuild homes in the Hutt Valley. That process will be starting this year.

The second one I’d like to touch upon is mental health, which is always the window into the well-being of our population. Yes, we heard already that there’s been a $2.3 billion underfunding and there’s been no accounting or calculation for population growth. And, yes, we’ve seen how that overtly manifests in sewage down the hospital walls or outright decay of buildings, but some of the real hurt—some of the real, unseen hurt—is yet to be seen, and that’s in mental health. Some of the causes on district health boards and the pressure that has gone on to keep those doors open have resulted in ongoing cuts to mental health services to New Zealanders, and that has meant that people in urgent need—young people in urgent need of mental health services—have had to wait three months or more to be seen. That, in the face of one of the highest rates of youth suicide in the OECD, is unacceptable.

So what happens now? Because the Labour Government has undertaken to look at a comprehensive mental health inquiry, the response we have from the National Party is to laugh—is to laugh that this is yet another inquiry group, another inquiry. Well, if talking to people in front-line services, talking to people who can’t access services, and going around the country to find out what this problem actually looks like is a laughing matter, then, clearly, that’s not right. This is an area where we need to fully understand where the people of New Zealand aren’t being serviced in order to make sure we target those resources in the right place, and that is what this Government is doing. It is rebuilding the social deficit left by the last National Government in order to give our people the best start in life. That’s why our schools, our hospitals, and our homes will be rebuilt from the ground up to give people in New Zealand a good start.

That member Ginny Andersen needs to explain to the people of Hutt Valley why she is breaching her word that she gave to her constituents that on 1 July this year doctors visits would be reduced by $10 per person, because trust is at the core of good government. I have not seen since the days of the Lange Government, that breached its word over Rogernomics, or the Bolger Government, that breached its word over the issue of surtax, a Government that has so blatantly breached its contract with the people of New Zealand. You see, the lesson from that era is that breaking promises is political suicide. The successful Clark and Key Governments understood that, and went to extraordinary efforts to ensure that they said what they meant and they did what they said.

Let me recite the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern’s, exact words: “The cost of visiting a doctor will drop by $10 for every New Zealander on 1 July next year.” She didn’t just say it once. She and the Labour Party said that thousands of times. It appeared in Labour Party ads. It was used in the leaders’ debates.

💬 Hon Andrew Little: How many?

But, Mr Little, it was electoral fraud. That was electoral fraud, because now this Government is saying—he’s laughing. It’s a laughing matter for Mr Little to tell electors to vote for him on the basis of a policy and then to rat on that word. You see, they said, “Vote for us, and this is what we will do.” We’re old-fashioned. We think it’s like a contract. We think that when you promise electors to do something, you should do so. And I am surprised by the giggles, the laughs that are occurring opposite, because members opposite do not seem to understand the way in which this erodes the trust in our political processes.

Now, this is the insulting bit. A year ago our Government, the National Government, made an announcement of reducing doctors visits to $18 for all New Zealanders, and Labour within a week promised to outbid—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: They got booted out.

Yes, you did. You promised, Mr Little, to do better, and what we now know is on 1 July this year New Zealanders will pay more for going to the doctor than what they would have if National had been Government. Let’s look at the track record. In 2011, National promised that it would provide for free doctors visits for under-fives. It said it would do so by 1 September, and it did what it said. And when financial circumstances allowed and we had the financial room to extend that to children up to the age of 13, we campaigned in 2014 on doing that, and we did what we said.

The ink is hardly dry on this new Government. Nine months into office, and it’s tearing up its pledges to New Zealanders and saying something very simple: New Zealanders cannot trust the word of Jacinda Ardern. Jacinda Ardern will tell you anything to get your vote, but when she chairs Cabinet, she will go back on her word and back on issues that matter to over 2 million families in New Zealand. So I challenge the next member to get on their feet and to explain why they are breaking their promise, why New Zealanders should ever trust the Labour Party again, when they can so blatantly—so blatantly—breach their pledge to the people of New Zealand.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker, and, as painful as it is for me, I’m not going to engage in that game. It is Rape Awareness Week, and I would like to speak directly to the survivors of sexual abuse in my debate contribution this afternoon. I want to pay tribute today to the Me Too movement and all of the women, including those in this House, and men and people who have been advocating for years for an end to rape culture in this country. I want to also acknowledge all those people who are not able to speak out because it is not safe or right for them to do so. Me Too is our contemporary, tech-enabled version of the 1970s or 1980s women’s movement. That movement back then enabled a massive cultural shift and the development of services independent—and, perhaps, in spite of—the State. My hope is that this time this Government will actively support the efforts of these people, particularly women, and amplify their efforts to create a safe and equal society. We all need to be working together to eliminate sexual violence from our society, and I believe we can do it.

Just over six years ago in this House, in my maiden speech, I spoke about sexual violence. I talked about the horrific levels of sexual violence in our society: one in three girls, one in seven boys, and up to one in two trans people being likely to be victims of sexual violence in our country. I acknowledged that I was one of those statistics, as are many people in our country and that the people have been victimised by what is predominantly men’s violence but that we are from all ethnicities, all ages, genders, sexualities, across an abilities spectrum, and from every economic stratum. Sexual violence, sadly, does not discriminate in that sense.

It was important for me, then, to bring those stories into this House, to break the silence, to make sure that the shame was shifted from those experiencing the violence to be held, at least in part, by us as a society so that we can take our role in eradicating the space that enables this violence in our society. I acknowledged that is a duty for us in this House, as representatives.

I noted that it wasn’t just enough to talk about doing these things, and at that time we were a few years on from the Task Force for Action on Sexual Violence and had not seen any action. So it’s now interesting to come back, six years on, and reflect on what I’ve seen happen. Under the National Government, I saw some terrible, terrible things happen. We saw lives lost over the changes to ACC. We saw cuts to funding and long waiting lists, and we saw the law reform that we so desperately need stalled. And then, because of the activism and the calls from our community and people in this House, we saw those decisions reversed by the last National Government.

I want to commit in this House, and call every member of this House to join us in the efforts to the next stage, to work towards having a system where everyone who experiences violence can get the help when they need it, and people who use violence can be held accountable and be helped to change, so that we can wipe out this violence from our society. It is absolutely achievable, and I am committed in my role and in this House to do that. There is much left to do, and I am fired up to do my bit so that one day our children can look back on this time now, in the same way that we look back on slavery and the idea of children working in chimneys, and feel grateful that they live in a different time—a time free of gender-based violence.

Thank you, sir. I want to start my words with an acknowledgment to the people of Taranaki, who, for many of them right now, face very high-level degrees of uncertainty regarding their future.

The Government made an announcement on 12 April that they said was to bring certainty, but instead, for my community, it brought uncertainty very, very quickly.

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: Rubbish!

Yes indeed, it did. If you will listen to me, Mr Hipkins, I will explain some factors. There are companies that have very high levels of engagement in the petroleum industry who have been called by international investors who have said that they are lacking confidence regarding the regime that is being developed here in New Zealand for exploration. There are companies that are strong companies in New Plymouth, owned by international companies, that also have those sorts of correspondence. In fact, one of those companies said that within an hour of hearing that news, they stopped all new employment.

That’s a tragedy because there are young people in my community who were looking to that company for opportunities.

💬 Hon Andrew Little: Why weren’t you worried about the companies already shedding labour?

They were looking for opportunities.

💬 Hon Andrew Little: Why weren’t you worried about Tenix when it closed three years ago? Why didn’t you worry about the other companies making people redundant?

In this decision—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! Mr Little, please keep me out of the debate.

In the decision that this Government has made, in the pursuit of emission reductions for climate change—a noble purpose—the issue is this will make no difference to New Zealand’s emissions because all of our transport fuels are made out of imported crude, and, in fact, from our exploration, 70 percent of that is gas, 30 percent of that is crude and light crude, and of that 30 percent, only 50 percent would end up as a liquid fuel. The other goes into industrial and pharmaceutical purposes.

So it’s very important to get some facts on the table regarding those emissions, because a decision has been made that has the potential—and it’s already started, like pouring poison into the root of a tree—to wreck an industry and severely shake an economy. [Interruption] Mr Little will try and say that it’s not true, but there was zero consultation. There was only “telling people”, and it was after the event. They swooped in afterwards and said, “We will now consult with you.” Well, it’s all over—it’s all over. International confidence in New Zealand has gone. You know, the poison has been laid at the root of the tree. It will take time, but it will happen.

I received a note just the other day. It said a client was told by her broker that as her job is in the oil and gas sector, and with her now job insecurity, she won’t be able to get the mortgage at the same level as promoted a month ago. This sort of thing is happening for everyday, ordinary New Zealanders living in New Plymouth. It’s also happening to people who have migrated to our country. They went on to say, “We are also seeing people selling up and returning to their nations, their homes, their countries of origin.”

So what we are seeing now is the dismantling of an industry. Instead of going to the industry and saying, “Look, we’ve got some concerns here and there. What can you do to find a better solution? How can you work with this Government?”, because on the—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: What a stupid speech. What a stupid thing to say.

Listen to this, Mr Little. On 19 March your leader stood in the Beehive theatrette and said, “The new Climate Commission, well they’ll look at things like natural gas as a transition fuel.” Why didn’t that happen? Why didn’t you use common sense? Why didn’t you depoliticise it? Why didn’t you say to the new Climate Commission, “Instead of just looking at agriculture, why don’t we also look at petroleum?” Get some smart people to look at it, instead of making this ideological decision that wrecks people’s lives. And you think that you care. Shame on you.

Nine years of neglect is a lot to turn around, but this Government is certainly up for that task. Under-investment has hit many, many areas and none more so than education. This Government inherited an education system which has been so undermined by under-investment that it’s almost in basket-case territory.

I’ve always been incredibly proud of our education system, but it was getting harder and harder and harder to stay positive about where we were heading. A funding freeze for early childhood education, for nine years—does that number sound familiar? The whole time that the previous Government was in power there was a funding freeze in early childhood education—for nine years. A focus in that sector on quantity over quality completely undermined one of our most important sectors that we have—in fact, our foundational sector in this country.

I’ve never seen morale in the teaching profession as low as what it was in the final term of that Government. We have low morale in our teaching workforce and burnt-out teachers—absolutely horrific levels. What did the previous Government do? They stopped democratic representation on the body that oversaw those teachers.

💬 Jamie Strange: Out of touch.

Just out of touch with the teaching profession—telling the teachers that they don’t matter.

A world-leading curriculum that we have had, and we are proud of in this country—one that educators hold up as absolutely the most amazing document—is completely undermined because of the introduction of national standards. That became the pseudo-curriculum. We were told at the time that that was because we had to raise the levels of literacy and numeracy. Well, how well did that go? Over that nine years, New Zealand plunged in the international rankings of the data such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the TIMSS records of literacy and numeracy. It didn’t go so well, then, that introduction of national standards. There are many, many, many other cases that I can talk about, but I don’t want to focus on the negative.

While the scale of this challenge is incredibly large, this Government has a plan and we are dealing with it, and, boy, we have made a great start. We have introduced legislation to reintroduce sector-wide, democratically elected members on to the Teaching Council. We have said to our teachers, “You matter and we value you.”, and we have done this and sent that as a really clear message to them. We have actually said we value all our children in this country. All of our children are priority learners—every single child. We will fix the broken learning support system in this country. We are not going to create a distraction by having another set of schooling there, with charter schools, so we are repealing charter schools as well. We have introduced that legislation.

We are scrapping national standards—that is the single best thing that we could do in our Government to actually lift education in this country again. We are telling our educators that we will put trust in them and talk to them first before just “doing to” them and putting stuff through urgency, as national standards were put through.

The one single most important thing that we are doing presently, at this time, is that we are asking all New Zealanders who are interested in education to join a conversation so we can set the way forward and agree shared priorities across the whole system, from early learning, schooling, tertiary, and lifelong learning. We want to talk to people. We want to have that conversation. That is really important. We are not going to “do to” the sectors or to the children or to the whānau; we are involving them in the conversation. I acknowledge all of our coalition and confidence and supply agreement partners on this side of the House in their work in that particular area.

We have started working with the early childhood sector to develop a strategic plan—again, we are working with the sector. We are focusing on quality. We are bringing them and focusing on that sector, making that important, and telling them that they matter. In this Budget, we will even do more—education will get a long-overdue boost to capital and operating funding. We will once again move towards a high-quality public education system that provides all New Zealanders with the opportunity to achieve their full potential.

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

💬 Jami-Lee Ross: Oh, this’ll be good.

This’ll be a very good contribution by myself, and I’d like to start by, first of all—we’re a team. Some of us are a team across the House, and I’d like to comment, firstly, on Grant Robertson’s contribution. I agreed with part of it. He talked quite positively about the state of the economy, he talked about the unemployment rate dropping to 4.4 percent, he talked about the growing economy—all good things. He could have talked about 10,000 new jobs a month being created—all good things. He could have talked about the $19 billion worth of surpluses that were before him—all good things. I thought he was actually going to say, “Thanks to the National Government”—thanks to the National Government, he, Mr Robertson, is able to do so much that he otherwise wouldn’t have been able to do. Thanks to the National Government, the situation is that there is money to invest, money for New Zealanders. Just remember—and I know we do on this side of the House—this is taxpayers’ money. This is taxpayers’ money that is being collected from hard-earning Kiwis.

Mr Lees-Galloway talked about the housing crisis, but we heard today that in the next 12 months there will be 1,000 houses—1,000 houses—being built by Housing New Zealand. One thousand houses—half a dozen small to medium sized enterprises could build more than that. A thousand houses in 12 months is pathetic. It’s not going to solve any housing crisis, imagined or real, that this Government reports on. Housing New Zealand is a $65 billion asset, and they can produce 1,000 houses in the first 12 months.

And then, of course, the question today in the House was how can we have new young people enter into the housing market? Well, Housing New Zealand will sell those houses. When we were in Government, it was such a terrible thing to sell State houses, but we’ve had an admission already that these new houses, built by the State, will be sold—will be sold to the private sector. Well, there’s a little bit of a flip around.

Now, of course, some of these things that the Government is talking about are going to require more than the $19 billion that was given to them on a plate by the National Government, so they’ve gone out and committed to $10 billion more of borrowings. They’ve gone to commit to the Cullen fund—that was mentioned by Mr Lees-Galloway. Now, we can only commit to a Cullen fund if we either borrow more or we tax more. So the question for Mr Robertson—or Mr Lees-Galloway, because he’s very keen on contributing to the Cullen fund—is how much are those two individuals going to borrow today to invest in the ASX or the New Zealand Exchange on their own behalf—on their own behalf? How much are they going to borrow to invest in the equity market? Because that’s what they are planning to do, on behalf of the New Zealand taxpayer. That is what they’re planning to do on behalf—

💬 Darroch Ball: Productivity.

—see, on that side of the House—“productivity”, Mr Ball talks about. You borrow money to invest in a sharemarket, because of productivity. I ask that member how much money is he going to borrow today or tomorrow or next week to invest in the New Zealand or the Australian or the New York or any stock exchange around the world? If he’s not interested in borrowing himself, why would he expect the taxpayer to borrow and have the Government borrow on behalf of the taxpayer? Quite an outrageous situation.

The other thing we’ve got going is that that Government talks about supporting the regions—what a lot of nonsense. They want to tax the regions to pay for the Auckland roads. It’s very clear. It’s very simple. They try and appease the provinces by having a lolly scramble, run by Mr Jones. Now, we know, on this side of the House, that lollies are not good for you—lollies are not good for you. There are no vitamins, there’s no protein, they make you fat, and they make you lazy, and that is what Mr Jones is planning to do. He’s already distributed a few little lollies here and there to his favourite pet projects—no accountability, no understanding. He’s stripped money from the Primary Growth Partnership and he’s stripped money from the Crown Irrigation fund—both funds sensibly invested in the regions—for the benefit of his own fund.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’d just like to quote from this document to start my contribution: “What society asks of our public education system continues to change and intensify. New Zealand First believes it is time to have a nationwide education conversation that includes wide public participation and robust discussion between all stakeholders across all sectors: early years, early childhood, primary, secondary, tertiary and trade training, adult and community education.” The first bullet point reads, in this document: “New Zealand First will develop a collaborative 30-year strategic plan for New Zealand education that would set an agreed yet flexible direction for our nation’s education that is free from changes in Government and Ministers.”

That has been the opening statement for New Zealand First in their education policy section of their manifesto for the last six years, and this weekend, as a coalition Government agreement, that will become a reality. For the first time in a long time, New Zealanders will actually have the ability to discuss what success looks like for their children—what success looks like for a five-year-old, for a 10-year-old, for a 15-year-old, for a 50-year-old, because this coalition Government actually believes that education is from the cradle to the grave. We will continue to support investment inside our education system, but, more than that, we actually will invest in diversity of opportunity inside our education system.

As Associate Minister of Education, I have the delegation to improve the outcomes for all those students on the learning needs spectrum. The learning needs spectrum runs from our Ongoing and Reviewable Resourcing Scheme students, with high physical disabilities and needs, all the way through to our gifted and talented children. It was during the last nine years, in the previous Government, that any funding and any recognition of gifted and talented children in this country was removed. It was under the previous Government that, in 2011, being well above the national standards—which were a dumb line to start with—suddenly, by the National Government, all aspiration for our students was gone and “well above national standards” was removed from anywhere inside the records.

This weekend, in Christchurch, 600-odd people will be coming together to start a nationwide conversation. That conversation will be based on: what will we want, what do we want, what do we need, and what does a student require from us as a country to be the best they can be? Regardless of where that student starts, regardless of the challenges that that particular student has, what does success look like for them? And then we will go on as a Government to develop the solutions and the workability to create that success reality for our young people.

That is just a beginning. Next weekend, in Auckland, there will be another education summit, and again that conversation will take place. Deliberately, invitees have been called from every part of our communities, every area that has interest in education, from young people through to those who participate, and stand up and have fought for so long for those of our students who have educational challenges that require more success.

We know that system is broken—we know it. It was a great joy to realise, during the negotiating period, that there were 54 points of commonality in education policy between New Zealand First and the Labour Party. That means that we have been able to hit the ground running. The collegial relationship, the continued effort on the same pathway to make sure that we deliver better a high-trust model for our teaching profession, a highly invested model based on individual needs for our student body, a collaborative model with our parental body, working with our boards of trustees and with the Ministry of Education officials, who, finally, can break free from the chains they have been held in by previous Ministers of Education for the last nine years and who, finally, feel free to speak and give honest and upfront advice to Ministers who listen, who appreciate, and who actually know what they’re talking about—that makes a really big difference.

So this is going to be a fabulous weekend, this weekend. Myself, the Minister of Education, and the Prime Minister will be there. We will be listening more than talking, which, again, will be unique for the people inside of education.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.