General Debate

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

We all know someone who has been affected by mental health or addiction issues, either in our families or in our broader sphere of friends and acquaintances. This Government, from its very outset, has set out to address the challenges to support those we love who wrestle with these challenges.

In our first hundred days, we launched the inquiry into addictions and mental health. That inquiry reported back in December last year, having received 5,200 submissions, having had 26 public meetings, and having had 2,000 people attend those public meetings. It was a serious report that engaged seriously and has made serious recommendations. Today, the Government announced its response to that inquiry, and tomorrow will announce the resources that will support that response to ensure we are prepared to support those, particularly, with mild to moderate mental health and addiction needs, who have missed out for too long.

The challenge of that inquiry was made in 40 recommendations. We’ve accepted 38 out of the 40 recommendations in principle or in full or we’ve accepted them for further consideration; we have decided not to accept just two. We will commit, as a result, to significantly increasing access to publicly funded mental health and addiction services for people with mild to moderate needs. We will commit to increased choice by broadening the types of service available. We will urgently complete the national suicide prevention strategy. We will establish an independent commission to provide leadership and oversight of mental health and addiction, to keep an eye on Government as it implements the findings of the inquiry, and to keep an eye on the whole system to ensure it is responding appropriately. We have committed to repealing and replacing the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act. It is out of date; it needs a full repeal and it needs a replace.

In the meantime, of course, we have progressed a number of issues. As a Government, we started, from the very beginning, by committing to doing those things we knew made sense anyway. In our very first Budget, we got on with putting more nurses in schools by rolling out that successful programme to decile 4 schools. We got on with introducing the Mana Ake programme for Canterbury and Kaikōura, for intermediate and primary school kids who are wrestling with the challenges that followed the Christchurch quakes. We got on with putting more detoxification beds into Auckland. We got on with launching the Piki pilot, which brings integrated therapies, talking therapies and makes them available for 18- to 25-year-olds across the wider Wellington region. Of course, we set aside more money for specialist services, with $200 million going into the mental health ring-fence in our very first Budget. We also committed $78 million to a rebuild of the Hillmorton Hospital facility in Christchurch. On top of all of those things, we’ve made GP visits more affordable for community services cardholders, who are those who often struggle to get to their GPs to get the services they need, because we know that for many people GPs are the first port of call. Of course, there are services available across primary care.

In terms of our response to the inquiry, we will be getting that draft suicide prevention strategy completed in weeks—in about eight to 12 weeks. We will also be establishing a mental health and wellbeing commission, and we will be progressing the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill, which treats addiction issues as health issues—that gets serious on the peddlers and the suppliers and makes sure they face criminal charges, but actually treats those caught in the web of addiction with compassion and helps to find them the support that they need to deal with the challenges that addictions present.

I am very much looking forward, tomorrow, to being able to announce the full mental health and addiction package in this Government’s, and the world’s, first wellbeing Budget. I’m incredibly proud of the work that’s going on behind the scenes to make sure that these issues are already being progressed. I congratulate the leadership of the Prime Minister and the finance Minister for an excellent Budget that’s focused on the issues that New Zealanders care about, addressing the challenges in mental health and getting on with the solutions, because this is a Government that is caring and compassionate and wants to see positive change.

Well, I understand that, on a day that the Government wished would go away, you would put up your most boring speaker but, man, that was just another whole level. I just thought that completely sucked the oxygen out of the room.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: The health Minister’s cured insomnia!

The health Minister has cured insomnia; Mr Brownlee, you are right. To call it a shambles, incompetent, a disgrace, and, at very best, embarrassing for the Government this week is an absolute understatement. They can’t run a Budget process, and yet we think they can possibly run a country?

💬 Hon Andrew Little: What a shabby, grubby, filthy National Party we’ve got.

So the fact that we have the—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The Minister of Justice will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

💬 Hon Andrew Little: I withdraw and apologise.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think the fact that we have the information itself shows just how incompetent they are. The fact that “Angry Andrew” Little feels he needs to shout out, quite like he does, actually shows just how discombobulated they really are this week, and feeling very, very disgruntled. So the very fact we’ve got the information, for me, proves incompetence, but if that’s not enough, it’s how you deal with a problem.

So rule No. 1, Prime Minister: when you are asked a question as you’re walking into your caucus that you don’t know the answer to, it is quite all right to turn around and say, “I do not know the answer to that question. I will ask the right questions.” But instead she just said, “No, there’s been no information leak. No, it hasn’t come from anywhere, and it’s all false.” We then, of course, had the Deputy Prime Minister, who came out and made absolute statements in this very House, in question time yesterday, which says that every figure is wrong—“It’s utterly false.” It’s utterly false, we heard—out to the New Zealand Herald—every figure is wrong. While, of course, we’ve then got Grant Robertson saying, “Yeah, well, some of them are right and some of them might be wrong.” Then we’ve got the Prime Minister, now, saying, “Some might be right and some might be wrong.”

But, actually, what’s really important in all of this is, as we always say, it’s not that a mistake or that information got out—that might happen, and I’m sure we might have all moved on—but it’s how you deal with it. Last night was actually, I think, one of the most disgraceful things that we’ve seen in Parliament for a long time. To make serious allegations like we have heard from the finance Minister and from Treasury, to make things up about serious hackers, and to actually report to the police with no evidence that we’ve seen or they’re able to produce for anybody is absolutely disgraceful. It is a measure to try and muzzle the Opposition in a week where the Government know that they are failing—failing New Zealanders, failing to deliver, and actually failing to even deliver a Budget process.

We had Treasury saying one thing, the Minister of Finance saying another, and the whole hope in this is that they are hoping that the Opposition will stop bringing out information that they do not want disclosed about their Budget. Well, guess what, ladies and gentlemen: we know more about the Government’s Budget than they do, and that is because of their pure incompetence in running a process. It is because they are—and I’ve got some serious questions here. So as they put these allegations out there, as they have accused Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition of actually serious systematic hacking, when that is proven false will the Minister of Finance resign? That is a fair question. Will the Prime Minister actually apologise for the disgrace when it is proven that this is purely incompetence and false allegations? Will they stand up and be counted then, because they should be.

This is a week when, actually, the country deserves more. Thousands of teachers out there today—their families are being affected because this Government yet again has made promises that they will not actually be able to live up to. To be told that there is no more money available as they see it then being wasted by Shane Jones on pet projects is absolutely cruel at its best and an embarrassment from this Government. Every time, Minister Hipkins, you look at them and tell them that there is no more money as Shane Jones throws out another roundabout or another few dollars to a few mates up north, it is a disgrace to the teachers that work so hard in this country and deserve better.

I’ll tell you what’s a disgrace to the teachers: the fact that for nine years under National, they wouldn’t even front up and talk to them. I’ll tell you what, I am disappointed that teachers were protesting today, but I fronted up and I spoke to them, which is more than the National Party did for nine long years.

The thing that has become abundantly clear over the last 48 hours is that the National Party’s levels of desperation have reached absolutely new lows. There is nothing that they will not do to distract from their own internal problems. What were the most significant announcements National made yesterday? It was nothing to do with the Budget—oh no. It was the fact they have decided in their depth of despair that maybe it’s not such a good idea to split themselves into multiple pieces after all. Now, I can say we had some dark days in Opposition, but never in our darkest days did we try and split our party up, which was what Simon Bridges’ strategy for reclaiming the Treasury benches was. That was the best that he could come up with. Even in our darkest days, we didn’t get that desperate, but that’s how desperate the National Party are. But, anyway, yesterday they decided, “We’ll chuck that out there while no one is looking and see if we can get that through.”

Then there’s this other inquiry that got released yesterday, which didn’t actually address the question that the inquiry was set up to address, and they don’t want to talk about that at all; so they sort of tossed that out there while no one was really paying attention.

But, actually, the real issue from yesterday was the fact that the National Party no longer have any moral or ethical standing. Regardless of how they got information about the Budget—and there are serious questions to be answered there—the fact that the National Party thought that it was OK to go and release that information publicly suggests that they no longer have a moral or ethical compass. I think that says everything about the levels of desperation in the National Party.

Now, I’ve been on the receiving end of leaks in Opposition. Leaks happened under their Government, as happens from time to time, and, actually, one of the things that you have to look at when you get those leaks in Opposition is: what is it for—political advantage? And you can look at that too, but you’ve actually sometimes got to think, actually, is this ethically right, what we’re doing here? There is a reason why Budget secrecy applies—there is actually a reason why Budget secrecy applies. It’s so that people don’t get pecuniary advantage from inside information, and a whole lot of other reasons which the National Party chucked out of the window yesterday and said that their own political advantage was more important than all of those conventions that have been built for many years around the Budget.

What I do want to do, though, is address some of the issues that were raised by those who were protesting on the forecourt of Parliament today, because I do want to acknowledge that the issues and concerns that teachers have been raising not just in the last 18 months but, in fact, for the last 10 years are actually legitimate issues that do need to be addressed. The Government has been listening to what the teaching profession has raised, and we didn’t just start listening when we became the Government; in fact, we spent a lot of time in Opposition listening to what they said, and some of our first actions in Government dealt exactly to the concerns they’d been raising for a long time under National.

I’m very proud that one of my first acts as Minister of Education was to abolish national standards. I am very proud to be the Minister of Education that abolished the charter school model, that gave teachers back the right to elect representatives to the Teaching Council, that gave the biggest increase in funding to learning support in over a decade—more funding for our most vulnerable kids. I am very proud to work alongside my colleague Tracey Martin on the learning support action plan that is making sure we are finally taking kids with additional learning needs seriously and actually giving them the support they deserve. I am very proud to be the first Minister of Education in a decade to provide across-the-board funding for early childhood education, something the National Government did not do once—they did not do once in their time in Government.

Yes, we are dealing with the critical teacher shortages that we inherited from a Government that did not care. The $1.2 billion in pay offers for teachers, worth more than all of the pay offers that they received under National put together—I am proud to be the Minister of Education putting my name to that. The NCEA review is under way; it’s going to result in meaningful change. We are developing a workforce strategy. In the next few weeks, we’ll be announcing a growth plan that will actually get serious and put concrete measures in place to ensure that we’re properly planning for population growth—something the last Government never did. Of course, we’ve got the Tomorrow’s Schools review to come. There is a lot to do. We are making progress, and I don’t underestimate that there is more to come.

The irony of getting a lecture on the morals of leaking from that member, who was involved in the Barnaby Joyce citizenship rows in Australia, is outrageous. For that member to stand in the House and try and take the moral high ground when his dirty and dodgy involvement in foreign political parties caused a serious rift in international relations is utterly outrageous. I tell you what, Mr Hipkins, you want to talk about what’s ethically right—what’s ethically right is not maliciously slandering the Opposition because the Government is embarrassed that it has been caught out on its own failings. This is typical Labour Party playbook. You get caught in the wrong and you blame everyone else. You go on the attack, you slander, you defame, you refuse to take any responsibility—well, this time, Mr Hipkins, your Government has been caught out.

The Prime Minister today and the Minister of Finance are backpedalling furiously—they are backpedalling furiously—but here is the reality: Treasury, in their statement, never once made a mention of the National Party or its material; that was the Minister of Finance. It was the Minister of Finance who, in his statement last night, clearly attempted to slander the New Zealand National Party because the Minister of Finance was embarrassed at what an utterly shambolic chaos of a process his Budget has become. This has to be the most incompetent management of a Budget process in living memory—certainly in my memory. You tell me, Mr Hipkins, when a Government has last failed Budget management 101, which is to keep the information secure. It is embarrassing, it is incompetent, and it certainly doesn’t attest to a Government that is able to run this country, when they can’t run their own process.

As Paula Bennett said, if it was simply about the stuff-up and the lazy processes and the failure to run his department properly, it would have been a story, he would have had a slap on the knuckles, and we would have moved on. But the cover-up is what gets you every time. This is a Government that did what it always does: it lashes out and blames. That is going to come back to bite Grant Robertson. He will have to resign when it is proven—as it will be—that it is not systemic hacking and it is not a concentrated attack on the Treasury system; it is incompetence—very simple incompetence—and that lands on the desk of the Minister of Finance.

If we move beyond the events of just the last 24 hours, which have been unprecedented, we have had from this Government months of build-up and spin and hype around what this Wellbeing Budget is going to be. But here’s what they don’t want you to know—here’s what we’ll see tomorrow that this Government has been trying to distract everyone from—quite apart from their incompetence in delivering almost anything in the year of delivery, they didn’t want you to know that the economy that underpins wellbeing is going backwards at the rate of knots. Do you know what that actually means? It means that this Government, in dropping 1.5 percent of our growth rate in just 18 months—that is the equivalent of $1.2 billion of tax revenue every year. Over three years, that’s more than $7 billion less money this Government has to spend to actually do anything for wellbeing.

So when you want to talk about why the teachers are getting short shrift from that Minister, it’s partly because the money has been wasted on other priorities—mostly about keeping New Zealand First happy—but it’s also about this Government destroying the economic machine that actually pays the bills. Now, this Government doesn’t want to talk about things like the economy, because it knows what a bad job it’s doing, but even prominent economists that the Minister of Finance himself quotes on wellbeing say you can’t have wellbeing without solid economic growth. This Government has been caught out. This Government has been caught out on their priorities.

Tomorrow’s numbers will show—we know because it’s already been released—that they have put a bigger percentage increase into health bureaucrats than into maternity services. Now, I think that is outrageous. How can this Government talk wellbeing when women are giving birth at the side of the road because they haven’t put money into maternity and they’ve allowed health services in our regional and rural communities to be degraded. My colleague Hamish Walker is running an excellent campaign highlighting the way his community has been ignored and absolutely had their services destroyed. That is not wellbeing, but that’s what we will see increasingly from this Government.

Sixty-three percent of businesses say this Government is running the economy poorly—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. It is a privilege to take a call in this debate, just as it is a privilege to serve in this Government under the leadership of Jacinda Ardern, a leader and a Government that are motivated by kindness, by compassion, and by trying to do things differently, because we need to do things differently in this country. Those values of kindness and compassion were what motivated Jacinda Ardern’s leadership after the massacre in Christchurch—values that enabled her to speak from the heart and provide leadership across the world. That’s the Government that I’m proud to be part of. And I am proud to be part of a Government that is delivering a different type of Budget tomorrow: a transformational Budget; a Budget that is a change from the past because we are focused not only on the economic measures but also on wellbeing—the wellbeing of all New Zealanders.

I want to focus in particular on mental health, today, and how we are doing things differently in mental health, and, in particular, with respect to young people. I’ve been reflecting on the young people in my ambit: the students I used to have in my former job, the students at my high schools, and my own daughters and their friends, who were in and out of our home all the time. I see in these young people a change from the way that we used to be. They are riven by anxiety. Anxiety has become a huge mental health issue for our young people, and I can kind of see what it’s driven by: by the gig economy we forced them into, by the pressing issue of climate change, and by the rise of social media. These perhaps are some of the causes. The fact is it is a real issue for young people.

I have a story here of a young woman in Taranaki, Nuutea Itchner, who was in the Taranaki news last year talking about what anxiety did to her. She would sit in her classroom and be unable to move and be unable to talk. That’s what anxiety did to her, and it really compromised her education.

Let me talk about another young woman who really was struggling with anxiety, a young woman in Christchurch: Kelly Pope. She was alone, homeless, and really suffering to control her own behaviour and to interact with others. She was desperate and went to her GP for help with her issues of anxiety. They were having a huge impact on her but she could not get help. She was referred to a specialist—the specialist mental health services—and three times she was sent back to her GP because the resources simply weren’t there.

Reflecting on the Marinoto health unit for young people in the Waitematā District Health Board, and particularly the services offered at Waitakere Hospital, I know that the services there are superb with respect to mental health care for young people if they can be accessed. But, in order to access those services, a young person has to be suicidal—so no help for people with anxiety, no help for people with mild mental illnesses.

That’s the change that we are going to bring about in our Budget tomorrow. As has been announced today, this Government will be focusing on increasing mental health care and particularly with respect to increasing the care that is available in that mild to moderate range.

Of course people who are suicidal will still be helped, but under this Government, a person will not need to be suicidal, will not need to be in absolutely desperate straits, will not need to be at risk of losing their lives because of mental illness. Instead, we will try to fund the services that will fund that mild to moderate healthcare to enable people to get on with living their lives, so that they can live lives of wellbeing, can flourish in their daily lives, and so that they can access care early when it is needed.

That’s the kind of transformation that this Government is interested in: doing things differently to ensure that for all of us New Zealanders, when we need mental health care, it is there for us, it is available to us when we need it, where we need it, and because we need it, not just for those who are in desperate risk of their lives. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s Budget—it will be transformational.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge the thousands and thousands of teachers and parents and students that turned out today on the forecourts of Parliament and in places like Auckland to protest what they see as a gridlock—a gridlock in collective bargaining. I want to acknowledge them, and I want to acknowledge them for the job that they do but for the serious issues that they currently have in terms of pay and workload.

It is important to talk about history. Every Government is handed a different set of circumstances. We have said, very publicly, that we were handed the global financial recession and the Canterbury earthquakes, but despite that, we increased the education budget every year that we were in office. This Government, however, was handed a very different set of circumstances. When I talk to teachers and principals up and down the country, they tell me a very different story than what the Government is telling other people. They tell me this was a story of a Government that had huge promises and huge expectations. This is a story of a Government that promised to modernise every school building. This is a story of a Government that promised to provide reduced teacher ratios in early childhood. They promised to provide 100 percent in early childhood. They promised that they would scrap school donations. But what they’ve done is they’ve not met those promises. They created huge expectations. Why haven’t they resolved the teacher strikes within an 18-month period?

The second thing that they’ve done is they’ve misled the public, and I have questioned the Minister about this. I have had many teachers who have contacted me, and they’ve said, “Please, Nikki, will you point out to the Minister that it is not the vast majority of teachers that are getting 10 grand over two years.” The reality is, because there’s been gridlock, primary school teachers have not had an increase in 2017 or 2018. In the Minister’s own question yesterday, he admitted that there were 25,000-odd teachers that had not had $10,000—and I’ve seen Minister Martin’s video with the whiteboard; I’ve had the emails from teachers. So the second thing that they’ve done is they have misled the public around the teacher offer.

The third thing that they’ve done is they have dug their heels in. This is a Government with billions and billions of dollars. This is a Government that has Shane Jones out there promising things in regional New Zealand. This is a Government that is promising trees, they are promising planes, but when it comes to wellbeing, I’ll tell you what we will hold this Government to account for. We will be saying to them, “If you can’t keep teachers in classrooms and you can’t do the basics, then you are not providing a wellbeing Budget.” It’s not just us that are saying it; we have teachers out there on the forecourt of Parliament and across New Zealand saying, “We understood in the global financial recession. We understood with the earthquakes.” Now, obviously, they wanted to be paid more, but it was a different set of circumstances. Now there are billions and billions of dollars that are being provided with this Budget, and what we know is we have gridlock in teacher collective bargaining because they have not shown leadership.

I’ll tell you what leadership is about. Leadership is about Prime Minister Ardern being there for the tough times. Leadership is about being there for the tough times. She was not on the forecourt of Parliament today. She was not talking to the teachers. She was not explaining why the priority—and we will see tomorrow in the Wellbeing Budget—has not been on resolving these really crucial workload and pay issues.

So what would National do? National has been very clear: we believe—and we have been very clear with teachers—that the bargaining parameters need to shift. The envelope needs to shift. Simon Bridges’ first speech as the Leader of the Opposition at conference was in education to say that National would spend hundreds of millions of dollars reducing teacher ratios. National prioritises front-line education services, and the question for this Government, on the eve of the Wellbeing Budget, is: have they prioritised trees and planes and other less important things over actually keeping our teachers in classrooms?

💬 Hon Ron Mark: You’re in trouble.

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

It’s not about what we are saying; it’s actually about what the thousands of teachers and parents and students said today as they marched. They said to the Government, “You need to listen to us. We are the people at the front line of wellbeing.” We need to support our teachers more.

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Before I call a member, I’m just going to say to the Minister of Defence that when he’s making interjections across the floor suggesting people are in trouble, he should not use the second person.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Now, as much as the member Nikki Kaye, who just sat down, really wants to know what’s in tomorrow’s Budget, there is only one more sleep. One more sleep and that member will know it all.

It’s always a pleasure, actually, as a teacher—and one with a full practising certificate—to follow the previous member. I’m proud to be a teacher, and I am proud of the amazing teachers that I have worked alongside. I am proud of all of those teachers who have suffered a lot over the past decade.

I find it amazing when we have the Opposition spouting to be the new best friends of teachers, and yet, suddenly, that’s where we are—we’re these new best friends. But over those nine years that they were in Government, we had an insidious attack on public education. It was one that has put teachers where they are at today. It is that attack that has caused teachers to march to Parliament today, and, unfortunately, it’s this Government that is actually working really hard, because they’re having to work on the outfall of those nine years. But we’re up for the task.

Over those nine years, we had that attack on quality public education, but we also, through that, saw the introduction of national standards. In the very first week of that previous Government, they put in national standards—unbelievable. We saw learning support squeezed very, very tight, the funding caps put on staffing, and that would become difficult for those teachers in those classrooms to cope with those children and the needs of those children. We saw teacher aide numbers reduced over time because of caps put on funding into the operations grant. But what did the previous Government do? Rather than saying, “Oh, well, let’s help. Let’s put more support in.”, they said, “There is a crisis in education in those schools, so let’s create a new form of schooling; let’s create the charter school.”—so therefore privatising the schooling.

I could go on. I could go on about the major property issues, the no workforce plan, some of the elements that weren’t so widely popularised among people that they didn’t know about. That tightening of the back staffing rules, the changes to the back staffing rules, which, actually, as a principal, was the big turn-around for me when it really became incredibly tight. It was at that moment that I decided I needed to actually step up and make a change, and that was the change that eventually brought me to this House. I left a profession that I loved. I left a profession that was my dream job, and still is the profession that I am absolutely passionate about, and my dream job, because I was tired. I was like those teachers on that forecourt today. I was tired of seeing where education was heading, and I knew that we could make a bigger difference in this place and as the Government.

I’m proud of our Minister of Education for fronting out there today. That is the first time that I have seen that in a long, long time—or second I should say, because he did it in August as well. But I remember protesting against the previous Government and their offices being locked over the time; nobody coming and fronting to those protests. I am proud of the Minister, I am proud of our Associate Ministers. I think they are doing an absolutely incredible job. As I said, we are up for the task. We have made some differences in a short time. After nine years of neglect, in 18 months we have made an incredibly strong start. The Minister said during question time today that we have put some of the biggest increases into learning support, and I thank the Associate Minister the Hon Tracey Martin for the work that she is doing in that area, because it will make the biggest difference to schools. I can only imagine how delighted the principals of the new special education needs coordinators will be having the new learning support coordinators in those schools.

But I want to just quickly give you the figures. We’ve heard about the pay increases that happened under the last Government. Well, I was head of the negotiation teams over that time, and I can tell you that in 2013 to 2015, the top of the scale went up by $2,000. In 2016 to 2018—very similar—to bring that sum total to $5,000 over five years. The current offer will bring that top of the scale up by $9,500. We are making a difference.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. You know when a Government’s in trouble, don’t you? They bring out the big guns in the general debate, and they start defending—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! Right, come on. Let’s start as we mean to go on, and not start with the second person. I’ve warned people on this side, I’ve warned the member, and one would’ve thought we’d get two sentences getting it right.

Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. So, when the Government brings out the big guns in the general debate, you know they are in trouble. It’s all about defending, and defending. When you hear that there’s an emergency caucus this morning at 7.30, you also know that the Government is in trouble. Also, the mudslinging that’s started to occur, which is not good to see in Parliament. But those allegations that have been made are scurrilous, and they are ill-judged. So I think what this is showing is that we’ve got a problem with our Minister of Finance. To use Mr Twyford’s expression during question time earlier today, it doesn’t matter how the person slices or dices it; the Minister of Finance has overseen a wholehearted decline in our economy, and that is the worrying thing for ordinary New Zealanders.

Under the National Government, in the last three years, we were averaging 3.3 percent GDP growth. Now, we’re at 2.3 percent, and I could almost guarantee that we’re at 2 percent at the moment. As the Hon Amy Adams said earlier, this is a significant downturn in the economy. It does not sound much in terms of percentage, but, if you know the value of the economy—and, unfortunately, the Minister of Finance did not know that question when he was asked by my colleague the Hon Paul Goldsmith the other day—our GDP is roughly $300 billion in New Zealand. If you slice off over a percent, you are effectively slicing off $3 billion of activity in New Zealand, and that is everything from selling coffee to manufacturing tractor parts.

That means, for the $3 billion that roughly has been sliced out of the economy, the Government has now lost a billion dollars of revenue. That is why Mr Robertson has got a problem tomorrow; because he has lost—taking the original forecast from Treasury—over a billion dollars’ worth of expenditure, and that is why he has sought a 1 percent cut across the board from all the departments. That is why, tomorrow, we can almost guarantee that we will see most of the Government agencies seeing a reduction in their allocation. Certainly, when you overlay the impact of inflation and population growth, the net increase will be much below the per capita or the per population increase, and, therefore, we will be going backwards in most of those departments.

The only pressure valve that the Minister has got left is actually playing with the debt figure, and where you’re right is that we have relatively modest debt figures in New Zealand. But this announcement by the Minister of Finance—that he is going to move to a target from 15 to 25 percent—is a sign of ill-disciplined spending, and also a declining economy directly attributed to many of the actions of this Government. That translates into between $15 billion and $17 billion worth of additional debt. We’ve just had the Reserve Bank Governor in today at the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and the first thing he’s talking about is financial stability. Well, I put it to you that the first thing we should be talking about is the level of Government debt, because adding another $15 billion to $17 billion of debt doesn’t actually help.

So, yes, we do want to spend stuff on education and all that sort of stuff, but what we don’t want is to spend our money like the Hon Shane Jones, who is out there splashing it around on these projects that will drive little economic growth. They will be a short-term hit to this economy, but they will not bring long-lasting projects and benefits to this economy. That is the travesty of the $3 billion that’s being spent right now. If it created permanent, sustainable jobs and grew our businesses, we’d all be in favour of it. But it’s not, and it won’t be, and it’s an absolute waste of money that should be spent on much more important areas like health and education.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. First of all, can I just address something that a teacher said on the forecourt this morning—

💬 Brett Hudson: “Give me more money.” is what she said.

That was one of the things they said, but the other thing they said was that they were the counsellors for our children, that they were the social workers for our children, and that they were the learning support experts for our children. And they are right, because those specialists, those supports, have been so ignored by the previous Government for the last decade that our teachers have had to become all things to all people, hence why Minister Hipkins and I and the rest of this Government are working on a wellbeing Budget that will address all of those indicators beyond the school gates. How many times did the teaching profession tell the last Government that all these things were affecting the children inside our schools, so please address housing, please address food security, please address poverty, please address the lack of counselling and social workers—and they did nothing. So today I proudly stood with Minister Hipkins as we faced something that the previous Ministers never ever did—faced those teachers and said, “We are doing this for you.”

The other thing that happened the other day is I saw Bill English in the airport. I sat down; I had a chat with him. He’s a lovely man. I miss him. He is a man of integrity. He is a man of exceptionally high moral calibre. He would never have allowed what that party did in the last 48 hours. Everybody in this House knows that Budget documents are confidential. Regardless of how somebody gives you a Budget document, everybody knows that they are confidential documents. Regardless of how a confidential document comes into your hands, you know it to be confidential. You know that somehow, somewhere somebody’s done something they shouldn’t have done. Bill English would not have made the same decision that the leadership of the National Party made the other day. So all I’m saying is that we miss Bill. That’s all I’m saying about that.

On 26 October 2017, I was sworn in as the Minister for Seniors. Seven months later, I was called to the Social Services and Community Committee to answer for the Estimates. The Hon Maggie Barry was subbed in at that time to make sure that she, as the previous Minister for Seniors, questioned me about the funding and the spending of the Office for Seniors. It was a little confusing because the Minister kept asking about things that had no delegation inside the Office for Seniors at that time, yet she was the previous Minister for Seniors. From October 2014 to October 2017, that member had been the Minister for Seniors, but she did not appear to understand what the delegations were inside that portfolio. She questioned about when we were going to be investing in the SuperGold card. I’m pleased to now be able to tell her $7.7 million—no investment at all in the SuperGold card during the period of time that that member was the Minister for Seniors; zero investment in the SuperGold card in the time that that member was the Minister for Seniors—$7.7 million to make sure that our seniors get better access to services and discounts to spread their superannuation.

Six hundred thousand dollars has recently been announced around supporting our seniors with digital technology—budgets, finances that were cut under the previous Government. SeniorNet’s budgets were cut under the previous Government so that there was less digital support for our seniors. We’ve seen Kiwibank do away with cheques, and yet that Government decided that our seniors didn’t need any more support around digital technology.

With regard to ACC, more of our seniors are working past the age of 65. If they have an accident in the workforce, for the two years following that accident, they no longer have to choose between ACC or superannuation; they will get both—they will get both—because that better represents their actual workplace, that better represents the income that they should get. They were working and paying ACC levies. It is only fair; it is only right. This Government will do right by seniors.

I met Bill English the other day in the Koru lounge. Funny story—funny story. He said to me: “I can’t believe that the outrageous demands of the New Zealand First Party in that coalition agreement are now affecting 50,000 teachers out there who aren’t going to get their fair share.” That’s what he told me. We know when incompetent Ministers are under pressure. We know because the cracks start to appear and they start to lash out. Oh, I know: car drivers—“They’re fascists.” Farmers—“They’re whingers.” Treasury officials are “kids devoid from reality”. Business confidence numbers are “unreliable junk”. Performance standards have “perverse outcomes”, and hackers are “deliberate and systematic”.

Of course these guys are a bit tetchy. Their major flagship policies are abject failures—every single one of them—and they have systematically frittered away every single dollar that we left them. A couple of billion bucks on KiwiBuild—Phil Twyford has bought more KiwiBuild houses than first-home buyers have in this country. Three billion bucks on this Provincial Growth Fund, which has not lifted the economy, not provided any jobs, and on the most important target, it hasn’t even lifted New Zealand First above the 5 percent threshold in any of the most recent polls. Because these guys didn’t do the work in Opposition, they have spent millions of dollars on 300-odd working groups: $1.4 million on a capital gains tax (CGT) working group that went nowhere, $1.5 million for a Welfare Working Group—46 recommendations, three that were taken up, one that was already a promise; that’s two recommendations at a cost of $750,000 each—I am in the wrong job!

So along with these nasty little outbursts that we’re getting from these guys, we also get excuses. Maybe we can play a little game: who said what here? What about “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”? That was James Shaw on our emissions. “It’s just aspirational.” said Minister Nash about the police that he promised to deliver and isn’t. “It was never a hard target.” said the Prime Minister in the last couple of days about the one-year KiwiBuild budget. “We were never going to do it in one Budget.”—David Clark. “We didn’t realise it was going to be that hard.”—Tracey Martin. “It’s a promise yet to be delivered.”—my very favourite, from the Minister of Education.

But while we can make fun of their nasty little outbursts and their imaginative excuses, what is no laughing matter is that this Government has dropped every target and every measurement standard that could possibly hold them to account. We might have to dig around a little bit more here in the Opposition, but we find the figures, and in every single one it shows a trend, and that trend is not wellbeing. While we wait for tomorrow’s Wellbeing Budget, I have only one thing to say to this Government: it had better be better than the last 18 months, because wellbeing is not about having to wait an average of an additional 55 days for early childhood intervention for our youngest and most vulnerable Kiwis. Wellbeing is getting the healthcare you need. It’s not about having 10,000 fewer elective surgeries than we had a year ago. Wellbeing is about having a job, not relying on welfare, like an additional 11,000 people. Welfare is about feeling safe in our communities, not having serious crime up 25 percent. It’s about actually staying in this country, not having to go to Australia, because the opportunities are here; yet more people are now leaving for Australia than are coming back. Finally, wellbeing is about being financially secure and knowing that your kids and your grandkids won’t be saddled with debt because this Government mismanages the economy.

Yet here we have the Government pulling the ultimate swifty. Grant Robertson has done a Houdini with debt targets. It’s a little bit like me saying my age is, you know, in a range between 30 and 40. We all know well that I ain’t 30. It’s more likely to be closer to 40—

💬 SPEAKER: How do we know?

So when Grant Robertson reneges on the Government’s hard and fast promise of reducing their debt target to 20 percent of GDP and he shifts it to between that range of 15 and 25, you know it ain’t going to be 15 percent. Somewhere in a living room on the North Shore, I bet you right now Steven Joyce is dancing a little jig and singing “Hallelujah”, because he was right. The only thing he was wrong about was the figure, because it ain’t $11 billion; it’s more like $15 billion or $17 billion. These guys tried to fix the hole. They tried to put their hand into New Zealanders’ pockets for a CGT; we slapped it away. Minister Robertson has gone round the other pocket to grab out the nation’s credit card to put his promises on tick. These guys cannot manage an economy. They cannot manage their expensive promises. They are destroying an economy that’s gone from 4 percent to 2 percent growth, and now they’re going to put their spending and their election promises in 2020 on the nation’s credit card, and shame on them for doing that.

It’s a pleasure to speak in this general debate. I’m very proud to be part of this coalition Government, and in less than 24 hours, our Minister of Finance will be delivering the Wellbeing Budget—the Wellbeing Budget—unlike the other side, who have been running around in circles and putting out all sorts of discordant and irrelevant figures over the past 24 hours. Ms Bennett, at the start of this debate, said that oxygen had been sucked out of the room. Well, that must describe the National Party caucus, because they’re so caught up running in circles, crazy and deranged around some bogus figures around the Budget, that they’ve got self-imposed hypoxia. They’re not seeing straight; they’re desperate. Fortunately, we will be able to on this side of the House.

The Budget tomorrow, the Wellbeing Budget, the only Budget that matters, will be presented tomorrow, and the people of New Zealand are long anticipating this Budget because we are going to be addressing the long-term challenges that are facing this country that were neglected under nine years of the last National Government, and that was a shame. But we are addressing the key priorities, which our Minister of Finance has articulated.

It’s about taking mental health seriously, and we’ve heard that from the fantastic announcements today around the acceptance of the Government Inquiry into Mental Health and Addictions, the wholesale adoption of expanding services. We’re looking forward to the announcements tomorrow around driving the resources that will back the adoption of those recommendations.

We’re seeing it through the breaking of the cycle of poverty, and we’ve done that already through alleviating poverty, raising incomes through our Families Package and the like, and also through measures such as the minimum wage—fantastic measures. We’re already seeing the difference that it’s doing right across, particularly to Māori whānau, who I represent.

We’re breaking the cycle of domestic and sexual violence. Already, we’ve had announcements. This Government is driving the largest investments—the largest investments—of any Government into breaking that cycle of domestic and sexual violence. My colleague over here, the Hon Peeni Henare, is part of some innovative programmes, working with our prisoners in our prison system, with our corrections Minister, the Ministry of Social Development—wonderful initiatives that are coming through.

We’ve announced these. These are what we’re doing in terms of the priorities for this Budget, but it’s also about the economy. We mustn’t forget about that. We have that front and centre, and we know that the Hon Shane Jones, with his Provincial Growth Fund, is doing some fantastic things, fantastic projects up and down the motu, driving those resources into the communities that were long neglected, creating those economic opportunities that were long neglected, making things happen. Those are the things that we’re proud of on this side of the House, and we’re managing the books appropriately and responsibly.

So these are the things that Kiwis want to hear, and they will be hearing it tomorrow, unlike the clutter, the clack, the clang, and the discordant sounds that are coming from the other side. They’re all crazy and deranged from the spin and with all of the excitement that they must’ve generated, which is totally irrelevant—totally irrelevant—and superfluous to what is going on, which is that, on this side of the House, we’re so proud to be running the country and doing it in a responsible manner, and we’re looking forward to, in less than 24 hours—this Wellbeing Budget is going to be transformative for our country.

I want to say this: I want to acknowledge the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, and also the Hon Grant Robertson. Not only will we be delivering a wellbeing Budget that is desperately needed right across Aotearoa but the Hon Grant Robertson will go down in history as one of the greatest Ministers of Finance this country has ever known. Not only is he delivering a wellbeing Budget, not only has he been balancing the books and keeping us in surplus, but he is also changing the frame around how Treasury thinks about things, and that is a legacy that will go long into the future. So I’m really proud to be part of this Government, and I’m looking forward to the Wellbeing Budget tomorrow. It’s going to be great for Aotearoa. Kia ora tātou.

This is the year of delivery—2019 is going to be the year of delivery. That’s right. I’ve got a new campaign slogan for the Labour Party for next year’s election: the “year of delivery for Southland mothers to give birth on the side of the road since 26 May 2019”. What a relief it is that mother Amanda and 10-pound Levi are doing OK. This is every mother’s worst nightmare. Imagine what it would feel like in the middle of the night in rural Southland, all alone apart from your midwife, and you go into the maternity centre to find that the maternity centre is missing critical lifesaving equipment like oxygen. The poor old midwife—it isn’t fair on the midwife who was there—makes the decision to leave the maternity centre because this Government was so incompetent they didn’t have lifesaving oxygen in the Lumsden Maternity Centre. You put this mother and baby at risk. This should not have happened.

I warned the health Minister on 9 May. I sent him a letter. I said, “Health Minister, I have grave concerns because the promised maternity hubs which were supposed to be up and running by 15 April”—three or four weeks earlier—“are not.” Despite the district health board (DHB) all through the media saying “Nothing to see here,” they are up and running. What did the health Minister do with that? What did the health Minister do with that letter on 9 May? The answer in the House yesterday: nothing, because it didn’t reveal anything new. Well, health Minister, if you’d listened to that letter and you’d taken action like you should have—you are accountable to the DHBs—you would not have put this rural Southland mother and the midwife in this horrible, horrible situation.

I hate to say it but, for the last 14 months, this Government has refused to listen. You had the College of Midwives, you had the local community, the local midwives, the local GPs, the local volunteer emergency services—were they ever listened to? No. They were warned. I see this morning the DHB has launched an independent investigation. Let’s hope that this time they actually consult the people on the ground who are doing the work, who know best, as opposed to sitting behind their desktop computers in Dunedin.

Only two weeks after the Lumsden Maternity Centre was downgraded, we had a birth on the side of the road. The community warned this Government and the DHB time and time again. Let’s look at the response since this happened on Sunday. Let’s look to see if the health Minister has been taking some accountability. Let’s look at his comments. I asked him in the House: Mr Health Minister, can you please clarify whether you are happy—is it acceptable that a mother, in 2019, has to give birth on the side of the road? He gave his assurance that mothers and babies will continue to receive the high quality, excellent care they deserve. Well, health Minister, if that’s the quality of care for rural Southland mothers in 2019—actually, I don’t know what to say. You’re playing Russian roulette with Southland mothers. The message to the wellbeing, well-intentioned Prime Minister, who fronted up to a post-Cabinet press conference on Monday, said—the question was put to her, “Is it acceptable that a baby was born on the side of the road?” Well, she started talking about epidurals. If she gets her basic advice right, no primary birthing unit in New Zealand has access to epidurals, because it’s explicitly excluded from the Ministry of Health arrangement. So to the advisers to the health Minister, please get the facts right to the Prime Minister.

She also mentioned the low birthing numbers. Well, let’s talk about those low birthing numbers, because the Ministry of Health still haven’t answered my question. It states, “Primary birthing units must be within 60 minutes of a base hospital or 100 or more pregnancies in the birthing area.” Lumsden is more than 60 minutes and it’s had more than 100 pregnancies, but when I put the question to the DHB, “No, it’s about the birthing numbers.” I want to give a voice to the Southland community today, because no one’s been listening to them, and I want to give a voice to the mother who gave birth on the side of the road. My heart goes out to you, Amanda. The message direct from Amanda to this Government: “Rural people don’t matter to this Government unless you live in a city. We do not matter, but we do matter because we pay taxes, we pay rates like people in town do. Something needs to be done before this Government has blood on their hands. Lumsden Maternity Centre needs to be reinstated before a disaster occurs.”

I just want to say to the Southland community: you do matter; you do care. The National Party understands how important to the safety of rural mothers and babies this facility is, which is why Simon Bridges’ first promise was to reinstate full services at Lumsden Maternity Centre if re-elected next year.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.