General Debate

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

When I arrived in Parliament 15 years ago, I arrived at the beginning of a National Government and I sat on the opposite side of the House from what I do now. And there were many occasions during those nine years where I was upset, frustrated, annoyed, and angry with the policy changes that I saw taking place. I obviously understood that it was part of the democratic process that Governments change from time to time and that things that I might have held very dear to me were no longer the priority of the Government of the day. I’m a passionate debater, as people know in this House, and I certainly made my points about that.

One thing I knew, however, during those nine years, was that when John Key was the Prime Minister, whatever I might have thought of what he was doing to the country and the policies that he was putting in place, the politics of race had been put on the back burner. Like many in this House, I vividly remember the period of time in the run up to the 2005 election where the politics of race took centre stage in New Zealand, under the leadership of a different leader of the National Party and under a different Government where Helen Clark was the Prime Minister.

That period of time where we saw that—and I acknowledge the likes of the Hon Chris Finlayson, who I think did an enormous amount, and we’ve just seen a Treaty settlement bill have its first reading in here, and I acknowledge the work that he did. I acknowledge the work that, as I say, the then Prime Minister did. To see the politics of race return in the way they are to our political discourse distresses me. Chris Hipkins, when he spoke at the Labour Party’s congress in May, used a line that I think is very important: “Only the weakest of leaders seek to use race relations as a wedge to stoke fear and division.” For me, I consider that to be a statement that I genuinely believe in. We can disagree on many topics in this House, and we do and it is healthy for democracy that we do, but when we find yet again that the politics of race have found their way to the top of the agenda, we as a Parliament are weaker and worse for that, and we as a country are far more divided from that than we should be.

The latest example of that over the course of the last week or two has been the question around the equity adjuster within the northern district health boards. It’s really interesting to me that there’s not been so much attention within that on the ridiculousness and the outrageousness that whether you live in a rural community is counted in an equity adjuster or whether your socio-economic status should be counted. We don’t hear that raised. We don’t hear that being a major concern. We just hear about issues of race.

I believe—and I know that the members’ opposite may not be enjoying this contribution, but I actually believe the vast majority of the members opposite are better than that. I actually do believe that, because I believe they are here for the reasons that brought them to politics, to put in place the things that they believed in, just as John Key and his Government did. And we will disagree on those things, but my personal view is that we diminish this House and we diminish the political debate by the focus and the division being stoked on the basis of race in New Zealand.

As a country, we have come so far, and yet we have so far to go. We celebrate moments like the one we just saw in the House now as a Parliament, and that is tremendous that we have the ability to do that, but we’ve got to look again at our politics. The kind of politics of division and fear that are stoked by those that put race at the top of the agenda and seek to divide us on that will only put people off engaging with us. So I want to commit again to the kind of leadership that I see coming from Chris Hipkins, which is that we are unifying our country, we are finding the ways that we can work together to move ahead as a country, and that we don’t fall into the trap of the lazy politics of division on the basis of race and stoking fear where that fear does not exist because, as we lift up the aspirations of Māori, of Pasifika, or of rural New Zealanders, as we lift up and remove the inequities that those groups face in our health system, our whole country is stronger and better. That should be our focus, not stoking fear and division.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Grant Robertson says it’s a lazy form of politics to talk about race. The laziest form of politics is actually to accuse the other side of politics of racism, and that’s what Grant Robertson spent much of his speech doing. We have to be grown-ups in this country, and this is a grown-up House of Representatives. We need to be able to talk about issues of race in this Parliament. And, to paraphrase the Chief Justice of the United States, the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. So we are not going to apologise for having robust discussions in this Parliament and in wider society, and we would be doing a disservice to the people of this country if we did not raise legitimate issues about race-based funding and discrimination on the basis of race in this Parliament. But the real issue today is actually about the Government falling apart, because, in the last five months, five Ministers have shuffled off the political mortal coil: Stuart Nash, Michael Wood, Meka Whaitiri, and, I predict, soon Jan Tinetti, because Jan Tinetti, in some ways, has done worse than Michael Wood has done, and there will be more words to be said about that.

But let’s talk about Michael Wood, because Michael Wood today resigned as a Cabinet Minister, and it turns out Michael Wood should be a member of the National Party, because Michael Wood is the biggest capitalist socialist I’ve ever seen! Michael Wood, back when he was a young whippersnapper, coming up through the ranks of the Labour youth movement, decided, as a youngster, that he would participate in the privatisation of Contact Energy in the late 1990s, which was done by the National Government as a trade sale and a partial float. It was the forerunner to the mixed-ownership model of the John Key and Bill English Government, and Michael Wood, the cloth cap, hard-left unionist leader of the Labour left movement decided back then: “I’m actually going to put up some of my own capital. I’m going to buy a few shares.” Not only that—not only Contact Energy—but Auckland International Airport; another privatisation by the National Government back in 1999 to 2008. And it turns out, we learn today, he owns shares all over the sharemarket: National Australia Bank, Chorus—there’s a whole bunch of different shares. So it turns out that the cloth cap, hard-left unionist is actually a dirty little capitalist! And we welcome him to the cause of a shareholding democracy. We just wish he’d been slightly more upfront about the fact that he owned those shares for all those years.

And, after 12 times being told by the officials and his staff, “Hey, mate, you’d better sell these shares, because you’ve got to disclose them”, he didn’t do it. So Michael Wood has left the ministry. And, of course, we’ve had Stuart Nash in recent weeks as well, who thought it was OK to leak confidential information out of Cabinet to his political donors. Then, of course, we get to the awful saga of Jan Tinetti, who decided to not be upfront with the public and the Parliament about her dirty little deal to conspire with her officials to make sure that announcements about attendance data were released at the same time as the Government was making some PR puffery about announcements to take care of it. What we see is a Government in disarray, and what I’ve just talked about—Stuart Nash, Michael Wood, Kiri Allan—is characterised by three things. One is arrogance. Second is incompetence. And three is a lack of focus on what actually matters. Here we are, less than four months till the election, talking about everything other than the important issues: the 60 percent increase in spending in the last six years, for no outcomes; a health system falling apart; an education system falling apart; law and order in this country that is going from bad to worse. We’re not talking about those important issues; instead, we’re talking about this inept and tired and arrogant Government’s last few months in office, with Ministers leaving left, right, and centre. New Zealanders deserve better, and on 14 October they’ll get the chance to vote for it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand as a proud wahine Māori from a rural electorate to take the third call in this general debate and lift this tone out of gutter politics and talk about some positivity. I would like to talk about the Fieldays. I had a great time at the Fieldays last week—it was really positive, spirits were high, the sun was shining, and we had the pleasure of hearing the announcement that the primary industries exports are set to hit a record high of $56.2 billion by 30 June 2023.

We are a proud primary-producing nation punching well above our weight, and I want to acknowledge our primary producers who have recently experienced really, really tough times with the weather events that we’ve seen—some last year, but mostly this year. I want to acknowledge all of them and everything that they have been going through. Our primary producers have carried us through for the last few years through tough times, and I want to acknowledge all of them and thank them for that.

I am proud of our primary industries and I want to congratulate them on this record achievement, which I note is set to move towards $62 billion by 2027. I am proud of the work that this Government is doing for our primary producers by opening doors for exports wherever we can, and build on the seven new or upgraded free-trade agreements secured since we’ve been in office.

The next really positive thing that I would like to talk about that this Government is doing is providing financial support for parents on paid parental leave. Those parents that take the full 26 weeks of paid parental leave are set to have an increase from $661.12 a week to $712.17. We know that the cost pressures of living are hitting our families hard at the moment, and anything that we can do as a Government to help support that is really important and valued.

When a couple are expecting their first, second, third, whatever baby it might be, it’s a time of joy. But it’s also a time of stress; it is a time of sleeplessness—I know members across the House will know what I am talking about there because we’ve had recent conversations—

Hon David Bennett: They’re very good.

Hon JO LUXTON: —Mr Bennett, about that. So anything that we can do to reduce the pressure and burden on parents is certainly helpful. From mid-2024, parents will also receive a 3 percent Government contribution to their KiwiSaver while on paid parental leave, so long as they also continue to contribute. Because we do know that when people are away on paid parental leave, traditionally there has been no money going to their KiwiSaver—so, therefore, depleting their wee nest egg going forward. So I think that that is a really great thing.

Another thing that I want to talk about is the simplified path to residency. When I’m out talking to people in my electorate, often we hear—particularly from our rural and primary producers—the difficulties that they face in getting skilled migrants, given the workforce shortages that we do experience. We are making changes to the Skilled Migrant Category Resident Visa as part of the immigration rebalance to help businesses be able to attract skilled migrants. We’re going to provide these highly skilled people with a faster route to residency, and that ensures that people in families migrating to New Zealand for work—it gives those families stability and certainty, knowing that they are going to be able to have a pathway to residency.

I want to finish up by talking about the milestone that we reached—and it was really good to reach this milestone yesterday, being World Refugee Day—where we celebrated the milestone of resettling 1,500 refugees this quota year. We have a really proud history, here in New Zealand, of helping people whose lives are at risk and are forced to flee their country. I am really proud that my electorate is one of the electorates where refugees can resettle—in Ashburton and Timaru—and we welcome these refugees to New Zealand knowing they make a fantastic contribution to our society. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Firstly, I want to acknowledge Karen Chhour and the urgent debate that she brought to this House today in relation to the abuse that was happening inside Oranga Tamariki. She spoke from the heart. She spoke from her own experiences. And as her tears fell on the floor in this House, I was expecting the Minister responsible for Oranga Tamariki to honour her and at least stand and make some sort of an effort to respond to what is an extremely serious situation. Instead, he chose to stand and make cheap political shots at the Opposition. Totally inappropriate and I thought much higher of Kelvin Davis and I expected much more from him.

I want to talk about the situation that we’ve had in Ōpōtiki recently with the Mongrel Mob deciding that they could come out in numbers and take over the town. I acknowledge the comments that were made by the mayor there, and I acknowledge the comments that were made by iwi leaders, but I personally believe that the people of Ōpōtiki don’t want to be known as a gang town. They don’t want to be known for gang violence. And by the way, we don’t have two standards of citizenship in this country where one group gets to blatantly break the laws of our country when law-abiding Kiwis have to keep adhering to those laws.

The police say that there was an adequate response. I completely, utterly reject that. When you have got gang members taking over public spaces and public roads, when you’ve got the police taking resources away from the communities that they should be protecting to do traffic control and closing roads that members of the public should have free access to, that is not a success. When you have the justice Minister standing up and saying that of the eight vehicles that were stopped—eight vehicles; there were hundreds of gang vehicles involved in this procession—five of them had firearms in them, that’s got to be a huge red flag. How many other firearms were actually part of that convoy? How many illegal firearms were still out in the public? There were two arrests.

If we have reached a point in this country where our police stand up and say that’s a great result, then we have plumbed the depths. Because in New Zealand we should put a line in the sand and we should be saying “Gangs, you don’t get to come out and take over public spaces. You don’t get to intimidate members of the public. You don’t get special rules.” No one else, when they’re mourning a loved one or having a wake or having a funeral—no other group in this country gets the sort of response that they get in terms of traffic control, roads closed, negotiation around behaviour, what they can do and what they can’t do. And by the way, half these negotiations that take place with the police and the gangs, they immediately go out and break the rules. So let’s not stand in here and pretend that what we’ve seen is acceptable and normalised and we should accept that as a country. It’s the complete opposite.

I was very pleased this week to see that we made a new announcement around aggravating factors for gang members. Let’s get this straight. If you’re a gang member, with the policy that we’ve put forward, if you commit a crime, then it’s going to be an aggravating factor. The current law is so weak that you have to prove that they’re part of a criminal group, and that’s why it’s not used.

Hon Willie Jackson: It’s already there, Mark—it’s already there.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: These guys don’t understand it—they don’t understand it. They say, “No, it’s already on the books.” It’s not on the books. If it was on the books, it’d be getting used. We’ve stated very clearly that if you’re a gang member now, if you’re a member of a gang, it doesn’t matter what crime you commit, whether it be some domestic violence, whether it be assaulting someone—if you’re a gang member it’s an aggravating factor. It’s a new piece of policy and it’s a good piece of policy, and it’ll continue to put pressure on gang members.

I’ll tell you why. We don’t want gang members in New Zealand. We want to get rid of gang members. Yes, I admit—I concede that they’ve been here for decades. Harry Tam—Harry Tam was on the TV this week. Harry Tam’s got some genuine leadership skills. He’s got some say inside the gangs. Why doesn’t he take a stand and say, “I want you to leave.”? If he comes and says to me, “We’ll have a meeting. Let’s sit down and talk.”, I’m happy to do that. But the conversation’s got to be this: how do we help, how do we work to allow your gang members to leave the gang and rejoin society? Because very sadly, Steven Taiatini, who was killed in Ōpōtiki—and it is a loss and I’m sorry to his family—his father was killed as well with gang violence. The question is this: do you want the sons or the sons after that to be killed because of gang violence? For me, no; it’s not acceptable and we have to do something about it. And we do have to work together to do that. So Harry Tam needs to step forward and say, “How do we stop this? How do we work with Government rather than getting up and criticising?”

The member’s time has expired.

I think that member made a reasonable point at the end; I’m happy to concede that, having worked with gangs through my life and worked with someone like Harry Tam. So I would accept that, as a House, we do have a responsibility in working through what Mr Mitchell talks about.

I want to support our finance Minister. I think it’s a sad indictment on this House that the right have brought the race debate, in terms of health. The reality is, patients get a score of 100 to determine their surgery; being Māori or Pasifika adds one or two points to the equation—one or two points.

The way the right, particularly the National Party, have seized upon using ethnicity as a factor in deciding healthcare dollars and spun into a story of “reverse racism”—and that’s what they’re implying—and that is somehow equal to apartheid is disgusting. I agree with Grant Robertson, I believe that most of the National Party are better than that. I’m not sure about Mr Seymour, who seems to be using this all the time. Including ethnicity in health decisions has not been a racist policy; it’s an attempt to ensure that not just Māori but Pasifika, rural Kiwis, and Kiwis living in poverty who have waited on the waiting list for too long—and Māori—gain outcomes that are comparable to the majority experience and positive health outcomes.

Having small steps in ensuring a positive health outcome for Pasifika, rural Kiwis, and Māori is just the right way to go. It was sad listening to the Leader of the Opposition on National Radio this morning. His refusal to accept what most experts are saying—great doctors, like Dr Rawiri Jansen, Anthony Jordan, Mataroria Lyndon, Hinemoa Elder, Lily Freeman, Papaarangi Reid. These doctors have said for years—experts who the National Party have engaged—that clearly Māori have suffered under the health system.

The National Party of Bill English has acknowledged this. This is a disgrace what is happening in this House. It’s a disgrace that the National Party are going down a track that people before them would have rejected. We’re going back to the old Don Brash days, instead of acknowledging and working together. As our Minister of Finance said so eloquently today, let’s work towards reducing the problem, rather than using the race argument, as Mr Seymour is constantly and Mr Luxon is afraid to oppose, because he’s so worried now about the election coming a few months down the track. Despite all the facts that were given this morning on National Radio by the interviewer at the time, Mr Luxon refuses to accept that Māori and rural people and Pasifika have been hurt by the system.

It’s not something we should be worried about; we should show courage here. Why is the National Party showing no courage? That’s the big question. We know the ACT Party are just a group of opportunists. We know that that’s going to be used constantly until the election comes around, that the race card will be pulled on us. It’s sad, and it’s an indictment on the ACT Party that they keep utilising that strategy.

The realities are clear for everyone: Māori die earlier than our European brothers and sisters—seven years earlier. Pasifika die earlier. Poorer people die earlier. Why don’t you want to help them? Why do we have rural people die earlier? Why do we have to pull the race card? I’ll tell you why, Madam Speaker—you won’t be here, I don’t think; I think you’re moving on, which is a shame, because you’re one of the better members. But the reality is: it’s all about the votes. It’s all about their votes.

The National Party are too scared to say what the truth is, and the truth is that a number of people in this country are suffering under the current system and need support. So, well done to all our health professionals out there, all the doctors out there. Don’t listen to the rubbish that is coming from the ACT Party and the National Party, and keep at it. Our people—all people, right across the different communities—need our support. Kia ora tātou katoa.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Lovely to be the last speaker before the dinner break. I actually thought I might be helpful to my Opposition colleagues, as a start, just in terms of understanding the concepts of discrimination but also affirmative action. I think one might think that they thought it was a new and wild concept that had never been used before if you listened to some of their speeches. But the idea of first asking “Where are we now?” and looking at the inequities in society is actually something that’s quite embedded in much of our law. So just a helpful first suggestion: Opposition members might want to look at section 73 of the Human Rights Act, which allows affirmative action to achieve equity in the employment context.

The former Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner and, actually, former National Party member Jackie Blue’s view was that without that sort of affirmative action New Zealand’s progress towards gender equality in private sector leadership would remain abysmal. The concept of looking at where we are and looking at inequity is good governance. We do it through a lot of the areas of law. To say that affirmative action and looking at where we are now is a bad thing is horrifying. It is a failure to see who we all are to each other. So I would encourage the members just to do a little bit of homework in terms of understanding the history of that concept and its use in our law.

But I was really wanting to focus on what we are doing in terms of helping address the bread and butter issues that New Zealanders are facing at the moment. I was a child growing up in the 1980s and like many others in the room, I’m sure, I remember walking into a Big Fresh and seeing the giant fruit, bananas, and veges dancing around. I remember going to the Foodtown, the Right Price, the Price Chopper as a child, but then, of course, in the 1980s and 1990s we saw mergers and acquisitions which meant we, essentially, only had one major provider and that has led in many ways to the situation that we have now. It became so bad that you really had providers who were responsible for and owned the production of fish right through to when that fish was sold to you, which was why we didn’t end up seeing competition on our shelves.

We are addressing the real issues. We are working to ensure that there is more competition in the grocery sector, which is why we have introduced legislation to ban restrictive land covenants as well. And I invite members, if you haven’t been already, to come out to north-west Auckland where we do also have the likes of Costco, who are in the market and are absolutely making it more competitive with the supermarkets that are there as well.

When we say we are addressing the bread and butter issues, we mean it; the real bread and butter issues. What principals will tell me in the Upper Harbour electorate is that it is a game-changer that kids can turn up to school and have free lunches—it’s a game-changer, and this Budget is extending the provision of those free lunches in schools. They tell me the same thing about accessing free period products, where girls can come to school and not have to worry about bringing them from home.

On this side of the House, we are a leadership who are focused on women. We are focused on women being in leadership roles in the House as well as women being in leadership roles on public sector boards. If you look at the voting record of this side of the House, we have voted to decriminalise abortion and we have voted to ensure abortion safe areas. We are all about looking after women’s rights as well. If you look at what we’ve done through this Budget, we’ve made sure that young families can get back into the workforce, and that is largely women. After I had three kids who were all under about 5½ years old, the key discussion at every coffee group meeting was when is the tipping point? When can you go back to work? And for most people it was around the three-year mark. From here on in, those mums with under-three-year-olds will be able to re-enter the workforce.

We are focused on the issues that matter, but we are also focused on the values that sit behind those issues. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break, and the House will resume at 7.30 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6.02 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Kia ora, members. When we went to the dinner break, we were still in the middle of the general debate. The next call is a National Party call.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s rather an unusual day, when we are actually doing the general debate slightly differently. I was trying to keep track of what number we were up to, and it is my turn indeed.

I’d like to talk about an issue that has come up, which gave me grave concerns—and I’ve had many emails and, also, social media conversations on ethnic community sites, using WeChat and KakaoTalk, for example. The community is really, really angry at the report that says Auckland surgeons are now required to consider patients’ ethnicity to decide who gets an operation first. The Labour Government actually calls it the Equity Adjuster Score. I know that earlier, the Labour members actually talked about how, apparently, it is us on the opposite side of this Chamber who are bringing race into the issue, but it is in fact the Government that has actually made the race issue the prominent issue, where people are feeling that they don’t belong in this country. When you actually consider that the priority is to Māori and Pasifika patients, on the grounds that they’ve had unequal access to healthcare historically—they said they have really bad health outcomes and that is the reason why they should be given priority. I don’t have a problem with people being given priority when they have health issues—we should be achieving better health outcomes—but the thing is that need should be the decision maker. Need should be the criteria when people are attended to.

If the historical thing actually matters, should we be giving the New Zealand - born Chinese community a priority? The first Chinese arrived here in 1842, and they were the people who had to pay poll tax, which was massive—£100 poll tax—and the thing is they weren’t even made New Zealanders until the 1950s. The Helen Clark Government, at the time, actually apologised to the Chinese community for the way they were treated badly. They were called “the yellow peril”. If the ancient, historical issue matters, perhaps it is the Chinese people who should actually get priority, rather than some other people? But that is not what I’m actually calling for. What I’m actually saying is that, since the revelation, I sort of got to thinking about this. Three weeks ago, my son was involved in an accident. He was run over by a ute. He was dashed to the hospital, and I was in here, in Parliament, and I couldn’t actually get back home. The next day, when I flew up, he was in hospital in a lot of pain, but when I see stories where Auckland Hospital is apparently giving priority to Māori and Pasifika patients, does that mean that my son could have had more urgent treatment had he been Māori or Pasifika? Just because he is not, does that mean I have to wonder “Did he not get the urgency he actually needed?” That is the concern of a lot of migrant populations that I have actually had comments from. They are saying, “Do they need to leave this country to get fair treatment?”

When I was looking at the news about Michael Wood, I went back to his maiden speech. He actually said—and I quote—“Political trust in this country was badly corroded in the 1980s and 1990s by Governments of both stripes that, regardless of what you might think about the contents of their programmes, fundamentally broke faith with their electors.” He also goes on to say, “In my view, then, one of the core tasks of Government is to ensure that balance is maintained—a fair balance of interests, power, and resources, recognising that an imbalance in any of these areas privileges some and inhibits others from achieving their potential and that such injustice will hurt us all in the end. I believe in a balance between having a clear world view and striving to achieve it, and being open to the ideas of others.” I have to say that that speech probably made a lot of impact, but when you actually consider that, when people think about the race of a person instead of their need for service in our health system, it doesn’t actually provide that fairness, nor the justice that Michael Wood was talking about. I guess it symbolises, and it is actually quite typical of this Government, that what they talk about is not what they actually deliver, and, to me, in reality, it is symbolic of a Government that is a shambles.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I really want to take a moment to shout out to our primary industries. You know, we heard earlier tonight about a wonderful record on our primary exports. We know that, despite the significant headwinds that they are facing around, you know, those significant weather events, major international cost pressures, they still managed to crack—what was it, $56.2 billion, something like that—because of their resilience, their commitment, and their ambition. And we are proud as a Government to support them.

This Government proudly invests in our rural communities and our primary sector. We put our money where our mouth is. We know that they are worth investing in because we are the best in the world. I was at a sod-turning the other morning—State Highway 43, the forgotten highway, for some—with Minister Allan. It was a cold but beautiful morning under that mountain. Kahouri Stream Bridge project: $8 million to turn one little single lane on that State highway into a big two-lane bridge. Really great investment, a really great example of building resilience for our rural communities, making sure our school buses can get where they need to go, where our milk tankers and our logging trucks—and also the 13,000 additional tourists we’re going to have, as we tar-seal the Tangarakau Gorge and we get our travellers between Tongariro National Park to Papakura or Taranaki. Really, really great investment in resilience.

Another event, I was at a couple of weeks ago, another beautiful day in Taranaki—it always seems to happen. I was down at a local’s farm, Bushlies farm, where a whole pile of us turned up to plant 1,005 trees in one morning, in a couple of hours. It was quite boggy, but it was really great to be with my neighbours and being really excited about regenerative farming and restoring and protecting the biodiversity and our wetlands. Our farmers are doing magnificent things, and this Government is fronting up with the resources to support those communities. We are building the capacity and the capability of our people. We make sure that they have the ability to have local, nimble responses. They can identify their needs and they can respond to them.

This Government has provided more than $34 million for more than 200 catchment groups, 16 in Taranaki alone. You know, most of those groups started talking about the challenges they had around the water and water quality and soil erosion, and those sorts of things. But now, in Taranaki, we’ve got dung beetles. We’ve got some pretty good dung beetles having a go at fixing up our soil. And we’ve got some really great support going for those who are reaching out to diversify. Food and fibre: it’s not just about milk, any more, in Taranaki; we’ve got hops, we’ve got botanicals. It’s a really exciting place to be living, amongst a community that is so ambitious, and to be able to provide support to them.

The last event in the last few weeks that I had the great privilege of being involved in was Fieldays. Another fabulous week of fabulous weather up in the Waikato, and it was really great to see all of this investment that’s happening has built such momentum. The highlight, for me, was going up to the innovation hub and catching up with a couple of my neighbours from down in the southern end of Taranaki - King Country and some constituents from up in the King Country end. It was great to see one of the finalists in the Early-Stage category in the Innovation Awards. Good old Rewild, Nick Jones and his amazing team, who have created—you’re going to love this one, Minister, the “F-Bomb”.

Hon Peeni Henare: Hey!

ANGELA ROBERTS: All right! It is the most amazing innovation around trapping mustelids. It’s really exciting stuff. And—[Interruption] yeah—and the team at AgriAI were really excited about sharing their innovation around the machine vision-enabled automatic teat sprayer. Now, this might not sound like something that’s really exciting, but I tell you it is. And there were young, excited scientists in the middle of that.

This is because we are investing in our primary industries. We’re investing in our people. We’re investing in technology. We’re investing in everything that we need to build the momentum and make sure that we stay in that top spot. We are—did you know this?—the top of the Sustainable Trade Index. It considers environmental and social and economic pillars, so to speak, and it shows that we are working really hard and really effectively at getting to the top, the front of the pack, and making sure we do everything we need to stay there. And I’m really, really pleased to have been part of that.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. You’ve got to be alert at this time of night, I guess, for the general debate, so if others aren’t interested in the opportunity, I will take the opportunity to take a call in this evening’s general debate, which is usually held in the afternoon. I want to focus my short contribution in the general debate this evening on some exciting things that happened in my wonderful electorate of Nelson last week. Alongside having an opportunity to attend Fieldays and join the thousands of people who had a useful shopping experience at the Swanndri shop, we had some exciting developments in Nelson that I do want to share with the House tonight.

The first was that we turned the sod—but with a digger—for the development at Port Nelson for our new slipway upgrade, which has been a project that has had a lot of planning involved in it and has been many years in the making; Port Nelson and Nelson City Council have been working on plans to upgrade the slipway for a very long time. People may not be aware of this, but Port Nelson is the largest seafood processing port in Australasia—it is a huge part of the Nelson economy, it creates thousands of jobs, and I’m really proud, as the granddaughter of a mariner, to be able to continue supporting the work that happens at Port Nelson. The Government has put nearly $10 million into the upgrade of the Nelson slipway, which will help to enable marine engineering jobs to be created and ensure that we can bring the right boats into the port for both processing of seafood but also for maintenance. This sits alongside other investment we’ve made recently that I’m really proud to have advocated for—$2.5 million to the wonderful SnapIT company who kicked off a lot of the work around cameras and boats in New Zealand and are doing amazing work on the world stage, alongside support for our new oceans and fisheries cluster, with a number of companies working together to grow jobs in the oceans and fisheries sector, so that was a wonderful occasion.

The following day, we had another wonderful occasion on an issue that is dear to my heart, and that is housing. It was an emotional day to attend and open 14 beautiful new homes that have been built through the Government’s Progressive Home Ownership Scheme, where we’ve put $3 million into this project. Of those homes, 12 will be what we call rent-to-buy homes, and being able to walk through the homes with the children, see the smiles on the faces of the families who painted the inside of the homes; to see the pride that they had in these homes that are theirs. There was one young woman who had been living in a damp, mouldy home with her young son with respiratory issues, and to see him knowing that he was going to have this beautiful, warm, sunny, dry home; it was one of the best days that I’ve had as the local MP.

We are doing a lot of work around social and community housing in Nelson. In the last week, Kāinga Ora have announced 49 homes to go into my community where I live—of Nelson South—alongside another 16 into Nelson City. On Friday, I’m looking forward to spending part of the day visiting a number of new projects run by the Nelson Tasman Housing Trust, some of which are being supported through Government funding as well. So, in total, there’s nearly 100 homes that have either just been completed, are currently being built, or are in the planning stage over the next couple of years in the social and community housing sector, and I just want to note that in Budget 2023, the Government committed to funding for another 3,000 public homes, so it is going to make a real difference to my community of Nelson.

I’m also looking forward to some changes coming to our public transport system on 1 August, which has been a shared project between Government and local government, where we’ll get more buses running more frequently and to more locations, and sitting alongside the Government’s commitment to make public transport free for under-13-year olds, and half-price for those under 25, this is going to make a huge difference to people’s ability to access alternative forms of transport. So it’s always a wonderful opportunity to take a short call and just celebrate the achievements of our Labour Government in my wonderful, sunny electorate of Nelson.

It’s a pleasure to take a call tonight in the general debate, and it’s a pleasure to take it this week, because we’ve just come off the wonderful event of Mystery Creek Fieldays. Being the local member of Parliament for Mystery Creek Fieldays, it was a pleasure to welcome many people here from various parties all the way across the House.

Being the conservation spokesperson, I took the opportunity this year to do some volunteering in the new sustainability hub, and it was really fascinating, as a volunteer, where you had to go around and we had to visit various sites looking at where their rubbish was able to go; where food waste was able to go, if there was food waste, if it was a site that produced food waste; or, if they had coffee machines, where the dregs from the coffee machines were going. Other volunteers were looking at who came in what sort of cars, and various things were happening—who came by bus, where they came from, just trying to work out the carbon footprint of Fieldays. So it was a pretty engaging experience, and one that I enjoyed. We had the summer Fieldays that rained every day and the winter Fieldays that was pretty fine most days, except for Saturday, so it was beautiful on the first three days.

But I wanted to make a point tonight about conservation, because without our industries, conservation wouldn’t exist, and nor would most of the things that we have today. So it really is time, in our society, to leave some of the idealism behind that we’ve been facing for the last period of time. Because everything that we have, that we own, that we look at, every room we go in—everything in the room that we either eat, wear, or outside that we drive, roads—is either grazed, it’s grown, or it’s extracted from beneath our ground. While climate change is extremely important, I wonder how many young climate protestors go along to these protests and have no idea that the bubbles for their drinks actually come from the gas plant in Kapuni in Taranaki. When we lost Marsden Point, we lost another source of that carbon dioxide.

So I think it’s worth knowing, when our children are in school and they’re studying these days—that’s when they are in school, and there have been a lot of strikes lately, and some of them haven’t been there a whole lot—that, actually, they need to understand where their food is made, where their drinks are made, how our renewable energy is made. All of the things that we have are made from something that comes from within, on top of, or below the ground.

It’s great to be working on things like predator-free, but we wouldn’t have a lot of what we have in predator-free and we wouldn’t have a lot of what we have in our conservation projects if we didn’t have these industries who are contributing. I spent a day with some of the mining industry on the West Coast of the South Island last week as well, just before I went to Fieldays. It’s quite amazing, actually, how they can actually restore the biodiversity. They can actually lift it up now. They can actually mine underneath it, put it back down, wet it, plant extra trees, and it grows again. Of course, they’re not doing that in national parks or where biodiversity is really affected; they’re actually picking pieces of land where they’re able to do it without too much disturbance, and they put it back better than they found it.

The conservation estate is 30 percent of our land, so it’s a large geography. It’s either farming, a lot of it is put into energy, and a lot of it is mining, and whether we’re in any of those industries, we all wear boots, and we all have to drive vehicles to get into those distant and far-flung places, but all of us are protecting biodiversity. It needs to be celebrated, because often these industries are pointed at, and farmers do jobs for nature every day, as do our mining industry and as do our infrastructure industry. A lot more offsetting is done out of generosity than many of us would ever, ever recognise. So I think there’s a point where we need to look at our industries and we need to say thank you, because if we drive all of our good industries out of business and we drive our economy of this country down, we will never be able to get to predator-free goals, and we will never have the conservation that we deserve in this country. So I want to shout out to all of our productive industries in New Zealand who do so much work for conservation for us all. Thank you.

Mālō e lelei, Madam Speaker. The full firearms registry takes effect from this Saturday, 24 June 2023—an absolute taxpayer-funded failure, to be sure. But let’s clear up some misinformation that has been broadcast around the registry.

We have a registry in place for pistols, restricted weapons, and collector items. It’s actually been there since the 1992 Arms Regulation changes. In the 1980s, a permit to procure process was in force—that’s where the firearm was registered, and not the person. It was a paper-based system that had a 66 percent error rate, so police asked for it to be scrapped.

We moved, then, to lifetime licences, which was looking at the person. In 1992, we had the Arms Regulations. That introduced the 10-year firearms licences and it also introduced endorsements. Endorsements have been in place, and have been registered, since this time—and they still are. Military-style semi-automatics, pistols, restricted weapons, and collector items have been registered since 1992, and still are registered today.

The current registration system is not paper-based; it’s data-driven, and still contains many errors within it. There are concerns around security of information, and rightly so. In December 2019, the police data from their confiscation regime was left open, with owners’ names, addresses, phone numbers, bank account details, and hand-in information accessed. Then there was the wheelie bin that was left behind at the old police station in Vincent Street, Auckland, with around 4,000 licensed firearm owner details inside it. Pages from that wheelie bin were found in the home of a criminal when a search was being undertaken. Many licensed firearm owners do not trust police with this information, and we do have to ask: why should they? Since the start of 2022, police themselves have lost six firearms—a Bushmaster and a Glock 17 are still unrecovered. That’s right: a prohibited firearm and a pistol are still unrecovered, and if in civilian ownership, these would have been registered already.

In question time yesterday, the Minister of Police made the statement that once the registry goes live, “It will be able to map, for the first time, where all firearms are in New Zealand. I believe that this is a good way to find out where the guns are and make sure they are out of the hands of those organised criminal groups who are a danger to our community.” What a load of crock. Mapping for the first time—this isn’t the first time; the first time failed. As for the statement “This is a good way to find out where the guns are”, well, the police already know where the licensed owners’ guns are. They’ve been in our homes, they’ve interviewed our families, and they’ve checked and approved our security. They know exactly where we are, who we are, and who we live with. What the police and its Minister don’t know—and won’t know, even with registration—is where all the illegally held guns are. We know that 95 percent of firearm charges are laid against people who are not licensed; people who would never use a register because they’re not meant to be in possession of a firearm in the first place.

The public are being told that licensed firearm owners are the ones that give gangs guns, and there is no evidence at all of this. Police refused an Official Information Act (OIA) request by saying they don’t capture data on the diversion between licensed and unlicensed people. Maybe some of that diversion came from the 29 gang members on the National Gang List that police did issue a firearms licence for.

Licensing in Canada was meant to cost $2 million; it quickly blew out to $2 billion before the full registry was scrapped. They found 87 percent of firearm homicides were committed with unregistered firearms. It was scrapped due to the extreme cost and lack of effect it was having on gun crime. Justice Thorp, who held an inquiry into firearms use here in New Zealand and who advocated for registration, said it won’t work unless there’s 90 percent compliance. Police answered an OIA admitting that 46 percent of seized firearms had no serial number recorded at all.

Registration will not keep our communities safer. It isn’t even an ambulance at the bottom of the hill; it’s a money pit that Labour are hell-bent on pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into. It doesn’t achieve the objectives of the Arms Legislation Act, which is to keep our community safe. Emphasis needs to be placed on the fit and proper person, and ACT has a bill that will do just that. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to correct some of what I’ve heard already this evening from the other side of the House. I want to be very clear with the member Melissa Lee’s contribution, who sadly talked about the fate that met one of her family members, and I hope her family member is receiving the care that they deserve. But I want to be very clear: what we are saying here on this side of the House is that we do take equity seriously in the health sector. What we are saying is clearly after COVID-19 there was a backlog in those who were waiting to receive surgery and it was important, in order to address inequities, we had to do something about that waiting list. There are a number of factors that are considered, but the first and primary point to be made is that we trust our doctors to make the right decision so that the person who needs help the most gets that particular service—those in acute need, those in emergency need. And we trust our doctors and back our doctors to be able to do that.

What we also know is, just this morning, that side of the House—Mr Luxon, in his interview on Radio New Zealand with Corin Dann, said, “he doesn’t believe the health system is currently designed in a way that discriminates against Māori and Pasifika.” Well, the first thing I’ll say to that is, actually, he’s right. That’s because this side of the House fixed the inequities in the health system through our health reform. That side of the House wants to get rid of Te Aka Whai Ora—the very system Mr Luxon this morning admits is designed not to discriminate against Māori. That man and that member and that side of the House might want to check their facts on this. I’m proud that on this side of the House we take equity seriously, whether you are Māori, whether you are rural—and in fact, you only need to ask the ACT Party about their overpriced stall at the Fieldays and their poor humour and sense of humour in using golf balls to try and make a point. Well, here’s something for them—fore!—because they’re way off the mark, they are so far off the mark. It is—

Damien Smith: Point of order, Madam Speaker. We did not use any golf balls, or any balls at all. They were actually promoted by Groundswell.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): It’s not actually a valid point of order—

Damien Smith: Well it is, I’m just making a point.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): —in terms of Speakers’ rulings.

Hon PEENI HENARE: Fore! That’s another miscued shot. I want to say that on this side of the House, in order to make sure we have equity in our system, we also are asking them to remember our rural community. This side of the House have heard the pleas from our communities in the rural sector who say, “We deserve better access to healthcare”, and this side is taking it seriously. If you live in poor socio-economic parts of our country—we know where these places are, from electorates in the deep South to the Far North, and we made it clear that we want to prioritise them; and also for our Pasifika community, the evidence is overwhelming, the research is overwhelming. I want to invite members on that side of the House—I can even tee it up for them if they would like; I can tee that golf ball up for them—to get along to a Māori health provider, spend the day with them, and make sure they truly understand the health needs of our people and our community.

I want to quote one of the great National Party Ministers in his time, the Hon Chris Finlayson, who said, “What is good for Māori is good for the rest of the country.” And if that side can’t see it, then they are the ones who are short-sighted and continue to use race as a political football in the upcoming election. And I’m not surprised by that—I’m not surprised by that because on that side of the House, all we hear are flip-flops, a backtrack on the policies that they announce, nothing more than rhetoric to appeal to fringe voters. On this side of the House, we are delivering for our country and we will continue to do that and we will be unapologetic about that. We will make sure that our people get what they deserve when they deserve it.

I’m proud to be surrounded by colleagues who are truly passionate about healthcare, they are passionate about our agricultural sector, they’re passionate about our primary sector. I reflect on National’s policy announcement the other week saying that it’s all going to be about farming and nothing about forestry. Well, forestry providers and forestry owners have already been in touch with me and said, “The other side got it wrong.” Well done to the Labour Government for making sure that their interests are carried into primary production in this country. I’m looking forward to joining the Prime Minister at the end of this week, alongside our colleague Naisi Chen—who I saw come into the House a little earlier—to go and make sure that New Zealand puts its best foot forward when we engage overseas, to make sure that we continue to look towards high export value, to make sure that our primary products continue to feature on the global market in a way that our people deserve.

On this side of the House, we’ve always been clear—we tackle the big challenges. We don’t hide from them, and we don’t hide behind rhetoric; nor do we not hide behind some of the cheap lines and cheap attacks coming from that side of the House. I can’t wait till election day, whānau, because it’s coming, and I’ll be there for the fight.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! The time for this debate has expired.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.