Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

I am extremely proud to stand today in the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement. I am proud of the record of this Government in providing what the Lowy Institute has declared as the best COVID-19 response in the world. That is a COVID-19 response that has been driven by the view that the best response for the whole of society, including the economy, is a strong public health response. We have stuck to that throughout this period of COVID-19, believing that if we support New Zealanders’ lives and livelihoods, we will come through this pandemic stronger. I am proud of the fact that we are now going to build on that response to take New Zealand forward, to not accept business as usual but to build a high-wage, low-carbon economy that provides economic security to New Zealanders in good times and in bad.

That is what New Zealanders have learnt over the last 2 years: that this Government is prepared to step forward and give them security. In the face of a one-in-100-year health and economic shock, it was this Government that stepped up and provided the support for New Zealanders to stay in work, and today we stand here with the lowest unemployment rate in New Zealand’s history, at 3.2 percent. That means, though, in turn, that there are 2.83 million New Zealanders in work today. We have under 100,000 people unemployed in New Zealand, and that—at the end of a pandemic that has rocked people and has hurt some businesses and some sectors—is a remarkable result. It is down to the hard work and the resilience of New Zealand businesses and workers that we have got there, and the fact that there is a Government that is prepared to stand alongside them.

There are no easy decisions in COVID-19. At each and every stage, we have been presented with difficult and worse options. We’ve had to shift and adapt at each stage to try to stay ahead of the virus. Of course we will not get every single decision right, but New Zealanders know that we have kept to our word: that we would save lives and we would save livelihoods—and that is what we have done.

What New Zealanders also know is that they cannot trust the National Party when it comes to COVID. For two years, across five poor leaders, they have flip-flopped around with open borders, closed borders, and were for ever arguing against the very things that are working. Remember, this is the party, and, indeed contestant number five is the leader, who said in December, as Omicron began to spread around the world, that now was a good time to open up, invite Omicron in through the door. A petition went up in the name of the National Party and it said “End MIQ now.” Then, when it started to get just a little bit hard and Omicron cases started to pile up at the border, they changed the name of the petition on the National Party website to “End MIQ”—no other word. I think we can probably make the judgment that the next step for the National Party’s petition will be simply the word “End”, and on that I think we could all agree.

When National comes forward and puts out ideas and positive solutions, people will respond, but, yesterday, we heard Christopher Luxon come to the House with a speech that could’ve been written by any National Party leader since the 1990s. He came here with the energy of Tony Robbins on Valium, a corporate life coach with nowhere else to go, and he told us that New Zealanders weren’t happy. Well, what we know, on this side of the House, is, having got through COVID-19 in the way that we have, New Zealanders know that they have a Government that has their back. But the National Party leader went on to say that the cost of living crisis, he said, in New Zealand is one that he will address, but not once yesterday did he say what he would do, and then when he was pressed he said, “Cameras on boats”, representing the major inflationary push that we have seen in New Zealand! He also said, though—I want to give credit here—that they were going to get rid of the Auckland regional fuel tax. It was a little bit confusing, because when he was asked what he would replace that with, he said, “A congestion charge.”—i.e., a levy; i.e., replacing one tax with another tax, which wouldn’t actually reduce the cost of living.

While we’re on the subject of the regional fuel tax and getting rid of it, I wonder if he—the Leader of the Opposition—has spoken to the National Party’s transport spokesperson, Simeon Brown, who, I believe, attended with great excitement the opening of the Eastern Busway, a project funded from the regional fuel tax. They cannot have it both ways. Either they support those transport projects or they don’t, and what we know is they are just playing politics here.

On this side of the House, our focus when it comes to the economy is the lifting of wages. We do need to do that by investing in the initiatives that will lift productivity, and on that I agree with the Leader of the Opposition, but that means actually investing in infrastructure—$57 billion worth over the next five years. It means being prepared to look ahead, not take the cheap political shots, but actually say, “What does a plan for transport look like? How do we actually invest in the building of public housing, not the selling off of public housing, making sure that our hospitals, our educational facilities are all being built and turned into world-class facilities?” That’s what helps grow productivity.

What else helps grow productivity is skills and skills training, and one of the proudest things I have of our response to COVID-19 was our move to make apprenticeships free, and subsidised trades training free. Over 100,000 New Zealanders have benefited from that. It’s lifting skills. It’s giving people opportunities like that that actually makes a difference when it comes to productivity, just as it does when we reach out into the world, and I want to give credit to both our former trade Minister, David Parker, and our current trade Minister, Damien O’Connor, for the work they have done in establishing the UK free-trade agreement alongside Minister Nanaia Mahuta. We are on the way to a strong agreement with the European Union and we are out there supporting our exporters in a practical way, and the Prime Minister will lead trade delegations later this year to support that.

All the way through COVID, we have had a mind to how we support our exporters to continue to be able to drive the New Zealand economy, and here I do want to thank our primary sector. It is a sector, I note, that the Leader of the Opposition didn’t bother to talk about during his speech yesterday. That primary sector has driven those exports and we’ve got alongside them. We have had an air freight subsidy scheme that has meant that planes have travelled in and out of New Zealand throughout this pandemic, which they would not have without that. That has meant that tens of billions of dollars of exports have gone out of New Zealand, and imports have come in. That is a practical partnership between the Government and business to make sure that New Zealand has made it through COVID-19.

So what we do now is we move forward to make sure that we are producing those higher-wage, low-carbon jobs, and, at this point, I want to thank our partnership with the Green Party, particularly in the cooperation agreement when it comes to climate change. The year 2022 will be a year when New Zealand finally comes to terms with what we need to do to reach our zero-carbon target. That is a big challenge. It is a massive environmental challenge but it is also an enormous economic opportunity for New Zealand.

No one’s better at renewable energy in the world than New Zealand. No one’s better at sustainable agriculture anywhere in the world than New Zealand. We can do this and we can create economic opportunity and higher-wage jobs out of the way that we approach the climate change challenge, and those emissions reduction plans and the new climate emergency relief fund that we have in the Budget will drive us forward to meeting both our environmental and our economic goals. Our industry transformation plan, which is being led by the Hon Stuart Nash, is vital to ensure that we get alongside business to make sure they have the skilled workforce, to make sure that they have the infrastructure that they need, be it in agritech, be it in advanced manufacturing, be it in forestry, be it in fisheries—industries that New Zealand is good at, but industries we know we must add value to. That is the answer to productivity, not old stories and old slogans from the 1990s but actual investment and partnership, not only with business but also with workers and with iwi, who we know want to be part of driving forward that story of a higher-wage, lower-carbon economy that supports economic security.

We have a big agenda this year. We are reforming the health system. We are reforming our three waters system. We are making sure that as a country we have the infrastructure that New Zealanders need, and deserve, to give them the opportunities to be able to achieve their potential. I am enormously proud of the statement that the Prime Minister put out. It is a plan for New Zealand to be able to drive forward, to provide opportunities for the next generation, to look after our planet, and to make sure that every New Zealander has a stake in our future. This is a statement to be proud of.

You know, the most significant thing in the Prime Minister’s statement and her speech was what wasn’t in it. I listened very carefully to everything the Prime Minister was saying yesterday.

💬 David Seymour: Why?

Well, because it was a thought experiment—it was a thought experiment. Barely a whisper about the economy, and I was just listening to Grant Robertson—well, there was a little bit; he talked about wages for about 15 seconds, but did he mention the word “inflation”, cost of living, and the pain New Zealanders are feeling? Not a murmur from Mr Robertson. In fact, I think what you’ll find is he spent much, much, much more time in that speech than on anything else, talking about Christopher Luxon and the New Zealand National Party. I’ll tell you why that is: he’s worried. He can see the National Party coming; he understands we’re a party that’s reset and that’s focused on issues, like cost of living and inflation, that really matter to New Zealand, and that are worrying them, and they’re not hearing a bean from the New Zealand Labour Party in Government.

And I want to say those naysayers over there: when we talk about the economy, we’re not talking highfalutin stuff, we’re not talking about the most wealthy, we’re not talking about those things that David Parker and Grant Robertson are obsessed about, with their envy of the rich. We’re actually talking about the regular Joes and Joannas, who actually are really worried right now, because when they go to the petrol station—at some places a bit under, at some places $3 a litre—they have to decide whether they’re going to fill it a quarter or a half full. They can’t afford the petrol at the petrol station.

They’re worried, because when they go to buy fruit and vegetables, they know the price of cauliflower, the price of broccoli, the price of tomatoes, and these things are unaffordable today and, actually, whether it’s mum or it’s dad and they’re going to get their school lunches for their children, they understand that sometimes they get to the checkout and they have to put things back in a way they didn’t have to, because of the economy that Grant Robertson and Jacinda Ardern are presiding over.

New Zealanders understand that they’ve still got their 30-year-old at home, in the basement, in the garage, because that 30-year-old today—more than ever in New Zealand’s history—can’t afford a home. They can’t move out of home because inflation is so high. And, as Nicola Willis has said so clearly today, and could not get a straight answer from the Minister of Housing on—she would not straight answer the question—rent has gone up $50 a week last year; the highest ever, as I understand it, in New Zealand; $50 a week. New Zealanders are going backwards.

So I want to focus on, today, a few of the things that should have, could have, would have been in Jacinda Ardern’s and Grant Robertson’s speeches, as they set out their float, their priorities for the year, in the Labour Party parade, that matter to New Zealanders. The first one—I’ve already mentioned but I want to come back to—is 5.9 percent inflation. It is the highest in 31 years in this country. It’s been higher, that’s true, but I tell you what, actually, for myself, for David Seymour, for Chris Bishop, for Simon Watts, for Simon O’Connor—I think I’m the oldest of all of the people I’ve just mentioned right there; I know, I don’t look 45!—for all of us in our adult lifetimes, we have never experienced inflation like that. A lot of New Zealanders haven’t. It is a thief in your pocket. It is an invisible tax and it hits the poor and the most vulnerable, and those workers close to the minimum wage are hit the hardest. We have inflation that’s one of the highest in the Western world. We hear a lot of nonsense from the Government. Their excuse today in this Parliament is “It’s all international.” Well, here’s the thing: actually, domestic inflation was up over 5 percent last year. It’s a big part of it. It is growing. At the end of last year, on the last figures, we have faster, higher than the international part. So it’s simply not right to say that.

And here’s what the ANZ, New Zealand’s biggest bank, said about the question and the blame that Grant Robertson and Ardern put on the international picture. They said, on 27 January, “The domestic economy is … highly inflationary”. It’s New Zealand. Infometrics said on the same day, “Inflation isn’t an offshore problem that New Zealand is caught up in.”; it’s domestic and it is hurting New Zealanders. Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson need to front up to that.

Wage growth, and here’s the real kicker: it’s only 2.6 percent. Again, obfuscation—I’d use some other words, but we’re in Parliament—from Grant Robertson today when he tries to hide the lack of wage growth relative to inflation, the cost of living going up in New Zealand. It’s very simple. It just means this: New Zealanders right now are going backwards—they are going backwards. They can’t afford the kind of economy that Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson are presiding over. And interest rates, as a result, because the Reserve Bank will have to act as a result of what Grant Robertson is doing and the spending that he keeps on spending and spending and spending—interest rates will go up several times this year. It will be a double whammy for New Zealanders as they face high inflation and high interest rates, and we have real problems for them being able to afford the basics for their whānau, for their family.

So what can Grant Robertson do? Because his excuse is, “Well, you know, I’ve saved us from COVID. Hasn’t it been amazing—the business subsidy, all of these things!” Well, he can now—not back then; now—rein in the spending as he continues to spend more and more and more. We’ve come a long way. He wants to spend more than he was spending at the height of COVID, in the next Budget. That’s what his public documents tell us. He wants to take spending from 40 percent, more than National ever spent, to 68 percent, or $128 billion, in the next year, from a position where we are second only to the United States, who, by the way, has the highest inflation in the Western World, fundamentally—second only to them for the most spending of any Government in the world as a proportion of our GDP.

That’s not success. It was a sugar hit for a time, but, actually, there’s an unsustainable hangover that comes in the form of inflation and interest rates that really knock Kiwis back. And so we’re saying pretty clearly: Grant Robertson, rein it in. It’s not cuts. It’s not austerity. It does not at any level—in fact, it is a lie to say that it means health spending, education spending, and investment have to go down. Rein in the new spending—the many billions more and the biggest operational spending we’ve ever seen—that you want this year, Grant Robertson. Rein it in a bit, actually, and focus on the quality. Don’t take my word for it, by the way. The OECD, Treasury, and every commercial bank in New Zealand is saying the same: Grant Robertson, please rein in the spending so that New Zealanders aren’t socked in the back pocket; they’re not stolen from by the thief that is inflation.

The real tragedy here is that economic commentators on the left who I don’t always agree with, like Bernard Hickey, like Max Rashbrooke, and so on—actually, they’ve got a real point. The pumping in of cash that we have seen relentlessly from Grant Robertson has made the rich and the asset classes richer, and it has made the poor and the vulnerable—sometimes called the working poor—poorer. All of that money.

Jacinda Ardern has made, despite what they campaigned on, the generational divide in this country worse: more kids, more young people, 25-year-olds, 30-year-olds living in their parents’ garage. His answer to all of this is: low unemployment. He boasts about it at Parliament, but engineering long-term dependency and a long-term dependency crisis all the while, as the jobseeker support benefit goes up and up and up: up 90,000 since Grant Robertson has been the Minister of Finance; and 50,000 more people have been on that benefit, that welfare, for a year or more. That’s a shame, actually, at a time like this, in a hot economy.

You know, Norman Kirk said something that Jacinda Ardern likes to refer to: basically, there are four things that matter—people have to have somewhere to live, food to eat, clothing to wear, and something to hope for. That’s actually pretty un-aspirational, but, at the end of the day, Labour on its own terms, because they are failing in a cost of living crisis, are making it worse for the Kiwi battler, for the strugglers, for the vulnerable in this country. National is needed to turn back the clock—

Order! Order! The member’s time is up.

Well, there were no solutions in that speech, but I am proud to speak to the Prime Minister’s statement, where she clearly sets out three key objectives in our effort to respond to a global pandemic and navigate our way forward. Those three points, in my mind, were about leading a country through this global pandemic; to emerge economically stronger by being an active Government who wants an inclusive, productive economy; and to save lives by putting people first. Aotearoa has shown, time and time again, its strength as a nation by working as a team.

We’ve taken a science- and evidence-based public health response to COVID-19, and, because of that, we’re a nation that is better prepared for what the future may throw at us, ready to grasp the opportunities that we create and will emerge as a result. And when I reflect on my own work, I look at the resilience of our domestic infrastructure, supporting our region and neighbours towards greater economic resilience.

Water is a taonga. And when I think about the way in which water underpins livelihoods and economic growth, what we do in this space matters. Whether it is, for example, investing in water infrastructure and a resilient network, safe drinking water, ensuring water security, ensuring that there are water storage options where needed, or even desalination solutions in the Pacific, water is a core component to wellbeing and resilience. It is a taonga; it’s our most precious natural resource and it brings life to the heart of people and communities and their livelihoods. It’s a necessity, and that’s why we’re placing such importance on our nation’s water infrastructure.

We’ve seen the effects of compromised water infrastructure up and down the country over summer, over winter, and, certainly, when we see significant natural weather events occurring around the land. Our current system is crumbling; it’s causing disruption to our communities on a daily basis and everyone knows the problems facing our system. But without maintaining and upgrading pipes and plants to meet the needs of our growing population, the changing climate, and ever-frequent weather events, we’re going to see the negative impact of water when it’s contaminated; bursting out of our pipes; breaching treatment plants; and affecting our towns, cities, and communities.

Our storm waste and water infrastructure may not be an attractive thing to talk about, but we certainly need to do it. It wasn’t cool 20 years ago, or even six years ago when that group was in Government. They were holding the reins and they did absolutely nothing about it. They hardly even talked about it. Well, we will not kick this can down the road. The stark reality is that decades of under-investment in water infrastructure means we can no longer ignore the situation we have arrived at. It is a serious situation. We not only need to talk about water but we need to act. And we need to act in a way that puts the resilience of our water network at the forefront and underpins regional growth and strong economic opportunities.

That’s why our proposal around three waters is a commitment that was reflected in the Prime Minister’s speech. We’ve been engaging and working on this for four years—working with communities, councils, water experts and environmental experts, iwi, and leading industry professionals and policy makers—talking with locals to do the jobs to patch the holes and stop the leaks. When the system breaks down and ratepayers get frustrated at permanent boiled water notices, we’ve got to do something about it. We can’t ignore it.

The Leader of the Opposition stood up yesterday in this House and predicted that these water reforms will fail, while not offering any type of a solution. He’s taken a scuttlebutt approach to the serious water matter rather than doing something about it. The fact is: the Opposition don’t want water reforms to succeed. It’s an Opposition whose only policy position has been to oppose for the sake of opposing, and I haven’t heard a single solution in the alternative. We cannot let people die from unsafe drinking water and I will not let that happen.

But let’s go to a brief fact check of Mr Luxon’s speech. One: on the consultation process, this Government has spent four years and hundreds of meetings consulting with stakeholders, and we continue through the governance working group that councils are a part of to engage. We want to ensure the reforms themselves suit the New Zealand context, are robust, and financially sustainable—a model where infrastructure investment is affordable over time, both in terms of value back to ratepayers but affordability to them as well, and we’re providing for Te Mana o Te Wai.

💬 Two: there’s no compulsory acquiring of ratepayers assets. Communities will retain ownership through the new entities and the funding package will ensure no council is worse off.

💬 Three: Mr Luxon claims the cost savings are unrealistic. These savings are modelled using councils’ own forecast water infrastructure costs. His do-nothing solution will see households face incredible costs over the next 30 years to pay for an inefficient system, constant repairs, and continued disruption.

Finally, Mr Luxon predicted the Government will back down on these reforms—again, wrong. While he may favour political dog-whistling—and his local government spokesperson, whoever that is, is saying nothing on the matter—New Zealanders want safe drinking water. They want to make sure that no matter where they live around the country, in a metro or rural area, there should be no difference in the water that they receive. Quite frankly, doing nothing isn’t an option. We can’t ignore the evidence. We must do something about it. But, ultimately, the proposed reforms are about generating more jobs and are about a financially sustainable way of investing in infrastructure: better value back to ratepayers, more affordable outcomes over the long term. It’s got to be a way forward for all of us, and we’ve all got to be in on this critical solution.

But let’s move from local to the Pacific. Briefly, while COVID has been a significant challenge for Pacific nations, so too is climate change and the impact of sea-level rise. That’s why I’m really proud that Aotearoa New Zealand will invest $1.3 billion to support countries most vulnerable, a large majority of which will be in the Pacific, to help respond to the effects of climate change. We’ve seen first-hand the impact of climate change in our region: domestically over the summer with extreme weather events, and last year with the likes of Cyclone Ana having a deadly toll for our Pacific neighbours, and also the recent volcanic eruption, Madam Speaker, in Tonga, which you are very familiar with, and its devastating impact on your family and your community.

We know that addressing these types of issues are fundamental to the resilience of the Pacific going forward into the future, and that’s why climate finance spending will be used to support mid- to long-term adaptation, like clean-energy projects in developing countries; ensuring buildings are able to withstand more damaging storms; crops are resilient to droughts, floods, and new pests; and communities are protected from sea-level rise and storm surges. And like our three waters programme, it’s about creating jobs and upskilling local peoples to maintain and fix their own infrastructure. Resilience isn’t just about swooping in to fix things up and leaving again. Teach a man to fish, or a woman, and they’ll fish for a lifetime. Or as my tūpuna would say: Ko taku rourou iti ā-haere maringi kai whenua, ko taku rourou iti ā-haere maringi kai moana—while small is our offering, it’s cultivated with the deepest riches of the land and the sea. Climate change remains the single greatest threat to Pacific lives and livelihoods, and at least half of the climate finance that has been committed by New Zealand will go to the Pacific over the next four years, and I’m very proud of that—it will make a difference.

Finally, as I reflect on the Prime Minister’s statement and the challenge that is still ahead of us in relation to the COVID-19 response, our nation is better prepared than many. And the Lowy report that was referred to by the Deputy Prime Minister is a significant one, because, when you get to travel around the world and they are looking at the way that New Zealand responds, while we can be proud, we know there is still work to do, like the Prime Minister has said. While we know that our effort is the combined effort of the many New Zealanders who have taken on board a public health response, we know that we have to work through many of the anxieties that they face on a day-to-day basis, and we do not take that responsibility lightly.

What we want is an economy that is underpinned by people who are able to work and contribute to an inclusive economic solution where their livelihoods are being cared for. We want innovation to underpin a high-value, low-carbon economy future. All of this is possible because at the heart of our economic response is a health response that puts people first. This Government has taken a COVID-19 response that seeks to save lives; be an active Government to support a productive, resilient economy; and ever-mindful that our responsibility to transition to a high-wage, low-carbon economy is the goal.

Iti rearea teitei kahikatea ka taea.

[Even the small bellbird can ascend to the great heights of the Kahikatea tree.]

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Well, that was a bold speech from a Minister who will not be the Minister for Local Government come 12 months’ time.

💬 Hon Nanaia Mahuta: Scuttlebutt.

Oh, “Scuttlebutt”, she says. She’s heard the rumours too. We’ve all heard the rumours about what’s going to happen. We’ve heard the rumours that the Hon Nanaia Mahuta is going to be moved on from local government and three waters is dead. I’ll tell you why: because that Minister has done more to fracture the relationship between central government and local government than any local government Minister in the last 30 years since local government reforms led by Michael Bassett in 1989. They are in open revolt at that Minister’s poor handling of the three waters situation. So she’s heard the rumours. We’ve all heard the rumours. But we’ve got her on the record: “Three waters is still happening.” Let’s wait and see whether or not that happens or not.

I want to start by acknowledging a couple of groups of people. Firstly, I want to acknowledge the Grounded Kiwis, because in a couple of weeks’ time, there’s a court case coming before the High Court, led by Alexandra Birt and Kiwis abroad. One of the most regrettable things about the last two years of this pandemic has been the insularity that New Zealand has adopted as an approach to the world. The Prime Minister talks about a team of 5 million, but there’s 6 million New Zealanders—a million abroad. The Grounded Kiwis have taken a court case to the High Court in order to challenge the legality of managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ). That court case is going to be very interesting. We now have, finally, seen some movements from the Government—they’ve been dragged kicking and screaming to it—to end the lottery of human misery that is MIQ. And, frankly, that can’t come soon enough. So I just want to give a shout-out to all the Kiwis abroad who have had to suffer through the MIQ system. Some members of the House will have seen the Kiwis in London at the Waitangi Day pub crawl, which is, frankly, not something that I necessarily approve of, but many of them dressed up in the old MIQ lottery T-shirts and jerseys poking fun, in a very Kiwi way—very irreverent Kiwi way—at the lottery of human misery.

Secondly, can I acknowledge the split migrant families, because forgotten in all of the announcements last week by the Prime Minister was the shameful fact that yet again, migrant families here in New Zealand, working in our hospitals, working in our rest homes, working around the country, keeping us going through COVID, have been left out in the cold again—again. The Government can wipe their hands of them and say, “Oh, well, we’ll sort them out later.” But these are a group of people who have moved here to New Zealand to work in our sometimes critical industries, and the Government has consciously, deliberately split them apart from their families abroad. Can’t say that it’s inadvertent anymore. There have been petitions and protests on the forecourt of Parliament. There have been exhortations made to Ministers. There have been meetings. So let it be recorded in the House that this Government that preaches the mantra of kindness and compassion, this Government has made a deliberate, malevolent, and malicious policy choice to make sure that families who have moved here in good faith can be split apart from their families. Even though we’re doing the immigration reset, and even though we’re ending MIQ, there’s no solution in sight for the split migrant families.

One of the interesting things about the Prime Minister’s speech was the downgrade in ambition from just four years ago, because this Government was elected with huge ambitions—transformational policy agenda. You go back and read that Speech from the Throne. It’s inspirational almost, if you believe in Labour Party policies—“We’re going to do this. We’re going to do that. We’ve going to transform the country.” It’s interesting how the level of ambition has diminished over time. Now it’s just, “We’ll make progress.”, “We’re setting ourselves to work on—”, and “The direction of travel is this—”.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in housing, because very interesting stats released last night by Statistics New Zealand: average rents—median rents—up 50 bucks a week in the last year—$50. In Lower Hutt, my area, average rents in Lower Hutt are up $200 a week in four years—200 bucks a week. That is $10,000 a year for the average family: $375 a week in October 2017, now $575 a week in December 2021. The average house in Lower Hutt is a million bucks—$1 million. When I became an MP, you could buy a house in Wainuiōmata—good, solid suburb—for $280,000, $300,000. Houses in Wainuiōmata now go for over $850,000. I see the MP for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti there, who represents that area; she knows what I’m talking about. In Wainuiōmata, 850,000, 900,000 bucks. There are, in Lower Hutt, 588 families on the social housing register. That is up from 200. It’s 200 more than there should be, but it has trebled in four years. There are children growing up in motels in the Hutt Valley—children growing up in motels. The Government will say, “Yep. We inherited a bad situation.” That’s true. But things are not better; they are demonstrably worse. They are going backwards, not forwards.

Interesting piece of rebuttal to the Prime Minister. In her speech, she said that Kāinga Ora built 2,432 houses last year. That’s true. Guess what, though! Two thousand four hundred and thirty-seven were demolished. So what’s the net increase? Negative five—negative five. So, yep, the Government built 2,500 homes, give or take, last year. They also demolished 2,500 homes. So there’s no net increase in social housing. So let’s put aside this myth driven by the Government that they’re going on this massive building spree; that is not correct. So we’re going to have to grapple with this housing crisis not only in the Hutt Valley but the wider country, and the Government has no answers to it. MPs on the Government benches know it because they represent areas where they see it. They see average houses at a million bucks. They see that the average house price-to-income ratio is now over eight, 8½, nine—the worst in the developed world.

There are three things that are clear about this Government. The first is that they think good intentions are enough. As long as you care the most, that that results in better policy outcomes. We know from the last four years that’s not true. Good intentions don’t drive good outcomes; they just drive empathy, basically. That’s about it. I’ve got good intentions, but it’s the policies that matter and the delivery that matters.

Second thing is: they think press releases are enough, because there’s 57 people who have been housed through the progressive home ownership scheme, and I reckon there’d be 57 press releases issued on it—57 people in a thing that was announced in a the Speech from the Throne in 2017. This is four years ago we got that in the Speech from the Throne, and we’ve had endless press releases about it. Press releases about petrol prices, press releases about welfare working groups. Remember when the Prime Minister used to stand up and say, “Kiwis are being fleeced at the pump and I’m going to sort it out.” We got endless studies and a Commerce Commission market inquiry and things like that. Now when you go down to the petrol station, the petrol prices are three bucks. Now, that’s not wholly the Prime Minister’s fault, but the critical point is this: don’t make promises you can’t deliver and wave around good intentions.

The third thing about this Government is they think money is always the answer. They think spending money—more money—is always the answer, taxing and spending. We know that that’s not true, because if it was true, KiwiBuild would have worked. It didn’t. If it was true, light rail would have happened by now. It hasn’t; it’s gone backwards. If it was true, there’d be fewer kids growing up in poverty than there were four years ago, and the number’s gone up, not down. So we’ve had a 68 percent increase in Government spending in just five years, and we’ve ended up with 90,000 more people on a main benefit. Go figure.

Finally, I want to comment on rapid antigen tests. The Government spent most of last year banning rapid antigen tests. They didn’t allow people to import them into the country. They were rightly castigated for that in the Government’s own expert review not only by Sir Brian Roche but by Professor Murdoch as well. And then they got around to ordering them late. We’ve had the unedifying spectacle in the last two weeks or so of the Government, basically, nicking rapid tests ordered by the—

💬 Hon Member: Not true.

Well, the Minister says that’s not true. It’s totally correct. The Government admits this—Dr Bloomfield said that. They said, “We’ve consolidated them.”—in other words: “We’ve seized them.” “We’ve consolidated them all together and we’ve collated the forward orders.” Here’s the point: there are private companies out there that did the right thing and got ahead of the game and ordered rapid tests who don’t have rapid tests anymore because the Government’s got them. That is the critical take-home point. So the Government was late to the party on rapid tests—[Time expired]

It’s a privilege, as always, to take a call in this House, but no one should be more grateful for the Speaker’s generosity than the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Luxon, who missed his call in the first debate of the year and, then, without a shred of irony, got up and said, “National’s ready.” And we all saw how ready National is. We wanted to hear a debate speech, but instead we got a TED Talk, which characterised their COVID policy as “sensible upgrades”. What does that mean? I won’t repeat the litany of different positions the National Party has had on managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) that the Deputy Prime Minister outlined well, but it’s fair to say that the National Party have had more positions on MIQ than the Kama Sutra! And each change in their policy, they don’t need to worry about, because it has no consequences. They’re just trying to win one media cycle after the next, while the Government has succeeded time and time again in keeping people alive.

You can’t undo the consequences of bad pandemic management—although Mr Bishop tried to suggest you could just change up your border policy when it seems to be politically inconvenient. During the Omicron outbreak, our border policy has stopped a thousand further incursions and kept New Zealanders alive while they got boosted. And, today, Mr Luxon asked for a time line for an end to vaccine mandates—like you can schedule a pandemic like you can an aeroplane. And, yet, it is abundantly clear to any objective observer that the COVID response that New Zealand has launched has been one of the best in the world. And it probably kills the Opposition to acknowledge that. We have the lowest rate of deaths, we have low case numbers, we have had succeeded where other countries with stronger health systems have failed—where those with stronger scientific institutions have failed, we have succeeded. And we have built effective systems where none existed. We built those systems in 2020 and 2021 and then adjusted them again for Omicron. We have kept New Zealanders safe through an MIQ system in which we have a staged and managed approach to allowing people to reconnect. We have developed a testing system that has had one of the lowest positivity rates in the world. We have doubled our PCR capacity. We have installed robotic methods to make sure that our workforce is supported from the stress of running the testing system. We have a contact tracing system that is currently keeping one of the most virulent and transmissible variants or infectious diseases at bay—incredibly effectively. We are deploying boosters at the time when they are most needed and also vaccinating the paediatric population. We have built and refined our systems, and the Opposition have focused on the RATs and mice of winning each individual media cycle.

It is worth remembering that this isn’t the first pandemic that we have experienced in our lifetime. I was a doctor in the Wellington Hospital laboratory during the 2009 pandemic, the H1N1 influenza pandemic. And what was the legacy of that pandemic response? What was it? Where were the quarantine facilities built after than pandemic response? Where were the contact tracing systems—the infection-control infrastructure that was strengthened? No, we didn’t have that. We did have a handful of pandemic personal protective equipment supplies, some masks with the elastic that had perished. So there is an embarrassment of lack of investment in pandemic preparedness, which this Government has not only countered but has built the most successful pandemic response in the world on the back of it. And what the pandemic response has shown us is that prevention is better than cure, and that is how we have achieved some of the best health outcomes in the pandemic and enabled many of our economic freedoms to continue. It has been because we have addressed some of the long-term issues that have not been confronted, and we will continue to do this, this year, through our wider work in strengthening public health in New Zealand.

We will, now, enabled by legislation passed last year, improve the oral health of New Zealanders by fluoridating more community water supplies—another health issue that has not been confronted for years. We will implement the now-regulated fortification of bread and flour with folate to prevent neural-tube defects. We will take a world-leading approach to preventing the most harmful consumer product in the world—tobacco—and make sure that future generations of New Zealanders grow up smoke-free. We will install the fundamental of public health, which is access to clean water, through the three waters reforms that Minister Mahuta so ably leads. We will build HPV and breast-screening infrastructure that’ll keep women safe in their adulthood, and we will do these things that National promised to do but never funded. We will stop women from falling through the cracks of the public health system, and we will leverage the technology that we have built in the COVID response to make sure that our wider childhood immunisation system prevents diseases like influenza and measles. And that will be through technology, like mobile apps that we’ve already used, but also through the community mobilisation that has been a strength of our vaccine roll-out.

These long-term issues in securing the health of New Zealanders have been in the too-hard basket for too long, and I am looking forward to the work that we will do this year in order to secure those changes. But the pandemic has also shone a light on our health system, and we have seen both the exceptional efforts of our highly trained staff and our ability to deploy science to bear on a critical problem in a rapid period of time.

But we have also faced challenges. We saw in our vaccine roll-out that some DHBs were slower to roll out vaccinations than others. This is what we mean by the postcode lottery. There are many small and financially challenged DHBs that needed the greater support to complete their roll-out. It also revealed the inadequacy of some small DHBs’ investments in their IT system and, as a result, we had to build multiple systems centrally. This Government is committed to reforming the health system for our day-to-day health so it can be improved, but also in case we face future health challenges, like the pandemic, that we inevitably will. Critical to this is building a Māori Health Authority that will address the shameful health inequalities that have, for far too long, characterised healthcare in our country. At the heart of our reformed Ministry of Health will be a public health agency where the skills and knowledge built through this pandemic will be deployed to address preventable causes of disease in the future.

One of the most important things we will do is build Health New Zealand and set its strategy through health plans. It will get DHBs off the cycle of single-year annual plans so that we can address long-term challenges. That includes, in DHB infrastructure, CAPEX, but also the challenges of diseases that need to be addressed over the longer term, such as diabetes. And we will find improved ways of working at the community, using lessons that we have built through the vaccine roll-out and deployed at the level of localities. This Government has achieved the best health outcomes in the OECD through the global pandemic, and we have kept our people safe. We have kept our freedoms, we have kept people in work, we have kept our exporters going, and we will be bringing our people home safely—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! With apologies to the member, can I direct members to Speaker’s ruling 140/2 and just remind members that interjections are to be rare and continue to be reasonable.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I commend the PM’s statement to the House, and I am eager to continue the work.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I was reading this Prime Minister’s statement yesterday, and I think it could be summed up by saying “all talk and no action”. And I think that member who just sat down, Ayesha Verrall, also just reiterated these very points. I found it fascinating how they’re already trying to rewrite the history of the vaccine roll-out in New Zealand, and apparently the reason why we had the slowest vaccine roll-out in the OECD was because it was the DHB’s fault—the DHB’s fault. And what a great solution they’ve got now to fixing that problem, “Well, let’s restructure all of our DHBs across New Zealand, right in the middle of a pandemic” as the solution to that problem. They don’t take responsibility; it’s all talk and when something goes wrong, it’s time to blame, blame, blame other people.

I also found it fascinating that she said that this Government will implement the three waters reforms. Well, I’ve been reading this document, and I listened very carefully to the Prime Minister’s statement, and I’m not sure if the Prime Minister actually referenced the three waters reforms once in her speech or in this document. They’re trying to hide themselves away from it, but clearly that part of the memo has not quite filtered all the way down to other Ministers and to backbenchers in the Labour Party.

But one of the issues which I don’t think was highlighted effectively in this Prime Minister’s statement, but which I can tell this House that New Zealanders up and down this country are very concerned about, is the increased cost of living which is a thief in the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders, and which is impacting everybody’s lives. This was only mentioned once—in this very, very long statement of 23 pages—the Prime Minister only mentioned “cost of living” once. Well, I can tell you out there, in New Zealand, people are talking about the price of petrol which has just hit $3 a litre. They’re talking about the fact that rents have increased by $125 on average a week under this Government. They’re talking about the fact that this Government came to office saying that they were going to fix the so-called housing crisis, but they’ve inflated the housing market so much that the average house price has increased by $380,000 under their watch, and is now over an average of $1 million for New Zealanders. They are the ones who have inflated the housing market, they’re inflating the economy, and they’re making it harder for New Zealanders to get by in their day-to-day lives. And that is the issue which New Zealanders out there are worrying about every single day.

What this doesn’t speak about is just the absolute waste of Government spending, and one of the areas which I’m very focused on is the growth in the public sector which has grown substantially over the last few years. We’ve had a 50 percent increase in salaries for core public servants; 10,000 additional Wellington bureaucrats, and they’re saying, “Well, that’s all because of COVID”. Well, even last year when they increased the number of bureaucrats in Wellington by 6,900, the Public Service Commission said, “Oh, only half of that’s actually because of COVID”. So what’s the other half for, and how many of these jobs are going to get baked-in over the years to come? The wastage of expenditure, the number of people in the Public Service earning over $400,000 a year has doubled, and hard-working New Zealanders out there who are just trying to put petrol in their car, pay the rent, pay the electricity bill, and to get by and, hopefully, one day own a house are the ones scratching their head and saying, “Where is this Government, and what is it actually doing for me?” And the question they’ll be asking is: “Am I better off now than I was four years ago?” The answer is no, they’re not; they’re going backwards, and that’s something that’s hurting many, many New Zealanders but was not addressed in this speech.

So I come now to the other issue of delivery. As the transport spokesperson for the National Party, I’m very focused on actually making sure that transport policy is not just about issuing press releases but actually delivering results. And one of the issues we’ve got is this Government came to office and promised light rail down Dominion Road by 2021. Well, I’m not sure if the Minister of Transport has actually realised it’s 2022. Now, I know that he would like to take a lot of New Zealand policy back to the 1970s: workplace relations, trams—he loves trams and trains and all sorts of that sort of stuff from the 1970s—but, actually, it’s now 2022 and light rail hasn’t even been started. In fact, this Government’s issued 7.1 metres of press release about light rail, and not delivered a single metre of actual light rail for Auckland.

And now they’re saying to Aucklanders, “Well, just trust us, trust us. We will deliver light rail, we’ll deliver it, we’re announcing it all over again.” Except now it’s going to cost $14.6 billion at least, potentially going up to $25 billion. It’s going to cost $14.6 billion, up from $2.4 billion when it was first announced back in 2017. And they think Aucklanders are going to believe them. They think Aucklanders are going to keep believing their promises of delivery, but also their promises of keeping to the cost that they say these projects are going to cost. And I can tell you: Aucklanders and New Zealanders won’t continue believing them. They look around the country and they say, “Well, where’s the actual delivery of projects?”

The statement says, here in the Prime Minister’s statement: “We will continue to deliver new transport infrastructure. Key projects such as the Hamilton section of the Waikato Expressway, the Matakana link road in Auckland, the northern bus extension to Albany, and the Pūhoi to Wellsford project are due for completion this year.” Well, are they actually going to deliver the projects this year? All of these were meant to be finished a while ago. Are they actually going to complete them?

What about Transmission Gully, which has been delayed four times under this Government’s watch and which has still not been delivered by this Government? Then it says here, “Construction will begin on Mt Messenger bypass and State Highway 3 and New Zealand upgrade projects Penlink and Takitimu North Link.” That’s if this Government doesn’t cancel them again before they actually get spades in the ground—because they love cancelling roads. They love cancelling these roads. They keep announcing them, putting a carrot out in front of New Zealanders, saying, “Oh, we’ll build this for you if you vote for us” and then what do they do when they get in there? They cancel them. We’ve seen it up and down the country. Whether it’s Ōtaki to Levin, Mill Road, the East West Link, Penlink, all of these roads: cancel/start, cancel/start. Well, you can’t progress construction in new infrastructure in New Zealand if that’s your attitude to actually building our country.

As my colleague Matt Doocey mentioned yesterday, not one mention of South Island roads in this Prime Minister’s statement. Does this Government not even know where the South Island is? It seems like it’s just the North Island map under this Government and no investment proposed into the South Island under this Prime Minister’s statement. And I can tell you: people living in the South Island will be incredibly disappointed. They’ll be looking at Auckland, going: “$14.6 billion for light rail? Well, that’s a lot of money, we could do with some of that. And $6.7 or $7 billion on light rail in Wellington? Well, we could do with some of that.” Well, I can tell you, just replacing the Ashburton Bridge which got damaged: $35 million. That’s less money than this Minister of Transport has already spent on consultants for Auckland’s light rail. He could replace that bridge and help the good people of Ashburton and Canterbury to get around their region, but he doesn’t care. He’s ideologically fixed on his pet projects rather than actually delivering good outcomes for New Zealanders.

The other thing tucked away inside of this, they call it the “Clean Car Standard”. Well, it’s the car tax, the ute tax, it’s the taxes which are going to be piled upon New Zealanders, hard-working New Zealanders: farmers who’ve got no choice but to buy a ute to get around their property—the productive sector of our society—the tradies who can’t take their tools to work on the train or the bus. I haven’t seen many tradies—and I’m not sure if the Minister has seen many tradies—taking their tools on the bus or the train. But they can’t take their tools on the train or on the bus. But, yet, they’re going to be taxing the productive sector of our society without offering them other options, and at the same time failing to alleviate the pressure at the pump for Aucklanders, who are paying 11.5c per litre additional on their petrol costs. The Government’s taken $515 million off hard-working Aucklanders, and they’ve spent less than half of it. It’s just sitting in a bank account—it’s just sitting in a bank account. And the Minister says, “How much is in the bank account today? Oh, it’s gone up, it’s now $285 million. That’s wonderful. We’ve taken all this money away from Aucklanders.” They’re not delivering anything.

So my message to the Government is: a Government should be measured on how much it delivers, not on how many press releases it issues; how much it improves New Zealanders lives, not by how many metres of press release about some project which it hopes to deliver sometime in the future. This Prime Minister’s statement is not what New Zealanders want. It’s not what New Zealanders need, and we do not endorse it.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēna koe, otirā ngā Mema katoa, tēnā tātou katoa. E ngā mate huhua kua wehe atu ki te pō, haere, haere, moe mai rā.

[Madam Speaker, greetings to you and greetings to all the honourable members. To the many deceased who have recently passed, may you rest in peace.]

It’s customary to farewell those who have recently passed amongst our members, so I wanted to acknowledge that.

I am proud to take a call on the Prime Minister’s statement. I’m proud and stand in solidarity because not only did the plan that the Prime Minister deliver in this House talk about what we have delivered with a backdrop of a pandemic but also a plan forward to take this great nation forward. This Government has been around delivering for all while managing and keeping people safe, and that’s what I want to touch on in the short time I have in contributing to this debate: keeping people safe, taking a health-lens approach that ensures not only the safety of all New Zealanders but to enable our economy to thrive. The COVID-19 Protection Framework not only kept us safe, but it has proven to be safe—having one of the lowest not only hospitalisation rates but mortality rates in the developed world, and that’s something we shouldn’t lose sight of.

The vaccination roll-out plan—something very dear to my heart, particularly when it came to the people I represent of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti and our Māori and Pacific communities. I want to acknowledge the many hauora providers around the motu: our iwi organisations that stepped in to that bridge, our social services providers who worked in tandem with our DHB leadership. It was a complete nationwide effort and I want to acknowledge everybody that ensured our vaccination rates went up. I am pleased to announce that the Hawke’s Bay yesterday, for all eligible Māori first-time vaccination, finally hit the 90 percent mark. So I’m very, very proud about that: securing our economy and our future.

We heard—and I was hoping that the member that just resumed his seat, Simeon Brown, and many others on the Opposition benches would talk about their plan, but I haven’t heard anything. So this is supposed to be a debate, you put up your plan and you counter that plan, but I didn’t hear one thing from that member that resumed his seat. So he talked about non-delivery. Let’s just put this on the pages of Hansard. Let’s talk about the $8.8 billion that we invested in health through the COVID period. Let’s talk about the $22.9 billion invested in saving jobs, like wage subsidies to support businesses, whānau, workers. I’m proud that we have responded to the urgent needs of our communities, of our businesses, and of our workers in securing our economic future.

But, for now, I want to acknowledge the role of the primary sector. Record export earnings over the last 12 months. I want to acknowledge what they have contributed to this nation while many of us were being locked down—the delivery, the returns. That has been fantastic for the country.

The Prime Minister talked about reconnecting to the world and I want to acknowledge the United Kingdom Fair Trade Agreement and the pending one with the European Union, because those offer huge opportunities for not only our primary sectors, but our emerging industries whether it’s in the creative, whether it’s in the IT. We’ve got some creative minds in this country and having new trading partners opens those opportunities. So that’s why I’m proud that this side has not only secured an FTA with the UK, but is working very, very hard on one with the European Union.

When we talk about modernising New Zealand’s infrastructure, you cannot go past the $53.3 billion that we have invested in infrastructure. This is where our new schools, our hospitals—the major infrastructure that we require around the nation to keep us a thriving and growing nation that I’m really proud that we have announced. Higher wages and growing skills all add to the possibility of rangatahi that are out there thinking where is their hope for the future. That’s why an investment this significant in the work that we’re doing around Mana in Mahi and the opportunities around apprenticeships bode well for our rangatahi who want to see their future in this nation.

This was a great delivery from the Prime Minister. It is an inclusive plan that takes all New Zealanders, all Aotearoa, along with us as we still continue to deal with COVID-19. I endorse this plan and I present it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. My colleague Meka Whaitiri asked a question. She said, “What is their plan? What is the plan that we have heard from the other party in contrast to our plan? What is their plan?” and it’s a good question, Meka Whaitiri. The answer is: there is no plan. They never have a plan, and we can tell this when we cast back our minds to a time when they were in Government. What did we get? We got nine long years of neglect, where they managed, managed, managed, and managed with benign neglect. There was no initiative, but though it might have been benign neglect, it was still neglect. It left us with problems that this Government is taking active steps to address. We were called to office and we started on the huge task of working on housing, of working on climate change, of working on poverty—all issues that that party, when they were in power, had neglected. We started work on it.

And then we were thrown the most extraordinary curveball. We were thrown the extraordinary curveball of a global pandemic. Throughout this global pandemic, this Government, on this side of the House, has demonstrated that it has the capacity to face challenges. That virus wreaks havoc. Two years ago, people were dying, there was no vaccine, and we were staring at it coming towards us. This Government based its response on the principle that the best response is a health response. If we get the health response right, then all the other things will come along with it. So well have we done that we have had one of the best health responses in the world, one of the best economic responses—so much so that the Lowy Institute has judged us as No. 1 in the world.

What have we heard from that side of the House? We’ve heard carping, we’ve heard quibbling, we’ve heard complaining, but we have heard no plan. I’ve got to say to you, given our extraordinary success with the virus, given our hugely well-vaccinated population, given the incredible economic results, which side of the House would you trust—would anyone trust—to handle a challenge? I say that it is this side of the House. It is the Labour Party that you can trust to lead New Zealand through a crisis.

We are facing an ongoing crisis from the epidemic—a worldwide crisis. Not one of our making but one we need to deal with. We are facing the worldwide problem of inflation. But when it comes to handling inflation, who do we trust? Do we trust the party that has no plan—that functions on neglect? Or do we trust the party that has guided us so well through the global pandemic—that has led us through it very successfully? I say to you that we have the solutions there, and we will work on that in the next few months.

So we will continue to work on the problems that have been brought about by the benign neglect of the National Party. Climate: this year we will deliver our emissions budget and 15 years’ worth of emissions budgets so that businesses have certainty, so that New Zealanders have certainty, so that everyone can plan for how to deal with the climate challenge, and everyone can contribute to dealing it.

What else will we do this year? We will bring to the table the health reforms, where we are removing the structure of DHBs, which has failed us—even though people have worked very hard, it has failed us. We will move to a new health structure. Something that is an important part of our Treaty obligations and an important part of addressing need, we will establish a Māori Health Authority. We will try to end the inequity in health.

We will continue to work on housing. I see the Kāinga Ora units being built in my electorate, where there is a great need for housing—some really exciting developments going up there. There will be many, many more houses offered so that we can control the cost of housing. We will work on kauri dieback—again, dear to my electorate—through the national pest management plan. We will work on all the issues that confront New Zealanders.

This is a Government that is determined. We are determined to make positive change to make New Zealanders’ lives better. We are determined to respond to the challenges that face us, not just to manage and neglect them. We are determined to do the very best for all New Zealanders. I am proud to be part of this Government, and I am proud to be led by our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. At the beginning of 2020, before COVID-19 had reached our shores, officials from Treasury and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand produced advice for the Government. It was later Official Information Act requested. That advice said that if we were to cushion the economic impacts of COVID-19 through what was once called—and I don’t think it anymore can be called—unconventional monetary policy, we would experience what they called “distributional impacts”. Distributional impacts is a nice way of saying increased inequality.

The Government knew this when it made the decision to rely heavily on unconventional monetary policy. The Government knew that the alternative was to use more heavily fiscal policy, which is a nice way of saying, “Taxing and spending”. Yes, taxing and spending is something that all Governments of all stripes do indeed do. The Government, and, in fact, all of us, have seen those distributional impacts. We’ve seen it in house prices rising by more than $300,000 on average across Aotearoa. We’ve seen it in the $1 trillion estimated transfer of wealth to the wealthiest New Zealanders. The Government has seen that increase in inequality not through some natural process but as a result of decisions that were made and decisions that were not made.

The word “ideology” is thrown around a lot in this place, and it’s usually one side accusing the other of doing something without any other justification than they believe in it. But, the thing is, all of us have ideologies, because all of us have values and philosophies. Those values and philosophies are actually the things that we run election campaigns on. They’re the underlying principles of our policies that we take out on the hustings and we ask the people of this country to vote for. Almost all of us can find evidence for the things that we believe in, but, of course, not all of that evidence is made equal.

The very basis of the scientific method starts with a hypothetical answer to the universe’s many questions, then rigorously trying to prove yourself wrong. Your hot takes, the things you’ve extrapolated from your life experiences, your reckons—there has been a lot of ink spilled and millennia of academic years spent arguing about how we format these hypotheses, about who’s hypotheses are given air time to be tested or not, about whose life experiences and brains get inside of institutions like our universities—and, in fact, even this very debating chamber—to translate the inherently limited experiences and thoughts of each of our lives into ideas that we have the privilege of testing out. Science is the process of falsifying the things that you thought.

But politics feels like doing anything to justify exactly those same thoughts, and that is where ideology comes back into the picture. If we do not constantly challenge our views and values and political positions we form as a result of talking to people—yes, people out there, especially the people who are so far outside of institutions like this that come up with these ideas—then we cannot begin to pretend that any of us are any better than deeply dogmatic ideologues. Regardless, even and especially when tested, it will always ultimately be our values as people and as politicians that will allow us to accept or reject new information, to either change our opinions and our policies or not to do so—in fact, that’s often the path that is rewarded in politics—and that is why it is so important that we are, in fact, straight up about these ideologies, about our values, our priorities, and the things that we are willing to trade off.

I am not just talking about rhetoric, because in fact, all of us—all of us—can talk about freedom and kindness and respect and fairness and justice and responsibility. All of those words, though, mean totally different things to all of us. What I am talking about is those values in practice and how, when it really comes down to it, we will have to prioritise things—how none of us in our policies or in our voter bases can have it all; how it is a complete and utter folly to pretend that there is somehow some middle road through really crunchy and difficult issues of poverty, of racism, of the climate crisis.

Each and every one of us can give really nice speeches and use similar words on those issues, but you cannot have a world below 1.5 degrees of warming without taking the necessary, and now requisite, radical action to actually achieve that. That means you cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet. You cannot end poverty without raising benefit levels to livable incomes. To do otherwise is to decide that some people deserve to live in poverty. You cannot get house prices to affordable levels when you refuse to define what affordable levels actually are, let alone refuse to let house prices fall down to what we all kind of think is a vibe of affordable levels. You cannot say that you are pulling all of the available levers while ruling out land back, a capital gains tax, a wealth tax, and rent controls. You simply can’t say that you’re using all of the cutlery available to you when you leave the knife and fork in the drawer.

Today, I asked the Finance and Expenditure Committee to hold an inquiry into the COVID-19 economic response. Unfortunately, a Labour majority voted it down—and do not take that as some glowing endorsement of the current state of the Opposition. Because we know that inequality today is worse than it was two years ago. All of this, and all of us, will say that we know how to deal with this problem; that we want to deal with this problem. But do we? Because, when it really comes down to it, you either reduce inequality or you don’t. That means being honest about our ideologies, about our values, and who and what we will prioritise when it really comes down to it. I’ve been told that I have offended landlords by standing up for renters. I’ve been told that I have offended some in university hierarchies by standing up for students. It is, of course, the case that actions and the words that we, as politicians, speak have consequences, and we all will try our best to negotiate solutions amongst parties that have differing opinions. But you genuinely cannot have it all, because, when you are genuinely fighting for something, when you are genuinely fighting for people, you will have to choose a side. And we must be honest about it.

That is why I am so deeply proud to be in the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand. Obviously, our name is Green and our colour is green; so a lot of people can draw a lot of extrapolations about that. In our founding document, our charter principles, the underlying principle is a commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and that is something which we will continue to do our best to live up to. Embedded within that is a commitment to what we call “ecological wisdom”—note that these are terms that were come up with, I believe, in a hui of a hundred-odd Greens back in the day. But ecological wisdom is a recognition that the resources of this planet are finite and, if we accept that as a premise, then we must accept that, in order to have our second core principle of social responsibility or social justice fully and properly meet, those finite resources must be shared amongst people in a way that enables us to have a cohesive society.

We also hold steadfast to the vision and the value of appropriate decision-making. That means boiling decision-making powers down to the level where it actually affects people. It’s where we are such staunch and stoked advocates of things like localism and empowering our local communities. We also believe fundamentally in non-violence. And while for some, that, of course, is making sure that we are doing our utmost to engage in non-violent direct action to stand for the things that we believe in, it also means bringing people around a decision-making table—voices that are not always heard—representative of all, in a non-tokenistic way, to ensure that we come to a creative and constructive solution.

My question to all of the other parliamentarians who will engage in this debate today and tonight is: where, really, when it comes down to it, do you stand? Who and what will you prioritise when those hard decisions around climate action, around inequality, around housing affordability, around Te Tiriti o Waitangi are truly on the table? Because actions speak louder than words, and I implore my fellow parliamentarians to be honest. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Recently, I had a period in my life when I was a little bit distracted about what was going on in the real world—it was around the death of a close relation—but, at the end of it, I came and I sat down and watched my telly one night, just thinking that I would have a catch-up with what’s happening around the world. There was a poll result that came out—I believe it might have been on Newshub—and the poll was actually pretty good for this side of the House. But, in reflecting on the poll, I heard the commentator make a comment about “despite the omnishambles”, and I thought, “Have I missed something here? During this period of distraction, have I gone into some sort of a time warp of the kind that I am reminded of when I look at the demographic across the other side of the House?” So I thought I had better do some research because I may have missed a little period of my life, because when I went into this possible time warp, things were looking quite good for New Zealand.

So when I went into this perhaps time warp, there had been a COVID outbreak. The world was facing a COVID pandemic. So I thought, “Well, with something that serious, probably a pretty good way to judge how you’re going as a country is how many people have died.”, because this is a pandemic that does have a high mortality rate and it also leaves many of those who are infected quite debilitated for some time. I thought, “Well, in New Zealand, we like to look at other countries, and the first country we always look at is Australia. We’ll see how the Aussies are going.”, because many times in this House, when we’re being persuaded and we’re being harangued about what we should be doing, quite often our Aussie neighbours are mentioned. So I thought, “Oh, let’s go and see how they’re going in Australia, shall we: 164 deaths per million—hmm, that seems higher than I remember. But, anyway, we’ll just go to Denmark, the old Scandinavians. Scandinavia—you know, good old social democratic countries. They get it pretty right. They look after their people. Oh, 667 deaths per million people. Israel—always in the news, Israel.”—they’re on their fourth booster, I believe, now—“988 per million people.”

It goes on. Sweden—oh, we were told that Sweden had got it right: “Leave it with the health authorities. Don’t have a leader like Jacinda Ardern, who is involved in the decision making.” I thought, “The Swedes have got it—oh, 1,592 per million. We could go to the United States, of course: 2,711 per million.”, and then I thought “Obviously, this had all happened while I was in that time warp that I’m reminded of whenever I look at the Opposition, and I had better have a look at how we’re going in New Zealand, because we must be pretty bad if we’re in some sort of omnishambles: 10.34 deaths per million.” I thought, “Oh, that’s pretty good, actually. I wonder what all this criticism is all about. We’re doing pretty well.”

But then, in that same story, there was actually a mention made around building, saying that we’re doing terribly in the building statistics. So I thought, “Oh, I’d better have a look at that.” In fact, what I could see from September 2017 to December 2021 was that we’ve had 166,922 new buildings consented, and this compares with 188,000 for the 10 years of the Key-English Government. So I thought, “Boy, we’re doing pretty well there. I wonder how many people we’ve got actually involved in the building industry.” Between 2017 and 2021, the construction sector added 31,700 jobs. Well, it would appear that, actually, we’re doing quite a bit about that which ails us.

I’ve run out of time. I could go through our inflation rates, but just before I do finish—and I would like the Opposition and those who are looking at ways in which they can put the boot into Government to remember this—I will leave you with this. There is one group of people that I would really like to pay tribute to, and that is our managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) workers, who at some time last year went from being the heroes of the piece—and I’ll put it right down to, actually, a previous Prime Minister who started using words like hermit kingdom. All of a sudden, they became the bad guys. They became the jailers, and all of a sudden, the job where they had been hailed became very difficult. So I would just remind anyone opposite who’s going to stand here and put the boot into our MIQ system to just remember how well those people have done by us. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I call Shanan Halbert—five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s wonderful to stand here. Together we have risen to the challenge of COVID-19 in our third year. We see this challenge, and it’s an incredibly frustrating time for all New Zealanders, but, can I say, we are the best in the world. I repeat: we are the best in the world. Now, I know this because I’ve followed it closely. People can yell and shout all they want, but we know we have incredible vaccination rates across this country. That is what has kept us safe from COVID-19—through Delta and, now, through Omicron. We’ve done an incredible job at running our economy, ensuring that unemployment remains low. In fact, on the North Shore of Auckland, 10 percent of people have moved into employment off benefits. That’s an incredible number in this time, in a pandemic.

I want to go back to our infrastructure. We know that, in growing Auckland, we have to invest in our infrastructure. It’s no longer fit for purpose, and Aucklanders know this. I listened to Simeon Brown this afternoon talking about transport—and no, he had no ideas—but what Aucklanders face is ongoing congestion that we have to address. We have growing emissions, since 1990, that are out of this world, and we’ve got to take action now, and we’ve got to invest in infrastructure for Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland to ensure that it meets our needs now but also for future generations. Yes, that does include light rail. Yes, that does include North Shore Northern Busway extension. Those things are important.

Why I believe in our Prime Minister’s statement, and the words of this Government, is because we have delivered on transport and infrastructure. In fact, if I go back and—it’s been 15 years since a Labour MP has held a seat on Auckland’s North Shore—as we look to the transport projects, or under-delivery of 15 years, and I look back to the Northern Busway, that was the last piece of transport infrastructure that was delivered to North Shore people in Auckland. The last. Now it’s up to this Government to deliver again. In fact, I move forward to the Northcote housing development: we’ve got on and delivered and built houses. We’ve built 300 so far, and this time next year we will have doubled that, doubled the houses up to 600, up to almost 2,000 at the completion of this.

In addition to building houses, we’ve focused on infrastructure in the ground. I’ve heard lots about three waters, and the scaremongering that sits there, but, I come back to, people in my community want to protect our water. They want infrastructure that’s going to support our growing community and the intensification that we’ve seen. We’ve seen the start of this Government—in my own community, $13.5 million has been invested in water infrastructure. We’ve got to ask ourselves: what do we want moving forwards? We want infrastructure that supports our growth. We want infrastructure that enables us to move around our city when we want, how we want, and we’ve got to build good public transport to enable us to do that.

I’m so proud of our plan to not only build light rail in Auckland and get on with that but integrate it into the additional harbour crossing. Yes, all parties have talked it up. We’ve known for a long time that we have to do it, but this Government is delivering on it. We’ve invested in it—$100 million has gone into the Auckland Transport Alignment Project plan to get that started already. That’s why we’re here where we are now.

But what is important is that people believe in this Government and our ability to deliver, our stability and our unity, as a caucus, to get on and do the things that we said. So investment in infrastructure, getting on with our economic recovery and ensuring that people continue to have good jobs, that they are paid the wages that they need to be paid, and that they are able to operate in what are difficult times, and times that will continue to be difficult.

Lastly, and coming back to infrastructure again, I’m proud of the change that we’re seeing in our health system, the investment in our hospitals. I come back to North Shore Hospital—120 additional beds, $5.5 million over the COVID period invested in increasing the number of ICU beds, should we need it when Omicron comes largely into play, and we’re seeing tens of thousands—[Time expired]

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to stand today, because it is my first opportunity to speak after the summer break. But I have to say I stand in absolute opposition to the Prime Minister’s statement. I guess one of the reasons is that I cannot believe the kind of speeches that I’m actually hearing—for example, from Shanan Halbert. I mean, the very fact that he claims that the Government has delivered on infrastructure! What a joke. Has he even been to a local business in his electorate and talked to the business people and seen how much they have suffered as a result of Government actions? He obviously hasn’t actually visited any.

I just want to actually talk about Chlöe Swarbrick’s comment. She said, and I quote, “Actions speak louder than words.” I completely, utterly agree with her, but obviously she doesn’t believe in that, because she’s done nothing about the climate—apparently—actions that the Government has taken. Because when you look at the Prime Minister’s promises to deliver on the climate issue—they actually claimed that it was their nuclear moment, of this Labour Government. And yet, when you actually consider the fact that, for example, the clean energy issue—“A low-carbon future for Aotearoa New Zealand is within reach, powered by clean energy.”, she says. Well, in 2020, New Zealand coal imports hit a 14-year high and at the same time the Government declared a climate emergency and they imported one of the dirtiest coals from Indonesia. They took 1 million tonnes for the first time since 2006. I wonder where Chlöe Swarbrick was when the Government actually did that. Obviously, she believes that the Government has delivered, and I guess Shanan Halbert actually believes that the Government has delivered on their promises.

I’d like to go to what Dr Deborah Russell actually talked about. She said something about, “We’ve had one of the biggest issues called the pandemic.” Let me actually remind people: every Government faces difficulties. Let me go back to the previous 2008 Government of John Key. We had the global financial crisis, we’ve had severe acute respiratory syndrome, we’ve had the Christchurch earthquakes—oh my God, thousands of earthquakes—the Kaikōura earthquake; we’ve even had the Psa kiwifruit virus that decimated the horticultural industry in New Zealand. Every Government faces difficulties. How we actually determine whether the Government is coping well and has actually delivered on their promise is the outcome that the people will see.

This Government has promised so much and yet delivered so little. KiwiBuild—my goodness, was one of the—

💬 Hon Member: What?

Yeah, KiwiBuild was one of those promises.

💬 Hon Member: What happened to KiwiBuild?

I don’t know whatever happened to KiwiBuild, because they promised 100,000 houses that they would build, and how many did they actually build? My goodness, do I hear any numbers from that side of the House? I guess not.

And when I actually listened to the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday, I was hoping that she was going to deliver for the rural communities when she talked about connectivity. She only had maybe one line about it. You know, she hasn’t actually delivered rural connectivity. Ultra-fast broadband was something that the National Government actually delivered for New Zealand. We began the business. All they had to do was extend it slightly, and yet they still haven’t done that.

I was hoping that they would actually talk about digital safety, talk about the issues of cyber-security. Government departments have been hit with hacks. They’ve been hit with breaches in the digital space. The digital border is not secure under this Government. We talk about Omicron coming into this country. Why is that? It’s the border. It’s been brought over from the border, it’s been spread from the border entry, and it’s now in the community.

The same thing with Delta. The same thing with everything else. COVID, yes, yes, but the thing is we could have done it better. There could have been less people impacted as a result. We could have delivered the vaccines faster, ordered the vaccines faster, yet they say, “Oh, yeah, we’ve done everything.”—compared to the lowest common denominator, just like they do with the minimum wage. They say, “Oh, we don’t believe in a minimum wage.” Why do we have to focus on the lowest common denominator? Why don’t we grow an economy where people are earning more than the minimum wage—that we give aspiration to New Zealanders, we actually provide the best possible education system so that our children can actually aspire to more than the minimum wage?

This Government talked about delivering for and addressing some of the countries long-standing difficult issues, they said. They wanted to lift 100,000 children out of poverty. How many did they actually lift out of poverty? Only a 1,500 increase. That is not a lot when the Prime Minister holds the portfolio herself. She wanted to lift 100,000 children out of poverty and yet we only lifted a 1,500 increase.

They also said that they were going to deal to the housing price increase. Well, housing prices increased in the last four years on average $380,000. That is, like, way more expensive than my first home that I bought—my goodness. And rents: they said they were going to make sure that people can have affordable rents. Rents actually increased by $125 a week—my goodness.

How is that Government, the Labour-led Government, delivering for New Zealand? I just don’t think they can claim that they are actually delivering for New Zealand, especially when they have the highest number of New Zealanders on the main benefit—90,000 more Kiwis on a main benefit today than there were when Labour actually first took office. That is not something that they can crow about. All of the PR that they actually put out—I mean, Ministers actually like putting out PR. They actually want to talk about “Oh, we have a record number of people getting off the main benefit.” Perhaps that is because they have a record number of people on the main benefit to get off the main benefit, and yet still they’re on the main benefit—90,000 of them. That is not something that they can actually crow about.

You know, when you look at the impact that COVID has, I mean, no doubt the Government’s done the best that they can. And I have to say everyone who actually works in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ)—I know that my colleague across the House Greg O’Connor actually talked about the staff and the people who work in MIQ. I have to say thank you to all of them, because they, the police, and everyone who is actually involved, having to deal with COVID, put themselves on the line to actually do the job, and we applaud them. It’s not about them; it’s about how much better the Government could have delivered if they had, in fact, acted faster.

Just like in the tourism sector—I don’t know if my colleagues across the House have even spoken to people who are in the tourism sector. I had a group of inbound tour operators from the Korean community whose businesses are absolutely decimated. These are grown men who have invested millions of dollars into their business; some have even bought new buses thinking that they are going to actually grow their business, and yet, after how many years now, they still cannot operate. I had grown men in my office, in tears, without the ability to accept the fact that they actually needed some counselling, you know, and the fact that they couldn’t talk to anybody. Where was the Government helping these people, some of whom actually need some language support for counselling?

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Where’s the kindness?

Where in fact is the kindness? That’s right, Mr Simpson. Where is the kindness of this Government?

I only have less than one minute left. I just want to say, in closing, I’d like to make a short comment on the platinum jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Like many first-generation New Zealanders, the first moment we know we are New Zealand citizens, that we truly in fact belong in this country, is when we take the oath and affirmation of allegiance, the final step towards citizenship and a sign of loyalty to the sovereign Queen of New Zealand, representing our democratic institutions and our Kiwi way of life. I’m proud to be a member of Parliament, having sworn the oath to her in my mother tongue, Korean, at the start of this Parliament and at many more occasions to come. I just want to say, you know, there are some who actually disrespect that, but all I can say is I’m very pleased that I’m a New Zealand citizen, so help me God, and God save the Queen!

The next call is a split call.

Thank you so much, Madam Speaker. It’s with great pleasure that I stand in support of the Prime Minister’s statement in my first speech of the year, and I wish everybody a very happy New Year.

My family takes pandemics very seriously. I lost two great, great grandparents—young, healthy, fit, and with five young children—to the Spanish flu pandemic. It changed our family for ever, as it did to the honourable member Kelvin Davis, who also lost members of his family. So when I say that I’m proud to be part of this Government, proud to be here representing our pandemic response, it’s with a very clear understanding of the impact of those pandemic responses.

I know that the decisions that we make aren’t part of some political game, but they have irreversible consequences for some people. And I know that you can’t actually wind back mistakes that you may make—you can’t open borders and shut them and expect everything to go back to as it was before, because, despite what members of the party sitting opposite might say, there actually isn’t any coming back from the dead, divinity notwithstanding.

We have lost 53 Kiwis to COVID. And this is undoubtedly a tragedy, and my heart goes out to those families and to those who loved them. But putting this in a global context: Ireland has suffered the loss of 6,228 people—Ireland, an island with an almost identical population to New Zealand. In the UK: 158,000 deaths, equivalent, when adjusted by population, to 11,752 Kiwis we could have lost. But, of course, none of these countries are 100 percent directly comparable. The closest comparison still sits in the thousands of deaths to date.

Now, I lived through the earthquakes in Canterbury, and I have seen the effect on our community of losing 185 beloved people. The terrible effects of those losses still reverberate through the entire country. We’re a close community here in New Zealand, and I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like for us to have lost thousands of Kiwis. We could have; however, we went there and we took early and decisive action to prevent it. We listened to our experts, and over and over again, we responded with intelligence and flexibility to new challenges, new variants. And last year, we delivered one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. We should be very proud, and I am.

I’m going to sing Canterbury’s praises here, because 98 percent of Cantabrians are fully vaccinated, 91 percent of our Māori population, and 97 percent of Pacific people. People and communities have pulled together to ensure that no one is left behind. And in Ilam, our Orchard Road vaccination centre has been breaking records daily, and I thank them, together with every pharmacy, GP, vaccination clinic, and every single person who’s rolled up their sleeves to keep us all safe, like my daughter, who today got her booster—the first of our children to do so. I’m proud of her, and I’m proud of every Kiwi who’s going to take that action to keep us safe. And in an ever-changing global situation, we have looked after our people, we have delivered, and we will continue to do so.

But we haven’t just been delivering a world-leading COVID response; we have remained focused on and committed to making things better for all. We’ve increased the minimum wage steadily to $20 per hour, and the predicted falling of the sky just didn’t happen, but what did happen was that money was put directly in the pockets of our lowest earners. The party opposite, which was performatively hand-wringing over the cost of living, has opposed the rise in the minimum wage time after time after time. It’s completely ludicrous to adopt a position of caring for everyday Kiwis when you’ve personally bemoaned the increasing cost of your barista-made coffee. And when a super-wealthy member of Parliament bemoans a 10c increase to a cup of coffee, when that 10c has such a significant effect on a barista’s wages, you know that that party couldn’t give a flying fig for everyday Kiwis.

So I’m proud of what we’ve achieved, and I’m excited for the year ahead. We have the long overdue creation of our unified health authority to address inequities for Māori health, and I’m very proud to stand by my Prime Minister’s statement and her speech. Thank you.

Fa‘afetai lava, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Prime Minister’s statement. And again, like all my colleagues before me, I want to say happy New Year across the House, manuia le Tausaga Fou.

I acknowledge, Madam Speaker, your work as well with the most recent Tonga disaster, with their eruption. Madam Speaker, thank you for your work with Anahila, as well as co-chairs of the Aotearoa Tonga Relief Committee, and well done on sending those containers full of relief for the community there.

I’ve listened to the contributions across the House and I’ve heard the Opposition say they have no confidence in this Government, and I’m thinking to myself, which country do they live in? And like my colleague “Greg O” behind me—

💬 Hon Member: Which planet do they live on?

Yes, which planet? Yes, I wonder. It’s almost like they’re in The Twilight Zone. But, I just want to say, you know, I’ve heard from Simeon Brown in his contribution that we’re “all talk and no action”. I thought he was talking about his own party right there. I would say that they’re all talk and no plan, because that’s all we’ve heard—it’s all hot air and no balloons flying anywhere. But I just want to point out the things that this Government has done in order to combat COVID.

Our cases, hospitalisations, and deaths have been the lowest. And again you’ve heard that across on this side of the House, because that is one of the markers of how well this response has done for COVID. It’s been the lowest in the OECD for each of the past two years. I wonder if they have confidence in those numbers. Ninety-four percent of our eligible population is fully vaccinated, and our boosters are heading in the right direction—up to today it’s 53 percent. I wonder if they, on that side of the House, have confidence in those numbers. Our unemployment is at a record low, and record numbers of New Zealanders have moved off the main benefit into work. Again, I wonder if that side of the House have confidence in that. All these things are just some markers and numbers that show the collective effort that this Government and the team of 5 million have done to protect the lives and livelihoods of our community. Our policy is protect jobs, and therefore saving businesses as well.

The Leader of the Opposition, yesterday, hearing what he was saying, and I wonder—one of the first things he wanted to do when he came into that position was to have “Freedom Day” in December. And it certainly would have been “freedom” day—it would have been freedom for the Omicron variant to run rampant in our community, and therefore cause unnecessary illnesses, and therefore lead to unnecessary harm for our community. So I’m confident in this Government, in making sure that those numbers have improved and protecting our community.

I look to a couple of things that our Prime Minister has made in her statement, one of them being keeping people safe and keeping our whānau safe. Omicron did come—we saw globally how difficult it was for other Governments to manage the infectious nature of this new variant—and I’m glad that this Government had a plan to make sure that we slow down and limit the spread of the outbreak. The COVID-19 Protection Framework that was set up in order to make sure that we took into consideration the high vaccination rates, and now boosters, in order to control the spread of the virus and make sure that the economy was kept ticking over.

No country is immune, we’ve heard that, but with the markers and the details and results of this COVID response I’m glad that the public health response has done really well, and again in partnership with our community. The investment into COVID-19 treatments has improved—we’ve funded, now, therapies when people do get COVID-19 in order to make sure that they don’t go into hospital and therefore ICU admission. Those are the antivirals and, also, antibodies that’ll make sure that we boost the immune system of our community. Boosters are our strongest weapon, and I want to acknowledge and make sure that our community go and get their boosters—53 percent is a good number. We’re on the right track, but let us keep going with that.

Lastly, again I want to acknowledge the amount of work that our health providers, our community providers, and social providers have done in this pandemic, and the amount of work they’re going to be doing in the next short months and weeks. I acknowledge them. Kia kaha. Faamalosi, malo le tautua, faafetai lava.

Well, thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party and the good people of Coromandel to oppose the motion put forward yesterday by the Prime Minister and to support the very good motion of no confidence in this Government and the Prime Minister put forward by the leader of the National Party, Christopher Luxon.

You can tell when a Government is running out of steam, and the best way to tell that is when they get personal, and when they start attacking people and individuals not for the quality of their ideas or the passion of their aspirations for New Zealand and New Zealanders but because they don’t like them personally. And that’s what we’ve seen so much of in this debate from the Government, from Cabinet Ministers, from backbenchers who know that this is going to be probably the second-to-last year of their time in this place, before they are ejected from it by the voters of New Zealand in 2023.

And so, we had a speech yesterday from a Prime Minister who was uncharacteristically flat in terms of her presentation. It was a speech that lacked energy, that lacked vision, that lacked hope, and that lacked a sense of purpose or direction for New Zealand at a time when New Zealand does actually need leadership—when it needs inspirational, aspirational leadership of the sort that is not being provided by this Government, and that so many New Zealanders desperately want and need. And that’s kind of sad, because I think that we all come to this place as members of Parliament, as legislators, to provide hope and a brighter future for all New Zealanders, no matter how they vote. And to see a Government that is bereft of ideas and running out of steam is, I think, a sad thing. And we’ve seen, effectively, the roll-out of a speech yesterday that was just a rerun of speeches past that delivered no performance, that delivered no measures, that delivered no sense of direction other than, “Oh well, we’ll just manage our way through as best we can. We’ll make things up as we go along and we’ll change the rules and the parameters on a day-by-day basis as we see fit.” And that’s just not good enough.

Earlier today, a colleague of mine, Christopher Bishop, gave a very good speech, and he said that this Government was famous for three things—first of all, for their good intentions. And I guess no Government has bad intentions—no politician has bad intentions. But this Government has hung their hat firmly on the hook of good intentions, but there they have left it—their hat, on the hook of good intentions—and never taken it off. This is a Government that simply doesn’t understand that policy and actions are what’s important, rather than good intentions. Policy, actions, and delivery are more important.

The second point that Chris Bishop said this Government was famous for was the issuing of press releases and announcements. And press releases and announcements are not enough, either. Endless announcements, endless issuing of press statements, simply doesn’t cut the mustard. People want results, they want delivery, and they want to see action. And this is a Government into the fifth year of its term in office, and it’s tired, it’s bereft, and it’s run out of steam.

And the third matter that Chris Bishop raised in his speech today that this Government is famous for is that their view is that money is the solution to everything. Other people’s money is the solution to everything. And just “Spray and walk away.” is some kind of economic or political plan for the future of this country. Well, sooner or later, someone has to pay. And it’s not going to be so many of us in this debating chamber that are going to pay, because people with my colour hair are not going to be the ones that pay it. It’s going to be my children, my grandchildren, and their grandchildren who are going to pay for that again.

💬 Hon David Bennett: Stop being ageist!

Some people, like the Hon David Bennett, worry a lot about hair. But he knows that it’s going to be his children that will pay for the profligate spending, the printing of money, and the poor quality of decisions of this Government. And so that’s a sad indictment on them.

There was no mention—I think the Prime Minister mentioned inflation only once in her entire 20 minutes. For 30 years, we’ve had low inflation in New Zealand. And I can remember when inflation was running out of control. There are some members in this House, like Nicola Grigg, who is far too young to remember when inflation was running in an uncontrolled way, but I do, and it’s a thief in the pocket of all New Zealanders, as Simon Bridges has said—a thief in the pocket of all New Zealanders. It’s an unlegislated tax, and it eats away at people’s savings, and it makes them less well off at a time when, actually, the cost of living is increasing out of control.

Ordinary Kiwis listening to me speaking in this Chamber tonight as they’re driving home, in the petrol cars that they have had to pay nearly $3 a litre—in fact, over $3 a litre to put petrol in their cars—as they’re driving home from their hard-working day trying to keep the economy ticking over, they know how much this Government is hurting them. And, today, we’ve had released that median rent increases are the highest yearly increases on record—not just the highest in the last few years but the highest median increase in annual rentals on record. Now, that’s reached a staggering, eye-watering nationwide median of $540 a week. And that hurts. That really does hurt.

So I listened this morning to the fellow from—I think he’s the general manager of the Gull petrol station chain, Dave Bodger. He’s a good guy and he usually speaks a lot of sense. And he said on the radio this morning, just before the Hon Stuart Nash committed political hari-kari on the Mike Hosking show—this guy, Dave Bodger, said that, actually, people will still buy petrol. They’ll still do that because they need to buy the petrol. But what they will do is actually spend less on other things. They’ll spend less on food, they’ll spend less on clothing, they’ll spend less on hospitality, and they will spend less on other things because they need the petrol. And so I think he’s right.

But, in terms of issues relating to climate and the environment, I’m very worried that the $4.5 billion emissions trading scheme fund money that’s going to become available to this Government will be spent not on quality, practical, pragmatic climate issues, because we across the Parliament actually agree on the direction of travel, but I’m very worried that these funds will be invested and spent on party political pet projects, of which this Government is so famous. And they’ve actually done very little in the area, even though the Prime Minister reverts to talking about climate change when she’s in trouble. She always does it—always when she’s in trouble, she’s, “Oh, we’re going to talk about climate change. We’ll change the subject and talk about something else.” But here’s what Greenpeace campaigner Christine Rose—not normally known, Greenpeace campaigners, for being anti-Labour governments—has said: “When it comes to the climate crisis, the Ardern Government talks big but spends small.” That’s what they say in Greenpeace. And, in terms of the environment, where has been the delivery? A Government that talks big but delivers nothing or little.

Where is the progress on our threatened indigenous biodiversity? That progress has been delayed. Why is the Resource Management Act reform—the much-vaunted RMA reform—taking so long? Why was the exposure draft document full of so many gaps? Why were there so many hollow, empty spaces in that piece of draft legislation? Where is their work on marine protected areas? And, what’s more important, why haven’t we advanced the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary? And to the shame of the Greens, who, during the first term of this Government, if they had decided to support us, we would have had a Parliamentary majority for an entire three years to see that sanctuary put in place. It’s to the eternal shame of the Greens that they chose not to do it, because that speaks volumes about how really the Greens think about the environment. Where’s the progress on freshwater quality? It’s stalled, it’s confused—

💬 Hon Member: Too hard!

It’s fraught, it’s too hard, it’s not understood, and it isn’t getting results. Where’s their much-vaunted action on reducing the amount of stuff we send to landfill? On waste? Why haven’t we got the delivery of their nationwide standardised kerbside recycling programme? They promised us that five years ago. Where is it? And why are we still sending such huge volumes of waste to landfill? Just digging holes in the ground.

I read over the summer break a paper by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment about weeds. Where is their progress on noxious weeds that are a blight upon our natural environment? So this is a Government that talks a big game on climate, that talks a big game on the environment, but simply fails to deliver.

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.

This debate is adjourned and is set down for resumption next sitting day.