Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

I am proud to stand on this side of the House and of the record that we have established during our term in Government. But I would like to acknowledge the context in which we are now operating. We have had our second case of COVID-19 confirmed, and it is our highest duty as a Government now to keep New Zealanders safe. There are some things that should not be politicised, and on this side of the House we know exactly what our priorities are.

As a Government, I’m most proud of the progress that we have been able to make in the two and a bit years since we came to Government. We have made good progress; we can see that. But we also know that there is much to do and, most importantly, that we cannot afford to drift backwards. We are working hard to make sure that New Zealand is the best place in the world to be a child. We are making sure to ensure that New Zealand and New Zealanders live up to their full potential. We’re taking positive action to ensure that everybody has a warm, dry place to call home and that everybody has opportunities to learn, to earn a wage, and to care for their families. We’re also working hard to ensure that New Zealanders have access to affordable healthcare and mental health support where and when they need it. On this side of the House, they are fundamentals that we believe are the duty of a Government, and we do not want to see drifting back from that.

What we have seen over the last 2½ years from the Opposition is a negative barrage of no ideas. We know that they’re out of ideas. What we also saw today is that they’re out of questions. We saw supplementary questions being used to ask the meaning of words. I’d like to refer the members on the Opposition benches to a thing called a dictionary. I know that being in Opposition can sometimes be a time when you examine the meaning of life, but I would have thought that there would have been time for examining the meaning of words through ways other than using supplementary questions to do that.

This is an Opposition that has no new ideas, it has no solutions for New Zealand, it cannot bring itself to take a long-term view on the problems that are facing New Zealand, and instead all we see from them is a succession of what they won’t do. We don’t see positive vision for our future. We don’t see where it is that they’re going to make a difference. What we also see is that there is no change from the programme that they had when they were last in Government—the programme that left our Government with a legacy of issues to tackle, issues that have meant that we have had to have the courage on this side of the House to lift our eyes beyond the three-year political system and tackle the long-term issues that are facing New Zealand and New Zealanders.

We’ve started tackling those issues. We’ve made big investments in mental health so that people can get help at their local GP. We’ve provided more addiction treatment beds and services. We’ve funded new cancer treatment equipment like radiation machines and new cancer drugs. We’ve started to clean up our rivers by supporting farmers to fence waterways and plant trees. We’ve increased school funding so that parents don’t have to pay for school donations or NCEA fees. Like many constituent MPs, I know that in Wigram I am getting so much feedback from parents and families who are just relieved that at the beginning of the year they are not faced with those burdens of the so-called school donation and that they actually have a little bit more money in their pocket and can put that towards their families.

I’m also really proud that we have started supporting businesses to invest in innovation and diversification, that we’ve invested in trade training, and that we’ve banned offshore speculators and stopped the sell-off of State houses. We’ve passed the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill. We’ve deployed over 2,000 new cops across the country to keep our communities safe.

That’s all at a time while also ensuring that our economy is in good shape. Unemployment is down to 4 percent. We’ve got the highest annual wage growth in a decade, and the minimum wage is up to $17.70. This is something of which I am very proud and which I know makes a real difference for many of the people that I represent. They can afford to put food on their table and feed their kids in terms of their hourly rate—something that I believe is the duty of every Government to ensure it is being done.

Our economy is growing faster than most of the other countries that we would compare ourselves to. Over the next two years we are projected to grow faster than Australia, Canada, the US, the UK, the EU, Norway, Japan, and Singapore. But all we hear from the Leader of the Opposition and his merry band is what dire straits New Zealand is in. I think those on the other side of the House should stop being so negative about New Zealand, they should stop talking it down, and they should realise what great shape our country is in.

Interest rates, debts, and unemployment are at an all-time low and our books are balanced. We’ve restarted contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, and we are reducing debt. That is something that all New Zealanders can take some comfort from.

One of the things that I’m also incredibly proud of, as a Christchurch-based MP, is the momentum we’ve managed to get into our city in Christchurch. We are finally seeing the coming to fruition of many of the programmes, but what I am most personally proud of is that we’ve managed to tackle the insurance issues that were holding so many people’s lives up in our cities. Through institutions that we’ve put in place like the Greater Christchurch Claims Resolution Service, like the changes we’ve made at the Earthquake Commission, and like the insurance tribunal that we have set up, we are seeing people able to move on with their lives after nearly a decade of being bound up. We on this side of the House are immensely proud of that, and very pleased that we were able to bring something in. I’m only really sad for those people that it took our Government to come into power, and the previous Government did not put in place the measures that would have allowed people to move on with their lives.

But the other area that I also have a great deal of pride in is the area of housing. We are building more houses as a Government than at any time since the 1970s—any time since the decade that I was born. We are building more houses, and this is something that we should all celebrate. We are not selling off houses; we are not getting rid of houses. We are building them. We have added over 4,000 new public housing places to our stock in the two and a bit years since we came to Government. What was the legacy of the previous Government? Fifteen hundred fewer public houses than when they took office, and a failure to build. If the previous Government had built at the rate that we are aiming for—but we are exceeding—we would have 15,000 more public housing spots. That is more than our public house waiting list. So when the Opposition talk about homelessness, they need to reflect on their culpability in that area. They failed to deliver and New Zealanders are paying the price, but we are setting about putting it right on this side of the House.

Getting New Zealanders into affordable homeownership is something that we are committed to. Now, KiwiBuild isn’t something that has gone as well as we wanted it to. We have been the first people to admit that, accept it, and set about ensuring that we are not giving up on New Zealanders. We have 300-odd houses that have already been built. There are 700-odd more in the pipeline. I will put that nearly 1,000 KiwiBuild houses either currently built or being constructed next to the 100 affordable houses that the previous Government delivered in nine years. I will put that number next to theirs any day of the week.

We will not give up on homeownership as an aspiration for New Zealanders. We take pride in what we are delivering. We know there is more to deliver, and we know that we cannot afford to drift backwards.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, history will judge this Government as one of the least impressive in this country’s history. No amount of warm empathy—no amount of warm empathy—can paper over the cracks that this is a moribund, ramshackle coalition.

Look at them—we’ve got the Green Party, who want to kill extractive industries. They have a vision that sees no agriculture and that our future is a completely decarbonised New Zealand that is underpinned by tourism and baristas. Then, on the other side, you’ve got the Labour Party, who have completely forgotten their roots in terms of representing working-class New Zealanders and who now are captured in fringe causes and identity politics. Then you’ve got, of course, New Zealand First—shonky, conservative, sort of nativist, anti-anything, and back to the 1970s. Somehow, that coalition tries to purport themselves as a Government of the 2020s. Well, they are hopeless, and their record does not bear scrutiny.

The way this Government has approached the economic platform that they were presented, which was the strongest in a generation—the strongest economic platform that any Government had upon arriving into office. GDP growth of 4 percent a year, job growth 10,000 a month—10,000 a month. Here we are, just a bit over two years later, holding up 1.6 percent growth as somehow a bulwark against what this country is having to face at the moment, as coronavirus is a very real and present danger, not only to people’s health but to the health of the economy of New Zealand. They hold up their record of going from 4 percent growth to 1.6 percent growth as some badge of honour. Well, it is hopeless.

The way they have approached economic management in this country in the last couple of years has been hopeless. They remind me of that game at fairgrounds that you see at the Bay of Plenty A and P show, where you’ve got “dunk the teacher”—where they’ve got cash-filled sponges that they’re just throwing at a target. But the poor target is the farmer of New Zealand and the tradie of New Zealand and the small-business person of New Zealand. Absolute indiscriminate spending, and they have got our country to a position where when we really do have a crisis, which is what this is feeling like—when you actually get out of this place and listen to people—they do not have the strength of platform and competence to be able to manage it.

You can actually see it in some of the answers to the questions that we pose on this serious issue. They have reached the scenario where—and that does happen at times—what they have in front of them is beyond their capacity to imagine how to respond. They don’t have an economic platform to do it and they are falling back to platitudes and process, because, actually, this is unravelling in front of them. They don’t actually have a plan to be able to turn it around. You can see it in their increasingly diffident answers to the questions this side of the House are putting on this issue.

I seek to advocate for 23,000 farming families, and let’s imagine and reflect on their perspective on this Government’s tsunami of impact that they have wrought upon rural New Zealand over the last couple of years. Kieran McAnulty immediately looks down at his pad because he knows that if he stands up in his community in Wairarapa, this is what he gets told. He gets told, “First of all you rocked up with a capital gains tax.” Yes, it got put back in its box, but you absolutely had an intent. You were going to come after those farmers because, from your perspective, that was an asset that deserved to be taxed. Then you have your essential freshwater proposals, and the reaction that that gets from our farming community, when you take the capacity of farmers to imagine how to actually farm to the limits that you’re proposing off the table—you know it, because you’ve seen it. They have seen it when they’ve gone out and listened to the farming community on how massively impacted they are by those proposals.

Now, we’ve got a national policy statement of biodiversity—“Oh, it’s just another proposal.” Up to 10 percent of your farm, at least, can be taken off the table—10 percent in every single catchment—with no clarity around what a significant natural area is, and so you have farmers who are looking at, basically, an attack on their property rights.

Then you’ve got your particular response as a Government to climate change. Yes, you highlight the fact that there was the zero carbon bill that got passed, but your immediate focus was to frame up for the agriculture sector of this country that the future from a climate perspective was co-designing a tax system. Not working with the industry and not identifying, firstly, how to measure it or give them tools to be able to mitigate it, but your total framework as a party with respect to rural New Zealand was how to tax it out of existence.

It actually talks to a fundamental view that sits at the core of this Government around the future of agriculture and the dominance that it has historically had in this economy of our country. For at least a couple of decades, the left of centre—particularly expressed by the Labour Party—have held the view that agriculture is a sunset industry. They have held the view that the New Zealand economy’s dependence on agriculture to be able to produce the most efficient food and fibre to the world and to sell it to discerning consumers around the world was yesterday’s model and that the economy needs to diversify beyond it to other industries and other sectors. You overlay that with an absolute focus on destroying an oil and gas sector, and then—in particular with respect to agriculture—a view that their best days are behind them, and that is at the core of the philosophy that this Government brings to the table for agriculture in New Zealand.

There’s no understanding of the competitive advantage that this country has in producing food and fibre to the world. There’s no understanding of what it actually means to partner and collaborate and stand beside that sector and to actually work with it to be able to increase its capacity, to measure its impact, and to be able to build value-added products in the future. There is a sense of condemnation that this Government has allowed to fuel the sentiment that exists, particularly on that side of the House with respect to farming in New Zealand. This is not a sentiment that I am plucking from thin air; this is the sentiment that I get told at every farmer meeting that I’ve had in the last six months—that when you go around and listen to the provincial and rural communities of this country that underpin our collective wealth and strength, with 65 percent of our tradable exports, this is the sentiment they’re expressing. This is a Government that has lost its way in terms of managing our economic direction and that does not have a plan to get us through the next year or two, and particularly the next few months.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: He’s running out of puff. Come on, lift yourself.

Well, I appreciate the other side of the House sees these issues as flippant and sees these issues as not particularly important, but the farmers who are listening to this, the families who expect a Government that actually understands their pressures and understands their needs and who actually want a Government that sees a future for them—what they see back is increasingly cynical and flippant, and a Government that actually doesn’t understand their interests.

There is a degree of seriousness around where we find ourselves with this coronavirus. Actually, Government members, you’re in charge, and you guys are the ones that have to front the plan, and so where is the plan? Where is the plan to be able to respond to what’s happening and unfolding across our communities? Where’s the plan to keep people safe? Where’s the plan to ensure that our economic strength in rural New Zealand is underpinned and supported? It is all platitudes. It’s all fluff.

That’s the problem with this Government—it has always been fluff. You will ultimately be judged by what you do, not how warm you say it, and that is the challenge that this Government is going to find over the next few weeks—that, actually, you have found yourselves right at this time and place in this country in a situation that is beyond your capacity to imagine how to respond. The country needs more than that, and you’re going to be held to account for your failure.

Before I call the next member, could I just remind the member who’s just resumed his seat not to bring the Speaker into the debate. It was quite consistent throughout the speech. I understand this is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m delighted to speak in support of the Prime Minister’s statement and to tautoko the wonderful work that our coalition Government is doing. I must say I am feeling quite forlorn for the member that just resumed his seat—Todd Muller—and I would ask Mr Mark Mitchell to give him a hug or something. Just cheer up, Charlie, cheer up, because this country is moving ahead. Yeah, it was very forlorn and it was very sad. It was like “The sky’s falling in!”, but I can say to Mr Muller there’s good times ahead because we’re in Government and we’re a positive Government.

We’re tackling the long-term challenges that our country faces and we’re getting on with the business, none more so than the immediate business. I want to acknowledge our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern and the work that we’re doing right at this moment—right at this moment. We have a special Cabinet committee that has been formed to deal with the impacts of coronavirus and the risks it will pose to our country, to our economy, and obviously to the health of our population.

So we are working, we are getting on with the job, and our special Cabinet committee is meeting, right as we speak, to deal with all of those challenges, whether it is public health, at the border, or dealing with our economies, our regional economies, our impacted industries. We’ve just had our members up in the Tai Rāwhiti yesterday, and today we are working closely with all of those highly affected areas and industries, and that is what we’re doing as a Government.

We’re getting on with the job because we have stable leadership. We have the stable leadership of the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern. No more has that been demonstrated than in the events which took place coming up to a year ago. The leadership that she showed was absolutely outstanding, world class, and that has steadied our waka so that we can carry on and deal with the challenging currents and tides that may affect us globally, because we know that COVID-19 has a global impact, and it is causing problems worldwide. But we are in a very strong position with our Minister of Finance, the Hon Grant Robertson. He has looked after us—he is a safe pair of hands. We have a strong set of books. Our economy is strong and we are prepared to weather the storm and the impacts that inevitably have been flowing, and we dare hope that it doesn’t exacerbate, but we are prepared—we are prepared—as a country, and our Ministers and our whole team are doing that as we speak.

So I want to mihi to our Prime Minister for a wonderful statement affirming the work that we are doing as a Government. I was the first, I believe, to say that we are like the whakataukī “Mā whero, mā pango, mā kākāriki, ka oti te mahi”—“With red, with black, and with green, the work will be done”—and that is what we’re doing with our coalition Government. We are getting on with the job.

I want to, as the member for Te Tai Tonga, acknowledge the work that we are doing for Māori and with our Ministers. Whether it’s the Hon Kelvin Davis and his wonderful work with Hōkai Rangi, groundbreaking new strategies for the Department of Corrections, or whether it’s the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, we know that there is a housing crisis in this country, but we are taking action on that. As we’ve heard, 4,000 new houses—the biggest building consents that our country has had in decades. To add to that, I want to acknowledge the opening of the very first transitional kaupapa Māori housing up in Ōtāngarei, in Whangārei, which took place yesterday. That’s a great example of papakāinga housing. We’re all in this together, and we’re all finding solutions with the leadership of this Government, working with our Māori land owners to build more housing and to provide more support for our whānau.

These stories go right across the motu. Whether it’s the Provincial Growth Fund or whether it’s our record investment in infrastructure, this Government is charging ahead, no more so than is reflected in my own electorate of Te Tai Tonga. The population of Māori in the South is rising—that’s wonderful news. Māori are increasing. The population down in Southland is charging ahead, and that’s a good sign. When Māori whānau are feeling good, well, the population’s increasing and it’s good for the community, and our whānau are employed. There is record low unemployment, particularly across key regions, our productive regions in the South. There’s more than enough mahi, so our families are well, and I commend this Prime Minister’s statement. Kia ora.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. A real pleasure today to stand and talk about the Prime Minister’s statement. I just have to, before I commence that, acknowledge my colleague Tino Ririkatene and his statement today—did I say that right?

💬 Rino Tirikatene: Rino.

Rino—Rino Tirikatene, sorry. I got it right. Anyway, what he has said about our Prime Minister is absolutely correct—absolutely correct, my friend. I might have got your name wrong, but I knew what you said.

I’d just like to quote, initially, from the Prime Minister’s statement: “Two years ago, this Government of three parties set out on an ambitious programme to tackle the long-term challenges that have been neglected for nine years. We committed to major investments in housing, health, education, conservation, police, and infrastructure. We committed to restoring the environment, creating more jobs, lifting the finances of families, and reducing child poverty.”

The Prime Minister then spoke from her heart about what we’ve done and how far we’ve come, and all of the work that we’ve had to fix and what more we’ve got to do, and what our plan is.

I was incredibly proud of that speech and of our Prime Minister, and of the progress that we’ve made. In fact, when I was listening to the member Todd Muller, I was really surprised that he chose to speak about the farming community—the 32,000 families that he tries to represent. He’s actually the member for Bay of Plenty, the community that I live in, and I wonder why he didn’t stand here and talk to us about the amazing things that are happening for the Bay of Plenty in Tauranga. He wanted to just turn the picture away.

Now, one of the things that is most amazing about our infrastructure spend is that $993 million has been committed into our community—$993 million has been committed into our roading infrastructure. Not talked about; not a ghost road, but committed and it will be spent on our roads—absolutely amazing. Our city is groaning under the infrastructure pressure, and I’m so absolutely proud that our Government is taking care of the infrastructure needs that have been for so long neglected, absolutely neglected, by the National Government—for nine long years, in fact.

I’m really delighted as well that we’re taking mental health seriously. In our community of Tauranga, we are looking at a new, purpose-built mental health service. That is $30 million worth of services that will help and support our people to be lifted up out of mental health and difficulties.

I think it’s also amazing that we have an extra 93 police officers in our community—

💬 Marja Lubeck: How much?

—93 police officers in our community—alongside our serious crime unit. Now, the member Todd Muller did not mention that we have had some significant issues in our community, and I would just like to acknowledge that we as a community are getting on and working towards solving that. We are a community filled with tremendous wealth and tremendous natural beauty but also we have some serious underbelly difficulties and issues in our community, and I’m absolutely delighted with the way that our Government is approaching this.

We’re not saying “Lock down the gang members.”, and we’re not saying “Let’s do a beat-up.”, but we’re saying “Let’s look at the system, let’s lift wages, let’s lift opportunity, and let’s give people the opportunity to change and to make good in their lives.” We’re not saying “Let’s just lock ‘em up and throw away the key.”, because, actually, that doesn’t do anything for those people. All it does is help make noise sound good.

So, finally, in my last few seconds, I’d also just like to say, very carefully and somewhat quietly, that I’m so very proud of our Prime Minister and her leadership and I’m so very proud of our Government for what work we have done. We have more to do. We are getting on with it. We’ve got a plan. We are delivering. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a privilege to rise on behalf of the National Party to oppose the Prime Minister’s statement and to support the Leader of the Opposition’s amendment that “this House has no confidence in the Labour-led Government because, in just two short years, it has plunged New Zealand into deficit and failed to deliver on any of its promises.” I must say, how good was Simon Bridges in his speech in the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement? How good was Simon Bridges?

The reality is that with this Government littered with failures over the last two years, it’s a failed socialist experiment—that’s what this Government’s been. KiwiBuild, the primary growth fund, and fees-free have delivered no housing and have got no new tertiary students in, and they have been wandering around the country giving out money purely for votes. This Government has been a failed socialist experiment.

Being a proud Canterbury MP, I remember a time when the Canterbury rebuild was a top priority for a Government. The last National Government made it one of its top four priorities. We had John Key, the Prime Minister and a Cantabrian, and we had Gerry Brownlee leading it, as the Minister supporting Greater Christchurch Regeneration. We had the Hon Amy Adams and the Hon Nicky Wagner, senior Ministers driving from the front bench to make sure the second-biggest city in New Zealand, that punches well above its weight in GDP, was rebuilt.

What we have now is one Canterbury Minister on the front bench—the Hon Megan Woods—who’s getting rolled. We know that, don’t we, because in the last infrastructure announcement, Auckland got over $4 billion and Canterbury got $159 million. How is that fair? Billions for Auckland and a few million for Canterbury. Cantabrians are being fleeced and forgotten under this Government and are no longer a priority. No longer are we in Canterbury a priority.

What about the press secretary of Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister, who told Chris Lynch that we would need another March 15 mosque shooting before the Prime Minister would come back on his talk show? That’s where this Government is lacking. It’s failing New Zealand.

It’s failing Canterbury when Canterbury needs it most, and how much money has this Government spent out of its $300 million promised for Canterbury? Not one dollar, and this week, they’ve rehashed their announcements for the stadium. That was announced 2½ years ago. What has this Government done in the last 2½ years? Sat on the $300 million and dangled it as a carrot, and we’ve had the stadium stalled—the Metro Sports Facility. You can’t even get a car park for the hospital off the ground. What you have is people having to park miles away from the hospital and take shared transport with wheelchairs and crutches for sick people, because what you’ve promised, you haven’t delivered.

This Government has not delivered in 2½ years. It’s a failed socialist Government, and I’ll tell you what it’s causing in the regions and in my area of Waimakariri. On 9 February, we had one of the first protest rallies Waimakariri has ever seen: 400 people turned out at Owen Stalker Park in Woodend. That might not sound like a lot of money to you guys from the big metropolitan cities, but for a small town where there’s only a few thousand people, 400 is a lot. They were turning out on Waitangi weekend. Why? Because the Government failed to commit to the Woodend bypass. Why has the Woodend bypass been taken off the table? Because under the Government policy statement for transport, this Government has stripped out $5.5 billion of State highway funding and redirected it to public transport initiatives in Auckland that haven’t even eventuated.

So why are people in Christchurch and greater Christchurch and Canterbury suffering? Because you’re redirecting State highway funding to Auckland.

This town has a motorway running through the centre. It has had a 20 percent increase in vehicle movements in the last two years because of the growth in that area. It’s now topping 20,000 car movements a day, going through that State highway that goes straight through a town. Parents take their primary school kids across that motorway every day to school. We wanted it pedestrianised and to have lights, and do you know what the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) said? They came in and said, “Well, that’s good, but you’re going to have to apply to an oversubscribed budget.” That’s NZTA coming in and telling us that the Woodend bypass is now off the table because there’s no money.

We’re even having to beg for safety improvements, where you’ve got a motorway of 20,000 cars and trucks going through the centre of a small rural town, and you’ve got elderly telling me that they don’t even go to their medical appointments any more because they don’t want to cross the road to get the public bus. Local businesses are saying that people are not stopping any more to go to their shops because they don’t want to get back into the traffic.

That is what’s playing out in regional New Zealand. You have failed regional New Zealand, and this is why. You can say what you want in the beltway of Wellington, but it’s your policies under the Prime Minister’s statement that are failing Canterbury, and that’s why people are turning out and protesting that you’re not listening.

Do you know what the real kick in the guts is? That the Woodend residents’ group has joined up the Make SH1 Safer Committee. It’s made up of the primary school principal, the head of the Woodend residents’ association, the head of the Pegasus residents’ association, the community board chair, and the Lions president. They wrote to the Minister of Transport, Phil Twyford. They didn’t say “Look, we want you to guarantee it in one meeting.” They wanted to come up here at their own expense and just tell him what they’re encountering in that town, and your transport Minister refused to meet them. He won’t even meet them. That’s where you are failing. This Government has failed in the last 2½ years.

I just want to finish on what should have been a success for this Government: mental health. You championed mental health. You told New Zealanders that you would make a difference, and that’s the problem with a Labour Government: they tell people in election time “All you need to do is vote us in. We will make a difference.” Well, for $1.9 billion, do you know what? Under the annual reviews we’ve just been through for the DHBs—

💬 Hon Poto Williams: Suicide commission—that’s making a difference. Mana Ake’s making a difference.

Mana Ake—yes, what a great programme for Canterbury. We have 16 regions in New Zealand; you’ve rolled it out to one. At this rate, it’s going to take you 48 years. Piki pilot, for 24-year-olds—you’ve rolled out to Wellington. There’s $1.9 billion for mental health, and do you know what? After the annual reviews we’ve just received at the Health Committee, child and adolescent wait times in the DHBs have gone up 40 percent in the last two years. People in the DHBs are saying they haven’t seen any of the money. It hasn’t flowed down yet. They don’t know where it is. So stand up and say how much of the $1.9 billion you have spent to date, and, under your own inquiry that said we needed to move access from 7 to 20 percent, how much access have you improved? Your own Minister won’t answer that question. How much access has been increased in the last 2½ years?

Mental health was supposed to be a strong point for you, and now you are failing to deliver on mental health. Mental health will be categorised as another KiwiBuild, another fees-free and another primary growth fund failure. I find that difficult, because you raised expectations. You told people in the last election you were going to make mental health a key plank. Yes, you’ve got this figure of $1.9 billion, but in the last two years under your Government, the wait time for child and adolescent family services has increased 40 percent.

Could I just remind the speakers again not to bring the Speaker into the debate. This is a split call, I understand.

Listening to the contributions in the House this afternoon, I’ve been reflecting on the fact that the role of Government is very multifaceted, and as we find ourselves in some trying times and relatively uncertain times as a consequence of COVID-19, I guess it reaffirms why it is so important to ensure that we prepare for stormy times when the times are good. To that extent, I want to start by my contribution this afternoon by acknowledging the role of the Minister of Finance.

The Minister of Finance has ensured during the course of his tenure at the helm of the Treasury benches that we have maintained a strong economy. GDP is currently sitting at 2.4 percent, comparatively, across all other OECD nations and the USA—outstanding. Our economy is growing faster than each of those, and that’s no mean feat. Our unemployment is down to 4 percent and we have debt down to 21 percent. Now, those types of things in and of themselves could be just numbers, but, practically, what does that look like when it comes to the trying times that we now have to face as a nation, as a part of a global world that is having to find its feet in light of COVID-19?

Well, I was with the Hon Phil Twyford and the Hon Meka Whaitiri up in Te Tai Rāwhiti yesterday alongside workers that are being impacted in the forestry region in Te Tai Rāwhiti. We’re at a period where 300 people currently have been laid off work or have had their hours severely disrupted, and there’s uncertainty as to how long that will go on. But the Prime Minister said that we should be known by our deeds, and when she said that, I was thinking about the real-life implications—particularly when we’re in a time of strife—for a region like ours. We have fat in the Budget as a consequence of that careful management to be able to ensure that we can have regional economic responses to regions like ours as we weather the storms in terms of things like COVID-19.

I step back a little bit and then I look at, well, what has our Government done for families, for parents, for kids. Immeasurable work. In Te Tai Rāwhiti alone—a simple thing. It was a catchcry for so many for so long: “Feed the kids.” Well, we’re running a trial throughout our region where every single kid in the schools that are participating in those trials, they’re being fed. When you look at the times—and we’re in a bit of a strife at the moment—also 40 percent of our schools up there are decile 1 schools, and we can take the burden off and feed those kids because this Government has seen it as a priority to invest in our kids and their future. That takes an immeasurable burden off parents, off families. I’ve been to schools in Kawerau and I’ve been to schools in Gisborne, and what those teachers and what those principals are saying is there has been, in just the short period of time since that trial has been running out, a dramatic shift in the way that kids are learning, contributing, and showing up to schools.

I look at it again. Well, this Government, as our Prime Minister said, is a Government of infrastructure. We’re building those regions that have been neglected for so long. For nine years, our region sat in the darkness; for nine years, funding was pulled out. Well, last week, a $79.4 million cash injection went into Ōpōtiki for our harbour rebuild. That was a project that sat and almost got a dust ball. But the commitment by this side—New Zealand First, Labour, the Green Party—to our regions has been to build roads and build communities, and of that major investment in 1,800 jobs, 700 jobs of those are for locals, 200 jobs almost instantly.

This is a Government that is focused on people. This is a Government that is focused on building communities. Look, we’ve made good progress, but what we do know is that there is a lot more work that needs to be done and we’re under no grey veil about that. But we are working hard as a Government to ensure that New Zealand is the best place in the world to live and for a child to grow and breathe, and that’s why on this side of the House we don’t waste our time with silly politics like that lot. We’re just getting on and doing the job.

Madam Speaker, it’s an honour and a privilege to be a member of Parliament, especially a backbencher in a coalition Government that’s doing great stuff in New Zealand. I agree with Kiritapu Allan, the member who just took her seat, that New Zealand is the best place to bring up children, and that comes from the leadership of its leaders.

I want to take a paragraph from the Prime Minister’s statement that I like—and I quote—“In the last 12 months, our country has been tested in ways that would have seemed unimaginable two years ago. We have emerged as saddened but resolute, for ever changed but optimistic. Despite a declining global economy, our economy remains in good shape compared with much of the rest of the world.” That was what I took from the Prime Minister’s statement that I liked.

Within those words are a lot of things that demonstrate our Prime Minister’s leadership. I want to acknowledge that that the global leadership of our Prime Minister in Time magazine this month. There’s the title. There’s our Prime Minister on front and centre and it says, “Know us by our deeds.” It’s all from Belinda Luscombe, who describes the Prime Minister’s “revolutionary management” in times of crisis, stating—and I quote—“Ardern’s real gift is her ability to articulate a form of leadership that embodies in strength and sanity, while also pushing an agenda of compassion and community”.

It is not just the people in America who are saying that about our Prime Minister. I’ve recently returned from the Commonwealth women members of Parliament—

💬 Hon Member: It’s just people in New Zealand who don’t like her.

I’m talking about this because it is action—words followed by action is a demonstration of leadership. The regional publication of the Pacific, the Islands Business magazine, named and chose our Prime Minister as the Pacific Person of the Year. Why is that? Its author, Samisoni Pareti, stated—and I quote—“Ardern was given the 2019 title because of her work at the Pacific Islands Forum to bring consensus to climate change.” I am saying that because it is more than just what I am saying—that I am privileged to be under her leadership.

One of the priorities in the Prime Minister’s statement is this priority: the priority of investing in vital infrastructure across the transport, health, and education systems. The words that come to mind are that we are making good progress. I want to use this to demonstrate where we have said, as a coalition Government, $400 million is being invested in school infrastructure. What does that look like? Well, principal Bec Kaukau of Papakura Intermediate School said to me a couple of weeks ago that upgrading the Papakura Intermediate Mansell building is about innovation in learning spaces as well as a Whānau Fono Space. They’re taking that money to provide a space where principal Kaukau describes her school as a home to learners.

I want to also quickly name some of the schools in Papakura—as the list member based in Papakura, I want to acknowledge that these schools are receiving funding. When we are talking about infrastructure investment in schools, it looks like this: Alfriston College, $400,000; Cosgrove School, $369,000; The Gardens School, $397,000; Hingaia Peninsula School, over $200,000; Kelvin Road School; Kereru Park school; Opaheke School; Papakura Central; Papakura High School; Papakura Intermediate; Park Estate School; Randwick Park School; Red Hill Primary School; Rosehill College; Te Hihi School; Edmund Hillary School; and Papakura Normal Primary School. The word “school” stands for a building, but within those schools are our future—our future that this Government is investing in, and that is because of the leadership of our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern.

I want to, in my last point, congratulate the principal of Papakura High School, John Rohs, for his leadership at Papakura High School, where last year’s NCEA results took a massive jump. Maybe, maybe, maybe it’s because we’re investing in children and families at school by making progress in terms of NCEA, where families are no longer having to pay NCEA fees. It is about making changes to enable access to education. One teacher said to me that the pay rise that the teachers received indicates and demonstrates that this is a coalition Government that values education through their actions. Mālō ‘aupito.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Today, we’re here debating the Prime Minister’s statement, and what I will say about the Prime Minister’s statement lines up nicely with what some of the recent speakers have just said. Yes, it’s a great communication skill that our Prime Minister has. Her speech was nicely presented, but, yet again, the speech had no substance. It was full of words, and I’ve yet to find out what has been delivered by this Government. There were many times through the speech that the word “denial” was mentioned. Well, this Government is in denial that nothing has been delivered. What has this Government done?

We’ve heard all the time, over the last few weeks, about this Government being the party of infrastructure. For two years, this Government didn’t even think about infrastructure, didn’t even discuss infrastructure, and, all of a sudden, it’s 2020 and this Government’s discovered that this is a nice word to use.

Well, I’ll tell you a little bit about infrastructure. In my electorate, I was surprised on Facebook to see, probably about a year ago, when this Government decided it was going to do a road safety package, that our Prime Minister brought two Ministers and the local member of Parliament into Hamilton Airport. They went out on the road at Ōhaupō, put a couple of cones on the road—obviously, for protection—did a Facebook post, and said, “Look how wonderful this is. We’re doing road safety projects on roads like this.” It’s just unfortunate for this Government that they were standing on a road that was Simon Bridges’ project that I’ve been driving on for a year and a half before they stood on it. Now, if there’s any sort of fake news and fake advertising, that was it.

Secondly, on the page of Phil Twyford, all we get is “Look what we’re doing. We’re doing the Awakino Tunnel.” Well, the Awakino Tunnel was in Budget 2016. It’s been through its consent process. It was announced by John Key and Simon Bridges. I’m very pleased with the Awakino Tunnel bypass going ahead, but it certainly isn’t to any credit of this Government. So, again, it’s nothing that this Government has delivered, and, to be quite frank, the fact is that it started under this term of Government—I often stand here and wonder if I’m the only member of Parliament that’s actually had any road started in this term of Government—and it was something that was well set up before this Government came into power.

Also, while we’re on infrastructure, I want to talk about water infrastructure, because we don’t hear much from this Government about water infrastructure and water storage. It’s a well-known fact that in this country of New Zealand, we do not have a water shortage problem; we have a water storage problem, and right now we have country and city alike screaming out for water. I know we had a recent flooding episode down in Southland, but besides that, the country has been screaming out for rain. I think it’s a time when we can—country and city alike—start really thinking about the sort of infrastructure we need to store our water and put our water in a place where we can use it for both groups when it comes to the dry weather. Historically, every time water storage has been mentioned, everyone just goes, “Oh, it’s just for the farmers.” Well, actually, I can tell you that in many city communities right now, there are people that just can’t get enough tanker-loads of water and they’re screaming out for it. We’re all human beings. We all need water. We all need water to run our businesses and our households, and I think it’s time that this Government got more serious about that topic.

I would like to move on to the mental health funding now. You heard my colleague Matt Doocey speaking on mental health—it’s his portfolio—recently, but I want to know, just like Matt Doocey did, where is the money? It’s all very well to talk $1.9 billion, and if we look back at the Budget from last year, that’s probably the only significant thing that most people remember, because most of the rest of it was very unmemorable. But I want to know: where is the money? I talk to people on the ground, and they think that it’s great that there’s this great pot of money that’s sitting somewhere, but it’s still trying to filter its way through to those people that are out in our communities doing fantastic work. It’s a big number, just like the number that’s bandied around about a billion trees. You know, it’s easy to bandy around big numbers, but when it comes to actually delivering mental health on the ground, it’s just not there. We think about Northland at the moment going through one of the most serious droughts they’ve had for a very long time. What do they get? Something like, you know, a small pittance—like $80,000 or some ridiculous amount—to share around among one community.

I want to move now on to climate change. In the Prime Minister’s statement, it says, “When we came into office, there was no plan for climate change.” Well, I was at a Bluegreens conference a number of years ago, where Lord Deben came out from the UK, and I remember, under Nick Smith and Scott Simpson and a number of other people, that we talked very seriously about the Climate Commission. So we have supported that zero carbon bill, but guess where that idea comes from? It’s a good idea; we are pleased to have supported it, but it does say here that there was no plan for climate change, yet there was a plan for climate change.

But I think it’s even more important than that, because some of the targets and some of the numbers that have been set around climate change—and particularly around methane—are very tough, and we have no tools to fix them. We owe it to ourselves as a community to sit down and figure out what we can do with the tools we have. We need to make sure we have money into research around methane. I’m really pleased to see that there’s a seaweed that might make some difference. There are a number of conversations going on around how we can control methane at the moment. But, you know, you can’t put penalties on people when they don’t have tools to solve the problem.

So while this big, $1.9 billion factor around mental health is being fed as if something’s being done when it hasn’t actually hit the ground, at the same time there are farmers worried about sections of their land being taken around significant natural areas (SNAs). Now, those farmers look after those SNAs better than anybody else that might come along and decide that they need to take this piece of land off the farmer. So I think, you know, the worry about that, the worry about water, the worry about methane, and the worry about the pressure that that’s been putting on around capital is causing people a whole lot of stress on top of the weather conditions. Then it’s all very well to talk about the $1.9 billion in mental health, but it’s not being appreciated on the ground because it’s not seen.

I also can’t help but have another chip at the oil and gas and the energy situation, coming from a province like Taranaki, and we read and hear about the new energy research centre in Taranaki. Well, that’s great. We have to do research. We have to have a research centre. But why would you stop one of the most efficient products we have—i.e., gas—to burn more coal while you’re setting up a research centre to discover how the next energy is going to work? Would you not think that you do the research first, you find out what that cleaner, more climate-friendly energy is, and, at that point, then you can start working through and shutting down the things that you don’t need any more? And, by the way, why would you shut it down in an industry that is so hungry to solve these issues?

It’s not a Government that’s going to solve these issues. With all due respect, there’s not any Government that’s going to solve the issues that some of our industries have; it’s those industries, and it’s those industries that have the funding to do it. And, by the way, they don’t want to become obsolete by being a thing of the past, so they will be striving to solve the problems in their industry. So it’s all very lovely to pour a bit of money into research for something out in the future, but let’s not kill the goose that lays the golden egg that can pay for the new research in some of these projects.

The Prime Minister finished her statement by saying there is plenty more to do. There is, and we look forward to taking the baton on 19 September and doing a lot more than what this Government has done. Thank you.

I rise to support the Prime Minister’s statement. Particularly, I’d like to cover issues around rural issues and farming issues—something that I might add that the Leader of the Opposition in the party that pretends to stand for rural New Zealand failed to do in his contribution.

Firstly, in addressing rural New Zealand, I think at the moment we have to start off by acknowledging the issues that are being faced in Southland, the recent flooding in the Waikato and Northland, and the many parts of New Zealand where it has got very dry and into drought, and then, of course, the COVID-19 situation, which is fast evolving and causing some uncertainty, and certainly some of the early issues around the forestry sector and the crayfish and the like. It is a fast-evolving situation, and you can be assured that this Government is monitoring it very carefully and will respond.

But what I do object to is the fact that, those things aside, the fundamentals of rural New Zealand and agriculture are absolutely strong. In fact, we’ve got record exports in excess of $46 billion. It’s just come out in the last couple of days that our terms of trade at the end of last year were the highest ever. This is not a dire situation; this is a very strong situation for agriculture and, by association, rural New Zealand.

Of course, that is overlaid by a Government that is running a low debt. We have very low interest rates and that, of course, is helping our rural sector as well, and, importantly, we have wages growing at twice the rate of inflation. Everyone is participating in this growth. It is not just the few at the top, which we’ve seen in the past.

This Government has been supportive of farming and rural New Zealand. Of course, if we go back a couple of years to the outbreak of the M. bovis situation, we’ve put support of nearly $1 billion, alongside industry, into that response. Recent comments from Minister O’Connor suggest that that response is going as well as could be expected. This is a world-first initiative, and we are doing that on behalf of our farmers and alongside our farmers.

Of course, alongside that, we’ve increased funding for biosecurity and for customs. There was the $230 million to help our farmers transition in the freshwater and environmental packages in the Budget, including one—the Thriving Southland initiative—which is a collection of 23 catchment groups in Southland that are doing great stuff on-farm, and it’s allowing them to do extension work amongst their peers and lift the overall game. That’s the sort of support we’re giving it.

We’re investing in the Overseer programme, which needs a significant upgrade to be the tool that it needs to be to help us on our journey to lift our environmental outcomes, and, of course, we in New Zealand First are very proud of the Farm Debt Mediation Act that has come into play, or will be in play on 1 July. This has been a longstanding New Zealand First policy. We know that the banks are clamping down. There is $63 billion worth of debt in the agricultural sector, and now farmers are assured of a mediation process and that the imbalance of power that is in those relationships has been balanced, and we’re very proud of that.

But I’d like to come to the contribution of Todd Muller, which was a particularly dire and grim outline of what’s happening in rural New Zealand. It was incredibly negative. We know he’s got some leadership aspirations, but it’s not on that performance, and, in fact, you’d have to suggest that he’s sandbagging a little bit now to strike after the election, because there is no love lost in rural New Zealand for Simon Bridges. I can tell you that as someone that’s on the ground regularly. John Key is not coming back and there is no replacement in sight.

We do have challenges that we do have to address, and the National Party are in denial about that. It was them that signed the Paris Agreement. Lord Deben may have come over to the Bluegreens conference, but you went, Barbara Kuriger, to that conference. You sent Paula Bennett over there and you signed that accord. We do need to respond and you’ve done almost everything you can to stonewall any initiative that has been put up.

It’s the same with our environmental performance. We heard Minister Parker outline some of the actual statistics that are coming through on our waterways. We have had over-allocation through land-use change in some of our catchments. We do have to do something about that, and we heard nothing from Todd Muller about what they’re actually going to do. There was a lot of talk about what we’re doing and how it was adversely affecting, but it’s not something we have a choice in. If we want to have a sustainable future where we want to hit those high-end markets, we have to have a story to tell—a story that is provable.

In things like animal welfare, for example, it is just not acceptable any more to have cows standing up to their knees in mud. It will be on social media and around the world in minutes these days. That’s the reality of what we’re dealing with, and I am proud that we are part of a Government—and we are behind Minister O’Connor—that is tackling these big issues and trying to put us on a more sustainable footing.

Of course, the other thing we didn’t hear from Todd Muller or Barbara Kuriger or any of the other rural representatives over there was any sort of vision whatsoever as to what New Zealand agriculture could reach: what are those highs, where is that value strategy? Once again, Minister O’Connor, through the Primary Sector Council, is driving that work, and that’s something that we will look forward to progressing with New Zealand First as well.

The other thing is, talk about rural New Zealand and you cannot go past the Provincial Growth Fund, and we are absolutely proud of that. I am actually so surprised that the National Party have taken the line that it’s the Shane Jones slush fund. They’ve taken a totally political line there, because I can tell you what is actually happening out in the provinces. They love this fund. This is a $3 billion fund—the biggest R & D fund per capita of its size in the world.

Let’s look at the comparison with when the National Party was last in power. That fund was $11 million a year for regional development. Ironically, they were investing more in developing the Saudi sheep industry than they were in their own regions. So I look forward to the National Party going out into the regions on the campaign trail, talking to Mayor Cleine in Buller about the goldmine in Reefton that’s being funded or the Punakaiki tourism resort, Mayor Smith in Westland with his garnet mine and his cycle trail, or Mayor Gibson in Greymouth. I was there yesterday and I can tell you we went to the Dispatch & Garlick engineering site, and it filled your heart with joy to see an old-school engineering firm building a dredge for the harbour there at Greymouth, and also for use up and down the Coast.

These were New Zealanders in a heavy engineering environment building a New Zealand - made dredge and it was wonderful to see, and they were absolutely over the moon to have had that funding that enabled that to be done in their town, for their town. The Gore District has their Hokonui Huanui project and the Moonshine Museum that will get off the ground now, and, of course, no one can talk about heavy engineering without talking about the revival of the Hillside railway workshops. So we will be building our carriages and our wagons in Dunedin now, and not importing asbestos-filled ones from China.

Then there’s the Clutha and their cycle trail. Try telling Mayor Cadogan that that $8 million that came through between the Provincial Growth Fund and the Tourism Infrastructure Fund, which will link all the Otago trails back through from Dunedin to Queenstown and around the local towns, is not going to be something that you’re going to be investing in. Tell Mayor Shadbolt in Invercargill that there’ll be no money for the inner-city rebuild. Tell Mayor Tong in Southland that the community investment in the airport and the connectivity, and the Southland Youth Futures, with 200 kids getting work experience through that programme, are not going to be happening. Tell them that none of those things are going to be happening, and I know what they will tell you.

So New Zealand First looks forward to standing on our record in rural New Zealand with our vision for farming that we will be taking into the election, because we have got runs on the board here. We are not peddling dire untruths, essentially, about the state of rural New Zealand. It is in good shape, notwithstanding the challenges coming at it from abroad. So we will stand on our record and we look forward to doing so. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Before I call Mr Simon O’Connor, can I encourage members to use the personal pronoun “you” in the correct context, without bringing the Speaker into the debate. The last two speeches did that, and I’m sure Mr O’Connor’s going to show us how we can deliver a speech without doing that.

Thank you very much, and I will, then, say, Mr Speaker, that if I do use the term “you”, I’m turning myself a little rural—“ewe”.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: And it baas.

And it baas—that’s exactly right. I firmly oppose the PM’s statement and I want to affirm the suggestion of the Leader of the Opposition, the Hon Simon Bridges, that this House has no confidence in the Labour-led Government because in just two short years it’s plunged New Zealand into deficit and failed to deliver on any of its promises.

But I have to say that in opposing the Prime Minister’s statement, part of me is actually not worried—not about the Opposition per se, but about the Prime Minister’s statement. If we have learnt anything in 2 to 2½ years, it’s that what the Prime Minister says leads to nothing. Arguably, if you want to be attempting the generous and somewhat paradoxical, all that it delivers is non-delivery. The Prime Minister’s statements are empty. They are empty statements. They are empty promises. They are a world of rhetoric, as you were. They’re just words that go nowhere.

In fact, arguably, things go backwards, and speaking of going backwards, I want to address the area of social housing. It’s one of my portfolios, one of my areas, and it’s something that the Prime Minister doesn’t talk about a lot. But she said in the PM’s statement—her statement, of course—that she was proud. She said, “we are also proudly a Government of housing. And I say that firmly and proudly.” Again, a perfect example of the Prime Minister ratcheting up the rhetoric, but she didn’t go on to talk about housing and what the Labour Government had done, because, I would suggest, of course, that there is nothing they would want to talk about. Instead, she rambled on about what the previous Government had done and her perception of what had happened years and years ago. It was a glaring absence not picked up, I note, in the media, so perhaps they might pick up something from this speech today and begin reporting on it.

The Prime Minister said she’s proud of housing. I’d like to put to her—rhetorically, of course; it’s always good to meet rhetoric with rhetoric—that if she’s proud of housing, is she proud that under her watch, almost 15,000 Kiwi families are waiting for a State house? I want to repeat that: 15,000. That’s almost triple—almost triple—what it was when National left office. I myself have not stepped back from saying that 5,000 and a bit under National was not good enough. We were working hard to fix that. It was still too high—you never want it that high. But it’s been remarkable that a Government—a now Government that used to wax lyrical of a housing crisis at 5,000—are now silent—

💬 Marja Lubeck: Who was selling those State houses?

Oh, we’ll come to that, actually. We’ll come to that, because this Government’s meant to be factual. So we’ll silence them in a moment. But they were very, very loud. They were very, very loud about 5,000 families, but they’re remarkably silent now about 15,000 Kiwi families waiting for a State house. But I just repeat that the Prime Minister is proud of what they’re doing in housing.

Even in a year, there’s almost a 40 percent increase in that list. So we have seen it consistently rise, time and time again. I predicted last year—this time last year—that it would go higher, and the latest stats out a few days ago have just shown that. It is an absolute tragedy for those families, and National is determined when it returns to the benches to fix it.

The spend on emergency housing grants has gone from $9 million before National left office—so we were spending $9 million. You can make the argument, or someone can make the argument, that we needed to spend more. That’s fine. It’s now at $48 million.

So not only do we have 15,000 families waiting for houses, not only do we have trump-it-up talk about houses built—and, strangely enough, many have actually been purchased and leased; they don’t, again, tell us about that—but $48 million now is being spent on emergency housing grants. This is for people to be in tents. This is for people to be in motels and other accommodation. They said—and, again, it illustrates my earlier point that the Prime Minister talks but doesn’t deliver other than words—that in their first year, they were going to solve it. They were going to solve it. They said there would be no one sleeping in cars or otherwise in the first winter under that Government. Well, we’ve been through at least three now and we’re still having—still having—these problems.

As I say, it’s getting worse. It’s getting worse, and the Government is directly to blame. It has had an obsessive focus on KiwiBuild, which, objectively, on all levels, is an absolute failure. It is such a failure that the empty KiwiBuild homes can’t even be given to Housing New Zealand. They’re that bad. They won’t work—the Government, that is—properly with community housing providers.

This is a left-wing—I would suggest—Marxist-inspired Government, which means it’s only the Government that does the work. Why engage with the wider community? Community housing providers had their up-front funding cut. When I challenged the Minister about that, he said, “Oh, no, no, no. There are at least 12 community housing providers that have talked to me about this.” But in written questions it turned out that 11 of them had been declined and the twelfth was only lucky that they got their application in before the axe fell.

We have, of course, had a Government that’s introducing through its housing bills more and more regulations on landlords. I’ve said quite happily in the House before that it’s not a problem that we want to increase insulation, ventilation, and so forth. But when you dump it all at once, or when a person, Mr Speaker, dumps it all at once—as this Government’s done—along with the threat of a capital gains tax, getting rid of ring-fenced losses, trying to remove 90-day notices, and the like, there’s only one logical conclusion.

You don’t have to be a genius—you certainly can’t be a lefty—to understand that this is going to put rents up, and we’ve had evidence day after day. In fact, a survey came out recently of more and more landlords wanting to exit the market. Now, some might say, “Great, those houses can be sold.” Well, I’ve got news for this Government: they’re not being sold. The landlords just sit with them. That is not helping. And what ends up happening? Those tenants end up on the State waiting list.

Even worse, we’ve had reports of Housing New Zealand buying private homes and turfing out private tenants. How’s that for irony? Oh, and today—I shouldn’t forget—we had an interesting omission by the Minister of Housing when she was put under pressure by Judith Collins around progressive homeownership. We’re still waiting for it—again, another illustration of talk that leads nowhere—but there was a suggestion that community housing providers will not be part of this because the Government knows best, and nobody else. It’s an absolute shocker.

As I say, we have a waiting list going through the roof, but what we also have, unfortunately, is some in Housing New Zealand exhibiting terrible antisocial behaviours and a Government that is not willing to make the hard decisions. In fact, instructions have been given that there are to be no evictions and, effectively, no consequences.

Now, I want to be really clear: most tenants within Housing New Zealand are fantastic and they do a great job, but there are those who cause immense harm and trouble. We have had almost 14,000 antisocial incidents and reports since this Government came to power—almost 1,000 a month. These are not minor; these are incredibly serious. These are tenants who are harassing their neighbours, abusing their neighbours; barking dogs, rubbish, defecation. There was even a report, and I can’t use the person’s name, but their three-year-old daughter has been assaulted three times. What does Housing New Zealand do because of the instructions of this Government? Sweet F you-know-what—nothing. Absolutely nothing.

There’s meant to be supportive intensive care—God forbid or knows what that is. Well, it doesn’t appear to be working. I for one stand on this side and say we try to work with those people and you try to change behaviours, but at the end of the day, when the carrots have been given, a stick is sometimes needed. I say that this Government needs to see that evictions are needed at times.

The final thing, of course, is they all go “Oh, no, no, no.” Well, I’ve got a bit of a suggestion for all the Labourites who are going soft: give us their addresses—give us their addresses. We’ll buy houses next to those MPs and we’ll send those troublesome tenants there, and then they can wax lyrical and do all their virtue signalling with those State house tenants.

By the way, we can add all the meth addicts into that as well. We all know the meth standards have changed, but did you know that in the last three months, the number of State housing tenants whose homes are reporting not at the old standard and not even at the new standard but at double the new standard of meth is increasing? More and more State houses are being meth-contaminated. It’s not reported to police. It’s not reported to police.

💬 Marja Lubeck: Who sold them? Who sold them? You haven’t answered the question.

Oh, sorry, who sold them? We actually sold them to the likes of the Tāmaki Redevelopment Co. and other community housing providers. The problem is that Labour talks about the selling; they don’t say about who bought them, which, again, was the likes of the Tāmaki Redevelopment Co., for social houses. The thing is—and she’s gone quiet now—they’re Marxist. They’re lefty Marxists, and if they don’t own it, they don’t want anybody else to. We will stop that.

But, as I was saying, meth contamination is not reported to police. You know what happens if someone has contaminated their home, destroyed it, in a State house? They’re given another one. They’re given another one, ahead of 15,000 other Kiwi families—shameful.

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

The Prime Minister’s statement—I remember, some days ago now, when the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, stood up and outlined just what this Government has achieved. But more importantly, we understand that there is a long-term impact of failing to act, and what that previous speaker has outlined has just simply been a listing of all the failures of the previous Government. What I intend to do is just talk about one other manifest failure, which is now appearing in our statistics today. Of course, during this, we’ll talk about the problems with not doing the maintenance, the problems with not paying the bills, because that’s, essentially, where we arrive at today. We’re doing wages catch-up, we’re doing school maintenance—these are all the things that were ignored. Everyone here who either rents or owns a house knows that if you don’t do the maintenance and if you don’t pay the bills, someone eventually has to. What we’re doing is paying the bills. We’re doing the maintenance and, at the same time, reducing unemployment and prison numbers, and, of course, the national debt has come down.

But what I’d like to focus on is something that the members opposite are very keen on bringing up: gang numbers. The seeds of the situation we arrive at today were sown in about 2010, when the Rebels motorcycle gang arrived in New Zealand. It was recognised at the time, because the then Minister of Police, Judith Collins, issued a press statement saying, “Aussie crime gangs are not welcome into New Zealand. We’re going to crush them. We’re going to bring them down. We’ll make sure that we do away with them.” Well, the very next year, police numbers were dropped by 150. Now, if you want an example of talk but not action, you’ll never get a better example.

What actually happened with that Rebels gang is they not only arrived here but they thrived, either through generic growth—and they patched over the Tribesmen. What they did do is they changed the whole of the culture of gangs in New Zealand. We’d had gangs in New Zealand. They’ve come belatedly. We hadn’t had the mass immigration and ghettoisation that they’d had in most big cities in the world, especially in Australia. It was only when we got mass urbanisation in the 1960s and 1970s that we really ended up with a gang problem in New Zealand. But the big difference we had in New Zealand from Australia, and the reason our gangs never were really able to establish, was we didn’t really have the corruption problems that they had there.

I see that members opposite are very keen on going to Australia now to look for solutions for our problem here. Well, they are looking in very much the wrong place, because what’s actually happened in Australia because of—I see someone here spouting raptor as being talked as a—

💬 Marja Lubeck: Strike Force Raptor.

Strike Force Raptor is going to be the solution to all our ills in New Zealand! Well, that is something that’s taken out of New South Wales, where, essentially, after the Wood royal commission into corruption, they stopped policing their gangs. They stopped policing their organised crime because they didn’t want the police officers to actually be put in situations where they may end up being corrupted again. So their gangs got way out of control. That was why they got big enough and started looking to expand and why we ended up with the Rebels in New Zealand, and why in Australia any strategy which has been imposed or brought in over there is quite irrelevant in New Zealand. So be very wary of anyone who comes back waving a piece of paper—a bit like Neville Chamberlain—with “Peace in our time. This is what we’re going to do to fix this situation.” It simply will not occur.

In the time left to me, what I would say is that we now have a situation which is a clear result, because as a result of the Rebels arriving, the local gangs embarked on a recruiting exercise in—about 2013 or 2014, which has now continued to today. So, once again, we have an absolute problem in New Zealand whose roots were sown around about 2010-11, and any opportunity to cut it off by the fact that we cut police numbers at the time was—

Order! The member’s time has expired. Marja Lubeck—five minutes.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Listening to the speeches from the Opposition, a couple of words come to mind, and my colleague Mark Patterson mentioned it before. It was “grim” and “negative”, and I would like to add to that “out of touch”. It’s really the only way I can describe the Opposition.

To start off with a couple of examples—I’ll touch on the speeches as well—last week, there was a headline in the newspapers, and it read “The New Zealand unemployment rate is the lowest in over a decade”. Of course, that is because we have seen the unemployment as well as underutilisation rates fall to levels not seen since the Helen Clark Government. But at the same time, since we have had this record low unemployment, Mr Bridges is in the news and he’s talking to us about “This Government has given up on getting people into work.” So we have record low unemployment, and he is just making a contrary statement. We have the highest wage growth in over a decade. We have record infrastructure investment, record health and education, and reduced child poverty. So at a time when this Government is busy tackling those long-term challenges and playing catch up in all of those areas that have been severely neglected for many years by consecutive National Governments, all we’re hearing from the National Party is that it’s all so very bad.

At the same time, we don’t hear any concrete action from them. There are no policies that we’ve been offered. None of their speeches talk about anything that you could actually put criticism to, because they haven’t got anything to offer. There’s no evidence to any of their claims. They’re hoping, of course, that nobody will notice it—that through all of that hot air and all of that noise coming from the other side, there’s nothing of substance.

One brave soul—I think it was Matt Doocey—at some stage said, “How good is Simon Bridges?”, but everybody else is very quiet about it. The only rhetoric we hear is the same line continuously as when they’re saying, “Oh, it’s so easy to make promises, but what about the delivery?”, and Gerry Brownlee said, “Let’s talk about it and not actually do it.” Well, forgive me for thinking they were talking about themselves. Ten bridges never delivered, so many roading promises, no funding put to it, and if I can actually mention a specific one, that’s the Penlink project up north.

Now, our Government is actually the very first Government to put funding to Penlink. This is as part of the largest infrastructure investment that we are seeing in a generation in New Zealand. It’s fully funded, and $411 million is set aside to put this project out there. Lots of criticism, but I have no doubt that Mr Mark Mitchell will actually be there to help us cut the ribbon, because, as we’ve heard before—and it’s the same with the Provincial Growth Fund—National Party MPs are falling over themselves to be there, standing next to the Minister, putting the first shovel in, and cutting those ribbons.

This is cynical politics, and I’ll give a good example of it. Yesterday, in my local paper, there was a viewpoint column by Mr Mitchell and it said, “Penlink assured under National”. This is hilarious, isn’t it? Penlink has been promised three elections in a row by the National Government saying, “We will deliver Penlink”—never put any funding to it. They wait till the moment that this Government, as part of the largest infrastructure investment in a generation, puts $411 million on the budget line, and then Mark Mitchell comes out in his column and he actually says, “I have always been very careful not to set false hopes or expectations until I was able and sure to say I could deliver.” What is that? We put the money out and he’s going to deliver?

What the National Government actually did is that they took Penlink off the National Road Register, they did nothing for nine years, and then, in 2017, at a candidate meeting I was at, Mark Mitchell stood up and said “We will deliver Penlink.”, completely forgetting that the National Government in 2006 had said, “We will build Penlink within 10 years of being in Government.” Of course, we know that never actually happened.

So with that negative narrative, the Opposition MPs don’t want this country to hear about all of the good stuff that we are doing, and there’s plenty much of it. So, really, come the end of this year, the voters will have a choice between positive, factual, and transparent in our brilliant Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, or they can choose relentlessly negative in Simon Bridges. We are, obviously, playing catch up on a lot of these areas. It’s going to take a lot more than just one term to fix all of those years of neglect, but we’ve made good progress already, and, as our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, always says, there is plenty more mahi to do. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I call Ian McKelvie—oh, just a minute, is this a split call?

💬 Ian McKelvie: It is.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Sorry, split call—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I did listen to your warning about using the word “you” before, and I can assure you that whenever I use the word “you”, it will be spelled e-w-e.

Now, I want to just make the point that I did listen to Mark Patterson speaking earlier on, and he did for a while speak quite plausibly about Southland agriculture, in the only green part of New Zealand at the moment. However, he must be very worried about his place in next year’s Parliamentary Cricket Team because he spent the rest of the speech talking about Todd Muller, and you can only imagine from that he must be concerned about it. But one other thing I did pick up in the course of that—of course, he will be missed in the Parliamentary Cricket Team because he’s not bad.

One other thing I did pick up on the course of that speech was he referred to the Provincial Growth Fund as an R & D fund, and I thought to myself, “Well, Mr Bishop will be pretty impressed with that.” I wonder what R & D has got to do with the Provincial Growth Fund, because it doesn’t take a lot of R & D to build a roundabout.

I want to speak briefly about a few things that are going on in New Zealand at the moment, and it’s because it just shows how quickly our environment changes in this country. Again, agriculture has been in a pretty good space in the last year or two and that has certainly come to an end, and it’s come to an end because of some events beyond our control, some that are partly in our control—and I’ve always been one that’s thought drought is not necessarily out of our control. I think it’s something farmers live with and they should be able to manage their way through most of that.

But I want to speak about, in particular, the fishing industry and the rock lobster industry in particular, who have been massively affected by the coronavirus outbreak in China. Over 90 percent of their export goes to China, and that virtually came to a halt overnight on 25 January. There are about 250 crayfishing boats in New Zealand. That’s a significant number of small family businesses that are pretty much tied up to the wharf, and not only are they tied up to the wharf, but so are those people that work on them and those people that service that industry. So it has made a massive difference to what’s going on in the New Zealand rock lobster industry at the moment.

In recent days, the Minister of Fisheries, Stuart Nash, announced the result of some consultation he undertook with respect to extending the quota into next year’s catch. He came back with the decision to allow them to carry 10 percent of it over. That, unfortunately, is not enough to help the industry or give the industry any sort of certainty going forward. So that’s one of the big challenges that’s come out of the coronavirus very quickly and very early in the piece, and it has hit that industry very quickly. It has had a massive effect on all of our other primary sector industries, of course.

I now want to just take a brief time to talk about the racing industry and, interestingly, at Ōtaki today there was a race meeting. I think there are six or seven races at Ōtaki. That’s about as small a number as you ever get, and I think there are about seven horses in each race, on average. That shows the state of the racing industry in New Zealand at the moment. We had a Minister who said he was going to fix that industry. He brought a bill to the House and that went some way towards fixing it. The second bill he brought to the House has got almost unanimous opposition from the racing industry and the sector, and it’s got unanimous opposition, not because some of the bill isn’t necessary and won’t do some good, but because a lot of what’s contained in that bill isn’t going to achieve the outcomes that John Messara, in his report to the Minister last year, pointed out needed to be done.

Those submissions are under way at the moment, and it’s going to be very interesting to see how that legislation evolves, because it is critical to that industry. It’s an industry that’s not huge in New Zealand—about $1.6 billion—but none the less is very important to New Zealand. Also, interestingly, it has an interesting opportunity to play quite a role in our environmental changes that are needed in rural New Zealand, in agriculture in New Zealand, to give us some more sustainability, because horses, of course, are a very different kind of business. We are very good at it in New Zealand and we should be able to carry on with it.

So there are, I think, some interesting things going on in our economy at the moment caused by the events that to some extent are beyond our control, but some of them we have a great deal of control of. The real issue we’ve got is how to keep stimulating our small industries and our small family businesses as we go through these challenging times, because that’s what keeps rural provincial New Zealand going—not massive grants from Governments, but assistance to create the right environment for those industries. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I call Dr Parmjeet Parmar—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. On this side, we have no confidence in the Prime Minister’s statement, and we have a very good reason for that. The reason is that the Prime Minister is very good at reading out statements—yes, exactly; reading out statements—but when it comes to delivering, she is a failure. Actually, she is the biggest failure. She made big promises before the last election, before the general election in 2017. Did she deliver anything? No. Then, last year, she said that that was going to be the year of delivery, and what did she deliver? She delivered more people on benefits. She delivered more people on the waiting list to get into a Housing New Zealand house. She delivered higher rents. She delivered the Auckland regional fuel tax. She delivered low business confidence. She delivered more gang members. She delivered more violent crime.

I am based in Mt Roskill. Mt Roskill is a very small electorate. It’s one of the smallest electorates in the whole country—so you can imagine the area of Mt Roskill. In Mt Roskill, we have had, since that Labour Government took office, four gun-shooting incidents, and, just very recently, over a very short span of time—just three days—we had two gun-shooting incidents.

Every kind of crime is serious, but with this one, and the first gun-shooting that happened recently, three people were injured; they were hospitalised. Now the situation in Mt Roskill is such that people don’t want to talk about those gun-shooting incidents. Why? It’s because they fear that those incidents were gang-related. So nobody wants to talk, because they fear that if they talk about it something might happen to them or their families. They are scared; they’re feeling really anxious.

There is no excuse for this kind of violent crime going up. On this side of the House we understand the importance of safer communities and safer families, and we will deliver that.

In my portfolio area, in research, science, and innovation, again, it’s painting a very depressing image—a very depressing international image—of New Zealand’s ability to support innovation. In a very recent international innovation index ranking—the Bloomberg Innovation Index ranking—New Zealand dropped by five places. New Zealand is the biggest loser in this innovation index ranking. It sounds harsh, but this is the reality. We dropped by five places. Out of 60 countries that are published by the Bloomberg Innovation Index ranking, New Zealand is the only country that has dropped by five places. This is the biggest drop. Now New Zealand has the lowest ranking since the Bloomberg Innovation Index ranking started. When Labour came in, we were at 18—yes, when we left office we were at 18, and now we are at 29. That’s what they have delivered.

These international rankings matter—yes, they matter—because these international rankings are important for us to attract international investment. We are a small country; we need people from other countries investing in research and development here. We need that investment to support our entrepreneurs here in New Zealand. We also want to see that more people are able to collaborate with other researchers and entrepreneurs overseas, and these rankings matter because when you go out to collaborate with other scientists or innovators, they want to collaborate with somebody who is at that equal level. But New Zealand doesn’t look like it’s doing well, because if you see the countries that are behind New Zealand now in this recent innovation index ranking—no, it’s not looking good. These innovation index rankings clearly show the health of our economy and the ability of our economy to support innovation, and it’s not looking good.

I want to give a message to Shane Jones. Shane Jones is repeatedly making comments that are directed to stigmatise the Indian community. I want to say to Shane Jones: stop targeting the Indian community. Our Kiwi Indian community is feeling unwanted; they are feeling isolated from the rest of the country. I say to Shane Jones: stop creating racism for your political gain—yes, stop creating racism for your political gain. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. Otirā, ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. It is indeed an honour to make a contribution on the Prime Minister’s statement by the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern. Can I say as the proud member of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti that for two years since this coalition Government has been in place, it has delivered real gains across the electorate—not just across the electorate but, actually, across the nation. It has been made several times by colleagues in this House: the enormous issues that this side of the House have rolled their sleeves up and got on with tackling—the real, real big issues. We haven’t shied away from them.

The big issues like housing—the housing crisis. What have we done in our two years since we’ve been in office? Well, we’re building 4,000 new homes, more than that side of the House had ever done in the entire nine years that they were in Government.

Last year, we heard about a $1.2 billion investment into well-needed mental health services throughout the motu, something that every community, big and small, have been demanding that we address, and this Government is doing that.

We’ve got education. We have more teachers in our schools. We’ve got the school donation that removes the hardship and the barriers for many families and their children doing those extracurricular activities at schools. We’ve also invested in infrastructure to address the deferred maintenance that many of our schools around the country have concerns about. I’ve met many principals throughout my electorate who have talked about that extra $50,000. It now means that they can do things around their school property that they weren’t able to do in the past. So I’m really proud of that.

Of course, I joined the Prime Minister recently in a visit to Flaxmere Primary School where we launched the school lunches. Can I say for the House—and what the principal said, in front of the 400 children there, is the enormous difference that that has made to those children’s learning while they’re at school. The principal talked about the reduced, I guess, challenges that children have in the playground after lunch because they’ve had a healthy lunch. I want to acknowledge the jobs that were created by this initiative in a place like Flaxmere. The healthy component of those school lunches is making a real difference to learners’ abilities in that place of Flaxmere.

But it’s the economy that I want to celebrate. In our first year of this coalition Government, we talked about being the wellbeing Government. We continue to deliver on that because a lot more needs to be done. We recently, through the Minister of Finance, the Hon Grant Robertson, made a $12 billion investment into infrastructure. Yes, we are the infrastructure party, along with the wellbeing party. That investment is going to stimulate economies right throughout the country. So I want to acknowledge Mr Robertson’s commitment to our nation in terms of that investment that gives surety to large and small firms that this Government is putting their money where their mouth is.

Unemployment is down. I want to acknowledge the great work that Minister Willie Jackson is doing, particularly with our rangatahi around the motu. Debt is down, wages are up, and, of course, our exports grow. But we’re not deluded that more doesn’t need to be done. That’s why we need a return of a Labour-led Government.

I want to now turn to the gains for Māori, and there are so many; I’ve only got a few minutes to mention them but it’s really important that I share that the Prime Minister’s statement does acknowledge specifically the gains for Māori. I want to talk about the New Zealand history in schools by 2022. I want to talk about the real issue that when we have Treaty settlements in this House, where we come together as a House, that the telling of our history is a reclamation of who we are as New Zealanders going forward. That is a big policy announcement for all people but particularly for Māori people, whose stories are now going to be told in our schools.

I want to also mention that we are investing $32 million into Kōhanga Reo, a fantastic nest of language learners but more so for those people like Dame Iritana Tāwhiwhirangi and others who started that movement, and it is resonating right throughout the nation.

I want to talk about the 1,200 rangatahi Māori in He Poutama Rangatahi. I want to talk about the 11 new Māori district judges, as we identify that in our justice system we do need to diversify, and we are doing it on this side of the House. I want to talk about the $50 million targeted funding in last year’s Budget of 2019/20. There have been so many gains for Māori: $100 million towards Māori whenua development, $80 million more on papakāinga investment up and down the motu. The list goes on and on. But I want to use my time to also acknowledge that we are not deluded, because for Māori gains there is more to do, and we are the party that will do it.

I want to now turn to my beloved electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, and I want to talk about two particular issues that the Prime Minister’s statement alludes to addressing, and that is the COVID-19 outbreak in the East Coast. I want to acknowledge the local leadership shown by the Tai Rāwhiti leaders, led by the mayor, Rehette Stoltz. We had members from the Eastland Wood Council, we had members from Trust Tairāwhiti, we had the people from Port Gisborne, we also had the forestry contractors, and right down to the whānau and right down to those working in the Whānau Ora space, working alongside those whānaus.

Can I acknowledge the leadership, the proactive response that local leaders have done. But I also want to acknowledge the Prime Minister’s response in dispatching our colleague the Minister of Economic Development, the Hon Phil Twyford, and myself, with Kiritapu Allan, up there to spend a whole day meeting with those leaders and looking at solutions that keep our people local, that do address the real concerns around some of our business owners in Gisborne, but also making sure that we as a Government are going to work alongside those leaders and those organisations to address a real threat to our economy that no one knows when it’s going to end. So I want to acknowledge that. I know the Prime Minister and other colleagues have met about this particular issue in Tai Rāwhiti, but all around the country, in terms of our preparedness around COVID-19 and the impact on local economies.

I now want to turn to another part of my electorate, Wairoa, and I want to talk about the gains of a town that is one hour south of Gisborne, 1½ hours north of Napier—often gets left out from successive Governments, but not this coalition Government. No, sir. They have taken and invested in Wairoa, a small rural community on the East Coast, and they have invested big time, because that community came to Parliament over a year ago and put their priorities to this Government. What did this Government do? They listened—they listened.

So in Wairoa, for example, we have got over a million dollars being invested in the Wairoa CBD. We’ve got the Ngāti Pāhauwera Horticulture, Forestry, and Land Enhancement project of $6.9 million. We’ve got $960,000 for the Wairoa Digital Employment Programme. We’ve got $400,000 for the Wairoa Regional Digital Hub, $4.8 million for the Wairoa Integrated Business and Tourism Facility, and just last week I joined our colleague Fletcher Tabuteau in announcing over $6 million for roads in Māhia to the rocket launch.

For a small community in Wairoa to feel the investment from this coalition Government shows—and should show to all people in this House—that this Government is a Government of action. It is a Government that listens. Under the strong leadership of the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, we’re getting on with the mahi. That’s what’s being put towards the challenges towards this side. We’re taking it with both hands, but we also know we’ve got more to do. I’m proud to belong to a coalition Government, and I commend the Prime Minister’s statement. Kia ora.

I understand this is a split call. I call Andrew Bayly—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. If I’m not mistaken, I think that’s a re-election campaign speech. I reckon we’re going to hear that up the coast in a few months’ time. All I can say to you is good luck, because I’m sure that this speech just needs to be refined a little bit more, and hopefully you might get re-elected up on the coast. It would be a good thing, in some ways, if you were, because I know you’re a very concerned MP for your area.

But I wanted to talk about building and construction. But before that, I just want to turn to this issue around the coronavirus or COVID-19, because this is and will have a significant impact on New Zealand. Unfortunately, we’ve already had the two confirmed cases and unfortunately, it is likely it may increase over time. This has the potential to be very, very significant to New Zealand. Where the rubber hits the road is that it is the small-business owners of New Zealand who are going to feel the pressure. We’ve got 325,000 small businesses in New Zealand who employ amongst them millions of New Zealanders. This issue and similar such events end up showing where the rubber hits the road: the issue around cash, how it moves around businesses. Debtors stop paying and creditors start calling.

We’ve already seen the impact of this on exports. We’ve got logs sitting on Chinese markets that will go off, cannot be processed other than in chips, if they’re sitting on the wharf 120 days after they’ve been processed. This is a vicious scenario also for imports, because if you can’t get your piece of equipment out of a country from overseas—and particularly places like China, which are so vital to keeping New Zealand working—then we have the situation where businesses start to grind to a halt. My heart goes out to those small-business owners who will be awake late at night wondering where they’re going to get the cash to pay the wages the next day. They are the people that will be worried and are under a severe amount of strain.

Of course, in by far the most cases, they are utterly concerned about the employees of their businesses, because they’re an integral part of their businesses. Very, very few business owners I’ve met have a cavalier attitude towards their employees. They are part of the family, the fabric of the business, and the business owners, as they’re lying awake late at night, will be thinking about how they can allow their businesses to survive while protecting and keeping those key staff. So already we’re starting to see people move towards taking holidays and all those sorts of things you start to do when you’ve got a small business.

We hear, sort of, the Government saying, “Well, just ring up your bank.” Well, you can’t just ring up your bank. Sometimes you’re at the end of your credit. Sometimes your bank isn’t that accommodating, particularly when your stock is sitting in some foreign port with little possibility of being repaid. These are the people that we want to look after. What we don’t want to hear is the platitudes we hear from the Government. What we want is action. We don’t want to hear people talking about global headwinds, which is a common refrain that we hear from the Minister of Finance. We want to hear some specific proposals about helping our small businesses. In essence, we want leadership.

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: No one cares.

That’s the other thing. I hear someone saying, “we don’t care”, from the other side, from the Government benches. What an outrageous comment to say. How unthinking—how unthinking—from that member. I am absolutely ashamed, on behalf of this Parliament, that you would even say that comment at this time, when many of the people who are going to be most affected sit in your electorates and are most affected by it. That is an outrageous comment. It’s unbecoming of you. That is a Government that doesn’t know what to do in a period of real adversity.

I call Denise Lee—five minutes.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I’m thinking I might need to wet my whistle to match the volume of my colleague Andrew Bayly. The truth is, I might need a steroid injection to get there. No one can match that volume but, of course, he’s got great content as well—double whammy. Well done to my colleague.

I want to start by pointing out in this debate something that the Prime Minister in her speech did not mention—completely left out—and that is laying out her plan for achieving pay equity legislation passing through this year. It didn’t get a single mention. Now, I don’t know if anyone else has brought up this topic, but I sure want to bring it up. Perhaps the topic was not raised by her out of sheer embarrassment that women in New Zealand have been completely let down to this point by the Government’s incompetence in passing something that has cross-party support—support across all of the House, for those who are listening right here—but has not been managed to get through to passing.

Now, we would like to know, here on this side of the House—the bill’s ready to go; it’s been passed through select committee; I was on that committee—what’s happening to it now? It’s been left languishing on the Order Paper for nine months since its first reading and passing through the select committee.

Where is the progress? The Prime Minister didn’t mention it. How important is this topic to this Government? Do we know if it’s a priority? Well, apparently it’s not. Women in New Zealand want to be able to make pay equity claims and make progress on the gender pay gap. Where is the reality? We’d like to see it. As usual, the PR spin from the Government hasn’t translated to any outcomes, and we won’t let this one go. We exposed the photo op last time. The first reading had to wait, apparently, until Suffrage Day. Is that what’s happening again this time? They’ve been caught red-handed the first time waiting for a photo op. Are we going to have that again?

Now, I also want to raise in my short time another thing that wasn’t mentioned in that speech, and that’s the promise for over two years now that we’ll find out what’s happening with East-West Link. Now, some may know this is a major project that should be happening in my electorate, the great Maungakiekie, but it’s not a local project in its entirety; it’s of nationwide significance. That particular area, Onehunga, and where this roading project needs to go, is of $10 billion importance to our GDP—$10 billion. Seven thousand freight vehicles—trucks and the likes—go through that area and congest our local streets. No wonder we have suburban intersections that are congested and some of the most worst and dangerous intersections in all of Auckland, if not New Zealand.

Congestion costs businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars every year, and now we have issues around coronavirus, and we have the need to get products on to shelves, for instance, in a timely manner. Here’s one particular instance where that congestion is costing the local economy, it’s costing the nationwide economy, and for two years this Government has said they’d give us a plan. What have we got? Absolutely nothing—absolutely nothing. No plan to get these trucks off our suburban roads and to pay attention to what is a vital part of our economy. That particular industrial area that I referred to, the Penrose industrial area, is New Zealand’s second largest contributor to GDP outside of Auckland’s downtown area. So we’re not talking about just a local project; we’re talking about something that should be top on the priority list. Instead, once again, we’re catching this Government red-handed, doing nothing.

We won’t stand by and watch them idly let this economy slip away on something so obvious as to progress a roading project that’s already gone through consenting and is right now passed through the Environmental Protection Authority. We want to see progress from this Government, and the Prime Minister on both counts—pay equity and a major road that’s absolutely integral to this economy—is silent. We don’t think it’s good enough.

Mr Speaker, thank you very much for that. The Prime Minister’s statement is so full of joy for so many New Zealanders because of the aspiration and the hope that it brings them, but also the dollars as well. And all you will hear is nothing but negativity from that side of the House. Why? Because they didn’t do it—because they wish that they had have done it, because we’re actually doing it.

I would caution the previous member that stood and talked just then, Denise Lee, when she said that the Prime Minister said nothing about pay equity. Well, let me read it for that particular member, because she obviously wasn’t here at the time or maybe she was checking her Facebook or something like that. But what the Prime Minister said was we are committed to pay equity and lifting wages, particularly for our lowest-paid workers. Since we came to office, we’ve introduced the living wage for public servants, teacher aides, and school support staff. We’ve reached pay equity settlement agreements for around 5,000 mental health and addiction support workers, more than 1,300 Oranga Tamariki social workers, and 329 social workers for very young children in early childhood and primary schools. Our hard-working nurses also reached a settlement, delivering the biggest pay increases that nurses have seen in a decade. So I challenge that member. I challenge her to actually read the Prime Minister’s statement before she stands and contributes to it.

This has been a great term that we’ve had: so far, so good. Just in the last recess, I spent a lot of time heading around the Waiariki, actually drilling down into some of the things that are making a difference for the lives of our people, because that’s what this Government’s always been about. Our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, said that if there was one thing that she was going to do while she was here, it would be to lift children out of poverty, and we haven’t fully realised what those investments look like. And even the Opposition have to admit that we are investing like we’ve never invested before.

When I went out to a couple of our schools last week, I went and spoke to some of the teachers, some of the principals, and some of the kids, and the change that they’re seeing at the coalface, at the flax-roots level of their schools, is overwhelmingly positive. That was a statement by Phil Palfrey, who’s the principal of Kaitao Intermediate—overwhelmingly positive—because he’s seeing a layering of things that are happening for families and for schools. So when we talk about the healthy lunches in schools, free lunches in schools—yeah, that’s making the difference. The children are calmer, they are fed, and they are not distracted by the sound of their own empty stomachs. That is actually making a difference. I’m proud to say that in the Waiariki electorate, 20 out of the 30 schools that are part of the pilot project are actually from our electorate. So I’m going out there and I’m engaging with our schools to find out the difference that it’s making, and what they’re telling me is that it is all good.

There are local jobs being created as well. In one of the schools that I’ve visited, they’ve actually employed one of the teacher aides and a couple of the parents to come in and to prepare the food. It’s not much, but actually, overwhelmingly, the small bit of food that is on the plate for that child is enough to get them through the day, and it’s enough to make them feel as though they are supported by their school and make them more productive during their school day. The knock-on effect for that is that the parents also win out of this as well. I spoke to one set of parents who said to me that they are now saving $120 in their shopping every single week because they no longer have to buy the food that they used to have to buy for their very ravenous four kids that they had at home. So they are absolutely overwhelmed at the progress that this Government’s making.

Healthy lunches in schools—that’s one thing. Then you couple it with the fact that there’s the schools that have opted in to school donations, and $150 per student is nothing to scoff at. When I went to Kaingaroa Forest School last week—there’s only just over 50 kids that go there—they said that things have always been tight for them, but now they can actually loosen the reins a little bit. They can still do things on the cheap, but they can actually do things on the not so cheap as well these days. That has spinoff benefits for the kids.

The Government paying for NCEA fees—that’s another relief for schools and for parents as well. And it’s the school infrastructure investment that I’m most proud of: up to $400,000 per public school in New Zealand to be able to upgrade their own infrastructure, however they want to do it. So I got great joy last week going to Rotorua Primary School and talking with the principal about what it was that he was going to spend the money on. You know what he said he was going to spend his $150,000 on? Well, he said that, actually, half of it—about $70,000—is going to be spent on solar panels for the roof. And it’s his estimation from the work that they’ve done that through that investment, the solar panels on the roof of the school will take care of about 70 percent of the school’s energy costs. If there are any gains over and above that from them capturing the energy, they also have that ability to be able to distribute those benefits back out to whānau in need—whānau of the local school. So again, as I start layering these things that we’re doing, you can start painting a really rosy picture about what life is like for our families out there that are really struggling.

I want to address the point that Andrew Bayly made recently about the impact that the rise in minimum wage is going to have on small to medium enterprises. I am a small- to medium-business man, and our company—we actually employ 30 people, and we employ them on the living wage—

💬 Andrew Bayly: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think I heard the member reference me about the minimum wage; I didn’t mention that at all.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a pretty robust debate. I did not hear that and I can’t remember if you mentioned that or not—I’ll take the member’s word for it. But this is a debate on the Prime Minister’s statement and members of both sides can make their contributions. It’s a debating point.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We were talking about the impact that small-medium businesses are having out there in today’s climate, and, actually, can I make a statement just to say that with the increase in minimum wages, actually what it’s doing is it’s putting a little bit more money into the pockets of those business owners. Yes, it may be impacting the usual bottom lines, but, actually, when more people have got a bit more money in their pockets, they can actually go back out and spend that in the local economy. That was the point that I was trying to make.

We are the Government of infrastructure, and that’s a great thing, because we have invested like we haven’t seen before. The New Zealand upgrade—the investment in infrastructure all around New Zealand is going to be beneficial, because we need it, because we haven’t had that kind of investment for such a long time: $12 billion in projects right across New Zealand to futureproof our country.

In the Waiariki, what have we seen? Well, we have seen the Tauranga Northern Link—yeah, that’s right; we’ve seen that actually ticked off under this Government.

💬 Todd Muller: It was already out to tender. What a disgrace—absolute disgrace.

But not just that—because, actually, once you get to the end of the Tauranga Northern Link, there’s another stretch of road that also needed to be funded too, which is the stretch of road to Te Puna to Ōmokoroa.

💬 Todd Muller: You’d never say that at Ōmokoroa—you’d be chased out of town; you’d be chased out of town. You’re absolutely appalling.

So what have we done? We’re fixing the road. That’s right—I can say that to my colleague over there. And, actually, it’s the people of Tauranga that know that it is our Government that has actually invested in this.

As well as that, in Rotorua we’ve kicked off Te Ngae Road, the upgrades to that, and also the Ngongotahā roundabout. I’ve had countless messages from the chamber of commerce, who have talked to me about the impact of the roundabout and the congestion that they face in that area.

But, actually, it’s through our Government that we are making those upgrades to our roads, because it makes good business sense. And the Opposition just can’t seem to handle the fact that on this side, we get business; we know business. But, actually, what we know is we know that people are the core of your business, and if you look after the people, they’ll look after your business. So I want to say that, and I say that proudly.

I also want to talk about, when it comes to people, the investment that we are making in terms of mental health. And, actually, yeah, I don’t know how you can knock that, because we inherited a mental health crisis from the Opposition. So thank you for that. We’re rolling up our sleeves and we’re doing something about it. It’s the new acute mental health facility at Tauranga Hospital that actually is being funded under our Government because of the huge demand, and, also, we’re doing it up the road in Whakatāne as well, because they need it too just as much, and they need kaupapa Māori responsive services too. So as we redesign it, we’re going to make sure that, actually, Māori are at the heart of these services, because it’s our Māori people who keep presenting with those needs.

So we start talking about the impact that all of that is going to have to our people, and, actually, it’s looking pretty rosy for our people. But are we finished yet? Not at all, because as our Prime Minister has said time and time again in this House, there is more mahi to do, and that’s what we’re doing; we’re doing it. When the Opposition says that we haven’t got a plan, I encourage everybody in New Zealand to read the Prime Minister’s statement and actually see our plan, and I want you to compare it to their plan—cos there’s a whole lot of nothing.

It’s a pleasure for me to follow that contribution from Tamati Coffey, the one-term Labour MP. He was seldom right as the weather man, and he was entirely wrong with his contribution then. I have also read the Prime Minister’s statement—I’ve read it twice this afternoon. I was here when she delivered it in Parliament, and it says nothing. It’s beautifully written, it’s full of rhetoric, but there is absolutely no substance at all to the Prime Minister’s statement, and that’s what New Zealanders are noticing. That’s what New Zealanders are saying to me time and time again: the Prime Minister can speak well, but you’ll listen to it and you’ll listen to it again and again and again and try to decipher what she has actually said, and it’d be a whole lot of empty words.

I say to the Prime Minister—I’ve got a question for her. Will she be proud when she goes down as a one-term Labour Prime Minister? Because that is what is about to happen. She will be a one-term Labour Prime Minister come 17 September 2020. What we’re observing from this side of the House is an absolute shambles over there, and it was never going to be any better than that when you consider the coalition that was cobbled together after the election. Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens—how could it ever possibly work? If you look at the Green Party, known for their simplicity, their naivety, and when you look at a leader like James Shaw, frankly—there are some principles; I accept that. But they’ve been rolled on just about everything they stood for at the last election. And the reason they’ve been rolled is because the real master in this Government isn’t the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern; it’s the Rt Hon Winston Peters. He’s the effective Prime Minister. He’s running the show, and that’s why Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens will go down at the next election.

What does New Zealand First stand for? It stands for the sake of power. That’s all it’s there for. I remember as Speaker taking a delegation offshore and introducing the various members of the delegation. I was able to explain what National members stood for—it was to the centre-right of politics. I was able to explain what Labour stood for—the centre-left of New Zealand politics. I was absolutely stumped in trying to explain what New Zealand First stood for. So I asked the New Zealand First member on the delegation to explain it herself, and she said, “It’s all in the name. It’s New Zealand First.” That was the principle. And I say that’s just absolute bollocks. What it is is it’s “Winston First”. He’s the guy, never there for the baubles of power, who couldn’t grab them quickly enough, and what we’re seeing now is an absolute repeat of what I observed in this House from 2005 to 2008. Again, New Zealand First and its leader is back before the Serious Fraud Office. On that occasion, there were denials about donations from one man, Owen Glenn, and they were found to be incorrect denials—up before the Privileges Committee and made to come back into this House and apologise for misleading Parliament. And that is about to repeat itself, because what you’ve got is Mr Peters, the New Zealand First Party, the New Zealand First Foundation, back before the Serious Fraud Office.

Labour knows it’s in trouble, because why did the Hon Meka Whaitiri come out in the Gisborne Herald, after talking to her people, telling her people last night there will be an early election? I would have said the Government will make it till 17 September, but Meka Whaitiri, and she probably knows more than we do, doesn’t think they’ll last till 17 September. She’s predicting an early election. And why? Because Winston Peters has always come into this House and gone around New Zealand saying he survives on donations, small-time donations—raffles and cake stalls—and yet we’ve seen repeated reports in the media lately about tens of thousands of dollars coming from the racing industry, tens of thousands of dollars coming from Graeme Hart and his associated companies—Graeme Hart being the richest man in New Zealand. That money isn’t about cake stalls and raffles; that’s from some of the wealthiest people in New Zealand, and that’s why—

💬 Mark Patterson: And not one cent from China!

And the man says, “Not one cent from China”. Whoop-de-doo! Whoop-de-doo! But declare the ones you’ve got—don’t hide them in a foundation, Mr Mark Patterson. Don’t have the Serious Fraud Office now investigating you.

I say that I’ve got a message for the Serious Fraud Office: this investigation needs to be tidied up and completed before the general election, because New Zealand voters need to know the honesty and integrity—the honesty and integrity—of Mr Mark Patterson’s party. That’s how important this is.

So I want the Serious Fraud Office to do its job and complete its investigation so that New Zealanders have that information before we go to the polls. My prediction is that the Serious Fraud Office will complete that work, and then, because Meka Whaitiri’s in the know, she knows that that is going to bring an end, a very messy end, to this Government—a very messy end—and it’s what I saw in 2008 as we led into the 2008 election. The good news from that was that Mr Peters and his party never got back into Parliament, so if we can get that delivery again at the next election, I’ll certainly be happy with that.

I want to spend the balance of my time talking about the economy and coronavirus, because no one knows—no one knows—the impact on the economy with any surety at all. We have an international world health pandemic and it’s difficult to predict the effects, but I will say to the House today that the impact on the economy will be significant. We don’t know how significant, but it will be significant.

Now, Grant Robertson continues to argue that New Zealand’s economy is resilient, and I think he is wrong. It was resilient when he became Minister of Finance, when he inherited growth rates close to 4 percent, but now we’ve got growth rates at 1.6 percent, before the impact of coronavirus. We’ve got a Budget deficit forecast in the next Budget to come into this House in May. Grant Robertson and the Labour-led Government have destroyed the resilience of the New Zealand economy, and I suggest that that will be another reason why when voters go to the polls, they’ll look very, very seriously at the credibility of a National-led Government and the credibility of a Labour-led Government. If they judge that on the economic performance and the economic capability of National versus Labour, that will have a major impact at the next election.

It’s well-known that I’m not standing. I’m not coming back into this place, but I will watch that election result with very great interest. At this stage, I think there’s every possibility that if this Government can limp through to 17 September—because that’s what it will be: a shuffle and a limp on a couple of crutches, and Zimmer frames for Mr Peters. If they can get there—if they can get there—then we’ll see how it goes.

I want to just, finally, make a couple of comments about the drought, because I know how the farmers in Northland, Waikato, and, now, the East Coast of the North Island, and Hawke’s Bay and Wairarapa, Marlborough and Canterbury, and, now, Otago are suffering. That’s not something the Government can do, apart from being there and being supportive—and I’ll make no criticism of the Hon Damien O’Connor as he’s moved around—but that, again, will be an economic impact that, at this stage, Grant Robertson has failed to realise. There’s the economic impact on the farmers themselves and there’s the economic impact on the economy as a whole, but there’s the emotional toll on those farmers as they get up, day in, day out, they look out their front garden on to their paddocks, which are brown and shrivelled. What that means is that any future Government needs to take water storage seriously—very, very seriously.

This country is gifted with water. It has absolutely no shortage of water, but it just doesn’t happen to rain in the right place at the right time. The solution is easy: build infrastructure, store water—

💬 Hon Aupito William Sio: Oh, ho!

Well, William Sio laughs. He doesn’t realise how important water is to the farmers of New Zealand. It’s actually important even to that member’s constituency, but you wouldn’t expect him to understand.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise with immense pride in order to support the Prime Minister’s speech, and what a great start to the year it has been, with the Prime Minister’s speech just shortly after we made a $12 billion announcement for infrastructure in New Zealand—long-needed investment in infrastructure in New Zealand—because when we came into Government after nine years of National, of a do-nothing Government, we knew there was plenty of work to do. We have started and there’s plenty more work to do, and that’s why I’m looking forward to election year.

I do want to note the previous speaker—the Rt Hon David Carter—who is leaving, and I respect him very much, but I would say to that member that in the twilight of your career, cheer up a little bit. Cheer up a little bit, because you’ve had a great career, and I’d hate to see a member leave this House so angry because of the prospects of his party at this year’s election. But enough about them and more about us, because there’s plenty of good news to talk about.

I do want to acknowledge the great work of our Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, because he’s managed an economy to the point where we now have growth that is well above the likes of some of our trading partners in countries that we compare ourselves to, and has managed our financial position to the point where we have talked about surpluses and where we can make that $12 billion investment. But I’m also very proud of all the other investments in some of the critical things that Labour Governments care about and that we have continued to invest in, and will continue to invest in beyond September of this year. I want to thank both the New Zealand First Party and the Green Party for their support and their initiatives amongst this Government, because it is making a massive difference to everyday New Zealanders up and down the country.

At the weekend, we had a festival in Cannons Creek called Creekfest, and it was really interesting to listen to the good stories that people were coming up and having a chat to us about, and the thankfulness that they have around the great work that this Government is doing. Just around the corner from where Creekfest is held is a street called the Castor Loop, and those of you who may have watched my speeches very closely over the years—

💬 Todd Muller: No, I haven’t.

I know Todd Muller has, very closely—modelling himself on me, as well. He’s been watching these speeches very closely. For the entire time that I was an MP in Opposition under that Government, there was a piece of land that used to contain State houses. Now, just before I was elected as an MP, they were demolished—under a National Government.

At the time of that demolition, a letter went to all the neighbours—who were, obviously, concerned about what was happening here—saying, “Don’t worry, we’re going to be building more.” That was in 2010. [Holds up photo of a street with no houses] This is what it looked like just after the demolition, and, as I say, those neighbours got a letter saying, “We’ll be putting up more homes.” In 2011, no homes. In 2012, no homes. In 2013, no homes. In 2014—after the election—still no homes. In 2015, no homes. In 2016, no homes. In 2017—election time—guess what happened? [Holds up photo of houses under construction] After the Labour Government came in, all of a sudden there were homes.

That’s why I’m very proud to be part of this Government that is delivering to the most vulnerable communities in New Zealand and putting that into action. So we’re not going to buy any of the empty rhetoric from across the House that we are not delivering for those most vulnerable New Zealanders, because in my electorate, when that Government said it would deliver, it sat on its backside for eight or nine years.

It can swing a wrecking ball very fast, that party, but it can’t swing a hammer—but that’s what we’re doing. We’re swinging hammers, we’re rolling up our sleeves, and we’re getting houses built for those most vulnerable New Zealanders. We’ve promised to build 6,400 over four years, and I’m proud to say that we’re well in front of that. So when the previous Government was selling homes and demolishing homes and not building homes over nine long years, I am proud to be part of a Government that can do this kind of thing and deliver dozens of homes, which look like this in an area that looked like this for eight or nine years in just 2½ short years.

So what does it mean for the community? It means that the schools around this piece of land, which is now getting homes built on it, will have their rolls lift so they can feel like a school that has meaning again. So you can bring people back into the community so the community can thrive. But that Government never understood that; it doesn’t understand communities. And that’s why when we build homes and communities, people notice and they come up to us and they say, “Thank you for giving us hope that after nine years of a National Government that did nothing, we will come back to this community that has meant a lot to us for some time because there are now affordable homes available to it.”

So I want to thank all of those advocates and community people who stood with us and had barbecues on what looked like a park but was actually Housing New Zealand land over those nine long years, because soon we will be able to cut a ribbon on about 50 homes so 50 families can call Castor Crescent home again. And I’m very proud to stand up seven days a week to put our record of delivery like this up against non-delivery of that Government over the last nine years.

Another story I had recently was I visited Rangikura School in Ascot Park, and I’d like to thank Eddie Uluilelata, the principal there, for letting us come and have a look, because that school, which would cater to a low-decile community, has been operating out of some dilapidated classrooms for quite some time. And lo and behold, when I went and visited the other day, there was work under way because some of the funding that this Government has given schools over the last 2½ years has enabled children to learn in a first-class environment, but under the last Government, schools in my area suffered because of a lack of investment in classrooms.

Again, I want to acknowledge the work done by the Hon Chris Hipkins, who I think at last year’s Budget saw $1.2 billion going into investment in new classrooms that should have been built in the previous nine years of the National Government to deal with the demand of a growing population but never got built. So we had this ridiculous situation of children being put in classrooms that used to be dental clinics, and I’m not sure if everyone remembers the murder house, but they aren’t big buildings. Having to transfer libraries into learning spaces—that was the reality under the National Government.

But the reality under this Government is investment in the things that matter, and they matter to those families who send those kids to their school because their kids aren’t learning in substandard conditions any more. They’re learning in safe, warm, soundproof conditions, and if you ask any teacher who is teaching a year 1 class about how important it is to teach in a soundproof classroom, they’ll say it makes a big difference to the way that the kids learn and their state of mental health at the end of the day. But that has happened under the last nine years of the National Government; it’s happened under us.

Again, I was extremely proud of the investments that we were able to announce at last year’s party conference of up to $400,000 for every school to catch up on the unmet maintenance that they had to put up with when the previous Government wouldn’t fund their 5-yearly agreement funding properly.

So all the work that banked up that National didn’t care about, we tended to and parents see that. They see it when they go to school. They see it when they and their families are able to get into a warm, dry, safe, affordable home. So I’m happy and proud to stand here and support the Prime Minister’s statement, because we have started dealing with the long-term issues that that party neglected. Have we finished? No, and we’re going to work really hard up until election day to make sure we keep going.

The next call’s a split call—Simeon Brown.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Prime Minister started this year saying that this will be a factual and robust campaign. This came about 12 months after she declared 2019 would be the so-called year of delivery, a year of delivery which still hasn’t turned up and which New Zealanders are still waiting for. And then no sooner had the Prime Minister announced that this would be a year of a factual campaign than the fake news began. The Prime Minister’s statement is a fake news statement with style and spin but no substance and no delivery for New Zealanders.

Today, I wish to speak in response to the statement about two key statements the Prime Minister made during her speech where she claimed that her Government is a Government of infrastructure and a Government of housing. And to that, as all good Tui billboards say, “Yeah, right!” These issues are important to my electorate in Pakuranga and the people I represent. However, the Prime Minister’s rhetoric does not match her results. When it comes to the Prime Minister’s statement that this Government she leads is a Government of housing, she couldn’t be further from the truth. When I talk to the sensible, hard-working people in my electorate of Pakuranga, the word “KiwiBuild” is now synonymous with the word “failure”. In fact, it’s going to be printed in the thesaurus soon, I think.

This Government promised that it would deliver 1,000 KiwiBuild houses per year. It raised the expectations of first-home buyers, but it delivered nothing on these numbers. Only 433 KiwiBuild have been sold to date—433. This is a dismal failure from a Prime Minister who says she is the Prime Minister of a Government of housing, and something that she should be ashamed of. And then there’s the little fact that she doesn’t like to recognise—that she has stopped more houses being built at Ihumātao than she managed to sell to first-home buyers through her KiwiBuild programme.

People in my electorate are concerned about this issue. First-time buyers were sold a dream, but this Government has not turned up and this Government has not delivered on housing. And people in my electorate are also concerned about how Housing New Zealand Kāinga Ora is now entering the home market and competing with first-home buyers. Last year, Kāinga Ora bought five houses for almost $1 million each in Howick direct from a developer and shut out potential first-home buyers. This Government should be focused on housing supply and growing housing supply rather than competing with first-home buyers who are trying to get on the housing ladder. This is not a Government of housing. That is a fake news statement from a fake news Prime Minister.

The second fake news statement from the Prime Minister was that she leads a Government of infrastructure. Aucklanders are now paying what is called the regional fuel tax, forced upon them by this Government. But there is nothing to show for it. Where’s the light rail down Dominion Road, which was going to be built by 2021? The spades aren’t in the ground. Nothing’s happened. Where’s the infrastructure projects? Where’s the new infrastructure projects for Auckland? We’ve had the Mill Road been cancelled and now restarted again. The East-West Link has been cancelled and there’s no news on what’s happening there. The East-West Link is a critical piece of infrastructure in Auckland, critical to people in my electorate who work in that part of Auckland, who drive through it, and who rely on it for key transport links through our city.

There is nothing in the Prime Minister’s statement on what she’s doing to deliver for transport infrastructure in Auckland, and this is all the time while we’re paying 11.5c extra on every single litre that we put in our cars. People in Pakuranga are being fleeced at the pump by the Prime Minister, with nothing to show for it and with an infrastructure pipeline which was stopped, and now the Government is trying to restart in a hurry to ward off a pending economic recession.

National is the party of infrastructure. National is the party of a strong economy and getting things done. National knows how to deliver core Government services and have an infrastructure that people need. This year, New Zealanders will have a choice—[Interruption] And they don’t like to hear this. New Zealanders will have a choice this year, and I know they will choose a National Government which can deliver over a fake news Government led by a fake news Prime Minister. I say, “Bring it on.”

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, it is a pleasure to stand and to support the amendment made by Simon Bridges that this House has no confidence in this Government. I think the issue was quite well highlighted by my colleague David Carter, who is a very experienced member of Parliament who speaks incredibly well, not just a speech with great oratory and great presentation but with great substance. As he quite rightly pointed out, that is what the Prime Minister’s statement lacked: substance. Unfortunately, we’ve just finished the year of non-delivery, we’re now into what is going to be the election year, and we’re confronted now with an issue coming at us like a freight train in COVID-19. It is not that COVID-19 will necessarily kill that many people. It’s going to cause a lot of financial issues, and it will put our health system under quite a lot of stress. The problem is that our economy has been going backwards under this Government. It doesn’t give us the headroom to fight this issue that’s coming down the road at us. What it requires is leadership. We require leadership as a nation to deal with this issue, and, clearly, we don’t have the people in the ministerial positions that are capable of doing it. I wish they were, because we will need it—we will need it. I’m not just talking party politics here; I’m actually really concerned about this issue.

I mean, we look at things like KiwiBuild as just a great example of the failure of what was quite a good idea, really, but a failure to deliver, because they don’t understand how to do things that they’ve never had any experience in working in. Anyone who knows any property developers know that they usually lose a bit of money along the way till they figure out the formula and how it works. Even with the Government’s cash, Phil Twyford still could not deliver.

Unfortunately, we’re seeing it also in every other sector—higher fuel prices, higher rents, all those sorts of things—making it much more difficult for families. We have an immigration system that is particularly in a bad shape to deal with this issue. As a result of COVID-19, the Beijing office has closed, for very good reasons, obviously, but 7,000 files that they have over there have been re-allocated round the other Immigration New Zealand offices, just putting more pressure on a system that was under extreme pressure because the Minister didn’t move fast enough.

Unfortunately, even visitor visas are being delayed significantly. They blew out from 16 days’ to 28 days’ wait, average time, for a visa to be processed since 1 November. Now we have a tourism sector that’s struggling, and at the moment, those visa delays are crucial. People will make a decision not to come here because they can’t stand the uncertainty of waiting for a visa. So they will elect to go to another destination. I think the Minister should make a good leadership decision—whether he’s capable, I’m not sure—to actually put the focus on the visitors from countries that don’t create a risk for us and process those ones quickly so we can get people into New Zealand and keep our tourism businesses afloat. It’s really important, it’s really simple, and that is leadership. Unfortunately, we’re not seeing it there.

I also want to talk about indigenous biodiversity and the proposals for a National Policy Statement in this area. I know it’s very concerning in my area. I’ve got two relatively small councils in my electorate; one’s the smallest on the mainland. The cost of actually implementing this will break that council. This hasn’t even been thought about or recognised by the Government, and unfortunately, as one of my constituents pointed out, the people that will be hurt the most are the ones that have done the most to protect their biodiversity in their properties. The fact that there is indigenous biodiversity on these properties speaks to the fact that these people care about it. They protect it. They have gone out of their way to fence these areas, and, actually, they are going to be punished for it.

We have huge amounts of area under Queen Elizabeth the Second National Trust around New Zealand, on the farms around New Zealand, and this Government is thumbing their nose at that. You’re better to take people with you rather than to just try and trample over the top of them, as unfortunately the Minister is. It shows no respect for what people have done, it is not a good way to do things, and that’s why I support that amendment.

It’s a pleasure to rise to speak in support of the Prime Minister’s statement. I’m proud to be a member of her Government. Can I say at the outset that her outstanding leadership is wonderful to behold, and it is a privilege to be part of the wonderful work that we are driving for all of New Zealand. I think she is one of the few leaders that genuinely has concerns for children, for families, for the wider community, for all of our region, not just Aotearoa but the Pacific.

As I get out and about in our communities, it never fails. From the Pacific community, they refer to her as a leader O le Toa, meaning that she is courageous, E Malosi, meaning that her voice is strong, E Fa’amaoni, meaning that she has a genuine concern for people, and E Alofa, and that is somebody who provides compassion in all that she does. I think, for all of us, irrespective of the opposition from that side, we see that in the way that she has conducted herself, in the way that she led this nation in response to the March 15 crisis last year, in the way that she represents us in the Pacific region, and, more latterly, in the way that she stood up for New Zealanders to those mean Australians across the ditch.

I’m proud, as a member of a coalition Government, a coalition Government of three distinct parties, about whom, at one point in time, at the very beginning, that lot there said it would never work—and the media bought into all that fake news. But we’ve proven in 2½ years how, despite our distinctive identities, despite our passion for a number of different views, that we come together united because we are generally concerned about lifting the wellbeing of all peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand.

We are making fantastic, good progress: big investments in mental health, big investments in housing, big investments in education, big investments in the Families Package to support families with children, big investments in the regions, big investments in infrastructure and in transport to boost economic development, and equally big investments for Māori and Pasifika. I have to say to my colleague here, Minister Jackson: last year, there was an unprecedented amount out of the Wellbeing Budget for Māori and Pacific.

After nine long years of that lot, they’re sitting now with their heads down in shame and embarrassment. I hear them suddenly take an interest in what happens in the region. Suddenly, they’ve taken an interest in housing. But for nine years they ignored the regions. They ignored the housing crisis. They ignored people in homelessness situations. They ignored the challenges of our hospitals. They ignored the cries from teachers and from principals about more investment in that sector. They ignored, generally, the cry by the public sector and everybody who supports the public sector for more money.

We come along and we’re putting a stake in the ground. We’re not only lifting the investment right throughout that sector but we’re also raising wages. The minimum wage is on track to achieve $20 an hour next year. We will increase it to $18.90 in April of this year. So far, the evidence of that: economic growth is steady at 2 percent, debt is manageable, surplus for a rainy day, but more people are in jobs, people are earning more money, there is confidence, there is hope in the regions.

I can say for Pacific communities, they really pride the fact that this Government stands with them in supporting languages and cultures. That’s because that’s an integral part of our next generation’s wellbeing. That lot, when they were in Government, they were determined to get rid of the Pasifika Education Centre. We’ve come along now and we’re investing money in the Pasifika Education Centre to provide community-based education, not just to Aucklanders but right across the Pacific region. Mana in Mahi is a project that’s working across the region to provide young people into employment, into education, into the trades. That’s working hand in hand in the regions with Tupu Aotearoa, where we’re lifting the age groups from 15 to 39. You see, my definition of young people, Minister Jackson, is as long as your parents, mum and dad, are at home, you’re a young person. So 15 to 39 in the region, giving them opportunities to support further positive pathways in education, further positive pathways into good, high-quality jobs where they’re earning better incomes.

But we’re also, last year and this Budget, now making sure that Pacific Business Trust is able to get the investment it can to be able to grow the business sector—not just in Auckland but right across the region—to support the organisations that are on the ground, not just making profits but also responding to the various social needs of our community.

I have to say, in the justice sector, when we came into power we inherited a backlog of cases in the Human Rights Review Tribunal. The appalling thing was that lot there, when they were in Government, they were given high-quality advice by our officials about the changes that they should implement in order to address the backlog of cases, but they didn’t—they didn’t. They didn’t heed the advice. They didn’t because they didn’t want to spend the money to make sure that everybody had access to justice, and so—as the Associate Minister and with support of all the Ministers of the different organs of this coalition Government—we moved through quickly with change. We appointed five deputy chairs of the Human Rights Review Tribunal, giving them full powers equal to that of the chairperson. We appointed a number of members of the Human Rights Review Tribunal. Training was conducted last year, and we’re on course to addressing the backlog of cases and making sure that everybody who needs to be able to access justice is able to do so.

I come back to the work that the Deputy Prime Minister is doing in the region with the Pacific Reset. For a very long time, the Pacific leaders in the region have felt a lot more confident that there is a New Zealand Government that understands them, understands the challenges they face, and understands the need to work together to lift all of our people’s wellbeing in this vast Pacific region. I have to commend the understanding and the leadership of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, because under the Pacific Reset we are working in partnership with those leaders and being led by their priorities. In addition to that, we’re working collaboratively on a number of fronts—in defence, in immigration, in the health sector. And we’ve shown in the recent measles crisis of last year that there is a need for New Zealand to take greater interest in what happens in the region because whether that side likes it or not, we are all part of the Pacific region, and this Government has put a stamp on the map to say that Aotearoa New Zealand is a Pacific nation, it is a member of the Pacific region, and how proud the Pacific region is to have a Prime Minister of the kind like the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern to be championing and amplifying their voice when it comes to climate change, not just in the Pacific regions, but also at the UN level. And that is so important because rarely—other than the previous Labour Government, but under the last National Government they didn’t understand the region. They didn’t understand the region and they were superficial in how they engaged.

Under this Government, with the leadership of Jacinda Ardern, there is hope, there is confidence, there is joy, and let it continue because that lot there, I think whatever happiness and joy they once had, it’s all got sucked in by the darkness of their leader. And let me just now issue a warning. I’ve listened to three of their speeches; they all seem to want to mention the coronavirus. And I get it, they’ve got to oppose. But let me just say: stop scaremongering. Stop the scaremongering and stop generating the herd mentality.

The following call is a split call—Maureen Pugh.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Well, it almost seems like a bit of a comedy show here tonight, listening to some of that rhetoric from the other side. But, of course, something that we’ve become accustomed to is rhetoric from those Government benches.

I want to reference some comments that were made in the Prime Minister’s statement. But first, I’d like to set the scene by reminding this House of something that was said by her in January this year where she promised to run a factual and a positive and robust election campaign. “Know us by what we do.”, she said. But three weeks later, standing in this House, in her Prime Minister’s statement she’s telling tales of hospitals that are run down and sewage running down the walls, and the Middlemore DHB had to come out in public to deny that as a matter of fiction. So when you start to hear the Prime Minister making up tales—and that one has become a bit of a folklore story from that side of the House—can we just put the record straight, this Labour-led coalition Government? Middlemore Hospital did not have sewage running down the walls. Get it right.

I’d like to talk about some facts—facts about delivery, not facts about rhetoric. And I’d like to quote the Salvation Army, something I do in this House almost every year, where two weeks ago they said, and I quote, “There was a whole discussion around being transformative and the year of delivery, I guess we would question whether there has been actual delivery and change, especially for those on the poorest incomes.” I think that says it all. There was a lot of discussion, a lot of rhetoric around the year of delivery, but the actual delivery and real change on the ground did not happen.

For instance, this Government said that by the winter of 2018 no one would be sleeping in cars. They said 100,000 houses will be built over the next 10 years. The facts: 15,000 people, vulnerable people, are now on a waiting list for public housing. That’s a 39 percent increase. Now, we all know that everyone deserves to have a roof over their head and be warm in the winter. We all know that. We all know it needs addressing. But what we don’t know is how that Government is going to fix it. Words won’t fix it no matter how many times you say it. And benefit numbers—what a nightmare. There are 27,000 more people on job seeker benefit in this country than when National was in Government—27,000.

This aspirational Government over here said it would get immigration settings right, and I heard my colleague Stuart Smith talking about that before. In the provinces, we actually know what a nightmare that is when you’re trying to get workers to come to farms, to come to tourism operations, and they are now costing—they, over there on that Government side—these businesses, because we have a real skills shortage in rural New Zealand. And they’re finding it harder and harder to stay here when they get here, because the Immigration Service has ground to a slow crawl and they’re not processing applications in a timely manner.

I want to talk about some of the other issues this Government has, and I want to talk about the significant natural areas project that’s under way. But I also want to give credit to the Government for one of their fails, because I think it’s one that’s not going to get any criticism from me, and that’s the no new mining on conservation land. Another big fail and well done. I’m pleased you failed. In the last two years, there’s been more mining applications approved under this Government than under the previous National Government. Now, how ironic is that? Twenty-one mining applications approved on conservation land since the Prime Minister’s Speech from the Throne. Thank you, conservation Minister, for being so ineffectual, so hog-tied by coalition pressure, and especially with the gold price at such a high. How can anyone take this Government seriously?

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

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call this evening on the Prime Minister’s statement. I was just reading through it this afternoon and I really enjoyed this particular passage, which I have to share with the House, “know us by our deeds. Know us by what we do, not by a press statement … know us by what we do.” If I were a comedy writer, I don’t think I could have scripted that any better, because if this Government is known for anything, it is known for being a Government of press statements.

But let’s just match up some of that rhetoric with some of the reality. In December 2017, Jacinda Ardern and Phil Twyford made a press statement saying that KiwiBuild will deliver 100,000 affordable houses over the next 10 years.

💬 Chris Penk: How many?

One hundred thousand houses over 10 years. Let’s match that up with their deeds—“know us by our deeds.”, this Prime Minister has said. Well, the number is nowhere near the 10,000 a year that they need to average to reach that. It’s 443—443 after 2½ years. As my colleague Simeon Brown has told the House earlier tonight, it’s not even enough to keep up with cancelling construction at Ihumātao.

What else? What of their other deeds? Well, we have another press statement, this time from 2017 from Chris Hipkins promising to end all school donations for all schools. But “know us by our deeds.”, according to the Prime Minister. In the Ashburton and Timaru districts, 25 schools out of 50—this will not apply to exactly half the schools. They’re either not taking part or, in the vast majority of cases, they are not eligible under the Government’s policy.

Surely, though, surely we can do better with the Green Party. The Green Party, that party of honesty, holiness, and virtue—surely they would not let us down. Well, there was a press statement from Julie Anne Genter in December 2018 where she says “Road safety is one of our highest priorities.”, but know them by their deeds—by their deeds. What have been their deeds? More than $5 billion ripped out of the State highway network. The road between Ashburton and Christchurch is now the second most dangerous stretch of highway in the country for fatalities and serious injuries.

James Shaw, co-leader of the Greens, climate change Minister, November 2019: “We are transitioning to a low-carbon economy.” What then of the Government’s deeds in the area that the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, says is their nuclear-free moment? Massive growth in the amount of coal being burnt for electricity generation following a press statement announcing a ban on offshore gas exploration, prior to the Prime Minister flying out for Paris.

More recently, just two days ago, the health Minister, David Clark, was saying “Our priority remains protecting the health and safety of the public.”—a laudable goal. Why then are health officials at international airports handing out inaccurate information about coronavirus to passengers arriving from Asia? Why are the Government recycling leaflets from August 2014, which describe symptoms of bird flu and not of coronavirus? “Know us by our deeds.”, the Prime Minister says—know us by our deeds. We absolutely will.

I understand this is a split call. I call Paul Eagle—five minutes

Thank you, Mr Speaker. What a pleasure it is to be back in the House, and, look, most people take a holiday over Christmas but I’ve been itching to get back. Here I am begging the Prime Minister, saying, “Let me talk about your statement. I’m ready to go.” Here in Rongotai—in Wellington east, Wellington south, and those beautiful Chatham Islands—things are all roaring for a 19 September celebration. In fact, it’s going to be such a celebration that that side of the House hasn’t even got a candidate to stand against me, but you’re welcome to deputise there, Nicola Willis, any time.

Can I just start by saying it’s the first line that captures it for me. Let’s read it out: “Two years ago”—and a few other days—“this Government of three parties set out an ambitious programme to tackle the long-term challenges that had been neglected for nine long years.” That’s been used lots, but it’s also relevant.

One of the great things about Christmas is all those people that were a little ho hum about me. They candidate voted, electorate voted, for me as the MP. They may have voted for someone else other than the Labour Party, but now it’s two ticks red. That’s what I wanted to hear. That’s the evidence that I wanted to see, because when a party delivers, then that’s what you get.

Can I say what a term of delivery it’s been, because there’s just so much. It was hard to buckle it down and knuckle it into just three things, but I’ve got it. One of them is the Wellbeing Budget, because people in my patch were sick to death of everything having the economic rule applied to it. They wanted a wellbeing approach. They understand that, actually, life’s a lot more than just about the almighty dollar. They might want something to be prudent, they might even be a bit thrifty, but they wanted to know that the party in power cared, and that’s us, the coalition Government, the New Zealand Labour Party. I’m proud of that.

I want to talk about positive things, because too often we come here and talk about anything but. Just a few weeks ago, I was on the Chatham Islands. I was there with Minister Hon Andrew Little, the Minister for Treaty negotiations. We took it, that Hercules plane, across and landed there, and settled with a Crown apology for the Moriori people, the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands, along there with Ngāti Mutunga, mana whenua. But it was the Moriori’s day, and we were able to give that Crown apology. That’s what this coalition Government’s about. It’s about progressing Treaty claims. There was good work done before, but I want to highlight the great work done there—$18 million. There’s a piece of literature here that clearly outlines the historical background. It’s sombre reading, but the great thing about the coalition Government is we were down there, we gave the apology—it was honest; it was raw—and we were able to settle that and come home later that afternoon knowing that we’d done something great that sets a path for the Moriori people, the only place in New Zealand where they can claim the indigenous rights to that island.

The other thing I want to talk about, because it was brought up down there, was around housing. We know that housing is a big issue wherever we go, but can I say it: I’m really proud because I think we’ve made hay in housing, and that means more State houses being built. We often hear the negative about it. I’m not going to go there, because what I do know is that in my patch, the empty spaces that were left when I came in to the seat are now finally getting construction and being built on. Evidence is everything. People want to see results. They want to see the delivery of projects. I know when we go down Strathmore Avenue, you’ll see a plot—and I remember I was there with a local Anglican minister. I’ve got a really good photo of him and I standing in the middle of this plot of land. On that side of the House, they were going to hock it off. We’ve now built on that very same site less than three years later. There are beautiful new homes for those who need them most. I guess just around the corner, for those who don’t know, the first State house is in Fife Lane, and that’s a symbol of this Government’s progress. It’s iconic in many ways because it shows at the end of the day it takes a coalition Government, a New Zealand Labour Party, to build homes for those most in need. It’s a proud day, and it’s been an honour to have a few minutes to talk about the Prime Minister’s statement and the great things that are in it.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s great to be part of a Government that’s delivering for New Zealand, and we’re straight into it with a $12 billion infrastructure package—more infrastructure, more investment in New Zealand than since World War II. The interesting thing is I’ve been listening to the debates in this House, and I think there’s a fundamental difference going on in that definition of infrastructure. Somewhere on the other side of the House, infrastructure just equals a big road, whereas on this side of the House, it means a wee bit more than a big road. It means public transport, as well as cycleways, as well as roads, as well as interchanges, as well as schools that don’t leak, as well as health facilities like mental health units and maternity units. It means a whole lot more than just four-lane highways, because that’s actually what helps people, not just roads. So we’re doing the roads and we’re doing a whole lot more, and that’s what this is about.

We’ve been hearing some great fairy tales in the House in terms of this story of what’s happened in the past of New Zealand, and I’m fascinated. I think the transport spokesperson on that side did an excellent impersonation of Rumpelstiltskin yesterday, where he nearly went through the floorboards stamping his foot. But the interesting story—the interesting story—was what actually happened under the past story. So let’s go there. Let’s have a look at that fairy tale and see what happens.

What we did, what we actually had, is we had these roads of national significance, but they probably should have been named “the roads of National Party significance”, because that’s exactly what they were. They were actually a deliberate intention to set out to undermine the independence of the New Zealand Transport Agency and their decision-making process, and that’s exactly what happened with the roads of national significance, and it’s something that this Government has had to turn around.

The legacy of unfunded ghost roads has haunted communities from around New Zealand. The legacy here is that what was left was the land transport fund was $2.2 billion oversubscribed because of the hollow promises that weren’t backed up with actual funding. What we saw was not one but many projects around the country, places like the Penlink, places like Melling interchange, where we had great promises—great promises—but no funding to deliver. That is the big difference with this Government. So it’s fascinating that we hear claims on that side that it’s the party of infrastructure when, in reality, they were hollow promises that never delivered actual roads. So to put a promise in place, you need to fund it, and that is a difference.

But there’s more going on than just important places to keep moving and keep public transport in line with what’s also happening on our roads, and that is about our schools. We haven’t heard anything from the other side of the House—we haven’t heard one thing—about what would be done with the schools. What was happening for those nine years that we were left wondering? What was happening was children were sitting in classrooms that leaked. Buildings that needed to be repaired were not repaired. Hospitals that needed vital infrastructure were not done so, and that’s exactly the case where we are, here in the Hutt Valley. What’s happened there, particularly with maternity, is we have seen a huge underfunding for services that are now having to be rebuilt—front-line services that have not had adequate equipment to be able to function properly. To have to do that properly, we see now a $9.4 million investment in a brand new refurbishing of the maternity unit within Hutt Hospital—about time.

It’s about time the people and the mums in the Hutt got facilities that were actually functioning and operating properly. It’s about time too that we got a $25 million acute mental health unit, so that when young people in the Hutt instead were being shipped out over to Porirua and ran away to come back to the Hutt, now we can get those services right there where we live, so that families can support other family members that are going through a tough time, and those people can go to their local hospital and get the services and the support that they need at that time. That’s because we care about infrastructure, and our definition of infrastructure is a bit different than a four-lane highway. It’s about—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Thanks for Melling, Ginny Andersen. Thank you for Melling.

—the people that are in there and it’s about—ha, ha! You’re welcome. You can come on down to Melling any old time.

So it’s a good day to be in a Government that is delivering to New Zealanders. There are more than hollow promises; there are differences to people’s lives made on a daily basis, because we are investing, more so than any Government has done in a very long time.

I understand this is a split call.

The previous speaker is a very hard-working MP. I’m very delighted to work with the honourable—or the very respectful member, sorry—Ginny Andersen. But in terms of delivery, the hallmark of this Government—what’s the hallmark of this Government? The hallmark is the Government is very good at making announcements but hopeless in making delivery. So this is this Government.

Now, what are the hallmarks of the failure of delivery? Of course, we all mentioned this KiwiBuild, which is a disaster, and then light rail—we haven’t seen anything there, not even a blueprint—and then the 2018 census. That, again, was a disaster—the worst ever census in New Zealand. It missed over 700,000 New Zealanders in the process, and the response rate for Māori was just 68.2 percent. That was an over 20 percent drop from the 2013 census. Then the Pacific people: 65.1 percent, which, again, was an over 23 percent drop from the 2013 census. This is the Government which cannot deliver.

But I’m going to focus on the issue of safety. We understand that the number of gang members has increased dramatically in the past two years, so that’s, again, an issue for public safety. Shootings—I was talking to Parmjeet Parmar, my colleague, and she said that in the past two years, there were three shootings in Mount Roskill. That’s this Government, right? More gangs, more shootings.

Again, in terms of safety, we can talk about public health. Public health—a very poor record of this Government in dealing with infectious diseases. We understand there was, of course, this meningitis outbreak in Northland and there was the measles outbreak—very, very bad performance from this Government, like Third World country performance—and then this COVID-19 coronavirus. Well, we understand the PM said “We’re not going to listen to the Opposition.”, but then the problem is that now we have two confirmed cases and more to come.

On 26 January, Michael Woodhouse, the spokesperson for health from National, urged the Government to take action. On the same day, of course, the Government did take action, saying, “OK, we are going to screen all the passengers from China.” The following morning, Chinese Herald journalists went to the airport and checked the airport. No one was there to screen passengers—no one. Ever since then, we had numerous reports saying that there was no one there to check the passengers, no one to take the temperature of the passengers—none. Why? It’s hard to believe, right? This is what the Government has been doing. The Government’s saying, “OK. Now, basically, it’s a matter of time for the virus to come to New Zealand.” They have surrendered. They have no confidence in dealing with this. “Oh, sooner or later, it will come. Just be prepared. It’s a matter of time.”

Then they set up the Healthline. A lady contacted me. They came from China and they were in self-isolation. They tried to register. They called the Healthline five times—five times. Sometimes no one answered the call. Sometimes no one was speaking Chinese and no one understood what they were saying, and they couldn’t understand what they were saying. So later on, of course, the Minister was right. We reported it to the Minister and the Minister responded to us. Indeed, they added more staff, more Mandarin-speaking staff, and it sped up. This is typical of the Government. They make announcements, but in the end, they could not deliver. Now, very often we will say that we need confidence. The Government’s saying don’t panic, but we need to have confidence.

I call Lawrence Yule—five minutes.

Mr Speaker, it’s with pleasure that I rise to speak to the Prime Minister’s statement, because it’s not that long ago that a slogan went across New Zealand and on the basis that we had a new leader of the New Zealand Labour Party, there was a slogan that said, “Let’s do this.” And nearly three years on, you stand back, and I look at it and I say, “Do what? What has been done and when?” There is lots of optimism from the new Government—lots of promises. And my colleague Andrew Falloon has explained that the greatest failure so far, in many ways, is that 100,000 houses were promised in 10 years—that’s 10,000 a year. In the first two years, 450 have been built. Nobody can say that is even close to the expectation and the thinking that was offered.

I give that example, Mr Speaker, and for members of the other side, because I want to give some figures on my own patch in Hawke’s Bay. When this Government came into power, there were 163 people on the waiting list for houses in Hastings—163. The numbers for Hastings were released yesterday. They are now 484—three times the number of people on the housing waiting list than there was in 2017. In Napier, the number was 193 in 2017. It is now 509. It is a disgrace. So much was promised and so little has been delivered. In that same time in Hastings, despite there being two hectares of vacant Housing New Zealand land, the net housing stock in Hastings has lifted by nine houses—nine houses in two years. The number of people in motels has gone from 163 to 484, and the Government, despite having two hectares of vacant land, has built nine houses. In Napier, they built 46 houses, so that’s a better effort—something to do with the member being a Cabinet Minister, I expect—but still there are now 509 people living in motels.

I then come on to the infrastructure announcement: “Let’s do something.” It was “Let’s do this”; now it’s “Let’s do something.” And the “do something” was we’ll borrow $12 billion because interest rates are low and we’ll announce a whole lot of things. Well, guess what: not a single cent of that $12 billion has been allocated to Hawke’s Bay or my electorate. Not a cent—not a cent. So when you go and talk to people about the big infrastructure announcement, now they simply say, “We’ve been completely bypassed.” Shane Jones would talk about, if he was here, the Napier to Wairoa rail link, and the Hon Meka Whaitiri and I, we went on that train. Well, guess what. It’s had three runs since it’s been started—three runs; three loads of timber from Wairoa to Napier. Nothing more. Five million dollars of Government funding, and it’s had three trains since Shane Jones walked up and down the aisles last year saying how wonderful it’s going to be.

In concluding, in my last minute, I have to talk about crime in Hawke’s Bay. We have had three major gang incidents in the last two months in Napier, which is the hometown of the Minister of Police. Two have involved shotguns, one through the Napier medical centre. Another involved a shooting outside a restaurant, and a couple of weekends ago there was an attack with a baseball bat. We then had a 12-year-old girl write to the local paper saying that she had witnessed, after a tangi, gang members riding straight through the middle of red lights and asked the Minister what he would do about it. Nothing, to my knowledge, has been done, despite the Minister saying it’ll be followed up. And yesterday, I read this notice in the Napier news: “Well done, Napier police. A 20-year-old girl gets chased into a property by a large male and punched in the face, resulting in a broken, bloody nose, with witnesses. Four 111 calls and police are unable to attend.”

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.