General Debate

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

When the people of New Zealand elected this Government last year, we knew that we were facing significant challenges as a country. The Labour Government had spent up large, the cupboards were bare, education, law and order, health—all were going back in the wrong direction. We were entrusted by Kiwis to get them back on track, and that is what we are doing.

Perhaps the most dire loss of confidence was within our energy sector. The previous Government wrecked confidence in energy with the oil and gas exploration ban, with a hare-brained and wildly expensive Lake Onslow scheme, which wasn’t going to provide energy until 2038 at the earliest, costing at least $16 billion, and with their reckless 100 percent renewable electricity target by 2030. The result is that New Zealanders are now paying the highest electricity prices in the Western World. Just this morning, the spot price in Northland reached over $1,700 per megawatt hour.

After stifling investment in the gas sector, after increasing our sovereign risk as a country, and after six long years of Megan Woods thinking she knows best, New Zealand now finds itself in an energy crunch with dry year conditions being compounded by a low supply of gas, which is critically important at this time. The high electricity prices New Zealanders are facing are deeply concerning and a direct result of those policies.

They are threatening the viability of New Zealand businesses, many of whom export products to the world, and the jobs they underpin. We’ve seen that, in recent days, with the announcement of several hundred job losses at Winstone Pulp and at OJI’s Penrose facility. High electricity prices have been cited on both occasions. This is ever-devastating for the individuals, the families, and the communities that rely upon these large employers, but this position we find ourselves in today has not happened by chance. It is a direct result of the poor policy decisions by the last Government and what we inherited.

This morning, I met with the four largest gentailers in New Zealand to discuss the situation and the solutions needed. The message is incredibly clear: New Zealand needs more natural gas supply to secure our energy sector’s confidence and our security as a country. But, as a result of the ban, our gas supplies are falling rapidly. Figures obtained from our gas producers released earlier this year show a 20 percent decrease in proven plus probable reserves from 1,635 petajoules to 1,300 petajoules. Instead of low-emission natural gas, electricity generators are having to turn on everything else they can. That includes coal-fired and diesel-powered plants, all while gas peakers—approximately 500 megawatts of gas peakers currently available—sit idle because we don’t have the natural gas that this country is needing.

This Government is taking action to respond to this through the Gas Security Response Group and the work the Gas Industry Company is leading on this issue. The Gas Industry Company is currently leading on two critically important work streams, which we reported to Cabinet on Monday. Firstly, the work stream on the feasibility of importing liquid natural gas, which is a lower-emissions fuel than coal, to improve gas supply in the short to medium term. I think this is a significant thing to have to be investigating as a country. This is a significant thing to be investigating as a country, because, as a country, we have been blessed with natural resources, but because of the last Government’s reckless policies, we are being left in this situation.

We must keep the lights on. We must support our industries. We must ensure New Zealand has the energy that we need, and so we’re working on that. The group’s also investigating how to increase investment in flexible, gas-based generation to ensure there is plant available to meet our future electricity needs for flexible generation. This Government is taking this issue incredibly seriously. We will not stand by while industry shuts down. We need to have the energy security this country needs. The reckless policies of the last Government have been thrown in the bin. What we need is a bipartisan approach where they give confidence to the sector so this investment can happen. I call on them to back this Government so we can have the energy security this country needs.

Today, the Labour Party has called on the Government to use its Government procurement rules to ban Government agencies from purchasing goods and services from Israel’s illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and we are also asking the Government to communicate directly to the Government of Israel that it should act immediately on the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and withdraw from the occupied territories now.

Why this; why now? Because the International Court of Justice, the United Nation’s highest legal body has handed down an advisory opinion that is a sweeping and damning indictment of Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank, which it acquired by force in 1967 and has held ever since. It’s worth a look at what the ICJ ruling actually says, and I want to quote directly: “The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying Power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the Occupied … Territory unlawful.”

The ICJ goes on to catalogue forced evictions, extensive house demolitions, restrictions on residents and movement, the transfer by Israel of 700,000 settlers into the illegal settlements, its failure to prevent or punish violent attacks by settlers on Palestinians, restricting the access of the Palestinian population to water. But here’s the important thing for this House: the ICJ found that all States, including New Zealand, are under an obligation not to recognise as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of Israel in the occupied territories and not to render aid or assistance to that occupation.

The ICJ ruling has changed the game. The world has watched in horror over the last eight months as Israel has killed nearly 40,000 civilians in Gaza, in spite of repeated calls by the United Nations General Assembly for a permanent ceasefire. Now the UN’s highest court has issued a damning indictment of Israel’s illegal occupation. Governments, like New Zealand, have a duty to act and this builds on a range of initiatives and policies that successive New Zealand Governments have held on this issue, and I want to reference when Murray McCully was the Foreign Minister of the National Government of the time, in 2016, New Zealand then held a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council and co-sponsored a resolution that was passed in the Security Council that condemned Israel’s illegal settlements and called on Governments—with the force of international law—to differentiate between Israel the State, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I note that some members, some Ministers in this Government disown that resolution now and publicly have differed with it.

I also want to point out that our Government, in recent days, has called on the Government of New Zealand to recognise Palestine, to give it diplomatic recognition, just as Ireland has done in recent days, just as Spain and Norway have done—144 other countries in the United Nations have recognised Palestine, as a way of signalling the need for a negotiated political settlement in the region.

Finally, I want to say that the ICJ ruling is not a suggestion; it’s not a request. It is international law and this Government likes to talk a big game on the international rules - based order, but it has been strangely quiet on Israel’s war crimes and its multiple breaches of international law going back decades. If this Government doesn’t speak out on this question that the ICJ has ruled on, if it doesn’t take the kind of practical actions that we are calling for today—at least in the beginning, a ban on Government procurement of goods and services produced in the illegal settlements—then this Government is inviting people to accuse it of being selective, inconsistent, and hypocritical and undermining New Zealand’s standing in the world.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I say, finally we have a Government that is putting educational achievement back at the heart of our education system, because we are aspirational for our kids. In the face of the last six years of declining results, 42 percent of our kids at the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement are not at Curriculum for mathematics; half of our kids are not able to pass a functional literacy and numeracy assessment at NCEA; three consecutive years of dropping NCEA results; Programme for International Student Assessment, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study results dropping like a stone. The question has to be—with all of these warning lights flashing, with the dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree, with the console screaming at them “Pull up! Pull up!”—what did they do in six years in education? I’d be very surprised if anyone in this country can think of anything that this last Government did, let alone their priorities in the education agenda, in six long years of education and declining results.

As education Minister in this Government, we have a purpose and clarity and we are working at pace to raise achievement and to close the equity gap. Underpinning all of this is our goal of getting 80 percent of kids to curriculum by the time they reach high school, to give them a chance at getting a meaningful qualification and going on to live the life that they want. We’ve outlined six clear priority areas: the Curriculum, the teaching practice, the fact that we need to assess our kids along the way, that we are investing in our workforce, that we’re investing in learning support, and that we’re using data and evidence to guide us.

We saw in the last few weeks that our maths results of those young students who are measured at year 8 against the Curriculum benchmark—only 22 percent of them were at curriculum for mathematics. This represents, as the Prime Minister said, a total system failure. High schools know it, because, as soon as I walk in the door, they tell me that they’re having to catch their kids up, that they don’t know their timetables and their basic facts. Parents know it, because after-school tuition is full, and maths and literacy and Kip McGrath and NumberWorks’nWords are all full, which is exacerbating the equity gap that we have in this country that we are trying so desperately to close. Primary schools know it as well: they have been awaiting a structured maths programme following on the very successful structured literacy programme that we’re rolling out next year to every single school.

A feature of our very quick turn-around with our maths approach is to introduce our knowledge-rich curriculum next year aligned with resources and teacher guides and workbooks and resources for kids in the classroom so that our teachers can successfully implement this new curriculum. We are ensuring that the teaching practice in the classroom is based on structured literacy and maths mastery—explicit teaching, a sequenced manner and a structured manner of introducing material, mastery before moving on, and an understanding of concepts and an automatising or recalling of basic facts. We’re making sure that we’re assessing our kids twice a year so that we can pick them up before they fall, and so that every parent in this country will know where their kids are at and how they are doing.

We are investing in our wonderful workforce—our amazing, passionate teachers. We’re making sure they have all of the resources that they need to support this new curriculum. We’re making sure that before they go into initial teacher education that they have the requisite level of maths to be confident in teaching it. We’re making sure, through the Teaching Council, that initial teacher education providers are properly teaching teacher trainees the math that they need to be confident—we’re investing $20 million into professional learning and development to do this. We’re also investing in learning support in class for those kids who are falling behind, with small-group interventions.

This is a Government that has high aspirations for our kids. We are not prepared to wait another single year to put these system changes in place—we have to raise student achievement. My message to all parents is this is a Government who takes your children’s success at school very, very seriously. It was really telling today in the House that the questions from the other side were around a letter that was written to an Australian Minister in English rather than using te reo, when 20 percent of our kids are at curriculum for mathematics, and 12 percent of our Māori kids, and yet nothing from the other side on these really important issues. It shows why in the last six years they achieved exactly nothing in education.

I take this call on behalf of the Green Party to stand alongside tamariki across the country in the collective hope for a better future. I want to start my kōrero by reminding the Prime Minister of his very words at the National Party conference in 2022: “The lives of all children, and the circumstances in which they raise their own families, will be shaped by the decisions political leaders are taking right now.”

Let’s look at the reality tamariki face growing up in New Zealand today: over 200,000 children live in households below the poverty line. That is one in every six children—one in every five for tamariki Māori. The royal commission of inquiry into abuse in care concluded just last month that 200,000 kids had been abused by the State in care. On average, one child dies every five weeks in New Zealand from abuse. Of the 5,977 tamariki and rangatahi currently in the State care system, only 56 percent of these tamariki are enrolled with a primary health organisation. Of the annual year 9 to 13 enrolments, 15,000—around 5 percent—are regularly missing school, needing to work to provide for their families. This is not inevitable. Tamariki born into poverty is not inevitable. Tamariki having the connection to their whakapapa ripped away is not inevitable.

Again, in the words of our Prime Minister, “for every kid walking into school tomorrow morning, backpack on, ready to take on the world, my message is simple. I cannot change the choices you make, or the home you were born into, but I will move heaven and earth to give you the best possible start … [to] life”. So let’s look at “decisions political leaders are taking right now.”

The Government indexed main benefits to inflation, which their own officials warned could place as many as 13,000 more children in poverty. Just last month, the Government diluted child poverty targets, showing the Government is comfortable putting a further 17,000 tamariki into material hardship. The Government plans to remove section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act, which will destroy connection of tamariki to their whakapapa. Last month, the Government launched boot camps just five days after the royal commission of inquiry released its findings on horrific abuse at State boot camps. The cutting of $120 million over four years to Oranga Tamariki contractors across the country—and they were kept in the dark about specific decision-making rationale. The reintroduction of charter schools is designed to take away accountability and oversight. The decisions this Government makes every day reinforces the same system that enabled the ongoing abuse in care, where the Prime Minister said, “You are heard, you are believed”, in this very House just 14 days ago. We know actions speak louder than words.

This attack on tamariki by the Government is targeted and deliberate. There is so much happening and it is designed this way so people switch off because it’s too painful, it’s too hard to bear witness to. This is an intentional strategy to collectively exhaust the public. Kiwis will remember this Government placing the profits of landlords over tamariki and will hold the Government to account for the “decisions political leaders are taking right now.”

Let me be clear: this will not go uncontested or without a fight. We have seen the hīkoi activations across the motu, and right here on this Whare’s doorstep, by Ngāpuhi on Monday, and this Saturday in Christchurch. We have seen almost 3,000 submissions to the Social Services and Community Committee on the removal of 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. Today, in select committee hearings, Māori rangatahi from VOYCE - Whakarongo Mai, with care experience, said, “We have not been consulted with.” We have heard from hundreds of Oranga Tamariki community providers whose funding is being cut. We live in a country of abundance. There is enough for everyone. We can and must ensure our tamariki have everything they need to thrive.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Last week, our co-leader Rawiri Waititi raised a phrase that we are “punch drunk”. It’s a phrase used to describe our fatigue—our fatigue from defending our culture, our fatigue from being unable to act normally, our fatigue from fighting for our rights and our identity, and our fatigue from feeling persecuted for being tangata whenua.

It is truly believed that this Government has started one of the biggest attacks that we’ve had as Māori since the 1860s, and, oh, for our people to have the luxury to curl up in a corner and cry. The amount of pain, fear, and harm that we are seeing from our whānau is heartbreaking. But, no, as tangata whenua, we must brave up because we don’t get to have the break, because we must stand strong and give our whānau hope, despite the tsunami of constant assaults, and it’s deliberate. It’s deliberately done, based on a history which is taught to us to grind us down.

Māori-focused solutions designed for generations are ending. The Māori Health Authority is demolished. Māori mokopuna in State detention with solutions like section 7AA—gone. Auahi kāti programmes, demolishing Māori wards, fast-tracking seabed mining.

Removing section 7AA, for us, is violent. Confiscating our reo is violence. Taking away Te Tiriti and constitutional rights is violence. Continual oppression to us as Māori is violence. And now, we have the foreshore and seabed decrying, with front-page, paid advertisements saying “Kiwis, not iwis”, because it’s all about going backwards. Prisons, where we’re having mega-prisons developed to prison their way to justice. Boot camps. Where is the aroha from this Government for its tangata whenua, whose solution to help with the British settlers who were unruly was to offer Te Tiriti?

Whānau mā, I think it’s really important that we are aware of what we’re in. The deliberate fatigue of repealing, policy extractions, and policy demolishes before the big one comes, because the big one is coming, and who is the architect behind this? How is this Government letting a small party like ACT be the tail that wags the dog? How has ACT groomed the Prime Minister and, indeed, National into deliberately exercising ethnocide?

Let me explain what ethnocide is. It is the deliberate, systemic destruction of our culture and us as tangata whenua by using legislative power and political force and influence to make us into one—their one, and our none. We’ll all be one New Zealanders, one people—where have we heard that before?

This Government has lost control. It is very clear, whānau mā, that National is being run by ACT, and they’re allowing them to destroy our culture, one repeal, one piece of legislation, one punch, at a time—very hard and very low, and it’s deeply, deeply dark. This Government is being led by a dark triad, and let me explain what that means. Three personality traits: the Machiavellian, the psychopath, and the narcissist, and I’ll get you to guess which one is which. They’re manipulative, extremely entitled, and they lack empathy, but together, those traits are dangerous for our people because, together, they create some of the cruellest social chaos ever known to indigenous people.

Ngāpuhi this week told the Government to stand down. Our kōrero to you, whānau, is to stand up, but be clear: do not get caught in the politics of distraction, because we must stay focused on our own. It’s going to take a revolution of minds to withstand what’s coming. Conserve yourselves and, together, stay focused on exactly what it is that we’re fighting.

Our Te Tiriti is under threat. Time is important. Intention is important. Strategy is important. Energy is important. Stay well and look after each other, because, as we’ve said, the next karanga will be big. That is why we’re calling on the necessity for our own Pāremata, because, whānau mā, this is not the way for our mokopuna to be living in Aotearoa. Te ngākau o te iwi whānau [The heart of the people, family], that’s one of our solutions, and we must continue to push forward on what was truly intended by Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Kia ora rā.

Point of order. Mr Speaker, I seek your guidance on what you would consider to be personal attacks. There were not names given in that speech, and I didn’t want to disrespect the member by interrupting her during her speech. However, there were comments made about the individual characteristics of three members who lead a Government, without their names specifically being mentioned—quite nasty characteristics—and I seek your judgment on whether those would be considered personal attacks under the Standing Orders.

I listened very intently to the speech that’s just been given, and I think you raise something that is contestable. It’s my intention to have a look at it beyond this particular forum, in light of what I had to say to the House yesterday. I would make the point that if we go too far down this track, then everybody’s ability to speak freely will start to become curtailed, so it can’t be something that I’m going to leap to very quickly. I know that that will see a pile of people sending me all sorts of instructive emails, but I think that it’s the right thing to do for the sake of the Parliament and for that ability for all members to speak freely and from the passionate positions that everyone in this House comes from. But I take the member’s point and will, obviously, consider that.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is my first opportunity to address the House since returning from maternity leave. I’d like to extend my profound thanks to yourself and also to members across the House for the very kind wishes and goodwill and support shown towards me in the seven months since I’ve had my baby. It is indeed a delight to be back.

In the context of getting some sleep, nothing sharpens the mind like having a baby. Nothing makes one more aware and more cognisant of the country and the future of the country and, indeed, the Government of the day and the decisions that it’s making to progress the future of the country, like having a child and suddenly being deeply invested in the future of that child. So it is as the Minister for Women and as a new mum that I would like to submit my comments to the House today.

I have to say, on my maternity leave, I had time—at times—to reflect on the direction of travel of the country and how women are treated. I have to say that I am profoundly pleased to be a new mum under this Government, not the previous. Under the previous Government, it became profoundly clear that politics were an order of the day, not the best interests of the women and girls of this country.

I think back to the previous Labour Government voting down Nicola Willis’ member’s bill that would have allowed parents to share their leave. I’m very pleased that we have now taken that bill on as a Government priority and it will be progressed in time. It will allow mums and dads in this modern society—or mums and mums, and dads and dads—to be able to share their leave as they see fit and to make autonomous decisions over how they structure their family and their working lives.

We’re here to make a positive difference to mums and dads and families. We have seen a catastrophic mismanagement of the health system under the previous Government. It is so wonderful to have Dr Shane Reti at the helm. Having just given birth and experienced the maternity services in this country, I am so pleased that he is now in charge of reforming the reforms that did nothing but degrade and run down the hospital system.

Again, this side of the House believes that parents know best. They know how to give their children the best start to life. I am so pleased, again, that National is going to take forward its three-day stay policy. It will mean that mums and babies will be entitled by law to 72 hours post-partum care. Staff will give them an alert to that, by law. They will be told of that entitlement.

As these little babies grow up and become small children and toddlers, we are also going to help our mums along by enabling them back into the workplace, should they choose. It’s all about giving parents choice, particularly our mums who are so overly represented in poorer outcomes for employment, and so on and so forth. We have been delighted to announce our FamilyBoost policy in this year’s Budget, which enables parents who qualify up to $150 a fortnight to go towards childcare, to get our mums back into the workforce, if they so choose.

On the topic of tax relief, women across the country can now keep more of what they earn. We are not the long hand of Government, reaching into their bank account and degrading their take-home pay with massively high levels of inflation that this country has seen for too long. Our Minister of Finance is getting the books back in order. We are driving down inflation. We are driving down interest rates. We are letting parents keep more of what they earn in order to enable lovely futures for their children.

On the topic of healthcare, again, thank goodness Dr Shane’s at the helm. We have announced the extension of breast-screening services to 70- to 74-year-olds. We’re in the business of saving lives. We’re in the business of boosting Pharmac to $6.3 billion over the next four years—that is the largest budget that Pharmac has ever seen. We are investing in healthcare for the future of the women of New Zealand.

In my last 30 seconds, I just wanted to very quickly touch on the pay gap. Under the last Government, it sat on or around 9 percent for six long years. We are the Government taking action. We are the Government working with business to design a pay gap calculation tool so that we can start to shine a light on the pay gap of New Zealanders—sunlight, as they say, is the best disinfect. It is the only way to drive it down and we are taking action to do that. Women are too smart to fall for lip-service. They were not interested in the press releases and proclamations of the Labour Government. The National Government—the coalition Government, with our friends in New Zealand First and the ACT Party, are driving changes to make a difference.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Welcome back to my colleague the Hon Nicola Grigg. I say “Tēnā koe” deliberately today because te reo Māori is an official language of this country, Aotearoa New Zealand, and I do not accept this Government’s continued whakaiti of our Treaty partner.

Aucklanders are not getting what they voted for. National promised voters that the cost of living would come down, that crime would stop, incomes would grow, climate change would be addressed, and we would all be better off, but that is not what we are seeing. Under National, “back on track” means rents are up, unemployment is up, benefit numbers are up, groceries are up. Insurances: up. Energy: up. Young people not engaged in training or education: up. Rates: up. Auckland businesses are closing at a much higher rate than their counterparts in the rest of the country.

You just can’t trust this Government, because nothing they do stacks up. It’s just slogans. It’s out of step with what experts say, and they aren’t focused on what really matters to Aucklanders. They believe that the still-to-be-proven repeal of the regional fuel tax eases the cost of living, and even if this was so, that gives Aucklanders back a mere $2 per week. Add on $50 for additional rego fees, add on public transport costs, add on prescription costs, add on their dirty fuel excise taxes. Even with all of their talk of tax cuts, an average Auckland family will pay at least $80 more per week under this National Government—$80 more per week. Aucklanders are left short-changed under National with all of their broken promises, and they just cannot be trusted.

Is this surprising when we look at the Minister responsible for Auckland issues? The Minister for Auckland is supposed to advocate on behalf of Aucklanders and coordinate an all-of-Government response. I think he spends more time working outside of Auckland than in, but he also has no plan to reduce congestion, to reduce crime, and, what I’ve spoken to today, he’s got no plan to reduce the cost of living.

Instead, he’s supported tax cuts for landlords and expected that to trickle down. He’s ripped out Māori wards. These are not priorities for Aucklanders. The cuts that he has supported are too extreme. The half-price public transport scrapped—more expensive to get around our city—$1.2 billion hole in Auckland infrastructures fund, disabling our city to futureproof our infrastructure. They promised to train 500 more front-line officers in two years—

Cameron Brewer: They’re coming.

SHANAN HALBERT: —but instead they have reduced police numbers from Auckland’s North Shore, Mr Brewer, and West Auckland to prop up their CBD response teams. In addition to that, huge cuts to Oranga Tamariki funding, including the North Shore Women’s Centre, leaving up to 500 women—vulnerable women and their tamariki—without support and forcing their closure. They promised no impact to front-line services, and here we are.

They’ve also scrapped the building of property of desperately needed classrooms and schools across Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland and in my local community. Beach Haven Primary School, Birkenhead Primary, and Willow Park Schools—they’ve cancelled the building of our classrooms.

Aucklanders work hard, they pay their taxes, and they wanted a cost of living plan that this Government has not delivered—they’ve broken their promise.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is with great pride that I stand and do my first speech in the general debate in this House. Look, in just a very short period of time, it will be a year since we were elected, and what a massive year it has been so far. The amount of incredible hard work done by the Ministers and MPs on the side of the House is quite extraordinary.

Just this week, we heard about the travesty that is our educational achievement in maths and literacy once more being sheeted home to us that, in New Zealand, we have been failing our children. Only 22 percent of our year 8 students are achieving at year 8 level. And, you know, we need, now, an approach that works. So it’s with great pride that our wonderful Minister of Education, Erica Stanford, has made the incredible announcements this week to bring forward the focus on numeracy to get our kids back on track.

I want to applaud the statement made by the Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, at the weekend, where he said, “This issue … is bigger than politics.”, because I think that this is simply one of the most important things we have to sort out, because our future in this country depends on it. We have the smartest kids in the world, and, currently, we’re doing them a disservice.

In my electorate, the mighty East Coast, the most beautiful electorate in the country, our educational achievement has been slipping over the past few years, and so has the area of our regular attendance at school. It’s slightly on the improve now, but some of the towns in my electorate still struggle to get their children to school. Regular attendance ranges from 29 percent in some towns to 59 percent, which is the highest, across thousands of students in our electorate. We must do better than this.

One way to keep kids coming back, day after day, is to make sure they’re engaged, which is where our structured literacy and numeracy comes in. Education is the game-changer. It’s one of the very important pieces of work we need to nail, to break down our intergenerational cycles of poverty, our benefit dependency, and truancy. This issue was one of the biggest facing the communities I represent.

Now, those folks on the other side of the House will find every reason to oppose this and to rail against this, and they’ll say that the curriculum won’t be right or that it was National’s fault, or whatever other rebuttal they’ll come up with. But I say it’s time to stand up. For once, just understand that six years of nothing has not helped. It is time to take the politics out of this and find a way to get in behind it.

I met a young fella the other day in my electorate who’d been in a gang all his life. He left school at 12. He couldn’t read or write, so secondary school was a bit of a disaster. He left home. He lived on the street. There’s a lot to unpack in his story, but he told me that he’d learnt to read so he could get his driver’s licence. It was the proudest thing he’d ever done. Finally, he’d achieved something, and, now, he looked in the rear-vision mirror for safety, not for a cop. He changed his life, because the downward spiral of getting into trouble for him started from not being able to read and not getting a licence. Now, imagine what else he could do now with a bit of self-esteem and mana restored. I repeat: it’s the game-changer, it’s how people get a job, it’s how they make a contribution to society and the community they live in, and it’s leadership for change.

It’s time to get New Zealand back on track. We are in a very challenging period of New Zealand’s modern history. Our country is at a turning point. We are working hard to bring recovery from woeful fiscal management, from ideological rhetoric—and let me just give you an example. Let me draw to your attention, last week, when I listened to the debate on the very fine work from Minister Simeon Brown on roadside drug-testing. What I can’t help but shake my head at is a member of the Green Party, a former Minister of Transport no less, who, in speaking against the bill, said of the evidence that deaths and serious road accidents caused by drugs was only 7 percent and, therefore, in her terms, weren’t that serious. Well, tell that to the parents and friends and family of people who died because people took drugs and drove their vehicles. I just can’t let that go. Any death, in my book, is one too many. It’s just another example, I think, of the ideological rhetoric that we have heard, time after time, from that side of the House.

We cannot gamble with the education of our children in this country for one minute longer, and I’m delighted that we will now focus on teaching the basics brilliantly for the sake of our children. I just want to say, too, to the good hard-working taxpaying people of New Zealand who are now enjoying tax relief for the first time in 14 years, we won’t be taking advice from an Opposition who overtaxed, overspent, and, now, is over there. Let’s get New Zealand back on track.

To Martin Phillipps:

I know deep down hidden in you submarine bells chime

Golden groaning, sunlit toning, submerged sound sublime

Deep and dark my submarine bells groan in greens and grey

Mine would chime a thousand times to make you feel OK

It is OK for you now, Martin Phillipps. I note the committal on the Order Paper that refers to his passing on 28 July at 61 years of age. Martin Phillipps was an iconic New Zealand musician who does deserve recognition in this House and I would like to pay tribute to him. On Friday in Dunedin, maybe it will rain, maybe there’ll be rain on the window pane of the Glenroy Auditorium as New Zealand musicians from all over the country come down to celebrate the life of this wonderful singer-songwriter who really helped develop the iconic Dunedin sound. He wrote songs that were of place, land, sea and people with a deep sense of melancholy, and he became infused into the Dunedin cultural fabric. His collection was immortalised in the Otago Museum and also through the incredible documentary by Julia Parnell, who I had the privilege of working with.

He was brilliant. I think he was a brilliant enigma, actually. As Neil Finn said, he was one of New Zealand’s greatest songwriters. He was name checked by Iggy Pop and R.E.M. He was an enigma because he was humble and intelligent and one of the most unlikely rock stars you could meet. I had the privilege of watching him play when I went to Otago University. I interviewed him as a journalist when he came back from a fairly failed tour of the US and had the kindness and generosity to let me interview him about that particular chapter of his life.

I also worked with him in Glasgow at the Celtic Connections, where he wowed the Scottish audience there and I could really see how he had earned such incredible international acclaim. I finally got to meet him many times on street corners when the Labour Party would go out and campaign and Marty would always come out—on reflection, I think, to honour the loyalty that I had given to him. So I’m really looking forward to his send off on Friday with his family; his father, Donald; his sisters, Sara and Rachel; and, of course, hosted by his biggest fan and friend—possibly—my former colleague Grant Robertson.

Now, Marty did have mental health journeys and it is no secret that he suffered addiction, which is probably partly responsible for his early departure. So it’s appropriate that I do speak to my mental health shadow portfolio today and draw attention to something that I think Marty would want attention drawn to, which is the misnomer that this Government is not cutting services to the front line of mental health. We have seen that in Southland, no less—the area where both Marty and I were very approximate to—where staff had sent emails showing that vacancies for mental health nurses, despite the fact that those roles are desperately needed, ads have been pulled down from Health New Zealand’s website. We’ve seen broken promises with the number of psychiatrists promised by this National-led Government before the election—14; we have not seen any movement of that. They’ve promised 500 new mental health staff and yet they haven’t even been able to get the 50 extra doctors placed that they had promised prior to the election.

What really concerns me this week is the health innovation funding, because $24 million was earmarked for Gumboot Friday through a procurement that was, in my view, half-baked. Now, we see the remaining $10 million—that’s over two years—that was announced in this Budget, where NGOs and community groups thought they had a real shot at maybe getting some funding. Well, guess what! To get that funding, the organisations have to have a minimum of 80 full-time employees and $250,000 in matching funding. I would challenge any member of this House to tell me which community mental health group has a spare $250,000 kicking around in their bank account, or, if they did, that it would not be taken back by this Government as we heard in question time today.

So I leave those thoughts as I remember my friend—somebody who I really looked up to, and I know the whole of Dunedin did—Martin Phillipps. We will salute you on Friday, we will continue to carry your mental health message, and we will continue always to listen to your music.

Kia orana, Mr Speaker. I note that it is the Cook Islands Māori Language Week, so it is a pleasure to stand on behalf of New Zealand First and this Government as we understand the importance of reconnecting with the Pacific.

My leader, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, has brought a new energy and commitment to our Pacific neighbours. You could say, in fact, he has become the champion of the Pacific, the Rt Hon Winston Peters. As he has said, the Pacific is a major focus of New Zealand’s foreign policy and it’s important that we get into the region and spend time with all members of the Pacific family, because every member of the Pacific family matters to New Zealand.

I have to say that my leader, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, would have to be the hardest-working and most highly respected Foreign Minister. Today, in the House, this very day, the Prime Minister actually noted that the Foreign Minister is doing an exceptional job as a Foreign Minister for New Zealand and that we should be incredibly proud of him, because he’s lifting the intensity and urgency of our relationships across the Indo-Pacific like no one has done before. In fact, that previous Government were absent in terms of their connection with the Pacific. So it’s good to see that we have a Foreign Minister who is totally engaged.

But wait, there’s more. Shane Jones, the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, like a modern-day way finder navigating Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, our champion of the regions, has crossed the mighty Pacific Ocean, distributing the pūtea. You could say, in fact, he has become the associate champion of the Pacific, a little bit like our own Hana Kōkō. Our Māori Centre, $50 million has been sent off to the Pacific to support sustainable Pacific Islands fisheries development over the next four years. This will go some way to address the recommendations of the parliamentary inquiry into illegal, unregulated, and unreported—that’s IUU—fishing by supporting better capacity and capability for monitoring and combating illegal fishing. So he’s out there, like the Foreign Minister, connecting with the Pacific.

In fact, my helper next to me will hand me this visual representation of exactly where the Foreign Minister and Shane Jones have been traversing across the Pacific. There we go, all the way, connecting around some of the islands they’ve been through—Fiji, Australia as well, Tonga, Cook Islands, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands, Nauru and Niue. Shane Jones has been to Solomon Islands and Fiji. I myself feature on this very map. I have been to New Caledonia, where I was able to attend the Anzac celebrations earlier this year—the first time a Government representative in more than a decade visited Noumea for those Anzac celebrations. Also spreading out some pūtea as we opened up the science lab, which will take a look at why these fish under these climate changes, warming seas, are moving out of the exclusive economic zones of these very Pacific islands, and the challenges they bring.

But wait, there’s more—more to come, as the Deputy Prime Minister leads another political delegation, a cross-party, across-the-House delegation; first off to Fiji, then, of course, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau. In fact, he said we have a goal of visiting all other 17 members of the Pacific Islands Forum during 2024, and this visit will mean they have made it up to 14 so far and on the way to 17 of those member nations by the end of this year.

But it doesn’t stop there. Back home, just last week, the Deputy Prime Minister and myself attended Radio New Zealand, where the Foreign Minister flicked the switch for the shortwave transmission which beams out across from Taupō, and that shortwave signal bounces on to the pumice, up into the ionosphere and bounces across the Pacific, spreading out those wonderful messages into the Pacific Islands, which is really important when there are cyclones. As we knew with the Tonga eruption, getting those messages through—shortwave does get through.

So, in conclusion, as it is Cook Islands Māori Language Week and the theme of the week is “Connect me to the canoe of my tribe”, I’d just like to suggest that if there’s someone no longer of your tribe on your waka, then it’s time to invoke the waka jumping rule.

Look, I join my colleague in congratulating a very excellent foreign affairs Minister, one of a number of excellent foreign affairs Ministers we’ve had over the past few years that this House can celebrate, I’m sure.

I’d like to say that today is a great day for New Zealand, it’s a great day for Mount Roskill, and it’s a great day for the people of Northcote and for Dan Bidois, because for many working New Zealanders, today is pay day. For many working New Zealanders, they will check their bank accounts today and they will see more money in their account this week than what they saw last week. For many working New Zealanders, after 14 years of hard work and toil, finally they are able to keep more of what they earn, because today tax relief is here.

Today is a great day for the people of mid- and South Canterbury. It may surprise you to know that my electorate is the hardest-working electorate in the country. We are ranked number one in the country for the number of workers who work between 50 and 59 hours per week. One-fifth of my electorate are labourers and 16 percent are in manufacturing, which are both the second-highest in the country. We know what hard work looks like. We know what turning up to work looks like. We know what it’s like to grind and toil day after day, night after night, to provide for our families.

Speaking of families in my electorate, 23 percent of families in my electorate earn between $70,000 and $100,000 per year, the highest rate of all electorates in New Zealand. They are the ones that will benefit from tax relief. They know what it’s like—

Cameron Brewer: They’ll be happy.

JAMES MEAGER: —to provide for their families, Mr Brewer. They work hard. They deserve to keep more of what they earn. From today, they will start seeing that in their pay cheques and in their bank accounts.

Today is a great day for the freezing workers of Smithfield and ANZCO Foods who spend 10 hours a day on their feet in gumboots on concrete, processing meat and goods for export around the world. Today they see their hard work rewarded with tax relief for working New Zealanders, Mr Costley. Today is a great day for the supermarket workers at Countdown Browne Street in Timaru and at New World Temuka who pack the bags and stack the shelves, working long into the night to provide the essential goods and services that we need for our families. Today they see their hard work rewarded with tax relief for working New Zealanders.

Today is a great day for truck drivers and port workers and mine operators, irrigation services and nurses and teachers and police officers and taxi drivers and baristas and retailers and every other working New Zealander. They finally have a Government who backs them to know what’s best for them, a Government that knows that they are the ones who are best placed to make spending decisions for them and their families.

This is not a Government which rests on its laurels. Today has also revealed an uptick in unemployment as the hangover from years of economic mismanagement finally kicks in and we on this side are left to clean up the mess. Inflation is dropping but continues to sit above the 3 percent target, meaning a prolonged wait for mortgage-holders as interest rates stay high in order to beat inflation down. Every single day, we have Ministers of this Government discovering more and more hidden financial time bombs, and every day we on this side of the House give thanks that New Zealand has a strong and courageous finance Minister in Nicola Willis to steer us through.

We will continue to hold up our end of the bargain. We will remain disciplined in our spending, ensuring every dollar is providing a return for New Zealanders in stronger economic growth, in safer streets, and in better health and education. There will be a high bar for new spending, as the finance Minister said, and it must align with Government priorities. What we save as a Government, we will return to working New Zealanders. Because while no side of the House owns the workers, only one side of the House truly supports the workers.

Finally, today is a great day for one Rose Stocker, the queen of Timaru, who turned 60 years old today. So on behalf of myself, Stuart, Zachary, Mykhaela, Harry, Oscar, Theo, Alfie, Xavier, and Lachlan, happy birthday, mum. You are a legend. Thank you for walking the dogs.

Well, thank you Mr Speaker. These are challenging times. If anyone’s seen the unemployment rate—up to 4.6 today—there is a severe shortage of energy, essential not only to big businesses but small ones and households, that I hope one day the parties opposite will take some ownership of for what they did. There is a geopolitical situation that’s pretty unstable, and not enough knowledge being transferred from one generation to the next. Yet we heard an Opposition party, and two and three, actually, who tried to do a quiz on the articles of the Treaty and talk about an invitation to an Australian to a party. That’s the standard that we’re getting from the Opposition, and I’d rather be talking about those other issues and what the Government is doing in each and every case to ensure that our spending is wise, that the economy is back under control, that people can afford to get to the end of the week with some money left in their account thanks to tax cuts, and what we’re doing to make sure kids are getting to school and learning.

I chose to take a speech in the general debate today on behalf of the ACT Party to talk about a value that is essential to the beliefs of our party, and I would hope every party in this Parliament. That is the simple idea that each of us are a sovereign human individual with the right as an adult to choose somebody to go and speak for us freely in public affairs. Whether it’s this Parliament or the local council, you have the right and each one of us has the right to pick a representative to go and express our views, no matter what they may be, so that we can settle our differences as a country and come together in consensus and make progress in public affairs in a peaceful way with no Vladimir Putin Russian threats of violence, no intimidation, just the best arguments eventually prevailing in healthy public debate. I love that value. It is foundational to our country and the prosperity that we all enjoy as citizens of a free and democratic society.

When I hear that a councillor in New Plymouth by the name of Murray Chong is on the radio saying that he has had to change his vote on a matter he believes important because he’s being intimidated, he’s having people firing air rifles at the car outside his house, he’s told that he can’t walk at night because he’ll be king-hit and “wake up in hospital”, that goes, actually, not just to the heart of New Plymouth or Murray Chong but to every single New Zealander who’s grown up in this country and inherited that basic right to be able to choose a representative to participate and express their views in public affairs without being intimidated or threatened or talked down like somebody might if they tried to contest an election in Moscow or Pyongyang.

That is why the ACT Party is calling on every single political party in this House to condemn the threats of political violence against Murray Chong, to agree that while we may differ on the question of Māori wards—and this Government certainly has a view—that it is absolutely wrong that anybody in an elected office should ever be threatened with violence or a sanction of changing the political views. They should be able to express the views of the people who elected them without fear or favour or concern for their physical safety. If there’s anyone in this House who doesn’t believe that, then they ought to ask themselves what exactly it is that they’re doing here, or why it is that perhaps their own arguments are so feeble that they cannot win them in an intellectual contest but would seek to win them in some other type of contest.

I have been disappointed at how little response there’s been from other party leaders. We’ve heard a lot today about invitations, we’ve heard a quiz on the Treaty, we’ve had questions about what the Government is doing about a 4,000-year-old conflict on the other side of the world, but I haven’t heard from the Opposition parties condemnation of political violence against an elected councillor in New Plymouth.

Murray Chong might be an eccentric character, he might not be the person that you or I would vote for should we live in New Plymouth, but nobody, including him, deserves to be threatened or menaced with political violence for holding a view that’s sincerely held on behalf of the people who elected them. They have the rights and the duty to express those views on behalf of the voters, in order for that democratic inheritance from which we’ve all benefited so greatly to continue to function and work, in a society where all of us are blessed with equal rights and freedom.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.