General Debate

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

What a good time it is to be in Government in New Zealand, when we have a Government that has got ourselves in a position where we’re managing the accounts carefully and prudently and making the investments that will make a difference to building a more productive, more sustainable economy, because that’s exactly what the Government is doing. In the Budget that I had the honour to deliver, we are investing record sums of money in the provinces of New Zealand, in lifting skills and building our research and development capability, and in taking the necessary steps to create the economy for the middle part of the 21st century.

We are a Government focused firmly on the future, and that future is more productive, more sustainable, and more inclusive for New Zealand. Sadly, on the other side of the House, the eyes are fairly, squarely fixed on the rear-vision mirror, and that could not have been made more clear than by the National Party’s associate finance spokesperson Alastair Scott.

💬 Hon Members: Who?

Alastair Scott. So in last week’s debate on the Investment Statement, the National Party’s associate finance spokesperson uttered the following words: “But why should all our doctors and nurses work out of a building that’s owned by the Government?” That’d be a hospital. That’s why they should be working out of a building owned by the Government, because it’s a hospital.

It gets better. Alastair Scott, the associate finance spokesperson for the National Party, said, “We cannot and do not know how to manage $28 billion to $30 billion - odd worth of houses”. Well, that lot didn’t know how to manage them, but on this side of the House we do, because we’re actually investing in them.

Mr Scott, in his speech, then got philosophical for all of us. He said he wanted to know what the purpose of us all being here was—what’s the purpose of Government? This is what he said: “Is it to own buildings? Is it to own hospitals? Is it to own schools and social houses?” And do you know what Mr Scott’s answer to that question was? “I say no, absolutely not.” The associate finance spokesperson of the National Party is now revealing to us all where the direction of the National Party is going: it is firmly in reverse—firmly back to the old, tired ideological idea of privatising everything.

Mr Scott wasn’t finished. He carried on. His privatised paradise had more to it. Mr Scott said to the House, “Just imagine if we sold $30 billion worth of housing assets and gave it to the 65,000 tenants and said, ‘See you later.’ ”—see you later. Now, he did go on to say, “We will still look after you. We will still have wraparound services. We will still take taxpayer money to support those … most in need, but we do not need to house you.” That’s the National Party of old. That’s the National Party we know so well—“We don’t need to house you.”

So if we summarise the associate finance spokesperson for the National Party, his plan is we don’t need hospitals, we don’t need schools, and we don’t need social housing. Actually, I haven’t even got enough time today to go through all of the other things.

He also described universities as being “lazy assets” for the Government. Several problems with that statement: the first of them is that we don’t actually own the universities. They own themselves, and they’ll be thrilled to learn how lazy they are all being. He also had some concerns about tarmac and how much tarmac the Government should own, which I found to be an interesting statement given the obsession by the National Party members last night to make sure they owned as much tarmac as they possibly could in every single part of New Zealand.

So Alastair Scott, the associate finance spokesperson for the National Party, is now leading the way. Now, Simon Bridges did talk about possibly a breakaway party. I think the time has come for the “Alastair Scott Party”, and I know there’ll be members all over that side of the House who will be dead keen to join that. On this side of the House, we’re just going to get on with running the country.

Well, there’s a vast, vast difference—the difference being, of course, that the Government, in this general debate, thought they would scan around and they might try and find one Opposition MP that might’ve said something that they don’t agree with and they could try and stretch that out for five minutes, yeah? So good on you, you managed to find one that you didn’t agree with.

My list—that I’m going to try and get through in less than five minutes, because I’ve spent 30 seconds already—could go: Winston Peters, David Parker, Kelvin Davis, Andrew Little, Eugenie Sage, Shane Jones, Stuart Nash, Phil Twyford, Chris Hipkins, Jenny Salesa, David Clark, Iain Lees-Galloway, Michael Wood, and list MPs’ offices. I’m going to try and show the incompetencies of all of those in the short four minutes that I’ve got left. I don’t have only one to get through like they did, in five minutes of trying to find it; I managed to get through such a long list. It is a rich smorgasbord of dysfunction that is happening on a daily basis from this coalition Government.

So, first of all, we have Mr Winston Raymond Peters, who continuously told us that immigration must be slashed by 30,000—“These people were dreadful, but now we’re in Government we’ll just zip it.” Of course, these foreigners that are buying all these houses and are doing such a dreadful job—“We will do something about it.”, he said in Opposition. Now in Government—zip. In fact: “We’ve changed it.” It’s a complete back-down that we’re seeing.

Kelvin Davis doesn’t know how to house prisoners, doesn’t know if they’re double-bunked, doesn’t know what he’s doing in a tourism portfolio, and makes a fool of himself in select committee.

Andrew Little is one that’s really up my goat at the moment. He can’t actually talk to his coalition partners, work out what he might do with stuff that’s going through, and then has the audacity to stand in this House and say that a sexual assault against a corrections female officer—where her buttocks were grabbed for seconds, where she had time off work, where she was followed and intimidated—is a low-level assault. Shame on him, and shame on the women of Labour who sit back and let him make those statements, yet would be the first ones to leap on us if we were to say anything even close to it. In fact, they go looking for our men to say something wrong. This was a man who said that a sexual assault on a corrections officer was considered low level, and did not consider and think about how women these days feel when they want to stand up and be heard about the violence that’s happening out there. So that’s one that I think is absolutely shameful.

Eugenie Sage went out there and said “No bottling of water.” and everything else, and we were supposed to believe that during the campaign. I was a Minister who was involved with the Overseas Investment Office and made the decision not to go ahead with Lochinver Station. She did not ask the right questions, she did not have a stance on it that actually meant something, and she could’ve made a different decision but didn’t actually have the courage to do so. I think that that is shameful, when you stand there.

Quite frankly, Shane Jones and what we saw today in this House—you may find it mildly entertaining. You may find it embarrassing that the Prime Minister had to stand there repeatedly and say of your comments—even though you were invited as a Minister and were speaking as a Minister at an event, you then, in this very House, where you are a Minister, made statements that are degrading one of the best companies that we’ve got in this country, quite frankly. The Prime Minister herself has to say that you made them in your “personal capacity…, end of story”, and she had to say that a good half a dozen times in the media. It’s actually—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Champion! Champion! Champion!

You may find it amusing; most of us find it actually embarrassing, but that’s fine.

Stuart Nash—I mean, where to start on that? The changes for policing: I get that we come in and make our own stamps as Ministers and do what we want to do, but to actually go out there and campaign that we need more police stations and that New Zealanders need to live closer to them, and then drop that completely—this is not getting noticed by the public at the moment, but, trust me, we’ll make sure it does. Actually, what they’ve done is taken away that every New Zealander should live within 25 kilometres of a staffed police station. I think the “champion of the provinces”, as he likes to call himself, should get on that, because I think it is an absolute shame that they will not be opening the stations that we promised them, and instead are closing them.

Phil Twyford—well, let’s be fair. He has KiwiBuild numbers that just don’t add up and aren’t possible, and we’re buying houses instead of building them. Then, today, we hear about a list Labour MP who then brags in the papers with Michael Wood, saying that they are sharing offices and this is a way for—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Well, what an interesting contribution. We heard the deputy leader of the National Party have a go at Mr Little, a man with incredible, incredible, respect and dignity and purpose, and yet when her Prime Minister pulled a girl’s ponytail, where was she? Where was she? Did she stand up and defend that woman? No, she didn’t. She thought it was funny. She thought it was funny. Well, I don’t see any difference, and that member has the audacity to stand up here and say we’re not doing anything for police.

Well, let me tell you—let me tell you—that member is a former Minister of Police, and between 2012 and 2017, the police service numbers dropped by 77.

💬 Hon Nanaia Mahuta: By how much?

By 77. The population increased by 380,000. Gang numbers increased—[Interruption]

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

Gang numbers increased by 2,000. Meth went through the roof. The only thing that dropped was the number of police in our communities—the number of police in our communities. And, what’s worse, in the last workplace survey, over 60 percent of police said they experienced an undue level of workplace stress and only 40 percent of police—only 40 percent of police—said that they were meeting the promises they made to their community. But the really good thing about the New Zealand Police service is over 80 percent of them said that they were committed to the New Zealand Police service and the communities we serve. So what we have is we have an incredibly dedicated group of men and women who are committed to our communities, committed to the New Zealand Police service, and who know what they need to do to keep our communities safe, but they just do not have the resources.

So what happened? Mr Ron Mark, from New Zealand First, and myself went around the country, and we heard this wherever we went: people respect the police. People have the utmost respect for police, but they knew that the the police weren’t there in our communities like they used to be. So what happened? Enter New Zealand First and Labour: 1,800 more police over three years—1,800 more front-line police over three years. And that’s not all: 485 back-office staff to support those 1,800 police in our community.

💬 Hon Paula Bennett: But no one believes you can deliver.

This is about delivery. This is about delivery. What we are seeing at the moment is an immense increase in the number of police going through the Royal New Zealand Police College. Every four weeks, a new recruit wing starts. In fact, two weeks ago, the largest wing in over a decade, of 100 officers, started training in the New Zealand Police. Every four weeks, an amazing group of men and women who have chosen a career less ordinary, who want to go out there and keep our communities safe and make sure that New Zealand is the safest country in the world and cut the head off the snake that is organised crime, are going to be out there keeping our communities safe. So when I hear the Opposition saying “Well, what are you doing about policing? Where are your targets?”, I’d say to them the number one target is 1,800 more police—1,800 more police right throughout our community.

💬 Hon Paul Goldsmith: It’s the results that count.

And when I hear that member say—

💬 Hon Paula Bennett: Not lowering crime.

When I hear that member say “Well, the Minister of Police has dropped these operational targets.”, my response is it is not my job to set operational targets; it is my job to ensure that the police have the resources to keep our communities safe. It’s up to the police—it’s not up to politicians to set operational targets. It’s up to the police, and Mr Mark Mitchell knows this. He was a police officer. He worked incredibly hard to keep our communities safe, and I’m sure when Mr Mitchell was a police officer, if he had heard a politician say “You must do this from day to day”, he would have gone, “That’s not your role.”

It is my role to give the police the resources they need to keep our communities safe, and what I can say is New Zealand First and Labour heard our communities. We heard them say we need more police, and we are delivering the greatest increase in the New Zealand police service ever—the greatest increase in New Zealand Police ever.

💬 Hon Paula Bennett: You should prepare better, honestly. It’s only five minutes—20 more to go.

And when we come to that member’s electorate and open up stations, when we deliver more police to her electorate, then I’m sure she’ll be there saying, “Well done. It’s what my communities want.” I just want to reiterate: 77 less police over five years; 1,800 more police over three years.

You know they’re in trouble when their Minister of Finance gets up to deliver a speech and all he does is talk about our associate finance spokesperson. He doesn’t talk about anything the Government’s doing. They all stay in the House—they all stay in the House—so they can rise to their feet and give him a standing ovation—

💬 Hon Member: They’ve got nothing else to applaud.

—because they’ve got nothing else to keep them going. This is a clear indication of how desperate they are and how bad things are. The most undignified thing I’ve seen in this House is the Hon Ron Mark tripping over himself and falling over himself to get to Grant Robertson to shake his hand for such a great speech. It was embarrassing. He’s had no papers into Cabinet. I assume that he’s putting on a big effort to try to actually secure some funding to actually buy some assets for our Defence Force.

But I want to use my general debate speech today to make an acknowledgment. We always in this House stand and acknowledge our first responders, whether it be the police, whether it be the fire service, whether it be the ambulance service, or whether it be our front-line medical staff that are having to deal with cases that come in through the emergency department. But the one service that we don’t really acknowledge, because they’re basically invisible to us as the public, is our corrections service.

Our corrections staff do an outstanding job every day of making sure that the people that can create harm in the community are actually kept in our corrections facilities. It is an incredibly challenging profession. It requires strong character and resilience to each day turn up and not know what they’re going to face during the day. They might face a prisoner that is completely motivated to self-harm, and they have to show compassion. They might face violent prisoners that want to spit, kick, punch, assault, and attack them. They may even have to face a prisoner that’s actually got a weapon, whether it’s a toothbrush that’s been filed down or some sort of shank.

Two hundred and fifty-nine corrections officers were assaulted between June last year and now—259 assaulted or attacked in the workplace. The one thing that we can do as a Parliament is we can apply sanctions. We can put laws in place that send a clear message. I feel strongly that assault against a corrections officer is actually an assault against the State—it’s an assault against all of us—and the one thing that we can do in this House is we can apply sanctions to say that we support corrections officers and we take it very seriously as a country when they are assaulted while they are just trying to do their job and keep the rest of us safe and happy.

So it brings me to a point that I want to raise. I was shocked last week when I asked in this House the Minister of Justice for two things: a definition of a low-level offender or offence, and a definition of a non-violent assault. The non-violent assault—to be honest with you, I thought the House might pick up the fact that there is no such thing as a non-violent assault. There has to be some sort of force used, even if it’s spitting. There’s got to be some sort of violence attached to that offence—there is no such thing. He stood in this House and he used as an example an indecent assault against a female corrections officer. That’s the example that he used, and every single one of the members opposite—and especially the female members of the Labour and the Green caucuses—have been completely silent on this.

Chlöe Swarbrick: We care about outcomes.

Sorry, who’s that? The sponsor of the bill, the domestic violence bill—what’s she got to say about it? What’s she got to say about it, as the great saviour and the advancer of these issues?

I was deeply offended by it. You had the justice Minister of New Zealand stand up and trivialise an indecent assault against a female corrections officer, and I think that that is a disgrace. That message that should be sent from this House is that we support them—

💬 Jan Logie: You are the problem right now.

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! Ms Logie, I remind you who you’re addressing.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This seems to have touched a raw nerve, and it should touch a raw nerve. Get up. Get up and take a call. Get up and take a call and explain, because I’ve been inundated with correspondence from women since the debate in the House—the questions in the House—last week, including another female corrections officer that was also indecently assaulted on the job. And, actually, the result of her assault meant that there was a second strike against the offender.

If this is the only example they can come up with against three strikes, it’s a terrible indictment on the fact that they don’t have an argument against three strikes. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I am the proud member for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. I’m also a very proud Minister in this coalition Government. I want to start off my contribution with the closing remarks of the Minister of Finance, which is “This is the Government getting on to do the mahi.” We’re getting on and doing the mahi, and I want to just first of all acknowledge that in my electorate of the East Coast, as a result of the floods on the recent Queen’s Birthday weekend that’s just passed.

Can I just say, in August of 2016—again, in another part of my electorate—we had a gastro outbreak in Havelock North, where 5,000 people were hospitalised, and a couple of people lost their lives—a very, very serious incursion for the people in Havelock North. It took the Government of the day 10 days to come into the House to acknowledge we had a gastro outbreak—10 days—and the only way that they did that was that our side of the House caused an urgent debate. We called an urgent debate, and then the Minister was forced to get up on his feet and explain the gastro outbreak. But on the East Coast, that I represent and I’m proud of, within two days of the flood, not only myself but officials from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and Gisborne District Council were in the air—two days. We were in the air to make sure that we were scanning the outbreak of the floods. I can say that although the flooding was quite localised in Tolaga Bay, the devastation that people saw on their televisions and on social media was devastating for communities and those families that lost their homes, and for farmers that are still recovering from those floods.

So I want to make sure that this House acknowledges the response in which this side of the House responded to those floods. I do want to acknowledge my colleague the Minister of Civil Defence, the Minister Kris Faafoi, for his attendance up in Tolaga Bay over the weekend, where he got to meet first-hand and hear from those that are actively on the ground, because this Government is about action. This Government is empathetic to the causes that small communities like Tolaga Bay and Whangarā experienced as a result of not just one flood, but two floods. I want to acknowledge all the farmers that are doing it hard.

I want to acknowledge my colleague Minister O’Connor, who, within seven days, called a medium-scale event. Why is that important? Because then that sends a message to the people of Whangarā and Tolaga Bay that the Government is caring about what’s happening to them—that we are unlocking the services and support of the Government agencies, be they the Ministry of Social Development, be they MPI, around supporting communities and families. It is important that I stand and acknowledge the devastation that’s happened, and still continues to happen, to those communities of Whangarā and Tolaga Bay.

The other issue is around this Government being empathetic not only to communities like the two I’ve mentioned but, actually, to all whānau and families within New Zealand. Within our first 100 days, we put families first—we put families first with our Families Package, which would see incomes boosted for 384,000 whānau. So we talk about not doing anything of action—that’s what we’ve done. We also passed the extension of paid parental leave to 26 weeks, we increased the minimum wage to $16.50 by 1 April, we announced changes to strengthen workers’ rights, and we announced legislation to set child poverty targets.

So let’s not kid ourselves in this House: this side of the House is about action. We’re an empathetic Government, but we’re also bound by strong, principled economic management commitments through our fiscal responsibility codes. We want to make sure that when we leave office—which may be three, four, or five terms away, or 18 terms away—we want to leave the books in a lot better place than what we inherited. So economic fiscal responsibility is a commitment on this side.

In the short time that I’m standing—engaging with industry is important. Last week, at the Fieldays, I announced scholarships for forestry degrees targeting Māori and women. We want more women and Māori in the forestry industry, so last week we announced that. I announced science scholarships, because we need more primary industry scholars in science. And I also announced the good employer awards. If we are going to recognise good employment in the regions, then we need to start giving that opportunity to celebrate. Kia ora tātou.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This Government, with its reckless disregard for the drivers of this economy, its arrogance towards its critics, its lack of self-discipline, its replacement of the previous Government’s clearly articulated economic plan with random and naive do-goodery, is putting this country’s economic prosperity at risk. A weaker national economy means fewer opportunities for New Zealanders. A weaker economy means young Kiwis will decide their prospects are better overseas—quite probably in Australia, where the economy is picking up. A weaker economy means less money available for world-class healthcare, for access to the latest medicines and the latest technology. It means less money available to help those in need.

How can this possibly be happening at a time when our terms of trade—what New Zealand sells into the world—is at record high prices? This Government needs take some responsibility for what’s going on. It needs take responsibility for business confidence falling through the floor—in particular, the measure of businesses’ own assessment of their future investment. The latest ANZ survey, showed that the figure for New Zealand businesses’ assessment of their own future activity is falling. It’s now plus 14 percent, which is very close to the level where the economy is starting to stall, and yet Mr Parker, the Minister for Economic Development, says that’s all junk—it’s junk—and the Deputy Prime Minister, Winston Peters, agrees with him. It’s junk. Well, the ANZ said, in defence of their survey after Mr Parker’s attack, that it’s a service of businesses’ expectations of their own activity and that this “maps well with official GDP figures produced by Statistics New Zealand … meaning it provides a reliable and robust gauge of business activity.” So it’s an unbelievably arrogant thing to say to call it junk. I mean, in effect, what he’s saying is that the 1,500 - odd business people who are talking about what they’re planning to do in the next year don’t know what they’re talking about—he knows better. Their concerns aren’t valid. It’s no surprise that business confidence and business investment intentions are going down.

Primarily, it’s because there is so much uncertainty in this economy. New investment leads to jobs and growth, and would-be investors are keeping their hands in their pockets. Everyone I talk to is keeping their hands in their pockets and not investing because everywhere they look, they see uncertainty. They don’t know whether they’re going to be facing a capital gains tax or not. They’re uncertain about the effect of the new labour laws and the strengthening of union powers, which are seeing strikes everywhere we look. They’re uncertain, if they’re a foreign investor, whether they’re welcome or not—and they’re probably not welcome. And they’re uncertain about the decision-making processes in this Government, as we’ve seen with the oil and gas decision, where a major economic decision was made in the absence of any detailed advice and in the absence of a proper Cabinet process.

They see an arrogant Government that has no sympathy with the wealth creators in this economy. We have an economic development Minister, as I say, who thinks that their opinion is junk; we have a workplace relations Minister who says that if they’re worried about increased labour costs, then businesses are just not resilient enough; and, of course, finally, we have the regional economic development Minister, who goes around attacking business leaders and calling for their sacking and their resignation.

And, on that point, the most alarming element in that is the chaos that it points to in this Government. So we see Mr Jones and his leader, Winston Peters, in open defiance of the Prime Minister. Let’s recall the sequence of events. He blurted out an attack—because a few days had gone past and he hadn’t been in the news—on Fonterra’s leaders. He had been warned by the Prime Minister before, when he attacked Air New Zealand, not to do it again. He did it again, and then she came along and said, rather hopefully, “Well, he was speaking in a personal capacity, not as a Minister.”—remember, she said that four times—“end of story.”—end of story. Nobody believed that, but at least that might’ve created a fig leaf that she could’ve stood behind. If it’d stopped there it might’ve gone away, but it didn’t stop there, of course, because then, immediately afterwards, Shane Jones came along and rolled over that fig leaf with his steamroller and said—actually, in the House—“I stand by all those statements.” and continued his attack on Fonterra’s leadership in this House, speaking as the Minister.

So he made the Prime Minister look like a twit, he made her look weak, and he’s done it again in this House, attacking Fonterra in open defiance of the Prime Minister. The only point that he’s making—the message is clear that the Prime Minister may be in office, but she’s not in power—

Order! [Interruption] Order! The member’s time has expired.

Today, I’m going to take a call in this general debate, and I want to talk about an issue which is actually partisan, and I believe it should be partisan—

💬 Hon Member: Oh that’s a shock!

I know, it is a shock. The issue is climate change. We as a nation face challenges ahead of us, and we have heard the member Meka Whaitiri talk today about the adverse weather events that’ve happened in her communities. We’ve heard about these across many, many areas in our country and these are happening more and more frequently, and this is attributed to climate change. So I believe it’s a really important issue, and it’s one that I want to talk to the public and to this House about.

Of course, the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, has said that climate change is our generation’s nuclear-free moment. Why is it so important to this coalition and, indeed, to our country? There are many reasons—many reasons—our Pacific nations, that are our close relatives, and there are also the adverse weather effects. But, actually, I’m a fisherwoman, so I’m going to, very selfishly, talk a little bit about the reasons why climate change is important.

I’m based in the Bay of Plenty. I fish all the time, and I want to focus on the sea—the effect of climate change on our sea. If we don’t address climate emission reductions, this will affect sea levels. It’ll affect sea levels to the point that our Pacific neighbours are not going to have homes, but it will also affect the migratory patterns of our sea fish as they move more poleward towards cooler water. We will see acidification in our sea waters, affecting our pāua and mussel aquaculture. Now, acidification is quite horrific. The effects on our food chain and, let’s face it, our recreation as well as our industries are going to be horrific.

We as a group need to address this matter. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has called for cross-party collaboration on climate change. We need this issue to be one that is not kicked from election cycle to election cycle. We need to act together, and we need to do it now. I would like to remind the listeners at home that there is currently, under the Ministry of the Environment, www.mfe.govt.nz, the opportunity to have your say around the zero carbon bill. It’s an opportunity for all of us in this nation to have our say around zero carbon emissions. And I encourage everyone to contribute.

So climate change and how we respond is something crucial to us all. But let’s look at the last nine years. The Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, and 194 countries in the coalition worked on this around the reduction of emissions without affecting food production—very important. We signed and the then National Government set a target of reducing emissions by 30 percent below the 2005 level by 2030, and then they set a 50 percent reduction by 2050. Well, we’re seeking a new target—one that is actually in line with global ambition—and the member Todd Muller, in his briefing note of 8 June, said, “We are comfortable with our 2030 and 2050 targets. We will defend against any expansion in ambition.” What is that about? We’re behind in the world, and we’re not going to have any ambition on this issue?

I’m not surprised, however, because I have just recently seen the National Party’s climate change policy—and I’ve gone on quite a bit—but, remember, the Hon Simon Bridges isn’t even sure—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak and make a contribution today, Mr Speaker. I haven’t done it for a while, so it’s a genuine pleasure to be part of the debate. Can I start by acknowledging the Hon Tau Henare, who was in the Chamber earlier during question time, and thank him for his contribution and his time in Parliament. Unfortunately, what it did in my mind was make me think of the National Party and the Opposition over there. It made me think there is—or there was; excuse me—a genuine contender for the Leader of the Opposition, and I’ll tell you why—I’ll tell you why. He came into the room and it made me realise he’s got more popularity than the current Opposition leader has. Internally, he’s more well liked than the leader is. It’s just ridiculous.

So that led me on to think: what is the situation in the Opposition benches over there? What we saw, actually, was incredible timing in terms of reinforcing my thinking, because as they stood up, one after the other, each of those factions within the National Party was represented by those spokespeople, and so it just goes to show you that everybody is positioning, jockeying, and putting themselves out the front there to try and be seen not only by the New Zealand public but by the membership of the National Party. So congratulations to Mr Mitchell—good job! A bit intense. And they’re probably way off the mark, Mr Mitchell—probably way off the mark. Congratulations to—was it Goldsmith? Did Goldsmith—I honestly can’t remember who has stood up this far. What we are seeing now is a frustrated and disgruntled Opposition.

So, actually, my point is a serious one, because what we’re seeing in that are the backroom operations of the Opposition, where these factions are contending with one another. What that means and what we’re seeing, as evidenced today, is a party that in their dysfunction, are not functioning as a true, strong Opposition. They’re not doing their job properly, is what I’m telling you, Mr Speaker, and the House. They’re not doing their job properly because what we’re seeing are petty attacks on personalities and people instead of a genuine contesting of ideas, of principles, and of policy, and it’s incredibly upsetting to watch and observe from this side of the House. So, instead of debating the issues, we have dysfunctionality, and it is evident in the performance of the Opposition.

What I would like to say—oh, jeez, that took me way too long to go over that. So I was going to talk about their deputy finance spokesperson, but I can’t even remember his name either. So look, Mr Speaker and to those members opposite, for the first time in nearly a decade, we have a Government that is focused on the people of New Zealand—all of the people of New Zealand.

💬 Erica Stanford: All of them?

Thank you for reiterating and making the point to Mr Mitchell; I don’t think he heard me. Thank you so much. [Interruption] Ha, ha! Yeah, he’s not getting it.

So this is a Government that is about capability building. It is about, despite the—was it—Scott? Is it Mr Scott who was going to create the far-right breakaway party for National, the next leader of the far-right party?

Universities are important and they need to be invested in. Our hospitals are important and need to be invested in. Homes for people who are struggling right now, guys—get this—are important and need to be provided for those who are desperate. Flip that on its head and ask yourselves the question: if we don’t do that, if a Government doesn’t do that, what is the true long-term cost to the people of New Zealand, to this Government, when what we would be doing—and, unfortunately, what this Government is doing now—is picking up the pieces of 10 years of a party that refused to give genuine investment in the people of New Zealand who need it most, and at a time they so desperately needed it. Basically, I’d better end there because I’m out of time and I really want to hear what the Opposition has to say to that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m feeling tempted to respond to some of the speeches earlier in the day, but I’m going to hold it and see if I’ve got time left at the end, because, really, I wanted to speak about nurses.

I’m the daughter of a nurse, and I feel as if I have, through my mum’s experience, a bit of an insight into their technical skill and the physicality and the emotional nature of their job. I just have so much respect for the work that they do, and I really want to put it on record in this House that they have been, historically, underpaid and undervalued in our healthcare system. So, in the Green Party, we believe that our nurses deserve to be paid more. And we support their call for urgent mediation in their pay dispute with the district health boards (DHBs).

I want to acknowledge too that what’s happening now is in the context as described by Richard Wagstaff of the Council of Trade Unions that around the world there’s this wave of action from women, who are saying, basically, that they’ve had enough of waiting for things to get better, and these women are expressing their absolute frustration with the refusal of the system to acknowledge their value. As the quote goes, I believe, “Well-behaved women rarely make history”. So I want to acknowledge their efforts in this current time.

In my experience, nurses are exceptionally professional, and their rejection of the DHBs’ offer reveals how undervalued they feel after nine years of the health budgets just being squeezed to breathlessness by the previous National Government. So the nurses are standing up for themselves and all women, but they’re also standing up for us as a society. Nurses are the largest occupational group in our health sector. We have an ageing workforce and an ageing population and an increasingly globalised labour market. If we want a strong and effective healthcare service, then we would do well to listen to what the nurses are telling us.

I want to recall the interview on Radio New Zealand yesterday with a nurse, Kathleen. She’s worked as a nurse for eight years and she was saying that she would benefit from the offer, with a 15 percent pay rise. But her concern was for junior colleagues, because at the moment they would only get 3 percent, and they are hearing on a regular basis from junior nurses talking about going to Australia because the pay and the ability to have a decent life looks better over there. She was acknowledging that nurses are working long hours, often they’re in shift work, they’re on their feet all day, and often they don’t get lunch breaks. She’s working most weekends and doesn’t get to have a decent life and is struggling from pay cheque to pay cheque. And that is on top of increased complexity of their work, and the fact that, many days, they are verbally and physically assaulted in their work.

The nurses are telling us that we need to pay attention, as a country, to ensure that people want to go into this work and stay in this work. The Green Party thank them for their efforts for us to understand that and for us to have a strong healthcare system that we can all rely on when we need it. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the previous Government patched up efforts around health—where they neglected the buildings; where we have mould in the walls of Middlemore and asbestos in Dunedin—and they have been underpaying the staff, and that has put us to the point of crisis.

When we hear Simon Bridges say that he’s standing by the nurses but he just doesn’t think that they deserve more pay, I challenge Mr Bridges to go to a protest of nurses and stand there with a placard and say “Nurses don’t deserve more pay.”, because that’s effectively what the leader of the National Party has been saying. The Green Party supports—we recognise it may not happen overnight, but we thank the nurses for their challenge.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would like to start on a positive note, and that is that I had my office’s open day just a few days ago. I have to say that it went really well, as I have moved from 165 Stoddard Road in Mount Roskill to 68 Stoddard Road. So I want to thank each and every one that came to my office.

In those conversations—they were casual conversations, but there were things that came out from each and every person that visited. People are really concerned about the consequences of the policies of this Labour-led Government. There were some business people, those who visited my office—they are saying yes, they don’t have the confidence. They don’t want to invest more in their business. They don’t want to employ more people. So that survey that was done for business confidence is not a waste of paper; that is what we are hearing on the ground and that is what the businesses are saying. So I ask the Government members to go out and connect with businesses to understand what they are saying.

As I am the spokesperson for research, science and innovation, we also talked about research and development tax credit policy. People clearly know that this policy is nothing but a copy and paste of 2007’s research and development tax credit policy. The Minister didn’t take any opportunity to do any homework to see what’s happening in other countries. All she’s done is copy and paste that policy and put that out for consultation.

Very interesting it was when we had Estimates hearings in the select committee process—Minister Megan Woods, she could not answer even simple questions. So I wonder if she has done any homework before putting out that policy for consultation. For example, I asked if she could tell me how much of that money that she has allocated for the R & D tax credit will go for existing business R & D. She said she didn’t know. We know how much business R & D is there. We also know what they’re proposing in terms of tax credit: 12.5 percent. She couldn’t calculate that and give me that figure. This is because she knows that some of that money will also go towards reclassification of work as R & D.

It became even more interesting when I asked her how it’s going to be monitored, and she said the Inland Revenue Department will be monitoring all the R & D tax credit claims. And when I asked if any money from this money that she has allocated for the R & D tax credit policy is going towards IRD, she said no. So no wonder that Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and IRD staff are planning to go on strike, because if you squeeze people for resources and funding, that is what you get.

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: Ha, ha!

Yes. It’s not a laughing matter. That is what you get—strikes—because this Government is just squeezing the IRD without providing any resources and is assuming that R & D tax credit policy will work fine. This policy is so flawed that no matter how much consultation is done on that policy, the design aspects of the policy cannot be fixed.

Then it became even more interesting when I asked about the minimum threshold. So the Minister didn’t know what’s in the consultation document. One of the officials tried to answer, and she couldn’t confirm who was correct. Then we also see that there is a maximum threshold for companies to claim research and development tax credit, and how that’s going to work? That’s going to be at the Minister’s discretion. So the Minister will decide which company will get the tax credit if they’re spending more than the maximum threshold, and how is that Minister going to decide? We don’t know. So the Minister is going to decide—tick for one company, cross for another company. How is that going to be decided? We have no idea.

But maybe we can pick up some hints from how these Government ministers are operating, especially from Minister Shane Jones, as he’s going around spraying the money that he’s got for his portfolio for his political motivations. We need that confidence that this R & D tax credit money that the Minister has allocated will not be used for ticking and crossing the companies based on their own political motivations.

I am calling on the Minister to stand by the Prime Minister—the Prime Minister who keeps saying that she wants to see that her Government is a transparent Government. I’m calling on Minister Megan Woods to make all the submissions public. And, yes, I understand some submissions on the R & D tax credit policy are public; that is because the submitters have made them public. But I’m calling on the Minister to make those submissions public so that we know what businesses are saying, because we know there is nothing for businesses that do not have a positive cash flow. There’s nothing for small businesses that are working really hard and contributing to research and development.

The uncaring policies of this Government are pinching people. But we know that this Government doesn’t care about people’s back pockets being pinched—or even their bottoms being pinched, as we have heard from the justice Minister Andrew Little.

Order! The member’s time has expired.

I find the general debate a great opportunity to see exactly what’s happening in this House. We propose; they oppose—is how I would really sum it up—and look, to be fair, it’s their job. The only way they’re going to get back into the Treasury seats is by pulling down everything we on this side of the House do—to be completely negative—and look, that’s fine. There’s some very able people there and they do it very well.

However, what I’d like to speak about today—I’d just like to appeal to those members on the Opposition benches to think about the effect of what they’re actually doing in one particular area, and that’s in law and order, in crime, and fear of crime. Now, traditionally around the world, Oppositions home in on the easy wins. They home in on those things that they can directly translate to speaking to the public, scaring the public, making sure that they’ll come back and build up a picture of a country, of a city, or wherever it is actually in peril. The problem with that is that in building that up, it’s an easy win, it’s a damaging win, and it hasn’t actually got anyone anywhere.

I stand here speaking as an ex - police officer with 41 years’ experience who’s still very much involved in those who are in the crime scene. I’m speaking about someone who I’m trying to assist through a gang experience at the moment, who has just had a horrific beating, and through that I’ve gained a reminder of just what we’re dealing with there.

Now, if we, and the Opposition, and as a country, become totally focused on the fear of crime, totally focused on scaring the heck out of the public, then what we will do is we risk missing some very obvious fixes here. Just throwing gang members into jail by itself, without any regard to anything else, could actually cause the problems they have in Los Angeles at the moment. Essentially, the jail gangs run the crime scene in Los Angeles. How they do it is because they’re there for ever. They’re never getting out, so they control it—the authorities have no ability to control them—and how they control it is that anyone who’s going to start committing crime anywhere else in Los Angeles knows eventually they’re going to probably get caught and go to jail, and they’ll come under the influence of those gang members. So I’m certainly not standing here saying “Don’t use jail as a tool to help control our gangs.”; I’m just saying let’s use it smartly.

What I fear is that if we just focus simply on, actually, irrational fear, where we’re building a fear that nothing is happening and that every time, particularly, the worried well in some of our safer suburbs still believe that if they step outside they’re going to be beaten, that there’s going to be sexual crimes committed on their street—which is not reality because, actually, crime generally is stable around the world. In fact, crime has come down generally from its highs, but if I could just focus you on one place where it did work.

Something that worked that didn’t work anywhere else was in New York. I think anyone with any understanding of how crime and how policing methods have changed over the years will focus on what happened in New York in the 1990s. Now, what happened there was that crime came down considerably. There was an influx of police—just the sort of influx that this Government is now contemplating and putting on the street—but it wasn’t just that that worked. It was how they used them—it was how they used them. They actually concentrated on reducing the fear of crime. So the people of New York, unlike the people of Chicago and unlike the people in the other cities that had equal drops in crime, actually believed their cities were safer. That is where we’ve got to concentrate our efforts.

If we are going to use the leverage of fear of crime, I would ask those members opposite now—I’m starting to run out of time, but I’d ask those members opposite to do one thing. When you’re sitting doing your strategy around your board, around your room, around your caucus, just be aware that by grabbing the easy win of fear of crime—grabbing the easy win of grabbing headlines and getting out there and convincing New Zealanders that we’re going to hell in a handcart as a country because crime is rampant on the street—you will not allow the Department of Corrections, and even you yourselves, to make sure that we’re part of fixing this.

So I’m not saying that we don’t use jails; I’m not saying that we don’t need jails. I’m just saying let’s use them smartly, and let’s not, basically, disqualify ourselves from doing that by just simply taking the easy win of scaring the hell out of the New Zealand public. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to speak here in the general debate this afternoon. I would like to spend my short time here referring to some of the issues that have arisen in local government over recent times. We want our local government bodies—do we not—to be effective and for the public to have some trust and confidence in the way that they engage and the way that they feel that councillors and mayors, and even staff and chief executives, can do their job and do their job well. It is incredibly fundamental that we have that trust and assurance throughout the country, but I would like to say and suggest that it is even more so for Auckland Council. You might think that this is something that I would refer to, having been a former Auckland councillor just recently myself, but let’s see what the value is for Auckland Council and why it is that we would undergird this particular local body.

New Zealand’s GDP in 2017 figures is $270 billion. Auckland’s GDP is just a little over $101 billion. That’s 36 percent of New Zealand’s GDP. So that’s the size and the nature of the governing body that we’re going to look at here just quickly this afternoon. So Auckland Council and their council-controlled organisation hold just—if you look at their entire assets and their balance sheet, if I can put it that way—around $70 billion. That’s a very sizable entity—Australasia’s largest council. We’re expected to grow, of course, those holdings, those assets, sizably over the next 10 years, if you look at their recent long-term plan. In the 2016-17 year, the staff at Auckland Council numbered 9,470 full-time equivalents, and, if you look at total headcount, somewhere to the tune of 11,500 staff. That’s massive numbers.

So the importance of Auckland to the rest of the country can’t be underscored. It’s undeniable and it means that the governing body of Auckland Council needs to be stable, needs to be reliable, and councillors need the right information to do their job. This is not rocket science, it’s obvious, unfortunately, that the current system does not seem to be working. We have recently seen councillors blocked from accessing important information, and tensions have been rising to a boiling point—to such a point that it’s come across and cut across here in the House in Parliament.

Council’s been in the news for the wrong reasons. It’s something that I’ve been through myself, but I’ve never experienced the escalation that I have seen in the last week or so. Now, someone could argue that the timing of the regional fuel tax and the tensions there may be related, but I think there’s a systemic issue here. So what’s the Government done to offer a solution in this space? Little—probably nothing.

And that was highlighted when I asked the Minister of Local Government in question time yesterday whether she sensed any urgency to address this issue and, even gave her a solution—in fact, two solutions, if you want to put it that way. One was referencing her capacity to use the Local Government Act 2002, where it states clearly, “The Minister of Local Government may”—and I’m quoting here—“require a local authority to provide to her information on the nature and extent of a problem and how the local authority is addressing or planning to address the problem.” Well, that sounds like an A, B, C way forward for the Minister of Local Government to have a conversation with Mayor Phil Goff and Auckland Council about the nature and the extent of the problem that they’re facing.

Now, there’s another solution, and that’s my particular member’s bill. I have offered—or I tried—to table that bill in the House and that was rejected by the Government. That bill offers a solution whereby the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act could be amended and, quite simply—look, here’s the problem. Why do councillors have to go through the same exact process as the public to get information that they should be entitled to, to do their job? It’s not right. It’s a simple solution.

💬 Hon Judith Collins: Get on with it.

You should get on with it. Pick up—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The member is—

The Government should get on with it. Send a signal. Pick up my bill.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.