Address in Reply

In the Labour Party, we were heartened to be elected the first majority Government under MMP. We were pleased that New Zealanders voted for stability and certainty in the election last year, but we know that this comes with huge responsibility, elected as we were in the middle of a global pandemic. We are humbled that New Zealanders have put their trust in us.

Of course, since the election, COVID has got worse in just about every overseas country. Luckily our crisis partner, Australia, has it under control as well. But the economic outlook in every country where COVID has worsened has also deteriorated. Our focus here, for those reasons, remains on keeping New Zealanders safe and minimising the ongoing economic impact of the virus. Of course, whilst we can shield New Zealanders from some of the internal consequences, the flow-on economic consequences from the slow-down that is occurring in the world are affecting us. Nevertheless, with a global pandemic raging around the world, there is a sense here in New Zealand that many of us are pleased to be here rather than anywhere else in the world.

I’ve been in politics for close to 20 years. New Zealanders are very respectful of the privacy of politicians most of the time. We’re not cajoled in public places, people don’t generally come up to us in airports or when we’re walking down the street, but I’ve noticed that in recent months, there’s more of that than ever—there is! There is more of that than ever. People break through our personal bubbles, if you like, to say thank you. And they’re expressing their thanks not just to the Government; they’re actually expressing their thanks to the way in which the Government and everyone rallied around. There’s an increased awareness, I think, in New Zealand of the inter-dependencies between us all, a recognition that, through COVID, we only got there because we all helped each other, we kept to our bubbles, we washed our hands, we respected the rules, we agreed with the enforcement agencies where education wasn’t enough and enforcement action was necessary, and there’s also been considerable agreement in society that the very expensive economic steps that were taken by the Government to keep people attached to their employment was the right thing to do. Far and away, the biggest expense that we have faced as a Government has been the wage support provision that went to New Zealanders.

The OECD statistics are very, very interesting. I was at a presentation by the OECD in the later part of last year where they said that New Zealand had the first lockdown in the OECD relative to an in-country COVID death, we had the strictest lockdown of any country in the OECD, and we had the most widespread wage support of any country in the OECD. And it was this combination of events, going hard and going early, and being generous to maintain the social consensus upon which the team of 5 million relied and rallied around, that have been the key ingredients.

Now, that said, we obviously have to plan for the COVID recovery. We’ve brought forward a lot of infrastructure expenditure, we’ve made sure that, notwithstanding the pressures in the economy, we haven’t lost apprentices. We’ve increased the subsidies towards employment of apprentices, particularly in the building trades but also beyond the building trades. As a consequence, the number of people who are in apprenticeships in New Zealand is higher than it was at the start of COVID, and if you compare that with the outcome after the GFC, we’ve done better. After the GFC, apprenticeship numbers went down and that’s one of the reasons why house construction fell during those years that followed, and one of the reasons why we’re still grappling with the housing crisis that followed.

Now, in addition to our priorities of keeping New Zealanders safe from COVID-19 and accelerating our economic recovery, we want to lay the foundations for a better future. We’ve identified some priorities there, including dealing with child poverty, and there’ll be some statistics out soon on that that actually show the effect of some of the income support measures that we made during the last Government—those will be flowing through in statistics for the first time. We’re also focusing on getting our climate change emissions down—I’m not going to cover much of that; others have already covered a lot of that—but we’re also really focused on housing.

Now, the housing issue is really complex. We’ve already done a lot. We’ve created a new housing and urban development agency—Phil Twyford brought through that legislation, including cut-through planning powers for large developments that enable that organisation to get on with the business. In addition to that, we’ve required councils to change their Resource Management Act (RMA) plans to make room for growth up and out because some of the restrictions have been strangling developments that we need, especially for affordable housing. Perhaps the most important part on that is trying to counter some of the nimbyism that prevents the intensification that will naturally occur if you don’t have excessively restrictive rules. In addition to that, we’ve passed legislation to create an infrastructure commission; the Prime Minister has put the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance in charge of pushing on with that infrastructure that we need as a prerequisite to housing.

We’ve done a lot of other things. I’ve mentioned apprenticeships, we’ve brought forward a fast-tracked consent processing, we’ve made lots of other changes, but the one that we’ve announced today is the overhaul of the RMA. Now, this won’t have short-term effect. Anyone that says we should just dump the RMA is being simplistic and most people know that. If you were to repeal the RMA without having a decent replacement, you would actually slow down the massive housing build that we’ve got going in the country at the moment. We’ve got the highest rate of housing build that’s happened in many, many decades in both the public and private sectors, and if we were to repeal the RMA, there would just be endless fights in the courts as to what the rules are. So that would actually slow down development rather than aid it. So that’s why we’ve taken all of those other steps that are discrete, but each one of them is necessary. I didn’t mention infrastructure, financing, or support for three waters infrastructure, which are also important prerequisites for housing development, but we’ve done that too. But we’re now getting on with repeal of the RMA because it costs too much, it takes too long, and it hasn’t adequately protected the environment. Since the RMA was passed, water quality’s gone backwards, climate changing emissions have gone up, and house affordability’s gone in the wrong direction. It’s a bit of a fail.

Now, there are some lessons as to what we need to do here. We need more strategic planning so we’re going to have a Strategic Planning Act that sits alongside the Natural and Built Environments Act. We’re going to pick up the recommendation of the Randerson review, and we’ve got Rachel Brooking from that committee, who has actually since come into Parliament, so I thank her for her role in that.

💬 Chris Bishop: Don’t make her ask patsy questions—it’s demeaning.

Well, actually, she asked meaningful questions. We’ve done more in respect of all of these reforms already than the National Government managed to achieve in nine years. They managed to increase the length of the RMA and make things worse; we’re actually in the process to make things better.

In respect of the core provisions of the RMA, we’ve got to process—it is complex, but we’ve got to get the equivalent of Part 2 right. There are some trade-offs in here, and I want to get them right. I’m really interested in the views of Opposition parties on this. I don’t agree with the ACT Party that we should just repeal it. I previously offered them a repeal of the RMA applying only to Epsom, but I know from letters that we’ve recently had from the leader of the ACT Party that, of course, he responds to nimbyism from his own constituents and criticises some of the projects that we’re putting through the fast-track process that go down Dominion Road. In any event, we do want to get this Part 2 right, so we’re going to put that to a select committee, largely in the form that’s come from the Randerson review, but we are making tweaks to that and we’re interested in input from the National Party, the Greens, National/ACT, the Māori Party—everyone. We’ve got no monopoly on good ideas here, and we do need to get that balance right to try and create some enduring protection.

We’re going to be focusing on protecting natural environmental values, biophysical values like water quality, sometimes landscape, but also soils and things like that. But we don’t want to go too far and allow amenity values to be used to strangle development. That’s the tension here. How do you allow decent rights of participation but not allow things to drag on for ever causing millions of dollars of cost in process and delay? I’m confident that we can land this in three years. It’s a big piece of work and it’s one of our duties that we see upon ourselves. We’ve been given that mandate by electors.

We are this afternoon debating the Address in Reply. That is the reply from the Parliament to the address read by the Governor-General on the formation of the last Government. It is, effectively, the Government’s address to the nation about its intentions for the three years to come. And it can only be described as the most vacuous document that’s ever been put toward the people of New Zealand by a Government that has the sort of majority mandate that we see from the current Government. What that indicates, I think, is a degree of timidness, a degree of uncertainty, and a degree of simply not knowing which way to head in these turbulent times.

So I want to this afternoon acknowledge that there has been a good response from New Zealand in the fight against COVID-19—no question about that. We have been as a nation very good at setting aside some of the civil liberties that we might otherwise want to have protected in order to see the benefit for the wider community. That’s a good thing. That is now bedded in, and we have a process for making sure that this pandemic does not afflict New Zealand to any greater extent than it already has.

There will be occasions when things go wrong, and we will point those occasions out, and we notice that when we have, the Government has been very quick to patch things up as much as possible, recognising the difficult circumstances that we’re facing. But COVID-19 cannot mask some of the very big problems that this country still has. It cannot mask some of the very big problems that exist internationally across the rest of the world and in our relationships with the rest of the world. And above all, it should not be the excuse that a Government daily uses for not getting on with the business of dealing with the things that make life better for New Zealanders. So let’s just look at a couple of things that are particularly troublesome at the moment.

The first is the hardy annual of crime, which is very much on the rise. Has there ever been a Government in this country that has so passively watched the increase in the gang activities across the nation than this current Government? Has there ever been a Government that has been almost apologetic for the large increases in gang activity across the country? And has there ever been a Government that has all but instructed the police to no longer prosecute for drug offences in this country? It is laying out the ground for that gang activity to become even greater than it is at the moment and for the complete disregard for the order of communities that those lawless gangs inflict on people. That is a huge abdication of responsibility by the current Government.

A simple question: where was there a statement in the Speech from the Throne about why the Government has cancelled police intakes for the time being? What’s happened to the idea that we’re going to increase the presence of police in our communities, something that was so important during the last three years of the Government but now is just gone? Completely gone—utter silence.

And then we come to the issue of housing. Well, I tell you what: I’ve never heard such hot air and wind talked about this topic as we’ve heard just in the two days that this Parliament has listened to question time. We just heard the Hon David Parker talking about the need to sort the problem out with some Resource Management Act (RMA) changes. Well, his process, outlined this morning, will not see a completed bill in this House in this term. There is no way that the process that he’s laid out is going to lead to anything that will speed up the opportunity for more land to be available for housing, for better rules around housing to be put in place by local government, or for there to be any downward pressure on the price of housing in this country.

We heard in one question going to the Prime Minister that the effect of the brightline test has simply been to put the price of houses up—$120,000 is the average price increase in the last 12 months. So if someone’s a speculator and they buy a house and they make their $120,000 profit on it, they pay $50,000 in tax and the rest is profit. So it’s certainly not a deterrent as long as there is that constraint on supply. And there is the unwillingness of the current Government to recognise that it is supply that always determines price. And then we have the issue of assistance that’s given to people to get into new homes. They talk a big game, mention all the schemes that are out there, but fail to tell the country that almost 20 percent of the price of a new home is taken in tax, and that’s before you consider any income tax paid by the various trades that put inputs into that cost.

So if the Government has got its hand out to that extent, why wouldn’t the price of a house continue to go up? And let’s be clear: that price drives the price of existing homes, and in areas where they are closer in to the city, it just exacerbates that upward price pressure. So we have a Government that talks a big game about housing but has absolutely no concept of how that market works, and I don’t in any way ashamedly use that word, because that’s what it is and that’s what we’re seeing.

Now, I find it fascinating too that David Parker suddenly has some kind of epiphany about the need to change the RMA, and then he goes on to say, “Oh, it’s enormously complex.” Well, go back to the first principle of it, which was that if you are able to mitigate against the worst effects on the environment, then you could do what you wanted. And if that was the starting point, we might end up with some legislation that actually let people move forward.

But I also want to say: have a look at what was done in Christchurch post the earthquakes. Eight-and-a-half-thousand families found out that they could no longer live on the sections that their houses were built on—the land would not sustain ongoing building. So there was an immediate need to create new space, and a lot of it. And what we discovered is the three local councils down there have been for 15 years arguing over an urban development strategy. They’d gotten as far as the Environment Court, and the Environment Court said, “Oh, well, if we hurry things up, we might get it done in another couple of years.” Well, we took the step of saying that wasn’t good enough, and effectively used the special legislation available to consent land for up to 43,000 sections in Christchurch. It was done very, very quickly. And what has the effect of that been? It’s meant that there has been some price containment, better than anywhere else in the country, on the cost of housing. But, of course, that will always relate to the rest of the country. The point is that it’s possible for Governments to do something a heck of a lot faster than this crowd are currently showing signs of wanting to do.

I will bet that there are urban development strategies stuck in councils from one end of the country to the other, not making any progress because of the hog-tie that’s around them from the RMA. So why not be bold and say, “Then we’ll have a fast arrangement.”? David Parker talks about the arrangements he put in place for consenting big projects, and he’s saying no one in here is very happy with it. We are happy with it. The only person who’s not happy with it is him because of the advice he’s getting from his officials, which is “Please don’t disturb our little fortress here. We’re very important and we’re very, very keen on stopping almost anything.” He needs to get over the top of that. He needs to get bold and he needs to get legislation into the House that consents a whole lot of land for new building. And then they need to look at the Government’s inputs into it. How much of that new house price is development levy? How much of it is contributions to reserves? How much are all these things? I see the Green Party there saying, “Oh, that’s great. You’ve got to have it.” Well, they get a rating base. They get an enormous rating base out of those new houses, and so they have a big, big forward income, but they want that cash just to spend it on other junky things that they seem to like. [Interruption] Stand up and take a speech. We’d love to hear from you. We would love to hear from that member. It won’t be anything worth listening to, but I still think it would be worth her saying something.

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: So mean.

No—you’re right. That’s far too mean. I do apologise. We live in a time when we’re supposed to be kind to one another, and you’re basically a friend of mine, so I take that back. Can I just finish by saying: if you’ve got a big majority, use it.

We’ve just spent 10 minutes looking back to the glory days of housebuilding in New Zealand under the Key Government, and here’s a simple question for the member who just resumed his seat, the Hon Gerry Brownlee: which Government built more year-on-year, that Government or this Government? It’s a very simple answer. By thousands per year, it is this Government which wins that prize. This is a Government which acknowledges—which actually acknowledges—something that that Government never ever did: that we have a long-run housing problem in the country. It is actually getting on with the job of increasing housing supply, like the hundreds of new public KiwiBuild and private houses that are being built right now in my electorate of Mt Roskill, something that has been replicated in seats across the country.

We had 10 minutes of looking back from that member, and we’re going to now move to 10 minutes of looking forward, to the future of New Zealand under this Government, which has a confident, positive, and inclusive vision for the future of New Zealand. I want to start off with a very, very positive announcement, which speaks to that today, and that is the confirmation that the new Te Huia rail service between Auckland and Hamilton will open for business on 6 April—fantastic news for the fastest-growing economic corridor in New Zealand, between Auckland and Hamilton. As I confirm this announcement, I just want to acknowledge the work of our two very hard-working MPs in Hamilton, Dr Gaurav Sharma and Jamie Strange, our new MPs for Hamilton East and West, who have pushed hard for this project—this region-shaping project—for years and years and years, and also to acknowledge my predecessor as Minister of Transport, Phil Twyford, who championed this project from the beginning. Now we are seeing the fruits of that hard work.

The Te Huia rail service really does speak to the vision that this Government has and our priorities for the three years ahead. We’re focused on keeping New Zealanders safe, on accelerating the economic recovery, and tackling our long-term challenges. In every way, the Te Huia service speaks to that. It’s actually incredible and we take it for granted that we can gather together here in this House, at sporting and cultural events, at the wonderful opening we’ll have for Te Huia in a couple of months, and we can do so safely in New Zealand when so many people around the world cannot do that. That is because of the relentless focus that our Government has had on putting the health of New Zealanders first over this past year, and the incredible work that our team of 5 million has done to make that a reality.

We have freedoms and health and safety in this country that are the envy of the world, and in international study after international study the quality of New Zealand’s response to COVID is consistently ranked right at the top of the world. That is something that all Kiwis can be immensely proud of. That response was and will continue to be centred on the principle that we put people first. From day one, that has been the approach that our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has put right at the centre of the COVID response, and it is what will continue to guide us. But it’s also a response which is humble, which acknowledges that we’re always learning. It acknowledges that we don’t always get things 100 percent right the first time and that we actually listen to the science and the experts and we make adjustments as we go along to keep Kiwis as safe as possible. I think that has been absolutely central to the success we have achieved as a country, and that will be important in the year ahead as well.

It’s also been about calm and focused leadership. I look across those Ministers and the Prime Minister who have led our response: our Prime Minister, who I think has really, for our team of 5 million, been someone that people have been able to look to with confidence as someone who does put people first, as someone who clearly and calmly thinks through the way ahead and then lays out the plans; our Minister for COVID-19 Response, Chris Hipkins; our Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, who has handled our economic response to COVID, the biggest economic shock since the Second World War, and has done such a fine job of that. As we move ahead into the coming term, this will continue to be our number one focus: keeping Kiwis safe.

I remember at the beginning of last year, as the threat of COVID began to loom, those, sort of, false arguments that were made: that we either had to choose the health of New Zealanders or looking after the economy. What this Government consistently said and what will continue to guide us is that simple maxim that the best economic response is also the best health response. We only have to look around the world to see the evidence of that fairly and squarely, because as this virus continues to rage in countries around the world, who still are having to enter and re-enter lockdowns and major restrictions on social and economic activity, the fact that we did that health response well and put people’s health first and eliminated COVID-19 and continue to exercise an elimination strategy—that is what has meant that we have been able to rebound economically so strongly. That is why we were so thrilled last week to hear that New Zealand has achieved 4.9 percent unemployment—an absolutely incredible result when we consider the scale of the economic disruption that our country has had to endure this year, and the incredibly difficult international economic circumstances that we continue to navigate.

It’s been about Kiwis coming together. It’s been about businesses and workers working together, showing extraordinary resilience, and it has been about active leadership from Government, and I think this is important to recognise. It’s very important to recognise that active leadership from Government has made a difference in terms of New Zealand’s economic position. We’ve been able to keep Kiwis in work because of that fast work in terms of getting that wage subsidy in, keeping people connected to work and employment. We’ve been able to support young New Zealanders who otherwise might have fallen through the cracks by bringing in those free apprenticeships, which have got thousands and thousands of young Kiwis into the trades, with a bright future ahead of them. It’s been about our massive infrastructure investment up and down New Zealand, in the towns and cities and the regions, creating the infrastructure of the future and employing tens of thousands of New Zealanders in that national work that we have got ahead of us there.

I paid a visit last week to the work that’s going on constructing the Third Main rail line in Auckland, an extremely important project that’s going to enable us to free up Auckland’s roads, get freight moving around more efficiently, get more Aucklanders on to rail, and is also employing 200 New Zealanders in the construction of that important line—another 200 employed electrifying the line between Papakura and Pukekohe, and thousands more across the country as we roll out a record infrastructure package. Currently, Waka Kotahi has $20 billion of capital work happening around our country, employing Kiwis and giving us the infrastructure that will support good-quality lives and economic growth in the years ahead.

Other great interventions that have been very important, that show the value of active Government in helping our economy to deal with the crisis: the international airfreight capacity scheme, a $300 million very carefully designed scheme which has ensured that we have retained airfreight capacity with countries around the world, ensuring that critical freight from our imports and exports that otherwise might not have got through with the massive disruption to international aviation have continued to flow. Eighty percent of our freight at normal times actually sits below passengers in those flights we take to Australia, the US, China, and Europe. That would have dried up completely without a smart, active Government that engaged with the sector to keep that freight moving.

This Government is also focused on the long-term challenges. Just because we faced the immediate challenge of COVID-19 doesn’t mean we’re going to take our eye off the ball. None can be bigger than the climate emergency that we face. It is a challenge which is not just a challenge to this generation but a challenge to the wellbeing and interests of our children, our grandchildren, and future generations, and few things can be more important. It was a signal moment earlier this year when the independent climate commission tabled its draft report. That process came out of legislation that went through this House almost unanimously, something we can be proud of, which has set up that independent climate commission to provide science-led advice to guide our Government and guide our country towards net carbon zero by 2050 and giving us a pathway to do that.

In transport, we are already taking the lead. Transport is currently 47 percent of our carbon dioxide emissions, and we know that if we want to meet those ambitious targets that the commission has set out that we need to meet our Paris commitments, we’re going to have to take fast action. We’ve already started that off very early this year. I was pleased to join the Prime Minister, the Minister of Climate Change, James Shaw, earlier this year to announce that, finally, New Zealand is going to have emissions standards for our light vehicle fleet. We’re one of the only countries in the world, alongside Russia and Australia, who doesn’t have one of these, and it’s one of the quickest, most effective ways that we can get our carbon emissions from our light vehicle fleet down.

This is a Government that’s got a clear vision for the next three years. We’re going to ensure that New Zealanders are kept safe as we continue to live in a COVID world. We’re going to accelerate that economic recovery so that there’s equity and opportunity for all New Zealanders, and we’re going to keep our eye on those long-term challenges: housing, climate change, making sure people get a fair deal at work, and that’s something I’ll have a lot more to say about this year as well. It’s a bright three years ahead, and I’m very proud to be part of this Government.

The next call is a split call. I call Jan Logie.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. In my contribution this afternoon, I’d like to talk to one of the points in the Speech from the Throne. The Prime Minister acknowledged three of the countries longest standing and hardest issues demanding continued and determined action: affordable housing, child poverty, and the climate crisis—and, of course, all those three issues are interlinked, in fact. But in my contribution today, I want to focus on a specific angle of housing, and that is accessible housing. The Green Party—and I hope every single person in this House—has a commitment and a vision for every person in this country to have warm, dry, safe, affordable, and accessible housing.

One in four New Zealanders in this country have a disability or an access need. At any time, any one of us could have significant mobility or access needs that we do not expect—and the chances are that if we don’t have them already, as we age, we will. We need universal design in our housing to help ensure that all of us at all times have a roof over our heads. Yet at the moment, we know on the public housing register waiting list, there’s almost 4,500 people who are waiting for a home who are receiving the supported living payment. To get that payment, you need to be blind or have a disability or illness that means you can’t work more than 15 hours a week, and for that to be the case for over two years—these are very significant levels of disability—or you’re caring for somebody who’s not a partner and who would otherwise be in residential care. I want people just to think about that reality for the moment and the poverty that that community experiences because of the low levels of income support and the lack of opportunities that are provided for them to be able to address that, and then think about the debate we’ve been having around housing affordability, and how much tougher it is for those people to have any opportunity to access housing.

And then, if you think about the housing market and the private rental market, we kind of tend to think of people in long queues to try and get a rental property, and we’re imagining—I imagine, if you’re like me—a house of whatever standard, and we know that we can’t make assumptions around that, but that it be a house that you can get into, through the door, to be able to have that conversation with the real estate agent. Well, when the Greens did a check on TradeMe at the end of last year to see how many houses were listed as accessible, we found that there were 10,291 houses listed on TradeMe and, of those, 27—I really want that to sink in: 27—indicated that they were accessible; for the entire country, our private rental market. When we think of our largest city of Auckland, there were four houses—in all of Auckland—on the private market that listed the fact that they were accessible. No wonder we have over 4,500 people who have managed to get on to a public housing list, and no wonder we’re hearing from people in the community who have been in motels. One man who I know in Dunedin was in a motel for 11 months waiting to find somewhere that he might be able to live, and thanks to him being in the media and talking about that reality, he managed to get some action. But we know there are so many more New Zealanders who haven’t.

There are people in my community who are saying a 15 percent target for accessibility is not enough; 18,000—15 percent of that is 2,700; it doesn’t even clear the waiting list. What they said to me, as well, is that they want a house to live in—that’s first—they also want to be able to visit friends or family and have their community available to them. The Government has to do better.

E mihi ana, Ranginui rāua ko Papatūānuku. E te Mana Whakawā, tēnā koe. Ngā mema o te Whare Pāremata, tēnā koutou katoa.

[I acknowledge Ranginui and Papatūānuku. Madam Speaker, greetings. Members of Parliament, greetings to you all.]

I would like to touch on some of the issues around one of the biggest reform programmes in front of this Parliament, and that is the reform of the Resource Management Act (RMA) and its replacement by the Natural and Built Environments Act, the Strategic Planning Act, and the Climate Change Adaptation Act, that the Hon David Parker announced this morning and discussed earlier in the House in his contribution.

Now, this Natural and Built Environments Act is going to be the core piece of legislation replacing the RMA and is going to be progressed first. The proposed purpose of the new Act, according to the December Cabinet paper, which the Minister released this morning, is to promote the quality of the environment, to support the wellbeing of present and future generations and to recognise the concept of te mana o te taiao: the mana of the environment.

The RMA has been the foundation of our environmental legislation for the last 30 years, and its purpose in sections 5, 6, 7, and 8, in Part 2 of the Act—that whole concept of sustainable management, the matters of national importance such as the preservation and protection of the natural character of the coast, the margins of rivers, significant indigenous vegetation and habitats—has been hotly debated and contested in front of councils and the courts. The drafting of the purpose statement of this new legislation needs to be done with enormous care and skill, and I really hope that it’s a focus of submissions on the exposure draft which the Environment Committee will be considering.

I share some of the concerns of the Hon Simon Upton, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, which he raised in the Salmon Lecture to the Resource Management Law Association last year, that those broad words which Labour is proposing as the purpose don’t specify that safeguarding the biophysical environment is paramount. As Mr Upton noted, the clause is directed to enhancing the quality of the environment as a whole, rather than just the natural environment. So supporting the wellbeing of people rather than of ecosystems becomes the overriding goal of the legislation. And potentially such a purpose statement leads us down that well-trodden path under the RMA to balancing competing outcomes, to trading off the environment and nature against human wellbeing when decision makers are forced to make an overall broad judgment which contains quite a strong element of subjectivity. So a focus on human wellbeing creates an enormous uncertainty that nature will in fact be safeguarded.

Mr Brownlee was talking about increasing the amount of housing simply by ensuring that a few of the adverse impacts on the environment were dealt with and then just going ahead. This fails to recognise the severity of the nature crisis, and I would recommend to Mr Brownlee and others to take a look at the major report which the British Treasury released earlier this month. It’s a landmark report, The Economics of Biodiversity, by Cambridge University economist Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta. It’s a 600-page review report which needs to be as influential as Nicholas Stern’s 2006 report on the economics of climate change, because in that report Professor Dasgupta presents a whole new economic framework which is grounded in ecology and which provides a basis for humans to live sustainably.

He’s made it very clear that we need a radical change in the way that we do economics, the way we assess the state of our economies across the globe, and that we need to elevate nature as a key element of economic planning, and to recognise, as I know the Minister for the Environment does, that the economy is a subset of nature, not the other way round. Because the RMA enables economic development and use and because economics influences policy, the thinking in the Dasgupta review must influence the drafting of our new Natural and Built Environments Act, because that review shows that by bringing economics and ecology together we can help save nature at what is potentially the last minute, and, by doing so, save ourselves.

There’s enormous research that has provided the basis for this report, and the fact that its conclusions are that our economic progress has come at a devastating cost to nature. We’ve had the coronavirus pandemic. We’ve had the economic dislocation that’s been associated with that. That’s just one example of what happens in terms of our impacts on nature. We need to take the conclusions of that review and include it in our new legislation.

The next call is a split call. I call Ginny Andersen.

Kia ora, tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity. Look, it’s important within this discussion that we reflect directly upon that speech we heard from the throne at the end of last year. One of the resounding themes for me when listening to that speech being delivered was the importance of laying the foundations for a better future in our country, and that’s exactly what lies before us now, over these next three years.

New Zealanders quite clearly voted for stability and for security going forward, and that responsibility weighs heavily upon our shoulders now to make sure we continue to do that. Those areas that we need to continue to focus on are important. Those three that I’ll briefly touch on today are housing affordability, child poverty reduction, and also taking action on climate change. I can see no better example than the announcement that we heard today from the Hon David Parker in terms of repealing and reforming the Resource Management Act (RMA), because what that does is it touches on all three of those areas. It demonstrates how we need to free up land and make that available in our urban areas, where our predominant population resides. We need to make sure that families that are affected by child poverty have access to affordable homes, and we need to continue to build them on land that’s freed up through a system and a process that makes land available through the local government systems as well. Finally, we need to be able to see that we’re taking action on climate change, and having a system that prioritises our environment alongside of urban development has been long overdue in the 30 years that the Resource Management Act has been in place.

In terms of child poverty, this Government will continue to focus on reducing how children, in particular, are impacted upon by the disparity between poor and rich in New Zealand. We will continue to overhaul the welfare system, and a big part alongside of that is introducing over 200,000 free healthy lunches in schools. Now, that’s a fantastic one that we see rolling out right across our regions. It also enables local businesses—local caterers—to be able to recover from COVID by providing healthy food and benefiting economically from giving kids a good breakfast and a good lunch during their learning day.

It’s also important in that space of child poverty that we continue to roll out our mental health support, which we’ve seen throughout schools, and making that also available in GPs as well. That’s a critical part of being able to make sure that not only young adults but their parents are receiving the support that they need to get on.

In terms of housing, our Government will continue to focus on housing as a priority. We continue to hear cries from those opposite that such and such is the silver bullet, or not, but the reality is that we have quite clearly said that there is no silver bullet. The reforms that we see announced today for the Resource Management Act are just but one part of overhauling a system that is long overdue, and it has been neglected for some time now. It’s all very well to cry that we must immediately repeal the RMA or we need to have things fixed immediately, but this problem that we face—this housing crisis that we face—was many, many years in the making. So to be able to provide for our natural environment and to be able to provide for better urban spaces for young people and our families, we need to be doing that with care, and due process is important in that space.

Finally, I would like to touch on the importance of climate change and on how we need to have a resource management Act that looks after our natural environment. We only see here in Wellington alone the importance of our waterways and also our three waters review, to make sure that we have clean seas and clean rivers and that waste is carried from our urban centres in a way that does not jeopardise the wellbeing of our drinking water, or our swimming in our natural environment.

Making sure that we have adequate resource planning and systems in place that equip us for our future will make sure that we continue to build a country on strong foundations. As we recover from COVID, we build back better, because that’s what this Government is focused on doing—making sure the next generation of New Zealanders has a stronger foundation to rest upon.

I’d just like to start by pointing out to New Zealanders that this weekend there’s a Coast to Coast event, the iconic Coast to Coast event, which has been made famous by Robin Judkins. And I want to acknowledge Robin Judkins, who started that. It’s become an iconic worldwide event. Steve Gurney is, again, the legend involved at the moment. Good luck to those who are competing and who are actually organising that this weekend.

But, importantly, what I’d like to do is use that as an analogy for where we find ourselves and how I relate that to the Address in Reply debate. Those who are training for this weekend are really training like anyone training for any sport—they’re really training for that last 10 to 15 minutes. Most people can do half of whatever the event is—three-quarters—but training, getting ready, is about making sure you’re in condition for the hard bit. The analogy I’d like to use for the Coast to Coast is COVID. COVID put New Zealand under stress. COVID has been the last 15 minutes of any big sporting event where we have to dig deep.

We have succeeded in New Zealand, by any measure. We have succeeded economically. We have succeeded by keeping the numbers, the deaths, down and by keeping New Zealanders safe. But, importantly, it’s a time now to look at why. It is because we were match-fit when we went in there. And this is a time when we really have to do something we’re not very good at doing in this House. Let’s acknowledge our public services, because one man, Ashley Bloomfield, was the public servant who was at the head of this, with Chris Hipkins, with the Prime Minister, each day. But what he did was he represented a very well-trained professional Public Service. I am the member of Parliament for Ōhāriu, and many of those public servants live there and I see them every day.

Today, I was in select committee and I heard people “Ha, ha!”, guffawing, when they saw that Government departments had had an increase in funding in the last three years, as though that was a bad thing. It was a good thing, and what we’ve seen with COVID shows what a good thing it was that we do ensure that our institutions of State are in good nick. And they were in good nick, because we saw Treasury’s response, we saw the Reserve Bank’s response, we saw the Minister of Health’s response, we saw IRD’s response. Education, the Ministry of Social Development—I could go through the lot. And anyone will do—there were members opposite, I know, who sat on that select committee who grilled those public servants when they came through, as part of the entertainment at 10 o’clock every morning during lockdown.

Tell me what anyone who was an objective or subjective watcher of that would have seen—“Wow! Aren’t our public servants pretty good? Isn’t our Public Service pretty good?” So anyone who would dare to criticise the fact that we are rebuilding that Public Service, we’re making sure that those professionals who kept this country safe, who, when we had the leadership—we had the leadership of the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern. But she, like any leader, is as good as the tools she has, as the troops she has, as the people she has, and she showed, and we showed, and New Zealand saw, that we have good people.

That’s why it’s so important that when we reflect on what we need to do as a country, it’s when things get hard; that’s when it’s important. That’s when we get down to that last 15 minutes of what we’re doing. That’s what our training is for. So what I would make a plea to those—and, yes, I accept that the Opposition have got a job. The Opposition have got a job to do—to keep us honest, to make sure they ask the hard questions—and they do it well. But I’d say to the Opposition, and to all the Opposition parties, next time you’re actually in select committee in particular, when you see those extremely professional public servants that come in there that do mean well, that are actually there doing the job—and when they were tested, when their moment comes, when they were 15 minutes from the end of the game, 15 minutes from the end of the Coast to Coast, 15 minutes from whatever endeavour they were, they showed that they were match-fit. So while we’ve got our team of 5 million, there’s an old saying: success has a thousand fathers; failure is an orphan. Well, in this case, success has a thousand fathers—and mothers, I should say; I’m in the modern age.

What we can now look at, as New Zealanders—don’t just look broadly; look at why we succeeded and make sure we don’t risk ever losing that. We have a great Public Service. Let’s maintain it. Let’s keep match-fit so that when I and many other competitors are getting to the top of Goat Pass over the weekend, we’ve got the match-fitness to make sure we will finish. We’ll finish hard, we’ll finish strong, and we’ll be successful. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I mean, always a pleasure to speak after that member O’Connor. We’re looking forward to Minister Damien O’Connor coming in after this and finishing the trifecta. Granted, I get into trouble with the O’Connors. A certain Damien O’Connor the other day made a rather injudicious comment to our Australian cousins and took a bit of heavy flak until they realised I was on their side. But I will actually pick up on one thing that Greg O’Connor’s rightly mentioned—in fact, I think it does happen across the House, and often in those select committee processes, which is the thanks which the committees do give to those who run our Civil Service. And we’ve certainly seen over the last year, particularly those in the health sector, but not alone, who have done a fantastic job, and at the risk of putting one public servant in the spotlight above others—but she’ll be someone that’s well-known to this House. I’ll just use her first name, which is Alma, who did an incredible job liaising with us as MPs to try and help our constituents—so to acknowledge that.

Now that the bouquet has been given, it’s time to throw the bricks. So we’re here, obviously, debating the Speech from the Throne and the Address in Reply. As the member of Parliament for Tāmaki, it was fairly important that I go back to the locals and ask them what they think about what the Government’s doing, what’s happening in the world, and what are their priorities. So I thought I’d use my time to indicate what I’ve heard back from them, and maybe the Government in time will pick up on that. Look, transport remains a massive issue in Tāmaki. Well, I’d welcome all of you to come and visit. Please keep off Tāmaki Drive. There’s more orange cones there than you could poke a stick at. The fact that there’s lots of orange cones and no one doing any work remains a great mystery to me—and to my wife and I that we didn’t invest in orange cones years ago. We’d all be retired and millionaires.

I want to acknowledge what’s happening at the moment around our local parks and playgrounds—granted, I will admit, not the purview of the Government, but as a responsible MP, I want to acknowledge that our people locally want to see those upgraded and certainly want to send a message to Government and to council that they want to see their rates better spent. A lot of concerns developing in the community around—well, Kāinga Ora, but a lot of people would understand it as Housing New Zealand, and I’ll come to the Government’s failures in the space in a moment. But there are real concerns about the way that Kāinga Ora is engaging in the community. There’s been some positive signs in Glendowie and Ōrākei around how they are discussing “topics” from now, but I suppose there is an encouragement in this speech to listen to people.

One thing that other colleagues have certainly picked up on is around crime. This is a concern that’s coming out of this Government. We look at the crime stats. We look at the decisions around no longer pursuing cannabis and other drugs. The pursuit policy has dropped. Elements around gun changes are not affecting, actually, the crime rates. I know it’s only one electorate, but the amount of crime in my electorate is going up and up, and we’re one of the better areas in Auckland, if you want to phrase it—well, if I’m going to phrase it that way. So it’s a problem right across the country and I would encourage the Government to actually do something about that.

They’re obviously concerned as constituents, as I am, about the economy. Many are business owners and they understand that we always want to pay people more. But when a Government increases minimum wages, increases sick leave, introduces new holidays, all on top of a COVID crisis, it’s not the most prudent of times. They certainly have issues around the managed isolation. It’s very much a heart thing, I would say. Many families—and I’m sure those particularly who are constituent MPs here will understand—are trying to get back to New Zealand or have loved ones return to this country and are finding the managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) system lottery at the moment inhumane, to a degree. It’s probably slightly inflammatory language, but they are finding it immensely, immensely difficult. They do understand that, you know, no Government, no system, can make it perfect, but the current system of MIQ feels like a lottery. To those families who are coming to my office, desperate to bring their loved ones home and are finding that it’s probably not until May, even into June now—highly, highly disruptive. And it has to be noted, granted, that the decision of a single member of the Green Party at the moment to travel and to return, and then to blame everyone else, does need a little bit of spotlight and is causing angst—angst—within my own electorate, mainly as a point of leadership, because they look towards members of Parliament to take the right and moral high ground in this space.

Certainly, there is concern about the vaccines. Look, I like the science of it. Vaccines are good. I think it’s really important where things are headed in that direction. But there is, again, concern within my constituency of what the Government says and what’s been achieved, and at the end of the day—and we have on this side been pushing it for a few days now—the Government said we would be at the front of the queue. There is a proverb that talks about the first being last, and it turns out that that is the case. We are well behind the eight ball on this and so many other countries—so many other countries—have it. The Minister is at length trying to say that we’re not using emergency provisions. Well, last time I checked, by definition a global pandemic which is infecting millions and killing hundreds of thousands probably fits within the purview of an emergency. And that’s probably been the overall theme which has been coming back around the Address in Reply and what this Government is doing: it’s what they say versus what they do and, by and large, there is a massive, massive gap.

Child poverty is getting worse. The housing crisis is getting worse. Look, I’ve said it so many times in this House I’m probably now even boring myself. But, you know, National left about 5,000 people on the waiting list when we left Government. It’s now well over 20,000. If by definition, we were decried as managing a crisis three, four years ago, what word does the Government want to use now when it’s four times worse? And having looked after housing for National, all the promises in the world do not build houses. The Prime Minister recently has trumpeted we’re going to build 8,000. Well, that’s lovely as a concept, but we know last year that the Government was only able to build about 1,300 homes, and that’s great—1,300 more—but it didn’t even reach their target last year, let alone the 8,000 that’s been promised.

I touched on about knowing business. They talk a lot about business, and great words of sympathy and kindness—though I’ve almost banned the “k” word from my home, I have to say. But as I say, adding higher wages—

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: Oh, that’s awful.

I know. Isn’t it awful, really? Just sometimes in the English language, we can far overuse a word. But the great thing is we all have thesauruses and we can all be nice, gentle, and understanding.

The tenancy changes—an absolute muddle of the highest order, which is, again, I’ve said to this House, only going to actually hurt the tenants, and the very dynamics that the landlords and other associations and myself pointed out would happen are going to happen. Great concerns in the electorate around hate speech legislation—very, very concerning. No one in this House, myself included, wants to see speech which is hateful. But speech which other people hate is not by definition something that should be criminalised. It needs to be put on the record, and I’m sure we’ll get to speak to it many, many times, but at the end of the day, free speech is one of the key foundational underpinnings of a liberal democracy. And I do worry and fear, as do a lot of Kiwis, that any hate speech legislation is going to undermine that.

Then finally around—it’s all the education changes. I’ve got real concerns about the curriculum changes. Teach history for sure; teach New Zealand history for sure. But boy, the decision to say that one of the three aims is to promote the idea of Marxism and Hegel that everything can be seen through power—that’s not education; that’s called indoctrination. Very worrying.

Then obviously around the Māori wards—[Interruption] Around the Māori wards—I hear some cries from the other side. It would be really good for them to do some Philosophy 101; it’s incredibly helpful. And the Māori wards—there’s all this funny Orwellian speak about democracy and what they’re doing. Well, the great thing is about words and actions—if we truly believe in democracy, then you follow the actions. And this Parliament’s usually about debating legislation, allowing the public to have their say, but that’s been explicitly denied by this Government.

The last point I need to make, because it has been raised with me by a number of constituents, is around how New Zealand engages in the world with its partners. I’d be remiss if I don’t speak to sovereignty and our national interests. I think we need to continue to speak up for democracy, not just here at home, and to challenge the Government, but to throw one brick and one bouquet in—and why don’t I start with a bouquet: I want to acknowledge the Minister in the House and the Government for taking the right stand around Myanmar, or Burma. It was a pleasure to be out there with the community last night and to hear the New Zealand Government condemning the military coup and putting other steps in place. I encourage, though, that New Zealand continues to stand with its allies robustly in speaking against the Chinese Communist Party. I have far too many of my constituents raising this with me with their concerns and their fears. What’s happening in Hong Kong must continue to be condemned. And I want to say, particularly to the 11 who are in jail, that you are not forgotten. And as per the recent BBC reports of the persecution of the Uighur people, they too are not forgotten. I may only be a simple and humble MP in Tāmaki, but to my constituents who demand I speak up for these things, I will continue to do so.

The next call is a split call. I call Jamie Strange.

Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to take a call in the Address in Reply debate. We’ve heard from two O’Connors this afternoon, and I sort of call it the “Tale of Two O’Connors”. Unfortunately, I can’t complete the trifecta, as I am a Strange, as we know. However, we heard from one O’Connor who gave a fairly positive, optimistic view of the next three years, acknowledging the challenges we are facing, but acknowledging that we have a Government with a clear plan to continue working through some of those challenges. And then we heard from the second O’Connor, who gave a fairly pessimistic view. I am going to take the optimistic view, because at the election last year, New Zealanders right across the country voted for a strong Labour Party, and they voted for a strong Labour leader in our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

One of the key reasons why I believe a number of New Zealanders did do that is because they have seen the leadership that our Prime Minister has provided during COVID-19. We only have to look overseas to see how bad COVID-19 can get. Our Prime Minister started by going hard and early, and she had clear communication. I spoke to someone recently from a large city over in Europe. Within that city, which is a city of around a million people, they had around half a dozen different zones for COVID over there. So you’d move from one part of the city and you would have different COVID rules; you’d move to another part of the city and have different COVID rules again. Without that clear communication, people struggled to come together to unite in the way that New Zealanders did. So, in this speech, I’ll briefly touch on keeping New Zealanders safe, and then I’ll talk about the economic recovery. Our border plays a key role in keeping New Zealanders safe, and I’d like to acknowledge all of those workers who work at the border. I’d like to acknowledge all of those workers who work in managed isolation and quarantine facilities, and I have spoken via Zoom to some of them in the Waikato region. The work that they are doing to keep us safe will be remembered for a long time.

We have a strong, resilient economy here in New Zealand. We have an economy that has diversified in recent years, and I think the diversity that we have in our economy has held us in good stead to navigate these challenges that we have in terms of COVID. And if I just look, in terms of a Waikato lens, as a member of Parliament from Hamilton East, the Waikato economy used to be predominantly a dairy-based economy, and we still have that as a strong aspect of our economy, but we have diversified in recent years to have the fastest-growing tech sector in New Zealand over the past three years, a strong manufacturing sector, and a strong service sector as well. I think that’s something, during these COVID challenges, that I haven’t heard spoken about quite a lot: the fact that the diversification within our economy over the previous years has held us in good stead. For example, the tech sector continues to go strong. It continues to go from strength to strength.

The Government has invested in a number of shovel-ready projects to support economic development in the regions, and one of those is in the Waikato region, and that’s helped us to get through these COVID challenges, and it will provide a pipeline of work moving forward. One of the key ones there is the Ruakura Superhub, which the Government has invested $56 million into. That’s creating 6,000 to 12,000 jobs. Basically, what it is is a fully operational inland port on the eastern side of Hamilton, which is the size of Auckland CBD. What we will see is containers come into Auckland port, they will be shipped south to the Ruakura development, and those containers will be opened there and then they will be distributed right around the golden triangle—that Hamilton, Auckland, Tauranga area. This sort of economic development in the regions of New Zealand is exactly what we need to see, and as a Government we will continue to invest in the regions. And as we go through these COVID challenges, the job creation for projects such as the Ruakura port and other shovel-ready projects will certainly play a key role in helping us to navigate through that.

So we have a Government that is keeping New Zealanders safe and is focusing on a strong economic recovery for our country. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call in this, the Address in Reply debate—my first opportunity to speak in the House since we’ve come back from the summer break. I just want to take the opportunity to welcome everyone back here, and I hope that everyone has had a lovely summer break. Everyone’s looking somewhat rested after having to make the change from shorts and t-shirts to office attire. There’s a little bit of adjusting: I think we’ve only just got used to the bit of the jandal that goes between our toes and now we’re having to pop our heels back on, so it’s a bit of shame. But when we think about the fact that we’ve been away on our summer break, we’ve had the opportunity to spend time with our families and with our friends. We’ve been able to holiday around the country. We’ve been able to explore our own backyard. I spent a little bit of time in Akaroa, and I have to say it was the busiest I’ve ever seen it prior to, obviously, when the cruise ships were in. It’s fantastic to see people exploring their own backyard, and it’s very lucky that we have the opportunity to do so.

I spent a bit of my time over the summer break just reflecting on how lucky we are. On Christmas day, I volunteered at the community lunch in Timaru, and there were hundreds of people there from, actually, all walks of life. I hadn’t helped at a Christmas lunch before, and I had in my mind where the people there might have come from and what situations they might be in. But they were from all walks of life, I have to say. I was looking around the room and I was thinking that some of these people are elderly, on their own, have no other family, and the fact that they could come along and attend the community Christmas lunch, I think, just meant everything to them. You could see that some of them had been coming for years and have developed wonderful friendships over those years.

So for us to be able to spend time together like that, we have to thank, partly—actually, a lot of the thanks has to, obviously, go to all of us here in New Zealand, the team of 5 million as we are often referred to, who have made the sacrifices we had to make and did what we needed to do in order to come out the other side of our lockdown. But I also think it’s very, very important that we acknowledge the strong leadership of our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and her team that she had around her.

We’ve heard today, and we know for a fact, that the health response was what we wanted to focus on first, and we’ve heard that the health response was the best economic response, as well. And we can see that because there are many businesses that have, obviously, now reopened, they are trading, we’ve got people training and/or retraining, and what’s really pleasing to see in that space is a lot of people training in the trades, and it’s exciting to see the amount of women that are beginning to train in the trades. What we do know is that women were quite severely impacted as a result of COVID and job loss. So it’s really fantastic to see that this is happening for our women.

This Government is going to continue focusing on the wellbeing of its citizens. I want to think about things that are happening for our children. They’re going to be affected, obviously, by the continuation of the overhaul of the welfare system. We’ve also seen the roll-out previously of lunches in schools and we’re going to continue and increase that roll-out. We just heard, this morning, in select committee, from the Ministry of Education, the positive impact that the healthy lunches in schools programme is having, and it’s actually impacting in a positive way on attendance levels. We’re seeing children who might otherwise not be at school, whether it’s the fact that their family doesn’t have enough food to give them for lunch—so that’s the embarrassment around that—but we are seeing it impact in a positive way on students’ attendance in schools.

We’re going to continue focusing on reducing inequality, and I think that’s something that is going to be very important going forward, as I said, particularly with the women in our community, who have been mostly affected by job loss in the community. So—

Order! Order! The member’s time has expired. This is a split call—I call Golriz Ghahraman.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Like others across the House, it is a time of reflection, and looking back on the Speech from the Throne, and also starting this parliamentary year, we can all acknowledge and express our gratitude for how well our nation has done in the COVID response and in not only surviving but, in a way, thriving, as well, in this pandemic. Everyone here keeps saying this phrase, and I think we need to hold tight to it, which is that we will “build back better”. So I want to focus on something that wasn’t necessarily working before that pandemic, and hold, too, on to the idea that we need to be bold moving forward, because some things don’t call for us to return to the status quo.

We did do well in the COVID response through active leadership, and as a Government—and in the Green Party we were so proud to be a part of that Government and that COVID response—the act of leadership meant doing things that hadn’t been done before. We were good at the lockdown in this nation because we worked as a team, but we were also good because we invested in the lockdown. We provided a wage subsidy, we kept the businesses going, and we allowed people to stay home. And we’re seeing some around the world, in particular some of our traditional Western allies, as we call them, doing so, so poorly, because they are holding on to ideology that doesn’t work. Putting business first hasn’t worked, because people do need support to stay home. So the thing I want to focus on, as the justice spokesperson for the Green Party, is justice, because that is an area where we need to build back better and we need to be transformative and we need to let go of old prejudices.

We know that our prison system is not working. We’ve been told over and over again, and last term by even the Prime Minister’s own Chief Science Advisor, that prisons have failed. We’ve got the High Court telling the Crown that they are no longer to bring up the idea of deterrence, in drug sentencings at least, because all the evidence shows that deterrence does not, in fact, work; it is a myth. We have high recidivism rates. We have one of the highest per capita prison populations. We constantly get reports from the Ombudsmen and from others about abuse in our prisons. And we are not keeping down crime rates. We are not keeping victims safe. In fact, telling victims that we need more and more people in prison—we need to lift sentences of imprisonment—has now become callous, because we’re not keeping them safe.

What we do need to invest in is what we know will prevent crime. That means acknowledging that the vast majority of people that we do imprison suffer from serious mental health issues, suffer from brain injury that’s been undiagnosed. They suffer from addiction. I think it’s 90 percent, or just under 90 percent, of young offenders, under-19-year-olds, that suffer from a diagnosis of what is described as serious learning disability. So we’re failing at different stages of our education system, of our healthcare system, in mental health and addiction treatment. These are places where investment must go, instead of the failed system of imprisonment that we’ve been pouring billions of dollars into in the past.

The purpose of our justice system must be rehabilitation. It must be successful reintegration back into the community. That means that rehabilitation programmes, drug and alcohol programmes, mental health support have to happen outside of those abusive prisons that have so far failed our communities, victims, and perpetrators and caused intergenerational harm.

Now, those reports into our justice system also say repeatedly that the justice system is racist. Māori are experiencing, at every encounter with the justice system—from the first time they encounter police, to the charging system, to the first time they appear in court, to convictions, and, if convicted, to being sentenced to imprisonment—far, far disproportionate rates to Pākehā and others for the same types of acts. Now, we’ve seen the Black Lives Matter movement across the globe. We know that we don’t have those very high rates of police brutality here, but we do have it, and we know that our justice system harms Māori in all sorts of other ways. So that’s not OK. We need to be bold and transformative, as we were in the COVID response, and do things differently. We need it for the health of our community, we need it for Māori, and we need it for a better future for all of Aotearoa.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. As my colleague Golriz Ghahraman just said before me, we are very proud and thankful to be here in Aotearoa New Zealand, where we had excellent Government leadership in the response to COVID-19. We have many lessons that we can learn from our response and its success, one of which is to listen to the science, to work together, and that we all do better when we’re working together, and, thirdly, to take a health response, and a good health response was the best economic response. That was the Government’s position and I think it was absolutely proven right.

I think that these lessons have to be taken when we’re looking at facing even greater challenges like the climate emergency, the incredibly rapid and terrifying rate of biodiversity loss. In order to respond to climate change effectively, and I have heard it mentioned numerous times by Government MPs and in the Speech from the Throne that they are serious about climate action, we will have to listen to the science, we will have to work together and put our collective common good ahead of some individual rights or preferences, and that a response that is looking after our planet and our climate is ultimately the best economic response. The sooner we act on climate change, the better off our society will be.

There is no real trade-off between the economy and the survival of civilisation on our planet. Obviously, by prioritising the survival of civilisation on our planet, that’s the best outcome for our economy, which is but one part of human society. And in order to take an effective climate change response, there are two things that also need to happen that have long been priorities for the Green Party and will continue to be. One is honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi, because the reality is indigenous peoples around the world have been at the forefront of the fight for effective climate action, and recognising and honouring Te Tiriti appropriately will be and must be part of our response to climate change.

The second one affects all of us, and that is inequality. There is no way we can have an effective response to climate change when a certain portion of our population is living in economic insecurity or poverty. There’s no question that the housing crisis is part of the contributor to this economic insecurity—it’s not the only thing, but it is part of it—and our high levels of child poverty. I know that child poverty is something that the Prime Minister takes very seriously, and I would just very humbly say that now is the time, following COVID-19, to revisit the long-held assumptions about what is politically possible in Aotearoa New Zealand.

What may have seemed unpopular in 2019, because there was a vociferous and misleading campaign against the comprehensive capital gains tax from the National Party at the time—we’re in a completely different world. We’ve had COVID-19. We’ve now got unprecedented growth in house prices. That means that the average house in Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington, Kāpiti Coast, and Queenstown earned more in untaxed capital gains just in the final three months of 2020 than the average New Zealander earned in pre-tax income over the entire year. So these are unprecedented circumstances.

Fair enough, the Government said they were advised that house prices were going to drop. I’m not opposed to the use of unconventional monetary policy to address some of our issues, but now is the time for Government leadership. Now is the time to take on those assumptions about what can or cannot be done, and still get re-elected. And, actually, now is the time to do what’s right. We can end child poverty. We don’t have to do it slowly. It doesn’t have to be 50 percent by 2030. We could actually do it next year with comprehensive tax reform that also helped address the increasing wealth inequality that has been caused by the unconventional monetary policy. That is fair and right. The owners of investment properties have become enriched by the Reserve Bank’s response to COVID-19, but they can give some of that back. We can end child poverty. We will all benefit from that. That is part of how we reduce inequality and have effective environmental and climate action in Aotearoa New Zealand. The Green Party will lead on this if our Prime Minister will not.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. As it’s my first speech in the House this year, can I acknowledge you, and begin this year as we usually finish the parliamentary year, by acknowledging the Speaker’s team, the Clerk’s Office, and also the Speaker’s office, who help us make sure we transact our business in wonderful House throughout the year. Can I also acknowledge everyone else in the Parliament, and especially our new class of 2020, who are embarking on their first new year of their long and illustrious parliamentary careers. Can I also acknowledge those who may be bereft of anything else to do, wherever they are, and are listening to and watching my contribution this afternoon.

As my colleague mentioned earlier, I hope everyone has had a restful holiday. Madam Assistant Speaker Dean, I spent some of my holidays in your electorate, enjoying the wonderful Otago Rail Trail, and I thank everyone amongst that for their wonderful hospitality to both me and my family.

In amongst my travels, despite my trying to not engage in politics at the many establishments that I visited, there were numerous conversations with members of the public and publicans on the trail about just the absolute privilege that it was to be able to be operating and having customers and tourists in their area, and I think I was one of many who took the opportunity to discover more of my own country during our Christmas break.

Again, I spoke to people along the trail who were very thankful, considering what is going on in other countries, that we’re able to have what is considered a relatively normal holiday. We were able to go and enjoy it, together with our families—be able to move freely, be able to go and have dinner in a pub in the middle of Central Otago, and be able to enjoy something a bit different in the North Island, for instance. But, certainly, I think there was amongst the public a general consensus as we were celebrating Christmas and new year, and a thankfulness, and not just for the decisions that were made by the previous Government but also, I think, for the fact that we had all pulled through one of the biggest modern challenges globally to be able to get to a point where we could enjoy Christmas like that. So I hope others around this House are able to recharge in that environment, because there are still many challenges ahead of us.

It’s very humbling to be able to speak as a Labour member of Parliament in this still relatively new Government. To have 65 MPs on our side of the House is relatively unprecedented, and is a great signal to our team of the support and trust that the country has in us. But also it is a clear message that we have to take that responsibility seriously and make sure that we are governing in the interests of all New Zealanders, and my message to those who are listening this afternoon is that that is exactly our focus: to make sure that we continue to keep New Zealanders safe as we’ve continued to traverse this global pandemic that is COVID-19, and continue to make decisions that keep us and our communities safe, which, as another speaker in this debate has said, is also allowing us to be in a very privileged position as it comes to our economy.

That is not to say that there aren’t challenges. As we closed borders back in March of 2020, there have been a number of challenges that have been posed to families, organisations, businesses, and sectors.

I will commit, as the Minister of Immigration, to continue the kind of engagement that we have had in the last six months with the likes of the horticulture and viticulture sector. Now, let’s be perfectly honest: this is not a situation that anyone wants, because, for example, at this time of year, there would be, roughly, 14,000 Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme workers here to pick fruit and who would be able to work on vineyards and work in the fields. That is not able to happen at the moment because of the restrictions that we have at the border, but we have allowed a cohort from the Pacific, a rather large cohort—a group of people from the likes of Samoa—to come here and assist in picking fruit. Now, those from the hort and vit sector would say that that is nowhere near enough, and we realise the challenge that we’ve got. But, again, we will commit to engaging with those sectors directly to do as best as we can to manage the flow of people in to assist those orchards, to assist those businesses in a time of a global crisis and to do as best as we can.

The challenge in amongst that—and I would like to thank a number of sectors in this respect—is that we really do have to take heed of the call that the reliance that New Zealanders on migrant workers in the past has to be addressed, and we need to start training more New Zealanders to do some of the skilled work that we have traditionally relied on migrants to do. We stand firm on that because it is the right thing to do—to make sure that we can get New Zealanders into these jobs in challenging times—with the dual remit of making sure that we’re being vigilant at the border to keep New Zealanders safe, and we will not shirk that challenge.

All the decisions that have been made have been difficult ones, but New Zealand is now benefiting from them. I think you see that in some of the forecasts that we may have had around the likes of unemployment that we’ve seen in the last five months, and the reality that is coming to the fore because of the support that the Labour-led Government offered—and this Labour Government will continue to offer—businesses, whether they be big or small. The likes of the massive investment in the wage subsidy has enabled people to stay in jobs and to stay in work and to be able to continue to support their families and to be able to do simple things like pay the rent or pay the mortgage or keep food on the table. But also, at the macro level, it has seen the likes of unemployment fall at the last survey, and I think, again, when you look at the situation around the world, with economies struggling to contain both a health pandemic and economic crisis, for us to be in this position is an extremely privileged one to be in.

To give a little bit of context there on the unemployment front, with our figures, and I think it’s 4.9 percent—that is in comparison to the likes of 6.8 percent across the Tasman. In the US, it is 8.7 percent unemployment, and there is an OECD average of 6.9 percent. So, again, for our unemployment to be below 5 percent at the moment is a massive indication of the work that the Hon Grant Robertson has done as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance to react to an economic shock that we have not seen in modern times.

Again, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge a lot of the officials that made that happen. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the likes of the Ministry of Social Development and the Inland Revenue Department for making the wage subsidy happen so quickly, and also happen so broadly, because I’ve heard story upon story from small-business people that I have managed to have discussions with, where they say they’ve put an application in, and within 24 hours or 48 hours, the money was in their bank. I don’t think we can underestimate the power that not just the money but the swiftness that that financial assistance for those companies met. They could keep staff who were more than staff, who may have been experienced staff who they wanted to make sure that they could look after, but it also said that “The Government’s got your back.” I think we saw the fruits of that at the ballot last year, but we, as a Government, are committed to making sure that as well as having their back, we’ll continue to work hard to protect them from the ills of the pandemic, but also to make sure that we can build back better.

That is, again, what I commit to as the Minister of Immigration: to make sure that we’re having those robust discussions with a whole lot of sectors, again, who have traditionally relied on migrant labour who can’t bring that labour in at the moment and need long-term plans to make sure we are training people and attracting New Zealanders into that work. That will mean training, and the Hon Chris Hipkins has done a lot in that space pre-COVID. We are continuing to do more, but it’s also a robust discussion about making sure we’ve got wages and conditions that New Zealanders will see as attractive, and that has been one of the challenges.

So it’s going to be a great year for the Labour Government. We are committed to keeping the kinds of results that we had from last year, and I look forward to the House in 2021—

Order! The member’s time has expired. The member will resume his seat.

This Parliament’s Speech from the Throne gave us a glimpse into the priorities of this Government: to keep New Zealand safe from COVID-19, to accelerate the COVID recovery, and to lay the foundations for a better future. They are all very noble priorities, wrapped in this cloak of kindness, this kind of warm fuzzy blanket of care that is some kind of invisible force-field around us that makes us all feel very nice. Unfortunately, the priorities and the kindness memo didn’t filter down to all her Ministers, including the Minister of Immigration, who clearly has no strategy and no plan, no transparent decision-making criteria as to who we let through our closed border, who gets an exemption, and with no guiding strategy and no ability to manage competing demands of our managed isolation and quarantine facilities (MIQ). The Minister bumbles from one haphazard decision to the next, leaving in this wake a trail of heartbreaking decisions, and head-scratching decisions, frankly.

One of the unfortunate outcomes of the visa exceptions that he is granting is the very sad case of Trevor Ponting, who was denied an emergency place in MIQ because there wasn’t any space, apparently. We’ve all heard the story. He had terminal brain cancer and it wasn’t deemed to be enough of an emergency situation to warrant a place in MIQ. Now, while his story eventually led to a positive ending after significant pressure from the public and from the press, the underlying problem still remains. The sad thing is that Trevor’s case is not unique. It is an example of a much wider problem, and it is a complete farce that we have a system that requires the media and the public to put pressure on Ministers to make the right decisions to get the spots in MIQ.

The situation arose because of the chaotic and directionless system and a Minister that is asleep at the wheel. Our immigration system, the whole point of it at the moment, is so vital. Now more than ever, it’s to keep us safe, to allow Kiwis to get home, to reunite families, to bring in critical workers, and to help rebuild the economy, and the careful management of these competing demands is the job of our immigration Minister. But he continues to drop the ball.

Visas are being issued in a haphazard manner to film crews, millionaire yachties, nannies, sports teams, comedians, bands, kids’ entertainers, and TV contestants. Each of these applications, if you look at them in isolation, may well have a great case to present to New Zealand in terms of the economic benefit that they offer. But the problem is that you cannot look at these things in isolation. Bands and comedians here to entertain us over a horrible year, film crews here to provide jobs, a cruise ship to generate $6 million in the tourism industry, and an international reality TV show to boost our profile overseas are all very worthy when looked at in isolation, but these cannot be looked at in isolation. There has to be some kind of overarching strategy from the Minister, but clearly there isn’t one.

MIQ spots are very, very limited. This Government has made decisions that they’re not going to expand the number of hotels or places for isolation, and that is their decision. But that means we have to very, very carefully manage the competing demands of the limited capacity in MIQ. For every band, for every TV contestant, for every film star’s nanny and UK comedian granted an exception, there are many others who miss out, and questions will be rightly asked when the balance is perceived not to be right.

The Wiggles or a Kiwi dying of cancer who wants to see his family before he passes? RuPauls’s Drag Race or desperate Kiwis stuck overseas? Comedians and bands and their families or the families of our migrant doctors, nurses, teachers, and engineers who have been separated from their partners and their children for a year with no hope on the horizon of being reunited? I will return to this issue later.

These comparisons get made by the public and by us and questions arise, because Minister Faafoi has no apparent strategy to deliver the common-sense outcomes that Kiwis expect. And not only that, he presides over a COVID committee that’s shrouded in some kind of thick fog of secrecy. We have no idea of how they’re making their decisions, who they are issuing exemptions to, and how these cases even get to that COVID committee. Every time we have an Official Information Act request or a question that we put, it is denied, refused, or redacted. This lack of transparency, this opaque decision-making process, sees Ministers and officials make calls with a lack of transparent criteria and the lack of the assessment of the opportunity cost, because the opportunity cost in many cases is a terrible human cost.

On the face of it, a comedian may tick many boxes, but without an overall strategy and clear set of criteria to balance competing needs, the opportunity cost, which in most cases is that human cost, is never weighed up. A comedian brought here to entertain us may sound great but at the expense of a dying Kiwi it’s abhorrent.

Without an overall strategy backed up by a transparent set of criteria around the allocation of border and visa exceptions, we will continue to muddle along as we have been, making random decisions that deliver heartbreaking outcomes that will continue to go down like a cup of cold spaghetti, to borrow a song lyric from The Wiggles.

I want to return to split migrant families for a moment. These families are another casualty of the Minister’s lack of strategy and inability to balance out competing demands on our MIQ system. We have unfolding a desperately awful situation in this country. Hundreds of migrants came to New Zealand at the end of 2019 or early 2020, before the border shut, to secure employment or to start a new position, with the intention of bringing their partners and their children once they settled in. And that’s not an unusual situation. It happens a lot. Often you get them coming here while their families settle up, sell houses, let their children finish out the term at school, and follow soon after. In this instance, these family members are trapped overseas without visas and Immigration are refusing to grant them, and the Minister has remained absolutely 100 percent silent on this issue, and when he’s pressed about it, all he will say is “Oh, we continue to monitor the situation.”

The reality is that there are hundreds of migrants in New Zealand who have not seen their children or their partners for over a year, and these migrants are our nurses, they are our maths teachers, they are our engineers, they are our doctors, they are our psychiatrists. A case in my electorate, that I visited the other day, is a nurse who comes from India. She has a 10- and a 12-year-old boy and a husband at home in India. She came here to do the Competency Assessment Programme, a course which you need to do before you can start nursing here. She did that for six weeks, and secured a job at a local rest home. That rest home had been trying to find a nurse to look after our elderly parents for eight months. They finally secured her. The thing now is that she is looking like she has to leave, because there is absolutely nothing from this Minister to give her any hope that her family will be allowed to come and join her here in New Zealand.

It would be right to think that the Minister would give them some form of indication about what’s happening. Is his silence on this matter giving an indication to these migrants that they should just go home? Is that the case? Or is he thinking that at some point in the future, over a reasonable period of time, we will slowly allow these migrant families to reconnect? I can’t emphasise enough the heartbreak that is going on out there in our communities. These migrants came here often because we requested them. We went out and we marketed for them because we need teachers and we need nurses. They gave up their lives to come here. And the Minister now, through his absolute silence on the issue, is giving them no hope, and they’re really at the end of their tether.

I have had people calling me every single day, as I know every other member in this Parliament has. They don’t expect the floodgates to be opened. They don’t expect their families to all arrive tomorrow. They don’t even expect to pay for MIQ. All they’re asking for is just some form of commitment from this Government that at some point in the future they will be allowed to see their families again. It is galling for them to see comedians and bands, and The Wiggles, and now refugees as well, all in the queue ahead of them, with absolute silence from this Minister. And the reason for that silence is he has an absolute inability to balance competing demands. There are always going to be demands on our system. Yes, we have to bring in people for economic reasons—critical workers, New Zealanders, emergency cases. There has to be a balance of these competing demands, but the Minister is absolutely incapable of doing that and we end up with these heartbreaking situations.

The migrant nurse that looks after our parents, the maths teacher who hasn’t seen his own children in a year and is staring down the barrel of another year, went to school this week to look after and teach our kids, and the Minister is completely silent about the ability for him to have any light at the end of the tunnel. It is abhorrent that the Minister doesn’t have a proper strategy to manage these competing demands, and I will continue to bring up these issues as long as there is no hope on the horizon.

This is a split call. Paul Eagle.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. What a privilege it is to speak for a short time in the House, my first for 2021. Look, I want to bring some cheer and encourage the previous speaker to come to the paradise of Rongotai, which includes the Chatham Islands, where I was over the Christmas - New Year period to see cheer, to see a COVID-free community, and to have some fun, because things aren’t all doom and gloom. What I want to do is just acknowledge everyone here in the House today, particularly the new MPs. I want to acknowledge Nicole McKee, a Rongotai resident, of course, for her long and established work in the electorate and an expectation of good things to come and working together on things. So, welcome—nau mai, haere mai to everyone.

I want to just quickly reflect on happenings in the last couple of weeks, and it does reflect the Speech from the Throne, when I look at Māori Crown relations, because recently we were in Waitangi—first of all, I want to acknowledge the strong Labour Māori caucus, because never have I seen a team of spirited but also highly intelligent and hard-working individuals who put together a much stronger partnership with the Crown. For the first time in many years—and I’ve been to Waitangi many times—the words when asked by some of the diplomats there were “How do you sum up Waitangi?”, and I thought, it’s warm and it’s peaceful. Those are two words that I thought I couldn’t claim in other years, but what I saw was a strong effort from the deputy leader of the party, Kelvin Davis; our Minister for Māori Development, Willie Jackson; and the team, including Nanaia Mahuta, who gave a great speech when she was talking to the diplomats there.

But it goes a bit deeper than just Waitangi, even though that is important. I want to acknowledge the Minister Nanaia Mahuta’s work around Māori wards. I’m on the select committee that is going to be working hard over the weekend listening to those who are going to give us some feedback. Look, I’m expecting some lows, but I know, being from local government, that it is high time that we address some of the legislation I’ve heard today. We need to be bold and we need to do some things that we wouldn’t normally do. We’re going to do things like address some of those racist things that are there. Some don’t see it as that, but it is in my view. Communities will still get a say, but I think it’s time for communities to deeply reflect with their mana whenua, with Māori, and go “How do we create a new New Zealand Aotearoa for our patch of this country and let democracy rule with Māori at the table making decisions, too?”

The other point I want to make just briefly is around Matariki. I remember the former Mayor of Wellington coming to me and saying “Hey, look, in June 2018, and four years later in 24 June next year, there will be the first Matariki. That’s highly appropriate.” That took some time too. I think that’s being bold, because I was told at the time by many that it couldn’t happen, it wouldn’t happen, we couldn’t afford it—there was every reason put on the table for why this couldn’t happen, but it did and it will, and I want to just acknowledge the work that’s gone on in there, and I’m looking forward to it. I know that the recent celebrations here in Wellington, from Waitangi Day, with our mana whenua, Taranaki whānui, and those on the Chatham Islands—the Moriori and Ngāti Mutunga are also supportive of the work we do, and I’m looking forward to working with them in 2021. Kia ora.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Can I officially congratulate you on being a Speaker. It’s very exciting to see two men and two women who formally preside over this House, and so congratulations. I also want to acknowledge all the MPs who have joined this 53rd Parliament. I have enjoyed listening to many of your maiden speeches and I look forward to your contributions in the House, because, for all of us, it is an absolute pleasure to serve the people of Aotearoa New Zealand, and that’s why we’re all here. I want to emphasise, from the Speech from the Throne and this Address in Reply debate, the priority of our Government.

We make no apologies for prioritising the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders, and having an elimination strategy that ensures that we remain safe whilst, at the same time, allowing our uri—those of us who don’t live in Aotearoa, the diaspora who have chosen to come home. They’re the majority of the people who are venturing through our managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities. They’re returning citizens, and I’m sure all of us would provide that space for them, would allow them to continue to come home. In addition, we have made some allowances for some particular employees with certain business leaders, and for me it really does speak to the social contract that is allowing us to continue to function, our economy to function, and that partnership between Government and business.

I want to thank our front-line workers, our customs and immigration, Air New Zealand staff, cleaners, our health and disability workforce, our district health board and primary health organisation professionals, and all the MIQ staff that have kept us safe. I really did want to focus on an attitude by some of our business leaders, and I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge Kiri Hannifin and the team at Countdown. They were named as one of the businesses where somebody who had COVID had gone to, and it ended up not being right. They weren’t actually visited, but they closed their store and they cleaned their store, and when they were informed that actually they didn’t really have to do it because they hadn’t been visited, what Kiri said was that they’d rather be safe than sorry. They put their workers first and they put the safety of their staff and customers first. The reason I wanted to highlight that was about that precautionary attitude, that vigilance, that focus on people, putting our people first to ensure that we all remain safe and that we can have a relatively good experience in our country, as opposed to what we’ve seen in other parts of the world.

In terms of our priority, I know much has been said about maybe not understanding our priorities, and I also want to emphasise our investment in people and how we’ve done that. I want to focus on the $320 million investment in trades training and our focus on the building and construction area, on agriculture, on the manufacturing sector, on community health, counselling, and care work. The reason that we did that was in response to something that happened when National were in power in 2017. There was a massive reduction in apprenticeships, by 38 percent—50,000 people dropped out of that sector. So we’ve been incredibly proactive, learning from history, but investing with our business leaders in sectors that obviously will keep our economy going. I think that, as a priority, is something that we all should be incredibly proud of. Again, it emphasises the partnership between Government and the business community. Kia ora.

I call on Damien Smith to make his maiden statement.

Mr Speaker, it’s an honour and privilege to rise today to deliver my maiden speech. Céad míle fáilte, which, for Hansard, in Celtic means “a hundred thousand welcomes”. I welcome my dearest daughter Alexis, and her mum Jo, from the mainland of New Zealand, and Rory, her friend. Thank you, Jo, for bringing me to this great country, giving me the greatest daughter a man could have—a scholar, an athlete, and a leader—and thanks for being a great mum to her. I also with Jo experienced the benefit of getting the great New Zealand passport, a privilege for this immigrant. These gifts have led me to be able to participate fully in this great democracy, the 53rd New Zealand Parliament, and the principles of liberalism. We believe in the liberty and freedom of New Zealanders and their prosperity. Also, thank you to my dearest friends and supporters who’ve come here today and are watching on TV, and to the ACT president, Tim Jago, the board, my fellow caucus members, our leaders and the management of the party, and Sir Roger Douglas.

New Zealand’s fastest-growing centre-right political party is the ACT Party, which in 2020 grew by 900 percent at this election: the greatest campaign result in ACT’s whole history. We listened to the country and advocated for change and for your continued freedoms and rights, and ACT is needed like never before. I’m an Irish-born MP—a list MP—but there have been 61 MPs from Ireland before, from 1853. There have been three Premiers and Prime Ministers—Pollen, Ballance, and Massey—and a Speaker, called O’Rorke. Indeed, Thomas Bracken, an Irish MP in the late 1800s, wrote “God Defend New Zealand”, our national anthem. It was originally a poem published in the Dunedin Times and modified later in the century. So I honour them, and it’s fitting that Peter Ryan, the Irish Ambassador, is here today to witness the latest one. Peter and I intend to put St Patrick’s Day back on the map post-COVID, and we may even apply for a new national holiday on 18 March, because it seems to be in fashion.

So I think I’m the first ACT Party one—is that right, David? Well, then, it’s so. It was a stoking of my passion for the principles of liberalism by David that led me to the ACT Party and to run for office after watching one of his famous speeches in a Belgian bar in Auckland. We call it the ACT public speaking house—the “alternative House”. I don’t want to go over-the-top on that day, but some Churchillian prose may sum up what I thought about your speech: “That chap makes the cosmos out of chaos.” Thank you, David, for the inspiration then, and what you do as the most effective leader of an Opposition party in recent times.

So on to the humorous part: at No. 11, and then No. 10, on the ACT list, I was always the one who was supremely confident of getting here, and I thank the nation and its party votes, and our campaign teams across the country, and local and fellow candidates. I now see New Zealand as the place to do good and see laws have a massive impact on a free or not-so-free society. If the standard falls, then democracy will fall, and bad law, under emergency or not, is a grave insult to the people of New Zealand. The people must be listened to and given time to respond on any legislation.

I honour today my father, Frank, who has passed away, and my darling mother, Agnes, who lives with Vincent, her husband, in the small town of Enniskillen in Northern Ireland. They raised a family of four: Brenda, John, Paul, and myself. I guess I’m Ringo! My father was an amateur tenor singer, a great small community-based businessman who was loved by his town. Over a thousand people turned up to his funeral—that was a lot of whiskey—and he never knew he was so much loved till he was gone, which is a very Irish thing to happen. My mum’s early career was as a telephone exchange operator and then a bookkeeper and a mum. She was a precursor to an operator in the Five Eyes network, I think, in my small town! I used to watch her put a call from Mr Smith to Mr Brown with a twinkle in her eye. She was really a natural connector, and the most loving mum a boy could have. She guided me to being the man and dad I am today, and so thank you on behalf of all our family.

On a sadder note, I was raised in a war-torn country, where your freedoms were threatened with a bullet or a bomb at every moment by stepping into the wrong district anywhere in the Irish or British Isles. We were bombed out of our house, with just a 20- to 30-minute warning. We had to check under our cars for incendiary devices, and informants were regularly kneecapped for playing both sides of the fence, but a lot of people who died did not even get a warning. The epoch of these terrible times was in my small home town on 8 November 1987 when the Remembrance Day service bomb massacre claimed the lives of 11 people—10 civilians and one police officer. Sixty-three were injured. This formed a turning point in the Troubles and personified the evils of sectarianism and division, and all the darkness that it brings.

It also showed me how the shutting down of freedom of speech and liberties leaves citizens paralysed and in fear of the State apparatus. From that day forward I chose to believe in the power of peace and freedom of expression, and protecting the actions of people under the law for the person and family and the country. And I have learnt that from that darkness does come light and freedom. Prosperity and democracy are the only path for a Westernised nation, but it can be taken away from you by political or warring factions or bad economic situations.

So those events spurred me on to leave my small town, go to university, and then, with Ireland’s youth who had ambition, you had to leave, because of recessions and property busts, to cities like London, New York, and Sydney—which is unfortunately now not available to the young people of the world. A corporate sales career followed in fast-moving consumer goods, in banking and governance and advisory services at some of the top companies in the world across the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

New Zealand has become home for me, and it’s truly a great, free society, underpinned by a bill of rights, our uncodified constitution, and the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding document. And upon these documents rests the New Zealand way of life. Let it be known from the ACT Party that all people should be equal before the law, as guaranteed in article 3 of the Treaty of Waitangi, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, religion, or political belief. We should be very proud to live with these values, and ACT honours their spirit as its daily bread. As an immigrant—and aren’t we all—my mind boggles at the lot of the shiploads and waves of early settlers, their resilience, pioneering, frontiering, and enterprising spirit. They drove the cohesion and spirit contained in the fabric and soul of this great nation, but we can and must improve it further to honour them, and not become insular, but leaders, global citizens, and once more unleash the creative and economic spirit and promote the achievements of New Zealand.

It is a privilege to honour all those people that have gone before, and the ACT Party will never forget who went before us and their contributions to building out the nation for a better place: going to war to defend our freedoms, safeguarding the Kiwi way—they came to New Zealand for a new life and travelled further and further for our future. Today I’d like to thank my friends at the Parnell Returned Services Club for their embrace and carrying the torch.

New Zealand is a country of high-achievement thinking and creative enterprise, property rights, and a freer society for family and friends was always a given. We were lucky as a nation because of their arrival and subsequent generations of Kiwis that have made New Zealand the envy of the world. Kiwis have great values in life and how we trade and relate with the world is well known. The New Zealand and the Irish passports means something real, and the ACT Party will be freedom fighting every day to uphold these principles—have no doubt about that, absolutely no doubt.

New Zealand has this incredible opportunity to be a star economy in the 21st century. It is based, and must continue to be based, on a highly developed free-market economy. But some things are changing fast. We fear for its future and we’ll fight for its free markets and liberties, taking everyone along with us, where all dreams of achievement are possible by self-drive.

I ask myself every day when I come into this Chamber, “Is this Government flattening the curve on our competitive advantage with its policies? Is it protecting us? Is it providing services and freedoms? Is it costing too much?” If it’s really good policy and a real solution, we’d like the Government to know that ACT will be super positive and supportive of the Government. However, at present, Government debt, local authority debt, and household debt and spending is unsustainable. ACT believes that the Government needs to lighten the burden it places on the economy. It’s difficult to overstate the level of spending today and what is projected. It seems politicians’ core expertise are spending the nation’s wealth. I call for no more vanity projects or political promised projects. Every dollar must have a cost-benefit analysis, as the Auditor-General states. We have no honey pots to reach into, like the European Union, and the Australian banks in the economy have their own problems, so hence we are on our own. The Government should be continuously cutting spending. Instead, it’s doing the opposite and adding its inflationary problems to the health problem of COVID-19, which is why we’ll be in worse shape in the medium term.

I remember in the 1970s in the UK, inflation was blamed on everything: decimalisation, the eurozone, Eurovision, whatever—and no one blamed the UK Government’s deficit spending as being the problem, and we have to address that. So we will hold the Government to account. If big Government works, then why hasn’t it?

Private debt is unsustainable as well. We must get out of the red. We must say to the Reserve Bank and the banks that the licence to print money or to lend money is a privilege, not a given right. Cheap interest rates have fuelled an asset boom of epic proportions in New Zealand, and we need to recognise that. Two years to get the Resource Management Act through is just not acceptable. If they were a corporation, this new Government would be dead.

A gap has emerged between the real productive economy and the financial economy. The banks must lend to business, roll over loans, and not hoard cash. It would be remiss if money printing and lax lending was our downfall. Debt leverage and low interest rates are tools, granted, but current settings do not augur well for the long run and inflation. This has led to the worst inequality, child poverty, and our largest intergenerational problems I’ve ever seen in my 25 years in New Zealand. And given the Government’s record in first-home buyers’ schemes, this boom in property would not be possible without the bank of mum and dad to underwrite it. I’d like our Prime Minister to understand that the leverage in the system is horrific.

We need to build more houses, like the boomers did. I hear the phrase from the other side saying “Build back better.” Well, we haven’t built anything, so it’s not better. Households are fuelling expenses with more debts. The problems are domestic and we can’t control them. It’s in our own backyard and we can do something about it. We have complete confidence that we can sell to the world—and the world wants our export products, people, and services—leading to new incomes and sustainable incomes and less wasteful spending.

ACT believes that the answer lies with productivity and the most basic right of all: the right to earn a living. Paul Krugman once said that in the long run, productivity is almost everything. It was also Murray Rothbard who said, “It is not true that high wages make prosperity. Instead, prosperity makes high wages.” We all need to realise that productivity, not employer generosity, determines wages. Wage growth and productivity and more jobs will lift us all up. So my friend Stephen has given me a basic formula for long-term growth: it is potential—in brackets, real growth rate—equals productivity growth and labour force growth. We are falling behind on some of these measures, and it’s not good enough to compare ourselves to other countries, for the sake of comfort, with high debt ratio levels, who are not like us at all.

So, in conclusion, ACT will advocate for better solutions in these areas, with common-sense, practical policy. We can’t have a fair, property-owning, lower-tax democracy based on new productivity. We can’t share the benefits together of improved productivity and profit share together. We can reduce debt and change our future. The Government must listen now.

This new Government, the people of New Zealand need to understand, have a feeling of weariness and exhaustion, and they need to show in vital aspects of life like housing and poverty that they are going to get on and do the job. In this country, we need cooperation, not a class war or anyone disadvantaged by artificial market forces. We need to introduce a level playing field for financial services and deposit-taking for Māori and Pasifika people and use credit unions and building societies as well as the big five banks. We need to start managing individuals working for the common good. Then we will have a free, liberty-based, open, and inclusive society.

ACT will be the most highly effective political Opposition, a party of ambition, because on our side of the fence, everyone is held accountable. We have a great opportunity in this century, and it’s up to us to be positive, and it is in our hands. But the next three to four Government cycles will see a challenge around crime, local authority, and household debt—and we have to address that problem. As Dwight Eisenhower said a long time ago, plans are nothing, but planning is everything—and ACT has a plan. ACT trusts the people as sovereign individuals in a sovereign country. This Government has been given a huge trust and managed responsibility, and it’s time to balance the books and manage the systemic risks in the economy and in niche economic investment. Let’s reduce the control of people who want to not be millstones and ground down by taxation and inflation, and let’s allow people to be productive, to succeed and create their own prosperity.

Thank you, everyone, for attending today. You’ve come out in great numbers, and I thank you for that. And thank you, Mr Speaker.

[Applause]

Order! I’m now just checking to see whether I should give the next speaker her call. I call Brooke van Velden for her maiden statement.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is an honour to stand here as the deputy leader of the ACT Party and as a member of this 53rd Parliament. I’m humbled by the support shown to me here in the Chamber today and from those watching at home and at work. It is the first time in nearly a decade that ACT has had a deputy leader elected to Parliament, and I will do my utmost to help lead and provide guidance to the eight other new members of our team as we navigate this exciting chapter in our party’s history together.

I wish to thank our volunteers from all across New Zealand for their tireless efforts to make this election a success for ACT. I’m amazed by the number of people who asked for a hoarding and used their own hammer and nails to secure ACT’s message to their fence line and public spaces. I received notes of support from people who had seen the hoardings on their drive to work from the Far North to the deep South.

A real highlight of the campaign, for me, was meeting Chris, a volunteer in Christchurch who was out delivering leaflets on his bike when he handed one to me out on my way to start campaigning. Thank you, Chris, and thank you everyone who gave up your time. It takes initiative and hard work to join a political campaign, but so many people gave up what they could for no other benefit than the hope of a better tomorrow.

To my family and friends, there is no way to truly express my gratitude for your constant encouragement and understanding. To my father and my flatmates, I appreciate every late night and early morning pick-up and drop-off to the airport and every supportive cup of tea that I know is waiting at home.

To the ACT Party board of trustees, thank you for placing your faith and trust in me. I think it says a lot about the board that they selected a 27-year-old liberal woman as the deputy leader of the party. A special thankyou to you, David Seymour, for your mentorship, support, and for always challenging me to do and be better. It is your leadership over these last six years that sees me standing in Parliament today.

I sincerely thank those New Zealanders who put their trust in ACT this election. Thank you for not only electing me but all 10 of us ACT MPs to Parliament. By lending us your vote, you’ve asked us to represent you. During the campaign I heard so many fears, concerns, and aspirations for the future. People came out to public meetings to share their vision for our country, not only for their benefit but for the benefit of their children and their grandchildren. I promise to keep listening. As the parliamentary prayer we say at the start of each day states, “laying aside all personal interest”, I will bring your voice to this House.

My family has a long history in New Zealand. My first ancestors to this country, John Pugh and Norah Dillon, arrived separately before the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, and my family understands that they were both present at the signing of the Treaty. Norah was a Bounty immigrant from Ireland, a single woman of little means; John, a carpenter.

My last ancestor to arrive was my grandfather, Ari van Velden. He arrived in 1952 from the Netherlands. I’ve heard many stories from him about his village living under German occupation during World War II. I hope we never forget those atrocities of the last century and that we never repeat them.

My family background is made up of different cultures and different languages and well over a century separated Norah, John, and Ari coming to these shores, but they all had something in common: hope. They had hope for a better future, security, and for more opportunities. I believe no matter the colour of our skin or when we or our families arrived in New Zealand, every person who comes here determined to build a better life is a New Zealander. We are all equal and we all belong here.

I was born in Auckland in 1992 to my parents, Robin and Adele. I want to take this opportunity to thank them for how I was raised. Nearly all parents want their child to succeed, but what success means is different for every family. I always knew that no status, level, or wealth, or career I would choose to pursue would earn my parents’ respect. Only my character could do that. My parents showed me the value of honesty, integrity, hard work, and responsibility. I learnt that there is strength in humility. As the youngest of four and the only girl, I’m sure my brothers will seek to keep me humble.

I wish to acknowledge my grandfather Bob, here today, just shy of his 90th birthday. Bob has been one of my biggest supporters and reminds me to never let my standards slip. Bob and Gran were big believers in opportunity through education and raised three independent, strong minded, and determined women, my mother and my aunts, who were all successful in their chosen fields. My mother and my aunts were my role models as a child. Because of them and how I was raised, I believed I could achieve anything that I set my mind to. My mother passed on to me this belief in opportunity through education, and I was fortunate to receive a great education at Cornwall Park District School, Greenhithe Primary School, and St Cuthbert’s College.

The walls of this debating chamber commemorate the sacrifices made by men and women in war for the freedom and lives of others. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to my own great-grandfather, Stanley Eyre Baxter, who bravely fought at Gallipoli. For me, the battles etched into the wood here serve as a sombre reminder of the seriousness of the responsibility that we hold. The laws we make in this House have real consequences and impact on every person. It is also a reminder that while we need Government to preserve our freedoms, concentrated power can threaten our freedoms.

I have been privileged to work in Parliament, before being elected, on the End of Life Choice Act. I was never motivated by a personal experience of bad death, but I travelled around New Zealand, hearing people’s personal stories, and I felt how much pain there is in our communities. It became a very deep, personal issue for me to work on. I know in my heart that working on it and passing the End of Life Choice Act through Parliament was the right thing to do. I saw how real change happens when a single member of Parliament with compassion and respect for New Zealanders takes a stand on principle. I want to be part of more positive change in New Zealand. For me, that does not mean putting forward ideas about how I think New Zealanders should act or to impose my morality on others. I am here to listen, to ask questions, and stand up for the dignity and freedoms of each individual New Zealander. I believe in creating laws that respect the inherent dignity of every New Zealander and provide choice and opportunity. That is why I firmly stand in favour of bodily autonomy.

I studied economics and international trade at the University of Auckland. This is when I became an ACT supporter. Economics opened up my mind to alternative solutions to the big issues we face today, such as poverty and the environment. It was a revelation to me at the time that trade and free markets have pulled billions of people from hardship and poverty. It is only through prosperity that people have the wealth and living standards needed to care about the environment. Throwing more money at problems is not the solution. A Government action—whether that’s a new regulation, tax, or hand-out—no matter how well-intended, does not always lead to better outcomes. I believe that we should not judge policies and programmes by their intentions to do good; we should judge them on results. This requires critical thinking—people unafraid to question, challenge the status quo, and put forward new ideas. That’s what I found in the ACT Party.

When I look around New Zealand today, I see an increasing number of families unable to find affordable homes to live in, more children leaving school without the skills they need to thrive, and more people struggling to get the care they need for their mental health or addiction. We need a higher standard of debate, reasoning, and better lawmaking in New Zealand. I want to help build an aspirational society. Every child should have access to a world-class education that inspires a thirst and curiosity for knowledge and provides the foundational building blocks for ongoing learning. New Zealand can be a country where every person has the opportunity to know the feeling of accomplishment that comes from hard work and putting in effort—where the entrepreneurs who take risks, start small businesses, and provide opportunities for others don’t feel bad for striving for a better future for themselves, and their families, and their country. Every person in New Zealand should know that they could one day own their own home.

I want to acknowledge Sir Roger Douglas, founder of the ACT Party, who is present in the Chamber today. Sir Roger had a vision and a conviction of values. He demonstrated that ideas matter, that change is possible. I wish to always remember this. The wellbeing of all New Zealanders depends on us fronting up to the difficult problems with ideas and solutions. As I stand here today, I am confident that our ACT MPs will deliver for you. David Seymour, Nicole McKee, Chris Baillie, Simon Court, James McDowall, Karen Chhour, Mark Cameron, Toni Severin, Damien Smith—I am humbled to be part of your team. We will not let you down, and we will work together to build a better future for New Zealand. Thank you.

[Applause]

Now, I’ll get a signal at some stage from Dr Kerekere as to when her team are all in.

I call on Dr Elizabeth Kerekere to make her maiden statement.

Tēnā rā koutou, rau rangatira mā, wāhine mā, tāne mā, takatāpui mā, tipua mā. Haere mai rā, haere mai rā, whakatau mai rā.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai. E tika ana kia tuku mihi ki ngā atua, ngā kaitiaki me ngā tipua e karapoti nei i a tātou i tēnei wā. Tēnā koutou.

Ki te hunga mate, koutou kua riro atu, koutou kua takahia nei i ngā tapuwae o ngā mātua tīpuna, e moe.

Te Ati Awa, Ngāti Mutunga, otirā Taranaki whānui, tēnei te mihi ki a koutou katoa. E raungāiti nei i tēnei rohe ataahua. Nā koutou i rangatira ai tēnei kaupapa.

Huri atu rā ki a koutou katoa ngā hoa mahi me ngā manuhiri tūārangi, tēnā koutou.

He mokopuna tēnei nō te uranga mai o te rā, nō Te Tai Rāwhiti. Nōku te hōnore nui kua whai wāhi mai au ki te whakakanohi i ngā hapori huhua ki te tūranga i te Whare nei.

[Greetings distinguished leaders, women, men, LGBTIQ, the supernatural. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Greetings Mr Speaker. It is only right that I acknowledge the deities, the protectors and the supernatural beings that surround us at this time. Thank you.

To those who have passed away, those who have followed the footsteps of our ancestors, rest in peace.

Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Mutunga, Taranaki Whānui, I would like to acknowledge you all who make up this beautiful area. Your presence honours this occasion.

Turning to you all, my colleagues, the visitors from afar, greetings.

I am a descendant from the rising of the sun, from the East Coast. It is an honour that I am able to represent the many communities in this position in this House.]

To everyone here and your purple fabulousness—yea-ah! As we acknowledge the haukāinga of this rohe and the beauty of their home, I acknowledge the pain and anger facing them. Shelly Bay and Mau Whenua may have replaced Ihumātao and SOUL in the headlines, but the fact is that whānau, hapū, and iwi all over the country are fighting in some form to protect their whenua, their awa, and their moana. Fifty-two successive Governments and their agencies have failed to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi, despite it being the contract that confers their right to govern.

In this 53rd Parliament, with the mandate given by Māori to Labour, and, again, the return of the Māori Party and some kick-ass activists joining the Green caucus—shout-out to Teanau Tuiono and Ricardo Menéndez March—I hope that we will collectively create actual systemic change, the constitutional transformation outlined in Matike Mai Aotearoa, for example.

I commit to working with Māori MPs across the House so we can collectively work for what Māori have identified that they need and not what our Government might think they should have or should settle for.

I acknowledge the workers in this Whare—my colleagues and the staff we rely on to do our job. Shout-out to my cousins Al and RJ Smiler, who have worked here for years. To the Speaker, the Office of the Clerk, and staff across Parliamentary Service, you took a bunch of exhausted candidates and inducted us to the bright-eyed MPs you see before you today.

To the class of 2020, I look forward to working with all of you. As we learn how things have always been, let us aspire to how things could be.

Te Whānau Kākāriki, shout-out to our co-leaders—the Hon Marama Davidson, the Hon James Shaw—our party co-convenors, staff, and the volunteer leadership across our provinces, branches, networks, and campaign teams. To our membership who put me high on the list, I will prove every day that your faith in me is justified.

Thank you to all of those who voted to ensure we were the green foam on that red wave, especially those who voted Green just to get me in. I am particularly grateful that I was able to tell my father-in-law, Tuisavelalo Aiono, that his vote got me elected, before he passed away in December last year. He was a solid Labour voter for 70 years, and for the first time, he split his vote. When the Electoral Commission came to his home, he told them he wanted to vote for the “Kerekere Green Party”. No rush, we can talk about the name change later!

So, let’s talk whakapapa. My father was Karauria Tarao Kerekere, but everyone called him “Bison”. He was born to my beloved nana Elizabeth “Betty” Kerekere and the man she was not allowed to marry but got pregnant to, my koro Pani “Bunny” Ruru. As the eldest grandchild, Dad was raised from birth by his grandparents Kahungunu and Barbara Kerekere in Gisborne, where I was born and where I live. We whakapapa to Whānau-a-Kai, Ngāti Oneone, Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Rongowhakaata, me Ngai Tāmanuhiri. Through you, Mr Speaker, shout-out to my whanaunga in this Whare, the Hon Meka Whaitiri, Shanan Halbert, and Arena Williams, and to those who came from Gisborne and around the country to be here today.

Dad passed away 15 years ago, after dedicating the last years of his life carving our meeting house, Te Poho o Hiraina at Pākōhai Marae. He was a hard man and a hard worker. He taught me that only those who do the work should have the say. It led to my own mantra that we must get to where the decisions are made, but when we get there, make sure we are qualified to sit at that table. So, Dad, for 40 years, I have done the work and I am uniquely qualified to be here. My father is as responsible for me standing here today as he is for the years of counselling I had to have. True story. Shout-out to Ally Andersun and the Lower Hutt Women’s Centre for that.

When I was 12 years old, my father would introduce me to his friends as the first Māori Prime Minister. So, in the back of my mind, I always thought that I would be here.

I first spoke in Parliament as an 18-year-old, as one of the rangatahi representatives to the Hui Taumata, the Māori development conference of 1984. Although I’ve been asked to consider running over the years since, it was only five years ago, and after I received my moko kauae, that I finally felt I could accept the title of “politician” and all the colonial baggage that comes with it.

Shout-out to Maddy Drew, who told me I should run in 2017, and to current and former Green MPs Jan Logie, Metiria Turei, Marama Davidson, Denise Roche, Mojo Mathers, and Catherine Delahunty, who modelled how to maintain their activist credentials in this place.

When I did my swearing in, I held a copy of the Tai Rāwhiti page from Te Tiriti o Waitangi, known as Page Seven. It was a way of acknowledging that my ancestors signed the Treaty in good faith. It helped to resolve the dissonance I felt, and a little bit of hypocrisy, at having to swear allegiance to the Queen. That whole thing, how the British Empire was built on the oppression of indigenous and black people, just makes it really awkward. Shout-out to all of the people seeking freedom from white supremacy. From the Black Lives Matter movement to indigenous peoples across the world, we stand in solidarity with you. Mr Speaker, I recall that you used that same page when you did your swearing in. One day—maybe today—if I need more time to advocate for iwi of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, I may remind you of that.

My mother is Erin Kerekere, who joins me here today with her best friend and my godmother, Susan, and my Ryan whānau. Mum was raised in Dunedin by her parents, our nana and grandad, Lorna and Tom Ryan, who lived into their nineties. We hail from County Clare and County Tipperary in Ireland. It wasn’t until I visited Ireland several times over the last few years, including with Mum, that I began developing an Irish identity. I welcome the wisdom of my Irish ancestors now it is easier for them to guide me.

Once, I painted an artwork for my mother with the whakataukī “Nau i whatu te kākahu, he tāniko tāku.”—“You made the cloak, I made the border.” It means that she and my father made the cloak—the foundation of who I am—and I added the border, the adornment, which is everything I’ve done with the life that they gave me. From my father, I gained strength and the confidence to meet high expectations: to lead, to stand. From my mother, I learnt organisation, resilience, and survival, to plan, to withstand. From my father, I learnt to say what had to be said and never apologise for it, especially when people did not want to hear it. From my mother, I learnt that people have feelings and there are different ways to say the same thing. From them both and a special connection I have with the goddess Mahuika, I have a drive, a fire that keeps me going through tiredness, pain, and disability. And if we’re talking adornment, I’d like to think I bring a certain rainbow flair to the world—#PaintParliamentPurple.

Shout-out to Anahera, Alex, and Curtis, who made this tarapouahi—muka garment—especially for me to wear today. I acknowledge all the artists, weavers, and performers who express in myriad art forms and with their bodies what is often so hard to capture in words, and to our poets and writers, whose words bring us clarity, solace, inspiration, and vision. If my parents created the foundation of that kākahu, it was my siblings, Desmond, Lorna, and Lynn, who helped me stop it unravelling as we dealt with the rollercoaster that was our childhood and, to be fair, most of my life.

It was my best friends, so many of whom are here today and in spirit, who told me I looked fabulous in that kākahu but who held me up when it grew heavy. And it was my mentors who made sure I wore that kākahu with purpose and clarity. I honour those who have passed: Eti Laufiso, Marjorie Rau-Kupa, Mina McKenzie, Erihapeti Rehu Murchie, and Jennifer Edwards. Of the many still with us, I acknowledge Brenda Tahi and Christina Hurihia Wirihana. They smoothed some of my rough edges and they sharpened some others. I aspire to the powerful and graceful leadership, the Mana Wāhine they exemplify and I strive for. It brings to mind the Māori women who signed away their birthright of moko kauae to join the franchise for women to vote in this country. Every Māori woman in this House shows their sacrifice was not in vain.

E rikarika ana i te whakaaro, ka whai mana anō ōku tīpuna i te kitenga atu o te moko Akauae, te mataora ki te Whare Pāremata. Me te huhua anō hoki ki tēnei! Te Minita Nanaia Mahuta me ngā rangatira o Te Paati Māori, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer rāua ko Rawiri Waititi.

[It excites me to think that moko kauae—moko of the chin—and mataora—full facial moko—has a renewal of status here in Parliament. And the sheer number of them! The Minister Nanaia Mahuta, the co-leaders of Te Paati Māori, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi.]

My own moko kauae represents waewae pākura, the footsteps of the pūkeko. This is not only an ancient term used in carving and weaving but also about holding space, as I do in my work and as my artwork Mana Takatāpui has done, hanging in the Rainbow Room here for many years.

In 1992, one of the best things happened to me: I met my life partner, Alofa Aiono. Shout-out to Val Little and Sue Rostron, who I will forever thank for helping make that happen. I joined the Lauofo and Aiono families from Samoa. I acknowledge Alofa’s mother, the late Lina Malatina Lauofo from Luatuanu’u. Three of her beautiful sisters represent her here today: Aunty Otilia, Aunty Carol, and Aunty Sita. I acknowledge Alofa’s father, the late Tuisavelalo Aiono from Fasito’outa, the last of his line. Tui and Lina were among the first families in Porirua and founding members of the PIC—Pacific Island Christ the King Church. Their baby daughter bringing me home was a little bit unexpected. Over many years, I went from being Alofa’s friend, to her girlfriend, to her partner, to being their daughter-in-law, to their daughter. In honour of Tui and Lina Aiono, I commit to supporting the Pasifika MPs in this House and working for Pasifika peoples here and in the islands.

Alofa and I had to wait 14 years to have a civil union. Shout-out to former Labour MP Tim Barnett for that mahi in this House. Through you, Mr Speaker, shout-out to Labour MP Louisa Wall for subsequently guiding marriage equality into law. Of course, the trappings of monogamous legality are not the be-all or end-all of rainbow relationships, but it is an option we should have. Alofa, with you all things are possible. At our ceremony, we unveiled our tattooed rings and vowed that our commitment to each other was “written in blood, rising above challenge, in this life and into the next.” And so it is.

My third whānau is Tīwhanawhana, a national trust I founded 20 years ago this year to advocate for takatāpui to “tell our stories, build our communities, and leave a legacy.” We believe that to uplift takatāpui—those Māori with diverse genders, sexualities, and sex characteristics—we must uplift our whānau and our rainbow communities. Shout-out to Tīwhanawhana, who have my back today and every day, especially my co-leader Kevin Haunui, our board, and our Kāhui Whakawāhine. Tīwhanawhana is the tūrangawaewae for all my work for our takatāpui Māori and rainbow people.

Change happens at many levels, but some change for takatāpui, Māori, and rainbow people can only happen here. Banning conversion therapy sooner rather than later, and the long-awaited third reading of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill, for example. This election, we broke the world record for queer representation. With four of our 10 MPs being rainbow, the Greens are certainly the proudest party in the proudest Parliament. However, we are all cisgender, meaning we all identify with the gender we were assigned at birth. It has been a very long time since 1999, when the legendary Georgina Beyer was the first transgender MP in the world. I mihi to you, e kui, particularly for your work in representing trans women, whakawāhine, and sex workers in this House.

Historically, Te Ao Māori accepted those with diverse genders and sexualities as a normal part of society. So long as you had your children and did your job, and they acknowledged that those with diverse sex characteristics, who we call intersex now, were sent to teach us. I coined the term “mana tipua” to recognise this whakapapa. Colonisation, however, resulted in the suppression, the criminalisation, and the pathologising of those people, and resulted in takatāpui and rainbow people often not being accepted today. That is why takatāpui rights is a Treaty issue and a Māori priority for the Greens.

The Human Rights Act 1993 currently does not specifically acknowledge the intersectional discrimination and violence experienced by trans, intersex, and non-binary people. My first member’s bill therefore adds two new grounds to the list of prohibited grounds in the aptly named—aptly rather than succinctly—Human Rights (Prohibition of Discrimination on Grounds of Gender Identity and Expression and Variations of Sex Characteristics) Amendment Bill. I hope this will make it easier for takatāpui and our rainbow whānau to take cases to the Human Rights Commission and that the mana of explicit human rights protections will help redress the historical trauma that has occurred. This amendment bill will go into the biscuit tin next week, but I invite the Government to just introduce it, you know, at your leisure, in association with the other legislation I might have mentioned.

I used to worry that I would be forgotten. It was irrational, when a simple online search will lead you to much of my life’s work. But whakapapa is everything. Because of the gendered violence and abuse that far too many of us suffer as children and young people in this country, I could not have children of my own. So I collect them. To well over 100 nieces, nephews, and greats, especially those who have lived with us, I hope you all feel how much the Aunties love you. To all the young people I have been privileged to work with and mentor in Māori, takatāpui, and rainbow communities, you are never just the leaders of tomorrow; you are the leaders we need right now. Many of you I call my kids, and you know who you are, because I expect more of you than anyone else. I need your counsel now more than ever. So to all of the rangatahi here and watching, you are my heart. You are my legacy.

Finally, as I like to say, why do we get up in the morning if not to change the world? I have done that in every other part of my life, and I intend to do it here. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora huihui mai tātou katoa.

[Thank you, thank you, one and all.]

[Applause]

Waiata

Can I now ask Dr Kerekere’s guests to move on out, because there’s another group that needs to come in. Can I just have the attention of members, please, to indicate to you, because there is a possibility that the next speech mightn’t be finished by 6 o’clock. [Interruption] Yeah, there is one after that as well. So what we are going to do is we’re just going to run through until both those speeches are done, notwithstanding the fact that there’s slight technicalities around dinner time, and at the end of the waiata for the second one, the House will be suspended. It will come back at 7 o’clock, and at that point the votes will occur for the Address in Reply debate. And I apologise to the Hon Peeni Henare, who’s, sort of, lost his speech through my lack of time control.

Can we open the second door as well? Thank you. And all the doors up there—can they all be opened, please? Can the people who are up there move around through the other door? Thank you. I call on Rachel Brooking to make her maiden statement.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Congratulations on your re-election, and thank you for all that you have done to make Parliament family friendly and a welcoming place for a working mother. I saw your little wave to Felix before. I’m very grateful to be here, and I feel the privilege and the weight of this opportunity. It is my privilege to stand alongside Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, our Māori caucus, Labour’s first XV, past student presidents—quite a few up there—and my talented friends and colleagues from the class of 2020.

I look up to the gallery and see my three wonderful children, my family, the faces of friends, mentors, colleagues, campaign volunteers, national council members, previous MPs, and the staff who have supported me to get here today. I look up and also remember the faces of those who have loved me but have passed before I had the opportunity to stand in this House. I believe it is important to express gratitude so that we acknowledge that we stand here not only because of our own efforts and talent but because we are the result of a long-term project and must pave the ground for those who follow.

I have much to be grateful for: born to Tom and Trish—both academic educators who believed in growing individuals and communities. My grandmother, Peg, lived a life centred around giving to others and dedicated much of her life to supporting me and my brother, Peter. My house was noisy. There was a lot of opinion and argument. It taught me the value of knowledge, of listening and learning, and that arguing improves your analysis and leads you to deeply understand what you believe.

I often feel like I won the birth lottery. On top of being part of a loving family, my father is a historian—expert in the history of Aotearoa. This meant that on summer holidays, we would visit pā sites and museums all over the motu. While 11-year-old me probably complained a little bit about these trips, I did come to learn that our history is messy. But not everyone had these same experiences or received the same education at school that I did. At Otago Girls’ High School, we learnt about Hone Heke and the flag pole, Princess Te Pūea, wars, and broken promises. It is bizarre that the complexity of our nation is often ignored or oversimplified, with divisions stoked—“iwi or Kiwi”—instead of addressing what happened, why it happened, and how to address it. Because of my upbringing, I have been grateful for my education, and have never taken it for granted. At the University of Otago, as a student politician, I fought against high fees and student loans because I feared that those unable to sustain the extortionate interest rates of the 1990s would be locked out. Without access to education, the social divide can only grow.

My education led me to environmental law. The law governs how we live in our built and natural environments and how we interact with each other. As boring as it might sound to some, urban planning impacts each of us every day. Communities need green spaces, healthy homes, and access to facilities and infrastructure such as hospitals and public transport to get there. Being reliant on personal vehicles is inefficient and the type of parking creates a barrier to amenities and care invisible to those of us who presume a car and parking space are our birth rights.

My first job was at the PCE—the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment—an Officer of this House, where, 20 years ago, we investigated a Treaty-based environment audit system, proposing ways to increase and restore mana whenua involvement in environmental management, which, unfortunately, seems as relevant today as it did then. My commitment to strengthening recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi remains. My legal career has covered environmental law, planning, resource management, and local government law. Most recently, I worked on the six-member Randerson review, which included how we build decision-making partnerships between mana whenua and both central and local government. I look forward to helping this Government reform and improve resource management legislation this term.

For the last 10 years, I’ve also worked as a company director. I have lived the decisions that face business to sustain profitability and care for employees. My directorships included retail and travel industries—some of the most affected by the economic challenges of COVID-19. I value how the strongest economic response has been the best health response, and look forward to working with our Government to help business rebound, recover, and thrive.

Through my time in business and the law, I have come to find that, for me, it is now time to move beyond interpreting the law, to a place where I contribute more directly to the development of the law—law that reflects our unique Treaty relationship. It must be clear and fair. Wherever there are tensions between interests, there will be trade-offs. These trade-offs must be explicit, open, and equitable, with decisions clearly and simply stating the justification for those trade-offs.

Politicians before me have not accepted that simply because we are a small country, we should have small ambitions—quite the opposite. From the work of the suffragettes to convince “King Dick” that women should have the vote, the creation of the welfare system and universal healthcare that recently saved the life of my father, and the stand to be nuclear free and not accept foreign interference when the Rainbow Warrior was bombed, New Zealand leads the way in being an open democracy with minuscule corruption levels. Government is accountable through the independent media, institutions such as the Ombudsman and Auditor-General, the independent judiciary—some of whom are here—a public select committee process to scrutinise legislation and offer ideas through submissions, and an Opposition that can choose to agree or disagree. All of this means that Governments are encouraged to serve the interests of citizens and not the elite, and to respond to facts and not fake news—thank goodness.

What we do here matters, and we can do better. To do better, we must be informed by our past. As a mother, I am motivated by my commitments to my children, and that means caring for the world that they will inherit. My children ask a lot of questions about their world. My son, Felix, has the awkward habit of asking people if they voted for Labour, and my daughter, Orla, wants to know why there is no musical about the Treaty, when the US has Hamilton.

As a very young child, that same Orla asked if ash would frustrate the ducks. There is so much that we do that frustrates our indigenous flora and fauna, from the obvious acts of draining a wetland or chopping down a forest to the insidious and irregular negative effects of climate change. We know that climate change is caused by our emission of carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide, with the most vivid example being the burning of fossil fuels—oil, coal, and gas. There was the international Paris Agreement to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees’ increase, and our Government has recently declared a climate emergency. The last Parliament unanimously passed the zero carbon legislation that created the independent Climate Commission that has just produced its draft budget, describing how New Zealand can be a low-emission country—that is, to reduce our reliance on using fossil fuels and reduce biogenic methane and nitrous oxide in agriculture. There is a lot that New Zealand can do to decarbonise, some of which is reflected in the Government’s commitment for departments to be carbon-neutral by 2025, today’s announcement of 22 new low-emission transport projects, and changes to public transport including the phase-out of public diesel buses by 2035.

Despite the negative effects temperature rises have on our biodiversity and built environments, there is often resistance to decarbonise, with cries of “But we in New Zealand are so small! We can’t make a difference!” Tell that to the suffragettes, to the proponents of a nuclear-free New Zealand, to the elderly, immune compromised, and healthcare workers who stood to face the heaviest weight of the wrecking ball of COVID19. This Government led the world in an iterative and transparent way to the COVID challenge. We can take the same values-driven, evidence-based, iterative approach to decarbonising. And if we want to lead the world in agriculture and tourism, I believe we must aggressively decarbonise our country. And our Pacific neighbours need us to do our best.

There is also the need for adaptation. We have already changed our future world, and the question now is: by how much? The scale and time frames for the need for adaptation are wildly variable, depending on how the world—including New Zealand—responds to the decarbonisation targets. So that makes planning for adaptation especially complex and difficult, but not insurmountable. In Dunedin, we have a number of areas affected by heavy rain events synonymous with climate change. The homes affected are not expensive coastal properties. If sea level rise is not a factor, then there are many interventions that can be made to enable people to live safely in these areas for now—things like building higher off the ground, over-grounding infrastructure, taking much greater care in stormwater management, and more. None of this is the status quo, and more might be needed depending on what happens globally with those decarbonisation targets. So we have to be able to accept the complexity and the need for an iterative approach. An intervention that works for the next 30 years may not last for the next 100 years—but it might. We must not simply throw up our hands and give up on areas where people have built communities over generations without first trying to change by working collectively with central government, councils, mana whenua, and local communities. Planning for different scenarios and trigger points is required.

To achieve both decarbonisation and engage planning for adaptation, there is a need for the reform of the Resource Management Act and the status quo that it entrenches. Regional spatial planning that includes the climate commission’s adaptation plans, as well as mitigation measures such as walkable cities, are sensible. Focusing on enabling positive climate mitigation measures and planning legislation is also important, and legislation and funding for enabling all relevant parties to work on equitable and iterative adaptation solutions is also needed. It will need to be principles driven, to allow for the different circumstances communities will, or may, face around the country.

I am so grateful for this Government’s ambition to tackle complex issues. We now have a Wellbeing Budget that helps improve the discussion of what is trying to be achieved in one area and how it relates to a wider range of outcomes, including natural resources and communities. Breaking down silos is necessary to this approach, and is started with the amendments to legislation around the operation of the Public Service. The work of Government to build an inclusive future and protect the environment is a long-term project. It requires detailed thought, argument, listening, compromise, reflection, evaluation, and iteration. Progress can be frustrating. It can be slow. It is not always linear, but it is built on the foundations of an open and optimistic Government that believes that what we do here in Aotearoa matters to the world and what we do in this House matters to New Zealand. I am grateful for the chance to stand in this House and am under no illusions about the scale of the task ahead.

So, thank you to family and friends who encouraged me into politics, before and after university, and to one John Angus, who would annually ask me when I was going to stand—a gentle prod and confidence booster. Thank you to those I campaigned alongside, David, Ingrid, Liam, and John, and to the volunteers out in the rain and snow—this was in Dunedin and Otago—who share the Labour vision and offer many hours of work but never seek the spotlight. To my children, Zac, Orla, Felix, I love your optimism, curiosity, energy, generosity, and how you always welcome others. To my husband, Chris Jackson, thank you for your ongoing support and encouragement, and for our shared belief that achieving change is slow, difficult, and requires patience and sacrifice, yet is so very worth it.

I am grateful to be a member of this House, to be part of a country that believes that what we do here matters to our neighbours and to the world—to be part of a Government that reflects inclusion, diversity, that embraces complexity, and seeks to make long-term change. If I can contribute and play my part in improving our environment and help Aotearoa become a world leader in decarbonisation and addressing the complexity of adaptation, then my time in this House will have been well spent. Thank you.

[Applause]

Waiata

We’re going from “team Brooking” to “team Boyack”. In the knowledge that MPs—I prefer them to have food before they come back. Could we get the change going, please? While—oh, I’ll turn the mute off. I turn the mute on when I sing, for good reasons! Now, members, we haven’t quite finished the time for the debate, but we will have finished by the end of the next speech. And what I’m going to do is seek leave now for the vote to be held now in order to save us a bit of time later on. Is there any objection to that process being followed? There appears to be none.

The question is that the amendment in the name of the Hon Judith Collins be agreed to.

The question now is that the motion that a respectful address be presented to Her Excellency the Governor-General in reply to Her Excellency’s speech be agreed to.