General Debate

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

It is a great day to be here in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is also a great day to be part of a Government that is focused on the important issues, like keeping COVID-19 out of New Zealand, like making sure that New Zealanders have access to the COVID-19 vaccine, like keeping Kiwis in jobs, and like fixing the run-down infrastructure that we inherited as a Government. Great news today: unemployment back to pre - COVID-19 levels. Because of the careful economic management of this Government, because of the willingness of this Government to tackle the big challenges, keep the New Zealand economy moving despite the global situation, and make the big, bold calls when they needed to be made, we have one of the most resilient economies in the world, and I think all New Zealanders acknowledge that and they appreciate that.

Another big piece of news today: 2 million vaccines delivered across New Zealand so far. As a result of the speed of the vaccine campaign, we have been able to open up eligibility for the 55-plus age cohort five days early—five days early—from next Friday. That’d account for the majority of the members opposite, probably! Five days early from next Friday—that’s good news, and I know New Zealanders are looking forward to booking into the vaccine programme.

We are seeing record numbers of people signing up for apprenticeships and trades training, tackling the long-term skill shortages that have held those industries back in New Zealand. The Government’s programme to support New Zealanders into trades training through free apprenticeships and free trades training has helped 144,000 New Zealanders so far. I was delighted only a couple of weeks ago to attend an event held by the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation where they celebrated their 20,000th active apprentice—a record number of apprentices in the building and construction industry. That is great news.

So when it comes to demanding the debate, let’s talk about those things. If the Opposition want to debate the economy, if they want to debate unemployment, if they want to debate healthcare, if they want to debate education, we are right there with them, because I will put our record up against their record any day of the week. But they don’t seem to want to debate those things. Apparently, it has just come to their attention that some people refer to New Zealand as Aotearoa. Stop the clock. Apparently, this is news to them. What a terrifying prospect. Never mind the fact that it’s been on our money. It’s been on our money since the National Party were in Government. That seems to have escaped their attention. Kiwis—Kiwis—are we still allowed to call them “Kiwis”, actually? Do we have to call them “New Zealanders”? When our athletes come back, do we have to call them “New Zealand athletes”, or are we allowed to call them “Kiwis”, as we always have? Apparently, the language police in the National Party are going to determine what we’re allowed to call things from here on in.

But also on the other side of the House, of course, we’ve got the honest conversations being held up and down the country by the ACT Party—begs the question what kind of conversations they normally have, if they’ve just discovered the value of honest conversations. But we had a new one today from Melissa Lee. What a cracker! Apparently, their low polling’s all to do with the fact that Kris Faafoi’s purchased the media, and therefore it’s all stacked up against them. It’s working really well for him so far! But apparently it’s all Kris Faafoi’s fault that the National Party’s down in the doldrums.

Then, of course, we get the desperate tactics, the fake news that we see out of the National Party. Apparently, we ran out of COVID-19 syringes this week. Not a chance. Not even close. Made up. Not news. Not true. Capital and Coast District Health Board—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member’s not allowed to accuse Opposition members of making things up.

The news apparently that the Capital and Coast District Health Board were behind schedule and were going to flow through their vaccination campaign into next year: not true. In fact, the chief executive of the district health board went to great lengths this morning to correct that misinformation being deliberately spread about the vaccine campaign. There is enough misinformation about the vaccine campaign out there already from people who should know better. The people who should know better shouldn’t be adding to that misinformation as they have been.

I am very, very proud to be part of a Government that is delivering for New Zealand low unemployment, a booming economy, people in work, boosting trades training, and, of course, vaccines for New Zealanders.

My speech is of a different tone to the previous speaker’s, but I do acknowledge everything that he says is right.

In 1964, my own father migrated to New Zealand from Samoa. He was part of the wave of Pacific migrants who entered New Zealand during the 1950s and 60s, invited to come here to Aotearoa New Zealand to address the workforce shortages that we were experiencing here. He came here, he moved to Taranaki, he worked on the railways, and he occasionally helped with haymaking. He played for the Taupō rugby and cricket teams. He met a farmer’s daughter and he had three daughters born in 1974, 1977, and 1980. He then went and settled in Waitara and worked at the freezing works.

It’s really hard for this daughter of a migrant to comprehend that the backdrop to that history and to the history of so many other Pacific people that came at the same time, or within those two decades, was a history where they were traumatised and terrorised, where they were chased down by dogs, where they were arrested unlawfully, and where they were harassed on the street. They were traumatised. So I am very proud to be part of a Government who, on Sunday, reached out to our Pacific community to heal the wrongs of the past, to officially apologise for what we have all known for a long time was wrong, and for mistreatment of the Pacific community of that time.

We were really clear that an apology is not just about the words to that community; it is about what we do moving forward. So it was appropriate that part of that included the extension of gifts in the form of educational opportunities for the Pacific community. Appropriate, because when our Pacific community migrated to New Zealand, on their minds was ensuring that they could work, that they could support their families back in the Islands, that they could get access to better opportunities for their children so that their children could have more than what they had access to growing up and whilst working those factory floors.

That extension of gifts, those gifts that were offered, do not sit alone; they sit alongside an agenda, a Government’s agenda that is very much focused on ensuring that all of our communities, including the Pacific community, get the opportunities that they deserve, the opportunities that they came here for: to get ahead. So I was relieved today to see that we have seen an improvement in the unemployment rates for Pacific people of 2.6 percent—a bigger jump than for any other group with regards to the latest unemployment figures.

It’s important, because we know that whenever there is an event of this type, a pandemic, a global financial crisis, there are particular groups in this country who are disproportionately impacted: Māori, of course, and Pacific being the other group. To see that we have not reached the lows that had been originally forecast is another relief. But to see that we are improving the situation for New Zealand broadly, but particularly for Pacific communities, for me as a Pacific Minister, is important.

It’s not just about the educational offerings that were given out at the apology. It is about our whole Government programme and what we are doing to support our Pacific community now and moving forward. Many of you in this room will know and our community will know that the programmes and the initiatives that we have put in place to respond to COVID have been targeted, and we don’t apologise on this side of the room for that. Our programmes, Mana in Mahi, Flexi-wage, He Poutama Rangatahi, and the supports on the front line at the Ministry of Social Development offices are all targeted towards supporting those who are most likely to be disadvantaged in a tight labour market and during an event like we are experiencing at the moment.

Those actions and the fact that we have invested in those places with a focus on those communities, including our Pacific communities, are indicative of the fact that our Government takes inclusion, participation, equity, fairness, and opportunities for people to get ahead in Aotearoa New Zealand seriously. We look forward to continuing that work in many different forms whilst we have the privilege of being in Government.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Democracy is the greatest form of Government that humanity has ever invented. It allows the citizens to peacefully send little messages to a failing Government, at the ballot box and sometimes before then, through the polls. The polls are crystal clear when it comes to a message on this Government. Right direction versus wrong direction, New Zealanders increasingly say that this country is going in the wrong direction.

The gap between ACT and National on the one hand and Labour and Greens on the other is closing, closing, closing—now only 10 seats, with two years to run. ACT is driving that change with some old-fashioned democratic habits of listening to voters, a 46-stop Honest Conversations Tour that has been packing halls from Ōāmaru to Stratford. Up and down this country, people come to say, “We are sick and tired of the way this Government treats us with contempt and makes promises and announcements but never follows through.”

The year of delivery, with no delivery. Then, there was the year of the vaccine. This Government couldn’t organise a vaccination at a pharmacy—that’s not a joke; it is literally true.

People are looking at a Government that is constantly distracted by gesture politics. It wants to ban gay-conversion therapy. It wants to ban hate speech. It can’t enforce the laws that have already been made. New Zealanders up and down this country are sick and tired of a Government that is busy banning new things, when it can’t keep them safe on the street. When women in central Auckland and central Wellington say, “I don’t go outside my apartment after 10 o’clock because it is just not safe on the streets of New Zealand’s largest cities at night.”, is it the time for the Government to be cracking down on gangs, cracking down on crime, or is it the time for the Government to be constantly seeking diversions?

On Saturday this weekend, there were two meetings. One of them at the Auckland Town Hall, the Labour Party and Government held what could only be described as a “rally”, apologising for immigration policy before Jacinda Ardern was born. Down the road, in Sandringham, at another meeting, politicians from every political party were listening to today’s immigrants separated from their children for over a year by this Government’s immigration policy today. Their apology would have so much more substance if only they were committed to dealing with today’s infractions.

In between central Auckland and Sandringham, I could take you to any number of places where people are living in motels—4,000 children living in motels, because this Government was elected to fix housing, but has fundamentally failed to do so. There are too few homes for the number of people living in this country, and the Government has failed there comprehensively.

What are we going to do about it? Well, throughout this three-week recess that Parliament has had, the ACT Party was not only listening—going up and down New Zealand, 46 meetings, packed halls, thousands of people—we were responding with positive ideas for a better tomorrow: how to crack down on gangs, with gang injunction orders that have worked in Britain and the US, instead of giving gangs money; how to get homes built, by sharing GST on construction and the jurisdiction of the council giving the consent for it to happen; funding infrastructure; opening up land for the future of New Zealand so that the next generation has a pathway to being part of a property-owning democracy; and painting a pathway out of COVID-19—out of COVID-19—that is intelligent, that works with private enterprise, that has a proper conception of risk, uses technology, and gives New Zealanders certainty about the future that we are facing. And where was the Labour Party? Apologising for things that happened a generation ago.

Here’s the thing: not one Labour MP was there to hear those immigrants suffering today. That is shameful. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think I’m going to start off by just acknowledging that we have reached a low unemployment rate of 4 percent. It was announced earlier today. The thought that Grant Robertson was out there with shovels making that happen I find slightly interesting, particularly as the Government loves to take credit for this sort of thing, but it is good that we have a low unemployment rate. But the question is: having thrown $56 billion to get to that point, we should be expecting to see some decrease in the unemployment rate, but is this as good as it gets? Is this the lowest rate that we can get? Is this the best? Is this what we should be striving for?

I think members on the other side of the House might be reflecting on the same theme when they think back to May, just a few months ago, when Labour was polling at 56 percent, and now they’re polling at 43 percent. Was that as good as it got? I’ve got to say, on my reckoning, that would be 15 fewer MPs in this House, and I don’t know whether that is his strategy. But the one thing we do need in our workforce is we need skilled people, and having a low unemployment rate is good, even though we’ve still got 190,000 people on the unemployment benefit—190,000 people—but the major issue we’ve got is the lack of skilled people in New Zealand and just people to be able to get on and make it happen with businesses.

I’ll give you two examples. I’ve got a friend who has a kitchen business. They have been struggling so much to find staff. The last person they took on, they gave them a shot. It was a person who had been in prison, and they are now finding it so difficult, because even the people they’re taking on and offering very high wages to, they are not turning up to work regularly. He’s faced with the prospect of letting go a very, very significant client, because he knows he cannot deliver the type of product in the time that’s required. So his next option actually is to let go of the very important client he has, downsize, and fire another four people. That is because we’ve got a labour shortage. Some of it’s skilled and some of it otherwise.

I’ll give you another example. I went to a business that makes prefabricated materials for houses—and we’ve talked about housing a lot lately. This company is so worried about the lack of staff availability that they have imported the latest equipment so that they can process much of it in an automated session, using the latest equipment imported from Germany. The issue they have is they cannot even get people across the border to come and complete the installation of that equipment—and we’re talking about millions of dollars’ worth of equipment—because they cannot get them across the border. This what I’m hearing across the entire New Zealand. Every time I go to a business audience, the number one issue is the lack of labour.

It’s good that the Government is suddenly waking up to the idea of doing something with Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme workers finally, after months of doing that, particularly when they come from countries that have no COVID, who have been screaming out to come here, and we have an obligation in the Pacific through our Realm nations there particularly. It is a tardy and long-overdue response. But the basic thing that is happening is this Government is strangling businesses by not allowing people to come into New Zealand and actually help them do the work. I think the worst thing about this is that over time, and next year in particular, I think it’s going to be so much more difficult as we have Australians in here, we have the Canadians in here, poaching our best New Zealanders, taking them overseas, and we’re still going to be landlocked here in New Zealand.

The outlook for 2022 is absolutely horrific, and I’d just say to the members opposite: what you should do is pick up the press release from Erica Stanford and Judith Collins today specifying our immigration approach—namely, that we’re going to clear the backlog of people here in New Zealand who are seeking residency here in New Zealand. The second thing is to decouple the visa relationship with employers.

I really don’t have a lot to say about that last speaker, Andrew Bayly, because really if that’s the best that that particular party’s got, then we can see why they’re concentrating on our side of the polls and not their own.

But I did want to just touch on the ACT leader’s contribution in this House, because, quite frankly, they showed how out of touch they are with the hurt and the shame that was caused by a dark history in this country with the Dawn Raids. I have never been so proud as I was when I saw our Prime Minister deliver an apology on behalf of this country to people whose hurt has stayed with them for so very, very long. And I am absolutely proud that we are now going to be giving the resources to the Ministry of Education to develop the resources to tell that history in schools. I think that it is well needed when you hear the interpretation from the other side of the House of that.

It is a great day here in this country. I am so proud of the work that this Government is doing when we see that both unemployment rates and underutilisation rates have dropped markedly in the June quarter—in fact, the largest quarterly drops that have ever been recorded. We are certainly a Government that is focused on securing our COVID recovery, and a key part of our plan is building infrastructure to create jobs.

With this in mind, as Minister for Women, I want to use the COVID-19 recovery as an opportunity to change and lay down the foundations to build back better for our women, and to make a more resilient future for our women and our girls. This means that we are working towards ensuring that our women are working in a variety of sectors and are better placed to tackle any economic crisis in the future, because we know from history that economic shocks disproportionately impact women in this country. We know that after the global financial crisis and after the Christchurch earthquakes, which were the most recent in our memory, but also after and during this COVID-19 pandemic, that women have been disproportionately impacted in the labour market.

Now, while we need to ensure that we are building back better immediately to ensure that disproportionate impact is minimised, we also need to ensure that when the next global market shock hits that women are not being disproportionately impacted. This is absolutely critical to the future of our women, and none of us can do this alone. So as a result, this Government has committed to producing a women’s employment action plan which will seek to address barriers and challenges that disadvantage women. This will give us a real chance to identify steps to support women to fulfil their potential.

I have been talking with many groups of women around the country who are wanting to contribute to this plan, including groups such as the National Council of Women of New Zealand, groups such as Pacific Women, and Wāhine Māori. I have met with many, many groups along the way. Today, I met with groups from Women’s Refuge out in Porirua. I also have been talking this week with women in horticulture who want to very much be part of this plan and feed into it, because they can see that they have this real potential now to build back better for women and into the future.

I have said to all of these groups: “What can each of us do collectively to increase the number of women in leadership positions and to increase women who are better utilised within the workforce? What are we doing as women in our workplace to encourage and support them to have aspirations and set goals and aim high? How can we not only attract women to these sectors but retain them in the long term?” I’m proud of what we are doing in this country to build back better.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure. I rise to take a call in this general debate today. This is the first opportunity I’ve had to speak in the general debate since we had the terrible flooding in Canterbury; so I do want to begin my contribution with some acknowledgments to people who were involved in that.

First and foremost, I wish to acknowledge our farmers and our rural community, who were so devastatingly affected by the floods that we had nearly a couple of months ago. It’s been a hugely stressful time for many of these people, and from what we have seen, though, they are extremely resilient, and we have come together quite beautifully as a community to support those farmers in that space.

I’d also like to acknowledge our mayor, Neil Brown, for his leadership and his fantastic communication skills with our community and nationally during that time, and behind every good man there is obviously a very, very good woman, and so it would be remiss of me not to mention our deputy mayor, Liz McMillan, who also supported in a really great way.

I think it’s important to acknowledge everyone who was involved at the time: Farmy Army, Student Volunteer Army, great initiatives like Taskforce Green, who I have heard since helped out in that flooding event and that a couple have gone on to employment in some of the farming areas that they may have helped out in. Rural support has played a huge and vital role in this recovery period as well.

I’d also really like to thank David Clark and Greg Anderson, our presidents from Mid and South Canterbury Federated Farmers, for their support that they showed our farmers at the time. Especially I’d like to thank Chris and Ann-Marie Allen, Stacey and Mark Stewart, Darryl and Lynn Butterick, Laurence and Phillippa Rooney, who allowed us on to their farms to see the devastating impact of those floods. They have such a huge, huge task ahead of them with their clean up, and so I wish them all the best in that. And I know it’s just not going to be an easy road at all; it is going to take months—who knows, possibly even years—to come back from.

I’d really like to thank our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, who came down twice after the floods, and our mayor, Neil Brown, acknowledged the other day that because she did that, that made the community feel very, very supported and that we were thinking of them at that time. We also had Minister Faafoi, Minister Woods, and Minister O’Connor come down and visit, and we had the announcement of the $4 million to help towards recovery. Whilst we know that’s certainly not going to fix everything, it is a great help in going forward in supporting some of that financial recovery.

This Government is focused on our COVID-19 recovery, and what we’ve seen through that is a focus on jobs in infrastructure and training. I was lucky enough to visit Jenkins Contracting in Timaru the other day with my Education and Workforce Committee colleagues to see what impact that is having in reality and on the ground. In Timaru, we were lucky to have Venture Timaru, who took care of what was called the apprenticeship—I can’t even think of the word now—scheme where we got quite a high level of funding, up to $40,000 per apprentice. They were expecting this to roll out over 12 months. Well, all these spaces, 100 spaces, were filled within five months, and Grant Jenkins from Jenkins Contracting has taken on, I think, around six apprentices. He has said that what this has allowed them to do is take a chance on these people and give the more senior members in his workforce time—really good, quality time—to spend training up these apprentices, something that may not have been able to happen before, because, when you’re really busy, and we know the construction sector is hugely busy, time is of the essence to get jobs and things done for your clients. Having the ability to take on these people with that financial support has been absolutely fantastic.

We were also lucky enough to visit some places that were providing lunches in schools. I want to give a shout-out to Lunch By Libelle, who have employed 13 local people. They are actually living-wage employers, and they roll out 1,300 lunches per day in Timaru to our children who desperately need that. It allows them to work much better in school, pay more attention, and have the ability to learn. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

One hundred and ninety thousand—190,000—is a big number, but every single one of those is a person, a family, who’s doing it tough. So while Labour might crow today that the unemployment rate from a Statistics survey is low at 4 percent, what hasn’t shifted is the number of people who are dependent on the job seeker benefit, so, unfortunately, it’s not so positive and optimistic and upbeat for them. I want to see the Government focus more seriously on each one of those 190,000 New Zealanders, because they’re people who are struggling each and every day in each and every week. And at the same time, it’s enormously frustrating that businesses, large and small, are desperate for workers, whether it’s in agriculture, whether it’s construction, whether it’s in hospitality and tourism in my electorate, whether it’s in aged-care residential facilities. So here’s a message I got earlier from a constituent: “I need to vent to my local MP. With 117,000 people unemployed, according to Statistics, and 190,000 according to MSD, why are some more not made to work in agriculture and hospitality when employers are crying out for overseas people? No one even mentions the point. Why can’t the unemployed fill these jobs?”

I’ll give you one answer. I’ll give you one answer: because the obligations under this Government have been reduced. And what does that do? That makes it harder for the very people the Government is supposed to be supporting, who are currently unemployed and on the job seeker benefit to get a job, to get opportunities, to get back on their feet and have the ability to put food on the table in their own home for their own family. They’re quiet now—they’re quiet now. So there’s a mismatch there and while Robertson might come out and crow about the 4 percent, I want New Zealanders to think about the 190,000 New Zealanders, that’s 70,000 more—70,000 more—than there were when the Government came into office. It’s connected to hardship—it’s connected to hardship. So in the Ministry of Social Development’s own quarterly statistics as of the end of June, we’re, unfortunately, continuing to see vast amounts of hardship grants that are required: $81.1 million for accommodation-related. We’re seeing still massive spikes in food grants, for electricity and gas, medical-related costs, and accommodation-related separate to emergency housing. So this is not a rosy picture of New Zealanders going well and doing well, particularly when there are businesses desperate for workers and people who are looking for and supposedly available for work.

So the other part of the tragedy—emergency housing: now 4,300 children this Government has put in motels and not even taken the basic measures to protect their safety. They don’t know who’s there. They don’t know how long. They’ve got children next to gang members. They don’t care about the fact that they are witnessing sexual assaults, violence, prostitution, drug dealing each and every day. Oh, and here’s the good news, they’ve just started a complaints register—just. How many months, how many months later? How many years later? Four and a half thousand children is another number I want New Zealanders to remember, particularly when we have asked and asked and asked for basic safety precautions to be undertaken. But oh no, the Government can’t tell us exactly what criminals are where, how many in which motel. They can’t tell us—oh no, they’ve told us actually the motels that are getting the most money from taxpayers, so that’s useful—a million dollars a day—and, meanwhile, basic things like building more houses and emergency legislation that we offered the Government in January would get more houses built now.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. In life there are some moments that when they happen you know you’re going to remember them for the rest of your life. I think for me, three of those moments have happened here in this House. I just want to take you back, by way of explanation, to my previous role monitoring child health, and I guess also the time of year we’re in, the middle of winter. Down South in winter it’s a beautiful time of the year. We’ve got those beautiful crisp mornings, you’ve got those amazing frost patterns that you scrape off your car windscreen, and we’ve got people flocking to Wānaka and Queenstown so they can ski in our beautiful southern landscapes.

But I think for my colleagues on the children’s ward, winter used to be a different time of the year, and what used to happen is that collision of cold, draughty rental houses, low incomes, and not being able to turn the heater on ended up with huge winter peaks in children coming to hospitals with respiratory and infectious diseases. And so, basically, in my previous role one of my jobs used to be to teach medical students about the links between child poverty and the thousands of sick kids we were seeing every year coming into hospital for poverty related diseases. What I used to talk to them about was the fact that if you took them back to the “mother of all Budgets” back in 1991, when we saw benefits slashed across the board and a whole lot of other policy changes, within two years what we saw is we saw child poverty rates spiking and then they never really came back down.

So then as the global financial crisis hit, a number of us working in child health started to get really concerned because what we were worried about was if we see these big rises in unemployment—and we knew our benefit rates were inadequate—we’d see a big spillover in child poverty. So we developed up this thing called the Child Poverty Monitor, which is still with us today. We went to a Paediatric Society conference back in 2019 and we lit a candle and we said, “We commit to monitoring the wellbeing of New Zealand’s children until the economic position improves.” And so every year we updated the monitor and every year it was exactly the same. So we’d say, “Look, there’s thousands of sick kids coming into hospital for poverty related conditions and our child poverty rates persist.” And every year I used to ask for the same three things. I used to ask for measures to improve family incomes and reduced child poverty, I used to ask for rental standards for houses, and I used to ask for measures to improve affordability of GP access, particularly after hours. So for me, having spent nearly a decade asking for the same three things, basically one of the reasons I entered Parliament was to escape my own personal groundhog day where every year I stood up and said the same.

And so the first moment for me that I will remember and I still remember was sitting in this debating chamber just before Christmas in 2017 and the Families Package passed into law. It was incredible after almost nine years of advocating for the same thing, within two months of coming in, we had the Best Start payment of $60 a week for newborn babies. We basically had something that we weren’t actually, as advocates for child poverty, asking for, which was the winter energy payment, and we also had increases to Working for Families.

And then the second moment was also just before that Christmas, when the Healthy Homes Guarantee Act passed into law. And, again, within a couple months of coming in that paved the way for those rental standards we’d been asking for for so long. And I think between that moment and the next one, we put a range of other things in. So, basically, we’ve increased the minimum wage progressively, so now there’s a lot narrower gap between the minimum wage and the living wage; we’ve indexed benefits to the average wage instead of the Consumers Price Index, that will make a huge difference over time; we’ve removed some of those punitive benefit sanctions; we’ve got low-cost doctors’ visits for community services card holders; and we also increased the benefits by $25 a week as part of the COVID-19 response.

But for me, from a historical perspective, it was actually sitting in the House—just back over there—a couple of months ago with the Budget debate, when Grant Robertson announced that we would be increasing benefits by up to $55 a week, with that first $20 coming in on 1 July this year. I think after three decades of those—you know, the “mother of all Budgets” impacting our children and young people in this country, seeing that huge transformational shift, saying, “We have now moved to address what had underpinned so much of everything I was seeing in terms of child poverty in those hospital admissions.”—So for me, we’ve got a long way still to go but I think the changes that we’ve made over the past four years have been incredible. And I’m looking forward to looking ahead into the next few years when we see many, many fewer children coming into hospital with poverty-related diseases. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s often said about politics that a week is a very long time. If a week’s a very long time, then a winter of discontent is an even much longer time—a much, much longer time.

So we’ve come back to the Parliament after the recess of three weeks, where some of us have been out working hard in our electorates, visiting businesses, talking to employers, talking to employees, and talking to people and listening to their worries, their concerns, and their issues with this current Government. And what do we find on the eve of our return to Parliament? A very telling poll. I’ve not ever seen in recent times so many scared faces sitting on the Government benches. Most of that back bench will be gone by the time the next election rolls around, because they have lost connectivity with middle New Zealand and they know it. There’s nothing like a bad poll result and a case of the political seasonal sniffles to give a party a bit of a wake-up call, and this Labour Government seems to have not yet heard the clarion call of the voters of New Zealand that their time is on short fuse.

So as I’ve tripped around the electorate of the Coromandel and I’ve talked to employers and I’ve visited other parts of the country talking to chambers of commerce and the like, employers’ groups, I’ve been talking to them about Labour’s so-called fair pay agreements. And what I’ve heard back is that there is an awful lot to fear about Labour’s fair pay agreements. Often I talk about how these were centralised closed-door agreements between big trade unions and big employers, made in Wellington, and they were a hallmark of the industrial relations landscape in New Zealand all through the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and they were finally put to rest in the early 1990s. Since then, of course, we’ve had an opportunity to have enterprise agreements where individual employees and individual businesses get down together and they talk about wages and they talk about conditions, and they talk about terms of employment. Labour want to take us back to those bad old days. There are a lot of people my age and older who remember how bad that was not just for employers but for employees and our total economy.

But what’s been fascinating, as I’ve been listening to younger business people and employers around the countryside, is that they, too, are fearful of Labour’s fair pay agreements. They’re absolutely scared witless, because they say, “Well, where’s the democracy? Where’s the fairness? Where is the equity in what Labour are proposing to do?” And they understand that the real risk is actually just a return to union based negotiations that will dominate the industrial relations landscape. But the younger business managers and owners and operators and the younger employees who don’t remember the bad old days, they say, “Well, we want to have democracy in the workplace. We don’t think it’s fair. We don’t think it’s fair or reasonable that just 10 percent of a sector, of a whole sector, can decide the negotiated wage agreements for the other 90 percent.” And in some sectors it’s going to be as few as a thousand people in one sector group.

So just think, for a moment, about a large sector of the employee groups; let’s say, sales reps, for instance, of which there are probably about 100,000 in the country. They are probably going to end up being unionised, because it won’t be too hard to probably find a thousand sympathisers who will say, “Oh, yeah, you know, we want a fair pay agreement.” But the other 99,000 people who don’t want it are going to be forced into a negotiated agreement that is decided by big unions and big business behind closed doors in Wellington.

It’s part of a theme about centralisation, about ruling this country by proclamation from the Beehive, issuing decrees from Wellington. We’ve seen it in centralising health, centralising education, centralising the water arrangements, and now they want to take us back to the bad old days of a centralised—well, it’s not really a negotiation. It’s not a negotiation at all. It’s a system that will be decided behind closed doors, and the only thing that’s really different between now and the period back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s is, of course, those closed rooms are probably not smoke-filled any more.

We know, on this side of the House, that one size doesn’t fit all, and actually employees and employers all around the country know that one size doesn’t suit all. There’s another often quoted rule of life and politics and history and that is: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There is nothing broken with our employment relations—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s great to be back in the House this week amongst my positive and proactive Labour party colleagues in Government, getting the job done. I certainly appreciated time back in Northcote seeing firsthand the difference that this Government is making to our North Shore community, and how we are delivering in our economic recovery.

The top of the list, of course, in Birkenhead, is our COVID vaccine roll-out, and across the road from my electorate office is the Birkenhead Vaccination Centre. Every day it’s full of local people getting their vaccines, and I want to thank the hard-working staff that are there doing an amazing job, providing an A-class service to our community.

A highlight for me last week is that I got to host our Labour infrastructure caucus committee at Kāinga Ora’s Northcote housing development. This is a transformational project for our community that started under the Clark Government, took far too long under the National Government—it stalled, actually—but I especially enjoyed meeting all of our apprentices that are working on building houses in Northcote, training up the next generation. It’s a really important legacy of this project, and it’s delivering for our North Shore community.

Now, the things that we’ve done—and this is a real list of achievements in the work that we’ve been doing and the fabulous outcomes of having a Labour Government, and a Northcote MP as a part of Government. We’re delivering on 1,550 new warm, dry homes, replacing 350 tired, old State houses that National didn’t. A third are Kāinga Ora homes for social rent, another third for affordable KiwiBuild houses for first-home buyers, and another third that are on the open market—233 homes have been completed under this Government, and construction commences for a further 300 this year. One hundred and seventy-four homes have been planned for the Birkdale - Beach Haven end of my electorate, on the other side. Last month I got to open 54 of 94 that we’ve opened since this Labour Party has been in Government. In addition to that, 736 homes have been consented in the last year in our Kaipātiki area—736.

But alongside homes, we have to build communities, and have infrastructure in place that supports these things to get done. So in addition to that, on Monday I had the privilege of attending the blessing of the newly built $19.5 million Onepoto Primary School in the heart of the Northcote Development. There’s three pocket parks alongside Onepoto as well, and the Awataha Greenway Project that brings a sense of environment back into our community. We’ve invested $58 million in the rebuild of Northcote College, and alongside that, invested millions in other local schools, including Northcote Intermediate School, Beach Haven Primary School, Birkenhead Primary School, and we’re not finished yet. That’s only eight months into my term as the local MP.

We’ve invested in our hospital, too. On the North Shore: $267 million, 120 elective surgery beds that under Minister Little’s watch we are getting done. And last weekend, alongside Minister Wood, we got on our bikes on the North Shore and we opened the Northcote safe cycling route and bridges connecting our community across the motorway.

We’re getting things done, and I’m very, very proud of the work, and bravery, that we are doing. But what we know is that population growth on the North Shore—and the statistic is that we estimate an additional 600,000 people by 2050. We need to plan now and invest in infrastructure to get things done. That’s why, under this Government, $31 billion has been invested in the Auckland Transport Alignment Project to get our local people moving. But as we know, there is no silver bullet to achieving our transport woes on the North Shore and the gridlock that we experience. We’ve got to have multiple modes connecting us from Northcote across the North Shore and across the city. We’ve got to see cycling, walking, cars too, we’ve got to have rapid transport, and also walking and cycling across the harbour. It’s one of our priorities, and, in particular, the comments of Minister Robertson—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Housing is a human right, and that’s where the Green Party has been very clear where we pitch our vision, our solutions, and our policies. I stand today as the co-leader for the Green Party to support the recent calls this week from the human rights commissioner but a call that has been long-time—around the world, in fact—to ensure that we really are treating housing as a place for people to put down roots, to have a sense of stability and security; a place that looks after people, that is healthy, that is warm; a place that is affordable; a place that is accessible, which we have a particular issue and challenge with at the moment; a place that is located where people can access places to play, live, work, and be educated, get their social needs; a place that accepts the diversity of the ways of living across different communities, that can respond culturally to the different needs.

If we had been approaching our housing solutions with housing as a human right over the many decades and successive Governments, we would not be facing the amount of harm and impact from unaffordability and a housing crisis that we are seeing today—an impact that has been the result of successive Governments giving far too much power to housing as a tradable commodity over and above housing as a place for people to live in, housing as a home over and above just a way for making a few people a lot of wealth and a lot of money. That is how we have allowed this country to treat housing for far too long, and so the Greens were absolutely supportive when we heard a recent call from the human rights commissioner. This is not just a housing crisis; this is a human rights crisis, and the Greens have been very clear that we need to put up solutions that can deliver those human rights aspects of housing, of an adequate standard of living to the many and not just to the few.

It is important that we understand that housing as a human right upholds Te Tiriti and indigenous rights as part of the overall human rights landscape, and that a key solution to our housing where Māori, who are absolutely one of the disproportionately represented groups in housing challenge, are able and enabled to lead housing solutions and able to lead with housing provision and supply in the way that Māori can organise and have power over community and whānau wellbeing. We also know that housing provision with community housing providers, including Pacific housing providers, is essential to uplifting a human rights approach to housing.

We don’t often enough as politicians focus on the 1.4 million, I think, who are also renting. Human rights are indivisible from who we might be, what our background might be as people, what our living situation might be today. Human rights apply to all of us, whether we are renting, whether we own a home—whatever living situation we are in, whatever community we belong to, whatever income we have to support ourselves. These notions of adequate standards of living are indivisible from our human rights, from what we have a responsibility collectively to provide all of our people in this country no matter who we are.

So the solutions that the Greens have always wanted to offer to meet the actual size of the challenge that we are facing are even more important today than in the couple of decades or so that we have been very clear about what is needed: essentially, interrupting, stopping urgently the speculative ramping up of houses being used as tradable commodities that is making it incredibly unaffordable for people to live in housing today in a way that gives people dignity. Having some rent controls right now, sadly, is needed, because it’s going to take far too long to bring our housing crisis and rental down to a level that is affordable, to give people some sense of hope and security. So I am proud to continue to put up the Green housing solutions and a human rights approach to housing. Thank you.

Now, we have two people taking the call—two people attempting to take the call. The Māori Party, which has been allocated the call, has chosen not to take one today. I’m going to suggest that I take the leave of the House to have two calls each of 2½ minutes. Is there any objection to that process? There appears to be none.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I wanted to use this brief opportunity to talk about the workforce crisis that we have in this country. At the beginning of the recess, I went out on the road, along with a massive number of people from the rural sector, to voice the concerns that we’re seeing around the overreach around Government regulation, particularly in that sector.

One of the key issues that we’re seeing, particularly in Northland—and I spoke with a farmer up there, Adam Cullen—was that there was a significant challenge around the turnover of the farm workers on his farm. He has one of his farm workers that have actually had to relocate to Australia because the Australian immigration department is so much more advanced than ours and has already offered his staff permanent residency.

The healthcare sector is also suffering from a workforce crisis—of which this Government is failing to listen to the concerns of those very workers on the ground. I was in the North Shore ambulance station only last week talking to a couple of the front-line medics there. The workload and challenges that they are faced with at the moment, primarily due to workforce shortages and crises, are significant. These are real people—young people within our communities—that are paying the price for action and non-delivery by that side.

The aged-care sector has got 900 nursing vacancies in this country and, probably, a number of thousand vacancies across the wider country in wider roles. Again, we are seeing no action from this Government around listening and putting in place practical applications and practical actions that will deal with closing these gaps. We have a thousand doctors and nurses sitting in the immigration queues, wanting to get into this country to fill the many thousand vacancies that we have within this country, and, again, we are told that we are planning and considering, but we are not taking action.

The number one issue that I hear, across the period of the recess with business, was the lack of workforce. Hospitality: in the Northcote electorate, The Engine Room restaurant in the electorate across the row here—where the MP Shannon Halbert was talking about how good they are—has actually gone and done their own petition because they are struggling with the significantly high number of vacancies in the hospitality sector. Yet their own MP is failing to act in his electorate to deal with some of those issues.

Kia orana, Mr Speaker. I would like to start with a massive congratulations to the Hawke’s Bay exporters of the year, Frost Fans. Frost Fans are a business that’s built on the back of a horticultural sector, and they are going places. At the exporter of the year awards we saw businesses celebrating the success they’ve had—yes, in a hard, tough year, but they’re out there celebrating and doing well. It’s been a big, big week in Hastings, because we’ve heard from the Minister of Immigration that this Government has announced that we’re opening a corridor with our Pasifika islands to bring in the RSEs. The RSE is a scheme, the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme, that was developed under the Labour Government. It has been one of the single greatest tools that has driven this horticultural sector, and this is why we do it: because when you get the fruit picked, you grow long, full, permanent jobs for Kiwis, and that’s the important thing. In this year, in this season, we have seen 2,600 job seekers come off the benefit to come and work in horticulture. That is a fact, and those are the things that matter when we start growing jobs from the best place in the world to grow apples and pears.

I want to give a great big shout-out to the growers. They have developed excellent relationships with the Labour Government. They have been talking. They’ve had an open way through to speak with the Minister. It has been tough, but they are celebrating this week. We know that when it comes to this season we are going to pick, harvest, pack, export thousands of premium quality, beautiful apples that will go to the other side of the world. That’s what we do here in the Labour Government. We developed the RSE scheme. We are keeping it rolling out. Thank you, Mr Speaker: this is what matters on this side of the House where we’re working with business and growing apples, growing jobs. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income (Fair Residency) Amendment Bill.