General Debate

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

Thank you, Mr Speaker. What we saw today was a Prime Minister being asked to answer some questions—[COVID-19 alert notifications sound]

Can I please start my time again, Mr Speaker?

💬 SPEAKER: Yes, we’ll just wait until that damn noise—first of all, wait for David Seymour to tuck his shirt in, and then we’ll—has it stopped? All right—Judith Collins.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, today I asked the Prime Minister some questions about mental health, and what we saw was a Prime Minister who is very good with words but not very good with answers. For almost every question, she just had a whole endless statement to say that had very little to do with the question asked. What we saw was a Prime Minister who had made enormous promises to New Zealanders about mental health and has delivered almost nothing.

In the year to June 2019, New Zealand recorded 685 suicides. In that same year, we had 342 road deaths—so that was double plus one. It is a shocking statistic, and it’s a shocking indictment on the fact that mental health has for far too long been kept in the shadows. What we’ve seen is that we know that one in five people will meet the criteria for a mental health problem in any given year—that is enormous. And around half of all New Zealanders will experience a mental health issue during their lifetimes. This is not about them; this is actually about us. It is something that is dear to the hearts of every parent, of every child, of every spouse, of every friend, and of every colleague—it is enormous. For too long we’ve seen this issue not taken seriously. That’s why, four years ago, this party said we would have a Minister for mental health, and that’s one of the things you can see from us is taking mental health seriously.

Today, I heard from the Prime Minister that the Government had not done all these wonderful things that they’d promised, but that’s because they were starting from ground zero—that’s what she said: ground zero. Well, what does she think we took over in 2008? Less than ground zero. What we did actually do is we brought in and we supported police to have mental health nurses working with them, not only in the watch houses, but later in frontline staff going into instances because, if you’ve got a major mental health situation happening, who do you call? Obviously not the Ministry of Health, you call police. You call people who are working 24/7, who do have the ability to come when you need them, and that’s what happened.

What did Labour do with it? They cancelled both of those projects. Why did they cancel it? Because they weren’t theirs. And those weren’t just our ideas, they were the ideas of the New Zealand Police staff—the frontline people—and they knew it was working. And this Government that says they care about people, they stopped that.

We’ve got a situation now where they went out and they said, “I’ve got $1.9 billion.” In that 2019 year with that largest suicide rate ever, they said they were going to help solve it—they’d have $1.9 billion. We had the Prime Minister meeting people and saying how much they cared. And then what did she deliver? Nothing. We’ve had Shaun Robinson from the Mental Health Foundation castigated by the Minister of Health because he dared to stand up for the people he represents. That’s the response from this Government.

We brought in mental health workers into our Corrections facilities. We doubled the amount of alcohol and drug rehabilitation in our prisons within the first term of Government, and then we went and redoubled it and redoubled it again. That’s what we did. When we did that, that’s what we did. Unfortunately, the Government’s response has been too little, too late. Lots of announcements, lots of words, almost nothing delivered.

In 2017, they politicised mental health, in the same way as they politicised Pike River—exactly the same and exactly the same result: big promises, big money announced, almost nothing delivered except disappointment—disappointment for families and whānau who are asking, “Why is it that this Government is so willing to say how much they care?” Why is it that they care so much about everyone else? How about caring about the families who today are suffering and who can’t get help for their kids with eating disorders, who can’t get help for them when they are suicidal? What is happening with a Government so busy to care and never to deliver?

Well, that was a very interesting speech from the Leader of the Opposition, really the new “Minister of People Who Have Just Given Up”, because hers was a party that gave up, and those members opposite are still the party of people who just give up. They never cared about people and their mental health problems in New Zealand. Their programme of police to help with mental health was never properly funded, never supported people, and we had a growing crisis in mental health that they just turned a blind eye to. They did not care.

The reality about Government is you step up to the hard problems, and I’m very proud to be part of a Government that does and has stepped up to the very hard problems, not just in mental health and not just in the rest of the health sector but in a whole swag of issues that were neglected by the previous Government to the detriment of the people of New Zealand. Whether it was housing and taking on the hard issue of housing, to the point now where we have record housing consents, a record house-building programme, and first-home buyers now having a real chance to get their first home. Whether it was on climate change and the work that we do with our cooperation partner, the Green Party, on actually seriously addressing the climate change challenge that this country has—totally and utterly neglected by the party opposite when they were in Government. They just turned a blind eye, buried their heads in the sand, and hoped that it would go away, but not this Government. Not this Government, because we step up to it.

And child poverty: how many households did we hear of for year after year after those members were in Government where there were not only families but—worse—children who could not afford the basics? They couldn’t get a new pair of shoes on their feet during wintertime, couldn’t get warm clothing, and couldn’t be properly fed. I’m proud to be part of a Government that has stepped up, and we are doing amazing things. We’re lifting incomes, lifting benefit levels, and providing food in schools for those kids who have been going hungry. That’s what stepping up to serious challenges actually entails.

We’re dealing with the infrastructure of this country that has been run down—not just roads, but the underground infrastructure as well—and then addressing those health needs. Labour has stepped up to fulfil its historical mission, and that is to rebuild, to restore, to reshape, to give hope, and to build our nation. That’s what we’re doing, and we see it in housing with what we’re doing, we’re seeing it in climate change, and we’re seeing it in health.

I want to talk about mental health, because that is important. It is important if you’re a family who’s got a loved one who is struggling, who is suffering, or who is in crisis. You need your services to be there. They weren’t there in 2017, when we took over Government, because members on that side had just turned a cold shoulder to the shattered lives of New Zealanders who were struggling to cope.

That’s why we did a stocktake and we had a look at the gaps and we got the report. He Ara Oranga was very clear, and it was the New Zealanders with mild to moderate mental health conditions who were suffering the most. That’s where the gap was, and so we had to address that gap. Nearly half a billion dollars over a four- to five-year period—we made the decision to put that into that programme. Right now, 520 extra people on the front line of mental health that weren’t there two years ago are now providing services, and 10,000 people a month now are being seen who could not get access to those services before. That’s the difference we’re making, and we are not even halfway there. That’s why it is a four- to five-year programme, and there is more to do.

Kaupapa Māori health services are getting extra assistance and Pacific health services are getting assistance, because those populations suffer too, and outside the $1.9 billion and the COVID-19 response and recovery package, we’ve put even more money into mental health supported services, because that was what people needed and said they wanted.

This is a Government that takes mental health seriously. This is a Government whose nation-building track record actually puts meaningful grunt behind our mental health services, and we’ll continue to do so. An emerging gap now is in acute services. The facilities left by the previous Government across our hospitals were totally rundown and neglected, with old lino floors, cinder block walls—not an environment for therapeutic restoration. That’s why we made a commitment for the five most neglected facilities to rebuild and upgrade and restore them: $235 million. We’ve started that work, and there is more to come: 11 other mental health facility projects are under way.

This is what caring about those suffering mental health issues looks like, not the crocodile tears opposite. This is what nation-building is. This is what Labour is.

E mihi ana ki a Ranginui rāua ko Papatūānuku, te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe.

[I acknowledge Ranginui and Papatūānuku, the Speaker, greetings to you.]

We’ll turn now from people’s health and the comprehensive investment the Labour Government is making in response to COVID-19 and in dealing with the mental health challenges, which have been neglected for too long, to dealing with the health of the oceans.

Yesterday, we had the launch of Revitalising the Gulf by the Hon David Parker and the Hon Ayesha Verrall. That was the Government’s response to Sea Change, a report that was released back in 2017. The Green Party strongly supports the outcomes that the Government wants to achieve through Revitalising the Gulf—locally abundant fish stocks, protection of ecologically important habitats, stronger fisheries management, and better understanding of fish stocks, fisheries, and ecosystems. It was really positive to see the proposals for 18 new protected areas, some restrictions on trawling, and some proposals to significantly improve fisheries management.

But the challenges in the Hauraki Gulf, Tīkapa Moana Te Moananui a Toi, are enormous. It is a taonga not just for Aucklanders but for all New Zealanders. That is why we have the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Act and the Hauraki Gulf Forum, an integrated management body involving councils, mana whenua, and central government looking at how we better manage the Hauraki Gulf. The report that came out yesterday has had a genesis in the work of the ministerial advisory committee, which was co-chaired by Catherine Harland and Paul Majurey. That committee was set up by myself and Minister Nash back in November 2019. They had about 10 months, did their work, finished that report in about mid-2020, and then the Government response has come out yesterday.

One of the things the Green Party is concerned about is the lack of urgency by agencies. So you had the Sea Change report released in 2017, but revitalising the gulf, its restrictions on trawling, the proposal that there be trawl corridors where trawling is allowed—those trawl corridors had not yet been identified. It’s proposed that there be a collaborative process with mana whenua, agencies, and stakeholders to do that. Yet in those four or more years, surely Fisheries New Zealand, particularly with GPS monitoring on fishing vessels now, could identify where trawling currently occurs and could have at least identified the draft trawling corridors. But no, they’re not yet identified. Similarly, with marine protected areas, the proposals for the new 18 areas will increase the no-take protection, except for customary use, in the gulf to about 6 percent of the gulf, up from less than a percent at the moment, and yet the legislation to implement those areas is not proposed to be introduced until 2024. The contrast is that the Government is proposing to remove the obstacles to the expansion of aquaculture by 2023. So once again, despite nature being in crisis, we’re pushing ahead with use and development but we’ve put protection on the slow track.

Now, there was certainly work that was begun last term to reform the Marine Reserves Act 1971. Because it doesn’t have a Treaty commitment or any Treaty principles, it’s too narrow in being restricted to our protection for scientific purposes. It needs to have a much broader range of marine protection initiatives. But the Hauraki Gulf, Tīkapa Moana Te Moananui a Toi, deserves special legislation to proceed with protection urgently. We need that protection because the Hauraki Gulf Forum, in each of its State of the Environment reports on the gulf, has charted that continuing decline: the fact that crayfish, kōura, are functionally extinct; the fact that snapper numbers have declined; kina barrens are increasing. We have in areas like Te Hauturu-o-Toi, Little Barrier—one of our most important protected areas on land with its nature reserve status, home to tīeke, to kākā, to kākāriki, and yet in the waters around Hauturu, it’s kina barrens.

There’s certainly a proposal for a new protected area to the north and some seabed protected area to the east, but we’re not getting that happening until 2024, and we’re seeing a major increase in recreational pressure through the increasing population in Auckland, people buying more boats, getting more sophisticated fishing gear with things like sonar. We need that protection now.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am reminded today of the words of the song “What a Difference a Day Makes”. Today, when we all arrived at work, we probably weren’t expecting what has transpired over the last few hours. I just want to take this opportunity to acknowledge all of those who are working at our managed isolation and quarantine facilities, at our border, our police, our health staff, particularly those staff that Minister Hipkins said worked assiduously during the night to ensure that those interviews were conducted with close contacts of the person who had come from Australia and now causes us some concern in terms of our COVID response.

Can I say that there is nothing like being prepared for this, and over the course of the last 15 months or so, there’s no doubt that our system for dealing with COVID and our response to COVID has been refined. Can I say that, whenever I am out and about in my electorate—and I have done so in recent recesses; checked in with local businesses, with local community groups, and the like—I always ask them “How has it been for you during COVID?” Because I genuinely want to see how businesses, particularly, have fared. Is there any more that we can do to support? How it is that our young people have fared. Have they returned to school? Were they well supported in their schooling? And, by and large, most people are saying—small businesses—the wage subsidy helped; the business loans really helped. In that hugely uncertain time, they looked to their Government for leadership and they found it. I am enormously proud of the work that has been done by our Government in terms of supporting business.

I am enormously proud of the roll-out of devices and the step-up to support our schools to deliver education to children when they were in their whare, and how some schools have said that, for some of those children, that environment actually allowed them to learn some skills about self-directed learning, which may not have been an opportunity they could have taken. However, we do know that, for some children, they were desperate to get back to the classroom and get back to working alongside their school friends and their colleagues.

Alongside all of that work that happens to ensure we have an appropriate and safe COVID response is all the other mahi that this Government has done, and if I think about our children, if I think about having a Government that is prepared to put itself on the line in terms of child poverty and say to the country “We want to be measured by the impact we have on our children. We want to be measured by making sure our children have adequate kai in their tummies, that they’re able to learn, that their parents are supported in their income, that they have decent housing, that they have the necessities of life to thrive.”, I’m really proud that we can do that alongside all of the other work that is going on—that we can do things like we can ensure that our police are resourced, that we increase police numbers, that we support them well to do the hard mahi that they have to do.

There is no doubt that there are some members in our community that we look to do the hard work that we would not put ourselves up to do, and the police are one such organisation that put themselves out there every single day to ensure that we’re safe. And whenever these unusual, unique, and extraordinary times happen, like COVID, like March 15, they are there to support us, to keep us safe, and they put themselves on the line. So I’m here to support the mahi of our police—enormously proud to be the Minister of Police; but enormously proud, too, to support Minister Kelvin Davis in the work that he is doing in Oranga Tamariki to ensure that our children, our most vulnerable, are kept safe; and enormously proud to work alongside Minister Megan Woods in her housing portfolio to make sure that we provide decent, warm, affordable housing, that we grow our housing stock, that we have rental properties that not only meet our needs but where people can put down roots, where they can thrive in the communities of their choice.

I’m proud to be part of this Government that deals with the hard jobs. They deal with them consistently and with the trust and confidence of the people of New Zealand. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Well, another week and another abject failure in mental health by this Labour Government. After coming in in 2017, raising expectations, politicising mental health, weaponising suicide statistics—they raised expectations for vulnerable New Zealanders. And what did I learn from writing to the health Minister’s office about funding announcements he made two years ago: $235 million for new and refurbished mental health facilities, and when I got that back on 14 May, it told me that up to April, two years since the announcement, they’d spent only half a million dollars—$500,000 out of $235 million. That’s 0.2 percent. We have our mental health facilities running at over 100 percent occupancy. We have vulnerable New Zealanders as patients in those facilities sleeping on the floors, sleeping in staff rooms, sleeping in kitchens. We have vulnerable New Zealanders leaving mental health facilities and committing suicide, and the health Minister and the Government is sitting on $232.5 million that they couldn’t spend in two years.

And then, when they get caught out, the spin starts to happen, it kicks in. So now we learn “Oh, it takes five years or so to build a mental health facility. That’s why the one that started construction under National in 2015 didn’t get opened till 2020.” But they forget the then health Minister, David Clark at the time, went and opened a 38-bed facility in 2018. So it shows you can deliver new mental health facilities in three years. These guys have had four years and they’ve sat on their hands, and the spin continues. The Ministry of Health misled the media yesterday, and on Monday. They told the media, when the media asked them questions—how much money had been spent?—they said they didn’t know. The Ministry of Health said they didn’t know, yet they could tell me through the Minister’s office a couple of weeks before exactly how much money had been spent.

The Ministry of Health has got a track record on this, because let’s not forget, not that long ago, they misled the public in the mental health annual reports when they stripped out data because they saw it as negative statistics and it would harm the Government’s performance, and then they had to write to Parliament and say that they accepted they misled the House, twice in several weeks. How long are we going to take this from the Ministry of Health before the health Minister takes control and heads must roll? We’re not Zimbabwe, we’re not Myanmar, we’re not North Korea; this is New Zealand, and we should expect public confidence in our health system, just like we should expect public confidence in our mental health system.

And what did we have last week? Mike King, the guy who’s put everything into mental health—and he backed this Labour Government; he believed what they said, that they were going to deliver, transform the mental health system. What did he do last week? He came to Parliament to return his Queen’s honour because he couldn’t live with it anymore, because he’s the one dealing on the front line when parents ring him for the services this Government promised and those vulnerable young kids can’t access.

Then we have Shaun Robinson, the head of the Mental Health Foundation, one of the biggest advocacies for people with lived experience of mental health. He said the mental health system is worse now. Four years now since this Labour Government took office—things have got worse and all they can do is spin, spin their way out of it. They’re sitting on a record amount of mental health funding, and they can’t get it out the door.

Then the audacity: the health Minister, off the cuff, announces a review. Well, what a kick in the guts to those New Zealanders who turned up two years ago and told their traumatic and heartfelt stories to that mental health inquiry—all those recommendations you’ve done nothing about. Then, two weeks ago, mental health was put in Grant Robertson’s new delivery unit. Now that’s failed, and you need another review—a review, a review, a review. This Government should hang their heads in shame for the failure in mental health.

I will speak shortly about the importance of recovery in the COVID-19 effort, but I do need to address a couple of points raised by the previous member. I do find it a little disappointing that he seeks to politicise so many aspects of the mental health system when he accuses others of politicising and says it should be politics free. I agree with him that we need aspiration. We need to better support into the future the lives of those who are struggling with mental health challenges. There is no doubt about that. But where he says that we have raised the expectations through coming into Government, he is right. We have accepted as a Government that this is a challenge that needed addressing.

If we go back to the previous Government, at the end of their time they were simply not open to even reviewing mental health. There was a crisis. There was a crisis and the whole sector was calling for a review. Labour and other parties that joined the coalition Government listened to New Zealanders and instigated a review, and the result was He Ara Oranga. Now, from that review, subsequently a budget has put aside, a record amount of money for mental health—unprecedented in New Zealand history. This is the first Government to take mental health seriously, and Andrew Little as Minister is driving that forward. Now he is overseeing the rebuild of significant facilities around the country.

The member Matt Doocey, in his contribution, raised the facility in Counties Manukau and said that took three years to build. What he didn’t mention was that before the build phase comes a good deal of planning with all of these facilities. And what he also failed to mention was that under the previous Governments, under the National Government, they had stopped planning for new facilities. They had been told it’s not worth it. They had stripped out of the legislation the requirement to plan for the future and the Ministers had told them “Do not plan for the future, because you will not get funding for your mental health facilities.” Some of those buildings had faeces in the walls! I mean, this is the state of some of the health buildings across the system, when they left office. It is a disgrace that they now come to this House and try to lecture us on the speed of the change, given that they had given up and they had caused everyone to give up hope.

We will not apologise for starting to make that change, on this side of the House. I back Andrew Little and the good work that he is doing overseeing that programme, training up hundreds more people to work at the front line in support of those wrestling with mental health challenges. He has given some of those figures today. Tens of thousands of sessions at the front line, because He Ara Oranga identified the needs of those people who were not able to get services for mild to moderate and were ending up at the acute level of our system. The Government acted and the Government is training people and making sure that we are working with the community to improve our systems for the future.

In the remaining period I have here, I do want to talk about addressing those immediate needs. We are doing it as Government across the board, not just in health. Of course, in the COVID recovery right now, we have extra clinics going out to do testing across Wellington. We have a vaccination programme being rolled out. There is an immense amount of spending going on to keep people safe. But we’ve found throughout the COVID period that the best health response is also the best economic response. And we’ve seen Standard & Poor’s come back and give the first upgrade for any Western country, for credit rating, to New Zealand—the first for any OECD country—the first credit upgrade post-COVID to New Zealand. The first upgrade New Zealand’s had since 2003. That is recognition of the fine stewardship of our Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson.

We are making the right choices around making sure we’re investing now in the health response, but we’re also planning for the longer term to make sure we’re addressing the challenges of climate change, of inequality, child poverty, housing, and so on. These are long-term challenges we’ve inherited as a Government, but we are determined to build back better: $57 billion in infrastructure over the next five years. These are ambitious plans, but we make no apology for tackling those long-term challenges we’ve inherited from a Government prior to us that simply put its head in the sand. We are determined to make a meaningful difference to build back better.

Well, it’s interesting to see that the general theme of delusion continues among Government speakers today as they do their best to articulate what they see as being the greatness of the current Government, failing to recognise that there is not one social service in this country that has got stats going in the right direction; everything gets worse.

We had the Minister of Health coming in here today talking about the appalling situation in mental health where the facilities that were supposedly funded with a very large amount of money, $1.9 billion in 2019, have seen only $500,000 spent in that period of time. The pathetic arrangement yesterday where he goes out and says, “Oh, I’m going to ask my department to review what’s going on.” Well, what was he doing with the weekly reports? Where was the fantastic Treasury, looking at how the money was going out the door, advising about these things? It’s simply because there is no will inside the Government to actually deliver beyond the announcement. And the people who suffer in the end don’t come in here. Former Minister of Health Clark can tell us that there are 10,000 people now getting appointments who didn’t have them before. Those needs were always there and they were there when this Government came in and cut $100 million out of the mental health budget—from our Government four years ago and they wonder why it’s got worse ever since.

It doesn’t stop just with that. There’s so much more. Look at the truancy in our schools at the moment: 14 percent of the children in our schools are not attending on a regular basis. Fourteen percent of our children in our schools are not there to get the basic learning that the system is there to provide for. And what’s the follow-up on that? Nothing. Apparently, it’s a reasonable life choice for people to say to their kids, “You don’t need to go to school.” Or it’s just excused because we’ve got a COVID-19 crisis. They are not reasonable excuses and the Government does have an obligation to make sure that the parental responsibility to get kids to school is exercised.

Then look at the situation with gangs in this country. Why have gang numbers exploded so much? They’ll come out and say, “Oh, it’s the 501s who are coming from Australia.” It is not; the numbers do not match up. It’s because those gangs are not being pursued vigorously by the police because the Government has made it clear they don’t want that to happen. I know that’ll sound ridiculous—there’ll be someone standing up and saying, “No, that’s wrong. Look what we’ve done.” The facts speak for themselves. Look at a small town like Blenheim—a really nice lovely place to live, a great part of New Zealand—having that massive gang fight in the middle of the town last week that led to all sorts of other confusions going on and almost four people dead: two very much injured at the moment in the Wairau Hospital and another two lying dead in the morgue.

That’s the sort of thing, the breakdown that’s happening in our country, because the Government is very, very soft on crime. Then of course, if they ever get into the system, they’ve got Kelvin Davis there telling them that actually they don’t need to be there, the system’s far too harsh on them, let’s make it nice and cushy and easy. So we are seeing people exiting those prisons at a rate that is only going to exacerbate that violent crime inside our communities.

The other point I’d like to make is around the issue of housing. Minister Little came into the House today and started talking about what a wonderful job the Government is doing at providing housing. Well, in four years—in fact, not even four years; in the 3½ years that this Government’s been in office—the rental price in New Zealand has increased by over $100, some say $120. It’s a lot—an extra $5,500 a year for families. That’s why there are now 4,000 families living in motels. That wasn’t the case four years ago. Ask the question: what’s happened? It’s because the rental stock has retracted because it’s become completely uneconomic for many people to offer that sort of accommodation to others who need it.

But of course the Government will feel good about themselves by saying, “Well, it’s our healthy homes programme.” What do they say to the children in those 4,000 families? It could be 20,000 kids living in motels. That’s no life for them. And more than that, the waiting list for State houses has grown fourfold from just under 6,000 to just over 24,000. That’s an appalling shift in people’s housing needs and has the Minister saying, “Oh look, we’ve got record consents going on.” I want to quote to him what he used to quote to us: “No one can live in a consent.” In the end, if you don’t have the resource to buy the house you’re not in good shape.

Madam Speaker, the question of how we rebuild and recover from COVID is particularly relevant to the community of Papatoetoe in the wake of the tornado on Saturday. Papatoetoe is between the electorate of Manurewa and the very good electorate of Panmure-Ōtahuhu. But first I’d like to talk about the person who lost their life at the Wiri Inland Port. His name was Janesh Prasad, he was 41 years old, and he was a mechanic. He was working a forklift when the freak winds hit the container yard. He was a father of two, and will be lovingly remembered by his family.

Loss, destruction, and shock followed that tornado, and its path includes the well-off parts of Papatoetoe as well as one of the most deprived areas in South Auckland. Its effects are felt particularly hard, when homes are irrecoverably smashed apart and cars are written off. In a neighbourhood that, earlier this year, was hit by a major COVID outbreak centred around its high school, this was a hard blow. I got to Papatoetoe after the storm had cleared. The things that occurred to me at first were the randomness of the tornado’s path, that this was something that completely destroyed some homes in the middle of a street by ripping the roof off, and then the house next door could be absolutely fine and untouched. I was also struck by the severity of the rain, which came after the holes in the roofs and the roofs were removed, to destroy what was left of people’s possessions and their livelihoods. I saw the power lines scattered around the streets, and the damage to that public infrastructure, footpaths, and roads, which caused significant damage to the ability of people in that area to even get out, let alone their friends and family to get in. I saw how Plunket Ave, which runs along one part of the tornado path, was affected in a very small way compared to the streets like Freyberg which came right off it. These were 50 metres apart, and yet one street looked like a monster had come forth from the ground and thrashed around, and one street was almost untouched.

At the same time that I arrived, Auckland Emergency Management was out making an assessment of the physical damage and the immediate safety concerns. Vector was getting into action to restore power safely and assessing the damage to the poles that were uniformly flattened, and the Red Cross was setting up the welfare centre. Fire and Emergency New Zealand were putting out boots on the ground in the affected streets, and cordoning dangerous areas. Police were setting up road blocks and assuring residents that houses that couldn’t be secured, because of the damage, would be safe, and the Supreme Sikh Society from the Takanini gurdwara was pulling its volunteer network together and amassing food supply for food parcels. Local businesses, like roofers, All in one Builders, and the Cavendish Mitre 10, were digging deep to donate time and products to fixing roofs before the rain destroyed homes even further.

I door-knocked for five hours that day, and went back on Sunday again, because I wanted to hear from households who’d been hit hard about why they needed help and to do my bit as their local MP, to make sure they got it. Things like tarps—I heard from ordinary people on the street that they couldn’t get tarps from anywhere in South Auckland, because they had all sold out, and there were holes in the roofs and the rain was coming. So I put out a social media call for all people in South Auckland, and Labour supporters who follow me, and asked for donated tarps. In a few hours, we had 150 tarps donated by Labour electorate committees and by members of the public who just wanted to help. Those got donated through volunteers, and I want to thank Brittany O’Brien and Melissa O’Connor for coordinating all of that. Brittany went to every North Shore Mitre 10 just to get those tarps.

I also want to acknowledge those dairies who I asked for local businesses to give them generators so that they could run the system which they were already running, which is a paper note of all of the neighbours who they had given supplies and food and they had just written down their name, their address, and their bill to be paid later. Thank you to those business owners, for supporting your community.

What I learnt is how deep the resilience of the Papatoetoe community runs. International evidence shows that the communities that recover from a natural or health disaster aren’t the richest ones, they’re the most connected, and that’s the lesson of the COVID-19 pandemic for all New Zealanders. Where we have been united we have pulled through. Where we care for people, we have led the world, and we’re not the wealthiest nation, but we’re getting on with the job of rebuilding now. It’s a lesson for me. I’m a community organiser, I believe in the practice of community organising. I’ve always been committed to using my political and legal skills for the benefit of my community, and to build power around the issues that elevate leaders from the grassroots. I’ve been attacked in question time today for that community organising philosophy, but I will not apologise for a commitment to helping my community at the grassroots, through door-knocking and elevating those leaders. To Papatoetoe, I say, “Keep it up, we’re with you.”

Thank you, Madam Speaker. That Government has held the Government benches for virtually 7 percent of my lifespan, and they’re still blaming the previous National Government for everything that’s wrong in the country. It’s time they were held accountable or took accountability for their own failings, in my view.

Now, before I get on to the issue I want to talk about, I just want to acknowledge a couple of people, and particularly my former colleague Nick Smith, who’s spent 31 years serving New Zealand. I think that’s a pretty formidable performance and he should be congratulated on that. And secondly, I just wanted to welcome my neighbouring MP, Harete Hipango, back to Parliament. It’s quite nice to have a neighbour in this place.

The problem I want to talk about today is the issue that rural New Zealand has with the whole lot of changes that this Government’s implementing. Now, I’m not a person who is averse to change. In fact, you might think I might be by looking at me, but in fact I quite like change—I think it’s quite exciting. The problem we’ve got is that change is being foisted on New Zealand at a pace that New Zealand can’t keep up with. It’s been foisted on New Zealand in the form of a whole lot of words and platitudes, but no plan and no action behind the change that’s proposed. And the problem with that is it creates huge uncertainty and uncertainty creates instability, which then causes businesses not to be able to operate in a manner that’s sustainable for the future of New Zealand.

And there’s a few examples of this: there’s $760 million being spent on 3,000 bikes a day going over the Auckland harbour. I’ll guarantee 2,000 of those are electric, and they’re all charged by an electricity network driven by coal. The vanity project has led to the New Zealand Transport Agency withdrawing millions of dollars from provincial councils in New Zealand, from the roading budgets, and cancelling much-needed new roads in Papakura and Bay of Plenty. The withdrawal of funds from our rural councils is going to put a whole lot more pressure on our productive sector as it tries to get product to market. It’s also creating inefficiency and slowing the whole of our process and our work process down.

So I just want to talk briefly about the three waters now, and the uncertainty that’s creating in rural New Zealand because there’s no plan being put in place about it. There’s no description of how it might work, and it appears to me that we’re going to be providing fluoridated, treated drinking water to our cow and sheep populations in many parts of New Zealand, because it has not been made at all clear how those rural water schemes will be encompassed into any future three waters programme. So that’s the sort of uncertainty I’m talking about, and it creates a great deal of concern for rural people particularly, who have no access to a whole lot of services that urban people have access to, and clearly one of those very big ones is transport.

I want to get on to transport with the EV version of what I call “Taxgate”, where, once again, the physical workers of the country—and they include shearers, loggers, fishers, farmers, plumbers, electricians, painters, builders, rural and roading contractors, truckers, and many others—suffer, despite the Prime Minister saying it won’t affect their current vehicles, she clearly doesn’t realise most of those people have to replace their vehicles at least every two years because they do such high miles. In fact, not only do they do high miles, but on our rural roads, they’re going to start rattling to pieces pretty quickly too because they’re in such poor condition.

So this business of putting the incentives on EVs and taxing those vehicles that are less efficient is going to put a whole lot of pressure not on the people who can afford it, because the people who can afford these things will have no problem. It’s the people who can’t afford to buy these vehicles and can’t afford to upgrade their vehicles to this level who are going to be forced, because of the cost structure that’s been put on the motor vehicle industry, to pay more for the old beaten up polluters they have to drive. So the whole process is hugely inefficient, creating a whole lot of inequity, giving huge advantage to those people who can afford things, and creating a great deal of suffering for those people who can’t—and a whole lot more cost.

I want to add that there’s some other issues related to cost, of course, in the lower income area that we’ve seen significant changes to because of Government policies. So we’ve got electricity prices going up at record levels. We’ve got food prices going up at a great rate. We’ve got problems with bringing products to New Zealand because of the transport networks around the world suffering—and that’s something you can’t really blame the Government for necessarily, but none the less something that’s going to cause considerable concern for our poorer people in New Zealand, particularly as the cost of everything goes up dramatically.

I want to spend a little bit of time talking about our superannuitants, who have had no effective increase in income, other than the very miserable income increase they get as part of the annual calculation, whereas everyone else in New Zealand at that level of income has had a significant increase. So beneficiaries up to $50 a week and the minimum wage going up significantly, and at the same time as that beneficiaries who don’t have any other form of income—and there are well over 50 percent of our superannuitants who don’t have any other form of income—are stuck in a system that’s got huge costs increasing behind them and makes it very difficult for them to get on and live a reasonable life. And I think that our superannuitants should certainly have had some attention paid to them in the last Budget—would have been very useful.

The uncertainty that’s created in rural New Zealand by putting policy—and I’m talking about the depopulated parts of New Zealand, so it’s much easier for urban populations to deal with issues because they’re close to each other, they’ve got transport, they’ve got services provided. They have everything provided for them. They might have to pay for it, but they have it provided. Rural New Zealand doesn’t have any of this provided for it. It’s having a whole lot of uncertainty foisted on it with environmental change, with climate change changes, with the quite considerable planting of trees we’ve got in rural New Zealand as well, which is starting to depopulate parts of rural New Zealand with no planning having taken place. It’s of significant concern to rural New Zealand—these issues—and I think it’s something the Government should take some time on, it should plan better as it polices these policies, and it should get on and make sure that those people in rural New Zealand can be assisted to get on with it.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I rise to reassure the member on the other side of the House—Ian McKelvie—that those of us who do live in rural communities are very aware of the plan and the action that is being delivered in our rural communities. I just want to bring a couple of examples to the House of the amazing people who—just like Arena Williams suggested before, when we stand collectively and we are connected with our communities, we can do great things, including our rural communities. We are ambitious for our rural communities and we are supporting them to do some amazing work.

For example, the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs, which is a contribution for 23 rural councils with small populations, those that we just referred to a moment ago—$11.5 million to help young people into jobs. Ōtorohanga mayor and the jobs task force chair, Max Baxter, describes it really well. He is really clear about the opportunities on offer here, because our rural councils have a better connection with their communities and are the best place to shoulder tap the local employers; potential employers. The districts are working together. Ōtorohanga is working alongside Waitomo and Maniapoto. It could be seasonal work, individual projects, training, or travel-to-work support. The aim, of course, is long-term employment.

The really interesting thing when you see these projects playing out—I just want to reflect on the women, actually, who are driving this collectively in the Waitomo district. The Number Twelve youth hub, with the Waitomo District Council and Aotahi Limited and the Ministry of Social Development—they take a holistic approach. They wraparound these young people to build a strong foundation for them, prepare them for jobs, and support them with pastoral care to help them keep it. The programme is robust, it is real, and it is changing lives in our rural communities.

Another great example of investment in our rural communities—well, nationwide, but I’m going to give an example from one of my little towns in Ōtorohanga—is the School Investment Package. So Ōtorohanga College is in the process of taking up the opportunity to fund a project that would normally go to the bottom of the pile because they’ve had much more critical parts of their maintenance to worry about, and they are in the process of rebuilding their school hall: the flooring, the ceiling, the sound, and the lighting. This is important not just to make sure that the arts are really accessible for our rural communities but that the tradies have got jobs. It isn’t just for Ōtorohanga College, but the three other rural primary schools who have their prize-givings there, who hold their school productions there, and numerous other community groups who can access the largest theatre space in Ōtorohanga. So this is about investing in our rural communities, this is about being ambitious, and this is about the long-term plan for recovery that comes about.

There is just one other group that I would like to highlight—again, another rural community—that shows how when we stand together—iwi and local leaders—and wraparound and come up with a local solution for our young people, it is a really powerful and successful endeavour. So under the visionary and ambitious leadership of Te Kāhui Maru Trust in the bottom part of the Taranaki - King Country electorate, and under their general manager, Anaru Marshall’s leadership, Tupu-ā-nuku Environmental Workforce programme has received additional funding because they have been included in He Poutama Rangatahi. So 660 participants will be involved in training for conservation and the forestry sectors. Yes, we are planting trees because forestry is important for our future. We’ve got succession planning going on. These young people aren’t just being taught the health and safety and how to work the machinery but it includes strong pastoral care and kaupapa Māori, which means that we are building strong, young workers who are going to lead our recovery and drive us much further into the future, the way we want to go.

So I just want to acknowledge our rural communities and the many people who are stepping up around the country to make sure that our recovery is a great one, and to remind you that this Government does trust our rural communities to be providing solutions that mean that we will thrive in the future.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. In 2017, the Labour Party campaigned to reduce net immigration to 30,000 annually—an extremely ignorant policy, but I’ll get to that later. However, in the year to March 2020—before COVID-19 took hold, and that’s quite important—the net arrival figure was over 90,000. Sometimes policy failure isn’t such a bad thing after all! However, COVID-19 actually did what the Labour and New Zealand First Government promised, and much more. So we unintentionally got to see what these sorts of policies would do in the real world.

We have labour shortages that are slowly but surely killing the economy, with more and more businesses desperately waving the “Help wanted” signs up and down the country. We’ve got one of the big four accounting firms, in Auckland, has 90 vacancies at the moment. So, all over New Zealand, we’ve got cafes, small restaurants, in different cities, that have done things like stop opening on certain days, simply because they can’t get the staff. The construction sector is desperate, as are the primary industries. The Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme has been a complete disaster. The tourism sector is dying, and hotels are grappling with both a lack of visitors and the threat of new taxes.

It’s an economy-wide problem, and we’re unfortunately reminded today here in Wellington of just how precarious the situation is. How can we ever reconnect to the world when we can barely handle the situation, when our vaccine roll-out is so slow compared to other countries? As an aside, house prices went up 30 percent during this period, over 14 months. It turns out limited supply and low interest rates are enough to drive the market nuts without immigration. Perhaps the never-ending blame game really is just a populist excuse for failed housing policy.

The immigration Minister was away the day that the Hon Stuart Nash filled in for him, reading out his sort of vague announcement about an announcement—or something like that—speech. The mood amongst the migrants and business community prior to that speech could accurately be described as terrified; luckily, their worst fears were not realised, though the speech definitely generated more questions than answers. That speech called COVID-19 a change point for a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change immigration. The Government described immigrants as increasingly low-skilled and that COVID-19 starkly highlighted our reliance on migrant labour. Then, nothing happened.

Nobody knows what immigration will look like when COVID-19 is out of here and we return to normal. The Government suggests that they’re against 90,000 net arrivals but, with their track record, who know? We just don’t know what it will look like. Are they planning to cap it at 30,000, like they campaigned on in 2017 but didn’t do anything about? More importantly, what should New Zealand’s immigration policy actually be? There are, of course, arguments out there for cutting immigration, but they’re ultimately wrong. Some argue that there are too many people here already, and they talk about the demands on infrastructure. They say, “Yeah, roads and houses and schools still get built, but”—apparently—“immigration stops us from specialising, because too much capital is tied up in providing the basics.”

The truth is we don’t know what the future holds, and it’s pointless for the Government to try to guess what the population should look like in 30 years’ time, when the economy will be completely different. New Zealand businesses need skills to grow and to be globally competitive, which, funnily enough, lets them employ more locals and get them into higher paying, more interesting jobs. They just can’t do it with the population or the migrants that are already here, especially when so many skilled migrants here are now leaving the country for better opportunities and to be treated fairer offshore. No economy in the world functions well like that.

So the Government needs to get far better at planning, funding, and pricing infrastructure, as ACT has long campaigned for. That’s true no matter what happens with immigration. The Government also needs to sort out Immigration New Zealand (INZ), who have somehow managed to escape the technological revolution. Its staff stopped working through last year’s lockdowns due to a lack of supporting IT. They still work with paper-based applications—in addition to online, of course—and they continue to drive more complaints to MPs’ offices than any other department. And I’m sure many members here know what that’s like. But, if one thing’s for sure at INZ, it’s that they are slow at everything.

Most of all, though, the Government needs to stop the uncertainty around immigration. They should tell us what they actually mean by “once-in-a-generation reset”, because the skills shortage is getting dire, and businesses are desperate. And, while they’re at it, having a plan to reconnect with the world, out of COVID-19, would help too. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak in this general debate. As I’ve recently returned to Parliament following the birth of my son, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on what this Government is doing for children. There are a number of things that this Government is doing for children, and I hope that I’ll be able to cover five of the key things that are most pressing in my mind at the moment. However, as this a short call I may not have time.

As all parents and carers know, it is one of life’s great joys to raise a child, or it should be. For me, in New Zealand, for too long raising a child has been a struggle. This was especially so following the cuts in 1991 that we heard about during the Budget debate. I remember this time, even though I was still a child. It is my hope that the children who are around now remember this Government for very different reasons.

Today, the key policies that I wanted to highlight that are really keeping our recovery going by focusing on our most important constituents, our children, are: firstly, the decision to raise benefits; the re-establishment of the training incentive allowance; the extension of Ka Ora, Ka Ako, the healthy school lunches programme; better childcare assistance for working families; and the recent decision to fund period products in schools. Now, this Government has a goal of making New Zealand the best place in the world to be a child, and all of these policies focus on achieving the same.

This first one I wanted to touch on is raising benefits. This Government is raising benefits and it will move children out of poverty. It is estimated that up to 33,000 children will be lifted out of poverty by increasing benefits, and it’s not just money in the bank. It is food on the table, warm homes, clothes, shoes, and less financial stress for families, and support to the local economy. This is a really important initiative.

The next thing I wanted to touch on was the re-establishment of the training incentive allowance. When we support parents, we also support their families. The training incentive allowance was scaled down by the previous National Government. This Government will support sole parents, carers, and those on the supported living payment with upfront ongoing costs of study such as fees, childcare costs, and transport.

When I was a student, I remember the inspirational sole parents and others who were so courageous in undertaking tertiary education while having childcare responsibilities. These people deserve our support so they can in turn support their families. And it was wonderful to hear Minister Sepuloni talking in the Budget debate about how the training incentive allowance had helped her, and we see now what she has achieved. She’s now an inspirational Minister of the Crown.

The next policy I wanted to highlight was the extension of the Ka Ora, Ka Ako, healthy school lunches programme. This Government is extending this programme and this programme intends to help feed around 144,000 kids in 660 schools. As we know, with food children can learn, and it is, in fact, the meaning and title of this programme. Ka ora, Ka ako: if a child is healthy, a child will learn. It is an honour to be part of a Government that is helping to feed our children.

The next policy that I wanted to highlight was better childcare assistance for working families. This Government is indexing childcare assistance to income thresholds to increase with the average wage. This benefits around a thousand families. This Government is also increasing funding for the OSCAR, which stands for the Out of School Care and Recreation Service programme, and that will help around 9,000 low-income parents remain in employment and training. We, as part of this Government, are supporting families with childcare to stay in work, and that’s so important for these families’ future.

In the brief time I have left, the last policy I wanted to focus on was period products in schools. This has been recently announced by Minister Jan Tinetti to be in all schools by June this year. Now, this particular programme will do a myriad of things. One thing is improve attendance. Another thing is assist low-income families and also end unjustified stigma that has too long been associated with what is a very normal function.

So, in conclusion, I just wanted to reflect on why we all came to this House. I believe, from both sides of this House, we came here to make a difference so that the future would be better for our children, for our grandchildren, for our nieces and nephews. There is no better way of ensuring we achieve this goal than by supporting our tamariki and their parents, by supporting families to live their lives and to grow. So I would like to commend the Government for its work that it’s done supporting children.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.