Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Together we have risen to the challenge of COVID-19. It is together that we will get through this next challenging stage that we are about to embark on. As we watch case numbers grow, it is important that we stay together. That unity has got us to the unique position that New Zealand is in today, and it is continuing to look after each other that will get us through this next stage. I want to thank New Zealanders for looking out for each other and continuing to look out for each other as we see the Omicron numbers rising. And while the current protesters outside are attracting much of the conversation and much of the coverage that we’re seeing in the media, I would like to point out: in the time those protesters have been here, literally hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders have gone and got their booster shot to continue to look out for each other, for their families, for their communities, and for their work colleagues. And I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to those people for doing that.

I would like to start in this contribution by acknowledging the leadership of our PM and the leadership that was delivered in the Prime Minister’s statement. There is a clear plan to continue to get us through this next phase. She is a leader who has listened to the evidence, she’s made the hard decisions, but, importantly, she has provided leadership to all of us as we have gone through this. All of us enter this House, right around this Chamber, with a desire to make a difference to the lives of the people that we represent—the people that we are privileged to represent in this Chamber.

Over the last two years, the PM has led us as a Government, where decisions have been made each day which were literally about life and death. And I want to acknowledge the PM for continuing the leadership that she laid out, because when you are in Government, these daily decisions that you make are for keeps. There is not the luxury of Opposition of doing a redo if you make a bad decision, if you make the wrong call. When you’re in Government, leading a nation through a global pandemic, these are decisions that literally are decisions of life and death for New Zealand. These are the decisions that have led to the measures that have literally saved jobs but also protected jobs and saved businesses. We see that, in the case of New Zealand, confirmed cases, hospitalisations, and deaths have been the lowest in the OECD for each of the past two years—and that is a record I want to see New Zealand continue. Unemployment is at a record low. Record numbers of New Zealanders have moved off the main benefit and into work.

But, as the Prime Minister’s statement made clear, as well as continuing to deal with COVID, we as a Government must also continue to make progress on the long-term challenges that New Zealand as a nation faces. We must continue to address housing. We must continue to address child poverty, mental health, and climate change. We are continuing to make pragmatic progress on the transition to a low-carbon and low-emissions economy. To reduce waste, to take mental health seriously, and to improve New Zealand’s biodiversity, we have a plan to keep us as a country moving forward, and central to that plan is securing our economic future. We have a plan to build a high-wage, low-carbon economy that provides security in the good times and in the bad times. It’s focused on increasing the value of our exports, developing new and interesting skills within our workforce, new technology, modern infrastructure, and research and innovation to drive productivity, reduce emissions, and increase wages.

And one of the key focuses of our Government will continue to be housing. We are under no illusions; there is no one, quick fix for a housing crisis. We are the first to acknowledge that. This is a crisis that is decades in the making. This is a crisis that requires a Government to have a programme of work that addresses each and every one of the issues that has led us to where we are today. And that is the Government that we are.

In the Prime Minister’s statement, she spelt out our plan for housing. The same cannot be said for the Leader of the Opposition’s statement in response. It is time for the Opposition to tell us what they are going to do in housing—not what they think the Government is doing wrong, not criticising and sniping over the small things from the sideline, but to tell us what they are going to do in housing. Is it to once again flog off public housing, as we saw when the National Party were last in Government? Or is it continuation of standing idly on the sidelines, doing nothing and letting a housing crisis grow around them as they did for the nine years they were in Government—and wouldn’t even concede that there was a housing crisis? We need to start seeing exactly what it is that the Opposition would do in Government.

What is their alternative? “Build more houses” is not a plan. We want to start hearing how you’re going to build more houses. What is the way in which you’re going to do that? Because I am constantly reminded that last time the Opposition were in Government, they ended nine years of Government with 1,500 fewer public houses than they started with. They didn’t build any. They did not add to the stock; they reduced the number of public houses in this country, and we are paying the price for that now, with a waiting list for public housing. We would have nearly 16,000 more public houses if the previous National Government had not sold houses and they had built at least at a rate of 1,600 houses a year.

What is needed to solve a housing crisis is a comprehensive plan, and that’s what we have. It is multifaceted, and it addresses the problem from both a demand and a supply perspective. We are starting to see the green shoots of Government action in housing; we are starting to see positive signs that we are turning around this multi-decade crisis. Forty-eight thousand new homes were consented in the year to December 2021. This is the most number of consents since records were kept. This is up 24 percent on the December year-end figure the year before. We are starting to not only see consents but that supply come through. And we are seeing that, where supply is coming through, we are having lower house-price growth and lower rent growth—evidence of Auckland.

We are seeing the green shoots from our initiatives, and these are the initiatives and comprehensive plan that we have taken. We banned offshore speculators. We protected renters’ rights through initiatives like stopping renting fees and reducing rent increases to once a year. We extended the brightline test. We tilted the playing field towards homeownership by closing tax loopholes for speculators. We incentivised investors to help us solve the housing crisis by building new supply and not competing in the suburbs with their kids. We’ve turned around the previous flog-off of public housing and, instead, are building new public houses at a rate not seen in a generation—close to 9,000 houses and counting. Over 7,000 of these are brand new builds—warm, dry homes for Kiwi families.

We’ve nearly more than doubled the operational funding for our community housing sector. We’re working with Māori and iwi housing providers to deliver by Māori, for Māori housing solutions. We’re addressing decades of under-investment in infrastructure with the $3.8 billion Housing Infrastructure Fund, through the Housing Acceleration Fund. Pipes and roads are critical to building more houses. Look to eastern Porirua: $136 million investment from this fund is yielding 2,000 extra houses. We’re investing in transitional houses; 1,123 places when we came into Government; now we have 5,102, and our job is not done. We will continue to get going. We have a programme of initiatives. We will keep going because housing is important.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We’re speaking here in the response to the Prime Minister’s statement, and I have to say, what I’d hoped to hear in the Prime Minister’s statement was a plan for sustainable economic growth in this country that involves more than just spending a lot of debt-fuelled Government spending and cheap money from the Reserve Bank.

Secondly, I was hoping that we might hear about a Government actually delivering on its promises and better public services—as they manifestly haven’t done so far on housing, on transport, and in myriad areas of COVID.

The third thing I wanted to hear was an understanding that we need to stop the division in this country. I have never known this country to have been so divided, so much division. Pitting one group against another is what this Government’s all about.

So let’s just go through these things. So a plan for sustainable economic growth—now, sustainable economic growth is growth that’s not just based on Grant Robertson borrowing ever more money and spreading it all around the country and saying, “Aren’t things doing well?” Eventually, it has to be repaid. He plans to borrow an extra $6 billion this year for new spending in the Budget, on top of the many billions that they’ve spent already. Now, people might say, “Oh well, that’s all very well.”, but hang on a moment, how are we actually going to pay this back eventually? And how is it actually going to make the economy go faster in order to provide higher incomes and more jobs for New Zealanders? Well, given the scale of the challenge that we face—and I’ve heard the Prime Minister many times say, “Oh well, we’re not having lockdowns anymore; we’re not going to move lockdowns; we’re going to be in red, but you can do most of everything, and isn’t that good? And we’re better off than many other countries.” I don’t think she seems to understand that we now are entering our third year of very substantial restrictions on the New Zealand economy—very substantial.

Our largest export earner, tourism, has been shut down for two years and is still shut down. What was our fourth-largest export earner, international education, has been shut down for two years and no end in sight. When you look at the hospitality sector, the most depressing thing that many of us encounter on a regular basis is heading off and seeing the look of fear and sadness in the eyes of owners of cafes and restaurants and business outlets around town. I see Chlöe Swarbrick there—Auckland Central is a terrible place at the moment in terms of people just not being there and businesses falling over and struggling—desperate—and we’re in this condition, in the red condition, for no end in sight, from this Government. They keep on restricting our lives, and what we need to see is a sense of urgency about reopening our economy and getting ourselves back on deck.

Now, what can the Government do about it? Yes, we’re dealing with Omicron. Well, they could have been so much faster in so many ways. 2021 was the year where they mucked around for six months on the vaccine roll-out because other countries were needing it more than us, and that led to the second lockdown in Auckland, which has been devastating for the economy and added real pressure on so many people in Auckland, in particular; an unnecessary delay that, thankfully, has been rectified, but six months too late.

Then, we talk about what the basic sort of strategy for COVID-19 under this Government has been: to buy time in order to prepare the health system to cope with the surge. Well, they bought the time, at colossal expense. New Zealand has been, of all the countries in the OECD—the wealthy countries—the one that has spent the second-highest on COVID response after the United States. It’s us, little old New Zealand, the most isolated, naturally protected country in the world—being a small population far from anywhere—and we managed to spend the second-highest amount defending ourselves against COVID-19, of all the rich countries.

And yet, having bought that time so expensively, we did nothing with it, and so the ICU capacity wasn’t increased at all, and so we’ve still got the problem, late last year, when we were unvaccinated, that we had to lock the whole place down because we were worried that the health system wouldn’t cope. We hadn’t done anything about it, hadn’t gone out internationally and got the nurses, and hadn’t got the ICU things organised. Now, when Omicron comes along, we’ve still got the same old problem. We’ve got to wait, we’ve got to be very restrictive—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: How many people in ICU?

—because this guy—that fellow—never got around to getting on to doing anything. All he does is talk. He ranted and raved like he always does and made no progress on preparing his health system to get results. And so time will tell—well, they’ve got plenty of time. We’ll look back and reflect upon it, and we’ll see the manifest failures in this Government to prepare.

So, when we look at the economy, we’ve got this great burden of debt that’s being built on us, the strangulation of our economy for such a long time, and when I look forward to see the plan for growth, there is nothing there. The only plan that this Government has on the economy is to increase minimum wages, and somehow that’s going to solve all the problems of the world. Well, that’s very nice. A 6 percent increase in the minimum wage is good for those who get it, but the rest of the workers will be wondering, “Well, do I need a 6 percent increase?” And how is that going to impact on inflation? When we see the real pressure—and we’ve heard so many business owners saying that it’s a kick in the guts for those people who are struggling to stay afloat at the moment. On top of many increases over the last two years, plus an extension of sick leave and a whole host of other costs being added on to business, it does make it very difficult for them to survive.

My second point is around a Government that actually delivers on its promises. We’ve heard so much about housing. We heard the housing Minister, Megan Woods, talking about the Opposition’s sniping about small things: small things such as promising to deliver 100,000 houses and delivering 1,000 houses—a very small, minor matter, the almost comedy, the complete failure of this Government’s housing policy. They stood and Phil Twyford declared that they were going to solve the problem in 2017. Jacinda Ardern said she was going to solve the problem, and they have made it colossally worse. The affordability of housing in this country is now an embarrassment, and they keep on failing because they misunderstand the basics. On renting, they seem to think that by making it more difficult for landlords, and more expensive, that somehow that’s going to lead to cheaper rents. Well, obviously, we’ve seen rents go up by $50 a week this year and over $130 or $140 since they took office. That has put real pressure on houses and made the broader issues around poverty so much worse.

We see the crazy approach they have to motels and short accommodation across the country. It was a disgrace, apparently, when National was in Government to have a few people in a hotel in an emergency situation. Now, we are spending $1.2 million a day on motels. Half of Rotorua’s motels are full of emergency housing. We’ve got more than 4,000 children being raised in motels alongside gangsters and other people that are not appropriate neighbours for young kids. No wonder we’ve made no progress on improving the truancy rates in our schools, which is a long-term crisis for this country.

So the third point I wanted to hear about was some sense that we need to stop the division in this country. We see outside of Parliament, I suppose, the sharp end of the sword of a wider rage growing in this country over the divisions that we see. This Government talks about being a caring and kind Government, but it has actually been one of the most divisive Governments in the history of this country. Jacinda Ardern pits one group of New Zealanders against another group of New Zealanders on a regular basis. If you think about it, they pit landlords against renters. They talk about speculators. We heard Megan Woods going on about speculators versus people who are trying to rent houses. We hear them pitting farmers against city folk. They’ve been attacking the farmers, and our mate David Parker is the excellent transporter of that, always talking about dirty dairying and all the nasty things that the dairy people have done. They’ve gone a bit quiet on that recently because they realise that it’s the only thing that’s keeping the country afloat at the moment, but that’s by the by.

So they pit the farmers against the city folk and then, of course, the vaccinated against the unvaccinated. And we all understand, and we early on supported mandates for critical people and we continue to, but, as Chris Luxon has said, we need to have a clear timetable to move on from that. Once we have very high vaccination rates, we shouldn’t be dividing ourselves and forcing people to be regarded almost as lepers, as some Ministers imply.

Then, of course, there’s the division on ethnic lines that continues in this country as well, by pushing too hard on a co-governance agenda and arrangements across government, which is an area where many New Zealanders struggle to understand how that fits with the age-old principle that most people expect that everybody should have the same access and influence on laws and their implementation in this country as citizens, regardless of what ethnic group they come from. So that is also divisive if it is pushed too far.

So my message to the Government is: first, come up with a sustainable economic plan that is more than just borrowing and spending; secondly, actually focus on delivering better public services rather than just announcing it; and third, stop dividing us as a country. We are stronger together as New Zealanders, and that should be the focus of this Government: bringing us together rather than dividing us at every opportunity. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Point of order, Madam Speaker. I take extreme offence at that member’s assertion that Auckland Central is “a terrible place to be”. I would just like to put it on the record that Auckland Central is in fact a wonderful place to be—

Thank you—thank you very much. The member has taken offence. I’d ask the Hon Paul Goldsmith to stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Sorry, Madam Speaker. I’m struggling to—

Thank you. The member has taken offence at comments made by Paul Goldsmith. I’ll ask Paul Goldsmith to stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Well, I don’t want to apologise for giving an opinion. Sorry—do you want to throw me out or something?

No, I don’t, in fact, want to throw the member out. However, a member across the House has taken offence at something the member has said. Now, it could be argued that when the member took offence, she should have taken a point of order immediately. However, I invite the Hon Paul Goldsmith to stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Well, I withdraw and apologise.

Madam Speaker, thank you. It’s a great pleasure to make an address in response to the Prime Minister’s statement.

I’m just reflecting on Paul Goldsmith, the member who just resumed his seat, and his speech. It’s not just classic conservative politics; it’s classic New Zealand National Party politics where, in their closing days in Government in 2017, they looked all around them and didn’t see a single problem. It doesn’t matter that there were thousands of people living in cars, and homeless and with nowhere to go—there was no problem! It doesn’t matter that we had huge inequities in our public systems, particularly our public health system, they looked around and saw no problem. They saw no problem with the housing crisis. They saw no problem with unemployment. They saw no problem with the infrastructure deficit that we had. They said, “No problem.” That’s, of course, why they were booted out of Government, and still they do not get that there were major problems and challenges that this Government has had to step up to and deal with.

I want to say that the health system in Aotearoa New Zealand has never been tested to the extent that it has in the last two years, because it’s not just been dealing with the COVID pandemic but it’s been dealing with years of neglect and chronic underfunding under the previous Government. We know that when we make health policy decisions and health investment decisions, there is a reasonably long lead time. From the time that you make the decision and make the investment, it can be two, three, four, or sometimes a few years longer before you see the thing that you’ve invested in, the policy that you’ve made, and the impact that it has on people. But the converse is also true that if you fail to fund the system properly and if you fail to invest in facilities, then it takes a wee while for that to start to show and for that to have an impact, and that’s what we’re dealing with right now.

This Government inherited a health system that under the previous National Government saw funding not even keeping pace with a massive growth in population: 600,000 people were added to the New Zealand population under the previous Government, and not a single dollar per capita more was added to health. There were some cost pressures and there was some inflation adjustment, but not to cope with the massive additional population that was drawing on our health services.

There was chronic under-investment in buildings and IT systems. Buildings were literally falling down and with sewage running down their internal walls because the previous Government did not invest. Two years where no money was allocated in successive Budgets to capital spending for health, and an IT system across the health system, generally—I think I was told there were 120 different platforms across 20 DHBs and no DHB system was able to talk to the next one. Just crazy—just crazy. If you compare the investment from that Government to this Government in capital spending in health, it was, roughly, $1 billion over nine years under the previous Government, and, so far, in four years, it’s nearly $6.5 billion by this Government, because that’s what’s needed to start get things back up to spec.

There were mental health facilities and services that were just neglected—that were just neglected—and an emerging mental health crisis that was just completely ignored. That was what we’ve had to deal with. That’s what we have had to step up and deal with in the health system.

One thing that has become patently clear, and will become more clear, is that when it comes to the two major parties in this House, the National Party does not care about public health. This party—the Labour Party—cares for a quality public health system and will invest in it every time that it is in Government, as it is doing now.

The background that I’m talking about too is that this Government is now undertaking the biggest rescue of the public health system in this country’s history, and that rescue is being carried out against the background of fighting the worst pandemic the world has seen in a hundred years. We are rebuilding the house at the same time as fighting the brush fires around it. That’s the situation that we have been in for four years and are continuing to be in.

But I look at our COVID response, widely regarded now as world class and as world leading. We have one of the lowest case numbers in the world, we have one of the lowest hospitalisation rates in the world, we have one of the lowest fatality rates in the world, we have one of the most highly vaccinated populations in the world, and—for the benefit of those out the front—we have administered more than 10.1 million doses since we started the programme last year and nearly 2 million booster doses since we started the booster programme at the end of last year. That’s 61 percent of the eligible population now boosted, 216,000 paediatric doses administered in the last few weeks, and we have 95 percent of people aged 12 and over now with two doses of the vaccine.

Since our friends out the front have been out the front, in the last seven days, 373,000—nearly 374,000—more doses have been administered in the time that they say they represent the rest of the country. Even first doses: over 400,000 first doses are still being administered in the time that they’ve been out in the front, and 15,000-plus paediatric doses in that time. So this is a vaccination programme that has worked really well.

But, as I said, we are rebuilding the system and fighting the brush fires as well, and I want to acknowledge the incredible work of those in our system, those doing the policy leadership in the ministry, and those on the front lines: those leading our DHBs, those working in our wards, running the vaccination programmes, running the testing programmes for the COVID pandemic—those doing an incredible job providing the healthcare that New Zealanders expect and still coming up trumps. Even when it is short-staffed, even when so many nurses are working short-staffed shifts, and even when doctors are working extra hours and knowing that they don’t necessarily have all the colleagues, because all the slots for their particular discipline aren’t filled on their slate, they are doing an incredible job. But one thing we will not do is we will not under-invest in our health system. That’s why I want to come to why the plan that the Prime Minister outlined in her statement is so important.

I want to acknowledge, too, of course, that in all that time it has been really tough. The COVID pandemic response has been really tough on so many people: so many families who have had their family lives disrupted, family connections disrupted, celebrations of family events disrupted, and the ability to grieve over loss and loved ones disrupted. That has been tough, and that is real—it’s real for people out on the forecourt and it’s real for thousands and thousands of other New Zealanders—and that is regrettable. But it has been important that we respond to COVID in a way that protects and preserves as many lives as possible, and protects our health system to be able to respond to all the demands placed on it and not just those placed on it by the pandemic.

But I’m really proud to lead a Government and to lead a health reform that is going to make so much difference to everybody. We’ve already started a programme of investing to reboot our mental health system: more than 800 new front-line mental health roles added to our mental health workforce in the integrated primary care system that we’ve got; more people with access to talk therapies when they turn up to their GP; investment in new facilities, with the construction about to start on as many of those as possible; and investment in our youth mental health, as well, particularly for Māori and Pacific services.

We’re doing all those things, but now the next phase is under way. We’ve made commitments to reform the system through our health and disability system review. We’ve made the commitment to remove the 20 DHBs and put in place Health New Zealand, with all of its ability to do much better localised planning and regional funding and to lead a nationwide system so that our clinicians and our people in this system can start thinking of themselves as part of a truly national system and draw on the best of the system, wherever it is in the country. We start to address inequity too: the Māori Health Authority is a major advance and a major development that will make a huge difference to the inequities in our health system that have been around for so long. I look forward to Health New Zealand and the Māori Health Authority. Their interim bodies are in place already, but the permanent bodies, subject to the passage of the legislation, will be in place by 1 July this year, and that will make a significant difference.

We have an opportunity with the reforms that we’re putting in place to actually have a nationwide hospital network that will serve the needs of all New Zealanders, where patients can move to where the best care is for them without a whole lot of form-filling, without a whole lot of bureaucracy, and without 20 different administrators having to make a variety of different decisions. We will have a revamped primary and community healthcare system. Primary healthcare will be a big winner out of the reforms. We’ll see more funding going into primary care than we’ve ever seen before, and we will have the Māori Health Authority.

Labour has had as its historical mission the support of, the creating of, and the building of a truly quality public health system. That’s what we did from 1935, in the Government that started then. We’ve picked up that mantle again and we will restore a public health system that is the pride and envy of New Zealand and the world.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is good to be back in Parliament, but, unfortunately, being back here in Parliament means that the Government is also back in Parliament, and that is hugely unfortunate for any New Zealander who actually wants to go about living their lives with little distraction from Government regulation and over-interference—making laws that make it harder just to get ahead. But, while the Government’s back, the ACT Party is back and we’re here to hold them to account for all of their silly, ill-informed policies that they might try and pass through Parliament this year.

I want to start by acknowledging the people up and down New Zealand who are doing it tough. Over the break, when Parliament was on recess, I travelled around a little bit of the country and I saw a lot of businesses that were really hurting and struggling. I walked past restaurants that had one table full in the entire restaurant, places that were practically empty because there were no tourists. I went on an Air Milford flight and talked to the pilot, who said usually he does five flights a day, but because there were no tourists at the moment, he was down to one flight. It’s hugely sad. There are hotels that are just sitting empty, with no one there to turn up. Tourist operators don’t want another handout from the Government. They want people to be tourists. They want people to come through their borders that have a good experience, that eat good food, and that enjoy being out and about around New Zealand. They don’t want another Government handout; they want good public policy. Cafes are in the same situation. So is the events industry, who just want to get out there and put on good events for the people of New Zealand, but they’re being restricted from doing so.

While Parliament is back, it might only be for a short while, because, like a lot of businesses, we will be seeing Parliament probably close because of the isolation requirements of the Government with close contacts. I’ve been speaking to a lot of business owners who are really struggling with knowing what sort of solutions they should put in place to make sure that their businesses don’t stop functioning in the months coming up. So I really want to take my hat off to all of the people that are still striving and still trying to make a difference and keep their employees employed.

It really does feel like people are falling behind. People are working harder and harder, but it’s feeling like it’s getting harder to get ahead, and a lot of that has to do with what this Government has done with COVID and how that’s affected our economy. We need a healthier economy this year.

If we look at just housing, for example, I was in contact with a man just this week who’s a solo dad of one young boy and he really wants to be able to provide a new home for him and his kid. He’s found a home, he’s got the 20 percent deposit for the home, but, in the meantime, he can’t get his mortgage pre-approval because of legislation that the Government put through which is making it harder and harder for banks to sign off on giving people access to that dream of homeownership. It’s the same for a solo mother that I was in contact with, with two kids. She already has two jobs and the bank said, “No, you need a higher income to be able to get a mortgage pre-approval.” So she’s out there looking for a third job.

There are so many things that are making it harder in the meantime, while they’re trying to get mortgage approval, to even save. Rents are going up, the cost of living is going up, you know, going to the weekly shop and trying to fill the basket is just getting so much more expensive. Every time you fuel up at the petrol pump, it’s getting more and more expensive. But for the landlords and the rents—we’ve had the healthy homes standards, we’ve had interest deductibility, we’ve had brightline standards being extended, and Kāinga Ora is also in the bidding, making house prices even more expensive. There’s just so much bureaucracy, which is making it hard to get ahead as a New Zealander.

We need to actually get rid of the bureaucracy and allow for more opportunity. ACT’s solution to the housing crisis is: just simply allow for more homes to be built. The real issue is infrastructure financing and funding. We’ve been hearing so many different regulations and ways that people could build more homes, theoretically, in this Chamber, but it really does come down to infrastructure financing and funding. Our solution is to allow for half of the GST on every new build to go to the local council that issues the consent, because that’s where the true hold-up is. We try and make it sound so difficult, but it really is quite that simple.

The cost of living has been going up because of the Government’s response to COVID19, and we’re seeing, essentially, a 6 percent COVID tax. I think a lot of New Zealanders need a break, especially those New Zealanders who are striving so hard to put money away to save for that house deposit and they’re finding, in the meantime, it’s getting whittled away by inflation. We should be giving them a tax cut to help them get ahead. We need better economic management, less wasteful spending, less bureaucracy, and more opportunity.

We also need healthy, thriving communities. You don’t have to go very far in New Zealand to talk to people who are feeling unsafe on the streets: women who are afraid to walk out of their buildings at night; people, even now, who are afraid to walk to work. People don’t feel safe, and dairy owners in particular are really feeling this. And you shouldn’t, in New Zealand, feel unsafe when you’re just trying to live and make an income. I think we need to do better to make our streets safer, and the ACT Party has many policies around this: on gang injunction orders and also making sure that we’re rehabilitating prisoners so that there is opportunity for a safer community.

I think a lot of the stress that comes from managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ)—and we need to get rid MIQ. We currently have community cases transmitting in New Zealand, and yet we’re still allowing for the borders to be closed for people who have negative-tested, who have vaccinations, and they just want to come home and see their families. It’s quite cruel what we’re doing as a country to New Zealanders who are locked outside of our own borders, and it creates division.

We need to do better to have a healthy, thriving community by acknowledging that our education standards are slipping and we have to do better. We have to acknowledge that the healthcare reforms that the Government’s trying to put through don’t actually fix the real problems that are faced in the healthcare system—the workforce shortage. With the borders shut for nearly two years, we didn’t allow for health workers to actually enter the country and help out with our COVID response and for the long term.

We need to have a better mental health policy. There are a lot of people struggling in New Zealand, and we don’t need to spend more money—like we hear—on mental health policies; we just need to get rid of the bureaucracy in the system. There’s a lot of money that sloshes around and doesn’t actually get to the people who truly need it.

I want to talk briefly on the last issue of this year that’s important to me, and that’s the Kiwi identity. I went to an event this weekend and I heard from a man who’s a Sri Lankan New Zealander, and he said last time he went back to Sri Lanka, he went into a business and asked, “Is this a Tamil, Muslim, or Sinhalese business?”, and the owner said, “It’s a Sri Lankan business.”, and I like that. I think that’s what we need to be like here in New Zealand. We are a multi-ethnic society. We have so many different races and religions and we are all equal. We all belong here. We’re all New Zealanders. Every single business in New Zealand is a New Zealand business. We are more than just Māori and generic white; we are hundreds of different ethnicities that all deserve to be respected. We need to be united behind good policy that acknowledges this, rather than being divided based on our race. We should be a liberal democracy that respects every person’s right to be treated equally. Instead of becoming fixated on our differences, we should respect our common humanity.

There has to be hope, and the ACT Party will be delivering that this year. We will be holding the Government to account, but we’ll be proposing good ideas to make sure that we have a healthy economy, a healthy, thriving community, and a shared Kiwi identity, and that is behind good public policy, which we’ll be promoting this year. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s indeed an honour to speak for the first time this parliamentary year and to support the Prime Minister’s statement. The most important question, the one asked by the youngest New Zealanders, the children, is: “Why?” I’ve always believed that that is the most important question they ask and we should ask always. There have been, over the last couple of years here, in facing the COVID challenges, thousands of decisions made by my colleagues, often shared with members of the Opposition—a heads-up on these things. They are hard decisions and the question of “Why?” is a reasonable one that everyone should ask about those decisions.

There are people outside the Parliament here who are somewhat confused. Their answer is not the answer that we would provide. I believe that the PM’s “why”, through her statement, is the one shared by Māori. My good mate Willie Jackson would say I’m a very poor student of tikanga Māori. He’s probably right but I do keep trying. Māori have a saying: “What is the most important thing in the world? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.” Everything that we have done in Government, through COVID and before that, is for people, for New Zealanders. There was some wisdom in the previous speaker, Brooke van Velden’s statement, but there was an underlying view that we are here for business. What a ridiculous statement. We are here for people. The view that people are here for business is not true. Businesses are here for people—the owners, the customers, the employees—but we’re not here as the slaves for business. We are here to support people—New Zealanders first and foremost.

When COVID broke out, we reached out to people who were researchers around the world. We reached out to them for their knowledge to develop the vaccines. We reached out to healthcare workers. Fortunately, we weren’t confronted with the realities of COVID like other countries, but we had the wisdom to stay ahead, to ask the questions, to ensure that we put in place provisions to protect our people at every part and stage and sector of our community and society. We remain committed to that and we’ll always remain committed to that. He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

We realise that the people we needed were not just doctors and nurses but, actually, supermarket workers, truck drivers, and people who worked on farms, and we moved, firstly, to protect them from what could have been a flood of COVID, and then to ensure that we had assistance for them through the wage subsidy. We ensured we had assistance to business to ensure that the people who owned businesses—not the businesses; the people who owned them—were in a position to be able to continue to keep that business going if they thought it was viable.

We moved to cushion the blow that was going to occur to our economy, but we focused on the people, and we will continue to. And it worked. Our economy bounced back. Firstly, we dealt with COVID. Then, we had the onslaught of Delta, and that set us back a little bit, and now we have Omicron, but we worked our way systematically through those challenges and, yes, it has interrupted business, and, yes, it’s interrupted people’s lives, but the facts speak for themselves. The lowest level of deaths and hospitalisations in the OECD: something each and every one of us should be proud of. It’s not us; it’s every New Zealander who has committed to do the right thing, and I thank them for that.

But the question of why we’ve done this is important. There are businesses out there and there are business owners and people who worked in those businesses that might have lost jobs or lost all their savings. Take the primary sector, where, because of the border closures, we didn’t have the people working in to do the jobs across many of the sectors. So, firstly, we got alongside the training establishments, the people who could help upskill those people, taking on board the fact that many people had lost their jobs in tourism, and assisting them to transition across. We did that from the top of the country to the bottom, and we kept places like Taratahi and Telford going. In fact, we built them up after they’d been run down by the previous National Government. We built them up to provide the courses, to provide the skills to people who needed to transition into other jobs. It may be temporary; it may be long-term.

We are approaching $50 billion in primary sector export earnings—never ever before achieved—through the COVID pandemic. Yes, it has been challenging. Yes, I acknowledge the changes and challenges for people in those sectors, but congratulations—we have done it, because we’re Kiwis and because we’ve built on the values of egalitarianism and equality of opportunity, but ensuring there are safeguards and protections for those people who are unfortunate. It’s not for business. If we have good, well-trained, healthy people, we will have vibrant businesses and a healthy economy. The facts speak for themselves. The $50 billion is a success story through COVID, and I doubt that there’s any other country in the world that’s achieved that sort of growth, that sort of success. Yes, there are some sectors, like tourism and hospitality, that are doing it hard, and we’ll work through to help them.

We have a trade agenda. We’ve always been, as a trading nation, focused on trade, but we now have a new agenda called Trade for All. There was growing concern that trade was just benefiting some people, some businesses, and not flowing through to each and every New Zealander. Our Trade for All strategy ensures that what we negotiate through trade agreements, what we do to facilitate trade through the Government agencies—New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and all that good work—enables all New Zealanders to see the benefits of that.

Because we had, in summary, still a low-wage economy, we lifted the minimum wage. We had to do that. There is huge pressure on people on low incomes. We need to lift that up and for a nation that is proud of its innovation, that’s enjoying the success of record commodity prices at the moment, we have to keep in mind that sharing some of that wealth will ensure that we have a better future. Build back better—that’s been said a lot around the world. Well, we have to do that, not just talk about it. So sharing that wealth that we create among all of society is absolutely crucial to ensure that all New Zealanders benefit.

There is a lot happening in the trade area. We have, of course, just announced the date—7 April—of the free-trade agreement with China, negotiated in 2008 by the previous Labour Government and now upgraded by this Labour Government to give us growing opportunities into that big market. But that’s not enough. We have to diversify. We have to open the doors in the UK and the EU and work across the globe to ensure the fine, high-quality products and services we produce can be sold around the world to generate the wealth we need. We’re reconnecting with the world. It has been hard to bring New Zealanders in. No, the ACT Party is completely wrong to say we didn’t bring in healthcare workers. Those are misconstrued facts, mistruths, the kind of misinformation that goes out to the people in front of Parliament to fuel their unfortunate ignorance and views.

We will allow people in as long as we can ensure that the hard work that Kiwis have done to save lives in this country is not undermined by a rush for a few months, a month here or two, to get people back. We know we need them. We know that in viticulture and horticulture there are seasonal pressures, and we’re doing all we can to alleviate those pressures, and then moving on through into dairy. But so too are other sectors, and the one that is most important—and there’s no wealth without health, and if we think we can run our healthcare workers into the ground through a COVID pandemic and outbreak, they’ll be packing their bags and leaving through exhaustion. We need to look after them. I want to thank them for what they’ve done to prepare. They will be facing more infections and a healthcare system under pressure, but I have confidence in what my colleague the Hon Andrew Little is doing to bolster the healthcare system and in what we are doing as a Government to focus on people: he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. That is why a Labour Government is in power. That is who we govern for: the people of this country—all of them.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. So here we are today debating the Prime Minister’s statement, after four years of her Government being in power. The speech was riddled with platitudes, self-congratulation, and hyperbole. That’s not to say the Government hasn’t achieved anything; I want to acknowledge that it has. But I think there is something that has occurred under this Government that is much more insidious; in fact, it is invidious. It is undesirable and it’s unwelcome. It has seeped out and spread throughout our community and our country. It is the issue of how divided a society we have become.

The Prime Minister is very accustomed to delivering edicts to New Zealanders. Standing on the podium of truth, she has happily proclaimed the new rules, and an army of public servants have set about implementing them. And while this has been necessary in the short term, during periods of crisis, over the longer term this has left many New Zealanders feeling steamrollered, confused, and alone. The Prime Minister has made it clear that her Government knows best, that Wellington is the centre of the universe, and that there is nothing she won’t centralise. What this serves to do is to alienate many New Zealanders.

The Prime Minister persists in using the term “the team of 5 million people”. But only someone who is wilfully putting their head in the sand could be blind to the dysfunction of this so-called team. New Zealand is divided because the things that we all thought were what New Zealand stood for have been tossed out the window. They are being contested, leading to unfair outcomes. There are the haves and the have-nots. The gaps have widened and we have all witnessed the huge divisions that have emerged.

For a start, the Prime Minister is excluding the million Kiwis who are currently living and working overseas, the so-called flightless Kiwis. We have all seen the callousness of this Government. We have heard from our elderly superannuitants stuck in places like Australia for more than 26 weeks, who are now getting letters from the Ministry of Social Development demanding that they repay their super because they haven’t been able to get back to New Zealand. They do not feel like they are part of the team.

Then we’ve had the really cruel outcomes. We’ve had families split apart because members can’t get through the house of misery called MIQ—managed isolation and quarantine. They’ve been unable to see their loved ones before they die or even attend a funeral. It is totally unreasonable that a person has to go on a hunger strike to be able to see their dying father. It is not any surprise that they do not feel like they are part of the team.

And then, the division between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, those who accept the mandates and those who do not, as evident outside this wall—their anger is palpable.

Then, there are those who work from home, calling for greater restrictions, while hard-working New Zealanders go out to work every day in places like petrol stations and supermarkets. But when the Government centralises—sorry, forcibly takes rapid antigen tests that forward-thinking New Zealand businesses have ordered and when Sir Ian Taylor has to speak to the media because many New Zealand businesses are too scared to criticise the Government, is it any surprise that these people do not feel like they’re part of the team?

Then, there are those who are in work and those who are on benefits. Why is it that there are 187,000 people on the jobseeker benefit now, when there are businesses crying out for help? What is the Government doing to get those people back to work? Instead, we have a Government that is in the business of growing benefit dependency. One out of nine working-age Kiwis is now on a benefit. That is not kindness; it is shameful.

Then, we have the old and the young. The elderly are fearful that they will get COVID, but they are also angry. Many can’t understand te reo and feel threatened and disrespected because they can’t. They don’t know how to use a computer well and they’re confused about the robot on the end of an 0800 number and they worry about internet banking.

On the other hand, our young are angry at the older generation. They feel that they’re ruining our planet and not embracing climate change faster, at a time when this Government is importing a record amount of coal from Indonesia. They’re upset that they will never own their own home, because they have been priced out of the market. Is it any surprise that these Kiwis do not feel part of the team?

Talking of property, the Government’s cocktail of policies will lock and is locking our younger generations out of homeownership. New banking regulations are making it harder for people to get a mortgage. Interest rates will rise as a result of inflation skyrocketing, and the new DTI—debt to income—limits that Grant Robertson has allowed the Reserve Bank to look into and investigate will only make it much harder for first-home buyers. Weekly rents are up by $125. Almost 25,000 people are on the waiting list for a State house. That’s a fivefold increase in four years. Is it any surprise that these Kiwis do not feel part of the team?

Then, there’s the divide between city dwellers and rural communities. Urban dwellers are blaming the farmers for poor water qualities; while farmers blame urban dwellers and developers that lead to sediment run-off and poor council-owned waste-water treatment stations that foul our waterways and beaches. And don’t get me started on the rules and regulations and condemnations being raised and rammed and directed at our farmers. Is it any surprise that these Kiwis do not feel part of the team?

And a really worrying aspect is the divide between those who respect the law of the land and those that do not. Hundreds of law-abiding citizens and gun owners turned in their rifles and their handguns while the gangs held on to theirs.

And while we’re talking about that, we’re also seeing a growing divide by race. Proposals like the three waters have done untold damage because many people see them as a takeover of assets built up by all New Zealanders, and the uncertain future role of Māori in the management and ownership of those assets. Rather than being open and transparent and taking New Zealanders along with them, we have a Government that has been less than transparent, with discussions held behind the doors. I’m ashamed of what this is going to do to the race relations in New Zealand and what it’s done already.

Finally, there are the many small-business owners who’ve been prevented from trading as a result of Government-imposed lockdowns. In the meantime, massive multinationals have hoovered up their customers and their trade. These are people crying out for our help. I talked to a tour operator on Friday. I said, “How’s your business?” “My revenue’s down by 50 percent,” he said. I spoke to my taxi driver last night: “How’s business?” He said, “Shocking.” I spoke to a restaurant owner—he has six restaurants in the lower part of Queen Street; he’s closing one down, at a loss of about a hundred jobs.

And then, over the weekend, I got this message about a person saying all the foot traffic is leaving Queen Street and how it’s taking his profitable business and turning it into an unprofitable business. And what have we got? We’ve got a Government that thinks the only solution is a wage increase. Is it any surprise that these small-business owners do not feel part of the team? We are in a bad place.

Can I thank that member, Andrew Bayly, for his volley of contradictions. What I heard from that member was running down local councils for their poor handling of their assets and fouling our waterways, and then in the next line having a go at the three waters proposal. That proposal is to make sure that those assets are managed in a way that benefits our country as a whole. The other contradiction was—he’s clearly against the raising of the minimum wage, yet his deputy leader is in support of raising the minimum wage, something that will see families around this country see an increase in income, and that always leads on to increased spending in their community. That is good for business, that is good for our community, and that is good for our whānau, wherever they might be.

If one listens to that side of the House, you would swear it was a picture of doom and gloom. The ACT Party today has just got up and said that they would look towards a huge policy reform where—well, a quick look at their policies will help one see that, actually, they only mention the word “inequity” in their health policy once. And that’s because they think it only applies to rural centres and Māori that live in those rural centres. It does not acknowledge that most Māori live in an urban centre. It doesn’t acknowledge the conversation I had with a wahine in Paihia a couple of weeks ago—Pākehā wahine—who said to me, “You know what, Minister Henare? I got my vaccine first dose, second dose, and the booster from the local Māori provider, the Ngāti Hine Health Trust. Why? Because our GP services don’t cater for us, so I go to the Māori health provider who is providing more in rural communities than any of the other GP services.” And yet you just have to quickly look at the health policies from the ACT Party and you’ll see a step backwards.

Our Prime Minister, in her statement this year, made it very clear that together as a country we have overcome many obstacles—obstacles that were there before COVID-19 and obstacles that came about because of COVID-19. We did that with strong leadership. We did that with a focus on the wellbeing of our people, acknowledging that the wellbeing of our people makes for the wellbeing of this country. I agree with the sentiments of my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor: he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. This Government has done a fantastic job. If we look across our record, it’s easy to compare the statistics with other countries overseas that show just how well we’ve done: such a low death rate, high vaccination rates.

I recall, after the announcement of the Delta outbreak, the other side of the House claiming, “Why should Māori get preferential treatment for vaccination? Why should they get extra funding?” We now have an eligible population of over 12 years-plus with a vaccination rate amongst Māori of over 90 percent. We were told that was unachievable. We were told there was no way you were going to encourage Māori people to get their vaccination rates up so high. I’m proud. I’m proud of the leadership from this Government. I’m proud of the leadership and hard work from our Māori health providers right across the country.

A quick look at some of those statistics will show that some of our larger Māori health providers, in fact, almost 65 percent of the vaccinations they delivered were to non-Māori. That is because Māori take a he tangata, he tangata, he tangata approach, despite the assertions from the other side of the House that we are walking down into a divided State, that we are seeing separatism. That’s absolute rubbish. A quick look at those vaccine numbers will tell members on that side of the House that Māori providers cater for all of our people. That’s a simple suggestion to say that what’s good for Māori is good for the rest of the country.

And you’ll see that in the health reform agenda that our Minister the Hon Andrew Little is progressing for our country. You will see the establishment of a Māori Health Authority, something I am extremely proud of, so that we can turn around the entrenched inequities that have seen Māori health statistics continue to head downwards—something that I’m sure everyone in this House will agree with, but the difference is this Government’s doing something about it. The other side of the House is quite happy to run down Māori efforts or even personal responsibility for the fact that our system has been actually established to run against them over many, many decades now. This Government is taking the opportunity to fix that.

The Hon Andrew Little is right. It’s going to take some time. And I’m proud that in a short period of time, he has led our health reform work that will see, on 1 July, the lights on for the Māori Health Authority and Health New Zealand. When we announced that policy on 21 April last year, everyone laughed and said that it couldn’t be done. Everyone laughed and said, “You can’t disestablish DHBs, create a Health New Zealand, create a Māori Health Authority within the space of just over 14 months. You can’t do it.” I’m proud to say we’re well on track. We have our interim boards in place. Just recently, in fact yesterday, I was privileged to be a part of the pōwhiri for the new interim chief executives for both Health New Zealand and the Māori Health Authority. We look forward to continuing our work with them to make sure that come 1 July this year, it’s lights on. But, like the Minister said, that’s just the start. We need to continue to support the aspirations of our communities, their health aspirations, and their wellbeing aspirations, to make sure that as we continue to develop our health reform work and our health sector, it matches those aspirations.

As we look towards our COVID response, I’ve talked about vaccination numbers, we now find ourselves in the onset of Omicron and are shifting to phase 2. We’re unapologetic about the plan that we established for making sure that our community continues to stay safe during the Omicron outbreak. Phase 1 was about continuing to push the message for boosters and vaccinations, continuing to drive paediatrics roll-out for the vaccine. That was important because we know the science is very clear: the vaccine will continue to support and protect our communities. That is the important message that we continue to espouse in our communities and make sure we can give our people the best chance for protection. But as we look towards the onset of phase 2—that’s about working to minimise the disruption of Omicron while also protecting our most vulnerable—there are going to be some changes around the way we isolate and also the testing regimes that we use.

In my contribution, as well, today, I want to say to our whānau out there: do not be afraid. Our Māori health providers, our health providers, and our health sector, our community leaders have been well briefed with respect to this particular plan and how we deal with Omicron in our community. I encourage, for those whānau who are feeling a little bit nervous about Omicron coming into their communities, reach out to the whānau, reach out to your Māori health provider, reach out to the health sector who can support you to make sure that, as Omicron continues to sweep across our country, you are in the best position to keep you and your whānau safe. That’s the message we need to make sure our people hear: not the message from what we’re hearing on the forecourt of this Parliament, but the message that we can do this and we can do this together. We’ve proven over the past two years that our response to COVID-19 is world leading and we can continue to make sure it’s that way as we look towards the future and what comes.

I’ve talked about the health reforms. There is so much going on in the reform space that our people are excited and optimistic about what that brings. In my final minute and a half I want to just say thank you. Thank you to the team of 5 million. Thank you to our hard-working health sector. Thank you to our hard-working health workforce. Thank you to our Defence Force personnel. As Minister of Defence, I know that they’ve worked hard in our managed isolation and quarantine space, but they’ve also been agile and responsive to the needs internationally and domestically. I want to say thank you to our community leadership who continue to support our communities, our families, despite the challenges of disinformation and misinformation that is being fed to them constantly. I want to say thank you to every mum and dad who has encouraged their child and taken them along to be vaccinated, because we know vaccination and being boosted will give you and your family the best protection as we look towards protecting ourselves beyond the coming weeks and into the months ahead with respect to COVID-19.

I also want to say, and it’s unlike us, but I want to say thank you to my colleagues, the leadership from our Prime Minister, the leadership from our Ministers, fellow colleagues right across this entire Government who have worked hard to continue to support our communities while also coming here to do the mahi where our people expect them to be to make sure that their voices are heard, here and in the responses and policies that this Government put in place to protect our whānau. A big thankyou to one and all.

I want to follow on from Minister Henare’s kōrero and talk about, obviously, supporting our Prime Minister’s statement, but also add my thanks to the Minister who has just finished his kōrero and has led the way in terms of our Māori response.

Mihi ana ki a koe, Peeni, mō tō kaha ki te kōkiri te kaupapa. Ahakoa i ētahi wā he nui te whakahē kei te kōkiri i te kaupapa, he mihi nui ki a koe.

[I acknowledge you, Peeni, for your strength in driving this initiative. Despite the many criticisms at times, the project still progressed, and I acknowledge you for that.]

He has led the way for us, despite some of the criticism and condemnation sometimes from the other side, and has played a vital part in the team going forward—a team ably led by our Prime Minister, and that’s why our Minister has singled her out. And, of course, that leadership team, led by herself, Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson, and, of course, Chris Hipkins, has come up, I think, with the best wellbeing and survival strategy, perhaps, that the world has seen. It’s been a brilliant strategy, despite the dire predictions from the Opposition: the National Party, who wanted to open up the borders last September, who ran dopey petitions, and then the petitions disappeared into the abyss; the ACT Party, who would have opened the borders 12 months before the National Party; and the Māori Party, who would have closed the borders forever. None of them could match our strategy that has seen 53 fatalities—a number so small in comparison to other countries. We’re talking about 11 deaths per million. We, of course, were given no credit from the Opposition, just criticism and mad accusations.

Sadly, my mates from the Māori Party have been the leaders with the crazy accusations. They accused the Labour Māori caucus of being murderous, of playing “Squid Games”. They were adamant that thousands of Māori would die, and we were guilty, as a Māori caucus, of rolling out a modern genocide. Somebody needs to tell them 18 Māori died. Obviously a tragedy—obviously a tragedy—but that’s not exactly a modern genocide. Millions have to die for a modern genocide, thousands maybe, but not 18. So, sadly, our relations and our whanaunga, friends in the Māori Party are very confused, but intent on running fearmongering strategies and opportunistic campaigns.

Sticking with the facts is probably the right way to go, rather than coming out with nonsense—the latest nonsense being that they don’t support mandates. I have to ask the Māori Party: what mandates don’t you support? Apparently co-leader Rawiri Waititi says they support the hospital ones but not the other ones. Oh, right. The other ones that actually look after our kids at schools and preserve their lives. So the Māori Party doesn’t support those ones, but they’re—anyway, they’re a confused lot, your relations, Peeni Henare, I tell you. So a question’s got to be asked of the Māori Party: what mandates do you support? Because keeping our kids safe should be paramount.

So they’re a silly lot, and I had to say that today. What a shame they’re not here. I really wanted to tell them, but I’ll send them a text just to confirm my kōrero, and ask them to get their acts together, instead of coming out with their extreme, opportunistic, they think they’re campaign-winning strategies but they’re stupid strategies, from a silly party who are confused about things. And the sad thing is, if you listen to a Rawiri Waititi speech or Debbie Ngarewa-Packer speech, you’d go and jump off the Auckland Harbour Bridge afterwards if you were a Māori, because they’re so negative and there’s not a positive thing they’re saying about Te Ao Māori.

So, sad about the Māori Party and the Opposition, but we as a Māori caucus, as a Government, are really proud of the mahi we’ve gone down, and Minister Henare went down that track. We knew that when we rolled out by Māori, for Māori strategies and solutions, we would get a turn-around, and we got a terrific turn-around in the last three months when we rolled out $120 million to our Māori communities. We saw vaccination rates really ramp up. Since the fund opened, the first dose rate for Māori increased from 69 percent to 90 percent, with the fully vaccinated rate increasing from 48 percent to 86 percent, and the gap between Māori and non-Māori really started to close. Through Te Puni Kōkiri and Te Arawhiti, we have been able to access and work with our people. This is on top of other Māori health investments. So we are pleased with the way things are rolling and ramping up, and we’ve seen a turn-around that I think we would never have seen under other Governments.

I want to also look at some of the other things that we’ve done well as a Māori caucus and as a Government. And we’ve had a very good economic response, I feel: a billion dollars of investment made in the Māori economy, employment, culture, and our people at the last Budget. And in the housing area too—an area where myself and Minister Henare work—we’ve seen the launch of Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga in 2021: a joint programme that has invested in 182 houses, with more approvals expected in the coming months. TPK—Te Puni Kōkiri—has committed $16 million out of the $98 million available for years 2021-2022, and there are 108 homes on papakāinga and 438 house repairs. The main point of the housing area, though, is that we negotiated—Minister Henare leading the way again in that area, with myself in TPK—a coming together of TPK and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, which is crucial if we’re going to turn around some of the housing rates for Māori.

In the employment area, 724 cadets have been contracted in the year to date through the cadet programmes—$10 million committed; $2 million has been committed to Pae Aronui. I’m very proud of some of the work that’s gone in in terms of Pae Aronui, where we have got right in with the gang whānaus and the disaffected and we’ve seen real turn-arounds. In the enterprise area, TPK continues to lead development of the Māori economic resilience strategy and the Māori small to medium sized enterprise ecosystem support and the procurement policy to date. The number of Māori businesses that have been appointed to all-of-Government panels has significantly increased. And we’re proud of this procurement area: an area that Minister Mahuta led initially, and I’ve taken over. It is a position that we’re very proud of because, of course, we could not advance the procurement side of things when we were last in Government because, again, we get hit with all this separation nonsense. But it has been a real asset and boost for our people in the Māori business area.

In our reo area of Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, we’ve secured $14.8 million over the next four years and appointed a Māori broadcasting board that will complement what’s happening in the public media area that Minister Faafoi is rolling out. These are some of the examples of the work that we’ve done so far. I’m proud of the way that our Māori caucus has worked and our Māori Ministers have worked. Recently, we did a groundbreaking spectrum deal. This is a unique deal that gives Māori a real opportunity to develop their interest in the area into the future and a deal that was widely and positively supported by all the major players in the telco industry. I was really pleased that National did not utter one word of criticism—so congratulations, National. I think that was probably only done because you saw how well the industry reacted and responded. And so it was good that you shut up when we did this ground-breaking deal: a deal that the National Party would never have done; in fact, refused to do when they were in power, choosing just to give cash to our people. It was groundbreaking stuff: 20 percent in terms of the spectrum and a major investment. So, well done to our people.

We have Matariki being celebrated officially for the first time as a nation. That will be happening this year. We’ve got our Māori Health Authority that Minister Henare talked about. Māori will be part of the three waters reform, and we make no apologies for that, because Māori have been factored out of that area for so long, it’s not funny. And later in the year, I’m hoping to complete my kōrero and our work with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: mahi that was started by the National Party, started by John Key, started by the Māori Party, and we’re committed to finishing that work so that New Zealanders can have a say on what sort of nation we should have going forward and what sort of constitution we should have. It won’t be binding, but it’ll be, in my view, a great example in terms of New Zealand race relations going forward in the future years. Kia ora anō tātou.

The next call is a split call. I call on Chris Baillie.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Last year, MPs started their Christmas holidays and trotted off to spend time with their families. Some even trotted off around the world and were lucky enough to get managed isolation and quarantine spots ahead of thousands of New Zealanders—very lucky!

I thought I’d tell you about how some business owners in the hospitality industries spent their holidays. We’ll start by with dealing with the COVID rules. Scanning-in, checking vaccine passports—all were the responsibility of the business owner. Fewer people coming in the door but they had to employ more staff—despite customers all being over 18, they know the rules, and they know when they’re breaking the rules, there’s no personal responsibility involved there at all or expected. Staff are having to wear masks in sweaty, uncomfortable environments, making it difficult to communicate with these customers. There’s been a huge increase in broken glasses, tripping on steps, and burns, due to the decreased and reduced peripheral vision that these masks create. Any health and safety inquiry would recommend the getting rid of masks.

Hospitality venues have had to deal with customers who feel the enforcement of the rules aren’t tight enough and staff get abused. And then, next thing, customers that feel there shouldn’t be any rules at all, and again, staff bear the brunt of this customer dissatisfaction.

Then, there was the brilliant idea of paying unvaxxed staff four weeks’ pay to give them time to change their minds—whether they get vaxxed or not. No worries, businesses can afford it, no problem! One business has two staff left, which meant the end to any holiday plans the business owners had. I suppose that’s just what you get for owning a business and employing people!

Over the last seven weeks, there have been six statutory holidays. Christmas was on Saturday and most hospitality businesses are closed on Christmas Day—actually, not because staff don’t want to work, quite the opposite in a lot of cases, and not that the public don’t want to go out, but it’s just not affordable: time and a half, day in lieu, the prep time that is involved, and the ridiculously archaic liquor laws just make it unprofitable. And, of course, Monday and Tuesday after that were holidays. Then, New Year’s Eve was on a Friday, so the following Monday and Tuesday were holidays. We did get a couple of weeks with five days in them. The staff member that left because they weren’t vaxxed was actually vaxxed and got another job.

What do we do? What does the business owner do about it? We all know that the personal grievance legislation only works one way, as all the employment lawyers opposite will agree to, I’m sure. Then, there was Anniversary Day, another statutory holiday, and Waitangi Day fell on a Sunday, but, of course, we need another holiday, so that was Monday.

This Government believes that if you repeat something often enough, you actually believe it yourself and sometimes convince others as well. Just a few examples: the red light means back to normal—it’s not. People aren’t going out; they’re being told not to by the Government and the Government’s representatives. People are even cancelling their weddings. But the bride and groom will always get their day in the sun, and I don’t really care much about that, as much as I care about the actual business that employs the function staff, the food, and everything that goes along with it, and whose January—a month that’s normally busy and the business can put a little bit away to get them through the winter months—has been ruined. The myth that businesses have been looked after with the wage subsidy and the resurgence support payment—it’s just nonsense. I haven’t got time to explain it now, and I shouldn’t have to, but the fact that businesses are expected to be grateful for the small-business loans—loans that have to be paid back when Government policies make it impossible for the business to make money.

The Government must drop these crippling restrictions immediately or offer more realistic targeted support. Only in the Michael Wood school of economics held in the Council of Trade Unions club rooms does anyone believe that the endless minimum wage increases is the way forward. Even the Government’s own advisers don’t think so. From one business: three out of 26 employees are on the minimum wage. They’re students living at home, no rent to pay, no food to buy, being trained and learning skills that will see them right for the rest of their lives. The rest of the employees have earned their higher pay rate through loyalty and hard work—and they’re happy. Building a work ethic in this environment of entitlement and mediocrity in all areas of the Government’s policies is difficult. The good news is that the hard-working employees, ones who understand, will get through. So the business owners didn’t get a holiday; they didn’t get paid either, but their staff did. They deserve a lot more respect than what this Government is giving them. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I apologise to my colleague for trying to steal his call. It is great to be back and have Parliament back and be sitting again with Ministers answering questions or sometimes vaguely addressing questions. I have to say, however, that I’m not a huge fan of the landscaping job that’s been done out the front of Parliament. It is a sorry state of affairs out there. This weekend, we saw some mind games being played out, as well as a whole lot of very unhappy residents, business owners, and Wellingtonians just trying to go about living their lives. What was absent was any real leadership from the Government.

Earlier this month, the Government announced yet another multi-stage approach in its COVID-19 response: this time, the gradual winding down of managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ), finishing in October—in theory. On the one hand, I applaud the Government for providing a time line that people can plan around. But, on the other hand, MIQ is past its use-by date and needs to be put out of its misery, for the misery it’s creating, sooner rather than later.

In its announcement, the Government said that they’re maintaining MIQ to “reduce the spread of COVID-19 in our community from recent arrivals”. However, there is little justification for its continued existence for most of this year. With the number of community cases undoubtedly more than what is actually been tested and showing up—starting to get on that exponential curve—we’re only picking up a few dozen at the border. It is evidently far more likely that people coming into New Zealand over the next few months will catch COVID-19 here, domestically, rather than bring it in with them. There is no need to prolong the anguish of Kiwis and visa holders trapped overseas—not to mention their families here. Using MIQ to limit the spread of Omicron is arguably nonsensical at this point.

The Government also stated that their plan will finally—I say “finally”—but it will “immediately” address worker shortages. My first thought was, “An acknowledgment—I can’t believe it—albeit small one, of the damage caused by its immigration policies and a lack of visa processing in general.” My next thought was that I’ll believe when I see it, because, in all my years of interacting with the immigration system, it has never even remotely been as poorly managed as it is now under this Government—not by a long shot. The Government has run out of ideas in addressing a total shambles of its own making.

Recent examples are the scenes of migrants that you would have seen on TV, or in person, in Auckland especially, sleeping or camping out on the street all night just to get the chance to remain here. This a highly predictable outcome of the way that medical certificates are dished out. Once upon a time, any registered doctor in New Zealand could issue a medical certificate for immigration purposes. This made sense—they are medical professionals, after all. For better or for worse, this was changed some years ago—it probably made sense at the time—but, as a result, around New Zealand, there are just 135 doctors who can do this for immigration purposes. In fact, in my home city of Hamilton, there are just four who have Immigration New Zealand seal of approval. They are now dealing with a significant number of people needing to get medical certificates before the end of July, when applications close. Given Immigration New Zealand has only managed to approve 15 percent of the applications in their little December trial run of this resident visa, I wonder if they’re actually quite happy to see the bottleneck caused by the lack of approved doctors around the country. This is just one thing that could have been so easily avoided with proper policy-making.

For our international student market, we thought we would be getting them in semester A in good numbers, but now it turns out that it’s just going to be mostly semester B, with a cap on those numbers. That’s assuming countries like Australia haven’t taken them all yet, which they probably have.

We had the Productivity Commission last year bamboozle the Government’s entire justification behind its mythological immigration rese—and speaking of which, by October 2022, it would be 30 months since the border closed. With changes to the skilled migrant category coming, why haven’t stakeholders far and wide been involved in a consultation process? The reality is that simple changes can be made to our immigration settings to achieve what the Government wants in the medium to long term, without leaving behind a trail of human misery.

If you’re an entrepreneur and you want to innovate here in New Zealand, you want to come here and do that, you are evidently not welcome; there’s no good visa option. And if you’re already here on a work visa and try to set up a little side business for some extra income, you will have your visa cancelled, and deported. None of this makes sense. ACT will continue to be a productive and thoughtful Opposition in Parliament and we’ll use our time well in proposing good ideas for the country. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I’m delighted to take a call in this debate in support of the Prime Minister’s statement, but I want to start, like many have done before me, by acknowledging the people of New Zealand who have risen to the challenges that this global pandemic has imposed upon them. COVID-19 has not been easy, but the way that New Zealanders have risen to this challenge to fight for each other and joined together in unity has been inspiring. I want to thank everyone from the scientists, to our vaccinators, to our public servants, to our Kiwis who have just stayed at home and followed the rules because they know that, by doing that and putting people in their thoughts at the centre of what they do, they are saving lives.

It is through the leadership of our Prime Minister that our country has united to be a world-leading nation in the fight against COVID-19. Throughout this pandemic the Government has worked relentlessly to save as many lives as possible and to protect jobs and to cushion the blow to the economy. At every turn we are focused on what we can do, to do the right thing. We’ve acted early and decisively to prevent the worst of the impacts that we have seen elsewhere in the world.

Listening to some of the contributions from the Opposition here today and over the past few days, you might think that they didn’t even know what was going on in the rest of the world. It has been horrific and horrendous, and that is why I am very proud of the approach that this Government has taken. Our approach has worked. Our confirmed cases, hospitalisations, and our deaths have been the lowest in the OECD for each of the past two years, and unemployment levels have been at record lows. These results are a powerful confirmation of our collective effort, and I think we really need to emphasise that. This has been a collective effort of the vast majority of New Zealanders. The measures we have taken have saved lives. Our policies have protected jobs and saved businesses, and the plan we have followed has worked. We now face the challenges ahead in a better position than many countries in the world.

It is great to see our highly vaccinated population: almost 4 million New Zealanders double vaccinated and over 200,000 children have had their first dose. Over 1.9 million New Zealanders have received their COVID-19 booster vaccinations and uptake is rising rapidly. Our vaccination rates and the COVID-19 protection framework defied predictions of a summer surge and prevented the Delta destruction seen around the globe. It’s something that is not talked about very much, but we did defy what was seen around the rest of the globe. We can draw confidence from our position, confidence that with a clear plan, good scientific advice, and a unity of purpose New Zealand can chart its own path and together we can do this.

I particularly want to acknowledge our educators: our teachers, our school principals, our support workers, our teacher aides, and all of those who work in education to contribute to educate and inspire our young people. I can only imagine how challenging it must have been to replicate the learnings of the classroom in an online environment, something that is completely unfamiliar to most teachers, but I also want to thank the families who played their part, and will play their part in the future, in supporting their young people’s learning at home.

It has been challenging for our learners. I think about our 6- and 7-year-olds, particularly our 7-year-olds, who would have been 5 in 2020. A vast proportion of their education has been spent in an online environment particularly during the lockdowns and the uncertainty of that going forward, although we do hope, and we have put the framework in place, that that will be minimised.

For those preparing to leave school and sit their final NCEA exams, the last couple of years spent away from their peers would have been tough. And close to my heart is the learning support students—those students that need a little bit of extra support—but our amazing learning support professionals did everything that they could during those lockdowns to support them.

All of these sacrifices were necessary in order for us to save lives, but it wasn’t easy, and we heard the call from the sector that investment from the Government was necessary and urgent, and we responded. The Government supported teachers during lockdown through the delivery of learning packs, TV learning channels, resources, and devices. We also provided substantial support to help re-engage students after lockdowns, particularly in low-decile schools, from deciles 1 to 4, and our approach was to get those students back in front of their classrooms and back learning.

Through all the challenges that COVID-19 posed for education, there are also opportunities for learning, around doing things in a new way. COVID-19 has been a huge disruptor, but sometimes with disruption comes opportunity, and many of the schools that I have engaged with over recent weeks are well supported to look at the next phase and how they can provide flexible learning environments for the young people in their school. But many of them go beyond that. Many of them are excited about different ways of working, around how we can change up what school and what education can look like for our young people, and that’s a really exciting place to be. We can rethink what great educational delivery can look like.

We also know that during lockdowns and throughout the COVID journey to date stress associated with this has had a big impact on mental health, particularly for our young people, and the Government is working to address this. For the first time ever, 141 primary, intermediate, and small secondary schools throughout Aotearoa now have access to counsellors. This is expected to reach 24,000 young people with access to counselling support at school, and all—that’s “all”—large secondary schools have had an increase to their counselling staff allocation. Mana Ake, the mental health and wellbeing programme that is in partnership with Health, or led by Health in partnership with Education, is being rolled out into another five regions across New Zealand.

We know that learners who are happy and healthy learn better. That is why over the last few years, this Government has taken a range of work to support the wellbeing of learners to ensure that our kids get the best start possible. We’ve looked at and implemented healthy lunch programmes and the provision of free period products in schools, and this is a testament to this Government’s commitment to barrier-free access to education.

Just in my last couple of minutes, I also want to acknowledge the work that we are doing as a Government to ensure that an opportunity exists to address historical and persistent inequalities in the labour force for women. That is why as Minister for Women I am working to deliver New Zealand’s first ever women’s employment action plan and to look at the immediate and long-term actions needed in changing the labour market to get disadvantaged women into work and to support them to stay in work.

It is of course also important that women feel safe and supported within their work environment and that they are paid fairly and equally to their male counterparts. That is why I am proud to be part of a Government delivering on pay equity settlements across many workforces, lifting the minimum wage, which will have a massive positive impact on women, increasing sick leave, and requiring better work conditions for hard-working New Zealanders.

So this Government has provided stable and united leadership in a time that has been one of the most challenging in New Zealand’s recent history. We have invested in our young people, in our education system, in our workforce, and we have done so while continuing to make progress on the long-term challenges New Zealanders face. We will continue to make pragmatic progress to make the lives of all New Zealanders safer, healthier, and happier.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I understand that the Parliament is being beamed live out into the forecourt, which I’m not sure is going to help the situation that much at all. And if it is, I’d just say to those people out there, I support your right to express your views and I support your right to freedom, but please be respectful of other people’s freedoms as well. I’ll leave that there.

It’s been quite interesting, actually. I noticed this year when I got back a distinct change. I look over the other side and see here, or see on the Zoom meetings for select committees and around about in Copperfields and other places a huge change in the demeanour and the body language of the new entrants to Parliament in 2020 who came in on the other side on the high-water mark for Labour. As sure as the tide comes in, the tide goes out, and the realisation that that is starting to occur is starting to dawn on them, and they’re looking at one another and thinking is their career going to come to a very short end. I actually feel for them—I do feel for them. It’s been a hard road to get into Parliament and it’d be such a shame for many of them to only have one term, but that is what we sign up for. That’s what it’s all about. We all know that. On this side of the House, we know that far better than those new members do. It was pretty brutal in 2020, but these things happen, and so it’s always better to be prepared.

This is a generally happy time of year for the wine industry, because we’re really starting the vintage—right now, actually, grapes are being picked. The 2022 vintage is well under way. Unfortunately, like other agricultural industries, the wine industry has struggled to get critical workers into New Zealand. Getting them recognised as critical workers has actually been an incredible battle. To think that bureaucrats in Wellington can define who is a critical worker is beyond belief, actually, and the wine industry has, like many others, struggled to get enough staff in. At this time of year—it usually starts in January, actually sometimes before Christmas—winemakers and cellar hands, highly skilled people from the other side of the world, and grape harvester drivers come into New Zealand to work the vintage in the Southern Hemisphere. In our winter we have winemakers, cellar hands, and harvester operators that go to the Northern Hemisphere and work in their vintage, thereby turbocharging their careers and getting two vintages in one year. It is a really great symbiotic relationship; it’s fantastic for broadening people’s experience, but unfortunately not possible under COVID.

It could have been managed much more easily. It could have been dealt with properly, but they didn’t get recognised as critical workers and therefore couldn’t come in. On top of that, we don’t have the recognised seasonal employer (RSE) workers that we could and should have, most coming from COVID-free Pacific Islands. But no, we couldn’t get those in either. However, if they had just been rappers or DJs they’d have been in. It’s just outrageous what their priorities are on the other side. It has put incredible stress on industries that didn’t need it. Then on top of that, we have all the uncertainties with the isolation rules.

Fortunately, the wine industry has now been recognised under the critical worker exemption, but there’s still all the issues with these isolation rules, and it is absolutely crazy. Everyone is very concerned about that, and the whole industry can fall over or any industry production can grind to a halt very, very quickly. It’s right down in the other industries to the dispatcher, the forklift driver, the truck driver, the shelf stacker, and the checkout operator in our supermarkets, for example—all of our critical workers, all reliant on getting through these rules unscathed. That is a huge challenge.

The wine industry and other agricultural industries are all struggling with this. It is a massive issue for them. I’d be quite surprised if we get through unscathed. Right now, we’ve had an incredibly long botrytis infection period over the weekend in Marlborough, so that’s put more stress on because they haven’t been able to have the adequate RSE workers and other critical workers to—

💬 Hon Member: There’s plenty of RSEs.

—do the really good canopy management. Well, there might be RSE workers in some places; they’re not where they need to be. That’s a part of the problem. All of these issues come down to a Government led by people with little or no business experience—little, I would say, if any at all. That shows in the way their policies are rolled out. They have no idea how things work in the business world—no idea whatsoever.

Anyway, moving on, I notice in the Prime Minister’s speech that one of their flagship policies, 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030 wasn’t mentioned—not once. I wonder if they’re backing away from it. I deeply suspect they are. Everybody in the industry told them it was a silly thing to try and achieve. We can get to the high 90s and we will on our own—even the Climate Change Commission said it wasn’t something that was worthwhile doing, but anyway, the Prime Minister has backed away from that. So I think that’s very interesting. It could be little wonder.

Maybe they’re seeing what’s going on in the UK. I doubt they are, but maybe they are. Energy poverty has become a huge issue in the UK because of very poor energy policies, energy policies driven by a net zero approach without actually thinking through the consequences. They’ve actually now approved six new gas permits in the UK. They are sitting on massive shale gas reserves as well. In fact, the Bowland Basin would be able to supply all their energy needs for 50 years if they exploit it. We have gone down the same route with banning oil and gas, which not only does it—it’s only new exploration, as the Minister is getting very fidgety on his seat trying to say. Actually, it’s had a chilling effect on the investment in gas. In the meantime, we have record amounts of dirty Indonesian coal being imported into New Zealand at twice the emissions, all because of a misguided approach to energy.

Lake Onslow, of course, is another folly that the industry—it’s really difficult. I’ve been visiting many in the industry right across the sector. I’ve yet to find anyone who supports it. But apart from the NZ Battery Project, I don’t think anyone does. It’s a massive over-expensive white elephant and challenging geological conditions. I think it’ll be very interesting to see what comes out. I’m told the conservative estimates are $10 billion - plus, albeit that the official number is $4 billion. No one believes that—not one that I’ve come across anyway.

I also note that the Minister of Energy and Resources in her speech earlier in the day said she needs to see what the Opposition are going to do, we need to tell them what we’re going to do. I wonder why. I think it could possibly be because every time we come up with a good idea, six or seven months later, they adopt it. Well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and we’re very happy to do that. We’re quite happy for them to adopt our ideas. What we would urge them to do is do it in a more timely manner. Had they done that, we’d have ample rapid antigen tests in the country and businesses wouldn’t be fearful about stopping.

I can’t understand why they would lack the competence to actually get on and organise these things. It’s because they took January off; the rest of us all worked. They didn’t sit around and do their job, and we are all paying for it. Businesses in New Zealand are suffering needlessly because of poor management on that Government’s behalf. I think we deserve far better than that in New Zealand. I think a number of the people that are out there on the lawn protesting at the moment, they are just angry and confused about what’s going on in New Zealand, and they’re venting their frustration. I don’t support all of the things they are standing for, but I can understand why they are feeling the frustration that they are. I think it’s shameful that this Government doesn’t heed those calls. Do things in a more timely manner. Get the rapid antigen tests available. They’re not even able for people to get in the supermarket. They should be there. They can’t, because they’ve—[Time expired]

I call on Ginny Andersen. The next call is a split call.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. As we enter into this, our third challenging year of confronting a global pandemic, we may be better prepared than many other countries in the world, but we must always continue to make progress. We must continue to make progress for the wellbeing of our people and for the wellbeing of the next generation. I often look at my kids and I think about how they will look back at this chapter in our history—how they will be proud or not of what has been achieved—and I look at what’s been created and I think that they will be proud of what we have achieved.

We have committed to putting the wellbeing of not only current New Zealanders but also those future New Zealanders as well, putting that at the heart of everything that we do. And this goes well beyond having one of the highest vaccination rates, one of the lowest rates for the second year running in the OECD for both hospitalisations and COVID-related deaths. It goes well beyond that. It goes into things like our education on a daily basis—the very structures that our kids go to school in. Well before this Government came in, the structures that we’re putting our kids in, classrooms, were dilapidated. We had asbestos, leaks, kids learning in libraries. We had school infrastructure that was well underdone. In the Hutt Valley alone, not only are all primary schools receiving a much-needed injection to help those infrastructure costs but our three major public high schools have all received a major rebuild—Taita College, Wainuiomata High School, and also Hutt Valley High School—and this underpins the belief that it does not matter where you come from or how much your family earns, you have the right to get a good quality education, and you have the right to learn in a warm, dry, modern, fit-for-purpose classroom. And that is exactly what this Government is delivering.

It’s not just about the buildings, though; it’s also about what we’re learning inside those classrooms and what’s being taught. New Zealand takes pride in teaching its own history, and I’m pleased to be able to see that implemented across schools in New Zealand. I am extremely proud that schools will have the resources available for them to teach New Zealand history in school. New Zealand is a country that takes pride in our heritage, a small island nation in the Pacific with voyaging routes from both Hawaiki and Europe. I’m pleased that our kids will be learning all about that. Matariki—how exciting is it for our young people to not only learn about our history but to be able to celebrate that in a brand new public holiday. I’ve learnt about that from my children for the first time.

But it goes further than that. It also goes into what happens after school, with one of the lowest unemployment rates that New Zealand has seen for an incredibly long time. It is so good to be able to see young people going straight into employment and being proud to come home and help pay for groceries and to help pay for some of those costs that they need to. When this Government took office, it was faced with a vocational education system that was pretty much stuffed—fragmented, uncoordinated, and lacking strategic direction. Right now, we see skills training and employment, with businesses all lining up. I have to acknowledge, in my own area, the great role that the local Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce has done in coordinating from high school, to training, to employment to make sure that we are keeping all our young people engaged, employed, and skilled-up as much as they possibly can to earn the highest wages possible when they’re in the workforce. Free trades training—that’s been a huge boost as well. Our investment in fees-free apprenticeships and targeted training has seen more than 175,000 people take up that opportunity since July 2020—and that includes over 80,000 apprentices, who are out there right now working.

This has been great, but also there’s more to be done as well, and that’s in the space of keeping our communities safe. Feeling safe is crucial for young New Zealanders, as well as the rest of our community, and the huge injection in keeping communities safe has been well received. At a local level, we see the reopening of the Wainuiomata community police station after nearly a decade, with a full-time senior sergeant, two community youth aid officers, and two community constables providing on-the-job, local policing that has been well overdue in an area that’s needed it. We have the largest Police workforce ever, with huge numbers of officers focused on community and, also, organised crime. I’m proud to be part of a Government that’s delivering safety and security right across the board. This is not just about surviving the pandemic; it’s about building back better and giving our children a better future. I’m proud to be part of a Government that’s doing that every step of the way.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe, huri noa i te Whare, tēnā tātou.

[Greetings, Madam Speaker, and throughout the House, greetings to all.]

So the Prime Minister’s statement is an important part of Aotearoa New Zealand’s democracy. On Parliament’s first sitting day of the year, the Government outlines its intentions, and I’m pleased to be able to participate in this debate on the Prime Minister’s statement.

New Zealanders, as the Prime Minister said in her statement, have entrusted the Government with a huge responsibility, the responsibility of bringing New Zealanders and this country through a crisis. It has been hard. The decisions to close borders, to lockdown a country, to change the way we live our day-to-day lives are not decisions any Government wants to make, but these are decisions that had to be made to keep New Zealanders safe. And I’ll pause here to state the reason why this is so important: on this side of the House, all lives are important and worth protecting, no one is expendable. Protecting the lives and livelihoods of New Zealanders has always been our driving force. No response will ever reach unattainable perfection, but most New Zealanders will agree, whatever their political stripes, there was nowhere else in the world that they would rather be.

But our response is not just directed at essential decisions to get us through a crisis, on this side of the House we have continually committed—as other speakers in this debate have said—to build back better. This Government will lead New Zealand through this pandemic, take on challenges we face as a nation, strengthen our economy, and we will emerge stronger than before. The Prime Minister rightly drew attention to this, to New Zealand’s world-leading pandemic response. Despite the one-in-100-year pandemic that we are currently facing, unemployment is at record lows, record numbers of New Zealanders have moved off a benefit and into work, and growth remains strong in our export sector with record export prices on our dairy.

But we won’t go back to business as usual. The Government will improve our health system so it can respond to the ongoing health needs of New Zealanders and any future crisis that may arise, through the establishment of Health New Zealand and the Māori Health Authority, to deliver a genuine national health service for all New Zealanders. As the Prime Minister said, “We want all New Zealanders to live longer and healthier lives”, which is why the Māori Health Authority is absolutely key. As the Prime Minister said about reaching equality, “this is because we do not have [it]”, and on this side of the House we recognise this as a reality and that something needs to change, and so we are taking action.

The Government will also set up a new public health agency to ensure we are better equipped to fight outbreaks, new variants, and new pandemics in the future. We will also provide better support to the estimated 1.1 million disabled people in New Zealand through the new Ministry for Disabled People, and we will continue to roll-out primary mental health services in New Zealand.

New Zealand businesses and workers, as the Prime Minister said, have proven to be resilient, innovative, and highly adaptable during this pandemic, because, again, we are better than “business as usual”. Our economic plan, still, despite this pandemic, is to build a high-wage, low-carbon economy that provides economic security in good times and bad times. We need to—and we will—increase the value of our exports and develop new markets, invest in skills and new technology, modernise infrastructure, and use research and innovation to drive productivity, reduce emissions, and increase wages.

Much of my work on the Education and Workforce Committee is focused on building skills and training opportunities for New Zealanders. It was great to see the Prime Minister’s statement reflecting the importance of skills and training as a key part of this Government’s agenda. If we want a productive, high-wage, innovative economy, then skills and training are going to be a huge part of that. We’ve already committed to raising the minimum wage again this April to support New Zealand’s lowest paid workers. As with all economic recoveries, it is workers who will, in the end, deliver this, and we will support all New Zealanders—workers, their families, and the businesses that they work for—to move us past the pandemic, past business as usual, and into a better, more resilient, healthier, happier Aotearoa New Zealand.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to take a call on the Prime Minister’s statement, my first call in 2022.

Last Friday, I visited a local pharmacy in Hamilton to receive my COVID booster shot. There were a number of people waiting in the foyer. I waited for a period of time, and then I went through. I met with a gentleman named Ahmad, and Ahmad administered the booster shot, and I said to him, “How many booster shots have you administered, Ahmad?” And he told me he’s personally administered over 10,000 boosters. He said he’s actually done so many that he gets blisters on his fingers and, actually, at night time, he’s even dreaming about administering booster shots. The reason I mention Ahmad’s name is because I believe that his name should be mentioned in the Hansard, because he and many other health professionals have done an absolutely amazing, wonderful, tireless job in terms of supporting our COVID response.

While I start with COVID, the real topic I want to talk about from the Prime Minister’s speech is the topic of climate change. Because while as a country we are working through the COVID challenges—and, actually, as a globe—we’re working through the COVID challenges, the number one issue still facing our planet is climate change. If we don’t work together as countries around the world, as people, as one people across this wonderful Earth that we have, and if we don’t find solutions to climate change, the reality is there is no positive future for our planet and for our people. I’m very pleased to hear from the Prime Minister, in her statement, the continued climate change commitment. The previous Government, and I acknowledge them for it, signed us up to the Paris accord, and that was the right thing to do. That means we have targets to meet. At the moment, there are challenges, particularly in agriculture and transport, and I’m just going to touch on transport because transport affects all of us as New Zealanders, very personally.

I’ve been very excited to see—

💬 Barbara Kuriger: So does agriculture, if we eat.

—that we have got New Zealanders coming on board in terms of some of the transport changes. The member opposite mentions agriculture. Agriculture is important and I’d like to acknowledge all of the farmers—I have two uncles who own farms and they’re doing absolutely fantastic work in that space as our farmers continue to deliver high quality products as we sell food to the world. But just moving back to transport, I’d like to first touch on the clean car subsidy that the Government has given. There has been tremendous uptake on this. In fact, I’ve got the statistics here that there were more electric vehicles registered in New Zealand in six months last year than were registered in a full year in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. So double what we’ve seen in previous years, effectively. It’s really exciting to see New Zealanders get on board with these incentives in terms of these electric vehicles. I remember seeing a picture recently of the wharf in Auckland and it was full of Teslas—and other electric vehicles, I’m not here to endorse Tesla in particular—but it was full of a range of electric vehicles, and it was fantastic to see that.

I’d like to acknowledge the work that Waka Kotahi is doing in the transport space—for example, supporting things like passenger rail between Hamilton and Auckland, the Te Huia passenger rail service, which I actually rode on recently.

💬 Hon David Bennett: That’s gone well. Come on Jamie, you’ve got to be faster.

And I acknowledge the Hon David Bennett on the other side of the House there, who attended the sod turning for that a couple of years ago, so I appreciate his enthusiasm for that project. If I could just mention to the House, and those who are listening at home, that if you haven’t tried Te Huia yet, I encourage you to do so. An absolutely fantastic way to travel—you can be productive while you’re travelling, you can arrive at your destination fresh and, look, as a country we are behind the eight ball on rail compared to other countries. But, as a Government, we’ve invested significantly in rail and we will continue to do so.

Just another example of what Waka Kotahi are investing in is our public transport fleet, and we see many examples of this around the country, but I’ll just mention one example, which is Flex on-demand small buses. We’ve seen them start to roll out across cities in New Zealand, where you can use an app to basically book a small bus, which has around 12 seats. For around $2, you can get to your destination—very accessible and exciting. It’s fantastic to see these rolled out. I’d like to acknowledge councillor Angela Strange for her work on this—who’s been doing an absolute fantastic job there—and others who have been working incredibly hard on this. So there are many examples within the transport industry of the good work this Government is doing. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and speak in the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement. It’s a pleasure because it’s clear that throughout this pandemic, the Government has worked relentlessly to save as many lives as possible and to protect jobs and to cushion the blow to the economy. It’s also very clear that at every turn, the goal here is always to do what is right, to prevent the worst impacts that we have seen elsewhere and almost everywhere across the globe.

Although it’s been stated, it’s worth repeating: our confirmed cases, our hospitalisations, and the deaths have been among the lowest in the world. It clearly has been a world-class response, and one that’s been roundly acknowledged as such. Unemployment is at record lows; New Zealand has essentially weathered the disruption better than most.

The Prime Minister has led our response, our world-class response. The Prime Minister has led the response based on evidence, based on science, and based on a determined conviction to keep people at the centre of the response, and, importantly, the response has worked. Just as importantly, our approach has worked because the vast majority of people saw it made sense. They understood it made sense, and they did their bit. They realised and they understood that we don’t beat this as individuals; we beat it together. The choices we all make every day have impacts on others, and the vast majority of New Zealand people have made, and continue to make, choices that help protect others, and I want to thank all of those people for doing that.

The Prime Minister also talked about modernising New Zealand’s infrastructure. Just yesterday, I was talking to a constituent, a retired gentleman in my electorate with a background in engineering and construction, and among the various things he wanted to raise with me, he wanted, quite specifically, to note that our historic under-investment in infrastructure has had a really negative impact, and it’s stopped us from reaching our potential. We know that building new infrastructure is essential if we’re going to remain globally competitive and connected to the world, but some of the projects that I’m most enthusiastic about is this Government’s continued commitment to rebuilding our health system, with 24 new construction projects due to be completed this year, just as an example; also, completing the 350th Rural Connectivity Group mobile tower to keep rolling out broadband to some of our rural areas. Two such towers stand out for me in particular: Le Bons Bay, I understand, due to go up in May-June, and Lavericks Bay later on in the year. And our local team will keep working on other bays in the beautiful Banks Peninsula also, and I want to acknowledge how important this issue is for you all.

The Prime Minister’s statement also emphasised our focus on tackling climate change. This challenge will be a core part of our economic strategy. Like any challenge, it can seem a bit daunting, but it’s also a great opportunity for new jobs and for higher wages. We know that other countries are starting to move to make the most of these opportunities, so New Zealand simply can’t get left behind. Much of the work in this area is underpinned by protecting and restoring nature, and I was especially pleased when conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan recently announced Government funding for six fantastic projects in New Zealand, two of which happened to be in the beautiful Banks Peninsula. There will be planting and pest, weed, and predator control, not to mention heaps of jobs, in Whakaraupō Lyttelton Harbour, with further pest control programmes in various locations across Banks Peninsula and Port Hills. We welcome this Government’s investment.

Another area that the Prime Minister emphasised as an absolute focus is mental health. This, too, represents a real challenge and one that’s not easily resolved, not the least of which because the way that we conceive of mental health and wellbeing is evolving and changing—for the best, but we need to create new services so that people have more access and more choice to the support that they need. That’s why establishing primary and community services in general practice, kaupapa Māori, Pacific, and youth services is important and will continue to be rolled out and expanded over the next two years, and I look forward to that.

These services have delivered more than 280,000 sessions since July 2019 and 27,000 people were supported in the first quarter of 2021-22. But as with other challenges, there is still more work to do. But as our Prime Minister reminded us in her statement, our opportunities, our potential, greatly outweigh our challenges, and I look forward to doing more work.

I call Mark Cameron—five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I know why I came here. The ACT caucus knows why I came here. I got off a quad bike after 30 years on a farm in rural New Zealand because I had seen this Government oversee a rort in New Zealand farming communities, and it just got wider. Somehow this Government had created this fictional character like a dark overlord that literally went rampaging through rural New Zealand.

The Government by its own hand spawned the groundswell impetus—

💬 Hon Member: The farmers are making huge money!

And I see the member over there has got a contribution; she wants to weigh in on it. But to understand the year that happened, we have to understand year that was—sorry, I beg your pardon, the year coming. We must acknowledge that this Government is like a bull in a china shop. It has assaulted the rural communities in every sector. We routinely hear it, the Minister of Finance applauding the rural sector. The dairy industry, he says, has been the impetus that is driving New Zealand out of this COVID pandemic, financial security can be found in the dairy sector, but on the other hand he will target it and is part of a Government that does.

What do we know? We have to look back on the rural calendar highlights. We’ve seen a Government that have gone after your ute and they affectionately call that a fee-bate scheme, a tax on a tradie’s ute, a farmer’s ute—his tools, his ability to function on a farm. They’ve eroded our trust with the acquisition of private property rights masked under significant natural areas (SNAs). And when questioned by me through an Official Information Act process, the Associate Minister for the Environment, James Shaw, said that names and titles were withheld when requested by me as to who he had actually met with pursuant to SNAs.

But, hey, the list goes on. We could talk about three waters. I know on this side of the House that this is an animating conversation. We’ve had 27-odd mayors in rural New Zealand weigh in on that. They see this as a theft of their ratepayer assets. And the water services bill, a piece of legislation that we spoke to on this side of the House, asks for a carve-out for the 70,000 rural water schemes. Nanaia Mahuta, the Minister of Local Government repudiated the requirement for that.

💬 Barbara Kuriger: Bureaucracy gone mad.

Yeah, gone mad, as the member notes. We have seen central planning and this red tide Government that seems to think that this is the way to proceed.

Freshwater reforms and intensive winter grazing: it took this side of the House and, arguably, members from the ACT Party who happened to be farming to talk to better options for that. And albeit that iterations—it’s through OVERSEER—failed 11 times I was told. Members on this side of House might wish to speak to that further.

And the big one, the tamale, this is coming: climate change. We had a Prime Minister that said that was her nuclear-free moment, this generation’s nuclear-free moment. Minister Shaw sets fantastical targets by all assertions out of the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment and Treasury. That will totally cook the books for not only farmers in their ability to operate but the overall fiscal wellbeing of the Government. Well, ACT is asking for logic. We hope that logic prevails, albeit that’s a hard ask when you look at the quality of the policy being delivered on the other side of the House.

Very quickly, we’ve got to have a conversation about He Waka Eke Noa and the emissions trading scheme (ETS). We at the ACT Party said that farmers shouldn’t be in any pricing scheme until all the calculables, all the measurables, all the on-farm sequestration is given consideration to. Farmers need the tools. They need the methane vaccines and inhibitors. We’ve got to have an honest conversation about the ETS and farmers’ inclusion in it or He Waka Eke Noa. Forget the slogans on this side of the House. We know they simply don’t add up.

💬 Hon Member: But you’re full of slogans.

There we go. I’ll leave my contribution by saying that unfortunately we have a Government high on its own hubris, drunk on its own arrogance, and constantly looking through a myopic lens with rural New Zealand. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

Does the member want the call?

💬 Damien Smith: I call, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Damien Smith—five minutes.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party and what we’ve seen in this statement is another example of the empowerment of the Labour political class. It’s the long arm of the State that continues to be what drives this statement, and in no word does it mention that the economy is facing a crossroads. They have an economic model that inherently requires heavy-handed State intervention—need to change. Major macro shifts are occurring and it’s going to be a very difficult two years, and the great moderation is over of low interest rates and low inflation. We have on one side the Reserve Bank of New Zealand pumping water surely into the economy to fulfil its role as inflation fighter, and it’s gone from promoting inflation to fighting it. And now we’ve also got high rates coming down the line. At the same time, we’ve got a Government that is cashing cheques it can’t write over the next five years. Clearly, there is no coordination between the monetary and fiscal policy that’s required to get us through any major, major event.

So on one hand, we’ve got Mr Orr raising interest rates, and then on the other hand, we’ve got the Prime Minister and we’ve got the finance Minister pouring more petrol on the economy, and it’s not going to end well. We think that they have to be very careful that they don’t induce a self-induced recession. To allow bubbles as well, in all the markets, whether it be commodities, housing, and let them happen along the way, is simply not good economic policy. Effectively, the Government’s been very quiet in its statement about the impact of those sectors and the ability to build houses and the cost of living. We know that, in New Zealand, the cost of living and healthy communities is a really essential mind-set to have to get through daily life, and this has been affected.

There’s something new going on and it’s not Marxism or socialism or any other variant of the traditional left-wing ideology. What we’ve got is a real threat to liberty, which is more generic. So rather than having history rooted in some doctrine like the Workers Union or in any class of socialism from the industrial era, what has now been forced upon us is the aggrandisement of the State and the empowerment of the political classes that are allowing them to make economic decisions that will be hard to justify, and they will pay the price at the next election. David Stockman calls this movement scientism, and whether it’s around the green agenda, the public health science agenda, infrastructure or climate change, it’s all relying on sweeping control and intervention by the State. The long arm of the State in the daily economic and social lives has to stop.

At ACT we have policies where we believe that bringing more capital into the country through overseas investment is essential. We believe in giving New Zealanders a tax break where they actually get some money in their back pockets again. We encourage a wealthy economy, not one that’s contracting, and we implore the Government to reduce its Government spending programme and instability, giving what is likely to be a high interest rate environment—which you just will ignore anyway—and a high inflation environment, even though the Prime Minister does not believe that to be the case.

So our economy is running unhealthy; we’ll never get healthier and wealthier if we don’t focus on getting away from the nanny State. We believe there’s still an opportunity to be a star economy in New Zealand if we manage the risks correctly, and that’s why the ACT Party here will be holding the Government accountable to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m so proud to be contributing to this debate standing on this side of the House because this side of the House wholeheartedly stands in support of our Prime Minister and her statement. The Prime Minister’s statement made last week was one that showed this country had a future and a bright one. Our Prime Minister laid out our plans for the future. It shows that she is leading a Government with a clear plan to navigate us not only out of Omicron but into economic recovery; one that is clean, one that is green, and one that will actually see all New Zealanders better off.

Today is Lantern Festival—元宵节快乐!—one that is usually marked by the Auckland Lantern Festival, the largest festival in Tāmaki-makau-rau. This year, unfortunately, we’ve once again had to move all celebrations online.

This Government is committed to supporting all communities. That’s why last year, in 2021, we opened the Ministry for Ethnic Communities; a portfolio that was deemed unnecessary by the Opposition members because they had actually lowered their reporting levels, but a portfolio that represents so many people in all of our community in this country. I’m proud that this ministry will continue to support ethnic communities during the continued COVID recovery.

I’m reminded of the Chinese word for “crisis” which is “危机” which directly translates to two characters meaning “危”, which is “crisis” or “danger” and “机” which is “an opportunity.” You would have heard the Prime Minister talk about the many opportunities that will arise out of COVID recovery.

On social media, for the past few days, you would often hear people compare the protest that we have outside right now to the one that had 40,000 people participate—especially young people—who campaigned to look after our environment, this earth. One of those opportunities that we have and that we’re faced with right now is to build a cleaner economy, and that is something that I want to spend the rest of my contribution talking about.

I’ve already talked about—last week—that I was lured into buying an electric vehicle because of our clean car scheme. When I was looking for a Wrangler, but, really, I knew I had to do the right thing, and I was given the right incentive, the right opportunity to stand by that. Transport accounts for more than 40 percent of Auckland’s total carbon emissions, so making sure that we have progress on our buses, the electric ones, in terms of being able to travel long distance, is so important to reducing our overall carbon footprint.

In terms of public transport and transforming the way that we move around our cities, it’s really important to build good routes in our cities. I remember one of the last events that I attended in the East Auckland electorates was actually the opening of stage two of our busway, our Auckland-Manakau Eastern Transport Initiative (AMETI) project that I was privileged enough to attend with the Hon Michael Wood.

I still remember on one fateful day, actually, during question time while I was sitting in my chair in this House that I received a text from my MP support in my electorate. He texted me saying, “Naisi, are you listening to the council debates at the moment?” I said, “No. What’s happening?” He said, “Auckland Transport have just actually cut funding for the AMETI project in East Auckland.”

This project means a lot to East Auckland residents, because often because of the geographic location we’re cut off from the rest of Auckland. I ran over from my seat to Michael’s seat and I said, “Michael, what are we going to do about the East Auckland transport?” I want to thank him personally, the Minister, for working with me on this issue to make sure that we’re funding stage three of it, to make sure that it will open in 2024 and 2025 to make sure that the route from East Auckland, from Botany, to the city will be a less than 40-minute route. Right now at peak hours it actually takes one hour and 30 minutes to get from Botany to the city. That means a lot for young people of the electorate because they need to get uni, they need to get to their jobs, and so in order to build good infrastructure—and actually the first hydrogen bus in New Zealand was actually established on route 70 in the Botany electorate as well. To have a clean, green, low-carbon emission public transport system is so important for all of us.

Order! Before I take the next call, I’d just like to remind the House that members of this House are to be mentioned by their full name. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this House of change, my first speech for 2022. I’m proud to stand here not only as the member for Ōtaki but also in support of the Prime Minister’s statement. That’s where I’d like to start—just by thanking our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern and our Ministers for, essentially, saving my family’s life. I mean that not just as a backbencher but as someone who lives in the Ōtaki electorate and knows what could have been if it wasn’t for this Government. I know that my mum and my dad are very vulnerable; my children, my husband, and our neighbours, and the people we love around us. I get it every day—messages of absolute gratitude that we put lives and families first. We put the health of our people in New Zealand first, and I am grateful to this Government, our leaders, and especially our Prime Minister for that.

This is in stark contrast, I guess, to the Opposition, where you’ve seen, I guess, the rolling four leaders saying “open the border, shut the border, open the border, shut the border” and more recently Mr Luxon saying it’s “freedom day” in December. Thank God we didn’t have “freedom day” in December—because God knows what could have happened then. But thanks to this decisive leadership, we’re in good stead, and not just around our COVID response, which we know has given us the lowest numbers, as we’ve heard in the House today. Actually, we hear it on the streets too, because people know the real rhetoric that’s happening out there. People know they’re grateful to live in Aotearoa and not overseas. They also know we have the lowest number of deaths. We have the lowest number of hospitalisations. For a Pasifika person, that’s a big deal. Hospitalisation is massive for us in terms of access, so we keep hospitalisations as low as we can so we have at least a starting chance of getting in there if we have any other issues is critical for us. So that’s massive, and, again, I’m grateful to this Government for making sure that’s happened. The other thing I would say is I’m really grateful to the 96 percent of vaccinated Kiwis out there. I’m really grateful that you also are doing your bit to make sure that my babies and my family and the people I love are alive and safe. So I say thank you to you also.

This Government is doing what it said it would do. The Labour Government is putting people and their wellbeing first, and they’re also managing this worldwide pandemic at the same time. But, still, we are progressing with our plan, and that is to make sure we support the most vulnerable—and we see that. Again, we’ve got the lowest numbers in terms of deaths and hospitalisations, but if we go further than that, we’ve also got a great economy. We’ve heard our Deputy Prime Minister talk about the fact that to have good economy, you need a good health response. They go hand in hand. We’re proof of that—these are facts now. We have seen in terms of the OECD what our economy looks like. People message me all the time to say they wish they lived in Aotearoa. We just have to look at Fonterra who have had a record pay-out this year, and that is thanks to this economy and the hard work of our farmers. The dairy, the beef, and the sheep industries are doing amazing—even in a massive worldwide pandemic. That is thanks to the decisions that this Government is making. We’ve got a record 3.2 unemployment rate. That’s never been seen before, and, again, for Māori and Pacific people, for our women and our people with disability, that’s huge. That’s critical. You can’t underplay that—and, again, in the middle of a massive pandemic.

There’s been over $20 million to support business during the COVID pandemic. Nobody has been left out of this Government’s support. We also have indexed benefits to wages. That makes a massive difference. We’re making sure we’re supporting our most vulnerable, but where are those people going to spend that money? In our communities, again, helping our economy. We’re making sure that people on low wages and benefits live with dignity. That is what this Government is about. That’s what we promised the people of New Zealand and that’s what we’re delivering. There has been a minimum wage increase, and, again, on 1 April, an increase to $21.20. That will be what the minimum wage will go up to. That is life-changing for some of our whānau out there. I could keep going on all these changes.

This Labour Government continues to put people first while still managing a massive, worldwide pandemic really well, by the way, and also focusing on reducing child poverty and making sure we tackle climate change, and there are more bills tonight that talk about that—our clean car bill. We are also making sure we’re making massive waves on housing, with the most that have been built since the 1970s. This Government is doing that for us. We are making changes in our communities. I see it every day. I’m proud to be part of this Government.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m boostered and back into it, and so I’m pleased to be standing today to speak to the Prime Minister’s statement and make a significant speech for the regions. It’s because of the regions and what’s happening in regions like mine in Tukituki—Hastings—where it’s coming from, where we are building back stronger and better.

As part of this I’ve been hearing about all the doom and gloom from the other side of the House, so I thought I’d better give some actual facts around what’s happening in Hastings. Gross domestic product: up 5.7 percent. Consumer spending: up 9 percent. Tourism expenditure: up 22.6 percent. Residential consents: 12.8 percent up on last year. Non-residential consents: 59.1 percent up. Now, let’s talk car registrations. Cars: up 18.5 percent. What about commercial vehicles? Up 41 percent. Then, unemployment down to 3.7 percent and employment up 2 percent.

These are real stats, real figures, and if we want to talk about figures and statistics, let me tell you about how we are leading on the home front in Hastings. Hastings: 438 social houses are being built in Hastings right now. That’s 135 for Flaxmere; 40 in Kauri Street and Kauri Place in Mahora, Hastings; 77 in Mayfair Avenue and Nikau Street; 14 in Plunket Street; 35 in Tarbet Street; 28 in Tomoana Road; and 82 in Waingākau. The Minister of Housing, Megan Woods, marked a milestone in Hastings earlier this year, visiting a Hastings development and to Flaxmere. All of this was going on, all the way through—building houses.

Now, in reflection to the houses that we’re building on this side of the House, I have been told that in the nine years of the National Government, where they ripped down houses, sold off our housing stock—guess how many the National Government built in nine years? Six—six. That’s the amount of houses that the National Government built. That’s what I’ve been told from the Hastings District Council. Six social houses, compared to 438 houses going up in Hastings—affordable homes.

That’s not just where it stops for Hastings and Hawke’s Bay. Positive stories about building futures where we’re committed to working together with local companies like Tumu Timbers, and where we’ve got an eight-week free programme going, supported by the Ministry of Social Development open to school-leavers and job seekers aged 17 to 26. This is to teach life skills and onsite job training in the timber processing and building supplies area, because, again, we’re building homes and we’re growing jobs, not like the six in nine years.

Let’s talk about what else we’re doing. We’ve got fantastic big employers like T & G, who are pouring millions into the Hawke’s Bay region. We’ve got a $100 million new automated pack-house being built for the region right here—the size of two football fields—and the best thing about it is that they will use all the redeployment of workers to operate in the pack-houses and have no staff job cuts. This will be happening in Hawke’s Bay.

Then I’ve spent an afternoon with Heinz-Wattie’s, where they’re harvesting like never before: 10 million equivalent cans of tomatoes are going to be harvested in Hawke’s Bay, and all of the produce except for the boysenberries is grown within 36 kilometres of their factory. Six hundred locals work there—vaccinated, boostered, and ready to work—and they keep this economy going, because that’s what we do in the regions.

All this is happening under a Labour Government—boostered and proud. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I call Rachel Boyack—five minutes.

I’m proud to take a call today on the Prime Minister’s statement. I want to focus my speech today on some of the tough decisions the Government has made in order to protect the lives of New Zealanders and the steps we are taking in Nelson to build back better as we recover from COVID-19. But first I want to put on record my thanks to everyone in the Nelson-Tasman region who’s worked to support our vaccination roll-out. Our vaccination rates in the top of the South are high: 97 percent have had one dose and 95 percent are fully vaccinated. We have one of the highest booster rates in the country, and nearly half of our 5- to 11-year-olds have had their first dose. My thanks to everyone involved in this life-saving work: our health workers, vaccinators, administrators, the public health contact tracing team, our COVID testing teams, and everyone doing their part to keep our community safe from COVID19.

Last week my staffer’s 4-year-old boy was diagnosed with cancer. Over the next few weeks and months, he will receive treatment at Christchurch and Nelson hospitals. These treatments will mean he is immunocompromised. Willy deserves all the protections he can get to avoid catching and becoming ill from COVID-19. I am grateful to all of the health workers who have chosen to be vaccinated to protect vulnerable children like Willy. Willy is too young to be vaccinated. He has no choice. He needs adults to make choices that will protect him from getting sicker than he already is. He deserves to be treated and cared for by health workers who are vaccinated. Willy’s diagnosis has brought home to me the stark reality of COVID-19 and the risk it presents to our most vulnerable. I am proud of this Government’s decisions to protect our most vulnerable, like Willy, from the worst impacts of COVID-19. The overwhelming majority of New Zealanders have made decisions and sacrifices that benefit the collective good; decisions that aren’t just about themselves but are about their neighbours, whānau, friends, and strangers, because we are better off when we look after each other.

The Prime Minister said in her statement how essential building new infrastructure is to continue growing our economy and lifting productivity. The previous National Government left a legacy of massive under-investment in health infrastructure, including ICUs. For two whole years, National didn’t invest a single cent in health infrastructure, despite a growing and ageing population. By contrast, the Labour Government has already put $6 billion into health infrastructure. I’m pleased, as the MP for Nelson, to have been able to secure a commitment from this Government to upgrade Nelson Hospital. Nelson desperately needs a new hospital. In 2020, a Government stocktake of hospitals nationwide found the George Manson building to be in the worst condition of any hospital building in the country. Built in 1960, the building has fire separation issues, a likelihood of asbestos, and seismic restraint issues. It is critical we have fit for purpose buildings, and this is the priority for me as the local MP.

My electorate of Nelson has faced a growing housing crisis that has built up for decades, and our Government is taking steps to address this. As the Prime Minister said in her statement, investing in the infrastructure needed for good, quality housing is a priority for this Government. In Nelson, we are seeing a range of measures to address this, including the transfer of ownership of council-owned housing from Nelson City Council to Kāinga Ora, freeing up $12 million for the housing reserve fund in Nelson. Last year, I successfully lobbied, alongside community housing providers, to release some of this fund immediately to support the development of community-owned social housing in Nelson. Nelson Tasman Housing Trust have ambitious plans to lift their housing stock from 50 houses to 100, and the Government’s changes to how we structure payments of the income-related rent subsidy gives them the certainty to invest in these developments. Habitat for Humanity Nelson also have ambitious plans for housing in the region, and the Government is pleased to be providing financial support for their progressive homeownership scheme locally, which supports low-income families to get into their first home.

COVID-19 has presented challenges for New Zealand and the world that we have not seen for a generation. I am proud to be part of a Government that is putting the health and wellbeing of all our people first as we respond to COVID and that seeks to build a stronger New Zealand for the generations to come. Kia ora.

The only thing that the House has learnt this afternoon, from any of the speeches from Government members, is, in fact, that the supply of tomato sauce in New Zealand is secured because of the hard work of Anna Lorck in her local electorate. I want to congratulate her for rolling her sleeves up, for getting those tomatoes in, getting them in the vats, and putting them in the bottles. But that is the sum total of what we have learnt new from any Labour speaker in the House this afternoon. I stand in support of the amendment to the motion moved by Christopher Luxon that says that all the words after “That” be deleted and replaced with “this House has no confidence in this Government that returns to Wellington at the start of each year with yet more promises it has no intention of keeping and regularly fails to deliver”.

I congratulate all of the Labour speakers today for the diligent way in which they have recited the research unit notes for the House—the way in which they’ve repeated all of the slogans that the caucus rehearsed in their caucus meeting on Tuesday, religiously putting them in front of the House and, almost as religiously, elevating the Prime Minister to a near-sainthood status.

This is a country that has faced down, so far, very, very well the COVID-19 threat. But there are some things about that that cause a problem, and I want to pick up on the last speaker, Rachel Boyack, who talked about the vulnerable. Well, what about the vulnerable people out there who cannot, for one reason or another, take a vaccine, who cannot, after they’ve had an adverse reaction to their first vaccine, progress to the full vaccine status? Why are they being cast out into the wilderness?

💬 Hon Member: They’re not.

The member over there says, “They’re not.” Well, get acquainted with the reality of what’s happening and going on in the lives of so many of those people. And then, just to top it off, we’ve got the State running round now, saying to people in that position, “Get yourself doubly vaccinated, get yourself boosted, or your job is all over.” They’ve got no ill intention—none at all. Quite happy to, but can’t. And that’s where I think this Government falls over. So-called compassion only extends as far as the mantra that comes out of the health department—no further than that.

You look at all of the other aspects of life in New Zealand, and I am reminded that it has been previous Labour leaders—and, indeed, the Labour leader we’ve got now, and I use that term because that’s how she described herself in the House today—who have always said New Zealanders’ greatest concerns are about health, they’re about housing, they’re about education, they’re about the economy, and they’re about security. Well, let’s just go through all of those things and have a look at the record of this Government.

Let’s, for a start, look at security. How many people in this country are happy with the extraordinary levels of crime, the extraordinary levels of burglary, the extraordinary levels of violent crime and murder that we see at the present time? No one is happy with that. And this Government’s response will be, “Oh, well, we’ve actually increased the numbers of police.” That’s also totally misleading, because the poor old police are now asked to do so many tasks that are away from the actual day-to-day policing that they are so good at. So let’s not be silly about this. Let’s at least acknowledge that there is a crime problem in New Zealand, and very little is being done about it—lots of words; lots of, as I said at the start and as Mr Luxon has said in his amendment to the motion, good intentions, promises, but failure to deliver.

Then there is the issue of education. We have, in this country, only 60 percent of our enrolled students regularly turning up to school. I’ll say that again: only 60 percent of our enrolled students regularly turning up to school.

💬 Hon Member: During lockdown.

Oh, so over the other side, “Well, they were in lockdown.” Dear me. Those people, those students, according to the education Minister, were able to log on and to continue their schooling through all of that. I’m talking about truancy. If the member over there says there’s a 40 percent truancy rate simply because of lockdown, that’s a failure of Government policy.

Then you look at something like housing, and this is where it really hurts the Labour Party. They’ve made massive, massive promises about what could be done. Then all they can do, really, is look over their shoulder and say, “Well, none of it was our fault. None of it was our fault.” Well, let’s be very, very clear about this: at the moment, a young person trying to put together a deposit is faced with the mountain of having to accumulate 20 percent of the house price that they are trying to buy—or 10 percent if it’s a new one. So, if you look at the average house price of a million dollars, they’ve got to come up with either $100,000 or $200,000.

💬 Hon Member: The average house price isn’t a million dollars.

Well, that’s an average price, over there. Somebody just started mumbling, saying, “You probably can get them cheaper in Hastings.” If people looked at who was representing them, they’d probably be deserting the place in droves. No wonder—the member has driven the property price down! But here’s the point. Here’s the point: on average, young people have to amass either $100,000 or $200,000 to get a deposit on a house. You know, in many cases, they can actually afford the extraordinary mortgages that they would have to take on from that point. But, no, the system’s been shut down because this Government prefers that people are in the Government’s thrall and crows only about a Government housing programme, forcing people into a life time of rent. Well, I don’t take any objection to the other side of the House saying that we sold some State houses. Largely, they were sold to tenants, who had paid for those houses over the 60-odd years of their existence many times over.

Then you look at some of the schemes that they’ve come up with. What was that one—the shared-equity one? Big announcements. Big television coverage by the media, who seem absolutely enthralled by anything the Government does. And what’s the result? Twelve—12 houses. That’s a big, big dent in the housing problem! Twenty-five thousand people currently on the waiting list for a State house; 4,500 children living every day in motels, at a cost of $1.2 million a day—$1.2 million a day for motels to keep 4,500 children in the company of less than desirable circumstances.

💬 Hon Member: You sold the houses and put them in motels.

And, over there, they’re saying, “Wasn’t that great they’re not on the streets?” Well, there are still people on the streets, and there will be more if the economy continues to go down the track that it is. I’ll come back to the economy in my final comment.

The last one is health. I heard Andrew Little telling us how wonderful the health system is going to be in the future, how marvellous it’s all going to be, and then caveat by saying it might be five or seven years away. As if somehow creating new structures—Willie Jackson, today saying, “The Māori Health Authority is going to solve everything.” It won’t—it simply won’t. People will get sick and need treatment regardless of their ethnicity, and that should be the focus, and it always was the focus under the previous National Government.

The economy is very interesting. We’ve got 6 percent inflation at the moment, and a Government over the other side of the House that said, “No new taxes.” Well, sometimes there is a thing called a de facto tax—a de facto tax. And that is: when the value of your dollar starts to fall, your purchasing power is reduced. That, effectively, is a tax if it’s sheeted back to excessive or unnecessary or unreasonable expenditure by a Government. And what happens over there? They all just scream across, saying, “Tell us what you’d cut—tell us what you’d cut.” This is a Government planning to spend at least another $6 billion in the coming year, and no explanation of that. Has there been, ever, a decision to sit down and have a look at all the Government expenditure and say, “What can we look at?” No, that won’t happen, of course, because these guys think everything they do is absolutely brilliant—absolutely brilliant, totally necessary, the whole lot. And then they’ll say, “Well, you only came up with small examples.” [Bell rung] Sorry, Madam Speaker, is that the end of me, or what?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): No. Hon Gerry Brownlee, I just hit the button a bit late.

Right, that’s happened to me once before, Madam Speaker. I’ll start my 10 minutes again—that’s fine!

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Well, you’re welcome to carry on, with 41 seconds left.

The point I make is that, when people are having the purchasing power of the money they earn reduced by a 6 percent rate of inflation, that’s a tax on their pay packet, without a question. If the Government doesn’t do something about reining in its own expenses, that trend won’t stop. Look at the increase in rental prices. Extraordinary. A couple of hundred dollars on in the last three years. How do people do it? Of course, it exacerbates because then there is the accommodation supplement that goes into that, as well. This is not a Government that knows where it’s going. It is a Government absolutely enthralled by its own spin.

I call Glen Bennett—five minutes.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Thank you for letting me take a call on this very important debate around the Prime Minister’s statement. Our previous speaker, the Hon Gerry Brownlee, spoke for 10 minutes and the only sentence I remember of that 10 minutes was, “Is this the end of me?” Well, if that speech is anything to go by, it probably is.

But on this side of the House, we are excited and motivated to ensure the wellbeing and the future of New Zealand. I want to thank our Prime Minister. I want to thank all of our Ministers who have worked so hard in the last few years, who have worked so hard since the last election to ensure the wellbeing of New Zealand, the wellbeing of all people. It’s been tough. It’s been really tough—and I don’t say that lightly. I know that for all of us, it has been hard. But we’re here. We’re working together, as the Prime Minister said, and we will rise to the challenge that COVID-19 throws at us. It’s drawn us together. I know that there have been moments when we’ve been apart and it’s been tough, but it is a pandemic that we have to focus and deal with, and I thank our Prime Minister for taking the lead on that.

I want to take a moment, as the MP for New Plymouth, to reflect on what’s gone on for myself and for those in the electorate of New Plymouth: the things that we’ve done around building back better, which has been so important. I want to talk about, really briefly, because it’s kind of a strange one, but we put $37 million in to our thermal drying facility in New Plymouth for our wastewater treatment. I know it’s a crappy thing to talk about, but it’s actually really important to ensure that we create jobs—I created a good pun; that was really average and a dad joke, but hey, I got there in the end.

Our education system—many of our schools in the New Plymouth electorate and many of our schools around Taranaki, and many of our schools around New Zealand have needed work done, and I’m proud that this Government has invested $23 million—$23 million—in the rebuild of Spotswood College in New Plymouth; not only creating jobs but creating a modern and a 21st century learning environment for the students who will go through Spotswood College in my ’hood. There was also more than $5.4 million put into classroom upgrades and to ensuring that pool facilities and fields were organised—and again, creating jobs as we build back better.

Jobs for Nature in Taranaki: 15 projects equalling more than $17 million has been put in, not only for our environment, not only for our sustainability, and not only for the restoration of what has been lost but it’s also around those jobs. More than 116 fulltime-equivalents are being created around the Jobs for Nature, doing things such as pest control, riparian planting, stream health, species restoration, the protection of taonga species such as our kiwi and our kōkako, biodiversity and biosecurity projects, and the restoring of our ecological corridor from the Waiwhakaiho River through to our beautiful Taranaki Maunga, ensuring that with planting and weed control that our water species are able to thrive once more.

I’m grateful that we are able to invest in our marae around Taranaki, around the New Plymouth electorate. Such an important space. So much was lost so long ago and it’s a step in the direction of partnership. It’s a step to remind us that we value and that we will continue, and I will continue, to support the development of iwi and hapū in a post-settlement region such as Taranaki.

I just want to finish around our vaccinations, and I want to say to those here today that I’ve got the numbers this morning for Taranaki around our vaccinations. Our Pasifika community in Taranaki are 100 percent vaccinated—100 percent fully vaccinated. How exciting is that? We’re 93 percent fully vaccinated, 95 percent full dose, and 60 percent have been boosted. We’ve also got our Māori who are 86 percent, and double-vaxxed is 90 percent. We’re almost there. We’re getting close and I’m grateful to our health professionals. I’m grateful to those who are ensuring that our society, that our region, and that the electorate of New Plymouth is protected from what is to come: this Omicron that is here with us right now. I want to say thank you to our Prime Minister for taking the lead, to our Ministers for walking and supporting her, and I am really proud to stand in support of the Prime Minister’s address.

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.

This debate is adjourned and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break, and the House will resume at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.