General Debate

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

Last week, the Government’s slogan was “Everyone must go.” Andrew Bayly finally got the memo and went. But this week, they’ve changed their slogan, and it seems to be “Let them eat Marmite”, because this is a Government that have absolutely trashed the school lunches programme. They seem to think that kids should settle for lunches with burnt plastic in them, lunches that are barely edible, lunches that don’t show up at all, halal lunches with ham in them. Then they think that laying off local workers and cutting funding contracts from local businesses to give contracts to multinational corporations who fail to meet their performance measures is a better way to go.

School lunches are an investment in our future. Kids going to school hungry won’t be focused on their learning, and this Government—instead of fixing the mess they’ve made of school lunches—this week, has decided to attack parents, instead. They’ve chosen, instead, to say that the kids who are receiving lunch at school are receiving it because their parents simply are irresponsible. How out of touch with working New Zealand families can this Government get? Half the kids in New Zealand who live below the poverty line have working parents. How out of touch for this Government to simply say, “Well, those families should just front up with the lunches.”

The Government here does not understand how hard it is for working New Zealand families. They also don’t understand the consequences of their own decisions. This was a Government that decided to increase the minimum wage by less than the rate of inflation. For those working families that are now being attacked, their incomes have gone backwards because of decisions that this Government took.

Then, having attacked kids, having attacked low-income working families, the Government then turned their attention to vigilante justice. Having said, when they were in Opposition, that they didn’t want to see a system of vigilante justice emerge in New Zealand, they have now embraced it and they want to make it the law. Interestingly, no one in this Government really wants to talk about that any more. Mark Mitchell certainly doesn’t want to talk about it. The Prime Minister certainly doesn’t want to talk about it; only poor old Goldsmith. He’s the only one who actually is willing to talk about that policy—and then he has to admit that he’s absolutely messed it up because the only person who actually argued in favour of this particular change was Sunny Kaushal when he was submitting to the review, led by Sunny Kushal.

Nobody else thinks this is a good idea. There’s been overwhelming opposition to it from the very people this Government seems to think they’re going to be supporting—shopkeepers saying that they feel this law change is going to make them less safe, not more safe—and yet the Government ploughs on ahead, completely oblivious to the opposition. It would be like Christopher Luxon saying, when at Air New Zealand, “We’re a bit short of pilots, let’s just let the public fly the planes.” I don’t think it’s going to work and I think New Zealanders can see that it’s going to make them less safe.

Then of course we had the complete debacle—the train wreck, you might say—of the interisland ferries and Nicola Willis’ decision to cancel them despite the fact that it’s going to cost New Zealanders more, and Kiwis are going to end up paying more to get less. We have the bizarre situation, now, where the Government’s conducting parallel negotiations with Hyundai, or they’ve got a negotiation to cancel the ferries, on one hand, and then another negotiation to build some other ferries, on the other hand. It is beyond farcical.

But it gets worse, because then we’ve got the situation with Richard Prebble and the Waitangi Tribunal. Turns out Richard Prebble didn’t read any of the reports of the Waitangi Tribunal until he joined it, and then he read a couple of them and says, “Oh, I don’t think I like it. I don’t think I agree with this organisation that I have signed up to be part of.”

💬 Hon Member: Clearly, he hadn’t been thinking.

He clearly hadn’t been thinking. Well, Richard Prebble’s written two books—I’ve Been Thinking; I’ve Been Writing—and all he demonstrated was he can’t do both at the same time. But, clearly, this Government didn’t do their due diligence and homework when they appointed Richard Prebble to that job.

What they have shown this week is they’re not focused on what matters to Kiwis. They’re not focused on the rising cost of living, rates going up, electricity bills going up. They still haven’t taken real action on supermarkets, they’re not fixing the health system as it descends further into crisis, more Kiwis are losing their jobs, and house building has collapsed. That’s what they’re focused on—well, that’s what they should be focused on. Instead, they’re focused on all the wrong things.

Well, what an interesting speech there from the Opposition. The problem is there weren’t many very interested people standing behind him, the most bored people on Planet Earth, sitting in the Labour Party backbenches, as he had his little moan for the week about the things that he’s been watching on Twitter—you know, moan about this and moan about that. Well, that was an interesting little moan from the Leader of the Opposition. While they’re moaning, we’re doing. We’re getting things done. We’re actually getting things done for New Zealanders. We’re focused on the issues that matter and we’re delivering for New Zealanders.

What an interesting question from the Labour Party’s health spokesperson today, asking whether or not I stood by a statement that I believe that patients should be put first in our health system. What’s the health system there for?

💬 Hon Judith Collins: Patients.

Patients—patients. It’s like that Yes, Minister film, isn’t it? Where there’s an empty hospital, no patients, and everything was running smoothly and no one was complaining. Well, we’re actually focused on the patients. That’s what we’re focused on, and while “Yes, Minister, Ayesha Verrall” on the other side is chirping away, actually we’re focused on putting patients first in our health system.

Actually, that question says everything about what the Labour Party actually thinks. They think unions come first when it comes to our health system. They think, actually, it’s the unions which matter first, because what were all the supplementaries about? Unions, unions, unions—nothing about the patients. We are focused on the patients and that is exactly what we’re doing.

This week, it’s been a pleasure to be talking about healthcare and the things that this Government is doing and putting the focus back on primary healthcare and the important—critically important—role that primary healthcare plays in our community. Of course, it’s all part of this Government’s record investment in healthcare—record investment—$16.68 billion more put into our health system over three years; $16.68 billion put into our health system.

That is a record investment. There are more front-line workers in our health system. There are thousands more nurses being employed at Health New Zealand. We are focused on front-line service delivery. That is our priority. Of course, what was the last Government focused on? Bureaucracy?

💬 Hon Judith Collins: Themselves.

Restructuring? Themselves, yes, absolutely, Judith Collins—themselves. They were focused on themselves rather than on the patients. What did they decide to do? Get rid of the health targets, which actually were about demonstrating whether or not the system was actually working for Kiwis. They decided then to restructure the entire system during a pandemic.

💬 Dan Bidois: During COVID!

During COVID, the worst time to restructure. And, of course, outcomes went down. Emergency department wait times increased, wait times for elective operations increased, everything went back. Immunisations for our children went backwards—appalling—and it became harder to get a GP appointment. We are fixing those issues and addressing those issues by putting the focus back on the patients.

What a great week it’s been to be able to talk about some of the new announcements this Government is doing: increasing funding for general practice—our doctors on the front line serving thousands. Over 50,000 people see their GP every single day—50,000 people see their GP every day. We are putting the focus back on our general practice practitioners.

We’re investing in making sure we have more doctors: 100 doctor training spaces for internationally trained doctors who are living here in New Zealand unable to work in general practice because there are no training spaces. We are fixing that and making sure they’ve got training spaces. We are increasing the number of doctor training spaces at our universities. Over the course of this Government, 100 more doctors are being trained every year in our universities. That is real results for Kiwis. Also, our nurses: we’re going to be making sure that we can help support general practice to take nurses straight into general practice through incentivising them at $15,000 in urban areas and $20,000 in rural communities.

More investment and particularly for our regions: there’s a deliberate decision here to help support our regions, because we know how important our healthcare is in our regions—a 24/7 digital service so that wherever you are, any day, anytime you’ll be able to access a doctor or a nurse practitioner. This is about making sure there are choices and more access available for Kiwis to access those services.

So, look, we’re focused on delivery. We’re focused on those services that actually matter to New Zealanders. If we invest in primary healthcare, if we invest in our GPs, our doctors, and our nurses on the front line, we know we can reduce the cost on our health system, we know we can keep people out of our emergency departments, we can help make sure we look after the health of New Zealanders far, far better. We are delivering the results for New Zealanders and we’re getting health back on track.

I stand on behalf of 14,000 New Zealanders who signed a petition coordinated by the Endangered Species Foundation against sand mining in Ruakākā Bream Bay, Whangārei. These 14,000 voices stand opposed to the fast track in our rohe, and I’m really clear after hearing from community, from hapū and iwi, that it can’t happen. We’ve done too much in our rohe already with the impact of development that we need to see taiao at the centre of what we do within our communities in terms of environmental planning, business, and development.

The voices of 14,000 New Zealanders all stand united saying no to the fast track in Whangārei, no to sand mining in Bream Bay.

💬 SPEAKER: The conversation that’s going on there, take it outside. It’s too loud.

HŪHANA LYNDON: Must be Matua Willie. Thank you. Kia ora. I’ll get back to it. Thanks, Matua Willie, for your support on behalf of our community and Whangārei, because we don’t want to see McCallum Brothers in their fast track coming into Whangārei, to Bream Bay. It’s a significant issue for our community after they have already been sent packing from Pākiri. We have to learn from our communities and what the impact has been in Pākiri and now sending them north into the Whangārei rohe.

💬 Hon Judith Collins: You can’t build houses without sand.

HŪHANA LYNDON: No. There are other options in terms of what we can do to provide concrete into our community. There are land-based options that exist already. The issue is that we’re going to see legislation in place that will shut out the community. It will shut out hapū and iwi. In particular, in southern Whangārei, we’ve got six projects coming—six projects, and more to come, because the fast track is the issue. You’re opening it up for big business. You’re saying nau mai, Northport. You’re saying nau mai, dry dock.

We’ve got 14,000 community members from hapū, iwi, and residents and ratepayers, who are saying, “No, not in my backyard, because sand mining is going to affect our ākau. That’s our coastline.” I invite you to come up and face our community and say, “It’s good for you. It’s only going to impact your taiao. It’s only going to impact the pātaka kai. You won’t be able to go fishing or have your mokopuna swim in the moana.” I can tell you after being in Pākiri and hearing and listening in the Environment Court to the local haukāinga who said, “No more. No more.”—hapū, marae, community stood together and said, “No more McCallum Brothers.” But no, no, the fast track’s opening up the door for more. Because what is it? The fast track to destruction. That’s what this Government’s opening up the door for our people in Whangārei.

We’re going to roll out with the big flotilla on 16 March and get those boats in the water. They’re going to go out large and say, “No, not in our backyard. Not in our moana. Not in the takutai moana o te ākau ki Paepaeroa [the foreshore of the coast at Paepaeroa]. No, absolutely. We don’t want to see sand mining.” In fact, we have to think about our tomorrow. That’s one of the issues: that we’re only worried about today and how much concrete we can supply into community—

💬 Mark Cameron: Oh, there’s a novel idea, concrete.

HŪHANA LYNDON: —or into business—no, no, no, no, no. No, this is about our tomorrow. Where is our thinking for the taiao, and where is the thinking for our mokopuna who will inherit the decisions of today?

When we think about our sand birds, te tara iti, do you know how many tara iti we have? Oh, like 14. That’s how few we have in New Zealand, and we have members in this House that are in Mahurangi. You know. We have endangered species on our ākau who will be impacted by sand mining. That’s what happened, and that’s what we heard in Pākiri, and that’s what you’re going to bring into our communities of Whangārei with McCallum Brothers being unleashed for 35 years: 9 million cubic metres to be taken from our ākau. That will change our moana, that will change the pātaka kai, and that will impact on the taiao and our community.

I pause because I think it’s really important for us to think about, “Well, what if it came into our backyard?” What if it came into your coastal communities? What would you say then? You wouldn’t be happy, because it’s going to impact on the way that you can harvest, you can swim, and actually, are our jobs going to really grow from McCallum Brothers coming into our community, or are they going to be importing kaimahi from Auckland? Is it really going to grow employment opportunities for us or are they going to import from other communities and bring them into Whangārei and take from our takutai moana?

These are issues that are serious for our community, and the 14,000 voices that supported this petition say no. We will go out on the boats on 16 March, and we will have a flotilla. You will see our people on waka, on boats out there saying, “No, not in our takutai.” Whangārei Harbour is too beautiful to see sand mining and dredging for 35 years, six days a week, 9 million cubic metres of Te Ākauroa taken. Kia ora.

How good is health Minister Simeon Brown? How good is our health Minister? More doctors, more nurses, quicker access to primary care—that is a health Minister who’s laser focused on responding to the needs of many Kiwis; they’ve called for better healthcare and that’s what this Government is responding to.

I must say, I’m also very envious of the health Minister, Simeon Brown, because he got to, in this general debate, talk about being questioned by the Labour Party health spokesperson. I’m very envious because I never get questioned by any of the Opposition mental health spokespeople. You would have thought, in the past 18 months of this Government, they’d bother to get on their legs and ask a question about mental health, but very rarely they get up and ask questions, and I wonder why mental health is not a priority for them any more.

I tell you what, under this Government, we’re laser focused on mental health: we’re reducing waiting times, training more mental health workers, and investing more in prevention and early intervention. Unlike the last Government, who came in and cancelled all the health targets—because, let’s be clear, they didn’t want to be held to account for the wrecking ball they took to the health system in the middle of a pandemic.

Not only have we brought back health targets but for the first time in New Zealand, we’ve brought in mental health targets to hold us to account, as a Government, on delivering better mental health. Three targets on access: those who want primary mental health services, to be seen in one week; for specialist mental health services, to be seen in three weeks; accessing emergency departments (EDs) within six hours, that will deliver timely access to mental health support; for mental health workers, to train 500 mental health workers a year; and to invest 25 percent of the $2.6 billion we spend every year on mental health and addiction, into prevention and early intervention. We’ll be reporting on those access targets, not only nationally but also in the four regions—the regionalisation of the new health system.

Unlike the last Government, that wanted to centralise everything under their failed socialist experiment, we know Wellington doesn’t know best. We’re pushing out the decision making closer to the front line, but we’re also reporting those access targets to the 20 district levels, so every person in their district will know how they benchmark themselves in those access targets of one week for primary mental health, three weeks for specialist, and six hours for ED.

We’re also committed to training 500 mental health professionals. We published the first mental health workforce plan. It beggars belief—the Auditor-General was scathing of the last Government for not having a mental health workforce plan. We published that in our first year: increasing psychiatry registrar places by 50 percent; doubling the number of clinical psychology interns by 100 percent; a new registration—next year, associate psychology students will be turning up in our universities, and in 2027, they’ll be entering the workforce; a new registration. But what I’m most proud about is a quiet revolution: the peer support lived experience workers. We’ve announced a $1 million fund that will train 100 new peer support workers to go out and provide lived experience peer support work.

We came into Government saying we’ll get more money out of Wellington to the front line. That’s what we’ve had with the Mental Health and Addiction Community Sector Innovation Fund—already six announcements; we’ve given more money to the Mental Health Foundation, to Youthline, and to Sir John Kirwan’s school mental health education programme. Yesterday, I announced money for the Wellington City Mission to scale up their Crisis Café with peer support workers. That’s what we said we’d do. The other side of the House left money sitting in the bureaucracy of Wellington; we got the money out to the front line, to the grassroots—they know best, and they’re responding and we’re backing them.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, what a shameful day for this Government and for—

💬 Jenny Marcroft: You always say that.

—I always say that because it’s true—the Minister for Māori Development, Tama Potaka, when we hear of the resignation of Richard Prebble from the Waitangi Tribunal.

Richard Prebble, apparently, can’t read the fine print before he goes on to the tribunal. It’s a shameful, shameful stunt from Mr Prebble in terms of promoting the filthy, rotten Treaty principles bill. That’s what’s driving this. It’s an embarrassment for the Minister for Māori Development and it’s an embarrassment for this Government that they were tricked into appointing someone who has used the Treaty principles bill as his stage to support that filthy bill and, of course, the ACT Party.

Getting tricked by David Seymour into allowing this appointment was so opportunistic that it is something that we should never forget. How many times—the question is—will the National Party allow the ACT Party to ankle tap them and play them for fools? Is Erica Stanford still waiting in the office for David Seymour to explain the terrible garbage he’s feeding the kids? Is the Prime Minister still doing nothing to hold David Seymour to account? Why has David Seymour been allowed to play Minister Potaka like this?

The resignation by Prebble is just another shameful, bad-faith political stunt designed to cause racial-baiting divisiveness. Whether he was on it or not, Prebble was always going to cause a scene to further the embittered, anti-Treaty agenda of the ACT Party. David Seymour applauded Prebble’s appointment when it happened last year. He applauded it and he thought it was wonderful, but he tricked the Minister for Māori Development into appointing this member. I’m sure he did, because it’s the same bad-faith argument from Prebble that we see with the Treaty principles bill and the same bad-faith argument that we see with school lunches. Everything ACT touches is bad faith.

Prebble has quit the Waitangi Tribunal because, apparently, the tribunal has turned the Treaty into a socialist manifesto—a socialist manifesto. If only—if only! Prebble has detonated this self-sabotaging stunt so he can smear the tribunal with the two words ACT Party supporters get most frightened by: “socialist” and “manifesto”. We all know Prebble’s background. We know his background, and it’s the same background as ACT. He was the leader of Rogernomics, he oversaw mass privatisation, and he helped create and then lead the ACT Party, and so everything to the left of Caligula is considered a socialist manifesto.

Minister Potaka has been tricked into appointing a right-wing agent provocateur to cause an embarrassing stunt to smear the tribunal, and, sadly, Minister Potaka fell for it. I warned him. I told him it was a mistake that Prebble had talked about the tribunal being racist and apartheid. I tried to help Tama Potaka, but he wouldn’t listen. This stunt smells as bad as ACT’s school lunches and is a waste of time to undermine this Parliament’s important work. We hear rumours that the numbers are being taken on the Prime Minister, and, hopefully, whoever the National Party’s next leader is will rein in the ACT Party from their embarrassing acts—particularly this one, in terms of Richard Prebble.

I want to finish by clearly advocating our support for the tribunal and their chair, Caren Fox, who has been a tremendous advocate, and who has put out a statement today. We’re in the 50th year, in terms of their celebration, and I want to compliment them for what they’ve done in terms of this nation. It’s been magnificent—they’ve changed the conscience of this country.

I want to congratulate them and also put this to people today: who would you believe with regard to tino rangatiratanga? Richard Prebble or my uncle Moana Jackson, who said that we would never give away our independence? Eighty thousand Māori giving away their tino rangatiratanga to 2,000 settlers—come on! He said that that “flies in the face of … human history, let alone … Māori history, where the notion giving away the authority to make independent decisions is not just culturally inconceivable; it was”—

💬 Todd Stephenson: Mr Speaker.

💬 SPEAKER: When you’re called.

—“politically impossible.” I know who I would believe.

Just be aware that it’s the Chair that runs the debate, not the floor.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The ACT Party doesn’t need to be reined in, because we’re a constructive part of this Government. I want to just reflect on what the health Minister, the Hon Simeon Brown, said today: patients must be at the forefront of everything we’re doing in health. In ACT, we totally agree with that. I really want to congratulate the Minister on some of the announcements this week he’s made around health and the timely and quality healthcare for New Zealanders he is trying to deliver, with the uplift in funding for GPs and the real focus on that primary practice, more places in medical schools, and, of course, supporting our very important nursing community.

What I want to talk about today is what the consequences are when you actually do decide to divide New Zealanders by their ethnicity and actually decide that there are different rights and privileges based on ethnicity. What I’m talking about specifically is the health regulatory bodies in this country who are using the Treaty to justify their ideology ahead of patient wellbeing and valid science. That is extremely concerning to me. These bodies have decided how they are going to treat New Zealanders. It will be based on ethnicity—Māori versus non-Māori—and that is just not good enough.

First, we have the Nursing Council of New Zealand. Now, they put out some standards of competency last year. There’s two of them, depending on whether you’re a registered nurse or an enrolled nurse. They have either six or four standards of competency, but the first two competencies are entirely related to ethnicity and the Treaty. Before you even get to patient care, how you actually should be looking after your patients is entirely based on ethnicity.

Some of the nurses have told me—they’ve come to me directly and said—they are not looking at staying in nursing because of these competencies. It’s requiring them to know te reo, tikanga, describe the impact of colonisation, and actually advocate for culture and spiritual health. Now, look, I don’t think that’s actually what nurses should be focused on. We actually think of nurses as having the right skills to treat the patients in front of them and actually having a big heart, and now these bodies are requiring nurses to have the right and correct views on the Treaty.

Then we’ve got my other favourite, the Chinese Medicine Council. This was set up in 2021 by Labour, and it’s to regulate the Chinese medicine providers here in New Zealand. Now, this council requires Chinese medicine practitioners to honour the Treaty as tangata whenua, challenge the biases of their colleagues, and enact the principles of the Treaty and involve bicultural principles. Well, bicultural principles—which culture are we talking about here? Chinese culture? Māori culture? I mean, really, this is crazy stuff. It’s absolutely absurd.

Then we’ve got the psychologists. The New Zealand Psychologists Board—now, I actually was a representative. Some psychologists came to me late last year very concerned about this. They were so concerned that their voice would be shouted down and they wouldn’t be listened to. They actually couldn’t write directly to their own professional board, so I took up their case and actually wrote to them in September of last year—a very reasonable letter outlining their concerns—and said, “Look, actually, some of your members have got concerns and we just would like you to reopen consultation, have it open longer, actually do something.”

They just acknowledged my letter and just pushed on. They didn’t actually listen to their members. What that tells me is we’ve got a professional body—this is the New Zealand Psychologists Board—who are actually not providing a safe board for their members or a safe council for their members to actually have their views. That is very, very concerning.

I will go on. We’ve got the Midwifery Council, who have embedded principles of self-determination, equality, and partnership. Again, luckily Minister Brown is actually looking for some new appointments.

💬 Hon Judith Collins: I wonder if either of them has actually ever had a baby—I’m just wondering.

Just wondering—yeah, worried about the Treaty, then.

💬 Hon Judith Collins: I mean I can tell you—you don’t really care about that; you just want to get it out.

No. Then the Pharmacy Council—again, pharmacists need to embed the Treaty in everything they do, which is very, very concerning. But we have some good news—we have some good news. Minister Seymour is getting some new pharmacists.

What I’ve got to say is, we’ve got to stop this woke madness. Kiwis engaging in our health system deserve confidence that they are being treated foremost as humans with individual needs and that their needs will be met on valid science. That’s what they’re wanting. I would ask parties to support the Treaty principles bill because it actually stops this divide by race.

Excellent, thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a great honour to rise in this general debate, and we’re going to be talking about health. We had a previous speaker that said, “How good is the Minister of Health?” I think everybody agrees we have a great Minister of Health, but I also want to say: how great is our Minister for Mental Health, the very first mental health Minister, getting the money out of Wellington and getting it to the front line?

💬 Hon Matt Doocey: I’ll give you a big cuddle.

Excellent, brilliant—I’m even going to get a big cuddle from him later. That’s great.

Anyway, we are in the middle of a big turnaround job. We are putting more money than ever into our healthcare system. The other side will say it’s cuts. They don’t understand that $16 billion extra is actually a boost; it is not a cut. This is extra money above inflation and above population growth, because we are turning around this healthcare system.

Last year, in the Health Committee, which I am the deputy chair of, we heard that the combined DHBs have a lower output than the individual DHBs. That is surely a sign of a complete failure of a reform when that actually happens. But don’t worry: we are going to fix that. We are driving a patient-centred healthcare system, and I do want to acknowledge the great work that the healthcare professionals do in delivering that. I’ve had a number of constituents over the last week in our recess who have come to me and explained how great the treatment is that they have had at the Christchurch Hospital, including a lady called Margaret, who had a pacemaker put in in under 48 hours.

Of course, we’ve reintroduced healthcare targets because we actually want outcomes from our healthcare system, and those outcomes are better health for all New Zealanders. These include faster cancer treatment, so 90 percent of patients will receive cancer treatment within 30 days of the decision to treat. We want improved immunisation for our children. We want 95 percent of our children fully immunised by 24 months of age. We want shorter stays in the emergency department (ED). We want 95 percent of patients to be either admitted to, discharged from, or transferred from ED within six hours. We want a shorter wait time for first specialist appointments, and we want shorter wait times for elective treatments.

Now, who would actually put our healthcare system through a reform during a pandemic? Probably those people that are shouting at me right now, but we are going to make sure we get better outcomes. Data shows we’ve already put the brakes on the decline that the other side drove through their reform. It does bring to mind a saying: if you don’t have a goal, you’ll spend your time running up and down the field and you’ll never score. Probably quite apt for the other side—they’ve never scored. Anyway, we have seen reduction in the time for cancer treatment; we’ve seen the increase in time as people move through the ED, but I’m not standing up here claiming that we’ve cleaned up all the mess that was left to us.

I want to change tack a little bit. I appreciate I only have limited time this afternoon to run through all the boosts that we have made to our healthcare system, whether that be in primary healthcare—we’ve already heard about that—whether it’s the boost that we’ve done with mental healthcare, including training more workforce and actually having a workforce plan—absolutely amazing that the previous Government didn’t do that—or our boost to Pharmac, that has led to up to 26 more cancer treatments, or our work to modernise our Gene Technology Bill, which will significantly streamline the development of new medical treatments, including lifesaving treatments such as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell.

Actually, just last week, the Malaghan Institute have announced they’ve expanded their clinical trial into their groundbreaking CAR T-cell therapy. That’s going to include cancer patients in Christchurch and Auckland, meaning that we can actually have access to some of these treatments. I also wanted to give a shout-out to BioOra, a biotech company which is developing, in conjunction with Malaghan, an automated system to actually be able to deliver CAR T-cell cheaper and more efficiently. This is why we do need to modernise our Gene Technology Bill, so we can have more of this.

I’ve already talked about Pharmac; let’s talk about primary healthcare. We’ve had a huge focus on it this week. We’ve got more clinical placements for overseas-trained doctors, we are training more doctors, we’re up to an extra 2,000 nurses, and we’ve got 100 more places for new medical students. These are all things that are going to shorten the wait for a GP. I can tell you, the mums and dads of New Zealand, they want to be able to take their children to see the GP when they have issues. We are focused on the patients; we’re not focused on the unions.

Mr Speaker, thank you. When I get up in the morning, I often look out the window and I think of the state of New Zealand as it is right now, with kids getting served up slop for lunch; more New Zealanders homeless; billions going to landlords; citizens’ arrest laws from back in 1893, when women got the vote, being resurrected; division over Treaty principles bills; and still no ferries. It’s kind of like a bad fairy tale, except it’s true.

The more I got thinking about it, the shoe fitted pretty well, just like the slipper fit Cinderella. Then it occurred to me what a wonderful Cinderella Mark Mitchell would make! Desperately he wants to go to the law and order ball, because all his friends are at the law and order ball. There’s Casey Costello, who’s stepping in and answering those tough questions on how the Government’s going to find 572 police officers in just nine months. Nicole McKee’s there too, and she’s stepping in to assure the front line that all’s going to be sweet as when the firearms registry gets disestablished and military-style semi-automatic weapons find their way back into New Zealand. Paul Goldsmith is there too, answering those tough questions in the House about how people are going to detain under citizen’s arrest provisions and how that’s going to impact on the front line.

The problem was that Mark Mitchell had nothing to wear to the law and order ball and he really wanted to impress the prince, so he shut his eyes and he thought of happier times in the Lulu lounge and the Foxtrot Parlor—no, he shut his eyes and he wished for his fairy godmother to appear. In a poof of smoke, Sunny Kaushal appears in front of him. Mark Mitchell says, “Sunny, help me out—help me out here, buddy.” And Sunny says, “It’ll cost you. It’ll cost you $920 a day, with a total cost of $3.6 million over two years. Throw in a flash office in central Auckland and you’ve got a deal.” Mark Mitchell says, “I like my boss. I’m sorted. I’ll take the deal.”

He waves his wand and he transported him to the law and order ball, looking absolutely spectacular. The only problem was the prince wasn’t paying him much attention. He wouldn’t give up too easily. Technically, Mark thought, “The prince has stolen my heart, and that’s definitely worth under $1,000. That means I can do a citizen’s arrest.” So he went in, got him in a headlock, but Paul Goldsmith popped up and went, “That’s not ideal—that’s not ideal. You just need to hold him steady until the police arrive.” Then Casey Costello said, “You might be waiting some time—you might be waiting some time—because we’ve got a problem. We’ve only got 72 fewer police than when we started. Most of them are tied up looking for gang patches. And to top things off, methamphetamine has gone through the roof. But don’t stress. We can just blame Labour.”

Mark Mitchell says, “That’s a great idea, Casey Costello. I’ve been so worried with the likes of no one liking our citizen’s arrest powers. Sunny promised they would but they’re just not. Retail crime is still going up and violent crime has gone up as well and it’s not looking great either. But I’m sure New Zealanders will believe me if I just say it enough. And if they don’t, I’ll find a Twitter handle that proves it anyway.”

Well, the trumpets blew and the floor parted and in entered the emperor Christopher Luxon. As he paraded through the ball, everyone exclaimed how fine his clothing was, how well tailored it was, except for one little boy with his mouth agape, by the name of Mike Hosking. He’d done a few interviews lately with the emperor and loudly he proclaimed, “The emperor has no clothes on.” And he was right. People from across Aotearoa finally saw that the emperor in fact did have no clothes on. Sorry for the bad visuals, Mr Speaker—I promise to stay classy here.

While all fairy tales end with themes of unity, truth, and courage, sadly not this one. The land of Aotearoa will need to get more than what they voted for, because they’re not, because National and this Government is taking us backwards. They have the wrong priorities and they are way out of touch with the New Zealand public. They are shambolic, incompetent, and divided. For if the land of Aotearoa is going to get its wish and have outcomes that provide a stronger, more stable, and united community, they are going to have to change this Government and all of the fairy tale characters within it.

Resisting all temptations to say anything else—Vanessa Weenink.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to rise and speak in this general debate, and our theme on health this week is really appropriate. I’m very proud to be part of a Government that recognises the importance of general practice and primary care in our health system. We’ve made a number of announcements this week about how we can help the sector, and I believe they’ve been very widely welcomed.

The digital health service that we’ve spoken about is not going to be something that disrupts but something that actually supports the business case for general practice. In the UK, they had a disastrous service called Babylon. We’ve learnt the lessons of that and we don’t need to see the same outcomes in this country. We know that we need to have a system that is integrated and complements and is not undermining of general practice. The emphasis needs to be on paid consultations to project the sustainability of GP practices.

We’ve also acknowledged that we need to point out that we understand and value the fact that general practice is predominantly privately owned. Therefore, we need to actually support those services. That’s why the GP boost increases the funding to general practice and encourages them to target the immunisations and expand their offerings and to keep their books open. This is incredibly important.

We’ve acknowledged the cries that have been going on for generations of doctors for an increased workforce. We know that the ageing workforce, as well as the ageing population, the increasing complexity of both the health challenges and the complexity of the health that we can provide to people means that demands on the system have outstripped the ability for us to supply. That’s why we’ve expanded the number of places for doctors in training; that’s why we’ve increased the number of places for early postgraduate doctors.

I was part of the pilot programme, nearly 10 years ago, that actually had young postgraduate year two and three doctors coming into practices. We had quite a few that came through and eventually one of them was my registrar and then later became a partner in the practice. It was really successful and it really helped to build up the GP workforce. It was cancelled under the previous Government. It’s one of those things where the previous Government had no idea of the importance of general practice. They talked a big game about how they were going to change the system and improve the outcomes but, actually, everything went backwards substantially. Without focusing on wait times, we saw an over 2,000 percent increase in the wait time for a first specialist assessment. That’s absolutely shameful.

By acknowledging the fact that we have a whole ecosystem in our healthcare system, we need to take into account all of the different parts of that. Where there’s hold-ups in the secondary system to get planned care done, that leads to further backlog in primary care because those people then go back to their GPs repeatedly—more than they would otherwise have had to. It all is connected, so we can’t just tackle one part at a time. It’s important for our primary care sector to be able to refer people in, for them to be able to be seen in a timely manner, and so for planned care to be done more in the private sector makes sense.

We’ve also announced that we’ll be increasing the number of places for nurse practitioners, and I welcome this because nurse practitioners are a really valuable part of our medical workforce, of our health workforce. It’s important to highlight to GPs out there that we know that nurse practitioners are not a substitute for GPs; they’re a complement for GPs. They work together well but with one working without the other, neither is efficient.

We need to make sure that we’ve got more of everyone. That’s why we’re training more doctors; we’re making more places for graduates. That’s why we’re allowing people who have done the primary membership examination to be able to do their two-year placement under supervision in general practice. It makes absolutely no sense that GPs are crying out for extra help and workforce and we can’t have those overseas-trained doctors who are able to be trained further. Why can’t they train in general practice? It’s been absolutely ridiculous that they can’t, and now we’re making that change happen.

This is all about continuing integration with GPs into multidisciplinary workforces. It’s about emphasising and creating an effective, collaborative, and efficient healthcare system so that we can improve the public access to our healthcare system, improve the whole ecosystem, and improve healthcare outcomes and delivery.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Every morning, at the moment, when we look at the news, it’s like Groundhog Day. We see more cuts, we see more shambolic practices from this Government every single day, and no more so than when we look at the media around the school lunch programme.

I thought that I would start with some of the greatest hits of the media. I thought, “Let’s look at the last week.”, but that would have taken maybe 10 minutes. I thought, “Let’s just look at the last couple of days.”, but that would have taken about five minutes of the whole of the speech. So I’ve chosen just a couple to read out to you, Mr Speaker. Yesterday: “Children eat burnt plastic in appalling school lunch.” Today: “Too hot to hold, children left with steam burns from lunches, school says.”

These issues were predictable and avoidable and, unfortunately, this has been a shambolic start to this lunch programme. Every day, every single day, there is a new issue and sometimes it’s not even one; sometimes it’s many new issues that come through every single day. We’ve seen enough, the principals have seen enough, and they’ve called for a restart. They’ve called for a return to the healthy lunch programme. It’s time to front up and return, but instead of taking responsibility, this Government likes to vilify and blame parents, because they are the ones that are living in poverty because of their policies.

Ka Ora, Ka Ako was launched in 2020 under the Labour Government. It was launched because, as a Government, we wanted young people to be the best that they can be, to be in the best place for learning. We knew the pressures that families were under and the programme was designed to ensure that those families had some ability to alleviate those pressures. We got told by parents along the way that it was saving them quite a lot a week, that they could put that money back into food at home or into other aspects that they could see at home to improve their lives as family and to ensure that their young people didn’t go hungry. We believe our young people are an investment for the future. We know that feeding our kids ensures that they are in the best possible place for learning, and we are not going to vilify their parents and we are not going to blame them because they are living in poverty.

Unfortunately, this Government is ripping the heart and soul out of the programme. They took a programme that was working really well and they let David Seymour run his ideological scissors right through the middle of it. We are hearing feedback that that this programme is just creating bad outcomes across the country.

💬 Cameron Brewer: Oh, we’re getting a lot of feedback about this speech.

Well, here we go. We’ve got the other side talking about the feedback, but how would they know? There is no formal feedback loop.

I’ve solved that problem for them, because yesterday I sent out a survey to all schools involved in the lunch programme. Now, about 10 percent of those that returned said, “Actually, the lunch programme is working quite well.” When I looked into it and said, “Why is it working quite well?”, it was because they haven’t actually gone into the new lunch programme yet. That 10 percent are still working with providing their own lunches, and they’re absolutely worried with what they’re seeing, of what the other schools are starting to show them, and what we’re seeing in the media. Again, it was working well for those schools because they’re providing it themselves and it hasn’t changed for them at this point in time.

But, for the 127,000 kids who are now getting lunches under the new programme, the feedback is really damning. Principals are saying this is a shocker. We are seeing plastic being fed to our kids. We are seeing them too hot. We are seeing them not being delivered. It is absolutely shocking. David Seymour doesn’t want to provide a service to provide highly nutritious and tasty meals to kids. He campaigned to cut this programme. His commitment to ideology is far stronger than the evidence of the difference this programme makes. He isn’t fronting up because he wants to see this programme stop.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Let me begin by acknowledging all the performers on the Matatini stage. I note that although many of us go to the Matatini stage, very few of us actually make it on the stage. Very few of us have the vocal range or the necessary coordination to make it on the stage, so this is my Matatini. I’m going to sing you a bit of a song and, hopefully, MP Lan Pham will back me up. It goes like this:

Ngā iwi e, ngā iwi e

Kia kotahi rā Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa

Ngā iwi e, ngā iwi e

Kia kotahi rā Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa

E i a i e, whakarongo, tautoko

[To the people, to the people

Let the Pacific Ocean be united

To the people, to the people

Let the Pacific Ocean be united

E i a i e, listen, support]

OK, that’s enough of the singing. I start with that song because it has a very, very clear message in it and a message I think—[Interruption] Oh, is that 10 out of 10? Thank you, Mr Speaker. It has a very clear message in that song. Those of us that grew up going on the nuclear-free marches would remember that song, because it talks about Pacific unity. It talks about unity across the Pacific. I think that is incredibly important if we think about the context of the times that we are living in.

I’m mindful that just on Saturday, 1 March, it was the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Day, where we acknowledge and commemorate that this is the 71st year that bombs were dropped in the Marshall Islands and acknowledge the nuclear legacy, the problematic nuclear legacy that we have here in the Pacific. Whether it’s at Mururoa, whether it’s in the Marshall Islands as well, I think that is incredibly important for us to remember that history and for our young people to remember their history, because we are at a crossroads.

Aotearoa is at a crossroads. We talk about the geopolitical tension playing out within the Pacific and it looks like one of the sides of that geopolitical tension has just basically given up and is busy berating the President of the Ukraine in an appalling display of terrible diplomacy. I’m sure we saw it all across our news feeds as well, causing issues for both Canada and Mexico wanting to buy Greenland, Finland—wanting to buy something there as well. That is why it’s really important for us to really think about what our place is in all of this, what would be best for all of us, for those of us that live in the neighbourhood, acknowledging that we are part of a family of Pacific nations, something that we are well known for, and it is important for us to continue to weave that in.

I’m talking about AUKUS. It is time for us to walk away from AUKUS. It’s time to walk away from that deal. Now, the Government has been flirting with AUKUS for quite some time. For those people that don’t know about this deal, Google is your friend. It is a $200 billion, $300 billion nuclear submarine deal, and there will be other things that are attached to it as well. We’re talking about Pillar 2 as well. The issues here with Pillar 2 as well is that it pulls us into alignment with that incredibly problematic administration. It is the position of the Greens that we should steer clear of AUKUS, regardless of who is in the White House, but Trump’s transactional and hyper-aggressive foreign policy makes the case incredibly clear and stronger than ever that we should walk away from this.

What we should be putting our focus on is those things that we do well. The things that we do well: relationship diplomacy, building on those connections, making sure that we do everything that we can do to strengthen those connections. For those of us from te ao Māori, it’s about whakapapa, it’s about building on those connections and just reflecting back on the issues around nuclear-free and independence. Despite all of the militaries being in the Pacific, there are actually only four sort of island nations that actually have those types of militaries.

It is important for us to recognise our place in this whole narrative, our place within the Pacific, and it starts with diplomacy, it starts with manaakitanga, it starts with recognising those long historical links, and it starts with our young people remembering and learning that history about the legacy of nuclear-free policy here in New Zealand. When we often talk to our young people, they don’t know that. This is an important part of our identity. This is what we should be leaning in on in this time of turmoil. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Mr Speaker—

💬 SPEAKER: Yes?

—this Government is committed to improving our healthcare system. We are focused on patient outcomes. We make sure Kiwis have access to timely, quality healthcare. This is the reason why we invested a record amount in health: to make sure our Kiwis can have quality and timely healthcare. We set ourselves five health targets, including faster cancer treatment, increased childhood immunisation, shorter stays in emergency departments (EDs), and shorter waiting times for assessment and treatment. To achieve these targets, we actually implement policy at different levels: prevention, primary care, workforce, medicine, and infrastructure. We ensure all Kiwis receive quality healthcare.

Let’s talk about prevention—what’s happened? Let’s talk about immunisation. Under the previous Government—

💬 Hon Member: It was a shocker.

—we know; it was shocking—we’ve got a record of poor immunisation rates. This is why this Government will invest $15 million, for two years, for Māori health providers to help lift immunisation rates. Madam Speaker, I’m very happy to report to you that only in the first 10 months, we already have a huge increase in vaccination rates, with over 69,000 vaccinations being delivered.

Let’s talk about the breast cancer screening age extension. We know that breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in women, affecting one in nine Kiwi women. This is why this Government invested $30.2 million to extend free breast-screening for women aged 70 to 74; we make sure they can accept treatment as early as possible.

We also initiated a new campaign to promote alcohol-free pregnancy. We’re actually investing $4.85 million in a package of initiatives aimed at understanding the prevalence of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, promoting better education and supporting women to stay alcohol-free during pregnancy.

We’ve also got some new AI programmes coming up in health as well. We are actually setting up an AI diabetes screening pilot programme. We’ll make sure to reduce the risk of people with diabetes developing sight-threatening diseases. This is game-changing for waiting times.

As we’ve talked about prevention, let’s talk about primary care. As our Minister mentioned before, we’re actually putting in a lot of policy, including 100 clinical placements for overseas-trained doctors to work in primary care, an incentive for primary care to recruit up to 400 graduate registered nurses per year for three years, and we also have a new 24/7 digital service for all New Zealanders to be able to be assessed by online medical appointment. We actually provide a $285 million uplift for general practitioners over three years.

You may ask us: how can we actually have the workforce to do that? Firstly, this Government actually refunded almost $20 million to enable the employment of 15 new senior doctors, and nurses as well. We’ve also made a fast track for overseas doctors to come here, making it easier for them. They can be registered to be assessed within 20 working days.

We also want to train doctors locally as well, so we also increased funding. Under this Government, we have already increased placements in our medical schools by 75 each year for our medical school. But it’s not enough. We think we can do more, so we added another 25 this year so we can actually increase to 639 annually from 2026. We’ve also given a pathway for internationally trained doctors to boost our health workforce as well. What an excellent policy.

I just want to spend a little bit of time on the infrastructure as well. We also got $28.3 million for a new in-patient unit built at Hawke’s Bay Hospital. We also gave another $14 million to maintain the infrastructure at Auckland City Hospital as well. You know that this Government is doing everything to make sure Kiwis have a timely, quality healthcare system.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.