General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

In 1996, the co-president of the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations (NZUSA) stood by tertiary students performing sham marriages so that they could access student allowances. He said—and I quote—“We do not encourage these marriages for allowances, but for many it is the only viable option that they have.”, going on to say, “Only 37 percent of full-time students get any kind of allowance. The main culprit here is the National Government’s absurd means-testing programme.” That student president, of course, grew up to become the Minister of Finance, the Hon Grant Robertson. In 1996, he was worried that just 37 percent of full-time students were getting any kind of allowance, and, in 2021, under his Government, it’s even fewer, at 27 percent. He was concerned specifically about students being means tested on their parents’ combined gross income until they were 25 years old. His historic Labour Government majority keeps that rule in place to this day.

Minister Robertson, however, is not alone in once arguing that the Government was forcing and keeping students in poverty. In mid-2001, then Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association president Chris Hipkins sent out a press release titled “Student Debt Sets to Cripple New Zealand”. Figures had been released under the Official Information Act showing Government estimates for student loans had nearly doubled from a 1999 projection of hitting $11.6 billion in 2020 to $19.4 billion. In fact, in 2020, student debt landed between those projections, at $16.1 billion. That student advocate would go on to become our Minister of Education. But, at the time, he lamented—and I quote—“The current generation of politicians are mortgaging the future of our country. The burden of this will not only be felt by students who graduate with large debts, but also by the future taxpayers of New Zealand who will be left to clean up the mess … If we are to get this debt under control fees must come down and access to living allowances will have to increase”. Yet in the final Budget of his first ministerial term, Labour would break their election promise of reinstating post-graduate student allowance and extending fees-free, citing the need to tighten the fiscal belt; the Government, at the same time, signing off an historic Budget, nearly 10 times larger and tens of billions of dollars more than they had anticipated pre - COVID-19.

Once upon a time in a galaxy not all too far, far away, tertiary education was recognised as a public good. Students were supported to study because their education was our education; their success was the progress of this country. Those who ended up making more money, on the other side, paid it back through higher tax settings; in turn, investing in education and support for those who came afterwards to flourish. All of this, of course, changed in the 1980s and 1990s, an era of slash-and-burn economic reforms intent on instilling corporate sensibility and cost cutting in our supposedly public institutions. These were political decisions. Political decisions keep these rules in place and political decisions can change these rules once again.

Last week, the Greens, NZUSA, Te Mana Ākonga, Tauira Pasifika, and the National Disabled Students’ Association released the findings of our People’s Inquiry into Student Wellbeing, along with 30 other student associations across Aotearoa. It’s grim. Two-thirds of students regularly do not have enough money to buy food, clothing, pay bills, buy groceries, access healthcare, or other basics. They are spending nearly 60 percent of their weekly income on rent—double the accepted affordable housing ballpark of 30 percent. These are the strained learning conditions of the New Zealanders that we so desperately need to become our teachers, our social workers, our health professionals, our researchers, and more.

As VUWSA president Andrew Little put it, back in his 1996 op-ed for Salient—and I quote—“Neither the Labour Party nor the National Party have yet made decisions about the future of tertiary education and education funding, and it’s important to maintain the pressure on both sides to influence their decisions.” As Otago University student president Ayesha Verrall stated in 2001, “This [Labour] government [has] a mandate to remedy a tertiary sector education in crisis. Instead the barriers to education continue to mount”. Or as VUWSA president Chris Hipkins warned that same year, “We’ve had enough of broken promises by politicians. It’s time for the Labour Government to put their money where their mouth was before the election. Ministers, the buck stops here, and 400,000 students are standing by.”

Mahalo, aloha, talofa, and warm Te Puke greetings to you all. Former Labour leader Mike Moore used to joke that if you can fake authenticity, you’ve got it made. Sadly, Christopher Luxon didn’t realise it was a joke; he took it as an instruction. I’ve got bad news for the Leader of the Opposition: Kiwis can sniff that out a mile away. That’s why, when someone says abortion is tantamount to murder and then decides to soothe your fears by saying nothing will change, that person drops 5 percent in the preferred PM ratings. When he says that he will increase health spending by at least inflation each year, Kiwis remember what actually happened when National were last in Government, when the value of health spending went backwards. But that lack of authenticity reached new heights yesterday. It was obvious that, for whatever reason, Christopher Luxon wanted New Zealanders to think he was in Te Puke and not Hawaii. And it is true; they are easily confused.

Mr Luxon and I are both children of the 1970s and 1980s, that golden era when New Zealand had two TV channels and a ratio of sheep to people to make anyone scared. We grew up with TV shows set in exotic locations: Magnum, P.I., Hawaii Five-O, Close to Home. All these shows made rural Bay of Plenty look marvellous—no wonder Mr Luxon dreamt of holidays on the sun-drenched beaches of State Highway 33. In the morning yesterday, when confronted with his mysterious time and hemisphere bending, Mr Luxon finally said what his social media posts did not: “I went to Hawaii in July, as I tend to do.” I’m not exactly sure how relatable that is. In July, I tend to remember that I haven’t cleaned the guttering out and that’s why there’s a massive waterfall going down my property, but each to their own.

The sad thing for the National Party is that this latest outbreak of “foot in mouth” is not the first of the brief but memorable tenure of the National leader. Just to run through a few highlights: “Abortion is tantamount to murder.”, “Low-income people are bottom feeders.”, “Let’s get rid of Labour Day.”, “Sam Uffindell is bringing what’s missing from the National caucus: intellect.”, and “New Zealanders have gone soft.” The last few weeks have been a study in what is, and what is not, leadership. Leadership is not what we have seen from Mr Luxon, going overseas and telling an audience at a right-wing thinktank what he thinks they want to hear and slagging off your own country. Leadership is what the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, showed over the recess, getting out there signing free-trade agreements, leading business delegations, and getting the first positive movement in decades on the rights of New Zealanders in Australia. The contrast could not be clearer.

For me, in the recess, as I tend to do in July, I got stuck into some reading. And I can summarise this book, Blue Blood, by Andrea Vance, for the busy among you: John got bored and left, the kids started fighting, Chris Finlayson overestimated David Bennett—English, Bridges, Muller, Collins, etc.—Christopher Luxon becomes the leader. At one point, National sources tell the author that John Key’s influence on Christopher Luxon meant that, with Luxon becoming leader, it gave the feeling that daddy’s home. Now, leaving aside the weird, creepy elements of that, I think daddy is going to be sorely disappointed. A few years ago, I was in Hong Kong—or maybe it was Hamilton; it’s hard to know, in any case—someone approached me and tried to sell me a designer bag. I asked if it was fake. The person said, “No, it’s a genuine copy.”

Christopher Luxon is the genuine John Key copy: the fake Gucci bag of a leader fading in the sunlight. Under a bit of pressure, the weak stitching is fraying, the gold lettering is flaking away, but, as Andrea Vance says, it seems not to matter that, in all of this, the National Party has lost its soul. Mr Luxon wrote poetically, and a little bizarrely, of becoming leader that we should not allow the future to happen to us, but we should happen to the future. Well, I think it’s Back to the Future for the National Party, because the book ends chillingly: “Pragmatism and a desire to win may paper over cracks, but if Luxon’s momentum fails and an impatient caucus looks around for another silver bullet, they will not have to search far. Waiting in the wings is another disciple of Key in Nicola Willis. ‘Willis is there thinking about her future,’ a senior MP says. ‘She is deeply tactical.’ ”

As I tend to do in July, and in most other months, I look forward to the next chapter from the National Party. Surf’s up—the Te Puke Bypass has been built.

There is only one person in New Zealand who will not acknowledge there is a health crisis, and that person is health Minister Andrew Little. Every other rational person can see there is clearly a health crisis, but from the Minister’s Wellington office, he cannot.

So let’s see what those at the coalface are saying. Nurses: the New Zealand Nurses Organisation surveyed its members last week, reporting it gave its members the opportunity in response to health Minister Andrew Little’s persistent assertions that there is no health crisis and that the system as a whole is coping. The 99 percent of responding members said the system was either in crisis or already beyond crisis. The New Zealand Nurses Organisation is reporting today that student nurses—some who are unlikely to have been on a hospital ward before—were paid with food vouchers. It has also reported that one of the students was hit. This is wrong on many levels. Firstly, the New Zealand Nurses Organisation reports that their students receive inadequate orientation. The Minister’s suggestion that this is what enrolled nursing is like shows how out of touch he is. Enrolled nursing is vastly different to this. Second, is it now a Government policy that nurses will not be paid wages and salary but instead will be paid with food vouchers, and where does this cross the boundary of work for payment versus volunteering? Thirdly, it is reported that some of the work was watch duty. The question arises: were unqualified students on watch duty for people who might harm them or maybe might even harm themselves? Minister Little, this is what a health crisis looks like.

Emergency department (ED) doctors: what are they saying? Those who are actually at the coalface. Twelve ED doctors from Palmerston North Hospital recently wrote to the Minister, saying, “There are people with major trauma, waiting for more than nine hours in wheelchairs.” ED doctors at Wairarapa Hospital recently said, “It is beyond a crisis; it is a catastrophe.” ED doctors at Waikato Hospital reported a crisis, and an elderly woman at North Shore Hospital waited outside in freezing conditions in a leaky tent. Minister Little, this is what a health crisis looks like.

Orthopaedic surgeons: their surgical waiting list has doubled in the last 10 months from 14,000 to roughly 28,000 today. A large contribution to that surgical waiting list is orthopaedics, so the orthopaedic surgeon should know a lot about surgical waiting lists. The president of the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association, surgeon John McKie, stated recently in a media release called “Elective Surgery Crisis”: (1) “We can’t blame COVID for the ballooning waiting lists”; (2) “The numbers of people waiting for elective surgery is much worse than the numbers released by the government.” Minister Little, this is what a health crisis looks like.

Here are some of the features of our health crisis. ED wait times are the worst in a decade. Two-hundred people, in April, waited more than 24 hours, and sometimes with tragic consequences. First specialist assessment: those who are waiting to even see a specialist are waiting more than four months—36,000. The surgical waiting list: those who have seen a specialist have been promised their surgery will be done in four months, doubling in the last 10 months. These are people with painful hips, painful knees. They struggle to walk to the toilet. They sleep at night with a bent knee because it’s so painful. These are people with cataracts who are slowly going blind. Mr Little, this is what a health crisis looks like.

And what has been the Minister’s response? To demean and disparage the hard-working health workforce, to tell nursing organisations that they speak with “forked tongue”, to tell experienced ED doctors that their data cannot be trusted, to tell ICU doctors that they have the figures wrong. This is what we are hearing from the current Minister. We know how we got here. We got here through incompetence in the first two years. The waiting lists were going up, ED wait times were struggling in the first two years, even before COVID arrived, and then, over that period—March 2020, roughly through for a year—we failed to build ICU beds. The safety valve, or the buffer, if you like, for ICU beds is waiting lists. When you want to protect the health system, you cancel waiting lists, and that’s what happened. A year ago, a workforce warning letter from 20 DHBs was ignored, and here we are now with health reforms and the distraction and redirection of financing. That’s how we come to be here.

What we need is a plan for how to get out of here. Our first thing that we could and should do is to give nurses the day one residency pathway to allow them to bring their skills and contribute to ask them to bring their skills and to contribute to the health workforce shortage that we have. Mr Little, in Wellington, you are not seeing from your office, but I’m telling you there is a health force crisis, and so is the rest of the sector.

Order! The member’s time has expired. Before the next member takes her call, I just want to remind members of the procedures when members want to speak to each other. We’re not bound to our own seats, but an incident involving Ms Grigg and me admonishing her quietly, I think, needs to be made clear to all members. If members want to speak to another member, they can shift and sit next to them. They shouldn’t stand, crouch, or similar. But the other thing is that it is very impolite to do that in between the member who is speaking and the Chair. I think if members have urgent conversations, then they should either go to the lobby or go to the backbench. I think, that way, we keep a bit more decorum in the House.

Mr Speaker, mahalo. It is a pleasure to rise in this general debate and take a call. I do want to start with a question, in that if there was ever a week for Christopher Luxon to come to this House and not grill the Prime Minister on attendance, I would have thought this would have been it. When you have been caught misleading the country over where you have been, when you have been posting on social media, pretending to be in one place and you’re actually in another, it belies belief in leadership that Mr Luxon would come to this House and front up and take that as a sign of what a leader should ask another leadership.

There’s several kind of rules that I think that we should all, as politicians, accept, and one is actually not to bend the truth about where you are—is probably one of them. What we have to do is we all accept that politicians should take a break from this place. I think nobody is disputing that. Every politician should take the time to spend time with their friends and with their family. But I think New Zealanders expect politicians to be upfront and they expect them to be straight up with them about where they are. It speaks to integrity.

So in the “What was he thinking?” file, straight off, calling New Zealand businesses “soft”, on his travels, you need to think: what actually was Christopher Luxon thinking by pretending to be in Te Puke last week? One can only assume that there had to be a method; there had to be a reason behind someone doing this. Could it be because he was looking for the international headlines that he couldn’t get on his travels? Well, he succeeded, if we take that as the measure. Let’s have a look at the Sydney Morning Herald headline: “‘A Wonderful Time’: New Zealand politician, on a Hawaiian holiday, tells Kiwis he’s hard at work.” Check; you’ve achieved that. Or what he couldn’t achieve, arriving in London, arriving in the UK amidst a Tory leadership meltdown—couldn’t get a headline in The Times. Well, he cracked one this week: “Christopher Luxon: ‘Hard at work’ politician was on holiday in Hawaii”. So that’s the kind of headlines that are being generated. I guess it’s that and calling Kiwi businesses “soft” that will get Mr Luxon the headlines where he is looking for them.

We saw my colleague the Hon Grant Robertson, in two speeches prior, waving around that great tome by Andrea Vance—a very compelling read, probably good beach reading in Hawaii, I would imagine, too. But I think Mr Luxon should probably treat it as a historical document and realise the Shipley plotters were known as the “Te Kooti bypass”. It wasn’t Te Puke, Mr Luxon. So if you’re looking to firm up your leadership and shut down the plotting coups, it’s the wrong place in the North Island. So probably—

💬 SPEAKER: No, the member’s risking misleading the House.

OK. Ha, ha! Mr Speaker, you would know! But, I do want to turn to some serious things.

💬 Hon Member: Do you really mean that?

The Speaker is our elder statesman of our House and holds the chronicles of what has happened. But I do want to tend to some serious material where we do expect our leaders to show leadership, and that is on the matter of climate change. I would like to inform Mr Luxon that taking climate action isn’t pretending to travel fewer air miles, to be pretending not to go on a longer plane journey than you are, and pretending to be in Te Puke. It is about showing leadership. It is about integrity. It is about having a plan for how New Zealand is going to meet its global commitments.

I am still waiting to hear about that from the National Party. I am still waiting to know what the plan is. They’ve said they’ve signed up to the carbon budget. They’ve said they’re going to resume oil and gas exploration. They’ve said they won’t help businesses decarbonise. I guess that’s because they think that helping businesses decarbonise would be because businesses are soft. On this side of the House, we know that we have to be a Government that supports our industries and our businesses to ensure that we are taking real and meaningful action on climate change and making sure we are getting results—or outcomes, as Mr Luxon likes to call them.

Mr Speaker, thank you. Today, I’m thinking of our primary sector who are out working on our behalf in extreme weather conditions in many places. The primary sector is the core foundation of our nation, and it carries us through. It’s always carried us through history, but never more has it carried us through than the pandemic of the last 2½ years. And today, again, we heard Minister Robertson mentioning the primary sector, as he does every week when he gets asked the questions about the finances of our country, and we heard it again today. So today, I want to bring attention to those who are not aware and should be, because most of New Zealand should be aware by now, that we are on alert around foot-and-mouth disease.

Now, New Zealand’s foot-and-mouth response, according to Stuart Anderson, biosecurity director at the Ministry for Primary Industries, would be swift and drastic. I know that both the Minister and the Ministry for Primary Industries are totally focused on this issue at the moment, as they should be. They’ve said today a foot-and-mouth outbreak would be a national biosecurity emergency, and the response would be swift and drastic. The word “crisis” gets used in and out of this House a lot, but what we can all reassure the public of New Zealand is that if the foot-and-mouth outbreak came to this country, it would be a crisis. So Deputy Director-General for Biosecurity Stuart Anderson said they would test herds and they would destroy diseased animals immediately. It would all happen very quickly.

Now, it may seem to some people that it would be a repeat performance of the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak that we had just a small number of years ago, but, actually, it needs to be brought to the attention of the public that it would be far worse. So while Mycoplasma bovis was a devastating event for the farmers—it was a huge devastation to many farmers’ wellbeing, watching herds get culled, and I must say, commending the Ministry for Primary Industries in that they have got this under control, because in the early days there were huge doubts. But Mycoplasma bovis has only one other country where it wasn’t present, so it never became a trade issue. Foot-and-mouth disease would become a trade issue, and even if the disease was confined to a small part of New Zealand, the entire country would be, essentially, locked down within the first three days, and we know what that’s like.

So let’s join forces to ensure that it doesn’t get here. We know that a benign sample was found in Australia recently, and while it was benign, it is still far too close to home. And the difference between the spread of Mycoplasma bovis and foot-and-mouth disease is that Mycoplasma bovis spread when cows’ noses touched each other. Foot-and-mouth can spread by wind, it can spread by water, and the wind can carry this virus up to several hundred kilometres, and it can also survive for some time without a host. So all it would take would be a few particles of the disease to walk in to New Zealand on a pair of jandals for billions of dollars to be lost. And the current estimate, if it gets into this country and affects pigs, goats, alpacas, llamas, cattle, sheep, and deer—who are all susceptible—is $16 billion over four to five years. But that was based on 2014 data when our export revenue was $38 billion, and we know that it’s over $52 billion now.

So there is a vaccine. People are asking about a vaccine, but our trade is based on foot-and-mouth disease - free, so if we start using the vaccine, we lose that status. So I’m putting out a call today for every person in New Zealand to join the team, to be vigilant, to keep foot-and-mouth out of New Zealand. It would be a crisis. It would devastate this country—all of us. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

It is a pleasure to rise in the House today, and I just want to acknowledge the comments made by my colleague Barbara Kuriger just across the aisle in respect of our friends, our families, those in our rural communities who are working out there tirelessly for our community whilst there are adverse weather events occurring up and down the country.

Just before I came into the House this afternoon, I was talking to a whole range of people from Tai Rāwhiti. We have the fourth significant adverse weather event that has absolutely impacted our critical infrastructure, our roading infrastructure. I’m watching our coastline slip into the ocean right now. Just before I came into this House, it was a privilege and a pleasure to be sitting with my colleague the Minister of Climate Change, James Shaw. I want to acknowledge the work he has done for all of us, every New Zealander, and for working tirelessly to ensure that we as a nation are playing our part in the global events that are causing climate change and the implications we are seeing every single day in our communities.

Right now, on State Highway 35, there’s a critical piece of infrastructure that connects Ōpōtiki, comes all the way up around the coast, and down through to Gisborne. There are three ways into Gisborne: the northern route, the southern route through State Highway 2, which is our other piece of roading infrastructure that connects us to the major port in Tauranga. Right now, State Highway 35 has got a block, where we can’t get heavy traffic through at Motu River bridge down by Te Kaha. We’ve got a block up in Te Puia, where we can’t get heavy traffic through; it’s on the Gisborne side. This is a consequence of geological impacts, a consequence of the changing environment that we’re having to adapt to. I have to acknowledge my colleague the Minister of Transport, Michael Wood. He and his team from Waka Kotahi are throwing down cash and doing what they can to patchwork these roads together, but what we cannot do is predict where the weather gods are going to go, and what we do know is that we are having to endure greater and greater impacts.

So what has this Government done? This Government is tackling climate change. It’s a key priority for our Government. We have made a target of zero emissions by 2050. We have introduced just this year an emissions reduction plan. That came with a big budget to help us transition and reduce the emissions that we as New Zealanders are creating. A lot of that, of course, is in transport, but it’s in a range of other reasons where there are critical emissions. We cannot afford to sit idly on our hands.

I want to come back to what is happening in Tai Rāwhiti, because my heart breaks day in and day out. I was talking to 60 people last night who are impacted—from the Crown, we had every agency that had a direct, relevant role to play. We were talking with heavy transport users of that road. That part of our economy is forestry—one in four households derives a direct benefit from forestry. Now with those two roads shut at Te Puia and shut there at Te Kaha, we can’t get our forestry products out. We can’t get our horticultural produce out, and that’s on top of the global issues that we’re contending with right now. Shanghai port has had its port doors shut for three months of this year. We’re already in pretty challenging times right now. What it’s requiring is everybody to do their little bit in the immediate patchwork stuff we have to fix up, and I acknowledge my colleagues and their counterparts and every single person that came on to that call to hear about the struggles they were enduring. The real work has been the mid- to long-term planning and how we’re adapting and building up our resilience, how we are making sure that we’re working alongside communities to adapt our behaviours.

We’ve got such a critical part of our economy dependent on infrastructure that we can’t be certain is going to be there in five or ten years’ time. Like I say, State Highway 35 has been taken out four times in a single year-long period. That is in complete contrast to what was happening a couple of years ago. It might have been taken out once or twice here and there, but this is becoming more and more frequent. Climate change is right on our doorstep, and I want to acknowledge Minister Shaw and this Government for tackling climate change on its head.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. ACT, over the last few weeks, has been travelling around New Zealand, listening to the concerns of real New Zealanders, and we’ve been hosting old-fashioned town hall meetings to hear from people in person. Over the last few weeks, we have met with over 2,500 New Zealanders at town halls up and down this country. We’ve been hearing the real stories about how New Zealanders have been affected by the cost of living crisis. People are finding it harder and harder to get ahead. But, not only that, they’re finding it harder and harder even to stand still, whether it’s just going and filling up the car to be able to get to work and drop their kids off at school or netball, whether it’s finding enough money to make sure you have enough food for your kids for their school that week, or whether it’s making sure you’ve got enough to put aside for paying the rent and the gas bills, paying for your mortgage. It is harder and harder for people to put those cents together.

Now, ACT says that it’s not OK to just survive; it’s important that we have communities that thrive. And in a healthy economy, people don’t find it hard to survive; they should be able to thrive. We don’t have a healthy economy, and that’s why the ACT Party has put forward solutions for the cost of living crisis. And that’s because the cost of living crisis is the number one issue that’s facing all of New Zealanders at the moment. ACT picked it up first, in December last year, and, one by one, every other party has come to the table to accept and acknowledge the crisis that New Zealanders are facing. But, of course, the Labour Party was the last to the table, because it takes a long time to accept that they were the ones that caused this problem in the first place.

And now their solutions are ones that will actually make it more inflationary and make it harder for people to scrimp and save and get ahead, and that’s because their policies add to inflation. You know, when you’re putting in place policies that will cut excise fuel tax and road-user charges for a very small temporary time, it sounds good, but when it’s being fuelled by borrowing and borrowed money, that is not good; it only adds to inflation.

And so instead of these inflationary measures, the ACT Party has put forward solutions that are real solutions, and we’ve launched our latest policy document on the cost of living, outlining nine proposals that we believe would get inflation under control and help these struggling Kiwis.

Firstly, we need to dump the remaining tariffs. Around $200 million per year is made up of existing tariffs on goods imported to New Zealand. You know, the ACT Party believes that if we got rid of these tariffs, we’ve estimated it would drop the cost of a school uniform by $20. That’s one very basic measure we could do.

Secondly, we need to dump the labour market test from the Accredited Employer Work Visa scheme. Currently, every employer has to prove that there is a labour shortage. Isn’t that remarkable? We’re in the middle of a labour shortage, and every employer has to prove that they are affected by a labour shortage. Let’s get rid of that bureaucracy.

Thirdly, let’s allow foreign supermarkets from OECD countries to bypass the Official Information Act and bring in real competition. It’s insane that we’re stopping this from happening.

Fourthly, let’s create a materials equivalence register; let’s force councils to accept substitutes for materials that are equivalent. That would bring down the cost of materials for new builds.

Number five: let’s incentivise councils to build by sharing GST on buildings in their areas. That would incentivise more homes to be built.

💬 Six: let’s cut taxes. Let’s give every person, the average person, over $2,000 back in their own pockets.

Let’s replace the Resource Management Act with a fit for purpose law where only those who are directly physically affected can object to a development.

Let’s also give the Reserve Bank Governor real targets. Let’s get them back to basics.

Number nine: cut wasteful spending—so, so important. The ACT Party has found $6.8 billion of wasteful spending that we would cut.

These are the policies that the ACT Party is putting forward to help Kiwis struggling to put food on the table and petrol in their cars. These are the ideas that will help New Zealanders. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

This weekend, I’ll be travelling to New York to head the New Zealand delegation at the Tenth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, otherwise known as the NPT. The treaty came into force in 1970, and, for the last 50 years, it has been the cornerstone of international nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. It is centred around the idea of a grand bargain whereby most States gave up the opportunity to get nuclear weapons in exchange for those five that already have them—that is, the US, Russia, the UK, China, and France—agreeing to pursue disarmament.

The treaty was forged in the depths of a nuclear arms race, when the need for disarmament was frighteningly clear. The mood at the time was summed up well by John F Kennedy, speaking in 1961, when he said, “We must abolish these weapons before they abolish us.”

Now, the NPT is far from perfect, but, today, only four additional countries possess nuclear weapons—India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea—and the number of nuclear weapons in existence is less than a quarter what it was in 1985, when the figure peaked at more than 63,000. But it’s important that we think about the achievements of the NPT when we criticise its failings, not because New Zealand is not ambitious for nuclear disarmament—because we very much are—but because the best weapon against the current cynicism and pessimism about the prospects for disarmament is to remember what the NPT has achieved, often in very difficult times.

New Zealand and our like-minded friends are fighting right now against a sort of collective amnesia by the nuclear weapon States and their allies: an idea that with all of the challenges the world currently faces—a war, a pandemic, economic woes, growing geostrategic rivalries—disarmament is just too hard. In short, we’re presented with a catch-22 in that the current lack of stability and security renders us incapable of actually working towards greater security and stability.

The logic of the nuclear weapon States, frankly, does not pass the sniff test. It forgets the grave uncertainty out of which the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was born, which some in this House will still remember. The world was in the grip of the Cold War, an existential threat in the form of a nuclear arms race, and two heavily armed nuclear powers playing out their competition in real time, but none of that stood in the way of Kennedy and Khrushchev and, in another decade, of Reagan and Gorbachev taking the opportunity to lead.

Speaking to NATO last month, our Prime Minister confronted this false logic in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She said that we cannot allow the legacy of the war in Ukraine to become an arms race or an even more polarised and dangerous world, and, to this end, she urged the international community to match our solidarity with Ukraine with an equal commitment to strengthen international institutions, multilateral forums, and disarmament.

In New York, I will be making clear that the lack of action in recent years by all of the nuclear weapon States in holding up their side of the NPT’s grand bargain is totally unacceptable. In recent years, we’ve seen massive reinvestment in nuclear weapons, nuclear modernisation programmes, and a reduction in transparency by the nuclear weapon States. Add all that to the heightened international insecurity and superpower rivalries, and you can see why the risk of nuclear catastrophe is considered to be greater now than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The nuclear weapon States must return to the path of nuclear disarmament.

I’ll be joined in New York by a parliamentary delegation, including the Hon Jenny Salesa and the Hon Todd McClay. This is a visible demonstration of New Zealand’s cross-party commitment to nuclear disarmament. Over 50 years on from the NPT entering into force, New Zealand’s message remains clear: we must ban the bomb.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. In September 2019, the words “school strike for climate” ended up scrawled across the wall next to my office. They were scrawled in chalk, and so—as they’ve been protected from the elements—I’ve decided to leave them there as an impermanent reminder of the voices of young people in our region calling for urgent action on climate change. Since then, the effects of climate change across our country have been all too clear. I think, for me, what I most vividly remember is the day of the Mataura floods, and the day that the Mataura River broke its banks and it flooded the low-lying homes in Mataura. But it also threatened the aluminium dross that had been stored in the paper mill next to the river. I also remember the hospitality of the Murihiku Marae, as they took people in who had been evacuated from their homes, and also the way that the community turned out afterwards to help people recover. But I think with the issue of climate change projecting these events happening—they’re much, much more likely.

I’m absolutely proud to be part of a Government that’s taking urgent action on climate change. In my last term, it was a real privilege to be on the Environment Committee when the zero carbon bill passed through the House. I think some of the submissions I remember most vividly were parents turning up and sitting in front of the committee with their children on their knees and saying, “Look, you need to go much, much faster for the sake of their futures”.

I am proud of the way the Government’s put in place a legislative framework that will ensure that we do our bit to keep global temperature rises below 1.5 degrees. But what I’m also proud of is the fact that our Government’s been investing to make sure that this actually happens. If I look at what’s been happening down our way in the South, what that’s meant is extra funding for Southland schools to replace their coal-fired boilers with ones that run on renewable sources. I think, you know, you can imagine how our winters get incredibly cold down there and the fact that we need to be able to keep our children warm, but we don’t want to be expanding our carbon footprint. So to be able to run those schools’ boilers on renewable sources is incredibly important. It’s the same with the Government putting in place investments so that the Invercargill Prison can replace its coal-fired boiler with one that runs on wood pellets. That’s going to save about 97.5 percent of their emissions. It also means that now that’s the last coal-fired boiler for the Department of Corrections.

A number of our local businesses and industries have also benefited from the Decarbonising Industry Fund. What that means is that they can put in place infrastructure that will be able to make sure that we can continue to grow as an economy down South, but we won’t be expanding our carbon footprint. It’s also wonderful to hear the conversations among people thinking about buying electric vehicles (EVs) or hybrids, and looking at the Clean Car Discount and also the way that the number of EV chargers has popped up around the South. So now people feel much more comfortable that they can tour the South in an electric vehicle and they’ll know that they’ve got places where they can charge their car.

So there’s a lot that’s been happening and there’s a lot, also, that we need to continue with. But I think the other issue is that for a city like Invercargill, which is only a couple of metres above sea level in many places, it’s really important that we look ahead to adaptation. And, again, it’s really great to see the Government particularly investing in our region’s flood protection. So as I drive out to the airport each week on the way to fly up here, I’ve been watching the progress on the upgrade of the Stead Street stopbank. It’s a huge stopbank that runs along in front of the airport and protects it from the estuary. Basically, over time, what we’ve seen is waves overtopping that stopbank at times with severe storm events. So the investment that’s been put in there with a big sheet pile flood wall will protect that area, not only from future sea-level rise but also from those severe storm events and the impact that has on the roads.

I think our region’s also benefited a lot from Jobs for Nature and the funding that’s been put in place to make sure that we’ve got native tree nurseries around the place, and a whole lot of other plantings, which will ensure not only that we’ve got more trees but we’re also protecting our biodiversity; we’re actually cleaning our waterways. So there’s a lot that’s been happening, and I’m really proud to be part of a Government that’s taking climate change seriously and that we’ve got a plan that ensures that every sector across transport, across waste, across food production, across building and construction, and across manufacturing, will be able to do its bit to see global temperature rises no further than 1.5 degrees. Thank you.

I think I’ve mentioned in this House before that I have teenage children. And teenage children don’t find it easy having an MP for a mum. In fact, it is a little-known secret that the battered mum-mobile I drive around town has removable magnetic posters with my name and face on them, so that they can be removed when said teenagers are in the car, as opposed to when I am driving on business.

But the thing is, it’s the kids’ fault that I’m here. There were a couple of years, just before I got asked to run, when my then early teenage youngest child began a little bit of a bedtime ritual. She would come into me and she would say, “Mum, can you tell me that the world won’t burn up by the time I grow up?” Every night, my daughter would come into me and she would say, “Will you tell me that the world will be all right when I grow up?” And I realised I couldn’t say that to her. It was a major reason for me taking the decision to stand and begin the campaign that ended with my role here. Her heart was breaking; my heart was breaking. Minister Allan has spoken of her own heart breaking when she witnesses the effect of climate change. There is a recognised phenomenon now of climate grief, where our children, our middle-aged mums, our older people are grieving for the damage done to our climate by us.

I often speak to young people. As often as I can, I get out into the community in Whangārei and I talk to the schools and I run a youth forum and I sit down with children, from the littlies to the biggest ones. And I talk to them because when I was a girl in Whangārei Intermediate, and nuclear weapons were last considered the great threat—and as Minister Twyford has said to us, that’s something we should be thinking about right now—that was the problem, I tried to take action, I reached the end of my tether on that, I knew not where to go. I do not want any of the children in Whangārei who are now in grief over climate, in anxiety over climate, not knowing how to take action. I tell them every single time, the antidote to anxiety is activism.

That is why, when I stood in this House, walked into this House for the very first time—it was the day that this Government declared a climate emergency, and it was a remarkable moment for our country; it was a remarkable moment for our Government. When I look at Whangārei now—and I look at where I live, where we’re facing, I think, the third time that Maungatapere is flooding, and our farmers are trying to dig out their paddocks, and our community is calling for volunteers to pick up shovels and go down for the third time this year—I know that it is things that this Government is doing now which are ameliorating it, not just in terms of $2.9 billion invested into climate change but in terms of the small things.

Today, I spoke to Jack Craw, who is a Northland regional councillor with a particular expertise in environmentalism. He talked about the Whangārei Urban Awa Project, where the Government has invested in the growth of trees, the cleaning of waterways, and the protection and development of new wetlands—things that he told me were “fantastic”, in his words. In fact, he asked me, when I told him about the speech, to get up here and thank Minister Parker and Jacinda Ardern. He said it has been extremely helpful. He talked about the carbon sequestration and the flooding relief that that measure is going to take.

When I look around my little area, I see Golden Bay Cement also, which has had $16 million out of $25 million of cost into waste reduction and cleaner energy. It is these measures which will assure our children gradually, slowly, one tree at a time, of a better future than my daughter fears.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Just a couple of days ago, there was yet another racially motivated attack on a father, a Chinese man, in our super-diverse Auckland City, outside a supermarket—Pak ’N Save in Albany—on Sunday morning. He was a software specialist, a role vitally needed in this country. There are well over 3,000 ICT job vacancies today in New Zealand. He was assaulted. To quote his daughter, who was actually reported in the New Zealand Herald, “‘He was trying to shield himself and ended up on the floor.’ ‘The other man kept on kicking him and hitting him.’ He tried to hide behind [his] shopping trolley but the man continued his attack and at one point threw eggs he had purchased at her father. One witness, also a Chinese man, called the police and stayed with her father until they arrived. By the time [the officer] arrived the attacker had fled. Her father [at] this point [was] kicked or punched in his lower back, chest, stomach, and head, and was covered in egg residue. He was taken to a nearby White Cross clinic for assessment, having suffered multiple bruises to his head.”

I commend the bravery of the Pak ’N Save Albany supermarket manager, who stepped in to protect this man, but this kind of Asian hate and attacks on Asian people has actually increased since the advent of COVID having actually come across to New Zealand and people blaming COVID on the Asian community. I’d like to commend every member of the public who steps in to say no to racism and actually just stop anti-ethnic violence and to stop Asian hate, because they certainly are doing a heck of a lot better than a Government who only gives lip service to this issue. The charge to go back to where you come from is one that echoes across this country for ethnic New Zealanders, despite many of them—actually, quite a majority of them—having actually lived here for generations, and yet they get this thing: “Go back to your country.” Especially for those who actually are born in New Zealand, where are they to go back to? They don’t have a country, apart from New Zealand.

I have personally been slandered in this very House by people who were rewarded with high office under Labour. They claim hate speech laws are needed. Maybe they should look into themselves and the deficits in law and order that have sprung up under this Labour Government, and execute and implement laws that we already have in this country.

There are dozens of stories that I could potentially tell on this particular issue, but we can look into the very electorate of the Prime Minister: Mt Albert. I have visited many shops in Sandringham, and many shops are covered up with boards, plywood. The windows haven’t actually been replaced. There are shopkeepers who are sleeping on the floor of their shop because they are worried that they will once again be ram raided. The majority of these people are Asian. One particular shop has been ram raided and broken into more than a dozen times. There was a shisha shop—not even a vape shop—that actually sells intricate shisha pipes for ethnic communities, which was reduced to one window only. The shopkeeper doesn’t even open the door wide, and he had actually been broken into many times, at least five times in as many months. The instances were caused by teenagers for this particular man. The Prime Minister cannot even bring law and order to her own electorate. She cannot even keep the streets of Mt Albert safe.

Labour are not backing New Zealand’s ethnic communities, and they cannot even keep the shops in Sandringham, and the people, safe. It is time the Government actually does something—or do all ethnic communities just wait until National returns to Government? We can certainly do the action. This Government is all about pretty conversations, huis, and lip service. They are certainly not delivering for the ethnic community.

It’s with sadness that I first acknowledge the passing of Rotorua kuia and Māori health stalwart Inez Kingi.

Haere atu rā e te kuia. Whakaheke tonu atu ki te pō.

[To our esteemed elder, may you rest in peace. Descend to the place of departed spirits.]

During her long and celebrated health career, Inez Kingi MNZM QSO gave great service to the people of Rotorua, particularly to tamariki Māori. Her legacy is the Tipu Ora Charitable Trust, a precursor to the Whānau Ora model, and a centre that I spent many summers in, alongside my mother, a Māori GP. She joins her husband, the late Ngāti Whakaue rangatira Pihopa Kingi. My thoughts are with her whānau and with all of Ngāti Whakaue today.

Let me turn to the politics of the day. Those are the politics of climate change. That’s because we are in an era of climate emergency, and all politics are climate politics now. I say that because of all the steps that Governments of today take now and in the near future need to be grounded in our commitments to see global emissions fall to net zero by 2050. I say that because all of the politics of young people on display at this month’s Youth Parliament were grounded in those commitments, and I was struck by how it’s apolitical to them; it’s something they will all want action on. It’s personal, it’s for their whānau, and it’s local.

I think of, in my electorate of Manurewa, the Awa Rangers, who are a group of young people who have come together to protect the Puhinui stream, and the young woman who said that the health of the river is reflective of the health of the community; that, when the awa is paru, it causes her sadness and it brings everybody down together. It’s also a source of anxiety and dread for them. It’s a source of grief, a real worry about their future and the country that they will inherit. And it’s also an acknowledgment of the burden of debt that future generations will face if we don’t act now and we don’t invest in community resilience to climate change.

I say that because the trade-offs that we need to make about our decisions about climate change go to the heart of the way we see ourselves as New Zealanders. Are we as New Zealanders going to shy away from those challenges? Are we going to work together and build on our collective spirit? Are we going to lead the way on a world stage? If our neighbours don’t keep up, we all lag behind. That’s why I’m proud that this Government has seen the introduction of the first ever emissions reduction plan, and, in 2019, we passed the zero-carbon amendment to the Climate Change Response Act, which provides a framework by successive Governments that can develop and implement clear and stable climate change policies.

Those things are important to the people of Manurewa that I represent, because it’s the people without savings and options who are the most affected by the worst effects of climate change. We’re more exposed to the effects of sea-level rises in Weymouth and in Manukau, from the Manukau Harbour. We’re more exposed to tornadoes in Papatoetoe, which have already wreaked havoc on suburban streets. And we’re more vulnerable to the long-term impacts that climate change has on our communities and our local town centres and our economy.

It’s important to Manurewa that this Government’s emissions reduction plan has a plan for all of our country and all sectors. We’re on track to meet our first emissions budget, and it has targets for the energy sector, transport, waste, food, and manufacturing. And, in terms of manufacturing, may I acknowledge those Wiri businesses based in Manurewa that have embraced a circular economy, and are working with producers like Eco Stock, which recycles waste and food products produced in our local area and turns them into food products for cows and sheep, and turns them into green biomass for production uses elsewhere. And things like the Wiri tyre centre, which mulches tyres that need to be recycled and sends from up north for Golden Bay Cement to use as fuel.

It’s important to Manurewa because addressing climate change now means also bringing down the cost of living. Things like half-price public transport have made an incredible difference in my community, and that will continue for people with community services cards. The difference that I hear they’re making not only for students and working people but for parents who would never have taken the bus or the train with their kids to school in the morning, or to kōhanga—which is right next to the Puhinui train station in my electorate—is huge. This is saving people between $7 and $20 a week in the electorate of Manurewa when they use public transport on a daily basis.

The last four years have seen this Government put in place bold action on climate change. I’m proud of that change, and it’s something we can all stand behind.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.