Debates — General Debate

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

In 94 days, New Zealanders get to choose our future, and the choice is getting clearer by the day: a new Government that’s focused on the issues that matter to everybody—tackling the cost of living, making sure we get Kiwis back to work in good, well-paid jobs, making sure Kiwis can get the healthcare they need when they need it, and making sure that everybody has a place to call home—or a re-election of another variant of this coalition of chaos that is simply focused on blame, excuses, division, and simply their own personal interests. A change of Government to a Government that is focused on bringing everyone together to tackle the challenges that the country faces, or a Government that can’t even bring themselves together to tackle the challenges that this country faces. A Government that focuses on moving the country forward, or a Government focused on fighting amongst itself. A Government focused on backing Kiwi businesses or a Government that talks down to New Zealand businesses, saying they are “wet, whiny, inward-looking”, that they’ve gone “soft”, that they’re “C-listers”, or that they have a “parent-child” relationship with the Government—all of the above are statements made by this Prime Minister when it comes to New Zealand businesses, and they deserve better than that.

But it doesn’t end there. We have a Prime Minister whose standards are so low that statements that he regards himself as racist are OK for his Ministers to make. It’s OK for his Minister of Foreign Affairs to attack diplomats from other countries in New Zealand. It’s OK for his Minister of Foreign Affairs to say that people from China, “lie like … flatfish”. It’s OK for a Minister in his Government to liken migration from India to a “butter chicken tsunami”. All of those things are OK under Christopher Luxon’s leadership. He has done nothing about any of those statements by Ministers in his Government.

Make no bones about it: there is real-world harm caused by those sorts of statements.

When we get reports from the Indian community in New Zealand, raising concerns that a primary school that has a high concentration of Indian students in it, had spray painted on the fence across the road from it “Kill all the Indians”—when they raise those concerns and the Prime Minister of this country will do nothing to call out that behaviour, it says everything about how weak this Government is and how wrong their priorities are. When our Chinese community report that they are subject to increased discrimination and increased attacks and this Prime Minister will say that those attacks have been racist but do nothing about it, it shows this Government is more interested in their own careers, in their own jobs, than they are in the lives and livelihoods of every other New Zealander.

On the day that records come out that show that we have an 11-year record for unemployment in New Zealand, what do we get from this Government? Once again, more blame and excuses. They call low-income New Zealanders “bottom feeders”, without accepting any responsibility for the conditions that have put low-income New Zealanders in the very position that they are. When Christopher Luxon said that New Zealanders were “wet, whiny, inward-looking”, he got the last part of that completely wrong; young New Zealanders who can’t find work in New Zealand are not inward-looking; they’re very outward-looking. They are looking to Australia—they are going to Australia to find jobs they should be able to find here in New Zealand. Take those working in building and construction—20,000 jobs gone, under this Government’s leadership, from the building and construction sector, and this Government thinks that’s something to celebrate.

As for emerging New Zealand businesses who deserve the backing of this Government, what do they get? They get called “C-listers” by the Prime Minister. Well, my message to the Government is very clear, and it’s this: if you want more A-list businesses, you’ve got to back the emerging businesses, not talk down to them, not say they’re inward-looking, and not say they’re asking for a handout. Get behind them and support them to grow. That’s not what this Government’s doing; this Government’s too busy talking down to New Zealand businesses—and, actually, they’re not just talking down to New Zealand businesses; the Prime Minister’s not got much to say nice about any of the people sitting over there too. When he’s talking down to New Zealand businesses, he’s also complaining about his own MPs and saying how useless they are—every boardroom in the country will tell you, “Christopher Luxon hasn’t got anything nice to say about anybody.” That is why, come 7 November, he’ll be looking for a new job.

(15:18:23): It snowed for the first time in three decades in Wellington this week, and at 4 a.m. yesterday morning on Cuba Street in Wellington, a man in his early 40s passed away, having been found unresponsive, curled up in a storefront, and unable to revived. We cannot speculate on the cause of this man’s premature death, but I remember on Monday night being woken up by the heavy rain and southerly winds that night—and MetService said that it felt like minus 5 degrees outside.

It reminded me of a submission that my office collected from people rough sleeping in Wellington on the move-on orders, and one woman said, “I move on if I’m asked, I won’t block doorways, I take my rubbish with me, and I respect people. I don’t drink or do drugs, I am with Work and Income, looking for work. My last three appointments have been cancelled. Sometimes I have to beg to make ends meet.” I think about our Pastor Joe—a beloved figure in our community—who is often on the streets with Pasifika Patrol and the Salvation Army. Pastor Joe told me that he was donated 10 sleeping bags on Monday, and by Tuesday, all of their sleeping bags and blankets were gone, with even more coming in the next day, asking for more. It’s not just about people sleeping rough; it’s about people who have accommodation but can’t afford to buy blankets or anything else to keep them warm. As Pastor Joe said, this is the kind of weather that can kill someone.

Tania George from the Wellington City Mission said, “I spent two years on the streets. It’s getting much colder. I work at the city mission now and I have homeless people coming in and crying, crying because it is cold, literally shedding tears—big solid guys crying and breaking down because it’s so cold. I just think a bit of comfort and humility and compassion can go a long way, as well. You know, I just gave him a big hug and he said, ‘I haven’t got a place to stay, but just the fact that you cared makes it a little bit better.’ ”

Pastor Joe said that he’s also observed that more women are ending up on our streets. It is a point that has been echoed by Te Whare Nukunoa - Wellington Homeless Women’s Trust, who said, “We deal with the wāhine that nobody else wants. These wāhine are continuously battling with their trauma, and each and every day they are still on the streets—another day, with trauma upon trauma, so when we finally can get them into our whare, we have to try and unpack the added trauma that has been inflicted on them, especially given this cold snap. Not only are they dealing with mental health addictions; now, they are facing the elements of the weather that, over the years, we have seen get worse each season.”

We know too from the Community Housing Aotearoa group that half of the people who are homeless are under the age of 24. Evolve, our local youth one-stop shop, have told me that some of the young people that they’re supporting are spending nights in the emergency room because they have got nowhere warm and safe to go, and that’s why I want to use this time during general debate to put the partisan politics aside and to remind people—as we all know when we walk outside—that it is freezing cold out there.

I want to appeal to people who are in a position to give to consider giving a donation to the front-line organisations who are providing warm clothing, blankets, sleeping bags, and hot kai to those who are rough sleeping, currently. One of our local organisations, DCM Wellington, will soon be launching an appeal for crisis accommodation this winter because human beings are freezing on the streets, and those people too often have been denied emergency support and are told that they have caused their own homelessness.

It is hard and it is uncomfortable to ask people to give. At a time when people don’t have a lot of money, when unemployment is at the highest that it has ever been, when people are struggling to live week to week, it is hard to ask them to give to front-line organisations, because isn’t this what a Government is supposed to be for? In New Zealand, we used to believe in having a social safety net, where anybody who fell through the cracks because of predicaments outside of their control would be caught, but now we have such cruelty when, instead, the number of people who are told that it is their own fault that they are homeless is increasing, and they are denied same-day emergency accommodation and told to come back next week.

Human beings should not have to rely on ordinary citizens’ charity, goodwill, and good faith to have their basic human rights met—the basic human right to adequate shelter and the basic human right to food. It’s disgusting that so many people these days have to rely on charity rather than on their Government helping them out.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We just heard from the Leader of the Opposition a few minutes ago, and, of course, what a whiny speech it was from the Leader of the Opposition, who had plenty to complain about, but not a single solution. It’s only 94 days until the election—94 days from the election—and he has no solutions for the future of this country. Not only does he have no solutions for the future of this country but he also has an $18.2 billion hidden bill that he wants to impose upon New Zealanders—$18.2 billion of unfunded promises that he wants to impose upon New Zealanders.

Of course, the Labour Party are experts when it comes to spending other people’s money—they’re experts when it comes to spending other people’s money. They have already announced $21 billion of promises, and the only thing they’ve promised in order to pay for it is one single tax. It is a brand new tax, a capital gains tax, which will bring in $2.8 billion of revenue. That leaves an $18.2 billion hidden bill that New Zealanders are being asked to pay for if those members get into Government later this year.

Of course, when you’ve got an $18.2 billion hidden bill, there’s only two ways that you can fill that gap. You can either increase taxes or you can borrow more money. That is the recipe, the same old Labour Party recipe: promise to spend money, increase taxes, and then borrow more money and pass it on to future generations.

Well, the truth is that in the next 94 days, New Zealanders will be looking at that bill and going, “We know who’s actually going to be paying for Labour’s unfunded hidden bill of $18.2 billion.”

Hon Louise Upston: Hard-working New Zealanders.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: As Minister Louise Upston says, it will be hard-working Kiwis who will ultimately pay for that.

But, of course, while Labour says, “Oh no, we’ve only got the capital gains tax. We’re not doing anything more.”, they know that they’re going to need some friends to help them get across the line, and have their friends got new taxes—have their friends got new taxes. Chlöe Swarbrick, who wants to be the next Minister of Finance, has got a wealth tax, she’s got a death tax, she’s got an inheritance tax, and she’s even got a higher income tax—taxing people a marginal tax rate of 45c in the dollar for every dollar earned over $160,000.

Steve Abel: And 96 percent of people get a tax cut.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: The member says that not many people will pay for it. Do you know that nurse practitioners earn over $160,000? Are they the type of people that the Green Party and the Labour Party think will be paying a 45c in the dollar marginal tax rate? That’s exactly what they have.

You then look at Te Pāti Māori, and they’ve got about two paragraphs about their tax policy on their website. It just says, “More wealthy people pay more tax.” Well, I guess that’s just that anybody they don’t like will pay more tax, and, of course, there’s these new people that the Opposition are looking at—new friends that have come along—and they now want to start charging a tax on every single square inch of land up and down the country. These are the people that Labour know they need in order to pay for their $18.2 billion of unfunded promises going into the next election.

But, of course, they could also go and put taxes up on small businesses, couldn’t they, and we’ve seen every Labour MP over the last week try and cry a river of tears on their Facebook pages, but, actually, what speaks louder than words is action. This Government has put action behind our words with Investment Boost, which is helping businesses up and down our country to be able to invest in the kit, the equipment, and the machinery to grow a more productive business, which grows jobs and wages and productivity in our country. The question for the Labour Party is will they keep it or will they cancel it, because that is the answer that small businesses up and down our country want.

Small businesses know that Labour doesn’t know how to manage money. They left the country in the ditch and they don’t have a plan to get out of it. They’ve now got $18 billion of unfunded promises, and the Labour Party will come after small businesses to help pay for their hidden bill. They will cancel the Investment Boost. They will reduce the productivity of our small businesses, our manufacturers, and our industries up and down the country. The way that New Zealanders need to keep the country moving in the right direction is to party vote National to fix the basics and build the future.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. In ACT, we’re interested in unlocking New Zealand’s potential, but it’s very hard to unlock your potential if you’re sick or ill and don’t have access to the latest medicines. So, today, I’m going to talk about something which I’ve talked about many times in this House: New Zealand’s need to close our medicines access gap. New Zealanders shouldn’t be relying on the charity of others or having to leave the country to, say, travel to Australia when they come down with an illness that can actually be treated by a modern medicine, but one that we, unfortunately, do not fund in this country.

Currently, we spend about the OECD average on healthcare as a Government, and we have made many strides as a Government over this term to improve medicines access, but the amount we spend as a percentage of our Budget on medicines compared to the OECD average is quite small. New Zealand spends around 4.9 percent on medicines, whereas the OECD average is 13.3 percent, and, in fact, Australia spends 12.2 percent.

Now, what’s the outcome of that? Well, in Australia they have access to 142—that’s 142—more medicines than we do here in New Zealand. What that means is that if you get a cancer or some other serious illness, you may not be able to have a treatment that’s funded here in New Zealand for you. We keep hearing stories of Kiwis either having to ask their friends, do a “give-me” page, or actually travel to Australia—move their entire family to Australia—to actually receive the treatment they need.

Look, we’re very pleased with the reforms we’ve made to Pharmac, but Pharmac has some 162 medicines and indications on what is called its options for investment list. Now, the options for investment list is a list of treatments that’ve already been through a rigorous Pharmac process and that the agency wants to fund, but it can only fund them when it has available budget.

What ACT has proposed, and what we’re going to be asking every party in this Parliament to consider, is a pathway to closing that medicines gap with Australia. We’ve come up with a very simple way of doing that. We know that our health spending has been increasing, and so we are saying that whenever there is going to be an increase to the health budget—and over the last six years we’ve spent around 8 percent more on health, but whenever there’s going to be an increase to the health spend going forward, 1 percent of that be allocated to Pharmac so, over time, that will adjust the amount of funding Pharmac receives. We’ve done all the numbers, and in around seven years, we would be able to close the gap with Australia; we’d roughly triple the budget that Pharmac has today.

I can tell you that that would actually clear off the options for investment list. All of those treatments—that Pharmac has already said are value for money—that we need in New Zealand would be covered, and, hopefully, there would be some room for some new treatments that haven’t even come through yet.

Just over a week ago, David Seymour and I wrote to every political party leader. We’ve heard back from the Rt Hon Winston Peters about this policy—because we said this isn’t political. Every party in this Parliament should be able to sign on to ACT’s policy. If they want to increase the amount that they’re willing to pledge to the Pharmac budget, go ahead, but they should at least sign on to our policy as a baseline and actually set this trajectory to close the gap. We’re still in discussions with New Zealand First about supporting our policy, and I want to thank them for replying.

I note that, earlier in the debate, the Leader of the Opposition said we needed to do something to stop people from going to Australia, so I ask the Leader of the Opposition, the the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins, to sign up to our policy—I don’t see how he couldn’t. I also asked the Greens and National and Te Pāti Māori to all consider this policy. It’s all costed. ACT is known for being fiscally conservative, so we’ve done all the costings. Our policy is responsible and will close the gap from Australia, but, more importantly, it will deliver lifesaving medicines for Kiwis who need them today. Let’s put our politics aside: sign up, and let’s get this done.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We’ve got a capital gains tax, an asset tax, a death tax, an inheritance tax, a gift tax, a higher tax rate, and a tax on renters. Eight new taxes—eight new taxes. That’s what New Zealanders are facing coming at them from those opposite here. If success was defined by how much you spend, the Labour Party would still be in Government. They spent 84 percent more while they managed to triple our debt, and at the same time, education got worse, health got worse, crime got worse, and they tanked the economy. That’s the spoonful of medicine that’s been dished up to New Zealanders, and they’ve learnt nothing: now they want to tax more and spend more again. Doing better is not about spending more money; it’s about outcomes. Outcomes matter.

No country has ever taxed their way to success. Tax grabs have just been failed experiments at the expense of hard-working people, and it’s time for those opposite to get real. You can only slice a pie so many times before you just end up eating crumbs. Those taxes will simply destroy the farming and business sectors overnight.

A National-led Government has aspirations to grow that pie by backing our farmers and backing our growers and backing our small businesses to unlock their ambitions and reach their potential. We’ve reformed the RMA—the Resource Management Act. That’s fixing a system that’s dished up road block after road block and added costs to every single New Zealander. We’ve moved the dial to unlock access to world markets. That’s how you grow the pie. One in four jobs in New Zealand are involved in trade. One in six people that get out of bed in the morning—one in six, one in seven—work in the food and fibre sector. We’ve delivered the fast-track process—a process, I might add, that Labour, Te Pāti Māori, and the Greens did not support. That fast-track process has delivered more housing, more energy, access to minerals, and water projects. That’s how you grow the pie. We’ve delivered Investment Boost so that businesses can get more efficient and produce more. That’s how you grow the pie.

Let’s rattle through some of those proposed taxes by those on the other side that seek the Government benches: a capital gains tax, an asset tax, or higher tax brackets. Those are the very things that will destroy the rural family farm. They will rip apart our rural communities and the towns that support them. That will be absolutely devastating to the men and women that work on our farms, that work so hard, that take on so much risk, and that contribute to their communities, to the local economy and to our export success as a trading nation. A land tax that is simply a tax on ambition, on inspiration. It’s a tax on taking risk and backing yourself, it’s a tax on success, and, more than that, it’s a tax on hard work. Those taxes would rip the heart and soul out of this country and be the biggest self-inflicted own goal we could ever score.

We need to be thanking our farmers, our growers, and our business owners. We need to be encouraging them to grow more, make more, sell more, and grow jobs and opportunities for the next generation, not punishing them with a fruit salad of taxes for doing the hard yards to get ahead and have a go.

Then we have a death tax and an inheritance tax. As a parent—and I’m sure most parents would feel exactly the same—we all want to provide the best opportunities we can for our kids, to help them if we can. That is why we work hard, take those risks, and have a crack, so our kids can have a better life than what we had. Even after we can no longer be here, we want our hard-earned and saved money to help our families, and, now, the Opposition is wanting to take our money even after we’re dead.

To sum up, we don’t need more taxes. We need to unlock ambition to reward hard work and to celebrate success, not tax it to oblivion. We’re not proposing to tax more Kiwis. We’re addressing the basics, fixing the foundational and structural barriers to success so we can unleash our economy to grow the jobs, wages, and opportunities. Do all that, and there’s no reason the 2030s couldn’t be our decade.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Just before I call the next speaker, this is a general debate. Members shouldn’t be reading their speeches, even if they do put their eyes up from their paper every so often. This is a time for ideas, so let’s have some.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to ask this House a question. The question I want to ask this House is: do you think the current Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology believes in science?

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Well, who is it?

REUBEN DAVIDSON: That’s very good question, too; I’ll get to that. You might think that no Minister holding the portfolio as the Minister of science would have any answer other than “Absolutely.”, but recently I had the opportunity to ask the Minister of science at a scrutiny week hearing whether she believed in science, and her answer was, “I hope so.”—I hope so. Let that sit for a moment. The Minister of science, when being asked directly whether she believes in science, says that she hopes she does. That’s not a slip of the tongue; it’s a candid window into this Government and that Minister’s approach to the very crucial and vital science sector in New Zealand.

This is the third Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology in as many years. This is also on top of an investment slowdown, and what we’re seeing here—and I’m going to read this, because it’s important I get the detail right—is that even though the Government is trying to paint a rosy picture by pointing to private sector research and development investment, data from Stats New Zealand’s latest survey shows that business spending on R & D has flat-lined, and employment in R & D has dropped by 5 to 10 percent in a single year. On top of that, we’re talking about job losses now numbering more than 700 in our science sector. This is not just numbers; these are people doing important work for the future of New Zealand, and those people have families and communities and contributions that they can no longer make in New Zealand. I’m starting to see that there is actually a lack of hope from that Minister for this sector.

Nobody is arguing against the need for our science sector to have positive commercial outcomes. In fact, I think that’s probably one point that every party in this House would agree on. But what this Government has done is narrow the scope and walk away from key parts of the vital ecosystem that are required to have commercial outputs from our science sector.

Professor Nicola Gaston from the MacDiarmid Institute puts it very well. She said that it’s a little like “pulling an apple tree up by the roots to harvest its fruit”. Now, that’s an absurd proposition, but it is very much a clear analogy for exactly what is happening to our science sector—the narrowing of the scope, the picking of the apples, but the tree is well and truly gone. Dr Victoria Hatton, the chief executive of FoodHQ, puts it even more clearly. She said that “we quietly cut $56 million, … from the primary industries and bioeconomy research that invents the tools we were busy celebrating. We are paying to help farmers adopt the science while defunding the science that comes next.”

I can’t tell whether that is a failure of understanding or a complete failure to care. Whichever it is, or if it is both, it is definitely a failure for our science sector.

Furthermore, just yesterday, scientists at our PHF Science institute started their day standing on a picket line for the first time ever—the first time that they have had to take industrial action—because of this Government, and what do these scientists do? These are people who work on infectious diseases, people who work on forensic science, people who work on climate change, health, and wellbeing, people who work on data science and AI, and people who work on reducing drug harm. They’re people who work in our science sector to develop and progress New Zealand’s future, standing on a picket line so that they don’t have to go backwards in what they’re paid for that important work.

Fleur Fitzsimmons, the national secretary of the Public Service Association sums it up very well. She said, “In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, these workers are being asked to go backwards while doing essential work for the entire nation.”

These cuts across our science sector are impacting real people—people doing vital work. All New Zealanders will miss out as a result and there is not much hope in that message, and not much hope in our Minister.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. There is no version of a New Zealand that is thriving that is not predicated on a basic sense of cohesion and unity at a social level. Already, we are dealing with members of this Government who have for a long time maintained a sense of race-baiting nationalism. To put it in the words of Oscar Wilde, it is “the last refuge of the scoundrel”, and they do not decry and oppose those statements, but, just today, our Prime Minister said that the Māori-Crown relationship was healthy. Well, I beg that he read the latest report from the Waitangi Tribunal on this Government’s intention to weaken the status of the Treaty principles in a swathe of pieces of legislation.

The cohesion that we seek as a nation can only be achieved if we uphold that founding agreement on which the relationship between the Crown and Māori is based. That relationship is based on a consent for my ancestors to settle, based on an agreement that we would uphold hapū tino rangatiratanga. There can be no healthy relationship without honouring that bargain. Weakening the status of the agreement in law systematically downgrades the bargain and is contrary to a healthy relationship.

I would invite the Prime Minister to read the responses of iwi Māori in the hearings on the question of weakening the status of the Treaty. Professor Margaret Mutu of Te Pou Tikanga said that “Minister Goldsmith would like to see the doctrine of discovery fully entrenched in this country and the preservation and the continuation of the normalisation of racism against Māori in this country”—she used the term “racism”, Mr Speaker. Mr Tuku Morgan of Waikato-Tainui said that because of his iwi’s sheer concern and huge disappointment about the constant change of this Government, they find the Crown is “completely untrustworthy”. Ngāti Torehina Ki Matakā said that these proposals are seen as “underhanded manipulation of ordinary kiwi sensibilities” which “sow[s] seeds of discontent, fear and division against the vision of Te Tiriti o Waitangi”, which is, in the words of the great Mr Jackson—Moana Jackson—

Ryan Hamilton: Not Willie?

STEVE ABEL: —a profound and visionary basis upon which to build a country. He was a good relative of Willie Jackson.

This Government has gone out of its way on multiple occasions to harm that relationship, and I would put it to this House that in the 50 years of the modern Treaty relationship since the creation of the Waitangi Tribunal in 1975, this Government has been the worst for its harm caused to the Crown-Māori relationship, and there are multiple examples of pieces of legislation that have done that. It even goes so far as to meddle where there is no perceived problem, as in the case of the Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements, where its small-mindedness and meanness and pettiness in regard to those relationships is inherently vindictive, frankly.

Were the Government actually concerned about the economy, the fastest-growing parts of the economy when they came to power were in the Māori economy, and they would be investing in it and supporting it and backing it. Instead, they have sent our country on a course of three years of division and of undermining the Treaty and undermining Māori and attacking them, and that is the recompense that Māori get for the generosity that they have shown us, as a nation, over 200 years of history. They get the meanness of the Luxon Government: a distrust, a patrimonial sense of managing Māori, and a gnawing sense of settler anxiety manifest in basic racism—in the words of Margaret Mutu.

It is not for the good of this country. No good can come from it. Our good comes from cohesion in the principle of a shared and inclusive humanity in Aotearoa New Zealand, where all peoples of all races and creeds and genders are welcome to thrive here, in a constant expression of our unity as a nation. That begins with upholding that founding agreement, Te Tiriti o Waitangi—a profound and visionary basis upon which to build a country. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I want to begin with a story. Imagine a young couple living in Auckland. They work hard, they save very carefully, they take on the risk, and, eventually, after years of sacrifice, they finally have just enough to open their own small business because they have a dream. They have a dream of building a business that will provide a better future for their family and their young children.

They don’t become wealthy overnight, though, just because they have saved and opened that business. They work the long hours, they mortgage their home, they miss family dinners, and every dollar goes back into reinvesting into that business because they want to build something good for their family. They want to invest into New Zealand and they want to have something to pass on to the next generation.

This story isn’t unusual. This is a story that reflects thousands and thousands of families and New Zealanders who believe in building the future. This is a story that resonates with farmers who want to expand the farm that they have had for generations. It also resonates with the builder who started with just one ute and one toolbox, and, eventually, is now building construction and building their future and employing 20 people. It also resonates with the cafe owners who have finally had a really good success-run in one store and now want to open it in another city. It also resonates with many, many of the migrant families that I represent, that I listen to, that I talk to, who have very little or, like my family, who borrowed money to come to New Zealand because we believe in investing into the future of our families and our country.

This is exactly why I am extremely disappointed at the capital gains tax and other taxes of our opposition, the Labour Party, together with their coalition parties right now—the Green Party and maybe a future party like The Opportunities Party (TOP), if they ever get in: seven new taxes. The capital gains tax is something that tells people that we should disincentivise everybody from investing into the future, because adding a new tax reduces the incentive and motivation for people to invest into their businesses or to grow their businesses.

A capital gains tax is not the only thing that the Opposition are coming around with. At the moment, the Labour Party has a very big spending bill. They have a spending promise of $21 billion, and the capital gains tax only provides about $2.8 billion of that—so in my simple maths calculation: $18.2 billion of a financial hole, and how is the Labour Party proposing to fill up that hole? Well, actually, working with the coalition partners—the Green Party and maybe the future TOP party—tax everybody that has an investment; tax everybody who, actually, I’m sorry, has died; tax everybody who has the heart to give; tax everybody who actually owns some land, called the land value tax.

This, in my words, and also when I go around the country, is something that is demoralising because people who want to invest in the future and also invest into the future of this country want certainty. They want certainty, from the Government and from our tax system, that we are backing them with incentives to allow them to grow. Think about the Investment Boost that this Government has introduced, passed into law, and the amount of businesses that have been invested in to grow the additional production line. Then, in contrast, think about the capital gains tax. Before you see the products or the productivity or the profit that comes from your investment, we will tax you. We tax you every single dollar.

We don’t have to look very far. Just look across the Tasman. Just look at the election this year with the Australian Labor Government. They have upped the capital gains tax when they promised they wouldn’t and look at the impact from Australia. Look at the headline. Just read the news: “Capital is fleeing Australia.” New Zealand was our number one search about a better place to invest. Our Minister of Finance has been on radio and interviews and said, “Welcome to New Zealand.” That is our competitive advantage.

I strongly, strongly encourage the Opposition to stop complaining and actually have a plan in solving the problem of this country. Stop complaining and stop adding tax burdens for New Zealanders who actually just want to grow.

The National Party that I represent, that I work hard for, because we came from very humble backgrounds—just look at my family who borrowed money to come to New Zealand and who have now finally, finally found some future.

Grant McCallum: They’re laughing at you for that.

NANCY LU: Well, yeah, thanks for laughing at that, but I strongly support my Government into building the future for all New Zealanders.

There’s only one thing worse than a cost of living crisis, and that’s a cost of living crisis when you can’t access your own money. That’s what’s happening to some of our seniors at the moment, and that’s what’s happening on a day when Age Concern in Canterbury has said that some of our seniors are having to choose between heating and eating. They are dying of cold and starving in their own homes.

We have a similar situation in retirement villages, because people might think retirement village people have lots of money, but their money is tied up. When they need to access it, it’s not for discretionary spending, it’s actually for really important things like deteriorating health where they need to move to a higher level of care or where they need to move to another retirement village. Those are real-life scenarios that they are facing, and they need to be able to access their capital. They should not have to go and get a bank loan. They should not have to apply to a village operator holding on to their money for hardship. They should not have to delay the important care they need. And yet that is what is happening currently because the law allows it, and because retirement village operators can hang on to their money until they sell the licence to occupy. That is really hard for our seniors.

What’s worse is that the Government has a choice in this matter. The Government has chosen to say, “12 months and you’ll get your money back.”—12 months. The Government’s own officials have said, “Very few residents would get the financial benefits of a 12-month mandatory time frame.” Very few residents would get the benefit, so why did the Government choose to ignore the recommendation from its own officials to make the mandated time frame nine months? Why did the Government model six months, nine months, and 12 months, and not model on normal consumer law, which would include three months? Every month that the Government has chosen when it could have chosen nine months—it’s chosen 12 to hang on to that money and let the operators have it—is a choice of choosing between the operators and the residents who need that money for higher levels of care or for their families for funeral expenses when they exit the village, or for other things that they need during a cost of living crisis.

The Government has made a choice and the advice that they relied on had cut-and-paste errors. There was a cut-and-paste error from officials that they had to correct, which overstated the upper cost estimate for the nine-month option by $42 million—$42 million. Question: where was that advice cut and paste from? Who provided the advice? Who’s modelling was it? How could there be an error of that magnitude? How could officials then say, “Oh, but it’s not going to make any difference to the advice we’ve given you.”? A very revealing Official Information Act request indeed, and it shows that the modelling and the assumptions that this Government started with came from one side of the argument, and that would be the operators. They did not look at the starting point of consumer law; they looked at the modelling that the operators wanted them to look for and what the operators had been advocating for.

Now, Labour’s approach is very different. Our starting point is a three-month repayment, and that would be applied fairly to both existing and future residents. It’s very interesting that the official documents, when we look at applying it fairly to all residents, the one line on the analysis that I asked for was a comment that the officials wrote down from the Associate Minister of Housing, which said, “I thought we weren’t going to need to do that.” I’ll quote the exact line. He thought we were “not going to require this.” That is the one line on the modelling.

Our modelling would be three months. It would apply sensibly to existing and future residents. Of course, there would be carve-outs for those retirement villages that would need them for cash-flow purposes that might have a different non-commercial purpose. But what this debate comes down to is that when Ministers were asked to choose between retirement village operators and seniors who need to be able to access their own money, who did they choose? Well, they didn’t choose the seniors.

Seniors deserve better from this Government. Seniors deserve a Government that will listen to them, that will respect them, and that will not make them go through the undignified exercise of applying for hardship or for bank loans when someone else is hanging on to their money. That is what Labour will do, and Labour will make sure that they can access their money when they need it in a cost of living crisis. That’s what Labour will do.

New Zealanders deserve a Government that is honest about the books and careful with their money. They deserve a Government that will live within its means and target support to those who need it most. They need a Government that is focused on growing the economy so that we can get ahead in this country with strong and serviceable public services for those who need it most. This is the approach that the National Party takes.

Labour takes a completely different path. They want New Zealanders to believe they can spend big and tax little. Well, the numbers tell a very different story. Labour has already racked up a tax bill of $21 billion of spending, but the only policy they’ve got on the table to help pay for it is a capital gains tax, at $2.8 billion. That leaves a gaping hole of $18.2 billion. That is Labour’s hidden bill—$18.2 billion is the Labour Party’s hidden bill. When they were asked if the capital gains tax falls short, what did their own Labour finance spokesperson have to say? “We’ll cross that bridge later.” “We’ll cross that bridge later.”—that’s not a plan. That’s not a plan; that’s a blank cheque written on the backs of working New Zealanders.

How will they fill the gap of $18.2 billion? Will they abandon the path back to surplus and load more debt on to everyday New Zealanders? We already spend $9 billion a year alone servicing the interest on the debt that they racked up when they were last in Government. They delivered nothing—absolutely nothing—with that extra Government spending, and yet they want to increase it and increase that $9 billion of interest repayments.

Will they reverse the tax relief that our Government delivered? For the first time in 14 years, that was delivering hard-earned money back to average and everyday New Zealanders: $102 into their back pockets. Will Labour cancel that money, or will they expand their capital gains tax? Could it include the family home, the farm, shares, and other business assets that Kiwis have worked hard to earn?

Will they scrap Investment Boost—the policy that is giving businesses a real incentive to invest in their equipment and machinery and to lift productivity in this country—or will it simply be a combination of all of the above? Labour won’t say. They want the credit for the spending promises today and the silence about the tax bill tomorrow. They want the applause now and the pain later. Let’s be clear who pays for it when they take on more debt: it won’t be the politicians sitting on that side; it’ll be my generation and the next generation to follow who are left to repay it for years to come.

Right now, we spend that $9 billion servicing that interest. That could be building new roads, new hospitals, and new schools in our country. It could be funding the infrastructure that our growing regions like Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty so desperately need, but Labour’s approach is to have more spending and more borrowing, and that will only make that bill bigger.

There’s a clear difference between them and us: their answer is spending, more tax, and more debt. They stretch every dollar of new tax revenue until it snaps, and then they come looking for the next target. That approach delivered higher inflation, a higher cost of living, and a serious increase in interest rates, and they’re lining up to do it again.

We believe, on this side, that we should live within our means. We target support to those who need it most, we back Kiwis to keep more of what they earn, and we focus on growing the economy so that New Zealanders can get ahead and we can have the public services that our country relies on.

There’s no magic money tree. There’s only higher taxes, higher debt, or both, with that side of the House. The choice this year is clear: vote for Labour for a hidden bill and more of the same, or for a Government that is honest about the books and careful with other people’s money. I know which one I will be choosing.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I was fortunate enough to be at the National Iwi Chairs hui last week that was held in Tāhuna—in Queenstown—and hosted by my home iwi of Ngāi Tahu. The premise or the framework for the hui was the title “Hīkina te Kō”, which, quite simply, just translates to “lift up the shovel”. A kō is an implement used in cultivation and for sowing gardens and crops and the like, and, in the Ngāi Tahu tradition, our ancestor Rākaihautū travelled the breadth of Te Waipounamu with this kō and carved out the valleys, the lakes, the rivers, and created the settings for generations to come. That was the responsibility of leadership.

“Hīkina te Kō” was a call for us to all throw our hand in and pick up the shovel to do the work, and what’s the work? The work is about building a nation that we can all thrive in, that all communities can live in well, and that all communities can be respected in. So “Hīkina te Kō” is the theoretical framework that the hui was set in.

I also note that our chairman, Justin Tipa, invited all political parties to this hui to present their ideas and to give their points of view, and that call was also made there for political parties to not get captured in political polarisation, but to reach further and do the harder yards, where you have to come into the middle and sit and listen for a while, and you have to consider other perspectives. His point was that we shouldn’t be captured by polarisation and spend too much time swinging extremely to the right or extremely to the left.

He said that not every kaupapa Māori initiative should be treated as an act of segregation, but, rather, it should be viewed as an opportunity to raise up parts of the community that need raising up—that will ultimately bring us to raising up all communities—and, in the same vein, not to consider every interrogation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi as an attack on it, but, rather, an opportunity for us to invite the conversation and to step into the dialogue and deepen the understanding for us, in particular, as decision makers in this country. That’s the space where nation-building is created, that’s the space where understanding is deepened, and the outcome of that greater understanding is better decision-making for everybody in the country.

That framework set out a map for us, and I was truly inspired by it. Every political party in this House took their opportunity to sit down and present their ideas, speak with the iwi leaders, engage in the dialogue, deepen the understanding, and advance that work of meeting in the middle and doing the mahi that really counts for everybody. As I reflect on all of that and where we are as a Parliament heading into an election—the state of race relations, we might say—the iwi leaders were very clear that there has been some quite regressive work done in this term of Parliament, but they’re not cutting it off, OK? There’s a conversation to be had, and as those conversations are had, the understanding deepens. That’s what we need as a country.

I reflect on my time here, and I think about this. Just across the road is a place, Archives, where the three founding documents of this country are held, and all of the information that comes with them are held there. The great thing about that exhibit—it’s called He Tohu—is that young New Zealanders of every persuasion, from every country around the world, go through that exhibition, week in, week out, and are learning. They’re deepening their understanding, and yet when it comes to us, there’s no real prerequisite for any MP or any person in Parliament to have an understanding that would match those young people’s.

So, for the sake of the future of our country, we need to lean in to Te Tiriti o Waitangi; lean in to our constitutional foundations. Don’t get captured by the political polarisation that Justin Tipa was talking about, but commit to coming, working our way towards the middle, to do the harder yards. Yes, they are harder yards, but in the long run they’re the yards that are worth doing.

Nō reira kia kaha rā ki a tātou, ngā mema o tēnei Whare. Tātou te iwi, hīkina te kō.

[Therefore, let us be strong, members of this House. We, the people, take up the shovel.]

That was the call from Ngāi Tahu to raise up the shovel and do the work. Nō reira, tēnā tatou.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Before I call the next speaker, I’ll mention that that was a very good general debate speech. I don’t think your eyes went down to your paper once, and it was full of ideas—without commenting on the content.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Statistics New Zealand unemployment figures released today show unemployment is up across the country, at an 11-year high of 5.6 percent above the prediction that came from Treasury. That’s bad enough, but for those that live in Hamilton Kirikiriroa, I’m very sorry to say that unemployment has risen to 7 percent. Hamilton is the country’s fastest growing city, yet we have more unemployed than any other place in New Zealand, at 7 percent unemployment.

The Ministry of Social Development benefit statistics show that the number of people living in Hamilton on the jobseeker benefit has reached 10,455. That’s the highest proportion of people on the jobseeker benefit from across Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin. In addition, compared to Wellington, who have 7,000 people on the jobseeker benefit, Hamilton’s got 10,000. But that doesn’t quite add up, does it, because Wellington is a bigger city to Hamilton, yet Hamilton has more unemployment. Hamilton has 17,000 fewer residents.

The problem is that the Government has well and truly left Hamilton behind. Unemployment in our fastest growing city should not be that high. I speak to people every day in Hamilton, struggling to get ahead under this Government. They are putting in the hard mahi. They are applying for jobs. They are willing to work, but they just can’t find a job. All while the cost of living continues to rise. Christopher Luxon promised to fix the cost of living; instead, he has made it worse. Every day, more and more people flee our shores for sunny Australia, because they know that they can find work in Australia and they can find well-paid work in Australia, but we want people to feel like they can get ahead in New Zealand. Unfortunately, under this Government, that is simply not happening.

Joanne Turner, who is the chief executive of Te Whare Korowai Taangata o Kirikiriroa—the Hamilton Christian Nightshelter Trust—described those who were not employed in Hamilton as “getting crushed”. I couldn’t agree more. Behind every single one of those unemployment statistics, there is a person who wants to work, there is a family worried about paying their bills, and there is a community feeling the impact. That’s the real cost of National’s economic choices. Too many Kiwis are not getting their chance.

National cannot claim that their choices have not deliberately made things worse. National have cut thousands of public sector jobs. That impacts every region in New Zealand, as workers pull back on spending at their local cafes, their theatres, and local businesses. National have cancelled major infrastructure projects and scrapped investment that supports business and innovation.

The National Party cannot cut their way to growth. They have forgotten about the hard-working New Zealanders who are trying to get ahead. How are Hamiltonians meant to build a future for themselves in a city when the Government’s answer to skyrocketing unemployment and a massive cost of living crisis is to close their eyes and just pretend that Hamilton does not exist. We have people in Hamilton choosing between putting gas in the car and buying meat at the supermarket—people desperate to buy their own home but just can’t keep up with household bills to pull together a deposit.

New Zealanders have had enough of the empty promises from this Government. Labour is focused on real ways to grow our economy and get more Kiwis back into work. On 7 November, we have a choice—New Zealanders have a choice—to change the Government for a more affordable New Zealand.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.