Appropriation (2019/20 Estimates) Bill, Appropriation (2018/19 Supplementary Estimates) Bill

First Reading

on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I move, That the Appropriation (2018/19 Supplementary Estimates) Bill be now read a first time.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am very proud to take a call on the world’s first wellbeing Budget. Our Government is not afraid to tackle the long-term issues, the difficult issues, the issues that were neglected for the best part of a decade. The Wellbeing Budget took immediate action on a raft of different issues, coupled with long-term systemic change.

One of the most important issues that the Budget tackled was mental health. During the last election campaign, I was taken by the very strong feelings that were evident out in the community. Everywhere we went around the country, people were talking about the state of our mental health services. And no one—no one—that I met and talked about mental health with said that they were happy with the adequacy of mental health services in our community. Last year, after the Government announced its inquiry into mental health and addiction, in my electorate in West Auckland, I ran a couple of workshops designed to get feedback from the local community that we would then channel into the inquiry in the form of community submissions. I want to say that there were some incredibly heartfelt concerns that were raised by people in our community in West Auckland.

I’m very happy to say that after the Wellbeing Budget, the people of West Auckland can rest assured that the Government has listened and we now have a Government that is, at last, taking mental health seriously. It was great to have the Prime Minister in West Auckland last week debriefing the local community on what the Budget meant for our people.

One of the big initiatives of mental health in the Wellbeing Budget was to put trained mental health workers in doctors clinics, iwi health providers, Pasifika primary health organisations, and even in tertiary education institutions, so that people can get care when they need it. For example, when a GP identifies that a person is in need of support for a mental health or addiction issue, under this policy, as it’s rolled out, they will be able to physically walk with the patient through to see a trained mental health worker to help out.

This new layer of services will be rolled out over the next five years. We wish that it could all be done straight away, but it’s important that we take the time to train up more qualified mental health workers and build the facilities that are needed. We’re also expanding access to addiction treatment centres, and I think everybody’s well aware of the close connections between substance abuse and addiction on one hand and mental illness on the other.

The other really critical item in this part of the Wellbeing Budget is expanding the nurses in schools programme. It’s been stunningly successful. We rolled it out in Budget 2018 to all decile 4 high schools, and in Budget 2019 it’s now being extended to a further 5,600 students—so a good number of decile 5 schools.

We’re also investing in homelessness. Again, the connections between homelessness, between mental health and addiction, are very well documented. Research by He Kāinga Oranga at the University of Otago, in conjunction with The People’s Project, the Housing First provider based in Hamilton, has shown that homeless people have very, very high mental health needs. They found, for example, that, of a sample of 300 long-term homeless people that they had helped to house, in the five years prior to those people being helped, they had had more than 10,000 inpatient nights at mental health facilities—10,000. That’s 10 times greater than the general population. That same sample of 300 long-term homeless people, over that five-year period, had had 50,000 prescriptions, the great majority of which were for antipsychotic or antidepressant medication. That shows the incredibly strong connection between mental illness, addiction issues, and homelessness. So we announced in the Wellbeing Budget $197 million to house another 1,044 people experiencing long-term homelessness.

I want to say this about Housing First: it’s an internationally acclaimed way of dealing with people who are experiencing long-term homelessness. It’s all about breaking the cycle. It says to people, “We will put a secure, warm, dry roof over your head, and then we will help you deal with the other challenges and the other issues that you have in your life.”, which are often mental health issues, addictions, and other things. Housing First has already, in the last two years, housed 720 households, including 431 children in Auckland alone, and that’s all in the last couple of years. It’s now helping to house long-term homeless people in Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch, Tauranga, and Rotorua. I want to acknowledge the former National Government, who picked up a pilot project and put some $20 million into it. I’m very pleased that our Government, in the last two years, has invested more than $260 million into extending Housing First across the country.

I want to also talk about one of the other big announcements in the Budget, and that was the billion dollars that we are investing in getting rail back on track. The previous Government took a hands-off approach and left the rail network in a state of managed decline. It was one disaster after another under that Government, because they simply wouldn’t give KiwiRail the money that it needed to maintain and invest in a rail network that could do the job of moving people around efficiently through our larger urban centres and moving freight around the country. Budget 2019 makes the first critical step in turning that around and building rail as the sustainable backbone of our 21st century transport system.

This issue, the future of rail in New Zealand, is supported by all three parties that support this Government. Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens all believe that rail has a critical role to play, unlike the former Government, who actively suppressed a report by EY—a report that had been commissioned by KiwiRail—that showed that the rail system delivers $1.5 billion of economic value to this country every single year. That Government suppressed the report. One of the first things that I did as transport Minister was give KiwiRail the green light to release that report so that the public of New Zealand could see how much they had been missing out on under the last Government.

In the Wellbeing Budget, we have allocated $375 million for new wagons and locomotives, $331 million to invest in the track and other supporting infrastructure, $35 million to begin the process of replacing the Cook Strait ferries that are nearing the end of their lives, and $300 million allocated by the Provincial Growth Fund—thank you, Shane Jones—for investment in regional rail initiatives. This Government understands, with the support and the leadership of New Zealand First, that, actually, the rail network has a critical contribution to make to prosperity in regional New Zealand.

💬 Hon Ron Mark: Make the Wairarapa come alive.

I thank the member for mentioning Wairarapa, because it was our Government that recently invested $200 million out of the National Land Transport Fund in upgrading the Wairarapa line, which is a lifeline—an economic lifeline—for the Wairarapa, taking visitors and tourists, as well as moving freight from the region, down to the port of Wellington.

💬 Hon Ron Mark: And workers from Wellington.

And workers from Wellington going to the Wairarapa. It is a great example of supporting our regions by investing in a modern rail system.

We also included in the rail allocation the Crown’s share of the cost reforecasts associated with the City Rail Link in Auckland, after the former Government failed to take into account inflation and normal cost escalations. The City Rail Link, I’m very pleased to say, will carry the equivalent of 16—one six—extra lanes of traffic in and out of Auckland CBD every day during peak hours. It will double the number of people who live within 30 minutes’ travel of the Auckland CBD.

This Budget shows our Government’s focus on wellbeing. We’re taking mental health seriously, we are breaking the cycle of poverty and despair by tackling homelessness, and we’re investing in a sustainable, modern rail network that can contribute economic value to the whole of New Zealand. I am proud to be part of this Government and to have a chance to serve in a Government that will deliver something as significant and visionary as the Wellbeing Budget.

Well, the Opposition has named the Budget this year “The Botched Budget”, and it’s not hard to see why. We are spoilt for examples of why this is the botched Budget. Certainly, you can look at the chaos of Budget week, can’t you? From Tuesday morning through Wednesday, through Thursday—the utter shambles, incompetence, and duplicity we saw from the Government, that alone would make it a botched Budget, wouldn’t it? But, actually, far more importantly than that, it’s a botched Budget because it shows that this is a Government that has failed to deliver on its promises to New Zealand. That’s why this is a botched Budget, because this is a Government that has failed New Zealand, it has failed to keep its promises, and it has failed to live up to even a quarter of its own hype.

The Government has failed to deliver on their promises around the economy. They have failed to deliver on their promises about living within their means. They have failed to deliver in health, in elective surgeries, in cancer treatment, in maternity care. They have failed to deliver on education, when they can’t even manage to keep teachers in our classrooms. They have failed New Zealanders, when New Zealanders are facing $50-a-week-higher rents and they are facing more and more petrol taxes. They are looking desperately to this Government for something that gives them better job prospects and something to help them with the rising cost of living. In this Budget, all they saw was a failure to deliver in the Prime Minister’s so-called year of delivery.

I want to talk a little bit about those economic promises that this Government has failed on, because you can talk about wellbeing all you like but every sensible commentator makes the point that the economy is what pays for wellbeing. The economy is what gives Governments the ability to do anything at all. Now, Labour might think it’s somehow lost trendiness or, somehow, it’s not en vogue anymore to talk about the economy, but understand this: if you don’t have an economy, New Zealanders don’t have jobs, they can’t feed their families, they can’t pay the rent, and the Government has no money for health, for education, for roading, for policing, for the things that New Zealanders care about.

So we do care about the economy, and what we saw in this Budget was that the economy that was growing up to 4 percent a year under National is now down to, basically, 2 percent growth.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: How much?

It has halved—2 percent growth, the latest Treasury estimates tell us. In just 18 months this Government has destroyed our economic growth plan, halving it from 4 to 2 percent. That’s the equivalent of about $5 billion in lost revenue because of the economic mismanagement of this Government. The proof is right there for us to see: 13,000 more New Zealanders on unemployment benefit under this Government because of that economic mismanagement.

What the last speaker didn’t tell you, when he waxed lyrical about the Budget and spent a lot of time talking about trains, is that he’s had to fund $100 million annually—every year, $100 million blowout on the cost of emergency housing because more and more people are in their cars under this Government, and under that Minister in particular.

I didn’t hear anywhere in the Minister of Finance’s Budget speech him crowing about the fact that the number of new jobs in this economy has gone backwards. Not only is it not growing, it has gone backwards; there are fewer jobs for more people. I simply say to the Minister of Finance: how can you talk about wellbeing? How can you put a wellbeing sticker and a pretty picture of a woman—who’s gone to Australia because things are so bad here—on the cover, when New Zealanders can’t get jobs? When there are fewer jobs for more people? More people in cars, more people on benefits—that is not wellbeing.

On the economy: this is a Government and a Budget that is all talk but absolutely no plan. How do we know that? Well, you look to the economic priority in the Budget document—as I did, and I know my colleagues did—and what was the big-ticket item on the economic growth plan? KiwiRail; that’s it! Subsidies for KiwiRail is the Government’s economic plan. Well, that is not going to help rural New Zealand which can’t get workers, which can’t get staff to their regions, where families are finding it harder and harder to pay the bills. That shows us exactly how little this Government gets economic growth, that they don’t understand its importance, they have no plan to grow it, and, frankly, they seem to think even having to talk about it is, somehow, a bit distasteful. Well, I’ve got news for them: there is no wellbeing without a strong economy and this Government and this Budget is butchering it.

This is a Government that has shackled our economy with uncertainty, with higher costs, with red tape, and with more taxes. If we know anything about Labour Governments it’s that when they run out of their money they come after New Zealanders for more of theirs. This is a Government that has already brought in seven new taxes—seven: fuel excise tax, three rounds of that; regional fuel tax; GST on online goods; brightline extension, ring-fencing of losses; GST on mobile roaming; WorkSafe levies; and tourist taxes. This was from the no-new-taxes Government. They have already spent all of the billions of dollars in surpluses left to them by the last National Government. They have run out of money, they have blown out the debt obligations and promises they made to New Zealand, and now they’re coming after New Zealanders for even more tax from New Zealand families who are struggling to get ahead. This is a Government who has failed to deliver on their promise of being economically responsible.

Do you know, when they took office one of the first things Grant Robertson did was put out his Budget Policy Statement, in December of 2017, and he laid out the spending track for the Government. “Look at me, look how prudent I am”, he said, “look at how we’re going to manage everything we’ve promised New Zealand on this spending track”. Well, here’s what he didn’t talk about on Budget day: that spending track, from December 2017, has now blown out by $9.6 billion. That’s just on operating—$9.6 billion is how much more this Government is already having to spend just to try and keep pace with the things that they said they would do, and even then they’re not keeping pace.

Now, Nikki Kaye has done a great job highlighting all of the broken promises in education. So with $9.6 billion more operational spending, $20 billion more debt, this is a Government that is still failing to deliver on their promises. Let me repeat that: $20 billion more debt from this Crown than when they took office. When they took office—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Repetitious, tedious, boring.

Well, I know Shane Jones finds the economy boring, because it doesn’t make him any better off. But I’m sorry, Mr Jones, $20 billion more for my children and grandchildren to have to repay does matter. Now, I know it’s not a roundabout outside your house but this stuff matters to New Zealanders, and $20 billion is what this Government has loaded up on the credit card for New Zealanders, because they cannot manage an economy.

You can’t trust Labour with an economy. You can’t trust Labour with your taxes. You cannot trust them to live within their means. Now, in National, one thing we understand is that you’ve got to earn money before you spend it, and earning money is a hell of a lot harder than spending. Labour knows how to spend, we know that. They don’t do it well, they don’t do it effectively, but they have completely given up any pretence of knowing how to earn it. That is why you’re already seeing them spend $9.6 billion more going straight on to the credit card bill of future generations.

Now, I just want to close by talking a little bit about their failure to deliver in health, because when I see constituents in my office, the thing they talk to me about is they can’t get elective surgeries. They can’t get cancer treatment drugs. They can’t get midwives, particularly in the rural communities that Jacqui Dean and Hamish Walker and others represent in the South Island. This is a Budget that has completely failed to deliver maternity services. It has failed to give any hope at all to cancer patients. Pharmac’s budget went up by less than the population increase. In real terms, they’ve gone backwards. There is less money for more people to provide lifesaving medicines.

I don’t know how Grant Robertson can talk about wellbeing, when he is failing to provide even keeping pace with population growth in our Pharmac budget. I don’t know how we can talk about wellbeing, when he is saying to cancer patients and pregnant women in the South Island, “I’m sorry, there’s nothing here for you. But don’t worry, there’s a billion dollars for KiwiRail”. Well, maybe the pregnant mothers in Lumsden can wait for a train and hope that gets them to Dunedin Hospital. In my own electorate, important road-safety projects cancelled just in the last two weeks because of this Government’s failure to provide for the health and safety of New Zealanders. They want to provide rail, but in my electorate, roading projects have been cancelled—

💬 Hon Julie Anne Genter: Rubbish—rubbish. Where are they?

—we’re not getting maternity services. Absolutely true—absolutely true, I say to that Minister. I’ll put it to you in writing and you can apologise to me when you realise I’m absolutely right. They have cancelled road-safety programmes. This is a botched Budget that does nothing for the wellbeing of New Zealanders.

There’s always an air of sarcasm, arrogance, and sneer when that member Amy Adams addresses the House. There’s something that speaks of the notion of “born to rule”. Hard to rule when you’re in the wilderness, hard to rule when you’re in the wasteland. In the wasteland, you find feral creatures; those who lack trust, those who thought it was a very good idea to undermine constitutional processes and not take responsibility and then hide, thinking that they could deface, they could undermine one of the most popular Budgets of $87 billion, allocated under the rubric of wellbeing.

Now, given their inability to strike a blow, they thought they would go low. Now we know that the Opposition Leader’s office left it to the resident hacker occupying the mid to backbenches of National. He’s got form in this matter—Mr Bishop’s got form in this matter, and we know that he’s got a very cosy and quite an unhealthy relationship with members of the police force, but I’ll have more to say about that at a later date. Don’t think for a moment we’ve heard the last of his attack to undermine constitutional integrity around the Budget process.

But let me come down to the more meaningful matters, to ordinary day-to-day Kiwis who don’t want to hear this din, who don’t want to watch this undignified—don’t want to see the politicians on the opposite side of the House not earning their pay. They don’t earn their pay when they attack independent civil servants who occupy a particularly important bureaucracy. Unfortunately for them, they concede that to be the counter-narrative that would cause them to triumph over us and our Budget—miserable failure—and Kiwis up and down the motu have said, “We don’t want to see this type of wastefulness in terms of the Opposition’s approach to this important document”.

Now, of course, the document not only allocates overdue funding in mental health but it reminds us that if we’re going to revive the economy, we have to focus on the regions, and they have found no greater champion than my good self. But I am finding nine years of decay, nine years of broken promises, nine years of delay. There is only so much that I’ve been able to do in the 18 months, but let us recite some of the modest contributions: nigh on $900 million put aside to drive initiatives in the regions. What are those initiatives? Those initiatives not only are digital connectivity but ensuring that freight, goods, and services have an option other than tarmac-ing our way into debt.

What we have done is provided, at long last, a robust economic platform for KiwiRail. Now, I know there are rail haters over there. I know there are rail baiters over there. But we campaigned on rejuvenating and re-establishing with a place of priority and the pūtea, in terms of our broader transport infrastructure and network. And it’s very popular. People are going to vote for it, because we have already made our political promises that out in the regions, we will not let rail decay any longer. But I don’t want to steal the thunder of a host of other provincial MPs and the announcements that they will make once we’ve worked through a process of utter exactitude, very, very thorough high probity, and, conveniently, those sums of money will favour those provincial areas that need our attention and support.

Let me also talk about the importance of David Parker’s contribution. Our Government re-established the contributions to what I call the Cullen fund. Now, the Cullen fund administrators—one or three of them talked, a tad injudiciously, to the media, but they have learnt that political power resides in Parliament, not on their parched documents which they describe as their mandate. Political power resides here, and through the Budget—the utter demonstration of political power—Mr Parker has guided us in our thinking, and $300 million will ensure that we do not see leakage and seepage amongst that class of entrepreneurial investors, because we’re sick and tired on this side of the House of funding people such as the rich American who wandered off with the lucre from the last regime. We want those businesses in the technology and the agribusiness sector to stay, either in our regions but certainly in the country, and we’ve been prepared to put the pūtea where the mouth is. So, in that respect, I think that Mr Parker has opened up a tremendous new opportunity which might be regarded as a fellow traveller to the very good work that the provinces are seeing our side of the House do.

Now, of course, the capital budget is something that’s near and dear to my heart. Capital enables us to strengthen the long-term infrastructure of the country. Not only has our capital allocation met our commitments for military spending—more to come in that regard—but it has ensured that five years’ worth of neglected investment in education can be dealt with—five years out of 10 years. This spurious nonsense that comes in terms of health underspending—look at the last nine years. That’s what we’re actually fighting in respect of health underspending. So what the capital allocation of $14 billion has done is bought at least two years up front of redressing that historical neglect in the health area. In addition to that, as I’ve already commented on with my characteristic modesty, now the Provincial Growth Fund is fully subscribed in terms of the pūtea into the fund, and there is nigh on a billion dollars to continue to allocate on the basis of a criteria that will withstand any level of rumour or exacting scrutiny. So I invite the Auditor-General not only to be exhaustive—stay on the right side of the line, Auditor-General. Do not comment on political mission; comment on administrative efficiency.

Now, I’d just like to round up the speech in terms of contributing to that area the last Government gave up on, and that is turning the lives of our young people around who are either not in training, not in education, and often on the couch. Not only have we got the military contributing to that in a significant way—and, actually, there’s a career path there now for them, because the size of the workforce, if I can use that expression in the military, is going to grow substantially. This is a practical demonstration of putting our rhetoric into utter reality. I can’t think of a New Zealander that is not proud to have their families associated—and those that aren’t proud, I don’t want to know them—with the military; our uncles, our grand-uncles—their deeds are festooned around this House. But not only that, we’ve got Willie Jackson, the Minister of Employment, taking the fight into the most difficult areas of our rural communities, which successive Governments have failed to penetrate, working with those families that come from gangs, working with those families that have been afflicted by years of drug abuse and other types of social abuse. That’s what a Government of compassion should do. That’s what a Government who’s got equity in terms of one of its key pillars is going to deliver on.

Now, sure, this may not capture a lot of the media attention, but let me tell you, in the Gisbornes, in the Nūhakas, in the Wairoas, in the Te Kahas, in the Ōpōtikis—the areas that were carpet-bombed through fiscal neglect under the last regime—they’re now feeling the fiscal love. That particular area is going to be one of the barometers that people will look at as to whether or not we’ve intervened and turned the lives around of those families that have been in the shadows for far too long.

Now, naturally, I speak with some passion about this because, disproportionately, they are my people. They are Ngāpuhi, they are Ngati Porou, they are Ngāti Kahungunu. They could very well be Tūhoe, but I’m very cross with them. They opposed the road, and they’ve unwisely believed that their hillbilly priorities for Te Urewera are more important than us tarsealing the road, but we’ll deal with that and them at a later state, because you cannot come forward and preach the gospel of Treaty reconciliation without working with your broader community. I’ll have more to say about them at a later date.

So you can see there are some very practical, earthy interventions in most difficult areas, and we’re proud to say we’re not a Government just for the big end of town—that was the last Government. We’re a Government down at the grassroots. We’re a Government at the churches, at the schools, at the rugby clubs, and in the community. Kia ora tātou.

Well, it was very enlightening to have a lecture from Shane Jones on various topics. He gave us a lecture on arrogance, and I can’t help but think of all his references to “to the victor goes the spoils” and all the false modesty that he talks about—every eye in the regions rolls when he talks about his characteristic modesty and the “first citizens of the region”.

Then we had a lecture about distasteful behaviour—this from the man who famously abused his ministerial credit card. Then we had a lecture from him on wastefulness, and this from the man who’s spent tens of thousands and hundreds and millions of taxpayers’ money so that he could buy trees to have them mulched up by his friends in Ngāti Hine. Then we heard about “utter exactitude” from Mr Jones, when he didn’t have any idea how many jobs have been created so far. We thought it was 54 plus 118 bureaucrats. He said maybe 560, but that includes a whole lot of part-timers, including the five people who spent one hour each mulching those very same seedlings up at Ngāti Hine—so, utter exactitude!

Then we heard about leakage and seepage, and that is too terrible to contemplate from Mr Jones. Then we heard lectures to the Auditor-General, in his usual way, and then he talked about the nephs on the couch. Well, how on earth he thinks he’s going to help the nephs on the couch by (1) doing away with any welfare sanctions to encourage them to get off the couch, (2) to be part of a Government that’s presided over a colossal drop in the number of new jobs being created in this economy, from 10,000 new jobs a month under the National Party—so more than 200,000 jobs over a two-year period, the last two years of the National Government—to a situation in the past three months when we have lost jobs. We haven’t created any new jobs across the country; we’ve lost 4,000 jobs. So he talks about getting the nephs off the couch, while his Government is presiding over an evaporation of new jobs in order to get those nephs off the couch. Then, of course, he’s part of a Government that wants to liberalise dope, so I don’t know how that’s going to help either.

Back on to the Budget. I knew what we were talking about when we heard about the Budget. The striking moment, to me, was on Tuesday after the Budget, Tuesday last week. I tuned in to Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report to listen to the Prime Minister, the Tuesday after the Budget, thinking that she would be out there, all guns blazing, talking about the wonders of her new Budget, and the amazing thing was she never mentioned it at all. She didn’t talk about it. So we had the Prime Minister the week after the Budget in her first round of major media interviews—she didn’t want to talk about the Budget, and that strikes me as speaking volumes in terms of the complete botch-up that was this Government’s Budget in 2019.

It was a flop because there was lots of spending, sure, there was lots more borrowing—that’s sure—but there was no economic plan at all outlined in this Budget. So we stand here as a country which, when the Government had come into power, was growing at not far off 4 percent GDP growth. Last year, that growth had fallen away to just over 2 percent, and that’s a colossal difference. Every 1 percent of GDP relates to about $3 billion, and so that fall-off in growth has ramifications for the whole of the economy and for our New Zealand way of life and our wellbeing. Every time I listen to Radio New Zealand in the morning, on Morning Report, I hear about New Zealanders saying, “Oh, isn’t it terrible that we don’t have access to the latest drugs and pharmaceuticals that Australians have access to?” Then I hear schoolteachers saying, “Isn’t it terrible that we don’t get paid the same as Australian teachers get?” There’s a very simple answer for that, and that is that the Australians are much richer than us. They’re much richer than us because they have a stronger economy. That is why it’s so important to have a plan to actually grow the economy.

So anyway, let’s go through the Budget. I do wish Vicky all the best in Australia. That was another element of the fiasco that was the communication of this Budget, and I won’t go into the question of the leaks and the hoax and all the other elements to it.

Now, if we look at the spending—the spending—there is $3.8 billion of new spending in this Budget. Just so people can get a sense of how that stacks up, the first year I was a Minister, in the 2015 Budget, we had allocation of $1 billion of new spending. We were fighting our way out of a hole caused by the global financial crisis and the earthquakes in Christchurch. People seem to forget very quickly what was going on. We inherited unsustainable spending and had massive debts that we had to climb our way out of, and so we were disciplined about our spending.

They’ve opened the taps full throttle, and what have we got? Well, we’ve got a lot of spending on mental health, and I think most New Zealanders would agree that’s well worth spending on. So we give them a big tick for that. The question, though, of course, is not what spending you announce; it’s what you actually do and what you achieve with that money. That’s a critical thing, and we’ll be watching closely to ensure that people with mental health needs actually get better access to mental health services over the next couple of years. There is a bit of money on family violence, and that all makes good sense, but very little else that you can actually point to for all that money. No extra money for pharmaceuticals.

Of course, having done all that, the first piece of legislation that the Government brought into the House was their petrol tax increase that New Zealanders are just waking up to the full ramifications of at the moment. I don’t think they quite appreciate that there’s about $1.5 billion plus GST—so about $1.8 billion—extra taxation that this Government is taking out of motorists over three years—$1.8 billion. That is contributing to, obviously, the cost of living and making it more difficult for people to get around to do what they need to do. It flows through to all parts of the economy, anything that moves, whether it’s something carried around in a truck—delivered food, groceries, ice cream, or new TVs; you name it—anything that’s moved is going to be more expensive because of the increase in fuel taxes.

People can understand that. They don’t mind, I suppose, if they could see that they’re getting something for the money, but, as we’ve heard from Mr Twyford, we’re taking a whole lot more money. And then his reaction has been to cancel a whole lot of projects and then talk about doing a whole lot of other weird and wonderful things somewhere in the future—maybe a slow tram down Dominion Road. But 20 months into Government, we don’t have anything like a plan put together. The New Zealand Transport Agency is in a state of chaos and dysfunction. So we’re paying more and getting less. It doesn’t surprise me that motorists are somewhat irritated at the prospect of paying more for their fuel and their petrol and being told they should be grateful—well, small mercies, they’ll get to go slower on the roads, thanks to this Government and its approach to transport.

Then, also, when they spend, of course, they spend in a highly wasteful manner. I just have to mention the Provincial Growth Fund, and I’m very keen to see the Estimates hearings with Mr Jones in the next couple of days and get a sense of just actually what he’s done. We know he’s announced a whole lot of things, but what has he actually done in 20 months with the Provincial Growth Fund money?

Then we look at the borrowing. They’re going to borrow an extra $20 billion, and all young New Zealanders will have to pay that in the future. The only point I’d make on that is these are supposed to be the good times. Let’s not forget that the export prices that New Zealanders are getting at the moment, as shown by our terms of trade, are colossally high. These should be golden years for this country. We should be roaring ahead right now. We should be rolling in clover. Instead, the growth is falling away, new job creation is falling away, and we’re adding debt, and that is an indictment on the economic management of this country.

When we look at the plan—we’re scurrying through this document here trying to find the plan for the economy. “Transforming the Economy”—one of the five sections is “Transforming the Economy”. What is the number one policy to transform the economy? A billion-dollar subsidy for rail. Well, thank you very much, folks, there you go—there you go. You’ve got it. You’ve heard it here, you’ve seen it here. We’re going to give an extra billion dollars’ subsidy to rail to buy some new wagons and to make some new tracks, and that is going to be the key policy to transform the New Zealand economy.

No wonder people are depressed. No wonder business confidence is falling through the floor. What are they actually doing around increasing the flow of foreign investment in this country? Well, they’re turning those taps off. They don’t want it.

What are they doing in order to expand New Zealanders access to natural resources with which to make the money? Well, they’re saying that we’re so rich—so rich!—that we don’t need any access to extra oil and gas—we don’t need that. Eugenie Sage stands up and says we’re so rich we don’t need to look for gold—we don’t need to look for those things.

What are they doing in skills? Well, they’re spending all the money on a pointless free fees area—pointless free fees, which has got no new students through the universities. And, if you looked in this Budget, you will find not one extra cent for quality and research in universities. There’s nothing about that. I’m waiting for the vice-chancellors to jump up and down like they always did when we were delivering Budgets, when we were giving lots of money to the university sector in order to improve its quality. We haven’t heard anything there.

And then what do we see on infrastructure? Well, we see a Minister that’s great at cancelling projects and not coming up with any new ones. So what a botched Budget. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Tēnā koe, Madam Deputy Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I’m incredibly proud to stand and speak in this Budget debate on behalf of the Green Party and talk about how the Green Party is driving fantastic change through our support through the confidence and supply agreement with this coalition Government. It really starts with understanding what really matters to all of us. I’ve heard the Opposition say that, well, you can’t have wellbeing without a strong economy. I think they’ve actually got it quite the opposite of how it works.

The economy is one small part of human society. It’s the part that measures our commercial transactions. But, in order for us to have those commercial transactions and for those to generate productivity and wealth, it actually relies on a whole lot of unpaid transactions: the care that parents give to their children, the care that they give to elders, the ordinary things that we do in our daily life that don’t make us money; that supports the paid economy. On top of that, human society is reliant on a healthy natural environment. We are reliant on our planet in order to have a functioning economy. So the idea that we could somehow just focus on GDP to the extent of all else and have a functioning economy is actually quite wrong, and it didn’t really work for the last National Government.

What we are doing in this Wellbeing Budget is taking an approach that actually makes a lot more sense, and that is understanding that the economy relies on people and natural resources. We have to manage those natural resources responsibly for future generations, and we have to ensure that people are receiving decent wages for their work; that they have an affordable, safe, secure, dry, and warm place to live; that we’ve invested in the infrastructure that enable people to get around our towns and cities and around our country; and that we’re investing in infrastructure that’s going to enable our exports and our goods to get to market efficiently. If we’re doing that in a way that increases climate-destabilising pollution, well, it’s not really going to make us better off in the medium term, or even in the short term, really.

So what is at the heart of this Budget that I’m proud of? Well, the huge commitment to dealing with our mental health crisis. I think that is truly something that the previous National Government had not dealt with, and it was something we heard loud and clear from New Zealanders—that we had to deal with it. Again, if we’re not looking after people’s mental health, we’re missing out on their productivity; we’re missing out on the contribution that they’re going to make to our society and to our economy.

We have in this Budget real action on climate change and a real commitment to transition our economy to one that is not reliant on climate-destabilising pollution, because that does not enrich us. But there are many opportunities for people to be involved in things that make our lives more productive, and that is what this transition to a sustainable economy is about; it’s about increasing the benefits to humanity while decreasing the cost and the cost of pollution.

We have a commitment to sustainable land use, and I know this is something that New Zealanders are really passionate about. It’s not just because it’s great for our economy; it’s because New Zealanders love our country. We love the land, we love the forest, and we want to see it used in a way that doesn’t destroy the things that we love about it, like our waterways. It is entirely possible for us to have a flourishing economy and clean up our waterways. In fact, those two things go hand in hand. If you have your old-fashioned approach to economic development, not counting the costs of pollution, then you might think that we’re doing really well, but we’re not doing really well if we are poisoning our waterways. That comes to the heart of what New Zealanders care about.

Rail—I thought it was really interesting to hear from the National Party transport spokesperson that they don’t understand why rail is an important investment for a productive economy in this country. Even if you don’t take into account the cost of pollution and the fact that we need to transition away from fossil fuels, rail improves the productivity of our existing road network. This isn’t rocket science. I mean, it’s something that I would have thought the National Party would understand well. We have a road network. We need to make better use of it. We need to enable more people and goods to move around the country at lower cost, and if we can invest in the complements to improving or maximising the benefit of our existing rail infrastructure, that is going to be a direct productivity gain to New Zealand, because we import all of the fuel that we use to run our cars and trucks, and we import all the cars and trucks that we use to move people and goods. If we can move more people and goods with fewer cars and trucks and less fuel, that is a direct productivity gain to New Zealand’s economy right there.

Of course, the experts in logistics understand this, and I don’t mean, you know, the political hacks who speak for the Road Transport Forum. I mean Don Braid, the CEO of our largest and most successful freight company. Don Braid knows what he’s talking about, and he says that it makes sense to invest in rail. It’s the second corridor. It’s all part of having a more efficient transport network. This isn’t about ideology, and I would think that in 2019, we could move away from this right/left approach to transport where the right is into subsidising cars and trucks and having an inefficient network. It just doesn’t make any sense.

So rail is going to improve the productivity of our transport network. It’s going to reduce pollution. It’s going to make our roads safer for people who are travelling by car to have fewer big trucks on some of our rural roads, which are being put under enormous pressure from some of the freight that needs to be moved on them. So it’s just about finding the sensible, balanced approach to investment that enables the network to work better. That’s at the heart of the Wellbeing Budget: taking a perspective that can take into account all the different ways in which things impact upon each other. In the case of transport, that is how the rail network improves the efficiency of the road network, how the rail network improves the safety of the road network, how the rail network reduces the cost to businesses and people of moving around New Zealand.

Of course, it’s not just that that I’m proud of. As Minister for Women, I’m proud to see one of the largest budget increases for the Ministry for Women, which will be very important to meet our commitment to leading the Government’s response to the Mana Wahine inquiry. Another huge commitment this Government has made is to pay equity. Now, this is something I’d be really interested to hear the Opposition’s view on, because how does this fit into a successful, thriving economy? Well, if women aren’t underpaid for their work, that’s beneficial for the economy. It’s fair and it’s right, and this Government is committed to reducing and eliminating the gender pay gap in the core Public Service and ensuring that we have the right support so that that pathway can be followed in the private sector. The economy, of course, benefits from people who are doing this vitally important caring work being paid the wages that they deserve. That gives them more money to spend on housing, shopping, groceries—all of those things that help increase the economic transactions within our country.

So we start by understanding that people are at the heart of our economy and that people rely on a healthy natural environment. It’s simple. It’s something that I think speaks to the values of New Zealanders, who love their natural environment, who believe that people should be paid fair wages and that they should have the means to have decent, affordable housing. It is going to take time, and I really want to acknowledge this. It’s interesting to hear the Opposition claim that we should be spending more money in all of these areas, we should be spending more money on infrastructure, but we shouldn’t be spending more money, because somehow that’s economically irresponsible. It is a completely incoherent narrative. We should be spending money. We should be ensuring that we’re investing in infrastructure that’s going to support our population and protect our environment. We should be ensuring that New Zealanders are getting fair wages for their work. And we should be investing in the services that New Zealanders expect in their health system, front-line services to help those survivors of domestic violence—another huge Green Party win in this Budget, led by my amazing colleague Jan Logie. This Budget is just the beginning, and we have a long way to go to make up for the 10 years of neglect under that last National Government.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party. It’s a great pleasure to speak in this Budget debate—a little bit later than I would have liked, having spent the time that the Budget was initially read circling in Cook Strait, looking at all the clouds and wishing I was here. ACT and I have great powers; unfortunately, controlling flight schedules and weather is not among them, but it did give me time to think about what exactly it is that defines New Zealand. What else would you think about while circling in Cook Strait? It occurred to me that this is quite an unusual country in its national DNA. It’s not particularly old. It’s not ethnocentric; it’s one of the most diverse. It’s not a theocracy; we are a country that practises a great deal of religious tolerance. We don’t have an all-powerful State; we are a free and prosperous democracy. Yet something holds together our country as coherent and prosperous, and I’d put it to you that it’s this: if you look at a map of the world, New Zealanders are people who are children of pioneers. Either we or our ancestors have travelled further for a better tomorrow than anyone else on the planet.

That pioneering spirit is a nice starting point to review the events of Budget week, because I have to say that those of us and our ancestors who came so far for a better tomorrow could only be disappointed, first of all, at Gabs Makhlouf, Treasury’s secretary. Now, he’s been a disappointment for a long time for the gradual erosion of standards at Treasury, the place where people seriously do exercises talking about their moon feelings, where the top economic graduates no longer seek employment—in fact, where they don’t even employ economics graduates anymore. But Treasury in the last week, under Gabs Makhlouf’s leadership, has gone from being academically mediocre and lacking rigour to downright dirty. Gabs Makhlouf’s act, talking about a bolt being attacked, could only be a deliberate attempt to throw the public off the trail and fudge the definition of a hack, when he could only have known that the access was perhaps not strictly authorised but nothing like the hack or the concerted attack that he made it out to be. I think it should be put on record that that is a real disappointment.

But I have to say it wasn’t a whole lot better from the National Party. To spend the whole week attacking a website betrays a lack of alternative vision, and we’ll come to that later. But I think that’s a real problem for New Zealand.

💬 Hon Shane Jones: No vision.

I think that if Shane Jones thinks he’s going to get off the hook, then he should know that the Government has been an enormous disappointment. We were promised to be world leading, promised that we would have a wellbeing Budget like no other, and the truth is that there is nothing substantial that anyone in the Government can point to that makes this Budget different from any other. There was revenue—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Rail.

Oh, Shane Jones says rail was different. Shane Jones needs to learn some history. Governments in New Zealand have been investing in rail since the 1880s. That might make it new by New Zealand First standards, but rail is not new.

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Legacy! Legacy!

This is a legacy of Winston Peters, perhaps, but not much else. Shane Jones is chirping in about a legacy. That’s the only legacy in this Budget.

The fact is that the Government cannot point to things that are distinctly different in this Budget. This Budget had revenue and expenditure, spending money on things the Government thought would be politically popular and attempting to raise revenue in a way it thought it could easily get away with—hugely disappointing. And disappointing because the real problems that this country needs to face up to and solve, the kinds of problems that deny many New Zealanders the kinds of lives that we and our ancestors travelled further for, for a better life than anyone else on the planet, the kinds of problems that need to be solved, well, those are things such as productivity. Productivity growth in New Zealand is in the tank. It has been 0.3 percent on average for the last decade. It is a shocker.

It’s things like our education system. We’ve got two-fifths—nearly half—of students coming to the level of NCEA level 2 without the basic literacy and numeracy standards that are demanded by international examinations or international benchmarks such as PISA. That’s a real problem. We have a housing market where housing in our largest city is 10 times income. Those are real problems: productivity growth, a long tale of educational underachievement, and a housing market that is out of control. Those are problems that we could have solved in this Budget but which the Government has failed to do anything meaningful about whatsoever.

What do they have in education? The big idea is a handout to certain types of school—or not to the school, actually, but to the parents. It is a cash transfer to people the Government thinks might vote for them—$150 each—but it is dressed up as education policy. That’s all this Government can do in education: shovel some money at people it thinks might vote for them. It has no other ideas in education. We need a revolution in education. We saw, in charter schools, what can happen when we give communities the power and the ability to write their own scripts, to create schools that relate to and engage their own children. We need a lot more of that. This Government could have brought back charter schools. It could have given parents and students a lot more choice in education. It could have actually had more children like Hope coming through the ranks—Hope being the girl who said to me at a charter school, “I never knew I was smart until I came here.” That’s the kind of thing that the Government could have been doing—actually unleashing the dynamism and the creativity of private sector educators to engage New Zealand’s most disengaged kids—but there’s nothing of the sort, just a cash transfer.

What about the housing market? It’s one of the most extraordinary things: over the last 25 years, you were almost better off buying a section in Auckland behind the regulatory cordon that prevents people from building on all the land that is out there—you were almost better off buying that land—than Apple stocks. Only the Government could push the price of a section in Auckland up 900 percent in 25 years simply by regulating that you can’t build anywhere else. Well, the solution is simple: we need to change our planning laws and we need to change the way we fund infrastructure. That’s how you free up land and help people develop sections and build homes that they can afford, but there’s nothing like that in this Budget. All you’re seeing is tinkering—a little bit more Government intervention and Government home building—when the real problem is not going to be solved by KiwiBuild, which builds houses, but by reforms to infrastructure and land-use planning that provide more sections.

Then we come to productivity. People on $48,000 with Working for Families face a 30c tax rate and 25c of Working for Families abatement. How are we going to be an aspirational and achieving society when so many people lose 55c out of their next dollar? What’s this Government done? It has increased the amount of tax and transfer. The ideas I’ve alluded to are the ones that this country needs; the ones in this Budget from this Government will take us nowhere.

In the very short time that I have remaining, for something a little bit lighter, I think we should all wish good luck to Manu—he’s done well; to Laura—she’s very funny; to Randell, actually—New Zealand can’t handle anymore Randell. Sorry, mate! But if you really want to see justice done in this season, then you’ve got to text “WILLIAM” to 3333, because William and Amelia deserve to win this season. Thank you.

I understand this is a split call. I call Greg O’Connor—five minutes.

I quite often get the privilege of following that previous speaker, David Seymour, and I always call it “leading with your jaw”; it’s right out there just ready to be—he started with this vision of flying around Cook Strait in the fog, trying to land, and just the analogy of his own party flying around for years looking for somewhere. I think there’s a little airport provided in a place called Epsom, I believe, where they’re able to land their little planes and take off from, but I’m not—I just couldn’t help but think, “What a shame he wasn’t on a Virgin Atlantic flight at the time.” owned, of course, by Mr Branson. He may have, while he was reading, picked up one of the flight magazines and got some words of inspiration from that man, who has actually looked at this Budget and has said, “Wow!” This is the man, a household name, a man who’s taken his industry, his airline, his record companies, and many others around the world. He’s looked at this—he’s been highly successful—and he has said, “This is actually what success should look like.”

I had a bit of a lightbulb moment when I was in the Budget lock-up. I have said previously—a bit of a sad life—that I’ve read the last 21 Budgets. With this one, I was expecting to go to the appropriations to work out where the money was, and it was a lightbulb moment when I read that it says, actually, you start off by working out what it is you want to achieve. It’s about, yes, you need the economy; yes, you need jobs; yes, you need to ensure you have the money to achieve things—and I’ll talk shortly about how we’re going to achieve that as well—but, most importantly, were just the words at the start: “When people are able to lead fulfilling lives with purpose, balance, and meaning to them, it means improving the state of our environment, the strength of our communities, and performance of our economy.”

Well, again, I’ll allude to the previous speaker. Those economies we came from, or sort of economies—we have all come from other parts, whether it was the Pacific 800 years ago or, more recently, from the Middle East, more recently from Europe—we all came away from countries where we just didn’t get the opportunity, because they were so unfair, because the wealth was locked in at the top, because all the power was locked in at the top. So what our ancestors did—those ancestors the previous speaker spoke of—they did come to New Zealand, they did come with an expectation of being able to use their skills, to develop their skills, and that’s what this Budget’s about. It’s about making sure that it isn’t only the immigrants. And I think, in my own electorate, in Ōhāriu, we are blessed with some very highly talented immigrants; people who, I can see as I stand in the market on a Sunday, are contributing greatly, because that’s what immigrants do, because people come—they’ve escaped from that.

However, we’ve got to actually recreate those immigrants, those people, because then I look around the main streets. If you look around any shopping centre in New Zealand, you’ll see those same people that need to migrate. They need to migrate not physically; they need to migrate into our economy, and that’s what this Budget is about. It’s about making sure those internally in New Zealand get the same opportunities, get the same inspiration. As I go through what we’re trying to achieve there, with even the education in there, apart from fulfilling the venture capital gap, again a very important part of it is that, as we build those industries, we make sure the capital is there.

But, more importantly, we go to actually what we’re going to achieve in education: bringing people out of the schools, making sure they’re work ready and life ready. That’s what it will do, because that will enable—I can use that analogy again—them to migrate to be part of New Zealand society, not to have to work three jobs and still be part of the working poor. Because if you’re doing that, you actually can’t partake in those good things about New Zealand; those good things that visitors to New Zealand see, those good things that actually those who come here and are able to get on to the “working train”—get on to mainstream in New Zealand, which is most immigrants—are able to do, as we were all able to when we got here. This Budget, if I can use the analogy, is about ensuring that those people are able to migrate on to the mainstream in New Zealand so they can produce, so they can be part of a productive New Zealand society.

If I can finish, in the time left to me, just today, the Opposition—they’re sitting here, saying, “This is such a bad Budget.” What have they done? They’ve obfuscated. They’ve sat there and tried to distract. The first two questions on Budget day—you know, they were from the Leader of the Opposition. I liken his performance over this to—let’s just say that he had a gold nugget in his hand, which was what he discovered. He could have done two things. He could have gone on the booze. He could have gone down the pub, thrown it on the bar, and had a great binge. Or he could have thought, “I’ve got a gold nugget here. If I spend this right, I could own the pub.” What has he done? What have he and his colleagues done? They’ve gone on the binge. They’ve had a binge and—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member’s time has expired. I call Raymond Huo—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. First of all, in terms of what happened to my forehead, just look at the other guy! But this time the other guy happened to be a big tree and some fallen branches. This was a result of poor gardening skills while battling strong winds. But back to the Budget debate.

As the Guardian newspaper said, “New Zealand ‘wellbeing’ budget promises billions to … [the] most vulnerable”, and the very first wellbeing Budget in the Western World has received widespread praise. We are tackling the long-term issues facing New Zealand such as mental health, homelessness, child poverty, family violence, and under-funded infrastructure. The Wellbeing Budget is designed to tackle those issues facing New Zealand. I want to thank the finance Minister, the Hon Grant Robertson, for delivering the world’s first wellbeing Budget, which has received widespread praise from credit-rating agencies to social sectors. I’m proud that New Zealand has become the first Western country to design its entire Budget based on wellbeing priorities and to instruct its Ministers to design policies to promote and improve wellbeing.

As Mr Robertson said, many New Zealanders were not benefiting from a growing economy in their daily lives. The reasons can be complex, but one of the reasons is that for almost all Budgets, GDP is taken as the primary measure of economic performance. “This is because GDP is a measure of market production, which therefore tends to focus policy on the interests of producers rather than on the wellbeing of consumers.” I quoted that part from a well-researched book called Wellbeing Economics: Future Directions for New Zealand, by Paul Dalziel and Caroline Saunders. This book is one of the series published by BWB, Bridget Williams Books Ltd. They are short books on big subjects from great New Zealand writers.

The wellbeing concept is nothing new. In the United Kingdom its Government launched in 2010 a nationwide wellbeing programme. Closer to home, the mission statement of the Australian Treasury begins with a simple phrase, “to improve the wellbeing of the Australian people”. The OECD has extended the concept to a wider audience. The OECD offers advice and analysis on economic issues to its member countries. Its mission is to promote policies that will improve the economic and social wellbeing of people around the world.

We’re tackling the long-term issues facing New Zealand such as child poverty, mental health, family violence, and under-funded infrastructure. We are delivering a plan to address those issues; notably, as I said, homelessness, child poverty, mental health, and under-funded infrastructure. We’re delivering a strong surplus and low debt with net core Crown debt as a percentage of GDP being forecast to be 19.9 percent in the year 2021-22. We are investing in New Zealand’s crucial national infrastructure. We’re building a productive nation in the digital age through innovation and social and economic opportunities. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Well, Mr Assistant Speaker, I’m pleased to speak in this debate on the Appropriation (2019/20 Estimates) Bill. From my perspective, Budgets are about priorities, following through on promises, but also it’s an opportunity to see the window and the soul of a Government, to see the nature of their character. What I would argue is that this Government has blown the chance of a generation to make a huge difference to New Zealand, because of failed priorities and a lot of broken promises.

I want to address at the outset the issues that have been raised around the release of Budget information, because it is relevant. It is relevant when we’re dealing with issues of integrity of a Government, of Ministers, of senior public servants, and it cuts to the heart of whether you can trust a Government and their behaviour. I want to talk more about that, because it is my strong view that they have been handed not only billions of dollars, in terms of their Budget, but also they have failed to deliver on the core priorities around education. Why is that? It’s, in part, because some of those coalition partners have come in and a weak Prime Minister has not stood up to them and has let them have their priorities, over education. I’m going to set that out in terms of a number of the broken promises that have occurred.

It is important because, as National has highlighted on our website www.laboursreportcard.co.nz, this was a Government that promised big in education—more than a hundred promises that they made—and they have not delivered on at least 50 of those promises. So what we expected in this Budget in education was a huge amount of funding in terms of wellbeing. They promised around social workers and they promised around guidance counsellors. Of all of the areas that one would have thought they would have turned up and provided additional funding for, it would be those. But they failed. They failed to deliver on their promises.

The next thing that we saw, and it’s very characteristic of this Government—and again, in my view, it demonstrates a Government that is more about PR and spin than actually tackling some of the long-term issues in New Zealand—was that they said “We’re going to spend $1.2 billion over 10 years on school infrastructure.” Well, let me tell you a few facts about school infrastructure. The first is that it was a National Government that went and did condition assessments of every school in New Zealand, and we were handed legacy issues around those portfolios. We increased the school property budget by 40 percent in the middle of the global financial crisis, with the Canterbury earthquakes. Then this Minister has the nerve to lecture us last year on a lack of investment in school property. He comes along with less than what we had spent. And then, this year, in this Budget, we find out that there’s about $170 million of underspend. What it shows is complete incompetence. So what I say to New Zealand is: this is a Government that has bad priorities. They can’t deliver the fundamentals in education, and that is demonstrated in an area like school infrastructure where we’ve got overcrowding and we’ve got delayed projects because the Minister is incompetent.

The next point that I want to make is that $1.2 billion over 10 years is not going to even keep up with growth. The Minister delayed the Auckland growth plan, for example, for which we indicated we may need to spend $2 billion on school infrastructure in Auckland.

So as we go through the next year and a half, National will be raising these issues and saying that it is not OK to have deep PR and spin around an area like school infrastructure. We’re going to have overcrowded schools, we’re not going to have the funding that we deserve, and, actually, they are investing, arguably, not even for business-as-usual.

The next area that I want to raise, which is core to their broken promises, is that there are some big promises that they made that people relied on, and the area is the school donations policy. Chris Hipkins—and I questioned him in question time today—went out there in the campaign, and the headline was that Labour were going to end school donations. Well, here’s a fact: there are 700 schools for which the Minister of Education and this Government have broken that promise. They have been excluded, and what we are hearing from people like Lorraine from Lynmore Primary School and from other schools in Tauranga is that you’ve got not only schools that relied somewhat on those promises but also we’re embedding deeply inequitable policies, and National will be talking more about that.

The next area that I want to talk about in terms of broken promises is early learning, and my colleague Nicola Willis is going to talk more about this. We’ve got a situation where this huge number of promises that were put up during the election campaign, including 100 percent qualified teachers in early learning, reduced teacher ratios in early learning, new childhood centres in areas where there is disadvantage—none of these promises have been delivered.

The next point that I want to make is that not only have we got a Government that can’t deliver on the fundamental issues and promises that they made but we have had the largest ever industrial action in education in our nation’s history. Of all the areas that you would have thought this Government would not cut funding to, it would be teacher pay, so what I want is members opposite to stand up and explain to me why it’s acceptable that there is around $100 million being cut around communities of learning, which is additional payments for teachers. So here is an example of the priorities of this Government: not only have they got the largest ever industrial action in education but they’ve also managed to cut the potential salary payments for a number of teachers in this Budget at a time when they’re in the middle of collective bargaining.

I want to talk about that collective bargaining. We are at 12 months of gridlock in primary. We are at more than eight months of gridlock in secondary. The fundamental issues have been pay and workload. In my view, it is incompetent for the Minister to have gone out there and say, “We’re not going to shift the bargaining parameters.” They’ve just stuck their heads in the sand, and they say that there’s no more money, when we’ve got money being spent on planes and racing and in a whole lot of other areas. So what we say to the teachers of New Zealand is that it is correct: this is a question of priorities and, actually, this Government has choices. It’s made bad choices. It needed to get to the table a lot earlier and prioritise both pay and workload. We expect that the Minister will come out tomorrow with a range of large promises, and our message to New Zealand is how about delivering on the existing promises that they’ve made—and New Zealanders can see that at our report card website.

The final point that I want to really address is that, look, as I’ve gone around New Zealand—I have done more than 70 meetings and public meetings—I’ve talked to people about their priorities for education, and the point that a number of people say to me is that it really does matter what you spend your money on. This is two Budgets in and we see a huge amount of wasted money, and people do understand this other point. They understand that if you have a Government that is weak on the economy, it’s less money for education and it’s less money for health.

What we know is that the economy is slowing and we’ve got a smaller amount of the pie. We’ve got a situation where Chris Hipkins has been weak and hasn’t been able to even address his existing promises, and so what National believes are the priorities are a few things. The first is, Minister of Education, it is time. Let’s settle this, Minister. Let’s settle this, Prime Minister Ardern. It is time—it is 12 months for primary and eight months for secondary. This Government needs to prioritise workload and pay.

The second thing is that this Government need to fulfil their promises in a range of areas. They haven’t done that in this Budget and they need to, and we will be holding them to account for those promises.

The next thing I want to say is that National will be out there and we will be advocating positive policies, particularly in areas like those children who have additional learning needs, and I want to make a comment on that. We saw huge promises by the Government members when they were in Opposition around children with additional learning needs. We literally saw them promise that every child with additional learning needs would get the support that they needed. Well, it turned up in this Budget—yes, with some roles around additional support—but schools have no idea who is going to get those roles. They don’t know what the priority is. It’s not clear that we’re going to be able to actually deliver that workforce. So in the core areas of supporting those disadvantaged children or supporting children with complex learning needs, this Government talks big but doesn’t deliver.

I would argue that this is a Government that is failing to deliver the basics in education. When the Minister can’t even keep teachers in classrooms, or even provide the classrooms in the areas where we need them, it is a failed Government. This Government does not prioritise education, and National will.

Thank you so much, Mr Assistant Speaker, for this opportunity to discuss the Wellbeing Budget of 2019. It is a Budget that I’m truly proud of—New Zealand’s first wellbeing Budget ever, and the first wellbeing Budget in the world.

I am also really proud of what we’re doing in education. In Vote Education, $11.4 billion is what the Wellbeing Budget of 2019 is investing in education. It is the biggest in our history. But before I address what Nikki Kaye, the previous speaker, said, can I talk about the thing that I am truly proud of, and it’s really different. One of the things I’ve heard other speakers say is, “This is the same old Budget. It’s the Budget that we’ve heard before.” It is not. One thing, as I begin, is that there is $1.9 billion for mental health. Have we ever seen the previous National Government commit that much to mental health ever before?

💬 Hon Members: No.

“No.” was the answer to that—$1.9 billion for mental health. Another thing that’s different for us is there is a half-billion-dollar investment in Māori. Have we ever seen the previous National Government investing that much in Māori?

💬 Hon Member: No.

“No.” was the answer to that. The other thing that’s different is the investment in Pacific: $113 million investment in Pacific. It’s historic. We’ve never seen a Government before invest this much in Pacific, and also, both Māori and Pacific are a priority for us in this Budget. That is also different.

The other thing that’s different—with my Minister for Ethnic Communities’ hat on—is that we are investing in our ethnic communities. In April, I came through and I announced a $1.8 million investment in ethnic communities as a direct response to what had happened over in Christchurch on 15 March, but in this Budget we are investing $9.4 million in addition to that original $1.7 million, and it is because we have a growing ethnic community right across Aotearoa New Zealand. When you look at the numbers, one of the things that we’re doing in this Government that’s different is we are investing in more staff in the Office of Ethnic Communities because there are so many of our ethnic communities that we need to serve. We’re also going out to have further conversations with imams, with Muslim young people, and with Muslim women, because we want to ensure that we continue to be an inclusive society in Aotearoa, that we are welcoming, and that we assist our ethnic communities to grow stronger.

Another investment that is different in our Budget is the $12 million that we are investing in combating rheumatic fever to address the high rates of rheumatic fever for Māori and Pacific young people. We are looking at investing in this. Two-thirds of our rheumatic fever cases are in South Auckland, so what are we doing as a Government? We’re making sure that we invest this money in Auckland, because the majority of the cases are Māori, as well as Tongans and Samoans. They have the highest rates of rheumatic fever. We’re interested in addressing it.

The other thing that we’re doing differently this time—and this is from evaluating what happened in the last rheumatic fever programme—is that we are listening to the providers and we are listening to our whānau and our families, who tell us that the programmes that worked most successfully for Māori and Pacific whānau was the one where they helped us co-design the initiatives. They actually give us the advice on what is the best way to ensure that the whānau know more about the signs of rheumatic fever and know more about the importance of taking the medication to ensure that kids with sore throats are actually treated with a full dose of the treatment.

I have so much more, because I’m so excited for this particular Wellbeing Budget: $1.7 billion to fix hospitals over the next two years. This is a fantastic investment by our Government. The other thing that we’re doing differently is we are sitting down, we have had a construction sector accord that we as Government Ministers—seven of us—have already signed an agreement with industry, because when we are fixing our hospitals we would like it to be of good quality. We would like the hospitals—not only the ones that we need to fix because of the lack of investment from the previous Government over nine years but as we’re building new hospitals, we want to ensure that it is of good quality and long lasting and that the materials that go in are really good long-lasting materials.

We also have—and addressing the previous speaker, Nikki Kaye, in terms of education—a 10-year investment in schools; $287 million this year for the first wave and $913 million for the next four waves of investment. The difference between us on this side of the House and the previous Government is that when we actually say that we’re investing these many millions, we actually allocate the funding—

💬 Hon Member: Yeah, it’s real money.

It’s real money—to ensure that we’re building these schools; and, yes, we have the programme of build for schools throughout all of Aotearoa. When we look at the investment in education, $27.4 million is the investment for Pacific. If you ask, “What is that investment going to do?”, it’s going to do several things. One of the investments is to ensure that as we work with our whānau, with our families, that we’re ensuring that we welcome them into schools, that there are churches that convene Pacific families. We’re ensuring that we work more with those families, because we know that when we work with our families, when we sit down and have various programmes and show them all of the things that their students are doing in the schools, when they are more supported by attending community sessions, they are then better able to support their students at home.

Another example is that we’re investing in early literacy programmes. We’re expanding various programmes that have been evidence-based—10 new schools a year—the programmes that are working with our families to ensure that they have better literacy skills.

Another example is this programme called Tapasā. Now, Tapasā is a cultural competence tool. What we know from talking to young people, as well as teachers and as well as parents, is that they tell us things like this—these are according to our learners and our Pacific parents: “a good teacher”—and I quote from this particular document—is one who “understands … my identity, language and culture is important … pronounces my name and words in my language properly … does not make fun of [myself]”—this is the students that are talking—“or my [whānau] or my parents” when they come through the schools and they do not speak fluent English, because when students feel that they or their parents are being put down, they don’t feel welcome in schools. So this particular cultural competency tool is a framework for teachers; teachers who actually work with the majority of our students. In this Budget, within that $27.4 million, we’ve invested money to ensure that it is a tool that more of our teachers—I’m not talking about Pacific teachers or Māori teachers; I’m talking about the majority of teachers who teach our students in schools—actually get to know how to appropriately support our students in schools.

There are so many things that I would like to talk to—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: So much to deliver.

So much to deliver. In terms of Māori, one of the things that is an investment—a huge investment—in Māori is Whānau Ora. This is the largest investment ever that any Government has made to Whānau Ora: $80 million. I speak of Whānau Ora because it’s an investment in both Māori and Pacific—about a third of the Whānau Ora money goes to Pacific families. I hear a lot from our families, from our providers, as well as from our young people that this is a really important programme. Why? It’s because it is a programme that reaches right across. It’s actually a really good indication of what a wellbeing Budget looks like—when you have health, when you have housing, and when you have education all coming together to address issues.

I do have one last example of an initiative that is a good example of wellbeing. It is one that I as Associate Minister of Education and as Associate Minister of Health have worked on over many months with the Minister for Sport and Recreation to ensure that we have this particular programme, which is a health and wellness programme in schools. It is going to be led by Sport New Zealand. It is an investment of over $47 million. It is one where Sport New Zealand will work in schools—level 1 to level 8, primary school to the end of intermediate—to ensure that we encourage healthy eating and encourage more active sport and physical activity, because one of the things that we are wanting to address is childhood obesity. Our rate of childhood obesity is way, way too high, and we must absolutely address it moving forward. Thank you so much, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’m going to start, unusually, by quoting one of the Labour MPs that spoke a few minutes ago. That member said that Budgets that have a focus on wellbeing aren’t new. So it’s fascinating that members opposite get obsessed about saying this is the first wellbeing Budget, when, in reality, Budgets for decades have focused on the wellbeing of New Zealanders. What’s interesting is that if you ask New Zealanders to talk about, or describe, what wellbeing is for them, I don’t think they’d need 140 different indicators that Stats New Zealand have come up with, and I don’t think at the top of the list—or actually anywhere on the list—they would be talking about measuring their moon feelings; that side of the House seems to think that that’s important. No, instead what they would be talking about—what most New Zealanders would be talking about when they think about wellbeing—are simple things like having a job, having somewhere to live, being able to pay your bills, having world-leading health and education for our families, having freedom and choice, feeling safe in their homes and communities, and making sure that we protect our beautiful environment. That’s what National believes in.

It was really interesting, because I had a conversation with a young man earlier today, and in his words: “Wellbeing, in this supposedly world-first wellbeing Budget”—he was shocked at the billions being spent on trains and air force planes. That did not feature in this young man’s description of wellbeing. But what he did want to know is that when he finishes his study, there will be jobs available for him in New Zealand. But what do we have instead? We had 10,000 jobs that were being created in the previous Government; now there’s a loss of 4,000 jobs a month. So if one of the key elements of wellbeing is having a job, I say good luck to the Government, because you’re going backwards, not forwards.

There’s been a lot of discussion in the House about this botched Budget, so I don’t want to dwell too much on it. One of the key things for a Government—the Prime Minister and Ministers—is to act with integrity, to not mislead the New Zealand public, and to make sure that documents and information that should be held with the highest secrecy and regard is protected. What we’ve seen in this example of the 2019 Budget has just been an absolute farce. But what’s worse than that—what’s worse than that—is we have seen that Labour is failing to deliver on their promises. I’m going to talk about that quite a bit in this Budget debate speech.

When we talk about wellbeing, you can’t just talk about social wellbeing if you have a sick economy. Unfortunately, that’s what we’re seeing under this Labour Government. We are seeing an economy that is getting sicker and sicker by the day. So instead of the 4 percent growth that they inherited, it’s slid back to 2 percent—and guess what? It’s sliding back even further.

I’m not going to talk at length about the employment policies or the oil and gas ban and the restrictions on foreign investment, because I know they’ve been traversed. But instead, as I said, this is a Government that is failing to deliver on their promises—very simple promises. KiwiBuild—100,000 houses. That was the hope that New Zealanders were sold; they have been totally ripped off, because in that very simple one-line promise, Labour is failing to deliver. This is ordinary New Zealanders who had an aspiration about owning their own home. How many have we had? I don’t even think we’ve hit 100 yet. I think it’s still in the sort of early 80s. Where are the $10-cheaper GP visits? Where’s the 100 percent qualified early childhood education teachers? Where’s the no new taxes? Oh, we’re at seven already, and counting.

We’re also seeing, unfortunately, a lift in the number of people on benefits. National quite clearly believes that Kiwis are better off in paid work, so that they can live independent lives and they can provide a better future for their children. We also firmly believe in supporting the most vulnerable, while ensuring they work with us to improve their lives. We believe that New Zealanders should be given a hand up and not a handout, and that those who can work, should.

I do want to talk about social development, because one of the promises that Labour made was to overhaul the welfare system. So after months of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group, how many recommendations do you think the Government accepted out of 42? How many? Give us a guess. Three recommendations; three out of 42. And, actually, two of them were Labour’s election promises anyway, so you can hardly count those, and they take effect from April 2020, so it’s not particularly immediate. But what they have delivered is hard-working taxpayers picking up the tab for children that their own fathers won’t financially support, which is absolutely appalling. To quote Steve Maharey, they’re “deadbeat dads”—this is not my quote, it is Steve Maharey’s.

So, unfortunately, one of the other areas that the Budget is promising is another 15,000 people on jobseeker and emergency benefits. Fifteen thousand—there’s nothing about wellbeing in that. If you look at the number of children living in poverty, those who are hit hardest live in benefit-dependent homes. So why is it that the Labour Government is forecasting 15,000 more people on benefits? That is not a life of opportunity. That is not a life of a great future for the children in that household. There is nothing in this Budget—oh, sorry; indexing means, on average, $11 a week for a beneficiary or a benefit-dependent family by 2023. So, I’m sorry; I correct myself: $11, when, actually, when we were in Government we gave an immediate boost to benefits of $25 a week—immediately, not in 2023.

We’re also seeing, unfortunately, a forecast of an increase in the number of parents on the sole parent benefit. As I said before, if the Government was serious about lifting children out of material hardship, they would focus on policies that work to support sole parents into work. But, actually, what did we see cut from the Budget? We see expectations of less childcare assistance. So how does that make sense? If we want people to be independent, if we want people to be able to take care of themselves and their children financially, to give them a hand up, then why would you reduce childcare assistance? It just does not make sense.

We are pleased that some of the National initiatives that have been incredibly successful are being continued: the Integrated Safety Response programmes in family violence with police and other agencies; Housing First for those who are experiencing chronic homelessness—pleased to see that that’s been continued—and also funding for the transition for kids in State care. The things they are funding were National initiatives anyway, which we’ve managed to prove that they work, and the Government now is just putting dollars alongside it.

Unfortunately, this Budget isn’t really about wellbeing. What this Budget is about is Labour failing to deliver on their promises. It’s incredibly underwhelming, and the flip side is the economic health. It’s really easy for the Government to spend money, but what New Zealanders are asking is, where is the plan for the economy to be more healthy? Where is the economic plan, when we’re losing $4,000 jobs a month? How is that supporting young New Zealanders’ futures in New Zealand? But, actually, this picture says it all. Here’s a young woman and her daughter who pursued a better life opportunity in Australia because the Labour Government clearly isn’t delivering it for them here in New Zealand. They’re now on the cover of another magazine, telling them what a great life it is in Australia instead of at home in New Zealand.

Oh, what a stupid speech that was—and a sad speech, really, coming from someone who should know better, a previous Minister. I probably should put her name up, but at the moment things aren’t going too well for our National Party mates. Here’s the problem that they have. It’s that no one cares about this stupid hack strategy. No one cares. I know they think they’re brilliant because they went and pressed this button and pressed that button and no one saw anything. Mark Mitchell knows that desperateness. And Simon thinks he’s a genius but everyone else thinks he’s an idiot. People care about what’s in their pocket. People care about real things, not the stupid hack story. Look at the polls, and if you looked at the polls, they would realise how this is the most idiotic strategy I have seen in politics. Every day they think they’ve got a coup, but the good thing from our side of the House is that Simon is hanging in there, and, as I’ve said—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member will use the—

Simon Bridges—my apologies, Mr Assistant Speaker. Simon Bridges is hanging in there and he knows he’s got the full support of his relations in the Māori caucus, as we well know.

What a wonderful time for the Māori caucus, and where are the Māoris today? I was looking for them when I came out, and they’re gone. They’ve left because they know that this Wellbeing Budget delivers for Māori more than any other Budget that National and their friends in the Māori Party have ever delivered in the history of Budgets. I don’t want to go too hard on the Māori Party. They’re good people in there; some of them are relations. Of course I’ve got to read—look, the Māori Party have come out in support of this Budget. The Māori Party, the National Party’s friends, have said, “it would be churlish not to acknowledge the generosity of the Labour Party.” They welcome “the Labour Government’s recognition of fundamental change to the system.” I am glad that the Māori Party finally woke up. It finally woke up and realised that the path to redemption lies through us, the Māori caucus.

It is a Māori caucus that is getting support from everywhere. Annette Sykes, that warrior woman, says, “A great beginning. I have to agree with the sentiment that Māori should be glad that this is the beginning of change.” But here’s the other one; another one of Mark Mitchell’s mates, Tau Henare. Tau Henare loves this Budget. He’s a National Party member—oh, well, he was, but they kicked out all the Māori who were doing well. They kicked Nuk Korako out. Now if anyone opens their mouth too much, they kick them out. So they kicked Nuk out; they kicked Tau out—he wanted to be the Speaker. They kicked him out—see you later, Tau. Now he makes a living in social media, but he’s doing all right, our Tau. But Tau says, “Yep, I’ve got to take my hat off to that Māori team in Labour. Best performance for a very long time.” Ngā mihi to National Party’s former wannabe Speaker, Tau Henare.

Where is the apology? That’s what I’ve got to ask today. Where is the apology from the National Party members? In fact, where are the Māoris? Where are they? They don’t come into the House any more when I speak—Shane Reti ran out the door.

Tim van de Molen: Is that all of them, or just the ones that member says is Māori enough?

I’m just so sad. I’m sad because—no, there are some good ones there. You know that. I’ve already named the good ones before. Actually, they’re all good people. But last year, Shane Reti was telling us what a terrible Budget—where’s that Shane Reti? Oh, he is here, old Shane. Last year he said, “I want to send a message to the Māori caucus of Government: where were you?” Well, this is where we were, Shane Reti. We were strategising for this year.

Last year we were talking about universality, because—as some of the dumbos in the media don’t understand, and some of the dumbos on the other side—you need two types of strategy: a universal strategy and a targeted funding strategy. You need a universal strategy for a lot of our people who are not part of Māori organisations, who are not on the Māori seats, who don’t pursue Te Reo Māori, who are not part of Waipareira Trust, not part of the Manukau Urban Māori Authority, who don’t watch Māori TV. We have to access those people. We do that through a universal strategy. We’ve done that for ever and a day, but it’s through a targeted strategy—a by-Māori, for-Māori strategy—where we know we can get some turn-arounds, and that’s why sometimes we have to really invest in Māori organisations, and we have. We have.

I’ve got so many papers here, and I want to read some of those numbers out. We’re putting $80 million—$80 million—into Whānau Ora. Well done to Peeni Henare—well done to Minister Henare. That’s just for the commissioning agencies—$116 million altogether in Whānau Ora, a kaupapa that my good friend Jo Hayes said that we had forgotten about. Where is Jo today? Where is Jo Hayes today?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member shouldn’t mention the absence of other members. Thank you.

My apologies, Mr Assistant Speaker—my apologies. But we were told that we’d forgotten Whānau Ora. Peeni Henare came up with the goods.

Kelvin Davis—$96 million, in terms of corrections and Whānau Ora, going through the prisons so that we can get things right for our people. Mark Mitchell knows about this, because whatever you say about Mark, I know he cares about whānau. He might have a different philosophy but I know that he knows that when you apply some targeted funding to what’s happening in those prisons, you can get a bit of a turn-around. So Kelvin Davis—doing the business in terms of the families.

There is $26.4 million over two years for He Poutama Rangatahi. Now, that’s coming through Shane Jones’ Provincial Growth Fund. Isn’t Shane Jones doing a great job, and New Zealand First? We were told that they would block Māori funding, that they didn’t care about Māori funding, but more money is going up for Māori than ever before, and who’s leading the way? Well, obviously the Māori caucus first, but New Zealand First second with people like Shane Jones supporting He Poutama Rangatahi, where we are getting our nephews off the couch.

We’re also putting money into the regions—regions that have been starved of funding by a selfish National Government. For nine years, they refused to support our regions. I go into these regions, into these areas, and they say what a mean, horrible, cold lot they were, led by Mark Mitchell and Lawrence over there—Lawrence, the mayor from Napier. Lawrence Yule—you know, I thought he was a good mayor, but, at the time, they forgot all about funding our regions. We have turned that around through the Provincial Growth Fund—

💬 Lawrence Yule: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I just wanted to make a personal statement that I was never the Mayor of Napier; I was the Mayor of Hastings.

Happy to give an apology, Mr Assistant Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): No, I’m going to make a ruling on that. It’s really important. Some members do make mistakes. As I’ve said before, every member has the right to be heard in the debates. What the member could do is take a call.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker—well said too, might I add. Can I finish off today, though, by saying we’ve got all this targeted funding now. We’ve got great people supporting us, like Annette Sykes and Tau Henare—I wouldn’t say he was a great person, but Tau was a formidable National Party MP—and people like Shane Te Pou, John Tamihere, Tariana Turia, and Larry Parr. A lot of people are coming in behind us.

I want to say today that, for us as a Māori caucus—and I’m proud of our Māori caucus, proud to chair it along with Meka Whaitiri—the $32 million that we set aside for kōhanga reo was one of the happiest days. A number of us attended that, and that was all about equity. That was about supporting a group of people who were ignored by the National Party—and the Māori Party, might I add. In 2011, they put their equity claim up. They were totally ignored by the National Party and, sadly, by my whanaunga Hekia Parata, who said, “No, we want you to get everything in shape at the kōhanga.” They’ve done that. They’ve turned things around, and I want to mihi particularly to our matriarch there, Whaea Iritana Tawhiwhirangi, for her magnificent work through the years for the kōhanga reo.

The $32 million allocated by Minister Kelvin Davis has got them on track in terms of the equity funding. Waihoroi Shortland was brought to tears, and it was a wonderful day watching Wassie Shortland talk about the tautoko for the kōhanga reo. That’s where the hope is. That’s where we’re going to start, with our tamariki.

Tēnei te mihi ki a tātou katoa, tēnā koutou, kia ora rā.

[I thank you all gathered here, greetings to you all.]

My worst fear has been realised: following the Hon Willie Jackson, being the next speaker after him! What I like to do in the House is write notes down to respond to the previous speaker, and I don’t have a lot of notes here to actually respond to Willie. The one thing that I’d acknowledge—and I agree with him—is that I want to acknowledge the Hon Tau Henare. I was very proud to serve with him, and I acknowledge the work that he did when he was in this Parliament, which was considerable.

I just want to set the record straight on a couple of things. The first thing is around the Budget and defence. I was very proud to be defence Minister in a National-led Government, in the last term in Government, and we did a lot of work—by my previous colleagues Gerry Brownlee and Jonathan Coleman—around doing a defence white paper. I myself, at the time, went around the country. We held public meetings up and down the country, seeking the public’s input in terms of what they would like to see from our defence forces; whether or not they wanted to see niche capabilities, and what they actually wanted to see us deliver in the next decade with our New Zealand Defence Force. Out of that was driven the defence white paper. Out of that was driven our Defence Capability Plan. It was a commitment to $20 billion of spending over the next 15 years, and it was a very comprehensive road map for us in terms of upgrading our defence property, investment into our personnel—our people—and investment into equipment so they could go out and do their job.

I was worried about the commitment that the incoming Government had in terms of continual investment into our defence forces because during that campaign, the finance spokesperson, Grant Robertson, came out when asked where they would make cuts—because at that stage, they were being challenged by the Hon Steven Joyce around the fiscal hole, which now he’s proven to be right about—and said, “We’ll be making cuts in defence.” So when you have the incoming finance Minister saying publicly that they were going to look at defence to make cuts, that of course rang warning bells for us—and certainly for me, specifically, because I hold the portfolio. Of course, I started pouring enormous amounts of pressure on Ron Mark, as the incoming Minister, and also Labour, as the incoming leader of the Government. So I’ve been very pleased to see that the Hon Ron Mark has continued to be able to retain the investment. I’m not happy in the reviews that he’s undertaken, because we do see that as kicking the can down the road and delaying that investment, but we’re pleased to see that they’ve maintained the investment.

The point that we made when this Budget was released—and it was released as the Wellbeing Budget, and the leadership team, led by the Prime Minister, went all around the world and they told everyone that this was going to be a special wellbeing Budget, something that no country had ever done, something that had never been seen in the world before. They laid out five priorities—five priorities—that were going to be focused on in this Wellbeing Budget. The five priorities were—the Hon Willie Jackson will know them. I don’t know if he wants to tell us, but I’ll repeat them. They are: taking mental health seriously, improving child wellbeing, supporting Māori and Pasifika aspirations, building a productive nation, and transforming the economy.

So when the Budget came out—and I think one of the members highlighted the investment into education—we saw that there was a $20 billion - plus investment into defence. That didn’t line up with their five priorities in a wellbeing Budget, and, actually, I think that’s why they’ve come under enormous pressure from their own membership, because they weren’t expecting that. We were happy to see that investment continue to go into defence. In fact, we’d been applying pressure to this Government for the last 18 months to ensure that that continued to happen. So I wanted to clear that up, that little misconception that for some reason the National Party doesn’t support defence. We do and we always will. We’re proud of the work that they do; we’ve got the best defence force in the world.

We’ve just had an announcement about a drawdown in Taji. I personally think that we’re making the wrong decision there. If it’s aligned with our partners, we have no choice; we’re not a big enough defence force to be able to stand up an operation ourselves that’s sustainable in Iraq in support of the Iraqi Government and the Iraqi people. However, history shows that we go in there—we’ve done a very good job of defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). They’ve done a very good job of dismantling the caliphates that were in Syria and Iraq. If we leave too soon, history shows that a vacuum is formed and it’s very quickly filled by groups like ISIS again. I hope that I’m proven wrong, but I just feel that a June 2020 time frame is way too ambitious, in terms of being able to retain the gains that we’ve made and the commitment that we’ve made in the past years, led by our outstanding New Zealand Defence Force personnel and our Anzac-type mission that we’re running with the Australians in Taji and in Baghdad, Iraq.

The other thing that I wanted to say, just in relation to the defence portfolio, is why are they doing a sole source? It’s apparent they are, looking at the announcement and the questions that were asked in the House to the Minister today. As an incoming National Government, we made enormous investment into our Ministry of Defence around procurement because we inherited some very poor decisions that were made under the previous Labour Government, in terms of the procurement of equipment. We identified that, actually, we needed to invest into our capability inside the ministry, and we did that. The incoming Minister had an audit done; the audit showed that we’ve got a world-class procurement system. Why aren’t we using it? Why are we going to a sole source? Why aren’t we making sure that we maintain a competitive tension inside that process so that as a country, as a small nation—where, actually, every dollar counts—we’re getting the best possible deal that we can? Instead of been wedded to—and this was already signalled by the Minister back in 2016 when he was in Opposition, that they’re going to go for a C130J Hercules, when we’ve got world-leading technology in systems like the Embraer, or even the Japanese C-2 aircraft which they’ve invested heavily into.

Now, I don’t know if they would ever meet the standard or the requirements that we have, but we’ll never get to find out, because we’re not going through a proper procurement system. In actual fact, it diminishes us in the eyes of the companies and the countries that are trying to work with us because they’ve already invested quite a bit, in terms of bringing aircraft here and engagement with us and a willingness to engage. We’ve now come out and said, “No, we’re going to go through a sole source process.” It’s not right.

The other thing that I would mention is that we committed a lot of time, on this side of the House, the Opposition, in fighting a capital gains tax and the introduction of a capital gains tax on Kiwis. I think that, regardless of what side of the political spectrum you support, most Kiwis would accept that a Labour Government comes in and they borrow more, they tax more, they spend more. The economy generally slows down, and I’ll give you an example of that: when the global economy last went into recession back in 2008-2009, the Labour Government had already put New Zealand into recession 18 months ahead of everyone else. We’re heading down the same track. We keep being reminded about the situation that’s happening globally. At the moment, we’ve gone from an economy they inherited with 4-plus percent growth; they’ve managed to stall it back to 2.5 percent or less in less than 18 months. So they have got us on the same track.

So we managed to deal to the capital gains tax but, of course, we knew what was coming. What’s come? We’ve got the fuel excise tax, times three, we’ve got the regional fuel tax, we got GST on online goods, we’ve got brightline extension, we’ve got ring-fencing of losses, we’ve got GST on mobile roaming, we’ve got WorkSafe levies, we’ve got a tourist tax. When we came into urgency—and, of course, we sat through the weekend; that’s fine, it was a long weekend—most Kiwis weren’t the slightest bit interested in what was happening in Parliament. They were more interested in getting away with their families and enjoying the long weekend. Meanwhile, the Government was busily beavering away here passing bills through urgency, so that when people woke up the next morning they were going to be taxed more. They were going to have more money taken out of their back pockets. That’s the reality of it.

One last point on justice—unfortunately, I’m running out of time. We haven’t seen any major investment in the justice portfolio; we haven’t seen any reforms come to this House. We were told by the incoming Government—there were some very big bold speeches and statements made—that this was going to be the biggest reformist Government in a generation in relation to our criminal justice system. We had the massive summit with huge cost blowouts that they ran. We’ve just had a report that’s come back from the advisory group. I want to acknowledge the advisory group; there are some very good people on there that I admire a lot, and they’ve come and they’ve met with us and they’ve taken the time with our caucus. I have to say, though, the report doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know. These are issues that, as a country, we’ve been dealing with for decades and will continue to be a big challenge for us. We just have to get stuck in and come up with solutions.

I’m pleased that on this side of the House we’ve got some real solutions. We’re doing some heavy lifting around our policy work that we’ll bring to the country next year for the election in 2020. But, sadly, we didn’t see any reforms, we didn’t see any investment, we haven’t seen any changes. In fact, the only policies that have been held on to and that haven’t been given additional investment were the ones that the National Party brought in our last term of Government. A very disappointing Budget by a Government that’s not delivering on its promises.

Madam Assistant Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to talk about the most anticipated Budget in 10 years. Here it is: the first wellbeing Budget, a first for the world.

I’d like to begin by acknowledging our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern. As I travel the country and people talk to me about our Prime Minister, one word that comes through is the word “genuine”. That she is a genuine person and that she understands people. She particularly understands people who may have had a hard time and who need some support. One of the key aspects here is around mental health, and I’ll get back to that in a second but I first need to acknowledge the previous speaker, Mark Mitchell.

Generally, Mr Mitchell makes sense but today I wasn’t quite so sure, because he spoke about that in 2008 the previous Labour Government left the books in a mess. Well, the previous Labour Government—nine years of surpluses paid down net debt to almost zero; started the Superannuation Fund, now worth $40 billion; started KiwiSaver, now worth $35 billion. In fact, the previous Labour Government had the books in such good shape that when the global financial crisis came, the National Government were able to borrow, and they borrowed around $60 to $80 billion to get through those challenging times, but that was because the Labour Government left things in a good state.

I’d like to talk about rail. We have a wonderful network here in New Zealand—a wonderful rail network. It’s been built by generations of New Zealanders. It’s a fantastic resource that we have. This resource has not been utilised over the past few years and I am proud that this Government is starting to make the first step towards utilising that wonderful resource that we have. We’re investing $1 billion in this Budget on rail, and $300 million on regional rail. That $300 million, particularly, comes from the Provincial Growth Fund and I’d like to acknowledge our colleagues in New Zealand First for the work that they do there. That’s $300 million on regional rail. Now, the member opposite, Lawrence Yule, former Hastings mayor, he’s excited about the regional rail because they’ve got rail right through the Hastings region. One of my colleagues, Tim van de Molen, he’s excited about the rail heading up to Auckland, the passenger rail.

We need a diverse transport system—a diverse system that caters for road, rail, and coastal shipping. This is the first step towards moving towards a diverse, balanced transport network, and that’s what we need in New Zealand. The previous Government built a lot of roads and we do need roads, we acknowledge that, but we also need rail and we will move towards coastal shipping as time goes on.

One of the key things about passenger rail is productivity, so when you’re sitting on a train and you’re sitting next to a table you can open your laptop and you can start working; you can be productive. You get certainty of arrival time, particularly with the rail that will be launching next year between Hamilton and Auckland. You don’t have certainty of arrival time when you’re in a car travelling up to Auckland; you hit the Southern Motorway and you’re not really sure how long it’s going to take. So people in the Waikato region are particularly excited about that. That’s the first one—rail.

The second one I’d like to touch on is education. People know I’m a former schoolteacher, in education—certainly something that’s very dear to my heart. We have allocated $1.2 billion for classrooms; the biggest spend in a decade on classrooms. Now, one of the key messages that I receive from principals, particularly the growth areas like, for example, the Waikato region, is that the funding for new classrooms has not kept up with the demand. But we’ve heard that and we’re committed to addressing that. We’ve got a 10-year growth plan, which will be coming soon—it’s just passing through Cabinet—and that will provide certainty for those schools. Previously, there’s been a three-year plan, and it’s sort of been a little bit haphazard at times. But this will give those principals and those schools certainty in those growth areas. We’re also removing school donations for decile 1 to 7 schools, and we’re investing in special education. Now, we acknowledge that there are a number of challenges in special education, and we are working hard to address those because teachers need that support, and we’re investing in that area.

I did touch on mental health, and mental health is, probably, the centrepiece of this Budget around wellbeing; $1.9 billion for mental health, and that allows for access for free mental health services, and not just for those people who are living urban but for those who are living rural as well. The mental health of our nation is of utmost importance, and I’m proud of this Budget.

I’m absolutely thrilled to stand here and take a call in the House this evening to talk about this Wellbeing Budget—the first wellbeing Budget that we are seeing in New Zealand, and the first wellbeing Budget that we are seeing throughout the world. We had a member opposite mention before about the fact that this wasn’t the first wellbeing Budget, because the previous Government thought about people when they developed—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: They thought about it a lot—did nothing.

Apparently, they did. They talk up about how good the economy was under them—under the previous Government, it was going great guns. But at whose expense? At whose expense was this so-called economy going at great guns? We had growing numbers of homelessness. We had children living in cars. We had children living in poverty. We had hospitals falling into disrepair around our ears. Our schools were falling into disrepair. We didn’t have teachers coming into the profession. We certainly didn’t have mental health workers coming into the profession, and what we saw was the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Well, if that is their definition of a wellbeing Budget, that apparently the previous Government has delivered, well, they should be ashamed of themselves—ashamed of themselves.

This Wellbeing Budget, it puts people at the centre. We had a previous speaker the Hon Amy Adams call this a botched Budget that does nothing for the wellbeing of New Zealanders. Well, I challenge that member and say taking mental health seriously, improving child wellbeing, supporting Māori and Pasifika aspirations, building a productive nation, and transforming the economy—how does that not do anything for the wellbeing of New Zealanders, I ask that member? This Budget looks long term and intergenerational to make change for generations to come. It thinks beyond the three-year parliamentary cycle, unlike what we have seen in the past.

I debated what to talk about in my contribution today, and there’s so much to talk about, so many good initiatives in this Budget. But the one thing that transcends everything, in my view, is the amount of money that is going to be put into mental health: $1.9 billion. Outstanding—the most we’ve seen spent in the mental health space in many, many years. Mental health has the biggest impact on everybody. It affects our day-to-day happiness, it affects our productivity in the workplace, it affects our personal relationships, it affects our social relationships, it affects and impacts on everything people do, every day. It affects, in fact, our quality of life.

We’ve heard the word “transformational” talked about a lot, and this Government will be a transformational Government. We hear members opposite saying, “Oh, you know, it’s not going to be transformative.”, but, actually, our people that need and use the services in mental health—the services that are going to be new services, new initiatives—this will be transformational for them and their families and their children. This will help to transform their lives.

In the area where I live, in Ashburton in particular, the amount of money that is going to be put into mental health towards new initiatives is going to go a long way. We’ve seen mental health suffer with the M. bovis issues that have been predominant in the Ashburton electorate. We have horrendous youth mental health issues, and one of the things that this Budget is going to work towards is increasing the number of staff working in the mental health space, so when someone goes to the GP, there will be a mental health worker on site, because that is something that has been missing for such a long time. People that go to their GP and get given a referral to have an appointment with a mental health worker—they may be ashamed, they may be embarrassed, and they don’t end up going, because they feel alone. Well, with this initiative, they will visit the GP, and their GP will physically walk them down to the mental health worker, and that will be transformational.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker, and it’s a pleasure to be talking on this Budget. The year of delivery—well, I think we’re going to find the word “wellbeing” a very overused word in time, because I just don’t think that this Budget actually delivers on what it says is wellbeing. I don’t think most people understand what that nice, cuddly word means—“wellbeing”. But, even if you did have a warm glow from that, I don’t think that this Budget actually delivers on that. The issue around trying to strive for better outcomes and deliver better outcomes—I just think that this is a Government that’s failing to deliver on its promises.

The reason I say that is that I do acknowledge there are a couple of good things in the Budget. The first one, as the previous member Jo Luxton spoke about, is around mental health, and it’s a substantial amount of money. Everyone in this House wanted to see something happen around mental health. But the issue, I’d have to say to you, is that a year and a half—in October 2017, all the consultation had been done, the money was in the books, and yet this Government chose to be political about mental health and wait 18 months before it actually came out with something. It’s the lost 18 months that is the worry about what’s gone on, purely for political grounds. The other thing is, I think the issue around looking after our more vulnerable members, around how their benefits are going to be calculated in future—good thing. But it does come with a financial cost. That, I think, were two of the good things about this Budget.

But the worrying thing about this, the worrying thing about what this Government’s doing at the moment, is that it is overseeing a dramatic decline in economic activity in this whole economy. What we’ve seen is, in the last three years when the National Government was in power, we averaged a growth rate of 3.3 percent. Now we have, as a result of the policies that that coalition, and particularly the Labour and New Zealand First members, have gone about doing, is that we’ve now got an economy that’s close to 2 percent. Many people will say, “Well, it’s only 1.3 percent. What does it matter?” What it means is that when you’ve got a $300 billion economy, that means, as a result of poor decision making, ill-advisable comments, and money being wasted in areas that people see little benefit—and then you overlay that with a whole lot of issues like let’s think about doing a capital gains tax, let’s look at changing all the labour laws, all those sort of things—naturally, people have got concerned.

All those worrying things that have been talked about and those new things that have been put in place have made people very uncomfortable. Particularly, it’s the business owners that have been affected. People say, “Well, that’s only the rich.” Well, it’s not, actually. It’s the 530,000 businesses we have in New Zealand, most of whom—the vast majority—are owned by husbands and wives who live all across this country and employ lots and lots of New Zealanders. It’s their business, what they are noticing right now—it is that small decline, fewer people coming through the door, ordering the coffee in the morning or just ordering the new piece of equipment that might’ve otherwise been going to go to their factory but they’ve now put it on hold. That slow decline; it’s only 1.3 percent but it represents, across New Zealand, a $3 billion decline in economic activity.

What it means—more worrying for this Government—is that it’s lost a billion bucks in tax revenue. It’s lost a billion bucks of tax revenue that Treasury 18 months ago was saying “You should be expecting to get this money.”, and, of course, Grant Robertson went out spending like crazy. That’s why we saw, before the Budget—he went to every Minister and said “You need a 1 percent decline in your budget.”, because that was Grant worrying about what was going on. That is why this Budget actually hasn’t allowed them to spend what they want to spend. They may talk about a new school-building project of a million-whatever dollars—actually, it’s little changed from when we were in power. Actually, those figures are not—health is down, all those sorts of things.

But even if you accept that, the other thing that’s showing why Grant Robertson is failing as the finance Minister is the rubber hits the road around debt. If you look at the Budget forecast in the so-called Wellbeing Budget, if you look at page 134, current debt is $60 billion—$60 billion. Under the projected arrangements, that is going to blow out by another $8 billion to $10 billion, whether you look at it on a net or gross debt level. This Government is talking a good shop, and Grant Robertson’s saying “Look, we’ve got debt under control. We’re keeping it at 20 percent.”, and the numbers are fine in terms of percentages—it’s roughly around 20 percent—but when you’ve got a growing economy, what Grant’s doing, what the Minister’s doing, is growing debt in real terms. He is taking on another $10 billion worth of debt. Ten billion dollars’ worth of debt, even at low Government interest rates, is a substantial increase in not only the interest you have to pay on it but also what you have to do in terms of repayment.

This is a Minister that is gearing up, indebting this nation, as he continues on a spending path while at the same time overseeing a gradual decline in economic activity. I think that is the most worrying thing about this Budget. That this was a Minister, when he was in Opposition, who used to say to our Minister of Finance, Mr Bill English—now Sir Bill—all the time, “You know, you’re growing debt.” Then we talked about per capita debt and all that sort of stuff—when the Minister comes to the Finance and Expenditure Committee and we talk about the net debt growing, I’m sure he’ll be saying, “Oh, it’s all about per capita debt, and there’s no change.”

This is a Government that’s going to put $10 billion of extra debt on this nation and at the same time spend three billion bucks to the Hon Shane Jones, spending up large around the country, another billion that he gave Winston Peters on foreign affairs, and what more? We’ve got another billion bucks in this Budget—another billion bucks—that’s just gone to KiwiRail, which we know will go to Northland. There’s five billion bucks out of the $10 billion of additional spending. Is it good-quality spend? I’d have to say to you I don’t think it is.

I don’t disagree with some of the principles of what they’re trying to achieve, but to spend five billion bucks when you could’ve spent it on some of the more important things, like increasing the budget for Pharmac, not by $40 million but actually giving it a decent dose so we can actually bring about and introduce more life-saving drugs into New Zealand—those are the types of things I would’ve liked to have seen in this Budget, and you’d hardly say that it’s a transformational Budget on that basis.

What is in here for the ordinary New Zealander? Yesterday, I held a public meeting in Beachlands. I had probably a hundred people, and one of the things I was saying to them was the issue around what this means for ordinary New Zealanders. I think the only thing you can point to is to say that for school donations, there’s $150 that parents are not going to have to write a cheque out or provide that cash for, but, of course, that excludes decile 7, 8, and 9 schools, so those people, those vulnerable people, those vulnerable children that go to those higher-decile schools, they will still be in this zone where their parents will have to write out a cheque. That’s not looking after the vulnerable and needy in New Zealand. I think that’s a travesty, that this Budget hasn’t focused on the most vulnerable.

It is a difficult role for Mr Robertson because he’s overseen such a decline in this economy, and that’s constrained him and he’s had to make hard choices, but I don’t think the choices he’s made are good for New Zealanders. This is not a Budget for New Zealanders; this is a Budget for one or two people, and I just don’t think that we’re getting the fairness and equity that everyone in the Government likes to talk about. What I think we’ve actually got is we’ve got a Government that wants to tax more, wants to borrow more, and wants to spend more. It’s interesting that the very first thing we did after the Budget, in urgency, without the scrutiny of a select committee, was to pass two new tax bills: one relating to the tourism tax, another one as a fuel tax imposed on all New Zealanders across New Zealand. Why are we passing additional tax bills if we’re doing a wellbeing Budget?

I understand this is a split call. I call Marja Lubeck—five minutes.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Madam Assistant Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak on Budget 2019. Well, that was a brilliant analysis from the speaker before me, Andrew Bayly. He basically said it comes with a financial cost. Now, obviously, sustainably growing our economy is important; we completely agree with that, but so is the health of our people, the health of our communities and the environment. We’ve heard a lot of criticism from the Opposition, and that is obviously their job, but they shouldn’t really confuse people with their messaging. Now, David Seymour was actually the one who said there’s nothing new in this Budget. That was misquoted by the Hon Louise Upston. It wasn’t a Labour MP; it was actually one of their own Opposition members who said that there’s nothing new in this Wellbeing Budget.

But I think it’s all been very negative, and I’d like to just bring it back to a little bit of positivity and just bring us up again, talking about these record investments that we’re seeing in this Budget. For example, if we look at the record investment that we’ve made in education—my colleague Jamie Strange mentioned it already. This is for the first time ever that we are seeing a multi-year commitment to building our new classes and our new schools. This Budget provides a $1.2 billion funding in a 10-year school programme, taking away the uncertainty of future Budgets so that people actually know what is coming and don’t have to be thinking of what they might be facing. So that’s in contrast with what a traditional Budget would do, and that is one of the new things that we’re doing here. So this is actually the largest-ever investment that is made by a New Zealand Government.

The other record investment that we’ve seen that people have mentioned is about health. This is starting the process of rebuilding the neglected area of mental health. We know that many New Zealanders are affected by this, and, in fact, on a recent survey I ran in the electorate that I’m based in, in Rodney, health and mental health was the number one concern for people in an electorate that most people maybe don’t associate with people that need the help.

What this Budget does is it actually expresses the values of our coalition Government, and we’re showing that there’s a different way of dealing with the issues, a different way for the Government to work and address the wellbeing of our people. So instead of having a Budget that focuses on a very limited set of economic data such as GDP, we are actually measuring success in a very different way, in line with our values, in line with fairness, protection of our environment, and also in line with the strength of our communities.

Coming back to the GDP growth, we’ve heard the National Party talk a lot about the GDP growth, but how can you ever make a claim to having a rock star economy when, actually, under that economy, we’ve seen that things like child wellbeing, homelessness, and the ability to swim in rivers and lakes have absolutely gotten worse over the years.

What the National Party, in their speeches, have done is they have conveniently forgotten that under their watch a decreasing share of the economy has gone to working people. Louise Upston mentioned families and children relying on benefits. Well, actually, what the National Party never talks about is that the changes they made over successive Governments to employment legislation have created the working poor. These are not children in families that are relying on benefits; these are children in families where mum and dad are holding two or three jobs, still doing it tough, and still not being able to make ends meet. So these households are struggling, and this is what we’re saying. You cannot rely on GDP as a measure of success when you’re seeing children in households where mum and dad are holding multiple jobs still not being able to be looked after properly.

So this Budget is doing things differently. It’s starting a whole programme of change. We are ensuring our young people are well equipped with the skills they need to go into the workplace and people are equipped with the skills that they need to cope with any changes in the future. We are looking ahead. In the Budget—as my colleague the Hon Willie Jackson before spoke about—we’re doing Mana in Mahi, so we are actually increasing the jobs by 2,000, getting young people off benefits into meaningful work, and that is actually on a way to creating 4,000 jobs. Now, everybody will agree there’s more that we need to be doing, but this is just the first start.

I’d like to finish with my favourite line in the Hon Grant Robertson speech, and that is, 51 years after Robert Kennedy’s speech on the limits of GDP, “we begin through this Budget to value and [to] measure all that makes life worthwhile in New Zealand.” This Budget is showing that our Government is looking ahead 30 years, not three.

Liz Craig, you have five minutes. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. This is a Budget to be proud of, and it’s going to make a huge difference to many, many people’s lives. I just want to think back to the inquiry into mental health and addiction. The panel travelled through the country last year, and they heard many, many stories from many people. They heard from people that were grappling with their own mental health and addiction challenges, they heard from families bereaved by suicide, and they also heard from workers in our mental health system, working with really, really stretched conditions, and also those in our community trying to hold things together. What they heard was that our current system is just not working and that people are not getting the services that they need. They heard about young people falling through the gaps, and, even with people when they got services, they actually didn’t meet their needs. So this is why this Budget is making mental health a top priority and we’re investing $1.9 billion in a mental health package so that we can get on and start implementing many of those recommendations that the inquiry put forward that we should be doing.

One of the key planks to this is looking at these new front-line services that we’re putting into doctors clinics and also many other health services in our community. What that will mean is that those with mild to moderate needs, particularly, can turn up to their GP and get put in touch with a key mental health worker. What that mental health worker will do is navigate that often difficult pathway to accessing the services they need. For some of those people, it may just be a few sessions with that mental health worker and to be able to develop some strategies and think through where they can go. But, for others, they might need long-term support or even referral to specialist services. So what that person will do—the mental health support worker—will be walk alongside them on their journey, and that’s going to be really, really important.

What we’ve got is those challenges with the current workforce capacity, and so what will happen is these services will be rolled out over five years. But the Budget puts aside significant investment so that we can train that workforce and also make sure we’ve got the facilities that we need so that those services can be rolled out.

One of the other things that the package does is it puts significant investments into suicide prevention, and, certainly, this is an area of significant unmet need in my own community and around the country. The Ministry of Health is working on a suicide prevention strategy, but what Budget 2019 does is it puts an extra $40 million over four years into suicide prevention services so that those at most risk can actually access the support they need.

The other things we are looking at investing in are extra resource into telephone counselling and also internet-based supports so that people have got the flexibility of accessing services and support how they need them. For many people, this may mean that they can actually get that support without even leaving home, which is really important.

The other thing, for young people in particular, is what we’re doing is extending nurses in schools. Currently, it’s in up to decile 1 to 4 high schools, but what we’re doing is extending it up to decile 5 high schools, and that means an extra 5,600 students have got access to a health professional in their school that they can go and talk to, and that can serve as an entry point if they need it into other services for them, which is really critically important.

So there are a lot of things that we’re doing in addressing unmet need in mental health, and we really, really need to do that, but one of the other areas of significant investment in health is in our ageing health infrastructure—our hospitals, our facilities—where we’ve had almost a decade of neglect, and we’ve got, you know, the legacy of their mouldy hospitals and rundown and earthquake-prone buildings, and we haven’t actually gone along and addressed them. So there’s a lot of money put aside there—$1.7 billion over the next two years—to make significant investments in rebuilding and refurbishing our hospital buildings, and that will make a huge difference to many people working in those facilities and to patients as they come in.

So, basically, what this Budget does is it’s starting to tackle some of those huge long-term challenges in our mental health services and our health infrastructure. But it also does a lot of other things. So we’ve got investments into rheumatic fever, which is critically important for children in terms of the lifelong impact that can have. We’ve got rebuilding our classrooms and our schools. We’ve got other significant investments to address family violence. We’re looking at making a lot of changes that will positively impact families reliant on benefits. So this is a significant milestone Budget, and I’m proud to commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I want to commend the last two speakers, Marja Lubeck and Liz Craig. Neither of them blamed the previous Government for everything that’s wrong in the country—very unusual.

There are two things in my experience in public life which inevitably lead to one losing an argument, and that’s abuse and mistruth. There’s no need to abuse or accuse to prove a point, and in this House we see too much of it. I’m referring, of course, to the issues around the Budget hack. What a farce for the Government, but, more so, what a farce for Treasury to think that when their website had been visited 2,000 times, they were under pressure from an anonymous hacker. I would be extremely disappointed, if I was Treasury, to think that only that number of people were interested in me. Frankly, it proves the Treasury, really, have little value to us.

Anyway, I’m also proud of our performance in Opposition. Our role is to hold the Government to account and ensure the integrity of democracy is upheld—a very important role for the Opposition and one that I think we should continue to carry out and be proud we do carry it out. This Budget’s been referred to as a botched Budget, a Budget of broken promises. But I want to deal with what I would refer to as a broken Budget, and my colleague Andrew Bayly touched on that a few moments ago.

That’s the issue that we’ve got in this Budget with a significant lift in Government debt. In fact, across Government the debt is lifting from some $111 million to $130 million-odd in the next year or so, and that’s, plainly, in my view, irresponsible. The issue I want to raise with respect to that though—well, two things, really. One is that as the economy slows, that debt’s likely to increase. The other one is that a fair bit of this debt is being slid into the agencies of Government—in other words, the Housing New Zealand Corporation and things like that. That’s a dangerous practice, in my view, for a Government, because they don’t have direct control over the activities of that debt. I think that is where we see the real risk of increasing Government debt. I’m a little nervous about that. I think it’s a disappointing factor of this Government.

Missing out in this Budget, I think, are teachers, Pharmac, seniors, and early childhood education funding—and more on that later, as I want to talk about that with respect to some rural issues. The surgical waiting list is a big issue for us in New Zealand. I remember some seven or eight years ago, when I first came into this business, it was a big issue for our electorate offices. It’s becoming a big issue for our electorate offices again now. I think that points significantly to either an underspend in health or a misdirection of funds or a direction of funds that’s taken a new track. It is the biggest worry most people have, particularly when they get to my age, when they can’t afford to have those operations that they so desperately need to keep them mobile and keep them moving.

The other victim, I think, of this Budget is all things rural. We don’t want massive handouts in rural New Zealand; we want a hand up for those that need it and some decent policy to enable us to thrive as rural areas. Despite Shane Jones’ $3 billion fund, Infometrics today in its Regional Wellbeing report, effectively, tells us that the Wellbeing Budget is not creating any wellbeing at all for provincial New Zealand. In fact, the self-professed champion of the provinces is anything but. He and his policies are failures. He’s failing to deliver in the year of delivery. Some of the billions will no doubt stick, but as we have seen so often before with what I would refer to as Government subsidies, most of it is frittered away. So it’s somewhat ironic that I want to speak a little later about the tree policy.

Other things that affect rural New Zealand—the midwife situation. I want to point out that for a rural midwife, a large part of their time is spent travelling. That’s just one of the facts of rural New Zealand. We’ve got to deal with that in rural New Zealand. But they get paid the same amount, whether they’re travelling in rural New Zealand or whether they’re sitting in the middle of Auckland or Wellington or Christchurch and have to drive around the corner. That’s another challenge and disadvantage for rural New Zealand.

I want to move on to education now. The report from Infometrics says, particularly about education in rural New Zealand—and, in fact, in my electorate; it points specifically to a part of my electorate—that especially in knowledge and skills, the low level of children attending early childhood education is a significant problem for rural New Zealand. I think that points directly to our rural secondary schools, which are challenged. They are challenged in many ways that urban schools are not challenged, and it is extremely difficult for them. We have young people leaving town to go to school elsewhere because the numbers and the resources available in our small rural or even provincial secondary schools are not adequate to provide the same amount of service and the same opportunity that kids in urban New Zealand get. That is a serious challenge for us, and it, I think, is an issue that we’re going to have to deal with and deal with urgently in rural New Zealand. It received no further assistance in this Budget, and the other issue that it creates in rural children is a lack of aspiration, and that’s big for us. I think that’s what keeps our people in our provincial areas. That’s what keeps people working in our productive sector.

This brings me on to the billion trees project. Sure, it’s a result of the last Budget but it’s received again additional funding in the course of this Budget. There are a few things that I think are causing distortions in this, and I want to make the point right from the start that we’re in favour of the right tree in the right place. I think that goes for the National Party as well. Certainly, there is plenty of room in New Zealand for more trees to be planted, and those trees need to be planted. They create a whole lot of benefit for us. But I want to talk about a couple of things that I think are distorting the market. One is the overseas investment exemptions which have been granted solely to planting trees that for every other sector of landownership in New Zealand, from an overseas investor perspective, is very difficult to attain. Planting trees, you’ve almost got an automatic exemption. That’s creating a distortion in rural land prices which I don’t think is necessary to have. In fact, the market would probably take care of it.

The other one I’m critical of—and I don’t have an answer to it, but the short-term carbon market is a long-term tragedy for New Zealand, more especially if those trees cannot be processed, and many will not be; they’ll sit there for ever. You only need to read the environment commissioner’s report on this matter to understand the challenge that that creates for us. As I said, I’m certainly in favour of more trees, and the trees should be planted in the right place. It’s ironic that as I speak here today, we’ve had also a report out today stating very clearly that our meat and milk receipts are at record levels in New Zealand. Both of those things are threatened by the policies that have been instigated in the last year or so and funded to some extent in this Budget. It is a challenge for us, the environmental factors around some of these things, but we need to find ways and make plans that give us a great future.

I’m very much along the lines of the right tree in the right place; I’m also going to talk briefly about the right train in the right place. I think there is a place for rail in New Zealand, but it’s got to be in the right place. I think some of our decisions around rail are, again, going to distort the transport situation significantly, very much along the same way that we distort—once Government enters any business enterprise in New Zealand, they create distortions. There’s no question that I think the rail in the wrong place is going to create distortions. There are some parts of New Zealand where we certainly need rail, and the boost to it will be welcome; however, it is also a risk for New Zealand, and I think it’s something we should be very cautious of how we deal with.

I want to give the Government a couple of accolades, one around the mental health, because I think that there was certainly a great cause to spend more money in mental health. I think the challenge for the Government is going to be how they spend it and whether that spend gets the result they’re hoping for, because there are some significant challenges in that area. I suspect that some of that investment should be put into resilience of our communities, because that’s where a lot of these mental health issues arise from.

The other area I want to talk briefly about, and I know Mark Mitchell spoke of it a bit earlier, was the contribution to defence. I look at Ōhākea air force base out of my window, and I’m just hoping that there’s still an aeroplane or two for me to look at when I have nowhere else to go but look out the window—and that could happen to be, in the future. But I also think that it is important that we maintain our defence spend in New Zealand, and I think that’s a positive part of this Budget.

The other issue I’m concerned about is the petrol tax, and the reason I’m concerned about it is that if you live in Levin and you think that we’re collecting all this extra petrol tax and it’s heading off to Auckland to pay for some light rail going to the airport, you’re going to be pretty disappointed. As the next couple of roads of national significance are finished leading to Levin, there’s going to be some significant challenges in that area, and that, I think, will disappoint people. The other thing petrol tax does is it impacts on rural New Zealand to a greater extent than anywhere else because, unfortunately, we’ve got so far to travel. That’s one of the factors that happens in rural New Zealand, and it also puts pressure on the poorer families in rural New Zealand. That pretty much concludes my time—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Oh no!

—it’s a shame, eh?—but this is a complex Government making some increasingly simple matters very difficult. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

I want to commend that last speaker, Ian McKelvie. As I listened to him hold up and congratulate the Government about the focus on mental health in this Budget, as I listened to him recognise the importance of planting more trees, as I listened to him acknowledge the need to tackle some of the challenges that the rural areas and our young children are facing, I thought, “He’s got a conscience and he’s found his voice.”, unlike the rest of his colleagues, who, in the last nine years—year in, year out of those nine years, all we got was tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, to the extent where it fuelled greed in this country.

But what we ended up inheriting from that lot was a decimated system of public sector, where the workforce was beaten, year in, year out—they were too afraid to ask them for anything—where our schools, our hospitals were under-invested and, frankly, could not deliver the services that people in need required, where they refused for nine long years to acknowledge that there was a housing crisis. So that’s the inheritance that we’ve had to pick up from that previous lot, and I want to acknowledge the previous speaker because he, at least, has found his sense of empathy. He, at least, has found the recognition and acknowledgment that this Government is on the right track.

Our first Budget, the foundation Budget, was about addressing the neglect of the nine long years after that last Government. This Government—I stand in immense pride with all of my colleagues here, with the coalition Government, with the support partner. All three parties are united. This is the first wellbeing Budget in New Zealand. In fact, it is the first wellbeing Budget in the whole world. Yes, others have talked about it—yes, others have talked about it. But for the first time ever, we are prioritising wellbeing. We are putting people at centre stage of all of our policies.

At the outset, I want to acknowledge the Prime Minister. I want to thank her for her leadership in driving and delivering this Budget on behalf of the coalition Government. You see, when she first took office as Prime Minister, she started demonstrating by word and action that what was required in this nation of ours was leadership that recognises the responsibility—that it was important to be fiscally responsible, that it was important to be responsible stewards of our economy but also to start talking about the values of compassion, aroha, kaitiakitanga.

That’s what our Prime Minister led from the outset. I remember, that first year, as we went out into the community, into the maraes, her voice was, as somebody said to me, “akin to the sweet melody of sparrows in the early morning of a new dawn.” I said, “It’s a real shame that the people feel that but in the House, when you listen to the Opposition, their speeches are akin to the screeching and croaking of vultures.” And that’s what we continue to hear from them time and time and time again. So I want to thank the Prime Minister.

I want to acknowledge also Grant Robertson, the Minister of Finance, because this is landmark policy. This is legacy policy. This legacy policy means that the work that we have begun this year will endure into the future. I want to acknowledge Winston Peters, the Deputy Prime Minister and the leader of New Zealand First, because, I hate to say it, as the senior member of the House, he’s provided gravitas. He’s provided sound advice and counsel in any which way, and I acknowledge that we would not be here delivering this Wellbeing Budget if it were not for the support of New Zealand First. Similarly, for the Green Party, I think the wonderful support that they have given has enabled all of us to begin anew with laying the strong foundations to begin not only to deliver on the basic day-to-day needs in health and education and housing and support for families with young children but also to lay the foundations to start tackling the long-term challenges that our country faces. As my colleague on the other side nobly made mention of, mental health—the first time ever that mental health has been recognised and we’re taking it seriously. It is long term, but the long-term foundations that we’re laying down for mental health mean that nobody who needs support will be without support after we’ve completed rolling this out.

To be frank, in the Pacific communities, sometimes when we talk about these issues, these issues are swept aside, and for the first time ever I am feeling a sense of confidence in our community that these are things that we should be talking about and that help can be made available to anyone and all peoples who are needing that particular support. So we’ve laid out the priorities for this Wellbeing Budget to make it absolutely clear about the direction that this country needs to head in: taking mental health seriously, with a focus on those under 24 years old, and improving child wellbeing, something where we inherited over 300,000 young people—children—living in poverty after the previous lot had finished. We know children don’t live alone; they live with parents, they live with whānau, they live with aiga, and if these children are not receiving the basics, it means those families are also not receiving the basics. Building a productive nation, looking to the future, restoring the infrastructure that was under-invested in by the previous Government, transforming the economy to look at just transitions so that we’re taking climate change seriously—we’re showing them the “what” and the “how” but, importantly, if people who are still doubters about the reality of climate change need to understand the whys, they need only look to the Pacific to understand why we need to be united in tackling climate change.

Also one of the priorities which I am really especially grateful for, which the Minister of Finance has been very adamant about right from the outset, is improving Māori and Pacific skills, incomes, and opportunities, because for so long—for so long—as Willie Jackson and many others of my colleagues on this side have known, there has been so much need, and in order for us to address those needs, we need, firstly, to acknowledge the value of cultural values: the way that things are done in Māoridom, the way that things are done by the many diverse communities of the Pacific. I think for so long nobody has actually dug a little bit deeper to acknowledge that the world view of Māori and the world view of Pacific is just as important as the world view of others, and so this Wellbeing Budget gives us an opportunity to begin the work now, firstly, to base all of our solutions on Māori values and Pacific values, but it’s Māori-led solutions and Pacific-led solutions, because only Māori and only Pacific can tell what their wellbeing is.

How do you define wellbeing for a Pacific person? The work that the Ministry for Pacific Peoples started last year, in engaging right across the region and picking up, from the young people in particular, and identifying what those goals were—of thriving Pacific languages, of a prosperous community, of a healthy, resilient population, and with a particular focus on the next generation, a generation that I often proudly promote throughout New Zealand and around the Pacific. That generation of 6Bs—the rising Pacific population that this New Zealand country will rely on in the years to come; the rising Pacific population that I’ve referred to as people who are “brown, beautiful, brainy, bilingual, bicultural, and bold”, because they have an interest in what happens to this country, not only to Aotearoa but across the region as well. When that lot is long gone, when we are no longer here, it is that generation that will inherit this country and inherit this region, and they have an interest in knowing what is left for them. They have an interest in knowing that they have every opportunity to prosper in Aotearoa.

One of the fundamental things that the young people told me was the value of languages and culture, and I want to thank the coalition Government for the $20 million that will be invested in establishing a Pacific language unit within the Ministry for Pacific Peoples with specific functions. That’s going to require the ministry working across the board with the Pacific communities of Aotearoa, but it also means that we link up with the Pacific so our languages are valued—

I apologise to the honourable Minister but your time has expired.

The Minister who just resumed his seat, Hon Aupito William Sio, gave some pretty glowing words around the Labour Government’s Budget with regards to the next generation, with care for young people and the generations that are to come in New Zealand, but I don’t see that reflected in this Budget for midwifery and maternity services. I just don’t see it. In the lower half of the South Island, in rural New Zealand—which is a long way away from the city dwellers who inhabit the other side of the House—in those rural places, we are sorely missing support for midwives, and not just the midwives, the support for the mothers and their babies; that very same next generation that the member who has just resumed his seat was so very concerned about.

Now we have the situation in the lower half of the South Island, in the Southern District Health Board area—which, by the way, is where Hon David Clark, Minister of Health resides, lives, holidays, and has his family. It’s within that context that he is, literally, turning a blind eye in practice, and in this Budget, to the needs of the mums and the needs of the babies.

💬 Marja Lubeck: What rubbish.

What rubbish? See, now, I just quote the member from over the other side of the House, a city-dwelling union representative, now Labour list MP. [Interruption] She just said, in response to my comments around midwife services and support for mums and their babies, “Rubbish.” [Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Settle.

Well, here are the facts about those mums and young babies: in Lumsden, their maternity hub has been closed by their Minister of Health to the extent that a young mum had her baby not in a safe environment but on the side of the road in an ambulance—not because she wanted to but because she was some way away from the base hospital in Dunedin. Labour is a very unpredictable thing sometimes, and the baby arrived in an ambulance. If that doesn’t talk of neglect by this current Government and this Minister of Health, I don’t know what does.

But it gets worse than that because, in the Upper Clutha, which is another area of the South Island which is even more remote from good health services, there is no maternity hub. There’s strong population growth, but there is no maternity hub. In fact, there are very few midwives, because they feel so unsupported by this Government, by this Minister of Health, and I’m not seeing any changes in this document, this so-called Wellbeing Budget. I’m not seeing any support in here.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I come fresh from the dinner break and watching One News and the 7 o’clock programme. It was interesting. On that, there was a very brave woman, Kristi James, who is a young woman who lives in Hawea Flat and formed a group calling for more midwifery support for the Upper Clutha a couple of years ago now. I had quite a bit to do with Kristi and her colleagues and their toddlers, who are always very entertaining at a meeting. All Kristi wanted for the Upper Clutha mums—that is, for Hawea Flat and for Wanaka and the Upper Clutha—was decent midwifery services. That’s all she wanted. She didn’t want anything gold-plated; she just wanted somewhere where she knew she could safely have her baby.

Now, Kristi was on the news tonight, and I want to congratulate her and her partner and their beautiful little boy, Makail, for his safe delivery, but it was only just safe because, as so often happens with labour, this one didn’t quite go according to plan. So while Kristi and her partner were meeting with their midwife—one of the very few midwives who are still working in the Upper Clutha, because they are so under pressure—it was discovered that in fact, yes, Kristi was ready right then, right now to have her baby. Having had previously a Caesarean, this wasn’t a great prospect for a young mum, facing right then, right now the prospect of having a baby. Whereabouts? In her midwife’s office.

We can only give thanks that that little baby was very safely born, and by the look of him he’s just a bundle of joy, and I’m sure everybody would agree with that. But where was the wellbeing for that family? Where was the wellbeing not only in this so-called Wellbeing Budget of this year, but Labour is failing to deliver on their promises to the young women of the Upper Clutha. Of course, it’s not just the Upper Clutha. I know that I have a number of colleagues who wish to speak on this aspect of the Budget where rural New Zealand—and, in this case, the mums and the dads and the babies—have been let down. Where was the funding for them?

Of course, the health Minister, David Clark, lives in that area. He holidays in that area. David Clark, the health Minister, made big promises in Opposition. I remember it very, very well. I remember back in 2017 on the campaign trail, David Clark, the then Opposition health spokesperson, railed against the so-called underfunding of health services by our Government. He railed. He got his other candidates to stand up and rail against what they called the underfunding, and yet two Budgets later we have not seen the money promised by that health Minister.

So I want his colleagues to stand up in the House this evening and in the latter parts of this Budget debate and explain to me and explain to my colleagues, particularly those of us in rural areas, and more than that to explain to the dads and to the mums and to the babies, why they have not supported the most vulnerable in our society by supporting maternity services and the midwives. So that’s my challenge to this Government—this wellbeing, transformational Government, who have failed to deliver on their promise to the mums and dads of New Zealand.

I invite them, when they leave this House—and David Parker is sitting across the House; David Parker was the MP for Otago—

💬 Marja Lubeck: Honourable, remember?

—the Hon David Parker—between the years of 2002 and 2005. What did that member do for the mums of the Upper Clutha who were in his electorate at the time? And what is he doing now? I invite the Hon David Parker to get to his feet and tell this House what he is doing for the mums, for the dads, and for the babies of the Upper Clutha, because, of course, this goes a whole lot wider than just the mums and dads. This goes to many, many parts of rural South Island. It is not good enough.

And when the Hon David Parker is finished, I’d like to hear from the Minister of Health. I’d like David Clark to get up and explain to this House why, after two Budgets—two Budgets, one of which is the Wellbeing Budget, or maybe the well-intentioned Budget—Labour is failing to deliver on its promises for health, for the young people, the next generation and their mums and their dads, so that mums like Kristi James, who faced either a 3½ hour trip to Dunedin Hospital or having it on the floor of her midwife’s office, actually had no choice. Is that wellbeing? Is that something that this Government is proud of? Is that what “being kind” means? If that’s wellbeing, well, I can tell that Government that it is not working for rural people in New Zealand.

I just know that colleagues on this side of the House will also give their perspective on how this Government is failing the very vulnerable people in New Zealand. Oh, they are talking the talk. They are very good at talking up this very special Wellbeing Budget. Well, here’s the thing: talk is cheap, but delivering on that talk is what we really need in rural New Zealand. And for two Budgets—two Budgets—they have absolutely failed in that endeavour.

Indeed, talk is cheap. The member asked what I did for health services in Otago.

💬 Hon Jacqui Dean: Not much.

She says, “Not much.” Actually, Dunstan Hospital was in a severely degraded state under the prior National Government. The last Labour Government, with some advocacy from the then Minister from Otago, rebuilt Dunstan Hospital. What capital works of any significance have occurred in the Otago, now Waitaki, electorate in the nine years of the last National Government?

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Nothing.

Nothing—nothing. What capital works are proposed under this Budget in respect of the Otago region? A new, billion-dollar hospital for the tertiary facility at Dunedin.

Next month, I will have been in this Parliament for 17 years. I’ve been through a number of Budgets under the last Labour Government, a number through the National-led Government, and now some in this. I can say, hand on heart, that this process has been different. As a Minister in that process, it has been different to any that I have—

💬 Brett Hudson: Oh, nonsense.

He says, “Nonsense.” Well, I’m expressing my personal opinion here, and it was different for me. I’m going to cover a couple of the areas in which it was different. Before doing so, I just want to reflect on when I was speaking to the Trans-Tasman Business Circle in a speech that was largely about economics. It was about the new venture capital fund and also the sustainable land use package that’s in this Budget. They asked me at the end what I thought would be the most transformative part of the Budget, and actually, in truth, it was the bit that they were most interested in. They weren’t so interested in the issues that I was speaking about, although they found them interesting. They were most interested in the mental health, violence, and addiction package. The package that pushes against our problems in mental health, family violence, and properly funds addiction services, or helps fund addiction services is, I believe, the most transformative part of this Budget.

Why is that? It’s because the chief science officers, together with the departmental heads, Ministers, and the Prime Minister, agreed that amongst the priorities for the Budget, we were to take mental health seriously, and that then drove a cross-departmental process that also required all the Ministers with an interest in these things to work together to develop the package. So they put aside their excessive focus on their own departmental priorities and their own ministerial priorities, and they worked to bring a package that crossed all of these ministries, broke down the silos, and delivered what I think will be the biggest lasting effect of this Budget, which is the very significant increase in funding for mental health, violence, and addiction.

I can attest to seeing that happen in respect of that area of policy, but also in respect of the sustainable land use package, the same thing happened there. It was a ministerial grouping that included me, the Minister for Climate Change, James Shaw, the Minister of Forestry, Shane Jones, the Minister of Conservation, Eugenie Sage, and the Minister of Agriculture, the Hon Damien O’Connor, as well as Nanaia Mahuta.

We came together and we actually agreed that in order to overcome both our climate change challenge and—particularly in this Budget, actually—our water challenge, we had to come up with a package that had three parts to it. It had a package that changed the regulatory settings, because we do need some regulatory change. We need to establish the Climate Commission. We need to strengthen our policy framework around water quality. We needed to do some policy work in respect of waste. So there was a policy part of the package. We needed better information and tools for people who are going to be implementing these changes that we want of society. So we invested in things like improvements to OVERSEER and also to provide assistance to councils to update their plans, and to have better information sets for people to take decisions upon, including information sets that farmers need when they are in farming. Then, the third part of the package was extension services through the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) but also through the private sector in order to enable farmers to implement these changes on-farm through farm environment plans.

Now, we sat around the table and we said, “Well, what are the priorities within there?”, and we agreed as a group of Ministers that, actually, the bulk of that money needed to be spent on the outreach services and that the MPI part of this was actually important because we needed to enable farmers to identify what is the bit of land that’s losing most sediment, what’s the most eroded piece of land that needs to be fenced off from intensive grazing pressure, what is the little stream that needs some riparian planting, and what’s the change in methodology that’s going to make sure that we don’t have excessive nitrate application at a time when the plants can’t absorb the nitrogen and so it’s lost to waterways? So we agreed to that.

We also all agreed that these packages were linked. You can’t have the money for the support for farmers to change if you haven’t got the regulatory underpinnings that require better performance of both regional councils and farmers. By the way, we weren’t just picking on the rural sector. We know that there are sediment problems in respect of subdivisions in urban areas that have been degrading some waterways. So we as a team got around and we agreed our priorities.

Then the amount of money was a bit less than we wanted initially, so we got together and we reprioritised it. We didn’t just argue for our own corner, but we actually came together through this wellbeing framework to actually address what was one of the priorities, which was transitioning, growing, and modernising the New Zealand economy while ensuring a just transition to a low-emissions future, which is one of our five priorities. It also touched on building a productive nation by supporting businesses, and it also touched on Māori aspirations in respect of their development aspirations for underdeveloped Māori land. That’s how the process worked, and I can tell you, from someone who’s been around here for 17 years, that it was different to any other process that I’ve been involved in in respect of Budgets.

The last matter I want to raise is in respect of the venture capital fund that we have created. There’s $300 million, which will be matched by some private sector funding at the rate of probably $1 or $2 per $1 that the Government commits, so there’ll be between half a billion dollars and $1 billion going into early stage venture capital markets. There is a hole in the venture capital cycle at the moment. Early seed, or what is sometimes called angel investment as well, is supported. Later stage financing is also well supported not just from New Zealand but overseas, as evidenced by the fact that Rocket Lab has raised something like $200 million in to that one company in the last year. But there is a gap in respect of early stage series A and series B rounds. This has been well catalogued, and it’s not disputed by anyone, actually, that we have a hole in these capital markets.

Now, we’re in the middle of this technology revolution born of affordable computing power, robotics, sensors, big data in the Internet of Things, and—

💬 Stuart Smith: Big google search.

No, it’s a lot more than a google search, but if you’ve discovered that, you’ve made more progress than when you spoke last time. But this combination of technologies and the digitalisation of economies is producing real challenges in the Western World that we’re going to have to deal with through the future of work and just transitions as we move towards a low-carbon future. So those are some of the challenging sides of it, but the opportunities lie in these new digital technologies, and we must make sure that New Zealand gets our fair share, or, indeed, more than our fair share, of these opportunities that lie in those technological innovations.

Now, we know that one of the productivity challenges in New Zealand is that we have low per capita capital investment in our productive enterprises. Part of that is caused by excessive investment and bidding up our speculative asset class prices like residential property, but part of it lies in under-investment in the productive sector. So this will assist by having money coming via the New Zealand Superannuation Fund through the Venture Investment Fund to private sector venture capital funds, who will make the investments into these series A and series B capital rounds, which will enable more of our high-growth companies to thrive. Fewer of them will have to sell themselves overseas prematurely for want of capital adequacy in that part of the market in New Zealand. That’s not to say that they shouldn’t sell themselves overseas or be bought out at times. We’re not prohibiting that; we just don’t want that to be caused by inadequacy in that.

Through this, we are on the journey from volume to value. It’s one of the reasons why New Zealand exports are going up after they went down under the last Government. It’s another example of us mobilising capital from speculation to productive investment.

That speech from David Parker was a sign of this Budget by this Government—it’s a sign of neglect towards rural New Zealand. That’s the difference between the National Party and Labour. In reality, we’re working hard in Opposition to actually get to the grassroots of New Zealand to actually find out what’s going on, compared to this lot here, who have spent the last nine years doing absolutely nothing. They need about $250 million to $300 million worth of working groups, and at the end of the day, Labour has failed. They have failed on all of these promises that they gave to New Zealand during the 2017 election campaign.

The fact that the honourable Minister David Parker—he’s not a bad bloke. He’s from Dunedin, so he’s a good guy. The fact that he had to use his speaking notes—this is a Minister of the Crown who needs his speaking notes because there’s so much spin and branding in the Government. The economy has slowed so sharply, meaning there is, basically, no money left over to go around.

So let’s have a look at this Wellbeing Budget. It’s all about the Wellbeing Budget. In my eyes and to Southland eyes, basically, it’s just a branding exercise. The Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, said that “the purpose of Government spending is to ensure citizens’ health and life satisfaction, and that—not wealth and economic growth—is the metric by which a country’s progress should be measured. GDP alone, she said, ‘does not guarantee improvement to our living standards’ and nor does it ‘take into account who benefits and who is left out.’ … To measure progress towards these goals, New Zealand will use 61 indicators tracking everything from loneliness to trust in government institutions, alongside more traditional issues like water quality.”

Well, what does that mean to a mother who is facing her worst nightmare in the middle of the night in rural Southland, in the back of an ambulance, giving birth to a 10-pound baby? What does wellbeing mean to that mother, when, for the sake of $200,000 or $300,000 per year—to ensure that Lumsden primary birthing unit is maintained? The fact that this wellbeing, well-intentioned Government—the spin Government, I like to call it—was warned time and time again by the community over the last 12 to 14 months that there will be babies born on the side of the road. The community was told, “You’re being confrontational, stop being so emotional. Stop making up irrelevant facts.” The very fact that two mothers within 11 days—this is only a month after the Lumsden Maternity Centre primary birthing unit was shut down by this well-meaning, Wellbeing Budget Government. What does that say to rural people across New Zealand? For the sake of $200,000 or $300,000 dollars to ensure the safety for rural mothers and babies in Southland—it’s not there. “Sorry we’ve spent it all. We’ve spent $3 billion on students. We’ve spent $10 million on vaccinations in Papua New Guinea.”, which is about 33 or 34 Lumsden Maternity Centres per year. For the sake of $200,000 or $300,000 per year to ensure the safety of rural mothers and babies across Southland, what is that saying to them? Rural people across New Zealand are sick of being treated like second-class citizens.

National took office in 2008. The health budget was $12.9 billion. We had the Christchurch earthquake, we had a global financial crisis—we borrowed to keep critical health services going. We borrowed to ensure that the safety of rural New Zealand was maintained. What do you think the “Spray and Walk Away” Government does, despite receiving billions extra in revenue? “Oh, we’ll just shut down a primary birthing unit right in the middle of rural Southland. It will only cost about $200,000 or $300,000 dollars to run. That’s all right.” And what do you think the wellbeing health Minister did when I warned him in early May—three weeks after the maternal hub, which is basically just a room for check-ups, and a room which provides emergency birthing equipment—[Interruption]—listen to them, they’re all going at it—what about wellbeing of rural mothers and babies in Southland?

This Government has failed Amanda McIvor, who gave birth in an ambulance on 26 May. They failed baby Levi, who was a 10-pound boy born on 26 May. They failed the father, Gordon Cowie, who had to follow behind this ambulance, not knowing. The fact that that mother had to leave Lumsden Maternity Centre primary birthing because it didn’t have critical lifesaving equipment—which I warned the health Minister about a month prior. What do you think he did about that warning? Basically, he chucked it in the bin. He said, “You’ve given me no new information. The community’s basically providing facts which aren’t quite true.” Then, the following day, what do you think the well-meaning Prime Minister said about the baby being born in the ambulance on the side of the road? “I’m satisfied they have an excellent standard of care” for maternity units in Southland. The mothers of Southland were told, “Please plan your births better.” Luckily, I don’t have to give birth in my time—obviously, being male—but I know it’s pretty hard to plan your birth. We’re living in 2019, and this Wellbeing Budget Government says to mothers, “Please plan your birth better.” I think this is disgraceful.

The Government members over there are yelling out. I say to them, if they’re so well-meaning and wellbeing, are we going to follow the example of rural Queensland? Five years ago, 40 primary birthing units were shut down—40 primary birthing units in Queensland, Australia, were shut down five years ago. What do you think has happened to the death rate of babies—what do you think?

💬 Hon Members: Gone up.

It’s gone up from six baby deaths per thousand to 23.5 per thousand, because the Government over there has forced rural mums to give birth on the side of the road while trying to make it to hospital. My question to the Government is: if a baby is born on the side of the road, blood will be on your hands, but what if we follow the unfortunate lesson of Queensland?

What do you think this Government’s done for Māori since taking office? What’s happened in the last two Budgets? It’s absolutely nothing. But to make matters worse, Lumsden Maternity Centre, the district health board, and the Government have gone ahead; they haven’t even consulted iwi. They have not consulted iwi, and in my books that’s a breach of the Treaty of Waitangi. So what’s the Government going to do about that now? You’ve basically silenced us, you haven’t consulted iwi—and that is a breach of the Treaty. If you want to look after Māori, you don’t breach the Treaty of Waitangi.

I think it’s incredibly disappointing that in 2019, we’re in a state where rural New Zealanders are being treated like second-class citizens. If the Wellbeing Budget meant so much, why, on the day after a mother is forced to give birth on the side of the road in an ambulance, is the Prime Minister saying to rural mums in Southland, “You need to plan your birth better.” and “We have an excellent standard of care.” Well, if I live in a country where an excellent standard of care is giving birth in an ambulance, I think that’s reasonably sad.

The National Party was formed and founded by farmers—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: For farmers.

—for farmers, and that’s why the National Party backs rural New Zealand. The Government MP Dr Duncan Webb is laughing. Duncan, would you be laughing to a rural mother who gave birth on the side of the road—after being warned time and time again? Why is that a funny matter? Rural people are being treated like second-class citizens, and that’s why the National Party backs rural New Zealand. That’s why we have allocated a huge sum of $400,000 to ensure Lumsden Maternity Centre primary birthing unit is reinstated next year, so that we don’t have the awful situation of forcing more rural mothers to give birth on the side of the road.

Three hundred thousand dollars or $400,000—they’ve spent $2.5 billion of new money. They’ve spent over $2 billion on a slow tram down Dominion Road. Guess what percentage of Aucklanders won’t use that tram: 99.5 percent of Aucklanders won’t use that tram. Three billion dollars to try and bribe students to vote for them; yet this year, they’ve realised that’s a failure: “Oh, we’ve had 300 or 400 less students enrolled in tertiary education”—another failure by this Government. Next election, they want to have a cannabis referendum to try and get the youth to come out and vote. Well, I back the youth of New Zealand—they are not that stupid. National will reinstate services at Lumsden Maternity Centre, because we actually value the safety and we’re going to ensure that no more mothers give birth on the side of the road.

I understand the next is a split call. I call Dr Duncan Webb.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Do you know what? Gee, we’re doing well, you know? We are doing so well. We are a Government which has the reins on the economy firmly in hand. Our growth is good. It’s steady. We’re prepared for the international environment. Our trade Minister negotiated a trade deal—the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement—that has put us in the driver’s seat for international trade. And do you know what? Our unemployment rate is way down: 4 percent—4 percent. Our employment rate is, believe it or not, lower than the popularity rating of the Leader of the Opposition: 4.2 percent; I do find it ironic that it’s the unemployment rate and it’s the Leader of the Opposition all in one breath. You know, there we are aiming for debt below 20 percent by 2021—we’re on track.

I find it astounding—I find it absolutely astounding—that the Opposition reprimand us for looking at things other than GDP. Yes, oh my goodness, there’s 65 other things that might be important—that might be important—about how culturally connected we are, about whether our children learn Te Reo, about whether our people are the victims of sexual and domestic violence. You know what, it’s about time we started measuring how we’re doing on there, because we want to spend New Zealanders’ money wisely.

I’ll tell you one thing I’m heartily sick of: I’m heartily sick of the other side talking about hard-working New Zealanders as if they’re not ordinary people. I’ll tell you about a hard-working New Zealander who came into my office; she brought in three kids, including a whāngai, a young child who she was looking after for another family member.

Now, she’s someone who will absolutely benefit from this Budget. She’s studying, she’s caring for three kids, and she’s working part-time. Her school fees are going to disappear; $150, perhaps, that she won’t have to pay, that’ll go straight to the school from the Ministry of Education. Her minimum wage will go up or has gone up this year. Her little bubs that was asleep in the carry-cot there, she’d have a Best Start payment for that kid. That is addressing poverty. That woman and her partner can now make choices which are better for her, for her partner, for her children, and for her wider whānau, and I’m proud of that. I’m proud of being part of a Government that has looked at a family like that and said, “You know what, there you are caring for our most valuable things, our tamariki, studying hard to try and get ahead and upskill for our modern economy, and filling shelves at the supermarket in the evening.” That New Zealander is gold, and we need to look after them. The fact is that this is a Budget that has done exactly that.

You know what, we have put, yes, an enormous amount of money into health, and mental health in particular. And that’s because, as you heard from Minister Parker, the Cabinet sat down and said “Where is the best dollar spend? What is the biggest impediment to our people doing well, leading the lives that are worthwhile and which they value and which they determine?”, and it’s mental health. Because if you can’t get out of bed in the morning, if you’re suffering from depression or anxiety, whatever it might be, that’s an impediment. We want to help people find the way through that so that they can lead flourishing and rewarding lives.

You know what it’s really about? This Budget is about dignity. It’s about looking at people and giving people back the dignity that the last Government took away, so that the children don’t have to go to school and be ashamed because their parents can’t afford the school fees, or that a woman doesn’t have to feel that she’s begging when she goes to Work and Income and has to disclose the name of her child’s father to get a few more dollars—now, that is an atrocious humiliation, what we needed to do in New Zealand.

You know what? I’m a city slicker. I’m probably more of a city-slicking unionist than Marja Lubeck is; she’s a really great rural MP, if I may say that. She lives way out of the country up north there.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: What do they know?

Not much. But you know what, I was over in Greymouth and when I was at the Paroa pub there, talking to a crowded room about this fantastic Budget, now they loved it. They might love some things that don’t leap to my mind. They were so excited about KiwiRail, a billion dollars to fix up that train wreck that the other side left behind so that they can get their goods to market through the alps. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’m absolutely delighted to take a call in this Budget debate. I am so proud of this Government’s Wellbeing Budget. Last week when I too, Dr Webb, was out talking to people around this Budget I heard so many fantastic things, people coming up to me from all walks of life saying “Well done.” People saying, “This is fantastic, you are putting people back at the centre.” They were saying to us as a Government that we are dealing with long-term issues: those around mental health, those issues around family violence, and those issues around child poverty. Those are the issues that matter to the people out there, and they told us that last week.

But the one area that I really am most proud of in this Budget is the work that we are doing to improve child wellbeing. That is so important to the future of this country, if we can make this country a fantastic place to be a child. When I was growing up, it was a wonderful upbringing. We were proud in this country that we felt this country was the best place to be a child in the world. We would spout that and we would talk about that often. There weren’t many instances when I was growing up of seeing people in severe poverty.

But, unfortunately, that has changed over the years. Unfortunately, now we see far, far too many children who are living in terrible, terrible poverty. Just recently I went through and saw—and remember that I was a principal of a decile 1 school—just about four months ago some of the worst poverty that I have ever seen. It was poverty where children were living next door to each other in parked up cars, poverty where there were just shacks, in fact, poverty where children were really struggling to even attend school. Last week, I went back to that same area and I saw hope in the eyes of those whānau and hope in the eyes of those children.

In fact, the particular school that those young children go to, there’s about 50 whānau, 50 families, in this particular area. The particular school where they go to was telling me that they don’t get donations in, or very few; about a thousand dollars of donations. But the families always feel very sad that they can’t pay those donations. They feel guilty. They try really hard to pay. After this Budget—it’s a decile 4 school—that particular school will be getting not the $1,000 they’re getting in now, they will be getting $85,000 towards supporting those children from those families, and supporting those children from poverty. But the families won’t have to feel that guilt and shame any longer. And those families said to me that that made a big difference.

The other area that those parents said to me last week that was making a big difference to them and their children was getting rid of the NCEA fees. They’ve always felt guilty about the fact that they couldn’t pay those fees for their children, and the NCEA, those children or young people were not getting that qualification because they simply couldn’t afford to pay it. From this Budget that is not a problem any longer. Those young people will be getting that qualification and those families will not feel the guilt or the shame about not being able to pay them.

One of the other areas is that we have put in—and I’ve heard my colleague speak about that here before—the increase of funding for early childhood education services, 1.8 percent that is going in to help those. This is the second time—last year and this year—that we have had an increase in that early childhood services funding, the first time in the last decade. So two years in a row this Government has been able to put money into early childhood.

I was talking to the head of our local kindergarten service in Tauranga just over the weekend, and to me he said that increase was great and will help the sector maintain their service. That is a big thing for those people. It might not sound a lot but it will help maintain those services. And he is looking forward to the future work that we are going to be doing in that area of early childhood. He said to me “This is the first time that I have felt hope for the sector in a long time.” I am proud of this Budget. I am proud of what it’s doing for children, and I’m especially proud of what it’s doing for education.

This was meant to be a wellbeing Budget. We listened and we heard all the hype beforehand and, the supposed hack aside, we waited until the Thursday of the delivery of the Budget. And, you know, for me as a new MP, I’d have to say I was incredibly disappointed all round. And I say that because against the backdrop of significant decline in business confidence and a falling of GDP, we produce a Budget that increases debt by about $20 billion. At the same time, the job growth in New Zealand has gone from 10,000 a month—that’s 10,000 a month, that’s a lot of jobs—we are now minus 4,000 a month.

💬 Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: How many?

Minus 4,000. A turn-around of around 16,000 jobs a month in not much less than 18 months.

I was also interested in the Prime Minister’s speech. The Prime Minister is a revered position, and as the leader of this country she chose to go off what I’d call a normal prime ministerial speech, and deliberately did so, and spoke about mental health. Good on her for doing that, and I’ll come back to that in a minute. But what was missing was any plan, any confidence, or any reassurance on the economy of New Zealand, and an export-led growth economy at that.

I acknowledge the Minister David Parker sitting over there, filing his notes. I’m not sure he was here on the day of the Budget. But, that being said, when the Prime Minister speaks, New Zealanders want to see a balance of things. She used her whole speech, largely, on mental health, and I think New Zealand actually deserves better than that and it needs a more all-round approach from this Government.

I actually congratulate the Government for the money that’s being spent on mental health, and I think that, across the Parliament, we accept there’s more that needs to be done. However, that is a lofty goal—$1.9 billion on mental health—and numbers I’ve seen indicate that up to 6,500 people are going to need to be employed to deliver that programme. Now, that’s a lot of people, and they’re not just anybody off the street; these are properly trained people that can help people in some of their darkest hours.

I give the plaudits for the mental health but not in many other places. You see, as we sat in urgency, the first thing we did was put the price of fuel up by 4c a litre this year and next year. Then, not long after that, we considered school donations from deciles 1 to 7. We’re not too worried about 8, 9, and 10, apparently, but 1 to 7—they can choose to have $150 if they don’t charge fees. What came out from—

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: Ask for donations.

—Minister Twyford, though, was that—sorry, donations—basically, all of that help to a family was going to be eaten up over the next two years by the extra fuel charges they’re going to pay when they fill their car. So, on one hand, it’s a wellbeing Budget, but the first thing they did, under urgency, was stick the price of fuel up by 4c a litre this year and again next year.

Then, if you look at the delivery model, there was great concern exposed before the last election around housing. We talk about it just about every time in this House at question time, and that’s because the Labour Government, and the Labour Party when they were in Opposition, promised 100,000 KiwiBuild homes. I haven’t seen the most recent figure, but I understand around 86 have been built. Across New Zealand, that particular policy has been a laughing stock.

I then look at really serious issues in my own electorate, which I’ve spoken about in this Parliament before. In Hastings, in the last 12 months, there has been a reduction of 12 Housing New Zealand houses—not an increase; a reduction. This transformational Government—this transformational Government that’s going to sort out all these ills—is on target to deliver five new houses in Hastings in two years in Housing New Zealand. They’ve demolished a whole lot. They’ve sold some. Guess what? That’s exactly what the National Government did as part of the last term. This Government is no different. But what I say in the year of delivery is: how can it be that there are 300 people in my community living in motels and Housing New Zealand can build only five houses in two years?

When I stand here listening to the wellbeing and I hear about mental health, I look across all of that and I say, “Some things are still very wrong here.” I didn’t get a chance in the general debate to talk about sanctions on beneficiaries who wouldn’t identify the father. I’m strongly opposed to that approach. I understand the rationale of the Government and they want to be kind to everybody, but I guarantee we’ll come back into this Parliament in three or four years’ time and there will be an increase in benefits given to people who won’t identify the fathers. Ultimately, what that does is takes away the responsibility, or minimises the responsibility, on those fathers. Fathers have a role to play in the financial support of their children, and every time we undermine this, we simply send the wrong signal.

I now look at the contributions that were made in this Budget and the choices that were made. Good on New Zealand First for managing to extract another billion dollars towards rail, $1.7 billion to aircraft, but when I go back in to my electorate and when I look at the Budget commentary in my own newspapers, it was pretty devoid. Normally, there are two or three pages on the Budget. In my own electorate of Tukituki and in Hawke’s Bay, there was not much over a page. The reason for that is because there was very little in it for the people in Hawke’s Bay—very little. There were a couple of small things but very little.

The commentary I hear when I go out and talk to people is not that there was a brilliant Budget; the commentary is that, actually, a whole lot of choices have been made and we don’t necessarily agree with them. You see, I have spoken previously to KiwiRail executives, to Peter Reidy when he was the CEO, and I have a view—and it’s been espoused to me—that there’s only one railway line in New Zealand, really, that is profitable, and that’s the one from Auckland, Hamilton to Tauranga. All the rest don’t make any money. Maybe there could be one in the middle of the North Island, but it’s marginal. For this Government to come along and say “Aren’t we great? We’ve given a billion dollars.” pays lip service to the fact that the National Government, over nine years, invested over $2 billion in supporting KiwiRail, and even then couldn’t make it work.

Against that backdrop, imagine the disappointment of what I call normal New Zealanders—what Scott Morrison would call quiet Australians; we’ll call them quiet New Zealanders—when they see that a billion dollars has been spent on railway projects, largely to try and win Northland, and $1.7 billion on aircraft, while the increase to Pharmac, against that, is around $40 million over four years. When you raise that with people, they say “How can that be, Lawrence?” And that’s what they’ve said to me.

I ask this Government to actually constantly think of its priorities. There is a growing need in New Zealand for better access to cancer drugs, and there is a view amongst New Zealanders that we’re not doing well enough compared with Australia. So when you invest, effectively, $2.7 billion on large projects—I accept we need some planes; but trains, a billion?—how does that resonate with a quiet New Zealander who wants a fair go for somebody who gets in difficulty with cancer?

If I look at some of the promises that were made by the Labour Party in particular prior to it coming into Government, it promised no new taxes. It’s introduced seven to date. It promised $10-cheaper doctors visits for all. That’s not in the Budget. It promised $20 million for access to lifesaving medicines for New Zealanders with rare disorders. That’s not in the Budget. It also promised no one would be sleeping in cars last winter, and again this winter. Guess what? Some are—some are. It also said it was committed to not housing people in motels, but that’s increased threefold in the same period of time.

If I go into my own electorate—I accept that it’s better if they’re living in a motel than living in a car, but in my electorate alone, if a Government agency can build only five new houses in two years, then what is the Government doing in my city and my district to help wellbeing? The Government is failing to deliver on their promises. For my electorate of Tukituki, it was a hollow experience and we don’t read too much about it.

Tēnā koe, Madam Deputy Speaker. Look, as I do in many of my contributions in this House, I want to start on a sombre note. The passing of Sir Hekenukumai Puhipi was a significant blow to Māoridom and, indeed, the country. I know that, in particular, Hekenukumai was influential in much of the policy development and also what you’ll find in the Budget around mātauranga Māori, and I want to acknowledge him.

Can I also lament the loss of Dan Bidois’ father very recently. I want to acknowledge that. It’s very difficult losing a parent in your time in the House here, and I want to acknowledge that; also the mother of the Hon Andrew Little. We say in Māori, rātou ki a rātou, tātou ki a tātou [salvations to the dead, and we return to the living].

Well, well, well. Mr Yule, I’m sure—he’s quickly forgotten the big smile he had on his face in the recent Budget announcement of Mana in Mahi in Hastings, where the good people of Hastings and the Hawke’s Bay came together with Minister Willie Jackson. He might have been on the front page of the three-page paper! But I do remember Mr Yule sitting there with a big smile, with his community from the Hawke’s Bay, from Hastings in particular, congratulating this Government on their funding and support of young people into work.

Mana in Mahi, I think, is one of those particular kaupapa that you’ll find in this Budget that is aspirational for our young people. It will see our people get off the couch and into the jobs and the training that is required to move our economy in this country. I want to acknowledge the Prime Minister, I want to also acknowledge the Deputy Prime Minister and New Zealand First, and, of course, Te Pāti Kākāriki, the Green Party, for their support of the Minister of Finance in a fantastic Budget.

That side of the House don’t really understand, actually, what our country is calling for. They’re looking for a systematic change. The people on that side of the House have only focused on the announcement on Thursday; there were so many big announcements in the build-up to Thursday. The Budget was massive for our people. Sure, on the Thursday of the delivery of the Budget there were some fantastic announcements and I, for one, am really happy for the kaupapa of Whānau Ora. I heard through multiple general debates in this House that this Government didn’t support Whānau Ora, that this Government has done nothing for Whānau Ora—$116 million into Whānau Ora is nothing to turn your nose up at. It is new money; it is on top of the money that was already there for Whānau Ora. What we know is the transformation that that will have on Māori whānau and Pasifika whānau across this country will be monumental. We’re really proud about that. If you factor in the entire Budget, there is so much to be had there for families.

What that side of the House hasn’t mentioned, yet they’re quite happy to support it, is indexing of benefits. That is a massive step for our people to make sure that they have the money to live the life that they deserve. This side of the House took that very seriously. We knew that there needed to be changes, significant changes, in the social welfare area and this was one of those changes that we knew would make a significant difference. Nowhere on the hustings will you hear somebody complaining about that. In fact, the families that I’ve spoken to in my electorate in the past week—

💬 Hon Member: Probably in the National caucus.

Oh possibly, yeah, most likely actually—but what I can say is, last week, in my electorate of Tāmaki Makaurau, it was well received.

I recall, during Christmas, there was a kaupapa at Ngā Whare Waatea Marae where Whānau Ora were supporting those who didn’t have much during Christmas; they had no food, they had no presents, they couldn’t give tamariki the happiness of Christmas and New Year festivities. They pleaded to this Government to make a change; in particular to me, as the Minister for Whānau Ora. When I saw the lady who ran that particular kaupapa last week, on Wednesday evening, she cried. She gave me a big hug and said “Peeni, you delivered. Thank you very much, you and this Government have delivered for our people.” It’s people like that, who are truly connected in the community, that I take my advice from. Their handshakes, their tears, their hugs, their kind words towards the view of this Government in supporting our people; it truly is magnificent to see and truly humbling.

We delivered $80 million for new commissioning in Whānau Ora, $116 million across that. My colleague the Hon Willie Jackson has already talked about the over $570 million, new money, in targeted Māori assistance. Minister Parker has already mentioned how some of that, in fact a significant proportion of that, will be utilised to unlock Māori land—idle Māori land that has been unproductive. The last Government, actually, thought that only unlocking legislation would do that. We were quite clear, on this side of the House, that there are better ways to do that. That particular announcement is one that excites me, because we know that tribes, as they come into a post-settlement era, we know that community and hapū as they come into a post-settlement era, can actually utilise that money to unlock the potential of their land, and there is so much potential—so much potential in the land, so much potential for those communities and those whānau, wherever they may be.

I want to talk about some of the rural sector, because we’ve heard from that side how that party are the only party that care about rural New Zealand; by farmers, for farmers. You know what, Madam Deputy Speaker? I stand here as the grandson of a former board member of Federated Farmers, and I’m a little bit embarrassed by that, but what I can say are three words: Provincial Growth Fund (PGF). What an amazing opportunity for rural regions right up and down this country. Not only is Mr Yule sitting front row in the announcements in the paper, so too are many of the other MPs right across this country. I recall, even recently, the member Andrew Falloon sat next to my colleague here Jo Luxton and, of course, Minister Jones, with a big smile on his face because he saw the investment that was going into Ashburton and Timaru. He saw that. That wasn’t off the back of the National Party, that was this Government delivering for our people wherever they might be, and that is super exciting for our regions right across the country. In Te Tai Tokerau, the PGF has delivered so many opportunities for growth in that region. We have acknowledged for many years—many, many years—that there has been an under-investment in those regions, and this Budget, once again, delivered to those people.

Mental health—this side of the House has always been quite clear that, actually, one of the biggest mechanisms of productivity in the economy of this country is actually the mental health and wellbeing of the people who work in it. We’ve made a commitment on this side to make sure that mental health is a priority for this country. I’m also proud that a significant proportion of that is to be used for kaupapa Māori. Kaupapa Māori services in mental health—and the Minister of Health has just walked into the House with a big smile on his face hearing that, because he knows that for Māori communities, kaupapa Māori - driven services is what will lift the mental health and wellbeing of those people. You combine that with Whānau Ora, combine that with all of the initiatives that come out of the Wellbeing Budget, and I’m proud to stand on this side of the House and endorse that Budget.

In the final minute and a half of my contribution I want to say this: we’re not complacent on this side. We know that the Budget is certainly a good start, but there is so much more work to be done. In fact, I heard no less than two MPs from the National Party quote my grandfather, and he said “[We] have come too far not to go further, and [we] have done too much not to do more”. On this side of the House we truly believe that we have so much more work to do. The Wellbeing Budget, as the Minister of Finance has already said, is a good start but there is so much more to do.

Minister Parker touched on systematic change. He’s witnessed it in some 17 Budgets during his time here in the House. On that side of the House they’re still focused on the old view of economics and Budget. On this side of the House it’s a new world, it’s a new era, and we’re really excited to be supporting our Prime Minister, our Deputy Prime Minister, this entire Government, in the work that we’re doing. The Wellbeing Budget, as the Minister of Finance has already said, is just the start and I look forward to representing this Government in our communities to make sure that even more benefits are felt by our people, wherever they might be in Aotearoa.

In conclusion, it is true: we have come too far not to go further, and we have done too much not to do more. Kia ora tātou.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I stand on behalf of disabled people tonight to condemn this Budget for the miserable and miserly Budget that it is. Can anyone else point out one other vote that went backwards in this Budget? Can anyone point out one other vote that went backwards—flush with money—one other vote that went backwards? They picked on the disabled; the disabled vote went backwards. The only vote in this Budget that went backwards: disabled vote, $7 million backwards from what it was last year.

💬 Hon Dr David Clark: Tell the truth.

It’s absolutely true, look at your own figures—$7 million less than last year, $1.351 billion compared to $1.344 billion. We know the National Disability Support Network said actually they needed $250 million—$100 million for providers and $150 million for the needs assessment and service coordination (NASC), and they went backwards. Clearly, there must be less disabled people. Really? Clearly, their need must be less. Really? I don’t think so. Certainly, that’s not what we’re hearing from the sector. There is no justification for $7 million less spending in this Budget than last Budget.

Where is this $7 million coming from? Well, we know where some of it’s coming from: the much trumpeted $58 million that went into disability last year. In fact, when I say trumpeted, I mean that literally because, in reply 17179, the Minister wrote to me and said, “Oh, I just want to point out that in Budget 2018, we made an additional $58 million available for disability”. Well done, yes you did. This Budget—$54 million, and decreasing by $2 million to $4 million every year successively. That’s where $4 million of the $7 million disappeared from. It wasn’t continued. Big item last year, nothing this year.

What, then, is going to be the impact of that $7 million across the sector? Well, we know several things. We know that before the Budget, $90 million of cuts needed to be found by the disability sector. When you explore that and when you, sort of, find out where could those cuts come from, and you maybe ask some written questions, you get from Minister Genter something like, “I do not believe the expense of answering this question within six working days can be justified”—really? Reply 17174. Well, maybe it’s different if we say, “Can you tell us where the cuts are coming from?” Reply 17178: “I do not believe that the expense of answering this question within six working days can be justified.” Really? You don’t want to tell the disabled community where their cuts are going to be coming from.

But I can actually tell you where the cuts are coming from, because, in the document disability financial sustainability programme update, that is where the cuts are coming from, and, actually, everyone in this House tonight will be interested to know, in their region, in the people you answer to, where the disability cuts were coming from. The $90 million that the Minister and the ministry were pulling from the disabled budget that help account for the $7 million less; I’ll tell you in each of your regions where the cuts were coming from.

In Northland, in my own region, they were going to cease previously grandparented day programmes. These day programmes are very important. Forget Me Not take in Alzheimer’s patients, keep them during the day, give them a hot lunch—nope, that was going to be removed. If we move to Auckland—what was Auckland going to do? What was their plan to fit this Budget? How did they help take $7 million off the disability budget? Well, here’s what Auckland was going to do: they’re going to not allocate behavioural support to under-five-year-olds. Really? Let’s be very clear what behavioural support is. It improves the life of a person with an intellectual impairment whose behaviour is challenging. That’s what they were going to remove. Let’s also be very clear, very specific—they were going to have no referrals for under-fives unless they were medically fragile—wow. Aucklanders in this room, that’s what your Government was going to do to the disability sector, in writing.

Let’s move further down the island. Waikato: what were your budget cuts going to look like for disability? Well, what Waikato suggested they do to meet the Minister’s objective was that all community clients requiring personal care and who are continent will have a maximum of three hours per week. That’s what you could look forward to if you were disabled in the Waikato, and only those clients presenting with very high risk will be referred to Explore over the next three months. The Hawke’s Bay—yep, you were also targeted. What were you going to have? Well, in your residential arm, all your clients were going to be reviewed as they moved from the child rate to the adult rate, and those who get home management, they were all going to be reviewed as well.

Whanganui—yes, we’ve got some MPs from Whanganui here—tēnā koe, Harete. Let’s see what your team were going to do for the disabled. Shower support—half an hour daily as the standard allocation—wow. Reduce showering time to half an hour. Oh, and by the way, we could potentially make the half-hour the default. While we’re there, why don’t we also remove meal preparation? Let’s do that. Let’s remove meal preparation from all other packages, and offer “prepared meals”. That’s what Whanganui was going to do to meet this Budget.

Moving north to south even further, Taranaki—Taranaki, you are also going to have a consequence of this Budget. For you, it was needs assessment for children with autism under six—needs assessment for children with autism under six; they weren’t going to get referrals for further support, all to find—in fact, it was $90 million they were looking for. In the Waikato, what was it that the cuts were going to be for you? The most effective, and, possibly, easiest strategy for achieving the reduction is to reduce the average size of the allocations made at the entry of a new client. This is because no pre-existing client has expectation or dependence. So before they come into the disability service, before they get their expectations up, set a low bar before they even get there. That was particularly for Hutt and for Tai Rāwhiti, I would add—that was how it was going to be for you.

Although there is one forgiving moment here: the folks at Tai Rāwhiti actually pushed back a bit, and they said, “Oh, this is too harsh. You just can’t do that.” All credit to them, they pushed back against the Minister and said, “We do want to take this opportunity to highlight to you our general concern about the potential impact of Budget constraints and allocation reductions in the Tai Rāwhiti area. As you know, Tai Rāwhiti is a vulnerable community characterised by a young population, with a high proportion of Māori, and higher than average social deprivation.” Well done, Tai Rāwhiti. At least you pushed back against this madness, against what the Budget cuts were going to be for you.

Wairarapa—let’s reduce coordination delegation. Yeah, that makes sense. Wellington—child development services, your team referrals; let’s increase the threshold so that less of them get referred on. Yeah, that’s a good idea. Nelson-Marlborough—let’s review any of your household management plans, so that any over three hours get cut back. Christchurch—Christchurch were quite savage, actually. What shall we do with Christchurch? Well, let’s reduce your support package allocations, let’s reduce your client packages, and let’s put new referrals on a waiting list from now on. Yeah, a caring Government? I don’t think so. Children under a certain age—oh, let’s not give them household management except in extreme circumstances. They also wanted to get into autism. Let’s remove autism spectrum disorder as a condition to receive disability support—wow, really? A caring Government? Let’s also not add foetal alcohol syndrome to the eligibility criteria. Oh my goodness, every region was pinged.

I’ll conclude with Otago-Southland. Otago-Southland said, “Let’s take an hour off every single disability support package. Let’s take an hour off them all, and, actually, for those in residential care, let’s see if we can reduce them by two days per year. Maybe they won’t notice if we take off two days per year.” That’s how this Government was planning to meet the $7 million that they chopped off the disability budget. It was $90 million around about February-March. All the needs assessment and service coordination centres were told: “Reduce by $90 million.” They came up with these suggestions; it was trimmed down to $7 million. The only vote, I would submit, that went backwards. This Government has picked on disabled people because they can’t fight for themselves. Well, this side of the House will fight for disabled people in New Zealand. This side of the House will stand up to them and hold this Government accountable for a miserable and miserly Budget.

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.