Appropriation (2024/25 Estimates) Bill, Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This bill strengthens our local democracy by reinstating polls on Māori wards and Māori constituencies. It requires councils to hold a binding poll at the 2025 local elections if they did not hold a poll when establishing Māori wards, and it adjusts the statutory time frames for local elections to give more time for the postal delivery of voting papers.

I want to thank the members of the Justice Committee for their consideration of this bill over the last couple of months and the work that they’ve done in a relatively short period of time, considering thousands of submissions, hearing from multiple individuals, groups, organisations, and councils. I want to acknowledge everyone who submitted on the bill, whether it was in writing or in person, taking the time to exercise their democratic right as part of the parliamentary process. As you’d expect in a healthy democracy, there was a range of views on this particular piece of legislation. I want to acknowledge the particular points of view that have been raised—

Shanan Halbert: Hobson’s Pledge—acknowledge them.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: I hear members opposite already discounting individuals and views and organisations, and they’ll have their turn soon to be able to have their say on this particular piece of legislation.

Ultimately, people in support highlighted that the bill will restore democratic rights that were removed by the 2021 amendment Act passed by the last Government. Submitters said that reinstating the poll provisions increased democracy by returning decision-making to communities on issues of constitutional and representative significance. Several submitters supported the requirement for council to hold a poll if they established Māori wards without one previously, because it would give communities more say on their recent decisions.

Now, I would make the point that there are lots of people on the other side of the House, and there were a number of submitters who came through, who talk a lot about localism, but what they then reject is giving local people the opportunity to have their say. So it’s all about localism to a point. That is actually what the people on the other side of this House stand for. They think it’s localism to the point that they get to have control over an issue. On this side of the House, in the National Party, the ACT Party, and the New Zealand First Party, we acknowledge that, on issues like this, ultimately, local people should be able to actually vote on these issues. On the other side, they are anti-democratic—anti-democratic—and we are actually upholding the principles of democracy. That is, fundamentally, what this bill comes down to.

The committee heard a range of views on it, which is completely understandable. Ultimately, this Government is standing, though, on the principle that, ultimately, local communities should be able to have their say when it comes to the establishment of Māori wards, where those wards are being determined on the basis of ethnicity. Ultimately, we think that local communities should be able to have their say as to whether or not that should happen. And, ultimately, what the last Government did was take away the ability for those local communities to have their say. They talk about local communities having their say, but what they think is that the council should ultimately be able to determine it. That’s where they think local democracy should stop. Well, ultimately, if you go out there and talk to New Zealanders, there is a number of key issues which should be able to be determined by all New Zealanders.

The committee has provided several technical amendments on the transitional provisions of the bill that deal with the requirement for councils to hold a poll. There has been a number of small technical tidy-ups to make sure that the intent of the legislation is clear for the public and for councils to implement. I thank the committee members for their consideration of these matters and their suggestions. During the committee of the whole House stage, I do intend to table an Amendment Paper to deal with some additional matters. The Amendment Paper will require councils either to resolve to reverse their previous decision to establish Māori wards or to resolve to hold a poll at the 2025 local elections by 6 September 2024.

The bill as currently drafted implies that councils only need to make an active decision if they choose to disestablish or rescind. The bill does not specify the process for councils to make the decision to hold a poll. This change is made to reflect that the choice to hold a poll is subject to the same requirements as the choice to disestablish or rescind, including that the use of a special consultative procedure is not required for this decision. This change will give more certainty for councils about the process and requirements for either course of action. Lastly, the Amendment Paper will also confirm that the electoral officer is responsible for holding the poll if the council resolves to hold a poll in accordance with the changes mentioned earlier.

These are some sensible changes that, effectively, will be proposed during the committee of the whole House. Effectively, it will clarify that councils need to make an active decision one way or another by 6 September for all those councils which set up Māori wards where local communities were not able to have their say through the ability to have a vote.

Hūhana Lyndon: Anti-localism.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: I hear the comment again: anti-localism. Localism is about actually letting local people have their say. This is the fundamentally different belief on this side of the House. If a local community decides, such as what Wairoa did, where they had a referendum and they voted to have a Māori ward and they have that Māori ward, we will respect that. If the local community votes and says, “We don’t want to have a Māori ward.”, we’ll respect that too. On that side of the House, though, they want to force their opinion on to communities up and down New Zealand. That is not localism. That is not democracy. That is not democratic. We live in a democracy. We believe in democratic principles in New Zealand, and that is what this piece of legislation is doing.

This bill is about restoring local democracy by giving powers back to electors: the right to decide on their local electoral arrangements. These rights were hastily taken away by the previous Government, and now it is the time to do the right thing and give local communities their voice once again. We live in a representative democracy and, as such, local voices need to be heard loud and clear. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. This bill is shameful. It is utterly shameful. The only thing that is the motivation behind this bill is race. That side of the House are bringing in different provisions for wards established for Māori than what exist for any other ward.

It’s important to understand the context here. What they are trying to do used to be in place. If you look at the reverse and you ask objectively “Why is it harder for communities to establish Māori wards in their districts than any other ward—urban, rural, whatever—why?” The only answer was: because it’s always been that way. That is hardly a justification. So the Labour Government fixed it. They brought the provisions to establish Māori wards in exactly the same as any other ward, as it should be, and they left that decision up to local councils, as it should be. Local council decides what wards they have in their district; no one else. They don’t need a referendum. But all of a sudden, this Government feels that they should have a referendum.

Now, if this proposal today was for there to be referendums on the creation of all wards, we could have a conversation. We could discuss the merits of that or otherwise. But there is absolutely no point in having a discussion, because there is nothing to discuss. They are bringing in measures that will make it harder for local communities to make a decision that’s right for them. Isn’t it interesting that they talk about localism, they talk about empowering local councils, but they don’t talk about referendums on any other issue that local councils have in their mandate, except this? Why? They can signal to me to be quiet all they like; bugger them. I’m not going to be quiet, because this is a disgrace. This is an absolute disgrace.

I have a definition that I’m going to read out. It’s from the Oxford Dictionary: “prejudice, discrimination or antagonism by an individual, community or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group.” Discrimination by “this group” against “that group” based on race. Let’s look at this bill. Does this bill bring in provisions just for Māori? Yes. Is that discrimination? Yes. Is this institution—Government—targeting people because of their race? Yes. In any other sphere, an act that can be described like that and fit that definition would be racism, because that is the definition of racism. If they don’t like it, tough. Suck it up. That’s what they’re doing.

I guarantee, in the future, they will look back on this moment, because inevitably it will pass because they have the numbers, and when they’re old, they’ll look back on their career, and none of them will highlight this as a highlight in their career. They will highlight this as a shameful moment. I don’t believe that individually they are racist, but what I do believe they are is spineless and gutless because they have given in to the whims of their coalition partners just to get into power. What is the point of being in power if, when you’re there, you’re going to kick those at the bottom? What is the point in being in power when you use the privilege that is available to you to make it harder for Māori people?

Now, they do it all the time. They’ve done it in the Budget. They’ve stripped funding. They’ve made it harder. It’s going to be harder for Māori people to access education. It’s going to be harder for Māori people to access health. It’s going to be harder for Māori people to get ahead. But nothing is so obvious as this. Kicking them—kicking Māori because they’re Māori. It is an absolute disgrace. The Minister said there was a range of views. Rubbish. There was a truckload of people pointing out the very points I’m saying today, and they’re ignoring them. They listened to the likes of Hobson’s Pledge. They certainly didn’t listen to councils, because there are more councils that oppose this bill than support their water bill. Yet they’re claiming they’re doing that for councils. They’re claiming they’re doing this for councils despite the fact they’re ignoring one simple provision: this was not compulsory.

There are districts in this country, after this law was passed, that discussed this and they decided that Māori wards were not right for them, and we respect that. That’s why it wasn’t compulsory: because it’s up to each council and each community to make that decision. But the majority of councils said yes. After consulting their community and hearing a genuine range of views, they decided that for them this was the right thing to do. On any other provision available in the mandate for local councils, that’s OK by this Government, but not Māori wards. Why? It’s pretty simple, really, when you think about it—pretty simple. Establishing Māori wards in the three Wairarapa councils took nothing away from me. It took nothing away from anybody else who we lived alongside. What it did do was add a voice; add an important perspective to make a better decision for that community.

Now, I remember, under the leadership of Lyn Patterson, the Masterton District decided that they would bring iwi representatives into their council, and there was a massive uproar. There were demonstrations. There were submissions at the council. It was hugely controversial, but it passed. A couple of years later, they brought in Māori wards—there was not even a peep, because those who were concerned about it realised that those concerns weren’t founded and they had nothing to worry about. Also, actually, when you think about it, Māori wards give the Māori population, or those who choose to be on the Māori roll, an opportunity to choose a representative who’s right for them. It’s more democratic than iwi representatives, depending on where you are and how you look at it. Again, it’s up to each council. But they chose to do it. They chose to do it because they had the support of the community. That’s what it’s about. It’s about choice.

I’ve been to councils that have chosen not to do this. They explained to me why and that was fine by me because that’s their choice and that’s their community. Some councils have a phenomenal relationship with their iwi representative, and that’s enough for them. But look back 10 years, look back 20 years, and think how far we’ve come and think how far backwards this Government is taking us. Why? It’s not about democracy. It’s got nothing to do with democracy, because if they were true to their principles, they would apply a referendum on every single matter that a local council deals with. But they’re not doing that, are they? Because that would be impractical and it would be foolish. But they’re doing it for this. Why? That is the question that New Zealanders who might be following this debate or are interested in this issue and are reading about it, listening to it, or watching it tomorrow in the news, ask yourselves: why? Why are they doing this? There are a range of views as to why, but it all boils down to one thing: they’re targeting Māori. There’s no justification to it—all to get the numbers for a coalition agreement.

Simon Court: Race obsessed.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: Utterly spineless and gutless. Simon Court yells out “Race obsessed.”, don’t be so hard on yourself; I’m sure you’re focusing on other things. But you’re about to vote on this, Simon Court, and your Māori constituents won’t have the same avenues available to them than their non-Māori neighbours. It’s a disgrace, and you, sir, should be ashamed of yourself. You won’t, because you’re sitting there smug, but you should be. It is a disgrace—an absolute disgrace.

Rawiri Waititi: Shameful.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: It is a shameful affair. There are rules in this House to call individuals the name of the definition that I called out earlier. I looked at the Speakers’ rulings as to why that might be. There are three. One said—it’s the most recent, in 2021, by Speaker Mallard—that you can’t call individual members racist; you can call policies racist if it is indeed true. It is true. Speaker Kidd mentioned that the reason we can’t say that members are racist is because we’re fortunate to live in a country where there were no political parties with racist platforms. The question I will leave at the end of this speech: is that still true? Is that still true? I would argue, when you look at the basis of this bill, it’s not.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Reo Māori: E mihi atu ana ki te rahi o Aotearoa, te manomano tāngata i puta mai ki te tono kōrero ki te rōpū whiriwhiri mō tēnei take. Kō atu i te 10,000 tāngata i tuku kōrero ki mua i te aroaro o te komiti whiriwhiri mō tēnei take. E mihi atu ana ki a rātou.

Kō atu i te 90 paihēneti i tautoko, tautoko i te whakatūnga kia motuhake ngā tūru Māori ki roto i ngā kaunihera, kia whai te reo Māori, te tangata Māori ki roto i te kaunihera mō te whakahaere i te rohe. Nō reira e tino mihi atu ana ki te rahi o Aotearoa i puta mai. Kaunihera mai, hapori mai, tauiwi mai, hauora mai, rātou katoa, ngā ākonga o te whare wānanga, ngā ākonga o Toi Whakaari hoki i puta mai. Te rahi, te reo o te taitamariki, te reo o te kaumātua, te reo o ngā pakeke ka puta mai.

Nō reira e mihi atu ana ki te nui, ki te kaha me te māia o te tū kia tautoko, kia motuhake ēnei o ngā tūru wāri Māori ki roto i te kaunihera.

[I acknowledge the multitudes of New Zealand, the thousands and thousands of people that came forward to make submissions of evidence to the select committee considering this issue. Over 10,000 people made submissions before the select committee considering this issue. I acknowledge them.

Over 90 percent were in support, support of the establishment so that Māori seats on councils remain distinct, so that the Māori language and Māori people are present within the council for the governance of the region. So I really thank the many people of New Zealand that came forward. Council, community, non-Māori, health providers, all of them, the students at university, the students of NZ Drama School also came forward. So many, the voice of the children, the voice of the elders, the voice of the seniors that came forward.

And so I acknowledge the quantity, the strength, and the bravery of those who stood in support, so that the Māori ward seats within council remain distinct.]

May I translate: I feel very special because Māori are once again being singled out. We’re being singled out by this legislation. The Green Party have already shared that it’s racist to te iwi Māori. With over 10,000 submissions presented to the Justice Committee within a five-day period—only five days, that’s the lack of respect that this Government has to the people of New Zealand; 10,000 people and more put in submissions to the select committee so their voice could be heard, 10,000-plus. As I shared in my kōrero, the people of New Zealand were elders, they were migrants—

James Meager: How many supported?

HŪHANA LYNDON: —they were youth, they were university—over 90 percent supported. Councillors came on. Councils came.

James Meager: Read the report.

HŪHANA LYNDON: Community came.

James Meager: Read the report.

HŪHANA LYNDON: We sat there—come on, we sat for three days and we listened. And what? Maybe one or two opposed—those democracy groups that come on, like Hobson’s Pledge. Come on! Our people stood and they wanted to be counted. It was a beautiful way of showing that tangata Tiriti, tangata whenua all united to support the unique and special voice of iwi Māori at the council decision-making table. Why is it so hard to accept that te iwi Māori’s voice is actually really beneficial? I’ve said before in this House, it’s a plus-plus. You get our tirohanga Māori, you get our mātauranga Māori, you get our connection into communities that they ain’t ever had, and you get us at the tēpu.

Remembering, e te whānau, this is one man, one vote. Māori only get one vote. If you’re on the Māori electoral roll, you only get to vote in the Māori ward. It’s no special treatment. It’s just like our Māori electorates that we have in this Whare.

He aha te hē o tēnei ture ki te iwi Māori? He mahi taurekareka tēnei, e whakataurekareka ana i te iwi Māori, e turaki ana i te Tiriti o Waitangi. E kaha tautoko ana au i te reo o te hunga kaumātua, te reo o te taitamariki, te reo o te hapori me ngā kaikaunihera, ngā koromatua i tū ki mua i a mātou i te toru o ngā rā, e tuku kōrero tautoko ana.

[What is wrong with this legislation to the Māori people. It is a dastardly act, it dishonours the Māori people, it tears down the Treaty of Waitangi. I strongly support the voice of the elders, the voice of the children, the voice of the community and the councillors, the mayors that stood before us for three days, making submissions in support.]

For three days, we heard submissions, and I must say we worked really well to hear the submitters because it was a truncated process. The Government limited the ability for us to really have a meaningful engagement with the community. But the community stood and they were counted. Over 10,000 submissions were heard, and I mihi to the people of New Zealand. Marlborough—they came before us and they said, “Well, e te whānau, you know, we support Māori wards, and, actually, we support the establishment of any ward, according to our own tikanga.”. They established the Marlborough Sounds ward because the constituents, the ratepayers, came to them and said, “We’re special. We’re unique. Our voice needs to be heard.” And they did that according to the legislation.

Now, if councils have spent six years—you know, every six years, representation review. It’s like a wānanga—I must say, the hui are a bit tough, you know, because they come out on to our marae, they send out surveys, they hold community hui, they go deep into the community to hear our voice. What they heard was tautoko.

May I reflect on Tai Tokerau, because the representation reviews took place in 2021 and they talked to their constituents—they talked to their people, all those ratepayer groups, us as iwi Māori—and all three councils supported. It was a beautiful thing. We had Ngā Tai o Tokerau stand, we had Whangārei stand, and we had Kaipara stand up. It’s been awesome to see tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti working together. He aha te hē o tēnei? [What is wrong with this?] What is wrong with it, e te whānau? I call us whānau because, ultimately, don’t we want the best for our community? Isn’t this about the betterment of all? For how long have Māori voices been marginalised on council? There has never been a guaranteed voice for Māori at council tables. I can only reflect on Whangārei District Council where—he iti noa iho ngā Māori i tū ki runga i te kaunihera o Whangārei. [There are only a few Māori standing on the council of Whangārei.] It’s very hard to overcome and be a Māori in council in the general wards.

May I mihi also to Tāmati Rākena of the Far North District Council. He shared, when they were debating and wanting to tautoko this and completing their submissions, “As a Māori ward councillor, I work for better rates, better roads, better water infrastructure, better housing for the community—and that’s not just for Māori; that’s for the entire community of the Far North.” He aha te hē o tēnā? [What is wrong with that?] You’ve got Tāmati standing up for the betterment of all the community. Māori people want the best for all. It’s a plus-plus. What’s good for Māori is good for our entire community.

The Waitangi Tribunal has found that this legislation breaches Te Tiriti. There was an urgent hearing heard on this. Our people again stood up. Our councillors were heard. Local Government New Zealand Te Maruata—over 50 of our councils came out and they provided an open letter of tautoko. And yet ka kapi ngā taringa o te Kāwanatanga. [And yet the ears of the Government are closed.] Ears are closed, not listening to the very loud, strong voice of unity of mayors from across the country.

And ko te mea kē, e tika ana. [And yet the thing is that they’re right.] Sound councils did engage and they did make decisions not to appoint Māori wards into their councils because they engaged with mana whenua and they came to a decision saying, “No, we’re good with what we’re doing.” Kei a rātou tonu te tikanga. [It is still up to them.] It is up to the local councils to make those decisions.

Whangārei District Council came before us at the select committee. You had uncle Phil Halse—he’s been in council since Adam and Eve. You’ve got Deb Harding, who’s a Māori ward councillor from Patuharakeke; and Simon Mitchell, CEO of Ngātiwai Trust Board. They came together to present, because we in Whangārei have a Māori standing committee called Te Kārearea. They are hapū-appointed māngai to work alongside council and provide input and advice at an operational level. They supported the establishment of Māori wards in Whangārei. As Matua Phil Halse shared, because he’s been around a long time—he said, you know, it’s been really beneficial. He’s seen the growth in relationships. Whangārei District Council actually said that this legislation could drive a wedge in our communities, that it could be divisive and could actually undermine the important relationship that council has with hapū in their district.

As I’ve shared: racist legislation. The Greens don’t tautoko it. We put in a differing view because it’s important for us to differentiate ourselves from across this Whare. Ultimately, we want to see Māori wards motuhake—there now and into the future. Now, we’re going to be put into a vulnerable situation as Māori people, where we could be marginalised in our own community with racial division—that’s already coming out now. They’re rallying the troops—they are rallying the troops. Those democracy groups are already dropping into my mailbox, I tell you. So what I’m sharing is the fear of the risk to social cohesion, the mahi tahi we’ve established—tangata Tiriti, tangata whenua. Me kaha mai tātou. [We need to be strong.] What’s wrong with us working together in local government? Kia ora tātou.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The ACT Party will be supporting this bill. We oppose the legislation introduced by the former Minister for Local Government the Hon Nanaia Mahuta on the basis that it was an aberration to our democracy.

Rawiri Waititi: Rubbish.

SIMON COURT: I’ll give you some facts, Mr Waititi. The departmental comment: the process for creating Māori wards in the Local Electoral Act by local council resolution was—until it was changed by Labour in 2021—subject to a petition of 5 percent of the electors in a binding poll, the same as it is for changing electoral systems. In other words, if a community wants to change from first past the post to single transferable vote—

Celia Wade-Brown: Yes, good idea.

SIMON COURT: —or the other way—that’s right, Celia Wade-Brown. Some communities want to choose their electoral system. In fact, the 5 percent threshold that was applied to the creation of Māori wards also applied to change the electoral system. It was on that principal basis that the law stood from the early 2000s until Nanaia Mahuta, unfortunately, changed it—changed it on two days’ notice in 2021.

Here’s a bit of background. I want to restore facts to the debate because it’s true—isn’t it, members of the Green Party?—that facts don’t care about your feelings. We care about facts in the ACT party, in the coalition Government. Now, the bill that we’re amending tonight was introduced on 5 February—in other words, tabled; our first reading on 9 February 2021; submissions to the Māori Affairs Committee closed two days later—two days. That meant local government, civil society groups had less than 48 hours to submit, and what they said was, overwhelmingly, “This is not good and it shouldn’t proceed.” The bill was passed by a supermajority of Labour and its willing and able enablers in the Green Party, and received Royal assent less than a month after it was introduced on 1 March 2021. That was a dismantling of our democracy. We now have to have a very unfortunate conversation about division by race, forced on us by the previous Labour Government. That is the legacy of people like Kieran McAnulty, who’s spoken earlier in this debate. That is the legacy that Te Pāti Māori seek to perpetuate in their absolutely callous seeking of votes from people who are uninformed about our democracy.

Now, the ACT Party’s not obsessed with race, unlike the members of the Opposition. What we do want is a bill that restores democracy to pre-Labour conditions. How about that? Restoring democracy to pre - Jacinda Ardern, Chris Hipkins Labour conditions. We want to give local communities the right to choose their representation arrangements. There’s something else we also want to do. We want to focus on the relationships between iwi, hapū, marae representatives, those groups who have mana whenua in places like the Auckland region where I lived and worked. I want to give [Interruption]—if the members of Te Pāti Māori and the Greens would give me a moment, I’ll explain what I mean.

When I worked as a civil engineer at Auckland Council, one of my jobs was to present environmental remediation, coastal remediation—how we clean up heinous old landfills, millions of tonnes of rubbish dumped in the harbour and estuaries in the coastal areas—and my job is to present those plans to mana whenua groups at a forum and seek their feedback on whether the designs and the outcomes from those projects met with their understanding about how the natural environment should be restored for the communities that we lived in.

Shanan Halbert: Do the same with your rubbish from 1840—clean up your rubbish from then.

SIMON COURT: Now, I don’t know if MP Shanan Halbert is interested in improving the environment and engaging with mana whenua groups and Māori in the communities where infrastructure’s being delivered—all I hear from that side of the House is a racket. What that suggests to me is they’re not really interested in Government and local government having positive and constructive engagement with mana whenua and representatives of Māori entities. What they really want is to use those concepts to garner and gather more political support. It is the parties now in Opposition who led this divisive conversation in 2021, and it is the parties in Opposition that now sit in Opposition largely because they insisted on dividing New Zealanders by race, assigning different rights in our democracy to different groups, when what New Zealanders really, really are asking for is an opportunity for better infrastructure, and enabling more affordable housing, making it easier to get around, and a cleaner environment we can all enjoy. With that, I commend this bill to the House.

Look, Mr Speaker, thank you. Like it or not, this is the three coalition parties doing exactly what we campaigned on, delivering on our promises to New Zealand. Now, you might not like it, but that is the fact of the matter.

I want to focus my comments—

Hon Member: You’re better than that, Andy.

ANDY FOSTER: Doesn’t take them very long, does it? I want to focus my comments on Labour’s minority view in the Justice Committee report and make four points. The first of those is that Labour has complained that this is a rushed process. Well, Simon Court has already covered that. This has taken us two months to get to this point. It took Labour just two weeks to get through the entire process last time round. When they complain about the difficulty in making submissions, I think the pot is calling the kettle black.

The second point I want to make—and this might be educational for people on the other side—is that there were some consequences of rushing this process. One of the consequences was, because they rushed the process in 2021, it also meant that councils had to rush their process. Now, I’ve been through quite a lot of representation reviews put on a council and those are long, detailed processes where you look at demography, you look at geography, and so on. That was denied to councils if they wanted to adopt a Māori ward for the 2022 election. It also meant the councils’ engagement processes were relatively limited in time, in analysis, and in who got to have a say.

I was the Mayor of Wellington when we brought in a Māori ward under that legislation, and I actually believe that people should have the right to determine their electoral representation system. I also believe that having Māori voices in councils is important—and there are a number of different ways to deliver it—whichever way those are delivered.

In Wellington, there was support from the submitters who made submissions for a Māori ward. But there’s also another really, really important thing which I’ll come back to, and that is really, really important, that each vote has roughly the same value, and we have a problem in that. The submission process we had was very, very constrained. As I said, councils had to complete that process by 21 May 2021, so it was a rushed process.

The third point was one that hadn’t occurred to me, and that is that there were people who said to me that because they were on the Māori roll for the national election, because this was a rushed process in 2021, they automatically ended up being on the Māori ward for the local election, but some of them didn’t want to be. I know that might be changed, but this is a consequence of rushing that legislation. Some of them would have liked to have voted in their own community ward, their general ward, and they were denied that opportunity.

Point four is the one that I really wanted to focus on. I was actually disappointed when I read the select committee report, and that’s disappointed across the board, that there was little consideration in that report back of the critical democratic principle of fair representation. A democracy is underpinned by two key principles: one person, one vote; we all know about that. But the other one that’s really, really important is that each vote has got to be worth roughly the same amount.

Look, we can all remember the failed anti-democratic Rotorua council bill, but I was interested in references to the departmental disclosure statement in the select committee report. They referred to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and they talked about Article 25, which recognises and protects the right of every citizen to take part in the conduct of public affairs, and that’s not been denied to anybody. Article 26, which enshrines a right to equality before the law—and there is a question mark there, and that question mark’s been raised across the House. Somehow these created concerns for the officials in regards to the bill.

What I was interested in is that they didn’t actually refer to an article further up the tree in that covenant, which is Article 2. It says that each State party undertakes to ensure that all individuals subject to its jurisdiction, “the rights recognized in the present Covenant, without”—this is the important bit—“distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” So, in other words, treat everybody the same is that article that this country has signed up to.

Now, section 19V of the Local Electoral Act tackles that very principle of fair representation. What it says is that the council or Local Government Commission must—not may but must—ensure that electors, effectively, have votes of the same value, plus or minus 10 percent. We all know that rule that exists there in that section.

The only exceptions that are allowed are for island or isolated communities, or where you’re splitting communities of interest, or where you’re putting two together which don’t have anything in common. There’s nothing in that section that says Māori wards are exempt from that requirement, and there’s also nothing in section 19Z which sets the framework for establishing Māori wards or constituencies.

Rawiri Waititi: Well, amend it.

ANDY FOSTER: It’s also—coming to that. It’s also silent on the plus or minus 10 percent. It’s when you look further into the Local Government Act, right at the end, there’s a Schedule 1AA which gives the answer.

Kieran McAnulty, when he spoke, said that there is no difference, but, actually, there is a big difference. It’s a very big difference, because what that simple formula in section 1(a)(ii) does, it absolutely does not adhere to the plus or minus 10 percent. It actually allows you a variation as high as 50 percent, because what it does is it says it takes the number of people enrolled on the Māori roll with a calculation for non-enrolled people like children, and it divides that number by the total population, multiplies the result by the total number of councillors, and if you’re still with me, if you’re a mathematician there, if the result is above 0.5, you round it up. If it’s below 0.5, you round it down. What that means in theory is that a ward with 50.1 percent of the general number will be entitled to a whole councillor, so it could be a long, long, long way out.

Now, for illustration, I’m going to use Wellington as an example again. The calculated entitlement on the basis of the population enrolled on the Māori roll was 0.609 councillors, but what that means is that was rounded up for one councillor. What it means is that, in effect, for every—and at the time I can remember thinking, “That’s uncomfortably low.” It means that every prospective voter—and I say “prospective voter”—in the Māori ward is worth 1.67 prospective voters in the average general ward. That’s a big, big difference. That’s not plus or minus 10 percent; that’s a lot more than that. Labour’s minority view said the existence of Māori wards or seats increases voter turnout, and I thought, “Actually, I agree with that.” I thought that this exciting new innovation, it might encourage more people to vote. Actually, it didn’t. It did exactly the reverse. The turnout in the Māori ward was very, very low.

What happened then, as the result was, under single transferrable vote, to get elected in Wellington on the first iteration, candidates in a general ward—and these are the numbers; the actual numbers. Celia, you’re shaking your head. These are the actual numbers: between 3,123 and 4,277 first preference votes in the general ward. In the Māori ward, Te Whanganui-a-Tara ward, it was 888. The difference, on average, was four times as much. That is a significant issue and it’s something which we should be paying some attention to.

Look, I’m not saying that all jurisdictions are going to be the same. I’m not saying that all jurisdictions are going to be the same, and I’m going to do a bit more digging into this one. But the problem you have is that if this legislation passes as it is, there are going to be people who might say, “I like the idea of a Māori ward, but I don’t like the idea of the electoral unfairness it brings.” Which way do they vote on that one? That will challenge some people. It is an issue, to me, of electoral fairness.

I’d like to remind you one more thing: we in this House have a clear, laser-like focus, a legislative requirement, to deliver electoral fairness. Each vote is worth very much the same. In fact, the law says plus or minus not 10 percent but 5 percent, and that’s general and Māori wards. To achieve that in the last electoral review in 2019, what happened? An extra seat was created and 22 seats—22 seats—had their boundaries changed. That is how much electoral fairness matters in this place. My question to you is: why doesn’t it matter for local government? At this stage, I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. So Māori wards have countered the crippling lack of understanding that exists within council and local government across the motu. By having dedicated Māori representation in councils, we can grow Māori participation in local elections and actually legitimise the actions of councils. This Government goes on about democracy, but how democratic can a system actually be if no one is paying any attention to it?

Simon Court: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Point of order.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Just before I take that point of order: sorry, Ms Kapa-Kingi—

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Yes.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): I’m going to start—this is a five-minute call. The clock, unfortunately, went to 10 minutes, but I’ll allow you to start again. So carry on. So you’ll get the benefit of the extra time. I presume that was what your point of order was? Right. We’ll go back to five minutes. We’ll start now.

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI: All right. Māori wards are a very, very good and new idea and applied in such a way that what I certainly heard over the hearings was a huge amount of support for Māori wards. I sat over the three days with Hūhana and others, and most certainly what I heard was a full support of Māori intelligence, Māori intellect, Māori grunt at every single board that they were sitting on. So it was very encouraging. It was positive.

So the report that ended up being tabled, I’m not quite sure how that happened, but save to say that it’s—so I’ll give you an example. A Te Rarawa kaumātua, absolutely wonderful, fully conversant in te reo Māori and Pākehā and he delivered a brilliant presentation or submission. He actually had a couple of presentation times, which was wonderful. At one point, he said at the end of his submission, “Look, this feels like Nazis’ time and I feel like a Jew.” This was his—

James Meager: There you go. You say it for me.

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI: —and I know, it is. I know it probably would make people feel a bit nervous. Then, of course, the chair felt a little bit nervous and then said, “Well, the first time I’ve been called a Nazi.”, and then one of his colleagues decided that he wanted to ask the gentleman to withdraw his submission—that statement particularly.

Of course, the chair and the select committee—well, certainly the coalition side—were having feelings about it because a kaumātua Māori of absolute full—his discussion and his submission was true and honest, right? And he challenged the chair and he made those statements in a very honest and clear—but even graceful—way; even respectful, you might say. Because what he was trying to prove in that point was that you don’t get it. You don’t get it; you don’t get us; you don’t get Māori.

There were many a submission over those three days. They were brilliant, they were fulsome—you know, a group of young Māori students from Waikato University, absolutely stunning. They had wonderful, wonderful discussion, but, unfortunately, it fell on deaf ears. That’s certainly what I’m hearing now, particularly when I listen to the rhetoric from across the House, because it represents in no way—it represents in no way—what I was hearing from Māori and Pākehā alike over those three hearings. The nonsense that was provided in the report, I’m not quite sure where that came from.

Before I came into the House, I supported and encouraged a number of young Māori to get into politics and run for these Māori seats, and they were successful and they took these roles seriously and they enjoyed and they still to this point enjoy that. In Tai Tokerau, of course, we have four councils, and I think in the end we had about nine that were successful to get in on the Māori wards work. Now, every single one of them is very clear that their council and their people and their communities are better off because they’re there. Why? Because they know they are their own walking, talking, Māori solution. They don’t need any other Pākehā person—any person—to speak for them. They can bring their own information, their own stories, their own ideas to the table.

Through all of the hearings, I might have heard maybe one or two, but the majority of what we heard was, “It is good to have Māori at the decision-making table. It is important that you have them there. You must have them there. It is good for our communities. It is good for Māori communities.” When our whānau see their Māori representatives at the tables, they’re like, “Gee, that’s great—that’s great. There’s Phoenix, there’s Moko.” Moko Tepania—wonderful Māori mayor. Fantastic.

When we see our representatives there, we see ourselves. Then when they talk and they talk like tino mana motuhake te whakaaro o te tangata [the thought processes of the person are truly about self-determination], when they see that, they go, “Ah, yeah, anā [there they are].” That’s exactly the kind of thinking and Māori intelligence that’s required in our councils. Why would we change that? Just because we’re a bit nervous of the word “Māori?” Is that really what it is? OK, my time is up. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Kia ora tātou. This cannot get through.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Greens do not support requiring referendums to retain or establish Māori wards. Voters on the Māori roll ought to be able to choose a candidate to represent them. Since the referendum option was removed in 2021, there has been an explosion of Māori wards. In select committee, in that rushed process, why does that one rush justify another rush?

We heard some amazing submissions. Some were pretty emotional about it because they felt attacked. There were a few who seemed to be misled, whether it was deliberate or otherwise. But let it be clear: a Māori ward provides for people on the Māori roll to vote for candidates standing in that ward. It is not an extra vote. The select committee report itself said, “A common theme of submissions supporting the bill”—these are the people who like the bill—was “it would return to the concept of one person, one vote.” In fact, I suspect some of them would quite like to go back to before 1893 and it would be one man, one vote.

All those votes should be treated equally. Let me return to the select committee report: “Māori ward system does not represent a departure from the concept of one person, one vote.” Voters on the Māori electoral roll do not have more opportunities to vote. Representation is so critical to our system of local government, and I’m really disturbed that less than a third of eligible voters voted in the Tauranga election last weekend. I’m delighted Tauranga has got a new Māori ward councillor—this Government bill is a slap in his face. We heard Māori wards work, and they work because Māori are at the local decision-making table sharing their knowledge, promoting greater inclusion, and addressing issues that they know well, whether it’s mātuaranga Māori, whether it’s the history of the whenua—this is 21st century Aotearoa, where we are the envy of many countries in having Te Tiriti. This is an example of giving respect and power to Te Tiriti. It’s a lot fairer than the ratepayer roll. Now, that is discrimination on the basis of property ownership. This Government voted to retain that this year—I say, shameful.

This bill forces binding referenda on one issue. Why not have a referendum on three waters? Why not have a referendum on cycleways? Why not have a referendum on the number of councillors a council has. They’re all things that you could have a referendum on, but you’ve just chosen a Māori ward or not a Māori ward. That is incredibly selective, it’s illogical, it’s inconsistent to say one decision is subject to a poll. We heard so many awesome submissions, and this Government is ploughing on, saying that local communities having their say is a binary referendum. There is one point I would agree with—

Simon Court: Let’s do a non-binary referendum.

CELIA WADE-BROWN: No wonder he doesn’t understand transgender. Right. I just want to say, with postal voting—there is also the bit about postal voting in this bill, and I think it’s about time to move past postal voting. Most of the votes in Tauranga were actually through the big orange ballot boxes—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The member’s time has expired.

Mr Speaker, thank you very much. As chair of the Justice Committee, it is traditional to hand out thankyous at this stage of the debate. My first thankyou goes to the white saviours on the other side of the House: Kieran McAnulty and Celia Wade-Brown. Thank you for saving us poor, helpless Māori from our own ill will! Thank you for being the defenders of all things! We need your help! We desperately, desperately need you to support us and save us from ourselves, because clearly we cannot do it on our own! Clearly, we have no way of getting ahead in life apart from with your help! So thank you to the great white saviours on the other side.

I will not be lectured by a party who in 108 years of their history has not had a single Māori leader. I will not be lectured by a party who had a deputy leader and for three years with a majority Government refused to make him the Deputy Prime Minister of this country. I certainly refuse to be lectured by a party—the Green Party—about process and consultation, given their sordid history. So my first thankyous of the night do go to the Opposition for showing their complete ineptitude—

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: He called you a Nazi, James, and you had feelings.

JAMES MEAGER: —when it comes to all things Māori. We did have a challenging ride through this bill in the committee—

Simon Court: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Apologies to the member who’s speaking. I did really enjoy that. I just want to raise a point of order. I heard the member from Te Pāti Māori describe the person speaking as a Nazi, and I am just wondering if that would be included as an offensive or disorderly word in terms of Standing Order 120, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): I didn’t hear that. If the member did use that term, I’ll ask her to stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: I did not use that word.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): I’m taking the member’s word. If the member did use that word, I’m going to ask her to stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: I did not use that word as in I said it; I was repeating what was said at the select committee.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Well, I’ll take the honourable member’s word for that. She has stated that, so I will take her word. Carry on. Did the clock stop then? Carry on, Mr Meager.

Simon Court: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): A new point of order, Mr Court?

Simon Court: Without seeking to relitigate your decision, Mr Speaker, I just wonder if you could provide some advice to the House as to when it is appropriate to say that somebody else said a word that I just said. Is that stretching our understanding of whether we could potentially say an offensive word or something we intend to be disorderly, that could be regarded as disorderly, and simply explain that because somebody else said it and I’m repeating it and directing it towards that member, somehow I’m absolved from responsibility? Mr Speaker, would you give the House some direction on that, because it’s just not clear to me what the implication of your ruling is?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The explanation as given by the member, accepted by the House, was that she was referring to a statement made at select committee. That’s sufficient for the House.

JAMES MEAGER: Oh, Mr Speaker, I don’t take offence to the member’s comments. Much of what she says does not make any sense, and that’s another one of them.

We worked very hard as a committee. I want to give my sincere thankyou to the clerk, Liam, and the team there, who worked tirelessly to process submissions. All in all, we received, roughly, 10,500 submissions through the online portal. If members care to actually read their papers and consider the departmental report, they will see that those written submissions were two-thirds opposed to the bill and one-third in favour. Of course, on top of those submissions, we received 13,000 submissions by email. I wanted to thank the providers of those submissions, the Taxpayers’ Union, for working with the committee to make sure they were combined into one single submission.

I did want to thank, also, members of the committee for the generally collegial way in which they approached the work, although we did have Willie Jackson sitting on our subcommittee and, in between terrorising Don Brash and popping out to have a go at the Taxpayers’ Union, he did make some very disparaging remarks about Helen Clark, which I thought were very unfair. And that goes to the root of this bill, because this bill restores the situation to what it was in the early 2000s, when it was first introduced by Helen Clark, by the Labour Government, and sustained all the way through to 2021. We are doing nothing more than restoring it to the status quo. I thank the Speaker for the time of the House.

It’s only appropriate I speak after that speaker, because I found that interesting, what he was saying about our member, Mr Kieran McAnulty. I understand where the member’s coming from, I mean, he’s meant to be one of our young outstanding Māori MPs coming through. He’s been lauded by some of the mainstream media. So he feels affronted when Kieran McAnulty gets up or some Pākehā members from the Greens get up, he gets affronted and upset that his taha Māori side is being questioned. And, absolutely, I accept that he’s whakapapa Māori and without doubt has a lot of talent and skills, but he needs to understand the depth of this kauapa. Mr Meager, you need to understand that so many of our people, for many, many years, have struggled to get on these councils—we’re talking for decades—decades—now—

Glen Bennett: Only one in New Plymouth.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: One in New Plymouth. I can never not continue this type of kōrero without giving a mihi to my tuāhine Nanaia Mahuta, because racism has been a lot of the kōrero tonight, and I saluted Kieran and I salute any Pākehā members, any members who absolutely accept that this is being driven, sadly, by racism. I also accept the kōrero that the individual members on the other side are not particularly racist at all. I accept that kōrero. But this policy is absolutely racist. And no one pointed that out better than Kieran McAnulty.

James Meager: He’s got your vote!

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: No one felt that more, Mr Meager—he can make a joke of it, but no one felt that racism more than former Minister Nanaia Mahuta who was pilloried in the media, who was destroyed in the media by rednecks, by racists. I wonder if people in the House, on the other side, thought that was racist when she was singled out and, let’s be frank here—

Simon Court: She wasn’t good—she wasn’t good.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: —she was, well, she might not have been good, but she did not deserve the type—from your perspective, she might not have been good from your perspective, but she did not deserve the racial abuse that she went through and why you can’t get that through your thick head is beyond me. You know? It’s just beyond me that you think that it’s acceptable. You think that it’s acceptable for a Minister who is standing up for her people and the opportunity to access democracy was her driver, you think that it was acceptable that she went through all those racial taunts.

Can I say today, for years and years, our people have strived to get on councils. Now, do you think for one moment—I was listening to Mariameno—do you think for one moment that Mariameno could get on a council? Do you think for one minute Mariameno could—no, this is what drives this kaupapa. Do you think Rawiri Waititi, for one second, could get on to a council? Do you think Willie Jackson for one second could get on to a council? There is absolutely no chance for anyone with a pro-Māori agenda; there is no chance, there is no opportunity in getting on a council. That’s what drove this legislation, and the Opposition can’t get it through their stupid thick heads that this is what Māoridom wanted. That’s why we had the Derek Foxs standing. Derek became a mayor, but over 50 percent of his voter base are Māori. But anyone who has a pro-Māori agenda cannot.

I’ll give you a couple of examples. Hilda Harawira, for example, the wife of Hone Harawira. Hilda became a councillor because of this beautiful legislation. Toi Iti, the son of Tāme Iti—they reckon Tāme’s going to get on the local council, actually, he might do, he’s been showing a bit of heart lately. But, seriously, this is the essence of this legislation: anyone who has a pro-Māori agenda will not be voted in by the Pākehā mainstream voters. Why? Because their views offend them—

James Meager: Tell us about Helen Clark.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: —just like their views offend the sell-out over there: Mr Meager. That is just an undeniable fact. Mr Meager, when you accuse others of not doing their job, you’re not doing your job as one of our young Māori aspirant leaders, and one day you’re going to have to face Māori properly, Mr Meager, rather than sit around with your mates in the National Party.

The sad part of this is that there is so much hypocrisy, as Mr McAnulty pointed out—hypocrisy right across the spectrum. It’s a different setup, isn’t it, if you’re in a rural seat. It’s different if you have multiple properties. If you’re a multiple property owner, you can vote two, three, four times. There’s all these hypocrisies and contradictions, but if you’re a Māori, oh, well, that’s different. There’s a different set of rules for you.

What the Opposition refuse to accept is that there, in fact, has been a change in democracy. No one has pointed it out better in the last few days than their very own Hekia Parata, who came out and said—just talking about the Treaty principles kaupapa: what a waste of time, and this Government is rehearsing what someone’s version of democracy is. This is from Hekia Parata, a well-established and well-supported education Minister. She says ACT are trying to reference what democracy is, and says, “entering into treaties are a feature of democracy. Individual and personal rights are a feature of democracy.” These minorities getting a say, the Treaty of Waitangi, are features of democracy. Democracy has been tweaked; democracy has been changed. Again, they can’t get it through their heads that it’s more than just one person, one vote. What does the Opposition not understand about that?

Do they only understand that there’s a change in democracy when they’re doing a dirty, filthy deal in Epsom? Is that when they accept that there’s a change in democracy? So the ACT Party does a deal with the National Party in Epsom. They do a deal so that their leader can win the seat in Epsom, but then they say, “Oh, that’s got nothing to do with tweaking democracy.” Democracy has been tweaked many times, and the Treaty is an important and an implicit part of that model. It’s an absolute fact. I’m proud that as a party, we’ve been going down this track.

In terms of this, this bill wants to put in place this barrier. The barrier’s not going to be put in the place, as I said, of rural ward voters, it’s not going to be put in the place of general ward owners. The barrier’s not going to be put in the way of property owners having multiple votes in multiple districts. No, it is only Māori wards and their voters that must be approved by a district-wide vote. Our people—

James Meager: Bring back Poto Williams.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Mr Meager, our people—I’m not sure what committee you were chairing. I’ve heard from others here that our people are crying out for these wards to stay.

Hon Rachel Brooking: As a council.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: As a council, this is the first time that we’ve been able to access democracy at a local level. What select committee were you chairing? Were you chairing your own committee? That member needs to get his head around things Māori a lot more. I’d offer a bit of a service for him but some of us have given up on him the way he was attacking some of our members tonight.

To consign this and to confine this to a veto is one of the saddest parts and one of the saddest things I’ve seen in democracy today. Democracy is evolving. The Treaty of Waitangi is an integral part of that democracy. The Opposition, Mr Meager, you need to understand that; you need to accept that, that the Treaty is an integral part. Play your game; don’t play the ACT Party’s game.

James Meager: You’re obsessed.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I’m obsessed! No, I’m far from obsessed, Mr Meager—I’m far from obsessed. I’m absolutely focused on trying to get justice for our people in these areas, and the Treaty is an integral part of that. This bill is another sad example of Māori people losing their rights with regards to the Treaty partnership that exists, but, sadly, has been denied by the ACT Party and supported, sadly, by this National Party. I’m so looking forward to my third crack at this at the committee stage of this bill. I want to complement our team again for supporting our argument. Kia ora tātou.

The House is suspended, and I’ll resume the Chair at 9 a.m. tomorrow for an extended sitting.

Sitting suspended from 10.03 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s an absolute pleasure to be talking today. Of course, it’s a very auspicious day with many announcements being made, but I do want to just talk about the Budget and what it meant for New Zealanders, because it was a good Budget. It particularly has relevance to me in my role as Minister of commerce, small business, manufacturing, and statistics, because there are many good aspects of the Budget that were about supporting small businesses, in particular, and manufacturers that underpin much of our exports in New Zealand.

As the Minister of Finance described on Budget day, this Budget was prepared against a backdrop where we had challenging fiscal issues going on. The main focus of what we’re trying to do is to make sure that we’re getting better value for the investment we’re making, on behalf of New Zealanders, to support New Zealanders and businesses so that they can grow, prosper, and enjoy the style of life that they expect and that we should be achieving in New Zealand, and I think the big issue is there’s no longer a mythical money tree. That concept, which has been sort of the predominant thinking previously, is no longer the case.

We have to have a world-class education, health, and justice system, and it’s important that we invest in it. To do so, we need the money to do so, and to do that, we need to have the right settings in place so that we can promote and support innovation and competition, and businesses can flourish. I think that that’s our job as a Government and that should be the job of every Government, of whatever hue, over time, to put in place the right framework, and, unfortunately, we haven’t had the right framework.

The actual thing that we’ve said about trying to achieve in this is to have a quite significant investment in a number of things. We’ve heard today in question time about the record investment in health: $16.6 billion over the forecast period. What we’re trying to do is make sure that the key driver of this is that if someone needs an operation, needs a hip replacement, needs a knee replacement, or needs whatever it should be, they should be able to get those services on time, and we want to make sure there’s an absolute focus on the health providers to make sure that they’re delivering against those KPIs that the good Minister of Health, the Hon Dr Shane Reti, has put in place for the health system.

The major thing coming out of the Budget is the tax savings for ordinary New Zealanders, everyday New Zealanders—those caught in the tax squeeze, who haven’t had a tax change in the last 14 years and have seen their earnings whittle away because of inflation. That is part of what we can do, mostly for individuals but also for businesses, to stop that rampant drive in inflation. The step to address it in the meantime is the tax cuts: $102 per fortnight for most families, and up to an additional $150 per fortnight for families with young children—and I think that’s a really important thing. Yesterday, I was having a public meeting in my electorate, and you know just how tough it is for New Zealanders at the moment, and the tax relief that will be coming through starting next week is an exciting part of that mix.

Also, we are putting some more money into capital funding. We want to see more money going into infrastructure, and the Hon Chris Bishop is, obviously, overseeing a wide programme that spans a huge amount of different projects: $7 billion to boost capital spending on top of what we currently spend as a Government. These are really, really important things. But in terms of what the Budget held in place for businesses, there was a lot of good stuff in the Budget.

The overarching theme for businesses is that we do need to rebalance our Government books. We do need to get the Government back into surplus. This is like running a business or a household budget where you are continuously in deficit and have been for years. This country has been in deficit for years, and we need to get back into a stage where we are running surpluses, because that gives us even more money to invest in building schools, invest in new roads, invest in better health facilities—all the good stuff that every Government wants, even including the members from the Opposition from the other side. So rebalancing the Budget is a key thing.

The second thing is getting inflation down, and the best news we’ve heard is the announcement that inflation is at 3.3 percent. When we see that coming down, that will give the Reserve Bank the reason to drop the official cash rate. Of course, that will have an immediate impact on interest rates, which is what is burning a hole in most households at the moment, where the cost of mortgage servicing is so significant and where they’ve seen their interest rates going from 2.5 percent to maybe 8.5 percent. That is taking all their spare cash. That is the best thing we can do for individuals, but it’s also the best thing to do for businesses, because not only are they paying debt on their businesses but also customer-facing businesses like hospitality, like tourism, like restaurants—all those types of industries that rely on people spending money. Of course, at the moment, people do not have the money. That’s why we need to work and make sure that what we’re doing is in alignment with the Reserve Bank so we reduce inflation as quickly as possible, and that is a really, really important thing.

I think the big thing for small businesses and for improving their situation is really about how we can improve them, and I’ve set about meeting with a whole lot of businesses. There are five common themes—and it’s the same for manufacturing—one of which is that they want access to talent so that they can get more skilled people in their businesses. That’s the number one priority.

Secondly, they want to be able to attract more capital coming into their businesses. I’ve got a piece of work I’m doing on how we can improve the New Zealand stock exchange listings and how we can get more equity capital going into businesses—particularly, hopefully, through KiwiSaver providers—but also how we can improve competition in the banking sector. Of course, we’ve got the Commerce Commission, which has been funded to do these market studies, and we’re waiting for the outcome of the report into the banking study, but we do want to make sure we’ve got more competition. Of course, Minister Bishop has just announced that tomorrow morning, the consumer data rights bill will be formally introduced into the House. That is also about promoting competition in the finance market, and I’m looking forward to the support of the House for that bill because we need more capital—both equity and debt—going into financing small businesses and manufacturing.

The third thing they want to do is reduce regulation, and everyone is doing their part on that. Obviously, the Hon David Seymour is doing that, but also at a personal level, I’m working with Stats New Zealand and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) to try and stop, for instance, silly survey results being asked of people all the time, full of information that the Government already knows about them, and stop repetitive surveying going through. There are a whole lot of other initiatives we’re doing on that as we’re rolling around the country, but we want to stop unnecessary regulation. Both Stats and MBIE have a huge part to play in that.

The fourth one is about increasing digitisation and improving manufacturers, getting to Industry 4.0. The Budget has specific information and the money set aside. What we’ve done is we’ve allowed businesses to undertake what’s called smart factory assessments, or the Smart Industry Readiness Index. We’re tripling the number of those assessments. For manufacturers, they can get a better grip on where they sit on the progression of Industry 4.0. That’s an important part, and one of the biggest things they’ve asked for. It’s all related to digitisation, and we also want to support small businesses. The Budget included money for digital initiatives, and we want to make sure that we are doing what we need to do to support businesses over time.

The fifth one, of course, is recognising the importance of small businesses and manufacturing. Too little focus is put on these industries. We need to make sure they are much more supported and they have the information flows coming to them. Stats is working on making sure that industries such as small businesses and manufacturers can get access to some of the great stats that Stats New Zealand has. But there is a wide range of other initiatives in there. Our big programme is the regional growth partners. At a time when we’ve got businesses struggling to survive, we’ve maintained their budget of just under $16 million to support businesses. This Budget had a lot for small businesses and manufacturers, and I’m glad to be part of a Government bringing this to fruition.

That member, the Hon Andrew Bayly, started his speech by saying he took great pleasure in speaking to the Budget. No one listening to him found it particularly pleasurable and it wasn’t a very pleasure-filled speech, and can I just say that I don’t take any pleasure in speaking to that Government’s Budget. However, I do so because it’s important that we speak to the general public and bring some transparency to the decisions that it made in the 2024 Budget.

I want to start with the tax cuts. I want to start with the $14 billion worth of tax cuts that this Government is giving and what that means for the rest of New Zealand. Those members have come to this House on numerous occasions and they have presented in front of the media saying, “We are responsible for the health of the books.” They are saying that they have had to make tough decisions because of what they inherited. However, they are the ones that promised $14 billion worth of tax cuts—$14 billion that many economists and many professionals and experts out there have continued to tell them are unaffordable.

What did they prioritise next? They prioritised landlords. I’m not sure whether or not that was who the general public were screaming out for to get support, but they decided that $2.9 billion worth of tax breaks to landlords was the priority.

What concerns me is that there are a number of New Zealanders who actually did need support who didn’t get any support at the Budget because of whom that Government decided to prioritise. Even if we just refer to the tax cuts, the social development Minister herself did not even realise that the 9,000 people who stood to lose from the tax cuts were actually 9,000 of her people. They were 9,000 beneficiaries on whom she said she didn’t get any advice with regard to their losing anything with the changes to the tax system, and yet it was in the regulatory impact statement—the regulatory impact statement that went with the bill, that went to Cabinet, and that she should have read, but, clearly, she did not read it.

Those beneficiaries—the ones who really are struggling the most at the moment with the cost of living challenges—were the ones that were left off the list when a decision was made to hand out $14 billion, and when asked on that side of the House why it was beneficiaries that were not included in any tax changes, we were told it was because the focus was on working New Zealanders. Well, superannuitants got a cut—a very, very small one, but superannuitants got a cut—so where do that Government’s priorities lie? Certainly not with the poorest New Zealanders, and we should be concerned about them because in the last eight, nine months since that Government took office, we’ve seen 20,000 more New Zealanders on benefit, with the backdrop to that being that, apparently, there is a public sector target in place that we’re going to see a 50,000 reduction in beneficiaries in the welfare system. Well, I don’t know how that can be when we’ve seen it go up 20,000 already.

Now, I do not begrudge those beneficiaries having to access welfare support, because, ultimately, it’s about what is happening with the economy. Are there any jobs available? Are they being supported into employment? Well, under that Government, they’re not, but they are certainly being stigmatised. They’re certainly being sanctioned more, and we saw that with recent statistics that came out. They’re not necessarily getting any additional hardship support, because that’s reduced, and that is despite the fact there are 20,000 more New Zealanders on benefit under that Government’s watch.

That takes us backwards. It takes us backwards because that is more New Zealanders that are in the welfare system, and who are not in employment, getting the money that they need to support their whānau. Not their fault—that is the result of that Government’s actions.

Now, the Government says that they have had no hand in that and they’re not responsible for that at all. When you lay off 6,000 public servants—I think it’s 6,000-plus now—then we all need to recognise that there are flow-on effects to that. New Zealanders are interwoven; we are self-reliant. When New Zealanders lose jobs, then everyone suffers—be that local businesses, be that the whole economy—and that’s exactly what we’re seeing now. Now we’re seeing more New Zealanders on benefit as a result of that.

I’ve been out and about in recent weeks, talking to our social services, who also didn’t get any reprieve with the 2024 Budget. That is despite them going to the Government, cap in hand, saying, “Demand is high. More New Zealanders than ever need our budgeting support and need food parcels.”, and yet nothing was there for them in the Budget and now what are we seeing? Forty-four of our budgeting services across the country are closing down as a direct result of that Government ignoring them and choosing not to invest in their very important service.

What else did we see? We saw the Auckland City Mission and a number of other key social service organisations across the country coming out strongly, lobbying the Government, and saying that they simply would not have enough money to be able to provide the level of food that they needed to the poorest New Zealanders in the lead-up to Christmas. Now, to their credit, very quietly, that Government has injected, or found, an additional $6 million to support those social services up until Christmas, but that’s not a plan. That’s not certainty for those social services. They know and the families that are going to them for support know that there’s no bright light of hope on the horizon post - December 2024. They are still going to have families in high demand, seeking support from them, and yet this Government has provided no certainty to them whatsoever.

One of the key areas—changing the subject a little bit here—that I had a high level of concern for when we were undertaking the scrutiny week reviews was actually the Government’s public sector target to reduce emergency housing grants by 75 percent. No plan for where you might put these New Zealanders who front up to the Ministry of Social Development; just a plan to deny them emergency accommodation if they showed up homeless to the Ministry of Social Development.

When I asked the Associate Minister of Housing what risks had been brought to his attention by the public servants who gave him the advice, he refused to answer that question, and yet we know what the risks are. A 75 percent reduction in those getting special needs grants for emergency housing will lead to a significant increase in New Zealanders rough sleeping, sleeping in their cars, and sleeping in overcrowded, potentially unsafe environments, and yet to make the books look good, they would reduce access by 75 percent to emergency housing, all for the purpose of being able to say, “Look, we have less money going to emergency housing accommodation and fewer New Zealanders in emergency housing motels.” But where will they be? On our streets and in their cars.

I was saying to one of our social service providers how would those guys on that side of the House like it if every single one of the people who was denied emergency housing in a motel showed up on their street, sleeping outside their houses, with their children, and with the sicknesses that they have, their disabilities, and their mental health issues? How would that side of the House feel? Well, that is what that type of policy decision leads to, and the sad reality is that we have not had the answers from that Minister or from many of the other Ministers with regard to the implications of some of their policy decisions.

I am worried about the welfare system and some of the rhetoric that we’ve heard. We heard the Minister in the House, talking about the move towards phone-based case management. I haven’t even seen any evidence to support that that works, but, again, all it is is rhetoric and trying to make the numbers look good for the sake of saying, perhaps, that they’ve got more New Zealanders in case management, and yet all they’re doing is giving them a phone call.

We are not seeing the significant investment that we need into those that are unemployed with respect to upskilling and training and employment. We’re not seeing the investment that we need with regard to income adequacy and support for those that are struggling with the cost of living. We’re not seeing the investment that we need in terms of their overall expenses; in fact, we’ve seen that taken away with the end to free prescriptions and free and half-price public transport.

We have seen so much taken away from the poorest New Zealanders in the most recent Budget that that side of the House should, quite frankly, just be ashamed of themselves. I take no pleasure in speaking to this Budget.

This is a split call. I call on Cameron—sorry, Mark Cameron.

Not at all, Mr Speaker. Thank you very much for your time today to speak to the Estimates bill—the Budget debate. A rural-friendly Budget debate, I reconcile. I believe that it’s got a rural lens in it, a damnably good lens—an ACT Party rural lens. We brought significant change to the narrative to this rural budget, and I want to highlight a couple of very salient figures: $65 million accelerating development of greenhouse gas mitigation research and development—something very salient to rural New Zealand—increased funding to the Rotorua Te Arawa Lakes Programme of $13 million, and an overall $67 million in the budgetary allowance for fresh water.

We actually listened to rural New Zealand, if I may say—we go back to first principles. What are the costs? What are the benefits? Do the benefits outweigh the costs, and if they don’t, perhaps we shouldn’t be doing this stuff. The previous lot, I would argue, weren’t so good at listening to those kinds of realities.

The vast initiatives I have spoken to are many. We put property rights at the centre of our campaign. We heard of the very salient issues to do with significant natural areas—a fraught issue. We’re willing to go into battle for private property rights and ownership to acknowledge the importance of local investments in things like the Queen Elizabeth II National Trust—gracious me!—affording property rights and outcomes for better biodiversity.

We were instrumental in keeping farming out of the emissions trading scheme. We actually care about rural people and their mental wellbeing. Rural emissions are vastly different from other industries. I know this intimately well; I am a farmer—as you will reconcile, with significant consideration needed, discussion had, and outcomes understood. That is still in development, we would argue. I would suggest perhaps that Parliament previously, I would certainly believe, was quite happy to see productivity fall on the back of not having had those discussions.

ACT led the way in opposition to He Waka Eke Noa. It was fraught with difficulties. What were the numbers? How did we reconcile the outcomes? Were they accurately understood? This Budget certainly speaks to those.

We’ve got to stop the hyperbole and ask the questions, and I maintain that this Budget puts farmers back in the centre of that discussion. It puts them—gracious me!—in the room—there’s a novel idea—and no longer languishing in silence. It is actually making these people—and this Budget speaks to them—part of that process.

ACT put forward a member’s bill, as members would perhaps remember, in the previous Parliament that was speaking to localism—outcomes, farm management, fresh water, their assets—and understanding the nuances of on-farm practices and fresh water. Sadly, our friends on the left all voted it down. The Labour and the Green team thought that it was better run by Wellington. The farmers that we listened to in this Budget certainly reconciled otherwise.

We worked across party lines in the language of collaboration—National, ACT, and New Zealand First. We said, “Let’s follow the science.” We collectively initiated an independent inquiry into the science of biogenic methane, a short-lived gas out of the ruminant animal sector that I have spoken of before. We preserved private property rights by challenging the significant natural areas and rolling back the erosion of what it looked like to everyday Kiwis. Andrew Hoggard here, as we well know, has worked tirelessly to promote localism, and this Budget certainly highlights that. Farm plans and better freshwater management outcomes are certainly being felt and improved in rural New Zealand, and I’m happy to share that.

One final thing I would add: this has been ACT’s core business in rural New Zealand. We listened, and this Budget certainly speaks to that. It’s not about officials in Wellington; it’s about real people in rural New Zealand.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I must say that I’m really proud of the work that my colleagues Mark Cameron and Minister Hoggard are doing in the rural sector.

I’m really proud of Budget 2024, and I would say that this is the first of many Budgets to come with ACT in a coalition Government. We delivered in this Budget what we promised to deliver before the last election. We said that we would squeeze our spending—we would squeeze Government spending.

We don’t want to squeeze hard-working New Zealanders, like the previous Labour Government did, and we have demonstrated that in this Budget. As we can see, the financial allowance in this year is $3.2 billion, which is less than the previous Labour Government’s, which was $3.5 billion, and I must also say that this is the lowest in real terms since the 2017 Budget. So we have demonstrated that we can deliver what we said, and we have also demonstrated that it is not about how much money we spend; it’s about how we spend. It’s also about valuing each and every dollar that taxpayers pay to the Government to spend on their behalf, and we are very conscious of that.

I am also conscious that the cost of living crisis, because of that irresponsible spending of the previous Labour Government, caused a lot of suffering to New Zealanders, and this wasn’t just on their back pockets. I have heard so many stories from people where the financial strain actually caused relationship strains as well in families. That is why I think it’s really important to give that kind of financial relief to New Zealanders, and I’m really proud to stand here and say that this coalition Government, with ACT in Government, is delivering tax cuts.

Today is 23 July, and in eight days’ time, most New Zealanders will see that they will have more money in their wallets because of the prudent financial management of this Government. We are also supportive of FamilyBoost because we know that for young families with young children, it’s really hard for them, and we want to see that they get that support for childcare.

I personally believe education is very important, because we want to see that education is able to do what it should be able to do—that is, to provide opportunities to our children, because our children are our future. That’s where we think that there should be diverse opportunities available for students to take up education and reach their potential, and I’m really proud of Minister Seymour for the $153 million that is allocated in this Budget for charter schools. This time, what is different is that charter schools are going to come back in a bigger way.

Previously, we know that the Labour Government got rid of charter schools. We are bringing them back because we really believe in giving opportunity to all children. We want to see that students are at the centre of education, not unions. Not unions, but students, children—New Zealand children—are at the centre of our education system, and that is why we are bringing back charter schools.

Finally, I want to touch on a topic that is of huge concern to me. In the recent adjournment, I went to two protests. One protest was organised in South Auckland because of that attack that happened at a jewellery store in South Auckland, and then there was another protest organised in the Auckland CBD, and this was because of that attack that happened on a bus. But there were other reasons, as well—overall crime—that the protest was organised for, and I went there to assure them that we are hearing them, that their voices matter, and that we are doing everything possible to ensure that we are restoring law and order.

Under the previous Government, what we saw was that the situation was such that that Government was taking the side of criminals. But this side—this Government—is on the side of victims, and that’s why $2.9 billion extra in operating and capital funding is in this Budget to restore law and order.

I’m really proud of my colleagues doing great work in the law and order space. I must say this: this money is going to go to increase the number of corrections officers that we have and to increase the number of police officers we have, and I’m really proud to see that Minister Chhour and Minister Seymour launched military-style academies just recently. This is to give opportunity to those young offenders, those who get into offending, but they have the opportunity to come back to normal life. So we want to see that these people—those who are derailed—can be brought back on track and given this opportunity to succeed in life and do better in life.

This Government is definitely on the side of victims. We don’t want to reduce the prison population just for the sake of reducing the prison population, like the previous Government did. We will continue to make sure that our communities are safer. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak in this Estimates debate. The Budget is a major milestone in the parliamentary calendar, as it is indeed in businesses’ and families’ budgets. It’s a big moment where we assess what we have in the kitty and what we’re going to allocate our funding to. Unfortunately, this Budget came with a backdrop of very high inflation and a cost of living crisis. We’ve had good news just recently with the inflation rate coming in under expectation, at 3.3 percent, and while our tradable inflation is down significantly, non-tradable inflation is pretty sticky. That’s been a problem internationally, actually, but we are a long way behind the countries we tend to measure ourselves against, who are doing far better than we are.

I would like to note and remember that what drove this, I suppose, is really important, and that is, I think, well highlighted in the Auditor-General’s report on making infrastructure investment decisions quickly, which highlighted how money was shovelled out the door during the response to COVID. Now, COVID absolutely needed a response, and I don’t think anyone disagrees with that, but having that money go out the door in the way it did and not looking for value for money actually drove inflation much higher than it needed to be.

On that, it was ironic and very disappointing that the Funding for Lending Programme, which was a programme put in place by the Reserve Bank to allow trading banks access to funding to lend to the market and homes and businesses at a lower rate than they would otherwise have done—good programme. It was a great idea in that time to sort of kick things along. However, the Reserve Bank chose to keep that programme running while they lifted the official cash rate (OCR) to curb inflation, so we had two policies running completely counter to one another. So the inflation and the rate that we suffered and why we are behind those countries that we measure ourselves against is due to two causes. One is that there was too much wasteful spending, and money thrown out the door that didn’t need to be—the large-scale asset purchase programme, which was the printing of money by the Reserve Bank—and this Funding for Lending Programme continuing while the OCR was going up.

Those two things cancelled one another out, if the OCR rise did, in fact, cancel it out at all, but it may not have, and when we’ve asked the Reserve Bank Governor why he continued to do that, rather than to shut it off—as most logical people would do—he said that he had a moral obligation to the banks. Well, what about his moral obligation to the taxpayer, because when you’re paying your mortgage rate every month, just spare a moment to take a thought about the Reserve Bank Governor actually having a moral obligation to the banks, which, in his view, was higher than the moral obligation to the taxpayer. I think that’s wrong, and we’re all paying the price for that.

However, the good news is we’ve got tax relief coming out next week, and so people are getting much-needed tax relief. Fiscal drag has been a huge drag on the average worker, where the increase in inflation has driven their effective tax rate rates up higher as they go into higher tax brackets. In fact, a full-time worker now pays 5 percent more than they did 10 years ago, which is a huge amount of extra tax, and that wasteful spending is a really good place where the Minister of Finance and Cabinet members went through an exercise of finding savings. They’ve found 240 savings initiatives and have driven down the expenditure in Government departments.

Now, we have been criticised for that, but I’ve been out and about amongst my constituents—as I’m sure other members have during the recess—and I can tell you that businesses are driving costs down themselves and having to let staff go, because they are under pressure. That’s what you do when you take undertake responsible budgeting, and that is what our Government has done.

But I want to go on to a bit more about wasteful spending, particularly those in some of the Government departments. I’m sure members will be aware of the debacle that has been the Cook Strait ferries, and I should actually qualify that because that’s not fair. That’s not fair because there is a private operator in Bluebridge, which runs a very efficient shipping service across Cook Strait, and it doesn’t rely on any funding from the taxpayer. But we have just seen debacle after debacle from KiwiRail, and I’ll take you back to the Kaitaki incident, when it broke down in Cook Strait with 900 passengers on board. We very nearly had a major maritime disaster, and why? Because there was not enough investment in maintenance on that vehicle. The part that failed was overdue for replacement by months. That’s not acceptable.

While we had the Aratere run aground recently—and we’ll find out in due course what happened to that after that investigation is completed—there has been the claim that the ships are too old and that that’s what the problem is, and the funding for the iReX project being refused by the Government has caused that. That’s not true. That is absolutely not true, because even if it had gone ahead, those ships—the new ones—wouldn’t have been delivered until 2026, and they wouldn’t have been able to berth and operate, because that landside work wouldn’t have been completed. So that had no bearing on that whatsoever. That is just poor management—out-and-out poor management—and I would point out that the average age of those KiwiRail ships is between 26 and 29 years old, and we’ve just retired the Hercules, which were 60 years old. So it’s completely untrue that those ships are too old and not fit for purpose. Yes, they need replacing, but that is not the issue. If maintained well, they should be operational and safe.

Then, added to that, we found now that the harbour master is now reviewing whether Tory Channel is actually safe for those ships to use. All the ferries may well be forced to go in and out through Queen Charlotte Sound, or perhaps go one way through Tory Channel and the other leg of the journey go out through Queen Charlotte Sound. That’s to be determined, but we know that the large ships that were proposed certainly would not have qualified to go through that channel very easily. They would have had to prove that they could do it, and there was quite a lot of doubt about that.

Back to the cost of living: I was in the southern part of my electorate in North Canterbury last week, and there’s a significant drought continuing there. I was speaking to one of the high country farmers this morning there and they still haven’t had rain. There’s a significant lack of snow in the back country, which is something we all should be concerned about because that feeds into the hydro lakes, and we already know that just recently, Meridian Energy has asked Tīwai Point to reduce their electricity take because of the lower lake levels. So that drought is ongoing and is really imposing a lot of cost and worry on the farmers in that part of my electorate.

I want to finish by saying that as the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, I’m really looking forward to the banking inquiry, which we will embark on shortly. I think that’s going to be really welcomed by New Zealanders. We will be looking into the primary production side of it as well—rural lending—and it will be something that will tie in nicely with the final draft of the Commerce Commission’s market study which will be released soon. I’m looking forward to that because it’s something we need to get on top of. I think the initiatives with the Customer and Product Data Bill, which is going to come to the House very shortly, will also tie in nicely to make that a more competitive sector. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s actually a real honour to be able to stand up in the House to talk about Budget 2024, and I have spent a lot of time across the country and in my electorate of Mana gauging the sentiment and the response to Budget 2024.

Before I go into the particular Budget debate, I do want to respond to a couple of the comments made by the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Stuart Smith, the MP for Kaikōura. We have a great working relationship, so great that last year, he, as the member for Kaikōura, and I opened the Kaikōura Fire Station. It was a $7 million investment that the previous Labour Government had put into Fire and Emergency New Zealand, and we funded $51.3 million for the replacement, refurbishment, and upgrade of fire stations across the country. That was done as part of the New Zealand Upgrade Programme and part of the COVID recovery funding, which the member for Kaikōura, Stuart Smith, has just said before was wasteful spending. Was it wasteful spending to spend $7 million on his local Kaikōura Fire Station? That was not what he was saying when he was helping me cut the ribbon at the Kaikōura Fire Station, and there are 26 fire stations across the country that were upgraded because of the Labour Government’s spending on infrastructure.

Another particular area that was also funded through what’s apparently called “wasteful spending” was a runway at Kaitorete Spit in Canterbury. We’d put aside, I think it was, between $5 million and $7 million—my memory fails me at the moment—and that was for a runway which locals had asked the Government, basically, to fund before this summer so that they could get that runway finished. Well, apparently, according to that side of the House, and there was a number of members from that side of the House—they went to the opening of that runway, now that they’re in Government. There was no word about that being wasteful spending, and, time and time again, we are now seeing ribbon cuttings across the country of infrastructure projects which the previous Labour Government funded and which this Government is now saying is wasteful spending.

The second point which I want to address that the member Stuart Smith also referred to was around inflation. He did talk about the large-scale asset purchase programme, but one of the biggest reasons why New Zealand’s inflation went up, similar to other countries in the world, was because of tradeable supply shocks across the world. Members will recall that during COVID, borders were closed across the world, supply chains were restricted, and New Zealand, being at the bottom of the world, found itself in a position where our tradeable inflation was high. So it’s really nice to hear that Christopher Luxon is also now using that excuse as to why inflation is high, and yet, when those members were in Opposition, on every single sitting day we heard from the Opposition—the now National Government—that that was not an excuse: “Supply shocks are not an excuse for inflation.” However, the facts are the facts, and those supply shocks reverberated across the world and that was a huge cause of why we had high inflation.

I do want to come back to this Budget 2024. Budgets are about choices. We have seen the impact of those choices that have been made, time and time again. I noticed that almost every single day last week, there was a negative health story in the media around cuts that were being done and hiring freezes that were being done, and so it’s no surprise there was a whole lot of political spin and performance that happened in the post-Cabinet yesterday. But, as I showed the House today, when adjusted for inflation, there is an increase in operating expenses in Vote Health of only 0.4 percent—0.4 percent—and how do I know this? Because it’s in this document, the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update. Now, I know that some members on the other side of the House don’t like to read, so, please, indulge me so that I can help summarise some of the numbers that are in this Budget Economic and Fiscal Update.

The operating balance before gains and losses (OBEGAL) returns to surplus in 2027-28. That is a year later than forecast at the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update. OBEGAL in the near-term is considerably worse, with the 2024-25 deficit increasing from 1.4 percent of GDP to 3.1 percent of GDP. Now, outside of the worst years of the COVID crisis—about which, again, members on the Government side of the House say that it was wasteful spending to have spent $30 billion on business support payments, resurgence payments, small-business cash-flow loan schemes. I don’t hear them saying, basically, that businesses shouldn’t have got money. Actually, during COVID, they were saying, “You should give them more money.” But outside of the worst year of COVID—2020—a deficit from this Government in this year’s Budget of 3.1 percent of GDP is higher than any other that the Labour Government ran.

Right throughout the election campaign, members on this side of the House would have heard “wasteful spending”, “borrowing too much money”, and “They’re going to leave the debt for our children.” Well, again, let’s go back to the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update. Net core Crown debt is higher by $17.1 billion by the 2027-28 fiscal year relative to the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update. There is also an increase of $12 billion in the bond programme over that forecast period. What is the driver of these larger amounts of debt—again, more than Labour borrowed? More debt. What is the cause of it? It’s because this Government doesn’t have enough money to keep the lights on. That is why this Government has had to borrow for tax cuts as well, because if you look at the income tax component—tax cuts—it is just under $10 billion. But, as I have shown in the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update—which, again, I know some members may not have read; I will help summarise it for you—there is a $12 billion increase in the bond programme over the forecast period.

It also shows in the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update that the fiscal impulse is going to be positive in the first two years. That’s page 58, by the way, everyone—page 58. The fiscal impulse measures the change in the Government’s contribution to aggregate demand compared to the previous year. So, despite the Government’s claims that Labour’s operating allowances were reckless, the total impact of additional spending—additional spending—in this year’s Budget, including spending outside the allowances in the phases of spending, has increased between Budget 2023 from members on this side of the House and Budget 2024 by members on that side of the House. But, again, numbers are numbers. What does it practically mean to Kiwis? What does it practically mean to our communities, whom members of this House have been talking to over the last few weeks?

What it has meant is that we don’t have enough funding in health to keep the lights on. There is a hiring freeze at Health New Zealand. It doesn’t matter, the big number, and the smoke and mirrors, which I warned members of the public, in this House, that that Government would use during the Budget—those big, billion-dollar numbers. It means nothing if there is not sufficient funding in the operating expenses, because if you break it down, most of those billions of dollars are in capital funding, yet the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update sends out a warning. It sends out a warning to New Zealanders that in the allowances for health capital spending, there’s a risk to Nelson Hospital, there’s a risk to Dunedin Hospital, there’s a risk to Whangārei Hospital, and guess how much this Government has put aside as a contingency just in case those hospital builds are too expensive! Again, it’s Nelson Hospital, Dunedin, Whangārei: only $100 million—only $100 million. That is irresponsible planning by this Government.

Again, our communities are suffering because even though those members promised $250 in tax cuts, what do our poorest New Zealanders get? Those on the minimum wage, basically, get $12.50. What do our pensioners get? A lot of pensioners still own their homes and their rates have gone up by 19 percent in the last quarter, and they also have to insure those homes. Well, guess how much they get from these tax cuts: $2.50. Then, what point is there in having a tax cut if you have no job? The Budget Economic and Fiscal Update shows unemployment is increasing. Poverty will increase. Child poverty will increase. This Budget is a shame.

The next call is a split call.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Today, I am taking a call on behalf of Te Pāti Kākāriki to speak about one of the, I guess, keynote aspects of this Budget. Amongst a slash-and-burn Budget, where almost every other facet of our public services has been cut, there’s one area that has gotten a massive amount of investment, and that’s the Budget line that has $1.9 billion going into increasing Vote Corrections, with a large chunk of money going towards a mega-prison at Waikeria.

There’s something deeply disturbing about a Government that would rather invest billions of dollars into locking people up after the harm has already been created, as opposed to preventing harm from happening in the first place. But this Government and its Budget isn’t motivated by reducing harm in communities; they’re motivated by looking like they’re doing something. We have a Government that says that they care about victims, but if they did, they would not have cut $25 million tagged for improving outcomes for the victims of crime.

We know that one of the biggest drivers of crime is poverty, and not just material poverty but also a poverty of opportunity. Last week, I went to the youth prison in Christchurch, and I heard about how some young people preferred to be in prison as opposed to being in their communities, because at least if they were in prison, they had guaranteed meals every day and a bed to sleep in. How sad is it that in order for some young people to have their basic survival needs met, they would much rather steal a car or hurt somebody in order to get their basic needs met?

If we look at the areas that the Government has made cuts to within this Budget, we can see that there’s $1.81 billion worth of cuts within the housing space, including scrapping the Homelessness Action Plan, making it easier to evict people from emergency housing and from public housing, and reducing the funding for rangatahi transitional housing. This is where we need to realise that having a safe and affordable roof over your head, where you don’t have to be in constant fear, is an important part of crime prevention.

Angela Davis, who is an African-American researcher looking into prisons and the role that they play in our societies, said that “prison construction and the attendant drive to fill these new structures with human bodies have been driven by ideologies of racism and the pursuit of profit”. Her writings on the American prison system may feel far away, but they are becoming more and more relevant to us when we look at another item that has been funded within the Budget, which is the reinstatement of the three-strikes law, the fact is that that has been imported from America, the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world. We’re building jails and building prisons at a rate that matches the United States; in fact, Aotearoa now has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the world.

If prisons worked, this Government wouldn’t be increasing the budget for prisons by $2 billion, and if prisons worked, their populations wouldn’t keep rising year on year. If you take it in conjunction with some of the other decisions that have been made in the Budget like the removal of prison population reduction targets, millions of dollars being put into three strikes, reduction of funding for courts like Te Ao Mārama, the removal of funding for section 27 reports, and the establishment of military boot camps and the new “young serious offender” category, it’s clear that the Government is happy to continue funnelling people into prisons instead of investing in our communities.

Prisons cannot be the only answer, and yet, sadly, they have become that. Prison shouldn’t be the place that you finally get support for mental health and addiction issues because the public health service is under-resourced. Prison shouldn’t be the first place you get the opportunity to connect with your whakapapa and your identity. Prison shouldn’t be the place you finally get a diagnosis for the health issues that you’ve struggled your entire life with, and yet they have become the only issue. I ask that we be a bit more creative in our response to the harm that is created in our communities and that we invest in those things that we know are the drivers of crime, instead of continually focusing on bottom-of-the-cliff approaches.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It’s a real privilege to be able to rise tonight to speak to the very real implications of this Budget, because here’s the thing: the Government members purport to be so laser-focused on their outdated, very narrow view of the economy that they fail to see te ngahere for te rākau, or the wood for the trees. This Budget neglects the one thing that holds it all up and the one thing, alongside the health of our people and our communities, which is the only thing that has any true value, and that is te taiao—our environment.

I knew that the environment wasn’t really a priority for this Government when they left all the environment Ministers out of Cabinet and scrapped really early on the Natural and Built Environment Act and the Spatial Planning Act. But what I didn’t expect with this Budget was to have so starkly laid out in these Budget decisions such a deliberate and comprehensive dismantling of our environmental reform and environmental management space here in Aotearoa, especially at this time in human history, when we need these environmental protections and legislation the most, and that’s what all the weight of evidence and science and research is telling us. We need to protect and restore the environment, or it’s going to be to our own detriment, and it doesn’t seem like that is reflected in any way in these Budget decisions.

I did just want to step through a number of the most glaring and troubling Budget decisions. Cuts to Vote Environment have totalled $617 million over the next four years, and these are across significant programmes of work like cutting $20 million from the indigenous biodiversity fund or cutting $47 million from the Freshwater Improvement Fund. Then we’ve got the gutting of both of our key environmental agencies. First of all, the Ministry for the Environment has suffered a funding cut of $65 million, and that’s a crippling 39 percent.

Now, I want to spell out as well what this means in terms of the staffing implications. We heard really clearly that 200 staffing roles that were vacant will no longer be filled, and then we have 303 roles that have been actively disestablished from these Budget decisions, and I do want to point out that these roles are across the Public Service in the fundamental domain of things like areas where we are protecting or researching or restoring or monitoring fundamental things like the air we breathe, the water we drink from or gather kai or swim in, and the biodiversity that we love and enjoy. So we are all worse off when we do not have these public servants doing the mahi and actually having benefits for te taiao and, therefore, ourselves.

The Department of Conservation (DOC) is another environmental casualty that we’ve seen as part of this Budget. DOC is tasked with the very difficult job of protecting over 4,000 threatened or at-risk or taonga species. They manage a third of the country on a meagre, shoestring budget and they’ve been awarded in this Budget a $48 million cut, which will have very real implications for their ability to carry out their role. This includes the incredibly successful Jobs 4 Nature programme, which goes up in smoke come the end of this month, with a $55 million reduction over four years.

Now, what possibly could be the rationale for this level of under-investment? Well, we got to ask the Minister that during scrutiny, and she believes that the balance had swung too far towards the environment, and what was really concerning about that was that she couldn’t point to any evidence within her own ministry that actually informed her of that view. But we heard, very vaguely, something about hearing from constituents and the need for housing and infrastructure. Now, those are valid needs, but you don’t need to scrap our entire environmental framework in order to achieve them.

The Green Party is really concerned that our window for protecting te taiao is quickly closing and this Government does not understand that. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is my absolute pleasure, actually, to rise and speak in support of the Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. It’s my pleasure for a number of reasons, mostly because I’d like to start and preface my kōrero today with this analogy, if I may. Imagine that you’ve left your house for a few years, and you come back and you’ve—sorry, not “you”—one walks back into their home and finds it ransacked. Everything is broken, tables turned, windows smashed, and it’s going to take time to fix up one’s home. It’s going to take time and it’s going to take careful measurement of how much one can spend in fixing up one’s home, and this is what we’ve been tasked to do.

As of last year, we have to fix up our ransacked and damaged home, and I’m proud of the fact that there’s a massive focus in our first Budget as a Government—and an awesome one, if I may add—and I’d like to highlight a few focuses that really resonate with my neighbours in Takanini South and East Auckland: tax relief, education, health, infrastructure, and law and order. I’m happy to say that our Budget provides for a number of other areas as well, despite the fact that we’re fixing up this ransacked home, but these areas are areas that we felt were an extreme priority and I believe this will positively impact my neighbours in Takanini.

Let’s focus on tax relief. In eight days—yes, that’s right; eight days—on 31 July, 3.5 million New Zealanders are set to receive tax relief for the first time in years. They’ve been struggling. My neighbours in Takanini and all across New Zealand have been struggling and still are struggling, but some relief is coming. It’s not going to solve all of the struggles but it will help, and some of that relief will be that we are adjusting, finally, the bottom three tax thresholds so that my neighbours can keep more of what they earn.

We’re extending the eligibility for the independent earner tax credit, we’re increasing the in-work tax credit, we’re lifting the minimum family tax credit, and we’re introducing the FamilyBoost payment. When I was door-knocking during the campaign, I let families that had their little bubs on their shoulders, on their arms, while they were talking to me know that FamilyBoost is coming. That’s just a few of the things we’re doing to provide tax relief to our whānau in Takanini and beyond.

Madam Speaker, please let me move on to the education sector. We’re committing, despite the ransacked home that we have to fix up, $2.9 billion to the education sector over the next four years. This will improve student outcomes. We’re going to hire more teachers and provide them with better support. Minister Stanford knows exactly what she’s doing, and underpinning all her decisions is that care. We’re going to be hiring, as I said, more teachers. We’re going to be building new classrooms and funding structured literacy with that $2.9 billion, as well, and investing in early childhood education amongst the many other measures. Part of this investment plan includes Budget 2024’s $456 million injection into school property growth, and here I am absolutely thrilled to repeat what I announced a couple of weeks ago, which is that a brand-new primary school is coming to Flatbush, with Flatbush being one of the suburbs in my electorate of Takanini.

This is part of our coalition Government’s plan in investment in school property growth from the Budget that we’re considering today. This new school is the first to have been announced by Minister Stanford and myself, and I know the benefits that this will bring to the schools in the area and to the parents in the area—there’s going to be more choice. As I’ve mentioned before in the House, Takanini is one of the fastest-growing electorates in the country, and our Minister of Education has seen this need and has announced—as I said, I was absolutely, absolutely thrilled by the news—that a new primary school is coming to Takanini. It’s going to cater for 600 students from years 1 to 6, and construction starts later this year. So anyone that has social media, please follow my page and I’ll keep you up to date with the progress.

Our Government is supporting our children for a brighter future with this Budget. In health: record investment. Those two words we’ve spoken about, and they’ve been said in this House a number of times, and I’ll repeat them—record investment in health. Despite the ransacked home, our health sector will also get a significant boost of more than $16 billion allocated to health across the next three Budgets. That’s priorities. This is knowing what our priorities are. This includes money for hospitals and specialist services, and primary, community, and public health services. There is $1.7 billion for Pharmac to ensure our fellow Kiwis can get access to the medicines they need.

Roads and infrastructure is another major focus of this very well-thought-out Budget. Despite the broken, ransacked home, $2.68 billion will be invested into our roads, rail, and public transport. We’re going to unlock economic growth and we’re going to get Kiwis and freight where they need to go, quickly and safely. This includes $1 billion to accelerate the delivery of roads of national significance, and I’m sure many in the House know by now one of those roads of national significance is in the Takanini electorate: Mill Road. Finally, after being promised twice by the former Government that Mill Road will be built and its reneging on that promise, we are getting back to work on Mill Road. Don’t worry, neighbours in Takanini, Mill Road will get done.

Finally, Madam Speaker, if I can please dedicate the rest of my time—I wish I had triple the time—to talk about law and order and the investment our Government is making in law and order. But I don’t want to categorise it as law and order, actually; I’d like to categorise this as making Kiwis feel safe, because that’s exactly what our investment in law and order is doing. It’s making our neighbours, our families, our businesses, our children be able to feel safe in their homes, in our communities, on the streets. As part of our commitment to restoring safety, we’re going to be investing $651 million over the next four years in critical support for our amazing, exceptional police force. As we know—but I’m going to repeat it for the benefit of my cousins listening in from Australia—we’re going to be employing 500 extra police officers. We’re going to be boosting pay and supporting our police to help us all feel safe in our homes, in our streets, and in our schools. Mr Speaker, welcome to the Chair. What I’d like to highlight, if I may—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): You may.

RIMA NAKHLE: —is I’d like to recognise, as a former speaker spoke about earlier, Mr Gurdeep Singh. His jewellery store is in Papatoetoe. As we know, there was a violent, horrendous attack against him and his family while he was just trying to make a living, and not only make a living but this guy is a very generous man who gives to different organisations, as well.

At Stonz Jewellers in Takanini, there was a smash-and-grab in broad daylight on a Sunday at around 4 a.m. last year. Other business owners that I’ve spoken to in my electorate are dreading to go to sleep because of that fateful phone call that they might get at 2.30 in the morning saying, “Your business has been attacked again.” That’s the reality that we face in South Auckland, and it angers me, actually, when other people make out as if our Government is just trying to please some type of vague group. No, we’re addressing issues that are the reality in South Auckland.

Our military-style academy: finally—finally—it’s going to be addressing youth offending. We’ve campaigned on this heavily, and guess when these pilots will begin, because we’re not wasting time. We’re not sitting and waiting for more ideas to come across. We know what we need to do—six days is when this pilot will start.

I’m absolutely proud of what we’ve measured to scrape together, after we’ve entered this ransacked home. Budget 2024 is going to deliver for many, including my neighbours in Takanini. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s good to be able to rise and speak in favour of the Appropriation (2024/25 Estimates) Bill at the second reading. I’d just like to congratulate my colleague Rima Nakhle on her excellent speech there, and I know her electorate will be very proud of that hard-working member.

Up in my part of the world, in Tauranga, we have very good news: we now have a democratically elected council—hooray! That is great news, and I just want to give a little shout-out to Mahé Drysdale and all the other elected councillors—well done on your election. It’s been a long time coming. Democracy has been restored, and it’s very, very good to see.

There were people there, coming in and saying, “We need a hybrid model. We don’t want to restore democracy.” We said, “No, that is completely unacceptable.”, and I’d like to thank the Minister of Local Government, Simeon Brown, for making sure that we stuck to our values and we valued democracy. I mean, to put it the other way around, it might be like me going to the Governor-General in a couple of years’ time and saying, “The previous lot was so bad, let’s not give democracy to the Kiwis. Let’s make sure we keep National in power.” That would be completely unacceptable and that was unacceptable, and Tauranga has democracy, so that is fantastic. All the best to the new council, and I look forward to working closely with them.

Now, this Budget is a good Budget for Tauranga—it’s a good Budget. We have some significant needs in Tauranga. We have very constrained housing supply. If anyone was watching TV last week, they might have seen on one of the breakfast shows—I think it was Friday morning, if I remember correctly, on TVNZ 1—there was a story on Tauranga. We have the highest rental prices in New Zealand, and that is crazy for a city of 160,000 people that we have the highest rental prices. Tauranga isn’t alone in that. It’s not unique. It is happening across New Zealand, where we have constrained supply and we have had councils and Governments that haven’t been willing to deal with the fundamental aspect of market prices, and that is the supply of housing on to the rental market.

We need to get housing right, and we look at where the previous Government was, where we saw homelessness up by 400 percent. That is unbelievable from a Government that talked about how much they care for the poor and vulnerable. Homelessness increased four-fold—shameful, very shameful. We saw rents increase by $170 a week. That was very challenging—very challenging—for people. We saw a Government that ignored the advice of Treasury around what to do with interest rate deductions. Where did that go? They said it would increase rental prices; that’s exactly what it did. In fact, under the previous Government, we saw one of the all-time great reverse Robin Hood moments in New Zealand’s history, where we saw money pouring into the market. It all went into assets which were held by wealthy people, and we saw an enormous transfer of wealth, the biggest in New Zealand’s history, from the poor and middle classes to wealthy New Zealanders—that is your record.

Good news: we are here to fix it, and you would have seen the Minister of Housing, Chris Bishop say that we are looking to deliver new houses. We are going to go for growth, and this is a great thing. We’re going to ask councils, such as the newly elected council in Tauranga, to deliver 30 years’ worth of houses. They can go out, they can go up; they need to make it happen.

Then we look at where we’ve got this big bit of land. You can go along Pāpāmoa into Tom Rutherford’s electorate, Pāpāmoa East—it’s almost its own city now. It’s significantly big. You can drive for a long time waiting to hit the end, but then you do, and there’s another big stretch of land called Te Tumu. Now, the landowners there have been wanting to develop that—there’s room for 6,100 houses—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Oh, fast track.

SAM UFFINDELL: —for almost 20 years. Someone said “fast track”—did I hear some common sense coming out from the other side of the House? I think I did. This is a momentous day. Well, I don’t know how that process is going to run, but I would love to see Te Tumu come on board.

Houses for 15,000 people—wouldn’t that be a good thing? That might help make Tauranga not the most expensive place to rent a house in New Zealand.

Glen Bennett: Kāinga Ora—stop there.

SAM UFFINDELL: People are going to keep coming to Tauranga. You might come there too one day, Mr Bennett, because it’s such a good—

Glen Bennett: I was there last week.

SAM UFFINDELL: You were there last week. It’s such a good place, isn’t it? When you’re there, you can understand why people want to move there—and I can see the Speaker nodding. Thank you, Mr Speaker, it is a fantastic place.

We have been growing for a long time and we have been growing above the national average for a long time, and it is a good thing. We have a unique value proposition. We are part of the “golden triangle”. We have the port of Tauranga, which—well, what do we do? We export, and it was 44 percent of New Zealand’s goods that were leaving out of the Port of Tauranga, if I’m correct on that. It is significant, and let’s hope that port can keep growing as well, because we need it to grow because we need to be able to drive value for all of the local businesses—the iwi and whānau businesses there—that are wanting to export their wonderful goods, especially kiwifruit. What a good season for our kiwifruit growers—how good has that been? It is so good.

But we are going for housing growth. We are going to improve the rental market. There were good announcements recently from Minister Chris Penk around building and construction, allowing competition in building materials, and looking at things that are adding $20,000 to $50,000 worth of cost and asking questions as to whether that is necessary. Do you know what it’s actually doing? It’s putting costs back on to consumers and it’s pushing up house prices. It’s very hard to buy a house at the moment.

We’re looking at better social housing, as well, and I think I heard one of the Green members talking earlier about the repealing of the Natural and Built Environment Act. What a good thing that was, and we will be continuing to reform the Resource Management Act. There are some changes in process at the moment. We need to get this right, and that will help deliver new houses for Tauranga.

I gave the Minister of Local Government a mention before for restoring democracy—thank you, Minister. He’s also the Minister of Transport, and, boy, do we have some transport challenges, but we do have a few roads of national significance in Tauranga. The Takitimu North Link stages one and two—a very busy, very dangerous stretch of road. It would be fantastic to have a four-lane—

Tom Rutherford: That’s right.

SAM UFFINDELL: —grade-separated highway to move people—Tom Rutherford in the House as well; welcome to the Bay of Plenty—delivering people and goods around the area and to the port.

State Highway 29—I went over there, I got a trip the other day from Tranzliquid Logistics in one of their tankers. They said, “Come on in, and make sure you bring the Minister next time.”, but we went over the Kaimais to Matamata. As we were driving, the driver started loosening up and telling me how wonderful this new Government was, and he’d noticed there weren’t as many potholes any more. We drove over the Kaimais and I was looking for potholes and I couldn’t spot one, and maybe that’s because our Government is taking roads seriously because we believe they are the best way to deliver people and goods efficiently and safely around the country and around the Bay of Plenty and around Tauranga.

It’s been very, very good to see, and we’ve got some other significant roading projects under way there, too. I drove past one this morning, the Pāpāmoa East interchange—we’ve already given “Pap East” a shout-out.

Tom Rutherford: As a resident, it’s good for my property value.

SAM UFFINDELL: How good is that interchange going to be for you, Mr Rutherford? Very, very good indeed. There are some significant challenges the new council’s going to have to grapple with around Fifteenth Avenue and Turret Road. We’ve got an old, rusty bridge there that needs to be replaced, but I know this Government actually has the wherewithal to make sure we recognise that and prioritise that. Instead of prioritising raised speed bumps and cycle lanes, we will be prioritising getting people from A to B as efficiently and as safely as possible.

I was walking down the road yesterday and a guy came up to me and he said, “Are you Sam Uffindell?”, and I said, “I am.” He was quite up front with me and I thought “Where’s this going to go? Where’s this going to go?”, and then he said, “I just want to thank you, Mr Uffindell, for all the great work your Government is doing.” When we got into caucus before the House started today, I told the Minister of Finance because it was directed at her and directed at her wonderful Budget.

This is a Budget that is delivering for the people of New Zealand. It’s delivering for the people of Tauranga. Good news too, because in a few days’ time, they are going to find out that the average household in New Zealand and in Tauranga is $102 a fortnight better off—how good? Then they could be $75 a week better off as part of our FamilyBoost policy. This is good news for the people and the families of Tauranga.

This is a happy Budget, this is a good Budget, and when they get their tax cut and they go and spend it on their food, they will see that food prices have only gone up—wait for it—0.2 percent in the last year. Inflation is down to 3.3 percent. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand predicted 3.6 percent, and we’ve got it at 3.3 percent. It’s almost back within band. This is an excellent Budget. I commend this bill to the House.

What a sad, sad speech—what a sad, sad speech. The Opposition—well, I was going to say that; they certainly deserve to be the Opposition—but this Government, I should say, is a little bit delusional.

Tom Rutherford: Welcome back.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Thanks very much. It’s a little bit delusional, this Government because they waffle on about how much they have done for Māori. We saw Minister Goldsmith today filling in for the Māori development Minister, and, as we know, he’s a little bit confused too about whether he’s a Māori or a Pākehā—and we’ve seen that released by the National Party in the past. But it’s always good to hear from Minister Goldsmith.

I need to say to him and to that previous speaker, Sam Uffindell, that, sadly, that Budget was all about landlords. That’s what it was all about. We know that and the country knows that. Landlords have been prioritised in this case, I want to say, over Māori, and it’s a shame the Minister for Māori Development, Tama Potaka, isn’t here, but I wish him all the best. I know he’s off at a tangi and wish him, obviously, the best today. But, sadly, I have criticised him and I will continue to criticise him for the shocking Budget that has been delivered to Māori.

It’s a shocking Budget because we’re talking about a $96.7 million cut in terms of Māori development. It’s a huge cut. Where are those cuts? In Te Tumu Paeroa, $4.9 million; hāpai whenua, $22.4 million; we’ve got discontinued funding in data capability and access, $22.8 million—right across the spectrum. That’s a huge cut, but then we go across to areas like Māori housing, and I’m very proud of the work that myself and Peeni Henare put into those partnerships with regard to Māori housing. We have had the best by Māori, for Māori solutions in this country, and we’ve got a loss of $40 million in the Māori housing area.

I mean, when you talk about by Māori, for Māori, how on earth can you even talk about there when you’ve got a huge cut in that area? In Te Kawa Matakura, focusing on our knowledge, in terms of iwi: $21.9 million. It’s right across the spectrum. Then we’ve had the Minister patting himself on the back over his funding in terms of kapa haka—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Yeah, Te Matatini.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: —Te Matatini—Te Matatini. But, in fact, there’s a loss of money there. It just carries on and on and on, and I have to say today that he has failed us. He has failed us and this Government has failed us, because there’s two types of strategies necessary for Māori. You, obviously, have to have a universal one, but you must also have a by Māori, for Māori one, and now we’ve got a Minister who has actually delivered us a Māori budget that is in absolute deficit.

It is a shocking Budget for Māori, so much so now that in Māori broadcasting, we’ve got Māori Television, or Whakaata Māori, announcing that they are going to be in deficit for the next two years. I was saddened when Minister Tama Potaka blamed me for not funding the channel for the next two years. Apparently, Labour gets the blame for a funding deficit over the next two years. We put $130 million into Māori broadcasting in the previous three years—$130 million. What is this Government going to deliver? Nothing—absolutely zero.

We have Shane Taurima, the chief executive of Māori Television, or Whakaata Māori, standing up and saying, “Sorry, we’re going to be in deficit. There’s going to be redundancies.” Then we have Tama Potaka standing up and saying, “Well, blame Willie Jackson and blame the Labour Party.” Don’t blame us—we’re not the Government. Put the blame where the blame should be. Yes, we’ve struggled in the past in terms of funding, but we got more Māori funding across the line than any other Government in history. In the last four years, we delivered a billion dollars a year back in terms of Māori—a billion dollars right across the spectrum—in terms of employment and in terms of Māori health. We didn’t deliver zero, like what’s being delivered now.

Hon Simeon Brown: You delivered a big red zero.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: We’ve got a Minister over there who knows nothing about things Māori and, sadly, we’ve got a Minister for Māori Development having to listen to people like him. We’re proud of what we have done, and we’ll oppose this Budget for the next two years. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to take a short call on the Budget debate. I want to agree with the previous contribution from our finance spokesperson, the Hon Barbara Edmonds, who said that Budgets are about choices, and I have to seriously question this Government’s choices. This Government has chosen to prioritise tax breaks for landlords over our most vulnerable children and their families.

In the five minutes available to me, I want to focus on the budget for Oranga Tamariki. I think this is a shameful Budget. The Minister for Children should be ashamed. Instead, she said she was proud of finding over $320 million cost savings from the back office within Oranga Tamariki. Well, let me tell you what those cost savings actually mean to the care and protection of our most vulnerable children and their families. The Minister of Finance required the Minister for Children to find 6.5 percent cost savings. So, in order to achieve that, they first and foremost looked at restructuring the organisation of Oranga Tamariki. That has resulted in 419 jobs being cut from Oranga Tamariki. That is about 9 percent of the organisation, but that is 25 to 30 percent of the back office. We are going to see the impacts of those back-office cuts—I dispute they are all back-office jobs—on the front line. You are asking less people to do more work and those who are going to suffer as a result of this will be the children and families who need our support and protection most. It has been described as back office, low-value spending, or wasteful spending.

The next one I want to move on to is $30 million a year being cut from contracts for services for services in the community. Community providers are providing services to our most vulnerable children and families. Now, in the hearing that we had during scrutiny week, we heard from the CEO of Oranga Tamariki who said he wanted to make it very clear that there is just not enough money to meet the needs that they see every day—there is just not. So why did the Minister for Children not go back to the Minister of Finance and say it would be irresponsible to find 6.5 percent savings when this is what her CEO is saying? She nodded and agreed with it in the hearings, and here we are, $320 million being saved within Oranga Tamariki.

Now, that $30 million a year that they are cutting from community providers are services on the front line. A reporter has rung over 150 community organisations. They had their contracts expire on 30 June. They are still waiting—still waiting—for Oranga Tamariki to confirm whether they will have contracts to continue the services that they provide, whether they will be buried, or whether they will be terminated. Now, in scrutiny week, it was very clear: they said that this would be sorted by 1 July. Well, it is 23 July and this has still not been sorted. It has been described by the media as a shambolic process, and I would have to agree with them.

I want to move on to the $29 million that they boast about for their investment into youth justice. It’s an investment into boot camps. That’s their solution, rangatahi and others that might be listening today, to youth justice. They are investing over $5 million into a pilot programme for 10 young people to send them to a boot camp experiment which evidence shows has failed in the past. It is an expensive experiment, and that money could be better spent in providers that I visited during the recess like Kirikiriroa Family Services Trust or Ko Wai Au in Te Awamutu, who said that they could do better work with our rangatahi and get better outcomes than a boot camp experiment that this Government is hell-bent on starting on Monday. This is a shameful Budget, and the Minister for Children should have gone back to the Minister of Finance and said it would be irresponsible to cut 6.5 percent.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Before I take the next call, could I ask members that are having fulsome chats to keep it down. If you want to keep engaging in different chats, there are other spaces that you can do that in so that we can focus on the engagement in the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m proud to discuss and share my insights into the Estimates and appropriations for 2024-25. In particular, I want to talk about how everything is related to health. In my background as a doctor, it’s hard for me to not look at the world through this lens.

Approximately 80 percent of health outcomes are determined by factors outside of the health system. So while people might not make this direct connection, for me our Government’s commitment to things like radically improving the availability of housing is going to have a massive impact on health outcomes. So housing is about shelter—it’s a basic physiological need, and one where if it’s not appropriate, if it’s damp, or if it’s in a mouldy environment, if it’s overcrowded, that can actually lead to more avoidable hospital admissions and upper respiratory infections and the like and all sorts of ongoing health problems.

So, in our Budget, we’ve committed $140 million for 1,500 new community housing places. So that’s going to be provided by community housing providers who will be able to improve access to housing, but that’s not the only thing we’re doing in housing. We’re also bringing in a range of changes that will reduce the cost of development. We’re going to be going for growth in housing, which means that we’re going to fundamentally make changes to the way that councils approve and go through their consenting processes and all of the costs that are associated with red tape will be reduced. We need to massively expand all of the options for people, including some of the options like build to rent developments, mixed model uses, and others to expand the choices available.

The other things that we’re doing that actually are about health in my eyes: education spending. Education is fundamentally linked to health outcomes. Educational achievement is correlated with lower infant mortality, also higher rates of immunisation and fewer hospital admissions. So we’re going to be investing $1.48 billion in education where we can make sure that the buildings and classrooms that are available for our kids are appropriate. At the moment, some of our school stock is actually mouldy and it’s probably contributing to the reasons why some of our kids don’t want to come to school. Although this is a large investment into making sure that our school stock is appropriate, from my perspective we will reap the benefits in the health system as well.

So, overall, if we are looking at the health budget directly, we’ve talked about some of the numbers that others have mentioned already. The $16 billion over the next few years is a way of giving certainty to the sector about what the budget levels are going to be, so that they’re not waiting each cycle to find out is there going to be an increase or a decrease or where it is—there’s certainty within the sector. That’s something that’s been asked for for a long time. But I think it’s really important to note that it’s not the size of the budget that matters; it’s actually what you do with it, and it’s actually how you take care of things that matter.

Tom Rutherford: It’s not all about size.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK: Ha, ha! That’s right.

Tom Rutherford: It’s about the delivery.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Are you heckling your own member?

Dr VANESSA WEENINK: The Minister of Health has—yeah, I’m being interjected by my own side, yes. The Minister of Health has appointed this week a commissioner for the health sector. This is one of the best pieces of news for people within the sector. We’re finally seeing some real action—we will see some real hope within the system. The message that I’ve received from people on the front line and health leaders has been “Thank goodness, it’s about time, and finally we can see some hope.” Because, really, what has been called for and what has been needed in the health system has been leadership: clear leadership.

That was actually one of the key themes that came through the report into the health system that the health reforms were sort of quasi based upon—a report that most of the recommendations in some ways were torn up and thrown away by a Minister of Health who’d been in place for less than five months when he decided that he knew better and it would be better to have, instead of a slow transition and a process that should take between five and 10 years to implement, they would do it in the space of one year. It was a risky and, now we can see, pretty terrible implementation. It has resulted in the worst level of low morale that I have ever seen in my 20 years of being a doctor for my health colleagues. They were tired, they were burnt out from dealing with a 100-year pandemic, and the previous Government did not listen when the New Zealand Medical Association, that I was part of at the time, said that we need reform in the system but now is not the time—now is not the time.

In order to implement proper, decent change in our health system, you need to have an engaged health workforce. You need to have a workforce who is ready to participate, who’s ready to step up to the mark and do what is required. But what’s happened is that instead of engaging the workforce, those on the front line, there has been a massive increase in the managerial overlays. So instead of having 20 district health boards, we had one Te Whatu Ora (TWO), plus we had the regions, but then we had, on top of that, districts underneath them. So, in real terms, you had more than 20 entities—probably about 25. You ended up with thousands of extra people, and many of them, when I’ve spoken to them within the system, because they cycled through so rapidly—most of them—didn’t know what they were actually there to do. I’d say that over the last few years we would have seen thousands of people go through that change management process.

By the end of it, we will have seen one of the worst examples of an implementation process that has ever happened in a health system anywhere. I would say that even 30 years ago when we had the previous health system reforms with the Crown health enterprises—CHEs—that three-letter acronym is probably going to go down in history as being not so bad as the three-letter acronym of TWO. As a health leader in the sector at the time—a front-line GP going through that—it was appalling and it was something that we could see the potential outcomes, and we know what is happening now. So, from my perspective, everything that we are doing within our Budget for 2024 is helping to redress some of the health outcome problems that we have in New Zealand. And, like I say, 80 percent of what happens in the health system is actually—you can find the cause of that outside of the health system.

Some of the things that people also wouldn’t think of as being a health improvement function would be tax cuts, but actually improving people’s incomes and the money that they have in their hands is directly related to their health outcomes. So the more money they have, the better they will do. Prosperity in a country is directly related to mortality outcomes. So by increasing prosperity in our country by improving growth, by working on infrastructure, by improving our roads that will lead to better outcomes across the economy, we are actually improving the health of our people. So everything that we are doing within Budget 2024 is aimed at improving health outcomes for New Zealanders. It’s about caring, it’s about the way that we do things, not about the size of the money that we’re putting in. So I’m very proud to be a part of a Government that is actually getting things done, that is getting things back on track in this country, and I commend this bill to the House.

There were days when people would trust what a doctor told you. Well, you certainly can’t trust what that doctor, Dr Vanessa Weenink, tells us. She should be ashamed, because, as a doctor, she knows that the imposition once again of prescription fees and the removal of the obligation to make homes drier and warmer will be an impost on many of the people that come to doctors up and down this country to look after their children. It is a disgrace. This Budget is about choices, and the Government chose to give tax cuts, big tax breaks to landlords and to those with high incomes, and to throw a few pennies—$2.50 a week—to people on superannuation; about $12 to people on low incomes. Their choices were to look after their mates. On top of that, how they did that was to borrow money to pay for their tax cuts—the so-called magical fiscal managers.

Well, let’s have a look: $12 billion is being borrowed and $10 billion is going out in tax cuts. Where does that money come from? Irresponsible fiscal management by a National coalition Government, to ensure that child poverty will go up, unemployment will go up. The misery for too many people who don’t have choices will go up while their mates, their landlord mates, walk away with bigger, fatter wallets. This is immoral. This is an immoral Budget from a coalition Government that just cares about the people at the top and still believes in the trickle-down theory. I’m ashamed to be here. Poorer people living in lower areas will not be protected, because there’s no consideration about climate change mitigation, about doing anything as a country, because this Government has changed the focus of what Government should do. Instead of caring for those who need care, they’re simply walking away on the basis of the trickle-down theory.

I could go on—my colleagues will talk on many other issues—but I’ve got a brief time to talk about trade, because the Government has aspirational targets of doubling trade, doubling export income for this country. Well, we support that in Opposition; in fact, we had strong growth, even through COVID, of our export earnings in this country, through a really tricky time. And I want to thank all those people involved in exporting—thank the A-listers and the C-listers, the people who were insulted by a Prime Minister who once again put his foot in his mouth. We in Government took trade missions when we could. Obviously, COVID interrupted that. We put people in planes and they paid their own way to come and meet up with the Prime Minister and myself and others—Mr Parker—to advocate for greater trade from this country. Big firms, small firms—in fact, if you go back, there were a couple of small firms. One was Animation Research; another one was called Rocket Lab, actually. They were small firms, probably C-listers, but they became big firms contributing significantly to the export earnings in this country. And for the Prime Minister to insult the people who were on trade missions with the Labour Government and the Labour-led Government was outrageous. He’s not apologised, and he should in my view.

His Budget—the Government’s Budget—does nothing to support the growing number of small exporting companies in this country to want to get out around the world. No more money for Trade and Enterprise—in fact, cuts to the budget for New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. No more money for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT). And I’d have to acknowledge that the Deputy Prime Minister has probably kept the money for MFAT, and good on him.

I just want to say that the first Budget of this coalition Government is an insult. It has simply transferred wealth from poorer people to more wealthy people, and the disparities in this country are growing, the division in this country is growing, and that is because of choices that have been made by the coalition Government, not because of inflation, not because of anything else, but because this Government has chosen to look after its wealthy mates instead of looking after the people in this country who need assistance.

Police got $107.7 million less than they did in the previous Budget. When we go line by line and see what they did get, they got a couple of Ladas and a boat. What they did get was less money in crime prevention; less money in youth services; job cuts to all those who support police—200 job cuts; critical IT projects to enable the front line have been put on ice; and all of that, on top of that, police are so stretched in their resources they are stepping away from attending family violence call-outs. This is because this Government has made the wrong choices for New Zealanders. While New Zealanders may have voted for change, they did not vote for this change. What this Government has done for police is they’ve made the shop front look good, but it’s a shambles behind the scenes.

Crime prevention—for all of the talk for crime prevention, this Budget delivered less money for police to prevent crime. Included in that is youth services—for all of the talk about preventing youth offending, our front-line youth aid officers are funded less in this Budget than they were in previous Budgets. For all of those support staff that enable police to get back out on the front line faster, 200 job cuts for non-sworn staff who support the front line to get out there and do their job. So more police are going to be doing paperwork under this Budget. Critical IT projects like ReFrame—which, ironically, were cut as back-office waste—would have enabled our front line to be more effective, and to use technology to respond quicker and smarter in the future of New Zealand policing. When the Minister of Police was asked about ReFrame at the scrutiny week, his response was that it’s “airy-fairy”. Well, I doubt that he even actually comprehends the benefits that a project like ReFrame could actually deliver for front-line effectiveness and good services for Kiwis.

Most scary to me is the fact that police have now advised the Minister of Police that they are so stretched on resources that they will no longer be attending family violence call-outs, even though partner agencies are not prepared to take up that slack and that there is a risk associated with this change in direction that may result in loss of life if risk isn’t adequately calculated. Now, that is because police have not been resourced to be able to do all of the things that this Government has expected of them. More foot patrols are great and it encourages safety in our CBDs—that’s excellent—but is that the price we should be paying for someone who requires a family violence call-out to no longer receive that service?

The additional police officers put into the Auckland CBD came from Counties Manukau and they came from North Shore—they were taken off other duties to go on foot patrols. In the Wellington CBD, the additional 17 beat patrol officers, half of those were destined for the Hutt Valley—my area. They were taken out of where they should have been going in order to make the shop front look good and make it look like they’re tough on crime. My concern is that with 124 fewer police since this Government came into power, all that is happening is taking police from one area to another to make the shop front look good, but the reality is that behind the scenes it’s an utter shambles. In the long term, those who are going to pay for this are the victims of crime in New Zealand—and having communities that are less safe. We know that because the latest poll from TV ONE shows that there are a whole lot of New Zealanders feeling less safe than they used do under this Government.

Let’s finish up with police pay, because that was in the Budget. Not enough to keep police here in New Zealand: 322 police officers have left to go to Australia. Do you expect that would happen when the Prime Minister himself doesn’t even know what a front-line new police officer earns? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not $90,000 a year. We have 124 fewer police officers doing this work. So when you set up a gang unit and it’s meant to be operating by 1 July and it’s not, and it’s only got five staff in it—not even necessarily police officers—that’s because the 500 promised to New Zealanders will not be delivered in two years. There is no way that that is going to happen. I’d just like to just wrap up by saying that this is a Government that has let Kiwis down—they’ve talked a big game on crime but they’ve cut funding for police and made our communities less safe.

Mr Speaker, thank you. Ned Stark warned us several years ago that “Winter is coming”, but with this coalition Government, we know it’s well and truly here, and it’s not good. Budget 2024 showed us this Government’s heart is made of ice. We know that every dollar spent on insulation brings at least $6 in benefits, according to a review of 45,000 Warmer Kiwi Homes whare. That’s through analysis done by the Motu economics institute. So that’s benefits—benefits in terms of health, wellbeing, and emissions: benefits gained through fewer visits to the doctor or days stuck in the hospital, and fewer days away from work; less firewood, less electricity being wasted; and benefits in fewer winter deaths.

A warm, cosy home safe from the elements is a basic human right, and as a country, we can ensure everyone has access to healthy, sustainable homes in caring communities, but this Government has cut $178.5 million of funding to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, and that will ensure that more children, more elderly, more whānau will suffer energy poverty. And we know that material interventions aren’t enough. Social support is also needed, like budgeting services, and they’ve also been cut by this Government.

The blitzkrieg of destruction has continued, with cuts to front-line services. The financial mentors in budgeting services have called for an urgent review of Government cutbacks because this Budget, as it stands, will drive more communities into poverty and debt and put added strain on an already under-resourced sector. So, clearly, this Government has not finished its massacre of all that is good. Disestablishing the Consumer Advocacy Council means that there is no advocate for residential and small-business customers. The Consumer Advocacy Council was an independent advocate. So here we are, with winter upon us, and the cold icy stare of the ice army in front of us.

I’ve had the privilege of working with those at the flax-roots, working on energy action. Members of the Community Energy Network like the Sustainability Trust here in Wellington, like Aukaha in Ōtepoti Dunedin—people who really care about their community, people who work with whānau in difficulty. I’ve had the privilege of working with many whānau in those challenging places, with poor-quality housing, needing support, not knowing where to turn, really stressed by this Budget. When the Prime Minister can spend $95,000 renovating Government House, a house that the Prime Minister prefers not to live in but only to hold family Christmas gatherings in, we can recognise the signs of privilege rather than care for those most vulnerable in our communities.

I’ve visited whānau and whare with holes in the roof, holes in the floor, rotten windows and weatherboards that were like a filigree—you could poke your finger into them—leaking bathrooms that cause the joists and bearers underneath to rot, holes in walls, homes where black mould looks like something from Stranger Things, and homes with weeping windows. Some of these homes were considered complete, having met the very poor insulation standards that we’ve already got, and having received ceiling and underfloor insulation in the basic Warmer Kiwi Homes scheme. So that’s what makes this so outrageous: to not only cut the Warmer Kiwi Homes funding but also to cut the new programmes which were going to deal with those complex issues—the programmes that were going to ensure that people could afford to heat their homes, programmes that would ensure that people could afford to have hot water, programmes that would reach those who distrust the State, who have been subject to abuse in State care and need special social support.

The experience of those who work at the flax-roots is really what matters, and when we look at this Budget, we see a disregard for evidence, a disregard for experience. The practitioners have been calling for a caring Budget, a Budget that recognises the cost of living pressures and the poor quality of housing, a Budget that will allow more flexible funding arrangements for those providers that sometimes have to bunch together different funds, report on different funding streams, simply to do the one thing that is necessary to improve those homes, to increase—not decrease—the available funding for repairing and restoring homes to a livable quality that are not safe to live in.

To work with those practitioners who are now confronting whānau in homes that have been flooded, whānau in homes that will be flooded again, whānau in homes that are not safe to live in because they are at risk from the climate impacts that this Government’s policies are now going to lead to when they expand coal mines and open up oil and gas exploration in our rohe—they have also called for coordinated approaches across Government; they’ve called for breaking down silos. I don’t see anything in this Budget that shows how we’re going to build a more collective effort across Government. They’ve also called for an investment in energy efficiency, which is interesting given that the Government’s already signalled an interest in reducing insulation standards, reducing our poor-quality Building Code to ensure that people can build worse homes than already exist in our poor-quality environment. Another recommendation is multi-disciplinarity to address what are complex social situations, but instead we see $2.9 billion going to give landlords a tax break.

And that’s not all: this Government has also gutted the Community Energy Fund, taking $30 million for tax cuts. This is really, really critical. This is important. This is important because many communities, those who work on energy efficiency, were also looking for localised distributed energy resources, distributed energy systems, peer to peer retail, community windfarms, community solar, to bring the energy dollar back into communities—to help prepare those communities for climate impacts which will increase, which will increase under this Government’s policies. Those communities have a headway, they are working anyway, but what we could have seen in this Budget was ensuring that we built the community energy sector to take charge.

That is the big disappointment, because the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment are now telling the sector that the remaining crumbs in the Community Energy Fund won’t be decided upon until December this year at the earliest. So what we have are people who are working at the flax-roots, holding on with their fingertips to provide for their communities. The one thing that reassures me is that recommendation—let’s see—in the Energy Hardship Expert Panel Report, which the Government seems to want to bury as well. The Energy Hardship Expert Panel Report to the Minister, released in July last year, is that there’s recommendation AF1 to improve competition and remove barriers to entry and operation for independent social retailers.

The good news for the Government is there is a bill sitting in the biscuit tin waiting to be pulled out, but it could come out a lot earlier. It’s called the Electricity Industry (Separation of Generation and Retail Businesses) Amendment Bill. So my gift to you is to adopt this bill and let us get working. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Budgets are absolutely about choices, about values, and about priorities. We can see very clearly through Budget 2024 that this Government made the choice not to listen to disabled people, families, whānau, carers, and the disability communities across Aotearoa New Zealand, because they have been marching in the streets, gathering at rallies, writing to Ministers, and speaking to the media and to many of us on this side of the House about the fact that their primary call was for flexibility of funding to be reinstated when it comes to disability support services. That is not in Budget 2024. What we see instead is $1.1 billion over 5 years, which will just about keep the lights on, as it stands. There is deep disappointment within disability communities to not see flexibility of funding reinstated.

I just want to quote from Chris Ford from the Disabled Persons Assembly, in an article published by RNZ, who says—and I quote—“Our primary call was for the return of flexibility, because having it gives disabled people and whānau the control to determine what supports work for us as individuals. We know from many years of trials that flexibility leads to improved safety and wellbeing outcomes for disabled people.” And yet it is that very flexibility that was removed, with no heads-up, on 18 March and not returned through Budget 2024.

The other point that I want to make is the uncertainty that many are feeling within disability communities up and down New Zealand because of the disability services review that is under way as well, funded through baselines and, therefore, relevant to the Budget as well. This flies in the face of the catch cry “Nothing about us without us”. There are no strong links that are seen by disability communities between the three people on the review panel who they were hoping would actually bring into the mix the need for flexibility of funding when sustainability of funding streams are considered by them. So I do want to point out that, of course, there’s nothing in the Budget for that, but it comes from baselines and it’s creating a huge amount of uncertainty, or as Chris says, that the sector is waiting “with trepidation” at the outcome of that disability support review.

The other point is the scrapping of the minimum wage exemption. That was something that our Government had budgeted for in Budget 2024. Policy work was under way. This Government has scrapped that, and as Chris says, “We are very disappointed to see that the new coalition government will not carry through the previous government’s commitment to getting rid of this unfair, discriminatory policy by 2025. Its continuation will mean that disabled people can be paid as little as $2 per hour (before tax) while working mostly in segregated, sheltered workshop environments.” It’s about 900 disabled people who will be paid about $2 as a result of this. Scrapping it would have sent a strong message, and this Government is undoing that.

Finally, with the time that I have left, I wanted to touch on the environment and conservation because we all know that the Department of Conservation (DOC) is already stretched, whether it comes to managing threatened species, dealing with animal and plant pests, and repairing damage from climate change - fuelled storms. We know that through the briefing to the incoming Minister, through the annual review, and, in fact, in a letter that the Hon Tama Potaka sent to the finance Minister that says—and I quote—“As you’ll be aware, the mahi that DOC teams undertake and facilitate is at the thin edge of environmental support for the highest conservation value areas of New Zealand.”, and then he goes on to outline all the ways that Budget 2024 could cut funding to DOC.

Why didn’t this Minister push back on the 6.5 percent cuts to DOC funding, for a department that is already so stretched? Instead—and I quote from Forest & Bird—“Now DOC and other Government agencies, the kaitiaki guardians of our land, soil, water, threatened species, climate, fresh water, and oceans face devastating cuts too.” They’ve listed all of the cuts and have, basically, said—and I agree—that it makes no sense to do this, environmentally or economically, during a climate and biodiversity crisis.

The Jobs for Nature programme, alone, in 2023, provided jobs for 11,000 people while protecting the environment. That’s gone. So much under the knife by a Minister who has no ambition for the environment and has clearly said that he’s fine with species extinction and that 30 percent marine conservation protection by 2030 is just “an aspiration”. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, this is a shameful Budget—a shameful Budget full of broken promises and bad choices. Many of my colleagues on this side of the House have talked about the fact that Budgets are made up of choices, and this Government has chosen some very bad choices. They talk a big game about the fact that at the election, New Zealand voters voted for change. I don’t think they realised what they voted for is quite what they were going to get, but, thankfully, I think Kiwis out there are beginning to see exactly what this Government stands for, which is not much. I would not be surprised if this ends up being a one-term Government.

Prior to the election, we heard from the Prime Minister that they were going to have a laser-sharp focus on the cost of living. Well, I’m sorry, but all we seem to hear about is a laser-sharp focus on roads, road cones, and potholes—not particularly aspirational, in my view. If this was a Government that had a laser-sharp focus on the cost of living, they would not have brought back 90-day trials, they would not have got rid of fair pay agreements, and they would not force thousands of people to lose their jobs—absolutely irresponsible and heartless from this Government.

We had a member earlier from the Government talking about radically improving access to housing. Well, how can that possibly be the case when we are seeing Kāinga Ora housing projects right across the country being paused and put on hold? One in particular that I would like to highlight is the one in Timaru where it was announced under the previous Government and it was going to be the largest public housing build in South Canterbury for many years. It would have provided 40 social houses, and these houses would have been made available to people in the community to move into in 2025. There are 141 people on the social housing wait-list, up from 105 in 2021. Those people, sadly, will not have access to housing, and I do not understand how members opposite can stand there and say that they are focusing on radically improving access to housing.

I want to talk about the broken promise, the broken promise on the campaign trail from that side of the House that families were going to be getting an extra $250 a week. Great news—families thought this was great news. But, actually, in reality, this is only going to a very few households. They talked a big game about this $75 a week rebate in the early childhood education (ECE) space for parents. What they didn’t campaign on was that parents were going to have to collect receipts for it, then they were going to have to lodge it with IRD—it was going to be a big process. I’m sorry, but we all know sometimes Government agencies aren’t the best to deal with and aren’t always the most efficient. I don’t even think that they actually spoke to ECE centres and how they were going to make this work, so it’s a big, long admin process for families, and I think many families will just give up and not bother. I think that’s a real shame that they didn’t continue on with the 20 free hours’ care for two-year-olds as the previous Labour Government had committed to.

I also want to touch on the fact that they have removed the free prescriptions. The removal of free prescriptions means that anyone would be able to get their prescription at no cost, thereby keeping people out of hospital. They also talk a big game about wanting to support small businesses. Well, I can tell you, the local chemist that I’ve spoken to in Ashburton has expressed real concerns about the removal of the free prescriptions, because that has been something that ensured that people would come and pick up their prescriptions. What this will do is simply benefit the likes of Chemist Warehouse. This is a shameful Budget with no focus on the—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The member’s time has expired.

I’m actually really pleased and excited to speak on this bill because it is my first bill as a member of Parliament. I am so proud of this moment because I joined and I wanted to be a member of Parliament working for New Zealand and for our future generation for one reason, and that is because I have now two very beautiful children—they are the future for New Zealand.

I remember when I first stood in the 2020 election—and the reason why I did that was because I had enough of the Labour Government already then—and I thought, “If I am to be a responsible parent, then I’m going to do everything that I can to deliver something for my children so they can have a better future in Aotearoa New Zealand. I need to do something about it.” So I ran in 2020; didn’t make it. I ran again in 2023, and here I am talking about the very first Budget, which I think came just in time for our current generation and also for the many future generations of New Zealand. Why? Because the country was in the wrong direction. Why? Because New Zealanders had voted on 14 October 2023 to make sure that we are turning the country and bringing it back on track.

I am actually really excited to hear, as you can see and as you can feel, to talk about the Budget, because—guess what! In the last three weeks of the recess, I was up and down the country. I didn’t take one single day off, including the weekends, because I wanted to be out there with the community, talking to people across different cities in New Zealand, talk to them about the Budget. Because, you know what? Most New Zealanders are struggling. Every single family that I’ve talked to has told me they are struggling so, so bad. “When can you guys fix this? We are struggling on this front. We have now decided to cancel our kid’s education programme on this front. We are no longer going on holidays. We are cutting down on the heat that we can put on because we are struggling.” And so when I talk to them—and guess what! Most of them are so busy with getting their own lives back on track that most of them have not realised about the changes coming ahead.

For every single family that I’ve talked to, I was telling them about, “Hey, have you tried the tax calculator? Let me try it out in front of you and do it for you.” And then I talked to them about the FamilyBoost. Well, coming on to the FamilyBoost—actually, the former member who spoke before me talked about the challenges for families with young children when they need to now collect invoices and then put it on to the IRD system to get support. Guess what! When you need support, you will do the extra mile to get the support that you really need. And guess what! I have actually talked to the early childhood educators for my daughters. I have two daughters who are 2½ and four. They’re currently going through the ECE programme, and I’ve asked their teachers and their ECEs—based in Pakuranga, Auckland—about the responses from the parents coming into ECE.

Now, Pakuranga is one of my favourite electorates, and I think it’s the best electorate in New Zealand. The best—where I grew up, and I’ve spent almost all my life in Pakuranga with all my extended family. I love it so, so much. Not the most affluent, but there are a lot of hard-working families in Pakuranga. So I talked to the educators and I said, “How are these families coming in?” Not a single negative response. Everybody asked “Why is it not sooner? Because we need the help. We really, really do need the help.” But guess what! Things take time. We need to set up the system. And why do we need time to set up the system? Because we want to make it easier for families.

The other reason why we are doing it online for every quarter is when you have a blanket policy—like the 20 hours or the 30 hours that the Labour Party campaigned on during the last election—when you have, basically, a blanket policy out there for anyone to just get it for free, you have also provided financial assistance to families who don’t necessarily need it, but it is their right to have it. What we are doing with the FamilyBoost is actually targeting the support that we can give to families who really, really do need it.

And now—this is the perfect time where I raise it again—from this family, parents called Yali and Isaac, who also have two children who are kids in the same ECE that my daughters go to. I remember them texting me on that very night, the Budget night, 30 May, with the screenshot and said, “Oh my God, we’re getting over $3,000 a year.” And that is enough that they can now put their two children back into an after-school, after-daycare, after-kindergarten care where they originally had the children but could no longer afford to pay for. But now they’re planning to take the children and enrol them again. Also, on top of that, they are going to take the kids to the zoo as a family treat, to go out as a break from all of the challenges that they are facing in trying to get their family back on track.

In the last three weeks of recess, I’ve been up and down the country and talking to different families who have struggles and continue struggling. Last night, when I arrived in Wellington, I actually popped around to the local restaurant, just about 50 metres away from Parliament. I was talking to the family owner who employs 12 full-time employees and she said she is struggling so, so bad—so, so bad. She’s waiting for the OCR to start to move down. She’s waiting for inflation to start to move down. She’s waiting for the National Government to start boosting the economy.

I said to her, I said, “But don’t just tell me about the good things that you’re waiting for, tell me your real thoughts. Because I’m a National MP, tell me something that you can—what is the best advice for the Government?” She goes, “I know it is so tough out there. I know the last Government have wasted so much money because I’ve seen people, I’ve heard stories in my restaurant from people who talk about the little things that they get from the last Government.” And she was not happy to hear them, because she is a taxpayer herself. So I actually told her, I said, “Hang in there. There is so much that we are doing as a Government. We are doing the extra sitting hours. We are doing urgency. We are doing law and order because law and order also matters for New Zealand as a whole.” I said to her, “Just hang in there a little bit longer.” Then she said, “But it would be nice if you can work even harder because we need to get New Zealand back on track and we need to bring our country back on track.”

Then I went to talk to her further, and I said, “Can you tell me a little bit more about doing business in general in New Zealand right now?” She told me a couple of things that she’s really struggling with. One, it’s the red tape. She said, “When are you going to make it easier for New Zealanders for small and medium businesses”—like herself—“in terms of banking, in terms of interest rates. When are you going to make it easier?” So I actually told her what we’re doing in the Finance and Expenditure Committee and I told her the things that we’re bringing into the Budget. Then she said, “What about law and order? I’m so frustrated with law and order. I have 12 employees and the last thing that I want is for someone to call me at about 10 p.m. when the restaurant is shut and say, ‘Someone has broken in’ or ‘Something has happened to one of my staff’.” She is so concerned about law and order. And then I reiterated it to her: “Law and order is one of the most—it is this Government’s plan this quarter, quarter three.” And then we went on to talk about the Budget and the plan. And guess what! She is a huge fan of the quarter-three plan and of all the plans that the Government has announced, because when we have a plan, we actually deliver it.

A couple of the things: when I went up and down the country talking about the Budget, constituents have told me they are actually feeling a lot more relieved—when they looked into the Budget and saw the commentaries around it—that there is a clear choice. They voted for this Government. This Government has put forward what we promised and we have given people the choice. But also, we are clear on the consequences of people not meeting their delivery. We’ve also made it really clear with New Zealand that we are here looking for value for money. Because New Zealand is struggling at the moment, we are in this economic crunch that everybody, including the Government and families and businesses, we just need to tighten our belts so that we can deliver better for New Zealand, deliver better for our businesses, and also deliver more value for the hard-earned taxpayer money.

This is why I am so proud to seek and give support for this bill, as this is my first Budget as a new MP and I’m so proud that we can deliver this for everyone in New Zealand as the National-led Government. So I commend this bill to the House.

Smoke and mirrors; that’s all this is. Once again I will reiterate that what we have is a Government—a Pākehā Government—that has released a Pākehā Budget for a Pākehā economy; always has been for the last 100 years. It’s not a 100-day plan; this is a 100-year plan to continue to entrench a Pākehā economy, lock out any type of Māori economy and to address the real issues here that continue to keep Māori in second place. That’s what Te Tiriti o Waitangi was about: the protection of the pre-existing rights of tangata whenua.

This is the most anti-Māori Budget in a generation: attacks on Māori ward representation; demolishing the Māori Health Authority; removing section 7AA provisions at Oranga Tamariki; rushing through the fast-track approvals bill; a 45 percent cut from Matariki funding; erasing te reo Māori from the Public Service; $40 million cut for supply and capability of Māori housing; $2 million cut for Aotearoa Reorua Bilingual Towns and Cities; a $6 million cut for the Mana Ōrite agreement between the Justice Sector Leadership Board and Ināia Tonu Nei to help transform the justice sector; a $96.7 million cut to Māori Development, including Te Tumu Paeroa; trying to remove the Treaty from legislation; $21.9 million cut for mātauranga and iwi-focused qualifications; a $4 million cut pertaining to strengthening Māori education; $37 million cut from backing mātauranga Māori to reduce emissions; $35.5 million cut, disestablishing the Māori Health Authority; a $9.5 million cut to claimant funding for historical Treaty claimants; and a $25 million on-hold for iwi and community-led rangatahi district courts. This is a shameful Budget. This is a shameful Budget. It is the most anti-Māori Budget in a generation.

The evidence does not lie. If Māori make up 20 percent of this country’s population, a “by Māori, for Māori, to Māori” approach means that Māori should get 20 percent of the total Budget. Absolutely. But we are sick and tired of Pākehā Governments continuing to fund themselves on the dysfunction it has created amongst Māori: 50 percent of the male prison population is Māori; 64 percent of the female prison population is Māori; 80 percent of Oranga Tamariki is Māori. We need to look at other solutions and Māori solutions “by Māori, for Māori, to Māori”, not “by Pāhekā to Māori”. That does not work, and it hasn’t worked. We don’t need reform. Reform is just a sugar-coated mechanism to make us better servants to the system. We need constitutional transformation. We need constitutional transformation. This is why 20 percent will give us $36 billion for a “by Māori, to Māori” approach to all of those particular kaupapa, and that’s being generous. It would be about $40 billion if it was based on need.

Instead, over $3 million of targeted Māori funding has been cut, while some initiatives have been completely scrapped. Māori are not mentioned once in the priority areas of this Budget. The Māori development section of the Budget summary only talks about savings; it makes no mention of new Government commitments. They have no ideas—they have no ideas. There is no new legislation to come out to look at, based on need, the data and the statistics that continuously put Māori at the bottom of the heap. Let’s look at health for an example. You’ve got an Associate Minister for Health advising Pharmac to ignore any of its obligations to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, when there are huge health inequities that Māori have when it comes to accessing medication. We’re dying seven to 10 years earlier than anybody else. This is the statistic that doesn’t lie. I have a solution. Let’s just take this for instance: if your NHI is worth $400 each, somebody is collecting $400—and don’t break my flow, please, Mr Speaker; I’m on a roll.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): I know you’re on a roll, but, Mr Waititi, just to recount that you have already spoken in this debate. Just speaking to Standing Order 110, “Member may speak only once to a question”—“Except as otherwise provided, a member may speak only once to a question before the House”—it has been brought to my attention that you have already done that in this debate.

RAWIRI WAITITI: So what does that mean? Can we carry on with the time? The time is Te Pāti Māori time, so can we carry on with—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): With another speaker.

Point of order. I was enjoying that. I seek leave of the House that Mr Waititi continue his speech.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Can you ask that again, Mr Webb?

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: I seek leave that this House permit Mr Waititi to continue with his speech.

Leave has been sought for that purpose. Are there any objections? There is an objection. Debbie Ngarewa-Packer can continue.

It is not surprising that this request to continue wasn’t supported, because—the truth be known—my esteemed co-leader Rawiri Waititi was giving facts, and the ecosystems of colonisation are really hard to swallow from those who are the absolute emboldeners; the absolute empowerers of that type of situation.

Tonight, we look at housing: 100,000 people in Aotearoa will be sleeping rough on the streets, in tents, in cars, in garages, and unlivable houses—things that the super-wealthy could never truly ever understand. We have, instead, the Government congratulates itself on a Budget where 30,000 of those who will be homeless will be Māori, a large proportion who are made up of rangatahi. Māori currently make up 50 percent of the social housing wait-list, and by no doubt they will be some of this one over here’s whanaunga. Therefore, they should be given 50 percent of the social housing Budget, but no—no. What we have is a Government ruling by denial.

Our people should not be forced to pay over half of their income to feed the super-wealthy Government and their coalition’s landlords. But that is where we’re going to land. We have, instead, a Government that’s cut first-home grants, locked another generation of Māori and Pasifika out of homeownership.

They’ve continued to make sure the buffering of the feathers of the landlords are looked after, sitting there comfortably pushing themselves as they’ve saved $245 million over four years—which is about 8 percent of the $3 billion handout they’re giving to—guess who! That’s right, the landlords. They’ve also cut Māori housing by $40 million and action to address rangatahi homelessness by $20 million. In the meantime, they’re giving $3 billion to who? The landlords. That’s it. More than the sum total of Tiriti settlements combined. Oh my gosh, the parity around here just continues to stun us.

Education: how extraordinary it is that kura and kōhanga reo have been funded less than 1 percent over the last decade and yet kura kaupapa continue to be the highest-performing educational systems in this country. Our tamariki and mokopuna to us are worth more than 1 percent. But again, that’s because we’re a future-focused party, unlike this coalition Government.

Te reo: Te Matatini is receiving $1 million less per year—that’s a 5 percent cut. Matariki funding has been cut by 45 percent overall. Funding grants for the Aotearoa Reorua and bilingual road signs has been cut. In fact, you could arrive to this country and not know there was even an indigenous language.

Climate change: funding for mātauranga Māori approaches to reducing agricultural emissions has been scrapped.

Justice in Aotearoa can only work when tangata whenua assert our tino rangatiratanga to use our own tikanga-based models of restorative justice. But, no: despite the fact that we make up all the worst numbers and all the worst stats, we are locked out of being involved in anything. This week, this nation—in front of the world—is being brought to sit and see the perils of those who have had to suffer and the community of survivors who have had to suffer abuse in State care. My aroha to those whānau. Instead, what we have is a Government intent on repeating the cycles and nothing has been learnt from history.

We have people here for the first time discovering that they may have a new idea—and, in fact, teaching rangatahi how to iron may be a way to actually sit themselves and navigate through justice. We have 70 percent of our Budget that needs to be allocated to 70 percent of the tamariki in Oranga Tamariki. But, no, we’re not going to see that; instead, we’re going to get mega-prisons, cuts to section 27 reports in sentencing, and cuts to programmes designed to address the over-incarceration of tangata whenua.

The measly tax cuts they’ve given us are a disguise. They’re an all-out war—they’re an all-out war that you have waged on tangata whenua and the poor and the struggling. In 1889, King Tāwhiao funded Te Peeke o Aotearoa, the first Māori bank with our Māori currency. This was after decades of Pākehā financial institutions using debt as a tool to de-possess our people of their lands and their autonomy.

Imagine if we were to create a Māori bank today while the Māori economy sits at $70 billion and is projected to reach $100 billion in the next five years. Just imagine if we would disconnect from $100 billion from the New Zealand economy, from the Government’s Budget and redistribute wealth to our own people and our own future. We are already a significant portion of this country’s primary sector: fishing quota, forestry, lamb, sheep, beef production, 10 percent of dairy, and 10 percent of kiwifruit. We have over 60,000 small to medium sized businesses, 20 percent of this population—almost a million and growing—and it’s you who will be in debt to us. Kia ora koutou.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Just for a bit of clarity for the House: the member can have an additional five minutes because this was a new call. The original call that was given to Rawiri Waititi was an invalid call. So if the member wishes, she can take an additional five as a part of that new call.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: Thank you, e te Pīka, mō tō mātauranga i tēnei kaupapa.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your knowledge on this topic.]

While we have the onus to sit here and reflect about the measly tax cuts that you are giving to disguise the all-out war that you’re waging on tangata whenua and, indeed, the poor, this Budget removes half-price transport and $5 prescription fees. They have cut minimum wage, benefit increases, support for disabled communities, while putting $1.9 million into what? Prisons. Because the only solution this Government has in its Budget is to prison its way through justice. You’re going to have rangatahi iron their clothes through justice in boot camps and then prison the rest of yourselves through a lack of innovation.

The sad thing that we can see for Aotearoa: well, the 20 percent—a million—of Māori, the median age of 28 are going and growing and, thank goodness, participating, because if Te Pāti Māori has proven anything, it’s in our period when we have had to sit there and initiate our people to come out and show you what it is that they think on Budget day. The only thing that can be remembered is the tens of thousands of Māori, tangata Tiriti, tangata Pasifika who got up and showed you exactly what they thought of your Budget.

If you were to sit there and reflect on what the articles and what the headlines and what the media were looking at, it was the activation of our people throughout the motu who showed you exactly what they thought of this out-of-touch, absolutely out-of-reach focus on only one group of people in Aotearoa—and that is the super-wealthy who, thankfully, do not make up the median age of those who are 28 years old.

I put to you from Te Pāti Māori that this Budget is short-sighted in the fact that you have incurred and are continuing to put pain on ordinary people: on ordinary people who work hard; on tangata whenua, on your tangata whenua who don’t belong anywhere else but here. And they will continue to grow and remember who was with them in their time of need. The activations that we saw at the railway station walk on to Pāremata; the activations that we saw stop traffic in the way that they did in Tāmaki Makaurau, in Waiariki, in Te Tai Hauāuru, in Te Tai Tokerau.

The activations that rose in a minute’s notice to show this Government how out of touch you are with the fact that you continue to think the arrogance of serving one group of people with one source of truth and one source of income is the only thing that will ever matter in Aotearoa. You instead will be remembered for your legacy.

Tom Rutherford: They.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: Your legacy—they—will be remembered for—thank you. They will be remembered for their legacy; they will be reminded and thanked for their legacy that they have left to remind a nation what we will never, ever do again.

This was the signing of a licence—the signing of a licence that proves that this will only ever be a one-term—thankfully—coalition Government. There is no way that people are going to forget the pain that those who are disabled, that those who are takatāpui, that those who are workers, that those who are in hospitals, that those who are public servants, that those who are teachers, that those who are nurses, that those who are police, that those who are unable to work, that those who are students, that those who are unable to afford homes. This Government and its coalition will be remembered for being the meanest-spirited Government ever. I te āhuatanga o tērā legacy, [In the nature of that legacy,] there is no way that a single person affected by this Government is ever going to forgive it in 2026.

Let’s look at the House. Today we have seen—and yesterday we have seen—the behaviour of political leaders who lack the decorum and indeed the relevance and relatability to our people, who, instead of using their sphere of influence to make life easier and better and relatable for those struggling, in fact get to resort to name-calling; get to use words that we have absolutely fought our lives against hearing our disabled communities have to hear in this place. What we have, sadly, is a Government that is so privileged that even its ability to use the House right is lacking.

So I want to remind and conclude that Te Pāti Māori will continue to breathe life to what could be—if we work together and dared to believe in what the economy that had the Tiriti been respected; that had the behaviours of white supremacism, the repealing and dismantling of kaupapa that advance our people being revolted, we would have had a much better Aotearoa. Kia ora rā koutou.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s really fantastic to be back in Parliament after our three-week recess. It would be remiss of me not to mention that, unlike many others, I made the most of my three-week recess period. Last week, I asked my beautiful partner, Hannah, to spend the rest of her life with me, to marry me, and—[Applause] Oh, clapping for the Budget from the other side—I love it.

James Meager: What did she say?

TOM RUTHERFORD: Well, she said yes. I just thought I’d put that on the record. I’d been thinking about it for a little while. We got a taste of what parliamentary life was like, and she was still committed to me after that. [Laughter] So I am really grateful—ha, ha! We’re not talking about the budget on the ring! But I am really appreciative to her. It’s highly unlikely that she’s watching, but, if she is: I’m looking forward to spending the rest of my life with you, Hannah, and thank you very much for saying yes.

What also happened in that three-week recess period was the election at our Tauranga City Council. Fantastic for our local community and the wider Bay of Plenty area to have local democracy restored last weekend, with Mahé Drysdale selected and elected as our new mayor, along with nine other councillors—

Rawiri Waititi: He doesn’t even live there.

TOM RUTHERFORD: —to make up our Tauranga City Council—oh, yeah. Anyway we had a great election. It was great to see the community turned out. I enjoyed being at the meet the candidates debates and actually just sitting in the audience, for a change, as an undecided voter and deciding on who I wanted as my local ward councillor and then also as my mayor. So it was great to see local democracy restored in Tauranga.

Budget 2024 is great news for the Bay of Plenty. The coalition’s first Budget stops wasteful Government spending; invests in front-line services like healthcare, schools, and the police; and it delivers tax relief to help hard-working Kiwis in the Bay of Plenty with the cost of living.

On 31 July this year, next week, New Zealanders will experience tax relief for the first time in 14 years. This relief—

James Meager: Oh, you were at school.

TOM RUTHERFORD: I was at school. This relief is well overdue and will help hard-working Kiwis who have endured a prolonged cost of living crisis.

Our tax relief package targets relief to low and middle income households. Families with young children are set to benefit the most. It gives average-income households up to $102 a fortnight, plus FamilyBoost childcare payments of up to $150 per fortnight for eligible families. A single person earning $55,000 a year will be better off by $51 a fortnight; a working couple both earning $150,000 a year will be better off by around $80 a fortnight; a single adult working 40 hours on the minimum wage will be better off by about $25 per fortnight; and so on. Our tax package is funded through savings and new revenue measures, meaning it will not add to Government debt. On the matter of health in the Budget, one of the parts of the Budget—

Helen White: They’re going to have to pay for their prescriptions, now; cuts into their tax cut, doesn’t it?

TOM RUTHERFORD: —that I’m most excited about is the extension of breast screening. I’m getting heckled from the other side of the House around the additional funding we’re putting towards breast screening. Budget 2024 provides over $24 million in operating funding, and $7.19 million in capital funding over 10 years to extend the BreastScreen Aotearoa programme to include free mammograms for women up to the age of 74, which is fantastic news. The current screening age for the programme is women aged between 45 to 69. Breast cancer is the most common cancer among New Zealand women. Detecting more cancers early can result in better treatment outcomes and save lives. Expanding free screening to women aged up to 74 will mean about 120,000 additional women will be eligible for screening every two years. On average, women will be eligible for an additional two to three mammograms over their lifetimes, as part of the free national breast-screening programme. This means the average number of free mammograms that New Zealand women will receive over their lifetimes will increase from about 13 to 16. The chief executive of the Breast Cancer Foundation said the extension to free breast screening is “excellent news.”

Furthermore, one of the other parts of the health budget was the announcement that we’ll provide $24 million over four years to Gumboot Friday. This is welcome news for my constituency of the Bay of Plenty. Gumboot Friday provides young Kiwis who are aged between five and 25 with free mental health counselling services. As the youngest MP in the National Party, I’m well aware of the issues that youth are most passionate about. One of the biggest issues facing young people is mental health concerns. Gumboot Friday provides an opportunity for support and early intervention while someone waits for a referral to other services. It provides young Kiwis who experience mild to moderate mental health issues access to free counselling services earlier. This funding will mean at least 15,000 young people across New Zealand will have access to free mental health counselling services every year. When you visit the Gumboot Friday website, you’re able to put in your location and find a counsellor who can support you. I’m proud to be part of a Government who’s committing to getting money out of Wellington and into grassroots organisations like Gumboot Friday.

Another part of the Budget that I was really proud of was our announcement around fees-free. Our Government backs a sustainable tertiary education sector that supports and incentivises hard-working learners, businesses, and tertiary education providers. The first year fees-free policy was an expensive failure and it did not deliver its aim of more students going to tertiary education, nor did it increase participation; in fact, there were fewer fulltime-equivalents in tertiary education in 2023 than there were in 2017. We’re changing the fees-free scheme from the first year to the last year of study, which is a much better way to incentivise students to complete their studies. Eligibility for the scheme will start in January 2025 and will be based on similar settings to the previous scheme. It will include provider-based and work-based learners studying at level 3 and above on the New Zealand Qualifications Authority framework. Every education dollar must be applied to its maximum value. Our fees-free change will create a more effective policy which will produce savings of $877 million, which will help deliver better education outcomes.

Furthermore, let’s discuss law and order. The Budget also delivers on National’s priorities of restoring law and order and delivering better public services. We are investing $651 million over four years to deliver an extra 500 police officers and provide them with the tools they need to do their jobs. Our coalition Government is serious about restoring law and order. That starts with having more police officers on the beat. The $191 million over four years to recruit 500 extra officers by 2025 is a priority in the National - New Zealand First coalition agreement, and this funding boost will help us deliver on our commitment to restore law and order.

In transport and infrastructure, Budget 2024 includes an additional $1 billion for the New Zealand Transport Agency to accelerate the delivery of the roads of national significance and other transport projects. This includes State Highway 29 over the Kaimai Ranges, and the Takitimu North Link stage one and two, both of which the Minister of Transport has announced as roads of national significance in the beautiful Bay of Plenty. We will deliver roads of national significance, roads of regional significance, and reliable and effective public transport in our main cities to get New Zealand back on track.

One of the other things I’m really proud of is that we’re spending over $1 billion to ensure that people with disabilities can access the essential services, equipment, and support they need. We’re putting more money into Pharmac. We will deliver more teachers, more support for teachers, more classrooms, funding for structured literacy, the healthy schools lunch programme, and charter schools through our $2.9 billion investment in education.

I wanted to finish with a couple of quotes from some members of the public. Let’s look at Business New Zealand. Business New Zealand said, “Budget 2024 shows a responsible approach to spending in areas that have the potential to significantly improve New Zealand’s economic growth.” Hospitality New Zealand said, “The Government has been clear in the lead up to Budget 2024 that it would focus on being fiscally responsible. We were not expecting a package specifically for hospitality, but we welcome the moves to reduce tax, keep communities safe and improve resilience and connectivity.” I commend the bill to the House.

Members, it’s time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will be resumed at 7.30.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Good evening, members. Before the dinner break, we were discussing the Appropriation (2024/25 Estimates) Bill and the amendment proposed to it. The next call is a Labour Party split call, and I see Dr Duncan Webb on his feet.

Standing on my feet, waiting. I am excited—well, no, I’m not excited about this, because it’s been quite disappointing to listen to the vacuous speeches of the other side who can’t really tell us what they are doing with the Estimates. We heard all kinds of personal information, but nothing really about what plan this Government has. Because certainly the justice sector, the Estimates of this Government are going to be spent on things that have tried and failed already, and that’s really quite disappointing.

I mean, really, this Government has TikTok policies for justice, because you only have to go—and I do go online and look at the members and the Ministers in the justice sector and see what they’re saying, and they’re full of three-line slogans, but no policy and no real evidence. We heard the Minister stand up today and talk about the millions of dollars being spent on so-called military-style youth academies or boot camps.

The true irony of announcing boot camps in a week when we’re getting a report on abuse in State care—I cannot believe that they haven’t joined the dots and realised that an authoritarian and oppressive disciplinary regime in respect of young people leads to trauma and harm. It’s been tried and it’s failed.

Now, the irony is that as the Minister stood up and talked about military-style youth academies and the fact that they’re going to get them out of bed at such and such a time in the morning, there was nothing military about it. So they seem to have not only called it a military-style youth academy, but they’ve in fact backed away. We know the military want nothing to do with it, and good on them as well.

It’s so frustrating, because we saw the Opposition, as they were then, go into the election with their crime and justice policies that you could have written on the back of an envelope. But they are utterly without evidential foundations, boot camps. Three strikes; another failed policy which will cost—and I’ve asked and been told by the Minister—tens of millions of dollars.

Now, on Q+A recently, the Minister actually was quite clear that he wasn’t doing this to deter criminals; he just wanted to put more people inside. He just wanted more people in jail. Because if you put enough people in jail, well, eventually all the bad ones will be in jail and there’ll be no crime—another failed policy.

Look, to be perfectly honest, if this is how you’re going to spend your money, by building prisons and putting people in jail, then you couldn’t make a better design to create social and justice problems in the long run. We know that broken families cause crime, that families with a person in jail are more likely for a child to grow up and be in jail, and that the educational outcomes, the financial outcomes for those families, they will be adverse and be more likely to result in criminal offending. We should be attacking those causes of crime. They’re the real causes of crime, and this Government is simply taking a clickbait approach.

Te Ao Mārama, the initiatives of the court which are working, which are taking young people at the earliest opportunity and shifting them away from the conveyor belt of court, trial, prison, and return again—now, those programmes that the courts have been initiating have been put on hold by this Government cutting the budget for them while they have a think about it.

Circuit-breaker, the initiative that we put in place, has not been extended as planned. Why? Because that Government’s more interested in spending money on putting in people in prison rather than evidence-based, proven things that work. It’s a sad day when we come and talk about a Government whose idea of a good spend of money is building prison beds.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Like my colleague Dr Duncan Webb, I have to say the only good thing I have heard from the Government benches about this Budget is the engagement of Tom Rutherford—congratulations for that. But nothing else.

Why is that? What does this Budget do? Well, it cuts anything and everything to do with the environment. Who—who is it good for, this Budget? I’ve said in this House before that the Budget is good for mustelids. But it turns out that not only is it good for mustelids but it’s good for ungulates as well. And ungulates are a huge problem in our conservation lands. But also, it turns out, the Budget’s good for pine trees. Pine trees are no good when they are wilding pines and they need to be controlled, and of course that’s been cut. Pine trees are no good when there’s been good Jobs for Nature programmes to control them, and those are being cut. Of course, we now see that the entire focus of the emissions reduction plan out for consultation seems to be all about planting more pine trees, and potentially on conservation estate. That is deplorable.

Why have we got this Budget that is only good for mustelids and pine trees and does nothing for the environment in any positive sense? It appears to me that there is no one in this Government advocating for the environment. We have a Minister whose title is Minister for the Environment, who says that the balance has swung too far in favour of the environment with environmental regulation. There is a huge effort from this Government to do everything it can to swing away from environmental protections, and of course we see that with the fast-track. We heard that in the Prime Minister’s answers to questions today, which were, frankly, outrageous, when he said that the Greens should support the fast-track bill because it will do more for renewable energy. That is not what that bill says. The bill says we will facilitate development that three Ministers want to have for pet projects—pet projects that will benefit our mates. It’s a disgraceful piece of legislation.

He then said to Te Pāti Māori, “Oh, you should be supporting the fast-track bill because it’s going to be good for Māori.” There is no Treaty clause in that piece of legislation; there is nothing for any group of Māori that is not a settled iwi. It is a disgrace. Then, of course, we have all of the resource management regulations being changed at the moment so that we can enable things like coal mining in wetlands. There’s been a blanket marine farm extension; car standards have decreased. There is absolutely no plan for 30 percent protected marine areas by 2030.

The Budget explicitly stops advocacy for the environment, and we see that with the Environmental Legal Assistance Fund—that’s cut, gone. We see the Community Environment Fund, funding community hubs and the like—gone. When we asked the Minister for the Environment about this in the Estimates hearings, she said, “Oh well, community funds can pay for that themselves.” And when asked about that legal assistance fund, I put to her that it was being cut in a cynical move so that people would not be able to go to the courts with this terrible fast-track legislation once it becomes law. And she said, “No, no, the only reason we’re cutting that legal assistance funding that has gone to do very important case law in New Zealand for protecting the environment is that sometimes it’s against councils.” Well, of course, councils are the regulator and so things will always involve them in a court case. That is no reason to stop that advocacy.

Then we hear that no advice has been sought on any of these cuts about the effects on the environment. We asked specifically about that, and we just get reckons. It’s been totally mind-blowing. In addition—and I have a very short time left—not only is it just the Minister for the Environment who has no qualms about doing worse for the environment, for allowing pollution; we’ve had the Climate Emergency Response Fund—that’s gone from this Budget. There’s nothing happening to actually reduce carbon emissions; the focus is only on offsetting with pine trees, and, again, that is a disgrace.

We have a Minister for Conservation who says we should be looking at doing costings of extinctions. I hold up my little dodo keyring here to remind people about the terribleness of extinctions, and the idea that you would think that we can cost—we can put a price on—native flora and fauna in New Zealand is appalling. This Budget is a disgrace.

The next call is a split call with the Green Party. I call Lawrence Xu-Nan.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Education is a cornerstone of any society, but, unfortunately, what we see with this Government is that they’re taking a hack and slash, yo-yo mentality to education. And this Budget only confirms that.

When it comes to the Budget, let’s start with the elephant in the room. Let’s start with the cuts to the Ministry of Education (MOE). The proposed cuts cut 724 roles in the Ministry of Education—the single-biggest cut of any Government department. It is a cut of almost 20 percent of their workforce, indiscriminately cutting roles and cutting whole sections and whole teams that are crucial in supporting teachers and support staff and schools and principals. But what we are not seeing is any form of thought, any form of consultation, any form of appropriate decision-making that has gone into that decision, to the point that the Employment Relations Authority has ruled in favour of the Public Service Association, in the sense that they have not taken the correct consultation when it comes to their cuts.

At the same time, what we’re seeing, in terms of the MOE cuts to the contractors and consulting savings, is a $16 million saving out of a projected $246 million spending—and this is a projection—based on March 2024 figures. The Ministry of Education is the biggest spender on contractors, which is close to a quarter of the total expenditure across all Government agencies. Yet they have decided to cut their staff and their full-time staff instead of looking at savings from their contractors and consultants. These are some of the bad decisions and bad planning we are seeing with this Budget.

The other thing we are really seeing when it comes to this Budget, particularly around education, is all of these things being set up by the National Party, by the biggest party, only to be torn down by their coalition partners, spoiling them with pet projects. To give an example, when it comes to early childhood education (ECE), great, we have the FamilyBoost, which is, arguably, spending $726 million on FamilyBoost. instead of just extending the free 20 hours a week to two-year-olds, which was what was projected, which would have been much better for families who are already struggling to do their day-to-day tasks. But instead, with FamilyBoost, they have to go and keep their receipts, collect their receipts, and then get reimbursement from the friendliest Government agency in the country: the IRD!

When it comes to something like that, parents understandably would be frustrated, because as we see with the regulatory impact segment, they were not consulted as a part of this, to see how much burden this will place on them. They were also not consulted from the perspective of “Can they pay this upfront?”, because the idea is you get a reimbursement. One of the things, looking at the ECE sector—and particularly some of the things that their coalition partner is currently putting through—when it comes to changes to ECE and privatisation of ECE, when we were questioning the Ministers, there was no guarantee, absolutely no guarantee from any of the Ministers, that the costs we’re going to see from the privatisation of ECE are not just simply going to catch up with the FamilyBoost—with the $726 million that were put in the FamilyBoost being caught up.

Other than that, we’re also seeing that we’re putting in resources around standardisation, we’re putting in resources around structural literacy, but we could not save something like Creatives in Schools—something that is evidence based—and we have the report that says that it is doing well; it is doing a good job. Again, when we were questioning the Ministers, they could not say what evidence they were looking for. Decisions that have been made around cuts to education have been arbitrarily made. We also couldn’t confirm the fact that they received bad information around the cutting of Creatives in Schools, because they said it was a COVID measure that was introduced in 2019. The Ministry of Education said they extended it, but it actually was for four years to begin with. So we are just, in general, seeing some bad planning.

We won’t see the immediate impact of these changes, but education is a slow burn, and we will only see the detrimental effect in years to come.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. If this Budget has shown us anything, it’s that this is a Government for mega-landlords, for mining-CEOs, and the grifters undermining Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The papers make it extremely clear that—despite whatever rhetoric the members opposite to me, on the Government side, may choose to say—this is a Government that has chosen to give massive handouts, effectively, to those who are already the wealthiest, at the expense of those doing it the toughest.

Hon Member: Property owners.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: And their heckles ignore the fact that their own officials warned them when they were designing the Budget that, for example, changes to how benefits increase would result in about 13,000 more children in poverty.

I’m really glad, actually, that I’ve got the Minister for Social Development in the Chamber with me today, because she told us, at the time when Opposition members were questioning her about this, that we could not take those figures in isolation. By “those figures”, I’m talking about the cuts to benefit increases that the Government chose to put in place to “save” almost $700 million over four years to pay for the tax cuts. They told us that we shouldn’t look at that in isolation, that this was going to be, basically, counterbalanced by a bunch of other things. But so far, all that we have seen is rent prices continuing to go up at a much faster rate than inflation. We have continued to see more people getting into debt just to make ends meet.

To add salt to the wound, this Government is now choosing to punish young people on the benefit, and, at the same time, they seem to have no regard about the type of work that people go into. They don’t care if disabled workers are earning $2-odd an hour just to survive, because this Government has this weird and completely out-of-touch agenda, that any work is better than no work. But if somebody’s getting paid $2 an hour, if somebody is having to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet, that is not a life that we should be aspiring to work towards. In fact, it speaks of a Government that has prioritised their wealthiest mates as opposed to the many. And I think the end to the wage supplement that would have replaced the minimum wage extensions just speaks so obviously to this—that this Government chose, in order to desperately find the money for tax cuts, to cut a wage supplement that would have allowed for workers to receive at least the minimum wage. This is about 900 disabled workers that at the moment earn less than minimum wage, and, as I said before, there are some that earn close to $2 an hour.

The Government could have gone ahead with this wage supplement. It would have allowed those workers to earn the minimum wage. This would have been, effectively, a subsidy for employers. The Government, under the guise of concerns, chose to cut it, when, clearly, the papers state that this is part of a savings programme to pay for tax cuts that would, ultimately, benefit those on the supported living payment—which is the benefit that many of those disabled workers are on—the least. So those same workers that the Government chose to not afford the dignity of earning at least the minimum wage are going to be some of the people that benefit least from those tax cuts. Talk to me about upside-down priorities.

I know many of us have talked about how the system is broken, but the system is working exactly as it was intended to. This Government has shown us that the system is working, because the system was designed and this House was designed to enable the accumulation of wealth by the very, very powerful few, while many go without. We’re yet to see, despite the changes to benefit indexations that will see more people in poverty, how the Government is supposedly going to counterbalance that. Because it’s definitely not going to happen by implementing more benefit sanctions on those young people, because benefit sanctions have not been shown to work to support people into employment. There has been, basically, mountains of evidence here and overseas that those benefit sanctions do not work. Effectively, the Government is sending a message to young people that the Government is quite comfortable with them living in absolute poverty just so that the Government can pay for those tax cuts that they will benefit least from.

But it doesn’t matter for the members on the other side because, ultimately, they’ll get away with what they intended to, which was to open their path to mega-landlords, to coal mine CEOs, to wreak havoc and increase inequality in Aotearoa, and to make the climate crisis worse. This is neoliberalism at its clearest. The Greens will continue fighting for a completely different type of system that treats everyone with dignity and that takes the climate crisis as seriously as it should. The time for pretending that the system is fixable has come to an end. People in the streets are demanding for a complete type of system. The Greens are here to hear those demands and to fight for them.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I hope this will be better—as they say. This Government was elected on a platform to get New Zealand back on track. And while that particular phrase was the plank of the National Party’s manifesto and policies leading up to the election, I do want to just take a moment to acknowledge our coalition partners in New Zealand First and the ACT Party for their constructive contribution to the Government of this country. I have been enjoying working alongside them and will continue to do so.

Being back on track means, specifically, rebuilding the economy; restoring law and order; and providing quality services that New Zealanders expect and deserve, particularly health and education, but a couple of other critical ones too. Of course, the connection between these things is that we can’t even hope to provide better services in health and education or, for that matter, restore law and order, unless we have an economy that is rebuilt, that is sufficiently robust, and that does provide the revenue for those services to be provided by Government. So that’s the overall context in which this Budget is being debated, and that will be the overall theme of my remarks, even as I delve into a couple of areas where I want to point out some of the Government’s work, as reflected in the Budget in portfolios that I’m privileged to hold for the time being.

Of course, like any Budget, it is criticised from the left and the right. I think that we have—if I may say—done a very good job of adopting a measured approach, but, more importantly, even than being measured and moderate in the way that we are governing New Zealand, it is a measuring approach. We are interested in the outcomes, we are interested in the effects, actually, of the spending that the Government of New Zealand does on behalf of its people. It is important that we improve the outcomes in health and education, not merely spend money in the mere hope that those outcomes might somehow magically be improved. So, in that context, the Better Public Service targets and the very specific, measurable outcomes that we are aiming to achieve in health and education and in other key areas of New Zealand life are really important and must be seen alongside the Budget measures themselves that we are debating today. Therefore, I would highlight to the House it’s not just what’s in the Budget but also the things that the Budget allows by way of policy development that actually makes it easier for things to happen in the real world that aren’t necessarily the result of Government spending.

I’m going to start on the subject of veterans. It’s a portfolio about which I’m very passionate, and I know others in this House are, including my colleague and friend Dr Vanessa Weenink. And I was very pleased and, indeed, grateful that there was an uplift in the Budget for Veterans’ Affairs, as part of Vote Defence, in which an additional $4 million was provided over four years. That was very particularly for the purpose of improving the processing of claims where people have served our country, are eligible under the Veterans’ Support Act—and I see the Hon Peeni Henare nodding, and I thank him for that acknowledgment, and, actually, our interaction at the select committee in the first scrutiny week to follow. But it’s so important that people who make claims and have a reasonable expectation and a legal obligation, actually, on behalf of the State for those claims to be met and processed in a reasonable time, that that actually happens. So we’re putting in a bit of additional money for that to be facilitated.

I’m very clear, as the Minister, and Veterans’ Affairs are clear too, that we can and must do much better, and that includes by way of improving and upgrading the system and doing things in a more efficient and productive way. So that’s ongoing work, but it was reflected as a Government priority to provide better services by that additional funding that was provided. And along with that it’s the partial—for now partial—restoration of the Veterans’ Independence Programme; the VIP services, and we would love to be able to restore that fully as time and funds permit. But, as I say, to have at least some step in the right direction by way of funding and by way of system improvement for those who have served our nation, including in the various battles and operations that are reflected around these walls, is important to the Government and it’s important to me.

I do also want to acknowledge—on the subject of veterans and going into defence—since the last time I spoke in this House, we have a new Chief of Defence Force. I congratulate Air Vice-Marshal Tony Davies on his new role. There’ll be other senior leaders in the Defence Force who are appointed in due course. We thank them for their service, along with every soldier, sailor, and aviator who serves our country. We know in the context of the recent Budget there was an additional amount of spending that was obtained, and I congratulate and thank the Minister of Defence, Judith Collins, for going into bat for our people. But it’s no secret, all the same, that times are tough. That’s the case across New Zealand public life and, of course, in the private sphere too, and the Defence Force isn’t immune to those cost pressures.

If we think about additional cost of fuel and other factors that are, frankly, outside the control of the New Zealand Defence Force—being asked to do more with less is an unfortunate reality of many spheres of New Zealand life at this stage. I know that they are undertaking the exercise of reprioritising and ensuring that Government outcomes can be met in the best way possible, and I wish them luck with that endeavour, and I know that the Government will support them in any decisions that they can make to those ends. I’m really confident because of the quality of personnel we have in our Defence Force that they will do the best possible job with that, even as we rebuild the Defence Force and, as I say, rebuild the economy and provide those better services of health and education in particular.

I’d like to touch as well on the land information portfolio. And it’s not often front of centre in this House—whether it’s at question time or the subject of other debates, but damn it all, I’ve got 10 minutes on the Budget and I’m going to talk about it. No one can stop me for the next four minutes and four seconds! Which is to invite a point of order, isn’t it, but I’m giving them no—

Camilla Belich: How much did it get in the Budget?

Hon CHRIS PENK: Well, interesting you ask about the Budget, Madam Speaker—well, not you, obviously, asking, but the Opposition—because there are very key priorities in this portfolio that, again, aren’t mentioned much in this House, but are actually hugely significant for “New Zealand Inc”.

One of them is the project known as SouthPAN, and that’s a satellite system that we’re doing in conjunction with Australia. We’re providing 25 percent of the cost of that; Australia’s stumping up, obviously, the other three-quarters, and we’re going to get a 50:50 share in that—a pretty good deal, if you ask me. Not often you can get more out of the Australians than you put in, but well done to whoever’s been involved in that project along the way from the land information side. That’s ongoing work, that’s important work that’s going to have huge benefits, some of which we can appreciate and understand now; others won’t have even occurred to us. But to be able to have satellite systems measuring global positioning within 10 centimetres will be a game-changer for many different industries and operators in New Zealand—and in Australia too, for that matter. That’s important work that’s ongoing. So too is the upgrade of the Landonline system—that’s to do with processing property titles and so on. These are important greasing of wheels of commerce and the economy and society indeed more generally because private property rights are an important part of any functioning democracy.

The Budget continues to fund the Overseas Investment Office—that’s a crucial aspect of New Zealand’s foreign direct investment regime. Frankly, we need more of it. We need more people who want to invest in this country being able to do so. And it’s not particularly because that’s helpful to them—it might be; that’s all well and good—but, actually, New Zealand needs the foreign direct investment. We need that capital to build infrastructure and other facilities in New Zealand that are, sadly, lacking and have been lacking for far too many years.

In terms of building and construction, again, the Budget continues to allow some great policy work that’s been done by our friends in the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to continue so Government priorities are supported along the lines of coming up with good policy in relation to remote visual inspections for consents; opening up building products, liberalising that regime to ensure better choice and competition for New Zealand consumers; the so-called granny flats policy—a real crowd pleaser. So, again, good policy doesn’t need to cost more money, we just need to focus the State towards the better outcomes that New Zealanders demand. But the Budget continues the funding for those who are doing this valuable work, and I thank them for it.

Finally, in terms of the Budget and also future Budgets—if I can glimpse into the future—we know that much more is needed on our defence estate. That’s one of the particular delegations that I have as the Associate Minister of Defence under Judith Collins. We know that our construction sector too is crying out for work at the moment. These are dark days for those who would build things in this country. We can help to solve a couple of problems at once by building infrastructure, including accommodation but other facilities too, that our women and men of the New Zealand Defence Force expect and deserve. We can prioritise those things, we will prioritise those things. The Budget in itself points the way ahead to a much better future for our New Zealand Defence Forces. And, of course, with the Defence Capability Plan shortly due to come out as well, we’ll have a road map that enables the future spending to be done in a coherent fashion that enables the Government’s outcomes to be met in relation to foreign relations and of course, but more particularly, national security.

So, on that note, I finish as I started by emphasising those key Government themes. If we’re to rebuild the economy, restore law and order, and provide the health and education services this country needs, we’ll do it through this Budget and future ones, and get New Zealand back on track.

I rise with great pleasure to speak about our Budget 2024. We’re having a few recess weeks out in my electorate of Tukituki; it’s been great to get out and understand our people and our businesses and all the amazing things that are going on in Hawke’s Bay. I visited the new $100 million T&G packhouse where we’re seeing world-class, full automation AI, just incredible; Silver Fern Farms, one of our biggest employers in Hawke’s Bay; and then The Apple Press and Boring Oat Milk, innovation in fast-moving consumer goods; Ovation, the meat-processing plant there; and Topline Contracting, with the Minister, actually, over here, and it was just fantastic because this is a business which is doing amazing things to lift people out of welfare and into work, into employment, and that’s what we’re wanting to encourage. These are just a few businesses in my Tukituki electorate that I visited over the last couple of weeks. They’re employing amazing teams of people, and providing hundreds of jobs and opportunities and driving productivity in this country.

Speaking of driving productivity, I’ve just been at the Red Meat Sector Conference this evening, where they are driving a lot of productivity and doing amazing things, our primary industries here in New Zealand. But, of course, these businesses and these industries are doing it really, really tough at the moment, with high interest rates and high costs, as the Minister has already alluded to this evening. But relief is on its way in this 2024 Budget. Next week, 83 percent of hard-working New Zealanders will receive tax relief for the first time in 14 years. Our Government is laser-focused on strengthening the economy and getting more value out of the money we spend.

We’re already starting to see some positive news: 3.3 percent inflation, this is the lowest inflation we’ve seen in the last few years, and this is promising news for people who are struggling with their mortgage, struggling to pay those grocery bills, struggling to pay those electricity bills. Interest rates are forecast to come down, and that is a result of the work that this Government is doing to get on top of spending and get on top of inflation. We are stopping the wasteful spending; saving and putting money back into the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders. This Budget is about putting things into what matters, and that is on the front line, in our hospitals, in our classrooms, and seeing more police on the beat.

In these past few weeks, I’ve also been visiting some early childhood centres—the BestStart centre in Hastings. Our FamilyBoost tax rebate of up to $150 a fortnight has been incredibly well received by parents and early childhood teachers, because early childhood is very, very expensive and it’s really taking its toll on a lot of hard-working families out there. So this is a great initiative in our Budget 2024.

I’m also really excited in this Budget about our commitment to infrastructure—$68 billion in infrastructure over the next five years to fix the infrastructure deficit in this country; getting things built; actually investing in roading, 17 roads of national significance have been committed to by our Government, and a four-lane expressway for Hawke’s Bay is one of those roads of national significance. Building roads and infrastructure is what drives productivity and efficiency and it gets us around a lot safer and more efficiently. The logging trucks; getting our produce to the port faster; our apples, our meat, our produce off to the markets faster—with better State highways we can reduce congestion and ensure that people can get to work faster and, again, drive more productivity and strengthen this economy.

We also need to maintain our roads. This Budget sees a significant investment in maintaining our roads and improving our pesky potholes, which I know, on that side of the House, they’ve mentioned quite a few times in this debate, but during the campaign last year, it was one of the number one issues in Hawke’s Bay that people actually cared about—they cared about these massive potholes on the roads. After having years and years of not maintaining our roads, people across Hawke’s Bay were sick of the potholes and they were also sick of the road cones.

We are reducing the number of unnecessary road cones, which are costing the taxpayers and just epitomises the wasteful spending by the previous Government over the last six years. During the campaign, I had truck drivers and motorists who would actually send me pictures and videos of road cones lined up for kilometres and kilometres on the road, with nothing actually happening. They just couldn’t believe that there was so much money being spent on unnecessary road cones. Well, on this side of the House, the madness is about to end. We are putting some practical sense back into traffic management and general road maintenance. Away with the wasteful, ideological projects like Auckland light rail and cycleways across the harbour bridge; it’s time to get real and invest in what really makes a difference, and that is good roads and good infrastructure in this country.

Housing is another area where we’re making a big investment so we can build more warm, healthy homes for families, and more affordable homes to rent and buy. Rents went up $180 per week in the previous Government. Too much red tape; things just taking too long to consent and build. Just yesterday, actually, I was at the Havelock North opening of their very large new supermarket there. An incredible, incredible building but, wow, it has taken some time to build. It has taken some time to get the consents and actually get the development under way. We need to build things faster and get things done, and that’s why our fast-track bill and the amendments to the Resource Management Act are going to make a huge difference to New Zealand. Rural New Zealand has been hurting. This Budget is about investing in our primary industries to drive more productivity so we can afford the public services that we so desperately need.

Education is another area I’m certainly really passionate about, with four children. Yesterday, I dropped the kids back at school. They had been staying with their grandparents up at the farm in Taumarunui. Their nana does a lot of reading with them during the school holidays. She really enjoys reading with them. Anyway, when she dropped them off, she said, “Wow, I just can’t believe how your six-year-old has really improved with his reading.” I said, “It is structured literacy. It’s really making a difference because the kids are sounding out the words, their faces are lighting up, and they can actually read.” That is why it is so good to see $57 million in this Budget to roll out structured literacy across all of our schools across New Zealand, because that is what’s going to lift performance in education.

Just the other week, I was out with one of our rural country schools, actually, Kererū School—a lovely school and the teachers are doing an amazing job there—and they are big fans of structured literacy, because they say that structured literacy really makes a difference with our kids, in terms of the sounds and the phonics and actually getting them reading. That’s what we as a Government are doing. We are making sure we’re getting back to basics in the classroom, with an hour of reading, writing, and maths each day, because that is what is going to make a difference for the future of our children and the future of this country.

Law and order is another one that I’m just going to quickly touch on before I conclude. During the campaign, I visited a lot of stores that had been ram-raided. People in Hawke’s Bay were feeling scared. They were fed up with the rising crime. In Hawke’s Bay, we actually have one of the largest gang populations in this country. The crime and the intimidation that we are seeing is unacceptable. So seeing this Government make a real commitment to restoring law and order in this country is so important, ensuring that we have safer communities for our families and for our children. So we’ve made a big investment—$1.94 billion in the Budget—into front-line Corrections, more support for offenders to turn their lives around as well, and more rehabilitation. That’s what we need to encourage.

Two-thirds of this Budget is going towards health, education, and law and order. It’s going into the front line, not the back office—the front line, where it really matters. We are being fiscally responsible and we are restoring care and discipline and fiscal management.

I’ll tell you the one thing Parliament needs—and I haven’t really realised this for the seven years that I’ve been here, but I’ve come to realise it whilst listening to the Government members speak—Parliament needs a fact checker. Parliament needs a dedicated Officer of Parliament to write a report every time there is a speech. But, by Christ, that would be a long report after that last speech. Every point that was made missed the mark. Catherine Wedd said police have gone up; it’s gone backwards. She said that things are improving; they are not. They said that they have improved investment in various areas, failing to mention that it actually hasn’t kept up with inflation, so, in effect, it is actually a cut. But if you took what they said as gospel, you’d actually think they’ve solved things. They’ve not solved things. They have made things worse. It’s interesting that, of all the list of things, she spent more time talking about road cones than she spent talking about health. I wonder why that is.

I wonder why, in a speech after this new Government’s first Budget, they haven’t mentioned health. One of the largest areas of expenditure, one of the most crucial elements to every household in this country, and they’re not talking about it. Why is that? It’s because they know that they have been caught out. They tried a massive public relations exercise this week. They tried to blame their underfunding and their incompetence on the previous Government, and Kiwis aren’t having it. They aren’t dumb; they can see a spin job when they face one, and they saw one this week. That’s why they’ve said in all the lists—and let’s be honest, all the speeches have said the same thing; all they’re doing is reading their lists. It’s OK; we used to do the same thing. It’s all right, it’s all good, it’s what they do, but they’ve clearly taken health off the list because they know that everyone that works in health knows that what they’re saying is absolute tripe.

They know that there’s a hiring freeze. They know that in hospitals, like Masterton Hospital, when there is a vacancy in the nursing staff opening up—do you know what they do? They don’t fill it; they drop the minimum staffing requirements at that hospital. There are 33 vacancies at that hospital. If you go online and check it out, it says there is none. It says they’re fully staffed. It’s a disgrace. I actually think it’s a scandal, because they are misleading New Zealanders. They are making it look like they care about service provision when, actually, all they care about is cutting spending. It’s interesting that they will talk about the inflation figure of 3.3 percent, but they don’t talk about rents going up at the highest level in 17 years, rates across the country averaging 9.8 percent, and insurance having gone up 14 percent. It is absolutely fatuous to claim that they have solved inflation when everybody else says they’ve had nothing to do with it.

The measures that come into this Budget—many of the things that are supposedly to help the cost of living—haven’t come into effect yet. There should be a rule about making such claims when there’s absolutely no factual basis to be able to do so. It’s got nothing to do with them. The Budget Economic and Fiscal Update in 2023 said that at this point, at this very moment this year, inflation would be 3.3 percent. What it didn’t say was that rents, rates, and insurance would be going up at record levels. Why is that? Could it be because they gave a $2.9 billion tax cut to landlords, promising this House and the country that it would have downward pressure on rents, when they knew deep down it would have the opposite effect? Could it be that they went round the country during the election promising councils they would help them pay for water infrastructure only to break that promise and then impose extra costs on councils and remove the options that were being reviewed to give councils alternative revenue streams, leaving them the only option they’ve got to put rates up? Could it be that insurance is going up because they know that this Government has withdrawn the funding that was previously committed to help regional councils put in flood protection?

If this Government isn’t investing in flood protection, what confidence does the insurance sector have, and what confidence should Kiwis have? Rents will continue to go up, house prices will go up, house builds will go down, and if they don’t believe me, look at the stats, because it’s already happening. The fact is that this Budget has got nothing to do with improving Kiwis’ lives. It has actually got nothing to do with the cost of living. The $2, or whatever, that retired people in this country will be getting will do nothing to help them with rates and nothing to help them with the costs that this Government has imposed on them. It’s a joke.

Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry, I was actually focusing on someone else, because I had a different name on here. Sorry about that. Thank you.

CAMILLA BELICH: That’s OK. That’s fine. I’m grateful for the call. Thank you for allowing me to take this call in this Budget debate. I do want to start by saying something about health, actually—something celebratory about health, as we are celebrating a few things in the House tonight. And just to acknowledge the 20th anniversary of Evolve Wellington Youth Service that we’ve been celebrating in the Grand Hall tonight—an amazing service that has contributed a lot to New Zealand. Possibly not as good as the engagement news on the other side of the House, but still celebratory, none the less.

I want to talk in this Budget debate tonight about workers’ rights. Make no mistake, what we are witnessing right now is the most systematic dismantling of the rights of working people since 1991. Before the Budget, we had fair pay agreements that had been key for achieving better conditions in Australia—gone. Ninety-day trials extended to all workplaces—and I won’t be the only one in this House who’s already receiving emails from people who have been sacked under 90-day trials, telling me that they feel they’ve been treated unfairly, and the only thing I can say to them is: this Government has taken away your rights; there is nothing you can do. The minimum wage—this was an effective cut even though the Minister wanted to have it even lower than that.

We were thinking before the Budget, “Surely there will be something for working people in Budget 2024?” The rhetoric was there, but the policies were not. This Government’s Budget has cut employment relations services, cut workplace health and safety, cut WorkSafe, and cut funding for screen actors’ occupational bargaining. There are cuts for the much-needed implementation of the plant and structures regulation that would make New Zealand workplaces safer, cuts to pay equity, no work on pay transparency, no work on modern slavery—this Government, in this Budget, is taking working people backwards. That’s not all. They’ve also sacked over 6,000 public servants. That might not be accurate; I think it’s probably more by now, but unemployment is taking off in a cost of living crisis.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: “Not enough”, they say.

CAMILLA BELICH: This is shameful. “Not enough”, they say. Well, there you go. That is the respect that that side of the House has for the working people of New Zealand, public servants. I saw the Prime Minister pay tribute to President Biden and say, “Oh, he spent 50 years in public service. What a good guy.” Well, no such respect for his colleagues on that side of the House, for people working in the best interests of New Zealand.

What are they doing? They have to be doing something. They’ve got all these ministries there allegedly doing all this work. Well, let me tell you: more cuts. Cuts to the rights of New Zealanders to take personal grievances, and this is all outlined in the Budget. Cuts for workers to go to the authority to challenge their employment status. You can no longer do this if the ACT Party gets its way and the Minister gets their way. Cutting sick leave against the promise of the Prime Minister. Cuts to the minimum wage for disabled workers. This is all in the Budget, taking New Zealand workers backwards again.

What makes it even more disturbing is they’re doing it with a smile on their face. They are saying to New Zealanders that it is them, not us, that are the party delivering for working people, but—

Hon Kieran McAnulty: It’s rubbish.

CAMILLA BELICH: Exactly, rubbish. No one buys that for a second. People have the right to be suspicious when the fox takes a sudden interest in the workings of the hen house.

Instead of openly admitting their desire to deregulate the labour market, cut worker entitlements, and weaken the workplace relations system, they mask their agenda with a euphemism of reviews. What are these reviews? They have hand-picked people to hear from to ask them about policies. They have a policy and they basically choose the people that they want to hear from so they get the answers that they want to hear. This is not consultation. In my day, we called that a meeting with your friends.

The Minister has chosen not to hear from New Zealanders with opposing views. I have to say, I look at members on the other side of the House, members of the National Party, and I know that they know that this is not how we do things in New Zealand. We need to make sure we hear opposing views when we make policy decisions. We need to make sure we respect the representatives of working people that the Minister is currently ignoring. This is a worrying change from the status quo that has been in place under successive Governments and it needs to stop. The Minister needs to make sure that there is a mandate for the changes because the changes that they’re bringing in are not what the majority of New Zealand voters voted for. It’s wrong, it’s regressive, and it will take working people in New Zealand backwards.

Well, if that was the future ticket of the once-great Labour Party, this country really is in trouble. What a sad, sad day for the once-great party of the workers; the great socialist party who fought for decades and decades for workers’ rights and are about to vote against tax relief for working New Zealanders for the first time in 14 years.

If that there is the future of the Labour Party, I think we’ve got a lot more to worry about than Rachel Brooking’s dodo ticket that she held up. Well, I know what Chris Hipkins is getting for Christmas: he’s getting that dodo ticket because after they vote against this Budget—after they vote against tax cuts for working New Zealanders—his leadership will be dead as a dodo, as will the Labour Party. Bring on the resurgence of the great Te Pāti Māori. Bring on the Green Party. They’re nipping at their heels. They know that they are now competing to be the great party for the workers, as are the parties on this side of the House because it is the parties of this coalition Government that are delivering tax relief for working New Zealanders across the country.

A great man once said it is a great day for Mount Roskill. Well, today it is a great day for Mount Roskill, it’s a great day for Banks Peninsula, it’s a great day for Kaikōura, it’s a great day for the people and the giraffes in Ilam. It’s even a great day for Wairarapa and for Mount Albert and for Manurewa. Because, finally, after 14 years, the people of this country—working New Zealanders—are getting tax relief under a Budget which will pass imminently with support of this coalition Government.

Can I say to the inspirational Minister Nicola Willis, who has shepherded this Budget through, congratulations, Minister. What an excellent Budget that she has delivered for New Zealanders. We campaigned on a Budget which would deliver tax relief to working New Zealanders, New Zealanders like those in my electorate in mid-Canterbury and South Canterbury who get up every single day and go to work in the supermarkets and the freezing works and the pack houses and driving trucks and working in mines—yes, the dirty “m” word: the miners, which were, of course, Blackball home of the Labour Party—long once remembered, lost, and forgotten. The workers in New Plymouth who get up every morning to work on the rigs out there to deliver economic growth to this country. They are the ones that are going to be receiving tax relief under this coalition Government and under this Budget.

If I talk about those great constituents in Rangitata and share with you a few home truths, because, of course, one-fifth of those working in Rangitata list their occupation as a labourer; 16 percent work in the manufacturing sector; and then we’ve got the hundreds and hundreds—if not thousands—of people who work in our agricultural sector, who work tirelessly every day to serve our community, serve our economy, serve our regions, and keep this economy going.

Finally, they are getting the tax relief that they deserve. They work hard. They work hard to put food on the table for their families. They work hard for their communities. They deserve to keep more of what they earn, and I’m looking forward to the final speaker of the Labour Party joining this side of the House, crossing the floor, voting for tax relief for working New Zealanders, which is long since overdue.

Can I just once again acknowledge Minister Nicola Willis on this excellent Budget. She has been faced with fiscal cliff after fiscal cliff, and she has climbed the fiscal mountain. Much like Tenzing and Hillary, she’s ascended to the top—triumphant—with this Budget. But she knows, as we know, the job is not done; the job is not over. There is much, much more to be done. There is the descent down the other side. There are some storm clouds on the horizon as we find more and more about what has been left with us—big red dogs of fiscal cliffs in the health budget, in the education budget.

I point to one in my electorate, at Ashburton College: underfunded for their rebuild by $23 million; promised a three-stage rebuild, cut off at the knees in November—just after the election, actually. Just after election day, the Government comes out and says, “We can’t fund your build anymore. Oops, sorry. We’ll have to leave it to the next guys.” Well, Minister Stanford with her education budget isn’t leaving it to chance. She is doing a full review of the property portfolio and she is making sure that the rebuilds that are needed in our schools around our communities are fit for purpose, are not gold-plated, and are exactly what is needed to protect and enhance the future of our country.

I want to go back to our hard-working members of the Rangitata electorate. Because the other one you might not know is that we are ranked number one in the country for share of workers who work between 50 and 59 hours a week—50 and 59 hours a week, they are ranked number one. They are the hardest-working, by definition, people in this country and it is about time they get the tax relief that they deserve.

Now, I want to point to a couple of specific initiatives in the Budget that have been very, very beneficial for our electorate down in Rangitata. I want to point out to Mr McAnulty, who talked about funding for flood resiliency and stopbanks. Well, actually, Mr McAnulty, there was $200 million set aside in the Budget under the Regional Infrastructure Fund. Maybe he needs to whirl up his own fact-check machine, but I don’t think there’s enough solar-powered panels in the world to actually power that machine, given what come across the aisle.

I’d just like to point out to Mr McAnulty that in that Regional Infrastructure Fund we have funded in Rangitata stage two of the Rangitata Flood and Resilience Works; there is, of course, the regional structure upgrade and adaptation programme up in Canterbury; and then the long-awaited Waitarakao, Washdyke, and Seadown Flood Works to protect the productive land, the industry, the lagoons, the wetlands that are inland from Seadown in South Canterbury, and that is all thanks to funding in this Budget.

Can I also move on and talk about our approach to delivering services locally. In this Budget, we also see that local catchment groups will be receiving funding—additional funding—and I’m very proud to see that in Budget 2024, $950,000 is going to be given over four years to the Ōtūwharekai Ashburton Lakes catchment group. That fits incredibly well with this Government’s approach that services are best delivered by those who are at the coalface, who know what’s fit for their community, that we are about local solutions to local problems. So we are going to be supporting and funding groups like the Ōtūwharekai Ashburton Lakes catchment group to deliver the change that we need to better protect and enhance our environmental systems in balance—in balance—with the need to continue to grow our economy and put food on the table so that we continue to thrive and prosper as a country and as an economy.

The other thing that our electorate is very hot on is potholes. If you’ve ever driven along State Highway 1 between Christchurch and, let’s say, Dunedin—Miles Anderson—very, very long road between south of Timaru and Dunedin, you’ll see the roads are littered with potholes. Potholes and cones. Can I congratulate Minister Simeon Brown for his excellent initiative in taking to the streets and taking on those road cones, one by one; knocking them over; kicking them down; grinding them up—grinding them up—reusing, reducing, recycling; using them to fill the potholes in the road. Whatever we can to find to fill those potholes, we will be doing it. Very, very glad to see the initiative of 24-hour pothole recovery programmes being put in place.

Of course, we’ve got a 51 percent increase in funding for State highway pothole prevention and an extra $186 million for pothole prevention in Canterbury. I’m very certain that on those long, cold, lonely midwinter drives between Dunedin and Christchurch, Miles Anderson and I will be very glad to see fewer road cones on the road, more holes being filled, and that’s all thanks to the stewardship of the Hon Simeon Brown and this Budget.

It would be remiss to get up and talk about roading and potholes and infrastructure and Government Policy Statements and Budgets without talking about the second Ashburton bridge. Of course, the long-awaited second Ashburton bridge, which was signalled in the draft policy statement on transport—well signalled by the Minister—we have committed to funding and building that bridge and we will be in there in our high-vis with our shovels, with our very sensible, reasonable balanced road safety management plans and a few traffic cones here and there, pulling gravel out of the rivers, putting the piles in the ground, and getting that bridge connecting Tinwald to the rest of Ashburton.

There is a lot more to be said in this Budget, and it would be remiss of me as the chair of the Justice Committee not to touch on some of the excellent law and order initiatives. One I want to focus on was an initiative driven by our coalition partners, and that’s the initiative to deliver 500 more police on our roads. I congratulate Minister Casey Costello for driving that new recruitment. Members opposite have been asking where they are going to recruit these police from. What are we going to do? Well, in 2026, I can see a few job vacancies up for grabs on the other side of the road, so get your applications in. We take all ages, all stages. You don’t even need your full driver’s licence anymore. So sign on up, make sure you fulfil the commitment to serve your community.

We are committed to restoring law and order in this country, we are committed to keeping New Zealanders safe, and we are committed to investing not only to prevent crime from happening now but to prevent it from happening in 15 years’ time. That is why I’m very, very proud to see that Nicola Willis is taking her social investment approach to this Budget, taking a lens on what are the drivers of crime.

I think we’re actually all agreed on this approach: that the number one way we are going to reduce crime over the long term is to invest in what causes crime, invest in our health, invest in our education, making sure that where programmes do not work, we throw them by the wayside and we invest in things that actually do deliver outcomes for young New Zealanders. If we want to be having this conversation in 20 years’ time about how to stop ram raids, about how to keep our young people out of prisons, about how to reduce refining rates, we must start now, we must be investing now, and that is what the social investment approach is all about.

If there is anything the members of the Opposition can do, if they can support one thing in this Budget, I would implore them to support the social investment approach. It is about identifying what works and what will deliver outcomes for our communities, for our young people, into the future.

In this final word, I would like to commend this Budget and I’d like to wish the Parliamentary Rugby Team all the best of luck this week as we face off against Rene Ranger up in Russell.

I’m incredibly proud of this Budget. I’m incredibly proud of our Minister of Finance and our Prime Minister. It is a fiscally responsible Budget, the first one in seven years, I have to say. It’s a Budget for all New Zealanders, a Budget for everyday Kiwis, including those that live in the mighty Rangitīkei—my fantastic electorate, 12,500 square kilometres of greatness.

Hon Tama Potaka: Majesty—majesty.

SUZE REDMAYNE: Ha, ha! Of majesty, yes. Tama knows it well. Look, this is a great Budget in terms of delivering tax relief for the squeezed middle, giving average-income households up to $102 a fortnight. And, ladies and gentlemen, that clicks in in one week. We’re all very excited about that. Plus, the FamilyBoost childcare payments—up to $150 a fortnight.

I’ve been out and about in my electorate in the recess and I’ve enjoyed talking to people and they are very excited about this. It makes a real difference. For some people, it means they can get a pizza on a Friday night. It’s absolutely brilliant. A retired couple on superannuation will get an extra $9 a fortnight, rising up to around $26 a fortnight by 2026. What’s more, our tax package is funded through savings and new revenue measures—

Hon David Parker: No, it’s not. Every cent is borrowed.

SUZE REDMAYNE: —which means it will not add to Government debt. My colleagues across the House know very well that’s true. It will also deliver—[Interruption] Budget 2024 will deliver more doctors, it will deliver more hospital and specialist services, more breast screening, and more mental health services. It was a privilege to have Minister Matt Doocey in my electorate the other day and visit Palmerston North Hospital and take him to see Dr Dave Baldwin.

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: That’s in the Palmerston North electorate.

SUZE REDMAYNE: We don’t have a hospital in our electorate. It’s our hospital too. And more mental health services. There are great people doing great things in my electorate. We’ve got businesses that are really excited about this Budget, really excited about letting them get ahead, cutting wasteful spending, giving them tax relief, giving them incentives to grow their businesses, like PEC in Marton that makes 80 percent of the petrol pumps sold in this country and 50 percent of the petrol pumps sold in Australia—absolutely outstanding.

The Government’s focus is clearly on managing spending and the key top-down tool for this is operating allowances the Budget sets aside for discretionary use spending in each Budget. We are setting tight but realistic operating allowances in this Budget and we’re going to stick to them. We’re making a real difference—we are making a real difference. We’ve also got $3.4 billion for hospital and specialty services, $2.2 billion for primary care and public health, $1.7 billion for Pharmac—even more than that—which is fantastic, and $24 million for Gumboot Friday, which I have had a huge amount of response about. People are blown away by that and Mike King is a fantastic champion to lead that cause.

Hon Tama Potaka: True story.

SUZE REDMAYNE: True story. In terms of schools, I’ve had a fantastic time visiting schools over the last couple of weeks—amazing. Taonui School—I was there yesterday talking to the kids who also came down to visit me in Parliament.

James Meager: Are they doing structured literacy?

SUZE REDMAYNE: They are doing structured literacy, and they absolutely love it. Yeah, they are doing it. We’re stopping waste in this Budget.

James Meager: Oh, hear, hear. About time.

SUZE REDMAYNE: Yeah. We have massively blown the Budget over the last six years, so Nicola Willis and her team went through line by line to stop spending. They found a lot of money that was being wasted and we’ve been able to apply that in different ways.

We’re also restoring law and order. And I can tell you, on the streets of Feilding, that has already started. We have police on the beat and we are also investing $651 million over four years to deliver 500 extra police officers. We’re going to give them the tools that they need to do their job. Seeing those boys and girls on the beat in Feilding, that’s just the start and it’s fantastic. We’ve also got $69 million to address youth offending, including our military-style youth academies—the first one of which was launched last Saturday and gets under way soon.

The other thing that I’m really proud, and I know the finance Minister’s really proud about, is the social investment aspect of this Budget. It’s something that was launched by Bill English a few years ago and Nicola Willis has taken up the mantle and she’s incredibly proud of it and she’s making a go of it. We know that we can make a huge difference with some of these kids and young families. It is worth investing in them now so that we don’t have to pay in the future for the legal fees and prison costs. It’s really important and it makes a difference. It’s not just one individual we’re looking after; it’s all the people that are around them, all the people that support them.

The Budget provides—which is also important in my electorate—$140 million to fund 1,500 new social housing places delivered by community housing providers, and that’s outstanding. I met with one of those providers in Feilding yesterday and they’ve started off—they got some houses off the council, put into a trust, and they’ve managed that exceptionally well. And they’re looking to grow and develop and build more and more houses in Feilding and perhaps even take it bigger.

Rangitīkei is a proud rural electorate, so many of the businesses big and small across our electorate depend on a buoyant economy. So growing the economy is vital, but also looking after our farmers is incredibly important. And the numbers tell you—in the year ended June 2023, export receipts from our agricultural exports were $57 billion. This year it dropped to $54 billion. That makes a difference to “New Zealand Inc.”. So we need to look after our farmers and give them the tools to get ahead, and that’s also what this Budget talks about. We’re going to cut red tape and allow farmers to get back to doing what they do.

I am incredibly proud of this Budget. I think we’ve done a great job for New Zealand. We set out and achieved what we said we were going to do: focusing on growing the economy, restoring law and order, and delivering better public services. That’s exactly what this Budget does and I’m proud that it’s doing it for Rangitīkei and doing it for New Zealand. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you. So the Minister of Finance, the Hon Nicola Willis, is present in the House and we call the Minister to give her reply to the debate.

When New Zealanders look back at New Zealand, the passing of this Budget will mark a turning point. It will mark a return to responsible economic management, a return to showing respect for taxpayers in the way we invest their money, a return to driving value for the dollars that the Crown uses on behalf of everyday people. All of those things are well overdue, because as I stand here today, we have an economy which is damaged. It has been damaged by several years of, frankly, fiscal vandalism and economic mismanagement, which has driven a cost of living crisis which is hurting people still today, a cost of living crisis which has gone on for three years, with inflation well outside of target, meaning that prices have been rising so quickly that many New Zealanders simply haven’t been able to keep up. Their household costs have been rising faster than their incomes, and they have faced massive financial pressure, all while the Government taxed them harder and harder and harder.

That was a legacy of a Government who chose, at a time of extraordinary inflationary pressure, not to take their foot off the spending gas but, instead, to throw spending fuel on the inflation fire, who embarked on an extraordinary programme of spending expansion at a time of extraordinary inflation. The result of that is that inflation in New Zealand has been both higher and has persisted longer than it needed to, than it should have, than it did in other parts of the world. Not only that—and the harm that that did, that high inflation and that pressure on households. But New Zealanders, I think, will reflect on that period of time and look back and say, “Well, what do we have to show for all that spending?” Because billions upon billions upon billions were spent, and what do they have to show for it? Well, there are the plans for light rail, which graced the front pages of the New Zealand Herald probably dozens of times, but never was a metre of track laid. There was $1.2 billion that was invested in the entirely wrongheaded three waters proposal. There was wasteful spending across the board.

In this Budget, we have laid down a line and we have said it is time for careful priorities. I am proud of the things we have chosen to prioritise as a Government. Here’s the place we started: every dollar that we use is a dollar that mum or dad at home, or the small-business person, could really do with right now. So if we’re going to take it from them and use it, we better be able to look them in the eye and say we’re treating it with respect and we’re driving the maximum value for it. When I look people in the eye and I tell them about how we are spending their money, they say to me, “These are the priorities I have.” They say, “I want to see investment in our health system, I want to see investment in our education system, investment in law and order, our police, our military personnel, and infrastructure to drive growth for the future.” Here’s the other thing they say they want, and good on them—they say, “I’d like it to be just a little easier to get ahead, to have some money left in my own bank account at the end of each pay cycle.”

On this side of the House, we say, “Those priorities that New Zealanders have are our priorities, and our Budget reflects them.” In this Budget, we have made a record investment in front-line health services. And, no, we haven’t chosen to prioritise new bureaucracy, new layers of management and administration as the other side of the House would have us do; we’ve chosen to prioritise funding for nurses, for doctors, for Gumboot Friday mental health services. We have chosen to fund real things that will drive real results for New Zealanders.

We have prioritised education, because we know that this economy doesn’t actually have a future unless we start educating our kids better. It should be to the shame of the members opposite that they were part of a Government that despite spending millions on education oversaw a decline in achievement not just by the average student but, most importantly, by those who had the least to begin with. When the education system fails our vulnerable, we are cancelling cycles of opportunity. I’m proud that in this Budget, we are investing in structured literacy, we are investing in training teachers for the front line, we are investing in better classrooms, we are investing in special schools for children whose needs are complex. We in this Budget have put education first, and we’ve got the policies to match that.

Then we’ve said, after years of disorder on our streets and in our communities, and a Government who thought its role was to make up new excuses and apologies for that, to make the gangs out to be some cuddly, friendly society, to take away the tools that police need to go after hardened criminals, to release people from prison even when they threaten the safety of others—we are a Government that says, “Enough of that. Our first obligation is to keep our fellow citizens safe.” That means actually backing the police, starting with 500 new front-line officers who I saw just this week walking down Lambton Quay in their vests and I felt proud of them and what they are doing—equipping them so that they can have a pay rise. We found a quarter of a billion dollars extra. On top of the pay provisions that the previous Government had offered, we said, “Actually, those police officers on our front line deserve quarter of a billion more.”, and we put more funding in so that they have the tools.

We acknowledge that there are some people in our community who have committed some crimes that are so grievous, so unacceptable, that in order to keep people safe, those people do need to be incarcerated. We’ve done away with the pipe dream that was the previous Government’s position, that if they just stopped building prisons, everything would get better—if they just stopped building prisons, magically things would solve themselves. Well, that little experiment failed, and so, in this Budget, we have provided for new prison places.

We want this to be a growing, thriving country in which New Zealanders look forward to better jobs, higher-paying incomes, more choices. For that to be the case, we need to build the infrastructure that supports that. So, over these next five years, our Government, as delivered through this Budget, will oversee a record amount of investment in the infrastructure needed for a thriving economy. Not only will Simeon Brown be fixing every pothole he ever met but we will have roads of national significance built to link our regions and our productive sectors and our cities, to transport New Zealanders from their place of work to their place of home. We will see a significant investment in school property, in flood protection schemes. In a world of more extreme climatic events, we are going to work alongside local government to deliver those projects. We are going to prioritise social housing for those in need but not via simply the monolithic Kāinga Ora provider with all the failings it has yet to completely account for but by actually backing community housing providers in the grassroots of their communities to get on and build houses for people in need.

In this Budget, we haven’t just set out a framework that forecasts lower inflation—3.3 percent, by the latest number; lower than it was forecast to be, on track to allow Mr Orr to do his magic with those interest rates. Not only have we set that better framework for growth but we’ve actually set in this Budget, I think, a new message about the way we will spend New Zealanders’ money. That message is this: we won’t just hold ourselves accountable at Budget time for seeing if we can find a little bit of value there, drop a little bit of cost there. We’ll do that every day, every week, every month. Because there is an opportunity cost for every dollar wasted on a bureaucrat that isn’t delivering on a project that doesn’t get finished, on an idea that is never realised. That opportunity cost is more hip operations and better education standards. So we will continuously be looking, and this Budget signals that direction, at how we can better put New Zealanders’ money to good end.

In just a week, we will deliver 3.5 million New Zealanders the overdue tax reduction they are owed. We’ve done it through careful budgeting, careful management—they deserve it. New Zealand: relief has arrived.

The question is that the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition be agreed to.