Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

It is a great time to be a New Zealander. This is a country on the move: a country with a proud, independent foreign policy; a country with a Government that is determined to give New Zealanders the opportunity to improve their quality of life and to achieve their full potential; a Government that has lifted the incomes of 350,000 New Zealand families already through the Families Package; a Government that has lifted around 64,000 children out of poverty already, and we are only just getting started; a Government that is delivering strong economic growth of around 3 percent, and forecast to stay at that level; a Government that has delivered near-record unemployment, at 4.3 percent—the second-lowest in a decade, of course, and just slightly higher than the last quarter, which was the lowest in a decade.

This is a Government that is delivering consistently strong Budget surpluses, and is going to continue to do so, in contrast with the woeful track record of the last Government. It is a Government that is delivering responsible management of the Government’s debts. I’m very proud of the achievements this Government has already had under its belt in its short time in office so far to date: banning overseas speculators from buying up New Zealand homes, because we believe that New Zealanders should be at the front of the queue, not the back of the queue, when it comes to being able to buy a house; stopping the sell-off of State houses so that we can accommodate the New Zealanders who so desperately need somewhere to live and who were neglected.

I have to say we are proud of the Provincial Growth Fund, which is already investing in 136 projects, which are estimated to create over 12,000 jobs—over 12,000 jobs—in the regions throughout New Zealand. The National Party hate it because they know that in the regions, New Zealanders love it. They want to see jobs created in the regions of this country, and they have no real ideas around how to do that, because they spent nearly a decade telling New Zealanders it wasn’t possible to create jobs in the regions. Well, we’re getting on and doing just that.

Last week, I announced on behalf of the Government some bold reforms to vocational education and training.

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: About time.

“About time.”, the Minister of Finance says. That’s what the country has been saying over the past week since we’ve made those announcements. We desperately need to see more education and training in the regions around New Zealand, but the system we inherited from the last Government was seeing cut after cut after cut to our polytechs and institutes of technology. But we also need to know that in addition to seeing more education and training delivered in the regions, we need it to be more relevant. We need more apprenticeships.

We need a much stronger link between training that’s delivered on the job, through apprenticeships, and training that’s delivered off the job, through our polytechs and institutes of technology. We also need to see industry stepping up and playing a bigger role in determining the skill requirements that they need, because it’s no good business and industry saying they’re not getting the skilled workers they need if they’re not involved in helping to solve the problem. We want to create an opportunity for them to provide leadership and be more involved in setting skill requirements and in helping to meet the skill needs that this country has.

We want more consistency in the national qualifications—the vocational qualifications—that are being offered throughout the country. Let’s not forget that it was the National Government in the early 1990s that abolished the apprenticeship system in the first place. Twenty-five years later, this is a Government that’s not afraid to take the big, bold moves required to put back together vocational education and training in New Zealand. The system of separating out on-job training from off-job training and treating them as if they are completely separate systems has not worked. It has not served New Zealand well, and we are going to fix that.

I do want to provide some reassurance, though, that this is about ensuring that we are getting more education and training in the regions. Of course there will continue to be a place for regional distinctiveness—that’s vitally important. We want to see more links between the education and training offered through polytechs and institutes of technology and the regional and economic development strategies in regions. It works well in some parts of the country at the moment, but it needs to work well in every part of the country.

And it cannot work well in some parts of the country by some institutions eating the lunch of others, which is what is happening at the moment. Some of those institutions are doing well by going and raiding students from the others, and that is not sustainable and we need to change that.

We don’t need every one of our polytechs to have a campus in Auckland. We actually want them focused on delivering education and training in the regions of New Zealand. We cannot sustain a system that in the last year alone required $100 million in bailouts from the Government just to preserve the status quo, which is serving fewer and fewer students. We actually need a system that is gearing up for growth, that is going to see more people involved in vocational education and training, so that we can build the houses that we need. But at the moment one of the constraints is we don’t have enough tradespeople to do it, and it is the same with infrastructure. Our primary industries are crying out for skilled labour on our farms, in our food manufacturing businesses, and at the moment the system is not delivering those. We’re going to fix that and the National Party needs to front up and say what they would do about it, because they seem all content on complaining, but they don’t seem to have very many solutions.

That’s possibly because they’re a little bit focused on a few other issues, like who, perhaps, their leader might be. I’m a little confused as to who the leader actually is because it seems that some of their MPs don’t even know. Take Matt King, for example—one of the most honest members they have in the National Party. When asked about it, he said, “I like Simon. I like Judith. I like a few of our leaders.” How many they have is unclear at this point, but he went on to say, “Look, there are a number of people in our caucus that can lead the party, and I’d be happy with any of them.” What a ringing endorsement for Simon Bridges—not exactly a ringing endorsement. He did say, though—if Judith went for the job and had the support of the caucus—“I’d support Judith as well”.

Nuk Korako was even more ambivalent: “There’s a number of people who would make a great leader. We’ll just see.” was the comment from him—and I think we probably will see. But then there was a lot of what my colleague Grant Robertson called the ATMs in the National Party: the “at the moments”. Gerry Brownlee saying that there is no leadership up for consideration “at the moment”, and then we had Tim van de Molen saying, “Simon’s doing a good job at the moment”. That was the chorus coming out of the National Party last week. But then, what should be alarming to Simon Bridges was the quote from Judith Collins that will have a shiver down his spine. “I’m very clearly not ruling anything out.” was the comment from Judith Collins. Then—even worse—from Judith Collins: “My job is to do whatever the caucus needs me to do.” If someone needs to get blood on their hands for the National Party caucus, Judith Collins is not afraid. She’s ready. She was limbering up in the House the other day, while Simon Bridges was doing his speech.

Of course, the National Party caucus opinion on Judith Collins is quite divided, as Anne Tolley let on. We got the quote from the Anne Tolley, who said, “You either love her or hate her.” Well, that’s a statement of fact, of course, but the question is, who falls into each camp at the moment in the National Party? Of course, then we had more comments from Judith Collins herself, including what would fall into the category of damning with faint praise: “The caucus has voted for the leader and he is doing the very best job he can.” I don’t know that there could be a more ringing un-endorsement of a party leader than what we just saw from Judith Collins and from the National Party caucus.

But, of course, I’ve read this book before. I’ll tell you how it goes. What goes is that the caucus goes into their room and they’re like: “We’ve got to attack more things the Government is doing.” So they bark at every passing car and then New Zealanders simply see them as a torrent of negativity and the polls continue to go down, and they wonder why it is happening to them when they are barking at every passing car and they are scoring all of these little victories that they think are victories. But they’re actually just reinforcing the problem that they’ve got, which is that New Zealanders no longer understand what the National Party stands for. All they know of the National Party is that they want to spend more money, they want to borrow less money, they want to cut taxes, and they’ve got no idea how to reconcile all of those things. They’re opposed to everything that the Government’s doing and yet they’ve got no ideas of their own.

The National Party has simply lost their way. The National Party of 10 years ago has vanished, replaced by a very depressing mob who are going to have plenty of time to be depressed before they figure out what to do.

Well, I must say, it’s nice to see Mr Hipkins so invigorated. I haven’t seen him as excited as that all the time that he’s been a Minister, certainly when he’s been dealing with the issues that he’s actually Minister for, such as the tertiary sector, where he’s spent billions of dollars in order to get exactly what we were getting before. He’s spent billions of dollars, which was in free student fees—the same number of students going to the universities. So I can understand why he’s a bit dour most of the time, but he gets excited when it comes to political point-scoring.

He asked: what does the National Party stand for? Well, we stand for New Zealanders getting ahead, looking after themselves and their families, first and foremost, and having the opportunity to do that through good, hard work and good jobs in a prosperous economy. We stand for people being able to have sustainable and satisfying jobs in an environment and an economy that’s growing, and then, once they’ve looked after their family, once they’ve done a good day’s work and made a real contribution to the country that they live in, they may also have a little bit of energy left over to be involved in their community, whether it’s at their local school board or their church or at their local sports club. That, to me, is what being a New Zealander is all about: looking after your family, having a job and making a contribution so that we’ve got a strong economy that can look after those who are in real need, and also having a contribution into the wider community. The National Party supports New Zealanders who do that and wants to make life easier for them in order to get ahead for themselves and for their families. That’s what we stand for.

What we worry about is when we look around the New Zealand economy at the moment, in the New Zealand society—there’s no question that we have been doing well as a country for the last decade. We’ve clawed ourselves out of the morass that we were in during the global financial crisis and the real struggles that we had in Canterbury after the earthquakes, and we picked ourselves up through, partly, the leadership from people like Gerry Brownlee, John Key, Bill English, and the team. We have created a strong and productive and competitive economy that has generated thousands and thousands of jobs. We thought about the 200,000 jobs, new jobs, created in the New Zealand economy in the last two years of the National Government—10,000 jobs a month. So the economy continues to have some of that momentum that we built up over those years, but what worries us on this side of the House is that this Government is great at bathing in the sunshine of that inheritance and enjoying the money that it’s got to spend from the Budget surpluses that have been created and basking in that glory, but they’re not doing anything to build on that and to continue that strength and to contribute to an economy that will provide the opportunities for New Zealanders.

In fact, what we’re seeing is a systematic attempt to undermine the foundations of that success that we had enjoyed. What we’re seeing is a slowing of the economy from something that was over 3 percent to something that is now going closer to 2½ percent each year. Instead of seeing 10,000 jobs created every month, in the last three months we’ve seen about 600—so, from 10,000 to 600, and that’s going to flow through to the rest of the economy.

We also see a lot of waffle and hot air, and I think our finance spokesman, Amy Adams, put her finger on some of the issues that we’re going to be talking about in the next little while around the well-being Budget that this Government talks about. I’ve never met anybody in the world—certainly, nobody here in New Zealand or in New Zealand politics—who isn’t keen on well-being. We all want New Zealanders to enjoy well-being. Shane Jones likes well-being—he certainly likes well-being with a bit of seafood attached to it—and many of the other people around this House enjoy a bit of well-being. I’m as much into well-being as anybody, but when it comes to an organising principle for a Government, it becomes a bit loose. So what we’re seeing here is Treasury talks about valuing avoiding diabetes at $3,900, but it also values improving contact with your neighbours at $8,500. So we end up with this Budget put together with all sorts of weird and wonderful calculations based on gaining a friend or joining a club and measuring all these sorts of things in a great sort of goulash or steamed pudding that emerges with the final conclusion that although the economy is actually only dribbling along very slowly, we’re all enjoying a wonderful amount of well-being, and that is some kind of “googly-glash” in order to confuse us all.

So what is this Government’s economic development strategy? I’ve asked this question a few times of David Parker, the economic development Minister, and you don’t get very much. When you really press him, there are three things that he’ll refer to. One is that they’re going to introduce an R & D tax cut. Well, you can argue about that, whether it’s better to have grants or R & D tax credits. If you go out and talk to people in the start-up community, they’re all at their wits’ end at the prospect of not having any support for start-ups but only for large, profitable companies, such as would be achieved through an R & D tax credit. But you can argue about that comment, so that’s one thing. The second thing is the Provincial Growth Fund, and I’ll come back to that in a moment.

The third thing is the capital gains tax—changing the tax system—which they’re all very excited about, and we’ll wait and see. I think there’s a big argument going on now between Labour and the Greens, who are slavering for a capital gains tax. They want more taxes; they want to put more taxes on New Zealanders. They say it’ll improve the housing affordability, but anybody who’s been to Sydney or Melbourne or Vancouver or London or any other city in the world which has got capital gains taxes and massive house prices like Auckland and Wellington will know that that is not a solution on its own to housing affordability—building more houses is a solution to housing affordability. They say it’ll improve equity, but that kind of makes no sense if you exclude the family home, which you should do. So why should somebody with a $4 million mansion in Remuera pay no capital gains tax but somebody on the West Coast with two houses worth $300,000 each has to pay capital gains tax on the second one because they’re a filthy capitalist? Where’s the equity or common sense in that argument? I’d be very interested to see the answer to that.

And then the third argument is that it’s going to increase investment in productive things, moving it away from speculative activities. Well, how is it that increasing the taxation on every small business, every business in the country, is going to improve investment and entrepreneurship? It’s not at all. How’s increasing the taxes on every KiwiSaver account going to lead to further saving and investment? It’s not.

So we’re very much looking forward to that discussion, but it’s, of course, driven by the fact that they want to spend more and more, so they have to tax more and more. So we’re seeing a lot of waste that’s driving that desire for more taxes. We’ve seen that waste through Mr Hipkins in the tertiary spending, which hasn’t led to any more students. We also see that waste on the colossal scale, potentially, in the Provincial Growth Fund, where you have Mr Jones trumpeting around that we’re going to create 12,000 jobs, but when you look into it and you actually look at what has actually happened so far, more than a year into the programme, after tens of millions of dollars and after endless press releases and high-vis jackets, how many jobs have we got? Fifty-four—54. But don’t worry, there’s 118 bureaucrats. So 54 new jobs; 118 new bureaucrats.

Now, Shane Jones would probably quibble about that. It might be up to 56 jobs now—I’m not sure—or maybe 57. But that is the kind of gap between what they talk about and what they’re actually delivering, and we’re seeing that replicated right across this Government in every sphere. They talk the big game—they’re going to solve the world’s problems, they’re going to solve poverty, they’re going to solve every issue under the sun—yet when you actually ask “What have you done so far? What have you achieved so far?”, it’s not very much at all, and then they get very irritated when we ask that question.

The waffle over Shane Jones’ numbers in the Provincial Growth Fund are unbelievable. He says he’s going to create a thousand jobs in forestry. Well, hang on a moment: they’re talking about shifting land use from sheep and beef farms, which are creating jobs right now, to native forestry. Well, I don’t know about you, but I would have thought that would destroy jobs, not create jobs, and yet he says it’s going to create a thousand jobs. Well, I think he’s got a bit of explaining to do on that one.

Then we heard Jacinda Ardern, the new Prime Minister, come in and say that this will be the most open and transparent Government in history. Yet we hear, time and time again, Shane Jones doling out millions of dollars in soft loans to private businesses—three or four of them out of the half a million private businesses in this country; there are three or four of them that have been lucky enough to get a private loan—and yet he refuses to tell us what the terms of the loan are. Well, if it’s a commercial loan, that’s one thing, but if it’s zero percent for 20 years, that’s a massive gift to that private company, and he refuses to tell us which it is. So, so much for the most open and transparent Government in New Zealand’s history.

We’re watching that fund closely. We want the regions to continue to succeed, like they have over the last few years with the incredible job creation that we’ve had and we’ve seen, but to do that you need to have genuine investment. So having Shane Jones handing out a bit of money to a few people does not make up for closing off foreign investment, frightening domestic investors because they don’t know whether they’re paying a capital gains tax, and, last of all, withdrawing $5 billion out of regional roading, such as we were going to spend on real, quality roads for the regions. So, all in all, it’s a bit disappointing.

Before I call the next speaker, can I just apologise to the House. My darling father, who’s 92 years old, has had a bad fall, and I’m just getting texts from the hospital as to his updates. So I’m not not paying attention, but pardon me if I answer my texts.

Madam Deputy Speaker, please accept my sympathies on such sad news. Can I start by thanking you and welcoming you back to Parliament, and all members of the House. I know that while it’s a bit belated—we’ve been back a week or so—I hope that everybody did find the opportunity to spend time with friends, whānau, and family and to take a well-earned break.

It’s been good getting back into work, and some of us came back quite early as we had some important things to do, but it’s also been interesting. You know, we had a saying in Waiōuru years ago—and I think they still say the same thing—which is that if you stay in Waiōuru long enough, you’ll get to meet everybody in the New Zealand Army, and I guess there’s an element of truth here in this place, if you take that same point. If you stay in this House long enough—and the Hon Gerry Brownlee will know this because he came into Parliament in 1996, at the same time as I did—you get to see the same thing happening over and over again. It’s a bit cyclic.

You know, I do reflect on history repeating itself, and I do remember sitting on the Opposition benches and watching the glee from the Government side as Labour changed leadership, time and time again—watching the jockeying and the vying and the positioning and the lobbying that went on, trying to predict the outcome, hearing the denials, and then seeing the inevitable change—and I guess we’re seeing that all again right now, as the newly returned Parliament gets back to work and the Opposition is clearly engaged in some soul-searching and some thinking about whether or not they’ve got the right leadership team. It’s fair to say that there’s some pretty astonishing talent that’s come in on the backbenches of the National Party caucus, and—

💬 Clayton Mitchell: Like Matt King.

Like Matt King. I mean, he’s the brightest light that they’ve got—a very bright chap. He’s the finest in Northland that the National Party could dig up, you know.

But there are people who have aspirations and hopes and desires and who see a long-term future, and they probably think that some of their more senior members down on the front bench have probably had their time. So this is natural. Michelle Boag used to refer to it as the clearing the dead wood sort of policy—wasn’t it? So there’s a bit of tree-chopping going on over there, and all I’ll say is that this is nothing new. It’s part of growth and it’s part of rejuvenation and refreshment, and we can speculate all we like on what the outcome might be, but good luck with that, I say to the National caucus. We are sure that you’ll make the right decision for the time being, and that, eventually, you will settle in a place with a leader who you’ll feel comfortable with and confident in, and who will take you into the next election. So good luck with that. It’s part of the democratic process, and parties tend to go through that.

Fifteen months ago, New Zealand First looked at the options it had available and, on balance, we decided—looking at the coalition agreement and looking at what the nature of the Government might be—that a modified status quo wasn’t going to do it and that we needed to do something fresh. So we took a bold decision to anoint the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern as the Prime Minister and to sign a coalition agreement with Labour, and here we are.

I’d like to think that what we did has put some heart back into governance. I’d like to think that what we did has started focusing on putting people first—you know, New Zealanders first, from the New Zealand First caucus perspective—and New Zealand first.

I think we’d like to think that we wanted to shift the gear on the way that some of the technocrats looked at some of the problems like housing and social support and disability and special needs education. I have to say, I’m tired of trying to make representations around the special needs of our children in schools in the Wairarapa and just getting nowhere. I’m tired of trying to talk to the Hon Jonathan Coleman about issues within the district health boards (DHBs). In all fairness, as I said to him at the time, I was a National Party appointee to two DHBs and I worked on three and I could see quite clearly where the problems were. But Jonathan Coleman had his own view of the world and he didn’t really want to listen to other people, and, you know, good luck to him. He’s no longer here. He’s doing what he really loves doing: something else other than this.

But I do think that we, this Government, saw that there needed to be some fundamental changes in the way in which the Government treated the people of this nation—that we have a Government of heart and a Government that wanted to lift the hopes and aspirations of people. We are doing that by, firstly, recognising that there is a housing problem, and, secondly, by recognising that the disparity gap between the haves and the have-nots is too great. It does not reflect the values of New Zealanders in New Zealand. It is not “New Zealand” to see so many people living in poverty, living in cars, and unable to pay the market rents. Of course, some political parties worship the market because the market can solve everything! Well, we never ever believed that—never in the 25 years of New Zealand First’s history. We’ve never subscribed to the view.

We believe that Governments should govern and lead, and lead in line with the values and principles that New Zealanders hold dear to. Some of that goes back to the days of Mickey Savage. Some of that, for me, goes back to the days of Norm Kirk and some of that goes back to great people like Keith Holyoake and, dare I say it, even Jim Bolger. This Government will take on some big challenges. I’m pleased, as a former business person—a person who had the responsibility of putting my home up on hock to finance a business, pay staff, pay taxes, pay rates, and try to eke out enough of that to actually pay ourselves and give our families the support it needed. But sitting here and watching corporates and major players on the international scene not pay any taxes at all is something that just does not sit right, and that’s going to be addressed. Now, whether that’s done with a digital services tax—well, let’s see, because those matters will come before this House and it will be led—led—by this Government.

I want to talk about one other thing, and this is this notion of tax cuts. So we hear the same old mantra coming up again. I have to remind the House that essential services like policing, health, education, and the defence force need to be paid for. That means people have got to pay taxes. That means they have to be funded. And continuing to—dare I say it, some of us would say—throw pork-barrel politics around to garner votes during an election year by offering up tax cuts undermines a Government’s true responsibilities to deliver on such things as defence. Everyone knows that, as far as I’m concerned, I’ve got the dream job: Minister of Defence and Minister for Veterans, and it’s been an absolute pleasure working for our men and women in uniform.

I’ve got to say a big shout-out to a couple of people: Tim Macindoe, Simon O’Connor, and Andrew Little are people who have taken the opportunity to travel with me to see our men and women in the field, on operations, and deployed, doing the job that we the people of New Zealand send them to do. For us to go ahead and to be able to implement a capability plan that provides surety and stability to our men and women in uniform, we have to have a degree of consensus within the House, across Parliament. There has to be some assurance for our military people that a plan that’s put in place by one Government is not just tipped on its head. The air combat capability disbandment was a classic example that gutted men and women of the air force. We can’t go back to those places. We can’t have Governments making decisions to buy 105 light armoured vehicles when someone like myself is saying “Don’t do that”, and hog-tying the defence budget for the next how many years. And now here’s the irony: I’m the guy that didn’t want to buy them, tried to tell the Labour Government at the time, and now I’m the guy that’s got to sell them, like the NH90s. It’s ridiculous. We need a high level of consensus if we are to live up to our responsibilities to our men and women who serve us in some very stressful locations around the world.

I just want to say that I am grateful that Tim Macindoe travelled with me to South Sudan, to the UAE, to Egypt, and to Israel, and that Simon O’Connor did the same and Andrew Little did the same. I extend the olive branch out again to the Green Party. Please, come with me on these trips and learn first-hand the work that the men and women of our defence force do. Then the Green Party might understand and they might be able to work with us a little closer and accept the decisions that we have to make.

I’ll just conclude by saying it’s an absolute privilege to have the jobs that I have as Minister of Defence and veterans’ affairs, and I just hope that over the next year we can produce a plan that the whole of Parliament can lock in and support, maybe not 100 percent, but, by crikey, 80 percent would be pretty jolly good.

Before I launch in to my comments on the Prime Minister’s statement, in support of the amended motion by the Hon Simon Bridges, let me just say to Mr Mark that much of what he is doing, I think, is a continuation of efforts that have been around for a wee while. I’ll just point out to him, though, that when the opportunity came to visit Iraq to see our soldiers at Taji, New Zealand First apparently were unavailable to make that trip, something that was very disappointing to me personally. But Andrew Little came along and it was a valuable thing to do. I think what the Minister of Defence is doing, in continuing to go into the field to give our personnel in the field the sense that their mission is very much on the part of the best interests of the people of New Zealand, is a good thing. So can I just say to the Hon Ron Mark, I do wish you all the best in the considerations that are clearly going to come with the impending announcement by the Rt Hon Winston Peters.

So when the Prime Minister delivered her speech the other day, I think there was an expectation that it might have been a little bit more substantive than actually was put on the Table.

It’s a speech, I think, notable for its lack of content—notable for its overreliance on emotional and values - based statements that really do very little to advance the cause of better living for any New Zealander.

I look at that speech and see how many times the Prime Minister protested that the current Government are showing leadership in a range of areas—a range of policies where apparently all who went before had failed. But that is utterly ridiculous when you’ve got a Government that now is looking at a job creation situation in New Zealand that’s fallen from 10,000 new jobs a month, down to just 650 jobs at the last measure. That is apparently leadership—that is apparently Labour Party leadership.

Then there is this talk about the economy: the constant claiming by the Prime Minister and the finance Minister and anybody else that ever gets to speak about it from that Government that the economy is continuing to grow at an extraordinary rate, which they seem to think is 3 percent. Everybody else that’s looking at the indicators is warning that the economy is not growing at that rate. We take no joy in that whatsoever—no joy in that whatsoever—because what it means is that opportunities for New Zealanders who are working or who want to be working are not going to be there. That’s why the job creation is down to just 650 new jobs a month. It’s why there are 10,000 more people on the jobseeker benefit now—that’s the old unemployment benefit—than there were 12 months ago. That apparently is Labour leadership, and it’s all OK; it’s all good!

Then there is the unexplained position that we now seem to have in foreign relations—this claim that we have an independent policy, an independent position, on foreign relations. Well, we always did have. But lately, the attacks that have come from Government Ministers on the Chinese administration show that we are no longer independent. We are much more interested in listening to others who are whispering in our ears to make the sorts of statements that have been made. And make no mistake; the Government can gloss over it all they like. They can say that everything that’s happened in the last little while—the aeroplane being turned back, the education student numbers falling, the tourist numbers falling, the recent decision on communications—are nothing to do, apparently, with the Government but everything to do with the deteriorating relationship. This is not a happy situation.

And then I’d ask the question: where has the comment been from the New Zealand Government about the atrocities going on in the Kashmir in India? Where has the Government’s position been on the human rights abuses and the terrible situation developing in Venezuela? Nowhere. Nowhere, because we don’t want to offend somebody else who’s whispering in our ear. That is apparently Labour leadership.

Then we have the Tax Working Group about to come down this week with their recommendations. There is no doubt that there will be a whole lot of gloss put on a very ugly pile of droppings that is delivered to the New Zealand people this coming week. A capital gains tax is nothing short of an envy tax, and it not only reaches people who own property—which is always the easiest way to deal with things—but it will go to have an impact on everybody’s KiwiSaver balances. It will have an impact on other private savings opportunities but, most of all, it will have an impact on people who are trying to get into the housing market, because if someone is selling a house and they are going to have to pay a capital gain on it because it was a second property, an investment property, then they are going to want that reflected in the price. And that is the international evidence that anyone can see wherever they’d like to look. So that of course in turn will set the median price for new homes.

And then it comes to what an extraordinary situation we’ve got with the Government claiming that KiwiBuild is a reasonable thing for first-home buyers, when the prices for those homes are astronomically large—astronomically large—and well out of the reach of most first-home buyers. That’s why they’re not selling. That’s why they’re not being taken up. At some point, the Government is going to have to tell us all how much they’ve underwritten this massive programme and how many dollars they’re going to hand out to people who have invested in the programme without delivering a single benefit to any of those who are supposed to be the customers, the clients, for KiwiBuild. That, apparently, is Labour leadership.

There’s the $5 billion they’ve stripped out of the roading. Can you imagine what it must feel like if you’re in a rural community when the “People’s Champion”—or what is he called: the “Regional Champion”; I don’t know what he calls himself—turns up the town, doles out cheques all over the place, but does nothing about the access that those communities have to major transport networks. The ridiculous situation in the House today where the Minister for road safety is saying that she is right on side with the Minister for Regional Development when he’s saying, sensibly, “Let’s build a road that’s safe.” and the Green Minister is saying “No, no. We’ll just put some wire ropes down the middle and everything will be OK.” That’s not going to cut it in a regional development sense. People aren’t silly. They know that if one and one don’t equal two, then it’s not of any benefit to them.

There are many other things. I want to finish my comments today on the issue of energy. I can’t believe that we’ve got a Minister of Energy and Resources happy to say that New Zealand’s natural gas supplies—given the current arrangements—will run out in between five and seven years’ time. Well, what happens then? What happens at that point? Does that mean that the entire North Island—that is largely reliant on gas for all sorts of domestic use—has to convert to some other fuel, presumably electricity? Is it possible to replace that petajoule value with electricity in just seven years? No it most certainly is not. So this country will be importing gas from countries far and wide, and we’ll be convincing ourselves that we’re doing a favour to the environment. This is the most nutty, backward, and, I have to say, almost deceptive policy that you could possibly have, but apparently that’s what you do if you’re showing leadership—totally unacceptable.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you think for just a moment—or everyone in the House should think for a moment—about this situation. Everyone is saying, “It’s wonderful. We’re going to have hydrogen technology before we know where we are.” Show me one place in the world where hydrogen technology is a significant contributor to their energy needs. That doesn’t exist in that quantity. And we’ve had the recent report that the New Zealand Government and the New Zealand Minister have completely decided to ignore, which says that electricity produced from hydrogen is 10 times more expensive than energy produced from the combined cycle gas. So why are we heading down a track that denies how history works? I think hydrogen—and hydrogen technology—will be a big, big energy player in the future, but it’s no further developed than steam was 300 years ago. It takes time, and in the meantime the Labour leadership is going to inflict enormous cost on ordinary New Zealanders.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Well, this coalition Government has spent its first year in office focusing on effecting real change that makes a real and positive difference in the day-to-day lives of real New Zealanders. It started at the very beginning with the extension of paid parental leave to 22 weeks and the legislation that will, ultimately, lead to the extension to 26 weeks. We increased the minimum wage to $16.50 an hour. We introduced the Families Package, which lifted the incomes of over 350,000 families. We provided the Best Start support for children’s early years, the winter energy payment for our elderly on the super, and for people who are on benefits. We have even changed our employment law to make it easier for working people to bargain for a decent wage so that a fair day’s work truly means a fair day’s pay. These are the things that we have spent our first year focusing on: real difference that makes a real change in people’s lives.

As we start this year, we can see there is a strong public endorsement for the approach of this Government. The news over the last couple of weeks has demonstrated that the people do like what this Government is doing: a strong endorsement of our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and her style of leadership both on the international stage and domestically that talks about compassion and kindness, as well as running the strong economy. There is a strong endorsement of this coalition Government: three parties that not only bring three different viewpoints under a shared set of values but also represent a majority of New Zealanders from all walks of life. People see the way this Government is working together in a coherent and constructive fashion in the best interests of all New Zealanders and they like what they see. But most of all they like the vision for a more productive, more sustainable economy that really delivers positive change for all New Zealanders.

But as the Prime Minister has said, it’s only one year. There is a lot more to do and of course the centrepiece for this year will be the Government’s well-being Budget—a Budget that acknowledges that we have to measure a lot more than just economic growth. Economic growth is important but we also need to look at things like the well-being of our young people; our mental health; lifting Māori and Pacific incomes, skills, and opportunities; creating opportunities for productive businesses, regions, and iwi. These are the things that truly represent progress for this country.

And I heard the National Party today trying to pick some holes in the approach of the well-being Budget, questioning the value of finding a friend—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Yes.

—because finding a friend, Nick Smith, is actually about connectivity. It is actually about a sense of community, a sense of place and purpose within our communities, and I would have thought the National Party, of all people, would have understood the value of finding a friend—those folks over there in glorious isolation, telling themselves “It’s all OK because we’re still polling around about 40 percent.” But they don’t play well with others. They don’t play well with others and that’s what’s going to keep them out of Government because they can’t find a friend.

So I won’t be lectured by the National Party on the value of finding a friend, not just because of the irony of the position that they find themselves in, but actually because that is the kind of thing we do need to measure: people’s well-being, people’s connectivity, their place and purpose in our community. And I’m proud of the fact that our well-being Budget will do that, and I can tell the National Party the world is watching. They are impressed with New Zealand’s leadership. They are impressed with the leadership of Jacinda Ardern and they are watching to see how New Zealand goes about implementing that well-being Budget.

Now, the central tenet of the well-being Budget of course is the fact that while economic growth is important, it alone does not guarantee improvements to New Zealand’s living standards. Government must do much more to make sure that we don’t just grow the pie but that we make sure that it is shared fairly and that everybody gets the opportunity to experience the prosperity of this nation. At the end of last year, I received the Fair Pay Agreement Working Group’s report. They identified some of the challenges that we must overcome if we are to ensure that everybody shares in the prosperity of this nation.

They identified the fact that New Zealanders work longer and harder and for lower wages than most other people in the OECD, that our labour productivity is woeful, and that that has been overseen by successive Governments and we cannot allow it to drift on and let our lowest paid continue to slide further and further behind. They identified the fact that inequality of incomes is growing in New Zealand and, in fact, what we are seeing and what we have seen over the last 30 years is a hollowing out of those on middle incomes. The people who work for wages, who earn moderate wages, have seen their pay in real terms stagnate while those at the top have gone further and further ahead.

And they’ve looked at what happens around the world to address these issues and they’ve identified a gap in New Zealand, and that is the fact that we do not have any form of sector-level bargaining. This is not an unusual thing. It happens all around the world. Two-thirds of OECD nations have some form of sector-level bargaining. In fact, the OECD as an organisation, as recently as last year, 2018, said that in the 21st century a strong market mixed economy like New Zealand should have some form of individual bargaining, some form of enterprise-level bargaining, and some form of sector-level bargaining, because that drives high employment and it drives improvements in wages and reduces inequality. What we are missing in New Zealand is that sector-level bargaining.

So I welcome the report from the Fair Pay Agreement Working Group. The Government will look at those recommendations and we will progress with that work over this year, because we do have to address New Zealand’s woeful labour productivity and we do have to address our low wages, because it isn’t just about having a strong economy; it’s about making sure that everybody gets to participate in that.

For the same reason, we will increase the minimum wage again this year to $17.70 an hour, taking effect from 1 April 2019. That will benefit around 209,000 workers, lifting wages throughout the economy by $231 million, lifting wages for a full-time worker on the minimum wage by $48 a week. These are the things that make a real difference for real people.

But we know that businesses want to see some change from Government as well, and that’s why we’ve initiated a review of the Holidays Act because we know that it’s a piece of legislation that is difficult for businesses to administer and it often means that workers are not getting what they are entitled to. This is something the previous Government wasn’t up for; they put it in the too hard basket. But not for this Government; we are prepared to take up the challenges. It’s not an easy job to do but that’s what Government is about: tackling the difficult jobs, and that’s what we will do this year with that Holidays Act review, and we will implement new legislation to improve the way people’s holidays—the way their entitlement to annual leave and other holidays is administered.

We are also doing a lot of work in the immigration portfolio. We need our immigration system to work well to drive economic growth but also to improve well-being for everyone in New Zealand—those who were born here and those who have come to make a life here from somewhere else. Most importantly, we need to make sure that our immigration system is working for the regions. New Zealand’s regions have quite different needs: Auckland is different from Southland is different from Hawke’s Bay is different from Northland. But we have a one-size-fits-all system and when you make a change to benefit one region under our current settings you’re more than likely going to do something that will be detrimental to other regions. So we’re out right now talking to people about our proposals to reform the immigration system to make sure that it gets the skills that we need and the people that we need into the parts of the country where they are most needed.

It is also designed to stamp out the exploitation of migrant workers. Of course, New Zealand is a migrant nation—we have always welcomed migrants from all around the world—but it is totally unacceptable that we have people coming to New Zealand from all parts of the world to be exploited, to work for the minimum wage, to be put in low quality accommodation, to not receive what they are entitled to in the way of holiday pay or their minimum wages. That is completely unacceptable, and it was a shameful reputation that New Zealand was developing. We will put an end to that with our changes to the immigration system.

I am proud of this Government’s first year. We have done an awful lot to improve the well-being of New Zealanders, but there is so much more to do. This is a Government that is full of energy, that is full of passion, and that is working together across three parties to represent the best interests of all New Zealanders, and that is why this is a strong Government with a strong endorsement from the people of New Zealand.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call in this debate, and I’m perfectly happy to fill in the gaps of the speech that we’ve just heard—about what’s not going on.

The member for Palmerston North talked about the well-being Budget and the value of finding a friend. If there is any personification of the failures of this Government, it’s in 38-year-old central Southland resident Blair Vining. Now, Blair is not short of friends; in fact, several thousand of them turned out to a fund-raising charity rugby match in Winton last month, raising over a hundred thousand dollars for a fantastic sports foundation to help develop talent in sports youth in central Southland. Blair has got plenty of friends; what he didn’t have was a timely appointment to see his oncologist. That’s what he wanted. That’s what he didn’t get. That very brave family came to Wellington two weeks ago to tell the Minister of Health that he had failed his family, that he had let them and many other New Zealanders down by not having a cancer plan. That, to me, is a metaphor for the complete mess that the health system is now in after just 16 months of this Labour-led Government.

Remember all the promises—the claims of $8 billion of underfunding, a gap they were going to close over four years? One would think that they would have started that at the first opportunity. It is incredibly disappointing to note that, at the first opportunity, on a percentage basis, they put less into our district health boards (DHBs), not more, and they removed national health targets, including targets for timely cancer treatment. That wasn’t mentioned in Mr Lees-Galloway’s speech or in Dr Clark’s last week. He seemed more interested in talking about my wedding anniversary. Well, that’s what one does when one has got nothing good to say about a health system that is in complete disarray.

I’d like to be able to tell the House the projection for the combined DHB deficits that we had for 2018-19.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: How much?

I have no idea, Dr Smith. Nobody does, because the Minister and the Ministry of Health are refusing to publish the data.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: But this is the most open and transparent Government!

That’s right. This most open and transparent Government, eight months into the financial year, cannot tell the public what the combined financial position of the DHBs is. So I can tell the House what I think it is. I think it’s about a half a billion dollars.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: What?

A half a billion dollars. I think that’s what we’re heading for. The last full financial year under the previous Government’s watch, the combined financial deficits were $119 million. We budgeted in 2017 for a continuation of that, and we were on track for that until November 2017, when the Labour Government took over. That’s when the debt and deficit trajectory went up dramatically, to the point where, last financial year, that deficit doubled to $240 million. So no more money in the kitty—$549 million, but that keeps the lights on—and a huge amount of cross pressures has led to DHB deficits that Counties Manukau alone told us could be over $50 million. That’s one DHB; we have 20. I shouldn’t have to speculate. We should know what that position is.

Now, I think most of us would accept those deficits with some good grace if we could see improvements in clinical outcomes, because the Minister himself said that financial disciplines are less important than good clinical outcomes. But, as Blair Vining and his family know, things are getting worse, not better, because of an ideological opposition to targets that the Minister said created perverse outcomes. Well, what is more perverse than a young man who’s being told he has bowel cancer that has metastasised and he gets an appointment that may be after he passes away? What kind of compassionate Government is this, that they sit idly by while that happens in our DHBs? He went private to see a spectacularly good oncologist in Otago, and he’s getting the best care. His prognosis is challenging, but I have a huge admiration for Blair and Melissa and their two beautiful daughters for the thing that they are doing here. They’re saying, “I’m going to leave a legacy.” Well, I can say that the Vinings’ legacy is a hell of a lot more than the Minister of Health’s legacy. This is an outrage. We are drifting.

Here’s what Dr Clark didn’t say at the Cancer Care at a Crossroads conference. He campaigned on creating a world-class cancer service in this country and it fell on the cutting room floor when the coalition agreement was signed—gone. The only thing we heard about it was when he was put on the spot at the start of that conference. He sent the ministry off to scramble something together to make it look as if he’s doing something. That is not good enough, but if that were the only thing, maybe. We lost $200 million out of the pharmaceutical budget—very good efficiencies gained by Pharmac by purchasing DHB hospital-based drugs—and the Government had a choice. They could have reinvested that $200 million in savings into more medicines like Ibrance and Kadcyla and Keytruda as a first-line treatment for lung cancer. But, no, back into the slush fund to stop the stemming tide of financial deficits that we’re growing because this Government lost control of industrial relations, it lost control of anything that looked like a focus on improving health outcomes for New Zealanders. Cochlear implants: a small amount of money—$6.5 million—to wipe out the waiting list for adult cochlear implants disappeared on this watch. Those promises of GP visits being cheaper for everyone? The Prime Minister when Leader of the Opposition went to Manukau with Su’a William Sio and with David Clark and said, “Everybody will get a discount.” Where are they? Gone.

This is a Government that has great speeches, and the Minister said to the midwives 10 months ago, “I’m listening.” Last week, he couldn’t be bothered to turn up because the same midwives and their DHB negotiations remain unsettled. To the Minister of Health: they don’t want him to listen; they want him to act on this settlement—on the industrial relations landscape more generally—on improving cancer treatment waiting times, on improving emergency department waiting times, on improving elective surgery throughput, on smoking cessation, on cardiovascular disease management, and on diabetes management. These were the things that the national health targets focused on. Now, I’m OK; I’m happy enough if he thinks there should be different targets, but I cannot stand here and accept a Minister in a Government that dispenses with targets all together and then presides over a sector that is completely rudderless. I have a great deal of sympathy for the people who work in those DHBs, because they have no direction from this Government.

In the remaining time, I want to touch on an issue of significant local concern for the people of Otago, and that is the institutes of technology and polytechnics sector reorganisation. Never mind the fact that Otago Polytechnic, the Southern Institute of Technology, and, indeed, Ara in Christchurch are high-performing, nimble, responsive to industry organisations; that is at risk now that a monolithic bureaucracy is going to be centralised into Wellington. I want to remind Shane Jones and the New Zealand First Party of what he said about how important the regions are, when he said that the billion-trees programme will fulfil a key commitment made in the New Zealand First - Labour coalition agreement—namely, the relocation of some Government functions to the regions. Indeed, it’s in the coalition agreement. It says that they will work to push public sector jobs into the regions. Only we’re in overdraft, because at least a thousand jobs—middle management, admin, academic jobs—are being ripped out of Invercargill, out of Dunedin, out of Cromwell, out of Timaru, out of Christchurch, and out of the West Coast.

Where are they going? Wellington—the exact opposite of what this coalition agreement says and what that Minister for Regional Economic Development said he was going to do. Dr Smith, in question time, talked about $20 million probably also going to be ripped out of Nelson and given to the bureaucrats in Wellington. Well, if that is support for the provinces, if that’s support for the regions, I’d hate to see what a lack of support looks like.

That contribution was from a member who sat around the Cabinet table and let sewage seep through Middlemore Hospital and did nothing about it. It’s a bit rich to start pointing the finger in Opposition and showing care and responsibility, but here’s the question: how many times did that member sit within the context of his Cabinet, in the previous administration, and address nurse settlements? How many times? Nothing. I can’t hear anything. Don’t believe anything that that member has said, because we know, and the polls show, that while there is more to do, people feel generally pleased that we are focusing in the right direction.

I am proud of our Government because, just as the Prime Minister said in her speech, we’re a Government that is prepared to lead, not follow, not tread water, not just govern, and that means doing things differently. I’m proud of our Government because we are a coalition, confidence and supply Government—a truly MMP style of Government—that is prepared to work differently within the context of the things that we are leading for and on behalf of New Zealanders so that everybody feels the benefit. And there’s the test: that everybody feels the benefit, because we know that when we’re tested back home in our electorates, where it matters most, people give you a pretty instinctive feeling about whether or not we’re on the right or wrong track. I know, as an electorate MP, that I have had less—less—urgency around issues to do with housing. Why? Because the operating practice is far more responsive to the needs of housing in our community, and there is more collaboration across the Government sector in trying to respond immediately.

Now, that’s a sign. People are feeling that, while, yes, they agree there is always more to do, the Government is steering in the right direction, and that’s important. We had the Prime Minister go overseas to Davos, to the economic forum there, and talk about the well-being Budget, and people were inspired. They were inspired because they knew that this is a Government that is focusing on more than GDP. We’re focusing on people, communities, and outcomes that really make a difference in the hardest areas. We want to address the issues of child poverty, reverse inequality, income inequality, tackle the really big issues of climate change and its practical impacts—its real impacts—in our community, and show that by being more responsive and working together across the Government sector with stakeholders in the community, more can be done and people will feel the benefit.

There are three key goals that the Prime Minister outlined in her statement: building a productive, sustainable economy that works for everyone—not just some but everybody. Why does that matter to us? Because for far too long the economy has been operating in a way that those who do well are always going to do well, but those who need a little bit of support aren’t getting it, and those who are right at the bottom of the heap go further down the bottom. And that’s not acceptable. So we do need an economy that works for everyone, and we need to change some fundamental things.

I’m pleased that the Minister of Education has signalled in the area of vocational training, where we can lift all boats of many of our young people, that we need to think differently about the way in which we train our young people, not just for now but for the jobs of the future. This will be a huge shift. Now, members of the Opposition would have you believe that that means centralising the delivery of vocational support. The Minister himself has said, and he’s taking public submissions on this matter, that actually this will deepen the footprint of regional training and vocational opportunities as it applies for the labour market and growth profile across the country. And that’s a good thing.

The second key theme that the Prime Minister highlighted was improving well-being for New Zealanders and their whānau. Last year, the Families Package came into effect. By 2021, 350,000 New Zealand families will get approximately $75 extra a week, but it’s not just about the money; it’s sending a signal that we value families raising children. The Families Package will make a huge, huge difference to the many families who need that extra support so that they can do what we believe they should be doing, which is caring for their children and being able to survive as well.

The other thing about that is to ensure that we’re underpinned by a vision around jobs, because we know that in order to distribute more of the benefit of the economy we need people in work. I’m proud of my colleague the Hon Willie Jackson in his employment portfolio and the Mana in Mahi programme, which is a pathway to help young people—many young people, many young Māori—move off the benefit into training and into secure employment. And there are a number of stories that we could tell in this House about the success that that initiative has shown, albeit starting very small and moving out, for young people working and brokering in local communities with employers who are trying to do things differently as well.

The third theme that the Prime Minister talked about was taking a new approach to leadership, focusing on long-term issues. I want to focus most of the rest of my speech in this area, because a number of the challenges facing the Māori community are significant and they require a long-term view about the nature of change that’s required. I’ve already spoken to one of them, Mana in Mahi. But if I think about the way in which we can lift opportunities for young Māori and Māori through education, employment, and vocational training—the types of changes that we’re implementing—we’ll see the benefits of that come through very soon.

But housing’s the other area. We know that as it gets more unaffordable for many Māori whānau to live in urban centres, they’re going home. Papakāinga housing has been an opportunity to support whānau aspirations, not to go home just because it’s cheaper but to develop their land through papakāinga and also enterprise initiatives, so they can return home, have a sustainable employment pathway, and, yes, provide better income and opportunities for their whānau back there. Stories throughout the country tell me that we’re on the right track. Why? Because we’re taking a community development approach. I’m very, very encouraged by the way in which these types of investments are improving outcomes.

In transitional housing—this is a huge area of need as well, and it’s not just located in our rural provincial areas but in our urban areas as well. I think about Ōtāngarei and Whangarei Ngāti Porou who are but two of the several projects in the transitional housing space, who are demonstrating by partnering with Government in a different way that they can respond to the emergency housing needs as it relates to the drive in their own community, and more can be done. I was certainly pleased at Waitangi to announce another initiative around Kaeō and Whangaroa.

In the land area we have dropped the previous administration’s wide-scale reforms to Te Ture Whenua Maori Act. It wasn’t supported. We’re going to introduce targeted changes to the Act alongside support and advocacy services in the region for Māori land owners to get the best opportunity out of their undeveloped lands that they have. We’ve done that through a whenua fund. But, more importantly, just recently with the support of the Hon Shane Jones and the Provincial Growth Fund, the hundred-million dollar Whenua Māori Fund that has been announced enables Māori to get uplift in the value of the enterprise coming off their lands to be able to further grow their economic aspirations so that they can in turn reinvest that into the social well-being outcomes that they seek for their family and their hāpu. It’s a huge step forward; never been done before. It will be transformative in terms of the impact it has on Māori whānau.

That really does underpin where we’re going in terms of a Government that is leading, not just treading water, not staying still, not just governing but leading so that economic prosperity can be shared amongst more people. By building the Māori economy, by investing in skills, training, vocational support, and by ensuring that we focus on the things that really provide greater security for our whānau, like housing, we know that all boats will lift and that people will overall do better.

Is that just a vision for Māori? No. It’s actually the vision we have for all New Zealanders. It’s not limited to Māori, but we know that there are significant investments that will get cut-through and transform the way in which New Zealand goes forward as a country and can value what we all value most, which is we’re a Government who leads for the many, not just the few. We’re a Government that cares about people, not just GDP. We’re a Government that is proud to be a coalition confidence and supply Government, with all its challenges and opportunities, to ensure that many, many more New Zealanders will feel the benefits of the way that we lead and govern.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Well, that was something to follow, but I’ve got a comment or two to make on one or two of the previous speakers. I think it’s a great shame when we get Ministers coming to the House, and one particular Minister spent four minutes, 30 seconds of his 10 minutes speaking about us instead of about his own portfolio—that shows he has little to speak about—and, of course, that’s one of the critical portfolios in the country at the moment, education. It seems strange he would spend four minutes, 30 seconds talking about us, but I suppose we like it. Then I want to comment a little bit on a couple of comments that the Hon Ron Mark made. He made the point that if you’re in the army and you stay long enough in Waiōuru, you meet everyone in New Zealand. Well, I can assure him as the MP for Rangitīkei, if you’re the MP for Rangitīkei and you stop in Waiōuru, you meet everyone in New Zealand too, because you’ve got to go through Waiōuru to get north or south or east or west, and so it’s a very good place, Waiōuru. And, of course, the army and the defence forces are a very important part of the Rangitīkei electorate.

I want to start today by congratulating the Government, oddly, on their response to M. bovis. I think they’ve made a very brave decision to pick up that M. bovis response and run with it, and I think they will be successful in eliminating it. It’s a pretty brave thing to do, when you think that 40 years ago in New Zealand, we started to eliminate TB from our cattle herd. We haven’t got there yet, and, of course, one of the very topical issues of the last few days—the eradication of the possum from New Zealand—is one of the reasons we haven’t got to the elimination of TB in New Zealand. So it’s an issue that is a difficult one to grasp, and I think they’ve done a good job with M. bovis, and I congratulate the Minister, Minister O’Connor, for his work on that.

However, as a backbencher in this Parliament and one who’s likely to be a backbencher throughout my time in this Parliament, I want to comment on one or two other things that affect us backbenchers. I just want to make a comment on the running of select committees, because I think that it’s the one chance backbenchers have in the Parliament to make a very real input—

💬 Marja Lubeck: Better tell it to your own team when they don’t show up.

One of them’s speaking just over there. I hope you get further than I have, Matt—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! You must refer to them with their proper name—even your own members, thank you.

The MP for Northland. Sorry, Madam Assistant Speaker—the MP for Northland. But I want to make a brief point about select committees, because I think it’s important for the whole Parliament that select committees take their time, or as much time as they’re able to, over issues that are important to the Parliament. I think that it’s really important that we all have time to have an input in select committee. I don’t think we’re getting that at the moment on one or two select committees I’m involved with, and I think that’s disappointing. Hence it will lead to some frustration, and I think we’re inevitably going to get that frustration coming out in the performance of those select committees. I think it’s important that select committee chairs give time for people to be involved. I think it’s important that Ministers, when they’re trying to influence select committee chairs, remember that as well.

I want to also just talk about one or two other things that affect the Parliament, I suppose, because I think it’s a really important place. I think it’s very important that we have an opportunity to say what we think in here, and that we do it in a manner that, I think, is acceptable to everyone in the Parliament. And I’d like to see that improved in the next year or two, and I would hope that that might be something we can achieve.

Anyway, having said all that, I now want to spend some time wondering about what the year of delivery will exactly bring, and I want to start with roading. My area’s affected badly by the Manawatū Gorge. We’re now seeing New Zealand Transport Agency proposing the alternative route speed limit be dropped to 60 kilometres an hour for a 14-kilometre stretch of a very important arterial route. And whilst there are a number of accidents on that road, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to drop that speed limit to 60 kilometres an hour throughout the length of that road. That is a very important route for us in the Manawatū and the Hawke’s Bay area, and it’s one that I hope the Government moves on very quickly and progresses the redevelopment of that road or the new road, or the alternative route, as it will be, I suppose. I hope that’s progressed in good time.

I also want to comment briefly on the Levin to Ōtaki road, because that road is without doubt one of the most dangerous roads in the lower North Island. It has four very dangerous bridges on it, a large amount of traffic, and, for those of us who travel that road frequently, it is often very slow. Now, the interesting thing about that is that when they finish the Ōtaki stretch of that road, the bypass of Ōtaki, that’s going to back all the traffic up in Levin. Now, Levin’s not a little town like Ōtaki. Levin’s quite a big town. It’s got two sets of traffic lights and you can queue up at them for quite some time. When that road hits them in a two-lane road, it’s going to be much more dangerous and much more frustrating for traffic. I think it’s really important that that road’s progressed. It is going to be progressed in a two-lane form at some stage in the future. I think it’s urgent that it be progressed much quicker than that, because a hugely important factor for us in the Rangitikei and the Manawatū area is our connection to Wellington—to the port, to the capital, and for other reasons.

I want to now speak briefly about, I suppose, what I call sustainable regions, or what’s been referred to in here today as sustainable regions. That is, I guess, Minister Jones’ fund, that’s supposed to be making us sustainable. And whilst he’s getting around New Zealand, or that fund’s getting around New Zealand, we haven’t, as the Hon Paul Goldsmith said, seen many jobs created yet. And as a part of that, I want to touch on the billion trees. I’ve expressed concerns about the implementation of the billion trees programme in Parliament before. And I guess the fortunate thing about the billion trees programme is that the sheep industry is having its best run it’s probably had since 1951. So it’s precluding the billion trees from progressing at the rate they might otherwise wish it to. And so that’s hugely fortunate, in my view, because there is some country in New Zealand that is absolutely eminently suitable for farming sheep on, and I would hate to see that country go into trees, because it would certainly inhibit the diversification of our food production and our industry. And certainly, at the same time, there are places that trees need to go. I urge that we plan that very carefully, because I think that if we don’t, we’re going to end up some years down the track regretting the decisions we’ve made.

Interestingly, we saw some of that happen after Bola on the East Coast, where trees were planted on country where now they have been taken out again. And I don’t imagine they’ll go back in, because it’s highly productive farm land, but none the less they were planted as a bulk planting after Cyclone Bola. That’s changed.

I want to comment briefly on the rental housing issue, because I think it’s of concern where we might get to there. The moment Governments interfere in things, we get into trouble with them, and the two very good examples of that, in my view, are both the racing industry, where we have the Racing Act, which controls the racing industry—that’s been tested by that Act—and the other one I want to talk about is the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act, which, of course, was bought in to create Fonterra. But none the less it’s caused distortions in the marketplace. It’s caused cows to be farmed where they shouldn’t. It’s caused milk to be picked up where it probably should never have been picked up. I think we should probably look to the future and, hopefully, that Act will be able to be scrapped, because I think the less interference we have from Government in business and productivity in New Zealand, the better off we are. It’s most important that we do. [Bell rung]

Briefly, as I’m getting through my time, by the sound of that, I want to talk about the fisheries sector of which I have the interesting role of being the spokesperson for the Opposition on fisheries. We have some challenges in that fisheries sector, not the least of which is the relationship between the commercial fishery and our recreational fishery. Our recreational fishing industry—it is an industry, in fact—is hugely important to New Zealand. Some 800,000 people go out to catch a fish, and most of them are more successful than I am. None the less, it’s important that as the number of people involved in that industry grows, we need to make sure that that sector is protected and has the opportunity to go and catch a fish, within reason, whenever they want. I think that’s most important for us, and we’ve seen some publicity in the sector in the last few weeks which I think the Minister needs to resolve. We need to urgently engage new techniques in the fishing industry to ensure that it’s sustainable and to ensure that bycatch is maintained.

That’s one of my interests; the other interest I have, of course, is as the spokesperson for racing. We’ve seen the racing Minister—or the Deputy Prime Minister, in fact—talk a lot about introducing legislation to implement some pieces of the Messara report. He hasn’t got to that point yet. I think it’s urgent that he does, because he delayed some legislation that would have got the racing industry going at a greater speed. So I hope that gets implemented as quickly as possible. Of course, in the last few weeks we’ve seen the Karaka sales, which contribute a huge amount to the New Zealand economy, in action, and only yesterday was the first of the standardbred sales, which also contribute a lot to our economy. It’s most important that the racing industry and that Act get to Parliament. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker. I’m going to try and outline what we’re delivering in all my portfolios in the time I’ve got, but first of all I just want to say that it is fantastic being in a Government led by a Prime Minister who is leading in a genuine way, both at home and internationally. The Prime Minister and her partner and little baby came down to Napier over the weekend to the art deco festival, and her natural style and unique way of connecting with ordinary Kiwis made her a real hit with everyone. The thing about Jacinda—the thing about our Prime Minister—is that she has time and a kind line for everyone. The reason people love her—they respect her, but it’s moved from respect, I reckon, to love—is because people know that she has their best interests at heart. She’s leading a Government that’s doing things differently, that is not afraid to make the hard choices, which is absolutely fantastic.

Let me start with my police portfolio. This is a portfolio where I work incredibly closely with my New Zealand First colleagues. In fact, I say when I go around all the meetings that the last election was one of the first elections where you didn’t have the major political parties talking about who could be the hardest on crime; you actually had them talking about who could deliver more police into our communities. You had the National Party say they wanted to deliver 880 police over four years. Labour came out and said 1,000 police over three years, and thanks to New Zealand First and the coalition Government, we’re striving to deliver 1,800 police over three years into our communities. That is going to make a significant difference, and someone like Matt King, who is a former police officer himself, will know the difference that getting these resources into our communities will make.

Between 2012 and 2017, police numbers in our communities dropped by 70—they decreased by 70. This is at a time when methamphetamine was out of control, the gangs were becoming incredibly organised, burglary numbers were going up and resolution numbers were dropping, and the Government was saying to police, “You’ve got to do more with less.”—you’ve got to do more with less. And it just didn’t work. Ron Mark and I had a look at the police survey in 2017, and what it said is that 60 percent of officers—60 percent—said that they weren’t meeting the promises they were making to our communities. Sixty percent also said they had an undue level of workplace stress. But the interesting thing is that over 80 percent said they were committed to the communities they served in the New Zealand Police service. So what you had was a group of men and woman who were completely committed and knew what needed to be done to meet the promises they were making; they just didn’t have the resources to do it. So Ron and I, New Zealand First and Labour, said, “We’ve got to do something about this.”

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Remember, just—

Ron Mark and I—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Thank you.

—and New Zealand First and the Labour Party said, “We’ve got to do something about it.”, and we have delivered in a way that is phenomenal so far—there’s a lot more to come. Since we have been in Government, there have been 1,190 new men and women that have entered the New Zealand Police service. I have been to every single graduation except one, and I can tell you that the quality and the calibre of the recruits is absolutely fantastic. People tend to think that new police are, you know, these young kids who are coming out of school. The average age of the recruits is high-20s, early-30s—there’s always one over 40; one or two over 40. These are men and women who are experienced, they bring life experiences into the service, and it is awesome. It really is.

The thing that we’re doing, though, is we’re going after organised crime and gangs. We have had enough of gangs who are peddling misery and death into our communities in the form of methamphetamine, in the form of synthetic cannabis, and we have an organised crime programme and a gang programme that is going to see us deliver 720 men and women to fight organised crime and gangs in a way that has never been done before. So my message to those who are peddling this misery into our communities: we’re coming after you. We’re coming after you in a way that’s never been done. With the 1,080 other officers, they’re going into community roles to support our communities and our neighbourhoods, because it’s about prevention first. If you haven’t got the officers on the ground, then you’re continually fighting fires, whereas, for us, it’s about preventing crime—it’s about understanding the dynamics of our communities and our neighbourhoods and making sure that we can prevent harm.

There are things like our iwi and community panels. This is where officers have the discretion—and, again, Matt King would know about this—to not necessarily just put people in front of a judge, but to say, “Hey, you know what? There are some people out there who are good people but they just have made bad choices, or they found themselves in a really bad situation, and putting them in jail doesn’t only take away their freedom; it takes away their future.” So we’ve said to police that there must be a better way, and police have come up with the iwi and community panels, and we’re delivering. It is a wonderful initiative to ensure that people face a jury of their peers, so to speak, but they don’t end up with a criminal record; they get a second chance to actually reintegrate and make the right choices. It’s awesome.

The Serious Fraud Office, which is one of my portfolios—there is an anti-corruption work programme which is under way at the moment. It’s about, again, being proactive and taking an educational response so the State sector knows how to spot corruption and how to prevent it before it becomes a real problem. There are estimates that there could be billions of dollars in corruption—there could be—but we’re looking at ways to deal with this.

Let’s look at tax. In the coalition agreement, we said that we’re going to go after those who aren’t paying their fair share. So we passed the BEPS bill—that’s the Taxation (Neutralising Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) Bill. That is about going after multinationals that have what we call in tax a permanent establishment in this country—that’s bricks and mortar in this country. So we’ve closed down the ability to avoid paying your fair share of tax, or closed down the ability to use really aggressive tax planning to ensure they don’t pay their fair share. What we announced yesterday is, in fact, the digital services tax. So we’ve gone after those with bricks and mortar; now we’re going to go after those that haven’t got a permanent establishment. We’re covering the whole spectrum of multinationals, because we want them to pay their fair share. New Zealand companies are paying their fair share; New Zealand taxpayers are paying their fair share—so why shouldn’t multinationals? It is about bringing fairness back into the tax system.

We set up the tax working group, and they’re going to report back on Thursday. We said to them, “We want you to look at the balance, the fairness, and the integrity of the tax system.” I go back to this fairness argument: it is just not fair if every single Kiwi is working really hard and paying their taxes, but there are those who aren’t. So this is what we want to do: we want to make sure the tax system is fair and has integrity and balance.

Of course, we’re bringing in the R & D tax credit. So what we’re saying to small to medium enterprises—in fact, to all New Zealand companies—is that we’re not going to pick winners, but what we are going to do is we’re going to let you take control of your own destiny. We’re going to give you the ability to go hard on R & D. You’re going to get a tax credit, because we want R & D to thrive. We want to become an economy that is known for research and development and innovation.

I’ve set up the Small Business Council on small business.

💬 Hon Member: Yeah, you scrapped the other one.

Now, they’re going after the big issues—we’re not scratching around at all. This is about going after the big issues. There was a Small Business Development Group that was actually put into abeyance by the last Minister, but it really didn’t have a mandate to do much. So we said, “Nah, we need a council that is going to look at the macro picture and say, ‘Hey, what do we need around access to finance, around skills and training, about the future of work, about regulation?’ ” So they’re doing some fantastic work, and I can’t wait to get their final report in July.

Let me talk about fisheries, because the Opposition spokesperson talked about fisheries. This is, again, an area where I’m working very closely with my New Zealand First colleagues, and also the Greens. I mean, Eugenie Sage and I work closely together, and Shane Jones and I work very closely together. He is a man of immense experience in this area. But I’ll tell you, one thing that really annoys me, that really gets my goat, is when I get outside commentators saying that Fisheries New Zealand is captured by the commercial sector, or that they’re corrupt. They’re not corrupt in any way, shape, or form. In fact, Fisheries New Zealand has some amazing people who are doing a very good job protecting our fisheries and ensuring sustainability. They really are.

We released a discussion document a couple of weeks ago that talked about the policies around the quota management system. This has the potential for massive change—for massive change—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Where’s the independent inquiry you promised?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! I didn’t make any promises about an independent inquiry, Dr Smith.

—where we’re talking about what has to be landed, what has to be discounted, and what has to be brought back to shore. I urge anyone that has an interest in fisheries to put their submission in. This is stage two of a three-stage change programme. It’s about doing what’s right in the fisheries sector but also engaging with those key stakeholders in the sector.

I just want to sum up by saying this is a Government that is delivering. It is a Government that’s not afraid to make the hard choices or tackle the really difficult issues. It’s a Government that does what’s right for Kiwis and that is out there actually doing the right things—doing the right things. We inherited an economy that just needed to change. In every single one of my portfolios, there are opportunities to make a real difference, and we really are. Under Jacinda Ardern’s prime ministership, and under this Labour - New Zealand First - Green Government, it is brilliant. It’s a privilege and a pleasure.

Thank you for the opportunity to make a contribution on the Prime Minister’s statement. I re-read the Prime Minister’s statement this afternoon, looking to see what the statement contained other than a lot of mentions to do with well-being, which we will see played out in Budget 2019. I certainly look forward to it, with some trepidation about what that means for a slowing New Zealand economy.

I looked at the Prime Minister’s statement through the lens, of course, of small business and local government, which are my two portfolios and particular areas of interest. I do note, and to quote the Prime Minister, that “The IMF is warning of an increased risk of a decline in global growth amid international trade tensions,”—and, indeed, we are seeing that—“a further slowing in China and the uncertainty caused by Brexit. Global trade growth has eased,”. Then the Prime Minister goes on to say “The Coalition Government is acutely aware of the risks posed by the global economy,”. So why, then, is Government policy so determined to attack small business in New Zealand, which makes up 97 percent of all business activity in this country? Those are actions which are absolutely in conflict with the Government’s stated aim to grow the economy and support the regions.

If I just zero in on small business, what are the costs and the pressures that have emerged over the last year and a half on small business? Of course, wages continue to be a concern for small business. Let’s just remind ourselves what small business is: it is the tradie with a truck and a small business where he does jobs. He might be a subcontractor through to the local baker, through to the car dealership, through to a start-up in a garage, which may grow and move to export—and we do have a very rich history in that around small business. So small businesses, as individuals, are and will be impacted by the rapid growth in the minimum wage.

Let’s remember that the former National Government and Governments before that made incremental changes to the minimum wage. That was done with a view to how business and small business would be able to absorb those costs into their business models whilst not being inflationary and having a negative impact on prices and the ability for the small business to invest and grow. So together with the changes in the minimum wage and employment law changes, small businesses are now sitting back. In the regions, small businesses are not breaking down the wall and growing their business into another space, because they simply don’t know whether they can get the labour to do the work. They don’t know, if they invest in stock and plant—buying upgraded and innovative machinery—whether or not they are going to get a return on this, not just because of the input costs into their business but, of course, because of the changing trade environment in New Zealand.

There are a number of—and I spotted this in my hometown of Ōāmaru, which has got a thriving local economy based on a broadening base of endeavour, which is around irrigation development and farming and agriculture, but also tourism, which adds to the traditional mix of business in that particular small town, replicated all through New Zealand. I counted 11 empty shops on the main street of Ōāmaru—and remember this is in the context of a thriving local economy. So I spoke to people—of course I did—and the answer came back. Particularly, I remember a conversation I had with a local real estate agent, who said people are just waiting because they don’t know what the Government is going to do next. They don’t know what’s going to come at them next.

💬 Hon Member: Ugh!

Oh, and they hate hearing the truth—they hate hearing the truth—but this is the absolute truth, and it’s being replicated all through the country.

I’ll tell you what’s coming at them and the reason why people are waiting. It’s not just minimum wage, it’s not just employment laws; it’s also changes in immigration, which the Government is consulting on at the moment. They’re consulting on a programme called changes to employer-assisted work visas. Of course, work visas—particularly in regional New Zealand—are critical to getting the fruit picked off the vine, are critical to man our hospitals and dairy farms, and are absolutely critical for horticulture, viticulture, agriculture, tourism, hospitality—you name it.

In regional New Zealand, we need people to come on tourist visas and working visas. The Government is going to bring in consulting on a measure which has a Draconian impact of requiring all employers to be registered—all employers to be registered. Oh good, that’s more red tape. You think small business—or one thinks small business—isn’t noticing? It is. That is compounding the uncertainty that small business is feeling in New Zealand. To add a little bit on top of that, we have the deteriorating relationship with China, and the Government—the New Zealand First, the Green, the Labour Government—are in full denial. They are in full denial about the deteriorating relationship with China and the impact that it is having.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: What a load of rubbish.

Well, no, it’s not a load of rubbish, to that member across the House. The member might care to explain to the House—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Well, you got me there!

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order, Mr McAnulty. Carry on.

—why it is that the long-planned—thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker—New Zealand - China tourism launch was cancelled. That has been one of the pillars of tourism and our tourism relationship. This big launch at Te Papa just got cancelled, just like that. Why? Well, why did that Air New Zealand plane get turned back? Why? The relationship is being impacted. It’s being impacted by this Government’s failure to negotiate international trade relationships, which have been managed so very well over the past decade, and now we are beginning to face non-tariff barriers, the likes of which we haven’t seen for quite some time. You think that’s not having an impact on small business? It’s having an impact on small business.

The member who just returned to his seat, the Minister for Small Business, did acknowledge that when I was small business Minister, I dissolved the small business working group because I could not see enough value in it, and was in the business of reforming to get some value out of it. At least he has finally acknowledged that. But what the current Minister has done is put working groups on steroids, and that is just to add to this Government’s already large number of working groups, which is up to over 200 working groups. Well, small business has got its share of working groups, and the Minister has formed the Small Business Council. One of the jobs for the Small Business Council in their report-back is to make a recommendation of whether to establish a small business institute.

So that is a working group where one of their tasks is to report on whether there should be another working group. Then, once they’ve done that, this working group then decides whether or not they should continue as a working group or dissolve as a working group. Well, if the small business Minister calls that progress, and the Government calls that progress, that is not progress; that is just death by a thousand working groups, which seems to be the modus operandi of this country.

I also found a direct reference in the Prime Minister’s statement to small business. This Government “is continuing to build connections for our businesses, including small and medium enterprises, offshore, to increase prosperity.” What a shame, then, it is to see that product is now being stopped at the border. New Zealand exporters are beginning to feel the direct impact of this Government’s failure to manage foreign policy, and it is real, it is beginning to happen. Tourism is going off. Exporting is going off, and what—and I’m interested in the Government’s response to this—is going to be their answer to one of our major trading partners, after Australia, going off New Zealand?

We have, if you like, a crisis in tourism in some parts of New Zealand. What is going to happen to that when the numbers stop coming? We already know that tourist bookings are beginning to go off the boil, and all this in a context where this Government is so very determined to talk about well-being. Well, well-being is great, but a strong economy is greater—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! I apologise to the honourable member. Your time has expired.

When I listen to that and the speeches of other members on that side—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: They’re terrible.

They are terrible. They’re frivolous. They’re petty and the arguments that they’re advancing are very weak. All I would say is it is such a privilege to be on this side of the House—absolutely—and may that side forever have the problems that it is encountering.

I’m proud to stand and to speak in support of the Prime Minister’s statement. It is a statement that reflects 15 months of hard work, a programme that is designed to grow and build a stronger economy that will benefit all New Zealanders. It is a programme that is focused squarely on tackling the huge challenges that we have inherited from the other side, and I’m absolutely proud to be with a team that is united in one thing, and that is the best interests of all New Zealanders.

The work programme that’s reflected in the Prime Minister’s statement reflects a shared vision and priorities of three distinct parties: Labour, New Zealand First, and the Green Party, and whilst they are separate and distinct parties, this is a coalition Government that is demonstrating a new kind of leadership that the country is not used to. For the last nine years that we had that lot—if I might contrast—it was a Government that governed for the few. They governed for the corporates. They were driven by greed and profiteering, and, essentially, they didn’t care at all about the crisis. People will remember that they denied, denied, denied there was a housing crisis. They didn’t care about the growing number of homelessness; they didn’t care about the growing inequality. So, contrast that with the new leadership that is being demonstrated by this Government. It is a Government that in its leadership is proving to not only the people of New Zealand but also the international arena that it is very possible to be able to be responsible stewards of the economy while advocating for concepts such as compassion and kindness. That’s the kind of new leadership.

I’ve never felt so proud in my life as when seeing our Prime Minister at the UN delivering a speech that didn’t just speak about New Zealand but spoke about its people and spoke about the peoples of the Pacific region. I think that sent a clear and strong message that New Zealand is firmly a part of the Pacific region and that its interests aren’t just confined to the length and breadth of New Zealand but its interests are also about looking after our Pacific region. I know, after the delivery of that speech in the United Nations by our Prime Minister, that many of the Pacific leaders that I met along the way, who flew through New Zealand to get home—I’ve never seen them feel so proud to be associated with New Zealand. I think it was genuine and they passed on that message, which I was proud to be able to pass on to our Prime Minister.

I think it’s fitting to reflect first and for people to remember the context of the kind of economy that we picked up: yes, that we have solid GDP growth today; yes, we have surpluses today; yes, our debts are at target; yes, our unemployment rate is hovering around 4 percent; yes, our wages are forecast to grow at around 3 percent, but that’s not the kind of economy that we inherited. We inherited an economy that was basically on the verge of being wrecked by the recklessness of that group there because they were so fixated on tax cuts for the wealthy, on tax cuts for the few. They took money out of health, education, and took money from families because they were fixated on making sure that the tax cuts would benefit their friends, their mates, and their corporates.

That’s why last year our first Budget was solely focused and it was termed by the Minister of Finance as the foundational Budget. We needed to restore confidence in our economy. We needed to restore funding in education and housing and health. We needed to be able to lift incomes for working families, particularly families with young children. That’s why it’s such a proud feeling to be associated with a Government that’s actually making a difference to families. And I feel that confidence coming through, emanating from people. I don’t know about the other Ministers, but every event that I attend to in the Pacific communities the length of breadth of this country, the feedback is positive. I just want to say what a wonderful Government this is. OK—that’s enough. But there is a new mood. There is a confidence that is shared by people on the ground, and that’s despite the harsh, malicious rhetoric that we often hear by people on their soap boxes, aligned to that group there, and that’s wrong.

I want to say that in the last year, I spent considerable time meeting with the Pacific communities. It’s a real privilege and a pleasure to engage with them. The Pacific communities are growing in the regions. As a result of that engagement, the ministry was able to put together a report called Lalanga Fou. Lalanga Fou is a report that captures the dreams and aspirations of Pacific peoples all over New Zealand. We’ve been able to group them, essentially, in four themes: “Thriving Pacific Languages, Cultures and Identities”, “Prosperous Pacific Communities”, “Resilient Healthy Pacific Communities”, and “Confident, Thriving and Resilient Pacific Young People”.

I want to acknowledge Matua Shane Jones—the first citizen of the regions, the father of the Provincial Growth Fund—because he recognised that in the regions we had to tackle some of the long-term challenges of unemployment. Using his pūtea, the Provincial Growth Fund, part of the $82 million for Te Ara Mahi work that Willie Jackson and others are involved with, the ministry has received $8.85 million for the next two years to work to tackle the challenges of unemployment, so that we’re transitioning a very successful Pacific employment programme in Auckland into the regions.

I also want to acknowledge Grant Robertson, as, working together with him, we were able to release a report that I call the Pacific economy. We are laying the foundation as a good starting point to build and lift well-being, and that foundation in the Pacific economy, essentially, we were able to scope out—the Pacific peoples contribute $8 billion into New Zealand’s economy: 1,500 businesses, 500 NGOs, and Pacific peoples contribute 27,000 hours on voluntary services on a weekly basis. I want to say to this House: imagine the kind of contribution we could make if we were able to eliminate the inequities and the challenges that Pacific peoples face in a range of areas, because that’s their contribution despite the challenges of rental accommodation, despite the challenges in health and education.

I now want to finish off by simply also acknowledging the Rt Hon Winston Peters, because it’s been a pleasure working alongside him and formulating the Pacific reset. It’s acknowledged, for Pacific reset, that Pacific peoples gravitate towards the Pacific as their ancestral home in the same way that Māori gravitate to the iwi and marae, wherever they may be, from the urban areas. What that acknowledgement is is that we’ve got to build these stronger relationships around the Pacific region. I want to acknowledge that in the precincts this week is a delegation of very high-powered people that I would refer to as the powerhouses of the Fijian Parliament: eight members of Parliament from the Fiji Parliament; four Ministers and four members of Parliament, and what a pleasure it is to be able to host them in our precincts this week.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to stand and oppose the Prime Minister’s statement. First of all, I would like to pay my acknowledgment to all the volunteers and the firemen who put a lot of effort into getting control of Nelson’s wildfire. We have to acknowledge the hard work they have done in the past almost two weeks.

I would also like to pay my tribute to the soldiers who died on 14 February in India. It was a very sad moment that on that day, many of the people were celebrating Valentine’s Day and some of the families were mourning the martyr who died on that day. It took almost three days for this Government to come out and condemn that incident, whereas we saw that many of the countries around the world, they were very prompt: in less than 24 hours, they condemned the incident, which was cowardly and heinous, and we have seen that more than 46 people died in that incident. This Government, which does not consider at all having good relationships with some of the Asian countries—and India is one of the powerhouses. It was very disappointing for this Government to take almost three days to condemn such an incident. When I have talked to the people of Indian origin living over here, they are really upset. They were really upset that this Government, who should have come up—and they always claim that they are very close to the Indian community, but they are not. That’s the fact which was proven in the last three days.

In the statement, the Prime Minister did take up many issues but did not have any content, and many of the things which are very close to people’s hearts were not touched by the Prime Minister’s statement. First of all, there was a big claim that KiwiBuild is going to change the life of every Kiwi, but whereas there was no mention. It was claimed that in the first year, about a thousand houses will be built. What we hear now is it is less than 50 houses to be completed by July, whereas the Prime Minister came up with a totally different ball game and mentioned that there is no target at all, there is nothing which we are going to achieve—whatever is delivered, that will be delivered.

Then we have seen that number of jobs being created during the National Government: every month, 10,000 houses, 10,000 jobs—new jobs—were created. What we have seen in the last quarter: just 650 jobs are being created, which is a total disappointment. What we are also seeing is that there is a drop in the GDP growth as per Treasury. We have seen it is going backwards, not forward, whereas the members of the Government are trying to claim that this economy is going from strength to strength.

We have also seen that there was a big debate about the prison population. That’s also not being delivered. There was big debate about the number of front-line police officers. We don’t hear anything from the Government benches at all. There is no mention at all of what’s happening. I would like to mention to the previous speaker, the Hon Aupito William Sio, that in his electorate, people are protesting because of increased crime. What we are seeing in South Auckland is that crime is increasing. We have seen that the people are protesting the number of shoot-outs that have happened over there. The people are feeling insecure in South Auckland.

We have also seen the increase in people who are not in employment, education, or training. It has increased by 26,000, and—

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: No, no, no.

The Minister over there is saying “No, no.”, but that is a fact. He has to read about it.

We have also seen that our relationship with our biggest trading partner, China, is also deteriorating from time to time. We have seen a number of things. The Ministers are waiting to have clearance to visit China, but they are not getting it. We have seen that there are so many issues. The fishery consignment is sitting on the borders of China not being cleared. So these are the issues which are of concern to Kiwis, but this Government is not at all making any effort to make sure that there is a strong economy which can be continued. The previous speaker also mentioned about the economy, that we inherited a very strong economy from National. That is a fact, whereas he was saying otherwise.

I would also like to touch upon the communities. They feel offended to see that—I remember that a number of spokespeople, while Labour was in Opposition, were talking about community police stations being closed by the National Government, and when they were asked if they will open up—no. Nothing has happened. No additional police stations have been opened under this regime, no new targets have been set, whereas we had set a target that there will be 24/7 police stations available, and additional funding was given out for rural areas. What we have seen from this Government is that number of working groups being set up—more than 200 working groups have been set up because this Government did not have policies in place for what they were going to do when they formed the Government. I feel this Government was formed by an accident, and this Government can also be called an accidental Government.

We are also seeing that the number of tourists from China is dropping. There is a drop of almost 8 percent, which is going to affect many of us. There was a review to be taken place in immigration, which is very close to the migrant community, for the parent category. For almost the last year, the file has been sitting on the Minister’s table, but no action has been taken so far. People, every day when I go out, keep asking what’s happening with the review, which was meant to be taking place a year ago, and also we are seeing that the changes in the immigration policy are affecting the newcomers over here.

These are some of the issues which are very close to the ethnic communities. We have seen that this Government is not delivering anything. It is just a Government of broken promises. They made so many promises, thinking that they were not going to form the Government. Accidentally, they formed the Government, but they are not in a position to deliver anything.

When we talk about the roads, they are tracking back. For example, just yesterday, I left my home and, normally, it takes about 30 minutes to reach the airport, but it took me more than 1½ hours to reach the airport because of the congestion. No new roads are being committed to. Whatever we had committed to increase the highway capacity has been withdrawn. What we are listening to is light rail coming from the waterfront to the Mount Roskill area, but when? Nobody knows. It is just another broken promise, which was—

💬 Simeon Brown: 2095.

Oh, 2095, my friend Simeon Brown says, and I think that’s right, because we see that there is nothing happening—nothing happening. So this Government, I believe—our accidental Government—is full of broken promises—

💬 Simeon Brown: And lots of accidents.

—and lots of accidents—and I hope that soon this Government is thrown out and a new National-led Government takes over this country.

This is a Green Party call, and I understand this is a split call. I call the Hon Eugenie Sage—five minutes.

Tēnā koe, Madam Assistant Speaker. Last Friday, I was really pleased to be at Te Heapara Marae near Ruatōria with the Minister of Employment, Willie Jackson, to launch a new training programme targeting the Waiapū catchment, Ka Hao te Rangitahi. Now, that programme is an example of the innovation that is happening with this Government. It’s designed to give young people the skills and training that they need to get jobs in their local communities through conservation and erosion management in the Waiapū catchment. It’s another example of joined-up thinking by the Government, because it’s a programme that involves a major grant under the Provincial Growth Fund, the Department of Conservation, Ngāti Porou, and the Eastern Institute of Technology all working together to deliver for young people and for their region.

The Waiapū River is one of the most heavily polluted with sediment in New Zealand, and so this programme will give those young people, those rangatahi, the skills in nursery seedling raising, in fencing, in driving agricultural machinery, in pest management, and in erosion planting, so that at the same time as they are getting skills that will enable them to get jobs in the agricultural sector or in pest management, they are also helping restore the health of te taiao. So it’s this Government’s recognition that a healthy environment is central to the well-being of people and the well-being of our economy, and that programme sums that up.

Just yesterday, I was really pleased to be at Zealandia, alongside the Minister for Regional Economic Development, the Hon Shane Jones, launching there a new grant from the Provincial Growth Fund that will enable Predator Free New Zealand Ltd to widen its landscape-scale predator control work and its regional predator control work. Again, this is just the sort of thinking that this Government is about. That will enable Predator Free New Zealand to invest in at least two more regions to do projects similar to those that have already been launched in Taranaki, in Hawke’s Bay, on Waiheke Island, and on the Otago Peninsula, where we’re seeing a joint effort between iwi, landholders, regional councils, the community, and the Department of Conservation to get stoat, rat, and possum numbers down so that we can protect the health of our forests and protect our special native birds.

It’s interesting that the National Party seems to be in considerable disarray. They don’t support using innovative programmes like the Provincial Growth Fund to invest in conservation. They don’t support using that programme to invest in innovation—to use the effective tools that we already have, like landscape-scale pest control, to get on with the job of protecting our special indigenous flora against pests—to ensure that innovators and inventors all around New Zealand can access that funding to take products to market.

Yesterday, we saw some really innovative new traps to better trap rats, because of the huge increase in landholders and community representatives all around Aotearoa who are in this predator-free army, who are working to protect what is special about indigenous Aotearoa. Yet, on the National Party benches, we had the former Minister Maggie Barry really supporting Predator Free New Zealand and really supporting the use of 1080 to get pest numbers down, but now the National Party is wanting to go after blue-sky research in GE. It’s wanting to divert all of the funding that we use on current tools, which we know are effective because of all of the research that’s been done to show that they work, and, instead, the National Party wants to leave birds to perish at the teeth of stoats and rats. They want to just divert all that existing funding into new, speculative research, despite the fact that GE technology is not used anywhere in the world to control predators.

We have the tools. We know they can work. We’re investing in more innovation to do that work more extensively, and I’m proud to be part of a Government that recognises that investing in nature is critical to getting jobs in the regions and to our well-being as a country and a healthy society. Kia ora.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to support the motion.

In this short contribution, I want to tell two stories of climate change. The first was under the previous Government. I was in the Pacific with the Hon Murray McCully. We were in the country of Kiribati, one of the poorest and one of the most low-lying countries on the entire face of the planet. There, I saw them use the only materials they had at hand, which was literally the garbage on this tiny atoll, with 60,000 people crowded on it. The only thing they could use to stem the rising tides was the garbage, and they were mounting up piles of garbage. For them, climate change wasn’t something happening in decades or centuries and it wasn’t something that was happening in the Antarctic. It was a lived reality, today. They could see the saltwater seeping up through their plants.

They asked me, five years ago, what New Zealand was doing about climate change, and what could I tell them? Here was our Prime Minister at the time on the world stage, saying that scientists were like lawyers—you could always get a different opinion. New Zealand at the time was arguing that we were such a small country that our emissions didn’t matter, but, deep down, I knew that we had the fifth-highest emissions per person in the entire developed world. How could I tell them that New Zealand didn’t have a separation of oil and State, and the previous Government was lavishing tax breaks and subsidies on the fossil fuel industry? They were hosting these lavish retreats for the oil companies. They were passing anti-democratic legislation under urgency: the Anadarko amendment. They literally called out the navy on hapū protesters Whānau-a-Apanui.

I felt bad because, as a proud Kiwi, I wanted to tell a story of my country on the world stage that was making a difference to our Pacific neighbours. Now, juxtapose that with what we heard this week from our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. Here we saw a Prime Minister who is standing for change, representing a country that voted to get away from the old ways of doing politics—the crony capitalism, the dodgy deals, the focus on the old polluting economy. We saw the country vote for political change but also for action on climate change. I was so proud to see my Prime Minister say that this issue—climate change—was our country’s nuclear-free moment.

Now, another story I want to tell happened today at lunchtime, out on the forecourt of Parliament. There, youth climate leaders were rallying outside Parliament, urging climate action. I heard from inspiring young Kiwis with fire in their bellies and a passion for protecting our planet, calling for this Parliament to go further and to act faster on the greatest challenge of our generation—climate change. There were kids there from high school, who said, “In class, we learn about the physics of climate change, but we aren’t taught how to take action. What’s the point of being in class when we’re learning facts, but we know we’re in the generation which might not be able to use those facts if there’s no planet to grow up in?”

Now, we heard the grumps, of course, who said that kids should stay out of politics and that kids should be kids. But the science is so alarming that we need to make sure that our kids can grow up and become grandparents. The scientists have said we only have 12 years left to avoid a climate catastrophe. The Met Office in the UK says that within five years we could hit 1.5 degrees. That’s why we need a Government that’s going to act and not make excuses. It’s not going to delay. And James Shaw came out to the rally and said, “This year the New Zealand Government will pass a zero climate Act.” The Greens and our partners in Government have achieved a 100 percent renewable electricity target, a green investment fund, and hundreds of millions of dollars to insulate Kiwis’ homes. The Government has made the needed but hard calls. Now, National used to always say that we would need to transition away from oil and gas, but they never had the courage, they never had the integrity, and they never had the leadership to actually say when that transition would start. Well, this Government has drawn a line in the sand that’s fair for the workers but, most importantly, it’s also protecting the climate.

Now, it’s a sunset industry and we need it to be. But in New Zealand we’re blessed with a wealth of clean, cheap, renewable electricity generation. We’ve been called the Saudi Arabia of wind. Every 25 minutes in New Zealand today a new solar system is installed on someone’s roof. Every month a new megawatt of home battery storage is added to our grid. Transpower, our transmission provider, is saying that by 2050 we could see 1.5 million homes being virtual power stations across the country, producing their own cheap, clean electricity from the sun. We’re never going to export electricity, but the solutions we develop could be the solutions we export around the world.

There’s no limit to the export of intellectual property, of software, of services, of the clean energy solutions the world is calling out for. So I want to be able to say when I next go back to Kiribati—I can look them in the eye and say that this was a Government that acted; this was a Government that took the steps needed on the world stage to protect future generations from the greatest challenge facing us. Kia ora koutou.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I commend you on your eyesight for being up to see this far up the back of the Chamber. It’s good to be here and be able to speak. It’s been a little while since I’ve had an opportunity to speak in this Chamber. I know a number of people never expected I would come back and speak in the Chamber—maybe some people in this Chamber sitting here right now—but I’ve decided to come back and contribute as the member of Parliament for Botany, and I am looking forward to this opportunity to speak on the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement.

Can I say, Mr Speaker, firstly, a thank you to you. I personally want to say thank you to you because you have handled the events of last year and dealt with myself in a very courteous way and I am appreciative of all of that. And I appreciate the kind comments I’ve received from many of the other members in this Chamber to date since coming back last week.

I noticed some words that were spoken by a long-standing member of this Chamber as she finished her speech last week. She said, “I hope we discuss more about New Zealanders and how we deliver for them, as opposed to the personalities and the insults that can be thrown around this House at times.” I thank Paula Bennett for those comments. I agree with her.

Having had the opportunity to see politics and see debates in this Chamber from afar for a few months, it’s given me a new perspective on how we debate things in this Parliament, and I hope that throughout the year and next year and long term into the future this Parliament does debate issues and how we can impact New Zealanders lives and how we can progress good, positive outcomes for New Zealanders.

My vote will formally be cast in favour of the Leader of the Opposition’s motion, and opposed to the confidence motion for the Government, but I have to say I do see many good things in the Prime Minister’s statement that I hope are progressed for New Zealanders. One of the areas that I welcome in the Prime Minister’s statement is the Government’s commitment to the mental health system. I have had some personal experience recently with the mental health system, and I don’t intend to spend a long time in this speech talking about myself, but I have to say, as someone who has just recently experienced up front, up close, the mental health system, that the people working in that system are exceptional people. They do amazing work saving the lives of New Zealanders, and I thank them for the work that they do.

The recent inquiry into mental health highlighted that in New Zealand 20,000 people attempt suicide or attempt to take their own life every year, and 520 people on average die and are successful in that. I was one of those 20,000 people. Having been in a mental health facility, having my liberty taken away, having no cell phone, I needed to seek permission to get access to food and drink; I needed to seek permission to speak to anybody in the outside world. Being in that situation really highlights to you the amazing people that work in that system and the amazing people that support New Zealanders. It also highlighted to me though, as I was talking to the staff, the workforce, in the Counties Manukau mental health facility that they wish they could do more. They wish they could support New Zealanders more. If you’re in acute distress and you’re someone who has got to that very, very serious point where people need to intervene in your life, you get amazing access; you get amazing support. They will do everything they can for you.

But what the mental health inquiry highlighted was that missing middle underneath. If you’re not at the acute point, you don’t have great access to support. If you’re not at the point where you’re about to harm yourself or others, then the support that should be available for New Zealanders in that situation is not there. Having read that mental health inquiry and having read some of the recommendations, I hope that the Government picks that up, and I hope that there’s cross-party support for that. I acknowledge David Clark’s advocacy on this. I think the media criticism of him that he might want to move a bit quicker probably is valid, but at least there’s some effort there. I also want to acknowledge Chlöe Swarbrick for everything she’s doing in that area, and also Matt Doocey, who I know has experience in this sector and is working hard at it.

I have noticed a charity that operates in Auckland. It’s called Voices of Hope. It’s run by two young women who have also had experience with the mental health system, and their motto is “It’s not weak to speak.”, and I think they’re right. Awareness of what goes on in this country is important. Putting more effort and more funding into mental health is what we can do as politicians. It’s what the Government can do. But the Government alone can’t solve these issues. It’s about awareness, and it’s about supporting New Zealanders. When it comes to those in the workplace, those in charge of running a workplace and keeping people safe, I think awareness in that area is also important. The mental health inquiry set a very lofty goal of increasing access from 3 percent of the population to 20 percent; that’s possibly unachievable in the five years that they’ve suggested that should be achieved, but it is a goal that we should be striving towards.

One of the other areas that I want to focus on in my time here is on issues that are important to my electorate and issues that are important to New Zealanders. In question time today I raised some questions around the issue of donations and the issue of overseas influence in donations. I have to say I share the views of Dr Nick Smith when he raised just recently a suggestion that there should be a ban on foreign donations to political parties. He said—this is a quote from him—“There is the issue of funding, and whether foreign Governments are either directly or indirectly, through shelf companies, using funds to inappropriately influence outcomes.” I’m unsure what Minister Andrew Little’s work programme is in this area, but I know that the Electoral Act and matters to do with that are within his portfolio, and I’m sure the Government has a view that New Zealand politics should be for New Zealanders.

But there are some obvious holes in our framework for political party donations and some obvious holes in the Electoral Act. Nick Smith is right when he raises the question around shelf companies being used for political party donations. Our political party donation regime does require a political party to outline and disclose when they’ve received a donation, but a donation can come from an individual—a New Zealand citizen, a New Zealand resident—or it can come from a company, or it can come from a trust. It is easy for those who are foreign nationals that wish to donate to a political party and have influence through those donations to use New Zealand – based companies to do so. It is possible for those living in other countries to utilise companies that might be in their own name to fund New Zealand political parties. I have to say, it’s time for that law to be updated.

I’ve asked a range of written questions to the Prime Minister and other Ministers on issues like this because I am also concerned that we don’t have tight enough controls on what Ministers may be doing when they’re overseas. I think it’s very timely that consideration is given to the way in which Ministers conduct themselves when they’re on overseas travel. The Prime Minister, through the Cabinet Manual, has the ability to approve personal travel for Ministers to depart from an itinerary that they’re on to make a personal visit. Should there be an instance where a Minister of the Crown, in the past, has received approval for a personal departure from their approved itinerary and met with a foreign national where political party donations have been discussed, I think that’s an issue that New Zealanders would be very interested in. I think New Zealanders would expect that our donation regime be strong enough to stop foreign nationals, through companies that they own, donating to New Zealand political parties.

In my time here, I’m looking forward to raising issues like this. I’m also looking forward to working on local electorate issues, and I’ve written to Minister Twyford recently to take up his option last week of cooperating with him on a transport link between Botany and the airport. In the future, I’m also looking forward to discussing issues to do with housing affordability. I think the Government that I was a part of and a member of for some time did many, many good things. The economy is better because of the last National Government, there are more people in jobs, and debt was seriously addressed, but there are some areas that I think we did fail New Zealanders—the mental health sector is one of them. I am deeply unhappy that we didn’t do enough to address housing affordability for young New Zealanders into the future. And if the Government can do one thing to help young people into the future, addressing mental health and also addressing housing affordability is one of those issues. Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the time.

E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. E ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. I’m very pleased to take a call on the Prime Minister’s statement. Can I first acknowledge the sad passing of Nate Miller—a young man from the Tai Rāwhiti who lost his life tragically in forestry last week. To his whānau, to his friends and colleagues, I just want to send my mihi aroha out to them all.

I’m proud to be part of a Government that is not just managing the shop but leading and facing up to the major challenges of our time. I’m proud of a Government that brings together different parties with different traditions, who puts people at the centre of what we do to help New Zealand and New Zealanders achieve our potential to bring equality and a fair go for our people and environment. I’m proud of the year that we have had, the Families Package, the record investments in health and education, funding for conservation, and investment in our regions. I’m proud of what we will do this year.

Over the summer, I travelled around the country. At the national waka ama at Lake Karāpiro, where we had over 2,500 paddlers, I had the honour of hosting the Minister of Sport and Recreation and the Minister of Finance, the Hon Grant Robertson. I travelled to Waitangi and travelled across my electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti.

Māori are welcoming the year of delivery. Māori value ourselves as people of Aotearoa New Zealand. We value engaging our senses: our sense of place, our sense of purpose, our sense of community, and our sense of compassion. Māori are looking forward to working with Government and welcoming the positive opportunities that they bring and will create. We heard from the Prime Minister that she doesn’t just want to govern; she wants to lead. She has said in this House that we need to do things differently. She also said we have to take some risk.

In the short time I am on my feet, I want to acknowledge the work this Government is doing around the development of Māori land. I want to talk about the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, who, through her agency, is building Māori landowners’ capability and ensuring that Māori can govern their land. We have approximately 600,000 acres of Māori land that’s either landlocked or has no governance arrangement. At a mere $1,500 return per hectare, that is just short of $1 billion—$900 million of lost productivity to the New Zealand economy. So it is well within this Government’s right to invest in Māori land.

I want to talk about the $100 million whenua fund that the Hon Shane Jones and the Prime Minister announced at Waitangi. That is going to lead, obviously, to developing Māori land so we can take our products to the market. Of course, I also want to acknowledge the Hon David Parker for his commitment around trade for all, with a particular focus on Māori. I’m keen to see these enablers unlock potential in regions like Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, which has one of the highest gatherings of Māori freehold land. The barriers to unlocking the potential of this land are being addressed by this Government. The people of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti are pretty excited that here is a Government that is listening to them; that’s enabling them to govern their own land; that is investing in them through shovel-ready whenua projects that will raise not only incomes but also opportunities in those regions; and a Government that’s committed to doing something different when we come to trade—what I consider the push factor and the pull factor. The $100 million fund investment will enable more Māori to utilise the very land that I mentioned earlier—the 600,000 hectares of landlocked or land that has no governance structures around it.

So I’m proud to be part of a Government that will do things differently, that will take some risk, and that will not just sit there and govern but lead. It is this time to shine. It’s the year of delivery. On this side of the House, we will be working very hard to ensure that we are delivering to all—to all folks throughout this great country of ours. Of course, Māori are seen very highly from this side of the Government as a community of interest that will add its weight to what this Government is aiming to achieve. I’m pleased to be part of a Government that’s progressive under the leadership of the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, who’s doing a fantastic job for us domestically and internationally. Kia ora.

I too rise and am proud to rise in support of the Prime Minister’s statement. As I was listening to my colleague the Hon Meka Whaitiri speak there, I thought, actually, I’m proud too. I’m also really proud to be standing here as part of a Government that’s leading—facing up to those major challenges as my colleague spoke about. Sometimes it’s not easy when you’ve got so many challenges that are in front of you. The task can seem too big, but we’re not scared of that, and this Government is not scared of that. We are standing up and we are leading, and we have a fantastic leader in our Prime Minister, who is just such a fantastic role model for us all.

We are building a stronger and a fairer country for all New Zealanders. Every single person in this country is feeling the absolute success that we are starting to see coming from this Government’s gains. But one area that I want to talk about, that I’m absolutely the proudest of, is the true gains that we are making in our goal of New Zealand being the best place to be a child. I think the work that we are doing in this area is fantastic. Children and families are at the heart of what we do in this Government.

In the education space: just two things that I want to talk about very briefly of what we have achieved. Firstly, the repealing of national standards, meaning that we can actually get back to a much richer curriculum for our children. We can develop them as whole and total people, not just the narrow literacy and numeracy skills that actually stop them from being the wonderful people that they can be. We’re actually looking at a much wider focus for those young people now.

But the one that I really want to talk about, that I believe we’re going to see some huge gains in this year—because I can speak of so many from personal experience—is the fees-free. Now, we’ve heard some debate from both sides about fees-free, but I just want to tell a couple of wee stories of what that looks like in reality and what that has meant in reality this year for young people that I know of. At the school that I used to be principal of, we never had young people who went to university. In fact, in my whole 11 years there as principal, not one young person from that school had enrolled in university. This year, we have six young people enrolled in university for the first time ever. And when I’ve talked to all of those young people, every single one of them said that fees-free had been a big part of the decision that helped them go along that pathway.

There are others who are enrolled in other equally as important tertiary education for the very first time. Again, when I talk to them, fees-free is the reason for them. I just think that that is absolutely fantastic, and if anybody says that that is not a success, then look those young people in the eye and say that they don’t matter, because that is what this Government has done for those young people. They have opened up their choices and we have opened up the world for them.

That is just the beginning. We have so much more to do in that space, and I am so proud of the work that we are doing in expanding Mana in Mahi. That means that we are looking at advancing young people by reducing the number of young people that are not in employment, education, and training. We are really working hard with those young people. We are advancing reforms in the vocational sector. That is really exciting work.

Now, I went to a horticulture event last week, one that was run up in the Bay of Plenty, and people wanted to come to talk to me about what was happening in that vocational sector and the work that we’re doing. I had mayors come to speak to me about it, and I had people from the tertiary institutions come to speak to me about it. Actually, all of them—once we had the conversation—were really excited about the potential that they could see that was coming from that vocational training. They could see the intent to actually deliver more into the regional areas. They were excited because they could see that that meant more for our region but, particularly in their horticulture space, they could see that something could be coordinated and be better delivered than it has been in the past.

So I think that having such fantastic education policies around having children being in the best place, our learners being in the best place to learn in this country, I just think is absolutely fantastic and I’m proud.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker, and as this is my first contribution in the House today, I just want to wish everybody a happy New Year—to fellow members and also to staff. This is a very special week this week in Parliament. We have a visit from the Fijian members of Parliament, and they all happen to be women, and so I send out a very warm welcome to them. Also, in Wellington, we have the big kapa haka festival Te Matatini ki te Ao. That is an amazing event that will bring many, many Māori to the capital.

I just wanted to open my speech with a little bit of salutation around those two events that are happening here in Wellington because, back to the business of the Prime Minister’s statement, it’s been very disappointing, actually, the offerings from this Government so far. The Budget last year, let us have a look at that. Māori got a hit there. We got absolutely—well, I can’t say “bugger all”, but hardly any money in our Vote Māori. Māori education took a hit. Our partnership schools were wiped out, Aspire Scholarships, and now we have the Tomorrow’s Schools review, which isn’t going down that well with many principals and parents. It’s abysmal, I say.

Then of course we’ve got Whānau Ora. Whānau Ora—it was promised in the 2017 election that there would be $20 million set aside for that, of which nothing came from that. There was absolutely nothing. And what happened? There was a Whānau Ora review, a Whānau Ora review that actually was completed and submitted—I know it was submitted—to the Minister in October of last year, and yet it seems, from my sources, that the review report will most probably, and it’s just speculation, be released tomorrow—tomorrow—when we have the opening, the pōwhiri, for Te Matatini. What a time to release a report that has many whānau hanging on the edge of their seats wondering what future they will have under a Whānau Ora programme.

Since the Government’s been in place, I’ve been hard pushed to see any value that this Government has made towards Whānau Ora, let alone hear the words “Whānau Ora” muttered by those Cabinet members that are supposed to be representing Māori. Where are you? You’ve gone missing. You are only there—I’m sorry, Mr Assistant Speaker; I don’t mean to bring you into my debate. However, what’s happened is that I’m getting feedback off the ground that the only time that they see Cabinet Ministers from this Labour-led coalition Government is when there is a ribbon to cut, an award to give, but when it is hard-hitting things like “Where is the Whānau Ora report? What is happening to Whānau Ora?”, where are they? Nowhere—and I get asked where they are and I say, “I’m not even in the coalition Government. Come on.”

But anyway—so I am disappointed, so much hullabaloo around the number of Māori MPs in the coalition Government and yet nobody’s doing anything. Nobody’s fronting up to the hard things. I think that when it comes to treating the Māori vote as something that should be always on the left side, I think that when push comes to shove Māori voters will have the last say, and it may not be that good in 2020 for those that rely on that vote, because to treat Māori like the way that they’re currently being treated is terrible. It is absolutely terrible.

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: Ha, ha!

You can laugh. Laugh away. Laugh away, Willie, but I can tell you now: the very people that the Minister sits there and laughs about are the very people that are telling me that they are disappointed in the performance of the Māori Cabinet Ministers. That’s terrible.

Unemployment—let’s look at unemployment. Unemployment was in here—the Government was going on about how good the numbers are, but, hey, the numbers went up. They’ve gone up. Unemployment is rising and it’s not good for this country to have unemployment rising. Business confidence is down. We hear about it all the time: it’s down. If business confidence goes down, that affects employment. The very things that people depend on that feed into the welfare system—that feed into the welfare system that pays the unemployed—are benefits, so they can actually find work for themselves, an interim measure.

So if we had business confidence going, we have landlords that are getting hit with all sorts of pieces of legislation that is making it difficult for them to keep their houses available for tenants. So who wears it? It will be the tenant, who will get a raised rent because someone has to pay. And I think this coalition Government does not get it. They are not listening and that is the most telling thing when it comes to Budgets and the Prime Minister’s statement.

Relationships with other countries—let’s look at China. That’s been on the front page of the newspapers. It’s been in the news. It’s been everywhere. So why is this Government not making better efforts to improve that relationship with China? Why? What’s going on? We do rely on China. They’re one of our biggest export countries. We also need to be reminded that whilst National did all the hard work around the first free-trade agreement (FTA) with China, it was actually a Clark-led Labour Government that signed the FTA. We need to understand that; we need to remember that. Yet this is a Government that is turning their back on China and the impacts that will have on export. Already we’ve seen in the news Sanford, Sanford fisheries, loaded with export goods and they can’t offload into China. They can’t offload on to China.

So you know, when we start to look at tourism, for instance—the number of Chinese that were predicted to come here to New Zealand that may not come here now because of the way that this Government is treating the Chinese Government—it’s terrible. Will they do it to other countries? Who knows. I hope that there are no racism issues in there or other areas that would actually stop China from having us as an FTA partner.

I’m looking at what a strong economy can do. The farmers aren’t happy. The farmers aren’t happy and we know that this country was built on the backs of the hard-working labour of the farming economy, the agricultural economy.

💬 Barbara Kuriger: “Labour” in the true sense of the word.

That’s right: ‘labour” in the true sense of the word, Barbara Kuriger. And so when I start to look at agriculture, it is still a core economic growth for this country, yet farmers are getting sidelined. They’re getting pushed to the very edge of their survival, and that’s because this Government can’t get their act together and get this relationship with China sorted, as well as other relationships with other countries.

What will happen is that we will also see our strong education go; we’ll see our strong health system just collapse. What else will we see? We will see the respect that other countries gave to New Zealand during the financial crisis, for the way that we handled the economy—the way that a National-led Government handled the economy and got New Zealand ahead of the game—go at an international, global level. Unfortunately, that side of the House doesn’t get it. It does not get it. It does not get the damage that they are doing to our reputation as New Zealand.

I want to talk about a safer and just community.

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: Just sit down!

No, I won’t sit down, Mr Jackson, because I’ll tell Mr Jackson now that I’ve spoken more sense in this 10 minutes that I’ve given than he’s ever spoken in the 18 months that he has been a Minister of this Government.

So we’re having the big rise of those people who came home to New Zealand when there was a National-led Government and now they’re leaving. They’re taking their business and they’re going offshore. They’re leaving because they do not see a future under this Labour-led coalition Government. They do not see a future.

A failed KiwiBuild project that has seen 10,000 households on a waiting list for a house? Come on! If the Government cannot do the work, then get out of the Government benches and give it over to this side, to people who can do it, to people who are willing to step in and take over and run this country back to the economic favour that it had when we were last in Government.

Lastly, in 40 seconds: a year of delivery? I don’t think so. It seems more like a “deliver us from evil” type of statement. It is a Government that does not know how to manage this country, how to grow a strong economy, how to look after the environment. There are the Greens over there. How much is this coalition Government going to listen to that partner? On this side, we have a strong environmental group. We have a strong plan for climate change. This is the side that will do the things that people will see we are the better managers.

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I don’t know where that member has been—certainly not at the Finance and Expenditure Committee, should she be minded, along with any of her colleagues, to turn up—but we have the lowest unemployment we have had for many, many years. I heard the Governor of the Reserve Bank say that there were capacity constraints, and when I asked him exactly what he meant by that, he said, “There are not enough people to do the jobs. We need more skilled labour.” The suggestion that unemployment is any kind of a problem is absolutely fatuous.

We have an economy which is growing year on year and is projected to do so. The international institutions have improved our rating. As amongst our international peers, we are surging ahead. On all measures, New Zealand is doing better now than it has ever before. And do you know what I’m proudest of? That we are looking at more and more important measures—that we are not just going to talk about GDP and fiscal measures alone but that we are going to start measuring things that matter. Do you know why we are going to do that? We are going to do that because what we want to do is make a New Zealand where people can live the lives they choose.

One of the biggest constraints we know for people living a meaningful life is poverty. You can’t make choices if the only choice you really have to make is between feeding your children and paying for school books. So that is why things like the Families Package assisted 350,000 New Zealanders so that they could make better choices—better choices for themselves and better choices for their children. That’s why 600,000 people can now choose to go to the doctor and the cost of that visit won’t be a constraint, because we have made sure that GP fees are lower for 600,000 New Zealanders. And fees-free means that there are more New Zealanders who can make the choice to get into post-secondary education, into our fantastic universities and our polytechs and vocational training, which will be fantastic once we’ve cleaned up the mess of the last Government. Mr Hipkins is making a start on that. It’s a big job but they are critical to our trades and to our wider industry. So it’s fantastic to see that the work is being done there.

This is about capabilities. This is a Government which is going to build the capabilities of New Zealanders and look not just at numbers and outputs but at real outcomes for New Zealanders. So we’re not simply going to ask “How many of this is done?” or whether this list has been achieved but we are actually going to ask the question as to whether each Government department and their Ministers responsible have delivered outcomes that make real New Zealanders’ lives better. And if we look at that, one way we’re doing that is in the tax area. It might sound technical, but if we look at what we’re doing, we’re making a fairer and more balanced tax system. No longer is Amazon going to be able to get a tax break when it sends lower-value items into New Zealand free of GST—things like that and the recently announced internet providers tax to make sure that providers who don’t have a base in New Zealand but offer internet-based services still pay their fair share. It’s about making sure that everyone bears their share of the tax burden.

The idea of having a zero-carbon New Zealand—making sure that we measure not only how well we’re doing economically but how well we’re doing environmentally, and not just today and tomorrow but making sure that we leave a New Zealand which is more sustainable, one that will last for generations. It’s no use stealing our environment from our children and our grandchildren, degrading it and depleting it so there’s nothing left. This is a Government which has a multi-generational vision, and it’s one that’s been needed for nine long, long years.

So what we have here is a Government that is moving on, is looking after its people, is measuring all kinds of outcomes, and is here for all of New Zealand. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Kia ora e Te Mana Whakawā. It’s an absolute privilege to stand here and contribute in response to the Prime Minister’s statement. My kōrero today will be focused on leadership, integrity, and caring.

In terms of leadership, I always have to translate things to Tongan because I think better as a Tongan when things are under way. The word for “leadership”, when you translate it into Tongan, is “tauhi kakai”. Well, what does that mean? It means “caring for people”—caring for people. Fifteen months ago, in the Speech from the throne, it had every intention of caring for people. So I want to take this opportunity to thank the New Zealand people who voted for this coalition Government, because the Rt Hon Jacinda and the Rt Hon Winston Peters made the right choice for New Zealand. So I am thankful that I am on this side of the House.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: No, it’s only Winston you have to thank!

I just heard somebody speak on the other side, but past behaviour is a predictor of future behaviour. I will try and demonstrate what that means in the last 15 months. What is past behaviour as a predictor of future behaviour?

In her statement, the Prime Minister stated that this is why the first priority of our economic theme is to grow and share more fairly New Zealand’s prosperity. OK, so what is that behaviour? One was the Government’s Families Package—350,000 New Zealanders have got value from that. The Best Start payment—on 1 April, the minimum wage will be lifted to $17.70. Best Start—what will that mean to someone who is on the minimum wage come 1 April? That will mean that if they have a child, if they are on $708 before tax and they have a child and you live in Auckland, where the average rental is $550-something, for the next year they will get $75 because the Prime Minister and everybody on this side has heard every New Zealander saying, “We cannot grow our children, because we don’t have enough money.” And that is listening to them—the Best Start payment.

The winter energy payment—I was attending church throughout Christmas and the New Year, and what I heard from the older people in the church communities—particularly, I’m a Methodist; so the Tongan Methodist communities—was “Anahila, tell the Prime Minister, tell Jacinda”—because they relate to the Prime Minister as if she were one of their children—“thank you for the winter energy payment. I can turn my heater on, and I look forward to this year when I can’t turn my heater on in the winter.” What does that mean? That means when we talk about—I’m going to go, because my time’s up—some of her statement, the Prime Minister talked about warm housing and providing housing for New Zealanders. Every New Zealander in this country is vulnerable at the one time. We all are most vulnerable, and do you know when that is? It’s when we close our eyes. When we are asleep, we are at our most vulnerable. Whether you’re the Prime Minister or whether you’re a pre-schooler, we are all at our most vulnerable when we close our eyes. We expect to wake up in the morning somewhere safe, in a warm house, and that’s what’s being provided.

I want to now jump, because I want to respond to the last speaker from the other side when she talked about Māori. I want to say that my favourite quote these days is “No interpreter needed.” Leadership is about hearing that. Te Arawhiti - Māori Crown Relations—that’s about leadership. Piringa Māori and leading the relationship with Māori—that is about “No interpreter required.” Our well-being Budget: we’re going ahead, sailing ahead, to our well-being Budget, and in that lifting Māori and Pacific incomes, skills, and opportunity is a priority for every Government Minister, every Government department in this country. Why? Because the Prime Minister did not listen with her head; she listened with her heart. This is a Government who is leading with their heart, who’s leading with compassion. Integrity is about saying something, following through with doing it, but leadership is about the way you conduct yourself.

I am so thankful that I am on this side of the House and we are contributing and delivering for all New Zealanders.

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. In my first opportunity to speak in the House this year, I would like to wish you and all the members of Parliament the best for 2019.

I just want to pick up on a point that the last speaker made about how people are most vulnerable with their eyes closed. How I would like to respond to that is “Yes, that’s fine on a personal level, but, actually, our country is most vulnerable when we have a Government that has its eyes closed.”

Everyone’s been up there banging on about giving people this and giving people that and giving people something else; actually, if we had just let our taxpayers keep that $1,000 of their hard-earned money, which they earned themselves because they take personal responsibility seriously, then they would still be much better off.

According to the Prime Minister’s statement, she says that this is the year of delivery—2019 is the year of delivery. Now, we’ve seen very little delivered in 2018 or at the end of 2017, to the point where I was at a meeting recently and the minutes of the last meeting from the previous year were having a look at what the Government had done in its first hundred days, which was virtually zero—and it was noted that, actually, the meeting was at the 130-day point. Actually, when we went through all of the issues—like housing, like law and order, and like safety; all of those things—if we looked at it a year later, 495 days, people are saying, “This Government still has done nothing.” So it’s all very well to have rhetoric, have ideology, talking about intentions, because intentions are not reality.

This week has been quite a special week for me because of two of my grandchildren. One of my grandsons, Max, is turning eight today, and my little granddaughter Aislinn turned eight yesterday. She saw something flash up on the news recently about how this Government’s going to build 100,000 houses, and she said to my son, “Dad, did the Prime Minister just say that this Government was going to build 100,000 houses?” He said, “Yes, that’s what she said.” And she said, “So how many have they built, Dad?”, and he said “Oh, about 47.” She said, “Dad, how long will it take for them to build 100,000 houses if they only go that fast?” If you round that off to 50, even be generous and round that off to 50, that’s 2,000 years. My eight-year-old granddaughter said to my son, “So why does the Prime Minister keep saying that she’s going to do this?” I think, you know, it doesn’t take much for an eight-year-old to work out that actually if you divide the years by the number of houses, she can actually see right through. So the Government’s got their eyes shut, but my granddaughter doesn’t.

Now, another thing that I wanted to talk about was well-being and, in particular, mental health, and that’s come up a few times in the discussion. Iain Lees-Galloway stood up before and he talked about the importance of friends, and none of us on this side of the House would deny the importance of friends. But we talk about friendship, we talk about communities, and I don’t know why this Government and the Ministers—Dr David Clark and Minister Damien O’Connor—actually refused to give $600,000 to the Rural Health Alliance, which was $1 for every person, man, woman, and child, that lives in rural New Zealand. So we’re hearing about “We’re going to fund well-being—we’re going to be the Budget of well-being”, but actually there was no well-being done there and there’s a lot of distance between people in rural communities. You know, it’s been extremely important with the Mycoplasma bovis going on, and there is one thing that I do commend. It does seem like the Mycoplasma bovis programme is working in terms of what it’s doing for the cow population. But there have been a lot of reports back out there from people about what it’s doing to the mental well-being of people in our communities. I commend the rural support trust for the time that they’ve spent in our rural communities looking after those people who have been through those devastating times. So, yes, the M. bovis thing is working, but we got a lot more work to do in rural communities, and if we haven’t got those data points to measure, I don’t know how anyone other than the rural support trust is going to do it.

The other thing was that really at the time when the whole bovis thing was going on and we got all these conversations about 70 percent of farmers not keeping their records and things from the Minister, we know that National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) wasn’t perfect and we know that not everyone in society has—you know, there are some faults with the records. However, when we go to select committee on the whole front of Mycoplasma bovis and we go “How many surprises did you find with tracking and tracing?”, because they keep telling us they were tracing these animals, according to the Ministry for Primary Industries it hasn’t gone over fences. They have had no surprises—they have had no surprises. So the finger was pointing at farmers—who can improve and NAIT can improve, and we all accept that sort of stuff—but they made it sound like farmers were a pack of bad people, when actually they’re not.

So every day I go out there—business confidence is down—[Interruption] OK? It’s the most worrying time for farmer confidence and it’s at its lowest level since 2009. And 2008 and 2009 were worrying years because we were getting through the global financial crisis. So this is actually the lowest confidence since the global financial crisis.

There’s a whole lot of blind positivity on the state of the economy. The economy was left in a really good state; thanks, Sir Bill English. The previous Government left the economy in a good state, but let this Government open its eyes, because economies must be stimulated and you have to have just transitions when you’re wildly changing things. I’m going to refer to the oil and gas decision, which is the most ridiculous decision when this Government claims it’s going to make any difference at all to global emissions and climate change, because all the reports actually said that it was going to have the opposite effect. And when we’re going to start seeing shiploads of coals come in and all of that sort of stuff, we know that gas is one of the most efficient things we have. We know that hydrogen might be for the future. We know that we will be finding other things for the future, but right now—and the Minister of Energy and Resources is here today—we don’t have those new technologies ready and in place to replace the old technologies. So when the gas prices go up or when people go to turn their lights on in the winter and the lights don’t come on, we are going to have some really, really big problems.

I’m going to state in my speech this afternoon that the provincial champions for New Zealand are over this side of the House. There’s a whole group of us over here. Some of them are sitting next to me in the House. We’ve got Nicola Willis and we’ve got Tim van de Molen. Under the previous Government, led by Sir John Key and Sir Bill English, we were getting our roads, we were getting our connectivity, we were getting our safer communities, and safer roads thing—Mt Messenger, which is in the lower end of my electorate, was actually budgeted for in Budget 2016. It was actually appropriated. It was delivered—well, the road’s not delivered but the money was delivered in Budget 2016, appropriated in 2016. So I’ve got a community going “We’re not getting our safer roads. We no longer seem to be getting anything in our rural communities, thanks to this Government, who are no longer out there, who don’t understand.”

💬 Kieran McAnulty: What a load of rot.

Not many people—Kieran McAnulty, I’ll make an exception for you, because I do know that you go out into rural New Zealand, but generally—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: You’re talking rubbish, Barbara Kuriger.

—I sent in—listen to this, Kieran McAnulty. I sent in a huge amount of questions to the Ministers about rural communities, and I asked what was happening in their ministry to measure and manage rural communities—all of the Ministers—and I’ve never seen such a big cut and paste exercise of standardised answers. I am going to commend Minister Jackson. I will commend the Māori Ministers, who actually put far more effort into it, because they do get out into the rural communities and they do understand.

Look, if this is going to be a year of delivery, I say to this Government that it’s about time to start, because we haven’t seen any delivery since your Government’s been in power. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.