General Debate

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

We go into Budget 2021 with an extraordinary tailwind as a country: record low interest rates worldwide, terms of trade with the milk price higher than it’s been in a long, long time, and we are an island nation on a pandemic planet. These are enormous advantages for any country to go into a Budget with, and yet we face enormous difficulties. We see rising asset prices that have dramatically increased inequality under a Labour Government. We see a country where interest rates won’t be low for ever, and that’s a real problem when the Government has rising public debt because its response to COVID-19 has been based on public debt and borrowing to stimulate the economy. And then there’s the COVID situation, which risks becoming dramatically more complex, for four reasons: there is going to be vaccination that will change the parameters of the virus—its infectiousness and virulence; there’ll be variants of that virus that may well make it a vaccine buster; there are new technologies, like finger-prick testing for immunity; and then there is public fatigue—public balance sheets and just people being a bit over it. All of that means the world is going to move on from COVID, and is New Zealand ready?

So far it’s been simple to stay back behind, in our walled garden, isolated from the world, protected by the Pacific and the Tasman, but the COVID situation will become more complex as the world opens up. And what has this Government done to prepare for that eventuality and facing New Zealand’s long-term challenges in general? Well, we are starting to see that our COVID response hasn’t been special; our country’s positioning in the world has been special. I even asked the Minister for COVID-19 Response “Did any country have more natural advantages going into COVID?” He couldn’t name one, but that advantage is slowly evaporating as we find we’re second to last in the OECD for vaccination.

Then we start to ask: what of the longer-term problems? What about productivity? What is this Government doing to make it easier for people to invest in their firms and their farms, to provide for their friends and their families? Well, this Government bans just about everything, taxes more and more each year, and then increasingly and onerously regulates the property that it hasn’t taxed off productive New Zealanders. That’s why we have tradies flocking to Australia because the Government makes it so hard to be productive with all of its taxes and regulations. They’ve no initiative to make business easier. The Minister of Finance gave a pre-Budget speech; 3,000 words, mentioned business twice. That’s why we have a productivity problem.

And what about making it easier to build homes? A problem that both National and Labour Governments have failed to solve: too many people chasing too few homes. But what did this Government do? Well, surprise, surprise! A tax. That’s right. Their housing policy was actually a tax policy disguised as a housing policy. That’s before we talk about getting kids to be at school, learning, equipped with the skills for the 21st century. They prop up the system that’s failed generations, especially of poorer kids, especially of Māori kids. They won’t do innovative things like charter schools to make sure they learn.

So we go into Budget week on the crest of a slump, with huge tailwinds, massive advantages of terms of trade, low interest rates, massive public borrowing—it’s all there—isolation in a pandemic, all of those advantages eroding and a Government that’s done nothing for business, for productivity, for skills, for making it easier to build homes, leaving New Zealand with a whole lot more debt and all of the same problems that this Government found. That is what we face on Budget day. There’s got to be a better way than this Government.

I want to begin by acknowledging our Government team, and in particular my fellow Labour Māori MPs, who continue to represent the aspirations of Māori in this House. Minister Davis spoke in this debate last week and referenced the Leader of the Opposition opening up the National playbook and scrolling down through Don Brash’s footnotes—jeez, talk about a blast from the past. It’s clear that when all else fails that side of the House reverts to the politics of division, trying to sanitise history, and ignoring obligations set out under the Treaty of Waitangi. This is an interesting tactic, and if we look at the poll in weekend, it shows that that old playbook still isn’t working. New Zealanders do not want to go backwards.

The Opposition has stepped backwards from the days of the Key/English Government. The weekend poll showed that John Key is still rating higher than the current Opposition leader as preferred Prime Minister, and it’s no surprise. Key and English didn’t shy away from their Treaty obligations. They didn’t try and sweep things under the rug, yet Judith Collins wants to turn back on the Treaty and she wants to turn back on how far we’ve come as a nation. She wants to ignore how much more there is to do.

National previously embraced their Treaty obligations and the concept of partnership. Just look at some of the legislation that they passed in their time: Te Urewera Act 2014, which saw co-governance and, in fact, eventually moving to Te Urewera being the main governors in their rohe. Then there is the Waikato River Authority, an independent statutory board, enabling co-governance and co-management frameworks to work between the Crown and river iwi. The Act that established the Tūpuna Maunga o Tāmaki Makaurau Authority is an Act that transferred ownership of 14 tūpuna maunga in Tāmaki-Makaurau to 13 iwi to be able to be co-governed. Whirinaki Te Pua-a-Tāne Conservation Park provides for co-governance. Te Hauturu-o-Toi/Little Barrier Island is where Ngāti Manuhiri with the Auckland Conservation Board have a co-management plan. You know what? Even Nick Smith saw the merit of partnership when he said about He Whare Āhuru, the Māori housing strategy at the time, that “The Government acknowledges the ambition of Māori and iwi to lead improvements in housing for their people, their desire to build on papakāinga land and the value they place on better housing and homeownership. It recognises that improving housing is a part of a long-term vision for Māori to control their own affairs and provide a better future for whānau now and for future generations.”

These Acts were good for National when they were in Government but they don’t want to have anything to do with it now that they’re in Opposition. Oh, my, how the worm turns. This Government understands that working in partnership with Māori helps to lift outcomes for Māori and indeed society at large. When Māori do well, everyone does well, and we do this on a daily basis. What we see are the benefits of a partnership in practice—Māori providers mobilising to respond to COVID-19, iwi responding to natural disasters to support our wider community, Māori advocating for the long-term intergenerational wellbeing of the environment, and, indeed, do I say, fresh water.

There is so much that we have done and it’s important to highlight that in the remaining time we have got, because tomorrow’s Budget is on its way. I want to commend the hard work of our Minister of Finance. So let’s go.

What have we done to date? We’ve invested in kōhanga reo to improve pay for kaiako and upgrade buildings. We’re improving access to healthy, affordable homes, through investing in papakāinga and housing repair programmes. We’re investing in employment and skills training for Māori through He Poutama Rangatahi, Mana in Mahi, and Māori cadetships. We’re setting a goal for 1 million New Zealanders speaking te reo Māori by 2040. We’re introducing Matariki as a public holiday, and making ratings changes to allow councils the ability to wipe rates arrears of whenua Māori. We’re supporting councils to introduce Māori wards. We’re introducing a social procurement target to lift Māori enterprise and support the Māori economy. We’re supporting whenua Māori development, supporting marae restoration, establishing Te Arawhiti, and continuing to work through the Treaty settlement process.

We’ve unveiled a statue of Dame Whina Cooper to recognise her contribution. We’re making sure that New Zealand history is taught in all schools and kura by 2022. We’re providing record investment into Whānau Ora, because we know it works. There is so much more to do. On this side of the House, we’re certainly looking forward to the Budget, for all New Zealanders, because we’re moving forward, not backwards. We know that partnership works and when we do things with others, with Māori, with local government, with community, so much can be achieved.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to speak about the National leader and her campaign to incite white hysteria, the politicking of fear, and make it clear that Te Paati Māori recognises her agenda for what it is—a desperate, radical agenda to gear up hysteria against bombing polls—and affirms to this House we will continue to call it what it is: conscious, deliberate, blatant racism.

We, like many tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti, know this isn’t about “preserving democracy” or “asking the hard questions people don’t want to hear”. Do not insult our intelligence. This is about a fading leader using an old trowel used by many monsters on these walls, before relying on the politics of fear, which causes people to suspend their reason and vent in a vile, destructive way. This is about a racist using her platform of privilege to spread fear—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. I know that the Speaker’s ruling I made a week ago, roughly, was one which is provisional and I’ve asked for advice on it, but I have made it clear that I’m not prepared to overturn that part of Speaker Kidd’s ruling which prohibits members being described as racist in the House. The member will cease use of that word when applied to a member.

This is about a person who is anti-Māori and using her platform of privilege to spread fear in a way that no vaccine could ever hope to wipe out—that’s what anti-Māori people do.

Let’s not kid ourselves that this is about discussing policy process, because, if that indeed was her agenda, she knows full well investing in future liabilities, taking targeted approaches, is the right thing to do. No, she has deliberately created hysteria because she wants people to act in a way they never would if we’d had a rational conversation.

If, indeed, we took ownership of the very inequities that tangata whenua are confronting and showed courageous leadership, here we have a chance to adopt a new norm, to reclaim a position that respects tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti—a calm, reasonable way forward that has data, years of research, recommending the way that makes not only political sense, but humane sense. Instead, she constantly and consistently uses the most anti-Māori, dehumanising language—segregation, separatist, apartheid—denouncing Te Tiriti and, indeed, its intent to build a strong, united Aotearoa for all. She attacks large iwi who have worked hard with multiple Governments and shown the nation how strong Tiriti partnerships become relationships for the future.

No, what we have witnessed and seen allowed to thrive in this House is a National leader who has incited anti-Māori and invited vile attacks into every Māori home. We are prepared to get kicked out for calling her out every time, as it doesn’t affect those who have the resilience to armour up, who can use platforms like ours to fight back and call her out. It affects those who are vulnerable, who we often don’t see or hear in the House: our tamariki in communities; our rangatahi trying to find themselves in a country debating their culture norm, their identity; our kaumātua who get up off their seat to manaaki our tangata Tiriti elderly. This affects those that are in employment as minorities, those fighting every day against race profiling, parents teaching their children to be proud to be Māori.

Māori are dying seven years earlier than Pākehā in a system run by people like her, a system they’re too scared to use—can’t understand diagnosis, don’t have jobs which allow them flexibility to get treated, won’t reach out for mental health support, don’t have marae and hapū around them. Māori, who are less likely to get screened or referred for secondary care specialists, less likely to get the cultural services they need, and who endure poverty and are too ashamed to ask for help. She has no idea what it is like growing up with a racist profile, living in an area deliberately targeted with tobacco shops, alcohol outlets, gambling.

Race-baiting is racist, and “Judith Coloniser”, this is exactly what she is—anti-Māori. What Judith has done is long-lasting, and I intend to use my privilege to fight and have it documented that at no stage will we accept it. White supremacists are emboldened by Judith. It’s irresponsible—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! I’m going to remind the member that when she’s referring to that member, she can refer to her as Judith Collins or the Leader of the Opposition, but not by first names.

My apologies. White supremacists are emboldened by Judith Collins’ irresponsible leadership, and we are not prepared to have that behaviour go in here unchecked. We didn’t ask what it would look like in a united Aotearoa. I watched as we sat there with tangata Tiriti, like my mother—75 years old—ashamed to hear that tangata Tiriti aren’t respected and valued, one that doesn’t want to see Pākehā demolish relationships. We have tangata Tiriti with tangata whenua stand on the front line against Māori wards. We all want to work hard to stop and cancel out the culture that has become about blame and shame, instead of walking forward. We encourage those that are continuing to bring policy and legislation that will grow and enhance this country for a stronger Aotearoa. Kia ora rā.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I heard the ACT leader, David Seymour, say that no progress had been made in housing, and I’m going to spend my five minutes, in ahead of tomorrow’s Budget, to disabuse him of his ignorance.

I do a weekly TV show on TV3 with Duncan Garner and Simon Bridges. Simon Bridges has started asking me questions as to whether the Labour Government’s doing enough to solve the housing crisis. It’s interesting, because anyone with a memory of longer than three years can remember that for the prior nine years, the National Party, leading Government with the support of the ACT Party—David Seymour—refused to acknowledge that we even had a housing crisis in New Zealand. Yet in the three decades from the 1990s till now, our house prices saw the highest growth after inflation—real growth—in the OECD: they went up 266 percent in real terms, to the point where a house in Auckland cost 10 times the median household income, which was plainly unaffordable for many.

So having denied the housing crisis, they left us with a country where they had sold off State houses—they sold more than they built new ones. They leased in a few, but of course they leased houses that already existed rather than building them, decreasing further the private sector stock, as well as the public stock. They allowed the workforce to wither, post-GFC, and after the GFC we had fewer people in apprenticeships, so that when things came right after the GFC, we didn’t have the people who could build houses.

Now, what have we done? We’ve done a huge range of things, and it’s working. We banned foreign buyers. We updated the national policy of existing homes. We updated the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, to require councils to make room for growth, up and out. We’re fast-tracking consents. We’ve got infrastructure funding that includes grants, but we’ve also got new financing facilities that enable subdivisions to be able to be financed without adding to council debt burdens. We’ve changed tax rules to interest deductibility, to change who can pay the marginal price for the next house purchase of an existing house, and we’ve had to do that because, as David Seymour says, interest rates are really low—but that’s not the fault of Government; that’s what’s happened to interest rates around the world post-COVID.

Instead of the number of people in training going down, we’ve got 100,000 extra people in training since COVID hit. Of those, around 20,000 are apprentices in the building trades. A lot of the other people will have micro-credentials, and the like. What’s happening? Well, we’re also funding public houses. We’re funding 18,000 public and transitional houses by 2024. Now, that’s a big enough number. You compute that down: it’s more than 5,000 a year, it’s more than 100 a week, it’s more than 15 a day, when you exclude Sundays. Fifteen houses extra a day makes a difference, if you do it for a while—which we are.

What happened to the total number of houses being built? The number of consents to build houses in New Zealand last year, the stats out a couple of weeks ago—it’s 41,000; more than 40,000. In 2017, it was 30,000. That’s a massive increase in the number of houses being built, and we’re now building more houses than population growth needs, and this year is going to be just as good if not better than last year.

What’s it like in Auckland, where the problems have been most pressing? House builds have gone up, from 10,800-odd in 2017, by 60 percent to over 16,000. Where’s the growth happening? Well, this is what I find really interesting. Apartments have gone down—that’s because we’ve banned foreign buyers, because they were being predominantly purchased by foreign buyers. That building effort is now going into semi-detached townhouses, flats, units, and other dwellings. The number of single houses is roughly flat, but the number of town houses, flats, units, and other dwellings has gone up from 2,200 to 7,200 a year—a 300 percent increase in the typologies of smaller houses that people can afford to buy.

We are making a difference here. I think that we are turning a corner. We hear this statement that rents are going up astronomically. They’re not. They’re starting to even out as well, and I reckon within a year’s time, with the additional support that we’ll see coming through this Budget, people can be confident that we’ve got this under control.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Last week in this House, I mentioned the issue, the crisis, of cyber-security and ransomware threats to New Zealand and what a big impact that it was actually having on New Zealand, and it seems like the Government really haven’t paid much attention to this.

Now, more than 435,000 New Zealanders—that is nearly 10 percent of New Zealand’s population—are without adequate access to healthcare in the Waikato region. Their sensitive health data, their personal details about their healthcare needs, are still being held to ransom as we speak. It is the patient records, their health information, the digital medical tools, and even the phone lines have been down, and we’re not hearing when it’s going to be fixed. It may still continue to happen well past this weekend, and that is a shame. That is an absolute shame and it’s an absolute disgrace, because it could have been avoided by this Government.

As the Minister responsible for cyber-security policy under this Government, Minister David Clark has failed the people of New Zealand. In his answer to my written parliamentary question, he said—and I quote—“As Minister for the Digital Economy and Communications, neither I nor my officials have given any advice to district health boards regarding cybersecurity.”—and I quote again—“As Minister for the Digital Economy and Communications, neither I nor my officials have given any advice to district health boards regarding ICT operations.”

💬 Hon Louise Upston: None at all?

Nothing. The Minister actually has officials across Government, including multiple Government agencies including the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. This means that CERT New Zealand, the Computer Emergency Response Team, did not provide any advice to the DHB, according to the Minister. That is the answer that he has given me. That means that the DIA scam prevention and digital safety team did not provide any advice, according to the Minister. This means that the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s National Cyber Policy Office did not provide any advice, according to the Minister.

Either the answer the Minister had in fact provided to me is wrong, and he is accountable and will have to come back to this House to explain himself, or the lack of action is a damning indictment on this Government’s cyber-security priorities. That means the Minister—

💬 Hon Louise Upston: What’s he done?

The Hon Louise Upston, to your question “What has he done?”: nothing, it seems. He has not done anything to prevent these kinds of cyber-attacks.

Last week, as I alluded to, the Health Research Council of New Zealand was brought to their knees because of the hacking, and this Parliament’s ability to scrutinise them during the annual review process did not happen. All the information that they were supposed to provide for their annual report was lost because of a hack.

The Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee is currently undertaking a briefing into cyber-security. As soon as this news hit about the Waikato hack, I have written a letter to the committee, and I would hope that the members in that select committee will looking into it seriously, because it is a question of openness, it is a question of transparency, and it is a question of public accountability. I call on the Government’s Minister for the Digital Economy and Communications, the Hon David Clark, to take responsibility and apologise to the people of New Zealand—oh, that’s right, he did not. He hasn’t, and it reminds me that he is in fact, or was, the Minister of Health who during the COVID lockdown decided to break the rules and went cycling. He went to the beach when everybody else was doing the lockdown.

💬 Simeon Brown: Oh, that’s right.

Well, yeah, it just tells me that this Minister has no sense of responsibility, and I don’t expect any apology from him. I think that—[Time expired]

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order!

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and take a call in this general debate. I just wanted to note that I’m pretty sure that the Minister responsible for the GCSB is Minister Little, not Minister Clark.

💬 Melissa Lee: No, I said “digital economy and communications”.

Oh, fair enough—fair enough. Well, thank you for that. Tomorrow is Budget day—Budget 2021. Now, it would be remiss of me, as a former early childhood teacher and an early childhood centre owner, not to mention the pre-Budget announcement that Minister Hipkins made very recently, with a $170 million package for the early childhood education (ECE) sector, increase in their funding, in order for centres to be able to pay their ECE teachers who are not kindergarten teachers on a collective agreement, in order to pay them to be able to reach pay parity. We know that many of our early childhood teachers are paid around $16,000 less. So this is going to mean so much to so many in our early childhood sector, and it is something I am so proud to be able to stand here and talk about.

Mr Seymour mentioned that the COVID response here in New Zealand has been nothing special. Well, I wonder if he’s been watching television and seeing what’s happening overseas, to see just how successful, to date, our response has been. We have so many more freedoms than people overseas have. When I was recently sitting in ICU with my mum on life support, and I was holding her hand, I was thinking this has been pretty damned special—pretty damned special that we, as a country, can do this when so many people overseas are not able to be with the ones that they love, when they desperately, desperately want to. So I think that our response has been very, very special.

But on to the Budget. This Budget is all about—well, we know that we are dealing with the pandemic still. As I said, you only have to see overseas that it is rife, but we do need to focus on securing our economy and continuing to invest in the wellbeing of New Zealanders. We are doing many, many things in order for that to happen. And one of the things that I did want to make mention of was what Minister Parker mentioned, around the success in our trades apprenticeships. Well, I just wanted to mention the fact that Venture Timaru, in my electorate, was successful in securing $4 million worth of funding for the regional apprenticeship scheme. Now, they anticipated that over a hundred apprenticeships would be available over a 12-month period. Well, that has been so successful that all those spaces for apprenticeships—100—have been filled within five months. That is a real success story, in my mind.

Now, we know that there are many regions who have suffered more so than others throughout COVID, and that could be dependent on where they are and what their local economies are made up of. My electorate, I have to say, has been one of the very lucky electorates, whereby we are, largely, a primary producing electorate, and during the height of our lockdown, etc., over 70 percent of our workforce were able to continue working. So we have fared better than many of the other areas around the country. So I think it’s really important to acknowledge our rural sector and the work that they were able to continue to do to ensure our economy kept going in the way that it did. But that’s also not to take away from the fact that there were many, many other people working in essential roles throughout our lockdown. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge them as well.

So I am looking forward to tomorrow: Budget 2021.

Look, I want to talk today about the Government’s three waters reforms, because while we as the National Party are very much aligned with the Government around water management in this country—we started off the three waters review back in 2017—we fundamentally agree that there is a case for change and that we need to do something more than the status quo. We believe fundamentally that our infrastructure investment is suffering and that we’ve got ageing infrastructure. We know we’ve got to upgrade it. We’ve got to seriously do something about it. We’ve got challenges with safety standards. We’ve seen that with Havelock North, we’ve seen it with lead in Otago, we’ve seen boil notices across small towns all across this country, and we understand that there’s a need for us to do something about that. We know that there is risk to our environment. We’ve got burst pipes in Wellington, we’ve got leakage in Auckland, we’ve got overflowing sewage on the beaches in Auckland. We’ve got a lot of things to do.

So we want to make it relatively clear that we are here to be aligned with the Government on the problem that exists around water management. But I have to say that’s where it now stops, because that alignment is lovely at the beginning, and it’s wonderful that we can agree on the problem that’s here in this country, but we fundamentally believe that this is a Government that doesn’t execute well. It talks a good game but it doesn’t actually get the job done. It loves to talk about what it’s going to do but it never gets it done. It talks about $1.9 billion in mental health, and yet we have a 41 percent blowout in wait times to get access to those services. It talks about spending the most that’s ever been spent in the history of this country per pupil, per student, secondary or primary, and yet we can’t get the kids to school and we’ve got the worst maths, reading, and science scores that we’ve had for some time. It has a unique ability, this Government, to spend more but to actually get less for it. So we’re looking forward to Budget day tomorrow, because I think we’re going to see a lot more of the same as we go forward.

The challenge when you start to think about the three waters reform is that it’s all going to come down to implementation and execution, because it’s complex and it’s hard and it’s broad and there’s a lot for us to do. Essentially, what’s happening: you’re taking 67 councils that provide those three waters services today and looking to amalgamate and push them into four big multi-regional entities or water entities. There’s quite a few issues in the execution. We could start on lots of things, but I want to talk about one thing in particular. I could talk about financing. I could talk about whether it’s voluntary or mandatory. But what I really want to talk about is the fact around governance structures, and that’s the issue I’m going to spend the most time on today, because we are now talking about proposals across the country that are creating really complex governance structures.

There’s one person that we really need to listen to very, very closely, and that is Mayor of Auckland, Phil Goff. You’ve got to understand, this is a Labour Mayor of Auckland. He is the great man from this House that was here for 22 years. He was the leader of the Labour Party for three years. He was a very experienced Minister. He’s very good friends with many of the people in this House. I often wonder whether Minister Wood is his son—that’s the sort of thing I wonder about. But he is very, very close to this party, and he’s a great man of Government. He’s one of the great leaders of the Labour Party, and he’s incredibly close and he’s deeply embedded with this Government, so we should listen to him incredibly closely, because I think Phil Goff gets it. I really think he understands this one. I think he gets it really well.

He wrote to Minister Mahuta and he wrote to his good friends the Prime Minister and Minister Robertson and Minister Wood just six days ago, and this is what he said. It starts up nicely enough—I mean, he really opens the letter really nicely. He says, “Tēnā koe Nanaia. Thank you for your letter received 5 May about the proposed three waters service delivery reform.”—nice enough. Good start. You sit there and go, “Thank you, Phil. We’re off and running.”

Then he puts the car into first gear and he starts sort of cutting to the chase of what his actual issues are and what he wants to talk about. So here we go: “I am seeking your explanation of how DIA’s proposed amalgamation will address any shortcomings in Watercare’s management or governance. I do not understand why Watercare needs to be amalgamated and removed from Council’s governance to achieve management efficiencies”.

He goes on to say, “I am not convinced that the proposed governance arrangements will achieve the efficiencies modelled, nor am I convinced that the change to remove the proposed water supply authority from democratic governance and oversight will be positive.”—I mean, ouch!

I mean, that’s quite something, isn’t it? You’ve opened nicely, you’re then sort of getting into the first point—pretty clear.

He starts to crank it up. He starts to really get into top gear when he starts to talk quite damningly about the governance complexity being created. He says, “The Governor’s Representative Group will comprise representatives ranging from four to six local authorities and up to 50 iwi. Gaining consensus among all [those] parties is likely to be a time consuming and expensive undertaking.”

💬 Hon Louise Upston: And he would know.

Now, he would know—right?—because he was a very effective Minister. He was a great leader of the Labour Party, he’s been an outstanding Mayor of Auckland, and I think we need to listen to Mayor Phil Goff. Minister Wood, he’s a wise man; I know you take his tutelage all the time. It’s fantastic. But I think he points out an issue that we’ve got to do something about.

So I just want to encourage all those members, as we go into Budget day tomorrow, listen to Mayor Phil—

Order! Order! The member’s time has expired.

Mr Speaker, thank you for letting me have a five-minute shot at being able to talk about some of the awesome stuff that’s happening over on this side of the House, and steer away from some of that negativity that the “Leader of the Opposition” is talking—oh, sorry, not yet. He’s not the Leader of the Opposition just yet, but if you believe everything that’s going on in the media at the moment, well, it’s not far away.

I’d like to first of all acknowledge the strength of our Māori Ministers that are inside our Cabinet and out there on the front line every single day, fighting for Te Ao Māori every single day, up and down the country. So having somebody like the Hon Kelvin Davis in charge of reforms around Oranga Tamariki, reforms around the Department of Corrections and making sure that Māori that are trapped inside that system are looked after the best that they can. Historically, we haven’t done well by looking after those particular cohorts, the young people in Oranga Tamariki and all of our people inside the corrections net—I’ll say “net”, and I’ll say that purposefully as well.

I want to also acknowledge Minister Nania Mahuta for the work that she’s doing—our first Māori Minister of Foreign Affairs, and isn’t that a great thing? But on top of that, she’s also leading reforms that Christopher Luxon, the previous speaker, alluded to: the three waters reforms that—

💬 SPEAKER: I’m just thinking Winston Peters.

TĀMATI COFFEY: Oh yeah. The first female Māori Minister of Foreign Affairs—there you go. But also, just talking about the leadership that she’s showing in the three waters reform.

💬 The Hon Peeni Henare: what he’s doing in Whānau Ora, making sure that our grassroots organisations that are out there at the coalface are being looked after as well.

Our Minister for Māori Development, the effervescent Willie Jackson—he is a character, but he gets the job done. This time around, he’s doing some great stuff, and I’m looking forward to those announcements tomorrow as they come out in the Budget.

I want to finish by talking about the Hon Kiri Allan, who is one of our team, and we’re sending her lots of love at this time. We know that she’d love to be here, but she’s on a journey of her own, and she’s got all of our support back here.

The Hon Meka Whaitiri, Rino Tirikatene—the work that they are doing is also to be held up and to be used as an example.

Last year, we delivered the Labour Māori manifesto, talking about what we were going to do, and in the six months since the election, we’ve done a lot. I know I’ve only got a short time left, but I’m going to try and peel through some of this stuff. The number one thing that I go home and talk to the whānau about is the establishment of a Māori Health Authority, an independent voice to grow kaupapa Māori services and improve the health of this and future generations by providing effective leadership and partnership right throughout our health system. It’s long overdue.

I also want to acknowledge Minister Nania Mahuta’s bill to remove the 5 percent poll provision, which was a barrier to councils being able to create Māori wards. I hear—hot off the press—that Hamilton have decided to enter into Māori wards, so congratulations to them. Tomorrow, the Whakatāne District Council get to have that decision, and I look forward to a positive result there. On Friday, back home, the Rotorua Lakes Council will also be having that discussion, and again, hopefully, we will be creating these opportunities to have Māori at the decision-making table. We’ve done that because we’ve been focused on changing the outcomes for Māori, which is a huge part of Budget 2021, making sure that we’re continuing the good work that we’re doing, supporting Māori and Pacific incomes, skills, and opportunities.

This is going to be a balanced Budget, it’s going to be very much a COVID Budget as well. We’re not out of the woods on that front yet. We’re still dealing with the effects of COVID-19, and the pandemic still looms large over all of us. But we agree that the first response is to look after the health of our people, and, for that reason, New Zealanders are behind us on this. They were behind us when we made the decision to open the borders to go to Australia, they’re behind us as we’ve opened the doors to go to the Cook Islands, and there’ll be more opportunities coming in the near future.

As well as lifting Māori and Pacific income skills, opportunities, we’re also going to be making sure that we’re moving towards a low-emissions economy, we’re reducing child poverty and improving child wellbeing, and also supporting physical and mental wellbeing for all New Zealanders and keeping COVID-19 out of our communities. Budget 2021 will still be a COVID Budget but also a recovery and a wellbeing Budget. It’s for that reason that there is going to be much to celebrate tomorrow, and there’s only one more sleep to go. As we keep telling the Opposition, who are desperate to hear what’s in the Budget, they just need to wait one more sleep, because tomorrow all will be revealed.

While we have our own tikanga and our own processes around what Budget looks like here in Wellington, all around the country the Budget affects everybody. So tomorrow is a day for all of New Zealand, and I look forward to being here and being part of it. Kia ora.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. Budgets are all about priorities—what we as a community, as a team of 5 million, think is important—and I think we all showed last year, through this COVID pandemic, that it is really important, the health of our people, how we work together and look after one another, and the Green Party is very clear about our priorities, what we think needs to happen in the Budget tomorrow.

In fact, I think the priorities of the Green Party align really well with the priorities of New Zealanders. I just want to quickly refer to the highlights from the Infrastructure Commission’s Aotearoa 2050 digital engagement. That got over 23,000 responses, which is a pretty good sample of New Zealanders: 92 percent of New Zealanders ranked not always having safe drinking water as a very important issue, 92 percent ranked a lack of recycling as a very important issue, 85 percent of New Zealanders want to produce less waste—they want the Government and local government to be enabling them to live more sustainably—80 percent of New Zealanders want investment in our water network, something that has been neglected over many decades.

Overall priorities: more so than jobs and people, the planet was the most important area that New Zealanders want us to prioritise when thinking about the future, because they know that without a healthy planet we have no future. Climate change is the single-most important issue facing all of us, and it’s really easy to focus on the short term, to focus on COVID, but in fact we have very few years right now to make the changes that we need to to secure a safe, stable climate for ourselves and for our kids and their kids.

So, in the recovery to COVID-19, climate change and climate action has to be central to that. It has to be central to everything we do: the future of food production, how we get around, how we build our buildings, how we produce our energy, how we use our energy, all of that is going to need to change. I know the Government have indicated a strong willingness to move in that direction. The question is are we going to move fast enough, because we can’t just tinker around the edges. Everything needs to change.

Our economic system has to change. It has driven, it has been fuelling, the destruction of ecosystems, the loss of species at a faster rate than we have probably ever seen, and the overheating of our climate, and, of course, our economic system hasn’t just done that to benefit all of us. It isn’t benefiting all of us. In fact, for the last 30 years or so, our economic system has benefiting a smaller and smaller group of people. It has fuelled inequality, and, again, this is something I know the Government has on their radar. The question is: do they have the courage to move fast enough to make the changes that need to be made in order to truly deliver an economic system that is going to benefit all people, that’s going to lift children out of poverty, that’s going to protect and safeguard our natural environment, something that New Zealanders absolutely hold dear and prioritise? That’s what we need.

So, in the Green Budget, what would we see? We would see an overhauling of our welfare system. We know that’s the only way to end child poverty in this country. We need to massively lift benefits. We need to make it fairer and easier to access. We need jobs that really employ people, OK, not just machines. There is this huge investment in infrastructure to create jobs. Yes, we do need infrastructure—we absolutely do—but we also need jobs that look after people. We need more nurses. We need more midwives. We need more early childhood education (ECE) teachers. We need better subsidies for early childhood education so that parents don’t have to wait until their child is three if they want to go back to work. We need the subsidies to be higher, and we need the ECE teachers to be very well paid. I know there was a pre-election announcement. I don’t think it goes far enough.

We can afford to do this. When it comes to the infrastructure that we need to see tomorrow, we need substantial investment in regional rapid rail. We are so far behind on passenger rail and sustainable freight options in this country.

Public transport: in fact, in the Infrastructure Commission’s survey, they said 75 percent of New Zealanders want public transport improved and less than 30 percent said we needed to spend more money on roads. So the money needs to be shifted to public transport, rail, and safe cycling in our cities. The vast majority of New Zealanders said that’s what they want. The question is: will this Government deliver it? Well, the Green Party will be here to hold them to account and to call for the action that we need to protect our people and our planet now and into the future.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege and honour to be able to enter this debate in anticipation of Budget 2021 tomorrow. I firstly want to acknowledge one of the pre-Budget announcements around cervical screening and the breast screening announcement made by Minister Verrall. Unfortunately, we all know someone who has been affected by cervical or breast cancer, and so to see this investment by this Government into women, into wāhine, is a game-changer, really and truly. This is going to mean—

💬 Hon Member: Life-saver.

Yes, absolutely, it’s lifesaving. This is going to mean many more Māori and many more Pacific but women in general are going to live longer—we’re going to survive. So that’s just one of the very many game-changers that I can see and I’m hopeful will continue in this recovery and wellbeing Budget.

Another real game-changer for us, and while we are talking about women’s health, is this Government’s investment into another step in achieving a reduction in poverty, including child poverty, around the free period products in schools. Now we know that’s another massive investment, another step towards this Government making sure that we reduce inequality and poverty by making sure that our young kōtiro, that our young rangatahi, can go to kura during that time because they can now access free period products, where before this they were having to stay home. So that also moves into, of course, this Government’s absolute focus on education for all and making sure that especially our more vulnerable and Māori and Pacific kids—making sure that they also get that opportunity to access education. So again, another game-changer from this Government.

While we are talking about education, I’d like to also note another game-changer again—here we go, No. 3—from this Government, and that is the free school lunches in kura. So again, another way to reduce inequality and poverty for our tamariki but it also goes further. Those free school lunches in kura also help our families with our budgets. I know many people who have said even with one child that’s almost $50 they’re saving in their family’s budget per week—again, another game-changer because they can use that on other utility bills that are important.

But it goes further than that. We were really lucky to have our Labour Party conference on the weekend in the mighty and beautiful Ōtaki electorate. I must say it was raining that morning. Everyone came and the sun came out, and it was an amazing weekend with some really great policy, great robust speakers, and kōrero around how we can continue to make Aotearoa better with this Government.

But one of the things we did have, and we were able to do, is we were able to have the same people who do the free lunches in schools do our lunches, because I thought it’s important that this Government, when you’re going to put out a policy like that, taste the wares of what they put before our tamariki. So we had exactly what they would have for lunch, and I can tell you it was nutritional, it kept us up for some of our amazing speakers in the afternoon so we didn’t fall asleep, it fed our souls, it fed our brains, and that’s what those free lunches do for our tamariki in kura. It feeds their souls and it feeds their brains. But, more than that, we also make sure that it’s nutritional and that we’re saving money for their families, but we also had—lucky enough—our economic tamariki who came along to support Hamish and his team who do the free lunches in schools. They also talked, or their kaiako talked about how it goes further than that. They are also making sure that they support local. They support the local businesses when they buy the local produce to be able to make sure that we feed our tamariki in schools. So, again, can I just say, is that No. 4 or 5—I can’t even keep up—of a game-changer that this Government continues to make sure that it invests in all New Zealanders.

Lastly, they also talked about the business aspect and being able to keep some of those businesses in business while we go through COVID. I know we haven’t got much time and there’s so many things to talk about, but can I just say the last part is around the amazing work of our Minister of Finance, the Hon Grant Robertson, who continues to manage our coffers so well that we are now looking at a 4.7 percent unemployment rate. Amazing—and, again, our Ōtaki electorate has benefited from those jobs in our rohe as well.

Can I just say, well done to Horizons Regional Council, who voted in Māori wards. Kia ora.

Look, I rise on behalf of National as the member of Parliament for North Shore. Today I want to highlight the workforce crisis in healthcare in this country. During the Estimates process in March, I asked the Minister of Health, “What was the size of the workforce shortage across the health sector?”, and you know what? He could not answer. But I’ve got the answer. I’ve got the answer right here, and I’m going to talk through that today in my short call here.

There is a saying: that there is no healthcare without the workforce. I can tell you here and now that I know that the numbers on this piece of paper are big. There are big shortages in this country. It is a big number, and it is a number that is growing. In DHBs alone, there are over 4,183 vacancies today. Over 1,600 of those vacancies are nurses alone. Nearly 1,000 of those vacancies are allied health professionals, and in one district health board alone, in the Waikato—the DHB that is crippled by a cyber-security incident, that has no plan in order to deal with it—they have over 450 nursing vacancies today.

But what is hidden by these hard numbers are the human lives and the human stories. This workforce shortage is highlighted in the media continuously. It is impacting our most vulnerable, our elderly. We are seeing people waiting in corridors, and long waiting times, nurse burn-out, GP fatigue, including in my home electorate of the North Shore. My personal experience of these human stories comes from working within two of the largest district health boards in this country, and in a clinical capacity, front line, as an ambulance officer with St John. My observations of this problem tell me this problem is important but it is also real. The workforce shortage is also a cause of our vaccination programme that is progressing at the pace of a turtle. This is leaving our country vulnerable and is constraining our growth.

This Government is just making this problem worse, and let me give you a few examples. What effect will the public sector health pay freeze have on this problem? Well, I’ll tell you what: it will make it worse. What will the effect of the immigration changes announced by this Government have on this problem? I can tell you it will make it worse. What will the effect of the restructuring of our health system have on this problem? I can tell you it will make it worse. Focusing on changing the structure within our health system without changing the root cause of the problem is not solving the issue, which is that we have a health postcode lottery of outcomes in this country, and that is made worse by the health workforce shortages across this country as well.

Lastly, I will refer to our aged care sector in this country. These are the people that are working with our most vulnerable, our elderly within our community, those that do not have a voice, those that need our protection. The aged care sector has confirmed to me today that they have, they estimate, between 300 and 500 registered nursing vacancies in this country alone. That is on top of the 4,183 vacancies that I’ve already quoted. But wait; there is more. There are over 300 additional vacancies of healthcare assistants, those people that are working with our elderly population within our rest homes every single day.

We have a significant crisis on our hands, and this Government has no plan to resolve it. We need to fix this problem and get on with resolving the workforce shortages within this country.

[Uses sign language] Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to start my short call by following on from my colleague Terisa Ngobi, first, in saying, as I stand here beside the desk of our colleague Kiritapu Allan: wāhine, Smear Your Mea—may I just say that now and wear that and tautoko that. Support your women to do it because it is so important. I am so delighted that this country’s Government has actually taken the step of doing something that is going to save women’s lives with the investment in cervical screening. That is what a Budget that puts wellbeing into a crucial place looks like.

I want to talk about another of those initiatives that this Government used last year that is making a real, measurable difference to the lives of tamariki all over New Zealand. I want to talk about the difference it is making to lives in my home town in Whangārei.

On Monday, I was at a little primary school on the southern outskirts of Whangārei, a place called Ruakaka School. It has about 250 kids. It is growing extremely rapidly. They have 60 staff doing an amazing job. When I went out there to talk to the principal and to talk to the staff, I asked them about the school lunch programme. Principal Marilyn Dunn said to me, “I’m almost tearing up here. The programme is fantastic.” What they have done is they have four people from whānau in the community locally who have been employed on a part-time basis to make school lunches for those 250-odd kids every day. I went to visit those people and I saw them in their workplaces and I saw an awesome selection of salad and ham sandwiches, blueberry muffins that were delicious, and I heard about the difference it is making to the kids’ attention span; to kids who previously did not last the afternoon, who now maintain mood and behaviour throughout the day, and who are able to keep learning; to whānau who are now employed, who previously were not. I saw the pride and the commitment on the faces of those women at Ruakaka School on Monday and how well they are serving their community, our community, and our tamariki.

I heard of the stories at Tikipunga High School, another low-decile school in my community, and actually the high school I went to. I went and spoke to the principal there, and what he talked to me about was the fact that demand is such that they have had to put on an extra lunch sitting to cope with the kids who want to come and have their healthy lunches—again, provided within that school by a local mum who has now got a job thanks to this Government; talk about doing double duty.

I want to talk about what it is meaning for the providers who, rather than the schools employing people directly, they are the schools—and many of them, 22 out of the 40-odd schools in Whangārei, are getting school lunches; about 15,000 kids over Te Tai Tokerau. The other way we are doing it is we are employing businesses within the community. One of those businesses is an outfit called Food for Life. This is a Hare Krishna outfit run by a gentleman called Buddhi. I had spent some time with Buddhi before this programme was announced, and what I know from him is that he was providing, with volunteers and donations and fund-raising, 1,000 healthy school lunches to schools in Whangārei before this happened. They were awesome schools, they were awesome lunches, I have been there and helped him dish out. He is doing 3,000 lunches now, and rather than a handful of volunteers working daily and wondering whether they are going to be able to afford what they are doing for the kids who need it, he is now employing 10 staff above minimum wage in Whangārei. That is 10 people who didn’t have jobs before, and 2,000 extra kids who are getting healthy lunches every single day.

That is what it looks like when a Government puts its people first when it is making its financial decisions. I am so looking forward to tomorrow’s Budget and continuing the good work that we are doing to support our people in the recovery of this—not just from COVID but of our country.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.