General Debate

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

Well, it’s been another week of change over in the National Party. We’ve seen some shifting of the deckchairs once again, and I would like to welcome Chris Bishop to the housing portfolio. I know he was probably hoping for finance, but I’m hoping he’ll enjoy the housing portfolio. I’d also like to offer him some helpful advice because that’s the kind of person I am. I too have been an occupant of that chair, that seat in the House. I would like to call it the chair of doom, and suggest that no amount of attempting to date the Speaker will get you out of the fact that everything you say can and will be heard.

But this has also been a week when we’ve seen significant improvements for New Zealand families. We’ve seen that the Government, who has provided stable and united leadership through the most challenging of events for New Zealanders over the last couple of years, is showing that that is exactly the approach it will take in response to our recovery and how New Zealanders are faring. I do talk about the 25c-a-litre cut that we’ve applied to fuel, and this is already making a positive impact on New Zealanders’ pockets. They are already saving between $11 and $17 a tank every time they fill up their car. They will already be saving, from around the beginning of April, every time they get on public transport. This is significant, and this is going to make a difference.

We are a Government that has put the cost of living first and to the fore since we came into office in 2017. We’ve done a number of things, but there are some significant measures that will come into play on 1 April that will make a real and meaningful change to people’s lives. I’d like to point to the 60 percent of New Zealand families who will get an increase under Working for Families of an average of around $20. I do not think we can underestimate the rises to superannuation that we’re about to see: $52 a fortnight for someone on their own; $80 for a couple. That is something that I know all superannuitants will be celebrating. I also point to the fact that the winter energy payment will re-begin its payments on 1 May. I’d also like to point to the fact that we’ll see rises in student allowances. These are the kind of things that will make real and significant differences to people’s lives and to their pockets.

We can put what Labour is proposing and already doing—we’re already seeing that real change—against the proposals that we’ve seen from the National Party. We’re seeing a reheat—a reheat of Simon Bridges’ policies from the time he was leader. So I’d like to acknowledge Mr Bridges’ retirement from this House and the work the National Party is still continuing to draw on: the kinds of tax policies that are going to mean those on medium and low incomes will see something like $2.16 in their pockets a week, whereas those on the highest incomes are going to see thousands. I think on my rough calculation that I’m set to get somewhere between $7,000 and $8,000 under the National Party proposals, while many of the people I represent will get $2.16. This is not something that is going to benefit ordinary New Zealanders.

But what we’ve also heard is another reheat of the familiar “Bermuda Triangle” from National, which is that somehow we’re going to spend all this money on tax cuts for the highest-earning New Zealanders, but they’re saying that we won’t have to cut services. Services will have to be cut. We will see cuts to education, we will see cuts to health, and we will see cuts to housing. I’m already hearing the rhetoric from the National Party that they sound out, like they’re gearing up for a sell-off of State houses. I’d put the cutting of the Auckland regional fuel tax—I ask the rest of New Zealand how they feel about a party that was only offering relief for Auckland. There are many parts of the country that, indeed, were paying more for their fuel than Auckland. So this is a party that is not only out of touch but it also doesn’t realise New Zealand exists beyond the Bombay Hills.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Well, isn’t a week a long time in politics, because last week, petrol hit $3 a litre and MPs’ inboxes around the country were filled with constituents saying, “I can’t afford to top up my car.”; inflation was at 5.9 percent, twice the rate of wage inflation—so, in other words, Kiwis are going backwards—food prices are up 6.8 percent in a year, the largest increase in a decade, and it wasn’t, according to the Prime Minister, a crisis. She used every word under the sun she could possibly think of to call it anything other than a crisis. It was challenge, it was a problem, and she acknowledged the difficulty many people were facing, and what happened last week was there was a poll which showed the National Party ahead of Labour for the first time in two years. What did the Government do? They panicked. They went into panic mode, and they were embarrassed over the weekend into announcing on Monday a 25c reduction in fuel tax and road-user charges. Panicked—an embarrassed response from a Government that is out of ideas and is out of energy.

The Prime Minister refused to call it the cost of living crisis that all New Zealanders know they are experiencing every time they go to the supermarket, every time they go to the petrol bowser and fill up, and every time they pay their landlord. For the third of New Zealanders who live in rental accommodation, rents are up 150 bucks a week in the last four years. In Lower Hutt, Mr Speaker—an area I know you know well—rents are up 200 bucks a week in four years. Up from $375 when Labour came to office to $575 per week in Lower Hutt alone, and this is replicated in many places around the country. The simple reality is this Government is addicted to spending, and they can say all they like that it’s the fault of Ukraine or it’s the fault of international factors. Why Vladimir Putin’s got anything to do with the rents that people in Lower Hutt pay, I don’t know, but I’m sure we’ll hear more from Poto Williams about that in due course.

It is of course true that there are international factors driving fuel prices, but inflation of 5.9 percent is caused by Grant Robertson’s addiction to spending: a 68 percent increase since 2018. Now, I’ve got a question for New Zealanders: do they think Government services are 68 percent better than in 2018? Are there 68 percent more hip operations being done? No. Are there 68 percent more elective surgeries being done? No. Has there been a 68 percent reduction in child poverty? No. Has there been a 68 percent reduction in the number of people receiving the jobseeker benefit for longer than a year? No. Actually, child poverty has increased and the number of people on long-term welfare dependency has increased by 50,000 people, so we’re spending more, but we’re not necessarily getting more.

To make matters worse, Grant thinks it’s all OK—

SPEAKER: Order!

CHRIS BISHOP: Grant Robertson thinks he’s all OK, because he’s proposed in this Budget the single biggest permanent increase in New Zealand Government spending in history: $6 billion in the operating allowance, which from this year onwards will be baked into Government spending. In other words, it gets locked into the forward Estimates and it’s a permanent increase—$6 billion in this year alone. Even if you take out the National Party’s very sensible and very pragmatic proposals to just reduce income tax thresholds to what they were when Labour came into office, just what they were four years ago or 4½ years ago—even if you take the cost of that, which is about $1.6 billion to 1.7 billion, leaving Mr Robertson $4.3 billion, it’s still the single biggest increase in the operating allowance in New Zealand history.

So this idea that Grant Robertson is a fiscal conservative is just belied by the reality. He is addicted to spending and New Zealanders are paying the price for it. We think tax thresholds should be adjusted for inflation. We think that’s a reasonable and sensible step to take that would put real money in the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders to allow them to get ahead at a time of a cost of living crisis.

There are two big problems with this Government. The first is they think that good intentions are a substitute for good policy. We all care in this House; it’s what you do that actually makes the difference. The second problem is they think that Government has the answer to everything, that Government can do everything, and that every social problem is solved by more Government and more Government spending, and we know from the experiment over the last four years that the truth is the opposite.

Well, I enjoyed hearing the speech from my colleague opposite—the speech that he wrote two days ago when he thought that he was going to be the National Party finance spokesperson—but it was the same old story from the National Party. The same old story: wide-roaming criticisms of Government spending, but did we hear a single proposal for what they would actually cut because that’s what it comes down to. What actually is the vision? What actually is the policy from the members opposite about how they would secure our recovery and how they would take New Zealand forward, because it’s all very well for members opposite to stand up in this House and wax lyrical about Government spending, but it don’t mean nothing and it’s not a plan unless they can say what they would actually do.

So far, we’ve heard about boats: cameras on shipping boats. That is pretty much the one tangible proposal we have heard from the Opposition. If that party opposite, as per Mr Bishop’s speech just now, genuinely believes that there are billions of dollars of overspending within the Government accounts, then start naming it now so that the New Zealand people know what they’ll be getting if they vote for that party’s agenda. I’m very happy to tell the House what that agenda will be: it’ll be cuts to health, it’ll be cuts to housing, it’ll be cuts to education, and, most foolishly of all as we come out from a pandemic, it is a party that is unwilling to make any tough decisions and make any calls around building a robust and good health system for our country.

That isn’t the only confusion, the only lack of detail, that we’ve had over the last week, because I have to say that I’ve been watching very closely the comments of Mr Christopher Luxon on the matter of the minimum wage over recent weeks. We’ve had a range of positions from the Leader of the Opposition. First, we heard that he was very concerned about the possible impact of a 10c increase on the price of his trim piccolo because the person serving him might have to be paid the minimum wage. We did then have a bold position and a noble one from the deputy leader and new finance spokesperson, Nicola Willis, who told us that actually the National Party isn’t opposed to the Government’s recent increase in the minimum wage. That got brought back into line pretty quickly. On breakfast television this morning, though, Mr Luxon was very happy to tell us that, in fact, “Well, we’re very supportive of increases in the minimum wage.” before telling us that he opposed the one that we made last year at the same time as we got unemployment down to 3.2 percent.

Well, I think it would be very helpful indeed for the House and for the country for Mr Luxon and the National Party to actually just narrow it down a little bit to just the one position on the minimum wage because it’s my view that the cleaners, the security guards, the bus drivers, the supermarket workers who serve every single member of this House and who help to make our society work and who have got our country through COVID need to know what’s at stake for them. This is a Government which has stood up for our low-wage workers, which is proud of the fact that we’ve retained their standards of living and kept unemployment low during the crisis of COVID, and we don’t actually know what that side stands for. Well, I think we know; they just won’t say it. It’s this side of the House which stands with them.

The challenge that we have here is that at this time, as we move into a recovery from COVID-19, we need steady and focused leadership that is actually focused on dealing with the long-term issues that New Zealand faces, and that is what this Government is focused on. Our country has come together so well to deal with the challenge of COVID-19, and now is the time to recover and to move forward. That is why the announcements in recent days about New Zealand’s plan for reconnecting with the world in a careful and staged way are so important. We can see the way forward there for our businesses and for our tourism, but if we had to follow the lines of the Opposition last year, we would have opened up New Zealand to enormous health risk, and I’m so proud that we held firm there and we have a steady and focused plan.

Our economic recovery plan is about making sure that we continue to invest in the infrastructure that New Zealand needs for the future, including the record transport infrastructure spend that our Government is rolling out to build the infrastructure of the future. I was really pleased this morning, Mr Speaker, to visit the Hutt workshops—a place that you would be very familiar with—with the member for Hutt South, Ginny Andersen, where we saw the huge work that is going on to follow up on the Government’s investments to make sure that we have a rail system that’s resilient and reliable after years of it running down under that previous Government. Two weeks ago, I was very pleased to visit the first stage of the Takitimu North Link in Tauranga, funded by the Government: $650 million and a critical piece of transport infrastructure, employing New Zealanders, employing apprenticeships, and partnering with local iwi and Māori to get people into work on that important project.

Of course, this is a Government that’s focused on those issues that matter to New Zealand, and we’ve dealt with it in the last few days, dealing with those cost of living pressures in a way through fuel excise duty and road-user charges and making sure that public transport is more affordable for the people of our country. This side of the House is focused on securing New Zealand’s recovery.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party today to talk about law and order, and specifically about gangs, because we’ve found that from that side of the House we’ve had a lot of laws but not much order.

Every day we open a newspaper, we turn on the radio, we switch on the television, we even check our social media, and we see lots of stories of gang-related serious and often violent crime in our communities. Why is this happening? Why is there an increase? I can tell you why. It’s because on that side, they are soft on crime. We have a Labour Government that has allowed gangs to grow at over 50 percent in numbers during their watch.

What are they doing? Well, let’s have a look, shall we. The Minister of Police, Poto Williams, must be wearing Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, because we don’t see her out there with the front-line police. In fact, do the front-line police know her name? Do they know who she is?

What about the Minister of Justice, Kris Faafoi? He seems more interested in locking up people for hate speech than for committing a gang crime. In Kris Faafoi’s world, calling someone is mean name is far worse than dragging someone out of their car and beating them to near death, unprovoked.

He wants to do away with three-strikes legislation, which keeps our most serious and violent offenders locked up. In Labour’s world, the message sent to our communities is that if you join a gang and commit a crime, it’s no big deal. Heck, you may even get $2.7 million to help you get off the drugs that that gang probably got you hooked on in the first place. But if you dare say something that Labour doesn’t agree with, then they’ll pass a law to have you locked up. No wonder the gangs are feeling empowered.

Gone are the days where you had pockets of bad behaviour that wore leather patches in your local neighbourhood. Now you see patches everywhere. They’re on T-shirts, they’re on hoodies, they’re on jackets, they’re on faces. Lots of new laws; where is the order? The Government blames the 501s exported from Australia. The reality is that the 501s only make a tiny proportion of this growing gang problem. The truth is it’s a home-grown problem. More are recruited locally.

Labour promised our communities 1,800 police. Good old Poto Williams—I congratulate her for admitting that Labour are not going to make that target even when the Prime Minister still won’t.

But it’s not all bad news. You see, ACT is not just a party of effective and good opposition; we have great propositions that will keep our communities safe. Rather than making police numbers a political football and making promises that we can’t keep, we will take the politics out of policing and increase police numbers in line with population growth.

There’s also a bill in my name that will shortly be heard. It is a criminal proceeds and recovery amendment bill that will allow the courts to seize gang assets upon finding an illegally held firearm when doing a raid. Does this sound effective and good to everyone in the House—yeah? Well, Labour doesn’t think so. They indicated that they won’t be supporting it.

But wait, there’s more: we have a gang injunction bill in the ballot box that would allow the courts to impose restrictions on gang members to curb that hunger for crime and violence. This bill would take away the power from individuals within the gangs and actually give it back to police.

We can hand this all to Labour on a plate, but it appears that politics, not communities, drive their decisions. The tide is turning and the polls are showing it. The gangs should be scared. ACT will not be soft on crime as this Government is. We will aspire to ensure that a child’s best option is to get an education and to grow up and get a job and contribute to our society and the betterment of it, not join gangs and wreak havoc. ACT will ensure that we have healthy and thriving communities with good laws and more order. Thank you.

It’s always a delight to speak in this House, and particularly after a member of the ACT Party. What that member Nicole McKee just said is that New Zealanders want to grow up and get a good education and get a job. Well, that member should be on this side of the House, because have I got a story for you: we are currently sitting at 3.4 percent unemployment. Labour is the party of the workers. Labour is the party of people, to get them into jobs, good jobs, and what we are doing is ensuring that we look after workers in decent employment. That is our mantra and I am so glad to lead on from that member on the opposite side of the benches, who could have been singing our praises; I think she was.

What this Government has done over the course of the past couple of years: well, we’ve had a Prime Minister that has led us through some of the most turbulent times that our generation has ever seen. Two years into a global pandemic, and we have had some of the most stable, united—good word for the Opposition to learn this week, particularly this week. They thought they had a good poll and then, oh, they still couldn’t get united and get themselves over the line—anyway, united. We have remained steadfast in the face of adversity.

Now, as we come past this second year of a global pandemic, we also have over on the other side of the world a terrible situation emerging, which has flow-through consequences not just in Europe and the surrounding countries around Ukraine and Russia and the like but it has flow-through consequences through the rest of the world.

This week, we saw this Government do what Governments should: listen to the people. We saw the issues that are emerging across the board, and what did we do? We listened. Now, the first thing that we could do and do swiftly is that we could make moves to cut 25c a litre off fuel excise, and not only that: led here by the Hon Michael Wood, we could cut 50 percent off public transport costs, because there are people that rely on public transport throughout the country, and you get bang for your buck two times there. Not only do we cut the costs to people in the pocket but, of course, we help address the issues of climate change by getting more and more New Zealanders into public transport and helping shift behaviour.

This is a Government that has really prioritised the lifting of incomes and tackling the cost of living since 2017. Now, in a couple of weeks, on 1 April, we are going to see 110,000 beneficiaries with children—they will be better off by $175 per week, increasing to $207 per week during the 2022 winter period, and 363,000 beneficiaries will be better off, on average, by about $109 per week, increasing to $133 per week during the winter period, when the energy incentives kick in.

We have worked really hard to lift wages here in Aotearoa. A new nurse is paid over $10,000 more per year than what they were in 2017, when the other side of the House left the Treasury benches, and experienced nurses are paid $16,000 more than what they were in 2017. A new police officer today, compared to when the other side left this side of the House—they’re paid $12,000 more per year.

This side of the House is focused on increasing incomes and reducing costs for families, and this is legacy stuff that we’re building on—legacy stuff that dates back to the days of Sir Michael Cullen, who introduced family packages. We’ve increased those and we’ve wrapped around them by providing targeted assistance to low and middle income families with kids. The Families Package has benefited 330,000 families in its first year, and the winter energy payment provides additional support to a million New Zealanders every single winter. At a time when we know that costs are hitting their pockets and it’s happening across the world, this side of the House has our people at its centre. Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker.

Mr Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity. Well, we’ve had another week of drama in New Zealand. The cost of living crisis rages on, where Kiwis are struggling to afford their everyday needs, wages are going up 2.6 percent but the cost of living is going up 6 percent at least—it’s much more than that in many other areas when people visit the supermarket. We’ve seen the return of the scourge of inflation in this country, such as we haven’t seen for 30 years, and this Government—this Labour Government—has lost control of the economy and lost control of New Zealanders’ living standards because it hasn’t been able to discipline its spending.

Then we’ve seen the destabilisation of the post-War order in Europe, and that of course is concerning many New Zealanders and many people around the world. What does that mean for us as a country? What does it mean for peace and stability?

Another thing we’ve seen this week is we’ve seen a team of groundsmen outside, fixing the front lawn after the chaos and riots that we had in front of this Parliament only a few weeks ago. It’s a reflection of the breakdown of law and order in this country.

We’ve also seen the retirement of Simon Bridges, and I do want to pay tribute to Simon—a good friend. He’s made a great contribution in this House and to New Zealand. He’s fought hard for Kiwis and fought hard for New Zealanders, and we wish him and his family all the very best.

What else have we had? We’ve had a poll. The people of New Zealand should thank TVNZ because that poll led directly to a cut in petrol prices, so people can enjoy the cut that this Government has done because they saw that their popularity was going down the gurgler. All of the list MPs up the back there realised that they were going to be having to go looking for a job. They didn’t have any chance of getting a decent job and they were panicking, and they all went into caucus in a mad panic and they’ve reduced the petrol prices. So people should be very thankful to TVNZ for that.

We’ve also had this new team put in place by Chris Luxon. I’m very proud to be part of his team taking the fight to this Government alongside Nicola Willis, who is going to be a great finance spokesperson and will hold Grant Robertson’s feet to the fire.

The challenges that we face in this country continue to be, fundamentally, and first and foremost, the need to develop sustainable economic growth that can sustain genuinely world-class incomes in New Zealand so that New Zealanders have the opportunities for themselves and their families to succeed, to prosper, to do well, and to be ambitious for your family. To look after your family and do well—that’s what we want. That’s what we want in this country and what we aspire to in this country. But what we’re seeing from this Government is an economy that’s based purely and simply on debt-fuelled Government spending on a colossal scale and incredibly low interest rates, which is not sustainable because it’s leading to inflation. Also, ultimately, if you can’t control your spending, you end up overwhelmed with debt.

There is no reference anywhere in Government policies, really, to growing the economy, or improving our competitiveness internationally. You’d never hear Michael Wood talking about how we’re going to improve our competitiveness; only how he’s going to increase costs for businesses. Their idea of lifting incomes is to lift the minimum wage and to increase public sector pay rates. Now that’s part of the job of any Government, but that’s not going to help everybody. That’s not how you increase wages sustainably in the long term. You increase wages sustainably in the long term by having a more productive economy that produces goods that the rest of the world wants and is prepared to pay for. That needs a competitive market, and part of that is flexible labour markets, and I’m going to be fighting hard against the proposed rigidity that this Government wants to put back in our labour markets with their so-called, inappropriately named fair pay agreements.

Then we need to talk about delivery. This Government, of course, famously hasn’t delivered on housing and will never deliver on housing. It hasn’t delivered much on transport. After four years of talking about the slow tram down Dominion Road, it hasn’t started. It’s colossally overpriced and it’s a very bad idea. I haven’t yet met anybody in Auckland who thinks that of all the priorities in Auckland transport, a slow tram down Dominion Road is the most important priority for the next $26 billion we’re going to spend, or whatever it is.

On justice—oh my goodness, on justice—we’ve got an increase in violent crime, we’ve got 50 percent increase in gang members, we’ve got a sense of lawlessness on the streets, and we’ve got very slow access to justice in our courts, and what’s this Government doing about it? Not very much. They haven’t delivered the police that they promised, they are focused on hate speech—well, let’s see what they come up with there—but when it comes to actually keeping New Zealanders safe, they’ve made no progress at all. Instead, what they focus on is dividing New Zealanders between those that they want to support and those that they don’t.

E te Māngai e te Whare, tēnā koe. Otirā ngā mema koutou o te Whare nei, tēnā koutou katoa.

I was hoping that Paul Goldsmith, the member that just contributed across the way, would actually share some of their insights or their policies that are going to address the many challenges that this side of the House has had the actual privilege to manage, but I didn’t hear one policy from that particular member that I could just actually debate. So I’ll leave that there, because I want to turn to what this Government has done in securing our recovery as a nation, given the enormous impacts that COVID-19 has had in terms of protecting our people and, of course, minimising the impact of COVID-19 in our community.

So I want to turn to the portfolio I am responsible for, and that is customs. Today, I want to add my congratulations to the Customs Service team who busted New Zealand’s largest seizure of cocaine—700 kilograms—in Tauranga today. So I want to send—and I’m sure all members of this House will send their congratulations to the Customs team working in conjunction with, obviously, our New Zealand Police. Members from ACT talked about our law and order. This is just a small sample of our response. The biggest investment in front-line police has been instigated by this side of the House. Let’s not forget that.

The interception of drugs in very trying times when borders are closed goes to the heart of what Customs have done in keeping our communities safe with today’s seizures. But it’s protecting people and minimising the impact of COVID-19 in our communities I want to also talk about, because I’m proud of what Customs do in the trade space, with the secure trade lane that we are doing with Australia and, hopefully, Singapore. The work we do in the Secure Exports Scheme to ensure those exporters’ goods get to market is an intervention that I’m really proud that Customs has continued to do during these last two years.

So while we are all focused on ensuring our communities are safe—which this side has done by enormous investments in our health system, our hauoras, and our iwi providers around the country to ensure our most vulnerable communities, particularly Māori, are protected during this incredibly trying time—it is important to acknowledge the investment and the leadership on this side, under the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, to address, not one, not two, but multiple crises, and putting people first has always been our economic recovery. But now we need to up the ante in terms of securing recovery and our economic investment, and that is what this side of the House has heard, because we are all electorate MPs—a majority of us on this side—and we enjoy the returns back to our electorate to hear the struggle that’s happening. But I am proud of the Families Package. I am proud of what that is delivering in terms of reducing children’s poverty. I’m also, like I said, proud of the investment in the housing build, the biggest that we have seen in this nation, and we are working hard to build that.

I want to pivot to our Māori Ministers, particularly in the Whānau Ora space. The largest investment in working alongside our Whānau Ora providers, up and down the country, has delivered the vaccination rates that keep our people safe, and I want to acknowledge all our Ministers and also our providers.

I want to talk about Māori trades training, because we’ve seen an unprecedented number of young rangatahi and not-so-young rangatahi who have benefited from this side’s investment in growing trades and sustainable employment for our people, and I want to acknowledge that. Papakāinga: you’re seeing the largest growth of Māori homes—Māori homeownership and Māori homes—on Māori whenua. That is a policy that I’m very proud of on this side of the House, and the continuation in investment is creating homes for our people.

But the big one for me and for every Māori member on this side is the marae oranga programme, where almost every marae around this country has not only been renovated but we’ve created employment opportunities for those Māoris on the trades training scheme. It is an absolute delight to know that as we travel around the country, marae, who have always struggled to maintain their infrastructure, have been invested in. On this side it’s a contribution to our identity as a nation but it also builds resilience into our employment, and I’m really proud on this side to be involved with that.

When New Zealanders are facing a cost of living crisis, is it responsible for this Government to be proposing to spend up to $29.2 billion on a slow tram from the Auckland CBD to the airport—$29.2 billion—which amounts up to $16,000 per household for all New Zealand households? Let me remind this House of what this Government promised. The Leader of the Opposition at the time, Jacinda Ardern, said in 2017 that light rail will be built to Mount Roskill from the Auckland CBD by 2021. Well, last time I looked at my calendar, it’s 2022, and nothing has been done about this.

But the problem is, not only has nothing been done—their promise has failed—but the cost keeps going up every time they keep talking about it, and the Minister of Transport had the audacity to speak in the House about what parts of the Budget should be cut or where should savings be found. Well, I can tell you that “Mr Doolittle”, the Minister of Transport, could find heaps of ways to try and save money by stopping wasting money in his transport portfolio: $50 million for a cycle bridge—$50 million for a cycle bridge—cancelled; $35 million for Let’s Get Wellington Moving. Well, nothing’s happened. All they’ve done is propose a pedestrian crossing and slowing a few streets down. Let’s Get Wellington Moving has become “Let’s Get Wellington Consulting”.

And what about that Te Huia train between Hamilton and Auckland: $90 million, and—guess what!—a subsidy of $280 per passenger per trip. It’s faster to go in your ute between Hamilton and Auckland and it emits more than going in your ute. There’s some more money that could be saved by the Minister of Transport.

But let’s get back to light rail, with the $29.2 billion price tag. It promised to be about $1.3 billion in 2017. Then it went up to $6 billion as soon as they got into Government, and some officials told them to be a bit careful. Then it became $10 billion when it was going down the twin-track process. The twin-track process sounded very exciting; it didn’t go anywhere. Then it got cancelled just before the election by some coalition partner before coming back in this term and being put forward as an indicative business case, which said $14.6 billion.

But wait, there’s more: Treasury has now come out with its advice, where it said it could cost up to $29.2 billion. I think the public needs to hear what Treasury advised this House about this project. It said about this project that “Based on the lack of detail provided on how urban development will be achieved, we have low confidence that these benefits will be realised, resulting in poor public value.”

But wait, there’s more: they went on to say, “We are concerned that overall affordability of the project is not factoring into analysis or advice from the Establishment Unit.” They’re not even taking into account the actual thing called affordability. During a cost of living crisis, they weren’t even thinking about affordability. They then said, “It may be timely to remind the Unit of the need to ensure affordability of the project is a key consideration.”

But wait, there’s more: they then went on to say, “We are supportive of consideration of options to progress the project and note the full suite of options should also include”—wait—“stopping the project.” Well, how’s that gone, Mr Wood? Did that go into the advice? Did that go into the consideration that Cabinet took into account when announcing in January the preferred option? They also said, “Don’t come up with a preferred option till you’ve done a bit more work.”

Well, I come back to my original question. During a cost of living crisis in New Zealand, is it responsible for this Government to be proposing to spend up to $29.2 billion on a slow tram from the CBD in Auckland down to the airport at a price of up to $16,000 per household in New Zealand? I know what people in my electorate are coming up and saying: “We can’t afford to fill up the tank of gas to get to work this week. The rent’s gone up another 50 bucks. The price of food and groceries at the supermarket—it’s becoming more expensive.” These are the issues which people in New Zealand are caring about. The Government should take the advice, stop the project, and actually focus on the cost of living crisis that New Zealanders are facing.

Today marks a huge milestone, and it really shows we are out of the COVID response and into COVID recovery. Today we announced the opening up of our borders to tourists from 1 April, and closing our border was one of the first actions we took to keep people safe. It worked. We have one of the lowest COVID mortality rates in the world and one of the strongest economies to emerge from the pandemic, and it’s now time to open up. Like so many New Zealanders, I am grateful that we had the borders closed and we had time to get vaccinated and we had a plan to keep our economy going, despite the significant challenges.

People are doing it hard. The cost of living has risen. That’s through international events pushing up inflation. We’ve had a pandemic. There’s a war in Ukraine. We’ve had a housing crisis, which has been decades in the making. National has a script which involves a tick every time they mention “cost of living crisis”. We heard that admitted in this House last week from the shadow Attorney-General, Chris Penk. So, Paul Goldsmith and Simeon Brown, well done today, but it wasn’t enough to get either of you National’s finance role.

But let’s do some myth-busting about the National Party. Yes, people are doing it hard, but the myth is that National actually cares about those who are doing it hard. The fact is that National is planning to target tax breaks to the highest earners rather than those most affected by rising prices. National wants to get rid of the top tax rate of 39 percent, a tax that affects only the top 3 percent of earners. So we’ve heard that those earning $250,000 per year or more would get a $5,000 tax break. Meanwhile, the lowest-income earners—cleaners and so on—would get $2.15 per week, and those lower-income earners are mainly women. Women are doing it hard. Mothers are doing it hard—mothers who are juggling kids and jobs and working from home and dealing with historical pay gaps that see some groups of women earning an average of close to 30 percent of Pākehā men.

So myth number two is that National and ACT care about women. National and ACT are election bedfellows, so it’s good to test how that marriage might work. Chris Luxon says he’s a feminist, even though he has spoken against abortion reform and voted against safe areas for women having abortions. David Seymour has even said on record that he would cut the Ministry for Women.

Now, it’s great that National finally has a woman in the National Party finance role, and I congratulate Nicola Willis. I would ask that member: would she agree to cut the Ministry of Women, and would National and ACT delete free period products in schools—something introduced by this Government?

I raise that because the Opposition maths doesn’t add up. If they are cutting tax without reducing infrastructure spend, then the money has to come from somewhere. The indications from the so-called feminist Opposition benches is that the first place those cuts will take place will impact on women.

Why is that important? Well, we know that policies which support women make a significant difference to ending child poverty, because the most at-risk children are in one-parent households led by women. Now, the data shows that we have a lot of progress there, but there’s still a long way to go. So I’d like to hear what Nicola Willis has to say about that too, because child poverty can’t end without policies which elevate the financial status of women.

Myth number three is that National is better at managing the economy—not true. There’s report after report that comes to the Finance and Expenditure Committee which talks about the good performance of the economy—outstanding performance—record unemployment, and so on. We’ve heard about record manufacturing results in today’s question time from the Minister of Finance, and that success has been deliberate. We have used economic stimulus to keep people in jobs to maintain confidence and certainty, and part of our response to the business sector has been targeted COVID support payments. That is to continue our commitment to provide cash flow and certainty for business.

Now, under National, how can we have confidence and certainty when there’s a constant change in leadership, flip-flopping on borders, a succession of finance spokespeople, fiscal holes in their budgets, and policies which actually advantage men in the workplace? What is true is that National is better at increasing the inequality gap, including inequality for women.

We have heard many of the things today around housing. We have heard things about “Who do we trust?”. Our recovery is already well on track. We’ve heard from my colleagues about the difference that we will make to people by increasing the minimum wage from $15.75 in 2017 to $21.20 from 1 April next month. Now, that’s something that Chris Luxon complained about in November last year. He said that that was something that business would have to stomach. Well, I say to the member, women have had to stomach pay inequality for decades. The women—

The member’s time is up.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you. There have been a series of in-depth and really well-researched reports from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, the Rt Hon Simon Upton, in recent months. They’ve highlighted the shortcomings in our environmental research system and funding for environmental research, how well our biosecurity system deals with native ecosystem weeds, and the fate of chemicals in the environment.

Today, the parliamentary Finance and Expenditure Committee and Environment Committee had a joint briefing from the Parliamentary Commissioner on a report he’s released on wellbeing Budgets and the environment. That report looks at the way the environment has or hasn’t been included in the process of constructing wellbeing Budgets. It was published last year, and it looks at how and why the environment has or hasn’t been well integrated into the formation of Budget packages.

In Budget 2021, we saw that the oceans really missed out in terms of funding. There was no extra funding for oceans, no changes in the fisheries appropriations in Budget 2021, no new policies or outputs for the oceans, and no additional funding for fisheries research. That needs to change in Budget 2022.

It’s long been recognised that we’ve got a huge information gap in terms of fisheries management and big gaps in our information about fish stocks and about species bycatch and the ecosystem impacts of fisheries, and the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, Dr Juliet Gerrard, highlighted this in her report about commercial fisheries management in March last year. She highlighted that more resource is needed so that the regulator, the Ministry for Primary Industries, can keep pace with ever-changing stocks and that we need to make that data more accessible.

We’ve got about 30 percent of the fish that we catch, and, commercially, it’s some 228 stocks—we don’t have stock assessments for those. It’s not good enough to be doing this extraction in the absence of information, and in Budget 2022 we need to recognise the importance of the oceans for the climate, for biodiversity, for our economy, and for providing food for millions, and in buffering us from the worst impacts of climate change, because, of course, it’s been the oceans that have absorbed 90 percent of the extra heat associated with global warming and a third of the carbon dioxide. We’ve seen with increasing sea surface temperatures major changes to weather patterns, more extreme weather events, melting sea ice, kelp forest decline, and ocean acidification from excess carbon dioxide, causing the collapse of our coral reefs and real problems for shellfish. So we’re in the process of losing much of our marine biomass and biodiversity across the world.

Now, the Parliamentary Commissioner this morning highlighted that we could improve the Budget process by identifying some key long-run environmental issues and challenges and developing investment priorities to systematically address them to better mitigate future risks and to identify and address tipping points. The declining health of oceans and our fisheries should be one of those key issues. We really need to recognise their value and we need a much greater sense of urgency around policies and programmes for oceans and fisheries because, after all, with the fourth-biggest exclusive economic zone in the world and with 85 percent of our indigenous wildlife being in the sea, and yet with so many of those species threatened with extinction—90 percent of our seabirds, birds like albatross and mollymawks; 80 percent of our shore birds, and 22 percent of our marine mammals—we need to safeguard their future and ours.

At the moment, we’re seeing really ponderous policy work around the oceans. Consultation started on marine protected areas on the south-east Otago coast back in 2016-17. We still have no marine protected areas. Similarly, with Revitalising the Gulf, work was well under way last term in terms of responding to the Sea Change process, and yet the Minister has said we won’t see legislation to establish new marine protected areas until 2025. That is too late.

We need urgency and we need much greater investment in the oceans. They are protecting us from the worst effects of climate change and they are a rich storehouse for a number of taonga species. We need to invest in them and we need to protect them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Before I start my speech, I want to acknowledge the fact that today, the Ministry of Health have reported 24 deaths of people with COVID-19, two of which were from Wairarapa. These are the first deaths that my region, our region, has seen since the pandemic began, and this will hurt. We are a close-knit community. These are people’s family members, they are people’s friends, and the region will be hurting. I wanted to take the opportunity to express my heartfelt and sincere condolences to those that are impacted by those deaths today.

What we have seen over the last few days in this House is a good example of the genuine differences between the Government and the Opposition. Now, we’ve all heard it. We’ve all heard it as we walk around our respective electorates—people that come and say, “There isn’t much difference between National and Labour.” Well, we’ve seen that this week. We have seen the tired old, retried approach from the National Party in response to a time when people are really struggling, and their answer is to give tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit the rich and give very little to those that are struggling most.

The reason I am pointing this out by way of comparison is that when you compare what this Government is doing on 1 April, where 60 percent of New Zealand families will see an increase through Working for Families—a programme that families depend on and a programme that the National Party voted against—they will benefit more from what this Government is doing, from our prioritisation of low to middle income earners, than anyone in that category will under the proposed tax cuts. When there are 1.1 million New Zealanders who will not benefit from National’s tax cuts, but the top 3 percent of earners will see hundreds of dollars a week flow their way, that demonstrates the priorities of the National Party.

Over this side of the House and under this Government, we are helping those who are hurting the most. We are seeing beneficiaries have an increase. We are seeing minimum wage workers have an increase, which, incidentally, the National Party do not support. They have the gall to stand up and say, “New Zealanders are leaving for overseas because wages are better.”, yet every single initiative from this Government to raise workers’ wages and improve conditions, they have opposed. Every single year when that side was in Government, they put the minimum wage up, and then when we do it, they vote against it. They like to play politics with people’s wages, they like to play politics with people’s livelihoods; we take this seriously.

Superannuitants will be seeing a significant increase in their incomes coming up from 1 April, with a $52 per fortnight increase for a single person and an $80 increase for a couple. Of course, the superannuation only goes up when wages go up. It’s indexed. It demonstrates that New Zealanders’ wages are increasing under this Government.

What would they do with tax cuts? There would be less money to put into the wages of nurses, which have gone up under this Government. There would be less money to put into the wages of police officers, which have gone up under this Government. You cannot promise to reduce revenue, to pay down debt, and to spend more—it is a falsehood. It is a falsehood that they got caught out with at the last election, and they’ve fallen into the same trap. My message to the National Party is that New Zealanders are not fools. They will not be tricked by this sort of falsehood. They will see right through the gaping fiscal hole in their plan.

By contrast, they will see in this Government here that it is responding to the current cost of living crisis that is under way. They recognise that because the COVID situation has had an impact across the world and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has seen fuel prices go up across the world, it is impacting lower to middle income earners the most. When you look at the numbers, you will see that it is this Government that is benefiting those people, and that side wants to give it to their rich mates.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The National Party is proud of our food producers because our farmers and our growers have supported this country through COVID. The PM spoke today about healthy food for families. Well, news to the people on the other side of the room: the healthy food comes from our farmers and growers. We keep getting a question from the other side of the House: what is the National Party going to cut? Well, the National Party is going to cut the red tape that this Government has forced on to our food producers because when we talk about the cost of living, we’re talking about the cost of living of our healthy fruit and vegetables and proteins rising in price in New Zealand due to the red tape that’s been pushed on those producers by this Government. So the red tape is increasing the cost of living.

When you think about what’s happened over the last couple of years, yes, we’ve had to close the borders because we’ve had COVID, but we’ve had completely COVID-free people who could have come to this country and picked fruit, and what did this Government do? They prevented them. They took away their income, they took away our growers’ ability to pick the fruit and they let it rot on the ground, and then they have the gall to talk about everything else in the world causing inflation.

Look, we all regret and are very saddened about the war that’s going on with Russia on Ukraine at the moment, but the Government talks about this as if it’s the only cause of inflation. Inflation was at 5.9 percent before this war started, and it’s always the world’s fault. The Prime Minister is always waxing lyrical about it being the world’s fault. Well, take some accountability, Government, because some of this can be sheeted back on your own Government.

So I think the other thing that this Government needs to realise is that we all want good policy in the area of climate change, but the obsession that the Government has of banning and taxing and going through climate change objectives in a way that just pushes the price up is also adding to the cost of living. We know now in energy what’s happening with gas prices, and the Commerce Commission has said it’s perfectly OK to raise the price of gas because the assets don’t have an expected life that they did have, thank you to the policy of this Government. Well, no thank you to the policy of this Government.

We also know that they’re pushing the price up on food producers by charging a ute tax. Now, we all know that even if there was a ute available, those utes would be powered by electricity that was fuelled by Indonesian coal. So the nuclear-free moment, so called by the Prime Minister, of the oil and gas ban has actually become an Indonesian coal moment and it’s not doing anything for our climate change, and I suspect that’s probably what this Government would push our food producers to if they’re given any more chance, which is why the public is not going to give them any more chance in 2023.

I haven’t seen anything from this Government. We’ve got 3-nitrooxypropanol products that would reduce methane. The applications are sitting on the desk of the Environmental Protection Authority and I haven’t heard the Government encouraging those to be brought in. We have rye grasses in other parts of the world that can reduce methane that we’re currently not able to use in New Zealand due to our regulation. Where has the Minister of Agriculture’s support for those been? Missing. The research and development—there’s a lot of carbon and we could increase our carbon sequestration in our soils. Where’s the science? Where’s the conversation around that?

All we hear is about ban it, tax it, and all the rest of it. We never hear about any R & D, and we hear a lot from the conservation Minister about jobs for nature. Well, guess what? We’ve got some very, very, very good people out there who do their own jobs for nature. They are called farmers. They do it out of the willingness of their heart and they do it out of the cost of their own pocket, and they are improving the environment day by day. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.