Annual Review Debate — Financial and Government Administration Sector and Annual Financial Statements of the Government (continued)

Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to make a couple of comments, on behalf of our committee, on internal affairs, and the first comment I want to make is around the RealMe services. The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) reported to the Governance and Administration Committee that they weren’t happy with the progress of RealMe, and I know a little bit about it, as some members in the committee will know a little bit about it, because it’s been an issue which has been under consideration for quite some time.

The last time I was part of any consideration of RealMe was when I was chairing the Justice and Electoral Committee back in 2015. We were conducting a review into the general election of 2014, and it was at that time that we determined that having a good, verifiable RealMe form of identification would be very helpful in terms of ease of voting in a general election and, then, in a local election. Five years later—five years later—in the second year of the term of this Government, DIA are still expressing to the committee that the satisfaction levels with RealMe haven’t been as high as they would have liked.

In this Government’s year of delivery, I would like to know from the Minister in the chair just what he plans to do about RealMe verification, particularly since there is a renewed interest, it seems, on behalf of the Government, in conducting elections online. So it does seem to me that if the Government is going to move forward with that policy direction, then verification of voter identity should be pretty crucial to that work. I could not find any evidence of any consideration around that. So I’m very interested to see whether or not the Government is going to continue to sit on its hands over something which might not well be attention-grabbing and headline-grabbing but is crucial if we are going to have a good, safe online identity verification process. So I leave that question.

The other comment I would like to make is on our examination of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC). Before the committee thinks this is about Crown limos and all sorts of other things, it’s not; it’s actually about the outbreak of M. bovis. DPMC worked with the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) to ensure it had the full support that it needed in the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak. So having done that two years ago, it is now very disturbing to see that the M. bovis outbreak is not in fact tracking as well as MPI would like to have us believe. MPI just very recently reported that another 300 farmers—300 farmers—who’ve had high-risk animals move on to their property will now be contacted, and it is expected that 50 of those farmers will have notices of direction placed on them. So that means that there are 50 farmers who now cannot move stock on and off their property at a crucial time of year for them.

Now, DPMC have taken responsibility for that. So I want to know from the Minister, again, having set themselves up to support MPI, where we are with that. Where are we with that for rural New Zealand, who are already under a considerable amount of pressure from this Government, the latest of which is some totally unrealistic methane reduction levels in the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill, that was debated this afternoon? So this is just another example of the Government saying one thing and, in this case, DPMC saying “We will support MPI in their response to M. bovis,” and yet the contrary is true.

So what’s DPMC going to do about it? Are they just going to say, “Oh well, we tried. We helped MPI. We seconded a couple of officials across to a system.”? That’s not good enough. That is not good enough for those farming families in rural New Zealand, 50 of whom now have their farming operation stopped. I want the Minister to explain that to the committee.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair, for the opportunity. As a member of the Governance and Administration Committee, it was fantastic to be able to receive the annual review and look at the work that the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet had done. The area that I am most particularly interested in is the good work that they’ve done on monitoring child poverty and how we’re doing and tracking in that space. There’s a bit of background in that space. I think it’s really interesting to point out how long it took New Zealand to put in place those very important targets that we now have in legislation that form a fundamental part of our ongoing Wellbeing Budget and how we’re tracking. I remember very clearly how it was, really, put in the too-hard basket for the last Government, how it was said that it was not possible to track and monitor something as important as child poverty. It was only in the very last hours before the last election that we actually got a commitment from the other side to try and track how we reduce child poverty in New Zealand. This Government is very much focused on providing housing and education, and making sure families are well provided for so that we can look towards actively reducing child poverty in New Zealand. I’m proud to see how well our Prime Minister has championed this area, in particular by fronting this, by fronting this legislation and by putting in place clear targets that we’re required to report back on on a regular basis.

So in the Governance and Administration Committee it was really good to be able to hear that the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet said that the Child Poverty Reduction Bill, since enacted, works within the context of the framework and includes a requirement for Governments to report back on the impacts of their Budgets on child poverty. This works right across other Government departments and how we’re tracking on cases. If I can say this, one thing that I learnt in my time in New Zealand Police is that if it’s not counted, it doesn’t happen. So the fact that we count this and we monitor it shows that we care about it and we are determined to deliver on those outcomes, and that is why it is represented in legislation.

So a key part of this Wellbeing Budget is, in fact, to monitor on an ongoing basis the wellbeing of our people, and a big part of that is in reducing child poverty, to see how well we’re able to look at other parts of people’s lives, which goes a bit further than just measuring gross domestic product. GDP is a good measure of how we do, but it is rather one-dimensional. What this Budget enables us to do in the space of child poverty, and other very important parts of people’s lives, is to look deeper than that, because we know that there is more to life than simply balancing the chequebook. Yes, it is important to do that, but there is far more to people’s lives than just getting things into the black. We want to know how people’s mental health is. We want to know how well they are connected into their communities—are they engaged? We want to make sure that our kids have parents who are able to play with and then talk to their children, to give them that resilience for the next generation, because that is what contributes to the long-term improvement of our community’s mental health.

Too often we see the current economic conditions requiring children to be put into childcare before school, to be at school all day, and to have to go into after-school care. That’s because of the requirement for families to have two parents working very long hours. By increasing the hourly wages, by making sure we are actively reducing the housing crisis, and by bringing down the cost of housing, while that’s important to balance the books, it also means that mums and dads and caregivers right across New Zealand have more time with their children, and that is important for the children’s growth and for their development, and for the wellbeing of our country. That is what we are investing in this Budget—giving people the best chance to get ahead in life and giving our kids the things that they need the most to be the best generation that they can be in the future.

So I’m proud to have seen the good work that’s been done in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to make sure that these measures are in place across the board. I’m even more proud to be part of a team that’s delivering a wellbeing Budget that puts our people first.

Thank you, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to speak on the Appropriation (2017/18 Confirmation and Validation) Bill. First of all, I would like to talk about the Office of Ethnic Communities. Before I do that, I would like to congratulate and welcome Paulo Garcia, another ethnic MP who has joined our team today. Now, we have got six MPs of Asian origin in this House, and Paulo Garcia is the sixth one and the first Filipino. As the National Party has always done this, it has brought the diversity into this Parliament—the first Chinese, the first Indian, and the first Korean, and today the first Filipino MP has been brought in by the National Party. So I congratulate him.

As I mentioned, I will be talking about ethnic communities. In May 2018, the Office of Ethnic Communities organised a Safer Ethnic Communities Ministerial Forum in South Auckland. What was disappointing was to see that the members of ethnic communities who are represented in this House were not invited. When we asked why other ethnic MPs other than the Government MPs were not invited, the answer was that it is the Government’s responsibility, not our responsibility. So it was disappointing for us because we want our communities to be safe and we want to contribute, and that opportunity was missed.

I would also like to talk about a very important area which comes under the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA): Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ). It has got a big role. We know that about 14,000 career, volunteer, and support personnel who keep people and property safe are part of the Fire and Emergency New Zealand team. I would like to acknowledge their contribution to our country.

FENZ revenue in 2017-18 was $612 million, which was a significant increase in revenue from $418 million. This is a very important thing which we need to understand: there was a bill which was passed recently through this House where they will have this increased budget for the next four years. That is important to understand—that the people who are paying their insurances will have to pay extra premium for the next four years. We supported this because we want to ensure that FENZ is properly funded.

Having that much of a surplus is just a burden on the insurance payers, and this levy should be revised. The Minister of Internal Affairs, who has been very cooperative in talking about this, and I would like to acknowledge her, hopefully will consider reviewing this levy structure and reducing it for the next three to four years so that the people who are paying the extra levy should get some relief.

Another thing which I would like to touch upon from this financial performance of FENZ is that there is an existing drive on the levy, and we saw that the expenditure of FENZ is not increasing in comparison to what the revenue is. So we need to understand that this levy structure is unfair to the people who are paying their insurance.

I would also like to touch upon the passport service. Same thing over there—we have got increased passport fees, and the revenue has increased from $34 million to $55 million, which means that they will have extra funding. We know that the questions were raised to the DIA around why we are increasing this passport fee. That is another area in which people don’t realise that has been implemented in the last year. We also know that the time period for the passport has also increased from five to 10 years. We understand that the validity of the 10-year passport will see the reduction in the numbers.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I put it to the committee to get ready for a roller-coaster ride of excitement and a commitment from New Zealand First to work with Labour in this Government. Let me speak to the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s report on the financial statements.

This is a Government that is doing incredible things in a time in the world where the rest of the world’s economies are a little bit shaky. They’re only a little bit shaky, but the good news is our economy is projected to outperform them as we go forward. It’s projected to outperform them, and I put it to you that one of the reasons for that is this Government is one that’s committed to our international engagements around the world.

I speak of recent reports and statistics from our trade. The Minister for Trade and Export Growth was able to bring to this House some of the best trade statistics this country has seen in a very, very long time, and that is cause for immeasurable celebration. In a time where world economies are slowing down, we’re bucking the trend. We have businesses out there who are doing the hard yards, who are employing good Kiwis, especially in the regions—and hopefully I’ll get time to come to that—and who are employing good people in our regions and doing good work, all the while supported, and I commend the Minister in the chair, Grant Robertson, because this Government has run the surpluses, has run to the 20 percent confines that it has set upon itself, and is running a good Budget. We have achieved a lot in that time.

Already, I’m at the halfway mark, so I’d better tell the listening public what some of those achievements are. Unemployment in New Zealand is at its lowest in nearly its entire history. It is an economy that is going incredibly strongly, and add to that, those jobs are jobs where we are optimising labour utilisation, so engagement is better and higher and people are getting paid more. People are getting paid more. All the while, I think the statistic from just this quarter was 20,000 more jobs in this quarter alone and whilst wages are increasing, whilst there are more people working and contributing to this economy, to our exports, and to making New Zealand that export nation which we so proudly hold to in terms of our place in the world.

The wellbeing package: New Zealand First, and I in particular—I used to study wellbeing economics, so it is a pleasure to see New Zealand at the forefront of the world, actually, where our Budget is a commitment to the four wellbeings of our economy. The commitment to that speaks to the fundamental change that this Government has brought to New Zealand, in that we’re asking the question beyond strong GDP growth, which it is—2.8 percent is strong by world standards right now—and it’s forecast to get better. We’re making the commitment to ask that fundamental question: “And so what?” What does that mean for all New Zealanders if the economy is growing? What does that mean to my family in Rotorua, my cousins in Rotorua? What does it mean to people in Ōpōtiki or Gisborne—

💬 Simeon Brown: Their locus of control.

—not just wherever that guy’s from—sorry, Mr Chairman—the member on the other side of the Chamber who’s annoying me. That is the fundamental question—

💬 Simeon Brown: What is?

—because we have to ask that. We have to say: how are we doing that? I come back for the benefit of the confused member opposite. One of those things is the minimum wage.

Headline figures—to conclude this contribution—$17.70 an hour for the minimum wage. The average wage has gone up $65 per week. I got it wrong—I got it wrong big time: there are 70,000 new jobs, and unemployment is down to 4.2 percent. We have a lot to celebrate, and I am incredibly pleased to have been able to be part of this debate.

Mr Chair, thank you for the opportunity to take a call in this debate. As a member of the Governance and Administration Committee, I’d like to acknowledge our chair, Brett Hudson, for the work he does there, and I’d just like to elaborate on a few of the things that we’ve been focusing on.

It’s an exciting time to live in New Zealand. We’ve got a coalition Government who are working well together and who are tackling the big issues out there and at the same time running regular surpluses and keeping the Government’s books in a strong position.

I’d like to start on one point: the Provincial Growth Fund. The Provincial Growth Fund—as someone who lives in provincial New Zealand, even though we are the fourth-biggest city, probably soon to become the second-biggest city, but the fourth-biggest for now—is an investment in our regions by this coalition Government. I’d like to acknowledge the work that the New Zealand First Party, in particular, have done on this. People in the regions are once again lifting their heads. After years of under-investment and after years of seeing their towns slowly move into a state of huge social challenges, they are starting to lift their heads, they are starting to dream, and they’re starting to see what’s possible. They’re starting to see the potential in the regions, and we have a Government who are investing in the regions through the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF), and also other mechanisms. So what the Provincial Growth Fund is doing is it’s encouraging groups to get together to form business cases. Groups right across the regions—

💬 Simeon Brown: Name two. Name two groups.

I could name many, across many areas there, sir—right from agriculture, right across to the arts to all sorts of areas. Groups in the regions are coming together to dream. They see that we have a Government who are taking them seriously.

We heard from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) about M. bovis. So M. bovis was a very serious issue that affected our country. I’d like to acknowledge the work of Minister Damien O’Connor in this area. I’d like to acknowledge the Opposition who also signed on, to a point.

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: No.

We have to be fair there, Mr Willie Jackson. But we had a Government who had a decisive response to M. bovis. Now, if we didn’t choose to eradicate M. bovis, the issues for our economy would have been long-lasting, but we took a bold step to eradicate it. Now, why did we do that? Because our cows, they aren’t in barns; they’re in paddocks, and when they’re in paddocks they’re under a lot of stress. That means they produce high-quality milk, which, for us as a country, is obviously a strength for our economy. But if those cows have M. bovis, the stress that they’re under in the paddocks can have exaggerated effects on them. So we took leadership and we’re working hard on this issue. The DPMC have been playing a leading role.

I’d like to get to the centrepiece of the next few weeks—what everyone’s talking about is the Wellbeing Budget. I’d like to acknowledge the Minister in the chair, the Hon Grant Robertson. For many years we’ve had a lack of investment in our social services. Health, education—they’ve been run down. They’ve been run down, and that’s why New Zealand voted for change, because they could see it quite clearly. We have a Government who cares about people, who put people first.

One of the key aspects of this Budget will be around mental health. Mental health affects everyone. Right from business, through education, right across society, the mental health of people is so important. I’m excited as the Wellbeing Budget comes forth. We’ve already heard a few announcements. We had an announcement today supporting St John Ambulance.

We have a Government who is listening. There’s a lot going on. I’ve talked about the PGF, I’ve talked about M. bovis, the Wellbeing Budget—I could go on, but I’m going to leave it there and let someone else have a bit of a chat.

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to follow on from my friend and colleague Jamie Strange, who is a tremendous advocate for the people of Hamilton and the Waikato. When I’ve been in that region—to answer one of the questions that came across from the Opposition—he’s brought together people from sectors including the arts, agriculture, and business to talk about the opportunities that are now on offer to the regions of New Zealand, because there is a Government that backs them. There is a Government that doesn’t come along and say “We know everything’s best.”, as the previous Government did, but goes to the regions and says “What have you got? What can we support?”

I want to congratulate Jamie Strange and MPs from right around the regions of New Zealand, including some, I might say, on the Opposition benches who, while they’re in the Chamber want to try and take the mickey out of the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF), but they’re pretty quick to get their letters in. They’re pretty quick to say, “Actually, we’d quite like a little bit of that provincial growth funding coming our way.”

That is, actually, reflective of the view in the regions. The cynicism that comes forward from the Opposition benches would pretty quickly disappear when they go to places like Gisborne and Ōpōtiki in the Far North and the West Coast. They see the difference it makes when there’s a Government that gets alongside the regions. There’s no cynicism out there about the PGF; there’s just gratitude that there’s finally a Government that takes this seriously.

I want to speak on the annual review of Treasury and the financial statements of the Government at the outset. What I also want to do as part of that is to thank Secretary to the Treasury, Gabe Makhlouf, who will finish at the end of June, after eight years in that position, to go off to be the Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland—that’s where he’s heading to. He’s played a really significant role in Treasury, in particular in its development of the Living Standards Framework, which sits at the core of the Wellbeing Budget. So I want to thank Mr Makhlouf for his service. I don’t think I’ll ever quite be able to forgive him for being a fan of the Chelsea Football Club, but other than that he is a very, very good person and somebody who has worked very hard on behalf of New Zealanders in the eight years that he has been here, and we wish him all the best in his next move.

But, as I say, Treasury’s work on the Living Standards Framework is at the core of the Wellbeing Budget. I want to be absolutely clear. From this Government’s perspective, wellbeing means making sure that we look after not just the finances of our country—as important as they are—but we actually think at the same time about other measures of success: how are our people going? How educated are they? How healthy are they? How secure do they feel? We also make sure that in measuring our success differently we take a long-term, intergenerational view.

One of the things that has been obvious after 18 months in Government is that when you simply measure your success by one indicator you run the risk of leaving people out and leaving people behind. We run the risk that we think in silos—that we only think that what matters is GDP growth rate, and that if that keeps going up we can be satisfied that there is success. Of course, we want economic growth and prosperity, but we want to care about who shares in that prosperity. We care about whether that prosperity will last for generations. Is it sustainable? We care about making sure that our focus is on the outcomes we want, not just the inputs that go in.

So this Budget will be different and I’m very proud of the initiatives that we have already announced that give evidence to that. On Sunday, when we did the announcement on domestic and sexual violence—the largest single investment in eliminating domestic and sexual violence that has ever been put forward by a Government—there were 10 agencies who came together to do that. That has never happened before—to bring those agencies together and say one set of outcomes, one set of goals. We will work towards eliminating domestic and sexual violence, working with our communities. I was very, very proud of that announcement.

I can help Mr Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, in fact, with his reference to the Office of Ethnic Communities, because by waiting to make my contribution until after 20 to 6. tonight I can tell him that another Wellbeing Budget announcement has just been made moments ago, which is to actually, finally put some resources into properly supporting our ethnic communities in New Zealand. So we’re announcing a nearly $10 million increase for the Office of Ethnic Communities to play its part in supporting our ethnic communities. I think, actually, in all seriousness, across the House we know that in the wake of 15 March, we can do much, much better on behalf of our ethnic communities to provide the resources for them to chart their own course, for them to be able to come together, and for the rest of our communities to be able to embrace the diversity that is New Zealand. I think Minister Jenny Salesa, who’s been in charge of that work, deserves a significant amount of congratulations.

While I said there will be things that will be different in this year’s Wellbeing Budget, there will be some things that will be the same. One of those is the commitment of this Government to fiscal sustainability, because while we are committed to investing heavily in the issues that have been neglected for so long, we also know that we owe it to future generations to do that in a way that is responsible. So I am proud that in Budget 2018—in the period that is under this review here—we were able to keep our levels of debt under control, we were able to run a decent surplus, and we were able to keep our spending at a level that is appropriate and a level that is sustainable.

We’ve had a lot of references in this debate already to Mycoplasma bovis. It is an excellent example of the unexpected and the fact that, as a Government, you have to be in a position to respond to the unexpected. There are always calls, there are always things that happen that you don’t expect, and that is why this Government knows that we have to do that, but it’s more than that. It’s actually about future generations, and that’s why in the report of the committee on these financial statements there’s one thing I want to pick out, and that is restarting contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund.

I sat in this Chamber through debates exactly like this for the best part of nine years and heard that the Government was not prioritising putting money into our Superannuation Fund. It is one of the best-performing sovereign wealth funds in the world, one that is building up the reserves to make sure that we have superannuation for the future, and the previous Government said that that was not a priority; that is taking money out of the pockets of future generations. So I am incredibly proud that one of the decisions we made in our first Budget, in 2018, was to restart those contributions, and that is already paying dividends. Financial and fiscal sustainability is important because it is about making sure that future generations have options and choices, and we should be making sure that that sits at the top of our priorities.

The other element that I just want to focus on, which again is drawn out in the report of the committee, is the fact that we are starting to do things differently already. We have reinstated the research and development tax credit. We have created a Green Investment Fund, that will put us at the cutting edge of the new economy, that will make sure that we are looking ahead. The priorities for the Budget that will be out next week, which are listed in this report, include the fact that we need to transition our economy to one where we are a true low-carbon economy.

I want to re-emphasise the point that Minister Shaw made today: there is enormous economic opportunity here for New Zealand. We are very, very good at the things that people want to be able to see—how we make agriculture more sustainable, how we apply technology to primary industries, and how we improve manufacturing at the high-value end. These are the opportunities in the investments that we are making. The new energy centre up in Taranaki, the money that we’re putting into R & D—those will put us at the cutting edge, but things like the Green Investment Fund allow us to leverage off the private sector here as well.

The important thing for me is that what this report and the Wellbeing Budget show is that this is a Government that has got its eyes firmly focused on the 21st century. We’re not looking in the rear-view mirror, trying to hark back to a time when the Opposition might feel that New Zealand was going well, but actually looking out for future generations. That’s what Budgets should be about. That’s what these financial statements and these reports show—that as a Government, we have our eyes firmly fixed on the future. We’re going to build a more productive nation, we’re going to adjust to the future of work, we’re going to make sure that we are on the side of a low-carbon economy, and, at the same time, we will invest in our people. We will make sure that we get on top of the scourge of child poverty, we will make sure that we take mental health seriously, and we will make sure that we use the evidence that shows us that our Māori and our Pasifika populations have been left out for too long.

I am extremely proud of the priorities that are in this Budget. I’m proud of the record that this committee report outlines and I am certain that wellbeing is the right focus.