Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

As we enter the third year of the global pandemic, I do want to take a moment to put some significant numbers in front of the House: 5,764,503—that’s the number of people on record, as of today, who have died around the world from COVID-19. Four hundred million people have been infected by the virus. And for those who think that the pandemic is over or that it’s coming to an end, here’s some other numbers that should be sobering: 23,765—that’s the number of people who died from COVID-19 on Saturday. The average number of people who are dying every day at the moment around the world stands at over 10,000 a day. We might feel like we’re over the global pandemic but the global pandemic is not yet over.

💬 Simon Court: Well, it is in Australia.

More people are dying of COVID-19 in Australia than were on the parliamentary forecourt. Each week, more people die in Australia of COVID-19 than have been standing on the parliamentary forecourt this week, and the ACT Party thinks that it’s over in Australia. The seven-day average of people dying in Australia is 57 people per day—dying in Australia. And they think it’s over in Australia! Well, it’s not for those 57 people a day and the people who care about them. In New South Wales today, 1,795 people are in hospital; 121 people are in the intensive care unit. Across Australia, 3,801 people are in a hospital, and 721 people are in Australia. The pandemic is not over.

Our Government will continue with a carefully balanced plan for dealing with COVID-19. We want to keep New Zealand moving forward whilst also protecting people as much as we are able to. We are entering into a new phase of our COVID-19 response, one where the response will be a more devolved response, but people will be needing to take more individual responsibility for keeping themselves safe from COVID-19. Businesses will be making more decisions at a local level about how they continue to operate as we see an increase in the number of cases.

The best thing that New Zealanders can do in this environment, to adapt with these changing circumstances and to keep themselves and their families as safe as possible, is to get themselves boosted. Accept the offer of booster vaccinations—most New Zealanders can get them now. I encourage all parents with children between the ages of five and 11 to take up the ability to get their children vaccinated. We can protect each other if we stay home when we are sick. Please don’t soldier on. It is one of those things about the Kiwi culture, that when we get sick—we get a cold; we get the flu—we have a culture of soldiering on and working through it. Please don’t. Go home and stay at home until you are feeling better. Wear a mask and stop the spread of COVID-19. The public health measures that we have in place are designed to give the virus nowhere to go, and the fact that we continue to have the lowest case rate in the OECD, the lowest number of deaths in the OECD, shows that the public health measures that we have in place are working.

In our economy, our position as a Government has been, from the beginning of this pandemic, that the best public health response is also the best economic response. Let’s look at the evidence of that. Despite the fact that there has been significant economic disruption as a result of COVID-19, we have the lowest unemployment rate on record. We have done well at keeping New Zealanders in work. Our GDP growth, if we look at the annual rate to September, before we had the Delta outbreak, was 4.9 percent. The annualised rate of growth in New Zealand before the Delta outbreak was 4.9 percent. It’s interesting to note that the highest it ever reached under the last National Government was 4.1 percent. So, despite a global pandemic, we have kept the economy moving and we have kept the economy growing. You have to go back to the early 2000s to see a rate of economic growth that is higher than that. I note the new Leader of the Opposition was saying that the best thing that we can do for the economy is to have a growing economy. Well, the facts on record will show, if you want the economy to grow, you’re more likely to get higher economic growth under a Labour Government than under a National Government, and the statistics over time prove that out time and time again. So, if Kiwis are looking for a growing economy, they’re more likely to get it under a Labour Government than under a National one.

For those New Zealanders at home, though, who are watching the new Leader of the Opposition and thinking, “Gosh, I’ve heard some of this before.”, they’re right, because it wasn’t that long ago that we had the National Party promising to tackle the cost of living, to close the wage gap with Australia, to tackle the underclass—remember the talks about that?—and to lift productivity and be aspirational for New Zealand. Well, how did all of that turn out in the nine years that followed, when they were in Government? What did we see? Well, their biggest answer, it appears, to the rising cost of living was to increase GST and increase the cost of everything. We had a flag referendum in a housing crisis!

And let’s talk about the housing crisis for a moment, because it’s important to think about the historic trends that have contributed to the housing situation that we have at the moment. It took New Zealand just over half the time to grow from a population of 4 million to a population of 5 million as it did to grow from a population of 3 million to a population of 4 million. And the majority of that growth happened during the tenure of the last Government, the last National Government. Did they build the houses to cope with that? Did they build the infrastructure to cope with that? No, they didn’t. What we saw was this optimistic complacency under the Key Government where things were going to get better as long as the Government did nothing about them, and it was proven to be a failed strategy. So, instead, we saw a running down of our health and our education systems, and we saw the emergence of a housing crisis.

We can do better, and New Zealanders know that we can do better. The Government is committed to a recovery for all New Zealanders, one that helps us to rebuild our essential public services like our health system; like our education system; like Oranga Tamariki, who deal with the most vulnerable children; like the Ministry of Social Development, making sure that they have the people that they need to do their jobs effectively; and what are we hearing from members on the other side? That they would go back and cut all of those things. When they talk about more bureaucrats in the Ministry of Education, which they were doing just as recently as this morning, they are fundamentally wrong. The biggest increase in staff employed by the Ministry of Education are front-line teachers. They are teachers who work with children. These are the people whom the members opposite—and the leader of the ACT Party in particular, who I saw on Breakfast TV this morning—are calling bureaucrats and officers. They’re not. The teachers employed by the Ministry of Education are working with the kids who need the support the most. They are the ones that are on the front lines doing the work to deal with the children in our education system who need that extra support in order to be able to achieve. And they are the people that the National and ACT Opposition are proposing to cut from their jobs.

So I want to end today with some words of thanks, and I start, first and foremost, with our health workers, knowing how much they have done to serve New Zealand so honourably over the last two years and knowing that there are still some big challenges ahead for those who work in our health system. We thank them for what they’ve done, and we thank them in advance for what they are going to do.

I want to thank our teachers and our education workforce for keeping young people learning in some of the most challenging circumstances our education system has experienced in generations. And I want to acknowledge all of those who have sat in their living rooms whilst they have been isolating at home and have supported children to continue their learning. I say thank you to them.

I thank in particular our border and our managed isolation and quarantine workforce, who, for the last two years, have selflessly put themselves on the front line of our COVID-19 response, who often found themselves the subject of a lot of unnecessary abuse. They have done that with great dedication, and we thank them.

I want to join with the Minister of Police in thanking our police officers for the work that they have done during COVID and the work that they are continuing to do to keep the entire New Zealand community safe.

I want to finish with my last words of thanks to the 1 million in our team of 6 million New Zealanders, who aren’t actually currently in the country, and recognise that the border restrictions that have been in place out of necessity have had very real consequences for a lot of Kiwis and for a lot of Kiwi families, and we look forward to being able to welcome them home very soon. The border restrictions have contributed to us having the lowest COVID-19 death rate and case rate in the OECD—

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

—and we acknowledge those who have sacrificed for that.

This Labour Government is failing an entire generation of young New Zealanders, a generation who were promised so much by Prime Minister Ardern and who have been failed so badly—a generation of young New Zealanders who have now given up hope of buying the home Labour promised them; who are now paying more for their rent than ever in New Zealand’s history; who watched that rent go up on average $50 a week in the past year alone. They are a generation of young New Zealanders who are facing a growing cost of living that hits them in the pocket every time they go to fill up at the pump, every time they go to put groceries in their supermarket trolley.

This Government is failing a generation of young New Zealanders, whose wages are not keeping up with those increasing costs; who have less money in their bank accounts now than they did last year; and who have given up on the hope of being able to save the deposit to buy a home. This Government has failed a generation of young New Zealanders, who, under this Government, can’t see how it’s going to get better; who have watched their friends in London, in Sydney, in Melbourne who wanted to come home for a family funeral, to see their friends, denied that opportunity—a generation of young New Zealanders who look overseas and see young people like them getting ahead, earning more, and getting better jobs. I don’t want the future for young New Zealanders to be that they look overseas to see where success is. I want them to see success here in New Zealand. But this Labour Government just can’t deliver.

Here we have a Prime Minister who got up, in the Speech from the Throne, and promised that this would be the Government that would solve the housing crisis. That’s what Labour campaigned on in 2017. They said—and there he is right now: Phil Twyford, the man who promised the 100,000 KiwiBuild homes. Well, how’s that going, Mr Twyford? Last time I checked, you’d only built just over a thousand KiwiBuild homes. So, for the hundreds of thousands of young New Zealanders out there who had the good faith to believe you, to believe the Prime Minister, to believe Labour when they said, “We’re serious about housing. There’ll be 100,000 homes.”, well, they now know that was wrong, that was misleading, that was a broken promise.

This is the same Government that said they’d make life better for renters. Well, how’s that going? Tell the renters of New Zealand that when they have experienced under this Government, on average, a weekly increase in their rent of $140. The members opposite are looking at me and nodding their heads—no?—because they’re getting the emails from their constituents, saying, “I thought you said you were going to make it easier for me, but you have made it so much harder.” I want to remind the members opposite because I’m not sure that Grant Robertson and Jacinda Ardern are being completely honest with these backbenchers. Under National, rents didn’t increase like that, my friends. Under National, the increases were far, far lower, because we took a careful, prudent approach before adding costs.

This is a Government that, in their first Speech from the Throne, said, “We will introduce a rent-to-own scheme.”, and renters in New Zealand pricked up their ears and thought, “Great. I’m going to have the chance to pay rent and get myself my own home.” And how did that go? How’s that going for Labour? Well, 54 people got into a home through their rent-to-buy scheme—54 families. You would have more chance in this country of winning the lottery than getting a house through Labour’s rent-to-own scheme!

Then Labour said, “We’ll be putting homes within reach of all first-home buyers.” What’s happened since then? Under National, the ratio of house prices to incomes was 1:6. So what’s it now under Labour—because they were going to make it more affordable. Is it 1:5? Is it 1:4? Is it 1:3? No. It is 1:9. It is demonstrably, statistically, by every measure, harder to buy a home in this country under Labour than it was under National, and young New Zealanders know it. They feel betrayed, they feel let down, and every member opposite is responsible for that, because they promised KiwiBuild when what Bill English was saying, what National was saying, was, “Do you know what you have to do? You have to increase the supply of houses, and, actually, the best way to do that would be to reform the Resource Management Act so that we get rid of the barriers.”

So what did Labour do last year? Well, after four years of mucking around with policies that didn’t work, they came to National and they said, “Hey, could we steal your homework? Actually, it turns out you were right all along.” And they did the one really good thing they’ve done for housing, which is, with us, introduce a bipartisan housing supply bill. Well, it shouldn’t have taken four years, Labour. That’s too little too late.

Then, what did they promise to vulnerable New Zealanders? They said, “We’re going to reduce homelessness.” So how’s that going, Labour? Why is it today that there are four times as many New Zealanders in such housing deprivation and at so much risk that they’re on the State house waiting list? That is 25,000 New Zealanders who used to be able to afford a home in the private rental market but are now squeezed out, pushed out, on the State house waiting list. And how long do people on the State house waiting list wait for a home under Labour?

💬 Chris Bishop: How long?

They wait for more than six months. And how long did they wait under National? Fewer than two months. So are things better or worse for people in need of State housing under Labour? The numbers don’t lie.

How are we going with the motels? I remember, and Phil Twyford will remember—he got up in Parliament and said, “It is outrageous, it’s appalling, that we’re spending $79,000 a day on motel bills for people without a home.” Well, what’s that bill today? Is it $100,000? Is it $120,000?

💬 Chris Bishop: What is it?

It is $1.2 million. And, if anyone wants to tell me that that is the best way to solve the housing crisis, spending $1.2 million a day paying the bill for motel rooms, then there is something very wrong in this country, and I will tell you who it is most wrong for. It is wrong for the 4,000 children who are now being raised by their families in a motel room, living week to week with gang members next door, drug dealers on the other side, seeing violence, intimidation, and threatening behaviour, and it’s happening on this Government’s watch—the same Government that said they would make things better. The truth is that what they’ve actually done is they’ve made things worse.

Last year, it got politically uncomfortable for them, didn’t it? Everyone was saying, “I’ve given up hope in New Zealand of buying a home. What’s the point of working hard under a Labour Government when I can’t even buy a home?” So the Government said, “Look, don’t worry. We’ve found someone new to blame. We’ll blame speculators.” Actually, it’s the fault of awful, awful landlords providing a housing service! So the Government said, “We’ve got this really clever plan: we’ll throw some extra taxes on them, remove their interest deductibility, and extend the brightline test, and then, by doing this crushing, punitive stuff and being big tough guys, it will all get better.” Well, what has happened since then?

💬 Hon Mark Mitchell: What’s happened?

Since then, Mark Mitchell, housing prices in New Zealand have increased an additional $160,000. So the big talk that this was going to put pressure on house prices—that didn’t work.

But can I tell you what else happened—and Labour were warned about this; there’s a pile of Cabinet papers this high, warning them. They were warned that this would make it harder for renters, particularly vulnerable, low-income renters. And so it has proved. We have seen the biggest annual rent rises in New Zealand’s history. We have seen more vulnerable New Zealanders turfed out of their homes because they can’t afford the rent anymore and there aren’t enough rentals on offer. The thing that makes me sick about that is Labour were warned and they were told, and they went ahead anyway because they thought they could pull the wool over New Zealanders’ eyes and say, “Don’t blame the Government. Blame the landlords.” Well, the landlords were never to blame.

So this is a Government that has promised so much to New Zealanders, and I would say to every young New Zealander in this country: never forget that that Prime Minister was prepared to stand up in an election campaign and promise that she would solve the housing crisis and get you an affordable home when she had no real plan to deliver that. And the result of that—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: What’s your plan?

Her plan was called KiwiBuild, Duncan Webb, and you campaigned on it too, and it was an utter shambles and disaster, and the consequence now is that things are worse than ever. It’s time for a National-led Government to put action into this issue and actually resolve it with substantive policy.

Order! The member’s time has expired. I understand this is a split call. I call the Hon Phil Twyford.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and speak in the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement.

There isn’t a country in the world that hasn’t been tested by the pandemic, and we’ve faced very difficult decisions on a daily basis with no playbook, but as a country we have done well, and that is a fact: the lowest mortality rates in the OECD year on year since the pandemic started. The Australian thinktank the Lowy Institute recently rated New Zealand as No. 1 for its COVID response. How often do the Australians throw us a bone, eh? Unemployment at 3.2 percent and impressive wage growth. The Prime Minister has delivered a masterclass in leadership: compassionate, clear, putting people first, and always with science and good policy front and centre.

Now, we haven’t got every decision right and, of course, there will always be things that could be done better. But to get the big calls right in responding to a global pandemic, an event that the world hasn’t seen for a century, is surely an impressive effort. And I reckon that the proof lies in the collective wisdom of the public, who we’ve been able to take along with us as each tough decision is made, and whose effort and sacrifice has been absolutely essential in keeping us all safe.

I want to acknowledge, in particular, the efforts in my own electorate in West Auckland: the Waitematā DHB has 95 percent fully vaccinated, including 93 percent of our Pasifika population and 88 percent of Māori—it’s a brilliant effort. I want to give a shout-out to two outstanding organisations who work on the ground in West Auckland, getting vaccinations up, working with their people—it’s been nothing short of outstanding—and I’m talking about Te Whānau o Waipareira and The Fono. They’ve really done the hard yards, they’ve been tireless and innovative, and they’ve got results.

In the middle of COVID, Labour has been getting on with nation building: a massive reform agenda that includes the redesign of the planning system; building the low-carbon economy; futureproofing the public health system—thank you, Andrew Little; a massive reform agenda in housing; the immigration rebalance; three waters; rapid transit in Auckland; the revamp of vocational training; fair-pay agreements to tackle the scourge of low pay; and, now, Grant Robertson’s social unemployment insurance scheme.

This is what the public elect Labour Governments to do. We are the party that New Zealand looks to in times of change and challenge. It’s not always popular, and sometimes it will be decades before the full benefits are felt, but there are too many times in this country when we lament the inaction of previous Governments, where short-term political expediency has taken precedence over what’s right for our country. And that makes it all the more amazing that National is still happy to be known as the party of the status quo, interested only in the exercise of power.

The Prime Minister mentioned in her contribution, in this debate, the free-trade agreement with the United Kingdom—and Damien O’Connor has worked tirelessly to nail this down—and I’m sure we’ll see more progress in this area as the Prime Minister leads trade delegations overseas this year. I’m looking forward to contributing in the trade area, in my responsibilities in relation to PACER Plus—the trade and development agreement that brings together 10 of our Pacific partners—and we are looking forward to a big year of progress on that.

Labour embraces change and challenge. We always look for opportunity and progress for New Zealand. In contrast, the National Party has in record time set the bar so low for itself that another leadership change has given rise to the mistaken idea of some kind of renaissance on the Opposition benches. It is the party of false dawns; we’ve seen it five times in the last four years, and I’m sure we will see it again. It epitomises National, a party that never saw an opportunity that they didn’t want to pass up. They couldn’t be a Government for this country at this time if they tried, but, thankfully, Labour is.

When I listened to the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday, I was encouraged. We’ve heard a lot about the ambitious plans, and there are many of them with this Government. This Government, despite all of the challenges of the last couple of years, has plans. It has ambitious plans for our nation, to protect us and keep us moving forward. Not only am I encouraged but I am really confident, because I know from the last couple of years that we are able to plan, look at the evidence, take action, and we can deliver.

So that confidence partly comes from looking at how we have responded and what we did to be in such a strong position with regards to not just COVID but our economy and what our communities have done over the last couple of years. To be honest, less than a year ago, as we were rolling out vaccinations, Taranaki was described as being a little slow out of the blocks, and we really had to think hard about how to make sure that we looked after our communities, and so what did we do? The leadership across our community rose to the challenge. They collaborated—the DHB, our primary health providers, iwi, our Māori Women’s Welfare League, NGOs, good old rural support, local government, and a ton of volunteers came together and built a response. We were nimble and effective, and we got a vaccination programme that has helped us catch up, and we’ve made it across the finish line and we’re doing well. They made sure that every person could find a trusted face and a trusted place, whether it was Tui Ora down at our local Whakaahurangi Marae, iwi, the local rugby club rooms, our schools—I don’t know how many times I was in a supermarket car park having to walk around flags—pharmacies, doctors surgeries.

The outreach was effective. Every arm counts, and it felt that way, whether it was the Taranaki basketball team turning up to make sure our young people felt like they were in a trusted place, whether it was rural support who worked for the DHB to go up the driveways of our most vulnerable and isolated rural community members. Every arm counts not just for vaccinations but for providing a safe place where those in our community who were feeling really vulnerable and had really valid questions could take the time and were given the respect to have them answered by professionals. They felt safe and they got vaccinated. Hayden Wano, CEO of one of our local Māori health providers, Tui Ora, recently described that team as being “match fit”. That collaboration, that maturing of relationships, was one of the wonderful things that has come out of what has been a terrible couple of years.

So we’re “match fit” not just to deliver boosters and support the vaccination of our children but as we progress the building of our unified national health service, as we roll out our influenza programme this year, as we go to pass the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill. We have the mature relationships to co-construct with the health workforce, with iwi, with our NGOs who are on the ground and working with our communities—again, like I say, like rural support—with patients and with communities. We know that as a nation, when we collaborate, when we work together, when we look at the evidence, and when we have all the different worldviews in the room, we can realise our ambitious plans, and we can keep this nation moving forward.

I’m excited that we have learnt so much from the last couple of years that have been so hard on so many of us and that we are going to be stronger and we’re going to be able to face the challenges that come in front of us. This Government has proven to not only meet the challenges but be really good leaders in times of change. And so, on reflection of what the Prime Minister laid before us yesterday, I am confident that as a community we can rise to the challenges, be ambitious, and make sure that we realise the dreams of every New Zealander and we make sure that we keep going and we’re better off this time next year as well. Kia ora.

I understand this is a split call. I call Ricardo Menéndez March—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise reflecting and thankful about the collective effort so many people in the community have undergone to protect us from the pandemic. I’m also thankful for my parliamentary colleagues from Labour, Te Paati Māori, and the Greens who resisted the consistent right-wing “let it rip” approach to managing the pandemic, which would have seen a devastating loss of life.

But it is not about saying there were no faults in the response to the pandemic. The pandemic should have been an opportunity to address those inequities that have existed for generations, which have made it challenging for people to respond and to stay safe. Ending poverty should have been part of our public health response; making sure that those responses we saw in the welfare system that supported people temporarily—for example, doubling the winter energy payment—should have been permanent measures that lifted people out of poverty. So I also see the recent approach as a missed opportunity to ensure that our communities are not just surviving but, rather, thriving. The Greens have always been clear, since the pandemic started, that we should seize the moment and ensure that everyone has a safe home to live in, has enough income to stock up when they need to in order to self-isolate, and that we end the punitive approaches in our welfare system that mean people still feel scared to reach out for support when they need to.

I’m a little bit tired of hearing the discourse back and forth on the lowest unemployment figures, as though that tells us the whole picture of the inequalities that we face in Aotearoa. The truth is that the figure we should be looking at how many people are living in poverty. Does everyone feel like they have enough to thrive, like they can reach out to Work and Income? Why haven’t we fully individualised our income support system so that, when people need to shift jobs, they’re well supported? We know the Government realised that benefit levels were not good enough, and that benefits should have been individualised, as we responded to the pandemic. They put in those temporary measures that saw people actually having enough. Why not make them permanent?

I also want to reflect on another group that has been impacted by the inequities in our response. I think of our migrant communities, who have often been left out, without adequate income support. I note the Prime Minister thanked our healthcare workers for their mahi in helping us keep people safe, and I echo that gratitude, but the truth is that many of those healthcare workers are migrant workers who continue to have no pathway to residency. And, in fact, many migrant workers who were at the front lines of our pandemic—whether they’re supermarket workers or managed isolation and quarantine workers—who just simply happened to be on the wrong visa are missing out on a one-off residency opportunity that would have granted them the security and certainty that they deserve. I’m thinking, as well, to the many split migrant families who continue to be affected by an inequitable response to our border reopening plan. We had an opportunity to ensure that we do not entrench global inequities that may mean we start seeing tourists from the UK arriving before people from places like India are able to be reunited.

It is never too late to look at the streets, to look at the communities we’re supposed to serve, and to put in place solutions that will ensure that everyone is supported. In our migrant communities, we continue seeing discrimination towards disabled people. Even though I’m heartened by the mahi that has been done in Parliament, through the petition of Juliana Carvalho, to put in really solid recommendations to review the current discrimination that disabled migrants face—one of the groups that are most at risk from the pandemic—policies haven’t changed. We haven’t seen changes to the way partnership visas operate to make them culturally appropriate despite this being a Labour Party campaign manifesto promise.

So I think about the Prime Minister’s words, and I encourage her to be a lot bolder, to look at those transformative solutions, not incremental change, so that we can reach an Aotearoa where everyone thrives, not just survives. Kia ora.

Kia ora e te Māngai—ki a koutou. While listening to the Prime Minister’s statement, I started to reflect on the concept of mauri. Now, mauri is the life force that we all have. Unlike wairua, that exists beyond death, mauri is something that’s just particular to us. It is our strengths, our skills, the things that we care about. It’s how we present ourselves in the world, whether through our dress, our hair. It’s about the pronouns that we use. So, when someone’s mauri is recognised, that life force glows. When someone is valued and they know that they’re an important part of their whānau, of their communities, of the world, those communities, the mauri of it starts to glow. When it’s not recognised, it starts to fade, and our mental health statistics show all of the people who have decided that it was the time to let that spark go out for ever.

So I thought about who was recognised in this speech, whose mauri was recognised in this speech: absolutely our Māori and Pasifika health providers; our communities, who have been working so, so hard in this pandemic; our border workers; all the people who have pulled together across the country; people with disabilities—and the new ministry that’s been set up is really exciting. For me, in the portfolios I hold, I noticed that, of the nearly 3,000 words that were in that speech, none of them were about rainbow communities. The Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act was amended last year; trans people can now self-identify their gender on their birth certificates much, much more easily, and we’re working on a process for people who were born overseas. That is very exciting. Conversion practices—second reading. I know that some people have really focused on the fact that there were some National MPs who voted against that. I would like to mihi to all of those who voted for it, because actually that’s where the movement is, that’s where the progress is. That is the thing that gives surety to our communities that, with the next change of Government, suddenly all those rights aren’t going to disappear. So I am thankful for that. We were given an assurance last night that some of those basic things that are important inside rainbow communities—around what gender identity means, what gender expression actually means, and what that looks like inside our law—would be done when we amend the Human Rights Act; so we’re very much looking forward to that.

We’re very proud, as this party, as part of this House, to be looking at what does it mean, then, for who we prioritise in the funding that we give out. I’m very much looking forward to what the Budget brings this year, of all the Budget bids that went out. But I just want to always think about how we can work together, even when we disagree at the edges, because, when we’re talking about people’s mental health, when we’re talking about communities that are discriminated against in particular ways, and very different ways—that we think of their mauri but we’re also considering their mana and what is needed for them to express their needs, either through the select committee process, through the different ways that we reach out to community, in the way that we do our work. For me, it’s really important and really something to think about every time we have this chance—the very limited chances that we have—to speak in this House, and the platform that we have. Whose mauri is upheld and whose maybe is diminished just a little bit more because we exclude them?

So I echo my colleague’s comments. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else in the world through the course of this pandemic. Omicron—the numbers are not as bad as we thought, and that is absolutely due to some of the systems that have been put into place. So the very last comment I want to make is that, when we’re looking at health, when we’re looking at the reforms, a lot of things have been stopped and affected by this absolutely necessary but all-consuming focus on COVID. When we’re thinking about mauri, it’s the health of all the other people that also matters here. Kia ora.

I understand this is a split call. I call Dr Gaurav Sharma.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koe e te Whare. It’s my great pleasure to speak in the House today in reply to the Prime Minister’s statement, in our first sitting week of 2022. I want to start, first of all, by wishing everyone a happy New Year, and also by thanking those of you who sent your well-wishes last year when I had some health issues. Exactly one year ago yesterday, I stood in this exact spot to give my maiden speech in Parliament. I was surrounded by friends, family, my former school teachers, and medical colleagues, along with volunteers, supporters, and mentors in the gallery.

I started that maiden speech by asking, “He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.” What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people. And this is the question that every single member of the Labour caucus and this Government ask ourselves each and every day. People are at the heart of every policy, every decision this Government and the Prime Minister has made over the last four years. Throughout the pandemic, the Government has worked relentlessly to save as many lives as possible and to protect jobs and cushion the blow to the economy.

At every turn, the Government’s goal has been to do what is right. We have acted early and decisively to prevent the worst impacts seen elsewhere. And this approach has worked. We have a very highly vaccinated population, with over 95 percent of Kiwis double vaccinated, 60 percent of people have now had their boosters, and over 40 percent of children have now had their first dose. Our confirmed cases, hospitalisations, and deaths have been the lowest in the OECD for each of the last two years. As a former medical doctor who worked in the local community as a GP in Hamilton, I’m incredibly proud of this Government for what it has done in achieving for myself, my family, my patients, and my community in keeping us safe.

I know the Opposition likes to criticise the Government’s response for the sake of opposition, but I can’t fathom where the country would be if the National Party and their friends were in charge. Every time the Opposition had a new leader, their policy on COVID changed drastically. One day, they wanted the borders open; and the next day, with a change in leadership, they wanted the border to be closed again. But this isn’t a pattern in their COVID policy only. One day, the National Party was in Government and they denied the housing crisis, the climate crisis, the looming transport crisis due to significant underinvestment in public transport; and the next day, they’re in Opposition and all their policies and stances have changed.

The Opposition now criticises this Labour Government on the pandemic response, but one of the issues we do have in New Zealand is that sometimes we can forget how well we have done collectively, as a team of 5 million. It is very easy to ignore the death and destruction that we have been able to avoid, which has wreaked havoc around the world. The Lowy Institute has just ranked New Zealand No. 1 in our pandemic response. Not a day goes by when I don’t receive a text or a call from someone overseas who reminds me of how well the New Zealand Government has done when compared to the rest of the world. And the credit for this goes to the Labour Party, to the leadership of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her Cabinet, as well as the 5 million Kiwis who have played their part and not been distracted by the Opposition’s changing rhetoric every time they change their leader.

Thanks to our front-line healthcare workers, who have stepped up to keep all of us safe. These front-line workers include not just doctors, nurses, public health specialists, and contact tracers but also supermarket workers, cleaners, and managed isolation and quarantine personnel, amongst many others. This Government has provided stable, united leadership throughout the most challenging times New Zealand has had to face in modern times. The path ahead is still challenging with Omicron, but I know that under the leadership of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and the watchful eyes of many New Zealanders who have put their hopes and faith in us, we will be able to stand up to our next lot of challenges with the same determination, focus, and empathy that we did through this global pandemic.

This Government has a plan that keeps us moving forward. This Government has acted in the last two years, which has kept us moving forward. Hoake tonu tātou. [Let’s get moving.] Let’s get moving.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. In the Prime Minister’s statement, she talked about what got us through what was and has been a very challenging year. She talked about the countless gestures of kindness, comfort, and care; the service of our volunteers, teachers, health workers, border workers, and our police—and I’ll underscore their service today. She talked about our Defence Force, the hard graft of our businesses and exporters, and she also mentioned the patience of every parent across the country. And, as a parent myself, I think several of us have been exhaling these last few weeks. It has been a challenging time to parent this last year, and I’ll always remember one of my sons asking me as we went into the level 3 lockdown last year, “So we’re going into level 3. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” And I said, “Yes, it was the right decision.”, but it was incredibly challenging.

While we were in lockdown, I spoke to principals, to teachers, to early childhood educators, and to parents in Upper Harbour, and there was fatigue, there was concern, but there was also creativity in how schools responded. There was humour, there was collective support, and most importantly, in so many conversations, there was an affirmation of what is the most important thing to families, to schools: the health and wellbeing of those children and of our families. There was resounding support for how we had approached the COVID response, and now that we do have high vaccination levels and we have a paediatric vaccine, we are committed to keeping our schools and early childhood centres open, with closures only used as a last resort, a measure when there might be a community or a school outbreak or other issues that might make it unsafe for a school to open.

For me, one of the highlights in what was a challenging year in many ways was seeing a photo of Minister Faafoi in a turban. Sure, it was photo-shopped, but it didn’t matter. The speed at which that image travelled around the ethnic social media circles was unparalleled. It was a bit of a cheeky but warm thankyou from the members of our ethnic communities to the Government and the Minister for their leadership in announcing the 2021 pathway to residence. In a year awash with challenging times, that announcement was and is life changing for so many families—for 165,000 people. It’s been a privilege to hear those stories, including many that touch on my electorate as well.

I know that that pathway hasn’t been available to all, and it’s not possible to put into words the level of grief that some have felt, not just here in New Zealand but across the world, as families have been separated due to COVID. But equally as hard have been those conversations with people who have lost family in other countries; people who have lost family because, in their country, efforts weren’t made to slow the spread, to enable a high vaccination rate. And because of what we’ve done, now we’re ready to reopen and to not only tackle the challenge which Omicron will bring with it but to tackle the other big issues that are coming our way: to establish the emissions budgets for the next 15 years; to roll out our progressive homeownership scheme; to build into our history curriculum stories about New Zealand—New Zealand’s stories; and to engage with the world in trade, diplomacy, and in human rights on the issues that are important to us all, because we know that issues that need to be addressed for all need to be owned by all of us.

I want to finish just by talking about service, which I think has been the underlying principle of how we’ve responded to the pandemic, and by “us” I don’t mean just the Government response; I mean the community response. Phil Twyford mentioned earlier the work of our West Auckland health providers, who have really pivoted. The Fono team have been extraordinary in how they’ve responded to this. The same is true of the north-west community centres who provided those locations on the ground. It is that spirit of service that will also see us through into a successful 2022. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand on behalf of the National Party this afternoon and respond to the Prime Minister’s statement. Some of what was in here was rather amusing, but the speeches in the House from the Prime Minister’s backbench MPs this afternoon have been nothing short of comedy, actually.

When I think back to when this Labour Government took office and we had the Speech from the Throne, the Prime Minister said, “We will be a party that will govern for all New Zealanders.”—that was the first part of the joke. There has not been government for all New Zealanders. Ask the farmers, ask the small-business owners, ask all the people out there who have tried to get family members through managed isolated and quarantine, ask the million people who actually can’t even get back into their own country. Is that called governing for all New Zealanders? I don’t think so. When I listened to the Prime Minister’s statement here the other day, I actually listened in disbelief to some of the things in there, and all that comes to mind for me is the Bee Gees song “It’s only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away.” And, actually, I’ve got news for the Prime Minister, because the Prime Minister’s words are not taking the country’s heart away any more; it’s actually breaking people’s hearts.

As I look through some of this, I just wanted to start off by noting a media release that I saw today. So, prior to this Government, we actually had a previous coalition Government that actually instigated an oil and gas ban. And every time I mentioned it as the energy spokesperson, and it’s pleasing to have Stuart Smith here, who is now our energy spokesperson, we were told anything to do with coal, anything to do with anything going wrong, was not Government policy. Well, today, I read that households and businesses using piped gas could face substantial bill increases under proposals put forward by the Commerce Commission because of Government energy policy. The regulator said it is reasonable that the four gas pipeline businesses should be able to earn more money in the coming four years, because the likely life of the infrastructure will be shortened as climate change policy squeezes out the gas sector. Climate change policy—how did that go? Shall we talk about Indonesian coal? Say no more. We were heading to 90 percent renewable energy back in 2016; we struggled to get to 75 percent at times this winter. And, while the power outage last winter on 9 August was actually a communication outage, Stuart Smith, just watch this space, because if the lakes don’t fill up—and we might have been lucky to have a boost of rain just recently—we’ve got a problem.

So, in the Prime Minister’s statement, it says the Government has committed to working with small-business groups and the rural sector to develop better support for mental health needs. Wow, partnering with small business—it’s not a word that we would use. And the rural sector would say to this Government, “Rather than actually being the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff”—and we all need good rural health and rural mental support services—“the first step would be to stop causing it.” As our fantastic leader, Christopher Luxon, says, farmers are standing there and it’s like you’re in a game of tennis and there’s ten balls coming over the net at you and you’ve got no idea which one you’re going to hit first. It’s just been a barrage of bad, unworkable regulations. Farmers are out there; they’re just absolutely wanting to do their best. They are, in fact, some of the best farmers in the world.

And that’s no excuse to say “We can’t change.” and “We can’t do things better.”—because we have to, and there’s some work going on at the moment to have a look at ways that we can improve our climate responsibilities—but, in this statement, the Prime Minister’s actually indicated that she’s going to lead trade delegations and trade supporting visits. Well, I’ve got a document that I think the Prime Minister should read before she leaves, because the Prime Minister’s always waxing lyrical about the world and “the best in the world”, and if anything goes wrong, it’s the world’s fault. Well, in this KPMG document, Net Zero Readiness Index results, it actually says that New Zealand is ninth in the world for net zero readiness; however, for agriculture, it is the most ready country in the world for net zero readiness. So I would suggest that the Prime Minister pick up a copy of this document, take it on every trade trip she goes on—trade is important—and make sure that she sells the story of our farmers truthfully and in a way that works.

So I think the other thing, as I went through this document in disbelief—I mean, I couldn’t actually believe that I heard the Prime Minister thank the farmers; it’s probably the first time in a long time. I know that Grant Robertson does it on a regular basis, because he’s the finance Minister, so he really knows where the money comes from; it makes a difference. Everything in this document uses the word “will”. So it says, “New Zealand has sustained itself through sustaining others for decades, and our customers expect us to do this sustainably. The Government will continue to work with the primary sector to respond to changing customer expectations. We will work together to improve the sustainability”—you go out there and ask any farmer out there about how much work the Government’s actually been doing standing beside them. Most of it’s been blasted at them from out of Wellington. They’re out there doing their best every day, and actually 90 percent of the answers are out there. All this Government has to do is get up and go out and talk to them, because they actually know how to do stuff. So less of the “working with”—you know, this is words; Government has been not “working with” the farmers. “We are working with farmers on the delivery of a national integrated planning framework. We will work with industry through He Waka Eke Noa partnership.”

Now, I acknowledge the industry leaders that are working through this process, and I do also thank the Ministers who have given an extra month for consultation, because it’s pretty tight under the red traffic light system and farmers have got a lot of catching up to do with the discussions that have been had, and we look forward to those conversations. But, actually, farmers are in this place because the Government actually said—the industry went to Government and said, “We don’t want to be in the ETS; it’s wrong. We don’t want to be the only country in the world. It’s not a way to fix the problem. Tax will not fix anything. Let’s sort our own issues out.” So less of the “work with”, and actually “We’ve issued you an ultimatum. You make this work or else.” is what the Government is about.

It says, “The Government will support more farmers to adopt existing measures and technologies to reduce on-farm emissions”. Well, do you know what? That tax, that ute tax, that money that’s coming off farmers—for what reason when there’s no alternative vehicle?—that was the biggest joke of Fieldays 2021, and let’s hope Fieldays goes ahead in 2022. That is money. It’s all very well to stand there and go, “We’ll put money into R and D.”, but, actually, that is money that farmers would be using on their own farms every day if they didn’t have to pay a stupid ute tax that is going to go into the Government’s coffers and not make one bit of difference to climate change. And, anyway, if they could buy an electric ute, they’re going to be out there putting it on a charger, actually feeding it with coal-produced electricity. So, you know, actually consequences is the one thing this Government never thinks about—consequences.

Now, I did have a little bit of a giggle to myself at one line, going back to the Taranaki situation, “Construction will begin on Mount Messenger bypass on State Highway 3 in the New Zealand upgrades”—there’s some other upgrades announced. Now, Mount Messenger was a project that was announced by John Key and Simon Bridges in January 2016—so we’re looking at six years ago. And I realise the Resource Management Act has some responsibility in that, which is why we need to fix it quickly. It’s not all the Government’s responsibility, but actually it’s very bold and brave to stand up here and say, “We’re doing this.” when, actually, John Key and Simon Bridges announced it six years ago.

So we’re hearing a whole lot today from the back benches about the Government plan and the Government this, and all the rest of it. We can’t see a plan. There is no plan. But guess what? Game is on and we’re a Government in waiting. So thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s been my pleasure to respond to these words today. Thank you.

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.

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