General Debate

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

Last Friday, Aucklanders, in the midst of one of the most crushing lockdowns in the world, tuned in at half past 10 in the morning, and what they were looking for was a plan and some certainty. They were looking, actually, for a bit of hope. That’s what they tuned in to find. The Monday before, they got picnics; this time, they got platitudes—platitudes from the “podium of truth”.

Here is the plan—“the plan”—as I understand it. Once everyone gets to 90 percent double-vaccinated in every DHB, we go to the traffic light system; that would be orange. Aucklanders can go to the traffic light system of red, once all the three Auckland DHBs get to 90 percent, except for if the Government decides to allow the three step levels in advance of that. The South Island has to wait for everybody else, including Tai Rāwhiti to get to 90 percent, except for if we get to 29 November when the South Island may be able to go down steps earlier, and Wellington may also be able to go earlier. In fact, Auckland may be able to go earlier, if the Government decides. I hope that’s clear! That’s literally the plan.

When can Aucklanders leave the Auckland prison? I don’t know; neither does the Prime Minister—they have no idea. When do freedoms start to return? We have no idea. When will vaccine certificates be available that might let Aucklanders leave the Auckland prison? We don’t know. Last month, it was “They’ll be ready in November.” Then the website was updated and it became mid-November. Then somebody turned up at the 1 p.m. “podium of truth” and it was actually the end of November. Last week, the website got updated randomly and it became mid-December. Then an hour later, it changed to the end of the year, and now it’s back to November. When will they be available? I don’t know.

Grant Robertson’s got the solution, though: paper. It’s literally like the train system in Wellington when you get on and you use paper tickets. Grant’s system is this antiquated, 100-year-old technology of paper—simple paper—that will allow New Zealanders access to greater freedom. This is embarrassing. The certificates aren’t ready, we were late to order the vaccines, we were late to roll them out, and now we’re going to be late to give people the proof to actually allow freedoms.

Why are we here? Here’s the truth: the truth is the Government spent the first six months of this year in smug self-congratulation mode. They sat back and they said, “Look at us, aren’t we so amazing. We’ve got this big majority. We smashed COVID.” They looked at the Bloomberg rankings, and they took the international plaudits, and they sat back and they crossed their arms and said, “Aren’t we clever? We’ve done so well in New Zealand.”

And while all that was happening, the COVID virus was mutating, and Delta turned up, and it turns out that the vaccine roll-out that we were so proud of in December—remember when Chris Hipkins said we were at the front of the queue for the vaccine—it actually turns out we were one of the slowest in the developed world to roll out the vaccine. This is a public policy failure of epic proportions, and when there is an inevitable commission of inquiry, or royal commission, it needs to examine exactly why New Zealand spent the bulk of this year as the slowest country in the developed world to roll out game-changing revolutionary vaccines.

Because here’s the truth: when Delta turned up in August and escaped, 20 percent of New Zealand was fully vaccinated—20 percent. That is shameful, and there was no excuse for New Zealand not to have vaccinated earlier. It was a deliberate policy decision by Government. Why do I say that? Because I look at the words of the Prime Minister in April: “We can afford to take our time. We’re lower in the pecking order, and actually I support that.” That’s what she said. The Government was comfortable with the slowness. In fact, they published ads, they published Government-funded propaganda, that everyone got, saying, “We can afford to take our time.”

Here’s the truth: you’re only as good as what’s gone before, and you’re only as good as what comes next, and this Government was an epic failure when it came to vaccinations. We were slow to order, we were slow to roll it out, and we were slow to get going on vaccine certificates. And when Delta turned up, we weren’t ready. And I fear we are going to make the same mistakes when it comes to boosters and now 5- to 11-year-olds’ vaccine. This Government has failed—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Well, it’s clear that in the caucus meeting yesterday when Chris Bishop got rolled on vaccine certificates, the booby prize was leading off the general debate with a call for the fact that you’re judged on what went before and what comes next. Well, I’m judging the National Party on what went before, what’s happening now, and if that’s what comes next, they’re in trouble.

I want to reiterate again the thanks of all members of this House to the people of Auckland and the people of Waikato for the work that they’re doing to ensure that the rest of New Zealand stays safe. I also want to especially acknowledge the progress that’s been made in all of the Auckland DHBs in reaching towards the target of 90 percent vaccination rates. There are now only 9,904 people who need to be vaccinated in one of those DHBs to reach that first dose of 90 percent and begin the next movement forward. That is fantastic progress and we want to thank every single person in that region who has done that.

Alongside that, the Government is putting more resources into supporting making sure New Zealanders get vaccinated. I want to particularly acknowledge our Māori health providers. They have been doing the heavy lifting around New Zealand to make sure we lift Māori vaccination rates. I believe we are making good progress there, but more needs to be done and that is why the Government established the $120 million fund that we did on Friday to push on, to push those rates up.

There are no easy decisions when it comes to COVID-19, and one of those was the one that the Government has made around vaccination mandates. But we know that it’s the right thing to do to provide certainty to businesses, certainty to workers, and certainty to New Zealanders about what is needed to keep them safe, and that is what the vaccine mandate has been all about.

Certainty is what matters here, but certainty was the one thing lacking from the Opposition’s response to vaccine mandates yesterday. By my count, in the last 24 hours the National Party have had four positions on vaccine mandates, and if you want this summed up, it’s the following quote from the Leader of the Opposition this morning: “If you look at the policy that we released about a month ago, it was very clear: 70, 75 percent, you can end nationwide lockdowns, but we’ve said you’ve got to get to 85 percent double vaccination rate across the country and then you get 80 percent in every DHB.” One interview: 70, 75, 80, 85. Will someone give me 90? Well, actually, we did, on this side of the House, but not over there because there is no clarity in that vaccine certificate position on that side of the House.

But perhaps we have a better insight into the Opposition’s position from an earlier interview today from the Leader of the Opposition when she said, referring to COVID, “Well, we just believe there needs to be an end time for this. There has to be some sort of, let’s say, when it finishes.” So we get on the phone and we give COVID a call and we say, “When are you finishing? When is it over?” Actually, I’d be quite surprised if COVID could keep up with the National Party’s positions on the vaccine certificate, so fast are they moving.

But this is what happens when it comes time to get your strategic advice about what to do on COVID-19, and you turn to the strategic geniuses in your caucus: Simeon Brown and Chris Penk! Because if they’re your strategic guides, you’re in trouble. And Chris Bishop, behind the mask, smiles, because he knows National is literally making this up as they go along. They made this decision at caucus yesterday about what to do about vaccine certificates. That’s why Judith Collins ended up with four positions in one day on vaccine certificates, because, actually, she didn’t listen to what Chris Bishop had been saying. He’s at least had some consistency when it comes to vaccine certificates and wanting them to be used. But not Judith Collins, not Chris Penk, not Simeon Brown. Now, Matthew Hooton, who knows a thing or two about this, has a name for the people in the National Party caucus that he uses to describe them. It’s not a word I would use, but the word is the “Taliban” inside the National Party caucus—the fundamentalists who come along every week to that caucus and push the National Party further and further away from where New Zealanders are.

Well, on this side of the House, we know that we have to give New Zealanders certainty. We have to give them confidence. We have had a plan from day one to save lives and livelihoods, and we have done that. One of the lowest mortality rates in the world, one of the lowest hospitalisation rates in the world, one of the lower unemployment rates in the world, and one of the higher rates of economic growth. This is not easy for anyone, especially those in Auckland, but if we stick to the plan New Zealand will come through this strong, and that is what the Government is leading.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to speak today about managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ), and that’s because today was the day that we actually expected an announcement on the MIQ changes. Unfortunately, to the 1 million New Zealanders who are currently stuck overseas, today is just another let-down, another disappointment from this Government about not knowing when they can come home. I want to acknowledge the feelings of frustration that people must be feeling, looking online, checking to see whether there are allocations available, and wanting to know what the future will hold. Should they get a visa in another country or will they actually be able to come back home and taste the fresh air of New Zealand? There is no certainty, and I want to endorse a banner that we saw at the All Blacks game at the USA: MIQ does suck and we should let them come home.

The Government keeps talking about the team of 5 million, but really we are a team of 6 million. There are grandparents in New Zealand whose grandchildren will nearly be reaching the age of two, and they still will never have had a cuddle. They will never have been able to give them a kiss, and I think that is so unfortunate and unfair. There are parents who have been separated from their children and they can’t come back through the border. We know that there are people who have missed the births and funerals of their children and their family members. I cannot imagine the frustration they are feeling and I want to acknowledge that.

But I want to talk about two stories that have come to me. I’ve been talking with a woman who is pregnant in New Zealand, who has not had the support of her partner, who’s been stuck, locked out of the country. She was so stressed her midwife was worried for her baby. Her emergency allocation for her husband was declined. And so what did she do? She decided to take the Government to court and, lo and behold, what happened? He’s now got a spot in MIQ. That’s what you have to do to try and get an MIQ allocation; you have to take the Government to court. Is that acceptable? Absolutely not. We know of nine other couples in that exact situation. I have also been talking with a man whose wife is an ICU nurse, who cannot come back through the border. Her application has been declined when we have a skills shortage not just for nurses but ICU nurses—so desperately sought after for our COVID response. The Government has been slow off the mark. They’ve given 300 spaces per month for a specific allocation for health workers now; they should have had that months ago.

But we’re also in a very strange situation now where the Government is setting aside these specific allocations at a time when they’re saying there’s going to be another announcement. There is so much uncertainty—should people apply for these allocated positions when you can’t even do so on the websites yet, or should they wait, wait to see whether self-isolation will actually happen? ACT has been saying for months that we should allow fully vaccinated people who’ve had a negative pre-departure test the ability to come home back through the border and self-isolate at home. The Government has already allowed COVID-positive people here in New Zealand to be able to self-isolate at home. These are low-risk travellers. Why should there be any difference? We know an announcement is coming. What is the Government waiting for? We’ve been waiting for weeks and weeks.

The Government has had the world’s longest nap for over 18 months with no changes to MIQ. People need the certainty of knowing when they can come home because, quite frankly, it feels like they have abandoned New Zealanders. The Government is making it up as they go along, but we need to know that certainty, we need it for those people who are anxious and afraid of, in the case of pregnancy, whether they’ll have a support person in the country to help them through those first thousand days of their child’s life, or whether they will actually be able to have a job to come back to, or even whether their visas in another country will expire and they’ll have a place to come home to. It is unfair. We are a team of 6 million, not 5 million, and the Government should respect people and give them the certainty they need. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. My great-grandmother died in 1919 as a result of the influenza that raged across the globe shortly after World War I. That pandemic left my 11-year-old grandfather, his older brother, and his two younger brothers motherless. So my father never got to meet his grandmother, never got to give her a hug, taste her cooking, never got to get a telling off from her, never got to hear her stories. A pandemic took all of that away from my father because my great-grandmother never got the choice of having a vaccine, so our whakapapa could not be protected.

I hail from the little valley of Kāretu in the Bay of Islands and the name of our urupā, our cemetery there, is Pūhangahau. In Pūhangahau there is a strip of soil about 10 to 15 metres long full of unmarked graves and I remember asking my grandfather, “What are these—what’s happened here?” I remember him telling me that’s where the people who died in our valley during that pandemic were buried, and they died so quickly they didn’t have a chance to record the names or where those particular people were buried. So there are people lying in our urupā there in Kāretu whose names we don’t know and, as a result, whose whakapapa links to us we don’t know—and whakapapa is what connects Māoridom. It’s what connects me to Peeni Henare, it’s what connects me to Nanaia Mahuta, it’s what connects me to Dr Shane Reti, and it connects me to all the other Māori that are here in this Whare.

We as Māori talk about protecting whakapapa and I just want to quote from Haami Piripi. Haami Piripi is the rangatira from Te Rarawa. Haami was questioned by the anti-vax movement about the strong stance he’s taken around vaccination for the people of Te Rarawa. As a rangatira he stood up and he said, “What defines our identity as Māori is whakapapa. What we measure our survival as a people with, is whakapapa. What determines the health and wellbeing of our whānau and marae is whakapapa.” That is leadership. That is what being a rangatira is all about.

But, sadly, there are many Māori who are doing all they can to jeopardise whakapapa and they use the pretext of mana motuhake and tino rangatiratanga to justify the unjustifiable. What price is the life of your nan or your mother or your brother, your niece, or your mokopuna? So they talk of Treaty rights but at the same time they neglect to talk about their Treaty responsibilities.

Now, my great-great-great-great-grandfather was a signatory to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and he was a real rangatira in that he actually had a hapū behind him. But what were his responsibilities as a signatory to Te Tiriti o Waitangi? Well, first of all, the responsibility of a rangatira is to protect your hapū, protect your kāinga, protect wairua, protect the lives. So those people who hide behind rangatiratanga or mana motuhake to justify the reckless endangerment of whānau demean the very tikanga of tino rangatiratanga and mana motuhake. They wave the Māori flag and the flag of He Whakaputanga in the vain hope it lends a veneer of credibility to the stupidity.

So these days it seems a prerequisite to be called a leader is to have big mouth and a Facebook account. The gauge of a leader is no longer the prosperity and wellbeing of your tribe but instead the numbers of likes and retweets. Being a rangatira was an important, deep, and meaningful role; now it’s just a shallow social media presence by which to spread misinformation to the misguided.

I’m really concerned about the lack of leadership, the conspiracy theorists, and the COVID deniers. I’m concerned about them trying to break through Auckland into Waitangi and spread the misinformation and stupidity. They mistakenly believe that is their right but they are clearly forgetting about their responsibilities.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, next week, COP26 starts in Glasgow, and no doubt the Minister will be winging his way there next week, for the next couple of weeks. And he doesn’t seem to have much in mind—at least, of what he’s announced to us in New Zealand—about what we will commit to for our nationally determined commitment, or NDC, which we should have confirmed in 2019. But, never mind; I’m here to help. So today the National Party announced our plan for COP, and it has five parts. I’ll take you through it now.

The first part is the use of the split-gas approach in our NDC. We have, in our zero carbon bill, a split-gas approach and, yet, we heard the Minister say in question time today he’s not going to adopt that into our nationally determined commitment. So our NDC is going to have different goals to our legislation. It makes no sense, and the Minister really needs to get a grasp of his particular portfolio and sort this out, because it doesn’t make any sense to have two separate goals and pathways to meet our commitments.

The second is that our plan backs our farmers. We know in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sixth assessment report, which was published recently, GWP100—or global warming potential 100—which assesses the warming potential in terms of carbon dioxide, or carbon units, over 100 years, it doesn’t represent methane emissions very well. It totally underestimates it in the early part of methane’s life in the atmosphere, and it significantly overestimates it in the latter part of its time in the atmosphere. And what the IPCC found was, in fact, if we adopt a method of measurement which is GWP-star, in fact all New Zealand’s emissions in the agricultural sector need to reduce by is 10 percent by 2050—10 percent instead of 47 percent, as is in the legislation. So our agricultural sector will get there by business-as-usual improvements. This is great news for New Zealand as we don’t have to cut production to meet our goals.

We also need to open ourselves up for global carbon markets. Article 6 means that we can in fact—and the Paris Agreement will allow us to—do bilateral agreements if we can’t come to an agreement to establish global carbon markets. And there is a group of countries that are just philosophically opposed to setting up international carbon markets. International carbon markets make sense if you accept that global warming is an international problem, and I think it is; it is not confined to a country’s borders. So nor should it attempt to lower emissions either by reducing emissions in the first place or sequestering them. We should be able to be open for that.

We should also demand more of the large emitters. If all of the Paris signatories meet their commitments through to 2030, all we will reduce our emissions by is 1 percent—that’s global emissions by 1 percent if every Paris signatory meets their commitments. We need the other emitters, the large emitters that are not a part of Paris, to play their part, otherwise our efforts will be in vain. And we don’t want to do that: to sacrifice ourselves in the name of a global effort when not all the team are playing the same game, particularly when they have a far bigger impact.

And, of course, the last thing is to embrace new technology. New technology is coming out now that enables us to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turn it into other things, either turned into fuel which can be burnt again or be turned into carbon products for construction. This technology is relatively new. It’s improving all the time, but already there are viable options that will reduce carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere for $100 a tonne. In New Zealand, at the moment, we have, with our emissions trading scheme (ETS), our New Zealand units are over $65 a tonne. We’re almost at $100 a tonne. We should be looking at this new technology. As the Climate Change Commission found, we can get to net zero with the ETS on its own, but the one problem is the over-forestation in rural New Zealand, and this, international carbon markets and new technology, would help mitigate that issue. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Our Government is working and making great progress as we secure our economic recovery during this COVID-19 pandemic. A case in point: I want to talk today about the New Zealand - UK free-trade agreement (FTA) in principle which was announced last Thursday. That is a monumental deal which our Government has struck with our seventh-largest trading partner, which will open up so many new opportunities and increase wealth for our exporters and for New Zealand at large, and in particular the Māori economy.

This is a landmark free-trade agreement. I want to acknowledge Minister Damien O’Connor and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and their trade policy teams for the outstanding work that they have done in coming to this landmark agreement, because in the midst of how COVID is creating havoc around the world, we must continue to secure our economic future and we must be able to continue to forge free-trade agreements with our partners around the world to ensure that we can enjoy the standard of living that we all want to ensure is there for us and generations to come, and this is a key plank in our economic recovery.

Such a great deal for our exporters—97 percent of our current goods that we export to the UK. By the date that this FTA comes into force, they will be gone, and that means every dollar we save is a dollar we make. More money that goes into our pockets, more earnings for our companies, and more benefits that can be shared through our jobs and through production as a nation—outstanding. So this is a wonderful agreement, not only for our goods exporters, but right across our economy. It’s been lauded from groups from all sides of the political spectrum, all industries. Business, primary sector, Māori economy, exporters—they are lauding this deal because they know how important it is that we have these trade agreements with our partners around the world.

This is significant, this agreement, because with the UK, we have a shared history. We have shared values and a lot of our shared institutions that we have adopted here. So there is that history that we have. Of extra significance in this free-trade agreement is the fact that we have an indigenous chapter, a chapter which acknowledges the constitutional importance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the role that Māori have in creating a future where Māori can participate and be more active and can benefit from these free-trade agreements with the UK, and the UK has agreed to that. So for us as a Government to make that a priority and to put that on the table and to ensure that our partners in the UK agree to that—that is a landmark. That is a landmark gain for us, and it’s a new era of collaboration that we have reached with our trade partners. It started in our North Asian agreement up in Taiwan, but we’ve taken it to a whole step further—a whole step further—with the UK agreement. So Māori are really excited by the future opportunities that this free-trade agreement presents for us.

There are so many benefits. It also goes into trade mark protection in the patents, copyrights, and trade marks field. It also goes into recognition of environmental concepts as well. Te Ao Māori, kaitiakitanga, mauri—those concepts are embedded now into this free-trade agreement. This is landmark.

This is landmark work that we are doing as a Government because we are committed to putting Māori having a true Treaty partnership and participation into the trade negotiation realm. That is reflected in the gains that we are achieving through these free-trade agreements and the ultimate benefits that will now accrue to the whole of New Zealand through our agreement.

So, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, this is the cherry on the top, this agreement. As far as the UK is concerned, they are absolutely thrilled that we have struck this agreement. Likewise, us here in Aotearoa New Zealand are equally thrilled because we know that we are going to be more wealthy as a result of these agreements. Just as we have achieved that, we are working at this stage with the EU as well. That agreement is just around the corner, so we are making great gains.

We are reconnecting, we are rebuilding, and we are recovering from COVID-19. These are great steps that we are making as a Government, and I am very proud of the work that we’re doing. Kia ora tātou.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As I take my mask off, I’m conscious that under the protection of parliamentary privilege there’s much theatre that occurs in this House and there’s much that gets—some slug shots—passed and fired across the bow.

So today is Wednesday, 27 October, and in four days’ time, Sunday the 31st, is Halloween. That’s not something that’s so big here in New Zealand, but it is building and picking up momentum. I talk about Halloween because it’s a time for people who think that it’s fantasy and it’s fiction, but it’s very much based on a Celtic custom that dates back 2,000 years, Halloween being a holiday that’s celebrated on 31 October. It’s a time when there’s a Celtic festival. People light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts and evil spirits.

So here we are in these COVID-stricken times. I removed a mask. I talked about the theatre in Parliament. In the masquerade of Halloween—in the masking, the theatre, the dress-ups, the dressing downs, and the costumery that goes with it—the reality is that COVID-19 is not a fantasy or a fiction. For many, particularly those who have been in Auckland for 10 weeks nigh in lockdown, it’s a living nightmare. It’s a living nightmare because it’s impacting on people’s livelihoods, but it’s also affecting people’s lives. Mental health is an issue that is going to roll out in time more and more, probably a bit more quickly than the vaccination roll-out and uptake, that is a necessity and a requirement.

I come back to the theme of Halloween. Drawing on my Celtic ancestry, that is shared with many members of the House and also New Zealanders, we heard in the House several weeks ago the importance and significance of Matariki as a public holiday. So, Halloween—just dressing down and coming back to the cultural relevance and significance of it. The 1st of November is the celebration of a new year, and with that new year it marks the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death.

Halloween and the fear that is amongst our living community, a living nightmare for Aucklanders, is COVID-19. I questioned the Associate Minister of Health for Māori health and Whānau Ora earlier this week, about the timeliness of the Government’s response to vaccinate our most vulnerable, our communities that suffer inequities, our Māori communities. This country went into lockdown on 24 March 2020. The Minister responded and tried to conflate and confuse by saying that I got it wrong. I didn’t get it wrong. To New Zealanders out there, we know that living in this COVID time, lockdown occurred on 24 March 2020. Why is it that the accelerated funding for Māori vaccination uptake was only announced on Friday, 22 October 2021—19 months later? I was not wrong, Minister. This has been a slow recognition. This has been a slow uptake by the Government to realise the significance and importance of treating and dealing with our living.

I come to Halloween also in terms of the theatre. Under the protection of parliamentary privilege, we had in the House, when there was a question posed, it was chipped in—a chipping in—by a Minister to divert and distract from the real issue, the living issue and the living nightmare for New Zealanders. Why is it that Māori are having the finger pointed at them and being blamed for the slow vaccine uptake?

There were a few shots from no lame duck in this House, directed towards an old Pem Bird—there was a bit of foul play that went in there. And speaking under the protection of parliamentary privilege, there was a bit of rucking going on and the slug shots were inappropriate. It’s right that our people question. It’s right that our people say we still have a choice. But it’s also right to promote the importance of vaccination and protecting our people.

So, under the protection of parliamentary privilege, I say, let’s lessen the slug shots and the firing across the bow; focus on the important things—less the theatre within this House; and the reality of the impact on New Zealanders’ lives.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. He Hōnore tēnei mōku te tū i tēnei ahiahi ki te kōrero i waenganui i a koutou i tēnei rā.

I a au e whakaaro ana he aha tētahi kōrero māku i tēnei rā e hiahia ana ahau ki te tautoko i ngā kōrero o taku matua, taku whanaunga, arā a Kelvin Davis. Tōna kōrero tino pā ki tōku ngākau. Pāpōuri hoki taku ngākau ki te whakarongo i āna kōrero hōhonu, tika hoki. Nō reira, e te whanaunga e Kelvin, tautoko ana ahau ō kupu, kei te kaha.

He rite tonu tōku kōrero e Te Māngai o Te Whare, ko taku tupuna tērā i mate i te tau 1918. 48 noa iho ōna tau. Tokowaru ana tamariki e toe ana. Tino pōuri taku maumahara i tērā kaupapa. Koirā tētahi o ngā tino take i haere ahau ki te wero i ahau anō. Ko taku tino take ko waku kōtiro, waku tamāhine Hihana Mairehau-Belle Te Tau o Taku Ate Prime, Heeni Hirere-June Te Kare o Ngā Wai Prime. Ko rāua te take i haere ahau ki te wero i ahau anō. Ko te take kāhore au e hiahia ana ahau kia pērā i taku tupuna i mate moata e toe ana tamariki. E hiahia ana ahau kia ora tonu ahau mō aku kōtiro, mō aku tamāhine, mō taku whānau whānui hoki me te hapori anō hoki. Nō reira e hiahia ana ahau ki te mihi ki te tini o ngā tāngata kua haere ki te wero. E mihi ana ki a koutou i haere mōu ake, mō tō whānau, mō Aotearoa whānui hoki.

E mihi hoki ana ki ngā tapuhi, ki ngā kaimahi, ki ngā hauora puta noa i Te Tai Tokerau, i Aotearoa hoki. E mahi kaha nei ki te tiaki i ngā tāngata i ngā hapori i ngā tāngata e haere ana ki te wero. Ahakoa whiti mai ana te rā i ngā rā tata ake nei e heke mai ana te ua, he āwhā, he waipuke hoki, kei reira tonu e mahi ana. Nō reira e mihi ana ki a rātou.

E tātou mā, e tōku iwi o Te Tai Tokerau. Kua takoto te mānuka. Ko te mahi nui kei mua i a tātou i tēnei wā kia eke ki tērā taumata o te 90 percent. I tēnei rā 19,000 anō tāngata e rapu ana tātou i tēnei wā kia haere ki te wero tuatahi. Ā muri mai i tēnā ko te wero tuarua. Engari, kaua e waiho mā ngā kaimahi o ngā hauora anake tērā mahi e kawe. He mahi mā tātou katoa e kawe. Mā mangu mā mā ka oti te mahi, nē? No reira, mā whero anō hoki. Nō reira, me kaha tātou katoa ki tautoko ki te tiaki i ō tātou hapori kia eke ki tērā taumata.

E hiahia ana ahau ki te kōrero, e Te Māngai o Te Whare, mō te kaupapa o te Super Shot Saturday. I hoki au ki taku ūkaipō, ki te tāone i tupu ake ahau, ara ki Moerewa. Ko te kaupapa i tēnei rā, ko tētahi o ngā kaupapa ko te pūtea, te pēke rānei, ko te kaupapa o te Rugby for Life. Mehemea ka haere mai ki te wero, ka hoatu tētahi te 10 tāra ki tō tīma. Te harikoa o ngā tāngata i tae mai i taua rā mō te kaupapa. Āe, i whiwhi te wero, engari i reira ki te whakaatu atu ki tō rātou hapori tō ratou aroha ki te hapori o Moerewa. Nō reira e mihi ana ki a Pamela-Anne Simon-Baragwanath, koia tētahi o ngā kaiwhakahaere. Te kaha o tērā wahine ki te akiaki ki te poipoi i ō tātou whānau i roto i Moerewa. Ko te hiahia ka tū anō he kaupapa pēra. Hei tētahi marama pea ka hoki mai rātou ki te wero mō te wero tuarua, ā, nō reira, kia kaha tonu tātou. Kua takoto te mānuka.

I roto i te 20 hēkona e toe ana, e hiahia ana ahau ki te mihi atu ki te Kāwana Tianara hou, ki a Kahurangi Cindy Kiro nā te mea nō roto o Ngāpuhi tēnei rangatira e mihi ana ki a ia. Tino harikoa te ngākau kua whiwhi ia i tērā tūranga hei painga mō tātou katoa, tēnā koe.

[Mr Speaker, greetings. It is my honour to stand and speak to you all this afternoon.

While I am thinking what I would like to say today, I would like to support the words of my senior and my relative Kelvin Davis. His words touched my heart and my heart was saddened to hear the depth and the truth of his words. Therefore to Kelvin, my relative, I support your words and your strength.

I am constantly talking about an ancestor of mine who died in 1918 at the age of only 48 years. Eight children were left behind. It is a very sad memory and one of the main reasons I got myself vaccinated. The main reason was my daughters, Hihana Mairehau-Belle Te Tau o Taku Ate Prime, Heeni Hirere-June Te Kare o Ngā Wai Prime. They are reason I got myself vaccinated. The reason being, I didn’t want to be like my ancestor and die early, leaving children behind. I want to live and be around for my daughters, for my wider family and for the community. Therefore, I want to acknowledge the many people who have been vaccinated, whether you did it for yourself, your family or for Aotearoa as a whole.

I want to also acknowledge the nurses, workers and health services all across Northland and the rest of Aoteoroa. These people work hard to look after the people in the communities and the people going to be vaccinated. Although the sun has been shining in the last few days, there has also been rain, storms and flooding. In spite of this they are still there, working. So I applaud them.

To my iwi in Northland. The gauntlet has been laid down. The big job in front of us right now is to reach that 90 percent threshold. Today, we are looking for 19,000 people to come and get their first vaccination. And following that, their second. But, don’t leave that job just to the health workers. We must all carry that load. With black and white, the work will be completed, will it not? Therefore, with red as well. Therefore, we should all stay strong to support the care of our communities so that we can reach that target.

I would like to talk about the Super Shot Saturday. I went home, to Moerewa, the town where I grew up. The theme for the day, one of themes for the day was financial under Rugby for Life. If you got vaccinated, your team would be given $10. People who came on the day were very pleased with this event. Yes, they got the vaccine, but it also showed their love for the Moerewa community. So, I congratulate Pamela-Anne Simon-Baragwanath, who was one of the organisers. She showed her strength in encouraging and nurturing our families in Moerewa. We hope there will be a repeat of this programme. In a month or so perhaps they will return to give the second doses, and so, stay strong everyone. The gauntlet has been laid down.

In the remaining 20 seconds, I want to acknowledge the new Governor General, Dame Cindy Kiro, because she heralds from Ngāpuhi. I am full of joy that she has been selected for this role which will be a benefit to us all. Greetings.]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, I’d like to say that last week I had the pleasure of being in the Education and Workforce Committee to review Te Pūkenga, but it certainly brought no pleasure at all.

Taking it back to 2018, the Minister of Education, Mr Chris Hipkins, started a review of the vocational education sector. Over a period of two years, a façade of consultation took place, which cost the taxpayers millions of dollars, for him to make a decision that was exactly the same as what he had promoted two years prior.

There are a number of things that the Minister said would happen when he merged the polytechnic sector, and there were a number of things that I said would happen. So let’s reveal who was right about what was going to come. So the Minister, Minister Hipkins, said that creating a head office for the vocational education sector would mean a very modest-sized head office. It would be “small”, “slim”, “nimble” were the words that the Minister used. I predicted it would be bloated; a bureaucracy that was slow, costly, and cumbersome.

So in the review, I had the opportunity to question what size the head office was. Well, sadly, the chief executive, who’s paid over $600,000 a year, couldn’t answer that question. He had to defer to one of his staff, who was able to tell us that 139 fulltime-equivalent staff were now in the head office of Te Pūkenga, at a cost of $11 million per year. Now, I guess “modest”, “small”, “slim” is all relative, and to a Minister that thinks nothing of seeing $12 billion of COVID money spent on things like wallaby constraining and cameras on fishing boats probably does see a head office of 139 people at a cost of $11 million as small and modest.

He also said that it would be nimble. He didn’t want it to be “administratively heavy” and “another layer of management”. Well, let’s see how that worked out when the $25 million announcement for mental health in tertiary education came to be distributed out. The announcement, in the middle of last year meant that in April this year Te Pūkenga signed up to an agreement to take some of that $25 million and distribute it out to their subsidiaries and to the students. So, how’s that going? Well now, 18 months after it was announced, two subsidiary companies have received some funding for mental health for students affected by COVID. Doesn’t sound nimble to me.

The Minister said he wanted the new head office to address viability issues in some of the subsidiaries. So I asked the chief executive how that was going. Sadly, he couldn’t tell me which subsidiaries had actually made a surplus or a deficit. When I asked him how he was going to manage the $11 million salary cost of his head office when the money ran out for setting up the institute—and to be clear, the Minister has said the funding is to support the establishment, $120 million to support the establishment. But the chief executive said, “Oh, he didn’t think there’d be a problem, there’d just be more money put into it.” So what viability issues has he fixed up? None. None at all.

We predicted that the successful Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics of New Zealand would subsidise those that weren’t successful. So an internal treasury function has been set up where the reserves from one polytechnic get lent to another. So I asked, where was the security for the lending institute? There is none; we’re all one entity. So where is the incentive for that money to be paid back?

What is the relevance of this? The relevance is, we’re facing three waters, the asset grab and centralisation of our council-owned assets. We are facing mergers of DHBs, and we should learn that actions speak much louder than words. It won’t save money. It won’t be nimble. It won’t have any democratic community input. And it certainly—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare. I rise to take a moment in this debate, and I’m proud to follow the members of team Te Tai Tokerau: the Hon Kelvin Davis and my friend, colleague, and flatmate Willow-Jean Prime, because—

💬 Hon Member: Name dropping.

—a little name dropping going on there—we in Te Tai Tokerau are facing a challenge, as Willow-Jean Prime said. We have 19,000 people to get us to the magic 90 percent of first vaccinations. Kelvin Davis spoke today about the importance of leadership and what true leadership is, and he spoke of rangatira tūpuna. I do not come from a line of rangatira. I come from a line of ordinary good people who did their best in hard and in good times. And it is to those people as well as to our rangatira that we have to look today to get those 19,000 Tai Tokerau people over the line and into the safe space where we want them so that we can all of us move on with our lives.

I am not known for my patience. One of the features of my childhood was the long car journeys from Whangārei to Wellington, where we were from, and back again. I vividly remember that last hour of the journey where all you wanted to do was “Is it over yet? Is it over yet?”, and all the time you wanted some magic Tardis to take you to that finishing line. So we would see Pukerua Bay or we would see the Brynderwyns over the hill. But the truth is every revolution of those wheels, bit by bit, takes us there, every gesture by every ordinary person.

On Super Saturday, I saw them: the nannies who had packed the sulky teenager in the back of the car and had driven him down, grumpy, but he was going for his vax; the nanny in Ngāti Hine health clinic on Walton Street, who had brought two of her granddaughters in, both of whom were nervous, but she had provided the aroha and the support to get them over the line and into the safe space; the mums, the dads, who turned up with their whole families in the back to go to Semenoff Stadium, where the nurses worked from 8 a.m. until 6 that night, in costume—I went back twice; never a smile faded from those faces—and those nurses who came out of retirement, like my friend Min, who has come out of her retirement and has retrained to vaccinate people. These are the small revolutions of the wheel that are going to get us in Te Tai Tokerau over that safe line.

I want to thank them. I want to thank the nurses out of retirement. I want to thank the doctors who today are out there vaccinating. I want to thank Max the retriever, who came out on Super Saturday with his purple ribbons to promote vaccinations. I want to thank St John and the rapid response team who fed everyone sausages—700 sausages they fed out. I want to recognise the Northland DHB, who have worked hard and tirelessly and creatively to try and help people to get over the line with more than 500 gifts on offer. Just saying to any Tai Tokerau people watching: right now it could be yours! Wonderful trips to some of our best tourist destinations. Just saying to anyone who later on when we reach that 90 percent can come in and sample those delights themselves.

I also want to thank those who have tirelessly and in their own time combated the misinformation on Facebook. The human brain’s got a tendency to doubt and to negativity, and people like Eileen McNaughton, for no good reason that I can understand other than good and other than leadership, has spent her time tirelessly unpicking the misinformation and reposting the good stuff and the real stuff. To those people I say thank you, because you are getting us over the line with those 19,000. I say thank you to Ian Pritchard—who about a week ago stood up a site called My Reason Why, because we were tired of hearing the misinformation and we wanted to hear each other’s love and aroha—and, on that site, the 503 people who as of today have posted, everyone says pretty much the same thing: “I did it for my whānau. I did it for my sister, my brother, my children. I did it for our community.” Thank you.

Mālō ni, Mr Speaker. I just wanted to acknowledge that it is Tokelau Language Week—Te Vaiaho o te Gagana Tokelau. The theme for this year is: “Tapui tau gagana ma tau aganuku, i te manaola ma te lautupuola which means Tokelau! Preserve your language and culture, to enhance spiritual and physical wellbeing.” So, first of all, I’d like to acknowledge all of our indigenous people’s communities that are on the front lines of climate change, and our whānau in Tokelau are definitely that as well—but also our indigenous relatives that are also in rainforests as well.

Like many things in this House, it starts with a report. I happened to come across this report, here, which was published by Greenpeace Indonesia, which is entitled Deceased Estate: Illegal palm oil wiping out Indonesia’s national forest. It revealed that illegal palm oil plantations have been destroying protected Indonesian rain forests and other habitats, and New Zealand’s industrial dairy sector is a major beneficiary.

Palm kernel expeller—or PKE—is a product of the palm oil industry. Since 2008, Fonterra has partnered with food producer Wilmar International, which, under the Agrifeeds brand, imports PKE as a supplementary for dairy cattle. A lot of environmentalists are really concerned about PKE because it encourages intensive dairying and then, of course, the runoff effects into our rivers and so on and so forth, as well. I just picked this up as well, which says “Canterbury ANZCO feedlot faces inspection”. And it has a really shocking picture of a whole lot of cows crowded on a muddy field. They are not eating grass; they are clearly eating some sort of supplementary feed like PKE.

This report really stuck out for me because I’d been there. I’ve been to the Borneo jungle. I was there about 15 years ago, as part of a UN capacity-building project. If people had seen what I’d seen, they’d be truly shocked to look at it from that other dimension. PKE does cause intensive dairying. There is all that runoff into our rivers, as well. We often get really focused on the domestic impacts, but there are international impacts as well.

One of the things that still pops up in my memory is: as we were flying on one of those really, really small planes—and it was a recently built plane, because previously you’d have to travel for weeks by river in order to actually get right into the highlands where I was travelling—and as we flew over, you could see the palm oil plantations. It was like they had mowed over the rainforests. And in that place there were these palm oil plantations where indigenous peoples used to live, where orangutan used to live, where all sorts of other wildlife used to live—life that has been there for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.

Often, we try to think of this stuff as over there, but there are actual connections as well. I remember sitting in the longhouse, talking with some of the elders and reflecting on, “Hey, you’ve got a longhouse back in Aotearoa Zealand.” Māori, we have a big house. Noticing and looking at some of their patterns, they reminded me of whakairo on wharenui.

But also, as I was sitting around the fire, eating one night, somebody came out and talked to me, and they said, “Hey, we heard there’s a Māori within this group. Is there a Māori there?” And that happened to be me. He goes: “Our uncle wants to talk to you.” And I said, “OK. Fine.” So I’m sitting there and this uncle walks out of the forest and they had a translator, and they were like: “Hey, many, many years ago, there were soldiers that were in this forest—and our uncle, he was their guide for them and they sung him this song and for all of those years, for decades and decades and decades, he had no idea what this song was.” So I said, “Oh, OK. Well, I’ll do my best.” So they sang me that song, and that song was “Pokarekare Ana”. So this kaumātua had been waiting since, I think, 1964 for some random Māori—me—to show up in the forest and actually translate that song for him.

So the point of that, in terms of this debate, is that things are all connected—things are all connected. Just because something happens here, it shows up in a packet, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have an impact somewhere else; it does have an impact. PKE is having a devastating impact on indigenous peoples and wildlife in the Borneo jungle. The way that we can really step into supporting indigenous peoples—recognising that we are a signatory to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is encouraging, for one thing, stopping the import of PKE but also looking to support the indigenous people’s communities who are deeply impacted by palm oil plantations in the Borneo jungle. Let’s not just look at the impacts here—and they are dire in terms of climate change; in terms of biodiversity loss; and, of course, looking at this picture here, animal welfare itself—but also the impacts on indigenous people’s communities in places like Indonesia—

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

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. As the MP for New Plymouth I rise to reflect on the challenges, the opportunities, the hard times, the misinformation that faces us daily in my electorate, and I’m sure all around Aotearoa New Zealand.

I think of Colleen Tuuta, one of our leaders, one of our people who has much influence in our region. I rang her recently, to say “Colleen, I need your support, can you please get into our communities, encourage the vaccination, and make sure the people in your community are getting vaccinated?” She said “Glen, you know, I’ve never been a vaccinator. I’ve never gotten vaccinated”, and I said “What? I had no idea.” And she said, “For years it’s been something I’ve been against. But it’s different this time, COVID is different and the Delta variant is different.” And she said to me, “Glen, my sister is dying of cancer, and I realised I’ve got to do something to protect her.” She said, “Glen, it’s my tamariki who can’t get the vaccination that we must protect”, and so she said “Glen, I’ve made sure that our whole whānau, our whole household has been vaccinated. No one is allowed in or out of our house unless they’ve had the vaccine.” She’s a staunch advocate for the COVID-19 vaccination, and I’m glad that she’s on our side, making sure that we get our nation vaccinated.

Secondly, on Super Saturday, I had the opportunity to travel right across the electorate, and I met a woman who had a needle phobia. The lovely doctor and myself sat down with her to have a chat, because she had tried at least three times to get the vaccination, and she couldn’t. We sat, we had a conversation, and she said she just could not do this; she’d had bad experiences in her past. So we had the conversation, and thanks to the DHB—they do a Thursday morning clinic where it’s sensitive to those who maybe have different needs, whether they be abilities, whether they be sensory needs, and she was able to go there. I checked in with her this morning, and last Thursday she went in and got a first shot. She’s booked in for a second. I’m grateful for our DHBs supporting the vaccination roll-out, doing what they can for all of our communities.

Thirdly, I want to talk about our Waitara aunties, our wonderful Waitara aunties. Auntie power all the way. That’s right. From our Māori Women’s Welfare League they’ve joined forces with our Taranaki District Health Board to ensure that they were defenders of their kaumātua, they were defenders of their community, making sure that everyone was vaccinated. Our dear aunties, old Aunty Wiki and the wonderful Aunty Patsy, were out there—and they continue to be out there twice a week—with a bickie, with a cup of tea, with a kōrero and, of course, with a vaccination. Making it more accessible to those who may be hesitant, maybe those who are nervous. And I was listening to Aunty Patsy on the TV recently, and this is what she said: she said “Forget about me, forget about you—this is about us. This is about our community, our people, our whānau, but most importantly this is around and about our tamariki. Thank you Aunty Patsy, thank you Aunty Wiki for your support.

Finally, I want to speak around Todd Williams, Louie Knuxx, and it wouldn’t be often that Louie Knuxx would be mentioned in this House. He was on the Sunday programme—his whānau was on the Sunday programme just this Sunday gone. Sadly, he passed away a couple of months ago. It was my honour, my responsibility, to walk the whānau through their last moments with him, to bury him, to say farewell. And for me, that was a great honour to be there. But it was really sad to see that people got hold of this pro-vaccinator, of this young man who was working with young people, this young man who was a musician. This young man who had worked with START Taranaki, worked in Melbourne and worked in Auckland to support our rangatahi, and people were using his name to criticise vaccinations, to put it down. It was shameful, and to Brent and to Kerry, his parents, I thank you for lending him to us. Thank you for allowing him to be a voice in support of vaccination in his life, and now in his death.

For us, I’m grateful that as a Government we are supporting the vaccination roll-out, we’re supporting that this summer so that we can hope that businesses will be open, that we can hope that people are vaccinated so people can feel a little bit more normal. And so, to be a little bit selfish, for the sake of Todd Williams, of his whānau, of his friends, that we can just have a really big concert, bring our muso friends, bring our artist friends together to celebrate his life.

Thank you, Todd. Thank you, Colleen. Thank you, aunties.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.