Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

I move, That this House express its confidence in the Government and commend its programme for 2022 as set out in the Prime Minister’s Statement.

It is with confidence in our plan that I stand before you, resolute in the job that stands ahead of us. And that job is clear: to lead New Zealand through this pandemic, to take on the challenges that we already face as a nation, to strengthen our economy and emerge stronger than we were before.

This year represents the third year of the COVID pandemic, and we begin with a plan to keep us safe and to help keep the country moving forward. Our guiding principle for the last two years has been to protect lives and to protect livelihoods, and that is exactly what we have done. Our confirmed cases, hospitalisations, and deaths have been the lowest in the OECD for the past two years. We now have one of the most highly vaccinated populations in the world, with 94 percent of those aged 12 and over double-vaccinated. And 42 percent of our children have now had their first dose as well, and just in time for school.

One point six million New Zealanders have already received their COVID-19 booster vaccination as well. And the fact that we have collectively worked together to look after one another’s health—that’s also cushioned the blow to the economy. In fact, it’s done more than that. Unemployment is at record lows. Record numbers of New Zealanders have moved off the main benefit and into work, and growth remains strong, with record export prices for our dairy sector, and I acknowledge our primary producers and the role that they have played during this pandemic. So to the team of 5 million who have made all of that possible we say thank you. We also say let’s keep going, because we are not yet done.

Omicron is the next challenge that we face, and it is a new and difficult phase of the pandemic, as New Zealanders prepare to encounter COVID-19 in a way that we have not yet to date, and at a scale we are not used to seeing in this country.

But we do have the tools and a plan to get us through. Now, that includes the COVID-19 Protection Framework, which uses public health measures to slow down the spread of Omicron but still allows our businesses to open and to operate. It includes the vaccine campaign, with a big focus on boosters, which has already seen more than half of our eligible population boosted. And it includes a specific plan for each stage of the Omicron outbreak: on how we’ll manage contacts; increases in testing, including how we’ll use the 180 million rapid antigen tests we have ordered; and how we’ll support critical services to continue operating when their workers may have COVID in their household. No country is immune from Omicron’s disruption, but we are working hard to avoid the worst of it and we are better prepared than most.

I have a really important message, though, for all New Zealanders: boosters are our strongest weapon at this point. Every booster strengthens our immunity and it takes pressure, importantly, off our health system. So to every New Zealander: if you are eligible, please go and get boosted today. It is the most significant thing that you can do to protect your family; your friends; those hard-working nurses, doctors, paramedics and all of our dedicated health workers.

Māori and Pacific health and community providers also remain essential to our plan, as they have all the way through. Now, we’ve supported their work by investing over $250 million, including $120 million to support Māori communities to fast track vaccinations and prepare for COVID-19 in our community, and we’ll continue that work in partnership.

But advice from our experts tells us that Omicron will not be the last variant that we will face this year. It’s advice that, sadly, the Opposition, I notice, have chosen to ignore. They declared 1 December “Freedom Day”: the day that borders should open, even when the World Health Organization had declared Omicron a variant of concern and the booster campaign had only just begun. They claim that they are ready to manage the pandemic because they have declared it over. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. It is not over, but that does not mean that we cannot move forward and that we cannot keep making progress—and so we are.

This year begins our reconnection with the world, and you would have already heard me announce the phases of our reopening plan that will see those already eligible to come into our managed isolation facilities to now be able to self-isolate, beginning with the first step in less than three weeks’ time. Now, this is an important moment as we reconnect with family and with friends, and as business access the skilled labour that they need, and as exporters more easily connect with really important markets.

New Zealand is in demand, and this year we meet that head on. So everything we step into this year requires planning and preparation, and here is where we’ll take the very best of our COVID response to address our other challenges. Now, the Ministry of Health and district health boards are working already to reduce the impact of seasonal illnesses that we know will have an impact on our health system, particularly as New Zealand reconnects with the world. Seasonal influenza will likely re-emerge. We need to prepare, and here’s how we’ll do that. First, we’ll deliver an influenza immunisation programme to maximise uptake for at-risk New Zealanders. Using the expertise and the infrastructure that we’ve already generated from the COVID-19 vaccination programme, we’ll work hard to deliver high rates of vaccination for our elderly, our immunocompromised, and anyone else at risk.

But that’s not all we can do. We know the importance of staying home when you’re sick, and we’ve made that easier with workers now eligible for 10 days’ sick leave to reduce illness in the workplace. We know the importance of keeping our kids in schools and early learning centres, so we’re working hard to make that as safe as possible by offering vaccines to 5- to 11-year-olds, maximising natural ventilation, and investing in filtration machines. But it’s the place we spend most of our time that requires the most investment. We need healthier homes, warmer homes, drier homes, homes that don’t make our tamariki sick. That’s why our Warmer Kiwi Homes programme has already delivered 80,000 insulation and heating installs in low-income households since 2018—and by the end of this financial year, we’ll accelerate the roll-out of insulation and heating installs, delivering 30,000 more warm, dry homes. And this is work we are pleased to continue with the Green Party.

We’re also going to roll out the Healthy Homes Initiative to an additional nine new regions, which means more insulation, curtains, beds, bedding, minor repairs, floor coverings, ventilation, heating sources—all of the things that decrease hospitalisations and the incidence of things like rheumatic fever in this country. On top of this, we’ll get on with building more housing and continuing to overcome the housing crisis we inherited. Kāinga Ora and community housing providers will deliver over 2,000 additional public housing places—that’s adding to the 8,700 delivered since November 2017. And while I note some members on the front bench of the Opposition may laugh, these are numbers that far outstrip anything that Government ever managed to build while they were in Government, when their focus was on selling down public housing stock rather than building the homes that we need. Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga and the Māori Infrastructure Fund will also see the delivery of approximately 1,000 new homes, repairs to 700 homes, and 2,700 additional infrastructure-enabled sites. Now, together, these represent the greatest investment ever in Māori housing.

But housing represents—and we know this in this House—just one of the many challenges we faced as a nation before COVID. Our health system was also in desperate need of reform. It’s not right that the care that you get in our health system in this country can vary so much depending on where you live. One of our top priorities this year is the abolition of district health boards, and the establishment of Health New Zealand and the Māori Health Authority to deliver a genuinely national health service for all New Zealanders.

We want all New Zealanders to live longer and healthier lives, which is why the Māori Health Authority is absolutely key. We all know the dire statistics; they are undeniable. Māori die at twice the rate as non-Māori from cardiovascular disease. Māori tamariki have a mortality rate 1½ times the rate found in non-Māori children. Māori die, on average, seven years earlier than non-Māori. We must turn these stats around. Doing the same old things won’t cut it anymore. Now, some have called our plan “separatist”, when, in fact, the opposite is true: this is about reaching the equality we currently do not have in this country. We are also going to establish a new public health agency to ensure we’re better equipped to fight any future pandemics that we may face as a nation.

We will also better support the estimated 1.1 million disabled people in New Zealand through the new Ministry for Disabled People; stand-alone accessibility legislation that identifies, prevents, and removes barriers to participation; and the national roll-out of Enabling Good Lives, which puts the voice of disabled people and their families at the heart of decision making. This is work that’s time is overdue.

If there is another challenge that COVID has highlighted in this country—that already existed—it is mental health. I was speaking to a medical practitioner recently who conveyed to me the additional appointments that they’d seen in their practice as a result of the pandemic—increased or exacerbated depression and anxiety in particular. This is all the more reason to continue with the roll-out of primary mental health services and addiction services across New Zealand. We have established new primary and community mental health and addiction services in general practice, as well as kaupapa Māori-, Pacific-, and youth-specific practices. Together, these services have now delivered over 280,000 sessions since the programme began in July 2019 and provided support to over 27,000 people in between July and September of 2021. By the end of this year, 2.7 million enrolled New Zealanders will have access to integrated primary mental health and addiction care through general practice. That is a step change in how New Zealanders access mental health services and brings the delivery of mental health into the place where people get support for their health needs already.

But that is not enough for us. This year we will also expand the successful Mana Ake scheme that provides mental health and resilience support for New Zealand children in years 1 to 8 to 24,000 of our most vulnerable children, expanding into Northland, Counties Manukau, Bay of Plenty, Lakes DHB, and the West Coast region.

But alongside the known vulnerability of our children and our young people, we also know there are two communities that have particularly high rates of burnout and stress, and they are our small-business owners, and we’re increasingly seeing the impacts of mental health issues in our rural communities. COVID-19 has exacerbated this with ongoing uncertainty and isolation. Rural communities also face the challenge of accessing mental health services. We’re committed to working with small-business groups and the rural sector to ensure better support and access to mental health.

In the face of two years of pandemic and disruption, New Zealand businesses and workers have proven to be resilient, they’ve proven to be adaptable, and they’ve proven to be innovative. We have weathered the storm of COVID better than many of our key trading partners. New Zealand’s economy grew 4.9 percent over the last year, outperforming much of the OECD. Our primary sector obtained record export prices. We have a construction boom underpinned by our infrastructure programme and strong support for new housing. But that is not the limit of our ambition, because, as I said last week, in our COVID recovery, we must not return to business as usual, because we are better than that.

In fact, we were elected to address the challenges that have held too many back for too long. That’s why our economic plan is to build a high-wage, low-carbon economy that provides economic security in good times and in bad. It is focused on increasing the value of our exports and developing new markets; investing in skills and new technology; modernising infrastructure; research and innovation to drive productivity; reducing emissions; and, of course, increasing wages.

Let’s break some of those elements down. As the border opens, New Zealand’s exporters will be able to reconnect face to face. We’ll build on that with a proactive programme of re-engaging with high priority international markets. New Zealand will sign a free-trade agreement with the United Kingdom. We’ll continue to work towards concluding a free-trade agreement with the European Union, and I will lead trade delegations, and trade-supporting visits to key markets in Europe, the United States, Australia, and Asia this year.

As a Labour Government, building skills and training opportunities is key and at the heart of our agenda. It not only links into our wider plans on infrastructure, it also underpins and enables a productive, high-wage economy. We have already started the work to develop and grow our talent here. We already have the reform of vocational training in this country with six new industry-governed workforce development councils. You can see the impact we’re having in the numbers. Our investment in fees-free apprenticeships and targeted training has seen more than 175,000 people take up these learning opportunities since July 2020. That includes 80,000 apprentices. We’ve seen Mana in Mahi, a programme that supports young people to obtain trade qualifications and enter into lasting employment, go from strength to strength, with 4,446 placements. All of this means that we’re better placed to roll out the crucial plank of our plan, and that is building infrastructure.

Historical under-investment has been a handbrake on our economy. It’s why we’re planning for the next 30 years instead of electoral cycles. It’s why we’re investing $57.3 billion in infrastructure over the next five years alone. It’s why we’re modernising our schools. It’s why we continue to rebuild our health system with 24 construction projects. It’s why we’re enabling more housing, providing New Zealanders with greater choices in tackling congestion in the transport system, rolling out telecommunications and energy infrastructure, preparing the economy for the future. It’s also why we’ll fix the issue of persistent under-investment in our water services.

I have said this before: when we look back on this period in our country’s history, I don’t want us just to reflect on how we weathered the storm of a pandemic, but what we built after. Our economy cannot afford to return to business as usual, because the status quo is unsustainable, and that’s why tackling climate change will be a core part of our economic strategy.

Climate change must not overwhelm us. In fact, it is our greatest opportunity for new jobs and higher wages. For a country already earning a premium from our clean, green, and innovative image, there is an opportunity to use that natural advantage to create new jobs in new industries. It will also reduce New Zealand’s reliance on global energy prices. Other countries are moving to compete and seize the opportunities, and New Zealand cannot afford to be left behind; not economically, and not morally either. Not when the future of our exports will be built on a credible plan to bend our emissions curve and meet our targets. That’s why this year our first emission reduction plan will put innovation and clean technology at the heart of our economic transition. We’ll continue to support businesses reduce their energy costs through the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry Fund, which already has reduced lifetime emissions by 6.6 million tonnes. We’ll continue to transition our transport fleet, and already the clean car discount, which came into effect, has seen the number of new electric vehicles being bought each month triple. Alongside the clean car discount, and clean car standards, the low emission transport fund will begin supporting business to pilot new emission transport technology.

You’ll know we’ll continue with the green investment fund, which has quadrupled the amount of investment in low carbon technologies. We’ll continue the work of He Waka Eke Noa and in our partnership supporting more farmers to adopt existing measures and technologies to reduce on-farm emissions.

The Opposition claim they share our climate ambition. Why, then, have they opposed almost every initiative that would bring our emissions profile down? Climate change is a challenge we cannot postpone, just like child poverty, just like housing, just like mental health.

New Zealand has entrusted the Government with the responsibility of bringing this country through our current crisis, but all of those challenges as well, and we will continue to do that. But we will do more than that. We’ll provide stability, a united team, and a singular focus on a recovery that, even after a crisis, leaves New Zealand better than we found it.

The question is that the motion be agreed to. Those who are of that opinion will say Aye—

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move that all the words after “That” be deleted and they be replaced with “this House has no confidence in this Government that returns to Wellington”—

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I regret to advise the House that, once the Speaker has put the vote, there’s no further debate on it.

💬 SPEAKER: I hadn’t completed putting it.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That all the words after “That” be deleted and are replaced with “this House has no confidence in this Government that returns to Wellington at the start of each year with more promises it has no intention of keeping and fails to deliver.”

Mr Speaker, before I begin, can I just wish you and all my colleagues here a happy New Year. I trust you’ve all had a good break. It’s good that everyone is back raring to go—I can tell you the National Party is ready.

Kiwis are tired. They’re tired of this Government that’s addicted to spending, and they’re consistently failing to get things done, and after four years—four years of stagnation and failure—they’re tired of being let down by a Government that has turned out to be what? All spin and no delivery.

This Government has never met a problem it didn’t think it could solve with just a little bit more Government, a little bit more Wellington, a little bit more centralisation, a comms plan, more bureaucracy, and less input from affected communities. They’re tired of a Government that’s clearly out of ideas; out of energy; out of steam; and in less than two years, frankly, will be out of office.

Because I can tell you, the people of New Zealand can see what an absolute mess this Labour Government is making of things. They see through it. They can see that Labour has doubled our country’s debt, and they’ve set Government spending on a completely unsustainable long-term path. They can see that all that spending, all that borrowing, isn’t actually getting results, and it’s not delivering the long-term solutions to our challenges or improving people’s daily lives, and it’s actually not getting things done. This Government confuses activity with achievement. This Government confuses words with action, and they are two very, very different concepts. And now here we are, with an overheated economy, and they can see it’s clearly making things worse. It’s pushing up prices, it’s pushing out the private sector, and it’s squeezing everyday New Zealanders.

Now, Kiwis’ ability to be able to get ahead and to enjoy a higher quality of life depends on the size of our economic engine, and it needs some serious upgrading if we’re to go forward together well. We’re suffering in this country from what is a productivity disease. The average Kiwi is working for an hour to earn what the average Australian earns in 44 minutes. Now, Grant Robertson, when he was in Opposition, used to talk endlessly about productivity per capita metrics. He doesn’t do it anymore. He doesn’t do it anymore because he fundamentally doesn’t care about small-business people. The only economic tool he’s been able to use is to spend more of Kiwis’ money, with Government spending now up a staggering 68 percent since they came to power. And that spending is driving a massive increase into the cost of living, which is now running at a 30-year high of almost 6 percent.

We have a cost of living crisis in this country. And I’m hearing it when we go around the country; I’m sure many of the MPs in this House are hearing it as well. It doesn’t matter whether there’s frustration around a block of cheese costing $15 to $16 or unsustainable levels of rent that are becoming so unaffordable to everyday Kiwis. They are feeling the pain of this Government’s economic mismanagement.

You’ve got to ask yourself just one question: are you better off under this Government than you were 12 months ago? Are you better off than you were four years ago? I can tell you right now, the answer is an absolutely categorical no. Under this Labour Government, people are working harder, they’re not getting ahead, and they’re going backwards. Everyone knows it, everyone feels it. Even Grant Robertson knows it, he feels it, he knows it’s true as well. That’s the reality, and, sadly, that’s what you get with a Government that is focused on making announcements on spin and not actually on getting results. That’s what you get: spin over substance. You get activity over achievement. You get a so-called year of delivery that delivered little more than press releases. You get the year of the vaccine that somehow delivered the slowest vaccine roll-out in the developed world, resulting in a 15-week lockdown at $8 billion. You get a Government that banned rapid antigen tests, then changed its mind, and then decided to confiscate them from the good, proactive businesses who were just trying to keep their own workers safe.

You get a Prime Minister who promised to make housing more affordable, but instead she’s delivered the largest, the fastest increase in house prices in our nation’s history. The average house price is now over $1 million, and in just four years of Labour mismanagement we’ve seen house prices rise by a staggering $380,000. It’s a truly shocking result of Government incompetence. Now, Labour are pushing the dream of Kiwi homeownership away from a whole generation of young New Zealanders, and I can tell you that rapidly-rising interest rates are only going to make things much, much worse. Weekly rents are up $125 since 2017—that’s making it harder for Kiwis to pay the bills, let alone a chance to be able to save up for a deposit. Just think about that, that’s a Kiwi renting who has to go find $6,500—after tax, in a year—to rent the same house that they were renting just four years ago.

You’ve got almost 25,000 people languishing on the State waiting list for a State house—that’s a fourfold increase in four years. That’s unbelievable—it’s unbelievable. There’s 4,500 children living in motels, sharing unsuitable accommodation with violent gang members and drug dealers, all at a cost of about $1.2 million a day. So it is an absolute moral failure, and it is an indictment on a Government that promised to solve the housing crisis but has made it so much worse, and this from a Prime Minister who promised to build 100,000 KiwiBuild houses in 10 years. But here we are, we’re four years in and how many more do we have to go? Another 98,000 houses to go. The Prime Minister promised big on State housing, but over the past six months we’ve seen the State landlord remove homes that it’s built. That’s right, they’ve taken away more houses than they’ve built in the last six months.

Now, nowhere has the Prime Minister promised more and delivered less than in transport. Now, one of the first promises she made was that she’d send a tram from downtown Auckland to Mount Roskill, it would cost less than $2 billion, and it would have been completed by the end of last year. Well, here we are, we’re four years in and the only thing that’s been delivered is a brand new spanking price tag of $15 billion. And depending on what officials you want to listen to, it could be up to $24 billion, and then you’ve got a promise of a decade of disruption in Auckland. I reckon that for all of that, the Government could actually go out and buy each of the team of 5 million people a brand new, state-of-the-art, swish e-bike. And they would still have billions of dollars left to invest in heavy rail, they’d still have money left to invest in upgrading ferries, they’d still have money to invest in dedicated busways and improving maintenance and safety on our highways. But that’s the sort of sensible projects that are actually about helping people and businesses connect and do business around our towns and cities. That’s not what Labour politicians are about; it’s about a legacy, or trying to impress Twitter followers.

Now, at the last election, voters were also promised “no new taxes”. But when you have a 68 percent increase in Government spending, when you have a doubling of the debt in this country—which has to be repaid, forget about what modern monetary theorists say, it has to be repaid; and when it does, that will mean that we don’t have the cash to invest in better public services, or productivity-enhancing intergenerational infrastructure—you just know, you know in your bones, that Labour is going to increase your taxes. There’s no doubt about it, it’s coming. Because Labour can’t manage money, they’ll come after yours. Labour broke that election promise of new taxes in pretty quick time. What we saw was a ramming through of a stealth capital gains tax, which was quickly followed by the infamous “ute tax”, and if that wasn’t enough, Grant Robertson has now cooked up another brand new tax. This time he wants to slap it on every single worker and every single business in New Zealand and, would you believe it? The Labour Party wants to roll out a jobs tax.

Now, they’re going to try and hide it; they’re going to call it a levy, or they’re going to call it a contribution, or they’re going to call it income insurance, but you all know the saying: “If it looks like a duck, if it swims like a duck, and if it quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.” I can tell you that this is a tax—this is a tax—

💬 Hon Member: What kind of duck?

—not a Mallard—making Kiwis pay an extra tax at a time when Kiwis need that cash in their own pockets—as they navigate a cost of living crisis, when they’re buying stuff that’s going up twice as fast as their wages. That’s what they really need—they need the money back in their pockets, not going to Grant Robertson through another tax. They’re living in a cost of living crisis, but it doesn’t seem that this Government cares or even understands the reality of that for people.

Now, what we didn’t hear much about from the Prime Minister today was what’s happening with the three waters reforms. Now, I can tell you, Nanaia Mahuta, she made up her decision on day one. She locked in on a model. She’s gone through a sham consultation process with local government and, despite saying it would be voluntary, lo and behold, it’s now been compulsorily acquiring the assets from ratepayers and citizens who’ve spent decades paying for them. I can tell you, the costs are unrealistic, the scale of benefits aren’t there, there’s massive cross-subsidisation between districts, and, most importantly, it’s got a convoluted co-governance and management structure that, essentially, is like a set of Russian dolls that launders the asset out of the control of ratepayers and citizens and local government through a process to end up in the Government’s hands.

But I wouldn’t be too worried about it, because I can tell you what I think is going to happen. I can tell you what’s going to happen: Grant Robertson is worried, right? He’s been studying those polls over summer, he’s been looking into the numbers, and—in the same way he went and killed off Michael Wood’s lovely $785 million walking and cycling bridge, in the same way that he’s pushed and cajoled and argued with the Prime Minister about finally opening the joint up—he’s going to come in and he’s going to squash these reforms too. I bet you that’s what’s going to happen. You mark my words: these three waters reforms are absolutely finished, and I predict that we’re going to have a new local government Minister very, very shortly too. Either way, watch this space. A big back-down is coming your way.

I’ve made it clear that our job as the National Party over the next 20 months is not just to hold this Government to account, to oppose them and all their failure to deliver—of which there’s just endless opportunities—but we are here to propose. We are here to propose an alternative vision of this country so that come the next election, the New Zealand people will be able to see a National Government in waiting, ready to go.

Now, we’ve already proposed some pretty sensible upgrades to our COVID management plan and as we navigate our way through Omicron and out of these endless restrictions, we’ve been doing the same. Usually what happens is they like to rubbish our ideas and then they go back and then they pick them up and they talk about them and then a few months or a few weeks later, lo and behold, pre-departure testing, rapid antigen testing, a special fund to pre-purchase the COVID treatments—that all starts to appear in the Government’s plans. Now, I have to say, we don’t mind that—we don’t mind that—we’re good with that because we’re here to act in New Zealand’s national interests. If we can help a Government that doesn’t have its own ideas, we’re very good with that. We’re fine with that. So feel free, as we propose—take good, practical ideas that are in New Zealand’s interest and get them done.

I have to say, I think the Government did a pretty good job in 2020 managing COVID, and I’ve said that publicly and I’ll continue to say so. But I have to say, 2021 was a shambles. We had lots of time to see what was going on, we had first-mover advantage and we didn’t get anything done on time. It was a total, sort of, look one or two days ahead, never have a plan, and just make it up as you go along. That was the story of 2021, and we ended up losing the plot pretty quickly. For most of the year, we had the slowest vaccine roll-out of the developed world after being told we would be in the front of the queue. When Delta hit, we only had 20 percent of the eligible population fully vaccinated, and so we had to go into that extended lockdown.

Rather than delivering quickly on vaccines or rapid antigen tests and boosters, the Government’s response has relied on extending everyday restrictions to everyday life. Because there’s been no plan, we need to be looking further ahead and that’s why we’ve been arguing for things like rapid antigen tests, so that people can have them wherever they want them. They can take control, take personal responsibility, and buy them from supermarkets and pharmacies. We want them to be available to everyone. Seniors, workers, kids in schools should all have the opportunity to get a tester to help keep us all safe. But what did the Government do? What did the Government do? They banned them for no other reason than they were ideologically opposed to any non-Government solution. They didn’t work with community organisations; they didn’t work with businesses; they don’t believe, actually, that a Government should work with business and community on some of our biggest challenges, which just speaks to the arrogance, the centralisation, and control agenda—the we-know-best agenda—that this Government’s running with. And it’s only after challenge from the media that we see a Government react and miraculously start finding large quantities of rapid antigen tests in a matter of days. But it could have been done six months earlier; it could have been done a lot, lot sooner.

The National Party will continue to push the Government to do better on COVID, and that’s our job. But it’s also our job to offer solutions to all the other long-term challenges New Zealand faces, and I have to say we’ve got lot of long-term challenges that we’re not getting outcomes or results for. To rebuild our economy, we’re going to need to rebuild our connections with the world—and that’s 7.8 billion people, sitting in 195 countries that we trade and do business with. And New Zealand has a very proud tradition of going out in the world and building business and building export businesses to do so, and we need to reclaim that confidence, that ambition, that aspiration that we seem to have lost. I want New Zealand to be world leading; I want New Zealand to realise its full potential on all levels; I want a place where good enough is not just good enough for us. National understands that the only sustainable way to lift incomes across the economy is for Kiwis to become more productive.

Now, for too long, Kiwis have been of the mind-set that they just need to get ahead by working longer hours. We’re already some of the longest-working people on planet Earth, but our incomes still lag behind. So we’ve got to boost productivity to realise our potential; we’ve got to work smarter, not harder; and National’s going to do that by investing education so the basics are taught brilliantly and our kids can go out in the world and realise their dream and actually access higher-paying jobs. We’ll do it by delivering the infrastructure we need to support growth; we’ll do it by attracting the top talent here, because we know, when we do, they grow the pie for all of us; we’ll do it by opening up New Zealand to the world; we’ll do it by backing small business up and down the country—not just letting businesses suffer while the Government overheats an economy. I’d say that expanding that economic pie is how we secure our future.

Today, the Prime Minister made a big deal about unemployment being low, and it’s true: unemployment is low in this country. But that’s what you get when you have unprecedented Government spending and record-low interest rates designed to stimulate the economy—the only two levers that this Government and Grant Robertson have been capable of using. But that’s what you get, and, unfortunately, that’s the same recipe that’s pushing up inflation. That’s the same recipe that I can tell you won’t end well for us, and the real frustration with unemployment being so low is that this Government has not been able to help Kiwis get off benefit and into work. There are almost 90,000 more people on a benefit today than when Labour first took office—90,000 people. One in nine Kiwis is currently dependent upon the State for an income, and it just begs the question: what is the Government actually doing to support those on benefits into jobs? Even more concerning is the fact that Kiwis are spending longer on those benefits: 116,000 people now spend more than one year on a job-seeker benefit, and that’s an increase of 50,000 Kiwis since Labour were first elected—50,000 people staying on a benefit for longer. On this side of the House, we know when someone’s out of work for a long period of time, it is difficult for them to re-enter the workforce. But if you can’t get people from welfare to work now, with all the vacancies, with all the labour shortages, with low levels of unemployment in this country, when will you be able to do it?

Let’s be honest, we think the Labour Government has not only engineered a cost of living crisis; they’ve engineered a dependency crisis that is the exact opposite of kindness and compassion. They don’t care that they have written off and consigned a whole bunch of New Zealanders to a life that’s just slightly better than poverty and subsistence. They’ve decided in their heads, with all their lovely white-collar backgrounds as academics and professional career politicians and union organisers, that somewhere between where they are and where the other jobs are there’s a miraculous line that work below that level isn’t worthwhile. I can tell you right now, we want people off welfare, getting into work, and we know why—because, when you get a job, when you get into work, you get a sense of self-worth; you get a sense of mastery; you get a feeling of control of your life. I have to say National is more aspirational for New Zealanders. We care deeply about all of this this; we care deeply about New Zealanders; we don’t want them consigned for ever to be on welfare; we want them in work. We think that’s dignity; we think that’s the pathway that they need.

New Zealand deserves better; New Zealand deserves a Government that is forward thinking; New Zealand deserves a Government that is prepared to tackle the big issues, a Government that doesn’t simply just react to the latest headlines or put all its efforts into spinning the news cycle, a Government that doesn’t just throw money at a problem and, then, just walk away. We want a Government that restores our confidence, our ambition, our aspiration as a country—a country that actually builds a society of opportunity. That’s what we’re going to do with a National Government, and that’s what we’re going to deliver for the people of New Zealand. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. E ngā mana e ngā reo e ngā rau rangatira mā o tēnei Whare nui o te ao, ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou katoa. Nō reira, tēnā koutou katoa.

[To all authorities, all languages, and all chiefly people of this great House of the world, I offer my warm greetings. I acknowledge you all.]

Well, based on the last couple of performances, I have to say the next year looks it’s going to be a somewhat one sided battle between Superwoman and Lex Luthor. And I have to say, he has managed to fend off his chief rival over here—Brainiac—but, based on that performance, he is yet to find the kryptonite!

I have to say the Prime Minister’s statement demonstrates that, with a strong Green voice in this Parliament and in this Government, Aotearoa is at last heading towards a future where communities thrive, where ecosystems flourish, and our economy is sustainable and pollution-free. That is the vision that the Green Party was founded on over 30 years ago. I am going to respond to the Prime Minister’s statement through the lens of each of those three long-term and long-held priorities, but before I do, I do want to offer our response in relation to the shorter term but somewhat all-consuming challenge that is in front of us right now. It is entirely understandable that the attention of both the people and the Government of Aotearoa is taken up primarily with the ongoing pandemic crisis.

Now, as we reconnect Aotearoa with the rest of the world, the priority must be on the protection and the wellbeing of whānau and communities, and there are many people—here at home, and abroad—who have been unable to be with their friends and family at precisely the moment when they need it the most. But at the same time, it is a fact that there are literally thousands of people alive today who would not be, if it had not been for our border restrictions and managed quarantine and isolation (MIQ) system.

💬 Hon Member: I thought it was capitalism.

We have one of the—I’m getting to that—lowest mortality rates in the world because of it, and it was good to hear from the Prime Minister that 40 percent of children have now received the first dose of the vaccine. That is a huge success, but there is no doubt that the reopening of the border does increase the risk of worsening the peak of the Omicron outbreak, and future variants. The Greens called for MIQ prioritisation based on humanitarian grounds—and that includes separated families—and we called for specialist MIQ facilities and that would have enabled more New Zealanders to reconnect with their loved ones, and that would have meant that we would have been able to maintain an elimination strategy long enough for everyone to get their booster shots and for all children to be immunised.

So if the borders are to open up before that point, then we must increase the focus on protecting and supporting our most vulnerable communities. We are very pleased to hear the Prime Minister say in her statement that tens of millions of rapid antigen tests will be made available to New Zealanders. The Greens’ view is that that shouldn’t just apply to rapid antigen tests, but also to N95 masks; they should be made available free to everybody who needs one. We’re also very pleased to hear the Prime Minister announce the extension of the Healthy Homes Initiative, the Warmer Kiwi Homes insulation programme, and the boost to the number of public housing places. Focusing on the social determinants of health, like housing, is utterly critical to reducing the impact of Omicron and later COVID variants.

As the Prime Minister said in her statement, empowering and funding Māori, Pasifika, and community providers was critical to getting the vaccination rates of those communities over 90 percent in most parts of the country, because when Māori and Pasifika peoples, and those who are most marginalised amongst us are taken care of, we are all taken care of.

My final word on the pandemic response, before I move on to some of the longer term issues facing us, is about the economic response. Thirty years of focusing on the debt to GDP ratio as the single most important measure of a Government’s success has left our country with a colossal deficit in housing, in health, in education, in transport, in water, in energy, in local government, and in public services. But in our response to the pandemic, we have demonstrated that, actually, Government can marshal the resources necessary to fight a crisis when the moment comes. We’ve demonstrated what can happen when good government meets good science, and we’ve demonstrated that the best economic response is, first and foremost, to keep everybody safe and well. But as we grasp toward some new semblance of a post-pandemic normality, we must not simply revert to the absolutely busted notions of the last 30 years that left us chronically short of houses and hospital beds and water pipes and classrooms and buses and trains as we were when the pandemic started.

Which brings me to the Green Party’s priorities, which are, and for a long time have been: one, to protect and restore our natural world; two, a fairer and more inclusive community; and, three, a clean, zero-carbon economy. So to have a New Zealand Prime Minister devote as much time as ours just did to placing climate change at the heart of our nation’s economic strategy in her opening address to Parliament gives me hope, and it should give some hope, too, to all of the scientists and the activists, the school strikers, the parents, the business people, and the regular folk who have campaigned for so many decades to make it so.

Now, the Prime Minister outlined a series of actions that we will take in energy and transport and agriculture and waste to modernise our economy and to cut emissions. I won’t repeat those, but I will add that, as we take those actions, we will seek to do so in a way that, first, ensures that the transition is equitable and just and inclusive; second, like our pandemic response, that it will be based on what the science says is required; third, that it honours te Tiriti and supports Māori in the design and the development of the transition; fourth, that it puts the protection and restoration of our indigenous biodiversity at the centre of our response; and, fifth, is well signalled, unlocks investment, builds innovation, and creates jobs.

Now, delivering all of this across so many industries and social sectors requires the attention and the leadership of a slew of Government agencies and at least half of Cabinet. And so I would like to thank all of the Labour Ministers for all that they are doing to deliver on New Zealand’s first and, now long-awaited, comprehensive plan to lower emissions and to limit warning.

Thanks to the changes that we made to the emissions trading scheme, there is now at least $4.5 billion available to tackle climate change over the course of the next four years. Now, dollar for euro, as a proportion of GDP, that puts our climate change response on a par with Germany. And I want to take this opportunity to address Te Paati Māori, the National Party, and the ACT Party. I know that we will disagree about many of the policy prescriptions that we may employ to get us there. But I do hope that we are able to maintain the consensus about where we need to get to and the institutions that we created to help to guide us there. So in that spirit, I will be consulting with all parties shortly on the emissions budgets before they are finalised, and we will also hold a parliamentary debate on those budgets so that every party may put down its views on record. And I hope that that will mean that there is a clear message to New Zealand about the direction of travel that has to span several changes of Government. But I do also welcome what I know will be robust critique and debate about the precise measures that this Government will be employing in the first emissions plan.

Of course, the emissions reduction plan is not the only major milestone on the climate change front in 2022. In August, we will be publishing the national adaptation plan, outlining how we’re going to build resilience to the increasingly frequent and severe floods and droughts and storms that we are already experiencing here and around the Pacific, and that will lead to the introduction of the Climate Change Adaptation Act early next year.

Of course, also this year, we will be deciding on the design of the system that we will be using to price agricultural emissions and support farmers to adopt practices and technology that adds value, increases profitability, and cuts emissions. There are so many good farmers who are already working with more sustainable and regenerative farming practices, and in 2019, the sector asked for and was given an opportunity to create a credible, effective, and fair way to reduce emissions from agriculture, and I hope that they take it.

I mentioned that one of the Green Party’s top three priorities was to protect and restore our natural world, and that will remain true in 2022. Tackling the biodiversity crisis goes hand in hand with tackling the climate crisis, but for decades, Governments have approached these issues separately. I am determined to better harness the power of nature to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to help us to adapt to the effects of climate change.

Also in 2022, the Greens will be pushing efforts and funding to rescue our native species from the brink, and we will continue to demand no more mines on conservation land. As the Government reforms the Resource Management Act, we will be the voice for nature in the House and we will put the health of our oceans firmly on the political agenda, pushing for a fix to the broken rules that allow overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution to continue.

The Greens have always stood for fairer, more inclusive communities, and the truth is that in Aotearoa today, the comfort and security of the wealthiest New Zealanders would be virtually unimaginable to those on an average income, let alone the poorest half of our society. The clearest indicator of the rot is the housing crisis and the record low rates of homeownership, especially amongst Māori and Pasifika. Last year, as has been well-travelled, house prices rose a staggering 23 percent. Thousands of families, who should have been able to buy a home, are instead funding their landlord’s retirement through exorbitant weekly rents, which were up 5.8 percent last year alone for new tenancies. That is unfair and unjustified. We welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to accelerate housing supply and improve the emergency housing system, but one of these options has to include the possibility—wait for it, David—of rent controls. And I know that that has to include—sorry; I know that my colleagues on the right will blow their gaskets over this—but rent controls have been in place in cities like New York and Paris and Berlin for decades, and the sky hasn’t fallen in. In places like Ireland and Scotland and London, Governments are showing what new, modern rent controls can look like. So given the scale of the housing crisis in New Zealand, this House ought to consider it as an option.

Now, as an associate housing Minister, my co-leader, the Hon Marama Davidson will be working to bring support to our whānau who find themselves where no one expects or deserves to be, and that is without a home. We are in the midst of a crisis that is forcing all but the wealthiest out of quality, stable housing. I’m very proud of what she is doing and what we are doing to see that nobody goes without it.

At the same time, this year, the Hon Marama Davidson will be working across Government and with tangata whenua, communities, and NGOs to deliver the actions outlined in Aotearoa’s first ever strategy and action plan to eliminate family violence and sexual violence, Te Aorerekura. Te Aorerekura is nothing short of a landmark in New Zealand’s social history, but we also know that the hard work is just beginning and I cannot overstate the importance of that work. Everyone has the right to live in a peaceful home, to be respected, to be safe from mistreatment and violence.

The Greens will also keep pushing for action and approaches that honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the tino rangatiratanga of hapū and iwi over their lands, waters, and people. Honouring Te Tiriti can not only right past wrongs but also empower Aotearoa to address underlying social and environmental problems. For decades, Māori have been excluded from decisions about what happens to land that used to be theirs. Now the Green Party are calling on the Government to begin a process of returning stolen land to tangata whenua so that they may reassert their ancestral role as kaitiaki of our precious whenua, awa, and moana.

So, in conclusion, we broadly support the direction laid out in the Prime Minister’s statement. But, fundamentally, the Green Party’s view is that our country, our planet, and our people face a multiplicity of interconnected, independent, and escalating crises. But the root cause of all of these crises, whether it’s inequality in health or housing or wealth, whether it’s in mass extinctions or ocean plastics or polluted rivers, whether it’s in the accelerating droughts or storms or coastal erosion—the root cause of all of these crises is the same and that is an economic system that privatises benefit and socialises cost. It will not be transformed by incremental action. As these compounding crises continue to metastasise, Green Party Ministers inside the Government and MPs outside of it will continue to stand for transformative, long-term action over incremental short-term fixes.

Einstein warned us that we cannot solve the problems with the same level of thinking that created them. We agree with Einstein, and recent polling suggests that more and more New Zealanders agree with us. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

The question is that the amendment moved by the Leader of the Opposition be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. You’ll note that James Shaw gave some of the MPs around the Chamber superhero names. He appears to be living in a cartoon. I thought, “What would I call James Shaw?” Surely he would be Captain Planet. Then I thought, “Hang on a minute.” Those of you who have watched Captain Planet know that Captain Planet had five people’s powers combined. James Shaw is in a coalition agreement where he has no powers at all. That’s probably a good thing, because he just decided to bring back the economic lunacy that we should bring back rent control. Well, it’s a good example of why we needn’t worry about that, because Wonder Woman, as James Shaw called the Prime Minister, ruled out that policy this morning. So we can be safe in the knowledge that James Shaw’s lunacy—or was it Marama Davidson’s on behalf?—won’t be going anywhere.

It is so good to have our Parliament back, because this democracy depends on the simple idea that any person can stand for office and be elected and stand on this green carpet and question the Government and hold it accountable. There were so many times during this summer that I wished we had that power and ability. Why is the Government stealing rapid antigen tests? Why, if people with Omicron, who we know have Omicron, because they had a test that said they have it—if they can isolate at home, why must people returning from overseas, those who have had their maternity care outsourced to the Taliban, queue up for a space in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ), and only 12 percent of them get one? Well, the Government said it was because they wanted to delay the arrival of Omicron. Omicron’s here. We still have the nonsensical, miserable, and unjust concept of MIQ destroying people’s lives and livelihoods.

I wanted to ask, does the Government understand that borrowing, printing, and wasting money puts up the price of everything? You see, this year is the year of the hangover. Anybody can get through a pandemic if they borrow enough money; the hard part is paying for it. I wanted to ask the Government, why do they insist on putting the partnership principle of the Treaty, as they call it, at the heart of everything, when it’s not at the heart of the Labour Party constitution, now, is it?

I wanted to ask why people must isolate for 14 days if they test positive and a further 10 for everyone in their household. Is that why, perhaps, we have lower testing numbers at the start of Omicron, that’s more infectious, than we did at the start of Delta, that’s supposed to spread slower? Could it be that small business is suffering because people are staying home due to a lockdown in all but name? We have a fear going out because they can’t afford to have 14 days isolation and another 10 for their family. How are we supposed to get to stage two of the Government’s communications plan—I mean, sorry, public health response to COVID—if we don’t have the cases they set that was the threshold for their own policy failing so we could move on to the next stage because no one can afford to go out or get tested because the isolation rules are unworkable. So many questions for this Government, and that’s why it is so good to have our parliamentary democracy back in session.

Actually, the whole ACT team are thrilled to be back after 2021. Brooke has been extraordinary. As our deputy and whip she has organised the ACT caucus. She’s broken stories on the neglect of patients and led a campaign against mortgage interest deductibility changes that make no sense, and forced this House to face up to the evil of the Chinese Communist Party when our Government wanted to cut and run the other way.

Nicole McKee, Parliament’s most-loved knitter, but she also skewered our hapless police Minister on her softly, softly approach to gangs again and again.

Chris Baillie has stuck up for small business and our overstretched police force—that same police Minister won’t stand up for with his, shall we say, cutting speeches in the House.

Simon has travelled the country—Simon Court, that is, although I’m sure Simon Bridges has travelled the country. I remember the last time he did, actually. Simon Court, though, has travelled the country hearing from people in our primary and extractive industries and bringing the message back to Wellington that we need to stop regulating those who pay the bills to death or we will not have any economy left.

James McDowall has worked hard for so many heartlessly neglected by our clunky immigration democracy, bureaucracy, and presents legislation to Parliament that would underpin the purpose of our universities about being the free exchange of ideas, not complaining about emotional harm every time somebody disagrees with you, as if that will never happen outside the walls of the university.

Karen Chhour is the ultimate battler and keeps building her base for the fundamental reform of the way we care for children displaced, something which every society struggles with and needs the care, attention, and passion of somebody who has lived through that experience.

Mark, well, what can you say? The authentic and loved voice of rural New Zealand. He is a star in a society, or a sector of society, that gets so little love from the rest of our Government and Parliament, for that matter.

And then there’s Toni, who is endlessly improving and searching for a way to reduce our shameful levels of recidivism, Not many politicians have the conviction to go to jail for their beliefs. Toni goes inside frequently to advocate for a better way to rehabilitate prisoners.

Then there’s Damien, who’s done the heavy lifting on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, but also improved our voter base, particularly in Auckland, with his Celtic charm—I can’t say any more.

It’s a solid base for nine new MPs to become the household names of the future, and this year we have everything to play for. The best way of finding out what is really happening is to ask the majority of New Zealanders a simple question: is the country going in the right direction or the wrong direction? And what is going to set the tone for this year is that for the first time since the global financial crisis, the majority of New Zealanders are telling this Government this country is going in the wrong direction. We now have a gap of 25 points between the left and the right on election night, down to a gap of only six points—100,000 more voters changing their mind about Jacinda Ardern’s leadership is enough to change the Government. And it’s not difficult to see why.

As more and more people understand that Jacinda’s COVID response is a grand illusion, nearly every day brings another bizarre disaster showing we benefited from good luck, isolation, borrowing and printing, rather than good management. A million Kiwis offshore know anyone can quarantine an island. I mean, it took 100 million years of continental drift, but the work was already done for this Government. We’ve now entered a Wonderland where the Red Queen is talking backwards, and a million Kiwis are locked out of their country in the cruellest abrogation of any State’s responsibility to its citizens that anyone has seen in a modern democracy in a century, and it is shameful.

Every aspect of her response has been incompetent. Testing: banned them, then allowed some, now stealing the ones that they did allow, now forcing unworkable isolation rules because without testing the Government’s only solution is to lock people down until you probably don’t have COVID anyway, even though they know that it is going to spread whether they decimate the economy with these unworkable isolation rules or not. When the penalty for testing positive is 14 days at home, what do you think people are going to do if they are not a critical worker? The simple answer is that if your family or your business depends on you showing up for work, you’re going to be a critical worker. That is the reality.

Then we’re told to be grateful for getting some freedoms back, that our border will open over a torturous process between now and October, while Australia will be open for business just next week. Two weeks’ time, they’re open. And you have to ask: how should a New Zealand tourism operator, who’s worked for 20 years—their whole career—to build up their enterprise, feel when they watch the planes landing in Sydney and Melbourne and Brisbane? People are going to spend their hard-earned money over there instead of over here because our Government—the Government that boasted about a wellbeing approach where they would balance all of New Zealanders’ different needs—now has a policy obsession with just one thing that blinds it to all of the hurt and misery that it causes to every other aspect of New Zealanders’ wellbeing. That’s why we face the year of the hangover.

Families know the price of everything has skyrocketed. Now, it’s partly the result of supply chain constraints and inflationary pressure that’s affected the whole world, but hear this: we have the second-worst inflation in the developed world and we have the second-biggest Government spending and stimulus programme of the OECD—behind the United States, who have the worst inflation in the developed world. We have done this to ourselves, or rather our Government has done it to us. Make no mistake, this Government knows its policies have been inflationary and that is why we have a grand illusion.

And here’s another reason why people think the country’s going in the wrong direction: this Government was elected to fix housing. I have to admire the Prime Minister for her incredible chutzpah, getting up in her speech and talking about what the Government’s going to do about housing. Well, maybe it’s not bravery; maybe it’s contempt for New Zealanders and an assumption of gullibility. The truth is that under this Government, the average house price has gone up $387,000, 58 percent. The gap between homeowners and non-homeowners has skyrocketed under a Labour Government, increasing inequality because they’re incompetent at policy.

They’ve got an economy that’s busy, but it’s not one that is productive or healthy. And that’s why this year, the ACT Party is campaigning for a healthier economy—an economy that makes careful use of taxpayers’ money, because we know how carefully they have to earn and spend it.

We are seeing, at this time, record tax takes. You know, if you take the amount of tax that this Government collects for every single New Zealander—and if you’re kind to the Government and you adjust it for inflation, they are taking another $2,000 in tax overall for every person in your household. And they’ve been helped by inflation, because when prices go up they get more GST, and if wages go up—which they’re not compared with prices—you go into a higher tax bracket to buy the same stuff.

If inflation is a thief in your pocket, then the Government should be had up for receiving stolen goods. They are inflating away their own debt and borrowing by lowering interest rates and causing inflation. But here’s the sequel—that’s why it’s called a hangover—the only way the Reserve Bank can get in control of inflation is if they’re prepared to raise interest rates. And you’ve got two-thirds of people coming off their mortgage rates this year—you’re going to see people go up two points, and that is when this Government will start to understand why people think they’re going in the wrong direction. They haven’t been confident at balancing New Zealanders’ needs through COVID. Anyone can isolate an island, anyone can borrow 60 billion bucks, but it’s paying it back and controlling the cost of living where they have failed.

And it’s not just a healthier economy that we require; it’s also healthier communities. You know, the Prime Minister has some gall to get up and talk about record low unemployment. You know, they say unemployment’s almost as low as 3 percent. What’s interesting: 6 percent of the workforce are on the jobseeker benefit; another 6 percent are on other main benefits. So you’ve got 12 percent on a benefit and they claim 3 percent unemployment. Why is that? Well, when Statistics New Zealand ring up and ask if you’re unemployed, they ask, “Are you looking for work?” If you’re not looking for work, you’re not unemployed. The figures the Government puts out are completely incredible, and I mean that in the true sense of the word—that they are not credible. The real problems are that we have too many people in our community for whom the best pathway to prosperity in their community is to join a gang because methamphetamine is a half-billion dollar a year industry with no tax.

We need healthy and thriving communities. We need communities where kids actually go to school. The Government had a policy like that called partnership schools, kura hourua, or charter schools. You know how they work? If the kids didn’t show up, the school didn’t get paid. You wouldn’t believe what happened next. The school started focusing on making sure kids went to school, and once they were at school, it was much easier to teach them useful things for the rest of their life than if they weren’t. None of this is complicated. We’ve been putting up the rates for benefits, and we’re wondering why there’s 12 percent on a main benefit despite claiming 3 percent unemployment. Well, the ACT Party says that if you’re on welfare for the long term, we’re going to use electronic income management and counselling to get you off a benefit.

That’s what healthier communities look like, and it looks like treating the criminals like actual criminals and being responsive when people find themselves like a woman I met just last week in a dairy in Epsom. I said, “What is wrong with your arm? Why do you have that cast?” She was fighting off a robber. When you consider that she lives above the store, you understand just how real that is.

And then, besides a healthier economy and healthy and thriving communities that we so badly need, based on the values of personal responsibility and respect for business, we also need to understand our Kiwi identity. It’s being said that we are going on some sort of bold trajectory, where we divide New Zealand into two types of people. On the one hand, tangata whenua, here by right; on the other, tangata Tiriti, here on some other criteria that is not clear. Through all of human history, there has never been a society that has succeeded by giving people different sets of political rights by birth. In fact, so many New Zealanders have come to escape the class system of England, the caste system of India, the one-party State of China, and the apartheid of South Africa—people dreaming of an equal future. Every good political movement, in 400 years; freedom of religion to believe what you want; equality between the sexes; equality between races; equality based on people’s sexuality—every good political movement has been about the simple idea that each human is born with the same basic rights. That is the way to address genuine challenges such as poverty and a lack of opportunity in education and health and welfare and housing, that we badly need to do. But if we divide our country into an ethno-State with different sets of political rights, depending on who your grandparents are, not only will we not achieve that, we will create a level of division and despair in this country that cannot be imagined in New Zealand as it currently conceives itself.

That is why we will be advocating, alongside a healthier economy, with less Government waste, less strangling regulation, and more respect for people who get up to make a difference in their own lives, along with healthier communities based on social services that really work with the premise of personal responsibility and the simple idea that people actually can make a difference in their own lives. We will also be advocating for New Zealand to be a modern, outward-looking, multi-ethnic, liberal democracy where every child or tamariki is born with the same bundle of political rights. That is perhaps the most important debate for New Zealand’s long-term future.

It is so good to have this House back. There is so much good work we can do holding this Government accountable and giving some hope of a better way forward to rebuild our country in the aftermath of COVID; or, perhaps more accurately, the Government’s expensive, cruel, and damaging, myopic, one-sided tunnel-visioned response to it. The ACT Party is thrilled to be here and can’t wait to do our best for this great country in 2022. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

E te Pīka, e te Whare tēnā tātou. Tēnā tātou i a tātou e pōhiri nei i te tau 2022. Kāti ake, ā, ko te wehi ki a Ihowa o ngā mano me ōna manaakitia i a tātou kei ngā tini āhuatanga o te wā. E kī ahau, ki ō tātou tini mate, ngā mate huhua o te wā, ngā mate kei runga i tēnā marae, kei runga i tēnā marae, tēnā kāinga, tēnā kāinga o tātou. Arā ko taku tuahine tērā i roto i Te Whakatōhea, ki a Kay i riro tītapu ki te pō i nehua i tāinahi, me ngā mate huhua o te wā. Kua rere ngā mate, haere, haere, whatungaro atu rā. Hoki mai rā ki a tātou ngā mahuetanga iho, ngā toe iho, ki a tātou e pae nei, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora tātou katoa.

[To the Speaker, to the House, greetings to all of us who have been welcomed here in 2022. May we be protected by the Lord God in the many current issues that we face. We mourn the many deaths, the many recent deaths on each and every marae and in each and every home of ours. Specifically, I mourn my sister Kay from Whakatōhea, who was taken recently and was buried yesterday, but also mourn the other many deaths. The dead have flown, go, go, be gone. I now return to us all, to those left behind, to those that remain, to us sitting here. Greetings, greetings, be well one and all.]

Well, as I reflect on the year that has gone, and I know many have done that—it was a big year and it was a hard year and it was trying year for many. But, with COVID, and with the summer period of the unknown, we are still here today ensuring the safety of all that live here in Aotearoa.

But let me bring you to a kaupapa that has been at the core of everything we have done, but at the core of our announcements in the last few days during the celebrations—or the commemorations—of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

The whakapapa of Te Tiriti o Waitangi needs to be continued to be discussed and wānanga-ed at every level of this country, from this House—where it is not evident; it is not evident in this Chamber. I see a lot of spare space on this wall where Te Tiriti o Waitangi should be evident. It should guide the discussions of this House.

The whakapapa of Te Tiriti o Waitangi article 1, as I have said before, consented to custodianship of the Crown. Article 2 consented to Kāwanatanga and to maintain rangatiratanga over our whenua, our awa, our moana, our people, and our domains. Article 3 was to be treated as equals. Māori have been good partners through Te Tiriti o Waitangi for the last 182 years. We have consented to Kāwanatanga and we have upheld our part of the deal. Rangatiratanga has not been upheld. The Crown has not honoured the Treaty. We continue to fight for the equal rights of Māori to participate in our country’s democracy.

We talked about divorcing the Queen—this Waitangi Day, Te Paati Māori announced the removal of the British Crown and the royal family as head of State, and move Aotearoa to a Tiriti-centric Aotearoa. Now, if you look at it as a marriage—if you look at it as a marriage—tangata whenua went into a marriage with the Crown, and they beget a child called Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Just because the divorce happens doesn’t mean the child still doesn’t exist. And so what we are calling for is to relinquish the Crown as head of State of Aotearoa, but to allow Te Tiriti o Waitangi to guide us, to create a Tiriti-centric Aotearoa between tangata whenua—and like, David Seymour said in his speech, and I heard him supporting this, is that we have tangata Tiriti sit in their rightful place: to be able to make equal decisions for the wellbeing of our country. So just because the divorce happens doesn’t mean the child still doesn’t exist. So it is time for an adult and a mature conversation to the herald the dawn of a new union: a marriage of equality between tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti to create a true Aotearoa; an Aotearoa our tīpuna envisaged and consented to, a Tiriti-centric Aotearoa.

Our vision is not reform, because reform is a sugar-coated mechanism to be better servants to the system. As we work towards equality, let’s not confuse diversity and inclusion with equality—because it usually shows up with an obsession with numbers. How many Māori are in the photo? Have we met our 20 percent Māori quota? How many Māori are in Cabinet? All we are seeing is chocolate sprinkles put over a vanilla cake—the cake is still vanilla. Our mana motuhake policy is the reconciliation of our indigenous truth and our re-indigenisation of our collectivism as tangata whenua. Our mana motuhake policy is the revolutionary transformation of who we are as mana whenua of this nation, as tuakana of this nation.

The establishment of a Māori Parliament is critical to our constitutional transformation. The implementation of Matike Mai recommendations is also part of that policy. The overhaul of the Treaty settlement process and to return land to whānau, hapū, and iwi by ensuring the private and local government land is returned to mana whenua, introducing a first right of refusal policy, and I thank the Greens for supporting this part of our policy because it means we are in agreement with this particular policy in our mana motuhake endeavours. We want to return conservation land in the Department of Conversation estate to whānau, hapū, and iwi Māori. Land back must become reality for tino rangatiratanga. To be achieved, we must commit to restore our environment and tackle the climate change crisis—and I look forward to the invitation by the Greens’ co-leader to have those discussions—by allowing mātauranga Māori to lead the way. Only indigenous knowledge will save this planet—because science hasn’t.

There is a new generation on the rise. You have the baby boomers, you have Gen Y, Gen Z, the Millennials. I have dubbed this next generation as ‘Gen T’: Generation Tiriti. They are intelligent, they are strategic, and they are in tune, and—dare I say it—they are woke. We are here to dismantle and they are here to dismantle the system, and I am here for it.

Our mahi for the year ahead: in 2022, we will continue to be the unapologetic Māori voice for a Tiriti-centric Aotearoa and be a continued powerhouse in Opposition. Just last month, we supported the call for musicians, artists, and creatives who had the rug pulled from under them with the sudden cancellation of events. Thankfully, the Government listened and has now fronted up with more support. This, once again, shows the power of Te Paati Māori’s voice on the cross benches, and that even more Te Paati Māori MPs next term—and I believe we’re the kryptonite everybody’s talking about—will lead to even more wins for our people.

Our people expect and deserve liberated representatives who will be ashamedly Māori, always; who will not bow down to the Crown; and who do not suffer cognitive dissonance, where our actions conflict with our values. This year, we will continue as we’ve begun. We will continue to elevate the voices of te pani me te rawakore and fight against inequalities in the widening inequality that this country has seen.

COVID has not only highlighted the injustices in society but made it far worse. As economist Bernard Hickey has reported, the Government’s COVID policies made the rich $952 billion richer, while the poor have been forced with a $400 million further in debt to the Government itself. The poor now need more than twice as many food parcels as before COVID. As prices continue to rise much faster than wages, it is Māori, as always, who bear the brunt of capitalism’s failures. This is clear when looking at the housing market. We are seeing the biggest wealth transfer in generations: from hardworking whānau to greedy property developers and landlords. Since 1986, the number of Māori forced to rent has increased by 88.3 percent; 70 percent of Māori cannot afford homes and are living in rentals; one-third of Māori live in houses considered damp and/or overcrowded; Māori make up 50 percent of the waiting list for social housing; 30 percent of Māori pay rent that is over 30 percent of their weekly income; and 33 percent of Māori will shift residence every three years.

At the same time, there were 191,646 unoccupied houses on census night in 2018—38,000 of those ghost houses were in Auckland. At least 12,000 tangata whenua are homeless in their homeland. This is one of the most significant Treaty breaches of today. We have created a generation of renters and we are holding them hostage with the very real prospect of homelessness. Te Paati Māori will continue to push for bold solutions to the housing crisis, including taxing unearned wealth through capital gains and a ghost house tax; we will massively increase the construction of State houses while enabling papa kāinga housing at scale through regular reforms and increased investment; and we will stop all sales of freehold land to offshore foreign interest.

My member’s bill on electoral law overhaul needs this House to support all the recommendations. If we do not, we fall short. We need a fair electoral system that does not limit and suppress Māori participation. Our electoral law is archaic, it’s discriminatory, and it’s racist. There are only two opportunities for Māori to choose the electoral rolls: either at the time of initial enrolment or during the Māori Electoral Option period, which the last time was in 2018. So if you wanted to change in the election for 2020, you couldn’t because your next option is 2024. So you miss the next election in 2023 and so you participate on the roll of your choice in 2026. This is no accident. The barriers in place are calculated to lock tangata whenua out from fully participating in this country’s democracy. The system is designed to disenfranchise Māori voters and lock us out. My member’s bill is to remove the racism that locks our people out of their right to change rolls for up to eight years—it’s an eight-year lockout.

Specifically, the bill will allow Māori to change between the Māori and general rolls at any time; to change the requirement to redraw electoral boundaries; to set a date two years after each general election; set a legislative requirement that if somebody stipulates they are Māori when enrolling but doesn’t choose an electoral roll, they are automatically placed on the Māori roll; change the name of the general electoral district to “non-Māori electoral district” because you’ve got the Māori roll, the general roll, and then the general election—it doesn’t make sense. I am encouraging all my fellow MPs to support this bill. Supporting is consciously choosing to actively participate in a Tiriti-centric Aotearoa, recognising the mana of the Treaty that our ancestors signed together. If not, then we choose to continue to discriminate against tangata whenua and you choose to uphold this blatantly racist legislation.

Seabed mining is another one of our members’ bills. Te Paati Māori will also continue to assert the kaitiakitanga of tangata whenua and for the restoration of our whenua, moana, and taiao. The other Te Paati Māori member’s bill—under Debbie Ngarewa-Packer in the ballot—the Prohibition on Seabed Mining Legislation Amendment Bill, which would ban seabed mining in Aotearoa. Debbie’s Ngāti Ruanui and the iwi of Te Tai Hauāuru have been fighting for years against the greed of international corporates who would destroy our moana and offshore profits. They follow in the proud tradition of whānau, hapū, and iwi across Aotearoa who have fought against the pollution of our taiao and the desecration of our whenua taurikura such as Te Whānau-a-Apanui, my own people. I stood on the front lines of the protest that worked to get Petrobras out of the Raukumara.

Ngāti Ruanui have won in the courts time and time again, including in the Supreme Court in September of last year, and we are very proud of that. It’s now time for the Government to follow the precedent of the courts and to do what’s right: adopt Debbie’s bill, ban seabed mining in Aotearoa, and, while they’re at it, onshore drilling and fracking too.

We are entirely focused on advancing the aspirations of our people because we are the true indigenous political voice and movement in this House. We will continue to support bills that do that and oppose policies that harm our people, regardless of who puts them forward.

Nō reira, e te iwi Māori, kia kaha, kaha ki a tātou e hika mā.

[Therefore, I say to the Māori people, we must indeed continue to stay strong.]

We must continue to be the protectors and the projectors of our indigenous voice, we must continue to be the unapologetic Māori voice for our liberation, and we must continue to re-indigenise our world for the sake of our whenua, our moana, our mokopuna, and our future. Why? Because we are magic.

Nō reira, e hika mā, ka nui aku kōrero mō tēnei wā. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora tātou katou.

[And so, I will leave my speech there. Greetings, greetings, be well one and all.]

Tēnā rā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Ahakoa kua tae tātou ki te marama o Pēpuere e tautoko ana ahau i ō mihi ki a tātou mō te tau hou nā reira, huri rauna i tō tātou Whare tēnā rā tātou katoa.

[Greetings, Mr Speaker. Although we have reached the month of February, I support your New Year’s greeting to us all and I also greet everyone in all parts of the House.]

I’ve reflected on the speeches of those who have stood before me this afternoon, and I have to say it’s only been 12 months since I’ve heard a more lacklustre speech than the one from the Leader of the Opposition. It was forgettable. He did miss his cue, and the debate just about ended before it started, but what was amusing was that within two sentences he said that “the National Party’s ready”. Obviously, when you miss your cue the National Party is not ready whatsoever.

But what concerned me most of all in his speech was his lamenting of our incredibly low unemployment rate. This Government has done superbly well in making sure people do have incomes and are able to feed their families, and yet what sort of politician, what sort of political party, laments a low unemployment rate? The National Party, and the ACT Party as well.

I was also really disappointed to listen to David Seymour, because somehow he buys into that whole theory that Māori are privileged and have greater rights than other New Zealanders. It’s interesting, Sir James Hēnare said, “Unity doesn’t mean to say we have to be the same”. We’re not the same, and I speak often about crossing over the bridge that is Te Tiriti o Waitangi from the Pākehā world into the Māori world. And I ask David Seymour, does he want to cross that bridge from his Pākehā world into the Māori world? Because he sees New Zealand and everybody in New Zealand being equal, if they are equal in his mould, in his vision of Aotearoa. And what’s really sad is that David Seymour has Māori whakapapa but he was born into the non-Māori world, and he wants everybody to be equal in his image. The reality is Te Tiriti o Waitangi in article 3 guaranteed equity. And if equity means that Māori have lower life expectancy, have lower employment rates, have lower education, then that’s not equity, and what he’s doing is actually going against the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. He has proved that he does not want to cross that bridge that is Te Tiriti o Waitangi and learn more about his own whakapapa.

He spoke about healthy and thriving communities, but then he disagreed with every single thing that this Government has done to make sure, through this pandemic, that we have healthy and thriving communities. We have had 53 deaths over two years because of the pandemic. Just 53. That’s averaging one every fortnight. Not 53,000: 53. Some countries around the world have had 53 deaths before lunchtime each day. This Government has done an incredible job at keeping New Zealanders alive. They lament a few other things, and they are upset about a few other things, but what is more upsetting than losing a family member unnecessarily? This Government, what we have done, has worked.

I reflect on the Prime Minister’s statement and I want to just quote a few parts from it. She says, “In a pandemic that moves swiftly, where new variants emerge quickly, no country has perfected the playbook.”—and we are saying we’re not claiming to have had a perfect response, but—“At every turn our goal has been to do what is right.”, and that everything we have done has been right because it has kept New Zealanders alive. Those political parties across the way, they don’t put the same value on human life that this Government has.

We have acted early and decisively to prevent the worst effects seen elsewhere and ensure our health workers haven’t had to carry the burden alone. It is an approach that has worked. Our confirmed cases, hospitalisations, and deaths have been the lowest in the OECD for each of the past two years. That is something to be celebrated and to be commended on. Unemployment is at record lows. Record numbers of New Zealanders have moved off a main benefit and into work. The measures we have taken have saved lives. Our policies protected jobs and saved businesses. The plan we followed has worked, and it has worked in saving Māori lives. I talk about my great grandmother, who passed away in 1919 as a result of the influenza after World War I. And I talk also about the urupā in the cemeteries and marae across the country, just like ours up north, in Ngāti Manu, where there is a stretch of ground that is full of graves and the bodies that are unmarked because people were dying so quickly up my valley that they didn’t have an opportunity to actually record who was dying. We avoided those sort of circumstances.

We have engaged with Māori since the start of the pandemic in 2020. I meet three different groups a week on the pandemic response—and they don’t make it easy for us, I’ll tell you. The Iwi Chairs Forum, those iwi chairs who are not affiliated to the forum, and then also other Māori organisations. There has been unequalled access for Māori to Ministers, to CEOs, to officials. We have listened and responded to many of their requests. We haven’t agreed all the time, we haven’t put everything in place that they’ve demanded, but we have acted on what Māori have asked of us.

The Prime Minister also talks about securing our economic future and, over the course of the pandemic, the Government has invested $8.8 billion in their health response. Over the past two years, we have invested $22.9 billion in saving jobs and businesses, and we’ve always said that a strong health response is our best economic policy. New Zealand has weathered the COVID-19 disruption better than many of our key trading partners. New Zealand’s economy grew by 4.9 percent over the last year and outperformed most of the OECD, led by our significant investment in keeping and creating jobs which the leader of the National Party disagrees with. We have record low unemployment, which the Leader of the Opposition party disagrees with. What’s the alternative, to lift unemployment? To have people out of work? That is the most preposterous idea in the history of this Parliament.

Record numbers of New Zealanders moving off a main benefit and into work; over 100,000 more people employed now than 12 months earlier; our primary sector obtaining record export prices; and a construction boom underpinned by the Government’s infrastructure programme—our plan as this Government has worked to keep people alive and the economy running. As I said, 53 deaths over two years, not 53,000, not 53 before lunchtime.

I just want to touch on some of the other work that—because each Minister has a work programme and I want to talk about some of the things that I’ll be doing in my portfolios. The first one is Oranga Tamariki. As we know, Oranga Tamariki for too long has put themselves up on a pedestal. They have been directing the state of play in communities and really what’s happened is things haven’t worked for our children. The future direction for Oranga Tamariki is going to put resources and decision making into the hands of the community. We have a future direction plan that will take three to five years to implement, which is going to change the way communities get to look after their children. The Māori medium / kaupapa Māori education programme: I hear that the Te Rūnanga nui o ngā Kura Kaupapa are going to the Waitangi Tribunal because they don’t believe that they have got their way; they want a Māori education authority and they’re comparing it to the Māori Health Authority. Now, one of the things I say is that the difference, the big difference between the Māori Health Authority and the Māori education authority that they are wanting is a Māori Health Authority looks after the health needs of all Māori. One hundred percent of Māori across New Zealand. The Māori education authority that they are talking about will look after about five percent of Māori learners, and I will never, ever agree to that. If we’re going to do something in Māori medium / kaupapa Māori education for Māori learners it has to be for 100 percent of our Māori children.

Matariki is a holiday that is fast approaching. For the first time, we get to celebrate a uniquely New Zealand Aotearoa holiday. New Zealand history in schools starts being taught later this year where the true history of New Zealand, not a vanilla history of New Zealand, is going to be taught. There is a lot the Government is doing.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Kia ora mai tātou. Labour has lowered the bar so low they will surely be remembered as the limbo Labour Government. The limbo-dancing Labour Government, an image I surely don’t want in my head, but one that is useful to set a structure to describe broken promises looking back, wasteful spending, and an inability to deliver looking forward. When we look at broken promises, first of all, certainly in the health space, the most obvious two that stand out are, firstly, a promise to deliver 20 mobile dental clinics by June 2021. Fail—broken promise. It doesn’t even come close, didn’t even start, wasn’t even on the agenda, didn’t make the Budget plan—just failed.

The second is free GP visits for those over 65, a big programme of about $385 million. Gone—shovelled under the couch, shovelled under the bed. Gone, completely removed for our older people. Two very clear broken promises. The clear failure to deliver in health spans many domains, and this Government actually needs to own them all over these last five years. I’ll certainly own every good and every bad of the National Government in health for the nine years preceding that, but this Government owns the last five years. They had the ability and the privilege to appoint DHB chairs; they signed off annual plans. This Government needs to own the last five years. Every single National health target when we handed over in 2017 is worse today than it was when we handed over. Oh, and by the way, it was getting worse before coronavirus struck, so we can’t just blame coronavirus for that.

When we handed over, there were only several thousand people on elective waiting lists, waiting for their surgery. Now, there are 100,000 who have had cancelled appointments, there are 30,000 who are waiting more than four months to see a specialist. While we are talking specialist services, over this Government’s five years, can Mr Little explain to me, please, Taranaki DHB’s reporting as an extreme risk 28 children between four to 16 years old “who have obstructive sleep apnoea or positive oximetry, tonsils grade two or above, snoring and pauses in breathing overnight” who are waiting more than six months for an ear, nose, and throat appointment? This is affecting their growth, development, concentration, and ability to learn and their behaviour. Every parent who has ever had a child with recurrent tonsillitis, a sore throat, snoring—that change in pitch that children have when their tonsils are enlarged—they will understand the importance of this measure. Minister Little, you own this. Your DHB is already reflecting it as an extreme risk. You need to do something with this.

Elective surgery is not the only area that this Government has failed to deliver. I’ve found it really interesting today; I was wondering how many people were going to stand up and talk about the 53 deaths under coronavirus. Every single death is tragic, but mortality by itself is stark, it is naked, it is cold, and it does not describe the fullness of the COVID consequences on New Zealanders. The British Medical Journal this week writes this: “Missed care for conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mental health, for example, has short and long term implications for morbidity and mortality. Measuring the pandemic’s effects only in terms of deaths due to COVID-19 fails to accommodate these important outcomes.” We need to understand the wider consequences of coronavirus beyond—and I accept a very good—53 deaths that we’ve had over two years, with each death tragic in its own right—absolutely. I don’t want to diminish that. But that cannot be our performance metric by itself. It is too shallow.

I want to focus on one particular aspect of health under coronavirus, and that’s cancer management. It worried me in the beginning, it continues to worry me today, and if we look back, under the Alpha strain what we know from Te Ahu o te Kahu is that in that first week after Alpha, or that first month after Alpha really hit us in April. If we particularly look at cancer diagnosis, particularly bronchoscopy, where we stick a telescope down the lung, looking for lung cancer, and gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy, where we put a telescope down the mouth, generally, looking for bowel cancers—what we know is that in the month of April, compared to the previous year, we had 70 percent less bronchoscopies and endoscopies. Now, by October 2020, we’d actually caught up, but that delay in those people who weren’t able to get their endoscopy from April through to October has had a consequence.

Then what happened? The health system failed to prepare for Delta across ICU beds, nurses—you name it—and so when Delta struck on 17 August, again, if we look with the Government’s own data on diagnosis of cancer, we see, thankfully, less than what we saw with Alpha. But with Delta strain, in that first month of August to September, we see a 30 percent reduction in bronchoscopy and 30 percent reduction in GI endoscopy. Not clear if they’ve been caught up. Just want to mention bronchoscopy and lung cancer. It was a failure coming out of Alpha. It looks like it’s still a failure coming out of Delta. Lung cancer’s an area we need to do a lot of work in.

I have little faith in the ability of this Labour Government to deliver on its promises to deliver new ICU beds by July, to deliver 20-plus health infrastructure projects that the Prime Minister mentioned, to build roads, to improve housing, to reduce poverty, to support the cost of living, and lower inequality. Not only do I not have confidence, but, you know, the Treasury doesn’t have confidence in this Government doing that either—their own agency, their own agency reporting on Government, the investor confidence ratings, which came out a few months ago.

Now, investor confidence ratings: there’s two tranches. First tranche was done in our hands around about 2017. Second tranche was done 2018 to 2020, so in this Government’s hands. And if we look at what the investor confidence ratings do, it’s a Cabinet approval process for assessing agency investment performance and the level of confidence that stakeholders should place in the ability of an agency to manage its assets and investments. It is the confidence that stakeholders should place. Stakeholders? That’s you and me; that’s New Zealanders. This is the confidence we should have in these agencies.

What happened here is Cabinet identifies 25 Government State agencies and puts them through an assessment process. They select these 25 agencies because they’re responsible for roughly $100 billion or 75 percent of assets in the Crown’s balance sheets. So we’ve got an investor confidence rating from Treasury, and there were really important Government agencies—in our hands, there were 16, 17, and in this Government’s hands there are 18 to 20; the two rounds of investor confidence ratings assessments.

What do we see? Well, the first thing we see is an interesting change to the weightings under this Government’s hands. They reduced the weighting for project delivery from 15 percent to 10 percent. Too hard, can’t deliver, reduce the weighting. That’s not a good look. And then if we look across these 25 agencies, several worry me, but one that worries me particularly is the Ministry of Health, who is one of the few that has gone backwards under this Government’s management. They were a “C” in our hands, which was average; I accept that. They are a “D”, which the Treasury is reporting. In this Government’s hands, the trust that investors, the trust that New Zealanders can have in this Government managing the Ministry of Health is a “D”; 40 out of 100 points, in this Government’s hands. It’s unequivocal. This is Treasury reporting. Other agencies? A few have done well, and I’ll give credit to that. But across the board, this is not a good report for the Government’s handling or their ability or any faith we might have that they can deliver any of the fine and wonderful things they’ve said here today.

Some predictions: firstly, the health sector reforms in July will further damage workforce morale and the organisational change will result in a reduction in health services. Secondly, the Government will fail terribly to meet health targets and so will shift the goalposts away from targets. Oh wait, they’ve already done that. It’s called health indicators—health indicators that today, if you go to the website, say there is no problem accessing GPs. That is a dream. That is a terrible, terrible dream. Health indicators that say, actually, it’s a plus 3 percent, I think it is, delivery of specialist services. That also is a dream.

The third prediction I’ll make, and it’s a warning, is to Māori. To Māori in the Māori Health Authority, I say this: kia tūpato—be careful. A Māori Health Authority will be underfunded, under-resourced, and vital planks in the policy will be walked back before 1 July. Mark my words, we will see the true colours of the Crown-Māori relationship with this Government when key planks in the Māori health policy will be walked back before 1 July.

Our leader has proposed a vision of a stable economy, a productive economy enhanced by increased skills, increased learning, infrastructure that’s actually delivered on time, on budget, and in scope. We know how to do that. National knows how to deliver infrastructure. We know how to deliver jobs of the future. We know the importance of raising people out of poverty, reducing inequality—that progression, that upward mobility that we need to talk about—and the fact that before we spend money on social services, before we spend wealth on social services, we’ve got to create wealth. National proposes a stable economy that will let us have it all. We can have at all. We just need to be prudent, we need to be mindful, we need to be thoughtful, and this is the vision we bring to New Zealand. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Happy New Year, Mr Speaker. As I listened to that speech, I couldn’t help but reflect on the saying “Beware a wolf wearing sheep’s skin”. And that’s the theme for the public: to beware of wolves wearing sheep’s skin, and I put my finger on that side of the House particularly. I want to say to Dr Shane Reti and the National Party that it does not matter how much you cut up the data, life matters—life matters—livelihood matters, and I’m proud to be a member of a Government in which we place that as a priority. And as my colleague Kelvin Davis said, the best economic response is a strong health response.

It’s a real pleasure to endorse the Prime Minister’s speech. I want to acknowledge her, acknowledge her leadership, and acknowledge also the manner by which she leads during this period. Make the comparison, I would say. I also I want to say that my heart goes out to her. I have seen sort of the kind of rhetoric that we don’t want to see in New Zealand. When I see people on social media and on placards where they’re threatening her, threatening her wellbeing, her family and their wellbeing, that does not belong to Aotearoa New Zealand.

When I see the racism that’s emerging—and I don’t care who you are: Pākehā, European, Māori, Pasifika, rainbow sector, elders, church leaders; if you are aiding and abetting that kind of rhetoric, I say, “They do not belong to Aotearoa New Zealand”. That’s not the kind of New Zealand that this Government is forging forward on. The Prime Minister is right when she was saying these are extraordinary times, and it is a testing time for this country; I want to say it is not for the victims of racism to try and address it. It is the culprits, the instigators, the perpetrators of racism—they must face up to that responsibility and it begins from this House and I say it begins from that side of the House.

I agree with the Prime Minister that the people of Aotearoa New Zealand by majority have risen to the challenges that we face. As the Prime Minister said, our confirmed cases, hospitalisations, and deaths have been the lowest in the OECD for each of the past two years. Unemployment is at record lows. Record numbers of New Zealanders have moved off a main benefit and into work with the minimum wage increasing every year, lifting families out of poverty. However, our Kiwi winter is around the corner and, as the Prime Minister has said, Omicron will not be the last variant. I take note of what’s happening around the Pacific region, and I’m so proud that we have a Government that continues not only to be concerned about the roll-out of vaccination for our people of Aotearoa New Zealand but recognising that we also have a place in the Pacific region in supporting what happens in the Pacific region. It remains a key priority of this Government to take pressure off our health services, so it’s critical that we work together, all of us, and I want to say to the Pacific community, we must commit to getting boosters and getting our children immunised. This Government will support your leadership in all that you do.

I want to acknowledge our providers right throughout the motu. They have been a leading arm of the Government’s response to COVID. They have been at the forefront. These are the frontline workers. But I’m not just talking about our health workers; I’m also talking about our Pacific communities who are working at the supermarkets, in the transportation sector, at the airport, at the hotel quarantine facilities. They are laying their lives on the line for the rest of Aotearoa New Zealand, and I take my hat off to you.

It remains, therefore, that our Government will continue to find ways of empowering and supporting our communities. The leadership that I have witnessed in the last two years—it’s just been amazing and I feel a sense of confidence. And I’m not just talking about our traditional chiefs and orators or our church leaders; I’m also acknowledging the leadership of our youth, our rainbow sector, our women, those up and coming clinicians that are graduating from university. I salute the leadership that you have played in these critical two years past.

The vaccine plays an important part in our preparations for Omicron. We need to ensure that our 5- to 11-year-old Pacific children are vaccinated and that all of our eligible Pacific peoples get their booster when they become due. It is critical that we vaccinate our children before the coming winter. It is critical to do this so that we can navigate our way through the traffic light system, and I’m delighted to say that the Pacific community’s response has been excellent. National vaccination figures show that 97 percent have received their first dose and 94 percent are fully vaccinated, with two doses. In Auckland, using both health survey user and primary health organisation data, we are at 94 percent partially vaccinated and 91.5 percent fully vaccinated of the 12-plus. In our boosters in Auckland, 30 percent, or 49,800 people, have received their booster. But we still need to do more. At the moment, the latest figures show just 42 percent of our Pacific population have boosters. The rest of Aotearoa has reached 52 percent and so we have to make sure that we rally our support, stand united, put aside any differences, and not listen to the rhetoric from this lot here but do the right thing for our families. So with our children aged from 5 to 11, it’s the same story that we’re hearing—that this Government will continue to support and empower the leadership.

I want to be able to make sure that we turn things around and achieve better vaccination, and that’s why we have been topping up the Prepare Pacific Community Vaccination Fund to the tune of $1.5 million. This will allow our community groups, churches, and youth to apply for up to $40,000 to do their plans in vaccinating boosters, children, and planning for self-isolation. The fund is run by The Cause Collective. This is one of our key movers and shakers in the Pacific community in South Auckland, who works to empower our Pacific people with information and action. So that’s available to support our communities.

As the Prime Minister has said, one of this Government’s key planks in terms of policy reform are our wide-ranging health reforms. The speech before seemed to blame everything on us. We inherited inequities. We inherited barriers and all you need to do is listen to Kelvin Davis’ speech—all you need to do. Don’t listen to me. Go talk to the Pacific communities in South Auckland. Go talk to the people who have suffered in and out of nine years of a National Government. Talk to those people. Talk to the people who were affected under the nine years of that Government. So the reform is about addressing those inequities. District health boards will be abolished and a new public health agency will be established. Along with these measures, the new Māori Health Authority will improve entrenched poor health outcomes for Māori. For Pacific people, it will see major changes of dedicated policy that will address inequities and supporting leadership throughout the new structure.

We also, this month, have seen a global mission to help Tonga, which has been led by the New Zealand Defence Force and our officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I want to acknowledge the wonderful, heartfelt response from peoples across Aotearoa, including people from across the House, putting aside my dislike of their speech—ha, ha!—I want to acknowledge just the wonderful way that people have responded. It recognises that we are part of whānau of the extended region, and I know that the work has only just begun, and I know that the Government of Tonga have been deeply appreciative of our response, not only in the volcanic eruption and the subsequent tsunami but also that we’re supplying them with the vaccine that they’ve asked for, to roll out for their boosters and, of course, for their young people.

I just want to finish off by saying remember the Prime Minister’s words of caring, of kindness, accepting of diversity, of culture, of standing together as opposed to the wolf in sheep’s skin—that’s the voice that I would not be listening to, because it takes us to a different kind of country, and that country is what is represented outside. That’s not New Zealand. That is not Aotearoa New Zealand, and any MPs associated with that, aiding and abetting that toxic rhetoric out there and on social media, don’t deserve to be called New Zealand.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d like to stand and speak today and talk about healthy, thriving communities. It has been a topic that ACT brought up and then Labour brought up—actually patting themselves on the back for how well they’ve done with their healthy, thriving communities. I don’t see that. The ACT Party do not see healthy, thriving communities. What we do see is that gang numbers have increased by over 50 percent since 2017, when Labour took over. What we do see, upon walking down the streets of Courtenay Place last year in December and talking to shop owners, is videos of extreme violence taking place on small-business owners as they try to go about their business. In one shop down Courtenay Place, a shop owner showed me videos of her staff members being punched in the head, of the doors at the front of her shop being smashed when people who were begging for money were not able to get it from the patrons trying to enter the shop, and the female shop keeper herself being thrown up against the wall for not allowing a person to store their drugs in her refrigerator.

What we are seeing is that people are becoming very, very scared to just go out into their streets—including another woman in Wellington who has a clothing shop down an alleyway, who said that she is now too afraid to open her doors, because people will come and urinate at her door while she has customers in the shop. The soft-on-crime approach that Labour has taken towards our communities is not healthy, and it does not allow our communities to thrive. People cannot afford basic amenities. They can’t get bread, milk. They’re struggling to pay their electricity bills, and when you start getting push notifications from the media, like we did today, suggesting that the $3 petrol price hike that we are seeing in some parts of the country means that the people that work at the petrol stations are being attacked, and they are asking us to, please, not take it out on them, we can’t justify this as being a healthy, thriving community—not when people are struggling to afford to live.

ACT has a future. We have policies that we think will help make New Zealand a healthy, thriving community in which to live. We can do this with some of the bills that we have already produced. We can do it by starting with addressing the crime rates. ACT has a criminal proceeds and recovery bill in the ballot box that we will be discussing. It will make sure that we can tax the gangs by taking away their assets, hitting them where it hurts—in their pockets, as ACT had originally said—by making sure that we can seize their assets upon finding them in possession of an illegal firearm. We also have—sitting in the ballot box—gang injunction orders. And while the firearm prohibition orders that the Government have laid will address some of the issues, we want to specifically target the gangs, and believe that this bill can do so.

We want to make sure that policing numbers in the future are based on our population, not on the Government’s priorities, which do not, obviously, look at a healthy, thriving community. We want to see our borders reopen so that critical workers and fruit pickers can get in, so that the tourists can come back, and so that those entrepreneurs who are making all sorts of things for New Zealanders and their tourists can continue to do so. Entrepreneurs strive to be successful, but, at the moment, they are being beaten down by bureaucracy. I want to make sure that those people can survive and that they can be a part of a community where they can thrive. These things are all needed to ensure that we have our healthy, thriving communities, and I’ve repeated that over and over again, because the reality is we have not got there. These are things that we’ve thought about, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg on how we can achieve it not only for our futures but also for the next generation, and we look forward to partaking in this year and bringing about our policies. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Auckland traffic congestion has always been a hot topic. The city is growing quickly but roading and public transport simply haven’t kept up. My neighbour, who’s a 20-something hardcase tradie, told me it can take up to 90 minutes to get across the city to the big housing development that he works on in South Auckland. People who move to these new modern communities simply assume that the infrastructure, the transport networks, will already be there or will follow soon after, like four-laning rural roads in what is now suburbs inside the city limits and delivering decent public transport connections to where people live and work. But instead of solving these problems, the Prime Minister in 2017 announced the Government would build a light rail to the airport, starting with stops in her Mt Albert and Minister Woods’ Mt Roskill electorates by 2021. Well, I checked my calendar this morning and it’s 2022. Not a shovel has been turned and more than $100 million has been wasted.

A few weeks ago when the project was announced again by the finance and infrastructure Minister Robertson, he said it would be another six to eight years and only $15 billion to deliver this project. I’m going to make a prediction about Auckland light rail: this project’s going to get an award for the most announced. I’m going to make another prediction: it’s never ever going to be delivered. It’s going to stall at the planning stage. It’s going to stall under the terrible Resource Management Act consenting process. It’s going to stall when they try to work out how to relocate hundreds of kilometres of services along the route. It will fail at a cost of billions of dollars to taxpayers. And that is terrible, because we need efficient transport networks. We need good quality public transport to serve our fast-growing cities, to serve growing regions, and in order to support healthy communities and healthy business.

That is why ACT insists politicians stay the heck out of decision making when it comes to transport and infrastructure projects. Leave it to the experts, the experts who manage our roads and our infrastructure. ACT would entrust long-term planning and decision making to a new nation building agency, an independent agency that would prioritise transport projects by combining local knowledge with the smarts of the Infrastructure Commission, combine them with Crown Infrastructure Partners to get funding from the private and public sector. That’s how the nation-building agency would deliver more infrastructure and faster.

There is another major problem facing not just our transport sector but all of New Zealand, every sector, and that is this Government’s climate policy. The Prime Minister said climate change was her nuclear moment. Last year, this country imported record amounts of coal. If it was truly a nuclear moment, we would all be irradiated by now.

Now, in 2018, the Prime Minister announced a ban on oil and gas exploration. Since then, gas prices have skyrocketed. Manufacturing and production industries have either shut production lines or quit New Zealand altogether with the loss of jobs and all of those opportunities in the regions and in provincial communities. And according to climate Minister Shaw this afternoon, this Government and their Green Party coalition members are only just getting going. That should be a worry for everybody involved in making things and producing things in New Zealand.

Imagine being a New Zealand farmer, one of the most efficient and environmentally friendly farmers in the world. Your Government won’t give you any credits for the carbon that your farm takes up, whether it’s by growing grass in the soil or in the native bush you have on your farm. But they will tax you for the amount of greenhouse gases you produce. If a carbon investor buys that same farm, they can plant pines on it and take the carbon credits. ACT has a better idea than this Government. We believe that New Zealand should be allowed to trade in international carbon credits. Trade is our nation’s lifeline. So why does this Government make it illegal to trade in carbon credits? People are telling me, New Zealand needs ACT more than ever.

The member’s time has expired. The Hon Poto Williams—five minutes.

Happy New Year, Madam Speaker, and greetings to all members across the House. I hope we’ve all had a chance to have a bit of time with family and friends and to rest after what has been a couple of very difficult years. And I want to thank you for presiding in what is definitely going to be a most robust discussion on the Prime Minister’s debate.

There’s no doubt that this year will continue to be a year where we explore lots of different ideas on how we help our country get through what is a very difficult time, and a big group of people who are helping us do that are the New Zealand Police. My thanks, my grateful thanks, go out to them because so many of them have given up a lot of their time, a lot of their family time, to make sure that we are safe, that we are well, and that we are protected, and I want to thank them so much for the work that they do.

Last week, I was at a graduation at the Royal New Zealand Police College—another 80 fine police graduates; I really enjoy going to graduations, because increasingly we are seeing New Zealand reflected in our graduates: more women; more Māori, Pacific, and other ethnicities; more representatives of our LGBTQI communities—people who put themselves out there to keep our community safe, and I want to thank them so much for that.

These 80 new officers that I saw last week join the ranks of the largest police force ever in New Zealand—an increase of 15 percent since we came to Government. They’re also better equipped with the necessary tools and training that’s being rolled out, in part due to our $45 million investment into front-line safety. But police are facing an increasingly complex environment, whether it’s policing during a pandemic or increasingly sophisticated organised crime, and of particular concern is the use of firearms to inflict harm on our communities. That’s why this Government is committed to tackling firearms violence in our communities by undertaking the most significant reform of our firearms laws in recent times.

Tomorrow, as has already been signalled, the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill has its first reading. This bill will introduce another tool to reduce gun crime and keep firearms out of the hands of those who would do us harm. Those subject to a firearms prohibition order will not be able to use, access, or be around firearms for 10 years. This is another part of our comprehensive plan to tackle gun crime.

When I visit police on their bases and at their stations—and, you know, we’ve been a little bit disrupted; I haven’t been able to get out as much as I would have liked—I ask them about what’s the most important thing for them, what we can do as a Government to keep them safe. They tell me, “More cops—more cops on the beat.” That’s why I’m really proud to support the work that we’ve been doing to increase our police. We’re still on target to deliver the 1,800 extra police into our service. But for me, as Minister of Police, I know that I will be privy to two of the most important things that I can do. Firstly, what I can do to support our police to be safe—and I’ve already talked about our investment into front-line safety which looks at lifting the training for our front-line police, lifting the training for police on base, which means that we have ready access to the best trained police when the most significant issues happen out there in our community; better analysis; and better deployment.

But the other thing that I can do is to make sure that our gun laws are fit for purpose and that our register is up to date so that we know that when we are deploying our police they are going into situations that they can assess the safety of, that they can make good decisions about that. But the other reason that’s really important is having a good handle on how to keep our community safe. If we know where firearms are, we know how to keep our community safe. So I’m really looking forward to this year to putting some more of that flesh on the bones of that particular piece of work. I’m proud of this Government.

Just one more message: please, please, please make sure you get your boosters because that will keep us all safe. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I call Arena Williams—five minutes.

E te Pīka, ngā mihi o te tau hou ki a koe. Kei te Whare e tū nei, tēnā tātou katoa. I tēnei wā o Waitangi, ka huri ōku whakaaro ki ngā tāngata katoa o te motu e noho kotahi ana i te mana, i te mauri, i te maru o Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

[Madam Speaker, greetings of the new year to you. To the House that stands here, greetings to us all. At this time of Waitangi my thoughts turn to all the people in this country living as one under the authority, the spirit, and the protection of the Treaty of Waitangi.]

Madam Speaker, greetings of the new year to you. At this time in the year when we acknowledge the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, my thoughts turn to all of the people of Aotearoa who carry the hopes and aspirations of our tupuna who signed it in 1840. And though we could not come together this year ā-tinana on Waitangi Day, we can take time to reflect on what it means for each other and for us all to be a good partner to one another and how we need to work in partnership to improve outcomes for Māori and for all New Zealanders.

In this Government’s work, I see examples of that spirit of partnership in the efforts to understand and rectify injustices. I see, for example, the new Pae Ora Legislation Committee’s work, which I’m a member of, to establish the new Māori Health Authority. As you heard the Prime Minister say earlier, Māori suffer from more avoidable deaths than most New Zealanders. We have lower life expectancy, and we do not always receive the same quality of care. Māori die at twice the rate as non-Māori from cardiovascular disease, and Māori tamariki have a mortality rate 1½ half times the rate of non-Māori children. Māori are more likely to be diagnosed with, and to die from, cancer, and these inequities cannot continue. Past efforts have failed to fix these inequities, and we must change the way we work. It’s a privilege to be a part of a committee which is hearing from health leaders around the country, from clinicians, the doctors and nurses who make the health system work every day. And they are calling for this change, because we know that a fairer health system for Māori will be a fairer and more effective health system for all New Zealanders.

I see us learning from what this pandemic has been able to teach us about the underlying inequities in that health system that have built up over many generations, as we build on our COVID protections and get ready to fight Omicron. Māori and Pacific health and community providers remain an essential part of that plan. I mihi to the kaimahi in South Auckland, at Papakura Marae, at Manurewa Marae, who are out there vaccinating our population; at the airport park and ride, and our local pharmacists and GPs, like my mum, who has vaccinated 98 percent of her patients, predominantly Māori and Pacific, in the heart of South Auckland. These providers have driven our Māori vaccination rates around the country to 90 percent first dose and are providing care in the community for those who need to isolate. The Government supported their work by directly investing over $250 million, including $120 million to fund Māori communities to fast track vaccinations and prepare for Omicron. It has provided the basis for our close partnerships as we design the paediatric and booster roll-outs, as well as the care and community programme, which so many providers in South Auckland are already providing.

I see us investing in education designed and delivered by Māori for Māori learners. We will continue to grow Māori-medium and kaupapa Māori education to meet the needs of ākonga over the long term. We’re aiming to see 30 percent of Māori learners participating in Māori-medium education by 2040. To prepare for this, we’re planning for more Māori-medium providers and to train more teachers who are fluent in te reo, and will also reform the legislation underpinning the Māori-medium education programme in New Zealand.

I see us protecting our taiao, which is our identity and our sustenance. A low-carbon future for Aotearoa is within reach, powered by clean energy and underpinned by protecting and restoring the whenua. Climate change is an opportunity for new jobs and higher wages, and iwi and Māori are at the table. For a country already earning a premium for our clean, green, innovative image, there’s an opportunity to use that natural advantage to create jobs and new industries which Māori are so well positioned to champion.

I see us embedding a national holiday into our calendar which is truly unique to Aotearoa. Matariki is a deity, it’s a star, it’s an agricultural marker, and now it’s a public holiday that we can all celebrate. It’s a symbol of acknowledgment of the loved ones we have lost in a year, but it’s also a symbol of rebirth and hope for the future. I am hopeful for the future when I see the strides this Government has made for Māori, and for the Māori kids like mine with blue eyes and blonde hair, who will see themselves reflected in the doctors and nurses in a new fairer and more equitable public health system. They will see their stories told on a national stage and celebrated by everyone. These are challenges ahead, but we have learnt how to fight a virus together, and that togetherness, that kotahitanga, that partnership will stand us in good stead for the future. Tēnā tātou.

As we gather in Parliament for the first day of the sitting in 2022, as tradition has it, we listen to the Prime Minister of the day’s statement, and we will debate this for 13 hours. So what did we hear today? Well, actually, another year, another list of hollow statements and empty promises—feels a bit like Groundhog Day, actually, for those of us who’ve been here before.

We had the year of delivery. Can anyone actually remember anything that was delivered? Then, of course, we had last year, which was heralded as the year of the vaccine. And how did that go? So, you know, on this side of the House, we acknowledge that in the first year of the COVID outbreak the Government did a good job. But to take credit for outstanding results last year is, quite frankly, appalling. I want to use the words of the Prime Minister’s own speech to challenge that: “New Zealand enters a third challenging year confronting the global pandemic better prepared than many other countries”. Really? Sixty-eight billion dollars of additional spending, higher levels of debt—but it won’t be those of us sitting around the Chamber today that have to worry about it; it’s our children and grandchildren that will bear the price for that. The highest spend per capita than any other country, and are New Zealanders feeling better off? No, they’re not. And the words in here: “to chart a path through the disruption and beyond into the recovery”—well, I thought the Minister of Finance had already started spending the billions of dollars for the recovery. No one out there feels better off, and that’s actually how people measure it.

So what’s it going to be this year? Is it going to be the year of central command and control? Is it going to be the year of spin and self-congratulations? Or perhaps the year of an alternate reality? The Prime Minister talks about preparing for winter. I think, for the Labour Government, it will be a very long winter, a winter of discontent and a winter that never ends, as the chills of public frustration at the decisions they are making come to roost. Because the reality is, when the Prime Minister talks about the fact that the last two years have tested New Zealanders in ways we have not seen for many decades, they’ve been tested, Prime Minister, because of the very decisions you have made, or the decisions you haven’t made, the plans you haven’t made, the actions that weren’t in place fast enough. So the damage has been done, and much of that damage could have been avoided.

I think about the families in my electorate. I think about the businesses in hospitality, in tourism, and events, that are absolutely decimated because of the decisions and the lack of planning and preparation by this Government. But, no, we sit here on a happy sunny day in February and hear the Prime Minister spread out some more empty promises, some more empty ideas of how wonderful it is right now. It is so far from many New Zealanders’ reality it is a joke. So I invite the Prime Minister to actually get amongst and listen to the people she represents. I was talking to one of her constituents the other day who said, “How do I get to go and meet my MP? How do I raise an issue with my MP?” And they can’t. Well, they should have every same access to her as an MP that any other member of the public does.

But let’s have a look at what this four years of failure—four years of failure—of a Labour Government has done to people. What has that meant in the area of social policy? Well, unfortunately, I agree with the former ACT speaker about the fact that many New Zealand families are struggling each and every day. We talk about the increase in petrol prices to $3 a litre. That’s a massive increase for households who are already struggling. The increase of $125 a week in rent—well, where does that come from? When the Consumers Price Index is nearly twice what the wage inflation is, that means New Zealand households have got less to spend in real terms. So, yep, Prime Minister, when you talk about the last two years testing New Zealanders, well, I actually think, under your decisions and the decisions this Government’s making, more New Zealand families, more individuals will be tested further in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

There’s nothing kind. There’s nothing caring or compassionate about many of the decisions that have been made under her watch, and, invariably over the summer, you have all of the barbecue conversations and the resounding comment has been that New Zealanders hate how divided we have become. And they never thought they would see a country with that level of division.

Well, on this side of the House, actually, we see greater opportunities for people, and one of the opportunities comes through work, and our leader, Christopher Luxon, clearly stated that in his response to the Prime Minister’s statement. Labour will crow about the fact that there are record numbers of New Zealanders moving off a main benefit. Guess what? There are record numbers going on. There are 90,000 more on benefit than there were four years ago. That’s four years of failure for those individuals and their families.

And what’s worse, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the length of time that people are staying on benefit. So for the jobseeker benefit, previously called the dole, there’s been a 59 percent increase in the number of people who are on it for more than a year, at the very same time we have record levels of unemployment—something doesn’t add up—and at the very same time that just about every second business you walk past, whether it’s a supermarket, whether it’s a manufacturing plant, is advertising for jobs with posters. Go through the Hawke’s Bay, as I did with the leader a couple of weeks ago. It was astounding—quite shocking, in fact—just how many signs there were with businesses desperate for workers. So it doesn’t add up, Prime Minister. It’s clearly a failure of the welfare system to have a 59 percent increase in the number of people on the jobseeker benefit who’ve been stuck there for more than a year. Because the sad, hard facts are, the longer you are on a benefit and disconnected from employment the harder it is to connect.

Oh, so then, of course, we come out with this wonderful thing called social insurance. Guess what? The best thing that people can do is get back to work as quickly as possible after losing one. We’ve seen economists already saying this is Labour who have an intent to spend another $3 billion or $4 billion. And what do they get as an outcome? Not much—not much. People are saying, “Oh, well, actually, in between jobs I could just have a bit of a holiday. I could have a bit of a break.”, because that’s what you can do if you’re getting 80 percent of what you would have been earning previously. Oh, but, actually, who pays for it? The very same hard-working family that is already struggling to meet the costs day to day, week to week, because it’s going to be an extra tax on them.

So I thought the Prime Minister promised no new taxes. Well, this is clearly a tax. It’s a job tax at the very time households can’t afford it. The Prime Minister also talked about New Zealanders that have been tested. Well, there’s a particular group that has seen no kindness or caring from her, and that is superannuitants who have been stuck overseas and can’t get a managed isolation and quarantine slot. Not only have they had their pension cut, they’re now getting bills to pay that back—$10,000, $12,000, $18,000 in debt to the Ministry of Social Development, when, as the National Opposition, we offered them the solution months ago. We offered them the solution, requested that exemptions be granted, but, no, the Government refused to support superannuitants who through no fault of their own have been stuck overseas and the Government want to cut them off. That’s not kind or caring.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Rino Tirikatene—five minutes.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā tātou i te Whare i tēnei tau hou. Harikoa te ngākau kua tae mai nei ki te tautoko i te kōrero a te Pirimia.

[Greetings, Madam Speaker, and greetings to everyone in the House in this new year. I am delighted to have come to support the Prime Minister’s statement.]

I am delighted to speak in wholehearted support of the Prime Minister’s statement this afternoon and the work programme that she has outlined for our Government. We know these are unprecedented, challenging times. Throughout the whole world, COVID-19 is unprecedented and it’s just causing absolute havoc. But our country, Aotearoa, we’ve done very well through this. Together, we have risen to the challenge, and, I think, whilst the other side can quibble about—moan about—this, that, and the other thing, at the end of the day, we are leading the world in terms of our response and the fact that our people are protected and that our vaccination rates are at record levels right across the board.

I just want to acknowledge the work that we’ve been doing as a Government in such trying times to be able to lead our country through the COVID-19 pandemic. We are doing so much work in this area. I have the utmost respect for the work of our Prime Minister and our Government in what they’re doing. We need to just look at where we’re at, because, yes, our economy may have taken a little hit in terms of tourism in certain sectors—that is the case all over the world—but our merchandise exports, our primary sectors, they are actually making record returns. Our export growth has been going up in the midst of this global pandemic. So I give credit to our export industries. I give credit to all our exporters, those hard-working folks that are actually ensuring that they can continue to operate in the most trying times, in these uncertain times. We are trying to give them the confidence and the certainty that they can continue to trade so we can continue to sell our products around the world and maintain the wonderful standard of living that we have here.

We are doing so much in terms of management of this global pandemic, but I also want to ensure that, at the same time, we are taking care of all of the other long-term challenges—immediate challenges as well—that are facing our country. As our Prime Minister has outlined, whether it’s in the areas of housing, health, infrastructure, climate change, we are doing so much work in those areas. Case in point, the work in infrastructure. I was delighted to accompany the member for Southland, Joseph Mooney, this morning to the opening of a brand new school in Queenstown—Te Kura Whakatipu o Kawarau. A wonderful, pristine, brand new school. This is the third school that’s had to be opened because of the growth that’s happening in the Lakes District in the Queenstown area. In spite of the global pandemic, the huge hit that they’ve taken in tourism, we have been supporting regions such as the Lakes District through investments in infrastructure, transport connectivity, and the opening of new schools to ensure that we can support these thriving communities that are around Aotearoa. So it’s not all doom and gloom. We are actually doing some wonderful support right across the country, and that’s a case in point.

I want to talk about what we’re doing also in health. Let’s not underestimate the groundbreaking reforms that we are doing, particularly in Māori health and the creation of a Māori Health Authority. I chaired the Māori Affairs Committee in the last Parliament, and it is so patently clear that there are inequities right across our health system in how it delivers to Māori and to other groups in Aotearoa society, but particularly to Māori. We need to address those inequities. If there’s a sick Māori and a sick non-Māori that go into the health system, unfortunately, the Māori doesn’t come out the better; they come out worse than compared to the non-Māori. So we need to address those inequities, and the Māori Health Authority, which is what we recommended as a committee, is now in its formative stages. I’m really looking forward to seeing the work that that does in conjunction with Health New Zealand, what we’re doing in public health, which will really be a game changer in terms of delivering better health outcomes for Māori and for all New Zealand. Those are absolutely wonderful reforms that we are doing.

I want to get back to the economy, because we need to be able to—we’re a productive economy, we need to sell our goods around the world, and we want to be more productive, absolutely. We can do that by the work that we have already done through free-trade agreements. Under our new Trade for All agenda, we have the UK fair-trade agreement—a landmark FTA in terms of access, better access for our exporters into those markets, absolutely wonderful gains for Māori under that trade agreement, and we will soon be doing an FTA with the EU. This year we really are going to be launching across the world. Our Prime Minister will be leading the way. I hope to be chipping in in terms of the contribution that we will be doing to really reconnect and to ensure that we can have that thriving Aotearoa that we are all proud of. Kia ora tātou.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I can’t recall much from the speech of the Leader of the Opposition, but I do recall that he mentioned be buys his cheese for $16 or $17 a kilo. I just received a message from my husband. He says, “We buy it for $10.60 every week, not even when it’s on special.” So he might want to shop around a little bit, out of that expensive deli that he might normally be visiting.

But, in all seriousness, New Zealanders have done the mahi and in large numbers they have gone through lockdowns, they masked up, they physically distanced, and on mass they have vaccinated, they’ve taken their boosters, and generally, as a country, we have looked after each other and our communities. And, as a result, what we’ve seen in New Zealand is we have fewer COVID cases and we have fewer hospitalisations and deaths than anywhere else in the OECD. And it’s also fantastic to see that we now have 4 million New Zealanders—that’s 94 percent of our country—fully vaccinated, and also 1.5 million New Zealanders have already taken their booster vaccination. So awesome effort from the team of 5 million.

But it’s not to say in any way that these last few years haven’t been stressful. In fact, we know that many have done it really tough. But no country has been immune from COVID, and, as the Prime Minister said in her speech, no country is immune from the Omicron disruption, but we are and we have been working very hard to make sure that we avoid the worst of that.

Like many others, border closures meant that I was separated from loved ones. In my case, that meant that I was separated from my family in the Netherlands. And while in New Zealand we were able to have our lives pretty much as normal for the last two years, with greater freedoms than in most other countries, I could see how being locked up and stuck in their homes for fear of going out and not being safe took its toll on my parents. And, at the same time, I also feared for the health and wellbeing of my sister, who works in a place where they look after the more vulnerable and the elderly, and where, in fact, many, many died during the COVID outbreaks. It’s not only that; when a country gets overwhelmed with COVID, the health services get strained to the point of breaking, and it means that many people can’t get their healthcare.

So it’s very stressful when you fear your parents getting sick or when you fear that you may never see them again. And it’s agonising to have to watch family overseas not able to get the healthcare that they need. So like many others did, I applied for managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) and to get a room so I could travel to my whānau in the Netherlands and help out where I could. And seventh time lucky in the MIQ ballot, I managed to secure one of those rooms.

But, putting the record straight, it wasn’t exactly the summer holiday that some have referred to. First of all, when I arrived in the Netherlands that week it was minus 4 degrees; so that is hardly summer. But also, as they had in 2020, Holland very quickly had to lock up all over Christmas and well into the New Year. As I said, it was the second year in a row they had to do that because cases were rising—and I don’t mean they were rising into the hundreds; they were rising into the thousands and then into the tens of thousands. And, in the Netherlands, the vaccination rate is roughly in the middle 80s, and also what they don’t do that many people may find surprising is they don’t have QR codes and they don’t do contact tracing.

So what living with the virus means in a country with a population of 17 million—which is roughly only just about three times New Zealand’s size—living with the virus means that 21,336 people have died from COVID, and many more, including my family, are suffering from long COVID. And, sure, the shops and the restaurants and the bars may be open, but the virus is going rampant. In the last 24 hours, they had 77,000 new cases—77,000 cases in a day. So 1,500 people in hospital, with 215 seriously ill in ICU, and that means that living with the virus means for so many that they can’t actually live life at all, and every day families lose loved ones, and they have since the very first day this pandemic started.

So that’s the setting when I say that I count my blessings every day for the fact that New Zealand had their approach to COVID. I count my blessings every day for our brilliant leader, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, for how she led our team and the team of 5 million in keeping ourselves, our communities, and everyone safe. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Tēnā tātou ōku hoa kaimahi i tēnei Whare Pāremata.

[Good morning, Madam Speaker, and greetings to all my colleagues in this the House of Representatives.]

I’m really honoured to rise today—my first, like everyone’s, speech in the House for the year. I echo my co-leader and colleague, James Shaw, in his earlier address today in that it’s really clear that a strong Green Party voice in Parliament and also in our ministerial work is absolutely essential to protect our strong climate for generations to come; to protect our natural world and our living system, which we absolutely depend on; and to make sure that we are taking proper care of our people and communities, and especially those who are struggling the most.

What it is appropriate—having had Waitangi Day just a couple of days ago—for me to say is that key to achieving those clear Green Party priorities of climate and equality and nature is finally realising and upholding the justice and the mana of Te Tiriti in the way that all of our tūpuna envisaged that to be, and especially our tangata whenua, chiefs, and rangatira of iwi and hapū, who signed our Treaty to uphold the mana motuhake and the tino rangatiratanga of our hapū over our lands and our peoples and our resources for ever, for as long as we determine we want to do that. That continues today.

Tiriti justice requires a sharing of power that we have not yet seen ever in the almost 200 years since the Treaty was signed. In all of the speeches of my colleagues here in the House—and this is a response to the Prime Minister’s statement where she outlined the many challenges that are facing us that we are all concerned with today—it is for those very challenges, it is for those very challenges, that I was proud to launch yesterday the Green Party’s Hoki Whenua Mai, a policy proposal which discusses how we can give land back, whenua back, to tangata whenua. The proposals are not just about giving whenua back to tangata whenua via a Crown-facilitated process that allows that, that ensures that that can happen, but we know that upholding the mana and the tino rangatiratanga of Te Tiriti is how we can work towards a more equitable Aotearoa for everyone. It is the current system, it is the current processes of making decisions in our country, which are not Tiriti-led. It is that current system which is unfair for many other people. It is a Tiriti process which offers us the most inclusive, most dignity-enhancing way of being able to realise everyone’s mana, everyone’s integrity, everyone’s dignity.

Hoki Whenua Mai—I am so proud that, I think it was, within the very day since announcing it yesterday, we are already seeing Pākehā and tauiwi coming to us, saying, “Yes. I would like to be on a register of lands where our land, where our land that I have benefited from and my family has benefited from, and generations, could be offered first back to tangata whenua.” We ourselves weren’t even expecting that much of a quick response. But we can see that people are ready to do the right thing, because, first and foremost, Aotearoa could be a leading country in the world upholding the sovereignty and mana motuhake of its indigenous peoples. Nowhere in the world has that contract, has that understanding been upheld properly, and we could, first and foremost, do the right thing and actually honour that.

But Hoki Whenua Mai will also lead to the better outcomes that we know are good for everyone, for long-term enduring kaitiaki responsibilities to be upheld, where our climate is far better protected for the generations to come, where people absolutely have homes and kai and what they need to live dignified lives, where we understand and have a far better relationship with our living system, with our living world around us.

Hoki Whenua Mai is about transforming the current oppressive power structure, which has denied communities and iwi and tangata whenua power for ever, which has led to the harmful generational impacts that we are all now concerned with today, whether it’s because Māori are featuring disproportionately in the area of housing, whether it’s because Māori are featuring disproportionately in those who are struggling the most when it comes to income justice and income equity or health or justice or education. Land Back—Hoki Whenua Mai—is about a transformational shift that picks up on one of the most single aspirations of tangata whenua and indigenous people around the world, which is to have land that was stolen returned, which is to have kaitiaki responsibilities upheld, where we can look after our people and our planet. That is what Hoki Whenua Mai is about.

I am so proud that our Te Mātāwaka MPs, which are the Māori and Pasifika and Tiriti MPs which form a collective within the Green Party to lead on Māori political issues, have put this out collectively. I acknowledge my colleague Dr Elizabeth Kerekere, the chair of our Mātāwaka caucus, who has helped to drive this, to get this out to the conversation that we saw yesterday. I am so proud to be able to present for decades what our people have been talking about. People have dedicated their entire lives to seeing land back. People have dedicated their entire generations of families to this work. The Green Party has a role to simply now say, “This is how we do it.” We have had enough of the talking. This is actually how the Government gives the land back that it was responsible for dispossessing from us in the very first place. That is our role as the Green Party, is to put those visionary ideas and proposals—and we did the policy work—on the table. Already we are seeing the positivity being grabbed by both Māori and Tiriti partners and tauiwi from all variety of backgrounds saying, “This is tangible. This is real. It’s not just a pipe dream. It wasn’t just a catchcry. It’s not just a catchcry from all around the world. It’s actually something that can happen.”

In our proposals, we have outlined a number of very doable ways where it involves revisiting and making sure that our process of inquiry into land dispossession is actually brought together, that we have a proper inquiry into the real extent of land that was taken and its value—not just its fiscal value but its generational value—where we make sure we are revisiting settlements to ensure that they were adequate. One of the examples that was raised to us is where tracts of land have been included in settlements that have not been the most robust pieces of land, where coastal communities have to now rethink whether those pieces of land are now going to be at the threat and risk of climate change, where we include having a look about how just those settlements actually were.

We also know that Te Tiriti was never supposed to be settled; it is supposed to be an enduring, honest partnership, honest relationship between Crown and tangata whenua. We have put up that there should be additional redress at the hapū and whānau level. For far too long, even with acknowledging every single Treaty negotiator who has given life and blood to get the best that they possibly can get for their people, we know that it is the system that has kept the settlements and those claims miniscule, absolutely unjust, and that that settlement process has continued to see breaches of Te Tiriti.

So we know that we can do better, and especially getting the long-term enduring benefits to hapū and whānau, which is one of the biggest things that the settlement continues to create that harm, that ongoing harm, is the large natural groupings and the full and final clause is an ongoing breach of what our tūpuna who signed envisaged for us to live in true harmonious relationship here in Aotearoa. We want to see a Government fund that can enable the facilitation of that land back. As I said, we’re already seeing Pākehā saying, “Yes, we would like to go on that register.” We want to see the—[Time expired]

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Happy New Year to you, and it is good to be back in this House. The Prime Minister and some of my colleagues have comprehensively covered everything—what this Government has achieved in the last two years—and the list is so long, and all that was while fighting COVID-19 and keeping New Zealand and New Zealanders safe.

At the start of 2020, when COVID-19 hit China, I was in East Africa seeing my parents for the first time in almost 18 years. At the time, we knew very little about this COVID-19, and we thought it was going to be contained in no time—but here we are, two years on; we’re still fighting it. At the end of 2019 when I left New Zealand, the country was in a mood of celebration for Christmas, and the parties—it was a good time. Six weeks later, I returned back to a different country, where people were scrambling to stockpile food and the streets were quiet, which somehow reminded me of the wartime back in my home country. This is when I realised that we were up against a tough, tough enemy that was already taking so many lives, but I am proud the core of our response came from an empathetic leader who prioritised saving lives. When the Prime Minister stood at the podium, explaining the lockdown guidelines, she was sombre, and she was balanced, and she was reassuring, as she is today, but not hiding the alarming circumstance that we were about to face.

While we fought COVID-19, I’m proud to say that the Government have never lost sight of other issues that are important to our people, and particularly, I’m really proud of what this Government has achieved in the last two, three, four years for low-paid people. And this has proven to be a Government for all New Zealanders rather than a tiny sect in our society. And I want to talk about essential workers. I know that so many times we have talked about the bravery of our essential workers, but often I don’t think we talk enough about their struggle. When this Government decided to increase the minimum wage to $20, they were at the forefront of the Government’s policy; when the Government decided to give the living wage to the core Government workers, they were at the forefront of the Government’s policy; and when the Government talked about the fair-pay agreements policy, they were at the forefront of the same policy.

But I want to reflect on the speeches from the Opposition today. Everything we heard was really negative; there was nothing positive about it. I was hoping that they’d come with some sort of positive remarks as we move forward to the next phase of fighting COVID-19, but what we have heard is all negativity. But, funny enough, in the last few days and weeks, we have heard about the Opposition now wanting to change their approach and that they want to fight poverty, and that’s a good thing, but how do you fight poverty while you are denying an increase in the minimum wage, while you’re denying workers an increase in the living wage, and while you’re denying everything that the Government have been trying to do for low-paid workers, and rejecting the increase on benefits as well? That’s quite ironic, and I’ve been talking to a lot of workers, and when I shared this with them, they just seemed as confused as I am.

We have achieved everything; we have achieved the high vaccine roll-out, and now we are ready to open for business, and we’ve got the five-phase plan of reconnecting New Zealand to the world, and I’m one of the people that will be looking forward to this because, for the last 2½ years, I haven’t seen my family, and I’m looking forward to that. But this is not just about me; this is about all of us. While we all were looking forward to seeing our families, we also all understand why the borders were closed, because our borders were our first line in our fight against COVID-19, and they have served us well, and I am very proud of everything this Government has achieved. Kia ora.

I call Jo Luxton—five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in response to the Prime Minister’s statement this afternoon. I want to wish everyone a happy New Year and hope everyone has enjoyed their summer break, and the reason that we’ve been able to have such a lovely summer break is because of the collective efforts of everyone right across New Zealand. In particular, I want to take this opportunity just to acknowledge all of those who’ve been on our front line right through the last couple of years of this pandemic, of this time of disruption, and they are the health workers, they are the managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) workers, they are the essential workers—those people who work in our supermarkets, our police, our fire crews—all those people who have had to continue working on the front line throughout this time. Our rural sector, our primary sector, has been a sector that has really, really stood up to the challenge during these times and really carried this country through economically; so I really want to acknowledge them also.

The Prime Minister spoke this afternoon about the fact that the Government’s focus was on saving as many lives as possible, and I think that we should stand as a nation very proudly that we have managed to do that. One death is obviously too many but, when we compare ourselves to countries around the world, we have done outstandingly well.

I heard members opposite, earlier on, talk about or criticise the vaccine roll-out, and I think that that’s a real shame when we stand here today and we have 94 percent of our population who are double vaccinated. We have 40 percent of our children who’ve had first doses, and we have 1.5 million people—eligible New Zealanders—who have had their booster shot. So I think that, rather than criticising the vaccine roll-out, we should celebrate that New Zealanders have embraced it and that we’ve had the opportunity to access these vaccinations for free, at no cost, in order to protect all New Zealanders. But we’re not out of the woods yet and we don’t know what will come next, and we don’t know what variant we might see next, but what we can do is plan as best as we are able to, knowing what we know currently.

I think that the things that the Prime Minister outlined in her speech today speak to some of those plans very well. She talked about preparing for winter and increasing the influenza vaccination roll-out programme to ensure that those that are vulnerable, our most vulnerable, have the option to be given the best protection that we can. Because what we know is there is a likelihood that there will be a lot of people hospitalised, whether it be through COVID or influenza or other ordinary illnesses and things that people end up being in hospital for. But what we don’t want to see is our health system overwhelmed, and getting vaccinated is one of the ways that we can work towards ensuring that that doesn’t happen.

The Prime Minister also talked about other measures that this Government has put in place in working towards ensuring that that doesn’t happen, such as the 10 days sick leave. And yes, it is an increased cost on businesses, but it does ensure that people have the ability to stay home when they are sick, rather than needing to go into work and spread their illness and therefore affecting the workforce in that way. Because we do know the workforce will be under pressure once Omicron really takes off. So the 10 days sick leave is something that has been a very good initiative, in my view. Things like the healthy homes standard and the healthy homes initiative, where that is going to be rolled out to another nine additional regions—I think that’s really important, where people come in and assess the home and think about ways that that can be made more healthy through curtains, insulation, bedding, and the like.

We know that COVID-19 has had a huge impact on mental health across New Zealand and across all walks of life and all ages and all ethnicities. Mental health doesn’t discriminate in that respect. We’ve made some really great progress in the area of mental health, but, yes, there is more work to be done, and I’m really pleased to see that Mana Ake will be rolled out to more primary schools across the country. And when I visited a primary school back before this pandemic really took off in 2020, the principal there said that he had found that that was just absolutely invaluable for our children, because it is our young children that bear the brunt often when they see how stressed parents are and things like that. So I think that it’s really important that we are looking after our youngest and most vulnerable. Yes, there is more to do, but this Government has a plan. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, the speech from the PM earlier today was absolutely spot on in one respect. She made a comment in particular that struck a chord with the National Party—it struck a chord with me—that was very hard to disagree with. Her words hung in the air: we cannot return to business as usual. And, hallelujah, because business as usual for the last four years has seen a Government that has mixed up a hot mess of press releases, promises, and PR spin all served on a bed of lack of delivery, lack of detail, and a general failure to deliver on anything that they said they would get done. Business as usual from this Government has seen not a single extra ICU bed—a staffed ICU bed—added in two years. Despite everything we saw offshore, despite the Prime Minister today saying, “Well, we’re probably going to see new variants.”, not a single extra staffed ICU bed; that’s business as usual from this Government.

Business as usual from this Government: a health Minister that started the campaign to attract ICU nurses to our shores literally today—two years into the pandemic, and he starts that work today. That’s business as usual from this Government. A Government that ignored emails from Pfizer for six weeks, delaying our vaccination roll-out in 2020. A Government that, again, ignored emails from our rapid antigen supplier Kudu Spectrum at the end of last year for eight weeks. Very late in the piece, finally, after business leaders intervened, placing an order for 65 million rapid antigen tests right as Chinese New Year hit, meaning we will not get delivery of these as early as if we’d placed our order weeks ago, but they ignored that email again. Business as usual from this Government; not learning their lessons from 2020. And a Government that literally steals—as it now turns out—rapid antigen tests from the private sector when they realise the levels of their own incompetence.

An immigration Minister that literally takes six weeks to sign off immigration instructions to allow rural contractors to get their visas, and that was something that Minister Damien O’Connor announced six weeks ago, in early December. This is going to mean that we will not have agricultural machinery operators harvesting things like wheat, which we need for bread production in the South Island, and grains for food production—as we’re about to go into an Omicron curve. Business as usual from this Government is disastrous, and no more disastrous than has been evident in our managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) systems. The lottery of human misery that has divided Kiwis into the 5 million onshore and the 1 million offshore while the Government reduced the 1 million offshore to being called “cumulative risks” by a Government that divides to rule. They told us they would manage the border, but we got DJ Omicron who came and went from this country at his leisure, film stars, nannies, production crews from reality TV shows, children’s entertainers, sports teams, The Lion King dancers—I’ve talked about this for two years now, nothing changed while desperate Kiwis in awful situations had to explain things like their very personal and complex medical conditions to non-medical professionals at MIQ, who decided who got a spot in MIQ.

Pregnant women with high-risk pregnancies stuck in countries where they weren’t able to give birth, with no visas, having to go to court to get an MIQ spot; nurses sitting offshore, unable to get in through MIQ to bolster our critically short workforce, while split-migrant families have spent three Christmases apart—that is business as usual at our border. Business as usual from this Government saw us being the only country in the world that, effectively, closed our borders to our own people while gas lighting them by pushing the narrative that they had all the time in the world to come back—“They’re only coming back for a holiday.”, “It’s all their own fault.”, and “They’re simply cumulative risks.” Business as usual from this Government turned Kiwis against Kiwis in a disgusting display of division; this was business as usual from this kind and caring Government! Did they reprioritise Kiwis over DJs? Nope. Did they increase MIQ capacity? Nope. Did they consider purpose-built MIQ capacity? No. Did they, in fact, use all of the MIQ rooms that they had available to them? No. They can argue all they like that they were keeping us safe, but the things don’t add up when sports teams, The Wiggles, DJs, and nannies come and go while desperate Kiwis and healthcare workers get relegated to the bottom of the pile. This has been business as usual for two years.

But how about business as usual for bolstering our health workers? Well, that’s been a complete nightmare from the start. What does business as usual look like? It looks like a health Minister who knew in June last year that health workers, including nurses, couldn’t get in through MIQ, and yet, it took him until October before he decided to do anything about it. After months and months of screams from the Opposition, “You need to have MIQ spots tied to these workers—these critical healthcare workers.”, finally, in October, he got around to thinking about it; it wasn’t in place until late November. And, as it turns out, of the 600 spaces that have been available since then, only 60 nurses have come in. The Minister will tell us that it’s just because, well, maybe nurses don’t want to come here, when the reality is that the scheme that he’s set up is so bureaucratic in nature and so difficult to get in that nurses and doctors around the world are choosing not to come. That is the truth—nothing to do with the fact that they didn’t want to come in the first place.

Business as usual has seen a health Minister and an immigration Minister that never had a conversation on how to attract nurses to New Zealand. National proposed residency on arrival for healthcare workers and this was, effectively, picked up by the Government with access to residence in 2021 for healthcare workers that now enter the country. Migrant nurses were split from their families, leaving the country in droves. National lobbied to get them reunited with their families; that finally happened May 2021, 14 months after the start of the pandemic. The immigration Minister never kept a record of how many ICU nurses were entering the country—didn’t bother to ask them! We knew nurses were coming in but we never knew their speciality; we still don’t—we still don’t ask that question. And now, the health Minister, after his summer break, two years into the pandemic, decides we might need a programme to start attracting ICU nurses to New Zealand. Well, here’s some free ideas that I’d welcome him to pick up. How about paying them a resettlement fee, like we do with teachers? How about paying their Competency Assessment Programme course, their competency course? How about expediting their residence? There’s a whole lot of ideas that he could be using—there we go, free to him—if he wishes to pick them up.

Business as usual for the border has seen big announcements and no delivery. Fancy PRs, with screams from rooftops, “Here we are, fixing the problem. We’re bringing in workers. We’re going to bring in farmers, we’re going to bring in teachers, we’re going to bring in port crane operators, we’re going to bring in vets.” The reality was no one ever arrived. Three hundred teachers in July last year; 8 have come in. Two hundred dairy farm workers; none have been delivered. Port crane operators in 2021; none have been delivered. Sixty vets; 7 have arrived. Two hundred rural contractors to drive the heavy machinery to harvest wheat and grains announced in December; none have arrived. And guess what? We need those grains and wheat being harvested right now. One hundred and ninety seven people were interested in that scheme; now only 40 are left because of this Government’s business-as-usual approach to the border. And it’s against this backdrop that we see, just recently, their opening up to the world scheme, against the backdrop of continued failure of border exceptions; where no one’s getting in the country, against a backdrop of people like Charlotte Bellis not being able to come home to give birth to their baby; the backdrop of very negative press. And, again, we get business as usual from this border announcement, because, when you take a look at it, it lacks so much detail.

The Prime Minister and her Minister of Immigration have said, “It’s going be great; we’re going to get 20,000 extra critical workers in in Phase 1 and 2. We’re going to have all these extra workers, they’re going to be paid 1.5 times the minimum wage, and they’ll be attracted to New Zealand.” Well, the question is: why would they come? The Minister has already said they can’t have access to their resident ’21 scheme; so that’s closed to them. There’s literally no pathway to residence right now for anyone entering the country under this new scheme that they’re setting up to attract 20,000 critical workers. If you were a highly skilled, well-paid professional overseas wanting some certainty about the future for you and your family in New Zealand, why would you come when there is no pathway to residence for you? The answer to that is: they will not come. The second part of that is why would they come if they can’t leave? Because this Government have made it very clear to migrants onshore: you are not allowed to leave and you are not allowed to come back until October. So you’re a highly trained, skilled professional overseas, no pathway to residence, no ability to leave the country if your mother gets sick or your father dies or you’ve got an emergency overseas—they can’t leave and come back again.

It’s this business-as-usual lack of detail that this Government perpetuates day after day after day. New Zealanders deserve better. This country deserves better. We need a Government that is focused on the detail, on getting things done, on picking up the phone sometimes when that’s required. Instead, we’ve got a Government that lacks any ambition, any get up and go, or any mojo.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We’ve had a fair bit of whinging from the member who has just resumed her seat, Erica Stanford, who tries to grasp credit whenever and wherever she can, when the reality is that her lot have never run a country during a pandemic. So it is incredibly easy to sit across the House and to pick at and politicise individual experiences when you have never run a country through a pandemic. And then—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Don’t bring the Speaker into it.

When she has never run a country during a pandemic. However, while people might be tempted to think that it’s all doom and gloom, listening to the rhetoric from that side of the House, the reality is that this is the third year wherein we are facing another challenging year confronting a global pandemic that virtually every other country is also grappling with. Within that, the priority for this side of the House for this Government has always been to protect the lives and the livelihoods of New Zealanders. It has always been to keep New Zealand as safe as possible from COVID, which, of course, as I said previously, is a virus, is a pandemic that everyone is facing. There are costs and there are tough decisions. We on this side of the House have had to make those tough decisions that are so easily politicised by that side of the House. That has meant making decisions around border restrictions, around managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) spots, which, by the way—I correct the member who took her seat recently—we have increased over the course of this pandemic as safely as we can. We have had about 200,000 people cross the border and use those MIQ facilities, and our priority has always been, our approach has always been—

💬 Erica Stanford: DJs!

Yes, well, the economy, Miss Stanford. If we don’t focus on the economy, then the member will pick on that. We’ve had to balance safety with ensuring that we make decisions that keep New Zealand’s economy afloat. And I argue that our approach has worked.

We have had the lowest confirmed cases, the lowest hospitalisations, and the lowest number of deaths in the OECD each of the last two years. In addition, we’ve had unemployment at a record low. We have had a record number of New Zealanders who have moved off a main benefit and into work during the time of this pandemic. So I’d say to that member, we’ve had to make tough decisions, we’ve had to keep New Zealanders as safe as possible—and for that, we will always hold our head up high. Our approach was also to slow down and limit the spread of outbreaks.

In the short time that I have left, there are two points that I want to make: one was the fact that we recognised right from the start that a one-size-fits-all approach would not work in terms of keeping New Zealanders safe. So we’ve had an inclusive approach to that, whether it’s our Māori and Pacific health providers, whether it’s various community groups across the ethnic community landscape who have said continuously to us the needs of their communities and allowed us to then support them to support the vaccination uptake—and so on and so forth—that has now led to the high vaccination rates that we’ve seen across the board in New Zealand, and particularly with the Ministry for Ethnic Communities. I just wanted to highlight the latest data that we have. The national uptake for the Asian group is 106 percent for dose one and 105 for dose two; for the Middle East and Latin American and African groups, the national uptake is 99 percent for the first dose and 98 percent for the second. That didn’t just happen by accident. We worked with our communities to make sure that they had the support they needed to get communications out in a way that was relevant to their communities and that they had access to vaccination initiatives that were rolled out in a way that was appropriate, that was sensitive and respectful of those communities as well.

Finally, the community organisations that we’ve seen who have done a magnificent job and without whom we could not have achieved the rates that we have seen also need to be commended. Social service agencies that have seen people across the motu, iwi and hapū providers, various communities that have worked to provide food in ways that is culturally appropriate as well. We’ve also then worked with them to get some insights as to how they’ve worked differently and innovatively so that we could then incorporate that into how we do things even better to support these organisations. Not only are we a Government that governs in a crisis but we take those learnings to build the foundations for a much better future for New Zealanders. Thank you.

I call Steph Lewis—five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Earlier today, we heard the Prime Minister note how over the last two years we’ve seen our communities draw together to meet the challenges of COVID-19. Over that time, we’ve heard many heart-warming stories shared from people across the communities who have come together to support one another. But there’s one that stands out in my mind from the last 12 months, and that is as a young mother hearing about the millions of Kiwis who have come forward to be vaccinated. So I want to begin my contribution today by acknowledging all those individuals who’ve come forward and been vaccinated. I thank you. I also want to sincerely thank our front-line health workers who have worked tirelessly at the coalface right throughout every stage of this pandemic.

I have a three-year-old daughter. She’s too young to be vaccinated, and, in a few short months, my family of three is going to become a family of four when we welcome baby number two. As a mum, throughout this pandemic my primary consideration has been: what can I do to protect my daughter and now my unborn baby? I’ve spoken to mums and dads right across my electorate in Whanganui, who are equally as anxious about what they can do to keep their tamariki safe. That is why I want to acknowledge the millions of Kiwis who have been vaccinated. Because whether they know it or not, they are helping us mums and dads to keep our babies safe. Whether they know it or not, they’re also helping hundreds of thousands of Kiwi families across Aotearoa to protect the vulnerable and at-risk members of their families.

On Saturday, my husband and I joined the over 1.6 million Kiwis who’ve gone out and got their booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. I got mine because I know from looking at overseas research that, as a pregnant wahine, this is the best way that I can protect myself and my unborn baby. It’s the best way I can protect my three-year-old daughter. And it’s the best tool I have to protect those in my electorate who I talk to who are at higher risk. It’s a weight of responsibility that I feel heavily.

Vaccination is also the best tool that we have collectively to ensure that our health system is not overrun by this virus. And while COVID has featured heavily on the agenda over the last few years, our Government has continued to tackle the big issues head-on. We’ve been following our plan to protect jobs, and that is that the best economic response is a strong health response. By putting health first, we’ve not only saved lives but we’ve saved livelihoods, investing $22.9 billion in the wage subsidy scheme, resurgence support payment, and Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme. We’ve invested in critical infrastructure projects which have contributed towards our goal of becoming a high-wage, low-carbon economy.

In my electorate, we’ve been able to grow jobs through investment and the Whanganui Port revitalisation. Over the summer break, it’s been wonderful watching the progress of the repair of the North Mole. We’re grateful for investment in our Sarjeant Gallery, the Hāwera civic hub, and the investment in the development of green hydrogen by Hiringa Energy. A large part of the Whanganui electorate is rural, and we know that rural towns face barriers to accessing healthcare that those in urban centres don’t face. We’ve seen firsthand how waiting times can vary depending on what district health board you’re in. The healthcare you get in the 21st century should not depend on where you live. That’s why I am proud of the health reforms that we will deliver that will be a genuinely national health service for all New Zealanders, so the people in my electorate can get access to the same level of healthcare that their friends and family in the cities receive.

Housing is another long-term challenge that we’ve inherited, and I’m pleased to say that we’re seeing progress on that front in my electorate as well, seeing over 17 houses being built and more due to be completed at the end of this first quarter, and another 30 units scheduled for the near future. I’m proud to be part of this team that is putting people first during this pandemic.

I call Karen Chhour—five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s an honour to be able to stand here today and address the many issues that this country is facing right now, because like it or not, there is more going on right now than just COVID. I recall multiple occasions of the Prime Minister standing up and giving the impression that child poverty and New Zealanders’ wellbeing were her number one priority. I struggled to find an area where this has improved in reality. We hear and see statistics that sound good, but is this a real reflection of what’s happening outside the walls of Wellington?

So while the Prime Minister and her team sit across from me today, patting themselves on the back and celebrating like they’ve won the war, in the real world, our children and our people are telling a different story. Well, Prime Minister, there is nothing to celebrate when we have record numbers of families living in motels, cars, and on their friends’ couches—if they’re lucky enough to get this help. For others, they’re not so lucky and we see this playing out in the form of our people sleeping rough in our city streets.

Prime Minister, there is nothing to celebrate when we have people waiting record times just to be placed in a stable home. The wait was around 54 days in 2016-17. It is now, on average, 168 days to house a client. These are families, often with children, who feel scared and frightened and feel that there is no light at the end of this dark tunnel. There is nothing to celebrate when we have gone from having 5,844 people on our housing waiting list to now 24,546. Prime Minister, there is nothing to celebrate when we have record numbers of families lining up at charities because they can’t feed themselves or their children. Since when are we a country that tolerates mothers and fathers having to choose who eats at night because there’s not enough food to go around?

All of these issues I have mentioned have come under a Labour Government who prides themselves on being kind. This Government has made assurances that they will fix our broken system when it comes to the safety of our most vulnerable children. Well, Prime Minister, what have you and your Government actually achieved except for another four-year plan to replace the old four-year plan that puts more effort into abiding by the Treaty than focusing on the wellbeing of the children themselves? Surely all our children deserve to feel safe and loved, and “loved” to me means the same thing in any language. Don’t get me wrong, culture is a bonus. I’m proud of my culture and I’m proud of who I am, but the safety and security of our children should always come first. I have witnessed the heartache and distress of families that have turned their lives upside down to take in children in need. These people have not only provided a home for these children but they have loved them as if they were their own. Then, out of nowhere, they are now being told they are not fit to raise these kids. Were they neglecting these kids? Were they starving them or beating them? No. The reason was they could not raise them culturally appropriately. This should never happen and this needs to stop.

I’ve been asked by non-Māori mothers with Māori children, how long will it be before they are told they are not good enough to raise their own children? I know that this may seem extreme, but when you hear things in the public and statements made questioning whether non-Māori should raise Māori children, surely we can understand why this has become a real and alarming situation for the parents asking this question. It is high time that this Government stops the lip service and actually creates policies that help the people they’re meant to represent. ACT is listening and will continue each and every day to hold this Government to account.

I call Toni Severin—five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to say that we want a healthy economy. Cost of living is going up for New Zealanders and small businesses. The impact COVID has on New Zealand small businesses is only starting to show. It’s too late for our borders to be opened in October for the horticulture sector for this year’s harvest, and much of our tourist industry will not survive this winter. If unemployment is low, why is there a staff shortage as many businesses in New Zealand are looking for staff? Our farming community, our hospitality—these are just some of these areas that we’re lacking staff.

The Prime Minister, I’m sure, said that businesses are open to operate—yes. However, today, I just received a lovely letter from the chair of the Christchurch Central City Business Association. There’s about a thousand businesses within the four avenues of Christchurch, and they have over 500 members. This is probably only a snapshot of the businesses, but more than 90 percent of their respondents said the red light traffic setting was having (a), a negative and a very negative impact on the business, and (b), a negative to a very negative impact on the number of people visiting their businesses. Yes, businesses may be open, but people are not spending. It’s making it hard for them to operate, and most of them are also concerned that nearly over 80 percent of those who responded to the survey are very concerned for their mental health or the mental health of their colleagues or employees. We just need to see the signs around businesses around New Zealand that are asking for staff.

But the biggest concern that I have is that mental health for all. Most businesses are now propping up their own businesses with money, using their houses as collateral for mortgages. We can’t survive and nor can these small businesses if we don’t have the people to work them and if our economy is not boosting them. We just keep passing the money, like adding costs to small businesses and that has to get passed on to somebody. Who do businesses pass that on to? The everyday New Zealander. They are already struggling as it is with the everyday costs. So if our supply chains and everything keeps going up, from transport to get our goods, and especially if we cannot get our harvesting off, our fruit and vegetables are already going off. Most people are saying when they go into the shop, that lettuce is already winter prices and we’ve never seen that before—well, especially in my lifetime, and that’s been a wee bit long.

But the biggest comment, also, from this lovely survey that the chair of central city business sent to me—I actually gave some suggestions, and this is what ACT prides ourselves on, is actually listening to the people that are out there. The biggest thing that they said is to reduce the current restrictions. The current red light setting is not consistent with the Government’s original framework which has set out the requirements to move between the traffic light settings. The current settings are causing significant damage to business, mental health, and livelihoods. They also suggested to immediately reduce the isolation requirements. The requirements are strict and unworkable and result in a large number of people without COVID isolating, and the result is many businesses will not be able to open for trade. Provide free rapid antigen tests to businesses and individuals so that actual cases of COVID-19 can be managed and businesses can operate safely. These are just some of the suggestions that this association has sent us. We need to listen. We need those people to know that we are listening because their livelihoods, their employees’ livelihoods depend on us. We need to look after them.

But also, on a final note, we also have to identify the impact that this COVID is going to have on prisoners within our prison system, with restricted visit rights and backlog in courts. It’s not good for their mental health and their frustrations—they are going to be taking that out on Corrections staff, which they already are. So be aware. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I call Tangi Utikere—five-minute call.

Kia orana, Madam Speaker, thank you. Can I take the opportunity to wish you and colleagues all around the House New Year greetings as we recommence the parliamentary year. And can I also thank the Prime Minister for her statement earlier in the day, because what I take from the statement, actually, is that together we have risen to the challenge of COVID-19. And while we are all on this pandemic journey together, at every turn our goal as a Government has been to do what is right and to protect our communities and its peoples at every single turn.

And when we look at our current context, people can draw the conclusion that the approach has worked. I refer to contributions from my colleague the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan, who says, yes, that our confirmed cases, the hospitalisations, and deaths have been low compared with other countries for each of the past two years. It gave me an opportunity earlier today to reflect on those past two years. Just before we went into the very first lockdown in 2020, I vividly recall, as a deputy mayor, along with the mayor, going into my city’s emergency operation centre—they called it “The Bunker”—to confirm, at that particular time in a very small space of time, contingency plans for the refrigeration units that would be required to meet the overflow that our city’s cemetery would not be able to handle. And the reality of that was because that was what was proposed and what was happening in other cities, other regions, other places that people called home all around the globe. Now, thankfully, due to the Government’s plans, that did not eventuate, and we did not need to, as a city, call upon those contingency plans at the time.

So these results—and that result in itself, I would suggest—are a vote of confidence in the efforts of all of us throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. The measures that we have taken have saved lives, they have protected loved ones, and they have protected communities. Our policies have supported jobs and employment. And we’ve heard today in the House about the record low levels of unemployment, but the policies and decisions that this Government has taken have also saved businesses during times of uncertainty and also in times of immense need.

The plan that we have followed, during a difficult time, has worked. And, of course, we now find ourselves, relative to other countries around the world, in a stronger position because of our high vaccination rates. And it was pleasing also to hear from the Prime Minister today that 40 percent of tamariki have now had their first dose. And, of course, the ongoing roll-out and support for boosters will be a vital ongoing form of protection. So Kiwis can draw confidence from our current position—confidence that with a clear plan, based on good scientific advice and a real sense of unity, our country and its people can continue on its journey.

I want to take this opportunity to also acknowledge the Māori and Pacific health and community providers, who continue to be absolutely essential and critical to our plan. Yes, the Government has invested more than $250 million in partnerships in this space, but they are providers who are on the ground. They are providers who are connected and able to see the need within their communities. These are the providers who’ve driven up the vaccination rates. And I know that in my electorate of Palmerston North, and I’m sure in many others, they are the providers that will continue to be relentless in the work that they do. So I want to say thank you to all of them and to the broader line of vaccination frontline workers for the work that they continue to do to keep us safe.

When I reflect on the Prime Minister’s statement, she talks about the Government remaining committed to addressing some of those long-term, difficult issues. And I want to briefly reflect on that of housing through a local lens. When I see Kāinga Ora for the first time continuing to build new homes and houses in my city—the first time in decades where we see an increase in public housing infrastructure—warm, dry, healthy homes in Highbury, in Awapuni, in Roslyn, in Hokowhitu, in Takaro, in central Palmerston North, and there is much more to come, that is a fantastic part of the plan. And I have to say that there is no intention on this side of the House of taking our foot off the housing accelerator in Palmerston North for the fine people of Palmerston North as well.

So in conclusion: our Government has a plan for the year ahead; it’s a plan that we’re all committed to; it’s a plan that keeps us safe; it makes a real difference to the lives of many; and is a plan that as the member for Palmerston North, I wholeheartedly stand beside and endorse.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki—five minutes.

It is always an honour and a privilege to make a contribution to the Prime Minister’s statement. What I want to do is to acknowledge the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s leadership. What I take from her speech today, were the words that together we have risen to the challenges of COVID-19, that the pandemic also has drawn us together.

I just love the way she laid out our Government’s action plan. Fundamentally, more than a vision, but a plan to get us through safely. I heard the Prime Minister talk about five key themes for our plan to keep New Zealand safe: one was about keeping people safe; preparing for winter; managing New Zealand’s health in the long term; securing our economic future; and, laying foundations for the future. Leadership is about action—leadership is about action.

On 7 January, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta congratulated Tonga’s Prime Minister the honourable Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni on being appointed as Tonga’s Prime Minister. On 15 January Maui Motua shook the kingdom of Tonga, where Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai exploded in the creation of new lands. The lands were—Tonga was covered by volcanic ash and the tsunami. I want to pay respect to the three people who lost their lives.

The day after, 16 January, we sent a message to Tonga that New Zealand is ready to help. On 18 January, we sent another message, $500,000 ready to support. On 20 January, the Royal New Zealand Air Force was on their way to Tonga while we were getting the navy vessels ready. On 21 January, we had said to Tonga “$3 million—$3 million total of support.” Last week, we also said to Tonga, “COVID-19, we’ll find the Pfizer vaccinations.” Ko e koloa ‘a e Tongá ko e fakamālō.

Giving thanks is Tonga’s greatest value. As a Tongan New Zealander living here, I am proud to be here. I want to acknowledge the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and the Government. I want to say thank you to Kīngi Tūheitia of Waikato-Tainui, the tangata o Aotearoa, the peoples of New Zealand, the ngā kāinga katoa, ngā kāinga katoa o Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. [all the villages, all the villages in the Pacific.] Si‘i kakai Tonga nofo he fonuá ni, mālō e ‘ofa ki Tonga ko ho‘omou ‘ofá ko e fu‘u koloa lahi ‘e tofuhia ai e ngaahi fāmilí, tufa ‘i he kāingá mo e kau ngāué pea fiefia ai e fonuá ‘i he fu‘u taimi faingata‘á.

I co-chair the Aotearoa Tonga Relief Committee with the Hon Jenny Salesa. I want to take this opportunity to thank Aotearoa New Zealand for your aroha; nothing like a natural disaster to bring us together. As the leader of the comms team I want to thank—my fakamālō goes out to the tech companies, the tech equipment for Techenz, Ingram and Logitech , Dove Electronics, Mobile Mentors, Dicker Data New Zealand, Leading Solutions, Shabana Khan, IT4U, Ernst & Young, and Keith Crow. I want to say big, huge fakamālō to La’auli Sir Michael Jones and Matson shipping, Graeme Hart, Foodstuffs, Mayor Phil Goff, Auckland Council, Mt Smart Stadium, Swire Shipping Mainfreight, The Fono, Snell Packaging, Coconut Wireless, Israeli Embassy of New Zealand, Maungakiekie-Tāmaki Local Board, Pacific Forum Line, Chrystal Transport, Ultimate Transport, Fulton Hogan, Heinz-Wattie’s, Turners and Growers, Rapid Response Global, and Pita Taufatofoa, and Watercare New Zealand.

Last but not least, I would like to thank the other volunteers, the volunteers at Mt Smart Stadium, ‘Una Taufa and the Laise team in kolo-Tonga, Pakilau Manase Lua and team Topai in kolo-Ha‘apai. To Gretel Toleafoa and the donations team.

Importantly, I want to thank Maria Meredith and Daniel Meredith, who kept the army fed. Thank you to the Folaha/Nukuhetulu NZ Society, Fonu moe Moa Aotearoa, St Anne’s Catholic Church, Saipipi Village of Samoa, ‘Eua Community, Eight Roses Cafe, Sione Tu’itahi, and the Baha’i Faith, Lighthouse Community Church in Pakuranga. Fifty-one containers have left Mt Smart, over 1,000 tonnes of love from Aotearoa. That is the country we are in. The Prime Minister has kept us safe through COVID-19 so we can stop and think about our neighbours, the Pacific nation. On behalf of the Tongan community and on behalf of Aotearoa Tonga Relief Committee, ko e koloa ‘a e Tongá ko e fakamālō, fakamālō ‘aupito. And lastly, but not least, Gate 1 Rosie, Gate 3 Soni, Gate 4 T-boys Havelulahi, Toni Taufa, Saia Tukuafu, and Exit Alofi team tāpupuhá mālō ‘aupito, ‘ofa atu.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Happy New Year. I rise on behalf of the National Party in the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement, where I rise in support of the Leader of the Opposition—the leader of the National Party, Christopher Luxon—with his motion, “That all the words after ‘That’ be deleted and replaced with, ‘this House has no confidence in this Government that returns to Wellington at the start of each year with more promises it has no intention of keeping and fails to deliver.’ ”

I do want to start with one acknowledgement, and that’s for Hon Grant Robertson. I want to thank him from taking time out from his ivory tower in the Beehive to come down and listen to me and this important speech today. I also want to say: 2022—game on. National is back, and it starts this year. This is a Government that is tired. This is a Government that has run out of ideas. This is a Government that is increasingly out of touch—a Government that is a failed socialist experiment; that wants to run the country out of Wellington. It’s intrinsic in this Government’s DNA. It’s about running the country out of the beltway of Wellington. Bureaucrats know best.

Whereas, on this side of the House, we know different. We back hard-working Kiwis, who this year—in 2022—need a Government that will back them. And the first thing I’d raise: what a kick in the guts to South Islanders. What a kick in the guts this Prime Minister’s statement was to Cantabrians, to mainlanders—what was in it for them? Look at regional roads. What was announced for the South Island? Zip, de nada, zilch, forgotten. South Islanders are fleeced and forgotten, paying exorbitant rates at the petrol stations, exorbitant rates through their road user charges, and they’re fleeced and forgotten as this Government raids the National Land Transport Fund yet again for their pet projects in Auckland, while Cantabrians and mainlanders have to sit back and take it.

Look at a regional road in my electorate: the Woodend Bypass, announced by the National Government in 2017. This Government came in and cancelled it. Traffic volumes have increased 25 percent in that time—a State highway that runs through a small town that’s got a primary school on one side of it. And you know what’s galling? When I asked New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) about the latest update, they said there’s no commitment to it. The Woodend Bypass would have cost—it was costed by NZTA at $120 million—$120 million, yet these guys have wasted $50 million on consultants for light rail, another $50 million on a business case that will go nowhere, $50 million on consultants for the cycleway. That’s $150 million this Government has wasted on consultants. That could have paid for the Woodend Bypass to keep my constituents safe.

This is a Government of wastage. They’re fleecing and forgetting hard-working South Islanders. What did we hear about three waters today? Crickets. And they all keep their head down. Zip. De nada.

💬 Erica Stanford: It’s not a winner.

Exactly. Erica Stanford said, “It’s not a winner.”, because they know three waters has gone down like a cup of cold sick. In Waimakariri, 95 percent of ratepayers are opposed to it. This is an asset grab. These guys will forcibly seize community-owned assets this year because they know best. Running New Zealand out of the beltway—bureaucracy before New Zealanders. This is 2022. New Zealand is waking up to this blind ideology of this failed socialist Government. Centralisation, Labour knows best, ride roughshod over local people.

And probably one of the worst parts of the Prime Minister’s statement when she said, “We have made progress on building mental health services in New Zealand.” Three years ago, they announced a front-line mental health service. It’s only rolled out to 28 percent of GPs after three years—at a time of a pandemic, where there’s increased mental distress. That’s 72 percent of GP practices that are not providing the new front-line mental health service after three years. They announced a free counselling service for 18- to 25-year-olds years ago. It hasn’t gone past Greater Wellington yet. One authority out of the dozens in New Zealand.

And then of course, there’s the mental health facility rebuilds. And yeah, David Clark, he’s putting his head down because he knows where this is going: 2018, 2019, not one is opened. Do you know what? Not one’s even got a shovel in the ground. They had budgeted $443 million; they haven’t even spent $18 million of that yet. It’s about 5 percent, they’re all still in the design stage. A year ago, Health Minister Hon Andrew Little said he was extraordinarily frustrated, so he had a review. You know what he did? He asked his mate Grant Robertson to hold a review with the implementation unit. They came back and said, “Oh, good progress. Good progress.”

We’re seeing in New Zealand, in our young people, research out of the Auckland University last year reported higher rates of young people trying to access eating disorders as a direct result of the pandemic. The Ministry of Health released data for last year which showed a disproportionate increase of antidepressant prescribing amongst our young people in the first year of the pandemic. The St John annual report, released last week: disproportionate increase in under-14s calling up with suicide attempts and mental health. Australia is calling it a “shadow pandemic”. In the UK, they are saying they cannot respond to the increased waiting times. The surgeon general in America has warned of the devastation of young peoples’ mental health caused by the pandemic.

I wrote to Andrew Little highlighting this a week ago, saying, “Let’s get the best people around a table: young people with lived experience, advocates, academics, researchers, mental health professionals.” Zip, de nada, zilch, nothing. We are facing a tidal wave of mental distress in our young people caused by the pandemic, and this Government is sitting on its hands. It needs to respond urgently—to understand and leave no stone unturned; how we look at every new idea, every development, every innovation that will open up access and decrease waiting times for young people in this time of a pandemic.

And yes, the Prime Minister says, “Oh, we’ve provided mental health support for small business.” Well, I’ll tell you about that, because on 15 September, Radio New Zealand ran a story when I called on the Government—I gave them the policy: a $10 million mental health small business policy to be delivered through BusinessNZ. Hon Stuart Nash came out, said, “We’re not planning a specific fund for this.” Two months later, they came kicking and screaming and finally announced a policy for our small business owners.

Fine, they’ve pinched my idea. But the thing is, we could be doing it now. We could be responding now. This Government is becoming increasingly tone-deaf. They are out of touch. Name one Minister that’s been in to North Canterbury, let alone the Prime Minister. None in four years. They do not get out of Wellington. And in the Prime Minister’s statement, once again—like 2021—we start the year in 2022 with a kick in the guts for mainlanders. Nothing in it for them and a Government that wants to run the South Island from Wellington.

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.

This debate is adjourned and is set down for resumption next sitting day. Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7 o’clock this evening.

Sitting suspended from 17.59 p.m. to 7 p.m.