Appropriation (2019/20 Estimates) Bill, Racing Reform Bill

Part 1 Amendments to Racing Act 2003

It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Racing Reform Bill in its committee stage. Ironically, New Zealand’s playing South Africa at cricket tonight, and for those who really want to know, New Zealand’s paying $1.68, South Africa’s $2.14, and Kane Williamson’s the $3.50 favourite to be the highest scorer. Now, I guess that’s pretty relevant in the days when we are talking about a bill that deals with not only racing reform but also, I guess, not reform to such an extent, but certainly some alterations to our ability to have a flutter on the cricket.

I want to talk about three clauses, really, in respect of the bill in front of us tonight. The first one is clause 11, which sets up the membership of the Racing Industry Transition Agency (RITA). It sets out who shall be appointed to the RITA. Basically, this bill is based around the activities of the RITA in the next 12 months or so.

Clause 8 brings the RITA into being, and that replaces the Racing Board and enables the Racing Industry Transition Agency to carry out and restructure the industry as required and directed. We’re in favour of that part of this bill. We’re in favour of all of the bill, of course, but we’re certainly in favour of that part of the bill because it does give the ability for a new entity, basically, to take over the running of the Racing Board and its subsidiaries, and to make sure that that transition is smooth and operates effectively. I think we can certainly have some confidence in the people that are likely to be appointed to that RITA. I think that will be satisfactory for the industry, and there’s certainly a general air of acceptance in the industry that that’s going to work pretty well.

Next, I want to just talk about clauses 9 and 10 in Part 1, which are, effectively, the bits that make the industry work. If we hadn’t had the Minister in the select committee this morning, I would have been able to ask a couple of questions, and now I don’t need to because I asked him and I got the answer—well, I feel I’ve got the answer—but I think that this is where the big challenge will be. The big challenge, I think, for the racing industry part of this bill will be setting up—well, the RITA will be set up, and the next step is the big challenge. That’s how the industry uses the ability that this bill gives it to develop the next steps, and that’s really what clauses 9 and 10 cover in the course of this bill. I think that that will be the big job the RITA has in front of it, and it will be the big job for the industry that follows on as a result of that.

Of course, the racing industry part of this bill that’s affected by this is New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing, Harness Racing New Zealand, and the greyhounds. They will all have the opportunity to participate in how they might be structured as a result of this bill and in what that might look like going forward. It’s very important to the industry that those three bodies not only get themselves restructured in a manner that works for them but also get themselves together, because they need to cooperate in the course of this.

The other piece of this puzzle that needs to cooperate in the course of this to get the best result for everyone, of course, is Sport New Zealand and their various entities or the members of Sport New Zealand. It’s most important that the cooperation is there, and I think we can be confident that that will happen. It’s certainly essential that it does.

So I think that in the part of the bill that’s primarily covered by the need to set up the Racing Industry Transition Agency and the activities it takes, I guess we’re giving them the leeway to do what we think they’ll do properly, and I think they will. They are guided by this reform bill on what they can and can’t do. I think it will be successful, and it’s something the industry’s been crying out for for some years now. The Minister has been allocated a budget of some $3.5 million to implement these changes and make sure that they follow through—I think we can be confident that will be sufficient. I also think we can be confident that will get a good result for not only the racing sector but also for the sports sector as well.

I wanted to talk briefly about the TAB—or what’s known as the TAB, which, effectively, is what the Racing Board governs—because I think it’s really important and it will be important as we go forward. It’s going to be a challenge for the Racing Industry Transition Agency, and whatever follows, as to how they might manage that. But it’s interesting when you look at the history of the TAB. It was formed in about 1952—in fact, it was formed when I was, quite some time ago—by the racing industry with the help of the Parliament; in other words, it was formed by the Parliament, really, but it was formed at the request of the racing industry. I think one of the great challenges that we’re going to have going forward with this whole sector is, who actually owns it? I think if you looked at its history, that would be dubious, but you’d probably suspect the racing industry in its entirety thinking it does own it. That, of course, signals some of the issues that have followed since. Then, of course, in 1996, I think it was, the TAB was then given by this Parliament the ability to provide for sports betting, and that has led to where we’re at today.

I think the real challenge for us and for the industry going forward—and certainly for the whole of that industry—is going to be how that issue is resolved as to who owns and controls the entity that provides the gambling services to all of those who wish to gamble on sport, racing, or anything else in New Zealand. Of course, this bill in its entirety does enable offshore providers to—and they have been able to in New Zealand for some years, of course, because we haven’t been able to control it. This bill will provide the control on offshore gamblers, at least to the extent of being able to recover some levy money and some charges for use of product from those people. The Minister has a Supplementary Order Paper, SOP 249, which will deal with one or two of those things; and really it’s, effectively, tidying up some stuff that’s a little untidy, and that always happens, that’s to be expected. It’s positive, in my view, and we’ll certainly be supporting that.

There are a lot of things in this bill that I think are positive. I think the way that the levy is going to be divided and treats the gambling sector, particularly through the gambling harm part of the legislation, is positive and I think it will assist greatly in where we get to with that. As I said last night, there’s a big difference, in my opinion, between having a bit of a bet on what you think—or a flutter, as I called it earlier—might be the outcome of something. In other words, if you’re going to back Kane Williamson to be the highest scorer tonight, you’re probably pretty safe—well, you’d think you would be, wouldn’t you? But perhaps you’re not. But I think that that’s a very different thing, as I said last night, than poking some money into a thing and pushing a button and hoping it comes back out again. That, in my view, is the critical difference between most of the services that the TAB provides to New Zealanders and most of the things we get out of either sports betting or betting on a racehorse. So that’s hugely positive.

I just want to very briefly turn back to the issue I raised before, and that’s the issue of the industry entities getting their structures right and making sure that they’re in the position to utilise the ability that this bill and the bill that will follow will give them, because it is most important that if those industries have the money, that they then have the ability and the will, I guess, to make the thing work in a manner that should work, and make these racecourses work in the manner they should. That, of course, completely relates back to the critical factor in this whole piece of legislation, which, effectively, is to get our breeding industry in New Zealand and our horse breeding industry in New Zealand working, and working well. It’s essential that it does, because we are one of the best in the world—unquestionably one of the best in the world; we have the best conditions in the world to do it, and as a country we should use the things that we’re good at to the best of our ability.

Also, I think, the horse’s footprint, from an environmental impact perspective, is very different than many other animals that we might use. So I think that’s the other positive part that we will gain out of this bill. I think the fact that we can then enable people throughout the country to put a horse back in their paddock, which was the way when we were—well, when I was young, sorry, Madam Chair, I didn’t mean to include you in that. When I was young, every second person had a horse in their paddock or their yard. That’s the exciting thing about these animals; they’re not related to racing, necessarily. It spreads right across the equestrian sector, across the sports sector, and the recreational sector.

So it’s most important that that this works. As I said, I would have had a couple of questions for the Minister, if only we had the opportunity to question him on those this morning. The National Party do support this, but there are many challenges for the industry as we go forward from here. There are many challenges for the sports sector as we go forward from here. But it’s also, in my view, a significant opportunity for them all. I think that we’re in good order with the bill. A lot of hard work’s been done, particularly a lot of hard work by members on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I just want to congratulate—I didn’t last night—Darroch Ball on the work he did to get that bill through and back into the House in such a hurry. So that’s my lot, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Part 1 Amendments to Racing Act 2003

I’m very pleased to be able to speak in this committee stage of the Racing Reform Bill. I just want to say a couple of things at the outset. Firstly, I want to acknowledge our racing spokesperson, Ian McKelvie, acknowledge the former Minister the Hon David Bennett, and also acknowledge the Minister in the chair, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, to absolutely reaffirm our commitment to supporting the bill and also to the real issues around the viability of the racing industry.

But, as I have said very publicly, this is about balance. The reason that National has had a minority view that has raised issues of representation and of distribution is because we not only support the $1.6 billion racing industry and the 18,000 jobs that go with that but we also support the national sporting organisations and their absolute right to raise legitimate issues around representation and distribution. So I have a raft of questions for the Minister. I do want to acknowledge that I had the opportunity today to have the sports Minister in front of the select committee.

The first question that I have for the Minister relates to the totalisator levy. We, obviously, have a situation in this bill where it’s progressively being repealed—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): That’s Part 2.

Oh, OK—that’s fine.

You know, I do want to raise the issue of the representation with the Minister. There have been a range of questions about who will actually end up on the Racing Industry Transition Agency. There is some suggestion that members may have already been shoulder-tapped. I’d ask him to give us the absolute confidence that we’re going to have the sport representation that we need.

I think the other key question that, obviously, people are raising is around this distribution issue. Again, today the sports Minister very clearly said that he would be advocating for a greater distribution for sport. That’s at odds with the racing Minister and the Minister in the chair, who’s very clearly said no to media around that issue; people are wrong if they think that somehow sport should get a greater distribution. I totally understand that the purpose of this bill is to actually grow the pie for racing and sport. I accept that; that’s why National is supporting this bill.

This issue of the proportion of betting that actually occurs in terms of sporting organisations is real. It was raised through the select committee process. For instance, we heard from a remote gambling association that they expect potentially 95 percent of betting that Kiwis make on overseas bets could be sport-related. So I really want to hear from the Minister, because he is going to have huge powers under this bill around that formula, because we’re taking it out of the law—and I acknowledge that was a proposal that National put up under the former Minister—and what his thoughts are around that distribution formula, because we’ve got New Zealand Cricket and we’ve got comments from New Zealand Rugby, all arguing for that greater share of the pie. So we’d really love to hear some comments from the Minister for Racing about what he is thinking, specifically around sports and the distribution issues.

I also want to raise a few other issues that were raised through the select committee process. Obviously, this issue of the time. We had a five-day submission period over a long weekend, and people quite clearly said they were really, really concerned about the process. This issue that was raised in the select committee around penalties and the ability of the Department of Internal Affairs to be enforcer and have multiple roles, and that issue in terms of penalties—them being both the adjudicator and the enforcer—and, you know, whether it’s really a real issue that the members of this House should be considering. Is it appropriate? We heard from the New Zealand Law Society and we heard from the Ministry of Justice around these issues, so we’d love to hear the Minister’s comments on that, regarding that issue.

The other issue that was raised through select committee is around harm minimisation, and I can see that Julie Anne Genter is in the House. I know that there are plans through the second piece of legislation to discuss these issues, but, you know, they’re real issues that were raised by the Salvation Army. I think, as well, Transparency International raised this issue of harm minimisation and whether we should have been dealing with some of that in this legislation.

So there are multiple questions that I have for the Minister for Racing. Again, I acknowledge National absolutely supports this bill. We support the racing industry. We support the real viability issues. I acknowledge the Minister for all of the work that he’s done to shield this through, but these issues of balance, in terms of our sporting sector, I would love the Minister to comment on—and some of those process issues, particularly this issue raised by the New Zealand Law Society and the Ministry of Justice.

Part 1 Amendments to Racing Act 2003

It would have been good to have the Minister for Racing up first. It would have been good to be able to see what his plans are, because I think that the issues around this bill have been widely canvassed by all the speakers. Ian McKelvie raised the point that we raised yesterday in the second reading, and that is the responsibility that’s now on the Minister. That’s a responsibility that he cannot take lightly, and we would really like to get some comfort from him today about what his plans actually are.

Now, we all know that this is the first part of the legislative process, and it’s the easy part, effectively. It’s giving money to the industry, and it’s working off the basis of legislation that had been prepared some years ago, and it enables it to be taken to the next step with the reduction of that levy over time. But the real impetus for the industry will become in how that money is actually used, and that’s where the Minister has a vital role, because, in providing the leadership for this legislation, he also has a role now, in the next year or so, in providing leadership around how that money is allocated.

I’d like to pay credit to my—[Interruption]

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but could I just—are you coming or going? Thank you. Carry on.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s not quite the races yet, but thank you for keeping everybody in order.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: We’re hanging on every word!

You should be—you should be.

I’d just like to acknowledge that it’s not just about racing; as well, this is a huge thing for sport. Our spokesman on sport, Nikki Kaye, has done a tremendous job in advocating for sports in this debate. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that sport could win by the value of about $18 million to $33 million a year out of this. Those are the figures that are in the departmental report. On the back of the envelope, you’re probably looking at about $10 million that you could probably allocate to sport as its proportion.

We must realise that sport is about 27 percent of the total betting turnover of the TAB. Now, that will only increase over time, and sport will—as Nikki Kaye has said—have a justification for seeking greater funding. I’m sure the Minister for Sport and Recreation will be arguing for that as well. However, on the other side of it, we must understand that the TAB is something that has been set up by the racing codes many, many years ago. It does give an avenue for sports to collect that money that they wouldn’t have otherwise, and there will necessarily be a cost involved in that collection.

That is one of the responsibilities that now is on the Minister, because, in the process of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, there was one major theme that came through, and that was the good-faith element. Now, all three codes are undertaking good faith in the way that they have approached this legislation. They haven’t sought to have individual representation on the board. They haven’t sought to have those distributions identified primarily in the legislation. They could have, and they may have liked to have had that, but they have taken a broader good-faith approach to this legislation.

The sports entities have taken the same good-faith approach. They have put a lot of trust in the Minister and in the Minister for Sport and Recreation to make sure that that good faith is rewarded in a way that would be for the benefit of all sports codes and racing codes. So that is one of the primary obligations the Minister now has to face.

Now, we’re going to hear about a second tranche of legislation that the Minister intends to put forward, and that is sometime in the future. It is not settled at this stage, even within the coalition. But, without that legislation, there is still a requirement for the Minister to exercise that good faith now, because there is a reliance on him from the codes and also the sporting entities. That is primarily his responsibility for now, through his appointment of who will be on the board and the guidance he will give them, no doubt, over time.

The second element is going back to what Mr McKelvie raised. If we take it from a very racing perspective, the money we’re talking about here is not huge in the sense of the total quantum of what racing spends, earns, or will need to turn it around. It is a start, and it is a nice start, but this is not going to change the racing industry overnight.

But what can happen is this money can be utilised in a way to enable the racing industry to make some strategic changes and some strategic choices. That is the second responsibility that is on the Minister, because he is the one that has the most contact with those industries as the relevant Minister and is the one putting this legislation through the House. His responsibility now, I believe, is to ensure that this money does not just get allocated to the great pool and diluted across many, many racecourses and many, many race meetings in New Zealand. There has to be a better way of doing it. We’re not dealing with a huge amount of money for racing that will turn it around but we are dealing with enough money in racing that we can make some really strategic decisions.

I encourage the Minister to put some of his decisions that he is making in other fields in the racing area together with the money that is coming here today. You look at the desire to have a synthetic track, for example, and the Minister’s acknowledgment that he wants to have three throughout the country. Now, those synthetic tracks are yet to be seen where they will go, but it’s very important because the money that will come from this legislation needs to be incorporated with a wider vision of how that investment in the horse industry—and especially the breeding industry, and also for the dogs—goes along so that we actually get to a situation where this money makes real change.

If anyone talks to anybody in the industry, the biggest change they want to see is that they want higher stakes. They say that stakes are the important thing because that will enable investment by people that want to own horses and it will encourage a return for those that are training or driving and jockeys and other people that are involved in the horse and dog sector.

That return can easily get diluted with this money, in the sense that it won’t make a major difference if we put it across the whole of the industry. But, if we’re careful of how we do it and we structure it and link it with other reforms and other investments, then there is the potential to create that degree of the industry that will enable it to flourish and succeed. I encourage the Minister to think about that, because that is the real opportunity he has. This bill will pass through the House. It has support from all political parties, and it is not just voting support; it has moral support as well.

But the real issue now will be for how we use this money to make sure that that industry can actually go ahead and flourish. It has got the opportunity ahead of it and it has got a mechanism here to assist, but this mechanism needs to be in conjunction with other endeavours.

In closing, this is a good bill for New Zealand racing and is a particularly good bill for New Zealand sport. For New Zealand sport going forward, the gains that will be out of this will be tremendous as there is greater betting on sport around the world and on New Zealand sport from overseas. The gains that New Zealand sport will get will be tremendous. The gains that New Zealand racing will get will also be significant. But they need to be used in a constructive way so that we actually get the result that everybody wants, and that is a strong racing industry.

So I commend this bill to the House, and I thank the Minister for passing it through. I realise that it has been a long process because you have had the Messara Report and you’ve had other interactions to get it to the stage where we are now. So I thank the Minister for bringing it forward.

Part 1 Amendments to Racing Act 2003

I want to thank Ian McKelvie for his comments. I don’t know whether he’s accurate about the TAB overnight with respect to the cricket. In fact, I wouldn’t be too certain that the bet was off to a great start, but this is about the racing industry in particular. It really is an extraordinary question, but I’ve decided to, at this time, ask the question: who owns the TAB? Here we are, 19 June 2019, and we’re asking that question. So we need to sort it out, and fast.

Can I say to Nikki Kaye that when she says the issue of greater sports distribution—well, I can make it very, very clear that the racing industry itself is not just about horse racing. I don’t know if you remember the song “Rugby, Racing and Beer”, but it used to have the phrase “Down under we’re mad over our rugby, racing and beer.” So it’s not just about racing. On the question of distribution, I don’t think she’s right when she said 90 percent could be sport related; it’s 27 percent now. What’s being missed is if you’re going to say that that 27 percent should go directly to sports—because it came via other sports—what’s the cost of maintenance of the system that brings that 27 percent about? Surely that’s got to be shared. On the question of whether there should be a greater percentage, well, that certainly is an open debate and we should be proceeding with it. There’ll be additions to the Racing Industry Transitional Agency to ensure that sport is represented. So we’ve got to find the right person, but the Minister for Sport and Recreation, of course, will have to be consulted anyway. The big issue is to grow the pie.

On the question she raised about harm minimisation, well, we’re going to make sure that there is a far greater allocation to go towards harm minimisation. But I want to say this: you go in a casino and—it’s an extraordinary thing—you say, “Here’s all my money. I hope I get some of it back”. Now, racing and the TAB is not like that. In racing and the TAB, you’re putting your best judgment, your knowledge, and your studentship of the game or the sport that you’re watching against the rest of the country. It has got a certain excitement, and certain people who are skilled in it do very, very well. The casino—it’s all over to chance. If you’re any good and you can count numbers, then they expel you; you’re banned from the casino. How does that work?

So this is a far more fair system, but I do understand that those who are in sports should be assured that there’s no purpose here to have a dispute arising with the sports bodies, or, indeed, disputes between the three codes—the gallops, the trots, and the dogs. We can surely do much better. We can do far better for all of them. You are right, Mr Bennett, stake money is the number one issue here because it’s the owner who is the most critical person in sports racing. They pay all the bills for the vets, the trainers, the whole hundred yards, the carriers, the farriers; everybody associated with racing is paid for, in the end, by the owner. I’m going to give them a fairer go. On synthetic tracks—it makes good sense, surely, to not have the massive cancellations we have because of our weather so that the race, on race day, goes on.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 249 in the name of the Rt Hon Winston Peters to Part 1 be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Racing Industry Transition Agency

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Rt Hon Winston Peters to clause 28(4) be agreed to:

In clause 28(4), delete “paragraph (a),”.

Amendment agreed to.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

New Part 3 Certain Exemptions

New Part 3 Certain Exemptions

The amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 253 in the name of Chris Bishop inserting new Part 3 is out of order because it is outside the scope of the bill.

Schedule 1

Amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 249 in the name of the Rt Hon Winston Peters to Schedule 1 be agreed to.

Schedule 1 as amended agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Schedule 3

Amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 249 in the name of the Rt Hon Winston Peters to Schedule 3 be agreed to.

Schedule 3 as amended agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

House resumed.

Bill reported with amendment.

Report adopted.

This Government’s Budget, the 2019 Budget, is all about wellbeing.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Failed to deliver.

But there is one group whose wellbeing, I’m afraid, we cannot guarantee, and that is the wellbeing of the members opposite. We did our best. We introduced—in this year’s Budget—digital literacy for seniors, Mr Brownlee, but there is still a concern around the wellbeing of the members opposite.

The most insightful interjection during question time today actually came from Amy Adams when she yelled very loudly, “There’s nothing to be happy about.” I think that sums up the mood of the National Party at the moment. Of course, there is something for Ms Adams to be happy about today. She at least didn’t have to sit next to Judith Collins, who is still in purgatory after appearing on Q+A on Monday night to talk about the National Party leadership, despite being forbidden to do so by her leader Simon Bridges.

Of course we know that the deal’s been done. The Judith Collins - Mark Mitchell ticket is on the way. Chris Bishop is busy doing the numbers as we speak. And I hear that there are some other members who have been ringing around the press gallery. They gave me some names, but I don’t know who they are because I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them, but I understand that they’re National Party backbench MPs.

But the good news is that there’s a lot in this Budget to be happy about. This is a Budget that gets serious about mental health—something New Zealanders have been saying for a very, very long time they want a Government to get serious about, and we have delivered on that. We are also getting serious about investing in infrastructure, and I’m going to talk more about that very shortly, but we know we’ve inherited a big infrastructural deficit, and that’s something that we are tackling and we are getting on top of.

We also know that New Zealanders want us to get serious about child wellbeing, about making sure that kids get the very best possible start in life, and that is something that this Budget delivers on. As Minister of Education, I am very proud to say this year’s Budget contains the largest increase in education spending in over a decade. Of course, there was another big increase over the last decade; that was last year’s Budget, which was the second-largest increase in over a decade—both under this coalition Government.

This year’s Budget contains the largest investment in school property by a New Zealand Government. We know that the schooling infrastructure in New Zealand is not keeping up with population growth. It has not been keeping up with population growth, and we need to do better. This year’s Budget brings forward four years’ worth of schooling expansion funding for new classrooms and new schools so that we can make sure that we’ve got the school infrastructure we need to keep up with a growing population. For the first time in over five years, the funding rates for industry training, adult and community education, literacy and numeracy, Youth Guarantee, and Gateway are all being increased. That’s good news for those working in those areas.

A policy that I am very proud of is that all decile 1-7 schools, from the beginning of next year, will get an extra $150 per student if they don’t ask parents for donations. New Zealanders have been telling us for some time that schools are too reliant on income from parents to make ends meet, and that has to end. We know that those lower decile schools in particular raise a fraction of the money that higher decile schools are able to raise from parents and from community sources, and we want to ensure that they are no longer disadvantaged by that. So decile 1-7 schools will get that extra money from 1 January next year, and that’s something to celebrate.

There are cost adjustments for early childhood education, schooling, and tertiary education. This Government will not allow the expenditure on a per-child, per-student basis to go backwards in all of those areas, as it did under the last Government. We want to make sure they are properly funded so that they can keep up with increasing costs.

We have $1.2 billion being pumped into school property, and that’s new money, extra money, that will build more new classrooms, more new schools in areas of population growth, and will certainly provide a pipeline of projects for the building and construction industry, something that they have been frustrated about. It will mean that those projects can be delivered in a much more timely way.

We’re also getting serious about putting more resource into the kids who most need extra support in our schools. Last year’s Budget gave about $280 million extra into special needs support, learning support, more Ongoing Resourcing Scheme funding, and so on. This year’s Budget builds on that again, with another $217 million going into learning support coordinators as the first tranche of our commitment to put learning support coordinators in every school around the country. That will employ the first 600 of this new workforce.

We’re increasing funding for early childhood education to cope with population growth and we’re putting more money into vocational education and training, an area where we know reform is desperately needed, at a time when we need more people going into vocational education, into trades training. It has been going backwards for several years. We have to turn that around, and we know that the current system is not going to do that. It is an unsustainable system and it needs to be reformed, and that is what this Government is in the process of doing.

We know we need more teachers in classrooms, and we put $95 million in this year’s Budget alone into recruiting and training more teachers. That’s more money than was spent over the last decade—$135 million in total that this Government is spending on recruiting and training more teachers.

We know that the cost of education is something that we’ve got to get on top of. I mentioned before the $150 instead of donations for decile 1-7 schools, but another policy that I am particularly proud of, funded in this year’s Budget, is the abolition of fees for NCEA. It is simply wrong that some of the kids who most need access to their qualifications, having successfully completed them, have been unable to get them because they couldn’t afford to pay the fee. I think it’s time we dealt with that, and we have dealt with it, and we dealt with it in this year’s Budget, and I am very, very pleased to be the Minister in charge of that.

There is more money for computers in homes. There is more money for the School Leavers’ Toolkit so that we can make sure kids, as they leave school, are prepared for life beyond school. There is more money for the Christchurch rebuild—something the previous Government talked a lot about but didn’t actually stump up with the cash to do. This Government is making sure that the Christchurch rebuild can be completed. There is more money to improve the condition of existing school property. I mentioned before the money we’re putting into growing the school property portfolio to keep up with growth, but we know that we’ve got a lot of run-down buildings that need to be upgraded, and we need to do a better job. We need to get better value for money from the very significant hundreds of millions of dollars a year we spend on existing school property.

An initiative that the colleague sitting to my left, Kelvin Davis, is responsible for is the restarting of Te Kotahitanga, a programme that makes an enormous difference for some of the kids in our schools who most need additional support. I do want to acknowledge you, Mr Speaker, as the person who first introduced that; I’m not allowed to, but I’m going to do it anyway.

We’re putting more money into data and analytics capability so that we can better identify disadvantage. It’s all very well to talk about equity and the equity index—we talk about an equity index; the last Government saw it as a risk index, because they see kids as risks. We want a better system of equity in our system, and that means we need better data, and we’re investing in getting that better data. It’s about also having the screening tools in place to identify those kids who have got additional learning needs so we can get in earlier and give them that additional support that they need, and we are going to be doing all of that.

There’s more money for early intervention under this Budget and under the last Budget, because we know that we’ve got to get in earlier and give those kids a better start. We are not happy with the growing waiting times for those sorts of supports that were starting to grow under the last Government. Early intervention was growing in the last year of the last National Government, as were so many of the waiting times for other forms of learning support, and we are simply not happy with that, and that’s why we’re putting more money into dealing with those. We’re putting more money into home-based early childhood education so that we can ensure that those kids who are in that home-based environment—something many parents really value—are getting the right quality of education and the right experience through that.

This is a Budget that really delivers for education. It continues our three-year commitments in this area. We said right at the beginning that it wasn’t all going to happen overnight. Last year’s Budget delivered the first lot, this year’s Budget delivers some more, and there’ll be more in next year’s Budget. This is a Budget that I am very, very proud to be a part of. It delivers for New Zealanders, and it definitely lives up to its name of being the Wellbeing Budget.

Well, that, actually—that last speech, that 10 minutes—is almost more than we’ve heard from the Government over the last two weeks about this Budget. Normally, when a Budget is delivered in this House, there are Ministers up and down the country talking it up, talking about it as much as they can, and that just hasn’t happened—it just hasn’t happened. And the reason it hasn’t happened is that this wasn’t a good Budget. They botched it. It wasn’t transformational. It wasn’t wellbeing. At best, it was well-meaning. It borrowed more, it spent more, and it taxed more. When Mr Hipkins says that Amy Adams said there’s nothing to be happy about, that’s actually what the majority of New Zealanders are saying: there’s nothing in this Budget to be happy about.

Now, there were some things that are good, and most certainly it’s important we recognise that there is funding, more money, going into mental health, but we need that to be delivered on the front line now, not wait for working groups and more meetings and other bureaucracy and more processes. Mr Hipkins said New Zealanders want the Government to do something about child wellbeing right now. That’s the exact point: right now. They’ve had 18 months in Government. We know there’ve been more than 250 working groups. We know that when the working groups come forward with very long, very expensive reports, they’re saying, “Actually, we’re not going to do most of the things in there, because they’re too hard.” Ultimately, there has been a missed opportunity over the last 18 months, and this Budget fails to deliver on the promises that the Labour Party, the New Zealand First Party, and the Green Party made to New Zealanders when they were in Opposition—failed to deliver on their promises.

I’ve got a list here of the more notable things they’ve done over the last 18 months that New Zealanders should be concerned about: fuel tax increases times three, regional fuel taxes in Auckland, GST online, the brightline test extended, ring-fencing of losses, GST on mobile roaming, workplace levies, and a tourist tax that’s actually going to end up taking $70 million out of the pockets of small tourism businesses. They’ve failed to deliver on a promise—do you remember it? No more taxes—“no new taxes in our first term”. Well, we’re going to see $20 billion worth of additional borrowing, and they’ve extended out the credit card over what they said they would do to be able to borrow another $17 billion.

It’s no wonder the business community are concerned. It’s no wonder mums and dads are finding it harder to make ends meet with costs going up because of the extra taxes. At a time when this Government inherited a strong economy of up to 4 percent growth and growing surpluses, they’ve borrowed more and they’re going to borrow more so that they can spend more, tax more, and borrow more, and that really sums it up.

This wasn’t a transformational Budget. All this was was a Budget that the Labour Party does every time they come to Government: spend more, tax more, and hope. Well, that’s just not good enough. When you come to those broken promises—because I think this is extremely important. You see, when you go to an election, you make promises; if you get into Government, you actually need to deliver on them. You can’t say to the public, “Well, we didn’t think we were going to get here; we haven’t done the work. All of those promises can’t be delivered on, so we’re going to spend hundreds of millions of your hard-earned taxes on working groups.”

What are those broken promises? There was the promise of no new taxes, but there are seven of them. They promised $10 cheaper doctor visits for all—well, it ain’t in this Budget. They promised $20 million for access for lifesaving medicines for New Zealanders with rare disorders—nothing. Go and have a look at that Budget. In terms of annual health and eye checks for seniors—nothing. We heard a lot about seniors beforehand. We heard about 100 percent qualified early childhood education funding—not in this Budget—and ensuring all students have access to mobile digital devices—not in this Budget.

The list goes on and on and on, and the worst part of this is the reason they’re borrowing more, the reason they’re taxing more, is the economy is slowing, from a 4 percent growth rate to one that’s forecast at merely, barely, over 2 percent of GDP at the moment. We’re going to hear more about that when the figures are released tomorrow. For every 1 percent of GDP growth that this Government has ruined, there’s a drop—that’s $5 billion of Government revenue, of ability to spend, less. But they’re not slowing down on the spending; they’re increasing it to meet their promises to their coalition partners, and that means they need to borrow more and they need to tax more.

In three areas of policy I want to touch on that are very important—and we’ll have an opportunity go into some of this in more detail in the committee tomorrow. In foreign affairs, we saw a very large increase in funding last year. In fact, some of that went towards one more embassy opening. We’ve heard a lot from the Minister of Foreign Affairs about New Zealand’s footprint and New Zealand doing more on the world stage and meeting its commitments, but, actually, that one embassy they rushed through is a very small enlargement of New Zealand’s international footprint compared to what you saw under us as a Government. So a lot more money has gone into foreign affairs, but we need to see a lot more delivered for that.

When it comes to foreign affairs spending overseas, our diplomats do a very, very important job for us. We need them there working as hard for us as they can. They need to know that they have the backing of this House and the backing of New Zealanders, but we also need to make sure that the Government is driving them to deliver value for money, because all of the money that’s spent overseas on behalf of New Zealand comes from hard-earned taxes or, in the case of the Government, from borrowing, that hard-working Kiwis will have to pay back.

There are two particular items that actually need a lot more attention in this Budget. One is around APEC. New Zealand will host APEC in 2021, and the Government has budgeted, over four years, money for that, but it falls woefully short of what Treasury has said will be needed. So tomorrow we’ll have an opportunity to dig into that some more. This is one of the biggest international events New Zealand will have hosted for a long time and probably is capable of hosting because of our size. It can’t be undercooked, and it can’t be left until the last year to come up with the additional money, maybe as much as $100 million, that’s required.

The other part of the Budget is some funding around our base in the Antarctic. That needs a refurbishment, but there is no money in the Budget to do that, other than $16 million. I know the business case has been worked on, and, actually, the Government has fallen woefully short even though they’re taxing more and they’re borrowing more and they’re spending in other areas. This is something that needs to be fixed more quickly.

In trade, this is a Government that lacks ambition. We are hearing things around trade from them, but we don’t see where else they want to take trade negotiation. We don’t see where they’re ambitious, who we should be doing new deals with, where we can be opening doors for New Zealanders. Largely, all we’ve seen is them continue the agenda that was set in place over the previous nine years by the last Government, and that’s not good enough for a country that relies upon trade. We need to see the trade Minister and others he designates out on the world stage much more than they have been. It’s not enough for us to merely sit back and assume people will open the door for us. We’re a very small nation. Everybody in the world wants to sell the same things that we produce and sell to the markets that are important to us. We need to make sure that they are doing much, much better here, and it’s quite disappointing that we didn’t see anything in the Budget about expanding trade ambition for New Zealanders, bringing those barriers down, and finding more opportunity. When we hear about, you know, a slowing economy and falling GDP, the Government and the Prime Minister are very quick to talk about the hard work our exporters are doing, and they’re starting to talk about the hard work that our primary sector is doing. We weren’t hearing that last year or before the last election. You can’t only say that they are doing good things for you when you need their help. They need support all the way through, and rural New Zealand doesn’t see that support. You only needed to listen last week at the Fieldays.

Finally, in tourism, I’m quite pleased that the Minister has turned his mind to tourism, but he has woefully under-delivered on his promises. He said there would be much more money for tourism, and all we’ve seen so far is a new tax that “we’ll deliver soon”, he says. In fact, there has been less spent in tourism in the last two Budgets—actual spending—than there had been before, and that’s just not good enough. Seventy million dollars will come out of the pockets of small businesses as a result of the tourism tax—that’s Treasury’s figure, not ours. We know that there’s a slowing down because the time it takes to deliver visas to visitors has blown out, and there are reports in the newspaper that businesses are saying tourists are cancelling their trips because of uncertainty. That’s up to a $50 million loss, again from those businesses. More than $100 million is lost in tourism from small tourist businesses, and in its place, this Minister has promised $40 million through a new tax. To the Minister, it is a very important industry; I know he gets that. He needs to start delivering for them.

What another grim contribution from over the other side of the House. I think the irony, actually, of the initial part of that speech was that the member criticised this Government for not getting out and selling the Budget. Well, what I heard when I came in here, in two question times and subsequently afterwards, was the Leader of the Opposition getting up and going down a rabbit hole of someone is a hack or not a hack—something that does not matter to the people of New Zealand. What does matter to the people of New Zealand is this fine, well-balanced Budget that we have put out.

Of course, what the members opposite do not acknowledge is that we do have a strong economy. The forecast in the Budget is for 3 percent growth next year, and that far outstrips our international comparators, the likes of the UK, Australia—who we always love to beat—the eurozone, Japan. All those economies we are performing much better than, and, also, we have been fiscally responsible. That 20 percent debt to GDP target—we’re almost there now. We’re well on track, as the Budget shows, to be there by 2021-22. So we’ve been responsible with it. This is a very, very well-balanced Budget looking at addressing some of the big social issues that we face as a country but also keeping an eye on the purse strings.

Also, of course, importantly, employment—it’s got to be shared. What is an economy if it is not shared across the population? Of course, an important part of that is that wages are actually growing significantly higher than inflation, so people are actually getting ahead under this Government. A strong economy like this does allow us to invest in important areas like mental health, and I think it has been acknowledged across the Parliament that we haven’t been doing enough. This is a huge issue in our society and as someone coming from a rural background, I know it is a big issue out there where often, particularly on our farms, people are isolated. So that $1.9 billion package, some of it ring-fenced for our rural areas, will be incredibly welcome.

Budgets are about appropriating money. The thing that always interests me the most, and where I’m looking, is how we earn the money. You’ve got to be able to earn it before you can spend it. It’s the focus on paying the bills, and particularly in my area of interest, primary industry, our $46 billion that we’re bringing in this year in our exports. We’re looking at record exports in meat. Horticulture is absolutely booming—forestry, fisheries. The dairy payout is looking particularly strong again next year and our terms of trade are at record levels. So that absolute foundation stone of the New Zealand economy—the thing that allows us to do the things that we’re able to do, like this $1.9 billion mental health package, is being underpinned, as it always has been, by our primary sector.

But, of course, in the primary sector it is a time of change. We do have a number of challenges that this Government has undertaken to address—not just pay lip-service to. We do have to address our environmental footprint. There are issues around things like animal welfare. We’ve got a significant biosecurity response under way at the moment with Mycoplasma bovis—and, of course, Psa, a recent memory, in the kiwifruit. We’ve got an active fruit-fly investigation going on at the moment. So this is an ongoing reality that we have to resource.

It’s great to see that package go to the Minister of Agriculture, Damien O’Connor—that $229 million sustainable land-use package—as we look to address these big issues, as we look to see how we can farm in a more carbon-neutral manner. We are actually resourcing our farmers and our agricultural industry to get ahead of the curve here, to give them the tools that they will need to meet these challenges. Of course, one of the important parts of this is the extension services. We’re actually acknowledging that there are some compliance issues around a lot of this stuff. This is a new way of doing things, and we’re getting people out on the farms to help them with that transition: $35 million is going into extension services as part of a $122 million package, which includes $43 million for the OVERSEER programme.

Now, everyone in agriculture is grappling with how we can improve our water quality, and one of the issues that we’ve had is that the tool that we have measured that by—all the regional councils who are charged with monitoring these things and implementing these changes—is a programme called OVERSEER, which is an old programme that has been developed and developed, but it needs to be developed some more because it was never a regulatory tool. It was always a farm management package, but by default it has been a regulatory tool. So the Minister is investing $43 million into upgrading it, because farmers want to know what their environmental impact is, but they want to know it accurately. If there’s going to be nutrient limits, they want to know that those limits are based on accurate data.

Of course, there’s the $63 million that’s going into biosecurity and customs. Now, that is an incredibly important investment, because we know to our cost—we know to the almost $1 billion that it is costing us to respond to the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak—that prevention is far, far better than cure. And, of course, it’s not just the money; it’s the stress on the individuals involved in those particular businesses. So that $63 million spend within the Budget in the agricultural part of it is incredibly welcome.

Also there is $200 million for vocational training. We have seen an acknowledgment that our system has been broken. Certainly, in the areas that I’ve had some involvement with, with Telford in the agricultural sector—Taratahi, of course, got itself into trouble. We do need to resource the vocational sector better. It does cost more to train people for those vocations, and we are now, through Minister Hipkins, resourcing that, and we need to because we’ve only got 16,500 students in our agricultural institutions at the moment, and that is down from 22,500 just a few short years ago.

And, of course, as we’re growing our economy, one of the things we have to do is grow our productivity. We are committed to spending 2 percent of GDP on our productivity and on R & D, and this Budget, again, appropriates through that $1.1 billion package that will see tax credits for our businesses—something that the National Party actually voted against. That’s a tax cut—for the National Party—for businesses. You guys voted against it. We’re backing our business to do the R & D and get our total expenditure up to near the OECD average so that we can actually do things a bit smarter. We’ve got to the end of just more volume; we have to go for value. We have to go for knowledge and technology, and these sorts of programmes start to address that imbalance that we’ve had. We just have not been spending enough.

Of course, there’s the $300 million that’s going into start-up companies, that sort of second phase after the seed funding, and I think Minister Parker’s led that. Again, that is important so we can get our businesses to escape velocity. That is a very important spend as we look to grow our economy.

I’ve heard foreign affairs mentioned, but we are doing trade deals all around the world: the Europe trade deal, the EU trade deal. We are out there. We have got boots on the ground, getting deals for our exporters.

So this is a very well-balanced Budget. It does look to grow the pie. It does look at the drivers of our economy and how we can make it more productive and more sustainable, but it also looks to the wellbeing of our people. It looks to those gaping holes in our social services, particularly our mental health, which I think has been welcomed across the country. It is long overdue. I commend Cabinet and the Ministers for bringing this Budget forward. It has been a fantastic, very well-balanced, and very well-received Budget. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, that was a very interesting contribution from Mark Patterson, who I note today is wearing a blue tie. I noted when I saw him at the Fieldays—and not many people were flocking to him last week—that he didn’t have that blue tie on. He wanted to be seen as a New Zealand First MP, but people look at him and they go, “Is he National or is he New Zealand First?” When he’s sitting over there on the Treasury benches and he looks over here and he thinks, “This is the family that I should be with, but somehow I’ve sort of drifted up on to this family on the other side called the New Zealand First political party.”, we wish him well.

But what was fascinating last week at the Fieldays was that as we moved around—and the Nats were there in force and we saw a couple of others. I think Mr Patterson was cruising around with Mr Tabuteau, and there were a couple of other Labour MPs and the odd Minister there. What I found fascinating was the Prime Minister turning up, which was great—it’s great to have the Prime Minister there. She’s followed a long succession of Prime Ministers who have been to one of the biggest events in New Zealand, and, in fact, it’s the biggest agriculture event in the Southern Hemisphere. What was most telling was that when Jacinda Ardern went along to the lunch with all the agriculture leaders, she did a PowerPoint presentation on the Wellbeing Budget.

💬 Rt Hon David Carter: You’re joking.

Yes—yes. The Prime Minister did a PowerPoint presentation to the agriculture leaders, not on agriculture policy, but on the Wellbeing Budget.

Now, the Rt Hon David Carter has been here for 25 years. He came here in 1994, and I just asked him if he could reflect: has any Prime Minister in the time that you’ve been here, Mr Carter, ever used a PowerPoint presentation to get out there and sell the Budget?

💬 Rt Hon David Carter: Never.

Never. So I found that moment extremely telling that the Prime Minister had to get out there and try and sell the Budget to an agriculture audience when, in actual fact, they’ve had no real bounce on this Wellbeing Budget. In fact, the leaders that I spoke to afterwards said that it sort of feels like and sounds like a welfare Budget. But I’ll leave it there on that regard.

What I want to do is also focus on the sentiments that I picked up last week at the National Agricultural Fieldays. While export prices are actually in pretty good shape—and it’s really one of the few times I’ve heard the Prime Minister talk about New Zealand’s dairy industry and the almighty export power that it has and how it underpins the New Zealand economy. Of course, lamb now gets a mention in the Parliament by the Prime Minister, and the coalition Government always put Zespri up on a pedestal—and I say well done to Zespri. But let’s not forget the sheep and beef farmers, the dairy farmers, and others that help to underpin this New Zealand economy.

Now, while the outlook is quite strong and positive for exporters in the primary sector, sentiments are exactly the opposite. They walk around the Fieldays, the whole lot of them, looking at their navels and thinking, “What is next?” They realise they might have dodged a bullet with the capital gains tax, but I’ll tell you what’s around the corner—and Mr Patterson will want to know this. There are very stringent water-quality standards and regulations coming down the pipeline.

Mr Patterson might also want to know this: the Government are supporting Fish & Game and Forest & Bird out there to run a campaign, which they’re going to launch very, very shortly, against winter grazing in New Zealand. They’re going to have some photos of some cows standing in mud—whip-de-wow! There’s going to be photos of sheep standing in mud in the snow—whip-de-wow! This is going to be an orchestrated campaign that’s going to line up with David Parker when he comes out and announces very strict water-quality standards, and, yes, there will be a consultation.

So I want to know what Mark Patterson will say to those farmers in Southland. Will he get out there and stand on the stump and stand up for them and push back against Fish & Game and Forest & Bird? What will you say, Mr Patterson? Silence—exactly. Exactly—silence from the member. So we know that down in Southland, people will look to that MP to say something and stand up for them. Well, I’ll tell you what, Hamish Walker is already standing up for them. He is in the media today and tomorrow in Farmers Weekly, standing up for farmers because they know that this is an orchestrated campaign by the Government, supported by these NGOs, Fish & Game and Forest & Bird. I say it’s absolutely disgraceful, what is about to happen.

What also occurred at the Fieldays was that farmers are worried about the fuel tax. They’re worried about employment law changes that are being led by the other side. They’re worried about this large—and what I think is unrealistic—methane reduction of minus 24 percent to minus 47 percent. New Zealand First slept through that Cabinet committee and Cabinet when they decided on that particular one.

Then, of course, we’ve got Shane Jones out there rallying against 50 Shades of Green, saying “Oh, they’re all National Party stooges.” Well, just a couple of weeks ago, he was calling all dairy farmers—he said that when they’re not milking their cows, they’re whinging or moaning. Any criticism that comes to Shane Jones, he just rains on everyone’s parade.

So you’ve now got rural communities—50 Shades of Green—out there, a lobby group that are really concerned about the one-billion-tree programme hollowing out rural communities. There’s going to be an article in the Listener magazine any time shortly about that, and what’s really interesting is Shane Jones’ response. What does he do? Well, they get so much pressure at the Fieldays, they have to call a press conference. So Shane Jones and Damien O’Connor called the press in yesterday—they have to give them a briefing—“Now, media here’s all the statistics. What we’re not seeing is all the investment coming in from the overseas investors like 50 Shades of Green are saying, it’s not a subsidy for tree planting”—

💬 Rt Hon David Carter: Of course it’s a subsidy.

This is what they’re saying. Of course we know it’s a subsidy. We know, Mr Carter, that they’ve opened up the Overseas Investment Act to allow these investors to pour in and purchase land for trees. This strategy is going to hollow out rural communities—it needs a reset; it needs a rethink. But it’s typical of this Government whenever anyone challenges them. I want to say now, and put it on the record: 50 Shades of Green are not aligned with the National Party; these are farmers that are concerned about rural communities.

I’ll give you just one example: Kumeroa School in the Tararua district. A farm sold there, on its way to be converted into forestry. What happens? The farmer who’s working on that farm has to leave the community because trees are being planted. That’s not just one job gone, here’s the kicker: he’s in a relationship with the local schoolteacher. The schoolteacher now has to leave Kumeroa School. They’ve been struggling to attract teachers into the school—they’ve had eight in the last 15 years. So this is the impact if you don’t focus on the strategy and you don’t execute it well, the right tree, the right time, and the right place—certainly, we all get the sentiment of that.

For the last couple of minutes that I’ve got to go, can I also talk about the discussion document. We spent a long time on this document, because it’s quite easy in Opposition to ridicule the Government, and people say, “Well, what are you going to do? What are you proposing?” Well, this is a 32-page document with 40-odd questions and ideas about being tougher on biosecurity, giving biosecurity officials the power to deport a passenger for knowingly bringing in and concealing biosecurity risk items, lifting the fines from 400 bucks to 1,000 bucks, and bringing in a primary sector visa. We know it’s really hard to attract enough people and enough Kiwis to get into the workforce here, so we want to focus on a primary sector visa to give some certainty to employers.

We think that Landcorp, worth about $1.8 billion, 84 farms, six times the size of Lake Taupō—why not give young farmers the opportunity to lease to own some of these farms? Ring-fence the ones that we need to for the Treaty of Waitangi; ring-fence some others so that there will always be some farms that they can lease to build up the equity and move through the system into farm ownership. We’re proposing a biotechnology and innovation fund. If you think about all of the issues that we, collectively, in the primary sector are facing: Predator Free 2050, why not have sterile possums? Think about GE ryegrass—that will reduce methane by 23 percent and is drought tolerant; have to do field trials in the US, can’t do it in New Zealand. Where are the tools in the tool box? They aren’t there—they aren’t there.

Also, what about rural health—600,000 people living in rural New Zealand are finding it tough to get to medical professionals. We’re going to propose a mobile rural health clinic to ensure that these isolated communities can go and see someone when they need to.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I rise today to speak on behalf of the Greens in my call on the Wellbeing Budget, and particularly to discuss the topics of mental health and addiction. I’d like to preface what I say about our $1.9 billion investment in mental health and addiction with the logical precedent to it—that being the mental health and addiction inquiry started by this Government, in our first 100 days, no less.

That mental health and addiction inquiry—or He Ara Oranga—heard from over 5,000 submitters, many of whom were on the front lines of mental health and addiction in this country across a number of sectors treating those at both the top and the bottom ends of inequality in this country, treating those in the likes of poorer communities, those who are in more wealthy communities, and those who are in prisons. What was really fascinating about this mental health and addiction inquiry is that the Government didn’t seek to limit its ambit solely to the medical profession. It was the first Government-instigated inquiry of its kind that looked beyond pathologising and medicalising the issues of mental health and addiction. Fundamentally what it found is that the wellbeing of all people—and in this context, of all New Zealanders—is predicated on their connection to each other. It’s predicated on the feeling that they are contributing to society, as though they have a sense of identity, as though they have a sense of purpose.

Interestingly—or controversially enough, as the case may be—this mental health and addiction inquiry also, in the addiction part, recommended that we stop criminalising people who are caught in the web of addiction. This, of course, is being implemented through the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill, which is what, I believe, the Hon Paula Bennett is calling the supposed “decriminalisation by stealth”. I’m not sure where the stealth is, given that it’s presently in front of the Health Committee.

On the topic of mental health, that $1.9 billion when broken down, particularly as it pertains to addiction response, means there will be a $14 million more operating budget for mild to moderate alcohol and drug issues. There will be $44 million more for specialist alcohol and other drug issues. So too we are expanding—or at the very least securing—the funding and sustainability of Te Ara Oranga, a pilot project in Northland, which is a collaboration between the district health board and police, which I might, again, quite controversially say, effectively, decriminalises those who are caught in the web of addiction for methamphetamine and instead seeks to turn their life around by seeing that they have access to housing and education and employment and the opportunity to reconnect with their community. The National Party’s opposition now to our moving forward with the meth action plan and the likes of Te Ara Oranga is ironic given that they instigated it.

So too there is, importantly, as was announced—I believe it was earlier this week or just last week by Minister Kelvin Davis—the $129 million - odd for the wellbeing and quality of life of vulnerable people in corrections’ care. This is crucially important because we know that there are a huge number of people who end up incarcerated, who themselves suffer from mental health and addiction problems.

Finally, I want to touch on the cannabis referendum because this is a crucially important question that will be put forward to New Zealanders in the 2020 general election. There’s been $13.4 million allocated to the Electoral Commission to engage and communicate with the public on participation in the referendum process. I think that this is crucially important because this symbolises the first time that politicians will give over the opportunity to the majority of New Zealanders to discern what they think should be the future of our country when it comes to the opportunity to end the war on drugs—at least so far as it comes to the issue of cannabis. There is a lot more I could say, but that’s my time. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a really exciting moment, to get to speak to this year’s Budget and talk about the work that we are doing to address family violence and sexual violence. This is one of those underlying deep shames in our country that is still uncomfortable for many people to talk about and is holding us back as a country on quite a profound level. The statistics from the Ministry of Justice tell us that every year about one million New Zealanders are affected by these two forms of violence—that’s including the people causing the harm as well as those who are experiencing it. So we know that we’ve got a really big problem as a country, and it’s one that a business-as-usual approach of one-off initiatives is not going to solve. It’s going to take all of us working together to be able to turn this around.

I want to say really clearly that I have absolute confidence in our ability as a country to turn this around. We are a really small place, we’re really well connected to each other, and, if there’s any place in the world that can change this culture to get to a point of safety, where people are thriving in their families, it’s this country, because of our size and our connectedness and, I would say, the fact that we were founded on an idea of partnership.

This Budget is really significant. It’s the largest single commitment in a Budget in this country’s history towards addressing this violence, and it’s a completely new way of working in Government. It’s no longer one ministry saying, “This is our initiative. We’re taking this seriously. We’re going to solve this problem by ourselves.” It’s actually a whole package right across Government. We are coming up with a whole-of-Government response.

That reflects the fact that in 2016 the Family Violence Death Review Committee, who investigates all the deaths from family violence, in their report reflected on the fact that New Zealand at that point did not—and we still don’t yet—have a family violence system. Instead, they described what we have as a default system consisting of a fragmented range of processes and responses with one-off interventions that don’t actually manage risk. They do not, and they were failing to, and they are still failing to, keep women and children safe.

The only way we’re going to change that is by starting to work together to see, for once, if those interventions make sense together—to actually take it from the starting point of those victims’ and survivors’ lives and follow them through, asking what they need to be safe and, for those people who are using violence, where we could have got in earlier to prevent them from causing harm. That is one of the reasons, in this Budget, that we’re putting a really significant increase into funding for prevention projects, because, if there’s one thing I hear from people around the country, it’s that they want to see us doing more to prevent this violence before it happens. We’re doing that, and so people will soon start to see more discussions in their communities—more discussions about how they can help to intervene to prevent harm, and more discussions and opportunities to intervene to change this culture of violence that permeates our entire society.

We’ll be intervening with the babies and their mums, because that’s again one of those things people say to me: they’re sick of seeing these hurt children go on to hurt others in turn later in their life. That’s on us. We can prevent that. I am so proud of all of the Ministers in this Government for standing together for a future free of violence.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is a botched Budget. The economy is slowing down, and the Government has had policies and uncertainty and a bunch of failed promises. The so-called Wellbeing Budget is, apparently, the first Budget to ever focus on outcomes or have joint Budget bids. I don’t think so. We are not falling for fluff marketing. What wellbeing really means—and here’s what it really means, folks, where the rubber hits the road—is whether the average New Zealander can pay their bills, whether the average New Zealander can support their family and have a bit of money left over at the end of the day, whether the kids are getting a good education, and, if somebody gets sick in the family, whether there’s going to be access to the medicine that they need. That’s wellbeing. That’s the basics. That’s what New Zealanders want and what they are needing and relying on from a good Government.

But the Government has failed on every aspect. The economy is slowing. They can’t deny it. We won’t deny it. No one can deny that. Job growth is down. So the very first thing that this Government did for their Wellbeing Budget was introduce new petrol taxes—8c per litre to the cost of petrol. Out of everything in this Budget, that is the one thing that has the most impact on middle New Zealand—again, something that the Government can’t deny, and we certainly won’t deny, because it’s a fact.

Teachers were out on the largest strike in history, and the Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the table to resolve that. Funding for Pharmac does not even keep up with population growth. These are lifesaving cancer drugs, and they’re now less accessible because of this Government.

Everywhere you look you see broken promises by Labour, and no less in Auckland. Aucklanders have been left stuck in traffic because of this Labour Government. They’re being made to front up with the regional fuel tax and three separate increases to the petrol tax, and they’re getting no improved transport infrastructure whatsoever. Where is the improved transport infrastructure? Show us. Tell us. Give us any indication about what you’re doing. You’ve talked about what you’re doing.

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

You haven’t fronted up with what you’re doing.

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

They haven’t talked about what they’re doing.

I’ll never forget Auckland Action Against Poverty and their reaction to the regional fuel tax and these taxes. They used the word “regressive”—the Government couldn’t deny it—and they went on to absolutely confirm that it was a slam on low-income Aucklanders.

We’ve also got—back on the transport topic—Auckland Council and Auckland Transport pulling their hair out publicly because the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) aren’t funding their share of the Auckland Transport Alignment Project (ATAP) priorities. What does this Government say to that? New roading projects have been cancelled. We were promised a new version of the East-West Link. Where is that? Absolutely nowhere to be seen. The Government’s wanting to save all these new taxes to spend on a gold-plated $6 billion light rail project to Māngere, but I think they’re realising, obviously, that it’s a little too hard and the business case isn’t stacking up, because on that project we’ve got silence too.

We’ve got broken promises on a national scale, and we’ve got broken promises on a local scale, and I’m going to demonstrate how the national level of broken promises is absolutely personal and local to me in my electorate and to the people that I serve. The East-West Link—I just referred to that earlier. Six thousand trucks a day move through my particular electorate. You might say, “Well, what’s that in relation to the country’s overall scale?” Everything. It is the second-highest earner to GDP in the entire country, that area where the East-West Link is supposed to go through. What we’ve got is frozen freight, frozen trucks, sitting idle, stuck behind traffic lights, congested, and it is costing upwards of $35 million a year in lost productivity. That’s a conservative estimate. Now, what does that do? That produces congestion. That produces rat running. That produces safety issues in my area.

There is one particular intersection, called Church Street and Victoria Street, that is one of the most notorious crash sites in all of Auckland. Now, that is directly related to this Government doing nothing and sitting on their hands for a hugely vital project, the East-West Link. How does the Government stack up and answer to locals in congested traffic and very high crash rate intersections in my area?

💬 Light Rail: there’s been a failure to produce anything—anything at all—on that particular gold-plated project. You’ve got NZTA building a $25 million footbridge, very potentially unnecessarily, where, perhaps—I don’t know; we don’t know—light rail is supposed to go over the Manukau Harbour. Where is the solution to these big, massive projects that the Labour Party campaigned on and said that we would get? We don’t have them.

Now, let me bring it down even more local and personal, again. This is a Budget-related issue and one very near and dear to my heart. There is a man called Troy Elliott and his gorgeous wife Tracey Elliott who just recently celebrated their 19th wedding anniversary. Tracey has stage four cancer. She’s been told that she has 24 hours to live more than once. She still lives on; she still fights on today. Tracey, I know you’re watching this; my love and heart and hugs go out to you. They spend, right now, $8,867.63 every three weeks to fund Kadcyla. Kadcyla is a drug that is fully funded in the UK and in Australia, but not here. Every time they swipe that EFTPOS card where they get their treatment, the person who takes their card from them says, “Sorry”, but they’ve got to swipe the EFTPOS card anyway. They’ve got a Givealittle page going to fund that particular drug, to lengthen Tracey’s life. That Givealittle page has become their surrogate Pharmac, because they’re not getting it from Pharmac. Troy is venturing into Dry July—Troy, I know you’re reluctant to go into Dry July but he does it because the funds from Dry July fund TVs in ward 64, and they also fund comfortable chairs for patients who are receiving chemo.

This is a couple, this is a woman, this is Tracey, who deserves much more from this Government and much more from this Budget. What’s the Budget context? A measly 1 percent increase in medicines funding. That does not even remotely match population increase and pressures. Why might this be? Well, we know that the district health boards are heading for deficits of $500 million at the end of this month. Is that related? Of course it is. Let’s not forget that Government members blocked an inquiry into Pharmac back in April. What was that—

💬 Brett Hudson: Oh really?

Yup, they blocked an inquiry into Pharmac back in April. The Government does not want to know what’s going on—they’re burying their heads in the sand. Well, they should front up and answer to Troy and Tracey Elliot.

To the Government: what are you doing to deliver in your year of delivery? You were left with huge surpluses. You’ve made huge promises which you’ve failed—

💬 SPEAKER: That’s now the fourth warning.

They’ve had huge promises that they’ve failed to deliver on. It’s an extraordinary tale of failed promises. School donations to all schools, it isn’t happening; 10,000 KiwiBuild homes a year, it isn’t happening. What does the Government do when they can’t deliver? They reset, they recalibrate, and, in some instances, they reverse. Well, we are in high gear. Bring on 2020.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I remember those days too. My colleagues, a few of them here, they’ll remember those cold, dark, dismal days sitting on that side of the House where the sun never shines, where the only opportunity to, perhaps, generate a bit of light and a bit of heat is to stand up and give a depressing, nasty speech to criticise the Government. We’ve all been there, and long may it last for those people over there.

Now, the Hon Todd McClay stood up—he’s the spokesperson for tourism. Again, another cold, sad, miserable tale of woe from him. The reality is, one of the great things about being in Government is you have the opportunity to do good stuff, and you also have the opportunity to change the mess that was created by the regime that came in before you. Tourism is a classic example of where the country is lucky that we had a change of Government in 2017.

Now, let me tell you, the previous Government did quite a good job of destination marketing. Sadly, where they failed the country abysmally was in destination management. The numbers of visitors coming to New Zealand increased significantly in the last five years, which is good—good for visitors coming over here, and it should be good for New Zealand as well. Sadly, though, in too many communities the growth in visitor numbers has actually had a negative impact. It’s because the previous Government failed to manage New Zealand as a destination, and what that did was that jeopardised our biggest export earner. Now, 216,000 New Zealanders are directly employed in tourism and close to 170,000 are indirectly employed by tourism. But what the previous regime did was jeopardise that and threaten that. We were in danger of losing our social licence as a tourism destination but we’ve come and ridden in and saved the day. They should just say thank you. It wouldn’t be hard.

What have we done in tourism? Well, the work done by the Responsible Camping Working Group last year has eliminated by at least half, I’d say by 80 percent, the complaints from communities around responsible camping. Now, it’s not perfect, we know that. We’ve still got work to do, but we have reduced the number of complaints about responsible camping. Then we introduced the tourism strategy. The previous one was about 10 years old. It was out of date and there was no sign on the horizon that the previous Government was going to do anything about it, because the world of tourism has changed in the last 10 years. So they did nothing; they just floated and drifted. What else have we done? We’ve introduced the international visitor and conservation levy. Some $450 million is going to go towards tourism and conservation over the next five years.

The only people in the country who oppose it are the ones sitting over in the dark and the cold in the shade of Opposition. What they could do is stand up and promise the country that they will repeal the international visitor levy. I can’t wait to hear the Hon Todd McClay stand up and announce that they’re going to repeal that visitor levy. I can’t wait to hear the reaction from the tourism sector when he makes that announcement. I can’t wait to hear what Sandra Goudie, the Mayor of Thames-Coromandel, is going to say. I was there in the Coromandel a couple of weeks back, talking at the bed and breakfast conference. She was singing the praises of the Government. I can’t wait to hear what she’s going to say to her former colleague when he announces that they’re going to repeal the visitor levy. I can’t wait to hear what John Carter, the Mayor of the Far North District Council, is going to say when Todd McClay rings and says that they’re going to repeal the international visitor levy. I can’t wait to hear what Jim Boult, the Mayor of Queenstown, is going to say when the National Party promise to repeal the international visitor levy. I bet you this will be the first reaction: ring, ring, “Hello, it’s Todd McClay here.” There’ll be a deadly silence then people will say, “Who?” They will have forgotten because the man has been invisible when it comes to the tourism sector.

The Government and industry—mainly led by industry—have developed the tiaki promise, which sets out the values that New Zealanders hold dear. It’s an education package for visitors here. The China-New Zealand Year of Tourism—that’s kicked off. The Terracotta Warriors—we anticipated some 100,000 visitors to visit that in the course of the few months that it was there; there were close to 200,000, double the numbers. This Government has done a lot, and we’ve also saved the whole tourism sector and all those jobs because of the work that we’ve been doing.

But let me just congratulate the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance for the wonderful Wellbeing Budget that we’ve announced in the last few weeks. I also just want to acknowledge the Hon Chris Hipkins.

Now I turn to school donations. I was a principal of a decile three school in Kaitāia. Every year we had fundraising. At our major fundraising event we would raise $9,000 and, man, were we proud of ourselves—$9,000 is a big community effort. We thought it was fantastic; we barely got a dollar when it came to school donations. Now, that school, if it had the same roll—I don’t know what the roll numbers are at the moment—as when I was there it would have received $45,000 from the Government. What’s that—five times the amount that we got in our biggest fundraising effort? So I’d just like to thank the Minister of Education for that generosity. It’s making a big difference in those schools that have trouble raising money.

Mental health—if there are two words that the country remembers from this Budget, they are “mental health”. Chlöe Swarbrick mentioned the work that we’re doing in prisons: $128.3 million is going towards helping those people in prisons with mental health issues. I’ll rattle through a number of things that we’re doing: 2,310 additional offenders with mild to moderate mental health needs will receive help from this Budget.

Now, people say, “Well, why worry if they’ve only got mild or moderate mental health needs?” Well, the thing is that we don’t want those mild or moderate mental health needs to become severe and acute mental health needs. So we’re addressing that. That’s going to take the total number of people who are receiving help for mild or moderate mental health needs to over 5,000 in prisons. We know that there are around about 10,000 people in our prisons at the moment, so we know that we’ve got more work to do to support those people.

Eight hundred offenders will receive expanded social worker and trauma counselling. Why is that important? Well, one thing we know is we come down hard on people who are in prison because they’re there and they’ve committed crime, but the thing is that we always forget that just about all of them are victims of crime themselves—91 percent of people in prisons have a mental health or a substance abuse issue—and we must help them. So that’s why they’re going to get trauma counselling and expanded social worker support.

Two hundred and seventy-five whānau are going to receive mental health support outside in the community. So these are the whānau of people inside prison. Because we realise and we recognise that if people are in prison—and they probably have a mental health issue—the chances are that their whānau will also have mental health issues. So we’re going to support them.

Thirty places will be made available in the community for people with intensive mental health issues. That’s because we know that when people leave prison—that in itself is quite traumatic—we need to support them so that they can reintegrate back into the community as best they can.

We’re going to make sure that alcohol and drug services are expanded into four more prisons. That will take the number of prisons with alcohol and drug services to 15 out of our 18 prisons. It just seems ridiculous that we actually have prisons that don’t have alcohol and drug counselling services in them.

The $98 million Māori Pathway—now, this came about because I went into a prison. There was a Māori-focused unit, and the prisoners were telling me they loved the Māori unit. They got to connect with their language, their culture—all those sorts of things that many of them hadn’t had an opportunity to connect with before. They said, “Oh, but there’s only one problem.” And I said, “What’s that?” They said, “It goes for 13 weeks.” It was a lightbulb moment for me. What we do, for those people who have got these sentences, is that after 13 weeks they go back into the general population, and we’re saying to them, “You can only be Māori for 13 weeks of your three- or four- or five-year sentence.” That’s why we’re saying that, from the time somebody enters prison—a Māori, or even a non-Māori—to the time they leave, they can participate in this Māori Pathway, which will help them, hopefully, to not reoffend and not end up back in prison when their time is done there. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. What a speech that was from the deputy leader of the party leading the Government. There was no substance, just like in the Budget—Budget 2019. What a Budget this was, Budget 2019. Yes, people are asking all sorts of questions. I was at a meeting a few days ago and someone came to me and asked a question. This is just an example of the types of question that people are asking. The question was: “Who is actually running the country?” Exactly. The question was: “Who is actually running the country?”

I said to them that, yeah, because the National team released a big chunk of the Budget before the finance Minister stood up in the House to read the text of the Budget—and that was a big chunk of the real Budget, not a mock Budget—technically, it is National running the country. People would usually know who is running the country if the Government was performing. Obviously, they can see that this Government is not performing.

Then, around that Budget, what happened from the finance Minister’s office and from the finance Minister himself was all the cover up, but he failed—he failed. Or was he exposed? I would say he was exposed by his own colleague the Hon Andrew Little, who said that, yep, he had left messages in the finance Minister’s office—yeah, he did leave a message in the finance Minister’s office, and he did leave a message in the Prime Minister’s office in a timely manner. So much has happened around this Budget, but there is one person who seemed to know nothing, and that was none other than our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. I would have imagined that the Prime Minister has the ability to call in her Ministers to check what exactly happened, but she wants to wait for the report. So this Budget 2019 reveals a lot of things. It also looks like the Prime Minister has lost control of her Ministers.

Coming to the Budget, when we look at a document, the first thing we look at is the cover of the document. When you look at the cover of the document, it’s a very sad story. That tells everything about the Budget, because the person on the cover page of the Budget is not here in New Zealand anymore, because she has decided to move out to Australia because she couldn’t cope with the cost of living here in New Zealand—the way the cost of living is going up under this Labour Government. That’s a very sad story. They couldn’t even retain that person, whose photo they have used on the cover of their Budget, in New Zealand. I know they love talking about the nine years of the National Government, and I’m really proud as well of the nine years of the National Government and am very happy to talk about that and remind everybody that, under that National Government, people were actually coming to New Zealand. Kiwis were coming back to New Zealand, and people like me, immigrants, were wanting to come to New Zealand to call New Zealand their home.

Also let me remind them that, under us, we were creating around 10,000 jobs every month in the last two years. So that was creating opportunities for people to be here, to feel attracted to New Zealand, but under them what we have seen are 4,000 jobs lost in the last quarter—4,000 jobs—and the members want to laugh at that? They can, but 4,000 opportunities have been lost in the last quarter. That is the reality of this Government.

The Prime Minister stood in front of a business audience before the Budget and didn’t talk about business confidence, didn’t talk about the economy. Why? Because she knows that she is failing New Zealand, because she knows that business confidence is slipping down every day. She knows she’s not performing when it comes to the performance of our economy in our country. Yes, that is the reality, and the Prime Minister was so embarrassed that she didn’t want to talk about business confidence and the economy. And I think the Government members should understand that and should reflect on that, and they should be embarrassed too.

They don’t want to look at GDP numbers, maybe because the Prime Minister doesn’t understand what the difference is between GDP and Government accounts, and the Prime Minister didn’t know what our GDP was in the last 12 months, and also because the economic growth under them has halved. Under us, it was around 4 percent, and under them it’s 2 percent. So why would they talk about GDP? It doesn’t help them. Under us, we were helping people to get off the benefits, because we were creating opportunities for those people. But, under them, the queue of people outside the Work and Income office is becoming longer and longer.

I have heard several members talking about all their praises for this Budget. One line that came out was that this Budget represents the values of the coalition Government. Of course, it does, because this Budget creates dependency. The Government creates dependency on the State, and that is the value of this coalition Government. Another line: “It’s a first of its kind, not a traditional Budget.” Of course it’s a first of its kind when they can’t even retain the person on their cover page in New Zealand. They are driving people out from New Zealand because there are no opportunities for people. It is definitely a first of its kind for this reason. There was a big hype that it’s going to be a wellbeing Budget, but we have seen now that there was a big hype only because there is no substance in this Budget.

As a spokesperson for research, science, and innovation, I’m really appalled to see that there is nothing much for research, science, and innovation. When this Government was formed, they said they were going to get rid of growth grants and they were going to get rid of the R & D tax loss credit policy that was put in place by the previous National Government. That was working fine. So, instead of improving on that, they decided to introduce R & D tax credit policy. But in that, what was lacking was proper support for companies that are in a tax loss situation. There is a double standard that this Government has put in place for how they deal with companies that have tax liable income and companies that don’t have a tax liable income.

When questions were asked, when I asked questions, I was told that the policy area is quite complex to provide incentives to companies that are in a tax loss situation. So they’re going to work on a policy, and the policy will be in place by April 2020. So why is there no money in this Budget for that policy? If the money is going to come from reprioritisation, we need to know that too. So where is the money for that policy? Why is there no money for that policy in this Budget? Treasury has said that the Government should be investing public money—$150 million every year—to reach the goal that they have set; that is, 2 percent of the GDP of business spending on research and development. But, maybe—because they don’t want to look at GDP figures—that goal actually means nothing. So that’s why they haven’t allocated that $150 million Treasury has identified should be invested every year—public money every year—to support business spending on research and development.

So they lack that understanding of how to create opportunities for people, so obviously people don’t want to be here in New Zealand. As the associate economic development spokesperson, it was really interesting to see that their economic development Minister is also the Minister for the Environment. When I looked at that, that actually sounds like this Wellbeing Budget, which is just about the name, and there’s nothing inside there. So I thought, well, that is a very good combination, because there are so many things that can be done in the environment portfolio to support the economy, and vice versa.

But what we have seen from that Minister is the ministry is advising the Minister that he should think about our approach towards biotechnology here in New Zealand—this is genetic modification, gene editing. The ministry’s advising the Minister to do something about it, because it’s not working for us. Other countries are making a move. We are going to lag behind, and it’s going to harm our economy. But the Minister is ignoring that advice—ignoring that advice, so that stance of that Government and the Minister is definitely going to harm our economy and the environment as well.

It’s really interesting that this Government actually cares about how they look outside of New Zealand, not about what’s happening within here, in our own country. They just want to look good on that international stage, so they want to make big announcements. So let’s forget about that coverage that is going on in other countries, because we on this side, we know that if we do well here, the rest will follow—the world will follow. Let’s look at some commentary that is going on here in New Zealand. So it’s not just us Opposition complaining about the Government not performing. We know that people are complaining as well. As I have said before, that person on the cover page of their Budget—that is a big example. They should be really embarrassed about that.

Duncan Garner, one of the very well-known AM Show presenters, has said that this is the least effective Government in the last 25 years he has seen. [Interruption] Maybe they want to make the record of a hundred years. They’re laughing there. Yep, 25 is not enough, so maybe they want to make the record of being the least effective in 100 years. That would be something to really achieve—a good goal for those members to set. Patrick Gower is saying that he is regretting saying that he liked the change that happened after the last election. So we have seen a lot of commentary going on within our own country. So maybe this Government should focus on New Zealand more than focusing on the commentary that they want to attract from other countries. This Budget has failed New Zealand. This Government is failing to deliver on their promises. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s with absolute pleasure that I rise to make a contribution, and talk about this Government’s 2019 Wellbeing Budget, which we should all be incredibly proud of. But, of course, we wouldn’t know that from the doom and gloom we’ve heard from Opposition members who have gotten up to speak. Either we’ve heard a speech like the one delivered by the member who just resumed her seat Parmjeet Parmar, that manages to be arrogant, nasty, boring, and lacking in substance all at once—quite the skill, I’ve got to say—or we hear contributions from other members of the Opposition, who talk about how there’s nothing new in this Budget.

I think it was the member Denise Lee who said that it was fluff marketing and then pointed to a whole host of issues that culminated under the last Government: things like traffic and the woes that Aucklanders like myself, and my colleague Dr Deborah Russell, for example, have experienced, infrastructure issues, nine years of underspending and initiatives—this is a bit of a trend that we’ve picked up through the Estimates hearing process post-Budget at select committees of things that were promised by the previous Government that had no funding allocated for them. So given that those are all the issues that we’ve inherited, I think it’s a little bit rich that members opposite lead with those.

But anyway, going back to the Wellbeing Budget, which is historic, it is a world first for a specific reason and, for that reason, has actually garnered international support and has been in the spotlight since it was released a few weeks ago. Now the concept that underlies or underpins the Wellbeing Budget has actually been a concept that has been around for a while. Going back to a 2009 report that is generally known as the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission report, that actually talked about the limitations of using GDP as a sole measure to measure economic performance and progress more broadly.

Now, that was a report that was written by a whole bunch of eminent economists and social scientists, and it was one that was talking to political leaders at the time. One of the main recommendations of that report was to broaden the scope of traditional indicators that are used to measure economic, societal, and environmental progress from the point of view that that is integral if we’re looking at the wellbeing of citizens, which, at the end of the day, is what all of us are here to talk about. The Government is here to serve its people, and integral to that is improving the wellbeing of its citizens. For that reason, for the reason that it adopts that approach where it puts the wellbeing of people at the heart of decision making, for the reason that it focuses on outcomes—where do we want our citizens to be? What improvements do we want to see? How do we work backwards to make sure that Budget bids actually lead to those improvements? For all those reasons, this is a historic Budget.

At this point, I want to commend the leadership of our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, and the Minister of Finance, the Hon Grant Robertson for actually taking the bold step of focusing on and tackling the long-term challenges that this country faces, because although the concept is one that has been long held, it’s never actually been put into practice in the form of a Budget. We are the first in the Western World to actually do that—

💬 Brett Hudson: Oh, what a lot of tosh.

—and so while members opposite might scoff, it’s actually the truth.

In the time that I have today, all we have to do is to look at a couple of initiatives that will actually outline why this is historic, and the first that I’d like to focus on is mental health. Now, we are making a historic investment of almost $2 billion, for the first time ever, into improving mental health, which is a huge challenge for New Zealanders. If you look at a scale or a severity argument, we will see that one in five New Zealanders is affected, according to the data that we currently have. If you even want to look at it from an economic cost point of view, $12 billion was the cost estimate back in 2014. Severity—all we have to do is to look at the data around youth suicides.

Now in the Maungakiekie electorate alone, where I am based, I was talking to one of the youth providers—Flipping East—that we have there, who told me that if you look at the numbers of youth suicides in just the eastern part of the electorate in the year leading up to the last election, you’ll find that it’s in double figures. I was told by nine families over the course of the 10-month campaign that I ran on the ground there that each one of them had lost one young person in their family to suicide. That is nine youth suicides that I heard about within a 10-month period alone.

There is a huge need to address this, and that’s what this Government has done. If you look at the universal front-line service that has been announced through this Wellbeing Budget, it is so that anyone can go up to their primary healthcare provider—whether it’s a GP service or an iwi healthcare service—and if their GP picks up that they have a mental health need, they can literally be walked down to a mental health provider so that they get the care that they need when they need it. This will be rolled out over a five-year period.

Intensive support for those who are specifically at risk, which includes those who have self-harmed or those who have experienced suicidal distress, and expanding access to addiction treatments—we’ve heard from the Minister of Corrections, the Hon Kelvin Davis, who told us that 91 percent of people in prisons have experienced either a mental health issue or an addictive substance use issue. I can see the care and the thought that has gone into looking at which of the populations specifically need to be prioritised in this Budget, and where are they—so prisons are an example of that. Youth mental health, expanding the nurses in schools programme, and expanding that programme to decile 5 schools—that’s what it means to put people at the heart of decision making and to focus on the outcomes that we want to see as a nation, as opposed to specific Budget bids as we’ve seen in the past. That’s what makes, to my mind, this Wellbeing Budget an outstanding one.

Look at family and sexual violence, for example: now, the select committee that I’m deputy chair of, the Social Services and Community Committee, went to Australia last year—

💬 Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: A hard-working committee.

—and talked to a whole bunch of members of Parliament—and Anahila, my colleague, is on it as well, of course—and Ministers, academics, and non-governmental organisations, and the one thing that every one of them pointed to as a driver of issues like poverty, homelessness, and crime was family and sexual violence. The links between family violence, mental wellbeing, and addiction have been noted for years. These things exacerbate family and sexual violence. So if one were to put the victim survivor at the centre, you would look at how you change behaviours and attitudes to stop violence, and that’s where the spending in advertising campaigns and intervention programmes comes into play. Then you’d look at what happens once violence occurs and what are the support services that need to be funded, and that’s where the 24/7 sexual violence crisis support funding in the Wellbeing Budget comes from. It’s the funding into the Integrated Safety Response as well.

Then you’d look at justice, where there’s a huge link between the justice system and victim/survivors of violence. I know this because one of the worst weeks in my life was when I supported a woman who had been raped and had to go through the justice process. So what are we doing there? We’re looking at how we reduce retraumatisation there by looking at alternative ways in which victims of sexual violence can give evidence in court so that they’re not retraumatised. We’re looking at video victim statements for the same reason: to reduce trauma and to reduce time that is spent in court. We’re also looking at support for male survivors of violence—an issue that’s been talked about for years, again—and kaupapa Māori services in terms of a response to sexual violence as well.

So this is the largest single spend on family and sexual violence we’ve ever seen. It sits across eight portfolios and it’s demonstrative of how a good Budget works. So this may not solve all the issues—this Government has never said that it will—but it’s an important step in absolutely the right direction. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This really does take me back, this discussion and this level of debate, to the time when I was in the media, on Morning Report. We had a sort of a wage round situation going. Every year there were cyclical changes. Every year when Labour was in Government, they taxed more, they spent more, and they borrowed more. What’s changed? Very little. The Wellbeing Budget is anything but. What was in it for seniors? What was in it for women’s health? These are some of the issues that I’m going to touch on in my call today.

We look at the context of how this Budget emerged—pretty much, economic growth is what we all depend on if we want to have a good Budget that’s going to deliver for the people who need it, who pay their taxes, and who work hard and want to know that those taxes are being well spent. What’s happened to economic growth, though? They inherited 4 percent; it’s down now to around 2 percent. Treasury has also confirmed that we’ve got about a 1 percent slower growth rate each year, so after three years, that equates to about $5 billion. That’s revenue that could’ve been used for a lot of the things—for example, the things that seniors missed out on completely from this Budget.

They did, though, deliver on one thing, this Labour Government. What would that have been? They promised no new taxes, but they delivered on those: seven new taxes to date, and no doubt a few more working groups to come with it as well.

I mean, when you look at what this Budget has delivered, it’s really what isn’t in the Budget and what, really, we need to focus on. As the Hon Todd McClay said in leading off this debate for National earlier this afternoon, “In trade, this Government lacks ambition.” Ain’t that the truth? What new opportunities have been developed? They’re still doing what the entire Government is doing with its legislation, which is relying on the material and the hard work that the last Government put in. So in trade: no new opportunities. There’s nothing new in there about expanding trade, so how are we going to grow this economy so that people can actually get what they need?

Let’s have a look at some of the details around what seniors have been promised and what was not in this Budget. They were promised an annual health eye check for seniors. That’s not in the Budget. They were also promised an increase to the breast screening to 74 years of age—also not in the Budget. The Hon Amy Adams, in speaking earlier today in question time, talked about the cochlear implants. The things that make a huge difference to the quality of people’s lives—they were not addressed.

In terms of elective surgery, in my own area of the North Shore, there are 400 fewer operations available this year than there were in our time, and that is a pattern that’s been repeated in district health boards (DHBs) throughout the country. The DHBs are a basket case in their own right, and the Hon Michael Woodhouse has spoken about that in detail, so I’ll just go through the things that the seniors have been hoping would come their way because they were told they would. They were told—they were promised—that there would be delivery on the things that mattered to them. That has not occurred.

Housing and affordable housing is particularly important to older New Zealanders who don’t have the nest egg and who perhaps don’t own their own house. They’re reliant on paying rentals, which are going up. They need to have affordable housing. What was supposed to deliver on that? KiwiBuild. The epic “KiwiFailure” that’s currently undergoing, what is it, a retread or a reworking or tweaking, or something? No one mentioned it at all throughout the Budget on that side of the House, and I’m not surprised. It has been in a long list of failures the most epic of them that this Government has failed to deliver.

Law and order and security—that matters a lot to older people. They’re at home, they’re more vulnerable, and they worry about whether they’re going to be able to be safe in their own homes or if they go out during the day. This Government promised 1,800 extra front-line police in their first term—woefully short. There are fewer than 500 net new police so far, and my colleague Chris Bishop is talking about that a lot and really trying to hold the Government to account and get them to stick to what they said they would do, because it’s important.

Unlike people on this side of the House, who are perhaps a little cynical, a little sceptical, about when politicians in Government make promises, even when they were in campaign mode—we kind of take it with a pinch of salt, but a lot of older New Zealanders trusted the Labour-led Government, and what have they got for it? Nothing. This Government has said in the past that it doesn’t want to house people in motels, but that has increased threefold. Older New Zealanders are looking into their future and feeling very afraid. So the Government that promised to be the most open and the most transparent that New Zealand has ever seen, with this groundbreaking Wellbeing Budget, has failed to deliver. They bungled it when they first came out to announce it, and it hasn’t got any better since that time.

I’ve been looking through some of the agencies that represent older New Zealanders and looking at their evaluation of how this Budget has shaped up—not good. If you talk to and hear from Mac Welch, who is the national president of Grey Power New Zealand, he said that on the whole, Grey Power is very disappointed with the Budget. They said the pre-election promise of the appointment of an aged-care commissioner has not eventuated. This is something that one of the coalition partners has been talking about for a very long time. In fact, I think there was a big hoopla about three years ago, when the Greens, New Zealand First, and Labour went around the country annoying a whole lot of old people and asking them what they wanted. An aged-care commissioner was their big, glittering jewel in the crown. It’s been promised. What has happened with it? Absolutely nothing. In fact, I’ve been asking the Minister of Health, the Hon David Clark, about it, and he has said that, in fact, the million dollars that they had to scope it and to look at the aged-care commissioner has not been able to come up with anything.

So, look, I don’t know. I think if you make a promise to older people about looking after them, about checking up on the things that go wrong, about having somebody who’s in their corner, on their side—more than the Ombudsman; more than the individuals that are already there—and looking out for their needs, you should deliver, and that has not occurred. Just getting back to Mac Welch, basically, as far as the Grey Power organisation—who, you know, are a group of people that the Hon Simon Bridges and myself went and spoke to a couple of weeks ago. They were very disappointed and didn’t hold back on how upset they were about the fact that the wellbeing of seniors is so far down on the list of the priorities of this current Government. There’s absolutely nothing in this Budget for seniors. So we look at the seniors who are continuing—as he pointed out—to suffer and to make headlines for all the wrong reasons, and that is the reality. Grey Power, good on you for calling them out on that one.

Actually, I looked back on my notes from last year’s Budget. Last year, I called it a Budget that was a dowry Budget to pay for and to prop up Labour’s marriage of convenience with New Zealand First and the Greens, and what’s changed? The same applies again. This is a dowry Budget. They’re spending plenty of money to keep the coalition partners and the cling-ons happy, but, again, they have not delivered. So Labour promised an aged care commissioner with New Zealand First, and that didn’t happen.

Dementia is another issue that I think has been woefully overlooked by a Government that promised so much and has delivered so little. Alzheimer’s New Zealand has indicated how disappointed they have been in this Budget, and, again, “the forgotten people” is the phrase that they use. This is a group of people—Dementia New Zealand, Dementia Auckland; there’s a number of them around the country, as well as Alzheimer’s New Zealand—who have asked repeatedly to be treated fairly. We know we’ve an ageing population. We know that we need to train up really skilled people to look after them so that they can stay in their homes as long as possible, so that they can get their diagnoses earlier, and so that they can have cognitive skills development, which improves their quality of life and slows down the pace and the progression of most forms of dementia, and it needs to be funded. The broken promises that Labour has not delivered on for people with dementia is, in my view, unconscionable, and the specialist dementia services that they were promised are just not happening.

Elder abuse: very disappointing, again, to see that the number of people who are reporting abuse, which is financial as well as psychological and physical abuse, has risen. There’s about 2,400 cases reported a year. We know that’s the tip of the iceberg. We know that the 0800 number—which is a toll-free, confidential number—was being used, but it has no additional resources. The money runs out next year and it needs to be boosted. It needs to be talked about so that people will know to ring up. This is elder abuse awareness week. This is a time when we need to care for the people who are worried, lonely, isolated, and vulnerable. This Government has delivered nothing to them.

In palliative care: no additional funding or announcements around that. Again, when it comes to the end stages of life, I think a lot of people might be seduced by the idea that there could be an easy answer in the way of euthanasia and assisted suicide because they have no other options, and to actually think that older people might think that the nuclear option of having an end-of-life euthanasia is better than being cared for and looked after is something that I find incredibly sad. We are better than that in New Zealand. We are better, and we must look after our vulnerable better than we have. This Budget, in looking after the vulnerable, absolutely does not deliver.

We’ve heard this afternoon, at length, from Mr Nathan Guy about what happened at Fieldays, and particularly at Fieldays immediately after the Budget that has been delivered by the Government that I am proud to be a part of. So Mr Guy reported to us from Fieldays, and it was a tale of gloom and dissatisfaction, a tale of people who felt really hard-done-by. I was at Fieldays too, and it was a fantastic experience. I want to bring to you some of the highlights of Fieldays, because we had a big Labour presence—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: As long as it relates to the Budget, that would be good.

—at Fieldays this year in response to the Budget to make sure that people knew about our Budget. One of the first things was that we had our Prime Minister there, and she made a real effort to get around all the stalls to talk to people to let them know about our Budget. But, actually, she couldn’t get very far, because she was mobbed—mobbed by people who wanted to talk to her, mobbed by people who wanted a selfie with her. I think what was interesting about that was seeing the reactions of our colleagues from across the House who were also at Fieldays spreading the Budget news—slack-jawed, dumbfounded—because they couldn’t believe what they were seeing: the sheer popularity of our Prime Minister.

Another thing—another report from Fieldays. We had our stall there, the Labour stall. New Zealand First had a stall. The National Party had a stall. We all talked to the punters. But we heard from our colleagues the one piece of feedback that our colleagues at the National Party stall were getting, one piece that they got consistently from virtually every punter who came by: get rid of Simon.

I spent a bit of time in the innovation tent finding out about some of the innovative work that is going on, the sort of work that is going to be supported by our Budget through our innovation fund. There is some marvellous work going on there in the rural sector in irrigation, in linking potential employees with employers and in trying to ensure that our rural sector can do better and meet the sorts of targets we need them to meet. So I say to Mr Nathan Guy, who told us a story of gloom and doom and woe from the Fieldays, that I heard a story of hope and positivity and innovation that this Government is supporting.

One further thing from the Fieldays report that was brought to us by Mr Nathan Guy was the extensive report he brought to us about the 50 Shades of Green project. Actually, that particular issue worries me, too, with a family coming from the back country of Taranaki, who are precisely the farmers on marginal land, the beef and sheep farmers, who are worried that their land will be taken over by a flood of green. The reason for this, of course, is that we have been told that we should match the short-term gases with short-term forests—that’s what you do. That’s apparently the recommendation from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment—that all the methane that is being produced by dairy cows should be matched, should be absorbed, by short-term forests.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’d really appreciate it if we could have a Budget debate.

I suggest that when our colleagues across the House focus on what we need to do with respect to climate change, with respect to moving to a low-carbon economy supported by this Budget, there needs to be discussion between the dairy farmers and the sheep and beef farmers as to how they are going to manage that between themselves.

Moving on to the positive news from this Budget—the positive news—I want to speak especially about the issues surrounding mental health but particularly addiction. When I first became an MP, I made a point of visiting, of course, the agencies in my electorate and finding out what work they were doing. In particular, I spent an amount of time with some of the entities who work on addiction issues, and one of the first things they said to me was “Make sure we’re not forgotten.” Yes, there is a big concern with mental health, but let’s also focus on addiction. This was particularly said to me by Fiona Trevelyan, who heads up Odyssey House in New Lynn and across the country. She said, “Let’s make sure that we have money available to support people who are addicted to alcohol and to other drugs.” They do marvellous work at Odyssey, helping people to get rid of addictions.

I talked to Johnny Dow, who runs Higher Ground up in Te Atatū—Te Atatū. I find it hard to say that correctly, rather than “Tee At-a-tu”, because at least we should try to pronounce it properly. At Higher Ground, there is a real focus on helping offenders to get off the drugs and the alcohol that so distorts their lives, helping people to regain control of their lives. I visited just the other day The Retreat, actually, in Ōtāhuhu, and I spoke there to a woman who had recovered from alcohol addiction—though, as she says, she is still addicted to alcohol; she just doesn’t use alcohol any more. One of the things she told me was that when she was in the grips of her addiction to alcohol, it was a time of utter despair because she had totally lost control of her life and she felt she had no control over herself. This person is now working to help others with their alcohol addictions. All these people with addictions speak repeatedly of the need for support, of the need for help to help them to get rid of their addictions and to lead better lives.

I think the most inspiring day I spent talking with people who run some of these sorts of agencies was actually the day I spent with Judge Lisa Tremewan in the Alcohol—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is very interesting, but I really would like the member to discuss the Budget now. Relate it back to the Budget.

Yes, thank you. I’m going to refer to the mental health and addictions budget, the money that we’re piling into it—and for good reason. So Judge Lisa Tremewan works really hard in the alcohol and other drug treatment court, and part of the point of what she does is she needs places where she can send offenders, where she can send people who are addicts, in order to recover from their addictions. So there is a crying need for this, and in this Budget we have made a concerted effort to ensure that these services are properly funded.

So let’s talk about what is being provided in terms of expanding access to addiction treatment—access that is so crucially needed. It is vital that we fund these services so that people can recover control over their own lives. We’re spending about $14 million expanding primary care for alcohol and drug issues. Why? So that people can have greater control over their lives. We’re expending another $44 million to improve existing drug addiction services. Odyssey House, Higher Ground, The Retreat, the alcohol and other drug treatment court—all these services will be better supported through this Budget to enable people to regain control over their lives. We are spending money on providing live-in services, or residential beds, in areas which do not have them yet—particularly Tai Rāwhiti, which is absolutely critical for the critical need on the East Cape.

So all of these sorts of things are being provided in this Budget to support these addiction services. I am delighted to see that kind of funding there, and the reason for it is this: of course these services have always been needed—of course the funding is needed—but it connects so directly to wellbeing. It connects so directly there.

When we draw on the work of someone like Professor Amartya Sen in terms of wellbeing, he characterises wellbeing in terms of capabilities, of ensuring that people have the capabilities that enable them to choose lives of value to themselves. The thing about addictions is that a person is controlled from outside; they cannot make choices. But providing addiction services, enabling people to recover from addictions, gives them precisely the capabilities they need in order to achieve wellbeing.

That is the very deep connection here with our Budget, and not just with the Budget but with the whole idea of wellbeing that this Government is committed to—not just dollars and cents, not just managing, and not just scraping by, but actually enhancing people’s lives. That makes this a very moral Budget. It is a Budget that instead of just being about paring away and managing—about what Government might do—it is about enhancing lives so that people can lead lives of wellbeing, and New Zealanders will be better for it. I commend this Budget to the House.

I don’t commend this Budget to the House. I think that’s the quick response to the speaker Deborah Russell, who’s just resumed her chair.

But may I start on a slightly more sombre note. I wish to acknowledge the passing of a fine person who’s contributed a lot into my electorate and area, and that’s Ruth Bartley. She’s the mother of one of the local councillors there: Josephine Bartley. Their family has been very involved in the community, and so in somewhat of a cultural tradition, both of this House and theirs, I acknowledge the passing of Ruth.

I’ve been in and around the electorate since the Budget, but, obviously, not on sitting days—it’s always good to be in the House when you’re meant to be. But as I’ve been around the electorate, one of the things which has struck me is that very few of my people realised there was a Budget. They don’t realise there was even a Budget, and that doesn’t completely surprise me because the Budget was not only botched and not only highlighting the failures of delivery but it was a boring Budget—absolutely boring. In fact, it goes against one of the very basic dictums of the Labour Party, and certainly of Helen Clark, which this group is following through, that you under-promise and over-deliver. Well, as it turns out, this Budget over-promised and under-delivered in a huge, huge way, and I’m going to go through some of those aspects here.

But, as I say, within Tāmaki, there’s a sense of “There was a Budget? What happened?” Even when we talk about the legislation, and I was trying to tell some constituents about the Budget urgency and trying to explain to them that we were here, they said, “We didn’t even realise. Well, what happened?” I said “Well, unfortunately, what happened was you ended up landed with more taxes.”—many, many more taxes under this Government already—and, importantly, I had noted to them that Labour had been very big when they got elected that there’d be no new taxes, but we have even more petrol taxes now in Auckland. So I say to my constituents and to all of those in Auckland to look at the price at the pump, particularly after 1 July, and see that it’s going up and up and up. They’ve been “rewarded” with higher rentals of over $50 extra a week now because of the extra costs that have been put on by this Government. Taxes around tourism, taxes around—well, basically, you name it; this Budget is looking to tax it. Mobile roaming: actually, there’s a little quirky one that most people won’t have noted, but they will when they go and get their next mobile roaming bill. So a boring, botched Budget—a triple B, if you will—but one that for me just illustrates the failures in this Government.

Look, I’ll focus primarily on the social housing side; that’s one of my spokespersonships. Look, incredibly disappointing—all we have is a cosmetic window dressing. In fact, I would suggest it’s just a reshuffling of the deckchairs, to bring about the Titanic idea. We’ve had massive failures by this Government in the social housing sector, and not only by an erroneous obsession with “KiwiFail”—sorry, KiwiBuild—which the community housing providers have noted has been very misspent money where they themselves were asking for help, and this Budget delivers nothing, absolutely nothing, to community housing providers. That’s important, because under this Government, we’ve seen the social housing waiting list almost double—almost double—in the last 18 months. Now, over 11,000 Kiwis are looking and waiting for a State house, and this Budget has delivered absolutely nothing.

In fact, what the Budget highlighted, and it was tucked away—delicately tucked away in those hundreds and hundreds of pages is a Government and a Minister in social development and a Minister in housing which are admitting failure, because they are expecting the emergency social housing grants to go through the roof. It was anticipated that we would spend about $20—sorry, about $6 billion, million. Gosh, I’m getting my figures mixed up today. It was anticipated that we would spend $6 million in social housing grants over the last year. It ended up being $20 million, which is an admission of that immediate failure which the Government has. Then, when you look at the Budget documents, over the next three to four years, they’re expecting those housing grants, emergency grants, to be at $120 million a year—$120 million a year—from what was anticipated to be between $6 million and $20 million. That’s a huge increase.

That’s a huge increase on top of a Government talking big about a housing programme. If you’re logical, you’d think that if the Government was able to deliver its housing programme, you would not have a need for more emergency social housing grants, but so incompetent is this Budget and this Government that not only is there a failed housing programme but there is going to be not $10 million and not $20 million of social housing grants, but $120 million for the next four years. If that isn’t a sign of failure, then I don’t know what is.

We have an attempt through this Budget to, I would suggest, hide the failures of KiwiBuild. The Minister tabled very soon, along with the Budget, a new bill to, effectively, merge Housing New Zealand, the KiwiBuild unit, and the Hobsonville Land Co. into a newly named Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities group. Nothing like a name change—always good to put it in Māori and English just to sort of mix things up a little bit and to mix up perceptions. What it’s going to do is completely unclear to us, but I would have one idea, and that’s that it’s an attempt to wash over the failure that is KiwiBuild. So I signal to this Government that myself and others in the housing sector will be following that one very closely to make sure—it’s a little bit like the justice suggestions: “Let’s just change the name of how we run the Family Courts and that’ll fix everything.” Well, a bit of a newsflash to the Government: simply changing the names of organisations does not change the failures which they’re presiding over.

Look, to be somewhat—somewhat—positive, I am pleased to see the money in the mental health space. It is an important area to be addressed, but two further comments need to be made—actually, three. The first is there is no plan. So it’s great that there’s that eye-watering amount of money—that’s brilliant. There needs to be a plan of how to spend it. Money alone does not solve problems; plans that use money do. Secondly, it’s actually looking at the situations which bring about the mental health problems, and I would suggest that a lot of the Government’s policies, a lot of the left, progressive policies, are what add to this instability in families—a desire, effectively, to keep people away from work, a constant desire to find excuses. These all drive the mental health issues, and, of course, we have the glaring contradiction of a pro-drug approach by this Government. And what a time for Andrew Little to be here, looking across the House at me, but a pro-drug approach—if this House is going to be serious—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon—Hon.

The Hon—yes, indeed he is the Hon Andrew Little, whose honourable intention, I am sure, is to have a good mental health programme that actually works. I would suggest to him and others on the other side of the House that liberalising drugs, allowing people to smoke more marijuana and all the other distillates, is not going to help mental health. In fact, spending $13 million on a referendum on cannabis without even a piece of legislation is a joke, and I’ll say today it’ll be more than $13 million by the end of it—by the end of it.

Look, the thing about the mental health increase, though, is that was more than what the entire health sector got—more than what the entire health sector got—and that’s a substantial problem. I’ve been on the record many a time over the years that Pharmac needs to be completely reworked, and it’s quite correct when Ministers of Health get up and say, “We can’t direct Pharmac to buy certain drugs.” That is not what I and others are asking. It’s not about directing them to buy certain drugs; it’s to change the structure in the funding to allow those drugs to be funded.

Look, I’m happy as the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee chair with what’s happening in the defence space. Our military assets do need to be upgraded. I am pleased to see the money’s finally appropriated around the P-8s. I’ll be very interested to see where the money is for the Hercules fleet. I think, myself, speaking in my own personal capacity, the decision to buy the C130Js is a good decision, but we need to see where that money is and appropriate it at the appropriate time.

The last thing I want to note, though, is I am hoping that there is a little bit more money for Immigration New Zealand. In recent days, they had to take down, effectively, an anti-Israel document off their website that had falsely claimed that there is a State of Palestine and that Jerusalem exists as only the capital for one country. That is a disgrace and it’s inappropriate. I will acknowledge that with the outcry and the message from myself and others, that has been taken down. But I would like to see—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: It’s not in the Budget, though.

—more money in this Budget diverted to Immigration New Zealand to actually sort those sorts of areas, because I believe—and I have the Minister of Foreign Affairs here—that New Zealand’s policies in the foreign affairs space to do with the Levant need to remain committed to a two-party solution and ensure that errors like this will not happen again.

As I said at the start, I cannot, do not, will not, and never will commend this Budget to the House.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Interesting to note and to see a sliver, a tiny little ray, of positivity coming from across the other side of the House. It was like squeezing blood out of a stone. So to the member who has just resumed his seat, Simon O’Connor, we acknowledge that acknowledgment that the Budget is providing a greatly needed focus—the lens is certainly focused on mental health in this Budget.

Budget 2019, the 2019 Wellbeing Budget is a historic Budget. It is, basically, a representation of a change in our mentality. It’s a change in the way we understand what our economy is for. Our economy is for the benefit of the people and the environment, and this is what Budget 2019 does. We are focusing on a major issue in this country. We went into the election at 2017 understanding and recognising that mental health crisis in New Zealand must be addressed. In fact, New Zealand First, in 2017—at our conference leading into the election campaign, our keynote speaker was none other than the renowned mental health advocate Mike King. We understood the focus and the importance and the work that he did. He did receive an honour at the Queen’s Birthday awards for the work he is doing as an advocate in this space. So I’d like to acknowledge him, most definitely. There is $1.9 million in this Budget towards mental health.

Firstly, the coalition agreement that we struck was to restore the Mental Health Commission, so we’re very pleased to see that this will now come into effect—it will be re-established. It was in 2012 that the National Party disestablished the Mental Health Commission, so particularly with this Government, we are very pleased to see the commission back in action.

We are turning up the dial on how people can access mental health services. This is really important, to be able to easily, effectively, access the mental health services that individuals need. Those who have got mild to medium mental health issues will be able to access these services, wraparound services, for them. We are also providing through Budget 2019 an opportunity to deliver kaupapa Māori services. This is really important that it’s by Māori for Māori so that our people, our whānau who are suffering, have the access to the services not just for those who are suffering mental health issues but also too for those families, the whānau, who are in stress as well and who have to support our people with mental health issues—they will have the support wrapped around them too.

I note Minister Kelvin Davis in his announcement of $128.3 million improving mental health services inside prisons. This is a vital piece of work that needs to be done to get lives back on track—2,310 lives will be turned around with this funding that goes into mental health services inside prisons—but also too the whānau are affected by those inside prisons. Where there are mental health issues for those people in prison, often there are also mental health issues for the whānau, so this wraparound will help them to work through their mental health challenges.

Budget 2019, as I mentioned, is in fact a historic Budget. We are looking at people being at the heart of this Budget, and that is kind of quite a bit different, the concept of that. It’s not about the big end of town. We’re not just rolling out benefits for the big end of town; we’re actually looking at the people and what they need and require to have well-meaning lives and to thrive and prosper.

Hospital funding—that is receiving, over two years, $1.7 billion; over five years, it’s $2.9 billion. This is a massive capital investment. Dunedin Hospital: the funding will be ring-fenced to restore that facility. We are a Government that is investing back into this vital infrastructure. District health boards around the country are very pleased with what is happening there. Under the previous Government, there was a lack of infrastructure funding; it ultimately resulted in faecal matter oozing down the walls. We’re here now to fix that up and get these hospitals functioning with this capital investment.

New Zealand First is also really pleased about how we’ve been able to relieve the immediate pressure for the ambulance services—$21 million over the next two years will ensure the service of the ambulance is going to enable them to carry on doing the incredible work that they do when they’re called upon, and that is increasingly, as people need their services. So that was something New Zealand First in particular are very pleased about, and I note my colleague Darroch Ball, who had been working in that space alongside our leader, the Rt Hon Winston Peters. So, we’re very pleased about the funding from the Budget for the ambulances.

Health obviously is a big particular area, but also too there are a couple of areas that I’d like to focus on now. I acknowledge—and I mentioned him before—the Hon Kelvin Davis in his corrections space, but also too something that has affected my family, particularly my uncle Pāpā Manuera Tohu QSM. Now, he was a trustee of Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust. Previously, the Kōhanga Reo National Trust, who are responsible for the critical role of the survival and the revitalisation of Te Reo Māori, our language, were unable to even get a meeting. The trustees were unable to get a meeting with the previous Minister. They sat outside her office in the Beehive. They waited and waited. They sat through many meetings, but would that Minister even see them, the kaumātua and the kuia of the Kōhanga Reo National Trust? No, she did not. She ignored them. In fact, she walked right past them as they were sat outside her office, and off she went without even looking them in the eye.

However, this Minister, the Hon Kelvin Davis, has planted $32 million into Te Kōhanga Reo to ensure that these organisations which are protecting our reo, which is a taonga of New Zealand—to ensure that those that are working inside kōhanga reo will be paid, particularly those that are volunteers. They will lift the wages with that $32 million. It will restore the ICT capacity and the many buildings that need repairs. So my uncle, Pāpā Manuera Tohu, would say to me, “Could you please thank Kelvin for the work he has done in ensuring funding and security for Te Kohanga Reo National Trust?”

My Uncle Frank is 91 years old and he’s just started learning Te Reo Māori. Incredible—91 years old. That is absolutely fantastic. Frank King—he lives up in Cable Bay. Earlier this year, at our urupā cleaning in Utakura in the Hokianga, he came down and was very, very proud to say that he’d just started learning Te Reo Māori. This Government would like to see 1 million speakers of Te Reo Māori by 2040. Now, I don’t know if Uncle Frank’s actually going to be still alive—he’ll be 100 or 111 by then. However, no matter what the age of anyone in New Zealand, you could learn Te Reo Māori, and Uncle Frank is an example of that.

What I’d like to acknowledge is the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, the Minister for Māori Development, and the $14 million which has been put into Māori broadcasting to help reach that goal of having 1 million New Zealanders being able to speak basic Te Reo Māori. What we would like to see is not just a focus on our young people, our rangatahi, learning but also too the likes of Uncle Frank at 91 years old—reaching out through our Māori broadcasting spaces, whether it’s iwi radio, Māori Television, or digital content online, so that we are able to help people learn our language, Te Reo Māori.

Another very small way that this Budget is going to make a difference is $20.8 million that is going to research and find solutions to stop kauri dieback. Kauri are our taonga species in our ngahere, in our bush. If we do not ensure the survival of kauri, then who are we as New Zealanders if we lose our taonga species? I’m very pleased to see $20.8 million will be invested in further research into kauri dieback. We’ve had a whole lot more bush and tracks around the Auckland region, and up into the Rodney region as well, closed over the last month or so because of the spread of this deadly pathogen, which is killing the kauri.

So I’d like to acknowledge that not only are we looking after our people, where our people are at the heart of this Wellbeing Budget, but also we’re taking care of the environment. So I commend this Budget to the House.

Thank you, sir. Let me begin with something positive. I welcome the significant extra funding for mental health that was announced in the recent Budget. It would be fair to say that Governments of both stripes for far too long have failed to respond to the worrying increase in our suicide statistics, addiction rates, and other concerns, because these are serious matters that cause heartbreak in families and all sorts of devastating consequences. But I was very disappointed for the reason that Government parties last year failed to agree to my colleague Matt Doocey’s suggestion of a cross-party approach to mental health issues. That would have been the best way to ensure a commitment to sustainable mental health policies and funding without point-scoring to tackle the serious problems that many New Zealanders face. Nevertheless, I will support all initiatives made possible by this Budget’s funding increase that can be shown to be well targeted, evidence-based, and effective. It is vital that this Government’s habit of saying nice things and promising lots of money without having done the work to convert those good intentions into effective programmes and lasting improvements isn’t repeated in the mental health space.

The Ardern-Peters Government has, frankly, destroyed the trust of the electorate by repeatedly failing to deliver on their promises. They are light years away from delivering on the extra police numbers that they promised. In education, they’ve broken their promise over school donations for all deciles. In 2017, they promised teachers the earth, yet they’ve presided over unprecedented strikes—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Nine long years doing nothing.

—while demonstrating total ineptitude, Ms Dyson, in the negotiations over teachers’ pay and conditions. They’ve wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars in their fees-free tertiary education blunder, which, incredibly, has seen a reduction in the number of students enrolling. Rather than meeting health targets, they’ve abolished them to cover up their failures, and the number of elective surgical operations is plummeting around the country. They’re failing to deliver lifesaving drugs to people facing serious illnesses, and people’s lives are at stake.

They promised 100,000 affordable new houses, but instead they’re subsidising developers in affluent areas while failing to meet their housing targets so abysmally that the housing Minister must be the first one for the chop in the Prime Minister’s looming reshuffle. What a joke his KiwiBuild policy has been. No wonder none of his colleagues are mentioning it in this debate, despite it having been their flagship policy for years, even before Winston Peters put them into office.

They promised new roads, but they’re not building them. Instead, they made further fuel tax increases their first priority when they sat under urgency following a so-called wellbeing Budget. But, at the same time, they’re cancelling important infrastructure projects all around the country and not building a single new road with the proceeds. Well, my constituents in Hamilton West are furious that the extensions to the Waikato Expressway from Cambridge to Tīrau and from Karapiro to the foot of the Kaimai Ranges, which National promised and budgeted for—

💬 Hon Julie Anne Genter: No.

—have been cancelled on a whim by this Government, and if Julie Anne Genter, sitting over there, wants to tell people waiting to get on to State Highway 1 at Piarere while they’re driving from Tauranga to Hamilton that they’re car fascists and she doesn’t care about their safety, then she should be the next one for the chop in the Cabinet reshuffle, because, Miss Genter, my constituents are very, very angry with your decision.

In all of these respects, this Budget was the direct opposite of delivering wellbeing. New Zealanders can see that they’ve been conned by a Government that talks about kindness while spraying cash on any project that the minor party that calls the shots in this administration demands. But even that party let them down. There was nothing in this Budget for ACC clients, but there is significant angst in centres such as Palmerston North, Timaru, and Whanganui, where large numbers of ACC jobs are disappearing—

💬 Andrew Falloon: That’s right.

—because they’re being shifted to main centres—and it’s good to have the member for Rangitata in the House.

During the last campaign, Winston Peters went around the country pretending to be the provincial saviour. He told farmers in Ashburton that they were the lifeblood of this country and needed to be protected. “You burn the provinces down, the country is finished.”, he thundered, yet now he’s supporting methane reduction targets that will cripple them and our economy, even though all the science tells us that they’re unjustifiably extreme, and he’s happy to see Government jobs depart from regional centres, including about half of the jobs in Timaru, my colleague’s electorate—just down the road from those Ashburton farmers, Mr Peters. Well, that’s another promise that previous speakers on the other side of the House haven’t mentioned.

But what do we read in the coalition agreement? This is quite significant. Under coalition priorities, New Zealand First has a number of priorities to progress which Labour will support alongside its policy programme, including a commitment to relocate Government functions into the regions. Into the regions—what absolute poppycock! So those who voted for that priority have been betrayed, yet we’ve heard nothing from the self-appointed champion of the regions or his leader about that. Frankly, their record is appalling. They promised much, they tax more, and they consistently fail to deliver on their promises while wasting the cash, mulching trees, and paying for wealthy students to entice them into courses they were going to enrol in anyway.

But let me return to mental health. While I welcome that extra funding, I am concerned that so little of the extra $1.9 billion promised over four years that has been allocated for mental health is earmarked for drug and alcohol addiction services. In my city of Hamilton, the local service provider tells me that he may have to close his rehabilitation centre if the Government funding isn’t forthcoming. The evidence of the link between drugs and alcohol addiction and mental health challenges is overwhelming. Most admissions to the Henry Rongomau Bennett Centre at Waikato Hospital are due to drug-induced psychosis or a psychotic episode, yet there’s only a pittance in this Government’s specifically allocated predictions, and even then, there are no details that providers can rely on.

I’m also alarmed that the Budget fine print would suggest that our alcohol and drug treatment courts—which were piloted and funded by National—are under threat, and I call upon the Ministers of justice and police and health and corrections to express their support for these courts—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: $650,000—$650,000.

—clearly and unequivocally. Alcohol and drug abuse causes havoc in our communities. Both lead to road crashes, violence in our streets, and misery in our homes. Methamphetamine use is increasingly driving homicides. There’s considerable research in New Zealand that shows that more than 50 percent of crime is committed by people under the influence of drugs or alcohol and that two-thirds of our prisoners have substance abuse issues. Drug courts focus on breaking that cycle of addiction with access to specialised services, which engage with offenders on a longer-term basis as they complete appropriate milestones alongside their sentences.

Now, while I believe that the drug court programme should be expanded right throughout the country, no funding has been announced for the courts beyond June next year, Mr Little—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: That member’s Government set up a pilot that finishes this year.

—and the Government has given no commitment to continuing with them. I’ve been a strong advocate for a drug court in Hamilton. I know that all of those on the formation committee in Hamilton are deeply worried about this issue, Mr Little, and they’ve read your Budget, and they can’t see—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: No, they’re not. They’ve spoken to me—we’ve had a good conversation.

—any evidence of support at all. They have told me they are very concerned, and I’m reflecting those concerns in this speech. Well, there are 3,000 drug courts of that type in the United States, and in Texas, they’ve even been able to shut down some prison wings because they have been so effective. While I’ll continue to push for that in Hamilton, I know that it’s strongly supported by the Waikato Mayoral Forum, the Waikato District Health Board, and many others.

My disappointment over this matter is widely shared, and so it seems are many others. There’s widespread disappointment being expressed across the board by this Government’s friends and by other organisations who would usually be seen to be sympathetic to them, and many of my colleagues have quoted people like Mac Welch from Grey Power. We’ve even heard from the Child Poverty Action Group how disappointed they are with this Budget—there are huge numbers of people, with very good reason.

For instance, the New Zealand College of Midwives described it as a “disappointing” Budget in which “the dire issues facing the maternity system have not been addressed.” Their chief executive commented that “Much has been said by Grant Robertson about child wellbeing and investing in our younger generation to ensure better outcomes for them and wider society—but how the very workforce that brings those children into the world could again be largely ignored is beyond us.”

The chief executive of Lung Foundation NZ expressed the same concern as the Cancer Society of New Zealand. They have been concerned about the lack of significant increase in Pharmac’s funding. The chief executive of the Lung Foundation said that “the $10 million over four years is a step backwards.”, and his assessment was pretty brutal: “Budget 2019, is not a Wellbeing Budget but rather an instrument of more suffering, financial crisis and premature death for cancer patients most in need of care and support.”

The New Zealand Association of Counsellors highlighted the lack of detail about how the extra funding for mental health services will be spent. Their president said “At the moment we don’t know and neither does anyone else.”, and it goes on and on. If I had time, I’d put on the record many more concerns.

There’s huge criticism across the sector about the fact that this is a Government that has promised so much and has failed to deliver in really significant ways on their promises. It’s a disgrace. Members opposite should hang their heads in shame, and they couldn’t possibly be proud to commit this Budget to the House. It’s a disgrace.

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.