Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to continue my contribution in support of the Prime Minister’s statement. Before I begin, though, I do want to take the opportunity to acknowledge the passing of the Hon Chester Borrows, former MP for Whanganui between 2005 and 2017. Chester was one of those people, MPs, who is respected and admired by MPs right across this House, and especially by our communities in Whanganui and Taranaki. I also want to acknowledge the passing of Lyndsay Patterson, who was a renowned glass artist in Whanganui. His passing has been keenly felt by our arts communities.

When I started this speech last week before recess, I was talking about the support that our Government has provided our primary producers who’ve been impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle. At that time, our total support amounted to $29 million. Since then, however, I think it’s important to note that the total package is now $55 million to support our primary producers to rebuild and recover. That means that about $17.4 million has already been paid out to the over 2,800 applications that we’ve received for support. We know that more is needed, and MPs on the ground, like my colleagues Anna Lorck, Stu Nash, Meka Whaitiri—they’re all providing feedback from the affected communities.

I also began to talk about the support that we’re providing our families from 1 April. We’ve extended the fuel excise tax and road-user subsidies through to the end of June, and I know that this makes a huge impact on our families in the community. I recently rode The Tide bus, a new bus service in Whanganui, which cost me $1.20, thanks to Government subsidies, to get from the suburb of Gonville all the way into town. It’s initiatives like this that are having a huge impact on our families and individuals—being able to get into town and participate in their communities through challenging times.

We’re also increasing Best Start. At the same time, 54 percent of families with children will become eligible for additional subsidies for early childhood education. We’re increasing superannuation and benefits: 1.2 million adults are going to receive an increase to the winter energy payment, and I’ve heard from many across my electorate how much of an impact that’s going to have on them. So we are here for those people who are finding it tough during these challenging times. Our Government continues to be focused on those bread and butter issues that all Kiwis care about. We are committed to helping everyone through these challenging times and I’m proud of the work that we are doing to support Kiwis.

One more thing I’d like to note is the reinstatement of the Training Incentive Allowance and how that has exceeded expectations—a 600 percent increase in those applying to receive support through the Training Incentive Allowance. And I’ll never forget a young mum I spoke to on the doorstep during 2020, who said to me how much of a difference that that was going to make in her life to be able to build a better future for her and her children. So that is incredible support that people in my electorate are so grateful to receive. We’ve also supported almost 55,000 people through trades training and through the Apprenticeship Boost scheme. Our Mana in Mahi programme has supported over 5,000 job seekers into jobs, which has well exceeded our target and hopes of 4,000.

As I said, these are challenging times, but we are really focused on those bread and butter issues, that we hear time and time again on the doorsteps, that New Zealanders care about; that includes our families and our primary producers. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

I too want to begin my contribution today by acknowledging, as the House did earlier on, the passing of three former members: the Rt Hon Paul East, the Hon Chester Borrows, and Georgina Beyer. All three of them made significant contributions both to this Parliament and in their communities.

I do particularly want to acknowledge my friend Georgina Beyer. She was the voice for the voiceless. She always approached every issue that she came across with extraordinary courage and bravery. I stood with her on the steps of Parliament the day that Brian Tamaki’s “Enough is Enough” march arrived here, and I watched with a mixture of awe and genuine fear for her safety as she decided to go down and confront them face to face. Only Georgina could have pulled it off in the way that she did, and I was in awe of her bravery that day, as I was on a number of other occasions. I do remember, during the prostitution law reform campaign, that she began one of her speeches in one of the debates by saying, “I’ll take the liberty of assuming that I’m the only member of Parliament with experience of prostitution.”—and then she paused and she looked across the Chamber, and a few people looked away at that point! Georgina’s life was full of drama—some of it scripted; some of it unscripted. She was a wahine toa. She was a person of activism, of creativity, and of aroha. And I, along with many, many others, will miss her greatly. Moe mai, moe mai, moe mai rā e te wahine rangatira.

I rise with great pride to speak in the Prime Minister’s statement debate. I am proud of a Government that, through a series of challenging crises and moments in our history that we never thought we would see, has been able to prioritise looking after our people, because that is the fundamental job of a Government. When we come to a time of crisis, people look to the Government to step forward for them, and that is happening again today as we deal with the outcomes of Cyclone Gabrielle and as we deal with the flooding that we saw in Auckland and Northland earlier this year. Those communities have been devastated, and I know members from across the House have been in those communities, have been working alongside those who are doing it tough, and I want to acknowledge all of those MPs.

But I also want to acknowledge the communities themselves, who have stood up for themselves and for their people. I want to put on record again today that, as we have done in the past, as we did with COVID—and as we will no doubt have to do again in the future—we stand with those communities. This will be a locally led response, because that is the right thing to do, and it will be a time when central government works with local government, with iwi, with our communities, with businesses, and with workers to make sure that these regions get back on their feet. This will not be a short journey, but it will be one where the Government will be with New Zealanders all the way—just as we are with those New Zealanders who are dealing with cost of living pressures.

Right around this country, we see communities who have been affected by, for example, the rising cost of food and by the pressures of inflation that are seen right around the world. The Government has consistently put how we support people with their day-to-day expenses at the front of mind. I think about initiatives like our school lunch programme. This was something that, at the time we introduced it, there was criticism of. There was criticism—was this the responsibility of the Government? And we can debate—

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Are you going to fix the truancy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, Mr Goldsmith, again, I really don’t think you want to be contributing when it comes to a discussion about how much things might cost or where we might get the money from. And I’ll come back to you in a moment, Mr Goldsmith.

But, on school lunches, we know for sure that this is now making a difference in the way in which children learn and the way in which they are able to be at school, not worried about where their food comes from. Time and again, I travel around New Zealand and I hear from school principals and I hear from parents about the importance of that to making sure that not only are we supporting whānau with the cost of living but also that we are making sure students are able to learn.

We’ve done the same thing with the support that we gave through COVID and then through the cost of living payment. I am proud that, on 1 April, we will be able to additionally support people who are on Working for Families, who are on main benefits, who are in receipt of superannuation. If I get one piece of feedback, it’s about the winter energy payment, and that will come into force again from 1 May. That is a payment that makes sure that our older New Zealanders can stay warm through winter and those on low and middle incomes can be supported. I’m proud that the minimum wage has been lifted consistently by this Government, because those who are raising a family on a minimum wage deserve to know that that will increase and they will be able to meet the costs that they are facing.

So, when we see that, when we see things like the Best Start initiative—again, started by this Government, which from 1 April is going to increase to $69 a week—we know that we are doing the right thing. That’s why we’ve extended out the cuts to the fuel excise duty and the road-user charges, because we know that the cost of living is still that pressure. And we’ve got to get on top of the long-term issues that sit behind that. That includes making sure that we do have genuine competition in our supermarket sector, to lower the price of food that people are facing; that we have used the inquiries done by the Commerce Commission to keep an eye on the margins that we have within our fuel sector. These are the things that a Government does when it’s interested in making sure that we support those who are facing pressure from the cost of living.

One of the things that I’ve learnt as Minister of Finance over the last five years is that we have to make sure we know how we’re going to pay for things. While I would welcome—

Hon Paul Goldsmith: None of your 2020 figures were followed up. They’re all wrong.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Mr Goldsmith wants to debate the 2020 figures, as he calls them. Well, Mr Goldsmith, if he’s yet picked up the bit of paper that he dropped that fateful day, will discover that his numbers did not add up. That’s the tragedy: this week, the National Party is making the same mistake again that it made when Mr Goldsmith was in charge of their financial portfolio.

We’re pleased to note that the National Party has seen that early childhood education is a priority—that is a good thing; I welcome the fact that all parties in this Parliament, I hope, would believe in that—but it’s a little late to the party, for the National Party, given that they froze some of the funding rates in there when they were in office. But my bigger concern here is that the National Party, at the weekend, announced a $1 billion policy—$1 billion in our forecast year—yet every single thing they put up as a way to pay for this is something that’s already been expended. Now, I know that the National Party might be looking at changing a few ways that they’re doing things, but going back and getting money from people who’ve already been paid it by the Government probably isn’t in their list, although who knows, when it comes to Mr Goldsmith!

The question that the National Party has got to answer now is: where does the billion dollars come from? Because they haven’t answered that question up to this point. And, unfortunately, there is now a danger that the National Party again will fall into Paul Goldsmith’s fiscal Bermuda Triangle. They always like to tell us that they’ll be able to reduce debt, that they’ll be able to cut tax, that they’ll be able to fund a $1 billion policy somehow whilst doing those two other things. That was the failure of the National Party in 2020, and it’s pretty disturbing to see, over the last few days, that the National Party has decided that once again they’re going to be into that fiscal Bermuda Triangle. So the question for the National Party remains: what gets cut? Because something’s going to get cut along here. There isn’t actually baselined expenditure here that they can pull out; so they’re going to have to find something. Is it going to be the people who help design our roads? Is it going to be the people who look after our water system? Or is it going—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Robertson, we’ve got about a minute, 30 seconds left. I’d like you to spend at least that time—I’m aware you’re responding to comments from across the House, but can we just go back to the Prime Minister’s statement.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: With pleasure, Mr Speaker. But I do think it’s important, when members opposite decide that they want to get on their high horse, that they justify themselves. So I look forward to a National Party speaker telling us where the billion dollars will be cut from.

One of the bits of the Prime Minister’s statement that I particularly want to draw people’s attention to is the investment of this Government in infrastructure. One of the things I’m particularly proud of is that, when we came into office, we inherited an infrastructure spend of around about $5 billion a year; we’ve lifted that up to $9 billion a year. It goes up to $12 billion a year, on average, from next year. That is the funding that builds our roads. That is the funding that builds 10,000 public housing places. That’s what builds new schools. That is what builds our health services that were so sadly neglected by the previous Government. That investment in building our nation for the future is something that I’m both proud of and I am looking forward to doing more of over the coming months.

We must look after our people—our people come first, and they always will for a Labour-led Government—but, at the same time, we have to plan and build for our future. That is now in the shadow of climate change, that is now in the shadow of the extreme weather events that we’ve had, and I know, looking at this Prime Minister’s statement, that there is a plan to build back better, build back smarter, and ensure that New Zealanders have a country that they can be proud of.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We heard from the Prime Minister—new Prime Minister—in his first press conference that when he was asked the impertinent question about, having cancelled the Radio New Zealand - TVNZ merger, how much the Government had spent on it, he said, “Oh, I don’t want to look backwards.” I have news for the Prime Minister: I’m sorry, that’s not how it works. When you’re in an election year, a Government is accountable for what it has achieved or what it hasn’t achieved, and people want to know what has happened with the extra $1 billion a week that this Government has been spending since 2017. That’s right: an extra $50 billion a year has been spent by this Government above what the previous National Government did, an extra billion dollars a week. So there’s a very perfectly legitimate question that New Zealanders have: what have we got for it? How have our lives been improved by that extra billion dollars a week? How have our lives been improved by the 14,000-odd extra civil servants and by the $1.7 billion on consultants that this Government has been spending?

Then we look and see, well, how are things better? Well, we’ve got 7 percent inflation, and most New Zealanders are struggling with the cost of living. Then, if we look at the education sector, for example, we say, well, we’ve got extra billions of dollars going into education. How’s that working out? The previous speaker, Grant Robertson, spoke of the free lunches at schools. One of the main arguments for that was to make sure that the kids came to school, so they had lunch at school, and yet truancy rates have got worse and worse and worse under this Government. So we’ve got fewer than half of the kids regularly attending. We had the Prime Minister, “Mr Fix-It”—Mr Hipkins—and the Minister of Finance for five years, so the kids don’t go to school. It’s not very reassuring for us. And then the standards of actually learning, what they learn at school, whether they can read or write, have gone backwards as well. So that hasn’t been a good investment in terms of focusing the public sector and the schools on what they really need to do, which is ensure that the kids are at school and that they measure some progress.

If we look at health—what about health? We’ve got extra billions going into health, and what have we got there? We’ve got a very large bureaucracy led by a man who, up until a week ago, was clearly very focused on one issue, which was co-governance, and not much else, because we had much longer waiting times in our prisons. So with all the extra money, you go along—are you going to get your emergency situation dealt with quicker under all these extra resources under this Government? No, you have to wait many more hours in the emergency department on average in order to get seen. So that hasn’t improved things.

If we look at housing, they said they were going to create 100,000 new houses under KiwiBuild, which was Jacinda Ardern’s greatest flop. What’s happened there? Well, they’ve got more and more young families and people living in emergency housing week after week, month after month, and even year after year. We’ve got more than 4,000 young children being raised in emergency motel housing, and the Minister of Housing has no real solution. Part of the reason is that they’ve put up the cost of housing so significantly and had a war on landlords which has seen people retreat from renting out their houses—it’s not compulsory to rent out your houses. That’s added to the pressure on the housing, the housing’s added to the pressure on education, and the housing and education combined have added to the pressure on youth crime—and I’ll come to that later.

What about transport? We’ve spent extra billions of dollars, and so the Minister of Transport stands up and says, “Well, we’ve spent so much more on road maintenance.”, and yet the roads are worse than they’ve ever been. So what’s going on? Why are there so many potholes if we’ve spent all this extra money—50 percent increase on road maintenance? Well, one of the main problems is that so much of the money is spent on road management and cones that very little is spent on actually fixing the roads. That’s something that the Minister might look at. But we’ve seen this incredible increase in spending and we have not seen a single new significant roading project started. They’ve finished two of the National Party’s, one coming north out of Wellington and through the Waikato, which have been transformational for those areas.

They still haven’t opened the one north of Auckland after five years; they’re still fluffing round, and that’s one of the great kind of scandals of the day. What on earth has happened? It’s been finished for up to a year and yet it’s still not opened; they’re still fluffing around. They used to call that the “Holiday Highway”; I remember the Labour Party referring to the “Holiday Highway”. If you think of what’s happened in Northland, what is the most important thing you can do? It’s actually to enable people to reconnect with the rest of the country. This Government hasn’t continued, has been very slow with that motorway project and stopped the next leg of going around the Brynderwyns, and yet we still have some people suggesting we should move the port up to Whangārei—I wonder how that would work if you have no road and the trains are knocked out.

So the basic investment in infrastructure hasn’t been happening. Instead, the money has gone into the endless little road bumps all around Auckland and reducing the speed limit to 30. If that’s the limit of this Government’s ambition, that, in a time of life when cars have never been safer, we have to crawl around at 30 kilometres in our city and go over road bumps—that’s where all the money’s going, and actually investing in road maintenance and helping get people to where they want to go quickly and efficiently is way down the bottom. So billions of dollars extra are being spent, worse outcomes in health, worse outcomes in education, and nothing to see for it in transport apart from a promise of a slow tram going down Dominion Road one day.

Then if we come to justice, what do we see? Well, the only real justice target that this Government has is the 30 percent reduction in prison population, irrespective of what the level of crime is in our community, which is a bizarre target. We’ve seen, actually, a 33 percent increase in violent crime and yet the prison population continues to fall because this Government is soft on crime. It’s also soft on the causes of crime. They’ve managed to double it—soft on crime and soft on the causes of crime—because they haven’t dealt with truancy, they haven’t dealt with emergency housing, they haven’t dealt with any of the things that drive crime in the long term.

So they’ve been soft on the causes of crime, and then when it comes to crime itself, the only thing they’ve done in that area is to repeal the three-strikes legislation. Why? It’s because they’ve looked at the situation, they’ve looked at the increase in violent crime, they’ve looked at the 500 percent increase in ram raids, the sense of disorder on our streets, and they’ve come to the conclusion that the one thing we need to do is reduce prison sentences for our worst repeat offenders and do away with three strikes. What a bizarre outcome.

Hon Member: A joke—it’s a joke.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Total joke. So that’s where they’re at. They spent most of last year focused on that important issue of hate speech legislation, which in December the Minister stood up in the House and introduced and said, “This is great, this is important, this is a priority for us.”, and then, about four weeks later, they withdrew it. So that was a lot of consultants’ work, no doubt, focused on that this year. They still have, on the books, reducing the voting age to 16. So that’s where their priorities are in justice, on those things, rather than reducing violent crime, dealing with the long delays in courts, and doing something effective about youth crime.

So what’s National doing? Everybody wants to have higher wages, of course. Higher incomes should be the focus of all Governments. This Government’s conclusion is that the way to achieve that is to legislate for higher incomes through minimum wages and all sorts of fair pay agreements and all sorts of things like that. Secondly, it’s about reducing immigration, starving off immigration so there’s a shortage of workers, and wages go up. Unfortunately, they’re only short-term solutions. If you want to have sustainably higher incomes, you actually have to have more productive businesses; there’s no other way around it, and there’s nowhere in this PM’s statement about improving productivity.

That’s what the National Party will do: we’ll be focused on the things that actually improve the productivity of New Zealand, which is a better-skilled workforce; it’s improving in quality infrastructure that helps people move their goods to markets; it’s about increasing the flow of investment, because it’s actually investment that drives improvements in productivity. Then we’ve got to fight inflation, because inflation is digging into New Zealand families’ pockets. That’s why, on the weekend, Christopher Luxon announced the Family Boost, which will help young families with young kids by putting $75 extra into their budgets—over $3,000 a year, if they’re in the right category. We in the National Party, under Chris Luxon, are absolutely focused on helping New Zealand families fight inflation. It’s why we’ll have the Reserve Bank focused on its knitting, which is fighting inflation. We won’t waste so much money as the Government has, so that’s not fuelling the fire. We’ll be removing the roadblocks such as shortage of workers, and we’ll be actually doing the things that matter when it comes, finally, to law and order: focusing on reducing violent crime, keeping communities safe, and actually doing something about the increase in youth crime and offering new solutions like, particularly that small group of repeat offenders, sending them off to a military academy, getting their lives sorted out, getting them turned around so that we can live in safety in our communities.

So the Prime Minister mightn’t want to look back, but he needs to, and he needs to justify what has this Government achieved in five years—and I can’t think of very much.

Well, first of all, it’s a delight to be able to come back to this House and give a contribution and a response to the Prime Minister’s statement, but, first of all, I would be remiss if I didn’t just address my friend the Hon Paul Goldsmith and some of his comments. He started out with this incredible picture, where he articulated the billions and the billions and the billions. Now, one should remember that when he was the former finance spokesperson, he loved to talk about the billions and the billions and the billions—in fact, $4.3 billion of a billion-dollar fiscal hole. But it was nice to be, I guess, refreshed and to remember his efforts when it comes to numbers.

It also seems like, I don’t know, maybe it might be a good opportunity for our friend to get out of the little provincial town that is Epsom and come out and see the rest of us in the real world, because what I’d tell you is that all the rest of this country is looking to this Labour Government. They are looking to this Labour Government for what it has delivered for New Zealanders, and we are talking about the bread and butter issues.

We are talking about the action that we have done. We’ve supported parents with health costs by expanding free and low-cost doctors visits to children under 14—real stuff that helps New Zealanders. We’ve introduced mental health support into school, and expanded school-based health services across approximately 300 schools. The winter energy payment—your constituents know about it, my constituents know about, and they all love it. We’ve increased mean benefits, the family tax credit, student allowances, and the accommodation supplement, we’ve extended paid parental leave to 26 weeks, and the list goes on and on and on. This is a Government that delivers big.

I want to just turn my mind to things that have been pressing in our region and across the country generally, and I guess I’ll commence this part of my remarks alongside my friend the Hon Stuart Nash, as Ministers responsible for the recovery of the recent weather event: for myself in Te Tai Rāwhiti, and for my friend Stuart in the Hawke’s Bay region. Currently, in Te Tai Rāwhiti, we have 1,100 people still without access to the rest of the world. They’ve got 58 local roads that are broken and destroyed, as are nine bridges. We have extensive and significant damage all across our farms.

We’re a food bowl. Much like the Hawke’s Bay, we are a food bowl. We are food producers. The events that have started this year have sent ripples—ripples that will etch the earth for generations. When I took up this role as a member of Parliament for the East Coast, something that forms every part of the way that the people think in the Tai Rāwhiti is the remnants of Cyclone Bola. Cyclone Gabrielle and Cyclone Hale will be those markers for our children and their children to come.

I want to particularly acknowledge the range of men and women, and the good people of my region in particular, that I’ve got to see up close and personal. Whether it be the civil defence lead, Frank, over there in Te Karaka, who had to steward 500 people up two hills in Te Karaka as the rivers broke and absolutely decimated that small township, or if it’s the likes of our champions Lilian, Mere, and Hoana up in Tokomaru Bay, who have been providing food and sustenance and providing education and schooling to a township that has been completely disconnected, they have held their hands to the till.

I look down to the township of Tūranga—Gisborne—and I want to acknowledge Mayor Rehette Stoltz. I want to acknowledge Ben Green. I want to acknowledge the tribal leadership: Selwyn Parata and Amohaere Houkamau. I want to acknowledge Rongowhakaata iwi trust: Staci, Tama Waipara, and Teina. I want to look out to Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki: Ronald, Pene, and Willie Te Aho. There have been so many champions throughout the region that have stood up in a time of crisis and we’ll be leaning into their knowledge, their expertise, across the 22 hapori of Te Tai Rāwhiti as we undertake the mammoth task which is the recovery.

The Prime Minister has said and has continued to say that what’s going to be critical to our rebuild will be that these are locally led recoveries, and so, to that end, I am pleased to be able to work alongside and in partnership with the leadership of our region: the growers, the farmers, our iwi, and our council.

I also want to honour, on a somewhat sombre note, the life of John Coates, who was a local Te Karaka man who lost his life in that flood and that breach of the Waipaoa that day.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: If you could now return to the Prime Minister’s statement.

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: Well, this is part of our recovery and, indeed, it was the primary starting point for the Prime Minister’s statement for this year—the cyclone recovery.

If I turn to the regional development components, I want to acknowledge the role that Kānoa played, particularly the investment in the flood banks. If I talk to the families in Manutuke but, indeed, all throughout the Hawke’s Bay and, actually, all throughout our regional community, the role and the investment by central government in partnership with local government has been upheld as saving many a township, and it’s those types of partnership that we can engage in and are continuing to engage in and we are committed to doing so. They are locally led projects in partnership with and supported by central government through regional economic development agencies, with Kānoa taking that lead, and I’m pleased to be the regional development Minister to take on some of the legacy work commenced by my friend Stuart Nash.

I turn my mind now just to some of the other issues that have been arising and that are at the forefront of our minds. New Zealanders demand and New Zealanders want a place that is safe that they can call home. Now, for us on this side of the House, when we look at the law and order issues of today and the challenges that we face, at the forefront of our minds is that we are keeping New Zealanders safe for today, but the decisions that we make today must withstand the test of time tomorrow. So, from our side of the House, when we approach this, whether it is youth crime, retail crime, or any of the other law and order issues that every Government must engage in, we have made sure to be tough on the causes of crime.

Our focus is on an evidence-based approach to programmes that work. Most recently, we entered into a partnership in South Auckland where we’re working with young people aged between 14 and 17 years old that have been through the youth justice system. Through our investment in programmes such as that, we have seen an 80 percent reduction in recidivism rates, comparative to the experience we were having prior to it.

These are examples of the evidence-based mechanisms that work, and on our side of the House we’ve said that we will provide every single New Zealander with that chance to succeed, regardless of who you are or where you’ve come from. That side of the House will say a range of things about this Government’s approach to law and order, and it’s not lost on me that we’re coming into an election year and it’s all good to dog-whistle.

But at the forefront of our minds, let’s just look at a few of the facts. First of all, we have invested heavily in our front-line policing mechanisms. Whilst that side of the House were cutting our local police officers and police stations up and down this country, it’s through this side of the House that we have reinvested in building up that regional infrastructure, and, funnily enough, it’s been one of the most critical lifelines in places like Te Tai Rāwhiti as we re-engage with the floods.

We are investing in ensuring that we are rehabilitating our young people that deserve another chance, and that’s something we are proud of on this side of the House.

So there are many, many things that we are doing and we’ll continue to do on this side of the House, but I’ll tell you one thing: we will build back better, we will build back safer, and we are committed to building back smarter. This is an aspirational Government, and we are going to keep cracking on with the work ahead of us.

I understand this is a split call—five minutes each.

Yes, Mr Speaker, thank you. E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. On 27 January, within just a few hours of heavy rainfall parts of Tāmaki-makau-rau, my home and the homes of many across this House and of our communities were under water. Land slipped away and livelihoods were destroyed. In Grey Lynn, next door to Auckland Central, a whānau escaped from the second-storey window of their house, the first floor entirely overwhelmed by water, with a kayak from their next-door neighbour. Stories like this were not novel or unique; they were found across Tāmaki-makau-rau, Auckland. A fortnight later, Cyclone Gabrielle tore havoc across the North Island, and 11 people are now dead. Auckland Council warns that we are at serious risk of slips for the foreseeable future, and we’re yet to properly count the hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

This is climate change. I never anticipated that I would have a hair-trigger response to rain but, speaking to many of my friends in Tāmaki-makau-rau, it is precisely the visceral response that’s been embedded in all of us by virtue of this experience. This environment has been brought about by the fairy tale economic thinking that has been intent on destabilising and transforming—sorry, the economic thinking has destabilised this environment. This is the same climate change we experienced in Tāmaki-makau-rau that’s delivered states of emergency and multiple one-in-100-year weather events across the country every single year. We have seen it on the East Coast, on the West Coast, in the top of the South Island, in Northland, and now on Queen Street in Auckland Central. When that climate crisis unfolded, we saw what really matters. Communities jumped to action. Neighbours looked after neighbours—no questions asked, no means testing, no concern about who deserved it.

Then you step into this place and what really matters couldn’t feel like further from the agenda in a debate like this, and, frankly, I’ve got to say it’s just kind of embarrassing, given what has happened to the North Island over the past few months. A lot of the debate here is fuelled by these fairy tales of economic thinking and what we’ve got to sacrifice to this notion of the economy. So let’s talk about the facts of that economy—that economy, being all of us and the stuff that we create and the rules that we put in place about how that is distributed and the kinds of outcomes that we want to incentivise. We don’t live in a game of Monopoly, which, by the way, was actually invented to teach children about the pitfalls of an economy that is built on land banking and capital accumulation in the hands of a few. The rules can and should change when they don’t work for the majority of us—and they don’t. The rules can and should change when they are destroying the climate necessary for human civilisation and survival—which they do.

Inflation is currently sitting at 7.2 percent, and the major drivers of inflation are housing—namely, rents—transport, and household utilities. Statistics New Zealand make it clear that this inflation is hurting lower-income New Zealanders disproportionately hard, because they spend the majority of their income on essentials. This inflation comes on a backdrop of pre-existing inequality—in fact, the highest rates of wealth inequality that we have had in this country since records began. To lay this out once again, that disparity sees—based on the estimations of Max Rashbrooke, an economist based at Victoria University of Wellington—that the bottom half of New Zealanders, 2.5 million New Zealanders, hold just 2 percent of the wealth; the top 10 percent hold 60 percent of that wealth; and the top 1 percent hold 25 percent of the wealth.

If we want to address mythologies, let’s address the mythology that there somehow, apparently, isn’t enough to go around, because clearly and evidentially there is. It is a matter of what we value and what we prioritise, and we saw in that climate crisis which struck us in Tāmaki-makau-rau that the values out there on the streets, in homes, and among whānau and communities are values of humanity, looking after each other, responding when that crisis strikes. And the job of this place is to respond to those slower-moving crises which we can see on the horizon. They are those slower-moving crises of deeply entrenched wealth inequality, and the climate crisis, which only exacerbates that wealth inequality. If I can say anything in closing, it’s that we have an opportunity for transformation here in these next few months of this Parliament.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d like to join with members in the House, reflecting on the floods. As I was coming home through rural Manawatū, and the waters were coming down on our side of the Ruahines, the waters were up around about 3 foot and I’d heard word that, actually, the marae up in Feilding had been flooded out as well. And I knew that, on the other side of the mountain range, our friends and families and communities were doing it even tougher. So I would like to acknowledge those communities. I would like to acknowledge those marae. I would like to acknowledge friends and family who, during these really tough times, turned to each other, because that’s what we do during tough times: we turn to each other. And, of course, the incredible work of our first responders, what they did to sort of come together and to connect.

These events exacerbate the events of the previous years as well, and I’m talking about the COVID crisis. We’ve had these weather-intensive climate catastrophe events on top of what’s been happening with COVID, and we saw a significant transfer of wealth to the richest New Zealanders during 2020 and 2021 as asset prices exploded. The rise in inflation from late 2001, particularly in fuel, housing, and food costs, has hit those on the lowest incomes the hardest. But right now, banks, supermarkets, and fossil fuel companies are creaming it while thousands of families struggle to put food on the table, keep the lights on, and, for many around Aotearoa, across Te Matau-a-Māui, up north, Auckland, rebuilding their lives from the ground up.

The cost of the clean-up is going to run into the billions of dollars. But instead of using the levers that it has, the Government has partnered with Westpac and Lotto to launch a fund-raising appeal. And just to be clear: the levers of power are in that corner; that is where the levers of power are. And to put this in context: Westpac has lent $2.4 billion to fossil fuel companies; $2.4 billion profiting from the destruction of the planet. Consider, then, asking Westpac to set up an appeal fund for a cyclone super-powered by climate change. This doesn’t make sense. Westpac is also among a group of Australian-owned banks making a record $6 billion dollars—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Tuiono, we are here to discuss the Prime Minister’s statement. Could you at least make some passing reference to it.

TEANAU TUIONO: Yes, and I’m talking about how we’re going to fund the flood recovery. Money has to come from somewhere, and if the Government doesn’t use the levers that it has to get that money, and instead of using just Lotto or other kinds of schemes, then we need to actually ask some serious questions. So what I’m talking about here is an excess tax on banks, supermarkets, and fossil fuel companies. And let’s remember, in the case of fossil fuel companies, if there is any group of companies that are directly responsible for the climate catastrophe that we find ourselves in today, it is them. When I think back to as we’ve moved through the COVID crisis as well, there was a report that came out of the Commerce Commission which pointed that, actually, supermarkets were making an excess of $1 million a day—$1 million a day. Now, we all love Lotto, you know, but I don’t think and we shouldn’t try to plan ourselves to jackpot ourselves out of the situation that we’ve found ourselves in. What we need to do—the Government needs to do—is to use those levers and to exercise an excess tax on fossil fuel companies, banks, and supermarkets.

An excess profit tax is usually a one-off levy imposed on a company or group of companies by the Government. They target businesses that have unreasonably high profits, normally due to unusually favourable markets—for example, a COVID crisis. In Europe, the EU is now implementing an excess profit tax on the energy sector. Spain has its own excess profit tax on both the energy sector and on banks. This has been done before. A 10 percent levy on the banking sector’s record profit would raise over half a billion dollars, which could be used to support people. It is morally wrong that our economic system is rewarding corporations that are causing climate chaos. It’s a case of privatising the profit and socialising the losses. Instead of playing Lotto, we should be taxing the corporations. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you. The Hon Stuart Nash—and just before you start, for the members present, this is not a general debate; this is a reference to or a debate on the Prime Minister’s statement. At least some reference to that during your speech will ensure you don’t get interrupted, and not just make a general debate speech. So I’ll start the timer again, the Hon Stuart Nash.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. One of the first things the Prime Minister mentioned in his Prime Minister’s statement was about the floods and the rain events that have happened up and down our country this year. On 10 December last year, I turned the sod on a major stopbank behind the Pettigrew Green Arena in Napier. The then CEO of the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, a guy called James Palmer, who is now head of the Ministry for the Environment, was also part of the sod-turning ceremony. As we dug our spades into the rock-hard Hawke’s Bay soil, I said to James, “No way. This is massive.” And he said, “It’s designed for a one-in-500-year flood. It’s a metre higher than the engineers recommended.” Well, when the river was at peak because of Cyclone Gabrielle, it was a foot below the top of that stopbank. And if that stopbank had broken and flooded the whole of Taradale, then the conversations we would be having would be completely different than the ones we’re having now.

That stopbank was funded by this Government and COVID funds. But it is an example of what we are facing in this country now and some of the very, very hard conversations we are going to have to have as we move forward and as we rebuild. To the north of my electorate—Whirinaki; Bayview; the Esk Valley, which the Prime Minister’s visited; the Napier-Taupō Road; Wairoa—again, some very important conversations are now going to have to be had about what we do, how we rebuild back, and the sort of places we are going to allow people to build on. And they’re hard conversations, because they’re also expensive conversations, but they’re ones that we need to start having as a country because they are very, very real. But there is one undeniable fact: climate change has significantly impacted the weather patterns across our country, and the East Coast is bearing the brunt—two cyclones in the Tai Rāwhiti district this year.

We now need to drive forward an agenda for our high-wage, low-emissions economy. In terms of driving transformational change across our economy, the Prime Minister talked about the industry transformation plans. What these are plans in certain areas of the economy where we believe we could have, we should have, or we already do have some form of global competitive advantage, but where we need to really drive productivity in a way that creates a sustainable global competitiveness in areas of advanced manufacturing, agritech, forestry and wood manufacturing, construction, tourism, forestry, digital technologies, and fisheries.

The great thing about these is we’ve actually gathered in unionists, we’ve gathered in business people, iwi Māori, the Government—all working together for a common cause. I have read all the drafts that have been presented to me. After the drafts have been collated, then they go out for consultation and the final documents come back. And goodness me, they are great bits of work that cover the whole economy and where people agree on the work programme that needs to be done.

Why are we doing this? It’s because this Government believes that it’s incredibly important that the Government has a role to play in driving the sort of economic outcomes that we want to see in this country. We’ve supported business, we’ve supported ventures, we’ve supported the private sector, and we’ve supported the regions because we believe that the role of the Government is not just to intervene when there’s market failure. We believe that if we work together, we can actually create market outcomes that lead to high jobs, productivity, capital investment, sustainability, engaged outcomes—all the things that we want to see as a country and all the things that I believe the vast majority of politicians in this House actually believe in. It is a forward-thinking and a transformational agenda and is something that I am incredibly proud of in the work that we have done in this space.

Another area that we’ve invested significantly in is our regions. For the last 2½ years, I was the Minister for Regional Development. I’ve handed that portfolio over to the very capable Kiri Allan—my great friend the Hon Kiritapu Allan. But the thing about this is that in the last term of the National Government, there were a couple of economists, and one came out and said, “We need to be planning for managed retreat from our regions because the reason—for a lot of these small provincial towns—for being no longer exists.” Another one called these towns “zombie towns”, and one of them in my electorate—Wairoa was called a zombie town. Ōpōtiki was called a zombie town, and a number of these other small—which I believe are thriving communities. I mean, I call Wairoa the outdoor capital of New Zealand. There’s your hunting, your fishing, your camping, your tramping, your beautiful beaches, your hot pools, your water-skiing—you name it. It’s going through tough times at the moment because of Cyclone Gabrielle, but it is a wonderful little town. And I personally found it quite offensive to be told by an academic that this was going to be a zombie town or that we needed to manage retreat from provincial New Zealand.

Now, the thing about this is we looked at this and said, “Is this our vision for rural and provincial New Zealand?” And the emphatic answer was no. It’s the reason why we have spent over $4 billion, as outlined by the Prime Minister in his statement—$4 billion across the regions. I saw a report recently that did an audit of the Provincial Growth Fund. It was a big report. But the one thing I took out of it is that it said that this has created a hope and an environment where people are willing to invest in, whereas in the past they weren’t. So places like Ōpōtiki, which was going to be a zombie town, is now thriving. We’ve invested a lot of money up and down the country.

Hon David Bennett: Winston invested it.

Hon STUART NASH: And I know that member over there, his electorate has benefited greatly from the Provincial Growth Fund, as have a number of other National electorates. But this wasn’t political—this wasn’t political. This was about doing the right thing for New Zealand.

Another area that I’d like to speak about that the Prime Minister highlighted in his statement was about law and order. Now, it’s great to be once again the Minister of Police. It’s a portfolio that I’m very proud to hold, but the first thing I would like to do is I would like to say thank you to the men and women in blue who have come into my damaged region, Tai Rāwhiti, in a way that has helped in providing reassurance and security to damaged communities. Some of the tales of heroism that these police undertook when the floods were raging are outstanding. But as a long-serving police officer yourself, Mr Deputy Speaker, you will know that police don’t stand back and ask questions “Should I do it?”; they just go and they do it, and they often put their lives at risk. In fact, I heard of one story in Muriwai where two officers went in, grabbed out the couple, pulled them out of the house, and, about five minutes later, the house slipped down the cliff. Now, that is what our police—men and women—do, and I think they are absolutely fantastic at stepping up when we ask them to.

The reason why I’m so proud to be the Minister of Police is that last week I attended, I think, either my 39th or 40th police graduation. It’s something I have always prioritised as Minister of Police and, in my first term of three years and now as I’ve taken it on again, I think I’ve missed two out of 40. I love going to these graduations because you see the delight and the pride of these men and women who started out with a dream and they’ve now realised that dream as they head into our communities to keep our communities safe. But the thing is, we are about to deliver on one of our major promises. We promised that there would be 1,800 officers over and above where we were when we started in 2017. We’re up to 1,600. Well over 3,000 men and women have passed through Police College. It’s an astounding number, it’s an astounding achievement, and the police service has grown faster than at any other time in its history. But it’s needed to step up, because we are now asking police to do so much more than we did in the old days.

The approach that police take is actually outstandingly good. I had a conversation with Ray Smith when I took over the portfolio. He was then the CEO of Corrections, and he said to me “With more police, you’re going to need more prisons.” I said, “Ray, you don’t understand the police model. It’s about crime prevention. It’s about working with communities. It’s not about locking people up, throwing away the key, and then asking questions.” And he said, “We’ll see.” When he took over the role of the Ministry for Primary Industries, he came to see me when I was Minister of fisheries and he said, “Stuart, you were right.” We need less prisons because the police operating model doesn’t mean they’re soft on crime. It doesn’t mean they let people go; they still go really, really hard when it’s necessary—and Operation Cobalt is evidence of that. There were 26,000 prosecutions charges laid—26,000 charges laid against gang members—since June last year. But when it’s not appropriate to put someone in front of a judge, they work with that person, with the community to come up with better outcomes. Let’s face the reality: when you put someone in prison, not only do you take away their freedom; you often take away their future. So we’ve got to think long and hard about how we do this, and I think we’ve got it about right; there’s no doubt about that.

As mentioned, I am very, very proud to be a Minister, to be part of a Government that’s putting New Zealanders first, that’s looking at the big issues and is not afraid to come up with audacious solutions to the really big issues that are facing our country today. This is a Government with a vision, it’s a Government with a plan, and I believe it’s a Government that delivers for all Kiwis. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Well, very interesting with that last speaker, the Minister of Police, who talked about having big solutions, big visions for the issues—how about the issue today in Canterbury with our police attending 55 percent of their business they deem as non-core business? They’re turning up to mental health; they’re turning up to domestic violence.

What was visionary was the last National Government in 2017, who announced the mental health co-response service to pair up mental health professionals with police to go out to those mental health crisis call-outs that police are turning up to and not wanting to be there. And what was the first thing this Labour Government did in the start of 2018? They cancelled that service. So much for a Government that promised to transform the mental health system! They came in and their first action was cutting the co-response mental health service. Five years of inaction, and that’s why we have in Canterbury today 55 percent of police work they’re deeming as non-core business. No wonder they don’t have time to go and catch the criminals, because they haven’t been resourced. The Labour Government can go on about 1,600 new police officers. Well, a senior police officer told me recently—he said, “Matt, if I’d heard about the 1,800 new police officer policy by Labour, I would have said to them, ‘Don’t give us 1,800 new police. Give us the co-response service, because that would have given us more and time and resources.’”

Isn’t it interesting with the Prime Minister’s statement, the Prime Minister finished with the comment, “let’s get cracking.”? “Let’s get cracking.”, after six years—remember what the statement from the Labour Prime Minister was six years ago: “Let’s do this.” So, in six years they’ve moved from “Let’s do this.” to now “let’s get cracking.” What is the meaning of “let’s get cracking”? It means to do something quickly. Finally, after six years, they’ve accepted they’ve done nothing and they need to move quickly. Incompetence—this is a failed socialist experiment that has failed New Zealanders.

Not only will I be looking at what the Prime Minister said in his statement today, but let’s think about what he didn’t say in that statement. Did we hear about KiwiBuild? No. What a failure. Did we hear the words “three waters” mentioned once in the Prime Minister’s statement? No. What an abject failure three waters has been. Did we hear about the $1.9 billion for mental health in the Prime Minister’s statement? No. Remember they used to parade the $1.9 billion around like a trophy, and now it’s like a millstone around their neck. Even the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission came out with its first damning report and said that despite the $1.9 billion they’d made no material improvement. How can you spend $1.9 billion and make no difference? Labour can; that’s exactly what they do.

Think about that mental health inquiry six years ago. A lot of New Zealanders came out and told their heartfelt, personal, and traumatic stories. That inquiry made a report of 40 recommendations. Does Labour ever speak of those 40 recommendations today? No. Zip. De nada. Quietly shelved away in a back office somewhere. Forty recommendations, $1.9 billion for mental health, and nothing talked about. What they did talk about in mental health, though—a direct quote: “Students can either go to a health professional in their school, … be referred to youth health services”—or, wait for it—“[go to] child youth [and] mental health services”. What a kick in the guts for parents today whose kids are stuck in waiting lists trying to go to child and youth and adolescent mental health services. Very interesting with a Ministry of Health annual review at the end of last year.

The biggest barrier to timely mental health in New Zealand is a mental health workforce crisis that has occurred under Labour’s watch. From June 2021 to June 2022, psychologist vacancy rates have increased by over 50 percent, mental health nurse vacancy rates from June 2021 to June 2022 by a hundred percent, and psychiatry vacancy rates in our health system a 125 percent increase in one year. That’s on these guys’ watch. We’ve got a mental health workforce crisis.

What about the statement by the Prime Minister, “We will continue to rebuild our health system with the Christchurch relocation of mental health services”? Tell that Prime Minister what happened last year in Hillmorton—an in-patient facility was closed for good. It had an over 50 percent vacancy rate that it could not service its patients. It was warned at the time that if that inpatient facility closed, the beds would be lost for good. Let’s not forget, written parliamentary question data revealed that for the $1.9 billion, we have no extra mental health inpatient beds. Now, we lost 10 last year that are lost for good. Telling about the relocation of mental health services in Christchurch—we’ve lost services under Labour. Let’s look at the in-patient occupancy rate of our mental health facilities, operating at over a hundred percent occupancy. Clinical guidance is 85 percent occupancy for patient safety—we operate at over a hundred percent. This is all under Labour’s watch. So I’m not surprised the Prime Minister didn’t talk about the $1.9 billion.

How about the 13 new mental health facilities that were announced by Labour in 2019? The Prime Minister quoted, “Nearly a dozen large projects are expected to begin this year, including mental health facilities in Waikato, Lakes and Tairāwhiti”. In 2019—how many years ago is that? Four years—I tell you what: in 2019, Lakes was announced at $26.9 million. You know how much the Government has spent of that to date? Zero dollars. In four years, they’ve spent none of that money. Tairāwhiti—a new facility was announced for $23.7 million. Four years later, they haven’t spent any money of that $23.7 million. Waikato, which the Prime Minister refers to in his statement—$155 million was announced in 2019. How much has been spent to date, four years later, on that new inpatient facility? Zero—zero dollars four years later. He’s got the nerve to come to the House and say, “Let’s get cracking.” Let’s look at those 13 projects announced four years ago: over $500 million of investment announced; they’ve spent $10 million of that four years later. Two percent that’s been spent, with our inpatient facilities operating at over a hundred percent capacity.

Then, the Prime Minister didn’t stop, he couldn’t help himself—he went on to say, “We will continue to build a primary mental health support system from scratch. 2.66 million New Zealanders now have access to free mental health services through primary care organisations such as GPs.” All those New Zealanders have access, but how many have used it? That’s where we can see the consultancy spend going into the spin doctors, because the reality is that programme has stalled. That four-year programme is struggling to be operated out of 50 percent of our GPs. Those workers in the GP practices are, at the moment, delivering less than three sessions per worker, per day.

Everything this Government has touched on mental health has failed. Remember the hope—remember the hope six years ago that they were going to transform the mental health system; $1.9 billion and here we are. The Prime Minister comes out after saying “Let’s do this.” six years ago. Now, it’s “Let’s get cracking.” The problem is, you’ve spent $1.9 billion and you’ve absolutely done nothing. That’s why the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission came out and said that despite the $1.9 billion, there’s been no difference. What was even more damning is a Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission that said there was no clear plan to execute change to make a difference, and that’s why this Government is an absolute failed socialist experiment.

Kia orana, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take my first call for the year on the Prime Minister’s statement. As has been alluded to by colleagues around the House this afternoon, the Prime Minister identified in his statement—right from the get-go—the situation in terms of the recovery for those in Northland, for those in Te Tai Rāwhiti but also in the Hawke’s Bay and of course Auckland, and my neighbouring electorate, or nearby, of the Tararua District. I want to just acknowledge the devastation that those communities have faced; the local community groups, marae, local members of Parliament who have been on the ground supporting their communities in an absolute desperate and dire time of need. We know that the Prime Minister, in his statement, confirmed the commitment to those communities in terms of the ongoing support that the Government will provide to them. This utter devastation is one that is heavily felt by folks on the ground and the relentless nature within which our communities have responded—and I use the word “communities” in a very broad sense—is obviously something that is desirable and supported as well.

In terms of the reference to the Auckland floods, I want to acknowledge those emergency personnel, also, who have been involved. On the morning of the January Auckland floods, I was visiting Mount Wellington—visiting the St John’s 111 emergency operations centre, that morning. Little was anyone to know that they would be very busy in the evening, so I do want to acknowledge the work that they’ve put into supporting their communities.

I also want to acknowledge the many community groups and schools around the motu who have pitched in to support nearby neighbours. I know that many of the schools in my own electorate of Palmerston North have been fund-raising—because that’s what the call is about; providing some pūtea—by having mufti days in black and white, the colours of the bay, with sister schools, so I want to acknowledge the work that they have been doing in that space.

But this is a Government, as referenced in the Prime Minister’s statement, that has focused on tackling the infrastructure needs of our country and is also keen to ensure that it continues to provide the strong leadership, responsible leadership to support the resilience that is evident in our communities around Aotearoa New Zealand. It was, in my assessment, a cracking statement from the new Prime Minister and his new administration in terms of outlining the plans for New Zealand in the year ahead. There are opportunities that were addressed in terms of identifying the response that he and his Government intend to take to relieve the pressures around the cost of living that we all know about. And we have, in terms of referring to the track record of the Government in the lead-up to that, taken a range of actions across many areas actually—groceries, transport, housing, health, and education, just to name five.

I want to use my opportunity in the House this afternoon to canvass those five areas. When we look at groceries, yes, seeking to address the increasing price of food. The new administration has a new Minister in the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, who is going to lead out on that, to address the duopoly, to tackle that issue which is facing many whānau in the pocket. So that’s something that the Government is very keen to ensure it continues. But also ensuring that it continues to tackle the excess of $1 million profit per day currently that those in that particular game are receiving in their own back pocket. So groceries is something that the Government is seeking to address.

The second one is transport and, in terms of referencing the track record that the Government has already taken in terms of the continuation this year of half-price fares—and I notice that my colleague Steph Lewis cited this in terms of her trip recently. I know previously in the House I have referred to the Bee Card, which is something that is used in many regional authorities—that will continue to address some of that subsidy for the public transport needs of our community. The road-user charges reduction—which is something that the House is familiar with in terms of legislation through the House recently—is another; a continuation of cutting the duty or excise tax on petrols will continue to alleviate some of the pressures that families and households are facing around New Zealand.

The upgrade and investment—continual upgrade. This year, we will see new carriages for the Capital Connection service between Palmerston North and Wellington, a very, very dear-to-my-heart service that meets an absolute need. That is something that has existed by way of Government funding. It is something that we will see halfway through this year rolled out alongside some other infrastructure adjustments to some of the platforms along the way. I have to say I was pleased to see that many of the products, actually, that were used in the upgrade were sourced locally, including fibreglass from the Manawatū district as well.

Moving on to housing. Housing is something that the Prime Minister has confirmed is going to be a continued area of focus for this Government. I am proud to be part of a Government that is for the first time in decades delivering public housing opportunities for the people of Palmerston North. It’s something that I make no apology for in this House because, as the local member, it is something that I keep a keen interest in. I am keen to ensure that progress continues to be made and that is certainly the case as we have our target of delivering 18,000 additional public and transitional houses or homes by 2024. Kāinga Ora are continuing to deliver in my community and in many communities and that certainly will be something that the Government is expecting, moving forward—that Kāinga Ora would continue to meet those needs, that they would continue to acquire land where possible, and they would continue to engage with stakeholders in their community.

Area number three is health, and much has already been said around health. We will see a continuation of the roll-out of the National Health Service, known as Te Whatu Ora, and the particular investment, the significant investment that this Labour Government has made in health in over a generation—if not generations, plural—that would continue to support the work of community organisations on the ground who were attuned with the COVID response, that have continued to roll out their support for our communities. Just within the last few weeks, I was delighted that there was central government investment of $9.8 million for our local hospital that will see shorter stays in the emergency department—the emergency department observation area extension—but also the medical assessment and planning unit, which will allow for GPs to effectively make direct referrals to the hospital, and it will see an increase in bed capacity in Palmerston North for the first time in many years. But alongside that, the Surgical Procedural Interventional Recovery Expansion project that will see stents and catheterisation lab opportunities being delivered in Palmerston North rather than people having to travel regionally or beyond.

In the area of education: just within, again, the last couple of weeks, an ongoing investment of this Government through the Universal College of Learning and Te Pūkenga of $10 million for Te Whai Oranga, which is just across the road from my electorate office. So I’ve been able to see the progress of this health and community service facility being developed over recent months, and the Prime Minister has signalled a continuation in this statement of ensuring that the investment in public service that New Zealanders rely on continues. This is yet one example again of this Government delivering for people of Palmerston North but also in our communities.

Much has been said around health—the change in terms of the equity index, the move to ensure that attendance is a real focus. I acknowledge the work that our Minister of Education is doing in that space. As a former teacher, I know the importance of students being at school and I also know that, under National, there were opportunities to remove attendance as a focus and it was actually landed on other school staffing provisions to ensure. So a change in that direction is something that is absolutely going to be welcomed by the community.

I also wanted to acknowledge the support that the Government has signalled a continuation for, for our Pasifika community. I want to acknowledge my colleague and friend the Hon Barbara Edmonds, who has recently taken up a new role in the new administration as the Minister for Pacific Peoples. When we talk about ongoing opportunities for STEM academies—that focus around science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—where our Pasifika communities, our Pasifika ākonga, are able to focus in that space, that is really, really important. So it was a delight to see that Government ministries such as the Ministry for Pacific Peoples were able to continue to support communities on the ground. We had a fantastic festival in Palmerston North over the weekend, the Vaka Festival, and it was great to see that the ongoing focus of this Government in terms of ensuring that the Ministry for Pacific Peoples is supporting communities on the ground, is an ongoing focus, alongside Fire and Emergency New Zealand, Corrections, the local council, health community providers, and much, much more.

I am proud to support a Prime Minister who has outlined a very clear line of sight and direction for our Government and for the community of Aotearoa New Zealand. We on this side of the House are determined to support him and his new administration in delivering on that focus, because it will ensure that resilient communities are able to go about their business, knowing that they have a Government in Labour that will continue to support their needs, to provide for them in their time of need, and that is a good thing that all members of this House should be acknowledging and celebrating.

Toni Severin. This is a split call—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. In response to the Prime Minister’s statement, my thoughts go out to those who have been affected by the cyclones with flooding and slips. I can relate to some of these feelings that you are having—from someone who went through the Christchurch earthquakes, from the east side of Christchurch—and not knowing how to get in contact with one’s loved ones is very, very difficult.

When there’s cyclones, we have a large number of businesses affected, farms, small businesses, our horticulture centre, and many lost homes around Northland, Auckland, and the East Coast of the North Island, which will need to be replaced.

As someone who has seen how the recovery for Christchurch earthquake has gone, my suggestion to this Government is to listen to the locals, as they know what their needs are and what needs to be done to rebuild their communities better.

Some of these locals will be part of our disabilities community, who have had extra requirements to be notified re conditions for their safety. Currently in the House, we have an accessibility bill for our disability communities. However, this does not seem to have been listened to by this Government—to make accessibility easy for our disabilities community.

This Government talks about building more housing and infrastructure. Well, they promised with Kāinga Ora a 15 percent for disabled people, universal design—wow! Have we just seen the news recently? Well, I hope—when you look, and if we build these houses—that we look at the future with universal design because, I have been informed, we are all temporarily able. At some stage, we may all become temporarily disabled or permanently disabled. These communities need to be listened to. They know what is required for them to have a better life. And also the cost of living is affecting them more so than some other parts of our communities.

You know, the other thing is this Government says that they want to keep our communities safe. Well, we all want to keep our communities safe. And one area this Government didn’t quite put in here, but it’s very important, is around the rehabilitation of prisoners. Now, how can we release prisoners if they do not have basic literacy and numeracy skills to come back into our communities and be part of those communities and to be offered jobs? We need people on the ground. These people—we know they have done wrong, but let’s give them the opportunity to come out and have a fresh start. But if they don’t have the skills, then how can they part of our communities?

The other thing is electronic monitoring is a possible solution that has been used to keep an eye on some of our prisoners instead of being in prison. But, however, we have a slight problem that, when the power goes out—yes, the electronic bracelets monitor where these people are, but in a big crisis that we have just seen, you know, there is a shortage of people and manpower on the ground to check on these high risk electronic monitored people, and it is putting more pressure on those staff. Again, we have a shortage of corrections staff. How can we also allow prisoners to see their families if we do not have enough staff to be able to allow that? And that is part of their rehabilitation.

Now, also, for these prisoners that have been moved around the country, how can family visit them in a cost of living crisis when things are so expensive? Families can’t fly to visit them; people cannot drive to visit them. So there are so many areas that are still yet to be done, and so much money that needs to be spent. But let’s make sure that the money is spent correctly in the right areas and not just thrown out to consultants. Let’s make sure the money is on the ground, where the infrastructure is needed. And this way, we can have better communities, and better communities for all. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Christmas holidays seem a long way off now, with so much happening all around the country, and our thoughts and support go out to those affected by Cyclone Gabrielle. But as one Napier business owner said to me, “If it’s not the Government trying to ruin your businesses, it’s Mother Nature.” I read about MPs’ holidays overseas, the books they were reading, the family gatherings they were having, and it looked fantastic. But not everyone enjoyed that luxury. I spent a lot of time talking to business owners who don’t know what it’s like to have a holiday. They haven’t had one for years, working every day, often paying themselves a minimum wage—or less—but making sure their staff are paid and looked after. Many of the business owners I spoke to had nothing left in the tank. But they haven’t got the luxury of running away, they have debt and responsibilities.

This Government has made it too difficult to run a business. I spoke to a hospitality business owner who had a kitchenhand walk out on New Year’s Eve, walked out because another kitchenhand called in sick and he didn’t want to work too hard that night. So he just walked out, didn’t answer emails or texts for more than three days. Of course, there are absolutely no consequences for abandoning his employment because it’s just not worth going through the personal grievance process. The business would lose.

I spoke to another business owner who had a senior staff member resign just before Christmas, giving two weeks’ notice. It was pointed out that in his contract it actually says four weeks’ notice must be given, and he just got a smug, “Oh well, I’ll be sick for the other two weeks and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Then there was the cafe owner who made the decision to—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Baillie, this is relating to the Prime Minister’s statement how?

CHRIS BAILLIE: Talking about business, Mr Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well let’s do that then, shall we?

CHRIS BAILLIE: OK. Another business owner example, who had seen criticism from experts who had never owned or run a business. She opened, with encouragement, anyway, knowing that on one of the stat holidays it was going to cost her a lot more, and she ended up making $1,400 dollars. Wages—time-and-a-half, day in lieu, etc.—cost her $2,400.

I also spoke to many business owners who were being harassed.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: While you were speaking, were you listening to the Prime Minister’s statement? Could you just relate this to the Prime Minister’s statement please, Mr Baillie?

CHRIS BAILLIE: Sure. I’m talking about the business owners, the IRD, the small business loans that Mr Robertson talks about all the time. And—

Hon Scott Simpson: It’s all related to the economy, isn’t it?

CHRIS BAILLIE: Oh absolutely; well, that’s what I’m assuming, everything is related to the economy and how the—what it is, is the small business loan is a loan and it has to be paid back. But I was really pleased that over the holidays I got a lot of examples of good workers, and, as Mr Hipkins was talking about, there’s so much support of the young people, and the encouragement they need to do work.

I met a man, a young fella called Axle—we’ll call him Axle anyway—he’s 18 years old and he’s heading to university, which we’re all really pleased about. Started in hospitality in November, wanting to save some money he worked as many hours as he could; actually, he had to be restricted in the number of hours because the firm cared about his welfare. Great worker, and he got a pay rise after two weeks. He got a pay rise not because Minister Wood said he deserved one, but because he did deserve one. He was productive and he helped the business make a profit. The Greens need oxygen when they hear the profit root word, but that is actually how business works.

There was another young 15-year-old girl, who was exactly the same, got on with staff, used her initiative, and was an asset to the business. She earned much more than the minimum wage that Mr Hipkins talks about all the time.

The common denominator was that they both had parents who instilled in them a work ethic. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and the harder you work, the luckier you get. The sad thing is that if this Government’s union-driven agenda is allowed to continue, there will be fewer and fewer Axles and Lucys, and more and more entitled victims who think the world owes them a living.

ACT will reinstate the 90-day trial for all businesses, giving employees a chance and employers the confidence to take a gamble. We will pause all the minimum wage for three years so that the Axles and the Lucys can get a pay rise if they deserve it, and we’ll scrap so-called “fair pay agreements” because they’re not. ACT will ensure business owners get enough support so they can also have holidays.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe, otirā tēnā tātou katoa i roto i tēnei Whare hei tēnei ahiahi. Ko tēnei taku tū tuatahi i tēnei tau hou o te nohanga o te Whare Pāremata.

[Greetings, Mr Speaker, and greetings to everyone in the House this afternoon. This my first time to stand in this new year and new sitting of the House of Parliament.]

Mr Speaker—or, shortly, Madam Speaker—it is an honour and a privilege to take my first stand in Parliament this sitting year. It feels strange, because we are into early March and this is in fact my first time back, sitting here in this House. What a start to the year it has been.

I want to start my contribution in the way that the Prime Minister started his statement, and it was about acknowledging the difficult time for our country. In fact, I wasn’t present for the Prime Minister’s statement, because I am from one of those regions that was impacted by Cyclone Hale but also Cyclone Gabrielle. I was fortunate enough to be given leave by the Prime Minister to stay in Te Tai Tokerau alongside my ministerial colleague and MP for Te Tai Tokerau, Kelvin Davis, so that we could support our communities in the immediate response to the impact that the cyclone had had. I want to join with the Prime Minister in acknowledging the many, many people who, while their families were also impacted by the cyclone, were out there supporting their communities. That is our civil defence, that is our Fire and Emergency, that is our police, that is our Whānau Ora providers, who were getting care packages out to our communities as soon as it was safe to get back on those roads. And it is our road workers who have been fixing our many, many broken roads, some of which are still impassable.

So I want to start my contribution on the Prime Minister’s statement talking about the work that we have ahead of us to respond to the cyclone and to recover, because as I went across Te Tai Tokerau over the last couple of weeks, that is what people are still experiencing and still talking about. I know that there are areas across the motu that weren’t impacted by this event but are looking on and sending their thoughts to those of us in those regions that have been. I listened to the earlier contributions of the Hon Kiritapu Allan from Te Tai Rāwhiti, the Hon Stuart Nash from the Hawke’s Bay, and there’ll be other contributions, I’m sure, this evening from those also impacted. We have a huge piece of work in front of us to recover from this weather event and to prepare and be resilient for future extreme weather events, which we know are becoming more and more common.

In Te Tai Tokerau, we had 28 red stickered houses, 27 yellow, 15 white. In the Kaipara, we had nine red stickered, eight yellow, 30 white. In Whangārei, we have five red stickered, 22 yellow and 17. That’s many whānau severely impacted by this. As we’ve heard over the last couple of weeks, hundreds of local roads were impacted in Te Tai Tokerau from this weather event and also that event at the end of January. Our State Highway 1 Brynderwyns has been opened and, unfortunately, closed again due to further slips. We also had after Cyclone Gabrielle a huge downpour last Friday, which impacted Mangawhai—many people stranded there; again, more houses, families, and businesses impacted. Just to note, though, we are now able to have northbound traffic coming through the Brynderwyns, but further work continues on that to have that reopened. I also think about the Mangamuka, which was impacted last year and we had only just reopened it after the 2020 event.

So part of my absence for the Prime Minister’s speech is that in his speech he says that the solutions to this and the response to this are going to be locally driven. So we have been out in our communities, from Te Kao to Mitimiti, Rāwhiti, Mangawhai, Dargaville, and communities in between, talking about what we need to do together to respond, to recover, and to prepare for a more resilient Te Tai Tokerau in the future. We have started that work. We convened a meeting with leaders. We are looking to put together a plan in coming months to submit to the new Minister and the committee in terms of what the needs are for Te Tai Tokerau. It’s going to be a tough year for Te Tai Tokerau and for Aotearoa.

I want to turn to, though—apart from the cyclone—the other major challenge that we had before the cyclone, and I think has been compounded by the cyclone, is the cost of living challenge for our whānau. I’m really proud of the work that our Government has been doing to support our whānau. There is no silver bullet, as the Prime Minister said, to the high cost of living, and we are providing targeted support for working families, lifting incomes so that those that work hard can get ahead.

If I can share some of those initiatives, as the Prime Minister referred to: we have consistently put whānau first. From the very first day I came in in 2017, within the first 100 days we delivered a package to support whānau, and we have continued to build on that. We’ve supported parents with health costs by expanding free and low-cost doctors visits to children under 14. We’ve introduced mental health support into schools and expanded school-based health services across approximately 300 schools. We’ve introduced the winter energy payment, and we’ve increased main benefits, superannuation, and the family tax credit, student allowances, and the accommodation supplement. We’ve extended paid parental leave to 26 weeks. Low-income New Zealanders have access to increased support for dental costs. We’ve reduced the cost to send our tamariki to school by removing NCEA fees, by removing the school donations for more than 1,600 schools. We’ve served more than 63 million free lunches—free, healthy lunches—in schools, feeding more than 220,000 tamariki through Ka Ora, Ka Ako. And we’ve rolled out—something I’m quite proud of—free period products in more than 2,000 primary, intermediate, kura, and secondary schools. And, as the Prime Minister mentioned, from April this year we will roll out the next phase of the cost of living support. That is in terms of childcare support, and those come into effect in April.

But we’re also supporting families in terms of reduced costs for petrol, for road-user charges, for public transport—and, in fact, the half-price fares for public transport will be made permanent for community service and Total Mobility cardholders. Those are the bread and butter issues in my community in Te Tai Tokerau—cost of living, number one. The region I come from, unfortunately, has some of the lowest average incomes in the country, so this targeted support is making a real and meaningful difference for our communities in Te Tai Tokerau.

I just wanted to highlight a couple of other things. I am very proud to be the Associate Minister of Health, particularly for women and for rural communities. This year we will be developing and delivering, on 1 July, our health strategies, which include a women’s health strategy and a rural health strategy. I was pleased to see the Prime Minister make specific mention that we will be rolling out the HPV primary screening for cervical screening, including the option of self-testing, from July 2023 as well. Also, as the Minister for Youth, I am very proud of the work that we are doing to support our rangatahi and their mental health through direct access to the services in schools, and by the end of 2023 more than 3 million New Zealanders will have had access to free primary mental health and addiction support; 12,100 youth-focused sessions were delivered, and 15,700 kaupapa Māori sessions have also been delivered. We will continue to do this work for youth mental health services.

I see that my time has expired. While I have much more to contribute on the Prime Minister’s statement, that is my speech this afternoon. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. In this offering I want to respond to the Prime Minister’s statement and the outlining of his view of the world: where New Zealand is, where it could be, and especially where he said that his statement was focused, amongst other things, on health. He described what his Government would look like, the prevailing economic conditions, and the cyclone impact. In response I will address these areas.

The PM described the Government that he leads. Well, I’ve decided that the current Government could be best described as the “Jipkinson” Government—that is, the Jacinda Ardern, Chris Hipkins, Grant Robertson Government. And the way I think about what the leader described as this unholy trinity is when I think of “Jipkinson” I think of gypsum, which is a flaky material used as filler and fertiliser. It’s also turned out that gypsum is used as a retardant in Portland cement. Now, Portland cement is in my electorate and I can absolutely confirm to this House that this Government has been a retardant on Portland cement. It’s been a retardant on managing the cost of living. It’s been a retardant on producing enough houses. It’s been a retardant on law and order. And it’s been a retardant on transport especially—the single biggest economic driver for Northland.

State Highway 1 through the Brynderwyns—how many times has it been down during this cyclone season? More times than I care to remember. And when the Brynderwyns goes down, what happens? Well, there’s roughly two roads to the east and the west that then become the proxy, the poor cousin proxy, for State Highway 1. To the east they go through Waipu Cove, Langs Beach, Mangawhai and what happens is the road slowly starts to fall in towards the sea. Out towards the west, they go through Paparoa/Oakley, and, again, the wear and tear of that very poor proxy for State Highway 1 causes significant damage.

What we have is a number of views on part of the solution to this, the four lanes, and I well recall standing with Simon Bridges around about 17 May 2017 and announcing the four lanes as part of the resilience for highways, part of the resilience to cyclones like this, from Toi Road to Marsden, it was, and at that point in time it had a cost-benefit ratio higher than the Waterview Tunnel. In 2018 when the police announced police hotspots—that is, deaths per kilometre—that section of road between Toi Toi Road and Marsden was the number one police hotspot. So on a safety perspective, it ticked a lot of boxes. And was any progress made? No, because, as we all recall, Phil Twyford and his band of very merry people decided that it was a “Holiday Highway”. Those who remember know that this critical infrastructure for Northland was a “Holiday Highway”. And when every single mayor, every single mayor in Northland—and it’s kind of unusual to get that sort of local government support—and the chair of the regional council urgently came down to meet with Phil Twyford to discuss the four lanes, what did he say? Very dramatically, in front of them, he reached behind his desk, grasped a sheet of paper and tore it up, saying, “I will not be implementing National Party policy.” That was how Phil Twyford led out this Government’s progression, if you like, of radical failure to progress roading in Northland. And now we pay the consequence.

We’ve been isolated several times, and I totally get that other areas have too. Hawke’s Bay certainly has as well. But let’s remember the cyclone hovered over Northland for two days before it moved south, and there’s been times when we’ve had almost as many cell towers down as some of the other cyclone areas. So Northland particularly, I think, has some redress and I particularly point to roading. I particularly point to the Brynderwyns, State Highway 1, and the four lanes that were clearly required.

I want to, for a moment, rephrase, because the Prime Minister talked a lot about the economy. And I want to rephrase—I want to redefine, actually, an economic phrase: the OCR—the official cash rate? No, it’s not. It actually stands for “Open Chequebook Robertson”. Whenever we hear “OCR” again, that’s what we should think of: “Open Chequebook Robertson.” And I actually have some dots that I can join to bring all of this together. Now, Brian Roche is well respected by all of us. I respect him, we respect him, you respect him. And, in fact, Grant Robertson in November appointed him as a director of Kiwi Group Ltd. No questions there. But what happened was that during COVID, in 2020 I think this was, there was a COVID19 independent continuous review improvement group that was formed to look at the Valentine’s Day outbreak to review it. And Brian Roche was appointed to that committee. In their review, here’s what they formally wrote: “The ministry has indicated that the ‘chequebook is open’, at least with respect to COVID-19.” Let me just read that again: “The ministry has indicated that the ‘chequebook is open’ at least with respect to COVID19.” That is the Grant Robertson chequebook. OCR: official cash rate? No, “Open Chequebook. Robertson.” That’s what that actually stands for.

The Prime Minister’s statement talked a lot about health and about how he was going to focus this Government back on health. Well, let’s look at some of those things. Let’s look at maternity and where the midwives are at the moment. And let’s also reflect that maternity was a delegation to the current Minister of Health. She owned everything to do with maternity over the past two years. That is part of her baggage. And how has that gone for our midwives? Midwives have some of the biggest shortages in the health sector. How did that go under Minister Ayesha Verrall? Well, I can tell you. What happened under Ayesha Verrall is that she refused to say that there was a crisis in midwifery, and then she had the audacity to write in answers to parliamentary questions that midwives are coping in the regions. I don’t think so. Show me one—anyone who is coping. And yet this is now the new Minister of Health who has done such a poor job in maternity.

It actually gets worse. There was $180 million of maternity action plan through Budget 2020, and, would you believe, $60 million of that really important maternity action plan funding went to health reforms, and we know that from written question No. 30042 where the Minister replies that $60 million over four years was committed to support the health and disability review reforms—money taken from maternity and pushed towards the Government ideology. So that’s where the current Minister stands on maternity. Good luck with midwives making any progress there.

If Prime Minister Hipkins is so interested in health, let’s talk about emergency department (ED) wait times. This is what really worries me, because I think ED is sort of the canary in the mine. And I say that because when primary care fails, ED backs up. When the hospital sector fails, ED backs up. It’s not a bad measure. And what have we seen? Well, first of all, Andrew Little hit them a year ago, no longer reported them until he was shamed through written parliamentary questions to suddenly put them up and report them quarterly. Absolutely shamed. And so the last reporting was through to 30 June last year, and then this Government decided to stop reporting them quarterly as well. And so what we know is that in June last year, the last ED wait time target was 76 percent. Remember, you want the number to be high because it shows how close we’re actually getting to target. Then, mysteriously, about two weeks ago, Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand’s first performance report suddenly, magically, produces the ED wait times. Surprise, surprise, they’ve gone down 71 percent. Why would you do that? Because you know they’re bad. Why would not bring out the December quarter results for ED wait times? Because you know they’re bad.

How bad? Well, let’s have a look at some of those figures. I have a lot of angst, and it was interesting hearing the member for Palmerston North trumpet up his ED. I have a lot of worry for MidCentral and have done for a while. I know some of that team quite well, but, unfortunately, their ED is tail-end Charlie. They bring up the worst figures. They started at the beginning of the year on 55 percent to target, and at the last report they’re down to 36 percent—the biggest difference across any of the previous district health board sector.

I then worry about Capital and Coast. They’ve had a 15 percent reduction—the second biggest, from 67.6 to 49.6, and nationally, over the year, ED wait times have gone down from 78 percent to 71 percent. What we know is that Minister Verrall said that there were supposed improvements to Middlemore, one of our hotspot EDs, that would make it resilient before winter, and on that very same afternoon, the ex-chair of Health New Zealand, Rob Campbell, said that Middlemore Hospital would not be ready in time for the winter flu season—a clear difference between the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health. I worry about EDs. I worry a lot. I worry about the workforce. They are tired. They are fatigued. I cannot believe that the Prime Minister has the gall to stand here and say he is focused on health. He has not been. His team has not been, and the sector is tired and exhausted. We need to give some assurance to New Zealanders that in their time of most urgent need ED will be there for them. I do believe that. I do believe that, but my goodness, there is a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of planning. There’s a lot of trust, and I don’t believe this Government or a Government that Prime Minister Hipkins will lead will be successful in any of those areas. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Tēnā koutou e te Whare, tēnā koutou i te āwhā nui i pā ki a Aotearoa i ngā wiki tata nei. E mihi ana ki te hunga e noho ana i te Tairāwhiti, te puku o te whenua, Tāmaki Makaurau, te Tairāwhiti me ō rātou pakeketanga i tēnei wā.

Haere e ngā mate, haere ki te kāinga tūturu o te tangata. Ka hoki mai ki a tātou te kanohi ora e pae nei, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Greetings, Madam Speaker. Greetings to everyone in the House, and greetings to all those in the big storms that have impacted Aotearoa in the last few weeks. I acknowledge those living in the East Coast, the centre of the North Island, Auckland, and the East Coast with their associated trials at this time.

To the dead, return to the original home of people. To return us all, the living who sit here, greetings, greetings, greetings one and all.]

I’m delighted to speak in support—wholehearted tautoko—of our Prime Minister’s statement that was delivered in very challenging times at the start of this year. But I’m really delighted to be on the team of Prime Minister Hipkins. I’m really thrilled to have extra responsibilities—elevated to the Ministers ranks—and, look, we are a new team. We have got a new Prime Minister, we’ve got a new focus, and this is a new direction. It’s a wonderful statement that we’ve giving, outlining the mahi that we want to continue with, the ongoing mahi—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: The other way was no good?

Hon RINO TIRIKATENE: Taihoa, Mr Brownlee, taihoa—taihoa. Your chance might come later. We are committed to the mahi that we have ahead, and there is a lot of mahi that we have under way, which has been outlined very clearly by our Prime Minister. It’s about getting back to the basics. It is about those bread and butter issues: the cost of living, strengthening our communities, and our infrastructure.

A case in point: as I mentioned in my mihi at the start, I want to acknowledge the terrible devastation that has been inflicted on the communities in the North, particularly the Hawke’s Bay, Te Tai Rāwhiti, and also up into Tai Tokerau and Tāmaki-makau-rau, from Cyclone Hale and Cyclone Gabrielle. In Te Wai Pounamu, we’ve been fortunate—we’ve been spared by Tāwhirimātea—but we have lots of whānau connections. They’re all our whanaunga up in the North, and I want to just acknowledge all of the first responders, everyone, the communities, New Zealanders at large, Aotearoa whānui, who have been rallying and providing their awhi and support and hard work—just boots on the ground—that is needed. I particularly want to acknowledge our marae, many of which I grew up around, when I was young. I think of Ōmahu. I think of Mōteo. I think, just going around, up the way to Waiōhiki. I think of Mōhaka, which has been cut off. I think of all of those communities and I want to acknowledge the work that our marae have done and are continuing to play in the recovery. I want to acknowledge our tuāhine and all local members that have been rallying and giving so much on-the-ground support for our families.

Not only that, we as a Government have been right there backing up our affected regions and, as has been stated by the Prime Minister, we will continue to stand by these communities as well. I’m delighted that we have given $55 million to our farmers and growers for the immediate clean up and recovery, $17 million of which has been drawn down. I’m delighted that we’ve had $15 million go directly into our Māori marae and across our Māori communities, specifically focused on the big job that they have ahead. We have been working very closely with our affected communities, and that is the hallmark of what we do as a Government. We are a caring Government, and we care about those communities and we stand by them, and we have followed it up. There will be many more announcements to come and much more mahi to do over the coming weeks and months as we help them rebuild.

I’m so excited, really, because our Prime Minister’s statement outlined so many wonderful things that we’re doing as a Government. I’m now really proud that in my role—I want to talk about the importance of trade, which is a bread and butter issue, which our Prime Minister has as a key area of focus in our job ahead and in the months to follow. Trade is so important for Aotearoa. It’s important for the Māori economy. Our wealth as a nation is built upon us trading, and that has always been the case and it will continue to be the case. It’s so important that we connect with the outside world—that we have free-trade agreements (FTA) in place—that we can sell our wonderful goods and services and products to the markets of the world, so we can earn foreign exchange dollars and increase our wealth and standard of living. I’m delighted, as the Minister of State for Trade and Export Growth—associate trade role—to be working with Minister O’Connor on deepening and growing our trade architecture and strengthening it so that we can get greater goods market access, make more money through having reduced or no tariffs, so we get more returns back to our hard-working exporters.

In addition to that, it’s about positioning Aotearoa in the global community and in regional groups. That is so important for us as a relatively small nation here in the South Pacific. I’m delighted we’ve made some significant trade policy outcomes that have been achieved just in the last year alone. We have completed and signed the UK FTA, which is a significant agreement. It opens up a massive market into the UK. We also followed that up with the EU FTA. These are massive markets which offer great potential but also immediate benefit: 99.5 percent of our goods that go into the UK market will immediately benefit from having no tariffs upon the entering of that agreement. We’re just waiting on the UK Parliament to finish off their formalities, and then those benefits will immediately accrue to the New Zealand export sector. Likewise, with the EU FTA, 91 percent of tariffs will be removed immediately upon that agreement coming into force.

These free-trade agreements are not only important commercially for goods access but, as I’ve said, they’re very important to progress and to position Aotearoa on really important global and regional issues: trade and sustainability development provisions. Case in point: yesterday, Aotearoa hosted the first ever French Pacific Business Forum, up in Auckland, and we had the French Minister delegate Becht attend that with French Polynesia, Tahiti, Wallis and Futuna, and also New Caledonia. There is great, I guess, excitement and anticipation from major nations such as France at the work that we are doing in the Pacific around the creation of these trade and sustainable development provisions through the FTA. The EU has agreed to climate change targets, recognition of compliance with the Paris Agreement, environmental provisions, provisions around small business, around women, around Māori, through our Māori trade and economic chapters. These are real, fantastic innovations that we are doing to ensure that not only are we getting greater goods access for Aotearoa but we are also having those wider benefits of ensuring that our Trade For All agenda is actually being fulfilled. Trade For All is all about ensuring that the trade that we do as a nation reaches out to all communities and all who rely on trade, because it is such a vital earner for our nation.

I’m very proud of the work that we are doing as a Government. I’m only on the first portfolio and I don’t really have much time left! So I’ll go back to trade—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: It’s amazing how much you’ve done in three weeks!

Hon RINO TIRIKATENE: A lot of work, Mr Brownlee. A lot of mahi—a lot of mahi. In fact, we are hosting the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership Ministers this year—a major, major trade bloc. We have the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership—that is 30 percent of the world’s trade that is captured, and we are at the heart of that trade architecture. These are really significant trade agreements. New Zealand is leading the way. I want to acknowledge our officials and our fantastic teams in te Manatū Aorere for the work that they do, because the benefits are flowing thanks to a Government that really supports and backs trade, backs our exporters, and backs our communities to ensure that we can raise our living standards and have a brighter future. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou. I tautoko the Prime Minister’s statement. Kia ora.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. What a privilege to rise and speak in full support of our Prime Minister’s statement. There’s a saying that goes, “Crises don’t create heroes, they simply reveal character.” So I’d like to begin my statement recognising our first responders who have been on the ground with every weather event, putting themselves at risk to be there for our communities. Even post each one of those events, they have been on the ground despite often facing personal circumstances that have affected their homes and their whānau. I particularly want to recognise the loss of Dave van Zwanenberg and Craig Stevens, our firefighters out at Muriwai who lost their lives when they headed out to help their community members.

These last several weeks I think a lot about how much we have lost and how many people have been affected. I think about those we lost on the North Shore, Daniel Miller and Daniel Newth. I think about the businesses—a huge number—who were affected in Wairau Valley side of my electorate. A few days ago, I spoke to a community member from Massey who talked to me about how his home in Massey had been flooded four times over the last two years, three of those times just in the recent flooding events. He showed me pictures of his home over the course of a few hours where the water rose to two metres high, running all through his home, taking out his fence, through his garage and into his garden. He spoke about his wife and his two children and told me that none of his family members could swim and the trauma they felt when they had to evacuate themselves, but also the subsequent trauma they feel whenever it rains stays with them. I think about those who are affected in Greenhithe, with the severe rain that occurred on 24 February. I drove through Greenhithe the next morning to see the slips on the main road through Greenhithe as well as on the hills.

I think about the community at Muriwai, the fire and emergency team led by Phelan, their chief. The Prime Minister and I visited the fire and emergency team a while ago, and while the grown-ups spoke I met a little boy who’d lost his dad and he stood in his father’s boots while he spoke to some of us. Some people have lost everything. Others have lost that which is simply never going to be replaceable. I’ve been back to Muriwai several times over the last few weeks and the exhaustion is palpable. These are people who need to be listened to. These are people who need support. And that is exactly why the Government has put in support systems. The calling of a national state of emergency made a huge difference, and that allowed the allocation of national resources to assist those on the ground.

In the days after the cyclone, I visited the Trusts Stadium and spoke to a British couple who were visiting New Zealand and staying in the lodge at Muriwai. I drove them out to recover some of their essential items and they spoke about our defence force turning up in the middle of the night and them being very quickly loaded into the back of those defence vehicles. That sense of a swift response was so important.

The civil defence payment has been important to so many who can’t access their insurance payments. The temporary accommodation scheme set up through the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has been fundamentally crucial for so many who’ve been displaced, matching them with accommodation needs. And the business supports that have been stood up; the $3 million for flood recovery payments to help those who’ve been significantly affected, the $1 million worth of support for mental wellbeing through the First Steps programme, and the $1 million for small business advice focused on business continuity and resilience. This isn’t just money. This means a lot to our small to medium sized enterprises, in particular, who’ve been affected in Wairau Valley.

We’re also a Government who’ve identified that there will be a mid-term need to support impacted people through the insurance process. I understand that just in relation to the first flooding events, insurers received 47,936 claims. Many more would have followed through the subsequent cyclone and other weather events, which is why the Government has put in place the New Zealand Claims Resolution Service to support homeowners with insurance claims following these natural events. This service will be there to provide a number of different aspects like legal support, technical, as well as wellbeing, and this will ensure that for those that can, they can settle their claims early.

In addition to the direct support and response in the short term, ours is a Government who gets it. We understand the reason why what were one-in-100-year events are turning into more frequent events. We understand the scale of the climate crisis we face. Possibly about 15 years ago, I was interviewed on the Rainbow Warrior II for a job as a climate campaigner which I was blessed to have been offered and then took up. I spent so much time in my role with Greenpeace just sharing information to ensure that people understood that climate change has been and continues to be caused as a result of human action, and actually, now, also human inaction. We are so well beyond the view that persuasion is needed. Now we are well into a period of action, and our Government is a Government that has taken this climate challenge very seriously. We have done more in the last five years on climate change than any previous Government, but we still do need to do more.

In May last year we released the emissions reduction plan, which is preparing for what is to come and, indeed, some may say what has already arrived, and it ensures that the country is on track to meet our first emissions budget. Every sector is playing a part, and our plan is achievable because it includes a role for Government as well as every community and sector in the economy. Ours is a Government who understands that protecting the environment must be a priority. We’ve done this through other ways as well: we banned new offshore drilling for fossil fuels; we’re decarbonising the industrial sector so more processed heat is from renewable sources not just fossil fuels; we’ve co-funded over 1,300 electric vehicle charges across New Zealand, as well as trials for new low-emissions transport options; and we’ve made 100,000 homes warmer, drier, and more energy efficient through our Warmer Kiwi Homes programme. We are decarbonising the public sector to achieve carbon-neutrality by 2025. We get it—we get it. It’s not just about responding now; it is also about planning for the future.

I’ll end where I began; acknowledging the community members who have been so deeply affected. But I also want to acknowledge those in the community who’ve actively supported, actively followed up, who haven’t waited a heartbeat to get out there with food support, with clothes support, anything that the community needed. I also actually want to acknowledge a few colleagues from other parties who have put people before politics. I want to acknowledge Karen Chhour, who came to a clinic in Unsworth Heights with me to talk to those affected. I want to acknowledge Chris Penk, who has been sharing information with Marja Lubeck and I about those affected in the north-west. People come first. People must come first, and that is entirely what this Government is about. I also want to acknowledge the leadership in my electorate, in the Upper Harbour electorate, who were part of a very stand up group of principals, community centre managers, community leaders, local board members, all of whom said, “Whatever you need stood up, at any time, you just tell us, we will do it.” It is a powerful story about who New Zealand is and New Zealanders are.

To the affected communities: kia kaha. We stand alongside you through this recovery process, but we also stand alongside you as we plan ahead to minimise any future damage from weather events. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to speak in the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement, especially given the fact that there was a glaring omission from his statement and that was around how this Government are going to turn around the decline in educational standards of our kids.

In the last five years, I would argue that this Government has had an education Minister who has been distracted. We’ve had an education Minister who has focused his efforts on things like banning fizzy drinks in our schools and investigating getting rid of international students and then backing down. Meanwhile, the achievement levels of our kids have been declining.

We expected—or the country should expect of an education Minister—to work towards solving the declining achievement of the last 20 years that saw us go from the top of the OECD in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores to amongst the bottom. If you take math, we went from third in the OECD to 19th. The horrifying statistic—to put that in context—is that our kids have lost 1½ years of schooling by going from third in the world to 19th in the world. The equivalent is a loss of 1.5 years. What’s worse is that when Christopher Hipkins was the Minister of Education, he said in select committee around the Programme for International Student Assessment results, “Well, it’s OK if other countries do better than us.”—true story. “It’s OK if other countries overtake us. That’s no problem. Good for them.”

Let’s just set that aside for a moment and look at our own data: less than half of our kids are at curriculum by the time they finish intermediate—less than half; 45 percent are at curriculum for math; writing, 35 percent; reading, 56 percent; and science, a very dismal 20 percent. And it doesn’t get any better, because the numeracy and literacy assessment that was piloted last year showed very similar results. Things have not got any better. Reading, a 64 percent pass; writing, a 34 percent; and math, 56 percent—and much, much worse if you are in a high-equity or low-decile school. The system, for 20 years, has let down teachers and it’s let down kids.

The numeracy and literacy results of last year should have been a massive wake-up call. And what did we get? We saw, over the last few months, we’ve had a quibble between the Minister of Education via the ministry and New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) over the level of the test. And what we saw was the ministry trying to tell NZQA to use easier words, to have less questions, and to allow kids to use spellcheck in their literacy tests.

A month after, Jan Tinetti, the Associate Minister of Education, said that she committed that she would not reduce the quality of those tests, the standard of those tests. A month after that, Ministry of Education officials were telling NZQA to use simpler words, to have less questions, and to let kids use spell check. The education system, I would argue, should be teaching our kids to analyse text to infer meaning from context to understand unfamiliar words. But here we have the Ministry of Education as directed by the Minister telling NZQA to use simpler words.

Ironically, one of the words that was brought up in the briefing by the ministry was one of the words that shouldn’t be used—an example of that—the word “ambitious”. Make no mistake: the Minister might need it to use a dictionary to look up the meaning of the word ambitious, but for our kids, this Minister has absolutely no ambition. She is actively working with the Ministry of Education to dumb down these tests to make the results look better, to get more kids across the line, when what we need to actually be doing is going, “What is the cause of this?” We are flying completely blind. These poor 15-year-olds. We have no idea where they’re at through the curriculum, we’ve got no progression monitoring, we don’t know if they’re hitting milestones along the way. Even the Education Review Office, in all of their reports for the last 20 years, have said that the level of variance of our assessment of progression through the curriculum is highly variable. And we’ve had five years of a Government that have done absolutely nothing about this. At the point now—we’re staring down the barrel of 15-year-olds next year, having to sit a literacy and numeracy test that, the results are showing, they will most likely fail and will not get their NCEA.

When the Minister’s officials were asked, “Have you done any analysis on the number of kids who leave after gaining NCEA level 1 or NCEA level 2 who are likely not to pass this test and not to get their qualifications?”—“Oh, no, we haven’t done that analysis.” So we’ve got thousands of kids who are potentially at risk of not getting an NCEA qualification. And there’s been no analysis done by any of the officials to work out how many kids are going to be affected.

And, as I said, we can quibble about the test, but the real question has to be: how are we preparing our kids through primary and intermediate and lower high school to be prepared for that test? Because after five years, all we’ve had is an action plan at the end of last year that we might start thinking about how we’re going to monitor progression through the curriculum in a few years. Meanwhile, we have failed generations of kids—absolutely no ambition for those kids.

And as I said, we’re flying completely blind. The number of parents that say to us, “I have no idea where my kid is at in the curriculum. I don’t know until they’re three years behind.” And here’s a fact that lots of people don’t know that principals tell me all the time: unless a child is more than three years behind the curriculum, they cannot access any support.

Hon Member: That is completely incorrect.

ERICA STANFORD: Well, that’s what principals tell me, and if you want to argue with them, be my guest—but three years. And here’s the thing, the curriculum that we have hides kids who are falling through the cracks. Two-yearly bands and three-yearly bands now in the new curriculum—it’s hiding the fact that kids are falling further and further behind. We are building into the curriculum an allowance for kids to fail because of huge bands. And that is something that this Government have not looked at in the last couple of years—in the last five years, even.

I want to turn now to attendance, because what we’ve heard from this Government over the last few years is that “It’s complex, it’s multifactorial, it needs a tailored solution, that there are so many drivers to this problem.” And then what we had this month was an announcement to this complex, multi-factored problem that needs a tailored solution. We got 82 attendance officers—82—for a complex problem. Now, what was interesting on the weekend, when Jan Tinetti did The Nation, is we found out that those 82 officers weren’t for the chronically truant kids—the 100,000 chronically truant kids going to school less than 70 percent of the time. It wasn’t for the unenrolled kids, who we have 8,000 of now—which is more than more than doubled under this Government’s watch. It’s not for them; it’s for the moderately truant kids.

What’s even worse is they’re not actually for the kids. As it turns out, on the weekend, we find out that the truancy officers are just for the schools to give them advice. It’s another level of bureaucracy. They’re not officers to actually go into houses and help get kids to school. “Oh, maybe in some circumstances”, the Minister said. But, actually, what we really need is a tailored solution and to trust schools to know what to do. Instead we got 82 officers; not for the 100,000 kids, not for the 8,000, but for a handful of schools, because that’s all they’re going to be able to cover.

This Government, under both Chris Hipkins as Minister and now Jan Tinetti, have, firstly, not acknowledged the problem, they’ve not taken responsibility, and what’s worse is all we have now is a culture of excuses and a lack of ambition for our kids. I can guarantee you, Madam Speaker—

Order! The member’s time is up.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I’d just like to acknowledge the traumatic events of the last few weeks, and we have had so much about the initial response, the bravery, the sacrifices, how communities have wrapped around, and the loss and the trauma suffered.

I want to take a moment, as we continue to support the response and prepare for the recovery and rebuild, to consider the very important role and positive and significant role—that you haven’t heard about from the other side—that our schools and educators are playing, and will continue to play, as we rebuild and rebound strongly. Schools, alongside our marae and churches, have been a safe place for people to gather, to share food, to share tears and stories, to find a bed and clean clothes. In the middle of all of that, we’ve heard about the incredible damage to our campuses, to our kura, and to the institute, the Eastern Institute of Technology campus over on the coast. And we heard from our honourable Minister McAnulty about how desperate those schools were to reopen. We’re down to less than a dozen—it is amazing—despite the damage to their schools, and despite the significant personal loss and trauma of the adults in those schools as well.

We know that they’re doing this because they know that they play such a vital role in this recovery. Schools are a place where students turn up and they support each other and they find support, they share their stories, and they gather strength—and somehow they’re still working on their learning. This Government understands the importance of a strong, high quality public education system—and we back it; we invest in it—the role that it plays in building a workforce, an economy, but also engaged and able citizens, and a healthy society. We’ve walked the talk. We’ve heard the Prime Minister talk about the extended childcare support that is going to enable 10,000 children—10,000 children; not a win-win, but a win-win-win, all right? Not just for households who have reduced costs and increased incomes but for employers because they have got more parents able to enter the workforce and attend to some of those shortages, but, most importantly, for our tamariki, because we all know how life changing access to early childhood is for them.

At the other end of the learning journey, we have heard about the 600 percent—just in six months last year—increase in the training incentive allowance. And we heard again today about the individual lives, and their whānau, who are impacted for the rest of their lives by access to education that way: 215 trades training positions, 54,000 apprentices. How are we going to rebuild this country? By rebuilding our workforce, and we’ve done it. And we continue to do it. We have built 32,000 additional classroom spaces. We have provided access to school-based health services for 115,000 secondary students. We’ve delivered 33,000 hours of free counselling to primary, intermediate, and secondary school students.

Just a couple of weeks ago, we have heard of an even greater investment in our attendance network: $74 million in addition to the 88 already committed. That will put dozens of attendance officers into schools to contribute to all of the other services that are going on. You asked schools and teachers what they need, and we’ve delivered it.

Hon Member: Ha, ha!

ANGELA ROBERTS: I’m glad to see that you’re pleased that that’s happening.

This Government has proven it has the leadership to attend to what is important to New Zealanders. We are not scared to acknowledge and rise to the challenges—and we do have them in education. But rather than fall back lazily on old and failed ideologies, we are curious; we investigate; we gather the data; we talk to the professionals, the academics, with iwi, with whānau and their kids; and we come up with change that is effective—we invest, better start being a great example. Our educators will play a critical role in our recovery and rebuild. It will be a long, hard road, but we’ve learnt, through earthquakes and through COVID, that teachers and schools step up and they respond. And this is especially important as we’re supporting families who’ve got no washing machine for the school uniform, no books, and no bed, and are still doing their best to get their students to school. Teachers, educators, schools will do it creatively, nimbly, and with expertise and humanity for years to come, and for that we are incredibly grateful. Thank you.

I call on Lemauga Lydia Sosene for five minutes.

I am delighted to be able to respond to the Prime Minister’s statement and thank you for the opportunity—fa‘afetai tele lava.

I want to begin my short contribution to acknowledge the many people around Aotearoa who have been affected by the Auckland floods at the end of January and only two weeks later Cyclone Gabrielle. In my home town in South Auckland, in Māngere, in Tāmaki-makau-rau—[Interruption] All good. Many of the families who were flooded out were affected, and I want to acknowledge the lives of the 11 New Zealanders who went through trauma, losing their family members, and so I want to acknowledge their loved ones.

It is very important that at this time I have got the opportunity to acknowledge the first responders and those first responders who came to help and boots on the ground, communities like ours just jumped into action. And following that, we were able to set up the Māngere evacuation community centre, which had help not only for our local people but people right across the motu. We were very fortunate that in the couple of days that the Prime Minister was appointed, he rocked up with the Deputy Prime Minister and they visited with other Ministers to inform our community that this Government was helping and would be continuing to build back better and help our communities become resilient.

As I don’t have much time, I quickly want to reflect on the Prime Minister’s statement that the families across Aotearoa, that businesses who have lost all their wares—there is no silver bullet. The Labour Government continues to respond and I am proud of the work that this Government is doing. It consistently puts families first. The cost of living pressures, the Government has announced the lifting of incomes; the supermarket sector, the competition to make groceries and everyday needs affordable at this time. And one of the most important programmes that we have is the winter energy payment that many of our mātuas will be accessing in May of this year—that will help single adults get an extra $21 and couples with dependent children an extra $31 a week.

In terms of the low unemployment at 3.4 percent, there are 2.9 million New Zealanders now in work and the Government recognises the staff shortages in some of the sectors and we welcome the announcement by the Minister of Immigration that assistance is given to employers to assist with recruitment. The rebuilding of our communities to be resilient is being locally led. You’ve heard our Prime Minister make those comments.

I want to end off my contribution. Last week, in the recess, we had a select committee every single day in Auckland and it was a welcoming select committee to be part of, to hear all the committee come together, the Environment Committee. And so I thought I would catch the bus, I would catch public transport and test out how good the half-price public fare is. So 6.15 a.m., on the bus, in Māngere—Māngere town centre—and to my pleasant surprise, when I caught that bus, that bus was full with students and workers and parents who actually got their tamariki up really early. That trip costs me under $3 from Māngere to Auckland Town Hall.

And I thought I’d test it even further, so I jumped on the train from the CBD, Queen Street, all the way back through Sylvia Park, back to Ōtahuhu, back to Māngere. Again, that shows you that this Government is listening to Kiwis across Aotearoa. The fact that we have extended the programme of public transport fares is amazing, and I would challenge all of our colleagues to catch public transport where you don’t have to pay $30 at the fuel pump.

Lastly, infrastructure’s really important and the Government has invested $9 billion and will be increasing to $12 billion.

Order! Order! The member’s time is up, thank you. I call on Stuart Smith for five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, I will address the Prime Minister’s statement shortly, but I also want to acknowledge all of the people who have been badly affected by the cyclone and the heavy rainfall event in Auckland. But I particularly want to focus on the wine industry, which is where I came from before entering into Parliament, and acknowledge all of those people who have lost their vineyards—all that work that they put in—or lost their crops. They’ve gone right throughout the year just to get to harvest and then have it all taken from them. That’s a very tough and bitter pill to swallow, and just kia kaha to all of those people.

I have to also say hats off to the Restaurant Association and New Zealand Winegrowers, who have put a programme together where you all—Madam Speaker and everyone else—can do something to help, by going to a restaurant in Cooking up a Storm on 20 March. The proceeds from you dining with a two-course meal goes to the cyclone relief and to those in the hospitality sector in those affected areas. I think that’s something tangible that we can all do—we all have to eat and you might as well spend your money when it’s going to such a good cause. And well done to those wineries that have supported by giving wine, and other suppliers who have given their supplies to those restaurants to be able to run that programme. I think it’s a fantastic programme and please, let’s all get in behind that and do something tangible to help them.

That said, vintage is getting under way in Marlborough now and the fruit coming in is pretty good, so things are starting to move. But, despite what the Prime Minister said in his statement, there are significant issues out there. A lot of them are really self-inflicted by really slow policy adjustments to a changing situation. Any of the tourism businesses I go into in my electorate—and there are many—are struggling. They’re not struggling because they haven’t got customers; they’ve got plenty of customers—they don’t have staff. This has been talked about for months. My colleague Erica Stanford has been coming up with a really good policy: what could and should have been done months ago, and it hasn’t been. We’re paying a very dear price for that now, with restaurants not opening at night or not opening during the day or having a day off when they would normally be open because they simply don’t have the staff; they don’t want to exhaust the staff they do have and not give the level of service that they would like to give. So that is a really simple solution that could and should have been put in place very early on but wasn’t. These things have to be acted on quickly and ahead of the game, not afterwards. Unfortunately, we have a history of that.

Another issue that’s causing significant problems in my electorate, and for a lot of people around New Zealand, is the ferries are not running at the moment reliably. I spoke to KiwiRail this morning and I’ve got a fantastic contact there who very generously gave me a rundown on what’s happening. We have got old ferries in the Interislander fleet which have had a significant run of breakdowns that have, effectively, helped Michael Wood out with his pothole programme that he’s got, rolling them out all over the country. Now we have Cook Strait as the biggest pothole on State Highway 1. We can’t get trucks across there. We can’t get passengers across there. We have got a significant issue there which is holding up our economy. I think it’s just one of those other things that could have been got in front of years ago and hasn’t been.

Bluebridge have also, unfortunately, had the same run of issues, or different issues, of their ferries also not being able to run reliably. It has caused a significant issue, and I think that we should acknowledge that it’s been a massive impost on our economic activity. Those costs are going to really come home to roost for a lot of companies around New Zealand, and they’ve slowed up a whole lot of other activity.

So just to finish off, I’d like to please remind everyone again, Cooking up a Storm on 20 March. Have a good night out and put your hands in your pocket to help—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! The member’s time is up.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Firstly, can I just add my voice and pass on my deepest condolences for the loss of our two firefighters that were caught in the Muriwai slip, Craig Stevens and Dave van Zwanenberg. I have to say that everyone remembers where they were when they got the news. I was at the Silverdale fire station in my own electorate when the news came through. Obviously there was a very sombre mood, but our firefighters kept on turning out and they kept on responding to the communities that needed them. So I just want to acknowledge them and their families.

It’s very easy for politicians to stand up in this House and for us to acknowledge our first responders and the amazing work that they do in supporting us, and it’s important that we do that. But part of the problem that we have in this country—and certainly there was a megaphone put around it on the 27th in Auckland when we were hit with an event that we were hours late in having a state of emergency declaration put in place. That’s been well litigated through the media. It’s something that we have to have a look at in the review. Certainly, in my electorate, there was no excuse for it. I rang my own acting police district commander and said, “Why is there not a state of emergency in place?” He said, “We’ve been asking for that for four hours.”

We had people trapped, we had roads going down, we had power going out, and we realised very quickly that a centralised response was not able to prioritise, was not able to triage, which meant that we weren’t getting the right people in the right place at the right time. And that’s something that we actually have to look at in this review and make sure that we get it right, because a centralised model doesn’t always work. And I think that the one thing that has been shown very clearly with Cyclone Gabrielle is that the local response is what’s actually worked for the local communities.

I want to thank and acknowledge my own police Area Commander Roger Small; my Chief Fire Officer, Don McErlich; our senior manager for St John’s, Andy Everiss; and Faron Turner from our surf clubs—just four of our leaders. There were many more, but they all came together and we clearly identified that we had to take a local response back for the second round that we had come through Auckland. We made sure that we positioned our surf lifesaving assets at the fire station. That became a local command and control centre. St John’s had their mobile unit there, police operated out of there, and it meant that second time around, without using the centralised model, we were able to get the right people in the right place at the right time.

I visited the Hawke’s Bay. I went to Wairoa, where I met with the deputy mayor, because the mayor was actually down with COVID. Denise Eaglesome-Karekare, by the way, has provided outstanding leadership at a time when she lost her own house and they had three families trying to live in a four-bedroom home while she was still responding to the needs of her community. I want to acknowledge Juanita Savage. She was the incident controller in Wairoa. When she turned up, there was no power and there were no comms. She lit a candle and she tried to work out how they were going to deal with it. The farmers were actually the heroes on the night. They figured out what was happening in town. They got their tractors out, they hooked on the trailers, and they rolled into town and they started taking people off house roofs to save them from the floodwaters.

I went to Puketapu in Hawke’s Bay, where Kirsten Thompson, a young mum with some civil defence experience, had stood up to actually fill the gap that was left by civil defence and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in terms of no response for her community. She turned her house into an emergency centre. She did that for 12 days. On the 13th day, she called a public meeting and she begged for help and said, “I cannot do this any more. I need the Government to step in and take over.” That’s what they need. All these communities now, especially the ones that are isolated—Wairoa’s still cut off from Napier, Ruatōria is still cut off from Gisborne. They had their first public meeting in Ruatōria only about three days ago.

These are their major concerns: number one, that they’ve been forgotten; number two, that there’s no decisions been made. They’re not getting decision makers in front of them. They’ve stepped up through the worst of it when they had the adrenaline running, when they realised and they understood what they had to do to support and protect their communities. They are the true heroes. And the thing about our first responders in this country is that they’re so good. They go above and beyond. They often plaster over the cracks that have been created by the faceless bureaucrats that are sitting around computer terminals more interested in entering data than actually making sure they get the right people to the right place.

You might look in horror over the other side, but this is fact. This is coming from the people in the communities that are actually doing the job. So let’s step up and make sure that, number one, they aren’t forgotten; number two, they get the decision makers in front of them; and, number three—

Order! The member’s time has expired. I understand this is a split call. I call Marja Lubeck—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I know I only have five minutes, but I want to say a couple of things, starting off with a big thankyou to our Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, who has basically had everything thrown at him from the very first moment he started off in his new role, a mere six weeks ago. So I stand here in support of the Prime Minister’s statement and the vision that he laid out in the House.

As this is my first contribution for the year, I also would like to pay my respects to Jacinda Ardern for the role that she has played in navigating New Zealand and New Zealanders through the many challenges that we’ve faced over the last five years. I was part of a New Zealand delegation in 2019, in April, to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the global organisation of national parliaments, and it was really moving to have every delegate from every country that attended come up to us and express their admiration and gratitude to New Zealand for its leadership in the response to the 15 March attack. Jacinda Ardern, of course, also earned the world’s respect for keeping New Zealanders safe during the worldwide COVID pandemic, and we had the lowest death rate in the OECD.

So I am proud to now stand here with a team that was united and showed unanimous support for Chris Hipkins to take on the role of Prime Minister six weeks ago. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has dealt with the challenges that immediately upon him taking on the role were thrown on him, and I am extremely proud to be part of a team with such amazing leadership.

The challenge the Prime Minister has had to deal with is now described as the worst weather event of this century. The effects of the weather events in late January, followed by the cyclone and more rain again, are absolutely devastating, and I do join my colleagues from around the House who have given us the comment that they wanted to express their thoughts to all of the emergency services, who have been working so hard all around the country to keep people safe. I also want to put on the record my condolences to those who have lost family and lost friends and who have suffered damage and losses that will be felt for a very long time to come.

The Prime Minister and colleagues like Minister Barbara Edmonds, and several other of my colleagues like the absolutely amazing Vanushi Walters, have visited the community of Muriwai after the tragedy. They met with the fire brigade members at the station, who are grieving the loss of two of their colleagues—their brothers—and my condolences go out to the family, friends, and colleagues of volunteer firefighters Craig Stevens and Dave van Zwanenberg.

On the other side of Kaipara ki Mahurangi, the communities were hard hit too when the cyclone hit and the flooding started. In the North, we were cut off for days from going north or south, as the roads had all closed due to slips and the floods. There was no power. For many on tank water, it also means that they have no flushing toilets. No water, no internet, and no phone coverage, and it lasted for many days.

It was great to see how the communities get together in times of adversity, and it was a privilege last week to host Ministers Sepuloni and Edmonds up in Wellsford and to host a morning tea for our many volunteers who kept the Wellsford emergency centre going all through those three weather events.

So a shout-out goes to Deejay, Justine, Leeanne, Jolene, Melissa, Tanya, JK, and to Ant the police officer and Christine. I want to express, as many of my colleagues have, my thanks and gratitude to all those many volunteers who were showing everyone who came to the centres their manaaki. People who were stranded, whānau ordered to leave their homes because they were not safe, strangers and neighbours—and everybody was safe.

But, as the Prime Minister has said, the scale of the task ahead of us is significant. We’re up for it, and our commitment to rebuild the network of devastated areas means that we’re standing with those communities and making sure that this will be a locally led response.

The recovery will cost billions, but we are in a strong financial position, with some of the lowest debt in the world on a per capita basis. Our Government is committed to doing what they can to get people back on their feet, and that’s why we’ve rolled out immediate support like the $50 million to businesses to deliver locally led, interim emergency business and primary sector support. To support farmers and growers as they rebuild from the cyclone, we’re providing further funding to help them get back on their feet, taking our total primary sector package to $55 million so far.

At the same time as we respond to the immediate challenges around homes, roads, power, and communications, we also look to the future, building resilience to respond to unexpected events and to ensure our communities are safe. We’ve made a start on addressing the cost of living pressures by extending fuel excise restrictions and half-price public transport, and we heard from my colleague previously that it’s a really good deal to take advantage of those half-price deals. I recently took the bus from Wellsford to Warkworth—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

I move, That this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.

This debate is adjourned and is set down for resumption next sitting day. Members, I will indicate now that at the conclusion of Tama Potaka’s maiden statement, the House will suspend for the dinner break and resume for Government orders of the day at 7 p.m. I call on Tama Potaka to make his maiden statement.