General Debate

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

In the next few minutes, using the privilege of this House, I’m going to outline a series of alarming and disturbing issues that have taken place under David Clark’s watch. The issues I will outline involve, firstly, an audit into fraudulent, unauthorised, and excessive uses of hundreds of thousands of dollars at the Counties Manukau District Health Board (DHB); secondly, the former DHB CEO and matters being audited subsequently being reported back to him as Director-General of Health; and, thirdly, the Minister of Health later sacking the very board members that raised the audit issues with his ministry.

On 29 January this year, the Auditor-General wrote to David Clark regarding Counties Manukau DHB and raised significant matters discovered by DHB board members during an internal audit. The Auditor-General was referring to this report: a report containing findings of an auditor’s investigation which identified remuneration and benefits paid to a senior DHB executive which were either unauthorised, excessive, or unjustified, and multiple areas where that executive exceeded their delegated financial authority. The word “fraudulent” also appears in the report.

The audit was so serious and troubling that mid - last year, two new board members, Rabin Rabindran and Mark Darrow, were involved in seeking assistance from the State Services Commissioner and the Ministry of Health. After the internal audit report was complete, using the powers of the Director-General of Health, a review was commissioned, carried out by forensic accounting firm Beattie Varley. Beattie Varley were assisted by the former Solicitor-General Michael Heron QC and Deloitte.

In December last year, the Minister issued a press release welcoming the appointment of Stephen McKernan as acting director-general. Mr McKernan’s previous experience includes him once serving as DHB CEO at Counties Manukau. The final Beattie Varley report into a DHB he once was the CEO of would eventually land on Stephen McKernan’s desk.

The situation is alarming. It’s alarming because, as a former Counties Manukau CEO, Stephen McKernan was directly mentioned in the auditor’s report, multiple times, over successive years as being involved in some of the inappropriate and unauthorised salary transactions. The Minister of Health is also involved. In March 2018, the final Beattie Varley report was returned to the ministry. A summary was requested for presentation to the Minister. Within weeks of that summary being prepared, the two DHB board members that were involved in the first discovery of the financial negligence and mismanagement, Rabin Rabindran and Mark Darrow, were sent letters by the Minister removing them from the DHB. While those board members were told the Minister wanted to rejuvenate the board, Mr Rabindran and Mr Darrow were the newest members of the board. They’ve also not been replaced, and their positions are still vacant on that DHB.

The nature of this situation is serious. We have a review of an audit that was provided to the Director-General of Health into a matter that he himself was implicated in during a past health role. We also have a Minister whose only action in this matter so far, despite having had the Auditor-General raise it with him directly, seems to have been to remove from the district health board the very members that discovered the financial negligence. They investigated it, sought an independent audit, pushed for a ministry-led review, and then got sacked from that board as soon as the review was completed.

What did David Clark do when the Auditor-General told him of significant matters involving financial practices at the district health board back in January? Why didn’t the Minister take action to ensure that the director-general, Stephen McKernan, did not play any part into a review into matters he himself was involved in while that review was being carried out using his powers as the director-general? And why is the Minister not now acting on serious issues involving the use of public money that he has known about for almost five months?

Members of a district health board have found an issue, they have investigated it, and the only thanks they’ve had for that is to be sacked from that district health board. We also know that the Minister of Health has attempted through voicemail messages to gag that district health board member—the former chairperson—from speaking publicly.

There are serious issues that David Clark—

💬 Hon Dr David Clark: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I take offence at that characterisation that the member’s making, saying that I attempted to gag someone. It has been clearly established that that’s not the case.

💬 SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat. We are—I know this is a serious speech and an important speech. We are in the general debate, where the rules are quite a lot wider than they are, for example, at question time. I have been listening very carefully to this speech for a number of obvious reasons, and it is my view that the assertion is a refutable one and that may be the appropriate action to take.

It’s clear from the voicemail message left by David Clark for Rabin Rabindran that the issue of future appointments was raised and the issue of media problems was also raised. That is the only real contact that member’s had from the Minister of Health recently regarding media issues. I say that these issues need serious consideration by the Auditor-General and the State Services Commissioner in future.

I think it’s very interesting today that Jami-Lee Ross has come to the House attempting to take a serious tone, attempting to deflect away from the fact that that previous Government failed the health system, failed New Zealand, for nine long years. Nine long years of neglecting the health system, and they want to come to the House today and start off with a speech making accusations about our health Minister, who is attempting to fix the damage that was caused under that previous Government. Well, I think that’s shocking—absolutely shocking.

But I understand why that member has taken that tone: an attempt to look like a serious Opposition, because, quite frankly, in the last two weeks, they’ve looked like a joke. They’ve had members going haywire. Mr Alastair Scott was out there telling the public that they’re going to sell our schools and that they’re going to sell our hospitals. First they don’t want to look after them; now they want to sell them.

They’ve got the Leader of the Opposition publicly out there making very inappropriate jokes on a radio station about a baby—thinking that he’s funny, thinking that it’s just boy humour, and thinking that New Zealanders will think it’s acceptable. Well, actually, they don’t find it acceptable, they don’t think he’s funny, and in the last two weeks the general public has been looking at that side of the House and thinking, “What a joke. What a joke of an Opposition.” And that’s why Jami-Lee Ross has come here today and attempted to look all serious, attempted to fire what he thinks are—and we know are not—credible accusations at our health Minister.

Well, it’s not going to work, Jami-Lee Ross. It’s not going to work, National. There’s a lot of repair work that needs to be done, and firing false accusations is not going to fix it.

You know, I actually think that that side of the House need to learn that New Zealanders value a few things, one of them being—

💬 Erica Stanford: Toilets at WINZ! Ha, ha!

—just general respect. Someone over here’s making a joke about one of my announcements to do with WINZ offices. She thinks it’s funny. What that member’s name again?

💬 Hon Members: Erica.

Denise Lee.

💬 Hon Members: Erica.

Oh, Erica Stanford—sorry. She thinks it’s funny that today I announced one of the changes we’ll be making is ensuring that people who go to Ministry of Social Development (MSD) offices have access to a toilet. She thinks that’s funny. She thinks that it’s a funny matter.

It’s actually not funny, because when people go to an MSD office seeking support in very stressful situations, sometimes with children in tow, needing to queue for a long period of time because of the fact that that ministry was neglected under that Government as well and they need to go to the bathroom and they’re told, “No. Get off site.” and they lose their place in the queue—that actually is a really serious matter, and I don’t know how many times I’ve had it raised with me.

That side of the House underestimates the importance of upholding the dignity of New Zealanders, of expressing and exhibiting respect to New Zealanders seeking support from Government departments, and I think it’s shameful that she’s over there laughing about it.

This week I had the privilege of being able to announce a package of changes to the way we operate MSD. Moving forward, if you go to an MSD office, unless there is some serious risk imposed, you’re not going to be asked for identification or checked off on a list. When you walk in, you’re going to be greeted warmly.

If you want a glass of water when you’re in an MSD office, you can get that glass of water.

💬 Erica Stanford: Ha, ha!

There is going to be a space set up so that while parents—and she’s still laughing. She’s still laughing. Obviously, that woman is completely out of touch with New Zealanders and does not know that the majority of New Zealanders have to access support from MSD.

There will be a space where children can keep themselves entertained or parents can entertain them while they’re waiting to be seen. There’s a new eligibility guide, which will mean that New Zealanders can check online what they might be entitled to so we can ensure that they are getting everything that they need.

There is a new client commitment—and I need to tell that side of the House that I think it’s shameful under them that the charter that had been established by the previous Government disappeared and that they had no regard for ensuring that clients of MSD were treated respectfully. That is just only a few of the measures that we introduced this week.

It is only the beginning. There is much more to do to fix up the damage caused under that side of the House over the last nine years.

I find it difficult to take the Government’s claims of being concerned about the quality of social and health services when it is systematically removing any of the meaningful targets for delivery of social and other services, of which the most recent is the Minister of Health unilaterally abandoning any targets for performance in our public health system.

You see, in January this year, the Government dropped the Better Public Service targets, administered by the State Services Commission. These covered important areas, like a target to reduce by 10,000 the number of New Zealanders that are victims of crime, goals like reducing by 20 percent the number of people that are high-priority applicants for social housing, things like reducing the number of hospitalisations of children from preventable diseases, and things like reducing the number of people that are on long-term welfare. You have to ask the question: why on earth is the Government wanting to remove these performance measures on improvement in areas like health?

It’s not just health; we’re seeing it in education. We’re seeing it, as highlighted by Chris Bishop, in the area of police. Take the area of education, being championed by my colleague Nikki Kaye. The Government, with great fanfare, in January, removed the specific national targets on literary and numeracy and has left a vacuum for schools about what they are to do. I had representations from boards of trustees in my own Nelson community this week, alarmed at not being able to have, in future, reliable data on how well their children are doing. And it’s not just for parents; it’s for boards of trustees, it’s for principals, and it’s for ensuring good knowledge about where our Ministry of Education and Education Review Office should be intervening. Equally, it applies to the secondary sector, where, again, we’re wanting to take away national measures of how well our children are doing in secondary education with the changes around NCEA.

Then we come to yesterday’s announcements about district health boards (DHBs). We currently require our 20 district health boards to report their performance on six specific health goals—things like improving timeliness of being able to be seen in an emergency department, improving access to elective surgery, making sure people are getting timely access to cancer treatment, improving immunisation rates, making sure that we have active smoke-free campaigns and more New Zealanders quitting smoking, and improving the health status of our families and children. Why on earth do members opposite want to stop measuring and having targets in those sorts of areas?

You see, the value of being a local member of Parliament is that I can see how my DHB is doing. I’m hugely proud that the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board ranks amongst the best in terms of progress on emergency department see times, but, equally, I know that my own DHB is not cutting the mustard when it comes to smoking cessation rates. I suggest a key reason for these targets being removed is simply that this Government does not want to be accountable for actually delivering practical results for New Zealanders. We know the last Labour Government increased health funding by 50 percent and, at the same time, delivered no increase in elective surgeries.

Then we come to an area such as police, where we had very specific targets: 98 percent of burglaries being dealt with within 48 hours—target removed. Same again in respect of accessibility—no target for rural New Zealanders to access police services. What a contradiction in setting targets on child poverty but removing, across the State sector, any meaningful measure of how well this Government is doing. It’s a shambles, it’s a disappointment, and New Zealanders deserve better.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. It was 30 years ago this week that James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard space science centre told the US Senate in historic testimony, “The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.” Thirty years on, that same scientist says the world is failing miserably at the challenge of climate change. If you look at the science, someone born 30 years ago today has not known a below-average global temperature month their entire lifetime. What we know of global climate policy 30 years on is the temperature’s still rising, pollution’s still rising, the ice caps are still melting, the seas are still rising. We’re seeing more extreme weather events: we’re seeing floods, droughts, fire—an increase in them; the speed is taking off. Even this week, in Nature it was reported some of the world’s oldest trees—Africa’s baobab trees—are dying and climate change is the prime culprit. These trees have survived since the Roman Empire, gone through multiple climate fluctuations; yet rapid climate change is affecting them now.

Amidst the floods, the droughts, the wildfires there is a ray of hope in what is otherwise a doom and gloom story. And here’s where I in the general debate actually do a shout-out to the National Party. A ray of hope is the call from Simon Bridges to work with the Government on climate change issues. I’m incredibly hopeful. It’s something I know James Shaw, as our country’s climate change Minister, wants to see, cross-party consensus on climate policy. We need to see, we want to see, an enduring climate solution, and having all parties agree to it would be a step forward.

But it reminds me of a time that I was in Kiribati with Murray McCully about six or seven years ago. There, some of the poorest people in a country no more than half a metre above sea level—for them climate change, they told me, wasn’t something happening in the Arctic or in the academic papers; it was something happening there, now. It was their lived experience. In fact, they were using the only materials at their disposal—rubbish and waste—to try and build sea walls to stop the rising seas coming in. What could I, as a New Zealand politician six or seven years ago, say to them? The official Government line back under the previous Government, that we were such a small country that our emissions didn’t matter? Could I say to them that, in fact, the Government policies were intensifying—more cows, more coal, more carbon—that the Government was gutting the emissions trading scheme; that we were a so-called “fast follower” on the world stage; that our country was approaching climate change deals as trade deals, trying to maximise opportunities for our self-benefit, despite the impact on countries like Kiribati? I felt deeply ashamed as a Kiwi on the world stage, knowing we weren’t doing enough.

I contrast that to earlier this year, when I was talking to representatives from Mauritius and the Seychelles—again, small Island States. I was so proud to be able to tell them that, under the current Government, the Government was setting a bold, visionary, world-first, zero carbon by 2050 target. It was a Government which was fixing our emissions trading scheme. It was a Government which was establishing a Climate Commission; investigating 100 percent clean energy, solar panels on schools, a revamped home insulation scheme; stopping coalmining on the conservation estate; and starting a just transition away from oil drilling. We actually, finally, saw a separation of oil and State—no more subsidies going to the oil drillers and polluters. It was such a contrast, because here we have a historic opportunity to do something about climate change, to do something for our friends and whānau in the Pacific, in Kiribati and other countries—a transformational opportunity.

And here is where the opportunity is for the National Party, because they’ve said they’re going to reset their policies on the environment, I think acknowledging the terrible track record we saw. So my challenge to National is: are you going to walk the walk on climate change and environmental policy, or just talk the talk? It’s not a reset if you still support coalmining, oil drilling, fracking, dairy intensification, gutting the emissions trading scheme. That’s not a reset; that’s the same old pollution story set on replay. So you have the opportunity on the zero-carbon Act to work constructively for an enduring climate solution, but it has to be a climate solution.

We’ve seen 30 years of excuses, 30 years of avoiding responsibility, 30 years of debating the science but not doing anything about it. We have the opportunity today. We need to make sure that the zero-carbon Act is inclusive of all gases, that there are binding climate targets set by the Climate Commission, that there’s real action. I urge National to act on climate change, just like I urge all New Zealanders to have their say on the zero-carbon Act consultations, which are happening right now.

When I get out and about in communities across New Zealand, one of the biggest things that comes up is what will happen in 2020. Will people kick this Government out because they see a disorganised, inexperienced Government that doesn’t believe in accountability, or will they trust them? My submission to the House is that we are in uncharted waters. We are in a period whereby this Government is dismantling every single aspect of accountability. Let me run you through it.

At the very basic level, this Government said they would be an open Government. Who is leading that great white hope? Clare Curran, and we know what happened there. We know, in the Opposition, that we have more redacted information; we have, arguably, blanket redactions occurring from across Ministers. This is not an open Government. When it comes to Cabinet Ministers and conflicts of interest, again, do we know anything or have any form of detail in terms of what Kelvin Davis actually declared? What we know is that partnership schools were discussed at the Cabinet table, but we can’t get information in terms of basic conflicts of interest. We hear this played out again with regard to David Parker, but this Government doesn’t believe in following the Cabinet Manual, and it gets away with it.

Then when we look at Cabinet papers—“What are Cabinet papers? We don’t need Cabinet papers”—we had the Minister of Education announce cohort entry without even talking to his coalition partners or providing a Cabinet paper. We had Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announcing major decisions around oil and gas, but who needs a Cabinet paper? So, gone are the rules of the Cabinet Manual, gone are basic Cabinet processes in terms of Cabinet papers, gone is open Government. But also, at the very basic level, you would think that Ministers would want to be accountable for things like education and health. We hear this week the extraordinary situation—health targets are gone. We know they’ve already scrapped national standards. What is this about? This is about a Government that is not only inexperienced, disorganised, ideological, but doesn’t want to be held to account by New Zealanders at all for any form of basic targets in health and education, and that is appalling.

What we also know is there are other things that they are doing in terms of displacing accountability. We know that—separate to having no real rules around Cabinet papers, no real rules around the Cabinet Manual—at the very heart of their Government agenda we can’t get transparency around what is actually a Government commitment versus Labour Party manifesto versus the coalition’s agenda. So when we get around New Zealand, people are saying to me, “What does this Government stand for?” We’ve been through a process trying to get clarity on what the coalition agreed to over the next three years; we can’t get that.

We now have information being blocked by the Official Information Act. There aren’t any Cabinet papers. The Cabinet Manual doesn’t apply. This is a basic dismantling of our Government, and this week’s scrapping of the health targets is just another move by this Government to not be accountable for what it’s not achieving. Why do we know they don’t want any of these measures in place? Because we know they promised things that they can’t deliver. We see this in education—18 broken promises, scaled-back promises—because they naively went into an election, promised the world, they couldn’t deliver, and what they’re doing now is making sure they cover up and remove any—

💬 Hon Member: Cover up!

—form of accountability to New Zealanders—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! No, I didn’t tell the member to sit down. I told the member who made an inappropriate interjection—I called him to order. The member has another 45 seconds if she wants.

Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. At the heart of why people will elect Governments in the future, it comes down to trust. Our submission on this side of the House is that we are dealing with the most inexperienced, ideological Government in our nation’s history. At every level, they are dismantling both the Cabinet process—in terms of Cabinet papers. They’re not following the Cabinet Manual. They’re getting rid of health targets. They’re getting rid of education targets. They’re doing that because they know that, when it comes to 2020, they won’t have delivered, because they overpromised, they couldn’t pay for it, and that is a tragedy for our democratic system.

Can I begin by acknowledging and congratulating our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern—the boss—and Clarke, a former flatmate of mine in my student days, but we’ll leave it at that, for the arrival of young Neve last week. We hope that they are relaxing at home, enjoying some time off—a change of mode for the Prime Minister, but well deserved.

Can I just begin by responding to one comment from the previous speaker, Nikki Kaye, around transparency and put that in the context of one example that has stuck out for me that I remember very well from the last term of Government, where, all through some documents about a housing roadshow, just two lines were deleted. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand, in the context of the documents, why these two lines had been redacted from all these documents. You know, we could have left it alone or we could have pursued it. We did pursue it, but we still didn’t get any traction on the lines that were redacted, apart from where one official, I think, made a mistake and didn’t redact those two lines in an email. It said, “We want to make sure that there’s this Government-funded roadshow because one of the National Party MPs at the time was thinking about running for a by-election and wanted to lift her profile.” Now, I wondered why you would want to have that redacted, and why the Government would want that redacted, so if you’re going to start throwing around stones about transparency, you’d just better be a little bit careful about your track record in the previous nine years.

So, as well as acknowledging the boss, I’d also to acknowledge one of my colleagues in the House who is with us today, because we went and did a tour of the Wairarapa together, and that is my friend Kieran McAnulty.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Top bloke—top bloke.

Ha, ha! We started our day at Carterton, went to Masterton, and finished it up in Dannevirke. One day in about 2½ years, he will make a great member of Parliament for Wairarapa, because the current guy is making an absolute meal of it. We also heard from the previous speaker about dismantling of what we hold true here in New Zealand, but I just want to take a moment of time from last week where the National Party went back to the 1980s and Alastair Scott, the current member of Parliament for Wairarapa—I hope he’s not the policy chair for them—made some utterings in this House which, if you’re worried about accusations of dismantling from this side of the House, this guy’s taking it to another level.

In the front page of the Wairarapa Times-Age at the weekend, and I quote, “National’s associate finance spokesperson is unapologetic” for saying Governments shouldn’t own hospitals and questioning whether they should own schools, and “says there needs to be a debate about what governments should own.” So if that’s a debate that’s happening in the National Party caucus room, in 2020 we know what’s going to happen. We absolutely know what’s going to happen, because that’s the chair of the National Party policy council, Alastair Scott, and the National Party caucus was talking about selling schools and selling hospitals and not owning roads again. That’s a pretty solid three-plank campaign for them to put out, and I absolutely know the result that’ll happen.

But he doubled down—he doubled down. Alastair Scott didn’t stop there. He said, “Just imagine if we sold $30 billion worth of housing assets and gave it to 65,000 tenants and said, ‘See you later. Find a place to live.’ ” So, not content with selling hospitals and schools, he said we should just give away the housing estate. This is the man from Wairarapa, who no one recognises in his own electorate, who is driving the policy platform of the National Party for the next 2½ years. It’s very rich to sit on that side of the House and accuse us of dismantling what has been built up over decades when the policy chair of the National Party, the MP for Wairarapa, says we should sell the hospitals, sell the schools, and sell the houses. If that’s what the National Party wants to do to pull its policy together for the next 2½ years, then I say bring on 2020.

On 1 July—not too far away—in the short space of time we’ve had in Government, in this coalition, we’re going to start helping families in a very meaningful way. On 1 July, hundreds of thousands of more families will get support through Best Start; new mothers and families—thousands of more families—will get $75 more a week. So if you want to talk about dismantling, talk about the guys who want to sell the houses, the hospitals, and the schools.

Just before I call the member, I just want to indicate to Matt King that you’re not allowed to eat in the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Call me Nostradamus, but I predict—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: OK, Nostradamus. How you going, Nostradamus?

Thank you very much. Because I predict that somebody is going to come down to this House and make a correction and an apology, and my question is: is it going to be the Hon David Clark or the Rt Hon Winston Peters? Two things cannot both be true at the same time. In response to a question from the Leader of the Opposition, the Hon Simon Bridges, Mr Peters said in regard to health targets, “well, the Hon David Clark came along with a system and plan and policies of hope to improve public health and Cabinet members agreed with him.” Then David Clark told me, in question 8, “[The] matter did not need to go to Cabinet.” Both of those things can’t be true. So either people are being forgetful—possibly asleep in Cabinet; you never know. But both of those two things cannot be correct.

Mr Peters’ comment is most interesting when he says the policies are policies of hope. That’s it: we hope things get better in the health sector. Well, in the National Government, and, as a matter of fact, in the previous Labour Government—the Clark Government—hope wasn’t good enough; targets were. Right across the country, in every national daily paper, every few months, was this chart that I’m holding, and it was read very, very carefully by people down my way and, I expect, right across the country. It’s entitled “How is my DHB performing?” and it has the quarterly results for things that matter to New Zealanders, matter to constituents: shorter stays in emergency departments, improved access to elective surgery, cancer treatment waiting times, immunisation, smoking cessation, and raising healthy kids. Mr Clark decides that they’re not good enough—they have perverse incentives.

Well, he should firstly do a bit of research about the origins of these, because he said in question time, in respect of the diabetes targets, the former National Government had “targets for childhood obesity that measured the number of times someone is referred, not if they’re getting … better.” Well, actually, that’s not true. That was a target of the previous Labour Government, and this document I’m holding is the document released, I am interested to note, by Dr Clark’s predecessor, Mr Pete Hodgson. He introduced the diabetes target that the National Government got rid of, because we agreed with Dr Clark that it wasn’t tight enough.

Let’s have a look at the results that occurred when those targets were being monitored and measured and published to the public. Emergency department waiting times—the best independent academic research by the University of Waikato says that 700 lives were saved—

💬 Hon Member: How many?

—700 lives were saved every year by setting a target of no more than six hours’ waiting time in the emergency department. If that’s a perverse incentive, I’ll take it. Immunisation rates—up from 63 percent to 92 percent. The document that the previous Labour Government put in place talked about Māori and Pasifika inequalities. Well, the really important part of the immunisation target was that Māori and Pasifika immunisation rates were higher than non-Māori, and that is an outstanding achievement by our health authorities. Case-weighted discharges went up massively, elective surgery went up, and Dr Clark talks about, “Oh, well, they were eye injections, some of them.” Well, in his part of the country, in the Southern District Health Board, people were going blind because of disorganisation in the eye department at Dunedin Hospital, and he says that an eye injection is not important. Well, I bet it was important to those people with macular degeneration who did go blind and should not have.

What I don’t understand is how inconsistent these targets are. We’ve lost national standards, we’ve lost all of the Better Public Services targets, and now the health targets are not important to this Government. But, somehow, child poverty reduction is so important that the Prime Minister, when she was in Opposition and was spokesperson for social development, decried the previous National Government for not having a single target—a target that could be measured and published and endure across Governments. The only pattern that I can see out of the inconsistency is that anything the National Government did this Government is going to undo, and anything that it does is great and the right thing to do, but not when the previous Government did it. That is a real shame. It’s an ideological nonsense and it has to stop.

It’s always good to start off a debate with a real story about real people’s lives, and just last weekend I was holding a street corner meeting in Hutt South. It did happen to be raining, but, even though it was raining, people still came out. Even more interesting than the fact that people came out in the rain was that one of them self-confessed that they were a previous National voter. They came out in the rain, on a cold Sunday afternoon, to say thank you—to say “Thank you for the winter energy payment.” That person was over 65, and that person had struggled in the years before in paying their heating bill over those winter months. They said that even though they had voted National in the past, they were so grateful for having a Government that actually put people first and started caring about people. That pretty much sums up the state of the current National Party—that you’ve got former National voters coming out in the rain to say thank you to a Government who actually cares about people and their well-being.

We have a Government who is putting people first. And people are reminded of what they might have got under a National Government when you hear sterling comments from Alastair Scott, the associate member for finance, that Government shouldn’t own schools; not only that but they shouldn’t own roads—not even the tarmac, we shouldn’t own the tarmac; we’d like to privatise tarmac—and, furthermore, we shouldn’t be owning hospitals. Asked if Wairarapa Hospital should be sold or not, the member replied that he hadn’t thought about it. So at this point, it’s always quite good to do a bit of compare and contrast, and I just so happen to have the other example sitting quite handy, and his name is Kieran McAnulty. He’s the Labour list person based in Wairarapa. Just so you know the difference between the two, Kieran McAnulty won’t be selling Wairarapa Hospital, that’s his position, whereas the other guy, who lives in Wellington, is not so sure what will happen with Wairarapa Hospital.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Where does he live?

I think he lives in Wellington, actually.

So Labour has always delivered to the people who need it the most. Labour has always based itself on making sure that we have those people who need it getting the basics they need. Part of that is not just houses, it’s not just wages, education, and health; it’s also about changing the culture of our organisations that provide basic services to people. It’s so heartening to hear what the Minister for Social Development has delivered in terms of changing the culture within organisations like the Ministry of Social Development by giving people a place to get a drink, to use a toilet, for children to be able to play while their parents wait to get services. That’s how you treat people—giving them the basics and giving people the respect and decency to get a good start and get on with their lives.

But as well as doing those basic things that we’ll be delivering for families—like the Best Start payment, like the winter energy payment, and by not giving tax cuts to the top 10 percent—we are also helping those families in the middle. It’s those families in the $70,000 to $100,000 per household bracket that are better off under this Government. It’s those families that also benefit in the middle. And when I’m standing outside the school gates talking with mums and dads, who are often on one salary for the best for their kids, when they’ve got two or three kids at school, it’s hard over winter. It’s hard to pay the power bill, it’s hard to be able to run the car and do those things, it’s hard to be able to look after kids and buy those school uniforms, and it’s hard to be able to make things go over the time where people are needing the doctor more and power bills are going up over those cold months. So it is really good to see the changes happening in the Families Package that will help people in New Zealand in the middle that struggle as well, and I’m proud to see this Government delivering those things.

This is s a Government that delivers to people, and the more we see those people receiving the benefits of this Government the more the shine goes off the National Party. We see that when we even hear Matthew Hooton saying that Simon Bridges should stay off Radio Hauraki. He’s giving his own advice that that should be a good measure for him to make on Radio New Zealand—good advice there from Matthew Hooton. And all we can hear from the other side of the House is that the Better Public Services (BPS) targets are great. BPS targets were never even met. This is a Government who is delivering for people in real terms, and it’s about time that the Opposition realise we’re on a winner.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak and participate in this general debate. The previous speaker, Virginia Andersen, mentioned “real people”, and I would like to acknowledge the real people who are working hard in the dairy shops, working at the liquor shops, and working at the petrol stations. When they talk to me, they tell the real stories. There are two things which they do mention from time to time. The first is safety—they feel insecure in their businesses. The second is the constant drop in business. They are worried about the economy. They have seen that, in about the past eight or nine months, sales are going down, and they are really worried about both of those things.

The previous speaker also mentioned some of the other issues being raised with her, like some of the National Party members saying thank you to this Government. I’m also talking about a real person: the councillor in South Auckland Efeso Collins. What was the promise by the Labour Party before the election? It was that there would be no fuel tax—and, from 1 July, we will have a regional fuel tax. What Councillor Collins said was that it is going to take food off the table of poor people living in South Auckland. But there was not a single mention from any of the Labour Party speakers who participated in this debate that they are going to increase the fuel tax.

Some of my colleagues—Chris Bishop, as well as the Hon Michael Woodhouse—interrogated two Ministers about the targets which have been dropped: one was Dr David Clark, and the other was Stuart Nash. We know that this present coalition Government doesn’t believe in targets, but without targets, how are you going to measure what results have been achieved? We know that when we announced the Safer Communities package in February last year, we set a target that 98 percent of burglaries would be attended by the police within 48 hours. That would have given a lot of confidence to the shopkeepers to whom I talk from time to time, and they always raise this concern with me. The second target was that 95 percent of New Zealanders would live within 25 kilometres of 24/7 police stations. That was another target which could have given confidence to the people living in that range, but those two targets have been dropped.

It is not just those two targets, but we were going to invest in the wider justice sector to reduce reoffending. That is another way we can make sure that people feel safe in their businesses or in their home, and that has also gone. We know this Government is not at all worried about the safety of people. We also wanted to ensure that the extra 1,125 police officers, out of which 880 were going to be front line, would have been distributed in 12 different police districts. Every police district would have got extra police officers due to this expansion of our commitment in the National Party.

These are the things which really make a difference, and we know that the health targets, which were set up by us, were transparent, sharing with the public how the district health boards were performing—and that was one of the things which was transparent. We have also seen that the national standards in education are also gone. That is another measurement which was very important for students. We know that families which are working hard in dairy shops, petrol stations, and liquor shops want to ensure their kids get the best education, and that is how we can see that the diverse workforce is coming out of the universities, who are paying a good amount of taxes and are very capable of serving this country. With these words, I complete my speech.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. It’s my absolute pleasure to stand here and take a call in the general debate this afternoon, and it is also an absolute pleasure to be a part of this coalition Government. I also want to just make note of the Hon Carmel Sepuloni and the announcements that she has made today around making the Ministry of Social Development a friendlier place to go. I commend her on that because I myself have experienced firsthand just how intimidating and frightening and uncomfortable it can be to walk into a place like that when you are feeling in an extremely vulnerable state. So I really want to commend her for making it such a friendly place for people.

The reason I’m really proud to be part of this particular Government is that this is a Government that puts people first. We stand up for hard-working New Zealanders and we have different priorities to the previous Government, and that’s why we have cancelled the tax cuts that they had proposed. We had people on low and fixed incomes suffering hardship under the previous Government, and it made absolutely no sense to have tax cuts that are just going to line the pockets of the top 10 percent income earners. It makes about as much sense as the associate finance spokesperson and MP for Wairarapa, Alastair Scott, who says that we should be selling our schools and our roads and our hospitals. You know, I worry for the people of Wairarapa should he become the Minister of Finance, given the fact that he hasn’t even said he would rule out selling their hospital. But that’s OK, because there is help on the way in the form of Kieran McAnulty, who will be elected as the local MP in 2020.

Anyway, coming back to our Families Package. The Families Package is going to be transformational. It is ambitious, and there is nothing wrong with being transformational or ambitious. It is long overdue that we have a Government that is transformational and ambitious. Everybody knows that people do better when they have a good job, they earn a fair day’s pay, they have access to good healthcare, and they have access to a good education. This Government has developed a suite of policies that address that, and hundreds and thousands of people will be better off.

We know New Zealanders are resilient, and they’ve been resilient in the face of some pretty difficult and trying times; needless to say, especially over the last nine years. But now there is a bright light at the end of that very long, dark nine-year tunnel, and it is in the form of this coalition Government that is ambitious and will be transformational. When I say hundreds and thousands of people will be better off, I’m talking about the 64,000 children that will be lifted out of poverty as a result of this package, the 26,000 more families that will become eligible for Working for Families assistance, and 384,000 families with children will be better off by an average of $75 a week. And, yes, families with babies born from 1 July will get a Best Start payment of $60 each week to help give their child the best start in life.

I also want to talk about the winter energy payment that approximately a million people will benefit from. I want to think about it in terms of superannuitants. In the electorate where I live, Rangitata, around 20 percent, or one in five, of the population will benefit in particular from the winter energy payment. We hear the rhetoric across the House about people that are rich that are going to get it that don’t need it. Well, they can opt out so they don’t have to receive it. But we do know that our elderly are some of our most vulnerable people, who will not turn heaters on and will just sit under blankets in the cold to save power.

When I think about this Government and how transformational it wants to be, I think about a video that I watched on Facebook the other day, and it was of Oprah Winfrey giving a speech at a graduation. She ended her speech quoting poet, singer, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou, and it really hit home. She said, “Your legacy is what you do every day. Your legacy is every life you’ve touched, every person whose life was either moved or not. It’s every person you’ve harmed or helped. That’s your legacy. Feel everything with love because every moment you are building your legacy.”

This coalition Government is building its legacy for the betterment of those who we are here to serve, from one suburb to another, from one generation to the next. Thank you.

This is a Government without standards, and I mean that literally. They have no standards, because they’re dropping them faster than David Parker dropped his mate John Darby off his speed dial. Health targets: well, they went yesterday. This Government doesn’t want to measure emergency department waiting times. They don’t want to measure immunisation rates. They don’t want to measure smoking, cancer treatments, or elective surgeries. We lost Better Public Services targets almost straight after the election. Carmel Sepuloni doesn’t want to set targets around reducing long-term welfare dependency. But don’t worry; it’s all right, because she’s putting water in Work and Income New Zealand (WINZ). You can have a drink. Don’t worry, Greens, about taking your KeepCups to WINZ, because Carmel Sepuloni is going to have a glass of water for you when you walk in the door.

Our legacy: 30,000 kids out of welfare-dependent households under our term, and we know that because we measured it. Carmel Sepuloni’s legacy: well, you can have some water when you walk into WINZ. What a joke. And she gets her poor backbenchers to stand up here, who have to back her up—Jo Luxton and Ginny Andersen, and I remember your names because I have manners.

We’ve lost national standards because this lowering and scrapping of standards has seeped its way into our education system as well. Here we are, scrapping national standards, and we’re having a nationwide discussion about this Government’s plans to dumb down NCEA. It’s one thing to drop standards by which we measure this Government, but when this seeps into the lives of our children, when this Government tars our kids with their brush of mediocrity, then we have a problem.

This is a Government that when they’re faced with a measure that they can’t escape, like, let’s say, the latest business confidence surveys, they have this knee-jerk reaction to rubbish such a measure. What was it that Grant Robertson said the other day when he was confronted with these plummeting business confidence figures? He rubbishes the usefulness of the measure. “Oh, well, it’s about reality not perception.”, he says. David Parker says that they’re just unreliable junk. Or when Treasury delivers a report that the Government doesn’t like, what are their default positions? They rubbish the people who prepare the report, referring to them as kids who are completely disconnected from reality. So this is a Government that drops their own standards, rubbishes outside standards that they don’t like, and rubbishes the people who prepare reports that they don’t like.

This new Government knows full well, if we can measure them then they will be found wanting. It’s a classic Labour move, and I’m never sure if it’s nature or nurture with these guys. Do these Labour Ministers get into power and predict their own ineptitude by dropping standards just as an instinctive defence reaction to protect themselves from being found out? Or is it page 1, chapter 1 of the Labour Party playbook entitled Political Survival? Step one: befuddle the public with waffly rhetoric and over-the-top virtue signalling. Step two: remove all standards and measurable targets, describing them as having perverse outcomes, aka Dr Clark. Step three: tax and spend. I truly cannot figure out if this is political ignorance or political arrogance, although I think it may actually be a combination of the two.

💬 Chris Bishop: It’s both.

It’s both. This may be about political survival for the Labour Party, but the reality is this is about actual survival for New Zealanders, because one of the health targets that this Government is dropping is the emergency department wait times, which saved 700 lives around this country last year. So while David Clark might think that this target is a perverse outcome, I’d like him to take that vision to one of the 700 New Zealanders who are still alive today because of those targets and run that by them and see what they say.

I almost feel sorry for Clare Curran—almost. That poor woman has to uphold the virtues of open and transparent Government in a climate of murky opaqueness, because when it comes to measures and standards that hold these Ministers to account, well it’s all a little bit too hard.

One of the measures that they cannot escape is the next election. I wonder if they’ll set a target for that or if it will just be about the vibe of winning. Either way, they’re in trouble. But, more importantly, New Zealanders are in trouble if this is how they’re going to continue.

Tēnā koe, e Te Mana Whakawā. It’s a real pleasure to speak today in this general debate and to really celebrate the great achievements that this Government has had over the past month. When I was thinking about and reflecting on them, it fell quite nicely to think about what this Government has done for people from cradle to grave. Right from the moment people are born, from when a young child is born, this Government has taken steps which will look after them right through to their senior years.

So, if we think about it, already, right out of the gate, so to speak, this Government enhanced paid parental leave so that children could be with their parents for longer and those parents would have some financial support there as well. Best Start payments are about to begin—$60 a week for newborns, up to two years old, just to take an additional amount of that financial pressure off; another step that’s really looking at those first two years. And, of course, in the Budget, there was additional funding for midwives—midwives, who had been left behind for years and years. So there you have it. In those first months and years, that’s what this Government has done.

Then what about children? Well, children, as we know, are a real focus for this Government, and I’m very proud that the Prime Minister has taken on the portfolio for child poverty reduction. What we’ve done there is to increase access to up to 14 years for free GP visits. We’ve increased ORS learning support—the ongoing resourcing scheme. And, I must say, in St Peter’s, one of my own schools, in my own electorate, one of the things they have said time and again is that we need more special learning support for those students, and also to take the pressure off so that better attention can be given to students who don’t need special support but who need to have their teachers paying them ordinary attention. Extending the nurses in schools programme to decile 4 schools, and, of course, an across-the-board increase for early childhood education. So children in preschool and in schools are being looked after by this Government, and I really do celebrate that.

Young people: well, we know that we’ve got a fantastic fees-free first-year scheme for vocational training, polytechs, apprenticeships, and other training as well. So we’re getting people off to a good start so they’re not going to be burdened with debt when they leave their tertiary education institution—and, of course, an increased student allowance and reviewing the eligibility for those students’ allowances as well. So that’s fantastic. So those young people—and then, perhaps they move on and they have families.

The Working for Families package is at the centre of what this Government is doing: increasing payments for the eldest child and children under 16; 26,000 more families eligible, That is absolutely fantastic. Accommodation supplement increases: this is addressing a package which has been languishing for years and needed an absolute review. Extending the community services card. And, you know what? I’m really proud to say that we’ve done things for working young people as well. You know, the previous speaker, Erica Stanford, proudly said that she got her start in life working in The Warehouse for $4.50 an hour. Well, I say, “Good on her.” But, you know what? I don’t want to be in a country where people, when they make their way in life, look back and say, “I was being paid a paltry wage.” I want everyone to be paid a decent wage, and raising the minimum wage is a part of that—and also reinstating the tax credit, the worker tax credit, which the National Party would have done away with. That’s something which working people on modest incomes get and deserve.

And, then, for other New Zealanders—New Zealanders who are bang in the middle—we’ve done a whole lot. We’ve restarted contributions to the national super fund so that we’ll be able to afford that into the future. We’ve moved to address the infrastructure deficit and have started to ensure that New Zealanders will be able to buy a home by banning foreign buyers and by starting KiwiBuild, addressing supply and demand, both at the same time.

And seniors—right through to seniors: winter energy payment, keeping our treasured senior people warm in winter, and, of course, we’ve got the insulation subsidies off again for people in their own homes. We have done a fantastic job for New Zealanders at every stage of their life, and I celebrate that here today.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.