Budget Debate

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is my pleasure to rise to take a call in this debate. I think it is worth us reflecting on the privileged position we are in, in this House, to be routinely meeting as an assembly of lawmakers and to be in this unique set of circumstances.

I think, even more broadly, it is worth us reflecting on the incredibly liberal way in which we are living our lives in New Zealand now, compared to the rest of the world. That was made possible because of our team of 5 million. We all know that we are in unprecedented times of both a health and a global crisis.

In New Zealand, it was our team of 5 million who have set about eliminating this virus, and that same team of 5 million who are setting about kick-starting our economy. To hear today in this House the Opposition stating that they believed that we have done so well because of our geography I think belittles the contribution of every member of that team, every New Zealander who has sacrificed so that we are in the privileged position we are today.

We all know that getting our country back on track is going to take time, but we’ve made a strong start. What we have heard from the Opposition again in this House was not only the belittling of the team of 5 million and the sacrifices they’ve made but the urgency that they are calling on to reopen the borders with Australia and China. They want to put our collective hard-won gains at risk with knee-jerk political reactions.

These are times that call for leadership. These are times that call for the type of leadership we have seen from our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern; not these knee-jerk political reactions. We all want to see our borders reopen. We all want to see normality return. But New Zealanders do not want us to put their efforts at risk. New Zealanders do not want us to play roulette with the sacrifices that they have made, and that is something that we are committed to on this side of the House.

Our economic response is working for New Zealand. We’re protecting jobs, with more than $10 billion in wage subsidies already paid out to more than 1.6 million workers. Treasury has forecast that we could be growing again as soon as next year, with unemployment back to pre-COVID levels—near-record lows—within a couple of years. If we look around the globe, these are extraordinary projections and ones that we should rightly be proud of, and, of course, our COVID response, the Budget that we’re here debating in this debate, comes on top of our $12 billion New Zealand Upgrade Programme, which was announced, in what seems an age ago, back in January. Our economy is well placed to weather the global downturn. The Government’s response has cushioned the blow of COVID-19 for workers, for families, and for businesses, positioning well through the entire lockdown, right through to the recovery.

Prior to COVID, we were in the position of having interest rates, debt, and unemployment at low levels, and our books were balanced. This is the rainy day that we’ve been saving for. As our Minister of Finance keeps telling us, we are in a strong position thanks to the careful management of the books in New Zealand over previous years. It is very pleasing to see the work that we have put in as a Government being endorsed by ratings agencies maintaining our Aaa position.

So the Budget that was delivered this year is, obviously, a Budget that no Government ever expected to deliver. They were extraordinary times. The Budget that we delivered addresses some of the immediate needs as people find themselves out of work, but we have not let go of taking that future-focused vision as we approach our response phase, and it is vital that we do that as a Government.

The vision and leadership of our Prime Minister and our Minister of Finance means that we are in a great position to be able to bounce back and continue the strong growth prior to the emergence of COVID-19, because what our Minister of Finance delivered to us on Budget day was a jobs Budget. It’s recognition of the fact that employment needs to be the central pillar in our response. This is evident in so much work that we’ve done through our extension of the wage subsidy scheme, which has already put the over $10 billion I referred to into the hands of Kiwi employers and their employees.

Of course, we also have record investment in trade training through the $1.6 billion Trades and Apprenticeships Training Package, which will provide opportunities for New Zealanders of all ages to receive trade training. One of the areas that I reflect on as a Christchurch MP is the lessons we must learn from the past. Throughout the Christchurch rebuild, we did not take the opportunity to train enough of our young people to be rebuilding our city. I am pleased to be a member of a Government that is not going to squander an opportunity like that and that is truly investing in skills and trade training.

But in the time that I have left, I particularly want to talk about something that I consider is of utmost importance to all New Zealanders, and that is ensuring that more people have suitable housing. I am extremely proud to be part of a Government that stood here on Budget day and announced it will be delivering an additional 8,000 new public and transitional homes. This not only addresses the chronic shortfall in housing that we are trying to fix but also gives confidence to the construction sector that they can see that there is a forward plan of work coming through public housing to them. It builds on our Government’s record of delivering on public housing since we took office just a little more than 2½ years ago.

The evidence of our success is demonstrated in that the Budget delivered $100 million to fund the over-delivery of 1,650 public houses that were built ahead of schedule over the last 2½ years. It is always a good position to be in as a Minister starting your talks with the Minister of Finance, pointing out that you need funding to fund your success in over-delivery in an area, and in the area of public housing we have done that. With the extra 8,000 houses that we have funded through Budget 2020, our Government will have delivered or have in its pipeline 18,350 public and transitional housing places, representing the largest public housing programme in decades. This turns around the decade before that saw us decrease our public housing stock by 1,500 homes. This is a Government that has put public housing back on the agenda of New Zealanders.

This investment isn’t just about making sure more New Zealanders have warm, dry homes to call home; it’s also about supporting our construction sector because, on this side of the House, we will not repeat the mistakes we saw from the previous Government throughout the global financial crisis (GFC). We aren’t going to stand back and leave the recovery to the market while the public housing waiting list grows and another generation is pushed further and further away from homeownership.

The additional 8,000 public houses that we funded through this Budget will have an economic impact far beyond the $5 billion worth of investment that will be taken to build those houses. We will be supporting our local construction companies. We will be supporting the plumbers. We will be supporting the electricians. We will be supporting those small-business owners who deliver our small trades by making sure that there is a pipeline of work. Now is not the time to turn off the tap. We saw that from the previous Government through the GFC, and it is not a mistake that we will repeat.

Something else that I want to point out is that in the nearly one year that I have had the privilege of being the Minister of Housing in this Government, I am yet to hear a constructive plan from the Opposition on what they will do with housing. I want to know what the Opposition’s plan is. What is their plan to support the construction sector post-COVID? What is their plan to support first-home buyers? What is their plan to reduce the public housing waiting list? What is their plan to tackle homelessness? What is their plan to support the aspiration of Māori and Pasifika in the area of housing?

That is what New Zealanders want to hear from their politicians at the moment. It is what they are hearing from the Government, but we are hearing deafening silence from the Opposition when it comes to a plan around housing. Our Budget delivers that plan. Not only does it deliver the plan, but it delivers the funding. Thank you.

I am pleased to speak on the Budget, but what I am sad about is when we look back in history and we compare this Budget to previous Budgets of previous Governments dealing with major financial crises. I think it is important to look back. Under the last National Government, when we dealt with the global financial recession, when we were staring down a decade of deficits, what we did was, when we were in that situation, we left New Zealand a legacy of some world-class infrastructure, whether it’s ultra-fast broadband, which connected every school in New Zealand to uncapped, fast data for every school across the country, whether it was the Victoria Park Tunnel, or whether it was the huge number of roading projects that occurred. So when we look at this Budget and we look at this situation that we find ourselves in, it is important to understand the feelings of many New Zealanders—but also of this side of the House—to be disappointed.

The reality is that we are in the largest economic crisis of a generation, and it is not good enough to turn up in this Budget and have a bucket of cash but not have detailed plans. What we have seen on this side of the House is that despite the largest economic crisis in a generation and 150,000 projected job losses, the linchpin of this Budget should have been job retention and job creation. The reality is we’ve just heard from Willie Jackson about Mana in Mahi. This Government’s plan in this Budget but also from Willie Jackson himself is 729 jobs. So when Megan Woods stands up in this House and tries to give the Opposition a lecture on what our plans are, I’m very proud that our leader, Todd Muller, announced on Friday a plan for 50,000 jobs; not 729, Willie Jackson.

When we hear in this debate a lecture about building public houses, it is important to consider the backdrop, in which this Government promised 100,000 houses via KiwiBuild. So it’s not OK to be turning up with tens of billions of dollars available and then not to be meeting the mark in terms of a large-scale project like KiwiBuild. The reality is this is a Government that is very, very good at press releases, but, actually, when it comes to the detail and delivery on every major measure, this Government has failed. In the area of transport and infrastructure, this Government has delivered very little. In the area of housing, this Government, again, by its own standards, is nowhere near what its targets were on KiwiBuild. So as we travel around New Zealand, we believe that this election will be fought on who is able to best power up and power New Zealand out of the largest economic crisis of a generation.

Again, what that requires is some form of plan. What we saw in this Budget was, again, a contingency which enables members opposite to put out press releases of initiatives that are highly likely to never be delivered, because that is their record of 2½ years in office. On the alternative side, our party is very focused—very focused—on the 480,000 small businesses, who need a few things. The first thing they need is certainty. That is why we are asking questions about level 1. It is our view that we should be able to move there. It’s not just the view of the Opposition; it’s also the view of the Deputy Prime Minister.

It is incumbent on this Government to be able to turn up into the small businesses—the butchers, the factories, the other shops and retail areas of New Zealand, and hospitality—and tell those businesses why we’re not in level 1 now, because that matters, and it’s relevant to the debt that will occur for generations. If the Government spends every additional day with restrictions, then it will cost us more. So it is our view that we should be in level 1 now.

The second area of our economic plan is absolutely ensuring that we do what we can to save these businesses. The wage subsidy has been great, but it is not enough. That is why, on this side of the House, we have put up very comprehensive plans around GST refunds. We understand that there are people now who are being let go, and we understand that there are many businesses in my electorate and in other people’s electorates who are shutting their doors because the Government has not been able to provide direct cash flow and the Prime Minister has continued in this House to obfuscate and to put up a whole range of other things except for actual policy that will ensure that these businesses survive. That is why the other prong of our plan has been around job creation.

On Friday, we announced the JobStart package, which is about $10,000 to enable an additional hire to really ensure that for those potential 150,000 people that find themselves unemployed, they actually have a hope of getting another job. This is the side of the House that understands the economy, that has a leader that has business experience, and that has the capacity to ensure that people are in work and that they are helped through this very difficult time.

I turn my mind then to areas like education. Again, this is a Government that promised a huge amount. We know there are more than, I think, 40 promises in education that have not been delivered, despite tens of billions of dollars in this Budget. So the question for Ministers in the education area alone is where is the package around the viability of schools to get through COVID? The number of principals that have messaged me that are dealing with huge bills due to the loss of international students at their schools or due to a lack of fund-raising. There was not a package in this Budget to deal with those issues of financial viability for the schools across New Zealand.

What about the tertiary sector? Again, it was a huge hit around international students. In this Budget, there was $20 million for students for hardship. Again, that is nothing compared to the huge hit that the tertiary institutions of New Zealand have faced.

So where we find ourselves in terms of this Budget is that it is disappointing. We are going to be dealing with a more worse situation. Every day, we are talking to businesses across New Zealand and we’re talking to families. They are in extraordinary hardship, and what we have is a Government that does not have the team to deliver. It does not have a record of delivery in the best possible times, and it doesn’t have intelligent plans to be able to deliver and ensure that the 480,000 small businesses of New Zealand survive and keep families in work. It doesn’t have a record of delivery across infrastructure.

So what we find, again, from Ministers is that they go across the country issuing press releases, but they fail, again, to actually deliver when it comes to execution, and this Budget is a classic case of that. We know that they will spend probably $10 billion in the next three months, and the reality is, when I talk to people in their 20s and 30s and 40s, they say this: “This is the rainy day. We want to invest in infrastructure. We want to invest in people and training. We want to invest in people and skills. We want to build houses. We want to do all of these things.”, but what they expect is that we spend this money wisely.

What they know is that if we don’t, there will be no legacy as a result of the greatest financial recession of our history. They will be working longer. They will be paying higher taxes. So we have a moral obligation in this House to scrutinise this Budget, to acknowledge that members opposite—despite some amazing conditions until COVID—have failed to deliver, and to acknowledge that in one of the worst periods of our history from an economic perspective, the heroes of this recovery, our small businesses, have been left high and dry. It is only National that has the plans, whether it’s job creation in JobStart, whether it’s GST refunds to keep those businesses afloat, or whether it’s our infrastructure plan, of which Todd has said we will deliver the largest ever infrastructure plan in our nation’s history. It is only National that has the team of people to execute that and that has the plans to deliver, and this Budget is a disappointment.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to take my call to speak to Budget 2020. I’d just like to acknowledge my colleague opposite, Nikki Kaye, who’s just resumed her seat, on being elevated to her new position as head girl of the National—pardon me, as the deputy leader of the National Party.

I will begin my contribution this afternoon acknowledging the health sector in the response to this global pandemic. It has been a highly successful public health response, and I think we can all agree with that. The way that every individual, whether they stayed at home, whether they were an essential worker and went out into their community and performed the function that was required of them—everybody played their part, and we have had a really positive response. So a big thankyou, particularly to all those essential workers working in the health sector for keeping the hospitals and the medical centres ticking over.

Budget 2020 has a big number attached to it: $50 billion. There is another number I’d like to mention right now, and that number is zero. It’s a number that perhaps is a very small number, or maybe it’s not even a number at all. But it’s a number that, day after day, for the last 12 days in particular, we have wanted to hear that number: zero, zip, nil, nada—cull—new cases of COVID.

Throughout the course of lockdown and over the last number of weeks, families and individuals gathered around their televisions or their iPhones—maybe it was even with your teenagers—and we watched at 1 o’clock as the mighty Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, told us about the situation of COVID. But, particularly, we have been watching with bated breath over the last couple of weeks to hear those words from him: “No new cases of COVID.”, and so now we can focus our attention as a country on recovery and rebuilding.

But I’d like to go back to a comment made by the previous speaker, who said that when they were in Government, they left world-class infrastructure. So I’d just like to mention: can you tell that to the thousands who were left homeless under their watch? Can you say that they left world-class infrastructure when there was faecal matter oozing down the sides of public hospitals? I say no.

My leader, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, in his statement said that “It’s a Budget that responds aggressively to our present conditions, it’s a Budget that will support our transition to recovery, and it’s a Budget that has our people, New Zealanders, front and centre.” This Government has been focused from the get-go in 2017, when we came into Government, on the people. Our health response was about protecting the people. Our economic response in Budget 2020 is about the people: getting them back to work and getting them back into jobs.

I’d like to make note, as we turn to our recovery, of the health response inside Budget 2020: $5.6 billion in services and $755 million in capital investment, and $3.9 billion has gone to the DHBs because our DHBs are playing catch-up, and so that has been earmarked for healthcare spending over the next four years. Now, this is a deliberate intention to mitigate the consequences of past belt-tightening and retrenchment policies. Also, $160 million has been sent off to the combined pharmaceutical budget managed by Pharmac. Now, this critical investment takes Pharmac’s medicines budget to a record $1.045 billion, and that’s over the 2020-21 year. There is also $832.5 million for disability support services.

So as we move ahead into our recovery, I’d like to highlight that a lot of people actually read a few books while they were in lockdown—they had time and space to do that—and one thing that was very disappointing for a lot of people was that the libraries were shut. They were shut because absolutely everyone was home. But now that people are back out into our communities, we can go back to these hubs of our communities, and something that my colleague the Hon Tracey Martin, through her budget of $58.8 million, has done is made an investment in our libraries so that we can ensure free internet access at all libraries. There’s 600 libraries in New Zealand, with 2,500 employees.

So that announcement was made last week, and, on the very same day, the Auckland Council, basically, said that across all their libraries, for our relief librarians, they won’t be getting any extra work. There will be no extra hours for librarians, if they needed to pick up a few extra hours of work. So, as the Auckland Council said, they will retrench in the library space. Our Minister said, actually, we need to invest in our libraries because of the importance of libraries being a connector in our communities.

One of the things that we learn from history is that in times of crisis, often it will stimulate exciting new artwork. Now, we had an announcement about “What will we do, and what is the role of art in the time of crisis?”, so there is a new arts funding package. I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that over history, we’ve seen some incredibly inspired artworks that have come from a period of time when there was political and social turmoil. So I’d take you back to the time during South Africa at the end of apartheid and the artwork that was being produced then, the Solidarity era in Poland in the 1980s, and also the time that accompanied the Berlin Wall coming down in the 1990s.

During these periods of uncertainty and risk, there is an amazing amount of art that is produced. It forces a crystallisation of thinking, and we have now put in a package of $175 million to support the artists and the cultural creation in New Zealand, which I believe is not just about “Can they produce more work?” but also they have families that will be taken care of because there will be some income there for them. There is $7.9 million for Careers Support for Creative Jobseekers, $70 million for creative arts recovery, and $60 million over three years for a cultural innovation fund. So we are backing the arts in a really big way, because it is about people.

Back in the early 1900s, my grandmother Herene Kīngi travelled from the North in Tai Tokerau to Rotorua to work at Whakarewarewa. She went down to Te Puia to be a guide. From the arts and Māori tourism package, $7.6 million has been delivered to Te Puia and the Māori Arts and Crafts Institute in Rotorua to keep our young people training in carving and weaving, ensuring those skills will continue to be developed throughout this recovery period. As a young girl—because I grew up in Rotorua—my dad learnt to carve, so I’m really pleased that that institution, which has about a 100-year history in New Zealand, will continue to thrive because of the heart of this Government caring about our people.

I will just mention my connection up North, in Tai Tokerau and Hokianga, and the dreadful housing situation some whānau find themselves in, whether it’s homelessness or housing states that, really, no one should be living in. There is $40 million from the Māori and Iwi Housing Initiative, the Māori housing and development programme, and we saw it rolled out in a very real way as we went into lockdown in an immediate response, working with the Māori collective Te Kahu o Taonui. They sent up 60 campervans to the Far North to support homeless whānau so they could be in a safe space and also be able to physically distance.

This is a bold and exciting Budget package at a time where the country really needs to be united and to ensure that we can look after each other. We’ve done the health package. We have taken care to ensure that we have, literally, isolated ourselves from the COVID crisis. Now it is time to take care of our people as we move forward into jobs and work, because it is necessary that we get the country moving again by getting our people employed, and where they can’t have a job any more with that job, we can transition into new work. That will enable our economy to get moving again. So that is a grand plan, and I’m proud to be part of this Government. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on the Budget debate this afternoon and have the document in front of me around rebuilding together. I have no doubt that six months or 12 months ago, the Government would not have had any plan to deliver this Budget in exactly the same way that they’ve had to because of COVID-19, which means that it’s required some quick thinking and some adjustment to the Budget figures. Also, as we’ve seen, there’s $20 billion that was in there that was unallocated. So in that regard, the fact that it’s done with quick thinking means that it’s going to require a lot more intense scrutiny, because when things are done in a hurry—and we’ve seen it with legislation in the House, in particular—things do get missed.

One of the first things I read at page 33, as I’m going through the fiscal strategy, is that “The global COVID-19 pandemic has placed extreme stress on the global economy”. That’s true, but the Government of New Zealand is not responsible for the global economy, and neither can the Government use the global economy as an excuse for our own. It has an effect on it. It has an effect on trade, and, obviously, through this period with COVID-19, tourism, I would say—as we all know—is one of the biggest sufferers as an industry of the effect of COVID. So it’s not an excuse, and, as we went through the global financial crisis a few years ago, we were one of the Governments—led by John Key—who was leading the growth economies around the world.

So we can’t use it as an excuse, but it creates some broader thinking, because, in any economy, there are the economic factors, the environmental factors, and then there are the social factors, and right now, as an economy, some of the things that have been under attack are going to be the very things that will save our economy and will provide the social wellbeing expectations that our people have come to believe in. So when we hear—quite frequently these days—that farming is the backbone of our economy, for the last 2½ years, we haven’t been hearing that. Look, it certainly underpins our economy, and I would be the first one to accept that there are some changes needed in agriculture. But what we have to remember when we’re doing Budgets, whether they be economic budgets or environmental budgets, is that what we do in this country, as a great little place down the end of the world, is not going to have massive, massive effects on climate change.

So we really need to think about our Budget, going forward, economically as a country, think about some of our natural resources, think about the fact that our farmers in New Zealand are actually world leaders when it comes to issues of climate change, and think about how we economically use our intellectual property to influence the rest of the world. Last night, we were here debating the changes to the climate change bill. Several trees had been cut down to produce the bill in the first instance. It’s about a ream of paper, and then the Supplementary Order Papers are almost another ream of paper. I question this Government on how that is going to make any difference to climate change, because it’s going to create a whole lot more administration, and what we need is tools to drive things forward.

So I would not disagree—in this document, page 35—that “Now is the time to use our strong fiscal position to respond to COVID-19”. I would acknowledge the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, in acknowledging both Bill English and Michael Cullen for the work that they’ve done in the past. I always believe in giving credit where credit is due. It is time to use our strong fiscal position, but the way we respond to this is going to make a big difference.

We’ve had lots of discussions in this House about the wage subsidies. Now, the wage subsidies have been a big help for businesses, and no one’s actually going to deny that. But there seems to be some denial on the Government side of the House about the difficult position that many, many, many businesses still find themselves in.

The wage subsidy has been helpful. We hear time and time again that, yes, under level 2, businesses are open. There is a huge difference between opening the door and running a profitable business. If we think about some of our restaurants, certainly, in level 3, it was really difficult watching those people with their little table out the door, waiting for customers to come and get takeaways. You don’t go to a fine restaurant to get takeaways. It was very difficult. Even now, there are some restaurants, under the guise of the rules that we operate in level 2, that are allowing people to come for dinner for an hour, because they need to get that turnover in that business to make the money. You cannot expect people to go and get nine friends, as it was at that stage because the limit was 10, to go out with a group and say “We’re going out for an hour.”, because the reality is those sorts of things don’t happen. So we really do need to think about the dynamics of what we would call being open for business.

The time frame and the path for meeting our long-term objectives as we recover is on page 39 of the document. The time frame has been something that we’ve been arguing about quite a bit as to when we change levels, and the path is the other one. It appears that as a Government and as a country, we’ve been quite picky and choosy about the path and about the people that we allow into this country. Yes, I don’t have any objection that movie-making has helped this country a long way down the economic path, but when we start picking and choosing between different industries—and we’ve heard Nick Smith’s objections to blocking the boat out of his local area, which is, basically, taking $3.5 million out of his community when the boat’s coming from a country where there is no COVID. It’s not only about the time frames and the levels; it’s about how we make the decisions on who we let in and who we let out.

I just want to touch a little bit now on some of the expenditure in agriculture. It’s very good to see the continuation of expenditure on the Mycoplasma bovis eradication programme. It was pretty rough at the beginning, probably a bit like COVID’s being rough on a lot of people, but I do see some forward planning has been going on with the Ministry for Primary Industries for the last year or so, which has actually made the process easier, particularly relating to the wellbeing of farmers who are going through that dreaded process. So I commend them for the human factor that came into that process much later in the piece.

The other part of that process was the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) scheme, and it’s good to see there’s funding going into maintaining compliance for that. NAIT let us down at the time when it came to the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak. It was often referred back to farmers not doing what they were supposed to do, and in some situations, I don’t doubt that that was the case. However, the NAIT system was not operating as it should be, so it’s good to see some money going into that.

I’m really thrilled to see more money going into the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases, because when we talk about the emissions trading scheme and we talk about taxes, that’s not going to fix our problem. The global research alliance and the science is going to fix our problem by building up the tools. People just want to know: “Where am I now, where do I need to get to, and what tools have you got to help me?” It’s no good taxing things that we don’t have answers for.

So I’m really, really thrilled to see that happening and also thrilled to see some increase in capability for the post-entry quarantine and the laboratory services for new horticulture markets, because we’ve had some difficulties there in the last year or so. Lawrence Yule is very aware of some of the stock for horticulture that’s been through a tough time as well.

So thank you, Mr Speaker. That’s a very quick summary of my view of the Budget.

E Te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I firstly just want to start my contribution on behalf of the Green Party today, in this split call, addressing some of the concerns raised by Barbara Kuriger, the speaker just before me, being primarily those around climate change. She was simultaneously saying that what we do won’t change anything, but then also saying that we’re world leaders. I just really want people to inspect that, because you can’t have it both ways. If we want to be world leaders here, if we want to inspire others to come up to our standards, we have to keep leading the world, and we don’t get there by falling behind the mark.

With regard to the context of this Budget, as many before me have already spoken to, the context has entirely shifted to where we were months ago. A lot of people right now are talking about future generations, and they are harking back to the situation that we saw ourselves in as a country and, indeed, as a world and a global economy in the 1930s, centring around the Great Depression. There, it’s interesting to investigate that we saw a similar mobilisation of governmental, political, and parliamentary forces to rise to the challenge that was being faced, particularly with the creation of what was arguably the world’s first safety net, recognising a manifestation of the social contract that all of us who live in this country will look after others when hard times come upon them. Unfortunately, it is the case that over the past few decades subsequent to that introduction, it has been dismantled by Governments following it.

However, what has been highlighted in the context of COVID-19 is what is possible and what can be achieved, particularly those things that we have been told for so long are impossible, such as flexible working for those with disabilities or those who are sole parents, such as housing of the homeless, and such as the raising of core benefits. All of these things that we were told were impossible happened literally almost overnight, and what that has done is expose that these issues have always been solely an issue of political willpower.

So on the issue of the economy, as it’s been bandied about, I really want to begin to unpack that, because, in the words of the environmentalist Paul Hawken—and I quote—“We have an economy that steals from the future, sells it in the present, and calls it GDP.” There are a lot of speakers throughout this debate who have invoked future generations and who have invoked the need for us to sacrifice as we move into the next few years to pay back the debt that is coming down the pipeline. I really, again, think that that is deserving of going under the microscope, because the economy isn’t a sentient being; it is, in fact, the rules and the organisation that we place on all of us and the environment that we live in. The economy doesn’t suffer; we do. What that demonstrates is the importance of the social contract, and the importance of different regulatory and legislative machinery that we are able to mobilise as a Government, as a Parliament, as leaders in this country, to change the way that things like inequality are presently playing out.

On the point around future generations, I really just want to call across the House, across both the Government and the Opposition benches, and ask for people to really think about the kind of rhetoric that they are invoking here, because we are simultaneously hearing people ask about future generations and the debt that will befall them. But if we’re really concerned about future generations, perhaps we should stop trying to speak on behalf of them or for them, and speak to them about what matters, because when you speak directly to our tamariki and to our rangatahi, what you will hear is quite different to the issues that are regularly bandied about in this ivory tower. In fact, it is things like climate action, which I am appalled to hear certain members now asking to delay so that we can supposedly service this economy, which again, we have unpacked, is mythology. So too, we would be caring about students. We would be removing all barriers. Notably, this Budget does remove those barriers for certain trade training, but we have the opportunity to go further. Kia ora.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. I think the most important question members should ask themselves in the Budget Debate is: how does it help regular, real people in New Zealand? Now, it was Sir Geoffrey Palmer who once said about being a member of Parliament that it’s the best education you can have into your country. Now, I don’t think he meant about sitting in this Chamber. I think what he meant was actually getting out and talking to people in their factories, their workplaces, and their offices, and for me, the greatest privilege of my decade here is literally being invited into people’s homes and getting to have those conversations.

For years, when I’ve gone into people’s homes, I’ve been talking about the Green Party’s work to insulate them, to set better rental standards, and to have better-quality housing, and it would shock you what I’ve seen in Kiwi’s houses. I’ve seen black mould on the roof as if it was painted on with black paint. I’ve seen houses with holes in the walls. I’ve seen houses with plants and mushrooms growing out of the walls. I’ve seen in Dunedin—where I got to judge the worst rental flat competition as part of the city council’s campaign to clean up their rental standards—super unsafe staircases almost falling over. I’ve seen window panes that you can literally peel the wood like it was a Cadbury Flake because it was so damp and rotten.

So that’s why, when I’m thinking about real people, I’m so proud of this Budget, because we’re making a huge difference for real families’ lives. Now, we’ve seen the more than $1 billion for more than 11,000 jobs in nature, but it’s the 9,000 extra homes which are going to be insulated as a result of this Budget that I’m incredibly proud of because it’s those homes that are going to make a difference. Now, the Government’s come in and made sure that it can fund 90 percent of the cost of insulation. In some regions, that’s up to the total cost that’s covered. There’s new grants of $2,500 for clean-heating devices, including efficient woodburners and heat pumps. That’s thousands and thousands and thousands of Kiwi families that are going to be warmer, drier, and healthier as a result, and then their power bill is going to be less too because we’ve doubled the winter energy payment.

But we know we have to go further and faster, because 9,000 is great, but there are still 600,000 substandard homes in New Zealand that are making our kids sick and, even worse, that are making them miss school and, even worse, that are seeing them in hospital. Tragically, we are seeing Kiwis die at a rate greater than the road toll because of their houses. Our houses are more dangerous than the road toll. So that’s why we need to set a goal to insulate every single house in New Zealand to make sure it’s of a warm, dry, healthy standard.

We need to bulk up the building code, because, while London and Christchurch have similar heating demands, in the UK it’s two times the wall insulation standards and five times the underfloor standards that we have in New Zealand. We need smart, sustainable buildings and offices. So while we’ve admirably got through one health crisis, we also need to make sure we flatten the emissions curve to tackle the much, much deadlier looming climate crisis.

As Christiana Figueres from the UN pointed out this week, the investments we make as part of this Budget in the COVID response fund are going to lock in the emissions for the decades to come. All those decisions and those investments could give us the tools to reduce our emissions and to build a prosperous, low-carbon economy to help Kiwi families.

So while we’re warming up homes with insulation on the roof, let’s also make sure we’re putting a solar panel on it as well. Let’s make sure we’re putting solar panels and batteries in every single State house and running it as a clean, virtual network. Let’s stop burning fossil fuels for electricity and for milk dehydration. Let’s save people money by replacing their old, inefficient light bulbs with new, free efficient LED light bulbs. Let’s invest in energy-efficient advisers and good, smart technology. Let’s strengthen our grid so we can get to 100 percent renewable electricity. Let’s support community groups who want to do it themselves and produce their own clean, cheap wind and solar power. To reach our transport and electricity goals and to get to our Paris carbon goals, we need to electrify transport as an industry.

This is the great challenge facing us as a country. If we’re going to meet those goals, we may have to double our electricity production in the next decade. Our great challenge is we have to do what’s taken us 100 years to get to this point in only 10 years and do it cleaner and cheaper than ever before. This is our mission. This is our generation’s great movement, our great moment. With the economic stimulus, it’s how we can grow those clean, sustainable jobs and grow a richer, more prosperous economy.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the benches, we see a party which is looking to the past. It wants to bring back oil and gas exploration. It wants to see more mining. It wants to see more cars, cows, and coal. That’s a recipe for disaster, that’s a recipe for poverty, and that’s a recipe for death.

The Green Party is pushing forward the ideas to take us further and faster to build on the great work that we’ve delivered in Government and to make sure that we’re building that low-carbon, prosperous economy for the future.

I actually quite enjoyed that contribution by that member. We wouldn’t agree on a lot of it, actually, but it’s a calm rationality. It’s a different form of opinions, but I actually really respect Gareth Hughes, and, in sad anticipation, he will actually be missed in the House. I know this was not a valedictory, but it also just shows, I think, the best of the House in these debates, which is that, actually, all parties can bring, if you will, a particular philosophy and perspective.

It’s a refreshing change from earlier Green contributions, which, unfortunately—particularly around this situation of COVID—give truth to the adage “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” The idea that because of COVID, we can say “Look at all these amazing things we did.”—that that somehow is a platform for going forward. So while it’s been good that we’re able to put all the homeless together—we heard from an earlier Greens speaker that it’s just amazing what powers a Government can have and use to bring about a particular agenda of parties, and that’s just not particularly helpful in a democracy. But, as I say, the Green Party and others very much like a crisis to allow them to push through their particular agendas, and we’re seeing that, sadly, around the world.

We’ve also seen in the whole COVID situation at the moment a Government that I think, by and large, has done a good job, but I’d be remiss in this Budget debate—it has pumped billions and billions of New Zealand’s taxpayer dollars and, in fact, borrowed enormous amounts from overseas. The Government has made some mistakes—and I think, as the MP for Tāmaki, I need to acknowledge those—from, I believe, a lockdown that came not hard and fast, as we’re often told, but came too late.

I think it’s important, as the spokesperson for customs, to also note that we had a situation where the border, on 3 February, was closed to China, but over 38,000 people from China—or travelling from China. They were not necessarily from China. They came here—38,000 people—and were only, effectively, giving a pinkie promise to stay self-isolated. It doesn’t make any sense. I think it’s a problem, and a number of constituents have raised with me that we needed to have closed the border sooner in order to manage things.

We have seen, since, of course, New Zealand has locked down. We have been able to contain and manage the virus. The problem is, however—and I’ve certainly seen it as I go around my electorate—the community has suffered. It has suffered. It understands why we’ve had to lock down, but week after week has wrought enormous damage.

I fear that whatever this Government is trying to do, it is not going to be enough, not because of the amounts of money—they are scary amounts of money; eye-watering amounts of money—and the fact that it will take generations to pay off. The problem is that it’s not well structured or focused, and we only need to think of the $50 million package the Government announced—a slush fund in my mind—because there is no clarity around how it’s being spent.

There are two, if you will, broad examples coming out of my electorate where people are definitely struggling. Certainly, in businesses, and that will be no surprise to anyone in this House. Businesses are struggling. You cannot stop an economy for almost nine weeks and not expect businesses to be incredibly damaged, and simply giving them cheap debt is not a solution. The wage subsidy has been, I would say, excellent for the workers, but that does not directly assist the business. Put relatively simply but, I would suggest, accurately, it’s all well and good to pay someone a wage subsidy, but you want them to have a job at the end, and I don’t think the Government has focused on that sufficiently.

Certainly around my electorate, when I think of Tamaki Drive, it’s driven a lot by hospitality. Those cafes and restaurants continue to struggle with what have, basically, become rather arbitrary rules. It’s quite possible, it turns out, for thousands of people to gather in central Auckland and protest together—for good reason—but, up to a few days ago, you couldn’t have more than 10 people sitting together properly in a restaurant. It’s all become rather arbitrary.

Need I point out as well the outright discrimination by the Government against people of faith and religion. It’s the fact that, again, you could protest, you could play sport, and you could go to strip clubs and restaurants, but you couldn’t actually gather for your bar mitzvah or the mosque or churches. It’s been absolutely ludicrous, and I feel we’re continuing in this line, in some ways, to be puppets pulled by strings around all these continued levels and discussions and rules.

You can’t walk down the street without having to see signs about kindness and calmness. There are signs on the street telling me to keep left; in fact, even in this building, there are signs on every stairwell telling me how to walk up some stairs. We’re beginning to live in some bizarre dystopian little world, and it needs to stop. It is simply a form of propaganda, and it’s just completely unnecessary.

I’ve been calling for a while for us to return to normal on the fundamental principle that New Zealanders are smart, intelligent people. We know how to manage our lives and we’ve had enough of the Government constantly telling us how to do this. As I said at the start, the left, in particular, love a crisis because it allows them to justify getting into every aspect of our lives.

Speaking of getting into our lives, I want to touch very quickly on social housing. The Government’s made enormous promises. They’ve told us today, in fact, in a select committee that they are absolutely confident that they will build 3,200 new houses in the next year—just State houses. None of them are going to bought or leased. These are completely totally new builds. I just want to clarify and put that on the record today, because I am telling you now that in about nine or 12 months, we will be going to the Minister of Housing and wanting to see very clearly that 3,200 new homes are going to be built.

As I was pointing out, we already have seen the huge failure that is KiwiBuild, but also we know the Government promised in the last year to build 1,600 new houses and it failed. The Government was only able to build 1,400. Now, I don’t want to take away from it. That’s good—1,400 is good in itself—but that’s not the 1,600, and now the Government’s doubled its target. So it’s thrown a lot of money around and an incredible amount of rhetoric, but can it deliver? I’m going to make my own little statement here: no, they won’t. They won’t deliver, and it’ll be our role to keep them on track.

I also want to jump back into my electorate—and I’m bouncing around here a bit—around our businesses, particularly around the enormous cuts which the Auckland Council has announced in my area. First and foremost, it’s putting ratepayers in a terrible position of choosing between rate increases or having their projects cut. That’s actually quite an unfair choice. It’s a form of blackmail, if you will. But, really importantly—and it’s my pitch, if I would, to the Government—they have talked about shovel-ready projects. I really encourage Government to announce those quickly and/or provide the billions of dollars promised to the council. A number of the private businesses who help our infrastructure—it doesn’t matter if it’s the water to the roads—need certainty. They need certainty. We cannot have what is a boom and bust dynamic, with that being that councils cut the services, the private contractors are cut, workers are lost, and then, let’s say, in three months’ time, the money pops up and those businesses are trying to re-form. It’s not going to work. So I encourage Government there.

Look, in my final thoughts, actually, I want to turn more into the foreign affairs space and to customs, another set of portfolios or interests. In the customs space, I’m disappointed to see that the Budget had, effectively, no new money—no new money. The singular primary vector of coronavirus is through our border. One would think the Government might have just put a few more dollars into that space to allow the Customs Service to do the excellent job that they already do.

My last point’s around foreign affairs. We have seen more money there, but I would encourage the Government to speak more loudly, particularly about what’s happening in Hong Kong. Today, in something that’s never happened before, myself and three other foreign affairs chairs from around the world have signed a joint letter to the United Nations and to our respective Prime Ministers. So that’s Tom Tugendhat from the United Kingdom, David Fawcett from Australia, Michael Levitt from Canada, and myself. It’s a joint letter to the UN Secretary-General, calling on the UN to put in a special envoy to Hong Kong. What is happening there under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party is an affront to democratic principles, and our countries must stand up strongly against that. We have also—all four of us—written to our respective Prime Ministers, asking that they add their voices with a special session of the United Nations to call for that envoy.

I implore the Government, the Prime Minister, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs to speak up clearly. If democracy matters, it matters not just in New Zealand but around the world, and I for one will continue, in my role as a member of Parliament, to speak up for the importance of freedoms and rights around the world. Again, I just want to put on record that I am very proud—in a sense, this is the first time that I know that this has happened—that four chairs of foreign affairs committees have united together and spoken with one voice. On that, I think I might end my contribution.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Before I get to the substance of what I’m going to talk about, I’d just like to address some of the discussion points that Simon O’Connor, the member who just took his seat, raised: 92 percent of the country agree with the approach that the Government has taken to dealing with COVID, so he’s obviously in the 8 percent that disagree, and he speaks about the Government’s response to COVID-19 with a degree of sadness or concern. It’s almost like he was wanting our approach to be less effective than it was and that more people would get it.

We know from projections that we were looking down the barrel of maybe 3,000 deaths in New Zealand if we didn’t go hard and we didn’t go fast—as we did—and countries around the world are only congratulating New Zealand on the approach we have taken. We’ve now had 12 days in a row without any new cases of COVID-19, and we need to be patting ourselves on the back and saying thank you to the team of 5 million people who have contributed to that. But what we’re hearing from the member who’s just spoken is that he would have preferred that we relaxed our approach and, potentially, risked us going back up the alert levels, which, of course, is the worst thing that could possibly happen to New Zealand and the economy.

So we have taken steps to make sure that we have protected New Zealand and New Zealanders. Our best economic approach was our strong health approach, and I think that the National Party just need to tone down their opposition to the way that we’ve approached this, because it has had the best impact economically for New Zealand as well as health-wise.

We’ve heard all the stories about those people who lost loved ones during the lockdowns and how difficult it was for them to mourn and grieve, not being able to attend their funerals. Now, just imagine if there had been those 3,000 COVID-19 deaths, and there would be 3,000 more whānau, 3,000 more families, potentially, who could be affected by that and could be grieving by themselves. My cousin, in fact, in the early days of lockdown, at level 4, lost his mother. Because he’s a grave digger at our marae, he was one that had to dig her grave, and just a handful of them buried our auntie. It sounds like members opposite are almost disappointed that the situation wasn’t worse, but I hope that’s not the case.

This Budget delivered $900 million for Māori. Now, I have to admit that in the Māori caucus, while we’re happy that $900 million is a lot of money, we’re disappointed we couldn’t—for the first time—get to the billion-dollar mark for Māoridom. It sends a signal to Māori that this Government value Māori and we value the relationship we have, and it shows our commitment to continuing to work with Māori to make our country better for everyone.

Now, gone are the days of previous Budgets under the previous Government, where the National Government would under-invest in Māori. I recall in one of the last Budgets that they put out that there was some scheme where they would have a van driving around the Waiariki electorate. The member for Waiariki at the time was a member of the confidence and supply partners to the previous Government. It was to drive around the Waiariki dispensing—I don’t know; I’m not quite sure what it was meant to dispense—Disprins, Panadols. It was meant to be there as a health response for Māori health. It would have been ineffective and it didn’t get off the ground, but that is an example of what the previous Government did. They just paid and walked away—pay Māori, walk away.

Now, one of the things that I’m most proud of is the $200 million we got for the kōhanga reo, but it’s actually not the $200 million that I’m most proud about; it’s the relationship that we have created between the kōhanga reo and the Crown after a decade of neglect. Now, under the previous Government, the kōhanga reo didn’t get a bean, they didn’t get an audience with Ministers—they were left out in the cold—and, as a result, Te Reo Māori education for our youngest babies was absolutely neglected. The first thing when I spoke to Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust when I became the Associate Minister, was I sat down and said that I am committed to kōhanga reo. I grew up in a monolingual home, not being able to speak Te Reo Māori, and I still remember the shame of going on to our marae and not understanding what was going on, and I don’t want any other Māori child to grow up in that same situation that I grew up in. So I expressed then my commitment to work with the kōhanga reo to make sure that all Māori children, if they wish, can have the opportunity to grow up speaking Te Reo Māori.

We had to work hard, first of all, on just the relationship. I said to them that when we work on the relationship, then we can start talking about their aspirations for the next 30 or 40 years and we can put those aspirations into a plan, and we can start to address those aspirations over time. Last year, in last year’s Budget, we got them $32 million and we said that that’s a start. This year, we managed to get them $200 million. Now, $232 million in two years is still just the start. We are still committed to that relationship with kōhanga reo and to Māori education.

Now, there was another $200 million that went towards Māori education as well, and that was going towards other parts of the education system. One of them was $50 million going towards working with whānau. Now, for years and years, we’ve invested in the principals and schools and the boards of trustees and teachers with professional development, but there is one component of the education system that’s been consistently neglected, and that’s the relationship between whānau and the education system. So we’ve put $50 million in there to help Māori whānau to engage with the education system and to be demanding consumers.

Te Ahu o te Reo is our programme. We started four pilots last year, and those pilots were to help teachers to integrate Te Reo Māori throughout their curriculum. Now, I went to the pōwhiri for one of the cohorts up in Ōtaki, and when I got there I saw a whole heap of really shy people participating in this pōwhiri quite to the side, very quietly, and I thought, “Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen here? Is this going to be a success?”, because these people, very few of them who were Māori, seemed to be lost. Roll forward two or three months later, when they graduated and I was waiting outside, I could hear this singing coming from inside the hall where we had the graduation. I said to the organiser when he came out to greet me, “Which group did you bring in for the pōwhiri?” He said, “No, that’s not a kapa haka group. That is the cohort of people, of teachers and educators, who participated and who turned up two or three months earlier at that pōwhiri.”

Such was the success of that professional development that teachers who previously had had very little, if any, exposure to Te Reo Māori were engaging with me in Te Reo Māori after the pōwhiri. It was quite an astounding success. Like I said, very few were Māori—70 percent were non-Māori. Such is the success, now we’re looking to expand Te Ahu o te Reo Māori so that more and more teachers will be able to engage in and integrate Te Reo Māori into their classrooms by 2025, so that all Māori students, regardless of whether they’re in mainstream or are bilingual, will be able to engage with their culture.

We’ve also launched Te Kawa Matakura this year. We launched it up in Tai Tokerau at Waitangi during the Waitangi week. Te Kawa Matakura is a leadership programme for Māori. What it does is it is brings in the old-time learning that schools don’t teach. It is growing our Māori leadership, and they leave that programme with a degree.

We’re also investing $14.6 million to increase Te Reo Māori curriculum resources. That’s because there’s been a dearth ever since I was teaching. When I was a principal, I always said that we needed Te Reo Māori resources to support the curriculum and the programme, and it’s great to go from being a teacher and a principal saying, “I wish we could be able to do these things.” to now being the Associate Minister and actually making these things happen.

But what’s great—just to start to wind up—is that the $900 million, again, is just the start. We’ll have many more Budgets in the coming years to grow on that and build on that so that our people know that we’ve got all these Māori Ministers and we’ve got a ton of Māori MPs who will become Ministers in their time, who are going to continue to fight the good fight for our Māori people. As I said, gone are the days when it’s acceptable for National Governments to just pay and walk away from Māori. Those days are gone. Those Governments are gone, and good riddance to them. Kia ora.

Kia ora e Te Mana Whakawā. Let me assure the Hon Kelvin Davis, the Minister who has just resumed his seat, that the National Party has never walked away from Māori. In fact, Māori have achieved more of real substance under National Governments than they have under Governments led by his party over decades in this country.

This has been a year like no other in our lifetime. Equally, Budget 2020 was a Budget like no other that any of us can remember. I do actually feel some sympathy for the Minister of Finance and his officials, because whatever work had been done up to the beginning of March will largely have gone out the window, given the events that followed in the weeks immediately afterwards. So the document that was presented here in this House on 14 May was really more of a fiscal update than a detailed Budget. Cobbled together in a matter of weeks and with circumstances changing daily, it is understandable that it was light on detail and left so many questions unanswered. But the Government now needs to show much greater understanding of what this country needs in order for us to rebuild and to save shattered livelihoods.

This, of course, was our first COVID Budget, and every foreseeable Budget in the years ahead will have COVID recovery as its dominant theme. So I want to acknowledge again those whose lives have been upended by COVID, because, as I mentioned, their livelihoods are now at risk as jobs are being lost, as businesses are going under, as export markets have been put at risk, as our tourism sector has taken such a hit, and so it goes on. That has to be the focus of any Budget. Sadly, from the current Government, we have not been hearing enough about investing in initiatives that will turn those very serious challenges around. They must be the focus of all future Budgets.

Most of those who died of or, in some cases, with COVID in New Zealand were older citizens, and so in my capacity as National’s spokesperson for seniors, I’d like to send my aroha and my condolences to their grieving families. I also want to acknowledge and thank the New Zealand Aged Care Association and all the wonderful staff who work in the many retirement villages, care facilities, and similar institutions around the country looking after so many of our senior citizens. I know that at least one of those very special New Zealanders who they look after is watching this afternoon. She is a constituent of the member for Tāmaki and I send her my love.

💬 Simon O’Connor: Who’s her favourite MP?

Ha! Her favourite MP is probably Mr O’Connor; I’d like to think that her son might come in a close second. But thank you, Mr O’Connor, for asking.

Mr O’Connor was one of several National colleagues who have made very fine speeches in this House this afternoon. Their analysis of the Budget has been thoughtful and, especially, their understanding of the economic and social challenges that our country now faces has shown that the National Party is a team match-fit, full of talent, and ready to govern, and we look forward to having the opportunity to present our alternative vision to the country in just a few weeks from now, as we face the general election on 19 September.

We will be highlighting how disappointing this Budget was in failing to provide the leadership and a clear outline of our choices and what our priorities should be in a post-COVID world. Never has the work of our farmers and our other primary producers been more important, yet, currently, they have a naive Government that continues to believe they should be put at a competitive disadvantage with less efficient producers of the healthy food the world so desperately needs and which New Zealand produces so well. We must not kneecap our farmers and our primary productive sector.

The current Government, or Ministers within it, have supposedly set aside for themselves $20 billion for unspecified purposes, so that amounts to unprecedented fiscal irresponsibility. No one doubts that money must be spent, and a lot of it, but it’s money we don’t have. So it will need to be repaid for decades by our children and their children, and I do not want to saddle my descendants or the descendants of any other New Zealanders with a bill that is literally going to make life miserable for so many of them. So the money that the Government is setting aside, and a future Government will also set aside, must be spent wisely and in ways that will stimulate jobs growth, promote our economic recovery, and save livelihoods.

Gareth Hughes asked in his contribution—which was one of the better ones from the other side—about half an hour ago, how does the Budget help people. Of course it’s a fair question, because Budgets are always about people. That’s what our primary focus should be, as any politician. But, unfortunately, it’s a question that people are still asking now, three weeks after the Budget was delivered. I said that Governments must spend taxpayers’ money responsibly, and not say that they’ll put aside $20 billion that we don’t have and then think later about what they will do with it every time they need to scratch a pre-election itch. Make no mistake, it’s all about buying votes. That is appalling pork-barrel politics of the type we have seen far too often in the last three years, particularly with the shameful $3 billion slush fund, which looked dreadful at the time and yet now is small beer by comparison with what they’re doing.

Well, we’re not playing Monopoly—this is not a game. People’s livelihoods are at risk. Hundreds of thousands of them are losing their jobs this year—37,500 of them lost their jobs in April alone—and they need a Government that backs them to get back into work as soon as possible. We must move into alert level 1 right now, because every day that we fail to do that, more jobs are being lost, more businesses are at risk, and more people are suffering, and, frankly, there is no longer sufficient reason to justify that.

That’s why Nationals’ JobStart policy that was announced by our new leader, Todd Muller—who will be a fine Prime Minister of this country—was the right approach. It has the potential to assist many businesses to have the confidence to invest in staff and start rebuilding. It’s why we in the National Party have offered to work with the Government to share our policy, to cooperate with them, and to implement it as soon as possible—not to wait until we have an opportunity to do so after the election—and it’s indicative of more positive initiatives that our party will be introducing in the weeks and months ahead.

Well, I want to make it very clear in the little time that I’ve got remaining that because Budgets are about people, we will continue to work as constructively as we can with other parties. We are all in this together—we said that when we went into the lockdown—and we’re all in it now. But they must ensure that they are willing to respond appropriately to initiatives, and not give the trite, facile answers that we had from the Prime Minister when asked questions about her approach to dealing with the National Party on the JobStart programme.

Could I, in just the short time remaining, acknowledge the recipients of the Queen’s Birthday honours, because they’re people who have often contributed hugely to economic growth in our country. I want to acknowledge in particular the founder of Hamilton Zoo, founded just over 50 years ago. Murray Powell, who was also a pioneer in the deer industry of this country and who has been one of the great conservators of wildlife, not only launched Hamilton’s fine zoo, which is one of the best in the Southern Hemisphere, but, in 1976, generously gifted it to the nation. Dr—now Dame—Karen Poutasi, a very distinguished public servant, is now doing a wonderful job as the commissioner for the Waikato District Health Board. I congratulate Murray and Dame Karen on their awards—both well deserved.

Could I finally pay tribute to Ismail Gamadid, who was the former president of the Waikato Muslim Association and the Waikato Refugee Forum. Sadly, he died of COVID in Mogadishu about 10 days ago. He had returned there, after 20 years of living in Hamilton, to take up a ministerial post in his native State. He did a fine job in our area of promoting race relations and helping new settlers in our region to settle in. I was proud—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.