Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

In the Prime Minister’s priorities speech, she covered six points across my portfolios that I am looking forward to discussing today. Last week, the Prime Minister outlined our Government’s ambitious plans for the year. As has been the theme for our previous years in Government, there is a lot to do in lots of areas, not least of which social development, employment, ACC, disabled people, and arts and culture. We have some big changes planned this year and we are very well advanced in our work.

One of the big changes will include the establishment of the long overdue and yet to be named Ministry for Disabled People. Last October, the Minister of Health and I announced major changes to the disability system. The current disability system is broken and there are many barriers in place which make it hard for disabled people and their whānau to find and get the support needed to live their best lives. We, as a Government, want a true partnership between Government and the disability community, and that’s why a new Ministry for Disabled People will be established on 1 July this year. The new ministry will be the first of its kind anywhere in the world, which is a massive achievement for disabled people.

In her statement, the Prime Minister reaffirmed our commitment to build on previous work by the disabled community and roll out the Enabling Good Lives approach across the country. This will be a key role of the new ministry and will transform disability support services for over 43,000 disabled people, their families, whānau, and communities. We’ve learnt from the Enabling Good Lives demonstrations happening across the country that this approach creates more meaningful engagement, gives more voice, choice, control, and flexibility, and is reaching people who hadn’t accessed disability support services before. It also ensures that support is reaching the most vulnerable parts of our disabled community. I’ve been told that the MidCentral prototype has seen a 60 percent increase in tangata whaikaha Māori and Pacific disabled people connecting with the system.

Setting up a new ministry doesn’t mean that every other Government agency will not also have to have a focus on ensuring that they are providing for disabled people. The new ministry will be a leader, but other agencies will continue to be responsible for the way in which they serve disabled people as well.

The Prime Minister also confirmed our commitment to introduce the Accessibility for New Zealanders Bill to the House this year. The framework that will be set out in the bill has been developed in consultation with the Access Alliance and provides progressive approaches to identifying, preventing, and removing barriers to participation for disabled people and their families, tangata whaikaha Māori, and Pacific peoples. This will apply to a range of areas, including new or redeveloped buildings, transport, education, health, information, and events.

I want to move to ACC. Fifty years after it was set up—and it is 50 years old this year—ACC remains a unique and world-leading scheme. It is an integral part of our social support system in New Zealand and has become part of the fabric of our country. As Minister for ACC, I want to make sure that this system assists all New Zealanders who have had an injury, and is fit for purpose for New Zealand in the 21st century. That means continuing to reverse the cruel cost-saving changes that National made to the Accident Compensation Act in 2010 which unfairly disadvantaged tens of thousands of New Zealand workers. It also means looking hard at the equity of the ACC scheme and whether it is serving women, Māori, Pacific peoples, other ethnic minorities, and disabled people in the way that New Zealanders would expect.

Last year, I requested data from my officials that showed that women made fewer claims to ACC than men and have fewer injuries covered by the scheme than men, and each woman’s claim costs the scheme a third less than a man’s, on average, in entitlements. These gender disparities are not surprising when you think about the fact that this scheme was set up to support the largely male New Zealand workforce back in the 1970s, but it is time for us to begin addressing them.

That is why the Government has taken the first step in this mahi by introducing a bill that will extend ACC cover to a list of maternal birth injuries. The extension of cover will benefit up to 18,000 more women per year who will be able to receive cover for maternal birth injuries. This change will make a massive difference for these women, but we know that there is more work to do to address inequities in the ACC scheme, and we, as a Government, are committed to doing that.

Let’s move to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). MSD will continue to prioritise our welfare reform work programme, but some of the key milestones we will see happen this year are the roll-out of our increases to main benefit and increases to Working for Families tax credits. The increases to main benefit levels represent the largest increases to main benefits in a decade and are a continuation of our commitment to address income adequacy. We know that addressing poverty in our nation is not just MSD’s job; it is the job of multiple Government agencies, and our combined work programme this year will see us progress towards our ultimate goal of eliminating child poverty.

MSD will also continue its focus on employment. We’ve invested heavily in work-focused, front-line case management. The specific actions we’ve taken include 263 new front-line staff in Budget 2019 to help people into work. We’ve invested $150 million in Budget 2020 to help people into work, invested a further $99 million in work-focused case management and services in Budget 2021, and invested $86 million to sustain the additional front-line work-focused staff we employed through COVID-19.

The quarterly benefit figures show that our Government’s investment is beginning to deliver results and meaningful outcomes. He Poutama Rangatahi has supported 7,047 at-risk rangatahi to overcome barriers to employment, education, or training. Mana in Mahi has supported 4,446 people into placements since 2018. There’s been a total of 11,193 flexi-wage placements, and our Apprenticeship Boost scheme to help employers retain apprentices and encourage more people to take up apprenticeships has already benefited 40,314 apprentices. These are excellent results, but there is more to do.

Last but not least, I’d like to touch on the arts, culture and heritage portfolio. The Government’s strong economic management and landmark $374 million investment in the arts and culture sector in response to COVID-19 has protected jobs, supported livelihoods, and cushioned the blow for the arts and culture sector. The COVID-19 cultural recovery package impact report on the initial impacts of the four-year Arts and Culture COVID Recovery Programme shows that up to June 2021, our Government’s significant investment in this sector has created over 1,500 jobs, many of these in the arts and creative sector. I think I saw somewhere it had saved just under 3,000 jobs in the screen sector.

There is no question that the Omicron phase of the pandemic poses fresh and serious challenges for the arts and cultural sector in 2022. It will not be an easy road. In early February, I announced $121 million in further support for the arts and culture sector to further cushion the blow and protect jobs, incomes, and livelihoods of those who make a living from delivering arts experiences and events, and we should not underestimate the important role that the arts and cultural sector has to play with regards to supporting the wellbeing of New Zealanders but also the economic contribution that the arts and cultural sector make to our country. We continue to listen closely and engage with the sector to ensure we pivot, where needed, to ensure the cultural sector continues to make a significant contribution to our economy and to our collective wellbeing.

This Government is ambitious for New Zealand’s future, and we are delivering. The work programme you will see coming out of my portfolios this year are ambitious, but will make a difference to the lives of many New Zealanders. I’d like to thank all of the officials who are working on these incredibly important changes and all of the community organisations and iwi that are working alongside us. It is a programme of work that is well under way and I look forward to delivering it.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m going to speak about my portfolio areas that I asked our incoming leader, Christopher Luxon, for when he became our leader. The reason why I did that is because I’m deeply passionate about them, with the first one being police, the second one being the counter-terrorism role, and the third one being the Serious Fraud Office.

When I first became a proud member of this House back in 2011, I was also very proud of the fact that I had had a policing career myself. But I didn’t seek any law and order - type portfolios because, number one, I was very conscious, coming into this House, that you can be labelled, and I didn’t want to be labelled just as being focused on law and order. The second thing was that I was very fortunate to have had a decade with a business career overseas and I’d become very passionate about trade and our economic future. So I stayed away from the law and order portfolios to a large extent, but the reason why I ask for the police portfolio now is because, certainly, at no time that I can remember, and, talking to a lot of my colleagues that are still either serving or have retired from the police, can we ever remember the situation in this country being so bad in terms of the growth of gang numbers, the proliferation of weapons and gang members willing to carry weapons, and the worst thing is they’re willing to use them.

I know for a fact that in my own community, my own electorate of Whangaparāoa, we’ve been very lucky to have been gang-free, and our local police have worked very hard at keeping the gangs out. We had the Comancheros, who tried to buy residential property in Ōmaha, and our sergeant up there was very effective in working with our local real estate agents in ensuring that they were blocked. We had the Mongrel Mob, who tried to buy a pad on the Hibiscus Coast, and, again, the police worked very proactively in ensuring that they were blocked and they didn’t come into our community. But, unfortunately, two years ago, we had the Hell’s Angels buy commercial property in Silverdale, and they’ve set up a pad there, and then we had the Comancheros move in. In the last month, we’ve had the Hell’s Angels and the Mongols decide that it’s cool to have a stand-off and violence, and to discharge weapons in the community.

Now, I’m working at a local level with our other elected representatives—our councillors, our local board—and I meet every month with my police area commander. We’ve just lost Mark Fergus—I want to pay a tribute to him; he did an outstanding job for the last six years—and we’ve welcomed in our new area commander. We make it very clear to them that our community has an expectation that they will police professionally but they will use every tool available to them to put as much pressure on these gangs, and we will find ways of pushing them back out of the community and get rid of what they bring, and that is organised crime, recruitment of our young people, the peddling of drugs, and house burglaries.

But the problem is I can do that and try to be as effective as I can in my own patch, but they’re just going to move somewhere else. They’ll move across the boundary. They’ll go and set up somewhere else if we do that. We’ve got a massive problem in this country with gangs and gang-related crime.

I was in Palmerston North last night. I had a public meeting in Palmerston North last night, and I had a young female police officer come along to that. She is completely, totally demoralised. They go out and they deal—especially up there—with these boy racers. They’ll take action against them, they’ll arrest them and they’ll charge them, and the next day they’ll be out dealing with the same offenders, and it’s demoralising for them. They join the police, primarily, with one thing in mind, and that’s keeping their communities safe. Of course, you will have seen in the media that there was a police officer in Palmerston North who was assaulted, who was attacked, by some brave boy racer that decided to come up and strike him from behind—king-hit him; could have killed him—and he’s still in hospital recovering.

We’ve had young Matthew Hunt and David Goldfinch. Matthew Hunt was gunned down by Eli Epiha in broad daylight on the streets of West Auckland—a gang member that had easy access to high-powered, military-style rifles. We had David Goldfinch, a father of two young children, that through his own perseverance and his own quick thinking was able to actually extract himself and survive, although survive barely. He’s got injuries that will follow him along for the rest of his life.

We’re going to have a debate in this country, and it’s an important one, around the general arming of our police, and whether or not we think it’s right to send them out to deal with armed gang members with firearms, and whether we think it’s right that they can possibly be put in the same position as Matt or David. It’s wrong.

I can tell you one thing: when I was in the police, I didn’t care about politics. I was a young guy. I was motivated by the same things today that our own young police officers are out there doing—that is, they want to be effective, they want to look after their community, and they want to know that they’re backed. They want to know that the leadership is behind them and that when they go out and do their job, they don’t have to be watching their own backs, because they know the bosses have got them.

Now, there’s a quid pro quo, and that is that they have to act professionally and they always have to look at the least amount of force if they’re having to use it, in terms of what they’re trying to achieve. The police service is not perfect, like any organisation. But, in my experience, any rotten apples are identified and drummed out very quickly. We have got one of the most professional, world-class police services in the world, and I talk to that with some authority because I’ve been lucky enough to have worked, trained, and watched other police forces around the world operate and I’m extremely proud of the police service that we have here.

This debacle out here at the front, they now have to try and clean up and deal with. That’s not of their making. The making of that starts in here, because there wasn’t proper communication and because we have Kiwis that are deeply affected and upset by vaccine passports and mandates. We supported those. We supported—

💬 Hon Michael Wood: Right, you’re going to defend the lawbreakers now?

—no, I don’t need an interjection from Wood—a light touch on those, because we recognised the importance of them, but we were also very clear that they weren’t to go too far and they were to be removed as soon as practicable, because we could see very clearly that it was divisive. Now, you’ve got a big mess sitting on the lawn that you expect the very police force to deal with that you’ll not support on a daily basis.

I can tell you now—and I’ll come back to it—when I was in the police, Mr Wood, I didn’t care about politicians. I wasn’t even that interested in who the Minister of Police was, but I can tell you right now that the young men and women that I talk to when I come into this precinct, out the back here, that stand out in the rain, that put up with the verbal abuse, that are there to protect us—they’ve got no faith in their police Minister. They don’t believe in her. She might be a lovely woman and she came into this place, like we all do, with a passion for something. But I can tell you one thing: it’s not a passion for our police force. It’s not a passion for our men and women on the thin blue line. She’s not behind them. She doesn’t even understand what they do, let alone what they need, and when you pick up a portfolio and within the first two months you come out and you accuse the very service that you’re meant to be supporting of being racist, then you’re going to lose the support.

For the first time that I’ve ever seen in this country, police officers know who their police Minister is, OK? They’ve got zero faith, and the best thing that this Government can do and the Prime Minister could do, if she wants to show some leadership on this matter—because I acknowledge and respect the fact that she grew up in a police family. I have a lot of respect for her father, Ross Ardern. Make a positive move and change the police Minister, because I tell you what, our police service deserves much better leadership than what it’s getting at the moment.

I see shaking of the heads on the other side, so I take that to mean that the Labour Party think they are getting the support that they need and that they are getting the leadership that they need. Well, I tell you what, here’s a good idea: go outside this building, walk out the back door there, go and talk to some of them and just thank them. Just say, “Thank you for being here. Thank you for doing what you’re doing.” They’re under enormous pressure.

The other thing that you could do is the 1,800 police officers that were meant to be delivered in July of 2020: how about delivering them? You’re 500 behind, and now you’re saying July 2023. The best thing you can do for them is this: back them, support them unequivocally, and give them the number that they need. Actually, a bit more pay would be good too, instead of pay freezes, in terms of the job that they have to do.

So my message to the Labour Government and the Minister, quite simply, is this: get out and support your police service—

Order! The member’s time has expired. Rachel Brooking—a five-minute call.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the Prime Minister’s statement and the year ahead. Before I get started into what I’m really wanting to talk about, I would after that last speech like to acknowledge, as I have done over the past few days whenever encountering a police officer, and thank them for the great work that they are doing. In terms of the year ahead, hopefully we can focus on some other issues as well.

For me, I’m excited. As somebody who is particularly interested in urban planning, biodiversity, housing, and climate change, this is going to be a big year. It’s a big year for the environment. We have on the work plan the replacement RMA—that’s the Resource Management Act. That’s with both the Natural and Built Environments Bill and the Strategic Planning Bill, eventually to become Acts.

This is a big deal—reforming resource management. Resource management is intrinsically difficult. There are always trade-offs to make. There are always people who have the status quo on their side. They don’t want to change the system. There are few incentives to protect the environment. There are lots of plans, there are complicated concepts—often introduced by resource management lawyers in case law—and, of course, the fault of this place is that the legislation has been amended frequently. There are many inefficiencies and perverse outcomes.

So the changes need to be outcomes-focused and user-friendly, have environmental bottom lines, have explicit trade-offs, and enable councils to work together. In addition, there’s also the need for strategic planning in the much longer term so that we can look across a region for the planning of infrastructure, growth areas, and climate adaptation, among other things. We’ll hear more about this, in part, in a debate in I think our next sitting week, where we’ll discuss the Natural and Built Environments Bill exposure draft. That was an interesting process that the Environment Committee has already gone through, and that’s feeding into the legislation that will come into the House later this year.

One of those issues in terms of the spatial plans is looking at where growth should go, and we all know that housing is of great importance to the country. We have our $8 billion Housing Acceleration Fund in use. There’s planned public housing of over 2,000 houses this year. There are programmes towards warmer homes, healthy homes initiatives, and there are commitments for Government buildings themselves, where they’re over a certain value, to be certified as Green Star buildings. We’ve also got the Commerce Commission looking into building supplies, and late last year, we passed the enabling housing legislation. This year, councils will be putting out their plans in August to enable more of those houses and the National Policy Statement on Urban Development.

There’s also a lot going on in terms of climate mitigation. We have the first emissions reduction plan, providing many opportunities to New Zealanders and businesses, this year. There’s a focus on innovation and clean technology and being at the heart of the transition to a low-emissions economy. We’re going to have emissions budgets for the next 15 years, and it’s important here to reiterate that decarbonisation is important not just for the international agreements that we’ve signed up to—both sides of the House—but also for our trade and for our exporters, because the markets are changing.

On that, I note that the Prime Minister will be undertaking some visits this year. She intends to go to Australia, Asia, the United States, and Europe. We know that there’s already been very good progress on the UK free-trade agreement, and, hopefully, we’ll get further with the European one.

There’s a lot of work going into decarbonisation, with support to move to clean industrial processes—that’s with the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry Fund. There’s a planned new national environmental standard prohibiting new low and medium temperature coal boilers and beginning the phase out of all of the existing ones.

This Government is dealing with a range of very tricky and difficult issues. It’s not putting its head in the sand and doing nothing. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of the Prime Minister’s statement and categorically do not support the amendments put forward, as it is clear those amendments are fundamentally wrong and miss the point. For example, on the other side of the House, perhaps the member Mark Mitchell, who said he knows the police portfolio, would have a look at the 2018 Budget and see that in 2018, New Zealand Police received the biggest investment it has ever had, of over $500 million. If he knew the portfolio, he would have a look at those papers, because this Government does deliver.

Another case in point: last year, our Prime Minister made it clear that one of our priorities was the vaccine, to ensure the vaccine was accessible to our communities to keep our people safe. That is still our priority in 2022. Keeping people safe and accessibility of vaccine is grounded in what this side of the House stands for. As articulated by a very good friend of mine and colleague, the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall, “Labour is in the fight against COVID because we believe that people’s lives are worthy of protection, because our old, young, or disabled are equally members of our community as the economically or politically empowered.”

As the Deputy Prime Minister said earlier in this debate, “There are no easy decisions in COVID-19. At each and every stage we have been presented with difficult and worse options. We’ve had to shift and adapt, but New Zealanders know that we have kept to our word that we would save lives and we would save livelihoods.” This is what we have done, and this is what we will continue to do.

I remember standing here as the last speaker in 2021 in the adjournment debate, giving my thanks to the hard-working teams in our vaccination and health centres across the country for their work in administering what is now over 10 million doses. Today, my thanks remain.

As the Prime Minister set out in her statement, our high vaccination rates have defied predictions of a summer surge and prevented the Delta destruction that health systems across the world have faced. We turn now our focus on ensuring our people are prepared to encounter Omicron, to face COVID-19 for the first time on a scale we have not yet experienced, as we see that today with record numbers.

Over this last week, while others were putting their energy to occupying the front lawns and surrounding streets of this House, principals, teachers, Tiaki—which is our care and community lead in Mana—health providers, Whānau Ora providers, community leaders, our local supermarkets, and my electorate team were putting their energy into dealing with positive cases in our community, including in four of our schools in Porirua. Teachers were preparing for online learning and school packs to deliver to children who had to isolate so that they could still learn. Food packs and care packs were delivered to positive cases and those in isolation. Schools that were safe to remained open, and, like this Government, schools know that to close their doors is a decision that is finely balanced. When I spoke to these school principals, they were grateful for the support they were receiving from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health. I thanked those leaders for the work and the energy they are pouring in to keep their doors open, to keep their schools safe, and provide assurances to their students and family.

I finish my contribution by going back to the case in point where this Government has delivered and it is keeping our people safe. Over the summer, I lost my 93-year-old grandmother. She was the last matriarch of her generation. My grandmother was born in the time when Samoa was recovering from the 1918 influenza pandemic that wiped out almost a quarter of their population. She was a survivor. She became a solo mother of 10, and was one of the hardest workers I know.

My last thanks goes to the people of Aotearoa, especially of Māngere, South Auckland, where she lived for 30 years. Because you followed the rules over the last few years, it prevented the spread of COVID, and my grandmother got to live the last few years of her life in dignity.

Because the majority of us had vaccines, we were able to hold her funeral under the COVID protection framework and have people visit our family at home and in church to pay their last respects. Although we didn’t have all the grandchildren here in New Zealand, when the borders opened for a short period last year, my cousins were able to come over here and kiss their grandmother farewell. These are the freedoms that are afforded when we set policies to keep people safe.

Labour is in the fight against COVID because we believe that people’s lives are worthy of protection, because our old, our young, or disabled are equally members of our community as the economically or politically empowered. We on this side of the House will keep fighting for that, and we will never take people’s lives for granted.

Te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. In Ōtautahi Christchurch, there’s a plaque on a seat beside the Ōtākaro Avon River, near the hospital. It remembers the 460 Christchurch victims of the influenza epidemic of 1918, half of whom died at Christchurch Hospital or nearby at the Royal Hotel. More than 9,000 New Zealanders died in that pandemic in a little over two months. I can’t imagine a city where 460 people died from one event in two months. I can’t imagine a country where 9,000 people died, and the impacts that this would have on families, on whakapapa, on our social and mental wellbeing—the overwhelming grief that we would feel.

We’ve avoided that with COVID because the Government’s strategy has been about “we”, not about “me”. It’s been about acting on behalf of all of us and protecting as many New Zealanders as possible from dying or getting seriously ill. That is the crucial role for any Government, and it’s one that the Greens strongly support. So I, like many others in this House, am enormously grateful for the huge mobilisation of effort behind the vaccination programme, for getting 90 percent of New Zealanders who have had their two jabs and are now getting boosted, and for all of the preparation for the next stage, of Omicron.

But the need to tackle the climate crisis is as serious as outmanoeuvring the pandemic. Scientists predicted years ago that we’d have with warming temperatures more intense weather events, as we had with the remnants of tropical cyclone Dovi last weekend—huge anxiety and heartbreak, particularly to people in Westport, in Buller, and other areas in the North Island where there was extensive flooding.

The Prime Minister spoke about putting climate change at the heart of our economic strategy. That’s really important because we need that substantive change to reshape our economy so that we can reduce our emissions, protect the climate, protect nature, and improve our wellbeing. For too long we’ve seen the climate crisis and the nature crisis as things that are separate, in two silos. That’s a recipe for failure. This year, next year, the year after that, and the year after that, we have to integrate the solutions to the climate crisis and the nature crisis.

We had the $1.3 billion investment in Jobs for Nature as the centrepiece of COVID recovery last term. That’s bringing a huge number of jobs and connection with Papatūānuku through the programmes that Minister Allan is now rolling out. But we need much greater funding for nature and for the climate crisis, and we need major changes to policy and law to protect and restore our wetlands, to reduce the browsing pressure that deer and possums put on our forests, to protect soils and oceans, to sequester more carbon, and to protect the climate.

One of those key areas is exotic forestry, and there needs to be major change there and a major overhaul in the role of forestry in the emissions trading scheme (ETS), and I note that today, Beef + Lamb and Local Government New Zealand have come out with a discussion paper on that, calling for a much more strategic approach to forestry in the ETS. As the Climate Change Commission made really clear in Ināia tonu nei, relying too much on forests will not lock us into net carbon zero. To achieve meaningful decarbonisation before 2050, we need to reduce emissions, not just try and offset them through extensive pine planting. Dame Anne Salmond has said really recently that—and I quote—“The ETS is a spreadsheet designed in a silo, and an ecologist’s nightmare. It privileges the planting of monocultures of exotic conifers … while failing to assess their … impacts”.

With the Government spending $100 million on wilding conifer control, the largely uncontrolled spread of exotics is meaning we’re creating those problems for the future. One area that really needs change is the Overseas Investment Act: the way in which the special forestry test privileges overseas companies and individuals who want to come in and buy farmland for forestry. It means they don’t have to prove that there’s an identifiable benefit to New Zealanders. So, in 2021, we had the Overseas Investment Office approving 36 applications over 7,464 hectares. There is major concern in the Hawke’s Bay about the Huiarua Station: 5,000 hectares there that are potentially going into overseas ownership and pine. We need major change around forestry for the climate response, for the emissions trading scheme, the privileges it gets under overseas investment, and much better regulation so that its impacts are managed. Kia ora.

This is a split call, I presume.

This is a split call, Mr Speaker.

💬 SPEAKER: Jan Logie.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This afternoon, I’d like to speak primarily to one sentence in the Prime Minister’s speech—the only sentence where she mentioned child poverty—and that sentence was: “Climate change is a challenge we cannot and will not postpone”—yay! Just like child poverty, housing, and mental health, it sits firmly on this Government’s agenda, just as it did before and during this pandemic.

Now, I’ve got concerns about this sentence because, as a country and as a world, we need more climate action than what we’ve seen on child poverty, housing, and mental health. Four years on from putting those things on the Government’s agenda, we still have thousands of children in poverty: 25 percent of Pasifika children, about 20 percent of Māori tamariki, and disabled children. Basic needs are not being met in this country. The demand for food parcels recently has just skyrocketed, and this needs to be understood when we hear too that poor nutrition plays a role in two out of five deaths in this country.

It’s been acknowledged today from the Salvation Army that we have a housing catastrophe and an entrenched, if not building, mental health crisis. This situation can on some measures, as we hear sometimes from the Government, be still technically described as progress—and how grim is that?—and the Government points proudly to all the actions they’ve taken to increase benefits. Yes, that is so much better than nothing—100 percent—and the stop of the sale of State homes and the start of the rebuild of our housing stock—yes, yes, yes. But this is not a world in balance. This is surely not what success looks like, and I am genuinely frustrated that this pace and this impact that we’re seeing at the moment could represent the extent of the Government’s ambition for our children.

So we really need to do better on climate action than we are doing on this point, but we also need to do better on child poverty and the deeply interconnected issues of housing and mental health. When Dame Cindy Kiro, our now Governor-General and then chair of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG), said, on the launch of the WEAG report, “We can’t just tinker with the so-called welfare system. It’s just not going to cut the mustard.”, child advocates agreed, and they still continue to express real frustration that they’re not yet seeing anything that could be described as much more than tinkering.

Now, reportedly, only eight out of the 42 WEAG agreements have been partially implemented. Four years on, or however long it has been, none of them have been fully implemented, and the most recent changes to Working for Families, being possibly the worst example between the gap between possibility and this Government’s action, is that the Government increased Working for Families by a small amount for the lowest-income earners, but paid for it by taking that money away from middle-income earners. The Prime Minister didn’t mention any new initiatives to step this up, and I hope that she’s just holding her powder dry and this is going to be a focus, because we need action and we need it urgently.

The last Budget injection did not finish the job. At the time, Max Rashbrooke commented that meeting the child poverty targets over seven years would require “new spending on child poverty that is over a billion dollars a year, on top of previous spending”. Last year’s Budget announcement didn’t even meet that threshold. We need more, and now is the time to act because this is part of the COVID response, this is part of COVID response recovery, and this is part of climate justice. We need the WEAG items ticked off. We need guaranteed, adequate incomes and fair pay agreements. We need rent control and we need more State housing, and we need it now.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As I take a call in support of the Prime Minister’s statement and in opposition to the amendment to the associated motion from the Opposition, it’s quite pleasing to me as I’ve listened to a number of contributions that there is widespread recognition that, as a country, we have done very, very well with what is the greatest challenge that we are currently facing, which is COVID. I think it’s been an outstanding response from New Zealanders that has enabled that. Yes, it’s been coordinated by the Government, but notwithstanding the protests from a very small proportion of our population that we see outside, there has been a unified response from the people of New Zealand that has enabled us to overcome the pandemic in the way that we have until now.

We are now into the third year of the pandemic, and because of vaccination rates—and, really, only because of vaccination rates—we can now approach Omicron in a way that we couldn’t previously. It is with some confidence that we approach the challenge of the Omicron wave that is building in our country.

I think that New Zealanders, nervous though they are about Omicron, can take heart from the fact that the plan that the Government has adhered to with the support of New Zealanders has enabled us to have the best result in the OECD for two years in a row, and those are, of course, the two years that we have data for during the pandemic. We’ve had the lowest hospitalisation rate, the lowest rate of confirmed cases, and the lowest death rate, and it’s no coincidence—that didn’t happen by itself. It happened because of New Zealanders pulling together and doing the sensible things that we have done as a country. Yes, some of them have been hard. It’s been hard for people who have been separated from their loved ones and the business consequences for some businesses have been very difficult. But with support from the Government through wage support schemes and by doing this in as compassionate a way as possible, we have got through, and what an amazing result in the last year to have had 10 million doses of the vaccine taken up by New Zealanders.

I also know from my dealings with people that there is an enormous gratefulness on the part of the New Zealand population that for two years in a row, we have had a relatively normal summer, and we’ve needed it. People have needed a break from the consequences of COVID, and we’ve managed to deliver one. I think that’s a fantastic thing that we should be celebrating as a country, and I know the vast majority of New Zealanders do.

Over Christmas, of course, we had to wind back slightly the relaxation of managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ). I know that the Opposition was running a petition before Christmas saying, “End MIQ now”, which has since been changed to “End MIQ” because they’ve realised that they were on the wrong side of that one, given that if we had reopened to Australia as was originally planned, we would not have had the largely COVID-free summer that we have had.

We’re one of the only countries in the world that beat Delta. We didn’t completely stamp it out, but we bent the line down, and we haven’t been overrun with Delta deaths in the way that other countries have.

In the meantime, of course, the other business of Government goes on, and I haven’t got time to talk through in any detail the huge range of policy that we’ve got improving the country and the new deliveries that we’re doing across health, education, and climate. I note that the last contributions from the Green Party noted the importance of climate. Well, we actually have a Green climate Minister, and this year there’s going to be a focus on climate mitigation in the Budget. In respect of child poverty, I do note—and I didn’t see this mentioned by the last speaker from the Greens—that all nine indicators of child poverty, we’ve got progress on. The Prime Minister said that in question time today, and that’s something we’re immensely proud of.

In respect of health, of course, we’ve got the work that the Hon Andrew Little is leading to do away with health boards and to have a unified system. But in addition to that, we’re rolling out new hospitals and mental health infrastructure, in contrast to the last two years of the National Government’s Budgets, where there was no contribution to capital spending for health in the last two Budgets.

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: That is just not true.

That is true. There is some background capital expenditure, but in terms of contribution to capital spending from the Budget—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: That is not true, either.

Well, you can ask a question in the House on that, Mr Woodhouse, because we’ve heard the Minister of Finance contrasting the contributions to capital spending from the health sector. Remember those hospitals that were so poorly maintained that they had sewage running down the walls? Remember that fact that there were very few new hospitals being built in the country? Remember the complaints about mental health inadequacies of spending that followed the reality that the last National Government removed the ring-fencing of mental health funding? Health boards that were under pressure took the money that was meant to be applied to mental health and applied it to other areas, and as a consequence we inherited the mental health problems that we have.

In education, we reformed trades training in the polytechnic sector in a way that it really is working. We’ve got 100,000 extra people in trades training. One of the reasons why we’re coming out of this post-COVID recession so much better than the last Government achieved in respect of the global financial crisis is that instead of cutting back on spending on training, we increased it, and therefore we’re training the workforce that we need to, for example, build houses.

In my own responsibilities, having in recent years reformed the freshwater management in New Zealand, the big push this three-year term is to reform with the Natural and Built Environments Bill. We’re already in the meantime reforming the Resource Management Act through its repeal and replacement with the Natural and Built Environments Act, implementing the Randerson report, which the Hon Tony Randerson QC chaired during the last term of Government. But in addition to that, of course, we’re already adding to housing supply through the likes of the up-zoning legislation that we passed last year with the assistance of the National Party, and I thank the Hon Judith Collins in particular for that. I think that is something that history will thank the honourable member for.

In respect of the other big crisis that we inherited on housing, I do want to take the last 2½ minutes to just list the huge array of efforts we have that are behind the near doubling of the number of houses that are being built in Auckland. There’s a danger in this sort of speech of listing all of the things that have led to an outcome and then not leaving enough time for the outcome. In Auckland, from memory, the number of houses that was being built annually when we came into office was 10,000, whereas we’ve got that up to 19,000 in the last year, which is an over 90 percent increase in the number of homes being built. New Zealand - wide, the number of houses being built has increased to around 44,000 to 47,000 a year—47,000 last year and 44,000 predicted for this year, and if last year is anything to go by, we’ll probably beat those estimates as well.

There’s been an enormously complex range of levers pulled to achieve that. We’ve had the $3.8 billion Housing Acceleration Fund to help councils build the infrastructure needed to enable houses to be built. We established the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. We’ve developed our urban growth agenda to deal with land supply. We’ve established Kāinga Ora. We’ve passed the Urban Development Act and the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act, and we have the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, which we tweaked last year with the help of the National Party. We passed the COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Act. That has consented more than 3,400 residential units in the 2021 year. We’ve established the Progressive Home Ownership Fund.

We’ve changed the tax system. I know that the National Party hate this, but we actually have changed the tax signal in a country where we’ve got a very distorted tax signal around the housing market. We’ve done something to actually preference first-home buyers over investors, and it’s working.

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: How’s that going?

It’s working really well. It’s working really well. We directed housing investment into the building of new homes rather than bidding up the prices of existing homes, and we see that in the way in which house price inflation is rapidly going down in Auckland. House price inflation has been rocketing for years in Auckland, and in the last quarter, it is getting closer and closer to zero in real terms inflation in the Auckland housing market, and that’s a consequence of all of these measures. Of course, we’ve exempted the builders of new homes from these changes to interest deductibility in the brightline test because we want new supply.

It is working. We’ve got a big work programme on outside of COVID, and we’re proud of it.

Tuatahi māku e tuku he mihi ki a koe e te Māngai o te Whare nei i raro i te taumahatanga o te āhua kei waho rā. Ā, heoi anō kei roto i tēnei Whare kei te mihi ki a koutou ki a tātou katoa.

[Firstly, I’d like to send a greeting to you, to the Speaker, in consideration of the difficult circumstances outside. However, inside this House, I send my greetings to one and all.]

I stand here to unreservedly speak in support of the Prime Minister’s statement. I want to just commend our boss, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern. At a personal level, I feel incredibly privileged to be standing on this side of this House, under the mantle of her leadership. She is a person that is a humble leader. She is a woman driven with a sense of compassion who has this innate wisdom and a very clear sense of purpose, which provides a sense of clarity for all of us on this side of the House as we navigate some of what have been the most tumultuous of waters, standing here amidst a global pandemic—and we do.

Right now, we are living in a time of a global pandemic that is stretching out across the world and—with my emergency management hat on—we are also living in a time that we have seen some of the worst weather that has hit across regions, having absolutely gut-wrenching results up and down the country. We have people currently that have had their homes destroyed. Two states of emergency were declared down in the West Coast over the past three weeks. Up North, we have fires that have been tearing through the environment there for a month, and there’s a sense of uncertainty that people are feeling that I don’t think people have felt in quite some time. But what we have seen through it all is that our country, men, women—people from across the isle—have come together. We’ve pulled together and we’ve done our hardest, done our damnedest, to make the best of what has been thrown our way.

Minister Parker just left some encouraging words on the floor, and he stated it quite clearly: New Zealand has been one of the only countries, really, that did beat Delta. Yeah, we had incursions left, right, and centre, but nothing that was predicted. Here we are, standing at the forefront of this wave that is Omicron, and we saw some of the highest numbers come in this morning. But here we are with a population that is up in its mid - 90 percents for double vaccination, and getting boosted at a rate that is incredibly high per day. Our young children from the age of five and upwards have commenced their vaccination programme, and as far as a country could be prepared for this incursion that is Omicron, we could not have been better prepared.

💬 Hon Members: Oh, really?

And if anybody has any doubts across the other side of this House, I would love to have heard a single plan but for the one that they proposed. What was it—what was it? It was “Open up the borders.”, “Shut the borders.”, “Open up the borders.”, “Shut the borders.”, “Get rid of MIQ now—I mean, not now. Maybe a little bit later—no, no, just get rid of it altogether.”, “Oh, no, do it last year.”—I don’t know.

We’ve all been on a bit of a wave, a wave as they’ve gone through their turbulent times with their leadership. We’ve been on a wave as they’ve gone through their turbulent reckons when it comes to this pandemic. Thank goodness they haven’t been anywhere near the helm, and thank goodness they have not been anywhere near the purse strings of this country as we have weathered this storm, because it sounds like during the midst of a pandemic, all the folk on the other side of the House want to see costs cut, but they won’t tell you what programmes they’re going to cut—no, no, no. Anyway, it’s not about them. They can dither in their own whatnot.

But what I do also want to commend is our Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister, Grant Robertson. Grant Robertson, the Minister of Finance—

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: Top man.

—is a top man, as Minister Faafoi says. He has ensured that our economy is positioned as being on track better than any other in the OECD, or is one of the few that is in the position that we are in, due to better than expected financial accounts and our record of incredibly low unemployment.

We’ve always said that whilst we’ve been enduring the tides that are before us, we too have been just cracking on with the day-to-day business. For me, the thing that is bringing me joy at the moment is seeing how many New Zealanders are getting out there and protecting our environment. As our economy became afraid—with the wisdom of the Cabinet prior—they saw that we were going to have to offset some of the economic turbulence by creating programmes that would ensure that we could capture those that had been displaced as a consequence of COVID through programmes like Jobs for Nature.

As part of the Government’s economic recovery, we continue to roll out the Jobs for Nature programme. For the Department of Conservation - led projects, Jobs for Nature has delivered nearly 2,700 jobs so far. More than 1 million hours have been worked up and down Aotearoa by young men and women and people who strap on their boots, day in and day out, to get out there and look after our environment. We’re only 18 months into this programme, and there is plenty more to come. Under the Department of Conservation (DOC) mantle—it’s a three-tiered beast. But under the DOC component that I’m responsible for, we have 200 projects on the books as we are rolling out into 2024.

Alongside driving our economic recovery this year, we’ll see a huge focus—as has been stated across the House by Minister Parker just prior and others—on climate change across all of our portfolios. While the climate crisis is well-known, something that many of us have been yelling for folks to hear too is that we also have a biodiversity crisis. That is often seen as a bit of a poorer cousin to climate change, but it is incredibly important to our country’s values. I strongly believe that both of these crises are interlinked, and the more we can deliver nature-based solutions and protect and enhance biodiversity and reduce emissions, the better. A big part of my focus this year will be on implementing the Aotearoa New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy 2020, and we’ll have more to say on that in coming months, including how our collective biodiversity response can help drive our emissions reduction.

In December, I announced as well that we will be stepping up work to address longstanding problems in conservation law while laying the foundations for future law reform in conservation. Better legislation will equip us with the tools to deal with some of the biggest emerging threats to biodiversity today: invasive species, climate change, habitat loss, pollution, and the fragmentation of landscapes and ecosystems. We can start making improvements now to help relieve the pressure by tinkering with the way in which concessions work which are leading to unsatisfactory outcomes across the board, and that will be a part of the law reforms that we are tackling this year.

We’ve also launched a first-principles review of the Wildlife Act, which is over 60 years old and is often incredibly unclear, unfit for purpose, and incredibly difficult to implement. It doesn’t do a good job when it comes to protecting some of our most endangered species and, to be honest, it doesn’t really work well for anyone. Good progress has been made on a crucial stewardship land review and reclassification process, a task where far too little ground was made when DOC was established in 1987, and it was a promise that we undertook to do then. We’ve kicked that up into full blow this year, and it’s rendering some results.

Over the last four years, Labour, in partnership with the Greens, has delivered the biggest ever investment in nature and biodiversity protection. Kiwis back us on this, up and down Aotearoa, as we traipse up and down the country. They know the value of our natural landscapes, both for our identity as people and for our economy and brand in the world.

National’s track record for nature is poor: funding freezes and cuts to DOC, polluted rivers, opposition to any real action on climate change, and unrestrained and unplanned land use conversions. However, may I please just take this opportunity to thank the Greens for their constructive work alongside us, and, in particular, their conservation spokesperson, the Hon Eugenie Sage, for the work that we do together.

This is an exciting time to be in Government, albeit sometimes a little challenging. But on this side of the House, we’re up for the challenge, and I stand to speak and commend the Prime Minister’s statement.

Before I call the Hon Michael Woodhouse, I’d just like to ask the Hon Kris Faafoi to turn off the torch on his phone. When he moves it around, it’s sort of getting me in the eyes. It’s not as bad as the lasers that are coming in from our friends out the front, but it does hurt. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. That could be a member’s bill. I am recalling Dr Cam Calder’s laser bill. Perhaps we need a “Kris Faafoi Light Bill”.

Honestly, I think I’m in some kind of hermetically sealed parallel universe, listening to the speeches—

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: You are—it’s your caucus.

—that are coming from the other side—and Mr Faafoi agrees with me—because if there’s anything that underscores how arrogant and out of touch this Government is, it’s in the Prime Minister’s statement. It was 23 pages of “Aren’t we great and best in class, and oh what a great job we’ve done with COVID.”, and yet the reality is something very, very different. In my 40 years of adult life, I cannot remember a time where there has been more division, more despair, or more anxiety, anger, and frustration as there is right now, and I don’t excuse the protesters who are outside this place, but on a level I can understand it. They want to know what this Government is going to do to restore their freedoms and to live their lives free of unnecessary interference from the State, and they’re not getting those answers.

We’ve acknowledged year one, pretty solid—not perfect by any means—but year two and now we’re into year three, things are falling apart, and I’m not even sure what we’re trying to do here. Who are we trying to protect? Are we trying to protect the vaccinated? No, they’re vaccinated. The likelihood of them being seriously harmed by COVID is extremely low. Are we protected the unvaccinated? Well, remember the initial target was 70 to 75 percent. We’re now at 94 percent, and those few New Zealanders who have chosen for their own reason to be unvaccinated don’t want the Government’s protection.

So here’s what I think they’re trying to protect: they are trying to protect the health system, and they’re trying to protect a health system that they have failed to build capacity in. There is no extra capacity, no extra beds, no extra ICU places, no extra staff—goodness knows, the Minister of Immigration couldn’t get off his chair to get the doctors and nurses we need in, and, in fact, it’s worse than that, because the ones we did have have left.

It’s a scandalous reality that at Dunedin Hospital, a 12-bed extension to their ICU was completed nearly 3½ years ago. How many patients have been in that unit? Zero. It’s a Yes Minister moment. It’s an ICU with no patients, because there are apparently problems with heating and ventilation. Well, I’ve run a hospital. I know that is a complication, but in the UK, where some of those hospitals are 400 to 500 years old, those buildings, they’re able to do it. Why can’t we, in the middle of a pandemic, find a solution and get a unit that we have spent millions developing actually open so we can respond to a COVID outbreak if those beds are needed?

I have been having a look at some of the data. I hear, and it’s even in the Prime Minister’s statement—how many times have we heard this—the best economic response is a strong health response. Well, I argue that even through the narrow lens of COVID, the health response has not been strong. But I also am very, very concerned that that lens is so narrow, because not a single member of this House has avoided the heartbreaking stories of the cancers that have gone undetected, of the heart disease—of the heart attacks where people with chest pain have stayed at home because they’re afraid to go to hospital, probably at a cost of their lives.

Now, researchers are able to equalise those impacts, and they can do analysis on what they call QALYs—quality-adjusted life years—or wellbeing years, and they can measure the costs and benefits of different interventions. We know a lot about the costs of COVID through the lockdowns, and the Government crows about how many lives they might have saved, but how many have been lost? How many life years have been lost by the heartbreaking stories of cancer and heart disease?

You know, we’ve lost some older New Zealanders. How many New Zealanders have not been born because IVF treatments were stopped? There is the maternity care where the partner has to be prevented from going into the hospital and the self-harm that’s gone up in our rangatahi—about a third more self-harm in the last two years—and how much of that is attributable?

The analysis that I have seen indicates that the non-COVID costs to our health and wellbeing may exceed the benefits of the COVID response by two and a half to five times. Now, that’s got to be international research, because we, as far as I can tell, have not done that research. The lens is too narrow, and I think that’s why countries like Sweden, Morocco, Israel, the UK, and the USA have said enough. It’s not because they’ve necessarily defeated COVID, but they know that the costs of carrying on the way they were are so much greater than that, and they’re doing that at 73 to 74 percent vaccination rates, but they are opening up, they’re dropping the restrictions, and they’re flooding their countries with rapid antigen tests. That is a scandal in my view: the fact that we have had nearly no access to rapid antigen tests months after so many countries used them as a screening tool that would stop what’s about to happen in Queenstown, where it’s not hyperbole to say that that town could well collapse by the weekend because of the COVID outbreak and the requirements of staff to self-isolate, rather than actually get a rapid test that could conclude very quickly whether or not they and their clients and colleagues were at risk.

But what about that economic response? I left a Government that grew wages at twice the rate of inflation. Now, we have inflation at twice the rate of wage growth—that’s a scandal. Inflation is now touching 6 percent. The Finance and Expenditure Committee was told this time last year that it was going to be temporary and would max out at 2.7 percent. Well, I think they were right based on the information they had, but they had no idea of the spending binge that this Government was going to go on in an overinflated economy.

You don’t even need to know fourth form economics to know that when you pump that much money into an overcapacity economy, inflation will grow, and I predict it’s going to keep growing. It’s certainly hitting those people who are least able to afford that growth in wages the hardest. Food prices are out of control. Housing costs, which we’ve talked about—in Dunedin, it’s gone up 40 percent under this Government. The average price of a house in Dunedin is now something like $731,000. Mr Parker goes, “Oh, apparently it’s flat-lined.”—no. It went up 20 percent last year in Dunedin, 27 percent across the country, and they still pour billions more into the economy. The people who are going to have to repay that debt have not even been born yet.

So when they say they’re best in class, when they look at themselves in the mirror and say “Aren’t we great?”, look at the whole costs. Look at the non-COVID health costs, look at the future costs of the legacy that we are leaving for our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren, and then ask this: strong though that initial response was, for how long can we continue to do this? They say, “Oh, we don’t have a plan.” Yes we do: flood the country with rapid antigen tests that are a reliable indicator of who might be at risk, protect the most vulnerable, maintain very strong constraints on those immuno-compromised and elderly New Zealanders who are most at risk even of Omicron even if they’re vaccinated, and let the rest of the country get on with its life. We cannot continue to go on the way we are.

That protest out there is going to be a Moutoa Gardens—79 days that lasted. Well, what are we at—day eight or nine? I think we’re a long way away from, not moving them, but easing the anger, frustration, and anxiety that brought them here in the first place.

It’s got to stop. This Government does not have a stated plan to get us out of the restrictions that they have put us in. They said they would govern for all New Zealanders. Well, most New Zealanders don’t feel as though they’re part of the team of 5 million any more, and this statement really smacks of the arrogant and out-of-touch Government that they are.

It is my privilege to rise and speak in support of the Prime Minister’s statement. Madam Speaker, just before you assumed the Chair, Speaker Mallard asked me to turn the light or the torch of my phone off. It was a mistake, but I’m beginning to think I should have left it on and pointed it at the Opposition, because at the moment the Opposition is a very dark, dark place.

You would think from the Opposition that the efforts of the entire country over the last two years to make sure we can get through a global pandemic have come to nothing. You would think from the words of the Opposition that everything that every individual has done here in New Zealand over the last two years—to scan, to vaccinate, to boost—has come to nothing. Well, I am very proud to stand on this side of the House and to support the Prime Minister’s statement and the decisive leadership of the Government to make sure we have weathered, on the whole, better than any other country in the OECD.

I am proud of the decisions we’ve made. As difficult as they have been, the New Zealand public have bought into it, because there are 4 million New Zealanders out there who got vaccinated. There are 1.2 million New Zealanders out there who have had their third booster shot, because they know that they are doing their part to keep following through on the efforts of the last two years to keep New Zealanders safe from the ravages of a global pandemic—of a global pandemic—something that the Opposition seems to be completely and utterly ignorant of.

I am proud of this Government and its actions because at every turn, we’ve acted early and we’ve acted decisively to prevent the worst impacts of the global pandemic. It is sad because some families in New Zealand have lost loved ones, and I want to acknowledge that. But the early and decisive action of this Government has made sure that on the whole, New Zealanders have been safe and are faring better than most other countries that we compare ourselves to. In terms of confirmed cases, hospitalisations, and deaths, we have been the lowest in the OECD for the last two years, and I want to take my hat off to not only the decisions that we have made but the officials who have helped us implement that, the health workers who have worked tirelessly, and our community workers who have worked tirelessly to keep us safe and keep people alive.

I heard a saying a couple of months ago that might work its way around public health circles: when public health actions work, nothing changes. You get to, relatively, live the life that you want. Now, obviously we haven’t been able to do that, but the decisive public health measures that we have taken have kept us safe when other countries, both close and afar, have suffered a much higher incidence of COVID, much higher hospitalisation rates with COVID, and, unfortunately, much higher death rates because of COVID. I am proud that our Government over the last two years has acted decisively in the best interests of New Zealand to keep us safe.

The measures that we have taken have saved lives. There are challenges still ahead of us. But also the work—and I want to acknowledge the Minister of Finance here—that we have undertaken over the last two years has protected jobs and businesses as well. I want to acknowledge—because we can see the number of cases going up—that we’re not through all of those challenges, but we’ve got to this point in better shape than most other countries, and the plan that we have followed has worked.

We’ve got a more immediate challenge, and in this part I’m not talking to the people in this Chamber; I’m talking to the people who are at home who maybe, for some strange reason, want to listen to my speech. We know the onset of Omicron has grown. We’ve seen that from the cases that have happened or have been reported in the last two or three days. It’s now really important that we support our friends and family to get ready for that, and to make sure—importantly—that if you can get a booster shot, you do it, because we know from some of the numbers we’ve seen offshore that the rates of hospitalisations and death dramatically reduce if you have had your booster shot. So my main message to people who might be listening or watching is if you haven’t got your booster and you’re eligible to get your booster, please go out and get that done.

Then each family—and friends and neighbours—needs to make sure that they’ve got a plan to look after each other. I’m nearly finished with my plan to make sure I’ve got all the medication that I need, and I’ve got a plan to make sure that someone is able to look after me or my loved ones if I am asked to self-isolate. But please, to those listening—you might be driving; you might be heading home on the bus this afternoon—make sure you are having those conversations so that you’ve got the absolute basics if you need to self-isolate. It will help you and your family or your neighbours to make sure you can get through what is forecast to be an increase of Omicron.

Can we also make sure that we’re looking after our health workers. It’s been two years and I have certainly heard of stories of the stress that they’ve been under because of the heavy workload, and I want to acknowledge that, but also let’s make sure we’re looking after them in the way that we’re dealing with them too, because I’ve also heard stories of them being abused, etc., as well. So as we enter this next challenge, can I ask that we are kind to the people who are looking after us—to those who work at supermarkets and to those who are making sure essential services continue to run but very much our health workers.

Look, our economy is in good shape considering the challenges that have been thrown at us. Record low unemployment: I want to take my hat off again to the Minister of Finance and all the support that he has given over the last two years in terms of supporting jobs—so keeping people in their jobs to support family—because that has meant a lot of New Zealanders have been able to stay in their jobs. Record numbers of New Zealanders are moving off main benefits and into work. Over 100,000 more people employed now than 12 months ago and some of our sectors are actually having a bit of a boom time in terms of export earnings, and I want to acknowledge that, because that has assisted us in terms of the economy.

Speaking as Minister of Immigration, we’ve also set a path to reconnecting. A couple of weeks ago, I joined the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister in Auckland to announce our five-step plan to reconnecting. That begins later this month, to allow New Zealanders and those who are able to come to New Zealand from across the Tasman to come here. We open up again a month later to New Zealanders from around the world. Step three, by April: I think, importantly, it allows the likes of working holiday visa holders to come to New Zealand, and I think a lot of industries like tourism and the horticulture sector will welcome that. Then step four and five, which is from July or from October: we’re able to increasingly allow more people into the country, especially visitors, and able to be fully open from October. I think that is both a very careful and considered and balanced approach to make sure we are managing the public health, economic, and social factors that we need to when we’re opening the border.

I’m also proud that we’ve been able to get on with business, and this week I’m especially proud of a piece of legislation that started out as an idea within our party. We went through it and it became a manifesto commitment at the last election and, last night, it became a piece of legislation around the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill. I want to acknowledge all the hard work of Rainbow Labour caucus, Rainbow Labour, the policy committee, and all the advocates who were pushing to make sure that this was something that when we stand up in this House and this Parliament, it draws a ring around us, and all of us are supporting it.

I also want to acknowledge the journey that we have had to get there, and also acknowledge the weight of support that that piece of legislation had in this House, with 112 members of this Parliament supporting it. I think that sends a very strong message out to the country that no one’s sexual orientation or gender identity is broken or is in need of fixing, and people who want to love the way they want to love have more protections and freedoms in that respect.

That is the kind of thing that we’re getting on with, as well as protecting the country over the last two years from a pandemic. We’ve got to keep the course and decisive leadership will do that, and that’s why I commend the Prime Minister’s statement.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, and we love you, Minister Faafoi, and the work you’ve been doing. I was in a bottle store recently buying something for my wife, of course, and the guy there said, “Are you Stuart Nash?”—I was all masked up, of course—and I said, “I am.” He said, “Please say thank you to Minister Faafoi. I became a resident yesterday.” Every single one of the MPs of both sides of the House have heard these stories, because we have made a real difference, Minister Faafoi, and thank you very much.

I have been in Cabinet ever since COVID reached our shores—ever since we heard about COVID—and one thing I will say is that every single decision that this Government has made and every single meeting that the Prime Minister has chaired where COVID has been brought forward has put the health and wellbeing of our communities at the very centre. Every single discussion we have is about how we can protect the health and wellbeing of our communities. You will have heard the Prime Minister say and you’ll hear the Minister of Finance say that there is no global rulebook or playbook for managing a pandemic, and we acknowledge in hindsight that perhaps a couple of the decisions we made, we would have done things differently. But we went forward with a no-regrets policy, and I honestly believe that when the history of COVID is written, the Government led by our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and the economic response led by our Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, will be at the very top of performance around the world. As every single member has alluded to, we have the lowest death rate and the lowest hospitalisation rates.

I used to do a show. I did it for five years—it was on Mike Hosking—and we kept talking about the Government’s response. Mike Hosking is one of these guys who is always right in hindsight—he is always right in hindsight. He kept going on about the Government’s response, and I said to him, “Mike, we have the lowest death rate in the world.” He said, “Oh, well, that might be one measure.”, and I said, “Well, I think how many Kiwis have died is a pretty important measure.”

He used to talk about Sweden—“We need to follow Sweden.” Well, what I can tell you is that in Stockholm, there are about 990,000 people. There are about 1.5 million people in Auckland. There have been about 4,500 deaths from COVID in Stockholm. Imagine the conversations we would be having in this House, let alone around the dinner tables and barbecues, if there’d been 4,500 deaths in Auckland. They would be completely different to the conversations we have been having. We would not have had the summer we’ve just had. If you have a look at the economic intelligence unit’s report, we were number two in the world in terms of democratic institutions. I absolutely believe, as mentioned, that I think history will prove us right that our response has been at the very top.

The other thing I’d say about Mike Hosking is I made a bet with my good friend but Opposition MP Mark Mitchell and Mike Hosking in September that we would reach 90 percent double-vaxxed by the end of the year. Mike said to me, “Not a hope in hell. It’s never been done anywhere around the world, and I’ll take you up on that bet, but I hope I lose.”—those were pretty much his words. Well, he lost. He said, “It’s impossible.” We said that there’s a difference between impossible and aspirational, and if there’s one thing this Government is, it is aspirational, because we backed Kiwis. We knew we could get there, we knew the Kiwis would buy into the reason for getting vaccinated, and they did. I won that bet by about a month, and Mike Hosking still hasn’t paid—Mike, pay up, mate.

But we won that bet. When Mike said, “It’s never been done anywhere around the world.”, well, Jacinda Ardern said, “It doesn’t mean that we can’t do it, and we’re not going to say we won’t do it because we know we can.”, and Kiwis bought into it. As mentioned, every single decision that Jacinda has taken has put our best interests at heart.

The second thing I would say is that not every sector of our economy or our community has done particularly well. As the Minister for Tourism, I’m in charge of a portfolio where there are many businesses that have done it really, really tough, and I would like to acknowledge the men and women who work in tourism—the men and women who, pre-COVID, had a fantastic business model and were delivering a magic experience to all the international visitors who flocked to our wonderful country—and they have done it tough. As the Minister for Tourism, I would have been down to Queenstown about six times. I’ve been to every single district that we have identified had a reliance on international tourists and I’ve heard the stories, and they are of men and woman, as mentioned, who could never foresee this. A number of them have managed to adapt their business model, but it is still tough. But the message I want to give to them is that we are nearly there. We have a plan in place and we are nearly there, so hang on.

We’ve already provided $600 million in direct support to tourism. We provided $600 million in resurgence support payments to tourist and hospitality businesses, so there has been an immense amount of support, and I know for a number of them it is still really tough. But I want to say to those businesses, thank you for the work that you have done, thank you for holding on, and thank you for believing in us. We believe in you and I back you 100 percent, and we will get there and, once again, deliver the tourism experience that meets or exceeds the expectation of every tourist who comes to this country.

However, I have been very clear that tourism won’t look the same as it did pre-COVID. Pre-COVID, there were 875,000 tourists in Milford Sound every year. That was not sustainable and we were losing the social licence with our communities. We need to take that back and we need to move from sustainable to regenerative tourism. Regenerative tourism is about tourism adding value to our communities, and we’re working very closely with the sector to deliver on that.

Small businesses: before COVID, I used to say that this will be the last generation of business owner that will survive, let alone thrive, without being digitally enabled, and the reason I said that was because, as the Minister of Revenue at the time, Inland Revenue were moving everything online. Every single initiative we were putting in place rested on a digital platform. But what’s happened is that because of COVID, this whole digital transformation has been brought forward by a substantial amount. McKinsey & Co. believe that in the United States, about five years’ worth of digital transformation took place in eight weeks, and I believe the same has happened here.

But we recognise that for a number of businessmen and businesswomen, they were very good at what they did, but they weren’t digitally capable in a way that we needed them to be. Hence, the reason why we put in Digital Boost. It’s a free service. There are hundreds of videos so businessmen and businesswomen can start their digital journey right from the very beginning or jump in at any point in time. So far, there are 27,000 businesses that have taken up that challenge, and I think they’ll be a lot better for it when we get out of this.

I did hear a member talk about our police, and I do want to say that I was a very, very proud Minister of Police. I oversaw the investment of 1,800 graduates. We backed the police in a way that we have never done before. When I took over the police portfolio, I took over in a period where the numbers had dropped in the previous three years of the last Government—and I can see one of the former members, Judith Collins, there. But the thing I’ll say about her is I saw the Cabinet paper she put up and she was overruled when she wanted more numbers.

But we oversaw that. I went to every single graduation, except one when I was in Mexico and another one when COVID hit—they said, “You couldn’t get back if you went to this.”—and, goodness me, I saw the fantastic men and woman who chose the New Zealand Police service as a career. I back them 100 percent. I think they do a magnificent job at keeping us safe, and the thing about our police service is that the vast majority of Kiwis just do not know what they do 24/7 to keep us safe. I’m very proud of the way that we have really moved the police service into the 21st century.

The last thing I’d like to say in the final couple of minutes is about economic development. This is very important in a post-COVID world, and the thing that will lead us out of this is our industry transformation plans. We understand that as a country, we have a number of global competitive advantages, a number of unique selling points. We can go out to the world and say, “Buy New Zealand.” They used to say that we can feed the world. We can’t; we can feed about 50 million people. That’s the figures, and Mr David Bennett knows this—he’s a dairy farmer.

So what we should be doing always is aiming at the ultra-premium end of the market, whether it’s our food, whether it’s our services, whatever we deliver, or whether it’s tourism—that ultra-premium end of the market—because that’s where we need to play, and that is where the industry transformation plans will take us. It’s about looking at sectors—advanced manufacturing, forestry and wood-processing, Minister Clark’s leading IT, tourism, agritech, construction, food and beverage—and saying, “What do we need to do to encourage these industries and businesses that operate within these industries to be the absolute best?” We recognise that the Government does have a really important role to play to work alongside these industry sectors to help them be the best they possibly can be. We don’t tell them what to do; we ask them how we can help them be better. The process so far has been transformational, but we’re just along that path at the moment.

I would just like to finish by saying I am incredibly proud to be a member of this Parliament, to be the MP for Napier, and to be a member of Cabinet as we have made what are, I believe, some of the toughest decisions any Cabinet has had to make for a generation. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. That was Stuart Nash, the Minister for Economic and Regional Development. It took him to the last minute to actually talk about economic development, and there’s a lesson there for Stuart that I think he needs to understand. It’s not the Government that’s actually going to make these—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order!

—businesses plans work. It’s businesses—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member will refer to other members in the House with their full name.

The Minister Stuart Nash. It’s not Government that will determine the transformation of New Zealand business; it’s actually businesses themselves, and if he doesn’t understand that, he will never achieve anything in that portfolio.

When we look at his thing that he promoted at the last Budget, the Regional Strategic Partnership Fund, that was his big thing to take away and replace the Provincial Growth Fund with. That was $200 million that was to be spent in New Zealand regions for businesses. Guess how much he’s spent!

💬 Hon Members: How much?

Zero—not one application has been approved by his mates in Cabinet. None of his applications have been approved.

Now, to Stuart Nash’s credit, he, apparently, has taken something to Cabinet. He won’t actually specify what he’s taken to Cabinet. He’s actually taken something there—stay, Stuart Nash, stay—but he’s up to zero in his approvals.

So what does it matter? Where’s this regional economic development? Where’s the money when the country needs it most? This is a country in a very difficult part of its history. It needs the Government to actually fund and help businesses, if that’s what they want to do. But there have been zero applications approved under the new regional fund, which was glorified in the Budget as the Labour Party’s answer to the Provincial Growth Fund. The late—well, the past Minister in that area, Winston Peters, would actually be turning in his, up in Auckland, thinking about what this actually means, if his great Provincial Growth Fund has been replaced by a fund that’s had zero applications approved.

Now, the last hours of this debate have been pretty sickening—listening to Labour members singing the praises of the Prime Minister. They all must be wanting to get on that plane to go to that Harvard speech and to see the Prime Minister amongst all the other lefties of the world, talking about how they’ve done so well, and “Pat me on the back.” and “Praise me.” and “Have I been the greatest Prime Minister?” and “Have I done this for New Zealand?”—all those things that the Labour members have been saying. But let’s put some facts on the table: New Zealand is an isolated country at the bottom of the world, where it was always going to be difficult for COVID to get to New Zealand in the sense that we have seen it in places like Sweden, where they don’t have the opportunity to do what we did. In Europe and America, they just didn’t have the same scenario that we did.

Now, the other Minister over there is shaking his head and saying no. Well, Australia was in exactly the same position as New Zealand—probably even more connected in the world than we are—and they got the same result. We’re just a couple of months behind them. You know, Omicron’s here, it’s coming. It’s here—it’s around. People will get it, just like you have seen in Australia, and the fortunate thing for New Zealand hasn’t been the Government. The fortunate thing for New Zealand has been that vaccines have come along and the new strain, although easy to catch, hasn’t had the same effect. That is the scenario in which the gods have looked after New Zealand.

It’s nothing to do with a great Prime Minister that’s actually done anything good; in fact, what we actually need to look at is how you utilise the scenario that we are in and make it the best it can actually be for this country. That is where a Government comes into play, and that’s where this Government has fallen down consistently. They have stopped immigration. They have stopped international education. They have stopped tourism—even if you were going for the high-level tourism that Stuart Nash talked about, you could still have done that. They have stopped the New Zealand economy in its tracks. They have used lockdown after lockdown. They have used red settings, which are, effectively, community-based lockdowns. They have taken this country to the slowest point they can do.

Now, some may say, and the Labour members will say, that this is in the best interests of New Zealand. It is not used in the best interests of New Zealand. This is a definite plan by the Labour Party to achieve its political purposes. It never wants to see migrants come into New Zealand, because it knows they’re hard-working people that actually believe in the values of the National Party. It doesn’t actually want to see New Zealand have international education in our schools, because it thinks that it can control our school network. It doesn’t actually want to have tourism—and we heard that from Stuart Nash then. They only want the elite German tourists to come here. They don’t want people to come and see what New Zealand is like. That is what has happened under this Government.

Let’s look at the facts. They have used COVID. They have used it to create their own isolated, hermit kingdom, as some people have described it, but it is the true socialist idea, where you control the population, you limit a population’s ability to understand what’s going on in the real world, and then you actually control the decision making of people. That’s the ultimate plan the Labour Party is engaged in. It is a plan that is doomed to failure.

The public have seen through it. You’re seeing it in the polls. The people have said no to that approach. They know it will never work.

They actually wanted a Government that utilised the strengths of New Zealand at the bottom of the world and when we had the opportunities out of COVID, but we would actually take that and make a stronger economy that actually delivers more for New Zealanders. The impact you’ll see of the Government’s policies is going to be very soon seen by New Zealanders in inflation and other economic tests, because by restricting the ability of people to come here and by restricting the goods that came into New Zealand, they have, effectively, bumped up the price of the cost of living for New Zealanders, and that is the impact that you see from silly economic policies on the other side of the House.

The question for New Zealand isn’t whether we had the best COVID response in the world. We were always going to have a good COVID response, as Australia did. The question for New Zealand is whether we actually used that scenario that we are in as a country to create the best economic advantage going forward, and they have failed on that miserably. They have failed because they are led by ideology, because they actually wanted to achieve their political purposes at the same time. That is heart and soul of it. Kiwis are smart enough to see through this Government, and they see that.

The other part that’s the irony of it is that the people that actually saved them and actually spent the money was one of the groups they actually hated the most—that’s our farmers. They actually wanted to stop production in New Zealand, but they actually found that “Oh, we need that cash coming in. We actually do need to have a dairy payout like that. We actually do need our farmers.” They have hated them from day one and they have tried to attack them from day one, and they now need them like they’ve never needed them before.

They are paying the bills for this agenda that the Labour Party wish to pursue, but it’s an agenda which will never go far because the worm has turned on that Government. They know it. The next Minister speaking—he knows it. He’s been around Parliament long enough. He’s seen this happen before. They know what it actually means. Public opinion is now against them. The public have seen through the rhetoric and the sham that is this leadership in Government.

The public actually wanted a Government that utilised New Zealand’s opportunities and that dealt with COVID appropriately but also meant that New Zealand could take advantage of our opportunities in the world going forward, and that’s what they would have got out of a National Government. That’s the difference between a National Government and a Labour-Greens Government, and that’s what people know. They understand that, and they see that.

Whatever rhetoric that will come out of that side and whatever Harvard speeches they may do, it’s not going to save them from the inevitability of the public knowing that on that side of the House, they tried a failed plan that has failed throughout the history of mankind and will never work. We are just another example of how that experiment is a failure, and New Zealanders know better than the Government and the Labour-Green parties that think they know it all. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I think we’ve just had an illustration of the old saying that one should never let the facts get in the way of a good story. The member opposite talking about the economy—such doom and gloom. I mean, you wouldn’t think that New Zealand had had one of the highest growth rates in the OECD for the past year listening to that member speaking—4.9 percent growth over the past year, which isn’t to say that some sectors haven’t been doing it tough, because they have. Let’s be honest, COVID has brought incredible challenges globally, but the New Zealand economy overall has proven more resilient than most, and I do want to acknowledge the extraordinary leadership of our Prime Minister through this period in inspiring the confidence in our economy and of our Deputy Prime Minister, and finance Minister, Grant Robertson. The settings that they have led have ensured that we have had that economic growth, that we have been able to take advantage of the global opportunities presented to New Zealand with those record international commodity prices and so on.

But, fundamentally, the success has lain in the collective effort of New Zealanders. The leadership which said the best health approach is the best economic approach has proven to be true, but New Zealanders have got behind it. Kiwis have said, “We will do our part. We will work together and we will look after each other.” And that has put us in a position to respond so well to a one-in-100-year global pandemic.

If we look at the facts we’ll see that New Zealand, of course, has had the lowest hospitalisations and deaths in the OECD. The prior member will talk down that achievement. He will say it was inevitable, but there is nothing inevitable. We’ve seen such differing responses around the world, and New Zealand has retained that health approach and, with it, the extraordinary growth, really, in the global conditions that we’ve faced. We’ve got record low unemployment—record low unemployment. Again, that is all credit to the collective effort of New Zealanders who have worked together to make sure that we build back better, to make sure that we take advantage of the systems that have been set up to support businesses through the challenges that they’ve faced in the lockdowns that we’ve had.

So I do want to also acknowledge that in the collective response that there’s been, we now have 1.9 million New Zealanders who have received their COVID-19 booster. Every DHB has reached the target of 90 percent first doses for COVID protection. We’ve had Pfizer vaccines to 95 percent of our population—and double dose. We are better protected than others, and that has been through careful management and through New Zealanders stepping up to play their part in making sure that those around them are protected, those who are vulnerable are protected, by reducing the likelihood of transmission and severe illness, by keeping our hospital systems able to operate through a global pandemic that continues to go on. It’s years long, and our hospital systems have continued to be able to operate, and the health workers I’ve spoken to—the doctors, the nurses and allied health workers—have said how grateful they are to not be in hospital systems that have been overrun by COVID during the past few years. And that has all been deliberate on the part of New Zealanders choosing to be a part of a collective response to look after fellow citizens, to look after themselves, to make sure they are doing what they can do to keep us safe, and to provide the opportunity for us then to build our economy back in a way that we would want to see it.

We do want to build our economy back in a way that positions New Zealand well for the future too, building a high-wage, low-carbon economy, making sure that we have a robust economy that is diversified and protects us in good times. I want to say a little bit about some of the work going on in the area I’m responsible for with our digital technologies. We’ve consulted on our plan to put together a digital economy plan, a strategy for the country, and we’ve received feedback on that. Later this year, we will launch that digital strategy for Aotearoa New Zealand; again, something the Prime Minister saw as an opportunity, with the creation of a portfolio that brings together the digital economy and communications for the first time in order to position us well as a country to take advantage of the connectivity that we’ve got. Now we’re up to about 85 percent of New Zealand connected or able to connect to ultra-fast broadband (UFB). We are aiming to have 99.8 percent connected before too long to better services than they used to have. The rural broadband initiatives have made huge gains during our time in Government. We’ve seen a huge uplift in the connectivity stats in New Zealand—I’ll come to them a little later on. But in laying out a strategy so that we have a coherent vision as a country to take advantage of the opportunities, we are looking at making sure we’re doing inclusion well to make sure that we are building on our reputation as a trusted nation internationally. Our cyber-security companies do well internationally; overseas capital looks to buy them up because our brand as a country is so trusted. To make sure our own citizens trust technology and are able to leverage the benefits for them personally and to make sure we get the economic growth opportunities in a part of the economy that is growing at nearly twice the rate of the general economy—that is the opportunity we have here: high-value jobs, sustainable jobs, low carbon footprint. We want more of these jobs. And toward the end of last year, I was able to announce a border class exception for 600 much-needed tech specialists because we want to grow our capability here. There are vacancies in that workforce and with those people able to come in they can support the tech development that we need also amongst our own citizens.

The tech sector itself, NZTech, I do want to take my hat off to them for their work on our industry transformation plan (ITP) and the leadership they’re providing in building skills across New Zealand. They have said industry needs to play a greater role in making sure we’ve got the right talent and skills coming through our school system, through our educational institutions, and their words around this are that New Zealand doesn’t have a skills shortage, what it has is a skill mismatch, and we need a deliberate plan to build that back better. And Minister Nash spoke about the ITP that I’m leading in this area, and I do want, as I say, to acknowledge the sector and the work that they have done, particularly in the education space and the steps that are moving forward there. There will be more announced around next steps on that to come.

So that class border exception for specialist tech workers, further steps on that will be announced shortly if they haven’t already by NZTech and the sector, making sure that those who are going to be brought in through that border exception have salary requirements met. They have to be good paying salaries. They have to be rare skills that we’re bringing in. And then there is a pathway to bring more folk in through that channel.

And, of course, connectivity—I mentioned that I did want to say a little bit more about connectivity. I had the privilege a couple of months ago to travel to the Chatham Islands and to see what a difference connectivity is making there. Their first cell tower with 4G has gone in there and it has been transformative. The mayor shared with me stories of people who had what seem to us commonplace stories now, you know; one story about somebody finding a phone on the beach and being able to ring up the person whose phone it was and tell them, “I found your phone.” Things that seem so intuitive to us now, but indeed, when you’re first encountering that technology on a widespread basis, are fantastic. Another story of somebody phoning to check out the technology on Pitt Island and not being able to connect. And it turned out that the phone they had was from the mainland, what they call “New Zealand”, and was very dated technology and obviously needed to be upgraded. But it’s transformative over there, transformative round the country: 416 marae are now connected across the country to UFB as a part of an initiative led by this Government.

The increase in connectivity provides opportunities for our citizens, and that’s what we want. We want to see more New Zealanders taking advantage of the jobs in this sector, and we think particularly of software as a service, which is being promoted as one of the big opportunities under our digital strategy–cyber-security also, and the gaming sector, which has enjoyed some extraordinary growth in New Zealand due to some very committed Kiwis and some very successful firms that are selling their products to the world.

There is huge opportunity in this sector. I want to thank all of the workers who continue to bring the inspiration, develop the products, and make sure that we grow off that $6.6 billion base to continue to grow that sector, because the opportunity for weightless exports makes a big difference if you’re a small, trading nation a long way from market—high-value jobs that transform our sector and transform our country and boost our economy so we can continue to enjoy the kind of economic growth that has been made possible under Grant Robertson’s leadership as our finance Minister. Kia ora koutou.

I’m very pleased today to be able to stand and commend the Prime Minister’s statement to the House in 2022. It was a statement that I think set out a clarity of leadership and hope in what are enormously challenging times here in Aotearoa New Zealand, but in every country around the world, as we continue to face the global pandemic. It is a pandemic that carries on, that continues to claim tens of thousands of lives around the world most days of the week. While most of us would like to be able to wish it away—and, indeed, some who have spoken in this Chamber in this debate have acted as if we can do that—we just can’t. If we want to continue to keep our people safe, if we want to continue to maintain standards of living by having an economy that moves forward, if we want to look after the vulnerable people in our society who continue to be at the most risk, then we need to continue with our health- and people-focused approach to the management of COVID-19 and Omicron. The Prime Minister very eloquently set out the absolute determination of our Government to carry on with that.

But what I really want to focus on in my opening comments is the clarity of vision that the Prime Minister set out in her speech. Clarity is really about knowing where you stand. It’s not about being obstinate and saying that you won’t pay account of changing conditions or facts on the ground—any sensible Government will do that, and we have, as we’ve dealt with this pandemic—but it’s knowing what you will stand for and it’s being prepared to make the tough decisions.

In dealing with a crisis like COVID, the biggest public health crisis in over 100 years, the biggest shock to the world economy since the Great Depression, a Government can’t just make the easy decisions that make people happy or get the right headlines on any given day of the week, as are sometimes put to us from members opposite. A Government must sometimes make decisions that are tough, that will have tough outcomes for some people, but they’re the right decisions for the country and for the common good.

We’ve had the debates in this Chamber about some of those tough decisions, about some of the tough public health measures we’ve taken, about the alert levels, about our judicious use of lockdowns, about the way in which we’ve evolved towards a traffic light system, about the way in which we have used managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) to keep the people of our country safe—tough decisions and they sometimes carry costs. But we stand here confident and clear in knowing that every single one of those decisions has delivered the outcome that we have in New Zealand with one of the lowest death rates, one of the lowest rates of serious illness, one of the highest rates of economic growth and the lowest rates of unemployment in the world after two years of a global pandemic. We are very proud of that, and so proud of the leadership of our Prime Minister at the front of that effort.

I do have to contrast that clarity with the muddle that we hear from the Opposition benches over the course of this debate and in recent days. We’ve heard it over mandates—“They should end.” “They shouldn’t end.” We’ve heard it over MIQ—“They should end now.” “Maybe they should end at some stage.” “We didn’t say they that.” “Oh, actually, we want them to end.” You cannot lead a country during a global pandemic with that lack of clarity, that lack of precision in leadership that we see from the other side of the House.

We’ve seen it in recent days over the minimum wage. I stand proud, as a Minister in a Government who’s delivered increases in the minimum wage to our lowest paid workers—those cleaners, those supermarket checkout workers, those retail workers, those hospo workers who have carried so much over the last few years. We would not stand there and see those people’s living standards go backwards. So I’m proud of the work that we’ve done in that area. We’ve shown that we can deliver sustainable, good increases to the minimum wage and still have the lowest rate of unemployment in over 30 years—lower than that lot ever got it to. Three point two percent—world leading.

So I was very pleased over the weekend to see the deputy leader of the National Party, Nicola Willis, confirm the National Party’s support for that minimum wage. I decided not to make a political point out of that, but just to acknowledge that and say it was good to hear that. But from Mr Luxon today, her leader, on Morning Report this morning, we couldn’t get a straight word out of it. When asked time and time again what is his position and what is the position of the National Party on minimum wage, we couldn’t get a straight answer, a yes or a no. Do you support that or do you not support that? He’s entitled to take either view, of course, but he couldn’t take a position. That is a failure of leadership. That is a contrast between that side of the House and this side of the House.

I want to talk about something else very serious in this respect. I’ve been concerned by some of the drifting rhetoric I’ve heard from members opposite in this House about the events in the occupation that we see out the front. The words I say now I say with some precision and I say really carefully, because I think we need to take great care with this. Out the front of this place, there are people who I think we all feel for. There are some people who are confused, there are some people who are scared, there are some people who have been manipulated by an avalanche of misinformation. There are some people who have been hurt over the past couple of years and they’re lashing out. We feel for those people.

But underneath all of that, there is a river of filth. There is a river of violence and menace. There is a river of anti-Semitism. There is a river of Islamophobia. There is a river of threats to people who work in this place and our staff. Those are things that we should not in any way be condoning, things that we should be apologists for, things that we should be overlooking with the rhetoric that it’s all just good people and maybe we should talk about it and maybe we should put the mandates up for negotiation. I would say that there is a river of genuine fascism in parts of the event that we see out the front of this Parliament today. I just urge colleagues in this House—decent and honourable members of the centre-right parliamentary parties in this Parliament—that a lot is actually on them to not give succour and comfort to an emergent and dangerous far-right movement. I just ask those members to reflect upon that.

As the Prime Minister said in her statement, COVID’s not over. There’s a lot of work for us to do to continue with our response of keeping Kiwis safe. But it’s not just about that this year for us; it’s about getting on with the agenda, those long-term challenges that have been forgotten about and ignored for so long.

I was really pleased that the Prime Minister spoke about our plans for a true, linked-up rapid transit network for Auckland, plans that we announced last month and that have been received incredibly positively across all parts of Auckland. This issue has been kicked down the can for 50 years since Mayor Robbie first put forward his plans to link up our biggest city. Because of the failure of successive local and central government administrations, we have the problems we see in Auckland today—chronic congestion, bad air quality, sprawling suburbs in which people have no choice but to use their cars for everything. That’s not what people want. We’re only going to fix those problems if we deliver that proper linked-up mass rapid transit system across Auckland in the way that all modern, successful growing big cities around the world have. We all see that when we travel. Why shouldn’t we have them in our big cities, in Auckland? It’s not easy stuff. It’s not quick stuff. But we’ve got to start, and this Government is grasping the nettle and getting on with that plan.

I put forward my comment again in this House: this is a long-term project for the benefit of our biggest city. When our biggest city does well, our country does well, I want to work with other parties across this House to move through the politics and to see if we can find some accord on that big long-term plan. The other thing I will say in this area is that it’s not just about Auckland, it’s not just about the light rail; it’s about the alternative Waitematā Harbour crossing and getting that public transport link to the North Shore, it’s about the growing north-west, but it’s about our other big cities as well. I expect later this year for us to be moving forward with plans for mass rapid transit here in Wellington, but also to be furthering that conversation in Christchurch, a city that has waited for too long and in which there was such a missed opportunity in the recovery from the earthquake.

Finally, I was delighted that the Prime Minister also spoke about our plans to move forward with fair pay agreements in this parliamentary year. Over the last two years, I think Kiwis have been reminded about how much we rely on so many of our low-wage workers, and they’ve been devalued for 30 years. How would we have got through COVID without the work of our cleaners, without the work of our bus drivers, without the people who pack up our groceries at the supermarket? But they’ve been devalued and their work is so important. It’s time for us to turn the tide on that 30-year experiment of a highly individualised labour market that has enriched a small number and has totally devalued the work of hundreds of thousands of hard-working Kiwis. It’s not fair. It hasn’t led to increased productivity, as we were promised back in 1991. This Government is going to move forward with a well-researched, well-thought-out, clear plan for fair pay agreements to stop the race from the bottom and to make sure that those working people have some justice and dignity, and that good employers up and down New Zealand aren’t constantly undercut by someone coming in and getting a saving by paying their workers low wages and low conditions.

As I said at the outset, I am so proud of the clarity of leadership, the future focus, and the hope that was inherent in the Prime Minister’s statement to the House this year. I’m proud of our response to COVID-19. There is more work to do, but there are so many other things that this Government will be getting on with this year to lead New Zealand into a place that is better and fairer for all of our people. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Golriz Ghahraman—five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. As I rise, having heard much of this debate this week, I note that almost all of us are centring the global pandemic. It is, though, a global pandemic. It is a global shared common crisis and so I want to talk about global affairs—foreign affairs and trade—two of my favourite portfolios.

New Zealand has done incredibly well. There is no doubt that in terms of our domestic response we should all be proud. We’ve saved lives, we’ve stood with our front-line people, we’ve stood with the immunocompromised, of which I am a member, and we’ve saved lives here. But being a global problem, the thing that this common crisis has shown us is that unless all of us are OK, none of us are going to be OK. So two major global issues still form the forefront of the Green concern that I think New Zealand can do a lot more about.

One is what’s been described now as the vaccine apartheid forming across the globe, and the other is the problem of Third World debt. The vaccine apartheid is something that was brought to our attention by two nations early in 2020, after the pandemic started to rage across the globe. And it became clear that our response in the global west, whatever that constitutes, was to self-isolate, to lock down, and, in terms of New Zealand, we came up with a progressive, transformative solution of actually upholding people’s wages so that they could do that.

The global south is less able to do that, and they told us almost immediately, via a call led by India and South Africa, that vaccines were what would save them but that the costs were too high. Now, New Zealand has stood with our Pacific neighbours. We have shared the vaccines that we’ve bought with the Pacific, and that’s great. That’s charity. It’s not transformative change. It’s not systems change. It’s not getting at the problem of global inequality and healthcare access. What India and South Africa were asking for is that we go to the World Trade Organization—which is allowed; it’s part of the rules at the World Trade Organisation (WTO)—and we lift the intellectual property costs of the vaccines so they could be manufactured cheaper and made more accessible. New Zealand, shamefully, did not support that call until late last year. Both those countries have now been the forefront of new mutations of this virus: first Delta in India, then Omicron in South Africa. So we’ve seen how global inequality in healthcare access has actually harmed us all.

New Zealand has come to the table now. We actually came to the table after the United States Government did in support of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights waiver, that old socialist institution that is the United States Government. But what are we doing about it? How are we using our trade connections, our allies? How are we actively working to make the vaccine more affordable to lift the intellectual property costs at the WTO? It is very unclear.

Next, there is the issue of debt. Cycles of debt lead as the cause of global inequality. Poverty rages through the Pacific worse than the virus. And as we all come out of this thing, this crisis across the globe, it’s going to be that form of inequality that’s going to keep the global south—the Third World developing nations, whatever we’re going to call them—down. It’s the cause of historic inequality, of colonisation, and that debt responsibility falls on us. We can use our voice, our much celebrated voice of principle and the global moral compass that we see ourselves as, to advocate for equality. The World Bank—again, another little socialist entity—called for debt alleviation and cancellation of Third World debt as part of the COVID response last month. So it’s time that we lead by example, that we make global inequality in the COVID response the forefront of our work on the global stage. Thank you.

I call Teanau Tuiono—five minutes.

Madam Speaker, this is not, as Shakespeare would put it, “the winter of our discontent” because it’s the wrong season, but rather is “the summer of misinformation”. Misinformation has undermined our public health response, has undermined our response to the climate crisis, and undermined faith in the democratic process, and in some cases undermined belief in a common reality itself. I mean, how can you have a conversation with someone about maths if they don’t believe in numbers? How do you tell someone that the YouTube videos and Facebook videos that they keep sending you are not a replacement for an in-person engagement with an expert in epidemiology or microbiology—experts in real life?

I’ve watched a YouTube video on how to fly a plane. However, I think it would be very unwise for Air New Zealand to let me fly a plane, even though I watched that video twice. So I am—and I think we all should be—perplexed in the situation that we have found ourselves in.

💬 Todd Muller: You’d be a natural.

I’d be a natural, Mr Todd Muller says. Citizens need timely and accurate information about their rights and responsibilities, knowledge of our political institutions, and an appreciation of each other’s needs, interests, and aspirations. An independent media must rest on the foundation of a strong regulatory framework that reinforces responsible self-management. Of course, the media play a part in disseminating those ideas and information, and I reflect on a documentary I watched while I was flatting in Aro Valley in the 1990s, and it was by Noam Chomsky, which was about how corporate ownership can influence the framing of news stories. It was called Manufacturing Consent.

However, I’m not sure how much the corporate overlords have over the editorial decisions of the press gallery, but I felt an incredible sense of uncomfortable irony by some outside denouncing the corporate control of mainstream media while broadcasting those opinions through the corporate control social media. These people are telling us that these journalists are controlled by corporate media and, by the way, they’re telling us that by another medium of corporate control media. For me, this is a contradiction in terms. I expect that there is an editorial process and decisions are made—stories are aired—by actual live people. I don’t know. I’m not a journalist. I’m assuming this about them. But you don’t have that in social media. Anyone with any crazy conspiracy theory which hits the algorithm and the engagement will get the likes and people become engaged in it.

But how many people have disappeared down rabbit holes because of some absolute bollocks they’ve seen on Facebook? I think what we are in the midst of is the undermining of the democratic institutions, and we’ve seen that with what happened at Capitol Hill in the United States, currently what’s happening at the US and Canada border, and also what’s happened with religious and nationalist violence in India as well. And while mainstream media may have editors and directors who may or may not be under the persuasion of their corporate masters, their algorithm, the AI is not human and that is what has been driving social engagement on media because its primary motive is to make, in the case of Facebook, money. It determines that the thousands of contents that show up in our social media feeds are amongst the hundred things that you will engage with on that day or in that time.

The media wields significant social, cultural, and economic power, which must be used responsibly, and that, in my view, must include social media. The media should inform, educate, and entertain in a way that supports citizens to participate effectively in democracy, and we have seen that being hijacked by extremist right-wing elements. So for me, it’s not just about the freedom of speech but also about the freedom of reach. No one should have the right to algorithmic amplification and this House needs to take responsibility for that. It’s something that the Government must take grip of, but also us as parliamentarians around the House as well.

When people talk to me about freedom, I say to them, “If your freedom ends and begins with your individuality, then you are being coerced and guided into more extreme right-wing fringe elements.” and we’ve seen that outside.

So, for me, one of the ways that we can ensure that we can pull people out of the rabbit hole or to make sure that they don’t go down the rabbit hole at all is to make sure that their surroundings are as stable as possible. So that it includes making sure that everybody has liveable incomes, warm housing; making sure they have access to essential services, free N95s—these flash masks as well. All of these things combine to make people and families safe and secure. When they have that safety and security around them, they are less likely to tumble down into the rabbit hole. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. It must be about regulating the big corporate social media giants, but also—

Order! Thank you. The member’s time is up. The next call is a split call. Helen White—five minutes.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the Prime Minister’s statement, wholeheartedly. Earlier today, I heard David Bennett say that this Government is led by ideology—as if that is a bad thing.

💬 Hon David Bennett: It is; you’re socialists.

That is what leadership is, Mr Bennett. It is a way of making decisions that are actually comprehensive, that are cohesive, and that are driven by a set of values. Without this, you are left with negativity, no ideas, and no direction, and, unfortunately, that is the state your party is in at the moment. You are lost; you are in the weeds. The statement that the Prime Minister put to us the other day is one that is expressive of strong, clear direction and values at a time of great challenges. We face the pandemic, we face climate change, and this statement seeks to address those very real and critical things. I also would like to mention the Hon David Parker’s speech because he was very interesting, and I’m proud to be part of a Government of which he is part, because he talks about how well we have done, and he talks very compellingly and accurately about the things that have been done.

I have the privilege in Auckland Central of seeing people doing that work, and they are doing it not for money but because they are actually well aware of their obligations to each other. The police force is one of those groups that I am very impressed by. They have been doing exemplary work, and they have been doing it alongside mental health workers and health workers, and the Ministry of Social Development, and they have been doing it alongside voluntary organisations.

There is a group that I’m involved with called the rough sleepers steering group, and all these groups come together and they talk about how they’re going to cope with Omicron, and how they’re going to look after people in community care. Body corporate groups have been busy contributing to make sure that the rules and the connections that are in place in our apartment blocks actually work and make people’s lives better when they have Omicron. These are really important things.

I want to mention our small businesses which are suffering under the current situation—our hospitality and retail sector, our arts sector. These are the sectors that we will now need to focus on supporting. I would also like to mention those groups that I think really need a shout-out: one is our elderly. They are actually in a situation where there will be a lot of trepidation, there will be a lot of fear. I’d also like to mention those people who got vaccinated despite hesitancy—I have one of those in my own family, my mother. It took a lot of arguing to get her to take up the vaccinations, and it was a real lesson for us all in the fact that it didn’t just matter to her, it mattered to us that she got that vaccination. It was such a great relief and, for me, it reinforced the fact that we are all connected. I am now relieved to say my mother has had her booster, and I thank her for doing that. And I thank all the people who may have been hesitant but they have stepped out of their comfort zone and they have adapted because they can see the connection between people.

I’d like to talk about those greater connections because the connections that this Government has been making between transport and housing and wellbeing are very real, and they have directed the policies that will happen in the next year: things like, actually, light rail; things like intensification of housing; things like electric buses; things like the infrastructure that allows affordable housing. These are very, very real things that will connect us as a society.

Finally, I’d just like to talk about renting, for a minute. Today, there was an announcement that we would be looking at the regulation of property managers. Actually, affordable rent is an incredibly important thing but so is a rental situation where you’re not subject to damp, where your children won’t get rheumatic fever. These are important settings, and this is part of the puzzle. And so it’s not just a case of the price of rental—that is important—but it’s also the case of not turning our backs on that becoming an affordable and sensible choice, not only for our young people but also for our elderly, and for people who simply choose it because they want to. So I commend this Government, and I am very supportive of the Prime Minister’s statement.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s an absolute pleasure to rise in support of the Prime Minister’s statement. And I’d like to spend a bit of time talking about our Government’s proactive response to COVID-19. Looking back to my public health training, what we did as trainees is we needed to know about the New Zealand influenza pandemic action plan. This was something that we studied for our part two exams, and at the time it seemed quite theoretical. So it was something where the ministry ran these pandemic exercises preparing the health system we had to study. And looking through the documents there was talk about closing schools, it was talking about restricting public gatherings, there was talk about these things called CBACS, or community-based assessment centres, but they seemed quite theoretical, quite remote. And I think, looking back, basically, it didn’t really prepare us for what we’ve confronted today.

I think the other difference was we were preparing for a different virus. All the models were based on the fact that what they were thinking was we’d get 40 percent of the population experiencing the virus over an eight-week period. So what they were expecting was that the rates would come and peak at about week three to week five. And so none of us really thought that we’d be in the situation that we face today, where we’re now entering our third year of a global pandemic, and we’re actually sitting down now preparing for the Omicron wave.

So for me, thinking through, the other thing I never envisaged was that our Government had taken this very simple plan for another virus but adapted it using real-time data. And then they’d use it to create a world-leading response to COVID-19, which has resulted in us having some of the lowest COVID-19 case rates, hospitalisations, and mortality in the world.

So I think the other thing we’ve thought through over the last two years is none of us ever envisaged that we’d have to be creating this huge health infrastructure and we’d be having to do it for such a significant period of time. Thinking through, we’ve had to stand up fully functioning managed isolation and quarantine facilities and run them for a period of time, we’ve had to upscale our COVID contact tracing, we’ve had to upscale our testing capacities, and in the last year we’ve had to run a full national vaccination campaign. Basically, we’ve delivered whole other aspects: the wage subsidies, the business supports, making sure that our businesses can get through these very difficult times. And so as a result, as we await the Omicron wave rolling out across the country over the next few weeks and months, we’re coming to it with very high vaccination rates by global standards, but also historically some of the lowest unemployment rates we’ve seen as a country.

And in that, I’d just like to acknowledge the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, I’d like to acknowledge our Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, our Minister for COVID-19 Response, Chris Hipkins, our Minister of Health, and our Associate Ministers of Health for the huge, considerable role that they’ve played in taking us through these difficult times. I’d also like to acknowledge, though, the people I think about down where I am based in the South—those that have got up every day and have gone out and run our testing centres, they’ve run our vaccination campaigns, those that have been on the phone lines; basically, when people ring in, providing that support, providing that advice. I’m thinking of our GPs, thinking of our pharmacists, and thinking about those working in our hospital system, and the huge role they’ve played in keeping us all safe. And looking back over the last two years, just thinking about how many of us—we never know whether it would have been us or not; the role they’ve played in potentially saving our lives. And as we look back and as they look back on this time in years to come, I hope they’re really, really proud of the role that they’ve played in this pandemic.

But looking ahead: I think many of the people I talk to down South, looking ahead as we face the Omicron outbreak, what they really, really want is for the next few months just to fast-forward. They want to be able to see Omicron in their rear-vision mirrors. And I think it’s important to remember when we’re looking ahead to the next few months that we do have a plan. We’ve planned for this, we’ve put the structures in place. And the majority of people who’ve gone out and had their vaccination, have had their booster dose, if they encountered Omicron they’re going to end up with a mild to moderate disease that they’re going to be able to end up managing very well at home, but the hospital system will still be there for those who need that extra support.

But I also think it’s our role to look after each other, and that means getting out, getting vaccinated, and continuing to scan our COVID tracer apps so that if we do test positive, people can be notified very, very quickly. It means social distancing, it means mask wearing, as we’re doing in the House today. So for me, I’m really proud to be part of a Government that’s led a world-leading COVID response, and it’s something I never envisaged when I was reading those public health documents all those years ago.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Thank you for that. Can I just say what a real pleasure it is to stand up here and have the opportunity to reflect on the Prime Minister’s statement, and I would commend anyone to give it a really good read, not only because of the plan that it sets out but because of the values which underpin it. It’s that consistency of values and of approach which has stood us in such good stead—the idea that we put people first and that the wellbeing of our people across the board is the primary objective of the Government—and the Prime Minister, in her speech and in the statement that’s on the Table, makes that abundantly clear.

It’s always troubling to me when I hear other politicians in other parties say, “Turn the spending taps off. It’s all going to go terribly wrong.”, and have these cries that come from decades ago, cries for austerity in a time of need. I think it’s absolutely right that we should be looking now at the really significant challenges that face us—the climate challenges, the health challenges, the infrastructure challenges—and investing now because it’s prudent to do so. Now, we know that debt is rising, but debt should rise. When your children are sick or when your roof is leaking, you do not stop spending. You fix what needs to be fixed so that you’re strong and resilient for the future, and that’s what we have ahead of us.

If we look at what we’re doing—the focus on health, for example—we inherited a health system where there had been no capital spending for years—

💬 Hon David Bennett: Oh, that’s rubbish. What a lie.

—and where DHBs had been underfunded year on year. Well, it’s—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, Madam Speaker. I’m very sorry, and I apologise to my friend and colleague Duncan Webb, but there is one word that you cannot accuse a member in this House of being. The Hon David Bennett just used that word, and I will use it if I have to, but I think he should apologise. He cannot accuse another member of being that.

💬 Hon Todd McClay: He didn’t. He said it was rubbish.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): He also said—and I heard it—that those are lies. So I will ask the Hon David Bennett to apologise.

💬 Hon David Bennett: I withdraw and apologise, but note that the Waikato District Health Board was rebuilt under the National Government.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I will ask the Hon David Bennett to withdraw and apologise, and leave it at that.

💬 Hon David Bennett: I withdraw and apologise.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The point being, of course, that the time for genuine investment in health is here and it’s now, and the health restructure ahead of us is of pivotal importance so that we have an equitable and efficient health system, not the rundown, broken, and underfunded health system of prior years.

The Māori Health Authority—

💬 Todd Muller: What nonsense.

—is a huge leap forward, and you, Mr Muller, may call it rubbish, but they’re inequities that have been systemic. [Interruption] You can chip away, Mr Bennett, but only the other day I was reading, on an entirely different topic, Kemp’s Deed, and do you know what that is? That’s when Ngāi Tahu had 13 million acres wrested from them on a promise of reserves being set aside and, what’s more, hospitals and schools being built. They got a trivial 6,000 acres in reserves, and what did they get in terms of hospitals? Nothing, and that party over there would now chip away and say that we shouldn’t address the systemic inequities of years that the Crown and the Government, year in, year out, have failed to address. So come to the table, and come and be constructive. Where is the proposition? Yes, you’re in Opposition. You’re going to be in Opposition for a long time if you take that attitude.

What’s more, we need to invest in our climate infrastructure, as well. Year in, year out, we’ve had the Opposition saying, “Not now, it’s too early. It would cost too much. Industry can’t manage it.”, but we know that if we take that approach, not only will it get harder but the catastrophe will be larger, and that’s what we are going to address. So we’ve got a $4.5 billion fund from the emissions trading scheme—a scheme that they put on hold—whilst we had to reinvigorate and redesign in the last term of Government so that can actually spend the money we need to get to a low-emission economy, and also address the adaptation issues.

💬 Maureen Pugh: Stop burning coal, then.

You would do nothing, Maureen Pugh. We know your views on all kinds of things. You’d be building new mines on the West Coast for a couple of votes. Well, good luck to that.

We’re here for a low-emissions economy, one which has clean energy, and absolutely investing in the New Zealand Battery Project. The idea that we’re going to be innovative and try things and do things that that party on the other side never dreamt of doing. Absolutely, our Minister of energy is going to make all kinds of explorations because it’s the right thing to do.

Look, I’m going to also talk about housing. We know there’s a housing crisis, but I want to tell you the things not only that we’ve done, and there are many, but all the things that we are also going to do, of which there are many. Do you know what? We are making real progress. A housing crisis that was nine years in the making, and we’ve turned the corner. Only today—only today—figures have come out to show that not only have prices stabilised but there’s been a small drop in prices across the country, and that is indicative of the progress that we have made.

How many houses did that lot build when they were in Government? Well, they sold some, but I don’t think they built any. This Government, in the four years it’s been here, has built 8,000 new houses. We have turned the Housing Corporation into a renter, a property developer, and a responsible landlord—2,400 in the last year, and do you know what? The Prime Minister said in her statement that we would have 2,000 more built in the next year. We will absolutely address these issues.

Forty thousand building consents were issued in the last year. For the first time in a long time, we’re building more houses than there are people needing them. The Resource Management Act (RMA) fast-tracking legislation is being able to open up whole new developments so that we can have more housing development, and, of course, the RMA reforms—the Natural and Built Environments Bill—is going to progress that. I give the party on the other side credit because they have come to the table and talked about housing intensification, and that’s a good thing, because we need neighbourhoods which are compact, walkable, livable, and effective. So good on you for that. There’s one little feather you can have in your cap there.

Building Act reforms: Poto Williams has pushed those Building Act reforms for new and innovative building materials. The Māori infrastructure fund, so that Māori can build papa kāinga houses, and a whole lot are on track there—thousands of houses there.

Progressive homeownership for people who might not otherwise be able to get together a deposit for a house. The ability to get into an ownership situation where you own a little bit of the house at the time, and there are up to 4,000 people who will be able to own their own homes when they wouldn’t have previously been able to.

Warmer homes, the idea that we need to go and make houses not only livable and warm but healthy as well, and our Residential Tenancies Act reforms and Healthy Homes reforms as well—awesome. On top of that there’s $3.8 billion set aside for infrastructure funding so that we can unlock the potential of areas of land to make new strong communities with housing for everyone.

This is a Government that doesn’t sit on its hands and say that the problem is difficult. It is difficult, but we will try everything we can because we know what’s good for New Zealand. This is a wellness approach. It’s an approach which puts equity first as well to make sure that everyone across the board is looked after.

So this is a Government which cares and which tries. I must say, listening to Michael Wood’s speech was really good, because I was really proud of his approach to the Auckland light rail, seeing it not just as a big money spend but something which was about communities and also something that was part of a wider plan, a plan that wasn’t just transport—transport across the whole of Auckland, to North Auckland and West Auckland as well—but also something which was about linking communities together and unlocking the potential of that great city that is Auckland. Of course, I was very excited to hear him talk about the Christchurch light rail as well. I know there are a lot of proposals there, and I’ll be talking with him about that in the not too distant future.

But on top of that, whilst we’ve been doing all this, and whilst we’ve got low unemployment and whilst we’ve got one of the strongest economies in the world, we’ve raised incomes. We’ve raised incomes for those that need it most. So the benefits have been raised across the board: 109,000 families, our most needy families, now have $175 a week more, or at least they will on 1 April. That’s a huge amount for a lot of people, and one of the net effects of that and a whole range of other initiatives is 43,000 children who have been lifted out of poverty—43,000 children. We are making real progress on child poverty. When the National Government was in place, it went backwards, it went behind—200,000 students receiving school lunches.

I’m so proud to stand up here and talk about what we’ve done, what we’re going to do, the values that underpin it, and the approach taken by the Prime Minister. Kia ora, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker, thank you. He weaves a real web, that Duncan, the last speaker in the debate. Because, actually, if you just say you have a plan and everything is OK, the public will believe you! But that’s actually not the case as we look around the country today. Mr Webb said they’re not a Government that sits on their hands, but in housing, if they did just sit on their hands, actually, the country might be better off, because, rather than that, they’re putting their hands up in auctions and buying houses from the private sector that mums and dads, those first-home buyers he was talking about, are not able to buy because they don’t have—it’s not the taxpayer’s cheque book behind them; it’s actually the money the Government is borrowing that the taxpayer will have to pay for in the future to take houses out of supply.

He also said—and this is from his notes. He wasn’t reading a speech, but it’s from his notes. So this must be the lines that their research unit have given them after the Minister has signed off. He said, “For the time, we’re building more houses than are needed.” Well, hallelujah. The 45 motels in Rotorua that have people in are full of emergency housing. Those people that were promised a house and have been languishing day after day, week after week, year after year in those motels all of a sudden don’t have to stay in the motels tonight, because the Government says they are building more houses that are needed. But here’s the thing: they are not. They are buying more than they should; they are not building more than is needed. In fact, they are not building anywhere near enough.

They talk very proudly of how they are helping people out of poverty. They talk about the minimum wage increase as if that is the panacea to fix everything. They don’t say that, actually, rents have gone up $140 a week over the last 4½ years, and they haven’t scratched the surface with the minimum-wage increases. Those that have the least in New Zealand have even less because of the cost of living and how quickly it’s escalating. And, actually, the costs they’re placing on businesses make it harder—harder—for those businesses to survive. This isn’t actually a debate about whether the minimum wage should go up or not; it’s that Government action actually pushes prices up. And the $145 a week extra, when it comes to rents that people are paying around the country, is the reason that we have unprecedented numbers of people in motels, and the reason that there aren’t enough houses is because the Government is then buying those houses because the individuals themselves cannot afford them.

With the self-congratulations we’ve heard from every single speaker in Government, behind that of the great job they’ve done and how wonderful they are, and how lucky the country is, are at least 10 to 15 to 20 to hundreds of tourism businesses who are struggling to survive or who have closed. When the Prime Minister announced a few weeks ago—just before one of the TV stations started polling—that the border was opening, she forgot to say, “The border is opening for everybody except those who we actually need to get here safely.” So, later this month or next month, Kiwis can return if they’re double vaccinated, and they can go and stay at home for—it was 10 days; it’ll now be seven days. But, for the tourism sector, they are not expecting an influx of Kiwis from Australia to come and start doing tourism. When the Prime Minister says the border’s open and there is help coming for the tourism sector, what she doesn’t say is that the average Australian comes to New Zealand for a holiday for five days. If they have to come here and self-isolate in a hotel for seven days, as lovely as it is in Queenstown or Rotorua or the West Coast, they’re not going to extend the average stay of their visit by two days to look out the window of that hotel or order Uber Eats. They are not coming.

Yet next week, in Australia, if you are double vaccinated from anywhere in the world and you travel to Australia and you’ve passed a test before you leave and when you arrive to show you haven’t got COVID, you are welcome. What the Prime Minister hasn’t done is send a signal to the tourism sector in New Zealand about when the Government may consider similar rules here. All they’ve said is October of this year, visitors will be welcome if they’re double vaccinated, but they will have to go to a hotel to self-isolate for seven days. Guess what! They are not coming. That is not a lifeline for the tourism sector, who, today, across the board, are calling for help. Some of them are asking for Government money, but, actually, what they are really saying is, “We do need help. We need paying visitors. And if you can just, Prime Minister, for once tell us when this might happen.” Not October, perhaps, maybe, we could change the rules, but they are going to have to sit in a hotel, when, actually, you may look to level the playing field with Australia. If it can’t be today, when will it be? Explain why the Australians have different advice than you do, so they can start planning.

If I look at my home town of Rotorua and what’s happening there, because tourism is a very important part of our economy, I am very sad to say that the Top 10 holiday park in the centre of the town, owned by the same family for 30 years, has had to close. That business supported a number of families, paid for the kids to go to school. It was their livelihood. It’s the centre of town. It’s heartbreaking that that family has had to make that decision. Why is that? Because they were told they would have a good summer and people would come, but it didn’t happen. Actually, what happened for them and so many other tourism businesses in New Zealand, they either just broke even or didn’t lose as much money as they had been. And you cannot run a tourism business on school holidays and the odd long weekend.

Now, that’s a heartbreaking decision for that family to have to have made, but if they knew—because they were actually reliant upon Australian visitors before COVID came and the Government closed the border—that the Prime Minister would be looking to do the same thing in New Zealand as the Australian Government is doing just next week, and if they knew it was three months away or six months away, they could plan for that. Perhaps their bank would have said to them, “You know what? You had a great business before. We know Australians like to come here. The Prime Minister says they are going to come here in droves. We can get you through a few more months—three or four more months.” But the problem they’ve had for the two years is “We might do it later on. We could do it later on.” There has been no certainty. They haven’t been able to plan, and they have pulled the pin. I hope desperately that they haven’t made the wrong decision. I hope desperately that the Prime Minister doesn’t announce in a few weeks’ time, “We will be like Australia.” Because this Government does show urgency only when they’re forced to, and it’s always too late. For that business and other businesses around the country, it is far, far too late already.

I spoke about the cost of living earlier, and inflation and interest rates. We will hear from the Government again and again that it is happening everywhere in the world. Well, for hard-working Kiwis who have done everything asked of them over the last two years, who have sacrificed, who have taken on debt, who have paid others before themselves, who have gone through great uncertainty, the team of 5 million who have dug so very, very deep, they’re not interested in what’s happening around the rest of the world; they’re interested in what’s happening here. When the Government members stand up and read out a litany of things they believe they are doing well, well, I’m not sure that’s the case on the street, because, for every protestor who is here outside, there are hundreds and hundreds back in our electorates who are law-abiding, who have got their vaccines, who have done everything asked of them, and the contract was—the deal was—“If we just get to 90 percent vaccination rate, your life will go back to normal.” Well, in the case of the tourism sector, it hasn’t gone back to normal. And of the case of the people who are working in tourism still or in our restaurants and our bars, it hasn’t got back to normal.

Around the country this month, the spend in restaurants and bars is down by 27 percent—32 percent down in Queenstown. They are now saying 70 percent of cafes and restaurants are saying they’re looking to cut staff or reduce those hours. So how does it work when the Government says, “Everyone is better off. We’re better than the rest of the world.”—that there are still people losing their jobs, when the cost of living has gone up, and their petrol costs more, and their rent costs more, and their food costs more, and every single thing you can measure costs more? But members of this House opposite, in Government, stand up and say, “Actually, Kiwis are better off than their Australian neighbours.” Well, whether that was the case or not, I don’t think it works when you say, “You’re feeling unhappy, you can’t pay your bills, but you’re not as bad as the guys over there, who can’t pay their bills even worse.” This Government has an absolute responsibility to the people of New Zealand not to congratulate themselves, not to say that they’re sitting on their hands, but to actually get out there and make life better for everyday New Zealanders.

And whilst they may say, ‘Well, businesses can afford everything.”, this is a country that’s built on the back of small-business people. Mums and dads who get out of bed, who take the risk, who have borrowed against their homes, who go to work every day—they pay their bills and others before they pay themselves. It is their pride—that small business that they run—and they haven’t had the help, actually, that they need, and they are certainly not getting the help that they need today. They need clarity. They need a decision that the Prime Minister will make—decisions as we see in Australia—but, more than that, a Prime Minister who will front up and explain to them exactly why it is she won’t do—

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

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to sit through all the debates this afternoon, but I have been able to tune in and out of some of the contributions. I’m not going to focus on any of the criticisms from the other side. I’m going to focus on the job that we’ve got ahead of us this year, and it is a big job. In fact, when I look at the Prime Minister’s statement, it is 27 pages of jobs for us to do this year.

I was reflecting back—we usually start the beginning of our year with a caucus retreat, and the honourable member for New Plymouth, Glen Bennett, has just left the room, but we had our caucus retreat in New Plymouth under Maunga Taranaki. What a beautiful way to start the year with our whānau there as well. The Prime Minister began by outlining for us, her Labour caucus, what was going to happen in the year ahead of us, what were the challenges, what was the job for us to do. I was asked, following that, what I thought this would be the “year of”—the media were questioning us as we went out for morning tea. My immediate reaction from listening to the Prime Minister and thinking about that was: I think it’s going to be the year of the booster. I kept thinking about that afterwards because I thought, “Oh, that doesn’t really sound that inspiring, ‘year of the booster’.”, and I sort of thought, well, you know, maybe there was something more ambitious. But that is actually quite ambitious when I thought about it—I don’t step back from that. Actually, when I heard her describe the challenge with Omicron facing us, and the thing that we could do to protect ourselves the most—it was the booster.

I think about my people of Northland, our vulnerable population, and I hope that the booster isn’t the focus for us for the whole year, but it certainly is the focus for us in this first part of the year—we are racing against a virus. This is actually the month of the booster. We are trying to encourage as many people as possible to do as much as possible to protect themselves from Omicron.

I’m pleased that last year, the Prime Minister said this was the year of the vaccine, and I think that we actually did far better than many expected that we would. We’ve had some difficult conversations. It’s been challenging out there in our communities. Northland has just got to 90 percent first vaxxed. We are the last in the country, but I’m so proud of Northland because every single one of those vaccines required whānau encouraging each other, our providers being out there, making themselves available in the most remote parts of our community, and we got there. We’re going to get there with the second dose, and we’re going well on our boosters at the moment.

We can all do our bit to slow the spread and keep our communities safe, and that’s what the Prime Minister said. Together, we have risen to the challenge of COVID-19. The pandemic has affected us all and some in very tragic circumstances, but it’s also drawn us together. Yes, we have a protest outside at the moment, but I think about the more than 4 million people who have been vaccinated. And I just want to mihi to our team of 4 million that could get vaccinated, but also to our whole country for the efforts to date. It’s been two long, hard years. I know everybody’s hōhā, I know everybody’s over it, but guess what? COVID isn’t going away. It’s a virus, it keeps adapting and so too do we have to.

I’m really proud of my colleagues who are in Cabinet, who have had all of those conversations, difficult debates, and been put in a situation of making really difficult decisions but making the right decisions, because what they did was they prioritised people’s health, their lives, and their livelihoods. I’m really proud of what we have achieved, and the other side has criticised us for patting ourselves on the back over here. I don’t take that credit just us as the Government—that was the team of 5 million who has helped us achieve that so far, but we need to keep going. Kia kaha tonu tātou. He waka eke noa.

[We must stay strong. We’re all in this together.]

The challenge is not over yet.

So I’m proud that we can report today that there are now over 2 million who have received their booster shots, over 46 percent of our tamariki receiving theirs as well, but there is more work to do.

The other thing I wanted to pick up from in the Prime Minister’s statement was the other work that that is going on. It’s not just COVID that our Cabinet are focusing on. At the same time, they are continuing with major health reforms. They are working—I’m looking at two Ministers who are going to be making announcements shortly in the employment space. We heard the Minister of Tourism, the Minister of Small Business, talking earlier; the Minister of Immigration, the Minister of Justice, talking on things that we have been progressing. Just this week, we passed our first piece of legislation, which came through the Justice Committee, to ban conversion practices. All of that mahi continues while we are managing a pandemic, while our economy is strong and we have the best results in the OECD and the world, We should all be proud of that, us as the Government, but also Aotearoa, because everybody has played their part in it.

Now, what I wanted to pick up on is this plan for us, the 27-page work plan over here, and I know every member and every Minister has gone through it and picked out the things that have been specifically said that they have a responsibility for in their portfolio areas. One of my portfolio areas is I am a member of the Pae Ora Legislation Committee. I’ve just come off the select committee to come in to do the speech this afternoon. On that committee, we have had five days of hearings. I think it was from 9 a.m. in the morning to 6 p.m. in the evening. Five days—we received over 4,600 submissions on the Pae Ora Legislation Committee. Now, for those who maybe don’t know what that is in the House or who are tuning in tonight—that is for the reform of our health system. We are going to be disestablishing the DHBs, setting up a health authority, a public health unit, and, proudly, a Māori Health Authority.

It was a challenging five days of hearings, especially after a long summer break. It took a little bit of getting back into the swing of things. But what was particularly difficult for me, was that, unfortunately, the majority of the submissions from individuals were opposed to this bill and they were tending to be single-issue focused, and it will be no surprise to many in this House that the main thing that they were objecting to is the hauora Māori provisions, in principle. It was really sad to have to sit through those submissions and to hear that we still have people who do not understand and also do not accept that we have major inequities within our health system, and here we are trying to propose something because the status quo is unacceptable, and, unfortunately, we received this huge number of submissions in opposition. So we have our work cut out for us this year.

I want to absolutely acknowledge the Prime Minister, who said that we are a united team, we are a focused team, and that we will continue to manage the pandemic, but we must also continue to do all of the other things in health—as I just spoke about, and we’re making good progress on that—and in housing, and I do take issue with the comment made earlier criticising us for buying and building when all that side did was sell.

There are a couple of other things that I’m really excited about this year. We are—

💬 Hon Member: That’s a killer line.

Just, look—sell, full stop. That’s it, there’s no more to say.

There are a few other things that I’m excited about this year. This year, we will celebrate the first uniquely Aotearoa public holiday, and that is Matariki. So we will be celebrating that in June this year and I’m really excited about that as people will get to have a day off and, hopefully, reflect on what Matariki means, learn about some of that mātauranga Māori. It is also the year that schools are going to be receiving resources to teach New Zealand history in schools. I’m really excited about our tamariki getting the opportunity to learn that history of Aotearoa New Zealand. I hope that with that, along with Matariki, we’re going to see the next generation have the opportunity to learn more about our tangata whenua, about our unique place in the world as Aotearoa, and that everybody will have access to that. I really hope that by having that, we might see a different type of submission to our select committees in the future as we try and tackle issues that we are facing, where we try to reduce the inequalities, where we try to ensure that everybody has the best opportunity, their wellbeing is provided for to the greatest extent possible, and that we do that for one another, like we have our approach to COVID. Nō reira, tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The next call is the very last call in response to the Prime Minister’s statement, and we only have five minutes left.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. If they just sat on their hands, the country would be better off.

💬 Hon Todd McClay: Exactly.

That’s what Mr McClay said in his contribution, and now he is backing it up by saying “Exactly.” Doesn’t that sum the National Party up? If they just sat on their hands, the country would be better off. I think that absolutely sums up the do nothing, conservative, small Government, low taxes, low spending approach from the National Party. I ask this House, where did that get the country during the global financial crisis? Investment was cut, spending on health was cut, spending on education was cut, and when we came in in 2017 we had to clean it all up.

When you look at the problems that this country is facing in housing, if we just took our hands off, the country would be better off, they say. That’s exactly the approach that that side took on housing. That’s why the number of Government-provided social houses went down under their watch. That’s why they sold every single house, every single social house, in Wairarapa in 1999. Throughout their nine years of Government, they didn’t put a single social house in Wairarapa. And I’m proud to say that this Government is finally building Government social houses in Wairarapa, yet again.

Exactly the same with climate change. When they were in Government, they signed us up to all these accords and all these treaties, and then did absolutely nothing about it. Every single time we, as a Government, have put in measures that are actually going to help us meet the agreements that they signed us up to, they’ve voted against them.

The minimum wage is exactly the same. When they were in Government, every single year they put the minimum wage up, and they waived their blue flag and they said “Look at us. How great are we?” And then whenever we do it, they say “That’s a terrible idea. That’s hurting business.” What they fail to know is that New Zealanders can see through the politics. New Zealanders know that it is the minimum-wage workers that have worked the hardest, alongside our frontline health workers, that have got us to where we are now in this COVID response. They don’t agree with it. Or do they? Who knows? The other day, I was sitting next to Nicola Willis doing our weekly radio slot with Newstalk ZB, and she said “We do not oppose raising the minimum wage.” What does the leader say? I don’t know, couldn’t form a position. He didn’t have the ability to stand up and say yes or no. He fluffed about. So we don’t even know where they stand on the minimum wage. But here we are, as a Government, helping 300,000 workers, lifting their wages, and contributing to this economy. Because what that side knows but don’t say, is that small to medium businesses, the ones that they’ve spent most of their time talking about, their revenue is dependent on people’s capacity to spend. If they don’t raise minimum wages, like some of them are encouraging us to do, their ability to spend money goes down in real terms. Small to medium businesses miss out as a result.

They haven’t learnt a thing about the way in which this country has responded to COVID. It was the investment from this Government that kept people in jobs, that kept businesses going, and it is that spending that they now are criticising and saying that that’s causing inflation, even though they know that this is an international phenomenon. When they are asked to give examples of the things that they would cut, they cannot give an example that would make any impact on inflation. The only examples they’ve given has equated to 0.1 percent of Government spending. That is not going to make any difference to inflation. If they were upfront, they would say that yes, the way that they want to deal with inflation is to make cuts, and it’s back where we started with these guys under the global financial crisis. It’s cuts to health. It’s cuts to education. It’s not spending money on infrastructure. It’s not putting the planning ahead that we need.

This is the Government that actually has a plan. We are the ones that are investing in a plan to increase primary exports by $40 billion. They oppose it. They just want to tread water. This is the Government that is actually putting the investment in to make sure that rural communities get the health they need and rural schools get the investments they need. And if you don’t believe me, here’s a question for you: how many times did Chris Luxon mention agriculture or farmers in his response to the Prime Minister’s statement? None. Not one mention. They spend all the energy they like saying they care about farmers, they’ve got the biggest platform of the year, and they say nothing. I am proud to support the Prime Minister’s statement.