Appropriation (2019/20 Estimates) Bill, Imprest Supply (First for 2019/20) Bill

First Reading

I move, That the Imprest Supply (First for 2019/20) Bill be now read a first time.

Mr Speaker, I am very pleased to be able to stand in the Chamber today and acknowledge both our Prime Minister and our Minister of Finance for delivering a Budget that has done something that not only has not been done in New Zealand before but something that the whole world is looking at as a new and a better way of delivering a Budget, to ensure the wellbeing of all of the people who we in this Chamber are elected to serve.

I am, of course, talking about the Wellbeing Budget, delivered in this House just a few short weeks ago. It is a Budget that does things differently. It is a Budget that fundamentally focuses not just on the narrow strictures of GDP; not just on the narrow measurement of a surplus or a deficit; this is a Budget that says, “Yes those things are important, but they are means to an end.” And that end, which we in this Government stand towards and serve, is the wellbeing of all of our people and all of our community. This is a Budget which delivers in a big way on those objectives.

This Budget picks up that concept of wellbeing and delivers practical, real-world change.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Name two things.

One thing that I have been enjoying doing over recent weeks—and I’m sure the honourable member for Ilam, on the other side of the House, has done this as well—has been to go around my community and speak to my community about the things that really matter to them. When you ask a room of New Zealanders what the things are that matter, what are the things that they tell us? They tell us that what matters are the health and the happiness of their children, living in a decent environment, having a good education system so that everyone can be equipped to do well in life, knowing your neighbours, and having good social relationships and friends. The National Party needs some friends—we know about that—and most New Zealanders want to have friends and good relationships as well. These are the things that are important in the lives of New Zealanders, but for too long successive Governments haven’t focused enough on those things that actually make our lives worth living.

This Wellbeing Budget says that we will not only talk about those things but we as a Government will measure ourselves against those things and ensure that the policies that we are delivering are driven by evidence and can actually be tracked to show the difference that we are making to the lives of our fellow New Zealanders.

There are three key areas in which the Wellbeing Budget says that we will work differently as a Government to the way that Governments have worked previously. For a start, this is going to be a Government that doesn’t just look down narrow departmental budget lines; this is going to be a Government and a Budget which works across Government departments to actually deliver the outcomes that New Zealanders need. This is going to be a Government and a Budget that doesn’t just focus on the short-term sugar hits to make a Government look good—something to get us through the next three years and make us look good at the next election—we’re going to focus on the real long-term challenges that we need to reach to make New Zealand a better country for our fellow citizens.

We’re also going to focus on different and wider measures of success. I just want to speak about each of those in turn and some of the initiatives that point to the way that this Wellbeing Budget is different. The first is that cross-agency approach. After this debate in the House, I am looking forward to going to a unique Estimates hearing that the Finance and Expenditure Committee will be hearing, with a number of Government Ministers and Parliamentary Under-Secretary Jan Logie, to talk about and ask questions about the family and sexual violence package, a $300-plus million package that brings together different Government Ministers and different Government agencies and says, “We have to work together as a country and as a Government if we want to solve the scourge of family and sexual violence in our country.”

I know that there is not a single person in this Chamber who believes it’s acceptable that we have the rates of family and sexual violence in our country that we do, but for too long individual agencies have been going down their own tracks and not working together. Well, that changes with this Wellbeing Budget, because in this Budget our Ministers were told by the finance Minister, “Don’t just come to me and ask for a cheque to be written to your department; come to me and tell me how you are going to reach our Government priorities to make life better for New Zealanders.” One of those priorities was improving child wellbeing and dealing with that scourge of family and sexual violence.

So we had multiple agencies and multiple Ministers coming together with an integrated plan. They have worked with the community agencies and there has been outstanding feedback from all of those people in our community groups who work with our families, who work with the victims of sexual violence, who have said, “Yes, finally there is a Government that listens, and it’s working collaboratively with us and collaboratively between Government departments to actually deliver a better outcome for our families.” That is going to make a huge difference and I’m proud of it. This is a Budget that focuses on the long term, not just the next electoral cycle. I want to speak about the relentless focus that our Prime Minister and the Minister for Child Poverty Reduction, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, has brought to that issue within this Budget, because this is a Budget which does something that no other Budget has done before. No other Government has had the courage before to put numbers down in the Budget and commit themselves to reducing child poverty. Because of this Wellbeing Budget, and the different approach that we are taking, this Government and future Governments will be held to account at Budget time for reducing the number of kids living in poverty in Aotearoa. I don’t think there can be a bigger stain on our nation’s conscience than the potential of our children being squashed by living in poverty.

This Government has said we will halve child poverty within 10 years, and they’re not just words; they’re hard numbers in our Budget. We have put the programmes in there and the evidence in there to show that we are on track to reduce child poverty in this country. We, on this side of the House, are immensely proud of that. This is a Budget that builds on the Families Package last year that will shift between 50,000 and 70,000 of our kids out of child poverty. This is a Budget which does what the Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft said last year was the single biggest thing that we could do to lift our kids out of child poverty and that is the indexation of benefits within our system. This is a Government which has had the courage to take on those steps for the benefit and the wellbeing of our children. This is a Budget which has a different measure of success; not just GDP, not just a surplus or deficit. Those things are important and we are meeting all of our targets in this area. Let’s not forget, this is a Budget which delivers consistent surpluses over the next few years. This is a Budget which sees unemployment down at 4 percent, lower than that previous Government ever got it to. This is a Budget which sees economic growth continuing at good levels well above most of our major trading partners.

But it doesn’t just measure those things—this Budget also says that we’re finally going to take mental health seriously. I know that every person who is listening to this speech will have someone in their family or someone in their community who has suffered from mental health problems over the years and hasn’t had the support that they needed. Well, I am so proud that this Government finally takes mental health seriously and will invest a $1.9 billion package that will deliver free community-level mental health services for all New Zealanders who need that help. No longer, once this package is implemented, will Kiwis have to wait until they’re at an acute or crisis stage to get mental health support. Kiwis will have access to a free and comprehensive mental health service in their communities, delivered at the community level, in a culturally appropriate way, getting people the help they need when the problem can be dealt with.

This Budget invests $40 million in suicide prevention measures and $100 million in Housing First so that the people who are living rough on our streets, who often have mental health problems, can get into a decent house and deal with those other problems—substance addiction, mental health, alcohol abuse—that so blight their lives. I am very proud that under our Minister for Ethnic Communities—who I serve as under-secretary—the Hon Jenny Salesa, this Budget sees a significant uplift in our support for ethnic communities; the first major increase in resource since the early 2000s when the Office of Ethnic Communities was first set up. Nearly a 50 percent reduction in staffing across the Office of Ethnic Communities to directly work at grassroots with our ethnic communities—that is going to make a real difference.

As I finish, I would like to paraphrase the great Robert F Kennedy who spoke about the limitations of GDP around about 50 years ago, and I’m paraphrasing here for a New Zealand context. He said that—well, I’ll say, that GDP counts alarm systems for our homes and new prisons for those who break into them. It counts the repairs from rebuilding from climate change disasters and the culverting of the streams and urban sprawl. It counts the healthcare costs for preventable cancers and body armour for our police. It counts the buyback of dangerous military-style weapons and social media revenue driven by hate and intolerance, but it measures neither our goodwill nor the great coming together of our people after the tragedy in Christchurch. It measures neither the happiness nor the health of our tamariki. In short, GDP measures many important things but it does not measure the wellbeing of our country.

This Government does measure the wellbeing of our country, and this Government and this Budget support and improve the wellbeing of all of our fellow New Zealanders. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand in opposition to this debate. The previous speaker, Michael Wood, whatever he said, I think it will be summed up in this line: that Labour is failing on delivering their promises. This Labour-led Government—all the three parties made different promises. Every time we see what’s happening in this House, we can see that this Labour-led Government is failing on delivering their promises.

I would like to start by quoting one of the journalists who I feel is very independent and well-respected in journalism, Duncan Garner. In one of his articles he wrote, “but the truth is Labour told you a bunch of utter garbage. They told you what you wanted to hear—dog-whistle politics to keep up with Winston Peters. But the truth is, they have done diddly-squat to get there … I’ve watched politics closely for the last 25 years and this Government is the least effective of them all, by some margin”.

That sums up what this Labour-led Government is, including their coalition partners New Zealand First and the Greens. We see, from time to time that their policies—what New Zealand First is advocating, Greens are opposing. What Greens are advocating, New Zealand First is opposing.

💬 Darroch Ball: What nonsense.

I will prove it—listen to this. It is not nonsense, you listen, have some patience. Keep some patience. First of all, when the Green Party defence spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman said the country should be spending all that money which they are spending on big planes, equipment in defence—that that can be invested in smaller planes and the rest of the money can be invested somewhere else. New Zealand First is advocating for all this spending in the defence area, and the Greens are opposing it—that was what I wanted to say then.

💬 Darroch Ball: How could they oppose it?

They are opposing it. They are opposing—there is a crack.

💬 Darroch Ball: They have voted for it. How could they oppose it?

Yeah, listen to it. Listen to it. What she is saying, you haven’t heard it. You haven’t read what they are saying. So what you are proposing, they are opposing it.

The second point where I would like to show that the cracks are coming up is that all the three Government parties had a policy to reinstate the Mental Health Commission, but it had had long standing support from the Greens. The Greens advocated for this policy for a long time, and we just heard from Michael Wood how he was proud that the Labour Party has implemented the mental health policy. On the other hand, New Zealand First issued a press release claiming credit for it even before it was announced, and it claimed that New Zealand First had identified that mental health was the major issue this country was facing, as if no other party realised it. That shows, again, what I am trying to say, which is that the policy was advocated by the Greens and New Zealand First claimed that that was their policy. That is a total crack in these three parties, and we will see further that this is going to happen from time to time.

Another point which I would like to pick up on in their broken promises is that every day I go out in the community—and we have got the Minister of Immigration sitting over here—and people are, time and again, asking me what’s happening to the parents category. The Minister has had, sitting on his table, the report—which has been sitting there for almost the last 18 months—about when the review was to be taken up and the decision was to be made. I hope that the Minister is going to take a call and explain why the decision has not been made on the people who are waiting for the decision for their parents to come over and join them. They are just very eager about it, and National said that this policy will be reviewed after two years and the decision will be made. But it is another broken promise, I would say, for the people who are expecting that this policy will be reviewed.

Another area in immigration that I would like to touch upon is the delay in the processing of visas. Time and again, we are seeing—particularly from the Asian subcontinent—that the visa processing time is taking longer and longer. In particular, I would like to touch upon the student visa, and it has been reported that with the way this policy is going ahead there could be at least a $33 million cost to the New Zealand economy because of the lack of visa processing for the students. There are so many institutes that are coming and talking to us and saying that there is not any kind of assistance from New Zealand Immigration for getting these visas processed. These are the broken promises which are not being delivered on by the Labour-led Government.

Another broken promise is on KiwiBuild. We were promised that there would be 100,000 houses in the next 10 years, which meant that every year there would be 10,000 houses. The goal for the first year was reset so that 1,000 houses would be delivered in the very first year, but what we are seeing is that not even 100 houses are being built. It is less than a few weeks from 1 July when those 1,000 houses were supposed to be delivered. Now, the talk about the next year was that another 5,000 houses were to be delivered—no clue what is going to happen. In the third year, 10,000 houses were supposed to be delivered, but we are seeing nothing happening on that front.

What we are seeing is the Minister, every day, coming to the House and talking about those houses which were already consented or were being built. They are being included in this KiwiBuild project, and they are buying the houses in bulk from the developers, from the plans. So, again, I will repeat that the Labour-led Government is not delivering on their promises, and the people are disappointed in the performance of this Government.

I would also like to touch upon some of the taxes. The promise was that there would be no new taxes, but what we have seen to date is that seven new taxes have been introduced. We saw on the day of the Budget, under urgency, that two new taxes were introduced and passed. It is going to—

💬 Barbara Kuriger: Tax, tax, and more tax.

Exactly. Tax, tax, tax—that is the policy of this Government, whereas the promise was that there would be no new taxes.

They also promised that there would be cheaper doctors visits: $10 for a visit to the doctor. What is happening? Nothing. They also promised $20 million for access to lifesaving medicines for New Zealanders with rare disorders, but in this Budget there is nothing. Again, our Labour-led Government is not delivering on their promises.

We also had the promise from this Government about the annual health and eye check for seniors. Seniors are totally disappointed. They thought this Government was going to look after them, but they are very much disappointed. They also promised for early childhood education funding for 100 percent qualified teachers—nothing in this Budget. They also promised that no one would be sleeping in their cars last winter. We are now in the next winter, but still that promise has not been delivered on.

💬 Hon Aupito William Sio: That’s what your lot caused.

Aupito William Sio knows very well that in his electorate a lot people are sleeping in cars and garages, and he is doing nothing. He has got all the power. He can do a lot for his people, but I am seeing nothing happening from his side.

We also saw the commitment in housing that people would be moved into houses, but what we are seeing is that more and more motels are being taken up to accommodate those people. They also promised light rail to the airport from Auckland within four years, and I think that light rail was supposed to go through, again, Aupito William Sio’s electorate, but still we haven’t seen the business plan for how it is going to happen. We know that the Minister is not able to deliver what he has promised. So those two major projects, which are housing and transport, they are totally failing on, and I think that this is the time to oppose this coalition Government to ensure that we give the message that this is a failure of this Government.

The good people of New Zealand are excited by the Wellbeing Budget and all that it brings in dealing with things like taking mental health seriously; delivering cheaper education for families; delivering housing for the homeless; lifting Kiwi children out of poverty; and delivering low unemployment, low debt, and a strong surplus. New Zealanders are excited about their Government. They’re not excited about Simon Bridges—they’re not excited about Simon Bridges. I think the National Party has hit on a new strategy and that is to deploy Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi to stupefy the population of New Zealand, to hypnotise them with his long, drawn-out speeches like the one we’ve just had. But there is no curbing the enthusiasm and excitement from New Zealand about the Wellbeing Budget.

But before we can have a Wellbeing Budget, we’ve got to make sure the Government manages the books responsibly, and I want to start my contribution by acknowledging the finance Minister, Grant Robertson, because in all the excitement I think what people might have overlooked is that the fundamentals of the New Zealand economy are incredibly strong, and that’s because we have a Government that is focused on wellbeing but is equally focused on managing our economy and maintaining those fundamentals. So this Budget does deliver a strong, sustainable surplus and strong, sustainable GDP growth, and it maintains the Budget responsibility rules that the Labour and Green parties agreed to before the last election. Net core Crown debt as a percentage of GDP is forecast to be just 19.9 percent by 2021-2022, delivering on our promise to get net debt down below 20 percent. That strong surplus is projected to grow to $6.1 billion by 2022-23. And, of course, we all know that unemployment is now stable at a little over 4 percent.

In fact, going around the country and talking to employers from Cape Reinga to the Bluff, I hear one story over and over again, and that is that the thing that employers need more than anything else is people to fill the roles that are being created in this strong economy. Over the last 18 months, 70,000 new jobs have been created. And I would say, even more importantly, the average income for New Zealanders is up by $65 a week. That means wages are rising at a faster rate than inflation. That means that working people are better off in real terms, and no small part of that is the fact that the Government has lifted the minimum wage to $17.70 an hour. So people are not only in jobs, they’re in good jobs that pay well, put a roof over their head, food on the table, and clothes on their children. That, ultimately, is what budgets and governing are all about.

The other person that we all must acknowledge in this Budget debate is our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, who has chosen to lead with kindness and compassion and, as a result, the world is watching New Zealand. The world is impressed with what they see, and the world is deeply impressed with the Wellbeing Budget because it is a Budget that puts the real wellbeing of people and families at the centre. The biggest set piece—the biggest single piece of funding: $1.9 billion—went to finally taking mental health seriously. In this Government, we do want to make sure that all New Zealanders who are in need can access free mental health and addiction support and support that works for them, that they have choices about what that support looks like, that they can get it when they need it—that when people present with a mental illness or they present with an addiction, they are able to get the support and treatment that they need immediately, when they are looking for it, and that they can get it where they need it, whether it’s in cities, whether it’s in provincial towns, or whether it’s in our rural communities.

It’s important that that mental health support is delivered through our primary care system so that people can go to their local health centre and they can talk to someone who knows how to respond to the issues that they are presenting with. We need intensive support for those who need it, including suicide prevention services. We also need to support the people who are bereaved by suicide. Suicide can do enormous damage to families and communities. We need to make sure we are not only doing a better job of preventing suicide but we are supporting people who deal with its fallouts.

Investment in mental health and addiction facilities: we need people and we need the bricks and mortar, the facilities that people can go to to get the support that they need. We need to provide better mental health and addiction support to those in our corrections system to help break the cycle of addiction and of reoffending. This is a very good example of the approach that this Budget takes where we don’t work in our departmental silos but we actually get cross-portfolio bids like the mental health bid that covers health, education, corrections, and a variety of other portfolios to make sure that we are taking the holistic approach that is necessary to deal with those significant, ingrained community issues that New Zealand expects their Government to work on.

We’re reducing child poverty and improving child wellbeing, including addressing family violence. We’re committed to tackling New Zealand’s persistent and long-term challenge of child poverty and making New Zealand the best place in the world to be a child.

We’re addressing family and sexual violence through the largest ever investment in family and sexual violence support and support services. The package to address New Zealand’s long-term record on family and sexual violence includes funding and support for sexual violence crisis support services for children and young people, enabling victims of sexual violence to give evidence in alternative ways to reduce the risk of further trauma, dedicated funding for a kaupapa response to sexual violence, and covering one million New Zealanders with integrated safety response sites.

These are the interventions that are needed to break these long-term and ingrained cycles, and it’s only by making this kind of investment and setting the improvement of child wellbeing as one of the priorities of a Wellbeing Budget and looking at things through a wellbeing lens. That’s the only way that we’re going—

💬 Barbara Kuriger: Where’s the money going to come from?

—to address these issues. Now, the member opposite is asking “Where is the money going to come from?” Well, this is the brilliant thing. It is all budgeted for and there is a surplus—a surplus that is going to grow to $6.1 billion. We’ve reduced debt. We’ve done something the National Party was not able to do in its nine years in Government. We are on track to reduce core net debt down to 19.9 percent, below 20 percent—something the National Party was never able to do. So I say to the member, Barbara Kuriger, who is a reasonable member who I have respect for—a reasonable member I have respect for—that, actually, it’s not about where the money is going to come from; it’s about priorities. It’s about setting your priorities and determining as a Government what you’re going to do. And if you run the books sustainably, if you manage the books responsibly, you run surpluses, you get debt down, you can find the money to pay for the services that make a real difference in people’s lives.

I spoke earlier about housing. We do have a housing crisis. That is something we inherited from the previous Government—an enormous housing crisis that they were not prepared to deal with. And, yes, this Government is ambitious and, yes, sometimes when you have ambitious plans things won’t always go right the first time, but I want to point members opposite to the enormous investment in public housing. There are 1,200 additional public housing sites, 1,200 additional families in public housing, new State houses going up all across the country—getting the people who are in greatest need into the warm, dry, secure, affordable homes that they need. That has been an enormous success over the last 18 months, but more is needed. We all know more is needed, such was the scale of the crisis that this Government inherited that it was never going to be fixed in one year, two years, or even five years. This is a decade-long project that this Government has the ambition to tackle, something that the National Party did not have when it was in Government.

So I want to acknowledge Grant Robertson, the finance Minister. I want to acknowledge the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, our incredible kind and compassionate and visionary leader, who has led the work on this Wellbeing Budget, this new approach to doing budgeting and governance in New Zealand, and I commend this incredible Budget to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d actually like to start by addressing something my cousin from the top of the South over the hill from me, Dr Smith, raised about KiwiBuild and why they’re not actually mentioning it. I think the Labour caucus has fallen into the trap of the well-worn habit of thespians, not to mention the play. They won’t mention the play Macbeth and the Labour caucus won’t mention the word “KiwiBuild”. It’s a curse. It’s an absolute curse that they are trying to distance themselves from as much as possible. When the reshuffle is announced, I have it on very good authority that Mr Twyford has statistics and seeing that James Shaw’s made such a mess of the census he’s going to get KiwiBuild, so we’ll just see an ongoing disaster unfolding in front of us.

However, I want to address the Budget, the Wellbeing Budget. Wellbeing: no one can suggest anyone doesn’t come into this House seeking to help the wellbeing and the livelihoods of New Zealanders. That’s what we all come in for. However, I think this Wellbeing Budget is actually a “well-meaning Budget.” And Kiwis deserve more from their politicians than being well-meaning; we have to be able to deliver, and that’s why I support the amendment moved by the fine Leader of the Opposition, the Hon Simon Bridges, which was that we have no confidence in this Government and their botched Budget and all of the other promises that they will fail to deliver along the way.

I think it’s quite strange. Michael Wood raised some very interesting questions about the “Well-meaning Budget”, saying that he thought it was going to do things differently. But what is “wellbeing”? That’s what we’d like to know. What actually is wellbeing? It is a subjective measure. What wellbeing is to me may well be quite different to what wellbeing is to you, Madam Speaker, and to other Kiwis. So there is no definition of what “wellbeing” is, and there are no measures. He said they were going to measure it. What are the measures? We haven’t seen any measures. The Better Public Services targets were all deleted as soon as they got in—no measures. So if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. That’s a well-known maxim in business. It works because that’s how it has worked many times through business—they know that if they can’t measure it, they can’t manage it.

Child poverty—he talked quite a lot about child poverty and how they were going to get it down, but I would ask the member: what’s happened to the stats on child poverty in the last 12 months? They’ve gone up under their watch—they’ve gone up. Where was that Wellbeing Budget? Why didn’t they bring this Wellbeing Budget in in the first Budget that they had? If they cared so much about it and wanted to make some traction on it they should have moved on it right in the beginning.

I think one of their biggest failings is the oil and gas ban that they brought. This is just an appalling piece of legislation. The cost of the ban has actually been estimated at $28 billion by 2050. Where is that $28 billion going to come from?

💬 Barbara Kuriger: What about the cost to climate change?

Well, the cost to climate change—the member Barbara Kuriger raises a very interesting point. In fact, the Interim Climate Change Committee has actually pointed that out: it will likely increase our emissions. So where’s the money coming from? Where are the jobs going to come from that are going to be lost because of this oil and gas ban? We know Taranaki has the highest GDP per capita in the country, underpinned by that industry, and we are all underpinned by it. I think the big issue, really, from this transition to a renewable electricity target, which is in 2035, is that the climate committee estimated that electricity prices for consumers would go up by 14 percent and it would be 39 percent for industry. For those people who think that what electricity prices the industry pays won’t affect them, believe me they will. All of that will flow immediately through to costs in our economy, and unless it is mirrored offshore, that will also impact our exports. And that will have a huge impact on the wellbeing of New Zealanders.

Higher electricity prices will also, the committee points out, slow the rate of decarbonisation in our economy. We will have to change quite rapidly to electric cars, and electric cars are more expensive than internal combustion engine cars, are higher priced, and we also have an average age of our vehicle fleet of 15 years. We’ll have to turn that fleet over far more quickly than we have been to date to get up to that target. Yet the people that are going to be impacted the most by increasing energy prices will be those on lower incomes. It is quite a regressive tax, and that has not been addressed. Among other things we’ve seen from this Government, they haven’t actually done the homework. They had nine years in Opposition, and they just simply didn’t do the homework.

It is estimated we have only a 10-year gas supply left, and that is running down quite quickly. We’ve seen two exploration companies that have walked away from block offers just off the East Coast of the North Island, which could have been a phenomenal resource for New Zealand. In the first quarter of this year we’ve seen an increase in coal consumption for electricity generation of 138 percent. We are on target to burn 500,000 tonnes of coal this year in electricity generation, and that is in part due to the interruption in supply for maintenance on the gas fields. We don’t have enough gas here now. We need more supply, and we need more than one or two fields; we need these fields on stream to drive our electricity system.

The renewable electricity options are simply not here yet. They were just out here 10 years ago; they’re still just about out here. We’re almost there with these renewables and these batteries, but we haven’t got those technological breakthroughs enabling us to shift to a renewable electricity system by 2035 yet, and it looks unlikely to be there. We need that oil and gas exploration for our economy to be less at risk. We only have to look at Germany, where they tried to decarbonise there and push renewables by highly subsidising them, but they have the luxury of importing electricity from offshore or from over the border. We don’t have that luxury, and, ironically, their electricity prices are the highest in Europe. And, on top of that, they also have increased their carbon emissions, because they’ve had to burn more coal as well. So it’s not been a very good outcome all round. Actually, the last thing I’ll close on, on that, is: can businesses and households afford a 39 percent increase in their energy costs? I would argue that they cannot.

We move on to methane targets, which is certainly an area of concern for anyone who lives in provincial New Zealand. These methane targets are out of line with what is being considered overseas. It’s out of line with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s recommendations in his fine report, and it is also—with these subsidies and all of the work that the Government is doing around its billion trees—forcing good, productive farmland into forestry. The question for the members on the other side is: how many schools are going to close in rural New Zealand as a result of these policies? How many small towns will simply become ghost towns because of this target? It is unwise, and also the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment thinks that the policy of allowing CO2 emissions to be offset with the planting of trees—we’re the only country in the world to allow 100 percent of that—is a very bad policy and it should be done away with.

I want to close on earthquake-prone buildings, because the Minister of Finance, actually—his own electorate—has a significant number of apartments in his area which are earthquake prone. I went along to the inner city Wellington meeting of those affected apartment owners, and the finance Minister is acting like a backbench MP, making quite sweet noises that he really sympathises with them; he’s in a position to deal with it—overnight if he wanted to—for his constituents. Instead, he put a miserly $10 million in the Budget to help those people in some way—and other apartment owners around New Zealand. It’s totally inadequate. The Minister should actually man up. He’s their electorate MP. If he can’t do anything, simply be honest and tell them that he can’t and he won’t, but don’t try and have a dollar each way, as he is now.

In closing, I support the Leader of the Opposition’s amendment. This is a botched Budget, and it is really bad for New Zealand. We have no confidence in this Government. Thank you.

I understand this is a split call. I call Clayton Mitchell.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I have to say the member across from me, Mr Stuart Smith, is a well-intentioned member—one of the nicest people in Parliament—but I have to say I think he’d be a better sleep therapist than he would be a politician, because that 10-minute monologue even put his backbench and the gallery to sleep. Anyway, let’s spark things up again. Right, here we go—this nonsense about it being a botched Budget.

But, before we get to that, ladies and gentlemen, let’s talk about what people actually care about, which is the fact that 7 percent of New Zealanders actually feel that they have confidence in members of Parliament and that they trust us. Now, why do you think that is? I’ll tell you why it is: it’s because we get a constant barrage from the Leader of the Opposition, where leaking information from him to the Rt Hon Winston Peters in the build-up to the last election was acceptable—“It’s pretty legal.”—but yet, when his information gets leaked from his expenses three days early, all of a sudden we need a royal commission of inquiry—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’d rather the member actually addressed the Budget. Can we talk about the Budget? If it relates to the Budget—

Yes, it’s about the integrity of the Budget.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, you get to the Budget. You need to actually bring that into your speech.

So the Budget—it’s important for people to understand what we said when we set out on a pilgrimage to build our economy from the bottom up, because we’d had enough of neo-liberal, trickle-down, free ideological thinking from this previous Government for nine years.

So the first thing we set out to do was to ensure that we gave capitalism a human face, and by doing that, we had to build this economy from the bottom up by lifting the minimum wage, which we’ve taken another big step towards, building an economy surrounded by a living wage. We’ve invested money into areas that this country hasn’t seen investment in for a very long time. Ten years of neglect, and our rail system now is seeing a boost. And we see the members across the Chamber shaking their heads, saying, “It’s not going to go far enough.” It’s not going to go far enough because we had 10 years under a previous Government where no money was ever funded there—well, nine years. I have to say I gave them a year’s credit there. It was actually only nine years of neglect. So now we’ve got a Government that’s absolutely committed to start looking after those integral parts of our community: the people—the workers—on the bottom that are actually creating the opportunities out there.

We put $300 million into the idea that we’re going to have venture capital where young, emerging, innovative businesses in New Zealand can get that kickstart they need to put that innovation in, to get it really working so we’re not so reliant on international money. We’ve got the $1 billion R & D tax credit, which is a huge boost to people, to actually lift our R & D spending to 2 percent of GDP in this country. It doesn’t get us away from the fact, though, that we have seen the neglect by a Leader of the Opposition, and this royal inquiry that was being brought upon them, and asking for a public execution of one of his own members for leaking information. And yet it’s acceptable that the member can leak other people’s information, like the absolutely unacceptable, deliberate, unauthorised assault on the Treasury books—to release that information. Now, that’s the integrity that people want to see lifted. It’s absolutely unethical, it’s absolutely immoral what has taken place, and they wonder on the other side why the voters of this country have had a gutsful of their behaviour.

They are not trusted, because they promised everything and haven’t delivered on it—from 10 bridges to ghost highways that have never been built, with no money that’s ever been put there for State Highway 2A going north from Tauranga—all these loose promises: 15th Ave, Turret Road.

💬 Matt King: Three bridges have been built! You should come up sometime.

No money has ever been brought forward by that Government—just a lot of hollow promises. That member over there is like a sneeze looking for a mouth to shoot out of. Isn’t that right, Mr King?

Anyway, we’ve got a minute left on the clock and I’ve still got so much more to say. We’ve got LSV numbers doubled under this Government—these are Limited Service Volunteer schemes. We’ve got not engaged in employment or training—we’ve doubled that from 800 to 1,600 people. We’ve got a huge amount of money—$49.9 million—going into our Mana in Mahi to get disengaged youth off the couches, my colleague over here Shane Jones likes to refer to it as getting those nephs off the couch, giving them an opportunity, giving them something to work towards, building their pride in themselves so that they can become an asset to themselves, to their families, and to our country and our economy moving forward.

We’ve got $21 million that we have put into a very important service that we have with St John’s, but we have also turned around the racing industry with recent changes in the Racing Amendment Bill, with more changes to come to get that industry up on its feet again. And that’s about my time, and I’m going to hand it back to my colleague—over to you Darroch Ball.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This has been a very good Budget for the coalition Government. I might be a bit biased, but I’d like to say that New Zealand First has had some very, very good, serious wins out of this Budget.

We’ve just previously heard my colleague Clayton Mitchell list a few; I’d like to list a couple as well. These wins focus not only on the regions, though we did make some good wins in the regions, but we are focusing on our services, we’re focusing on our seniors, our vulnerable children as well, and everyone in between, I must say. We’ve put a billion dollars for KiwiRail. We’ve got over a billion dollars for Oranga Tamariki with our vulnerable children. We’ve got over $2 billion for our defence force—our underfunded defence force that was neglected under the National Party—all of the three services: the navy, the air force, and, of course, the army as well.

We’ve invested $7 million into a super SuperGold Card. We have—as my colleague Clayton Mitchell said—managed to secure funding for our ambulance services and St John’s over the next couple of years; over $4 million for veterans, and around $60 million for our forestry sector. So you can see that we have wide-ranging and effective and very serious wins on this side of the House.

But one thing that hasn’t been mentioned which I think is ultimately important as well is the increase in funding to our police force. The reason why I want to mention it is because last week we had Chris Bishop stand up in the House and, unbelievably, criticise this side of the House for increasing the police numbers—that’s what he did. So New Zealand First, as part of our coalition agreement, is to strive for 1,800 new police officers over the next four years—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: And you’ve done 450.

—1,800 over the next four years. We’ve got the likes of Chris Bishop, but now we’ve got Dr Nick Smith as well, talking about that we’ve only got around 500 so far. Well, over the nine years that that National Party was in Government, how many did they add to the police force?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Hundreds.

One-hundred-and-fifty, Mr Smith, 150. So now they’re complaining that, 18 months in, we’ve got 500 and climbing. That’s net by the way—that’s net by the way. Over nine years, Dr Nick Smith’s Government only had 150. In fact, in 2017 they went down by 60. They lost police officers. The year before that they lost another 40. And now they stand up in the House and want to criticise us for striving for 1,800 police officers.

I’ll tell you why that’s important—I tell you why it’s important, because there’s what’s called a golden ratio of one police officer per 500 members of public. If it goes above that—if there’s more members of public per police officer then it makes it very, very difficult for our police force to do the job effectively. In 2009, when the National Government took over, that was one police officer for every 498 members of public—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just relate it to the Budget.

Well, I’m talking about the increase—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just keep it focused on the Budget, not on history.

I’m talking about the increase in police numbers—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Don’t argue with me or I’ll stop the member. Relate it to the Budget.

In 2009, we had one police officer for every 498 members; in 2017 that went from one police officer—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Relate it to the Budget now.

—to every 547 members of public, Madam Speaker. The increase in police numbers that this Budget has overseen has done a couple of things. There were, in the 2018/19 financial year, 831 new recruits. That is a record number. Never once in the history of this country has there been more police recruits gone through the Police College. The previous record, actually, funnily enough, was 683 new recruits, and that, again, was when New Zealand First was in Government. We’ve got the largest police workforce in New Zealand history, with more than 13,000 men and women, and because of that our victimisation fell by 7,000 within the last year.

So I find it a bit incredulous that the National Party stand up and want to criticise this side of the House for having record funding in the police force, record numbers going through the recruitment process, and the largest police workforce in the history of this country. This is a good Budget for the coalition Government and for New Zealand First.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is the ninth Budget that’s been delivered in the time that I’ve been a member of Parliament. Normally I stand up and give some tub-thumping speech saying what the other side’s doing is wrong and what my side’s doing is right. Of course, I don’t have a side to be yelling at now in the Chamber, and it’s an interesting situation.

But the upside that I’ve found through my current situation—where I am an independent, sitting up the back, looking down at the rest of the Chamber, and also spending considerably more time in my electorate talking to real New Zealanders and not getting too wound up in what happens in this place, in “Planet Parliament”—is the world out there and the way New Zealanders see our politics in New Zealand isn’t as black and white as we make out in this Chamber. It isn’t the case of everything the Government does, if you’re a Government MP, is right and everything the Government does, if you’re an Opposition MP, is wrong. It isn’t a case of members on that side and the Government saying, “Our Budget is great. Our Budget is perfect. We’re delivering on everything.”, and then the Opposition to say, “They’ve got it all wrong. They’ve broken all their promises. It’s a botched Budget.” That’s not how New Zealanders see budgets in this country. It’s not how New Zealanders see our politics.

One of the real downsides that I see now that my eyes are really opened up too is just the fact that we don’t do enough to work together in this Parliament and Government on addressing solutions for all New Zealanders. I want to say, actually, congratulations to the Minister of Finance. He’s delivered a reasonably good Budget. Actually, it delivers on most of their promises. Actually, it’s a Budget that could have been delivered by Bill English, or it could have been delivered Steven Joyce. The only difference is rather than it being called a Wellbeing Budget, Bill English would have talked about social investment. When it comes to the likes of job creation, when it comes to the likes of investment in important areas like health and education, a National Government probably would have done many of the same things.

The Government is doing more in mental health. This Government is putting $1.9 billion into the mental health system, and good on them for doing that. It’s 19 times what the National Government promised in 2017—19 times. Through that election campaign—because I was a National MP at the time—many of us would go to public meetings or go to mental health - specific debates and we’d be hauled over the coals for the lack of investment in mental health. Actually, National got it wrong in that area. We did a lot to increase the number of operations, we did a lot to improve health services, but we didn’t do enough for mental health. So good on the Government for doing what they’re doing in mental health.

The great thing about what this Budget’s doing around mental health is it’s going to get some of the funding into those front-line services and into the areas where people can get access to care early, so they don’t end up in the acute system. If an individual gets in that system, they’re exposed to hospital-grade services and they do get quite a lot of support. But where we’re failing New Zealanders when it comes to mental health is we’re failing to help people to get the support they need early on when they’re identifying that they’ve got challenges; when they’re identifying that they’re needing support, before they get to that crisis point.

If we can solve a situation where people don’t get enough support before they get to crisis point, where they don’t get enough help and assistance, then we’ll be able to ensure that we reduce that suicide number. And getting access to mental health services in the community—if the Government can crack that nut then they’ll be doing a huge amount for New Zealanders.

But in terms of the overall Budget, I really struggle when I hear the terms being flung about about how the Government is doing something wrong, or how the Government is botching a budget. That’s not how New Zealanders see it. The taglines we give policies, and the taglines we give budgets, and the debate we have in this Chamber, that’s not reflected out there in reality.

The Government is doing a lot when it comes to the economy that, actually, the National Party could have done as well. That debt target that I heard Iain Lees-Galloway talking about—getting debt to below 20 percent of GDP by the early 2020s—that’s the target that Bill English announced four or five years ago. They’re doing exactly what National put in place. The Government can’t stand up and say they’ve solved it all and they’ve done everything right and it’s their Budget which is achieving that because the fundamentals were put in place by the National Government—the fundamentals were put in place by Bill English and by Steven Joyce. So what I’m trying to say is that when we look at Budgets and when we debate them, we’d do New Zealanders and ourselves a lot better if we were to actually identify things where we can work together as a Parliament and identify things that we agree on. When I read the amendment from Simon Bridges, basically saying that the Government’s bungling and incompetent and they’re overseeing a slowing economy and declining job creation—well, actually, that’s not the reality. It’s a nice political point to make, but it’s not the reality.

I have to say, the Government isn’t getting everything right, though. I do struggle when it comes to housing and understanding what the vision is. There was no vision delivered on housing in this Budget. The key question that many people, particularly in Auckland, want to know and have answered is: what is a Government, whether it’s blue or red, going to do to deliver on a vision where young people can get access to housing? KiwiBuild—for all that they’ve tried to throw at it—it’s not working. It’s failing. It’s not delivering cheaper housing for New Zealanders.

But at the same time, my old friends in the National Party—we couldn’t claim that we got everything right either. Nick Smith, I have to say, put a huge effort into trying to make changes in housing. He sweated blood and tears to try and get reforms in the housing sector, and good on him. He did very well. He tried very hard, but we didn’t crack that nut either. We left Government in 2017, leaving young New Zealanders without the ability to access affordable housing. We left Government not delivering a vision on how young New Zealanders and how children and grandchildren can afford housing into the future.

The solution has to be genuine Resource Management Act reform. The solution has to be increasing land supply. Sitting back and hoping that small changes and tinkering around the edges will make big adjustments to housing won’t work. Sitting back and thinking regulating a little bit more and a little bit here and there is going to work is not actually going to achieve the solution. We have to open up considerable chunks of land in Auckland so there can be greater housing supply. We have to put more infrastructure in place so that the people that will be moving into that new housing can get good transport, can get good water, can get good access to services. But by sitting back and just tinkering around the edges it’s not going to be doing very much.

While I’m talking about housing, I want to say that we also need to seriously look at the way Auckland Council is operating. The way I relate this to the Budget is that there is a review that’s going on at the moment around rates, and there’ll be work internally within the DIA around how local government is operating efficiently or not. I have to say, it’s been almost 10 years now that the Auckland Council has been in place, and if the Minister of Local Government is sitting back asking herself, “What do Aucklanders want to see from local government?”, I think the answer that she needs to arrive at is that Aucklanders aren’t being delivered efficient local government. They’re not being delivered local government services cost-effectively. They’re seeing costs escalate. They’re seeing staffing numbers grow year on year, but they’re getting less and less for their money. It’s about time—it’s been almost 10 years—we start to seriously consider whether the changes that this Parliament put in place in Auckland are working for Aucklanders, and whether or not Aucklanders want to see some more reform and some more changes in that area. If we don’t get local government in Auckland working right and we don’t have local government working with the Government to deliver a vision on housing, then those young New Zealanders aren’t going to get access to the housing services that they need.

Finally, I also want to say thank you to the Government for putting in place measures to deliver more police. They’re not doing it fast enough, though. We do need to see more front-line services in the police force and we do need to see more support there for those officers. In the emergency services space, why did the Government stop at the level that they did when it came to ambulance services? It wouldn’t have cost much more to fully fund ambulance services, and I think that’s something New Zealanders would like to see happen into the future. Ambulance services and dental services—whilst the health system is receiving considerable boosts, those are two areas that I think New Zealanders would expect the health system to do more on and that the health Minister could work on for future Governments.

This Budget delivers on many of the fundamentals that New Zealanders want to see Government deliver. It doesn’t present enough vision and it doesn’t solve all the problems, but, actually, it delivers much of what New Zealanders want. It’s a Budget a National Government could have delivered with a different name and a different tag line. It’s not as bad as the Opposition makes out, but it’s nowhere near as visionary as the Government makes out either. I think we should work better and closer together in the future as a Parliament. I think there are more areas we could collaborate on. The “them and us” attitude that we take in this Chamber doesn’t serve New Zealanders well. When you take the blue-tinted glasses or the red-tinted glasses off and you actually sit there and observe politics in New Zealand, actually, there’s a lot we agree on, there’s a lot we can work together on, and there’s a lot that we should do more on as a Parliament.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d like to start my part in the Budget debate by acknowledging our finance spokesperson, Amy Adams, who’s just made an announcement today that she’s going to be leaving Parliament at the next election. Amy Adams did a fantastic job of guiding us through this Budget process, as she’s done in the past in her roles, back even right down to when she was an associate. She’s a great person with the numbers, and we’re dearly going to miss her skills. She’s made a fantastic contribution thus far to this place and she’s not finished yet, so I acknowledge her.

I would disagree adamantly with the previous speaker. New Zealanders do care about the Budget, and they’re not impressed. We talk about a Wellbeing Budget. Stuart Smith asked before, “What is the meaning of wellbeing?” Well, wellbeing, when I just looked it up in the dictionary on my phone, it said “the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy”. So if we say the words “KiwiBuild” and “cancer treatment”, there better be a lot of “kinder” and “more caring” going on to make up for the other two parts of wellbeing that seem to be in some sort of disarray. Michael Wood said, when he spoke up, about this Budget being a means to an end. Well, my constituents are hoping that this will mean an end to this Government.

I was at Fieldays just after the Budget came out, and it was where the Situation and Outlook for Primary Industries was released. If you go through that document, it shows that things, the expectations, are good at the moment for dairy, for sheep and beef, for a range of other products. We all know that horticulture is going very well. But what I was finding at Fieldays, and what myself and my fellow members of Parliament from this side of the House who joined us at Fieldays—there were a large number of us. We could not get over the uncertainty of the mood of the primary producers at the Fieldays, and it was down to the uncertainty related to this Budget.

If you actually look at some of the reasons why, and there’s money in here—we’ve got down here “Meeting the climate change challenge”. Well, we’re all very concerned about putting all of this—there’s $95 million in here related to the climate change challenge. Well, the climate change challenge in their eyes is not having the right tools for the methane targets. It’s also those small communities that are really, really worried about, you know, the billion tree programme—$183.8 million operating going into the billion tree programme. There is no strategy to that billion tree programme. That’s what they’re worried about. Nobody’s opposed to planting trees. We all believe that we need to do things for climate change. But it’s a right tree, right place, right catchment, right time strategy, and they are really worried about planting all those trees—what’s it going to do to the rural roads? We already have Ministers talking about slowing down rural roads because—that’s a funding issue, in terms of dollars. We all know what’s happened to most people’s roads. I’m still hoping that the Mount Messenger project, which is up for appeal shortly, is going to happen. I have heard the Prime Minister and the Minister of Transport say that it’s going to happen—trying to also claim credit for it when it was actually appropriated in Budget 2016, but at least it looks like that road is still going to be happening.

We see $197 million in here for the reform of vocational education. Well, we’ve heard questions in the House today from our member Dr Shane Reti, who’s been looking at this reform of vocational education, and all it seems like is everything else that I’ve read in this Budget document is pulling everything back into Government level, because it appears that everything in these documents says this Government knows best, and the people who are trained in farming, education, whatever field that they’re in—their knowledge is not important: “Let’s take it back in here and do something about it.” I’ll give you an example here: “Productive and Sustainable Land Use: Climate Change Commission and Government Response—$42.7 million operating”, and then there’s a little bit of capital on top of that. It “supports New Zealand’s transition to more sustainable land use” and low emissions, and it talks about “key institutions and regulations” and ensuring the “resources to deliver on its obligations”. What about asking the community? They’ve been out there flat-stick trying to find some solutions. They don’t want more key institutions and more regulations and more red tape. They want to be able to have some tools that they can use, that can put the power in their hands, that can make sure that they have some control over their own future. They don’t want everything done to them. This Government is leaving people behind.

The second one is “Productive and Sustainable Land Use: Enabling the Transition in Agriculture”. So it’s funding for “on-the-ground advice for farmers”. You know, we hear again, “Oh look, there’s going to be some more advice, because we know best.” Well, what happens to the Dairy NZs, the Beef and Lambs, the people that are actually already out there giving advice? Why don’t we just collaborate a little bit? Why don’t we sit around and talk to each other and find out solutions instead of all of these things coming down from the top, coming down on communities, coming down and telling people “Thou shalt do.” and “Thou shalt be done.” and “We’re going to regulate you.” and “We’re going to find the answers for you.” Ninety percent of the answers are already out there, so they don’t want more institutions; they just want more autonomy to be helped to find their own solutions.

Also, in this Budget there is more funding for Mycoplasma bovis. Now, that’s been a huge, huge, huge process, that eradication process, and we know what that eradication processes has meant in terms of cow numbers, cows, trying to stop that disease from spreading throughout the country. You know, we’re monitoring and we’re still evaluating around the whole feasibility of it, and I hope that is being monitored all the time. But it’s actually not been a great process for the farmers involved. It’s been a terrible, terrible wellbeing situation for all of them. I have seen, over more recent times, how the care and the wellbeing for those people has picked up, but I know that our rural support trusts have spent hours and hours and hours out there, actually trying to deal with the people welfare of this issue. So it hasn’t actually been a very kind process, and while the decision was made to do that, I think the way people were treated on the way could have been much better.

Now, on to the subject of Taranaki—on to the subject of oil and gas. We all know that in that process, all of the advice was ignored, and not just around the Budget dollars. So it’s all very well for people to say, “Oh, we’re going to do wellbeing.”, but wellbeing takes money, and you actually need money to be able to sustain the wellbeing. You need it to sustain the health system. You need it to sustain the education system. There is nothing in this country that’s going to run without money. So if you ignore the figures that were put in front of us around the oil and gas, around, you know, making the decision that this Government has made—which, by the way, makes absolutely no benefit to climate change in all the advice that I’ve seen; in fact, it only has detrimental results in that light.

Look, developing a new energy development centre in Taranaki is a little bit like—you know, it’s just a lolly scramble in comparison to coming along and taking away not only the bread and butter for that province but for the whole country before they’ve had a chance to develop the new technology. Everyone knows that when you go from A to B, you need to know where am I today, how am I going to get there, how long it’s going to take me, and what’s it going to cost. Now, we all know where this wellbeing Government wants to be in 20 or 30 or 40 years in terms of what they want for this country, but nobody out there is certain about what does it mean tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year, because the tools that we had are being taken away before new tools have been developed, and taxes are being talked about before we have the tools to mitigate. So it’s a disaster. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Huri noa ki a tātou katoa ōku hoa kaimahi, tēnā koutou. The wellbeing of our people and our environment should be at the centre of everything that we in this House do. It should be at the centre of all the decisions we make because it will ensure that our grandchildren’s grandchildren have any sort of dignified and sustainable future. So I am proud to be part of a Government that is starting to take a different approach for the first time through this Wellbeing Budget, an approach which the Greens have long championed and called for, because right now truly transformational economic, social, and environmental solutions are needed more than ever. The way that we respond to the climate, inequality, and biodiversity crises in Aotearoa will lead the way for a world based on justice for people and our planet. So I wanted to pick up on a few of the initiatives that I’m proud of that the Greens, being at the table, have managed to secure, including across welfare, transport, mental health, and the environment.

Also, I wanted to be very clear that the Greens know that there’s more we need to do, that we need to be even bolder right now to meet the urgency and the scale of the challenges we face, because the climate crisis poses an existential threat to our planet and way of life. The science already shows us that we only have 12 years, tops, to transform our economy to focus on sustainability and wellbeing rather than what we have been held hostage to forever, which is profit at all costs. While our economy has grown in some measures, other measures are still a raging concern. Too many people are facing housing insecurity, our waterways have been degraded to the point where too many of our awa are too polluted to swim in and 4,000 of our native species are facing the risk of extinction.

So I’m pleased to see that the climate change and environmental and conservation work that the Greens have been able to do under the leadership of our fabulous Ministers has come through in this Budget, including laying the foundations to tackle the climate crisis with a transition to a low-carbon economy and getting up the Climate Change Commission. But I also want to acknowledge many civilians, societies, and groups, including School Strike 4 Climate and their calls for more honest and substantive Government action. So that is something that the Greens will absolutely have a strong voice on.

I cannot leave out in my speech heralding the $180 million in conservation funding, especially through the tourism levy and the international visitor conservation levy, because our indigenous species are calling out for our protection, and so safeguarding indigenous biodiversity was able to be championed through this Budget.

I want to acknowledge iwi leadership and water and the funding that will help iwi in Whanganui, Gisborne, and in my northern Ōmāpere area improve the health of local waterways, because the leadership of mātauranga Māori will be essential to enduring conservation for our whole country, for all of our waterways, and for our generations to come.

I want to be very clear that we need more investment in public and State housing. Everyone needs a decent home to live in, and we need real investment in public housing, not just extraction of profit by private landlords, which is what we have seen for far too long. We need to move away from housing as a commodity and understand housing as a human right for everyone. The Wellbeing Budget made significant steps to ensure the improvement and expansion of support under programmes like Housing First, which, essentially, puts in the supports—social supports and health supports—and ensures that we can put people into homes. We’re going to extend that with an extra 1,044 people and places. So I was particularly pleased to see that for people with a disability and families with children who struggle with homelessness and insecure housing in particular.

Beyond this Budget, though, the Greens will keep focusing on ensuring a rent-to-own or a progressive homeownership scheme, and that’s what we agreed to with Labour as part of our confidence and supply agreement. A rent-to-own scheme is just one policy that will help the very people that, actually, my colleague Jami-Lee Ross previously talked about—people who are not even entertaining the thought of ever owning their own home and properly putting down roots in their own community. They haven’t got a chance of raising any sort of a deposit. The Green Party is very clear that we want to bring back the principle of a Government-funded scheme in partnership with other organisations to allow for more people to actually own a home. This will add to the security and sense of community relationships—schooling, ensuring children can stay put for longer, is what I see would fill a massive gap in the trend that we are currently seeing of less people being able to afford to raise a deposit and own their own homes. So we’ll stay really strong and loud over that.

Listen, we’ve heard Ministers across the House, actually, rightfully, praise Under-Secretary Jan Logie and her leadership on the work to eliminate sexual and domestic violence and the work to a joined-up approach, across ministries and agencies, to be able to, for the first time ever, have such a transformational approach to ending and eliminating domestic and sexual violence. I too proudly—proudly—herald the work of Jan Logie in pushing something in a way that the Hon Grant Robertson as finance Minister also upholds as being quite a revolutionary approach to working with our Budget bids. So we are particularly proud of that work.

But change needs to continue, and I want to finish my focus somewhat on the Whakamana Tāngata report, the expert advisory report—quite a historical report that seeks to understand what needs to change in our social security support system. A range of diverse experts who were on that panel came out with a very clear blueprint for how we can actually ensure that people can seek security and income with a sense of dignity. For decades, successive Governments, actually, have at best allowed our social support system to stagnate, but at worst we’ve deliberately eroded it, leaving families and people without enough to survive, leaving people in low-paying jobs, struggling to be able to survive without a good social security net.

So we are very clear, and it was good to see some changes come through this Budget, including tagging benefit increases to wage growth, including removing some of the harsh sanctions and allowing for people to earn more before their budgets are cut. But the report, the expert report, was very clear: we need base income amounts to increase, and that is something that the Greens will be very clear on as part of our confidence and supply agreement to properly overhaul our social security support system.

When we are facing entrenched inequality and poverty and unstable climate and rapid loss of species and ecosystems, we know that truly transformative economic, social, and environmental change has never been more important. I’m proud of what our team, our Green team, has been able to achieve in Government, but we also know that there’s so much more that needs to happen right now, that we can actually do right now. The Greens will be insisting on seeing more of those changes coming through in the next Budget. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I believe I just have a few short minutes before—

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: Precious moments.

“A few precious moments.”, says the Minister of Finance, and I am going to take them, because, ladies and gentlemen, I was just looking at it, and there is no doubt about it that this well-meaning Budget is an abject failure—an abject failure. It fails to deliver for New Zealanders; it fails to deliver on the many promises that we have seen from this Government. It is a well-meaning Budget; there’s no way that there is that level of wellbeing.

We heard earlier when, actually, Winston Peters decided to go with Labour and form a Government and he talked a lot about how this was going to be the change and it was going to be a transformational Government and it was the pinnacle of where we were going to see—rather than the modified status quo that was National—this absolutely amazing change. Yeah, nah—yeah, nah. Maybe he meant that was in the big billion-dollar KiwiRail, but it certainly wasn’t a transformational Budget in what it could’ve been.

So, well-meaning—and I looked it up. The Collins Dictionary says well-meaning—[Interruption] I know, thank you. I know you guys didn’t, so that’s why I did. I know they didn’t look at wellbeing and what it means, because if they’d looked at wellbeing and what it means, they’d be delivering for New Zealanders on their promises. If they knew what wellbeing means, there would be more jobs for New Zealanders and not fewer. If they knew what wellbeing means, we would not have New Zealanders going overseas for cancer drugs and going to Givealittle because this Minister would not even give a little to Pharmac to see them. If they knew what wellbeing means, they would actually see fewer people living in cars and we’d see fewer children that are actually in poverty, both of which have gone up under this Government and are not getting delivered to in this Budget. So, Minister, if you want to start giving this side of the House a lecture on what wellbeing is, let me help you out.

Well-meaning, though, which is what I think it actually might be, because well-meaning means a person that intends to be helpful or kind but is unsuccessful or actually causes problems, and that, ladies and gentlemen, pretty much sums up this Budget. Yep, it might be kind, it might even have tried to have been a bit helpful, but it certainly has not delivered for New Zealanders.

I have been through what I think is missing in some of it, but let’s get to KiwiBuild. Can we get to KiwiBuild, because what—

💬 Hon Jacqui Dean: Well, they haven’t.

Well, they haven’t got to KiwiBuild. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s like the babysitters are currently looking after the country and they’ve been on a little bit of a sugar rush, they’ve spent a lot of money, but it ain’t going to be long before they need mum and dad back because the food’s running out, they’re now living on the credit card, and, quite frankly, the mortgage needs to be paid.

That was a fairly solid leadership bid there from the Hon Paula Bennett. Although, I strongly advise her not to use the Collins Dictionary—because I think if you look up, in the Collins Dictionary, the meaning of the word “utu” you might find that member’s name, possibly, under there.

I thank all members of the House for their contributions to the Budget debate. It is an important part of our system that we have a robust analysis of the Budget in this House. I’ve heard some magnificent speeches given, mostly from this side of the House, I have to say, but I also do acknowledge those on the other side of the House who have contributed.

On that note—just to diverge, briefly—I do want to acknowledge Amy Adams for her announcement today. She has dedicated herself to public service for well over a decade, was a Minister in the last Government, and, as I noted earlier on today, was part of an historic move to expunge convictions for people who were convicted before homosexual law reform; so I want to put on the record today, my appreciation for that and my acknowledgement of her service in this House. I wish her well for the future.

This Budget is fundamentally different from every Budget that has gone before in New Zealand. We promised, at the outset of this process, to focus on the long-term wellbeing of New Zealanders. I have news for the members opposite—that is, as I have travelled around New Zealand over the last few weeks, talking about the Budget, time and time again what I’ve heard from New Zealanders is finally there is a Government taking mental health seriously. Finally, after all these years, one of the biggest issues that has faced New Zealanders in terms of their wellbeing is actually being looked after. I want to give credit to Dr David Clark, the Minister of Health, who at the core of that package has come up with something that will change the lives of New Zealanders, that will save the lives of New Zealanders: and that is a new frontline mental health service—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: What happened to your suicide target?

—so that wherever we are in New Zealand, we know that if there are issues for us or our whānau or our friends, we will actually be able to support those people to get the help they need at the front line. That $455 million investment will pay off time and time again.

Dr Smith is yelling out about suicide prevention services—$40 million in this Budget to finally actually begin the process of supporting New Zealanders who find themselves in those situations. But more than that: taking addiction services seriously, finding more residential prices for people who need support in that area, making sure that we enhance our nurses in schools programme, making sure that we actually deal with the addiction and mental health issues of people who are currently in prison. We know that if we can actually get to the root causes of crime, we can actually make sure not only that those people don’t reoffend again, but they come back and join us in society in a way that means they can contribute positively. Minister Kelvin Davis has produced, I think, one of the big step changes that are in this Budget in the way in which we focus on people in prison being supported to not reoffend again. I want to acknowledge Kelvin Davis for the terrific work that he did.

On the priority around improving child wellbeing, I do want to acknowledge what Marama Davidson said before. We have in front of us the Welfare Expert Advisory Group. Again, this is not a Government afraid to face up to the big challenges that are in front of us; and in this Budget we take meaningful steps to address that. For example, we are moving to the indexation of benefits to the average wage—again, the meaningful contribution that will make to people’s lives is recognised as I go right around New Zealand.

So also is the decision to stop so-called voluntary school donations. Actually, right across the country, those in decile 1 to 7 schools know that they can actually bank on this Government. I want to read what one school principal said: “As a citizen of Aotearoa, I want a Budget that is driven by values that result in a quality life for every person who lives here.” She went on to say: “The school donation change means that my school will be better off by $40,000.” The most the school had ever received in donations was $2,000. This principal went on to say: “So much in this Budget will start to move us to a country that is more equitable, compassionate, respectful, tolerant, and rich—in the widest sense of that word.”

What that lot over there don’t understand is that being wealthy and being rich in a country is not just about money. Yes, we want to be prosperous, but we also want to be rich as people. We want to be rich in terms of our environment. We want to be rich in terms of our communities. The myopic view of the other side of the House of what constitutes success is going to mean that they stay there for a very, very long time, because what they’re missing is that New Zealanders want a Government that values our overall wellbeing. They want a Government that is investing in children. They want a Government that is investing in making sure that our mental health system works properly.

I am also proud of the priority in this Budget that says that we can support Māori and Pasifika aspiration, because time and time again, when the evidence had shown that we needed to do better by Māori and Pasifika populations, the previous Government ignored that. Well, this Government’s not doing that—nearly half a billion dollars of initiatives to support Māori development, a big boost for Whānau Ora, and a big boost for languages.

I am proud to say that on this side of the House, the coalition Government has come together to say that we can do universal funding—and we are—and we can do targeted funding where we know that that works. I know among the Pasifika community as well, there’s a lot of support for the initiatives that we’re taking there too.

The priority where I think a lot of New Zealanders will see the long-term benefit is our work to build a more productive nation. I want to acknowledge my colleague David Parker for the work that he did to produce the $300 million fund that is going to lift the prospects of entrepreneurs in New Zealand and make sure that venture capital stays and flows through the New Zealand economy—I believe that will make a massive difference. A huge investment in innovation. A huge investment in transitioning to a new low-carbon economy.

Then there are the practical things. I was at the Tauranga Chamber of Commerce—perhaps you might not think of it as the most welcoming of places for a Labour finance Minister, but at that event the first thing they were saying is: “What’s Simon up to?” The second thing that they were saying to us is: “This is a Budget that supports productive business. This is a Budget that’s focused on a 21st century economy.”

It’s the small things in a Budget that can matter. The Business Connect programme: a single platform for business to interact with Government. It has been asked for for years; never came from the supposed party of business over there, but this Government is delivering on that. I am extremely proud of the fact that we’re doing that.

Then there are the big investments in our infrastructure that are contained in this Budget. Today we were down at the Wellington Railway Station with the four tenors: myself, Minister Jones, Minister Peters, and Minister Twyford—thankfully, Minister Jones was the only one who sang today. At that announcement, we were talking about the practical difference that more than a billion dollars of investment in our rail system will make in this country. On the other side of the House, they neglected rail. They didn’t care about the decline of our rail system. Today Simon Bridges was interjecting saying: “Oh, it’s a drop in the ocean.” It’s a billion dollar bigger drop than what that Government did at any point. We know this will need a sustained commitment—this will need a sustained commitment to rail. But on this side of the House, we have three parties in this Government who believe in rail—believe in the importance of it for our climate change goals, for improving productivity, for creating jobs, and for connecting the regions of New Zealand back with the cities of New Zealand.

We’ve made a big change in this Budget to a multi-year capital allowance, so we can plan ahead properly. Schools know what they’re going to be getting in terms of buildings for the next four or five years. The construction sector knows what they’re going to be getting for the next four or five years. In the health sector, we’ve got two $850 million capital spends. The last lot put virtually nothing in year on year.

This is a Budget that will transform New Zealand. This is a Budget that is about the overall wellbeing of our population. That means that in New Zealand we truly value the contribution of every New Zealander, and we measure our success alongside the values of New Zealand that, yes, we believe in prosperity but we also believe in making sure our environment is clean and protected. We believe in our people and we will invest in our people. We believe in strengthening our communities. That is what wellbeing is. This is the first Wellbeing Budget, and I am extremely proud of it, and there will be many, many more to come from this coalition Government.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Simon Bridges be agreed to: