General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

The world has been put to an extraordinary test. Every country in the world has been put to the test and has had to meet a very important challenge. The thing about disease and illness and viruses and bacteria is they don’t discriminate. Every country has been faced with COVID-19 and the pandemic, but not every country has responded the same. What that has meant is that the leadership of every country has been put to the test, and we now know who can do it and we now know who cannot.

We are very fortunate that in this country the Government of New Zealand, led by Jacinda Ardern, showed leadership and stewardship unlike any other country in the world. We now have the benefit of being a country where COVID-19 is not in our communities, and we are fighting fiercely to make sure it doesn’t cross the border. That’s what good leadership does, faced with a worldwide challenge such as we have seen.

This coalition Government, supported by its confidence and supply partner, has kept New Zealanders safe and kept many more New Zealanders alive. You know, I said some time ago that the question on the lips of voters this September—and it still will be this September, because we’ve managed the issue—is “What did you do to keep us safe?” And the other question they will ask—not just to members of the Government—will be “What did you do to keep us safe?”, because then they will be looking at the Opposition, and they will be saying, “Well, what did that lot do? What was their contribution to keeping us safe?”, because the reality is that the National Opposition fudged and mudged their way through the entire pandemic—they could not make up their minds on what to do. They wanted to close the borders, and then, just as quickly, they wanted to open the borders. They wanted to borrow heaps, and now they don’t want to borrow heaps. Although, if you’re Jacqui Dean, you don’t borrow; you just get the money offshore. So we know that much.

Now we’ve seen exposed to this Parliament and this question time today exactly what the National Party stands for. Gerry Brownlee doesn’t want the young Kiwi who left last year to go on their OE, experience a bit of the world, and see the great sights, and who now wants to come back home. Gerry Brownlee and the National Party want to charge them $3,000. But the Fonterra executive on $800,000 a year, doing the very important job of making sure the markets are intact, Gerry Brownlee wants that Fonterra executive to come back for free. That’s the difference: the party of privilege and elitism is over there; the party that looks after New Zealanders is just over here.

It hasn’t just been dealing with the public health challenge that we’ve had. In the meantime, we’ve got on with the job of making New Zealand socially and economically better. So just this week alone, we’ve passed the Equal Pay Amendment Bill, and we’re now invested in 50-year-old infrastructure in Auckland Hospital to make that part of our health services better. We’ve invested $51.6 million in our international education sector so they can deal with the challenges. We’ve got laws now, and a programme now, to better protect migrants, and we’ve announced an investment package in new, clean technologies—the work of governing does not stop.

But the reality is this: a new rogue element has been thrown into the election campaign—not the shambles that is the party opposite. We’re well used to that. We’re well used to the shambles opposite. But a new rogue element has been thrown into this election campaign, and it is something to do with the Leader of the Opposition. You see, the day after she became the leader, every member opposite was dragooned along to be part of a photo shoot with Judith Collins. You know, we’ve got the evidence of it. Every member had to go and have their photo taken with the Leader of the Opposition. Now, according to Facebook, that photo shoot was accompanied by, I think, a Bach piano concerto—a very nice piece of classical music. I think it was the National Party’s attempt to tell the electorate they’re actually high-brow.

But it’s not the high-brow we have to worry about; it’s the eyebrow. We’ve now got the new measure of election campaigning: the eyebrow—the raised eyebrow. That’s why these photos are so important, because you look at the eyebrow—there’s poor old Ian McKelvie still wishing he was mayor of whatever he was mayor of, and there’s the raised eyebrow saying, “You must be joking. You must be joking.” That’s what she’s saying. Then there’s Chris Bishop. He knows the test because his eyebrows are furrowed because he’s not joking—he’s not joking. But Judith Collins—she’s got the raised eyebrow. She’s saying, “You’ve got to be joking.”

This side of the House will get into the election campaign, promise safety for New Zealand, knowing we can deliver it, and they’re going to measure the eyebrow.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, I think it would be fair to describe this Government’s economic plan as more spending, more debt, and more tax. We’ve already seen that this is a Government that loves tax. Tax is love, according to the Greens. Yesterday, we quoted the Dance Exponents when we said you can’t get—but no, actually, I think more appropriate is Supergroove: “Can’t get enough”. They can’t get enough of love and they can’t get enough of tax, and they will keep going until they’ve got everything that they need to keep spending and to keep piling on the debt.

💬 Hon Member: Come on—get out of the 90s.

So we heard today in the House that this Government’s increase in debt this year—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Too modern.

—from 21 percent of GDP to 39 percent is an extra $55 billion, or $1.25 billion a week. Now, if we think about that, that’s the equivalent of the annual budget of Pharmac, which is a billion dollars a year. All the cancer drugs to keep us alive and all the drugs that we spend to keep New Zealanders healthy—a billion dollars a year. We’ve been borrowing that at the rate of—every five days, we’ve been borrowing that money to keep things ticking over. Everybody knows that somewhere someone has got to pay it back.

We acknowledge that at a time like this, a difficult time when many people are losing their jobs, when people are under pressures, when families are under pressure, the Government needs to spend more and it needs to borrow more. But you’ve got to do it carefully, and what you spend it on counts, and you really have to focus on growing the economy. So we’re going to be talking about three things in this election: about jobs, where they come from; we’re going to be talking about taxes and debt; and we’re going to be talking about infrastructure.

If I start off with jobs—where do they come from? Where are we going to find the new jobs to fill? Hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders are losing their jobs right here, right now, and how do we create the jobs to get them back? Well, the Government’s got an answer, which is to borrow more money and buy the jobs. There’s $1.1 billion to go and plant possums—no, not plant possums; plant flax bushes and shoot possums—shoot possums, plant flax bushes, make pools, and do funny things around the place. Well, that’s all good. It’s good for the Government to invest, but much more important is for private sector investment to drive jobs in this country, and we trust the tens of thousands of New Zealand business owners, large and small, to make the decisions to invest and hire a person, expand their business, build their businesses, and create opportunities.

Today, we’ve announced that we’re going to help them. So if you lose your job and you’re made redundant, we’ll give you the money, the tax that you’d be paying on your redundancy, as a tax credit when you start your new business, to get a chance. That will give many New Zealanders who have lost their jobs the opportunity to get started. Then we’ll enable them to get into their KiwiSaver. Now, I’ve heard a lot of complaints from some of the KiwiSaver providers. There was a chap called Rupert, who wasn’t at all happy about it. You’re not surprised that the KiwiSaver providers want everybody to keep their money with them, but we recognise that we’re living in extraordinary times. It’s a jobs emergency, and we need to be flexible in this critical period and be prepared to allow New Zealanders to get access to that money to start new businesses if they have lost their jobs. We think that’s a sensible approach.

Now, the Prime Minister sneered at question time and said we shouldn’t be letting people gamble with their money by starting a new business. Well, if that’s their approach to entrepreneurship in this country, we haven’t got a hope. The National Party backs New Zealanders to be able to make the judgments about what risk they want to take. If they want to leave their money in KiwiSaver, in a conservative account, that’s fine. But if they want to take a chance and use that money to start a business when they’ve lost their jobs, we’ll back them to do it.

Then, on tax and debt—well, we’ve seen the debt. What we haven’t seen from this Government, apart from the Greens—and we can thank the Greens for being honest about their tax policy, which is a rapacious tax policy: if you’ve got it, we want it. They’ll be going to the country saying, “Don’t you worry. Vote for us and we’ll make somebody else pay some more tax.” But the problem with that argument—and this is what all New Zealanders should be remembering: any Government that can’t control its spending eventually will come after you, and they’ll be coming after you—

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

They’ll be coming after the ordinary, hard-working New Zealanders who are trying to get ahead and who need that extra money to keep in their pockets in order to feed their families and create their opportunities.

The final area is around infrastructure. We’ve heard all the wonderful promises from this Government about light rail, how the Prime Minister stood there and said we’re going to have a rapid transit to the airport. Then they weren’t quite sure. It was actually going to be a slow tram down Dominion Road. In three years, they did nothing else. They cancelled all the other projects because Julie Anne Genter won’t give in to the car fascists, Phil Twyford thinks we’re over-invested in roads, and Shane Jones only believes in roads that are in Northland.

It’s a great pity that Mr Goldsmith didn’t share with us his extensive business experience. Mr Goldsmith said that his plan with the National Party is to pay down our debt against GDP to 30 percent over 10 years. You know what that means? $82 billion of cuts. What a nightmare. On the weekend, when an economist was asked—namely, Shamubeel—what he thought, he looked incredulous at the television screen and he said something like, “It’s nuts—it’s madness.” But there you go—that’s the National Party’s plan.

Now, look, last Friday, I was down at the working men’s club in Invercargill to tell the good people of Invercargill that there’s one party in this country that understands how Tīwai Point began, its whole history, and that the thousands of workers down there are going to get the backing of a party called New Zealand First right now and into the election—and it ain’t going to be closing. You see, I have never seen so frequently in politics so many politicians, including myself, who were told a massive lie, and we all believed it. We were told that Tīwai Point was the beneficiary of subsidised electricity and that the aluminium was therefore the product of the taxpayer rather than the workforce. We were told that the supply agreement was a secret.

Ladies and gentlemen, here are the facts: in 1963, under Keith Holyoake, he set up Manapōuri to supply electricity on the belief, like the movie says, that if you build it, they will come. They didn’t have Comalco as a partner at the time, but they knew that if they built this power station using all this reserve water, the big industry would come to Invercargill, and it did. The plan in the 1963 agreement, all laid out there, was that they’d pay all the cost of supply right to Tīwai Point plus a margin of 10 percent. That’s a massive dividend.

And what happened? In 1977, a man called Rob Muldoon, a year before I came to Parliament, decided he would ratchet up the taxpayer’s benefit off that, not by 10 percent; by a further 350 percent. He threatened to change it by law. It was catastrophe for the people down there at Tīwai, and they’ve fought ever since to survive. Our message to those people down there is there’s one party that understands the facts, the law, the accountancy, and the benefits to this country. We’re not going to go with a $100 million plan and that’s it—like Helen Clark’s $120 million plan for the West Coast and that’s it, and they’ve been suffering ever since. A hundred million and that’s it, when they’re getting $450 million being made down there right now for Invercargill and our country every year. Ladies and gentlemen, this is truth and tell time, and I’m asking the National Party, that’s had that seat all those years—all those years—what are you going to do for the people down there, or do you expect them to vote for you and you’re a lamb in Parliament and a lion in the electorate? When are they going to stand up?

I make it very, very clear: it’s not a criticism of other parties; it’s an exposure of the truth, that all this time we believed that it was secret and that there was a massive subsidy, and it turns out that it’s not true. Thousands and thousands of workers down there at Tīwai Point—their families, their children, the whole communities and towns—need the support of this Parliament, and the clear message to them from us in New Zealand First is we’re going to make this a point of absolute certainty. We’re going to not just save that aluminium smelter; we’re going to stand up for the finest aluminium production in the whole world. Out of that place in Tīwai Point, because of the efficiencies and the workforce, they produce the world’s finest aluminium—

💬 Andrew Bayly: Only in one pot. There’s three of them.

Yes, that’s right—that’s right. By the time—by the time—

💬 Andrew Bayly: Only out of one.

Yeah, look, there’s swings and roundabouts, but when we make the great comeback, they’ll be all going rather than import junk aluminium from offshore, paid for by the taxpayer and it starts rusting within two years. We’re going to give our industry a full and fair go. We’re going to stand up for New Zealanders first.

In short, we’re saying to them: if you see what has happened to you, it’s unnecessary, that you’re being offered options that are not sound, that the country has been misled and you’re the victims of it. If you understand that, then we’re asking you to back your future, because we will. If they see it that way, I know which way they’re going to vote come the election day in September 1993—2020. I said 1993 because back then, of course—

Order! [Interruption] Order! The member’s well past his time.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: Yeah—extension of time, Mr Speaker? Ha, ha!

The member is indeed well past his time.

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The member knows he doesn’t comment on my rulings.

Well, there are some of us in this Chamber who think that member taking his seat is well past his time. It was interesting to get the history lesson and the mixture of swings and roundabouts, and all that sort of stuff. I guess it came close to being a valedictory speech, but probably we’ll wait for that sometime next week.

It’s been a bit of a momentous day today. I want to spend a little bit of time in this general debate talking about the Resource Management Act (RMA), and five minutes probably isn’t nearly enough to do it. But today we had, finally, after months and months of a document or report sitting on the Minister for the Environment’s desk, the publication of the report of the Resource Management Review Panel, headed and chaired by retired Court of Appeal judge Tony Randerson QC. It is one of the myriad of working groups that this Government has had. I have to say, though, that this was, actually, on the face of it, quite a good working group, because they’ve produced a very extensive report. It runs to over 500 pages—not quite as long as the Resource Management Act itself, but getting close to it.

I haven’t had an opportunity since the document was released just a couple of hours ago to read the full 520-odd pages. But what I have been able to glean from it is, finally, that there is one of the Government working groups that agrees with the National Party position that the Resource Management Act’s time has come and gone—it’s time has come and gone. It was first passed, I think, in 1991, after years of consultation. The great plan was that it would be a world leader. By integrating our resource management planning legislation in amongst our environmental protection legislation, we were going to be world leaders. And the plan at the time from Geoffrey Palmer and others was that the world would follow us, and, sadly, they didn’t.

In the years that have ensued since the first enactment of the Resource Management Act, nearly 30 years ago, it has been amended something like 80 times, there have been 19 amendment bills passed in this house, and the document that started out as being 300 pages, and kind of understandable and usable, now runs to something in excess of 800 pages. It’s a document that is largely the subject of scorn, derision, and ridicule in our country—pretty much everybody has a RMA nightmare story to tell. People don’t have to go very far to hear horrendous stories about time delays, cost delays, expense, frustration, endless appeals, endless and sometimes very insincere consultation processes, and all, at the same time, not achieving at all what was originally set out and hoped for in the original Resource Management Act—and that was that the Act should be doing something to maintain, enhance, and protect our natural environment, our natural resources, whilst at the same time providing a platform for planning, development, and development of our economy and our natural desire to build, construct, and grow businesses, and so forth.

So the Randerson report has come out today and made what some were considering was a pretty radical suggestion, when Judith Collins raised it again after having first done so in our very good RMA building reform document, which was released last year when we first started talking about it being time to completely get rid of it and start again. When Judith Collins announced, just a week or two ago, our very good $31 billion infrastructure project and confirmed that a roadblock stopping that kind of development was the existing RMA, she said, “No, it’s not going to be tinkered with and reformed any more; it’s going to be repealed.” People thought that that was a bit radical, but, actually, here we have now the very good report of Tony Randerson QC, and what has he suggested? Exactly the National Party policy, which is to repeal, get rid of, start again, and replace the existing RMA with two separate pieces of legislation. That’s exactly what Judith Collins was talking about; it’s exactly the policy that the new National-led Government will enact upon election after 19 September.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Today, we’re celebrating some good news for the thousands of stressed, anxious Kiwis stranded overseas since the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The Green Party has said from the very start that we would not leave them stranded, that we would not agree to impose an unexpected, shock $3,000 fee for those who need to come home to live and who were overseas when this once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-generation—if not even rarer than that—crisis hit. We know that, as a nation, we learnt—with our COVID response—not only to listen to the scientists, not only to put people’s health before profit—but those are all great lessons—but we also learnt that unless we take care of all of us, unless all of us are okay and safe and well, none of us are truly safe and well.

Today, we have ensured, with Labour in Government, that that fee will not be imposed on anyone who was overseas before the pandemic hit and the cost of quarantine was made clear, if they wish to come home to live in New Zealand. These are whānau with children, they will be in ever-changing circumstances right now. They’ve had to decide between keeping their employment overseas, or coming home to face a lengthy period of unemployment, perhaps, and they’re only just finding that actually their visas won’t be renewed. They are people who found it really difficult to even find flights home and to move children and partners. It’s complicated, and it has been changing from day to day, so to cut them off, in situations where their residency is unstable, where they could potentially become Stateless, and to then assume that they can somehow meet this really unexpected fee—that’s $3,000 per person—for an entire family, would be quite a shock.

It would in fact mean that people may not only remain in a situation where they don’t have visas—and they are becoming more or less technically without Statehood—but, in fact, they could be facing the threat of the virus itself, while they save and they put together the money it would take for them to come home and start a life here with the rest of us, with this team of 5 million back here. The thing to remember, as well, is that quarantine—which is what we’ve imposed as part of our public health response—is a public health response. It’s not a personal privilege. It’s not a choice. And like all things that we put in place to keep all of us—as an entire society, as a community—safe, it’s something that we say should well be taken care of from the public purse, because it is in fact to keep us all safe.

It’s just like the types of decisions that we made during lockdown where we stayed home, the types of decisions we made to keep our essential workers safe from this virus. So it does fall within the realm of what we will take care of, as New Zealanders, for each other. So we do say that the balance was met well, by allowing those who wish to come home to live—who were overseas when COVID hit—to not be charged. But those who want to come home for a visit, or for business, will be charged, unless they’re facing financial difficulty—in which case they will have access to a payment plan. If not, they will be able to apply for compassionate dispensation, in cases where people are, for example, coming back to look after a sick relative. It may be a funeral, it may be a happy occasion—if it’s the birth of a baby—and those cases will be administered on a case by case basis. The fee may, in those cases, still be completely dispensed with.

Of course, those who leave now—knowing the fee and knowing the cost of returning and quarantine and this extraordinary circumstance that we’ve all found ourselves in—will be expected to cover that cost and to build it into the cost of the travel when they decide to go. We think that that’s a fair balance, and we’re proud that we did stand for fairness. We stood for all of the Kiwis overseas whose voices we heard, whose stress they expressed to us, and we’re proud to celebrate that win with them today.

Well, I’m glad that member from the Greens, Golriz Ghahraman, is happy that New Zealand taxpayers are going to continue to pay out roughly about a half a billion for the quarantine situation in New Zealand over the foreseeable future. If she thinks that’s a good day, I’m not so certain about that. Actually, I think it’s been a rather gloomy day. We heard from the Minister of Finance, who finally—finally—confirmed it today that there are 120,000 people who have been and will be made redundant this year. That’s the current estimate. That means that we’ve already got over 200,000 on the unemployment jobseeker benefit. The other really nasty piece of news we heard is that, going into this COVID crisis a mere four months ago, New Zealand was the best placed in the world, with a low debt figure of 20 percent of GDP, roughly $60 billion of debt. He confirmed today that, by the end of this year, that will have doubled to 39 percent. That is a staggering amount of debt.

To put that in context, our debt figure and the servicing costs on the debt will be, for this year, about $3.5 billion, which is the total cost it takes for Mr Stuart Nash, sitting opposite, to pay to run the New Zealand police force. That is even before we talk about paying back some more debt, and we have a Minister who is walking around with $14 billion in his back pocket. But what happens when the wage subsidy stops on 1 September, a mere three weeks before the election? That’s the crucial point that New Zealanders need to look and face and think about. That is why we are looking past the current situation and are saying, “What should we be doing as a Government past 1 September? What is the plan for New Zealand?” So the thing that we’ve announced today is that for all those 120,000 people who have been made redundant this year, particularly since the COVID situation started a mere four months ago—how do we get them into new vocations, new job opportunities?

So when our leader asked the Prime Minister today about the situation of trying to encourage people to set up new businesses, I was somewhat alarmed that the Prime Minister inferred that that was a gamble. I was really concerned how unambitious she was for New Zealanders, and dismissive, because many of these people have been made redundant, not because they’re useless, not because they are due it; it is actually because the industries in which they work have been absolutely devastated—highly trained pilots, flight attendants, just to name some; tourism operators who have been so badly affected because of COVID-19. It has nothing to do with their own situation—thrust out on to the job heap—and the Prime Minister’s response was, “Well, that’s why we’ve got Jobseeker. Go and get a benefit!” Well, I’ve got to say to you that that is not a long-term solution to New Zealand’s ills. The only way we can ever get out of this ill and pay back that estimated $200 billion of debt that we’re going to incur over the next few years—Treasury forecasts, by the way—is that we will have to grow this economy. We can’t tax everyone. You can’t tax people—you can, but it won’t work—because the only way to deal with that huge mountain of debt is to grow the New Zealand economy.

That’s why we need to encourage people to start a new business if they feel like it, if they want to—and it’s a voluntary thing. The package we announced today is that, if you are in that situation—the redundant airline pilot; lots of skills—if you want to go into business, go and get yourself a proper plan and get it signed off by a chartered accountant or a certified financial planner. If you then decide to get past that gateway, you can then, now, move into a situation where you can first of all get $10,000 from the Government—when we’re in Government. You can also get any benefit on the tax that you may have paid on your redundancy. So if you’ve had a $30,000 redundancy, rather than pay us, the Government, $10,000, you can also keep that and use that as working capital for your business. The third thing we’re going to say is: if you like—if you like—it’s not required—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Andrew Bayly is a very smart man. In fact, I think he should actually be their finance spokesperson, because he would bring a level of integrity and depth that they haven’t got there at the moment, and I suspect there will be. But that’s not what I want to talk about. This Government is the Government of law and order. The Rebels became established in New Zealand in 2011. A year later, over the next year, police numbers dropped by 150. In fact, police numbers fell in the last three years of the previous National Government as gangs grew, meth proliferated, and morale within our police service fell. In fact, 60 percent of police in 2017 said they had an undue level of workplace stress, and nearly 60 percent of police in 2017 said they were not meeting the promises they were making to our community. Enter the coalition Government under Jacinda Ardern yet again.

In 2017, the then National Government promised 880 new police over four years. Well, this Government, in three years, has delivered over 2,200 new police, or over 1,250 police over and above attrition, and there’s two more graduations before the election. So in three years, we will have delivered over 500 more police than the previous National Government said that they would deliver in four years. That’s 500 more police than the Nats would have delivered by this New Zealand First - Labour Government. This is 500 more police than the Nats would have funded to fight gang crime, to help deal with family harm and sexual violence, to confiscate drugs, and to keep our roads safe.

In just the past year alone, the National Organised Crime Group has commenced 31 operations, dismantled four transnational organised crime cells, seized 96 firearms, and charged over 154 offenders. That’s 154 bad guys who are no longer peddling harm into our communities, because of the investment this Government has made in policing over the last three years.

In the last 12 months alone, there was Operation Piano: 30 kilograms of meth seized, 318 guns taken, and $4.5 million in cash seized. Operation Mystic: 30 kilograms of meth, 33 kilograms of MDMA, 100 kilograms of ephedrine, and $1 million in cash seized. Operation Abbey: $3 million in cash, including 37 high-performance cars and five properties. Operation Maddale: 21 kilograms of meth, over $500,000, and 10 arrests. Operation Manta: nearly 500 kilograms of meth. Operation Essex and Operation Ali: 193 kilograms of meth. You get the point.

The investment that this Government has made in policing, and certainly into the organised crime space, has meant that we have been able to go incredibly hard against the gangs who are peddling misery into our communities.

Then we increased penalties for gun crime, and the Nats voted against this. We tightened up the fit and proper test for getting a gun licence, including ensuring that gang members could not get guns, and the Nats voted against this. The Hon John Banks, who I don’t think you would consider left of anything, said that his greatest regret as the Minister of Police was not being able to get amendments made to the firearms legislation after Aramoana because his provincial MPs blocked it. Well, we have done it. This Government, this New Zealand First - Labour coalition Government under Jacinda Ardern, has not just talked the talk on increasing police numbers, on tackling gun crime, on going after the gangs, on addressing the meth scourge; we’ve walked the walk.

We are the Government of law and order. These are the facts. The thing that concerns me is that Paul Goldsmith has preached the prophecy of austerity. The Hon Winston Peters highlighted the fact that that’s $82 billion they won’t be spending. Make no bones about it: if the National Party is returned in Government, you will once again see an erosion of policing in this country.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to speak about Behrouz Boochani and how he was granted a visa and asylum in New Zealand and the process. This is not an attack on Mr Boochani. I’ve never met him. I don’t know him and I’ve never read his book and nor do I have any intention to. But I do note that Mr Boochani has been very quick to criticise anyone who has raised questions about this and labelled people as—their hate speeches, which is a very bad term and I think quite unwarranted.

On 21 October last year, Immigration New Zealand (INZ) informed the Minister of Immigration that they were processing or in the process of considering a visitor visa for Mr Boochani under the no-surprises policy. So, clearly, they had some concerns about that, and under the instructions to be granted a visitor visa, the person needs to be a bona fide applicant, and that is defined as someone who “genuinely intends a temporary stay in New Zealand for a lawful purpose” and who is not likely “to breach the conditions of any [visa] granted.” Mr Boochani’s onward travel arrangements—I asked the Minister if INZ had looked into that, but that, apparently, is not in the public interest. The day before Mr Boochani left Port Moresby, he was interviewed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, where he said he would not be returning to Papua New Guinea; he might go to the US where he’d been accepted for asylum or he might stay in New Zealand. That is quite clearly a breach of the instructions and he shouldn’t have been able to get into New Zealand.

Under section 15 of the Immigration Act, it states, “(1) No visa or entry permission may be granted, and no visa waiver may apply, to any person … who has …been removed, [or] excluded … from another country.”—under the same basis the Australian journalist Mary Ann Jolley was excluded from or prevented from boarding a plane in Australia to come to New Zealand for personal reasons because she’d been deported from Malaysia, yet Mr Boochani got through.

Mr Boochani entered Australia illegally by boat. Under that country’s laws, it states—and I quote—“Any person cannot settle in Australia if they attempt to enter Australia illegally by boat.” Further, the Minister of Home Affairs in Australia quite clearly stated that Behrouz Boochani would never step foot in that country—again would raise serious questions about whether Mr Boochani had been excluded from Australia. Yet neither the Minister nor INZ checked with the Australian Government. [Interruption] That’s right.

The refugee status branch of Immigration New Zealand in their booklet around immigration quite clearly states: “If a person can obtain effective protection from the authorities of their country or a third country, New Zealand is not obliged to protect them.” And, yet, Mr Boochani had an option to settle in Papua New Guinea and he had an option to settle in the United States, so under that instruction, he shouldn’t have been granted asylum in New Zealand.

I’ve been informed by immigration lawyers that many applications from people from Afghanistan, in particular, and from Iran to come and visit family here—and these people often have very good travel histories; that is, they travel in and out of countries all the time—are not granted visitors visas, and it appears that it’s on the grounds that they are likely to be, or potentially, an asylum seeker. Yet, Mr Boochani, a well-known asylum seeker who quite clearly stated before he came to New Zealand that he might not leave the country, quite clearly should never have been granted asylum. He should never have been granted a visa to come into this country. The Minister must look into this and come back to the House and tell us why this behaviour has occurred under his watch.

I don’t know whether you or members of this House will recall a song of the 1970s that begins with “Have I told you lately”. Now, I have no intention of singing that song, nor do I have intention of completing the latter part of that line, but it’s often a line that members of our communities would say to me from time to time. In the role of Ministers, we had the opportunity of travelling the length and breadth of our country face-to-face, and now, of course, with online connection. But every now and then somebody would say, “Have I told you lately how glad we are that you guys are in Government?” or “Have I told you lately that it’s a blessing to have the leadership that you have in this Government?” That’s a fact. It is a blessing to be a member of this side of the House. It is a blessing to be a member of a Government that is strong, that is positive, and that is forward-looking.

I had the opportunity the other day, with one of our colleagues—Priyanca here—to meet with politicians and trade unionists and other people from Indonesia. They were all asking us about our experience of how we’ve been able to keep everybody safe, and one of the fundamental factors that I was able to share with them is that we have good, strong, positive leadership in our country. That’s a fact. We often forget that, but it is a fact that has to be adhered and acknowledged, and it’s always a privilege when people respond to that in our engagements.

But more importantly, I think you’ll find that, by and large, the team of 5 million recognise that this is a Government that is forward-looking, that has a plan, and that is implementing that; we are keeping people safe. For example, the five-point plan that the Prime Minister has spoken often about is about valuing people. It’s about our focus on jobs, it’s about preparing for the future, it’s about supporting businesses, and it’s about positioning us globally.

As Minister for Pacific Peoples, I have to say, when we say “people”, that conjures up values of life, values of why it is important to protect our communities right across the whole country. But as a Government, we’ve provided the wage subsidy to make sure that the day-to-day welfare needs of people are protected and they can have some confidence about the future. But for us as Pacific, as a Minister, it’s been a privilege to be a part of a Government that values languages and cultures, and those things combined make up what we would define as Pacific wellbeing.

This is a Government that has invested. It has demonstrated its commitment by investing significant amounts of money into the Ministry for Pacific Peoples that was never there before, particularly in the last nine years of the previous Government. A couple of weeks ago, we managed to announce that we were providing certainty and confidence to the Pasifika Education Centre, of $3 million over four years so that they can continue providing Pacific community languages, because under the previous Government that money was taken away.

In terms of jobs, this is a Government that is relentlessly focused on jobs, and it’s not just about protecting existing jobs but it’s also looking to the future and preparing people with the educational qualifications that they need so that they can have jobs—good, high-paying jobs. We have a saying in Samoa: without a job, you can’t support your families and the village. So jobs are so fundamental.

The Ministry for Pacific Peoples, through the investment of this Government, is now able to provide a programme called Tupu Aotearoa that provides support nationwide, and has removed the barriers of age limit there, but provides pastoral care so that Pacific people who lose their jobs or are unsure about the future have support towards better educational pathways or jobs—preparing for the future.

Today, I’m talking with some of our church leaders. I’ve said to our church leaders, when we’re preparing for the future, we must take advantage of the $400 million that this Government has put aside so that we can progressively move people into homeownership. Homeownership provides confidence and support for the future for all of our communities.

In terms of supporting business, it goes without saying that the future requires us to embrace all the opportunities of the digital economy.

As we were on our summer holidays earlier this year, who would have been able to imagine what happened towards February and then March as the wave of fear and uncertainty spread around the world as we watched COVID develop. I could not be prouder of the response of our Government and of our team of 5 million. We did it together, and up till now we’ve had a huge amount of success, and we should be very proud of ourselves.

What I was most proud of was the daily sharing of information. I know that following the series of earthquakes in Christchurch what people craved for was information, because information is power. And every day we had our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, with the Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, telling us all the facts, answering the wide range of highly intelligent and probing questions from the media, but sharing their information directly with the public. People were hanging out for 1 o’clock so that they could get their news and feel that empowerment that goes with information.

The other part of our COVID response that I’m most proud of is that it’s been very clear from both the Prime Minister but also the Hon Grant Robertson, our Minister of Finance, that we’re not just putting back what we had before; we are taking this opportunity of such terrible circumstances to build back better, and for many New Zealanders, providing them with an opportunity for a better life that they have never had. What a great thing to do out of a terrible situation—build back better—and you can certainly see that in the many initiatives that have been announced since that first response started in the middle of March.

People have been at the heart of our response. I haven’t seen any other country with such a people-focused response, a health response and economic response both based on the current and future wellbeing of our people. As my friend and colleague Aupito William Sio just said, it’s about jobs, jobs, jobs. There is nothing that gives people not only the ability, as Aupito mentioned, to put food on the table for your family, but to give people the dignity of work. It’s one of the first questions that New Zealanders ask each other: what do you do—what’s your job? And it actually doesn’t matter whether you’re the Prime Minister or you clean the Prime Minister’s office; you should have the dignity of a job with decent pay, and that’s another bit of progress that our Government’s making. Preparing New Zealand for a better future; investing in the things that matter; investing in the things that were neglected for nine years under the previous National Government; supporting small business, the backbone of the New Zealand economy. Everywhere throughout New Zealand we have small businesses that just work so hard to get by every day, and we’re backing them.

The ambition and determination of our Government to build back better is just fantastic. Free apprenticeships in specified trades training areas for all those young people and older people who might have lost their jobs to be able to get on the rung of the ladder of being an apprentice; the investment in green jobs, which I’ve heard the National Party mocking—for me, it’s a double benefit. Not only are we putting people in work that they’re clearly enjoying, and I’ve heard media reports quoting them directly, the satisfaction they’re getting from those jobs, but we’re doing good things for the environment, whether it’s getting rid of wilding pines or whether it’s planting and protecting our wetlands and our rivers.

I just want to also mention something. Despite being so proud of this Government’s response—it’s just been extraordinary—there’s something that I want to mention that I’m not so proud of, and this is one of my last opportunities to make this contribution. I have seen sustained and systemic attacks on individual members of Parliament, which have destroyed their careers in this place and damaged their families, their children, their wives, or their husbands. I think we can have fundamental differences of opinions in this place, but I think it’s within our hands to change our behaviour and not destroy families on the way through to pursuing our ultimate goal. We can do better than that. I think, as part of our COVID response, we should look at the leadership that has been provided by Jacinda Ardern and the better leadership we can provide on that issue in future.

Tēnā koe, e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I roto i te rima meneti kua homai ki ahau i tēnei rā, tēnā pea ko tēnei taku kōrero i roto i tēnei tautohetohe, taku kōrero mutunga mō te nohoanga o tēnei Whare Pāremata mō te toru tau.

E hiahia ana ahau ki te tīmata wāku kōrero e pā ana ki te waipuke kua pāngia ki Te Tai Tokerau i ngā wiki kua pahure ake nei. E huri ana ahau, e huri ana te titiro ki tōku hoa, tōku whanaunga, Te Minita, a Peeni Henare, Te “Minita mō ngā Kaupapa Aituā”, me kī, pērā i te waipuke, te āwhā, wērā mea katoa. I hoki mai ki tō māua hau kāinga, ā, ki te awhi i te iwi.

Ehara tēnei waipuke i te waipuke tuatahi ki roto i Moerewa, i roto i Te Tai Tokerau, engari, kite ahau i tēnei tū āhuatanga i te tau 2014 i te tau 2011 anō hoki. Nō reira, kua kite ahau i te pōuri o ngā whānau e noho ana i roto i Moerewa kua pāngia i tēnei waipuke, i wērā o ngā tau.

E hiahia ana ahau ki te mihi ki Te Rākau Whakamarumaru, arā, ko Te Civil Defence, mō tō rātou kaha ki te tautoko, ki te tiaki i te hapori, ki ngā kaunihera anō hoki, me ngā tāngata whenua.

Kua mihi kē nei a Peeni, Te hōnore Minister Henare, ki tētahi o ngā tangata whenua, arā, ko tō māua matua, a Mike Butler, e kaha ana ki te tautoko i tana hapori, ngā whānau, kua pāngia e tēnei waipuke, ā, e mihi hoki ana ki a Te Hōnore Kelvin Davis i hāere mai i tērā Rātapu ki te tautoko i ngā whānau. Engari ehara i te tautoko āwhina, manaaki, ā-wairua, ā-tinana, ā-kōrero noa iho, engari i hoatu hoki tētahi pūtea hei whakamāmā ake i tēnei tū āhuatanga kei runga i a rātou i tēnei wā.

Tētāhi pūtea mai i te tari o Peeni, engari tētahi pūtea mai i te tari o Matua Shane Jones anō hoki, ki te whakatikatika, ki te whakapaipai ake i ngā rori, ngā piriti, me ko te tūmanako, ko te haukoti tēnei tū āhuatanga ā ngā tau e heke mai nei, arā, te 12 miriona tāra mō te waipuke, ki te haukoti i te waipuke, ka tīmata tērā mahi i roto i Moerewa, nō reira e mihi ana.

I roto i te wā whakatā, me kī, ehara i te recess, engari he whakatā i Te Pāremata, i roto ahau i tōku ake rohe o Te Tai Tokerau. Pau taku hau i te kotiti hāere ki wiwi, ki wawa i roto i Te Tai Tokerau mō te tohatoha pūtea ki ngā kaupapa, ko te waihanga hei oranga mō Te Tai Tokerau.

Tuatahi, ko Te Kaipara. I hoatu te rima miriona tāra ki Te Kaipara, ono miriona tāra ki Kaikohe, iwa miriona tāra ki Kerikeri, tekau mā whā miriona tāra ki Kaitāia. I mua i tērā, ko te whitu miriona tāra ki Kawakawa anō hoki.

Ko ngā kaupapa e tautoko ana pērā i te whare pupuri tāonga, ō tātou taonga o te rākau kauri, kei Matakohe. Nō reira, e mihi ana ki a rātou, he moni hei whakarauora anō i tērā ō ngā whare pupuri tāonga. Ko te pūtea i hoatu ki Kaikohe hei hanga i tētahi pā hākinakina, tētahi whare hākinakina mō ngā momo hākinakina i roto i Kaikohe, mē ngā takiwā e pā tata ki Kaikohe.

I kite ahau i te hekenga o ngā roimata o tētahi wahine nā te kaha harikoa, te rongo i ngā kōrero ō wēnei momo kaupapa e tautokongia ana e tēnei Kāwanatanga. He pūtea anō hoki, hei papa hākinakina ki Kerikeri. Kaitāia, he whakarauora i te tāone o Kaitāia me te hono atu o ngā hapori iti, ngā tāone iti, i tērā o ngā takiwā.

Nō reira, kua pau kē te wā, kā kore anō kia pau waku kōrero i taku pepa. Kia ora.

[Greetings, Mr Speaker. In the five minutes I have been allocated today, perhaps my contribution in this debate will be my final speech for this sitting of this Parliament for its three-year term.

I would like to begin my speech by talking about the floods that have affected the North in recent weeks. I look around and see my friend and my relation Minister Peeni Henare, the “Minister for Responding to Disasters”, you could say, for things like floods, storms, and those types of things. He returned home to support the tribe.

This flood was hardly the first to hit Moerewa, to hit the North. I witnessed this type of thing in 2014 and in 2011. I have, therefore, seen the despair of families that live in Moerewa who were affected by this flood, and by those floods.

I would like to acknowledge Te Rākau Whakamarumaru, Civil Defence and Emergency Management, for their good work in supporting and helping the community. I would also like to acknowledge the councils and the local people too.

The honourable Minister Peeni Henare has already thanked one of those locals, our uncle, Mike Butler, who was a pillar of strength in supporting the community and the families that were affected by the flood. I would also like to acknowledge the Hon Kelvin Davis, who arrived last Sunday to support families. It was not just support in the form of good feelings and kind words but also funding to ease the burden on those who have been impacted.

There was funding support from Peeni’s office but also Shane Jones’ office, as well, to repair and clean up roads and bridges, and, hopefully, to prevent this type of thing from happening in the years ahead. There was $12 million allocated for the prevention of floods, and that work will begin in Moerewa. I would like to thank him for that.

During the break—not the recess, but the parliamentary break—I was based in my region of the North. I was exhausted from the constant travel to here, there, and everywhere in the North to distribute funding to the various initiatives that will help to revive the North.

Firstly, the Kaipara: $5 million allocated to the Kaipara, $6 million to Kaikohe, $9 million to Kerikeri, $14 million to Kaitāia. Before that, there was $7 million to Kawakawa.

The types of initiatives supported were things like the museum, to house our important artefacts related to the kauri tree, in Matakohe. Therefore, I would like to acknowledge them, it is funding to revive that museum. The funding for Kaikohe is to build a sports complex and a sports hall for the types of sports that are played in Kaikohe and its surrounding areas.

I saw tears run down the face of a woman—tears of joy—when she heard these announcements and heard about the support provided by this Government. There was also funding allocated for a sports field in Kerikeri. It will revive the town of Kaitāia and help it to connect with other small communities and towns in that area.

Finally, my time is up before I had a chance to finish the talking points on my paper. Kia ora.]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I’m going to use my time in the general debate today to talk about the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF). It was meant to be about jobs, jobs, jobs, and instead it’s turned into announcements, announcements, announcements. This $3 billion Provincial Growth Fund was set up as a coalition deal to get New Zealand First into Cabinet with the Labour Party—$3 billion of taxes from hard-working Kiwis funnelled through one Minister, allocating it as he sees fit. It gave huge licence to the Minister for giving away money, to choose pet projects in his favourite regions—namely Northland, where he hopes to buy his way back into power. But other surge regions identified by the former National Party have seen some attention, too.

💬 Mark Patterson: The West Coast.

Places like the West Coast and Tasman have been led a merry dance on their road to achieving their dreams for their infrastructure investment.

So let’s have a look at Golden Bay—Port Tarakohe, to be exact. They received approval for $22 million to upgrade the port for recreational and commercial users and to mainly accommodate a growing mussel industry up there. Now, the former mayor Richard Kempthorne was quoted as saying, “Port Tarakohe is a highly valued recreational asset and provides critical community resilience in the event of disruptions to road access in and out of Golden Bay.” Then what happens? Cyclone Gita. The barges brought in milk tankers so that the farmers could keep milking, and thanks to Fonterra and Port Tarakohe, no milk had to be dumped. Those road improvements and repairs are still being undertaken today, over 18 months later. It enabled medication and other food to be delivered to the community. It is a critical asset to the Golden Bay community.

But the funding, after COVID, was reprioritised, or repurposed, and that was clawed back because no contract was in place; nothing was committed to, and the Tasman District Council was redirected to other funding sources. So that gave the “Minister for Giving Away Money” more opportunities and yet further major announcements for projects that were reprioritised, with Cabinet deciding that those new projects were to be based around job creation. Well, that was the confusing part, because I thought the PGF was actually supposed to be all along about creating jobs and getting the nephs off the couch—and we were told there were 10,000 of them. But what actually happened? Announcements to local communities of funding support for their local projects, and all we’re seeing is the churn of this money going around and around and being reprioritised and repurposed into different projects—a money-go-round with actually very little happening on the ground.

Post-COVID, West Coast councils were approached and they were asked to come up with their list of shovel-ready projects, and given two weeks to deliver that list. On the surface, that was great news, right? But the reality is different. Here’s the twist: according to the Minister’s own response here in the House last night, he cannot guarantee that contracts will be in place before the election for any of those projects. He also went on to say, and we know this is the case, that no Government can commit a future Government. So there we have it. There is nothing but one announcement after the other. There is no commitment locked in for any of those projects, and it’s becoming almost impossible to get a contract on paper. It’s just like a wish list that you’d send off to Santa Claus. The likelihood of any of those projects becoming a reality is not great.

Now, they’ve had their hopes raised and, as usual, this Government has failed to deliver. But, worse than that, it has raised expectations in those communities and in communities across this whole country. So I challenge Minister Jones to ensure that contracts are signed before this election. Give the communities the surety that they need to move forward on the projects that have been approved and break your own cycle of announcements and actually deliver the contracts. The other thing that we’d like to see is, actually, the data around the full-time equivalents. It was asked again today. Back in December, when Chris Bishop asked, it was costing $484,000 per job out of the PGF funding. Apparently, it’s now $300,000 a job, but we haven’t got any money. Sign the contracts and commit the money.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.