General Debate

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

Well, Mr Speaker, you are no doubt a very well-read man, and I’m sure that you are very familiar with the tale of the emperor’s new clothes, because, as the story goes, two con men promise a prideful emperor a fabulous new suit of clothes. That emperor then parades before his subjects in his non-existent suit until a boy cries out, “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!” And then, when the crowd realise the child is right, they roar in laughter. However, the very sad thing is that the emperor continues on his parade because the turn back would be foolish and wrong. Well, here in New Zealand in 2022, the Labour Government is the emperor, and it has for five years—five long years—paraded through town telling people that they care, telling people to be kind, and telling people that they are going to deliver. And, while the people at court in the Labour Party on the other side praise their emperor, the crowds outside of this place are pointing and what they’re saying is they can see five years of failure: a Government that spends more, it hires more, and it uniquely and unbelievably delivers worse in every area across the board.

So let’s look at some of these failures; let’s look at why the emperor has no clothes, because it couldn’t be clearer. Let’s look at the story on the economy because it’s very simply five years of failure: inflation at 7.2 percent, the highest in 32 years; real wages down 4 percent; no one can get ahead; everyone’s going backwards, and there’s no plan to deal with it from the other side. We’ve got mortgage interest rates at record levels. We’ve got interest rates going higher than they need to be, because this Government’s addicted to spending an extra billion dollars more each and every week. At the same time, they’re collecting almost $15,000 more per household in tax, but they won’t give it back to Kiwis to keep in their own pocket, to spend and save as they see fit. Instead, what do we get? We got a rinky-dink band-aid idea called a “cost of living payment” that went to dead people. And what I would say to you: that is the sign of an utterly incompetent Government if you just can’t even give the money away.

So what’s the story on health? Well, it’s five years of failure there too, because every single health metric has gone backwards, every single wait-list time has got worse, and we have 200,000 Kiwis now on a health-related wait-list. We have a health workforce at breaking point; 4,000 nurses are needed and we can’t even fast track them through an immigration process. Meanwhile, we spend money building up a massive bureaucracy when we should be spending it on the front-line healthcare services.

What’s the story on crime? Well, I can tell you it’s a familiar refrain: it’s five years of failure. Violent crime up 21 percent, assaults up 31 percent, gang membership up 50 percent, ram raids up 500 percent. And what we have is a Labour Government soft on crime, and I can tell you National’s going to support the police and we are going to tackle gangs.

What’s the story on housing? Well, it is five years of failure. Homeownership is down. Remember KiwiBuild—1.4 percent of the hundred thousand houses have been built. Now, if you can’t own a home, you have to rent a home, and rents are up $140 a week. And, if you are not lucky enough to rent a home, you end up going on the State house waiting list, and that’s up four times. And, if it’s really grim, you end up not getting a State house; you’re in emergency housing. And 4,000 kids woke up in a motel accommodation today; a million dollars a day is what it’s costing us. And, if you can’t get emergency accommodation, where do you go? You end up living in your car, and that is four times worse than it was when this Government came to power.

What’s the story on education? It’s five years of failure. This is a developed country, and we have 54 percent of our kids not making school regularly. We have 100,000 kids chronically absent from school. And then, if you are lucky enough to make it through the front gates, we’ve got record low, abysmal levels of academic achievement. Here we are in New Zealand and 98 percent of our kids in decile 1 schools failed to pass the most basic writing tests. This is New Zealand; we don’t do that any further. That’s not transforming lives; that’s actually a social failure. It’s a moral failure, and it’s a future economic crisis.

So what’s the story from the emperor’s new clothes? What’s the moral that comes out of it? Well, it’s pretty simple: just saying it’s so doesn’t make it so. Pride becomes a fall, and karma gets you in the end. And I want to tell you, speaking of karma, the New Zealand people are going to be able to say next year “the emperor has no clothes” and they’re going to elect a National Government that wants to put the country back on track, that will deliver, and that is going to take New Zealand forward incredibly positively. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

This week, I want to wish one and all a very, very happy Labour Day, although I do pass on to the Leader of the Opposition my thoughts and prayers as he has to deal with the trauma and shared mental dislocation of living through a public holiday that he wants to abolish. And, at the same time, I do wish to pass on my apologies to him for the fact that, just days before that, we made an announcement about investing in the national ticketing solution for public transport, given, as we know, that he thinks that public transport should “Stand on its own two feet without any support from Government”.

But, as we celebrate Labour Day this week, the big win for working people is this Government moving forward and reaching that manifesto commitment of legislating for fair pay agreements (FPAs) for the working people of New Zealand. They are about stopping the race to the bottom and closing the door on a 30-year experiment with low wages that that party on the other side of the House has never been able to move beyond.

Fair pay agreements are about a new dawn for the people who clean our offices, who clean this Parliament, who drive the buses around our cities, who care for our old people, and who teach our youngest children. Fair pay agreements—so clearly, in this House, as they have made their way through—are also a marker of values and a marker of priorities because, while this Government stands by low and middle income people and is always looking for how we can improve life for them, the focus on that side of the House is on how they can shovel tax cuts, as much as possible, to the wealthy few. I’ve been doing a few figures on this one because sometimes you can work out how values translate into real-world facts and figures, and this is worth understanding because it makes it pretty stark. That party over there, every single member on that side of the House would give themselves an $8,000 tax cut—that’s what they would give themselves: an $8,000 tax cut.

Well, as it would happen, as it happens, it would take a minimum wage worker, like a cleaner, earning a full-time wage between Labour Day and the end of the year to earn the $8,000 that they would give themselves at the stroke of a pen. And it gets worse, for were Mr Luxon—God forbid—to be the Prime Minister in a position to do that, he would be giving himself an $18,000 tax cut that would take a minimum wage worker five months to earn. That is the difference between this side of the House, who stands with working New Zealanders, and that side of the House, who stands for unfunded tax cuts to the wealthy few. And that is the choice that New Zealanders face.

The increases to the minimum wage that this Government, this Labour Government, has delivered to the lowest-income New Zealanders since 2017—those people who worked so hard up and down our country—$218 more per week in their pockets. Mr Luxon’s tax cut would give himself a tax cut of $346 per week. And so let’s get past—let’s get past—the fine words and the pearl clutching about cost of living and how it impacts low and middle income earners, from that side of the House, because the policies that they would advance, the values that they actually stand for are all about the needs of those at the top, and would do nothing—would do nothing—for those on the low and middle incomes in New Zealand that this Government is supporting.

And that is such a clear choice for New Zealanders, and it just goes on and on because every single policy that this Government puts in place to support working people is opposed by that side of the House. The minimum wage: opposed by National. FPAs: opposed by National. A Matariki public holiday: opposed by National. Ten days’ sick leave in the middle of a global pandemic: opposed by National. Our investment in working people through more apprenticeships for our young people to give them skills and training; cheaper doctors’ visits for our kids; free lunches for our kids in schools put through by Labour Budgets: opposed by National. And that is because that side of the House continues to have a narrow, zero-sum game of investing in working people where they always see it as a cost; we see it as an investment, on the side of the House.

So, as we celebrate Labour this day, I say thank you to the working people of this country for everything that you contribute. Fair pay agreements, this week, will make a real difference. This is a Labour Government that backs working people every step of the way.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Everyone in our country should be able to make ends meet. Everyone should have enough to live a decent life. The Green Party has a vision where everyone in New Zealand has a warm, dry, affordable home to live in. Of course, that is absolutely achievable; everyone should have enough to be able to put healthy kai on the table and the ability to get around.

Now, there are two stories coming out of the pandemic. Right now, we seem rampant inflation, a cost of living crisis—how does that play out for ordinary New Zealanders? There is a family in South Auckland—probably many families—who are renting. Their home is not sufficiently insulated, there is no State support, necessarily, to insulate that unless the owner chooses to do so. It may not even have curtains in the bedroom, and, in the winter, the temperature can get quite cold. The quality of the house means the kids are more likely to be sick, to miss school, to have to visit the hospital. This family was making their energy payments, they are making every electricity power payment. However, that meant that they didn’t have enough to go to the supermarket and buy food. And so they had to go visit food banks.

At the very same time that these families are struggling with these terrible choices—to have to choose between paying the electricity bill, being in a cold, unhealthy home, or putting food on the table—we see companies in New Zealand—the supermarkets, the energy companies, the petrol companies—making record profits. Now, you can’t tell me that there’s not a connection between rising prices and record profits in sectors where we know there are a few big players wielding market power.

So what’s the solution to this? I mean, Government is there to make this system fair, and we can do that. It doesn’t benefit all of New Zealanders to have supermarkets and energy companies and petrol companies and the banks raking in record profits. It’s super-profit. It’s excess profit. There is a difference between making a living—an honest living—and making a killing by ripping people off.

I think New Zealanders can tell that right now, during this time of inflation, no, the culprit isn’t the Government. Government is investing in public services—obviously there’s areas where we differ in some of the focus on projects and there are different trade-offs that the Greens would make. However, we need Government to be investing in core public services like our health system, our education system. We need better water infrastructure; we need public housing.

So what are the solutions? Well, firstly, we need a fairer tax system. If we know that there are record profits—and I can go through what these are. So, of course, even the Commerce Commission study found that supermarkets were making excess profit of $1 million a day—$1 million a day. Meanwhile, we look at the big “gen-tailers”—the big energy companies that generate power and retail this—and I know they do a lot of good work, and there’s good people working in those companies, but the system means that they are incentivised to maximise their profit. As at August, Meridian is up 55 percent, Mercury is up 42 percent, and Genesis is up from a $31 million profit to $221 million—a nearly 600 percent increase.

Now, when those companies are making such huge profits we know there is a problem, and it’s ordinary New Zealanders that are getting ripped off. At the supermarket, on their electricity bills, and on their petrol bills. But there are things that the Government can do about this, absolutely.

Firstly, we want to make sure the tax system is fair; that there’s not this ability or an incentive to rip people off, to make super profits. That’s something that we can change. The Green Party is calling for those sorts of changes.

Other ideas for Government solutions: firstly, we need to have regulations around housing. I know we have healthy homes legislation—it doesn’t go far enough. When someone can rent out a house with no curtains in the bedroom, no heating in the bedroom, no insulation, and the temperature can fall to 6 degrees overnight, we have a problem and a health crisis. It makes sense for Government to intervene. We’ve heard that there are some landlords that are renting places with leaky roofs—that needs to stop. Government can invest in insulation, invest in energy efficiency, and invest in free public transport. We can do that with revenue raised, and fair for those companies that are making super profits to pay more tax so that we can pay for these solutions that help all New Zealanders.

Tuatahi, ka tahuri ōku mihi ki tōku tuahine ki a Soraya Peke-Meihana kua tīmata mai ki roto i tēnei Whare.

[Firstly, I wish to acknowledge my sister Soraya Peke-Mason’s commencement in this House.]

It’s a real special occasion to acknowledge her and, of course, her entering into Parliament at a very significant time. The numbers have already been raised about how a fair representation of wāhine in this Whare has been reached, but it can’t stop there. It’s an ongoing challenge to this House not to settle for 50 percent but to continue to support and tautoko wāhine into our House of Representatives. I want to acknowledge the new member because she certainly has a big job ahead of her, but I know that she’s cut out for it.

It’s really hard to articulate as well as the Hon Michael Wood just exactly what’s going on here with respect to those who are on middle to low incomes here in this country. But what is clear is that on this side of the House we’re supporting them. I want to lay out in my contribution here in the House just exactly how we’re doing that, and perhaps some tips for members on the other side that, actually, there are ways and means in which we can do it here in New Zealand.

What we hear from the other side of the House is that immigration is the answer to everything. Well, on this side of the House, we agree that immigration does play a role, actually, in the way we might support our labour market. We have, obviously, looked towards the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme to make sure that we can get whānau in here to do the work that needs to be done here in Aotearoa.

But I’m proud of this Government’s record and I want to highlight to the other side of the House that here’s a novel idea: let’s invest in our own people. Let’s make sure that we can train our own people here in Aotearoa to make sure that they can meet the demands of the labour market of the day.

It’s no coincidence that in the 1970s there was a housing boom in this country. Large numbers of houses were built. Like I say, it was no coincidence that Māori trade training was a huge success through the 1960s and 1970s that saw all of those who were able to be skilled and upskilled into the trades seek the opportunity and contribute to the housing boom that we saw during that time.

On this side of the House, I’m proud that this Government has supported over 50,000 apprentices into training to make sure that we can rise to the current challenge that we have with housing now—and rising they are. In fact, from the start of our time as Government and the introduction of apprenticeship schemes, I have spoken to a couple who have already passed through their apprenticeship, are now business owners in this country, and are looking to make sure that they play their part to repay the faith and trust that this country had in them to rise to the challenge to become builders, to become business owners, and to build houses for this country. It’s really exciting to know that in a hard time, like the pandemic that we’ve had, the Labour Party is supporting those here in this country to upskill.

We’re also supporting them with respect to the minimum wage. Now, I want to give a big shout-out to lots of good employers in this country—and there are many; there are many. I think of my own electorate in Tāmaki Makaurau. I’ve met with some awesome employers, who, despite the pandemic, paid their people above the minimum wage. They went to a living wage. They went to support their families that support their businesses. That’s really important to acknowledge those people.

Sadly, though, that isn’t always the case when we look towards our low-income earners and our medium-income earners. So this side of the House has made it clear that we will focus on lifting them. Minister Wood has already outlined what this side of the House is doing. I want to acknowledge that despite the attempts from this side of the House to continue to lift the minimum wage, to support workers, to support new parents who are looking towards supporting their whānau in those early formative years of their tamariki, sadly the other side of the House continue to block our attempts.

But I’m proud—I’m proud that on this side of the House we continue to push on, despite the negativity from the other side that looks towards solutions that aren’t actually fit for purpose here in Aotearoa. So I’m proud that on this side of the House we are focusing on what we can do for low to middle income earners.

But it doesn’t stop there. We know we have challenges ahead of us. We know that, for many of our whānau out there, living is a challenge at the moment, and we have supported them in many ways and we will look to continue to support those families into the future to make sure that when we emerge fully from this pandemic—because it’s a rather convenient lapse of memory on the other side of the House that there was all of a sudden no COVID-19—that we will be stronger and more resilient into the future, and they will know that this Government backed them.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. How appropriate was it that “Napoleon” himself—Michael Wood—led off the Labour Party’s contribution to this general debate, because it was the fable of the emperor’s new clothes that Christopher Luxon, the Leader of the Opposition, started his speech about. Then we had the real emperor himself, the self-appointed next leader of the Labour Party, Michael Wood—“Napoleon” himself—getting up to make a pitiful contribution in the debate today.

💬 SPEAKER: Yeah, I just remind the member to use proper names, not made-up names.

Oh, sorry, Mr Speaker—very good point. This Government will go down in history as the most incompetent and wasteful in New Zealand history. It is unbelievable, the increase in spending that they have overseen for so few results: $1 billion more per week compared to 2017—let’s get that very clear; a billion dollars extra per week compared to 2017—massive increase in taxation, $15,000 more per household compared to 2017, through the inflation tax, the inability to adjust the thresholds, the tenant tax, the car tax, we’ve got a jobs tax coming down the line. So $15,000 more, and what have we accomplished for that as a country? On every metric, whether it’s the health system, whether it’s the education system, whether it’s the welfare system, whether it’s housing, whether it’s law and order—on every metric—things are worse now than they were five years ago.

This is a Government that came to power promising to fix long-term problems. Jacinda Ardern swept up the country with her ambition and her good intentions and her rhetoric and her empathy and her kindness and her compassion. And here we stand today in 2022 with 30,000 people waiting longer than four months for first specialist appointments in our health system—it was 1,000, five years ago—30,000 people. At a time of record low unemployment, 50,000 more people are on the jobseeker benefit—when unemployment is 3.2 percent. We stand here, and the Government claims to have spent $1.9 billion on mental health—$1.9 billion. A lot of New Zealanders said, “Fantastic.” A lot of Kiwis said, “Fantastic. We need to do something about mental health; it’s a serious issue.”—$1.9 billion, and the Auditor-General, the independent scrutineer of Government money, doesn’t know where the money’s gone. He literally can’t find where the money’s gone, and certainly can’t see any increased results for it.

The Prime Minister said they’d lift 100,000 children out of poverty. There are more children now in poverty than there were five years ago. In no other area has the Government made more mistakes and failed so badly than in housing. People remember the 2017 election campaign. They remember the Prime Minister saying in August, “I refuse to stand by while children are sleeping in cars.”, and, quite rightly, most New Zealanders said, “You know what? That is a tragedy. Kids shouldn’t sleep in cars.” Here we are today in October 2022, and there are four times as many families living in cars than there were five years ago. There are four times as many families living in motels. The Government spends a million dollars a day housing people in motels. I remember Phil Twyford on his high horse in this House saying $90,000’s too much—[Interruption] $90,000’s too much—and he’s right; $90,000 is too much. I’ll tell you what’s 10 times more than $90,000: that’s a million dollars. The list MP based in Auckland Central, Helen White, complains and moans over there, but I just think it speaks to the poverty of ambition.

💬 Helen White: No, I was just laughing at you.

Oh, she’s laughing—she’s laughing. Righty-o. She’s laughing at kids in cars. She’s laughing at kids living in motels. She’s laughing at the—[Interruption] It’s not funny. It’s actually not amusing. It’s an incredibly serious situation, because I’ll tell you what: the kids living in motels in Rotorua and in Wellington and in Tokoroa and Christchurch and all around the country, those kids are the ram raiders of tomorrow. Their life chances are stuffed because of this Government’s total inability to fix the housing market.

This Government will go down as the most incompetent and wasteful at actually delivering outcomes for New Zealanders; the most incompetent and useless Government in New Zealand history. The good news is, in a year or so’s time, Kiwis have got the chance to throw them out and vote for a better way, and I believe they will.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The member who just resumed his seat, Chris Bishop, talked about wasteful spending. He alluded to Minister Wood’s contribution today in the House. The Minister was talking about investing in workers—that is what members on that side of the House consider wasteful spending. “He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.” “What is the most important thing in the world? It’s the people, it’s the people, it’s the people.” It’s also the people who are our economy’s biggest asset, the people that we on this side of the House are investing in.

Monday was Labour Day, a day that is an opportunity to celebrate the progress made by the labour movement to improve workers’ pay and working conditions, a day to reflect on the work that we still need to do in that space, and, unfortunately, a day that the National Party wants to abolish. Today is significant: we will be passing in this House a significant piece of legislation, the Fair Pay Agreements Bill. That is, legislation that will stop what we have seen in many sectors across Aotearoa: a race to the bottom that is fuelled by worsening pay and conditions for some of our lowest-paid workers. Can I acknowledge all those in the House today who, for many years, across various spaces, whether workers themselves or union members, have fought for this.

It is shameful that the National Party is opposing this legislation, but given their track record, it’s not terribly surprising. This is legislation that can improve pay and working conditions for our cleaners, our bus drivers, our security guards, our retail workers, our orderlies, our aged-care workers, and our early childhood educators and teachers. Our society relies on the work of so many of these workers, but the race to the bottom that they have experienced has meant that their work hasn’t been valued as it should be. That, at the core, is what fair pay agreements are about: they’re about valuing work and valuing those who provide that work.

In Auckland, we are seeing the impact of this race to the bottom very clearly. One of the biggest issues that gets raised with me in my electorate in Maungakiekie is the impact of rail closures. I have seven train stations across my electorate that are very well used. Auckland Transport has recently announced that there will be a closure of the rail network across Tāmaki-makau-rau next year, and I understand why that is: it’s to improve the foundations of our network, some of which were built 150 years ago. I get that, at the end of that, we’ll have more reliable and faster trains, and we want that. However, I want to ensure, as the local MP, that we have viable and frequent bus replacements. But there’s the rub, because we don’t have enough bus drivers. We have a shortage of bus drivers, significantly, that was caused by a contracting system that forces operators to lower drivers’ pay and working conditions in order to compete commercially—that’s the race to the bottom.

We’re doing a bunch of things to address this. There was money in Budget 2022 specifically to address this as well, but this legislation, the Fair Pay Agreements Bill, is one that could address exactly what we are seeing and experiencing today. It’s also a piece of legislation that’s—

💬 SPEAKER: I’m going to ask the member—you can talk about the principle, but you cannot anticipate what is about to come up in the House.

Sure—should the bill pass—

💬 SPEAKER: Yeah. So don’t actually talk about the bill.

Sure. All of the work that we’re doing on this side of the House is to ensure that many of the workers that we are supporting—and many of them are women, and they are men and women from our Māori, Pasifika, and ethnic communities—the work we are doing is about valuing them and their work. These are also people who face pay gaps and some of them are groups that disproportionately experience migrant worker exploitation. The range of work that we’re progressing on this side of the House will go a long way to address all of those issues: work we’re doing to prevent migrant worker exploitation from happening in the first place, to protect those who’ve been exploited and enable them to leave those situations quickly and safely, and work that we’re doing to enforce legislation to deter further exploitation and also to better hold to account those who do exploit their workers.

Last week, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act 1972. It’s a piece of legislation that’s instrumental in ensuring the legal right to equal pay for equal work in Aotearoa, and we passed an amendment that will make it even easier for people to raise those equity issues.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Labour’s “high-powered” waiting list plan announced yesterday is another failed health outcome—announced on 4 May, and here we are six months later. What have we seen? Well, surprise, surprise—this high-powered task force—waiting lists have actually gone up. Waiting lists have gone up. And furthermore, what they said yesterday, when they had this big announcement, was that they’re not going to deploy anything for another three months. Oh, and by the way, that’ll cost $30 million—that three-month delay. They have had years to come up with a plan, but, in fact, what we saw yesterday, with Labour’s high-powered waiting list plan, was actually a plan for how to shut the door on surgery, not how to open the door. It was a “shutting the door” plan, and I say that on three grounds.

First of all, if you look at the report and look at ministerial answers, what we know is that 10,000 GP referrals per month are declined by Health New Zealand. What we know is that Christchurch district health board shut the door on GP referrals back in August. What we know is that there are GPs who now don’t even bother sending a referral, because they know it won’t be accepted. So the size of the iceberg underneath the water is much bigger than this Government can conceive. What we also saw was that follow-ups have been cancelled. Well, that’s a good plan to shut the door! If you hadn’t thought about it, when a surgeon does surgery, they need to do the follow-up, one, to address complications, but also to quality assure that they did a good job. So, if you remove those follow-up appointments, you remove the opportunity for the person who had the knife on the day to address the patient—“Has everything gone OK?”—and also to quality assure themselves: “I did an OK job” or “Here’s where I can do better.” All of that is gone because Andrew Little and his high-powered task force has said that some follow-ups are unnecessary. Good luck to the Health and Disability Commissioner when that comes back to bite you.

The third part to shutting the door is that, by default, they have set a new waiting list time. Instead of it being that, when you go on the waiting list, you can receive your surgery in four months, the new default time now is 12 months. Health New Zealand is only operating on its priority, 12-month waiting list. Now, we know there are roughly 5,315 on that list who have been waiting more than 12 months. It used to be 4 months—the target. We know that went out the backdoor by default. The new waiting list target for Health New Zealand is 12 months. We have the worst wait times on record. First specialist assessments, those even wanting to see a specialist—36,000. People who are on the surgical list—they were told by their surgeon, “You will be seen within 4 months.” I’ve just said that it is now 12 months at best—28,000 of them. Put those two together—everyone on the list; those “more than four months” and those “less than four months”—and it’s 200,000 people; 1 in 25 New Zealanders on waiting lists. And surprise, surprise, here’s the spinner: when I asked the Minister how many people on waiting lists end up in the emergency department (ED)—“Are you surprised that it’s 30 percent—one in three—on a waiting list eventually end up in ED?”—now, to be fair, I can’t tell that it’s with the condition that put them on the waiting list, but with a high probability that it likely is, and that is adding to our ED wait time problems. ED wait times—76 percent, the worst they’ve been on record.

And let’s look at the excuses, because I heard them here again today. “Worst flu season ever”—that is not correct. Look at the Environmental Science and Research Ltd health stat data of 300 general practices. This is not the worst flu season ever. Find another excuse. So they go to COVID. No, again, wrong—all of the waiting lists were failing long before COVID even arrived. Look back at your own data. Look at what John Bonning, the head of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, said this week around ED wait times: “This is not a COVID blip.” Look at the letter we filed today from all of the specialists, all of the heads of department at Tauranga, and they say, “However, we believe that COVID is providing an excuse for delays in access to care.” And then the third excuse we heard last week was missing data—“The dog ate my homework.” Well, good luck with that! Find another excuse. Find a better excuse, because no one believes, and the data does not support, the pathetic excuses that have been put forward here.

Several things you can do: workforce—turn on the day one pathway to residency for nurses today. Targets: refocus the health workforce, refocus resources and funding on health targets. And, on the question of targets, we clearly have a difference. We have a difference of opinion here, with the Minister and his high-powered task force saying on TV ONE last night that they are distractions, but the real question Andrew Little needs to answer is why, in October last year, he said to reporters “I’m more confident today than I was two weeks ago about hitting the 90 percent COVID target.” Explain why you supported the COVID targets, Mr Little.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. It is a great pleasure today to rise and reflect on the wonderful things that this Government has done for workers and their employers. I took a few moments over Labour Day to reflect on the significant work this Government has done and will continue to do to improve working conditions and pay for workers across the country, and, indeed, across the world.

I’d like to take a few moments to reflect on the very real impact that it is having on my community. This Labour Day was one that I know my father-in-law would have been proud of; he was a strong unionist. We will not feel embarrassed about having connections with workers and doing what we need to do to support workers and support the work that workers do to support workers. So I’m really clear—we are very clear on this side of the House—the most important resource in our society and our economy is our people. We have to ensure we invest in them, not consider them a waste of money—invest in them through fair pay and conditions and training and development. This Government has done that and we will continue to do so and do it proudly. Despite the global pandemic and uncertainty, we have continued to fight, because workers deserve us to do that. Employers, workers, and their families have been provided with greater opportunities because of the work of this Government.

So I just want to start at the beginning—shall I?—with our babies. Paid parental leave has increased by $40 a week, all right? And we’ve made improvements to family tax credits: the Best Start payment that provides an extra $65 a week. Giving just a little bit more breathing space for families means that they’re more able to do their best when they’re trying to get our little ones off to the best start in life. Our young people: free period products and school lunches. It’s solid; it works. We know, every time we go into a school and we talk to the students and we talk to their teachers, the very real impact it is having on their lives.

Our workers: the minimum wage has increased to $21.20 an hour. We’ve worked hard to bring about legislation to protect our most vulnerable workers. We’ve stepped up to support industries to provide better conditions for our Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme workers. We’re working to end modern slavery, both domestic and international supply chains—the introduction of the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill. We passed the Screen Industry Workers Bill. And, of course, there are other bills that we won’t mention that we will continue to progress, quite possibly today. It’s 50 years since the passing of the Equal Pay Act, and the amendment that was made in 2020 meant that we have finished six equal pay settlements, and we’ve got 19 more in progress. There is still more to be done, and we will continue to fight for that.

Lastly, I want to talk about our future. Significantly, we have supported employers and their workers to invest in their workers. This is about lifting productivity. We don’t lift productivity by cutting wages and cutting conditions. We lift productivity by investing in our workers and our young people, by lifting their mana and making sure they know they are valued and what they contribute to their workplace, for their employers, and to our society. I’ve been with young people. We’ve heard about the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs, Mana in Mahi, the Apprenticeship Boost. I have been with young people when they’ve been given their pair of work boots and some tools. It isn’t just about health and safety and having the stuff you need to do your job; these kids look you in the eye, their chins are lifted up, and they know that they are valued. They know that they are going to be supported to become productive members of our society and our economy. That’s what lifts productivity.

But wait, there’s more. Discover Waitomo have been able to take advantage of programmes like Jobs for Nature, and that has meant that they’re better connected with their whenua and they are ready for the tourism reset. I could go on. Shout-out to all of the workers and the unions in the House. I’m going to finish there, because you are the highlight of our day, and it’s great to see you here.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, let me remind the speaker who just resumed her seat, Angela Roberts, what lifts productivity in this country: it is kids who’ve got good numeracy and literacy skills. When 2 percent of kids at decile 1 cannot pass a basic foundational test, that is going to be the biggest predictor of our future in productivity in 10 and 20 years’ time. She clearly just forgot to mention that because it doesn’t fit her narrative.

Well, last week, very quietly on a Friday afternoon of a long weekend, from this most open and transparent Government ever, from what we’ve come to expect from them on a quiet Friday afternoon, they quietly updated a website on the Ministry of Education page. And that was the results of the latest numeracy and literacy pilot. The reason that they did it with no fanfare, no press release, and no comment from the Minister—either Minister that could have commented—was because the results were appalling. They were abysmal. They should hang their heads in shame at five years of failure in our education system, at these horrific results.

Only a third of our students would have passed this exam and got their NCEA qualifications. But what’s even worse is those kids from disadvantaged backgrounds and decile 1 schools: 2 percent. Pretty much every single student would have failed these basic exams and not gone on to get their NCEA. The sign of a world-class education system is its ability to lift those kids from low socio-economic and underprivileged backgrounds up and give them the opportunities to succeed in life. These results will not do that for these children.

Now, what did we hear from the Minister on Friday when she was grabbed by the press after this announcement? We got excuses. What we got was, “Oh, well, the test questions were not culturally appropriate”, and then, when asked four times in this House and once on record, do you think she could answer the basic question? Just give us one example—in any one of those three tests—that was not culturally appropriate. Well, she finally—kind of—got there in the end. But the fact is, after four questions, she couldn’t do it. And do you know why? Because she knows she’s on shaky ground. She knows that these are excuses. And what did we get? Well, we got a 15-year-old can’t answer a question with the word “clue” in it because they may not have done a treasure hunt; so, therefore, it’s not culturally appropriate. The question she should have been asking is: why is it that a 15-year-old doesn’t have the oral language skills and the reading ability to understand the word “clue” and know what that means? If I was the Minister of Education, the first question I would be asking is: why is it that all 15-year-olds don’t have the oral language skills to be able to answer a basic question with a relatively basic word in it? And then I would be saying, “This is not good enough, we will be putting in place a range of things, starting at early childhood education, to improve the oral language skills of our very youngest learners, so that by the time they get to school, they’re ready to learn”. The next thing I would have said is, “Let’s get back to basics—

💬 Angela Roberts: Oh, national standards.

—in our”—not national standards, but thanks for the interjection—“primary school and protect numeracy and literacy.” The Government were told last year by the Royal Society math report to protect an hour of math a day. It was a report that they commissioned. Have they done that? Of course not—of course not. It’s all culturally inappropriate, that’s the problem. It’s not the fact that they haven’t actually done anything that they were told to do to improve kids’ ability to pass these exams. What we wanted to hear from our Minister is what she is going to do. What we wanted to hear is how she’s going to protect numeracy and literacy at primary school to make sure that by the time these kids get to senior school, they are at curriculum and they’re ready to learn.

Let me explain to you what this Government expected of this exam. In Cabinet papers, they said they expect that good year 7 and year 8 kids can pass this exam. And here we are with 15-year-olds at decile 1 and only 2 percent of them can pass that exam. This is an abysmal failure after five years in Government, five years of managing the education system with, frankly, a Minister that has been so busy with COVID, and now police, he’s taken his eye off the ball. He’s handed the reins to a junior Minister in her second term and we wonder why we get these abysmal results. We can do better.

Mālō ni, Mr Speaker. Yesterday was a historic day for women in New Zealand. We had the swearing-in and maiden speech from my friend and colleague Soraya Peke-Mason, and, for the first time in our country’s history, women have equal representation in this House, and long may that continue.

Yesterday, we also saw another milestone for women workers, with Minister Kelvin Davis announcing that community social workers would receive equal pay. Prior to entering Parliament, I sat on the board of Nelson Women’s Refuge. We had many difficulties recruiting and retaining qualified social workers, because they were paid so poorly. It was increased funding from a Labour Government that led to a massive increase in the pay rates of Nelson Women’s Refuge workers, and I was proud to be part of the board that delivered that. Those workers have still been behind the pay rates of many of our social workers within the public sector and that has led to incredible challenges to our NGOs and our community sector to recruit and retain qualified social workers, and so to have this announcement yesterday was remarkable. I am incredibly proud of those workers, many of whom are in the gallery today, who will receive an extra $20,000 to $30,000 increases on their annual salary. Labour is delivering for workers.

Today, we also have another historic moment, and I know I need to be careful about stating what may happen later this afternoon. Many of us today will remember our dear friend and colleague Helen Kelly, who was the driving force behind fair pay agreements in New Zealand. Helen would always say “It’s by design.” The reason we have low wages and poor conditions in this country is because of the design of our system. I was in my early teens when the Employment Contracts Act was passed and it took our country backwards in terms of wages for workers. We saw, for decades, wages fail to increase at the rate of productivity, and workers’ wages went backwards.

I’ve said before in this House, when speaking about fair pay agreements, about the amazing difference that they will make for retail workers and I want to acknowledge some of the people who’ve been involved through the FIRST Union, who are here today, in working towards collective agreements in the retail sector, but predominately at Pak’nSave and New World supermarkets, where those workers tend to be paid around $2 an hour less for doing the same work as those at a Countdown. The bill that we will be discussing this afternoon, the Fair Pay Agreements Bill, will work to correct that wrong and we will finally get justice for supermarket workers in New Zealand who did so much to stand up for their communities during the pandemic. They will finally be recognised as the essential workers that they are.

Yesterday, on breakfast television, Auckland City Missioner Helen Robinson said that what people need the most is an increase in wages. Let us put on the record today that the National Party will be voting against legislation to lift the wages of working people in New Zealand. What they don’t need is tax cuts—that will put us on an economic course like the United Kingdom where we have seen the economy tank one day after a Government announced tax cuts—for the wealthiest New Zealanders. What we see from the National Party today is a party who wants to give tax cuts and more income to the highest earners in New Zealand during a cost of living crisis, while, on this side of the House, this Labour Government—and I am so proud to be a member of this Labour Government today.

I want to acknowledge my friend Jenny Wells, who I hope will be watching, who has stood up for supermarket workers for years and years and years. What we are doing today is for you, for your workers, for the people who hold up this country. It is a proud day, an historic day to—

The member’s time has expired. [Applause from the gallery] Order! I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but this debate is for members; not for the public in the gallery. So it would be helpful if you didn’t actually participate. [Interruption] Yeah, I mean that.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. In her Speech from the Throne in 2017, Jacinda said that this would be—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Full names, please.

—Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that this would be a Government of action and that they would take action on homelessness. Five years later, a picture says a thousand words. [Holds up a photo of the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, appearing to give cash to a person begging in the street] The problem has not been fixed, and even the Prime Minister now can’t ignore that fact.

This Government talks about child poverty and Jacinda vowed to end child poverty—Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed to end poverty when she took office, and she likes to pat herself on the back about her performance. But Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has spent a grand total of 17 hours in her ministerial diary on the child poverty reduction portfolio since 2017—17 hours. She has spent more time trying to escape to Antarctica this week than she has on her greatest political passion.

It gets worse. The Ministry of Social Development’s Child Poverty in New Zealand report was released this month, and the Government got straight into patting itself on the back about the figures, but the report didn’t include the 4,000 children living in emergency housing. The Government didn’t include the children that are suffering the most in this country. Whole families are living in dingy motel rooms, often with gang members down the hall and with criminal behaviour around the corner that the Government won’t even take stock of. We’ve heard heartbreaking stories of what’s going on in those emergency motels, but the Government has dodged questions for years on this, saying that they don’t record emergency housing as a location type.

Another instance where the Government doesn’t want to know the extent of their failure is in emergency housing. They’ve excluded emergency housing from police records and they’ve excluded emergency housing from the Child Poverty in New Zealand report. When Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was asked about excluding these vulnerable children suffering in motel rooms under her watch, she had no idea that they weren’t included in the survey. Her office later apologised for the mistake, but, in the same statement, doubled down, saying that it didn’t matter. Her office kicked back against those who are saying that these 4,000 children in emergency housing should have been included. They’re within the margin of error, her office said. Is this how this Government views a group of some of the worst-suffering children—the margin of error?

What’s worse is that in the same statement, the Prime Minister’s office said that these children wouldn’t be in material hardship anyway because the household housing costs would be cheaper than private rentals. So is this the PM’s office saying that the family of five squeezed into a one-bedroom emergency housing motel are lucky? Think of all that money they’re saving on rent. So the PM’s office says that it doesn’t matter that the 4,000 children in emergency housing were excluded from the child poverty report—they’re within the margin of error, and they’re not doing it that tough, anyway.

How typical of this Government to turn a blind eye to the children they are letting down the most, like Minister Davis, who refuses to front up and take responsibility for Oranga Tamariki’s failings, which led to the death of Malachi Subecz. He’s been hiding behind an unpublished internal report for months. When the Ombudsman published its scathing review, saying that Oranga Tamariki (OT) had failed to do the bare minimum to prevent Malachi’s death and calling for OT to apologise, Kelvin wouldn’t take responsibility.

💬 SPEAKER: Full names, again.

Minister Kelvin Davis would not take responsibility. “We’re waiting for our own report.”, he said. Is Oranga Tamariki’s report going to find anything different from the Ombudsman’s report, and, if it is, why would it?

This is just another example of the Government shrouding its responsibility behind layer upon layer of bureaucracy and reports. ACT says that this isn’t good enough. ACT would put the children at the centre of its response and would make sure that we are collecting the data of those children who are most in need. We would make sure that OT acted on reports of concern and did not ignore them, as OT did in the tragic case of Malachi. The wellbeing and the interests of children must be at the centre; not protecting the interests of the Ministers and keeping the Government’s nose clean. This Government is utterly failing our most vulnerable children.

When I hear the rhetoric from the ACT Party and the National Party today, I wonder—I wonder—how they can actually say that we need more support, while having a philosophy that is so far away from that. It’s a philosophy that says the market should rule. It’s a philosophy that says we should actually lower wages, because that’s somehow going to increase production. And it has been an utter failure, and it has led to the problems we see in our society. It has led to the homelessness picture that my friend Karen Chhour just showed, because what happens when you actually pillage people, when you take down their wages to such low amounts is that they can’t survive and their mental health suffers. The median wage in New Zealand is $56,000. I challenge any member in this House to survive on that money, to feed their families on that money. That is a low wage and it is a stressful way to be, and it is a damn sight harder to live, with inflation as it is, when your wage is at that level.

What we need to do in this society is we need to raise our wages. We need to get out of a cycle of trickle-down economics. And yet what has the National Party offered us? It has offered us a proposal that we actually cut the tax of the highest-income earners, putting huge amounts of money into the pockets of the highest-income earners. And let’s just unpack that: what is going on there is that the National Party believe that that is the best way to produce a productive economy, because they believe that if the people at the top have the money, they will produce wealth—well, that has not worked. And the biggest actual signal of that was when we had the working party report come out and it was headed by Jim Bolger, who was the leader of the National Party, and he said it has not worked. What he suggested was that we needed, and he was with Business New Zealand when he did it, a system where we had an actual structural change where we lifted wages at the bottom. And that’s, of course, what fair pay agreements are designed to do.

We need to look at our most vulnerable people in our community and we need to support them. I challenge, again, the National Party and the ACT Party to think: if a woman who is on those low, low amounts of money is working as a caregiver, is she any less worthy because she doesn’t have the bargaining power to get that pay rate up? Because I’ve worked for different unions—when I actually was working as a lawyer, which was 25 years—and what I’ve noticed is you can work damned hard in this country and not make any money. You can do really good work, you can do work that is valuable in our community, and you won’t make money. because you don’t have the bargaining power to do so. So what’s really important is that we change the system and we recognise those groups of people and we lift them up—we lift them up—and they end up in middle-class actual incomes, not scraping at the bottom, not turning into our homelessness problem, because that’s what happens if you leave people at the bottom.

And guess what! Our productivity doesn’t go up. We have actually got the OECD behind us on this. The OECD say what will help our productivity in this country is if we raise the wages of those groups, if our lowest-income earners get our support, get organised, and have collective, minimum standards. That is what will make a huge difference in this country.

Actually, the philosophy—the philosophy—behind tax cuts for the rich, the philosophy behind blaming everybody else for the problems that emerge, and saying the market will actually do its thing and will protect us, that has failed—that has failed so badly. And what we ended up with is we ended with run-down services, run-down infrastructure—infrastructure makes a big difference to house prices. It is a system and this Government knows that, and it’s putting in place structural change, which means better infrastructure, it means actually affordable, accessible healthcare, and it means that we will end up with wages, in this country, rising—not for short term but for long term. I want less inequality, more productivity, and I am absolutely proud to be part of a Government that can see the wood for the trees on this one. I commend this to the House.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.