General Debate

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

Today is a good day. We have good news for every New Zealand household and business, that their mortgage rates are coming down; 3 percent—3 percent—is the official cash rate that’s been announced today. So what does that mean? What does that mean for a household? For an average mortgage of $500,000, over a year, it’s $330 less a fortnight that is going to be going on their mortgage. When we talk about indicators of the right direction and what we are doing is working, that is exactly the sort of progress that we are seeing. It’s the lowest interest rates in three years.

It’s important not just for households; it’s important for businesses. If we think about construction—and my colleague here the Hon Chris Penk has been doing fantastic work in building and construction—what do businesses need to know? That the mortgage rates are not going to strangle them. Having lower interest rates is significant.

What we do know—and the Minister of Finance said it earlier today—is that 40 percent of households will be refixing their mortgages in the next six months, so that does mean that the pressure that households have been under will be alleviated. It’s a significant step forward in terms of economic recovery. What it means is greater confidence to spend, to grow, to invest, and to take up the opportunities that we know are ahead.

What does the other side of the House spend their time doing? Thinking about how many more ways they can tax hard-working New Zealanders. They’re thinking about, “Oh, should we have a capital gains tax or a wealth tax?” Actually, maybe they’ll do both. Add an inheritance tax. I’m sure they’ll come up with a whole raft of new taxes, because that’s their record.

What is the record of this side of the House? We are really clear about the damage that the other side of the House did when they were in office, and the Treasury’s Long-term Insights Briefing said it recently. They completely used the opportunity—which was an absolute disgrace. They used the challenging times of COVID to just go to town and spend on whatever they wanted. Excessive spending, which is what has led to the households in pain that they’ve been dealing with for the last couple of months. It’s great to see, with the official cash rate out today, that progress is here. We are making progress over the next couple of months. It will make an enormous difference when those mortgage rates are eased, and New Zealanders will have more choices about: do they pay off debt, do they invest more, do they spend? That’s what means money flows in.

In terms of employment, of course lower interest rates mean greater employment opportunities because businesses can see that they have more space, more capacity; they’re paying less in interest rates; and they see that the tide has turned. That’s exactly what we’ve been saying. That’s what this coalition Government has been saying from day one. We’ve had an economic plan; we have been taking the plan each day. Look, some of it’s been challenging, you know—let’s absolutely face it. The other side were more than happy to spend recklessly so that New Zealanders have to pay the price, but this is a Government who are responsible, who are very clear economic managers, who have taken the time to work through incredibly challenging issues, whether it’s in employment, whether it’s in infrastructure, or whether it’s in building construction. This is a Government that’s saying yes: yes to infrastructure, yes to more tourists, yes to more employment opportunities, yes to lower interest rates, and yes to fixing the issues that we inherited.

I want to come to employment, because, if you think about one of the Government targets, it is around supporting more New Zealanders into employment. The other side of the House, do you know what they say? “Why would you bother having a target like that? Why would you bother?” They don’t believe in the opportunities and aspirations that this side of the House knows come from work. The ability to go to work, earn an income, look after your family, and be part of your community is what this side of the House values. That’s why, yes, it’s an ambitious target, but, each and every day, we are ensuring New Zealanders will be first in line for the job opportunities.

This is a coalition Government working hard to get New Zealand back on track. Three percent, with the official cash rate today, is a really, really positive sign. It’s been great news today, great sign of progress, great sign of optimism, and that’s why New Zealanders are backing—although it’s a challenging plan, we’re doing it; we’re delivering it; and they can see the progress that’s coming.

All is not well over there, is it? All is not well over there. Their heads are down; morale is down. It’s so bad they have to train their MPs to clap Louise Upston. That’s how bad things are. Now, they can’t replace Luxon in the general debate with Bishop, because Bishop polls better than Luxon. They can’t replace him with Nicola Willis, because she’s going around telling Kiwis in London that she’s going to roll him.

Did you see The Post? “Gentle whispers,” they said—“Gentle whispers” that Nicola Willis might be the next Prime Minister. What The Post didn’t say is it was her that was doing the whispering. She’s been going around telling everybody, “It’s going to be me.”—real gentle: “It’s going to be me.” Now, she’s got form. Just remember, before the last election, do you remember when she got in some hot water, when she was discussing with the Auckland business community about rolling Luxon then? Then, yesterday, she stood up, all buoyed by her own rumours and her own whispers, and took the Prime Minister’s lectern right in front of his face. How bolshie can you get? So, no, she’s out. It can’t be; it’s got to be Louise Upston. Consider the barrel scraped. If that was the message of this Government, how can they possibly expect to give New Zealanders hope?

This is true to form from this Government—this is true to form. They think that they can say that black is white and that people will believe them. They think that they can say that they are going to make things better, when, actually, what have they done? They’ve made it worse. They think they can claim to have built 7,000 houses. That’s what Christopher Luxon said in the House on numerous occasions—in the House, where you are bound by truth. How many have they built? Forty-five. Forty-five houses, when they promised—Nicola Willis signed a pledge and promised to build 1,000 net social houses in Auckland, and they’ve built 45 in two years.

They said they would build more houses than the previous Government. What have they done? They’ve scrapped housing, they’ve stopped people moving into emergency housing, and homelessness has gone up at unprecedented levels. People are sleeping on the street because of every single one of them. They voted for the Budget to scrap billions out of the housing and they celebrated saving a billion dollars because people are on the street. How shameless can you get? They don’t care. They do not care, because they have a strategy to distract and divide.

Now, there’s one thing that New Zealanders hate, and that is a lie. If you were to extend that further, there’s only one thing worse, and that is a repeated lie. There have been repeated lies after repeated lies after repeated lies. What is interesting is that they think New Zealanders are thick, that they can stand there and tell them that the last Government wasted money over COVID—it was a pitiful, pathetic effort from Louise Upston, but, if you listen closely, that was the message she was trying to get across.

They think New Zealanders are so dumb that they won’t remember: at the time, they voted for it. They supported it. In fact, I have a quote here from Paul Goldsmith: “We obviously back this and how this money is spent. We support the Government. We encourage them to go further.” That’s what they said—that is what they said—and now they’re turning around and saying, “No, no, that was wasted money.”

They said they would fix the cost of living; things have got worse. They said they would fix housing; things have got worse. They said they would fix health; things have got worse. New Zealanders are waking up to this. There’s nothing worse than a repeated lie. Perhaps a close second is an empty promise. That is all they are. They are full of PR, hot wind, empty promises, and absolutely no delivery. The cost of cheese, the cost of mince, the cost of daily basics—rates have gone up because of them, insurance has gone up because of them, but because they gave landlords a $2.9 billion tax cut, they think all is well.

Well, I’ve got a message for the Government: just because your mates think it’s going well, doesn’t mean it is. Ordinary New Zealanders are suffering because of their negligence, because of their division, because of their destruction, and they’re waking up to it. This Government, led by an absolute dud of a Prime Minister, only has months to go, and New Zealanders cannot wait for the change.

Good news today: 3 percent is the official cash rate, interest rates are coming down, and the stimulatory effect for our New Zealand economy is going to be great. A colleague and friend Louise Upston set that out very clearly. It’s a stimulatory effect for the construction sector. Good news for New Zealand businesses, good news for Kiwi households—we are getting New Zealand back on track.

I can tell members that New Zealand has got a Government that listens to the construction sector. We’re hearing their concerns and we are responding decisively to them. This week, I had the pleasure of announcing, alongside the Prime Minister, two transformational policy changes that will make life better for our building professionals, councils, and Kiwis. Importantly, the impetus for these changes came from the sector itself in the numerous meetings and engagements I do across the country almost every day, and I regret to say that that’s in contrast to some across the other side of the House, because when they were in Government—just as when they are in Opposition now—they didn’t listen to the community, they didn’t listen to society, and they certainly don’t listen to the sector.

But don’t take my word for it. This morning on Newstalk ZB, Combined Building Supplies Co-Op CEO Carl Taylor said of this Government—and I quote—“They are doing everything they promised to do when they went into Government. The last Government, I couldn’t … get in front of the construction Minister.”

Listening to the sector, listening to Kiwis, hearing about the issues that they face, and solving those problems is what we need in this country. It’s the longstanding problems that we are seeking to solve across numerous sectors and numerous policy areas, and not merely observing the economic cycle, standing back, and waiting for that to happen to our people.

We’re pulling every lever in the construction sector—for example, the first major change that we announced was changing the liability settings to free ratepayers from being unfairly saddled with the full cost of defective building work. This is consistent with our work in reducing rates through refocusing the Local Government Act to focus on core business. Capping rates is something we’ve talked about—you’ll hear more about that in due course—because we know that the pressure on Kiwi households and businesses is high when local government passes on costs that could be avoided and that don’t add value in the case of our unnecessarily burdensome consenting system, and we’re doing something about it.

Councils are understandably hesitant to sign off on consents and inspections, because, until now—or at least, it’s still the case until such time as we make the change to the Building Act—they can be held liable, fully, for every defect and every single build that is the result of negligence or poor handiwork on the part of another person because they have been involved in the consenting process. So when one of the parties responsible cannot or will not pay its own fair share of responsibility or liability, building owners, ratepayers, and the councils are left carrying the can.

This isn’t a small problem, and a report in 2018 from Superu highlighted that $330 million on councils, by which, of course, I mean ratepayers—it’s their money, after all—was passed on as a result of defects and faults for which the council was not even responsible. It’s a cost of living issue because inflation is caused when unnecessary payments are made. We see, along with insurance and energy—areas where the Government is working hard to keep costs down—that rates are a huge additional burden on Kiwi households and businesses and society. We are doing what we can in this space to take the pressure off local government in order to take the pressure off its ratepayers. It’s time to put the responsibility where it belongs, and we know that improving the responsibility of the building entities improves their performance because the incentives are right.

We also know that if we can reform the building consent authorities system by allowing councils to voluntarily consolidate their functions across regional boundaries and across whole areas of New Zealand, that will make life easier for them, and it will make life easier, therefore, for those building at scale, those building in off-site manufacturing outfits, large-scale home builders, and those who the Government procures from, among others. The Government procures a large number of these buildings, and that’s how we are able to keep the costs down when it comes to classrooms, defence housing, and other types of buildings that are so important to our Kiwis who serve us so well.

Councils have been asking for this change. We’ve listened to them, we’ve responded, and we’re giving them that change. The feedback from the sector has been strong. Local Government New Zealand said that the changes will have “an instant and positive impact on housing growth”, the Building Officials Institute of New Zealand called the reforms “a win for ratepayers, homeowners, investors, and the wider economy.”, and the Certified Builders described them as “the most significant change for the building industry in a generation,”. We’re listening, we’re acting, and we’re getting New Zealand back on track.

I bring a message from Duncan McLean, a retailer in Newtown, in my electorate of Rongotai, for 24 years, and a founding member of Newtown Heart, which is the local business group. He says, “The homelessness situation in Newtown is the worst I have ever seen. As a retailer, I am constantly approached for money, whether walking down the street or even while using an ATM. My customers regularly tell me they feel unsafe. Many say they no longer allow their children walk through Newtown alone. Every week, I witness drug dealers interacting with homeless people, and discarded drug bags are left on the streets, right where people and children from our three local schools can see them. Public drinking continues despite a drinking ban, and at night, many areas feel unsafe due to poor lighting.”

Now, Duncan is working hard for his community—like so many others. Newtown Heart association—we’ve got a whole series of local people in Newtown who have banded together to write an open letter to Minister Potaka and Minister Bishop, the Ministers of Housing and homelessness, to tell them how bad the situation has gotten over the last year and a half. It’s been signed by the residents’ association, the local sports club, the churches, the community centre, the local volunteer community patrol team, the local and regional councillors, the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Wellington, and businesses up and down the street—no less than 20 different businesses—all crying out for this Government to take responsibility. It is not good enough to come into this House and use some statistics to pretend like the problem isn’t growing; it’s out there on the street.

I sent this letter, on behalf of the community, to the Ministers on Friday last week, asking them to come walk the streets of Newtown. This is not a political stunt. This is not to score political points. These people want genuine solutions. Everybody cares about their community, and the reality is that certain decisions this Government has taken have left us in a worse position. This was in the paper on Monday. It’s about the rough-sleeping crisis deepening and the communities grappling with rising homelessness and a whole host of other problems, because when people don’t have a safe, secure place to call home, they’re much more likely to fall prey to substance abuse issues, and if we don’t have that wrapraround support, there’s no way for them to get out of the downward spiral.

Our community provides a lot of social housing, and that is ratepayers putting money into social housing—huge amounts of it—and that’s good, but the reality is that it is a central government responsibility. Now, they’ve cancelled 200 new units that would have been built in the Rongotai electorate. They cancelled them. Where’s the community housing provider contracts? Not a single one has been given to a community housing provider to increase the supply of housing in Wellington. That’s the reality.

We don’t have the housing being built that we need; we don’t have funding for the social support wraparound services that we need to support people who are suffering from trauma or substance abuse issues. The police are at their wits’ end; they have people who have such complex needs who might be taking some very extreme actions in public—they are taken to the hospital, but there’s no room for them there in the hospital. Where are they supposed to go? There’s a need for positive, constructive solutions.

The Salvation Army, one of the signatories on this open letter that I sent to the Ministers, noted that there has been an increase in homelessness and that it is directly related to a 386 percent rise in Ministry of Social Development rejections for emergency housing. That is a direct result of the Government’s actions. This is having an impact on our community, it’s having an impact on businesses, it’s having an impact on safety, and we cannot solve the problem on our own.

This isn’t just in Newtown; it’s also deeply related to my colleague Tamatha Paul’s—who’s the MP for Wellington Central—electorate. Both our communities across the city are being affected by Government decisions to cancel State house builds, to not move on Arlington, to increase the criteria for emergency housing, and to cut funding for social support services. It may be good news for those people in the Koru Club and those with investment properties, but come walk the streets. I invite any member from the Government benches to come to Newtown. It’s on your way to the airport. Come with me to Newtown, come see what’s happening, and let’s solve this problem.

I’m reminded of the famous song from the States about “Ol’ Man River”, because I find myself on behalf of Kiwi industry, manufacturing, garden-variety people seeking to claw their way out of “Strugglers’ Gully” imposed upon them by the last failed regime. So I’ve adapted the chords, I’ve adapted the lyrics, and I am known as Old King Coal, because that’s Matua’s role.

There will be no energy resilience, there will be no electricity security, without ongoing access to gas and coal. It is absurd we bring it in from 10,000 kilometres away, in an area that could easily suffer major geopolitical uncertainty—in South-east Asia—whilst we have coal in strategically important levels 10 kilometres away from the coal-fired power stations in the Waikato.

Why are we left with this bizarre situation? It’s because a bunch of shallow, juvenile, virtue-signalling captors of the Paris Accord thought it was a good idea to condemn Kiwi investors, encourage the Aussie-owned banks to demonise an industry that employs a host of garden-variety Kiwis—but, no, we’re not going to stand for that. Unless we do have a host of access points to generate more energy out of our own resources, we are condemning New Zealand to a greater level of vulnerability.

Now, I know this particular approach is not something that makes us friends on the other side of the House—and, of course, I regard some of them as my friends, because I’m a politician about ideas; I’m a politician that’s soft on the personality, until you insult my leader or the party I belong to, then you will not strike a more robust foe than the matua standing before you.

Now, on the question of these protesters, sadly, they have left the human filth that they created in the coal cart. Sadly, they have stopped blighting the prospects of the men and women who earn an honest living out of working in the West Coast and the coal industry. They’ve come down out of coal cart—that rhymes with night cart—they’ve made their way on to the ground into the waiting hands of the police, and, hopefully, they will be served with appropriate punitive messages from the police in the vein of a trespass order and eventually hauled off to court.

But the key point is: why is it that a tiny minority of self-appointed moral apostles believe they have a greater role than we do in this House to actually save the planet? They don’t think about 300 or 400 jobs or the $27,000 each day that was incurred by that legitimate business. No, they’re possessed of a higher, supercilious level of appreciation of the future, in their own eyes, that the rest of us should perish and face ridiculously high energy costs while they sit—should I say, sat—in a coal cart, blighting, undermining, hobbling the ability of that business to continue to generate overseas money and look after their workforce.

Now, of course, the Labour Party refused to back the oil and gas revocation ban legislation. They don’t want coal. They don’t want oil and gas. They never passed legislation to actually uphold and give a clear path for their great lake in the South Island. All full of gratuitous virtue-signalling vacuous rubbish. That’s why we’re facing the greatest energy crisis of my lifetime. That’s why that side of the House is ruining sovereign risk—because they refuse to abide by common-sense policies that will give Kiwis the resilience and the security—which, in the absence of those two things, we’re going to suffer a great deal of deindustrialisation.

But wait, the fast track is about to be improved. That will enable us to fast track more resources, more minerals, hopefully more gas, and certainly more coal. Here checks out Matua King Coal.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m going to follow Matua Shane Jones over here and talk about the same topic, because for people on the West Coast, we have had, up to our eyeballs, enough of these protesters. These protesters that we’re talking about, and the Hon Shane Jones talked about, have been in the coal bucket for 22 days, and they illegally occupied the aerial ropeway at Bathurst, which is a big coalmine 35 kilometres north of Westport. Now, that business employs over 500 people directly, so the trickle-down impact of disrupting that workplace is significant.

It wasn’t free speech. It wasn’t peaceful protest. It was reckless endangerment. Now, let’s be clear: this was a dangerous obstruction that put lives, jobs, and livelihoods at risk. Coal shipments were slowed down significantly because trucks had to be brought in to shift the coal to the train-loading facility at Ngākawau, and that would usually have come down on this aerial ropeway, which meant that then the company had to get trucks to come in to shift the coal to the loading facility, which increased emissions.

Now, I just want to do a bit of an explainer about the aerial ropeway. It’s 2½ kilometres of steel rope, and it carries down these large, big buckets—about 290 tonnes of coal an hour comes down off that ropeway—and then it gets loaded on to a train and transported to Lyttelton for export. It was in two of these buckets that the protesters lived for 22 days—and I could just imagine what that smells like today—but the coal extracted from Bathurst is metallurgic coal. It’s not even used for burning, yet these protesters seem to think that they were going to cut emissions by stopping this particular coalmine from producing coal—such is the intelligence of these people.

If a protester had gotten in trouble up there—if they’d fallen ill, if they’d fallen out, or if they’d had some other accident—we would have had to have relied on expertise that we don’t have in this country to extract them. It’s been an outrageous imposition on the business, its workers, and on police, so I’m going to call this out for what it was: it was unlawful trespassing. It was designed to cripple an essential industry and to intimidate the very people who keep our communities ticking over.

We must never accept that a small group of looney activists have the right to shut down workplaces, disrupt supply chains, and endanger lives. Protests should happen in the proper forums, not by the hijacking of businesses’ critical infrastructure. We must protect those businesses and those who work in them. Over the past month, we have had two vehicles set on fire, we have had the historic bath house at Denniston burnt to the ground, and a historic photographic display destroyed. I’m not saying those two protesters were responsible for those incidents, but it just shows the disdain that some people have for our history and our future. And I say, how dare they? The actions of those protesters were stupid, dangerous, and costly, and I hope they get to pay back the cost to the company. I hope they also took their waste with them. I certainly hope they never ever use anything connected to mining.

This is the bit that I find the most ironic: they were dangling 80 metres in the air in a steel bucket, using their cellphones to film their antics, charged up with small solar panels. Where do you think solar panels, reflective panels, come from? From coal. They were using top of the line climbing gear made from mined minerals. They were wearing clothing made with machinery made from mined minerals. I certainly hope they walked back to the rock that they crawled out of and didn’t use a vehicle that uses fossil fuel, or maybe a lithium battery made, of course, from mined materials. The hypocrisy is laughable. Bathurst and the Buller community: we will not be bullied by lunatics.

Thank you to those who support our mining industry and those who work in it. I just challenge everyone in this House to look around this room. Apart from the humans that occupy it, every single item in here is derived from mining. I thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. You’ve got to hand it to the National Party, they have taken selective memory to a whole new level. It’s pretty impressive that they can recall every single detail of the previous Government, except the part where National voted for the COVID payment and asked for more—that’s the only bit they can’t remember. During COVID, they were not standing in this House, asking for fiscal discipline or fiscal restraint; they only voted in support of the payments, and they asked for it to be increased. For National, history isn’t something to be remembered; it’s something to be rewritten.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane. Contestant No. 1 on “Let’s Rewrite New Zealand’s History” is Paul Goldsmith. Paul Goldsmith, back on 25 March 2020, said, “we, obviously, back him”—that’s Grant Robertson—“in his wise decision-making about how that money is spent”, “ But, all in all, we support this bill and hope that it will make some step towards helping some businesses survive.” He also said, “I support the broader point that we would make that it is necessary for the Government to go further in terms of offering relief to those businesses affected.” He also said, “So we support the Government in this bill and we encourage them to go further.” But there’s more. He said quite a bit on it, because he was the finance spokesperson at the time. He said, “and that’s why National has been broadly supportive of the very significant increase in Government spending outlined in this Budget and the need to go further into debt. … Nobody in this country, right here, right now, is saying, ‘Oh, we should not be spending anything and we should be going back to austerity.’ Nobody is saying that”—the words of Paul Goldsmith. That’s not an example of fiscal responsibility; that’s an example of political amnesia.

No. 2. Let’s look at No. 2. No. 2 in tonight is Dan Bidois. What did Dan Bidois say about the COVID payment? He said, “I do want to raise the issue that I don’t think that this is enough support for the business community. … this is by far not sufficient to address some of the challenges that these businesses will face in the next few years.” Well, for Mr Bidois, by Nicola Willis’ standards, I do believe that that makes him a fiscal vandal or an economic vandal. So maybe he should sort that one out.

No. 3—the third and final contestant on “Let’s Rewrite New Zealand’s History”—is Andrew Bayly. I’ve saved the best till last. Mr Bayly—what did he have to say in relation to the COVID payment? He said, “I don’t think for a moment anyone thinks that we shouldn’t be spending large amounts of money to support vulnerable New Zealanders, and particularly vulnerable businesses in New Zealand … it was right and proper that support measures were put in place.” Thank you for that, Mr Bayly; that was a great contribution.

But wait, there’s even more. There was a whole new COVID payment. Judith Collins announced an entire new COVID payment to help people self-isolate. That was National Party policy. They wanted to increase the existing COVID payment.

But today, with the benefit of hindsight and a fresh round of talking points, National pretend to be the great masters of fiscal discipline. It’s, basically, like signing a cheque and then yelling at the bank for cashing it. Suddenly, the very spending they supported is treated as reckless, as wasteful, as if it happened without their fingerprints all over it, and we know it was. That’s not principle. That’s not leadership. That is, pure and simple, hypocrisy.

New Zealanders aren’t fooled; they know when someone is trying to rewrite our history, and they deserve to hear the truth that National not only supported the COVID payment but they wanted more of it at that time. Their outrage that we hear today and over the past month is nothing more than absolute theatre designed to distract New Zealand from the harsh realities that we are facing now. That reality is that there is no plan for jobs, that there is no plan for getting to a GP, that there is no plan for more homes, and we are facing record levels of unemployment—18,000 fewer construction workers in New Zealand—record levels of homelessness, and hundreds of people who wait and wait to see a doctor and they can’t. On top of all this, the cost of living continues to increase.

New Zealanders deserve some hope right now, not the rewriting of history that we see going on. What we need is jobs, health, homes, and some actual plan to get our economy back on track—an economy that works for everybody, not just those at the top.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, it’s good to hear that the member who’s just sat down, the Hon Ginny Andersen, wants a plan. We heard her mention three words there. We heard nothing more about this plan. So for any Labour fans tuning in to watch that speech to hear about what they had in plan—

Hon Kieran McAnulty: They’re tuning out now.

SAM UFFINDELL: —there was no plan.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Listen to that roll.

SAM UFFINDELL: Well, look at this. We’ve got—

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Zinger after zinger. Here we go.

SAM UFFINDELL: And that speaker, Kieran McAnulty, had his leadership audition earlier today. I thought he actually got a few laughs. It was better than Ginny Andersen’s speech.

But what was even better than both of those was the Reserve Bank’s announcement that interest rates have come down—down 2.5 percent since the peak of inflation under the previous Government. Inflation down from 7.3 percent, to 2.7 percent. As was discussed, for your family out there or your people out there with a $500,000 mortgage—they’ve got that in there for 25 years—that’s a $330 saving that they will receive every fortnight. That’s a considerable amount. Times are tough throughout New Zealand at the moment—we’re not going to run away from that—but that will make a considerable difference. When you consider you’ve got 40 percent of households—I’m surprised that number’s still that high, but it is 40 percent of households—that are still to come off those rates and fix on to a new rate, that gives us hope that there will be a big injection of money—much needed for households and for businesses—coming into the New Zealand economy.

Now, we look at where else we’re freeing up, and you look at some of the reforms that Minister Penk, who was here before and gave a very good speech around what he’s doing to help reduce the cost of building. I listened to him last week talk about 20 things that he had done in this area to improve affordability. When you compare the cost of building a house in New Zealand to the cost of building it in Australia, you see that we are at a significant disadvantage. You see it right across the New Zealand economy. It doesn’t matter where you look—there’s too much bureaucracy, there’s too much red tape, there’s too much consenting times. You’ve seen Ministers Bishop and Penk, in particular, going very, very hard to make sure that these barriers are reduced. It’s hard for New Zealanders to find affordable housing. The work that they are doing is going to fundamentally shift the dial in that space.

We’ve already seen a stabilisation of rental prices. We have seen housing affordability improve, with income to house prices tracking in a more favourable direction. I think, over the long term as well, with the freeing up of supply and those changes that Ministers Penk and Bishop have made, you will see more affordable houses being able to be built across New Zealand. You’ll also see it being a lot more affordable to build infrastructure. Currently, we spend $1.4 billion a year on consenting fees. That is absolutely insane. It is so expensive. So we’ve got to get this stuff under control. We’ve seen a number of fast-track projects coming through. The Port of Tauranga—boy oh boy, I hope that one gets approved. We see a lot of housing and transport links as well that need to be done.

I could talk about the work Erica Stanford is doing, which will shift a generation of children into being able to reach their potential. That is going to unlock economic productivity in New Zealand like you’ve never seen before. Look, it’s not happening immediately, and I know Kiwis are out there doing it tough at the moment, but we are making the serious, long-term decisions that are needed to move the dial.

You compare that to where the other side are at. We didn’t get much of it from them today in their speeches, but you can look at where we’re going. Are we going back to fiscal and financial mismanagement? Will we have a credit ratings decrease? Will we see investors leave New Zealand if a left-wing Government comes in? My take on it is that you would see a flight of capital and talent like this country has never seen. You’d see a capital gains tax. You could potentially see a wealth tax. You could potentially see increases in income tax. You might have a member of the Green Party as your finance Minister—the degrowth Greens; imagine that! Reckless spending, growing bureaucracy, energy insecurity, sovereign risk, the malaise and degradation that comes in with the heavy hand of the socialist State.

So New Zealanders will have a very, very clear picture next year when it comes to the election: a Government led by the National Party that has come in and fundamentally shifted the dial on the Resource Management Act, on building and construction, on education through fast-track projects; or you will have a Labour-led, left-wing Government that will run New Zealand into the ground. That is the stark choice that New Zealanders will be faced with next year. I can’t wait for us to get out there and fight hard for Kiwis. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. New Zealand faces serious challenges. How do we provide school choice, better health choices? How do we make sure Kiwis can build affordable homes? How do we make the best use of our natural resources so we can all share in that wealth and prosperity? Most New Zealanders are content to have their say on these matters through the ballot box, through democracy, trusting Parliament, trusting local government to provide a level playing field to have a debate. That contest must be fought with evidence and with respect, and the rules of the contest must apply to everybody equally.

ACT comes prepared. We come here to tackle the hard problems. We want to debate them honestly. Whether it’s in the Chamber or on the campaign trail, ACT bring solutions, we bring arguments, and, yes, we play hard. From time to time, we’ve pushed the line, and we’ve also had to accept the occasional penalty when the ref calls against us, but that’s the game. We play within the rules.

Unfortunately, not every party in this Parliament respects those rules. Te Pāti Māori behave as if those rules don’t apply to them and that the ends justify any means. But let’s be clear: while Māori might be in their brand, they are not the party of Māori. Very few New Zealanders who whakapapa Māori actually voted for Te Pāti Māori. Instead of respect for democracy, Te Pāti Māori promotes a divisive idea that some Māori voices matter more than others, and that depends on who carries the biggest patu.

Well, that is not something the ACT Party will accept. Their behaviour has crossed the line from passionate debate into intimidation and harassment. Their leaders have even celebrated foreign dictators on social media. Rawiri Waititi praised Burkina Faso’s military ruler, Ibrahim Traoré, a man who has delayed elections, banned gays, and whose forces have been accused of massacring hundreds of civilians. Is this really the model for New Zealand?

It doesn’t stop online. A few weeks ago, a West Auckland lawn mower, a Kiwi just trying to run a small business, was doxxed by Te Pāti Māori president John Tamihere, who falsely accused him of vandalising Te Pāti Māori election hoardings. That man received death threats, and yet he said, “I’m not even into politics. … this could damage my business. … it’s nuts.” Yet there was no apology from John Tamihere or Te Pāti Māori, no retraction, just a torrent of online abuse directed at this mowing contractor.

More recently, after a billboard image caused offence, the company involved rightly removed it, but for Te Pāti Māori, it wasn’t enough. They posted the personal phone numbers of billboard company staff—finance, sales, marketing people—encouraging supporters to call with abuse and threats, and they did. The billboard sponsor’s address was posted publicly, alongside chilling messages, such as “Death to all white people.”, and plans to smash billboards. That is not democratic debate; it is mob intimidation.

ACT believes that New Zealanders deserve much, much better. We must be able to trust the institutions to resolve our differences of opinion. We must assume good faith in our fellow citizens. We must not attack a lawn mower, an office staff member, or anyone who dares to hold a different view. We need the fourth estate—our media—to do its job, to hold Te Pāti Māori and its supporters to account when they behave like tyrants, whipping up anger and threatening violence. Silence only enables more of this behaviour. Our society only works if we can agree to disagree respectfully—that’s in Parliament, in workplaces, and on the street. Te Pāti Māori should be held to the same standards as any other political party. If they’re allowed to play by different rules—the rules of intimidation and fear—they will tear our society apart. ACT will not stand by and let that happen. We will call it out. We will defend democracy. ACT will defend the right of every New Zealander to disagree without fear.

Mr Speaker, tēnā koe. So to the voice of reason—obviously, I have to just comment that it’s so great to hear Te Pāti Māori’s name said so many times in the previous speech. Maybe I’m thankful. Good for you—good for you. The rest of it was utter nonsense. Yeah, I’m not quite sure what else to say to that, actually, but read some more, think a little bit more, write it down, and let’s try it again at the next debate, shall you?

So here I’m going to say that I’m here to remind the House, in this particular five-minute kōrero, of the kids that are homeless and disconnected, of our young people that are disengaged but want to be engaged, and of our rangatahi that are sleeping on the streets. It does align a little bit with my colleague on the right in our general debate as well, which is our young people and our kids that are sleeping homeless and alone and do not belong.

On the weekend, I attended a seminar, Ināia Tonu Nei. In fact, it was attended by a number of members from Te Pāti Māori, the Labour Party, and the Greens. So there was a bunch of us there, listening, engaging, participating, and listening closely to this group that has been established since 2018, and looking at the justice system such as it is and to improve it, particularly for the most vulnerable, and, in this instance, the kaupapa was around Māori and Pasifika. So it was an important hui to be at in Tāmaki.

Inside that, a wonderful young group of people from Kick Back—so Kick Back is designed by young people, operated by young people, and supported by older people, but their focus is on young people that are sleeping homeless and finding solutions to that. They talk about standing in the gaps with young people and how to understand them, how to work with them, and how to find a place for them to sleep, so it’s an important time to listen to that, and we did. There were three or four that took the stage and shared their reality. For the 200 or more people that were in that room, they were moved to tears by the true story that these young people were sharing about their life right now. It moved everybody, as it should, but it reminded us of the reality and what it is like for young people when they are disconnected, when they are disengaged, when they are deculturated. Where do they go?

So this group, Kick Back—I just want to acknowledge all of their work. They get in there; they don’t talk about it. They support young people going into the Ministry of Social Development to get their income support. One of the stories told was about the recent rejection of one of the applications, which, when you’re listening to the detail, you’re thinking, “Gee, surely that stuff doesn’t happen anymore.”, but I’m afraid it does. Of course, it ties right back to some very recent work that the Minister has done in her team to stop young people from accessing emergency homes—emergency. It’s a shocking and terrible situation, and I don’t know how we let ourselves get away with it.

At the very end of the seminar, Minister Goldsmith joined and the young people spoke. There were a number of speakers that talked to him after he gave his speech, but the most disappointing thing about his kōrero was that he gaslit everybody in the room. He didn’t hear it, and when you don’t hear it and you don’t understand it, you’re going to just rattle off your own conversation. After all, he is the Minister that said that decolonisation was good for us, on balance. It was a disgusting show, not only in my view but for everyone there.

So when he left, everybody was just like, “Was that the Minister? Did he actually say that to us? Did he actually reject everything that we were saying and thinking and talking about?” I’m afraid he did. It was terribly, terribly disappointing that that kind of thinking is being shared at a seminar with young people and older people that are struggling in the justice system, trying to get some sense of justice.

I wanted to make those remarks to this House and to remind us that our young people deserve better, and, right now, it is not happening with this Government. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a great privilege to rise and speak in this general debate, because, as has been mentioned, it’s a great day for New Zealand with the official cash rate (OCR) coming down even further to 3 percent.

Prior to that, I was thinking of the previous Government’s approach to the economy. It is a pity that we didn’t prioritise financial literacy in our school curriculum before this Government came into power, because our recent economic history offers some stark lessons that the other side could do with a bit of brushing up on: high tax and reckless spending always leads to economic problems. We’ve seen this time and time again in New Zealand and around the world. But rest assured, this Government, under the steady leadership of Christopher Luxon and the finance Minister Nicola Willis, is cleaning up the mess.

As people have said before, New Zealanders are still doing it tough from the long hangover that we are experiencing. The previous Government’s policies led to a cumulative inflation that added a massive 25 percent to the cost of living—a quarter of our spending power has gone in just a few short years. Inflation isn’t just about rising grocery prices—it does do that—it’s a hidden tax that erodes the savings of ordinary New Zealanders. Periods of high inflation lay the groundwork for economic instability by pumping excess liquidity into the financial system, which fuels irresponsible borrowing and sends asset prices absolutely soaring above their real value. That is what we have seen in the past six years.

Every period of inflation—it doesn’t matter whether it’s in New Zealand or around the world—inevitably leads to a downturn. This isn’t rocket science, and it can’t be fixed by printing more money; you fix it through good economic management, and that is precisely what we are doing. We’ve witnessed that again today with the cut in the OCR.

Now, while it will take a long time for this effect to fully filter through the system, we are seeing progress. When the remaining 40 percent of Kiwi mortgages are refixed in the next six months, it will add even more back to our economy—on average, another $330 a fortnight back in the pockets of young families like my own. That’s thousands of dollars a year that can be spent at local cafes, on swimming lessons for the kids, or even a piano lesson or two. That means more money circulating our economies, not being swallowed by the bank.

This approach has also made homeownership more accessible. Last year, first-home buyers accounted for a record 29 percent of all real estate sales, the highest proportion that has been recorded. During the previous Government, the proportion of income taken up by mortgages was roughly close to 50 percent. So for every dollar that a New Zealander earned, 50 percent was going straight to the bank. That figure has fallen to 39 percent and will even continue to fall thanks to the OCR cuts.

We’ve also seen improvements in the rental market, with a drop in the average rental price and an increase in the availability of rental properties, giving renters greater choice. Despite this, the Opposition has fought us at every turn while we have tried to make it easier for those Kiwis renting. They want to keep the prices high. They want to lock people out of the housing market. We are making it more affordable and getting it in. They criticise all our efforts, but we can look across the Tasman to Australia. Their housing market continues to surge, their affordability hits new lows, and I’ll note that Australia has already had a capital gains tax for decades—a policy that never has and will never solve housing affordability.

We can trace the problems that New Zealand is facing back to the COVID payments, and the recent Treasury reports have confirmed that. While we’ve heard interesting interpretations of that from the other side, the majority of it wasn’t spent on health. The unprecedented injection of cash, underwritten by the Reserve Bank’s quantitative easing, acted as a hidden tax with raging prices, evaporating the wealth of everyday Kiwis. We can’t go back and risk those days.

The price of financial mismanagement is always paid by the hard-working Kiwi. Luckily, this Government is keeping that in check. We’re getting the economy back on track.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Ikaroa-Rāwhiti are counting the days—counting the days—until they march to polling booths and make sure that this is a one-term Government. Do you know what else they’re counting? The many, many ways this National-led Government are slamming whānau and taking this country backwards. They are counting the days, weeks, and months it takes to see a doctor. They’re counting the nursing positions they need to fill at Hawke’s Bay Hospital but they “cannot recruit because we are not allowed”. They’re counting the 44 percent of senior medical officer vacancies at Tairāwhiti hospital.

Ikaroa-Rāwhiti are counting job losses. Unemployment in the rohe is up to 9.4 percent, due, in part, to cuts like those in Jobs for Nature, which supported initiatives like the invaluable Raukūmara Pae Maunga Project and the restoration of Titirangi Maunga—reinstating kaitiakitanga.

They are counting the number of their whānau leaving Aotearoa in their droves to find mahi just to support their families. They’re counting the number of whānau making KiwiSaver hardship applications—those are up by nearly 57 percent, just to get by—because this Government, who promised to help the squeezed middle, are instead squeezing the life and hope out of the middle, top, bottom, front, back, and sides.

They’re counting the number of whānau with no place to call home. Kaimahi on the front line have told this Government there are more people living on our streets as a result of their policies. They’re counting broken promises: 7,000 public homes were promised by the Prime Minister, and a mere 45 delivered.

Let us count the many, many ways this Government is letting people down and taking our country backwards. But I represent Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, the electorate that brings the light to Aotearoa and, indeed, the world each day, and I want to acknowledge some of the services my team and I have visited recently, who, in spite of cuts and being downtrodden, bring light to whānau each and every day.

They are services like Kokiri Marae Health and Social Services, who are helping find shelter for whānau who find themselves suddenly homeless; services like the Pātaka Kai, still providing food in this cost of living crisis; places like Āhuru Mōwai in Napier, a collective providing a roof and life-planning support for those in need; services like SuperGrans in Gisborne, offering sustenance of all kinds to many, many people; and services like Manaaki Matakāoa—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti’s northernmost service—supporting whānau aged zero to 100, and beyond. There are many more, and I thank each and every service throughout Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, and, indeed, Aotearoa, that are out there giving our whānau hope in these dark times inflicted by this National-led Government.

While I proudly represent the Māori electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, these issues affect all of Aotearoa, and we are counting. We are not only counting on hope and counting on the services throughout Ikaroa-Rāwhiti; we are counting the ways that this Government is taking us backwards, and we are counting the days until whānau take to the polls and end this National Government’s cruel reign.

I started by saying that Ikaroa-Rāwhiti are counting. We are counting the days until there is hope restored to the leadership of this country, and counting the days until we march to the polling booths to make sure that this is a one-term Government.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.