General Debate

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

Well, there was no doubt about it. We already knew that this Government was lazy. Outsourcing more than 200 working groups—

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: 300.

300—sorry. It’s 300, says leader Simon Bridges. So the reality is we knew they hadn’t done the work in Opposition, had no idea what to do once they got into Government, and outsourced the job. That’s what we knew. What we didn’t know, I think, until recently, was just how arrogant they’ve got so quickly—so quickly.

We were told by Newstalk ZB’s Chris Lynch that, actually, they want to drop the Prime Minister’s monthly slot. She simply turned around, and the reason given was she already had done too many interviews and our Canterbury audience is not worth her time. That’s what she actually told them.

And then, of course, yesterday, we saw from Chris Lynch himself that he said—and I quote the whole thing—“Her press secretary recently told our producer Nellie that the [Prime Minister] won’t come on the show unless there is ‘something like another March 15th’—I kid you not. Nellie was so shocked she repeated his words back to him.”

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: Pathetic. What a lightweight.

Mr Peters, why don’t you take advice from the State Services Commissioner—who I find incredible, for two years—[Interruption]

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! Order! Both of you. Now, there is a matter currently before the court, and it’s not going to be referred to as part of this general debate. I am sometimes slightly behind the times, but I have been following the newspapers, and I know exactly what the member was referring to, and she will cease.

Mr Peters, why don’t you take some advice from the State Services Commissioner—

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. She cannot begin by saying, “why don’t you take some advice”. I know she’s not very experienced, but at least she should have learnt something about this House’s procedures. You can’t—you—use the word “you”.

💬 SPEAKER: Well, actually, Mr Peters—and the comment was in order, in that she used “you” in the sense of “one”, which I have indicated in a recent ruling is acceptable.

💬 Hon Member: Yes. That’s right.

💬 SPEAKER: I could do without the help, thank you. But what I have also made clear, Mr Peters, is where something is part of a debate and it is very clearly directed to a member opposite as part of that debate—in this case, it was “Mr Peters, you”—I have indicated that I have loosened off some of the rules in that area—not as part of question time; part of debate. It was something that was dealt with at the Business Committee by way of discussion. We’ll go back to the Hon Paula Bennett.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Back to the debate, where I was suggesting, Mr Peters, that one looks at the State Services Commissioner, who has had to stop an investigation into the Treasury leaks because of botching up yet another one that was happening. The arrogance, I think, from the Government is pretty stark as one sees that the Canterbury audience isn’t even important enough for the Prime Minister to actually go out and do.

But what we’ve seen in the last two weeks is more work done by the Opposition in the last two years—with minimal resources and minimal staff—than a Government that has the whole Public Service at its disposal and a whole lot of people that can do things for it. So what we’ve seen is, actually—whether it goes to the fabulous discussion document put out on social services, welfare, and our children; whether it goes to the education document from the Hon Nikki Kaye that we’ve seen today—more work and more ideas from the Opposition than one can see from three Government parties that can’t get themselves together, outsource to more than 300 working groups, and are still unable to deliver.

The list, of course—and we saw the Prime Minister do a little video of can she, in two minutes, get through all that they have done. Let me, for the next one minute and 42 seconds, get through all that they haven’t done.

They’ve introduced seven new taxes, despite saying that there’d be none. Seven out of nine child poverty indicators have actually increased. Failed to deliver, of course, 1,800 new police. Failing to deliver 100 percent qualified early childhood education teachers. The number of people in motels has increased threefold, despite saying there’d be absolutely none. Failing to deliver a surgical mesh register, which has actually been promised by this Government. Failing to strengthen the Official Information Act—because, of course, this is the most open and the most transparent Government that has ever been seen. Embarrassed into action—no, let’s say it: embarrassed into action—which they were on cancer, by, of course, National and all the work that had gone on by this Opposition that does more work than the lazy Government does on any day of the week. Failing to increase the age of breast screening to 74 years old, like it was promised but not delivered. Fees-free, of course, is still resulting in fewer students studying, not more. Failing to reduce the gender pay gap—and, in fact, my colleague Denise Lee is going to get up a bit later, and she’ll actually talk to you all a bit about how that’s going with the legislation that simply gets stalled. A cannabis referendum that, of course, won’t be binding because the lazy Government has failed to do the work early enough to bring it to the House so that the public get a true say. Has not actually introduced volunteer rural constabulary like they promised. Job growth has halved.

Order! The member’s time has expired.

You can see why the National Party is so attached to their attack advertisements, because it’s the only thing that they have. Today they apparently launched their education policy, which Paula Bennett, the deputy leader, couldn’t bring herself to talk about. She instead devoted her time to criticising the Government’s working groups and task forces, which, actually, if you read the National Party’s education discussion document, seem to have been the source of inspiration for most of their new ideas, because they don’t seem to have any of their own.

When it comes to education, I will put this Government’s track record against that Opposition’s track record any day of the week. It is going take us some time to undo the nine years of damage that was done to our education system. The fact that, during National’s time in office, we saw a 40 percent reduction in the number of people training to be teachers—that is going to take some time for us to turn around, but we are working hard on that.

The fact that, during National’s time in office, they did not invest in making sure that our schools were adequately prepared for roll growth. They were happy to see the population continue to grow and were happy to take the extra tax that went with that, but they didn’t spend that tax revenue on actually making sure New Zealand had the infrastructure to cope with that population growth—and we see that in our school system, where hundreds of schools up and down the country were already overcrowded when we became the Government, and more were projected to become overcrowded. That’s why our Government has put the single biggest injection of funding into school property of any New Zealand Government, because we want to get ahead of that growth curve so we don’t leave the disastrous legacy that we inherited from that last Government.

We are unapologetic about breaking down financial barriers to participation in education at every level. We see that in our school system, where we are increasing school funding so that the parents aren’t put under constant pressure to pay donations to schools. We have scrapped the fees for NCEA and scholarship exams, resulting in, quite literally, hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders being better off, including a significant number who completed their qualifications in past years but never had that qualification awarded, because they could not pay the fee. They now get that qualification awarded. They can hold their head high and have the qualification that they earned, without the financial penalty that was stopping them from getting that. I’m very proud of that policy.

We stand by our policy of removing the financial barriers to participation in post-school education and training. We are not going to sign up to the elitist view of the world being promoted on the other side of the House that it should only go to third-year university students. We think that those undertaking trades training and applied courses that are less than three years long should benefit from it as well; unlike the members opposite, who don’t seem to know what their policy on it is, because they seem to say, “Oh, we’ll shift it to the third year but maybe we won’t do it at all, maybe we’ll spend it on something else, maybe we’ll use it to build more roads, maybe we’ll use it to employ more teachers.”, bearing in mind that they promised at least $800 million more worth of teachers to improve teacher-student ratios. Where those teachers are going to come from, of course they’re silent on all of that because we know they didn’t train enough teachers.

This Government is making good progress in tackling the legacy of neglect that we inherited. We’re going to build more schools and classrooms for 100,000 additional students, because that’s how many we know we’re going to have to have over the next 10 years. We’ve already put aside a huge amount of money to get ahead of that curve, and we’re going to continue to do that so that, unlike the last Government, we don’t have to play catch-up all of the time; we’re actually going to make sure that we’re building those schools and classrooms ahead of when they’re needed.

There is so much happening in education to be proud of. We’ve made New Zealand history a compulsory part of the New Zealand school curriculum, something that parents have been asking for for some time; New Zealanders have wanted to see that.

What do we see from the members opposite when they’re talking about returning to failed policies? More charter schools; back on that agenda under that Government, because it worked so well. They seem to think that having kids working and learning in shipping containers is an adequate standard of education—that’s what we saw under the charter school model, and that’s not something that we’re going to tolerate on this side of the House under this Government.

We want a quality public education system that delivers for every New Zealander—that is what this Government is focused on delivering. We’ve got a proud track record, we’re just getting under way, and there’s a whole lot more to come.

Look, I’m pleased to take a call in this general debate. The first thing that I would say is: you know they’re worried. You know they’re worried when they spend most of their general debate speech talking about the Opposition.

Firstly, the last Government had a very different set of circumstances. We had the global financial recession. We had the Canterbury earthquakes. But despite that, we saw results in education. We saw achievement be lifted. We saw Māori and Pasifika students having higher achievement. We saw the largest ever capital infrastructure investment cleaning up a decade of neglect under the last Labour Government. But we are looking to the future.

It is the case that this Government has had more opportunities than ever before, but they have broken a number of promises. We have a website where people can go and have a look at that, at www.laboursreportcard.co.nz. The reality is that they promised a whole lot and they haven’t delivered—whether it’s early learning, 100 percent qualified, whether it’s every child having digital devices, or whether it’s career plans in schools.

So what we’re proud of as well is that today we released over 100 policy proposals and questions in education, because we want to engage with the sector. We want to engage with parents and principals.

But what we also know is that on the other side, in a number of the key areas in education, they have mucked it up—whether it’s a flawed donation scheme that people see as confusing and inequitable or whether it’s the learning support roll-out that is seen as flawed and not getting to the children that need it most. So what we’ve done is we’ve tried to work collaboratively, where possible, in areas like NCEA and Tomorrow’s Schools.

But we have, we believe, some of the best solutions to tackle those long-term issues for New Zealand. Whether it is investing earlier, in the first 1,000 days of life—Nic Willis has done amazing work on looking at enhancing screening. Whether it is ensuring that we tackle those short-term supply issues in early learning—we’ve got some positive policies and ideas in this area. Whether it is ensuring that we do crack down where there are serious licensing issues, because parents deserve to have safety when it comes to their small children.

But we’re also very focused on the quality of teaching and learning. What we saw with Tomorrow’s Schools, in our view, is too much of a focus on the administration. We’ve seen it in vocational learning, this sort of ability of the Minister to be very focused on building the centre and focused on officials. When it comes to that area of our document in teaching and learning, we are unashamedly saying that as a nation we need to lift the value of teachers in society. So we are talking about greater incentives to be teachers. We’re talking about greater incentives for teachers to come back into the profession. We also have proposals in there around reforming teacher training, because what we know, when we look at all of the OECD work, is that high-performing systems are rigorous around their selection criteria for teachers. We know, whenever I sit down with a principal, often they’ll say to me, “Nikki, look, there are some people that don’t have the disposition to teach.” We’ve got some policies in the document that are looking at that.

We unashamedly want to have a debate about our curriculum and the curriculum resources, whether that is the amazing work that the House of Science does in Tauranga—and thank you very much, Chris Duggan, for all that you do—whether it is ensuring that more children read. We need a reading revolution in this country. We’ve dropped from being the best country in the world in terms of reading, and we need to make sure that we support our teachers in teacher training, but also that there is more support for organisations like Books in Homes, that parents are focused on reading to their children.

We also want to see fewer educators spending time in administration, and the Minister can talk about school property all he wants; the reality is that he said himself they’ve funded only 50 percent of the growth funding needed to get ahead of growth in New Zealand. We talk about a new Crown entity in school infrastructure—guaranteed, legislated times in terms of school rebuilds, new classrooms. And we are unashamedly focused on reducing the workload of teachers in primary schools. That’s why, under National, today we have announced draft student-teacher ratios in primary schools. That is smaller class sizes. That means less workload for teachers. That means more of a focus on the curriculum.

We know it’s going to be challenging to get there. That’s why we have policies such as incentivising people to come into teaching. When it comes to the tertiary area, we are unashamedly wanting to have this debate about how we have lifelong learning, but also how we get more disadvantaged young New Zealanders into tertiary education. So I will not take a lecture from the other side when the reality is that, under the fees-free first-year programme, there is not the participation or disadvantaged young people getting into tertiary education.

We are a busy Opposition. We’ve got some plans. We are fit for Government. I look forward to being Minister of Education in 12 months’ time.

It’s exam time again, and I’d like to wish all of our students the very best for their exams this year.

This is a Government that is tackling New Zealand’s long-term challenges. The National Government, after nine very long years, has left us with a big mess, which means we have so much to do to address the many, many issues we’ve inherited. I’m really proud of our Minister of Education, the Hon Chris Hipkins. He has just announced the plans that we are doing in Government in terms of Tomorrow’s Schools. We have an education system that is not fit for purpose, and the last Government had nine very long years to address that. They did not. Our Minister of Education, within two years, didn’t just talk about the changes that we need; he is now coming through and implementing those changes, and we are supporting our teachers as well.

There are many other areas that we’re addressing; mental health is one of those. We’re investing the largest amount of money—$1.9 billion—to address mental health; cancer care as well. And we’re doing all of this work while keeping our economy in good shape despite all of the global headwinds that we’re facing.

If I can talk now about building and construction, this is another area that, when we came in, we were confronted with so much in terms of shortage of skills. We were actually told by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment that we were currently short, at the time, 30,000 skilled people in building and construction. We now know that we’re going to be short by 80,000 skilled people in building and construction over the next five years, but here’s the thing: we need to build so many houses, schools, and hospitals, and had the last Government, over the last nine years when they were in Government, trained and ensured that we had the numbers of apprentices and skilled people in this area, we wouldn’t have so much to catch up on in this area. I do applaud what it is that we’re doing in Government to ensure that we are attracting more people into the trades to train.

We also have, in building and construction, the Construction Sector Accord. We know that addressing the issues—the many long-term issues—in building and construction is not something that we can address on our own. So we’ve reached out to industry, and we launched the accord in April. The second part of that accord is going to come through this House very soon, and it is where we—Government—and industry are working together to address the many long-term issues that we have.

Another area is when we build schools and when we build hospitals—and I’ll give you an example: one of the schools that were built a number of years ago now, in South Auckland. The Government of the day invested $25 million to build that particular school. Within a few years, it was already leaking, and so one of the things that the Minister of Education and I went to announce at that school was an extra $20 million just to ensure that that school is actually up to speed in terms of ensuring that it is a fit-for-purpose school for all of our students.

One of the things I’m doing as Minister for Building and Construction, and one of the things that we’re delivering in this Government, is we’re ensuring that the Building Act 2004 is fit for purpose so that, when we’re building schools, when we’re building hospitals, they are good quality, that we’re not focused just on the cheapest price but that we’re focused on whole of life, that we’re ensuring that we build buildings that last a very long time, because, at the end of the day, it will be we taxpayers that actually come through to address those issues if we do not build it right the first time.

The other thing that we’ve done, in terms of building and construction, is we’ve changed the procurement rules so that we—Government—adhere to our own procurement rules. This is actually a set of guidelines that was written together with industry. However, in the past, we were not actually adhering to it ourselves, and I’m glad to say that, from 1 October, Government will be adhering to those rules.

The other thing that we’ve done is we’ve announced that we’re going to ease earthquake strengthening by committing $13.3 million towards financial support for residential building owners. Now, there are a lot of building owners, especially here in this city, who are affected by this. We’ll be making further announcements on the details of that pretty soon.

In terms of building consent, we have seen over 36,446 new dwelling consents. This is historical. We have never seen this many building concerns over the last 45 years, and it goes to show that there is so much work in this area—that not only are there building consents but we are, of course, building a whole lot of houses. Some of those houses, of course, are our own; we’ve built 2,200 State houses. We are a Government that’s delivering. Thank you.

I want to talk about early childhood education. I want to talk about why it matters and why it should matter to any Government that is actually intent on ensuring that children can fulfil their God-given potential. I want to talk about this Government’s absolute failure to deliver on its promises to early childhood education. I want to talk about the impact that failure to deliver is having on Kiwi kids and their families.

This is a Government of broken promises. We had here Mr Hipkins say—he had the gall to say—that it’s here on this side of the bench that we have an elitist view of the world. Well, if you want to know what an elitist view of the world looks like, you need look no further than the fees-free policy, which says, “If you make it to tertiary education—if you’ve got the skills and the qualifications to enter tertiary education—we’ll reward you with tens of thousands of dollars.”, but at the same time says, “But if you’re a child entering early childhood education, guess what, we won’t deliver on our promises to you, because you are not as important as fulfilling our promise to fees-free tertiary education.”

So let’s remember, shall we, what this Labour-led Government promised to early childhood education. They promised 100 percent qualified teachers. They promised lower teacher-child ratios. They promised that there would be shorter waiting times for early intervention. They have failed to deliver on every promise. Do you know what that looks like for parents who are sending their children to early childhood education? Well, I’ll tell you what it looked like for me this morning. When I got to my daughter’s early childhood service this morning, there, taped to the door, the minute I walked in, was a poster. It said, “Children are being short-changed by Government underfunding.” It said, “This looks like teacher shortages, this looks like a funding crisis.” It said, “It’s got to change.” It said, “It’s time for the Government to value early childhood education.”

You will ask, “Well, who put that poster there? Was it the National Party?” No, it wasn’t. Who put that poster there? Was it the New Zealand Business Roundtable? No, it wasn’t. The NZEI—the teacher’s union; Labour’s good friends—put that poster on the door of the early childhood service. I’ll tell you why they put it there: because they see that this is a Government that can find billions to commit to tertiary students but cannot prioritise funding for children and early childhood education.

It’s having an impact. We had a Prime Minister who in May last year said it was disgraceful that children were having to wait 74 days to get an early intervention appointment. These are children with additional needs, who need extra help. The earlier we get that help to them, the better the outcomes will be for them in their lives. Minister Martin, sitting opposite, knows what’s happened since that promise was made. She knows what’s happened. The early intervention waiting times have blown out from 74 days to 110 days. Minister Martin knows and Mr Hipkins knows what’s happening in our early childhood centres. There are such acute teacher shortages that services are having to cut back how many staff they have. They’re having to hire people they don’t believe are suitable. They’re having to have a revolving door of remedial workers, and this Government is not managing to act.

It’s starting to show up in the quality of care and education that our children are receiving. The number of complaints has spiked in the past year, and is it any wonder, when services are under so much pressure; up to 440 complaints—a huge spike of 90 in a year. We’re seeing more licences being downgraded and we are reading reports of centres where terrible things are going wrong, and when the inspectors go to see what had gone wrong, they find that the regulations weren’t being met.

So what’s this Government saying they’re going to do about it? Well, we had the wonderful set of proposals that came out from the Ministry of Education just a couple of weeks ago. They said that what they were going to do about some of these issues in early childhood services was they were going to ban cheerios; that’s right, ban cheerios, can popcorn, ban marshmallows. Because, rather than investing in early childhood education and prioritising teaching, what we need to do is introduce more bans on the things that are an intrinsic part of Kiwi childhood.

So over on this side of the House, we have put forward proposals for early childhood education that we intend to deliver on, not just talk about like the members opposite. We will have more spot checks. We will tackle teacher shortages. We will ensure better early intervention faster, because we care about Kiwi kids, we care about their parents, and we know that government is about priorities. We must prioritise the early years; that’s what really counts. These people opposite have not made them a priority.

I think it’s really unfortunate that that speaker, Nicola Willis, decided to minimise children choking, and that the research and the actions taken by the Ministry of Education to ensure that children don’t choke is somehow made light of. I think that’s a really unfortunate way to conclude the general debate. There are many ways to express your message and to promote discussion documents—because they’re not policy documents; discussion documents. I suggest the public look for the crest on it to see how much they have paid for those discussion documents so that the National Party can do its polling by them before the 2020 election. There are many ways to use general debate, but actually making fun or making light of the fact that there have been incidents where children have been placed in extreme danger, and that the Ministry of Education took that very seriously and was talking to the sector about it, is not one of the things that should be part of the general debate.

But I’m actually going to put some numbers on the table. I know there’s been some comment about numbers today. So 79,921: that’s the number of incidents attended in the 2018-2019 year; 19,871, that’s the number of fires that have been attended; 4,416 vegetation fires, that’s the number that have been attended by our volunteer and career firefighters over the last year. We have 11,801 volunteer firefighters. We have 1,801 career firefighters.

💬 Mark Patterson: Heroes.

Absolutely they are heroes. They are the heroes of local community.

Firefighters are the most trusted organisation in New Zealand. There’s a good reason for that, because, regardless of the raruraru that goes on in this House, those individuals, when they get a call to help, they go, regardless of what it costs their private lives, regardless of what it costs their businesses, actually. That’s part of the reason why Fire and Emergency New Zealand recently made announcements around supports for our volunteer firefighters: an annual payment of $300 to all volunteers to recognise that they sometimes incur expenses as part of their activities for Fire and Emergency, an allowance of $50 a night to support the families and whānau of volunteers when they have to be away overnight for training, access to websites offering discounts on a range of products and services, discounts with Fire and Emergency suppliers on day-to-day items, access to health insurance options, an employer promotion scheme to complement Fire and Emergency’s current employer recognition programme.

But we need to do more—we need to do more. We need to do more, because we are relying in our rural communities and even in our urban communities on our fire and emergency workers—the number of medical callouts that our fire and emergency workers are now attending, the number of suicides that they are attending in their communities—and it is taking its toll. It is taking its toll.

One of the areas where Fire and Emergency New Zealand is stepping up, and will continue to step up, both for the volunteers and career firefighters but also for their families, is the access to mental health, the access to counselling, and the access to areas where we can recognise that what we as a society ask them to do is put themselves in harm’s way, whether that be physically or, now we know, their mental health. We ask them to put themselves in harm’s way for the rest of us.

So that is why I will continue to advocate inside of Government for certain cancers to be recognised as occupational by ACC. And I know that Minister Iain Lees-Galloway is having those conversations with ACC right now. We need to look at further ways to recognise how our employers can be supported. They don’t want to become paid firefighters. They don’t want to lose the volunteerism that is core of who they are. That is why they join Fire and Emergency. It’s because of the citizens that they are and the way that they want to give back.

Lastly, a shout-out to the United Fire Brigades’ Association and Forest and Rural Fire Association of New Zealand, who I was with on Sunday, for the rousing welcome that they gave me, for the amazing stuff they do, and for being down to earth, practical New Zealanders who get in, do what they need to do, do it for their community, put themselves in the way, and do it constantly. Years and years of service; you often go to medal ceremonies for over 50 years of service that they give to their communities. But can I reiterate my message to them: we ask you to look after yourselves. We ask you to partake in the services should you need them. We ask you to look out for each other, but make sure you get help if you need it from us. Kia ora.

We’ve heard this afternoon that this is a Government failing to deliver on their promises to New Zealanders. We’ve seen it in education with their school donations policy now a shadow of its former self. We’ve seen it in housing with their longstanding policy of 100,000 new houses over 10 years now lying in tatters. And we’ve seen it in police numbers where 1,800 additional police, promised by Stuart Nash, is now being described by none other than the Police Association as a broken promise.

This is what we ask in their year of delivery: what are they actually delivering? Well, in rural New Zealand, the evidence is clear: concern, fear, and mistrust. Recently, more than 500 people packed into the event centre in Ashburton to put a voice to that concern. They spoke of their fear of the effects of the Government’s freshwater policies and the impacts in places like mid- and South Canterbury, that I serve here in this Parliament.

The proposals were released by the Government at the worst possible time of year, in the midst of lambing and calving, with a totally unrealistic six-week consultation period. It was increased begrudgingly to eight weeks, but it was nowhere near enough when you consider that the Government refused to release any economic modelling of the changes. The dissolved inorganic nitrogen limit of one milligram per litre has been described as unattainable in some catchments in Canterbury. We know that simply trying to achieve that target will result in wholesale land-use change in Canterbury towards forestry and dryland sheep and beef, and no irrigation. And yet David Parker has refused to release any economic or social impact analysis of those changes: what the effect would be on rural communities, what the effect would be on rural schools, on regional economies, and on the people that live within them.

Instead, there’s been a document released asking for submissions, but no desire for an informed debate. All we have is a footnote buried at the bottom of page 84 referring to an Environment Canterbury report looking at the Selwyn Te Waihora zone. It’s a report from June 2017 which looks at the effects of a dissolved inorganic nitrogen limit of one or close to one. I’ll refer to that report now.

It projects “a very substantial change in land use in the catchment, with virtually no intensive land uses and the catchment dominated by dryland sheep and beef grazing and by forestry or other extensive land uses.” It goes on to say, “Such large scale effective retirement of intensive land has not been experienced in Canterbury on any scale, and the implications would be far reaching. There would be significant changes to the social structure of the catchment, with the forestry or extensive grazing resulting in fewer farms and reduction in employment, losses of economic value in the land, significant loss in equity, and, depending on the time scale, bankruptcy for those with debt that could not be managed through the transition.”

Finally, and what can only be news to Mr Shane Jones, it says that “even forestry may not be possible because the reduction in aquifer recharge may result in higher concentrations of nutrients in lowland streams and lower stream flows, which breaches other desired outcomes in the catchment.”; in other words, no billion trees.

The reason I quote this report at length is most alarming. Two weeks ago on the TVNZ Sunday programme, mid-Canterbury Federated Farmers’ president David Clark challenged the Minister on the contents of this report. David Parker admitted he hadn’t even bothered to read it. Is it any wonder that farmer confidence is so low in this Minister and is so low in this Government? This is a Government that is failing farmers and failing to deliver on their promises to New Zealanders.

I’m absolutely delighted to be standing here today in the general debate because I’m really excited about our announcements that were made yesterday on the reform of Tomorrow’s Schools.

Yesterday was a great day for our education system; one I haven’t seen and been so excited about since I started teaching in 1990. That’s 30 years of the Tomorrow’s Schools system that I have been involved in, in education. The reform is exciting. It’s a major transformative change and the sector is excited. The feedback that I’ve personally had has been that of positivity. The feedback that I’ve read about in the public settings has been really exciting.

As I’ve said, I worked within that system for all of that time, and the last nine years before I came into Parliament were the hardest nine years that I experienced over that time. There were persistent disparities—yes, caused slightly by the Tomorrow’s Schools system but really exacerbated by the previous regime. Schools were often isolated and unable to access adequate networks of support.

I can remember when I first became a principal, in 1996. At that time I had wonderful support. Despite what people might say, we were actually really well supported in our first years as principals, and that was before the first-time principal support programmes came in. We had rural advisers, who used to visit us quite often. What happened under the last regime? Those advisers were wiped completely. I never saw those people or any advisory people that would come to me and say, “Are you OK? Can we support you? How can we support you?” There was a lack of trust in the system that grew over time. But I don’t want to actually dwell on the negative; I want to dwell on the positive here this afternoon of what is going on.

This is a really exciting time in education. I am really excited to be part of a team that’s implementing those changes. We have actually implemented so much already. We’ve implemented more funding into schools. Despite how the Opposition want to put it, we are putting more funding into schools. We’re actually increasing that funding to deciles 1 to 7 schools so that they don’t need to ask for donations any longer. We know it’s exam time at the moment. This is the first time that there’s going to be support for around those 168,000 students, because they don’t have to pay NCEA fees any longer—a great support to those parents.

Next year, we start the free school lunch programme. How exciting is that? I do want to do a big shout-out—I was in Invercargill last week and saw Koha Kai down there and their amazing set-up for school lunches that they do. Those schools that have been told that they will be in the next tranche of the free school lunches already are really, really excited because that means that a system that works for them is going to be well-supported by this Government, and those children won’t be going to school hungry any longer. That’s fantastic and it’s exciting.

We’ve heard it here this afternoon—we’ve put heaps more money into property. I can’t tell you the stresses that I used to have as a school principal over property. I wondered where I would get the next lot of support from as I watched those school buildings falling down around me. I was trying to make that extra dollar go a lot further, and it never ever stretched, because I didn’t have that opportunity to make more money. It is really interesting when we hear from the other side and they talk about early childhood—you know, “These teachers are in a tough way.” Yes they are, but that’s caused because over the nine years of that previous Government, they didn’t get a funding increase at all. In fact, there was a freeze on their core funding for nine years. This Government has put the first lot of money back into the core funding again and the first increase back into that core funding.

Really important that we see early childhood as being really important. We heard over there about the fact that we haven’t quite implemented the 100 percent qualified target. Who got rid of it in the first place? That was the previous Government that got rid of that target. We will get there. We have done so much already. We have got lots more to do, and I am really, really excited that we are well and truly on our way.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Early this morning, the National Party launched our education discussion document—the sixth of eight policy discussion documents that we’re going to be releasing. I’d like to take this opportunity to do a big shout-out to Nikki Kaye. She has put in two long years of incredibly hard work to get to this point. This is what we call a recipe for good government, because we do the hard work in Opposition so that we are ready to govern with strong ideas to move this country forward.

This Government should take note, because they’ve also been following a recipe. It’s a recipe I like to call “lame duck Government”. As it turns out, it’s a recipe for disaster. The preparation time? Nine very long years of rotating through many, many leaders.

💬 Dan Bidois: They did nothing.

They did nothing. They had a whole bunch of infighting. They were just lazy and they didn’t do the grunt work. That’s the problem—no grunt work like what we are doing. It’s become completely apparent to the whole country that these guys came in and they had absolutely no idea what they were doing. They’re trying to backfill with 300 working groups, at the cost of millions and millions of dollars, to generate ideas that they’re not even using. Let’s take the Welfare Expert Advisory Group—42 recommendations; three taken up. The education task force, with the central idea of education hubs—gone. Michael Cullen and the Tax Working Group—thanks, but no thanks.

The ingredients? A very easy-to-source bunch of extremely incompetent Ministers. There’s a smorgasbord of them in front of me. Let’s take Julie Anne Genter, who has difficulties with stationery and writes secret letters. Carmel Sepuloni—in two short years, she’s overseen 22,000 more people on the dole, a doubling of the housing wait-list, a doubling of food grants, and now we see gang numbers are up 26 percent. David Clark is having to bail out district health boards left, right, and centre. He’s got fewer elective surgeries in the last 12 months than the previous 12 months, emergency department waiting times are up, and we’ve had a measles outbreak with vaccines that haven’t been forthcoming.

Jenny Salesa, the “Minister for Vaping”—she’s had legislation from us with regulations around the vaping industry on her desk for two years. So if you’re out there and listening and your kid is addicted to nicotine through vaping, go and have a chat to Jenny Salesa.

Iain Lees-Galloway—welcoming drug dealers and recidivist drink-drivers into this country with open arms while overseeing a ministry where wait times for New Zealanders trying to obtain visas for their loved ones has gone from 33 days to five months to 10 months in cases that are coming to my office. Meanwhile, he’s got a ministry with a lack of staff to process visas, a revolving door of staff who keep leaving because they’re so disaffected, and that Minister is directly responsible.

Phil Twyford can’t build houses, can’t build light rail, and now he’s going to move the port, apparently.

Stuart Nash—1,800 new police, or maybe it’s 1,800 additional new police, dancing on the head of a pin while the police commissioner is directly contradicting him.

Grant Robertson—despite trying his best to be jolly and cheery, he can’t hide from the facts. We’ve got growth rates that have halved, plummeting business confidence, interest rates heading into the negatives, productivity that’s completely flat-lined, job growth that’s gone from 10,000 a month under us to 10,000 a quarter under these guys, and an economy that is shaky at best. But hey, at least his airline puns are first class. Kelvin Davis, Shane Jones, Clare Curran—the list goes on.

The method? Wheeling and dealing, flip-flops, kneecapping, broken promises, backtracks, overpromising, under-delivering, mishandling, and cover-ups. We have an executive chef who sprinkles fairy dust and then flits overseas with the Rt Hon Winston Peters, who’s suing people left, right, and centre. In fact, I would suggest he’s making the perfect “sue-chef”, kneecapping the Government at every opportunity to try and prove to them that he really is the one in charge. Too many chefs. It’s all served up with a side of sad, wilted Greens, who shackled themselves to the left and watched New Zealand First, who only got 24,000 votes more than them, get a $4 billion doggy bag. How embarrassing for them. They were left with a hundred million dollar Green Investment Fund, which in two years they haven’t even spent a single cent of. They’ve got no cameras on fishing boats, Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary is off the table, plastics are piling up, urban beaches are unswimmable, they’re still burning more coal than ever, and greenhouse gas emissions are going to continue to rise through to the mid-2020s.

While this unholy concoction may be served with a smile, it leaves us with a very bad taste in our mouths. New Zealanders deserve better than a lame duck. We have put in the prep in Opposition. We have the recipe for success and we will serve it up come 2020.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand would like to send solidarity to our neighbours in Australian communities who are currently battling unprecedented, catastrophic fires in New South Wales and Queensland. Here in Aotearoa, we want everyone in the world, including our neighbours across the Ditch, to have a safe and thriving country that is protected from the increased risks of these fires that devastate communities. We want to help Australia protect her people and communities, protect her unique biodiversity and her precious wildlife.

I would like to pass on my deep condolences to the family and friends of the three people who have died in these fires, as well as 150 families so far who have had their homes destroyed, who have lost their beloved pets, like their dogs and their horses. I extend deep sadness and love for the precious biodiversity of Australia, and the koalas in particular, because 350 of them already have been wiped out from one colony alone in the Lake Innes Nature Reserve. The joeys, the laughing kookaburra, the wombats, the echidnas—all at risk from these fires that are ravaging their habitats.

Regional communities have felt and experienced the change in bushfire seasons in recent years. The Deputy Mayor of the MidCoast Council in New South Wales, Claire Pontin, said, “We’re in the middle of an unprecedented dry spell, with river levels sitting at the lowest they’ve ever been. This is not normally a dry area—the hotter, drier conditions that are driving the current catastrophic fire conditions have developed only over the last 10 to 15 years. And the science tells us that it’s climate change causing it.” We agree with Deputy Mayor Pontin, who goes on to say, “The future out-of-control fires we feared are already here—this is our ‘new normal’, and the science tells us it’s only going to get worse unless urgent action is taken on climate change.”

Inaction by global leaders across the world on climate change has gotten us to this point where climate change is reshaping our planet and threatening our communities, our precious wildlife, and a world for our mokopuna. For 30 years, our leaders have known what could happen if we do not act. Politicians and corporate leaders have continued on the path of the growth of unfairly distributed wealth at any cost. Scientists, experts, locals, and their expertise have all warned that Australia’s fire season has grown longer and more intense due to climate change.

To the people of Australia who are experiencing incredible stress and trauma this very second, we send our aroha, and we say to everyone around the world: we cannot accept this as the new norm. Together the people have already been demanding and working collectively to create a clean, green, stable climate that stops the acceleration of these horrendous natural events. I am proud that New Zealand has begun to do its part with the zero carbon bill, which will get us down to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, alongside the offshore oil and gas ban, water reform, phasing out plastic bags, and other essential measures that must help.

The answers are here but we as leaders must implement them, and I am so proud that in New Zealand we have made that start. Politicians and corporations can no longer make decisions to keep amassing wealth into the hands of too few at the cost of the many people and the planet. We are pleased that Minister Tracey Martin is sending over 21 firefighters to help tackle the fires, additional to the six that are already there working around the clock to help. I echo Minister Martin’s words that our firefighters head to Australia with the support of all New Zealanders behind them. I add that the people of Australia have our support to take urgent action to address climate change. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Well, it well and truly is the year of non-delivery and broken promises. And how do I know that? It is because today marks the six-month anniversary of the Government’s failure to act on their own pay equity for women legislation. On 14 May, six months ago today, the Equal Pay Amendment Bill was reported back from the Education and Workforce Committee. It has been languishing on the Order Paper ever since and the Government is refusing to debate it and vote on it. Actually, though, it’s longer than six months; they’ve been in Government for over two years and it’s never been a priority. This is a bill that was copied nearly word for word from my previous member’s bill and is supported by all the parties here in the House. Go figure—every single party supports it. But they’ve blocked and voted—if you look back in history—our bill three times in the past, which could have been passed into law by now and have made tangible progress for all the women in New Zealand.

This is a very important issue for millions of women across New Zealand who want progress. If they feel undervalued, there’s a process that they could use to argue for better conditions, but this Government is making them wait. I have a question for the Minister for Women and the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: why is this legislation held up? It’s on the Order Paper; what’s happening to it? The Minister for Women said, “We want to get this right.” when I questioned her in the House a few weeks ago. We do know there are a couple of large pay equity claims sitting in courts right now. Are we waiting for a couple of vocal unions to complete their process, and everyone else—all the other rest of the women in New Zealand—are on perpetual standby? Is that the reason? We’d like to hear and we’d like to know the answer. Women in New Zealand deserve to know the answer.

Pay equity is one of the countless areas where this Government has failed to deliver. Aucklanders, they’re stuck in congestion, paying increased fuel tax and not getting anything in return, because we can’t see what the Government’s transport programme is actually delivering. To make it worse, local projects are on hold because they’re waiting to see what this Government’s plan is. Onehunga wharf, the rejuvenation of Onehunga’s town centre are all stalled because they need to adapt to this Government programme that’s not happening, with light rail specifically. The Government can’t even get that off the ground. We’re supposed to have it halfway to Mount Roskill by now.

The Government’s failure to build the Environmental Protection Authority - approved East-West Link means that a huge number of trucks are driving on residential and suburban streets in my area every single day. And then they’re pushing ahead with the outdated old Māngere Bridge—only a $25 million bridge that’s about to start construction any day. And they’re doing that when they don’t know what these other two projects that I’ve just mentioned—light rail and East-West Link—are doing. Why would you do that? It’s an absolute dog’s breakfast of misalignment and bad planning. Really, I’ll tell you what the plan is: the other side are just making it up as they go along.

Now, compare and contrast this: their track record and what we’re doing in Opposition. This morning, we launched our education discussion document. It’s our sixth document and we’ve got more to come. It’s absolutely packed full of ideas on how we can fix the education system. We’re doing the work. We don’t want to flounder around and we want to get back into Government next year, 2020, because we’ve seen—in fact, all we’ve seen are broken promises and non-delivery from this Government.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very proud to round off this general debate in support of this most positive Government, a positive Government that is focused on tackling the long-term challenges that New Zealand faces. We have a whakataukī in our Māori language. It goes like this: “Mā pango, mā whero, mā kākāriki, ka oti te mahi.” I took a bit of licence to add in the extra colour, but that translates as “With red, with black, and with green the work will be done.” And that’s exactly what this Government signifies.

We’ve heard from the other side through this general debate so much negativity. It’s really disappointing. I know they have got a bad taste in their mouth; we could smell it from over this side. But we know that we’re getting on with this job. We’re getting on with the job of running the country and tackling the long-term challenges. And no more is that evident than in the wonderful work of the Hon Chris Hipkins, the Minister of Education—just yesterday the announcement of our reforms of Tomorrow’s Schools. These are wonderful, long-overdue reforms that have been so welcomed from right across the motu. And that extends right through all levels of education. We’ve seen the most massive investments that we are putting into long-neglected infrastructure in our school system. We funded and are building capacity for over 100,000 more students, which we know that we have to prepare for as a country, so we’re getting on with the mahi.

If I cast my eye over my vast electorate right across Te Wai Pounamu and up here in Wellington, we’re making those investments everywhere. One little beautiful corner comes to mind and that’s the area of Collingwood in Golden Bay, where the Collingwood Area School and the Golden Bay High School are having new classrooms built, and there is such excitement and it’s such a welcome addition to those communities. So we’re making a difference. I want to acknowledge the Minister for that.

We’re actually extending it into Māori education as well. I could go on, but I want to acknowledge the Associate Minister of Education, the Hon Kelvin Davis, as well, for all the work that he’s doing in Māori education. We know that we’ve had the recent announcement—and we’re all excited—about introducing our New Zealand histories as part of our core curriculum. But we know that Minister Davis is doing a lot of work with the kōhanga reo—driving that funding that’s been long neglected for our kōhanga into upskilling all of the kaimahi that work within our kōhanga whānau. But, most importantly, Minister Davis has given respect and recognition to our kōhanga reo right up and across the motu. And we know that because we know that for nine long years the National Government did nothing for kōhanga. We know that there was a monumental Waitangi Tribunal report that was delivered, and what did the National Government do at the time? There was no response, absolutely no response at all from that Government at that time; nine long years of neglect. So we are doing so many things right across the education spectrum, at all levels.

In conclusion, I want to focus on the wonderful mahi that’s happening with Minister Jackson in our employment—Mana in Mahi, fantastic initiative. We’ve just heard the results today and it’s always unfolding, but a massive 417 participants in Mana in Mahi have now moved off the benefit and into full-time mahi; incredible results. And that’s what happens when you have a Government that cares, a Government that’s really focused on targeting those NEETs and those that are really in need of targeted effort and support, and Mana in Mahi is one such programme. But we’re doing wonderful things right across the country, and no more is that evident in the eyes of Māoridom and in the eyes of our tamariki across the motu than through our kapa haka. I want to acknowledge all of the primary schools that took part in the Te Mana Kuratahi, which was competed for recently; a wonderful display of Māori rangatahi, our tamariki from primary schools up and down the motu who took part. I know that it was a Mātaatua clean sweep from my colleague here, Tamati Coffey, but these are the things that we’re doing. We’re making a difference, we’re making changes, and our whānau are all the better for it. Kia ora tātou.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.