Thursday, 28 July 2005

Thursday, 28 July 2005

Thursday, 28 July 2005

Madam Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House): Next week in the House, the valedictory statements will be the first item taken after questions for oral answer on Tuesday, 2 August. Following the valedictory statements, the Government intends to take urgency to complete the remaining stages of the Appropriation (2005/06 Estimates) Bill, including the Imprest Supply Bill (Second for 2005/06) Bill; Government notice of motion No. 1 on the Misuse of Drugs Act; the remaining stages of the Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill; Government notice of motion No. 2 in relation to the Standing Orders; and Government notice of motion No. 3 in relation to the register of members’ pecuniary interests. At the conclusion of urgency, the adjournment motion will be put to the House.

Questions for Oral Answer

Questions to Ministers

Working for Families Package—Implementation, Reports

on behalf of 1. LESLEY SOPER (Labour),LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East), to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What reports, if any, has he received on the implementation of the Working for Families initiatives?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment): Latest figures, to the end of June 2005, show that 199,500 families received family assistance. Those families were getting $30 more a week on average from the Inland Revenue Department than in June 2004, 65 percent more working families are receiving accommodation assistance, and 43 percent more children are receiving childcare assistance. Next year we will be expanding family support eligibility again and introducing a new, $60-a-week in-work payment.

Lesley Soper: What reports has he seen about the implementation of the rest of the Working for Families package?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I have seen at least five reports on Working for Families. The first report said it was third-rate, the second report said it would be scaled back, the third report said the in-work payment would stay, the fourth report said the whole package would be kept in its entirety, and the fifth report said there would be major changes but they would be announced after the election. All of those reports came from Dr Donald Brash and the National Party, who cannot seem to make up their mind on one single issue.

John Key: When the Minister said that the uptake of Working for Families by working families had been disappointing because they were “nervous”, what part of the Working for Families programme were they nervous about?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I am afraid the member misquotes me. What I was referring to was the self-employed group of people—[Interruption] Just for Mr Key again, because he cannot stop yelling: I was referring to the group of self-employed New Zealanders who, because of their experiences in the past, have waited for the end of the year before they collect their money. We are encouraging them to take advantage of this fantastic package that the National Party endorses, does not endorse, will change some of, will not change any of, cannot make up its mind about, but will make up its mind about once it gets into Government.

Gerrard Eckhoff: Why was $15 million of taxpayers’ money spent on presenting this Labour Party election bribe, when the Minister’s own officials confirmed that 75 percent of the recipients would receive assistance automatically?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: Fifteen million dollars has not been spent. That is the entire budget through to 2007.

Judy Turner: Has he yet considered enabling working families to receive their entitlements by alternative means—in the same way that they can currently elect to receive them as an end-of-year lump sum—such as an adjustment to the take-home pay of parents, to be paid through their employer, or by enabling their entitlements to be capitalised to raise the deposit for a first home; if not, why not?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: As always, they are fantastic ideas from United Future, but right now we are rolling out the Working for Families package, and it is going extremely well.

Lesley Soper: What reports has he seen about working families needing to queue at their local Work and Income to receive assistance through Working for Families?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I have seen an inaccurate report about New Zealanders having to queue to get access to Working for Families, when, of course, it is delivered almost completely through the Inland Revenue Department. I have, however, seen a similar report from the same person suggesting that New Zealanders should queue outside post offices if they wish to get a job on a daily basis. I am sure that member, Dr Donald Brash, is merely anticipating his own future.

Taxation—Top Tax Rate

2. RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) to the Minister of Finance: What percentage of the workforce are paying the 39 percent tax rate, and how does this compare with his statement on 22 December 1999 that the 39 percent tax rate will “affect only about 5 percent of the workforce”?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance): The information at the time I made that statement related to the 1998 tax year, when the proportion of taxpayers earning more than $60,000 was 5.3 percent. The current percentage is 8.7 percent. Had we intended to index the threshold for the 39c in the dollar rate at the time, the policy would have said so, because this Government does what it says it will do.

Rodney Hide: Does the Minister accept that he is referring to all taxpayers, not to the workforce, and that if one looks at the workforce one sees, by his own admission, that 22 percent of the workforce are paying the top rate of tax, and is that not just another example that this Government cannot be trusted to keep its word, because it has always been more than 5 percent of the workforce—and, indeed, 5 percent of taxpayers—who have had to pay the top rate of tax?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I understand the member’s fascination with a 5 percent threshold—I do, indeed. And I accept that I made an error in that press statement referring to the workforce. That king hit by the member will not lift him from 1 percent to 5 percent overnight.

Rodney Hide: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Those were very interesting comments by the Minister, but I ask you: at what point did he address the question? Not once did he attempt—

Hon David Cunliffe: He did.

Rodney Hide: Well, David Cunliffe may want to help me with this point of order, but the reality is that the Minister is required to address the question. Not once did he address the question in that answer.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Speaking to the point of order, Madam Speaker, I point out that the member asked me whether I incorrectly referred to the workforce in the press statement, and I said yes. That is the best king hit he has had on me in 5½ years.

John Key: Why do working New Zealanders, including those paying the top rate, have to wait 3 years for Labour’s tax cuts, which cost only $360 million per year, when there was clearly enough money in the kitty to give that amount and more to those with student loans today—or does Labour not care about workers any more?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: The first point is that this was a 3-year policy, and actually announced as such. The second point is that, on present reckoning, the threshold change will probably arrive before National announces its tax policy.

Kenneth Wang: Why is it that the Minister can afford a $300 million a year pledge to his favourite student-vote group but cannot afford to cut the 39c in the dollar rate at all, especially given that there are now 320,000 people, or 11 percent of taxpayers, paying the 39c in the dollar rate—or is it just that there is an ideological opposition in the Labour caucus to lowering people’s taxes, but full support for election bribes?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I do note that the party promising $5.7 billion of tax cuts is at approximately 1 percent in the polls, and that the Labour Party is at approximately 40 times that number in the latest opinion polls. On the point the member makes, he does need to understand that the two have to be added together if we do them both. We cannot count the same $300 million twice.

Hon Richard Prebble: In my valedictory question can I help the Minister, by asking him whether he has ever considered that he could actually lower the 39c in the dollar tax rate to 33c in the dollar for about $680 million, and that he could easily find that money by just cutting out support for hip-hop tours, the sending of port-a-loos to Venice, and twilight golf, and by cutting down social welfare fraud and abuse; if not, why not?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: We have already cut out the support for the hip-hop tour, and at $27,000 it adds up to roughly a 1c a year tax cut once for all taxpayers.

Student Loans—Uptake from April 2006

3. Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) to the Minister of Education: Does the estimated cost of “a maximum of around $300 million” for the policy proposal to abolish all interest charges on student loans for all students and New Zealand - based graduates from 1 April 2006 include the cost of an increased number of students taking up student loans; if so, what is the expected increase in student loan uptake?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education): The maximum is $302 million in 2008-09. The cost is based on 70 percent of full-time and 13 percent of part-time students paying their fees through a student loan, and up to 50 percent of full-time students drawing down living costs. The costing is also based on up to 60 percent of full-time and 18 percent of part-time students drawing down course-related costs.

Hon Bill English: Can the Minister confirm that after “no interest while studying” was introduced, the average loan balance rose by $2,700 to $14,500 and the proportion of students who took up student loans rose by 20 percent; and why does he imagine that an average 18 or 19-year-old will not take the opportunity to borrow more money and hold it for longer when there is no interest on the loan?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I apologise in advance for this answer being slightly longer, but it is an important point. The first point is that in 1999 there were 296,000 equivalent full-time students. By 2003 there were 428,000 equivalent full-time students. The prediction in June 1999, under the previous Government, was that in 2005 total student loan debt would be $7,279 million. The current estimate of student loans is $7,203 million. That shows that notwithstanding the change that has been made, we are under what the track was for student loans when we came into Government; notwithstanding that there has been a massive increase in the numbers and that interest has been received whilst students are studying. Turning to the question of uptake that the member asked about, in 2000, before interest-free loans, the uptake rate was 55 percent. In 2004, following that, and following some behavioural change, the uptake rate was 55 percent.

Lynne Pillay: What feedback has he received on the proposal to scrap interest on student loans?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I think it is fair to say that Kiwis love it. I have had feedback from nurses, doctors, teachers, parents, grandparents, students, uncles, aunties, and through Marian Hobbs’ daughter, and everyone loves it. People are so keen to see how this works that over 300,000 people have checked out the website. However, I give one warning. If people have less than a year left of study there is a technical error on the website that is giving inaccurate results. For the people who had a loan under the Tory policy and who would have taken 30 years to pay their loan back, the figures are quite accurate, but for those who have a few weeks to go, it needs a bit of fine-tuning.

Hon Brian Donnelly: Is it not true that over 30 percent of full-time students take out no student loan whatsoever, and is it not a foregone conclusion that Labour’s interest-free policy will guarantee that that percentage drops rapidly to zero?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Yes and no.

Deborah Coddington: Why will the Minister not tell the country what both Treasury and the Tertiary Education Commission told his Government in 2000—that the real cost of writing off interest on student loans at net present value is not $300 million but $4.5 billion, or is he worried that Kiwis will not love that one?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The Tertiary Education Commission did not exist in 2000.

Nandor Tanczos: What is the estimated cost of the other half of that policy initiative, which is to ensure that 50 percent of full-time students become eligible for a student allowance in the next term of Government?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I do not have those figures with me, but I do want to point out to the member that it is not a lot extra, because already built into the baselines for the last financial year, and for this financial year in fact, were estimates that would have a much higher uptake of student allowances. Of course, the booming economy has meant that that has not been the case.

Bernie Ogilvy: What confidence does the Minister have in the estimated maximum cost of the $300 million for zero-interest charges on student loans when the response of Associate Minister of Finance to my written question asking how much it would cost to make a much smaller cut to the interest rate of 3.7 percent was that: “The fiscal cost to the Government is difficult to estimate with any degree of accuracy as there are likely to be large changes in the number of borrowers and in the size of the average loan as a result of such a policy change.”?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I agree with the Associate Minister of Finance—[Interruption]; the other one, I hope—that it is difficult to calculate.

Hon Bill English: Can the Minister confirm that a student who is currently fully supported by his or her parents and is eligible for a student loan but does not have one will be able to take up his or her interest-free student loan for living costs and put the $150 per week directly into an interest-earning bank account and therefore be better off; and why should taxpayers pay for that?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Some things have changed in the last few years, one of which is that interest came off student loans quite a few years ago. They could have been doing that for a number of years, and it has not—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Rubbish!

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The member says “Rubbish”. It has not happened to the extent that it would make behavioural change, and the member is just wrong.

Nandor Tanczos: Can the Minister confirm that his answer to my previous supplementary question—that the increase in eligibility would not cost very much—means that the Government does not intend that many more students will be eligible for a full allowance, just that a whole bunch more will get $5 a week?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Not at all.

Rodney Hide: Referring to the Minister’s answer to the primary question, which estimated the costs, could he tell the House what percentage of eligible students who can take out a loan he is assuming will not take out a loan at the full amount?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Quite a wide variety, depending on the component of the loan.

Hon Bill English: Can the Minister confirm that it is now the Labour Party’s position that in charging no interest on student loans, students are likely to borrow less and pay it off quicker, or does he accept the common sense of everybody else—that if the loans are completely interest free, students will borrow more, more of them will borrow, and they will have much less incentive to pay it back?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I think my best estimate of the situation is that they may borrow slightly more and they will pay it off much more quickly.

Electricity—Pricing

4. PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) to the Minister of Energy: What has been the percentage increase for fixed and variable electricity prices since 1999, and what solutions does he have, if any, to reduce the price of electricity to consumers?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Energy): Variable charges for consumers have increased by between 46 percent and 66 percent. Fixed charges have increased by 25 percent for those on options other than the low-tariff options, and fixed charges have decreased by 50 percent for consumers on the low fixed-charge tariff options.

Peter Brown: Is he aware just how detrimental these increasing power prices are for people on fixed incomes—in particular, the elderly who are now going to bed wrapped in blankets, failing to put their heaters on, having short showers, limiting their cooking, and living in fear and dread of receiving their next power bill?

Hon Dr Michael Cullen: Most of us go to bed with blankets.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I note Dr Cullen’s comments, and I think that most of us do go to bed with blankets. The changes this Government has made to superannuation are very important, but we are now seeing the effect of the rundown of the Māui gasfield under the previous National Government and its active discouragement of people who were exploring for replacement gas. That practice has changed under this Government.

Mark Peck: What steps has the Government taken to lower the cost of electricity for low-volume users such as pensioners?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Our Government is committed to keeping electricity affordable. All power networks have been required to offer a fixed daily-charge option. Lower power users are now saving up to $96 a year on their electricity bills, thanks to the very good work of Pete Hodgson.

Hon Ken Shirley: What is the projected increase in consumer electricity prices resulting from the Labour Government’s carbon tax on gas and coal, and how can he seriously claim to be trying to reduce the price of electricity charges to the consumer?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I do not have those figures with me, but, of course, the figures will depend a lot, going into the future, on the success of the renewable energy industry and also the savings that can be made through more efficient homes and more efficient businesses.

Mike Ward: What has been the change in fixed charges for gas over the same period, and when will the Government act to introduce low fixed-charges for gas, so more Auckland households find it economic to connect to the gaspipes that run past their doors?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Some of the actions I have taken in the last 24 hours will be helpful with regard to the cost of gas. The member will see policy announcements soon.

Peter Brown: In light of the Minister’s earlier answer to my supplementary question, does he take seriously the fact that some of the elderly in this country live in fear and dread of their power bill and see it as ever-increasing, because it has increased hugely over recent times; if so, will he tell us exactly what he is going to do to help the elderly with their power bills?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: This Government has done quite a lot about power pricing. We have facilitated a lot of wind power, we have worked in the solar area to knock off the peaks in demand, and we have subsidised gas exploration by providing tax breaks for those exploring for gas and by paying for seismic surveys. Those are really important factors in making sure that electricity prices do not continue to go up at the rate they have as a result of the Bradford reforms.

Peter Brown: Does the Minister accept that if there were more players in the industry, generating more electricity, there would be downward pressure on prices?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: If the market were working well, that would be the case.

Education Expenditure—Proposed Changes

5. MOANA MACKEY (Labour) to the Minister of Education: What reports, if any, has he received on proposed changes to education expenditure?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education): I have seen a report suggesting that education expenditure should be ring-fenced at 2005-06 levels. That would effectively result in a cut of $1.38 billion from forecast expenditure—funding that is already budgeted for extra teachers, teacher pay increases, school operation grant increases, early childhood education funding increases, and the list goes on. That crazy proposal came from Don Brash.

Moana Mackey: What impact would those funding cuts have on the tertiary education sector?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The university sector would lose the $40 million that has been budgeted to increase the Performance-based Research Fund, and the entire tertiary sector would lose the $73 million that has been budgeted to increase tuition subsidies. Extra funding for industry training and Modern Apprentices would be cut. Is it any wonder that National cannot get its tax cuts right if it cannot even understand that?

Hon Bill English: Why does the Minister think he has any credibility on education spending, when he has overseen the worst blowouts on the lowest-quality learning, and left a total shambles in the bureaucracy in the time that he has been Minister of Education; and why does he not apologise, instead of exaggerating the numbers?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I am proud to be the Minister—

Simon Power: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. During the course of Mr English’s supplementary question, a Minister sitting—I believe, although I stand to be corrected—on the front bench interjected. Since you have been Speaker you have set a rule that members are able to ask their questions in silence, and I ask you to rule accordingly.

Madam SPEAKER: Yes, I have mentioned that to members before. I have on several occasions in this session let members from all sides of the House breach that. You are all now on final warning, again. Would the Minister please answer the question.

Hon Bill English: My colleague was telling me that because of the interjection he did not hear the question. I seek leave to ask it again.

Madam SPEAKER: Yes, you may ask it again.

Hon Bill English: Why does this Minister think he has any credibility at all on education spending, when, under his responsibility for the last 6 years, he has overseen the biggest blowouts on the lowest-quality learning this country has ever seen, and he has left the bureaucracy in a total shambles, as confirmed by a report written by the Secretary to the Treasury, the chief executive of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and his own State Services Commissioner; why does he not apologise?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: This Minister is proud of the results from the Programme for International Student Assessment, which have our kids in the top group of the OECD. Our kids are in the top group in literacy, numeracy, science, and problem-solving. Opposition members do not like our kids being successful, and they do not like our teachers being good, but none of their whingeing will take away from the facts.

Budget 2005—Education, Minister’s Statement

6. JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) to the Minister of Finance: Does he agree with the statement of the Minister of Education that there is “room for $1.9 billion additional spending” in the Budget; if not, why not?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance): Yes.

John Key: Can the Minister confirm that the cost of the student loan policy announced on Monday will come out of the $1.9 billion of new Budget spending earmarked for the out-years; if not, where will the cost be funded from?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Yes, but the member must be careful—the $1.9 billion is $1.9 billion plus $1.9 billion plus $1.9 billion. Three hundred is roughly flat line.

John Key: Will all new pledge card initiatives that have a fiscal impact be funded from the $1.9 billion of new Budget spend; if not, where will they be funded from?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: That is the intention, as opposed to promising tax cuts of a total of $1 billion—having already promised more than $1 billion—with the main course yet to come.

Peter Brown: Noting the Minister’s positive answer to John Key’s initial question, why does the Minister not spend some of this $1.9 billion on roading, where he knows there is a shortfall, where he knows there would be huge economic gains, and which he would get back, plus bonus, in very short order; why does he not do that?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: In the Budget we announced $8.4 billion additional spending on roading. Since then, we have added a further $500 million. Since then, we have added further spending on Wellington. The Minister will announce spending in the Bay of Plenty next week. There is a Waikato package to come next. There is $23 billion to be spent on land transport for the next 10 years. There is in Auckland, at the moment, by value, 10 times as much roading under way as there was in 1999.

Gordon Copeland: Does he agree with the Minister of Education that a significant proportion of the $1.9 billion per annum is already spoken for in terms of salary increases for teachers, nurses, and other State servants; if so, what is the difference between the figure that is spoken for and the amount that is in the slush fund that has now been used to announce this policy of no interest on student loans?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: The $1.9 billion allocation—which, I draw to Mr Key’s attention, was in the Budget documentation on page 71—is not a slush fund. I think it was actually the Rt Hon Bill Birch who first put a Budget allocation for out-years into the Budget, after some encouragement from me as Opposition spokesperson on finance. It is quite true that a significant growth in expenditure is required merely to keep services constant. Thus, if a party promises merely to increase health spending by, say, $1, which is more spending than in the previous year, services will go backwards. That, of course, is precisely what the National Party is saying about the track of health and education spending.

John Key: Did the Minister’s office provide the costings for the student loan policy announced on Monday, or was it Mr Mallard’s office; and if there are cost overruns over and above the $300 million per year, will those be funded out of the $1.9 billion of out-year spending?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I think it was a joint effort between our offices on that matter. In terms of those cost overruns for the future, I thank the member for his confidence in the re-election of a Labour-led Government.

Rodney Hide: On what date were the costings done on the student loan policy that was just announced; can the Minister confirm that when Mr Birch set aside new initiatives for spending the amount was $600 million compounding each year, not the Labour Party’s $1,900 million compounding each year; and if one adds that up it is $5.7 billion, as set out in the Budget, in 2009, which, combined with the surplus of $5.3 billion, actually leaves $11 billion above current forecast spending?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I think that explains why that party is at 1 percent in the polls, on that particular matter—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Just answer the question.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I ask that member to keep apologising to Basil Morrison for his behaviour on Monday night at the local government conference. Work started on those matters earlier this year. Final costings were done in the last few weeks.

Working for Families Package—Childcare Assistance for Non-working Families

7. JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What assistance is there for families who do not qualify under the Working for Families package but wish to have one parent stay at home to care for children, such as the Garside family featured on Television One’s Sunday programme recently?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment): The Working for Families package targets tax relief to the 61 percent of families with children who are most in need. Families earning between $25,000 and $45,000 a year will get around $100 per week from that package. For other families, the best Government strategy, frankly, is a growing economy and investment in those things that will raise productivity levels, so that wages can rise, rather than tinkering with complications to the taxation system, which would give us no long-term profit. Families earning $60,000 or more with young children may, however, be eligible for an expanded childcare subsidy, and will qualify for 20 hours of free early childhood education from 2007.

Judy Turner: Does the Minister agree that the introduction of income splitting, as proposed by United Future, would give a family such as the Garsides, who missed out on the Working for Families assistance, an extra $98 a week, and allow them to achieve their dream of having one parent at home while their children are young; if so, does he support the introduction of that family-friendly policy; if not, why not?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: The Garside family, who I understand are on a main income of about $65,000, with a part-time income coming from the second earner, may well look at the income-splitting idea. But from the Government’s point of view, we have no plans to move on that policy. We do not believe that income-splitting benefits those families that most need financial assistance; income splitting is more beneficial to those who are on higher incomes, rather than those whom we are targeting. I note also that the price of United Future’s income-splitting package is the cancellation of the rest of the Working for Families package—no in-work payment, and no $10 increase per child for all eligible families. If that is not now United Future’s position, I welcome that.

H V Ross Robertson: Given the Minister’s response to the House, can he inform it of what reports he has seen about assistance for families who wish to have one parent stay at home to care for their children?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I have seen a report that: “This issue is very, very complex.”, that: “It cannot be addressed without the resources of the State behind you.”, and that: “Frankly, in Opposition no party, certainly not National, has the capacity to deal with it adequately.” A person told Radio Rhema that, and he was Dr Donald Brash, who is clearly intent on stealing home in this election, rather than openly telling his voters his plans about his policies.

Judy Turner: Has the Minister seen the Littlies Lobby survey results released yesterday, which indicate that the No. 1 concern of parents with under-fives is spending more quality time with them, and that parents want policies that affirm “support and recognition for a parent to stay at home with children”; if so, how does he reconcile that desire for parenting to be valued with the Government’s clear agenda to get more mums into work?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: The Government’s clear agenda is to give men and women choice about staying at home or going into the workplace, which means providing proper support through things like childcare to ensure that that choice is real and meaningful for both partners.

Judy Turner: Does the Minister agree with the comment from Diane Garside on the Sunday programme that she wants the choice to stay at home to care for her toddlers “no matter what income her family is at”; or does he still stand by his comments on National Radio last year that such a choice is simply a luxury?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I note that the Garside family, who have a $65,000 main income plus a second, part-time income, do want to make that kind of choice. As I said before, it is the Government’s intention to try to put in place policies that provide both men and women with a choice as to whether they will go back into the workplace or stay home with their children. As I said last night at a seminar here, which was attended by a number of members of Parliament, the key to that, of course, is to lift wages. That is what this Government has also embarked on doing, rather than giving silly, waste-of-time tax cuts.

Student Loans—Uptake from April 2006

8. Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) to the Minister of Education: How much did student debt increase in the 3 years after the policy to remove interest on loans while studying commenced, and how much is it estimated that student debt will increase as a result of the policy announced on Tuesday to remove interest on student loans for graduates living in New Zealand, in the 3 years after its implementation?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education): On the first part of the question, in 2001 the total amount borrowed was $909 million, a 56 percent uptake rate. In 2004 it was $983 million, a 55 percent uptake rate. If the member is talking about out-years, in, say, the 2007-08 year, under existing policy settings the close of year student loan balance would be $8,422 million. Under this policy—because, of course, the interest does not keep being added on—the closing balance would be $7,979 million.

Hon Brian Donnelly: Does the policy announced on Tuesday mean that taxpayers will be paying the interest on the residue of lump-sum loans taken out by students in the period prior to the New Zealand First - National coalition Government in order to buy motorcars and stereos?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: That will be the case, but I think it would be pretty hard to differentiate around the quality of borrowing 10 years previously.

Dr Ashraf Choudhary: What is the estimated impact of the no-interest policy on the amount of time it takes to pay back a student loan?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I will give a couple of examples. Someone with a debt of around $15,000, which is pretty average, and a salary of around $35,000, which, again, is pretty average, will pay back the loan 3 years sooner and save $7,000 in interest. Someone who has a bigger debt—say, $35,000, which is not unusual—and earns a salary of around $45,000 will pay back the loan 7 years sooner and save over $30,000 in interest. It is no wonder Kiwis love this policy.

Hon Bill English: If getting rid of interest on loans is such a good idea, why does the Labour Government not pass a law that abolishes all interest on loans, on the basis that it believes that it would make no difference to what people borrow or when they repay their loans, and that lots of Kiwis would love that for their mortgage?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Given the member’s background, I am surprised he is taking such an Islamic approach to life.

Hon Brian Donnelly: For ex-students who moved in and out of New Zealand—for example, within 1 year for short periods, like 3 months in Australia, 4 months back here, then off to England, etc.—will the time they were out of the country be factored into calculations of interest owed, and how many bureaucrats will be required to keep track of these calculations?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The changes will involve a closer link between the migration authorities and the Inland Revenue Department. People will be allowed to be out of the country for 2 months, except if they are out doing postgraduate studies, in which case the nil interest will apply. There will be some set-up costs, obviously, but I expect that the process will be pretty much automated.

Hon Brian Donnelly: Does the Minister agree that Parliament is the only body that has a constitutional right to levy taxes, and that the public has the right to know what those taxes are for; if so, why was this $300 million per year policy not announced in the Budgets so that it could be debated by Parliament?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Because it is a Labour Party policy, and it will be debated in the right place: on the hustings. But I must say that other than a couple of whinges from the other side of the House—[Interruption]—and one down there, I have not heard of anyone who opposes the policy.

Weathertight Homes Resolution Service—Staff Functions

9. Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) to the Minister for Building Issues: Does he stand by his statement on Tuesday about the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service having Sound of Music, Cowboys and Indians, and Pacific Island theme parties: “I have approached this matter with a certain degree of jest, because it sounds so absurd.”; if so, why did the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service say yesterday that allegations it had wasted taxpayers’ money are untrue?

Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister for Building Issues): Yes, because it did sound absurd. But, of course, much that has been claimed in this House about those events by that member has been exaggerated or incorrect.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Now that the department has confirmed it has had five of those parties—and I have identified only four—over the last 14 months at taxpayers’ expense and, notably, that it flew nine staff to Auckland especially for a Pacific Island awareness day with Auckland staff, which involved kava drinking and Pacific Island dancing and cost $6,670, why did the Minister’s officials say yesterday that the department had not wasted any public money, and does that not indicate a rotten culture of extravagance in an agency that is actually meant to be fixing rotten homes?

Hon CHRIS CARTER: The five events the member has referred to, which were discussed yesterday in this House in my absence, ranged in value from $632 to $2,563, and to $6,000 for two training days on Pacific Island culture. The other functions were a Christmas function and an office-moving function. As I said on Tuesday, those are trivial matters. Their importance has been greatly inflated by that member, but they do, nevertheless, indicate a culture that has gone on in that department but that has now ceased.

Russell Fairbrother: What changes have taken place within the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service since the social functions and staff training courses occurred?

Hon CHRIS CARTER: The service has now been incorporated into the Department of Building and Housing. That took place 28 days ago. The new manager has set out the standards of financial and performance accountabilities expected of public servants. My department has been looking at ways of improving the service it provides to homeowners affected by failures in the building system created by the last National Government. I will be discussing those likely changes when I meet with affected homeowners in Auckland tomorrow.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Does the Minister agree with the comment Dr Cullen made yesterday that I should apologise for saying staff had flown between Auckland and Wellington at taxpayers’ expense for a theme party, when in fact the kava drinking and hula dancing that the nine staff flew to Auckland for was not a party but a Pacific Island awareness activity, or does he think this Government owes an apology to leaky homeowners for having staff hula dancing and kava drinking while they lived with the misery of their rotting homes?

Hon CHRIS CARTER: I have a transcript here of an interview that that member gave this morning on the radio, where he said there was an all-day kava drinking and hula dance party at one of the flashest hotels in Auckland “for just 17 people, costing $6,600”. That was a Pacific Island training day, which involved a cultural group from a local high school coming in at the end of the training session to give a performance. Those were not hula girls. There was a kava ceremony at the end of a day’s training for the staff. That member, as usual, has totally distorted the whole event by exaggeration and embellishment.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I seek leave to table a media release from the Minister’s Department of Building and Housing, which states that all the points I raised on Tuesday were correct: that the Pacific Island awareness day cost $6,679, that it involved 17 staff at a cost of $392 per staff member, and that it involved a formal kava ceremony and a local cultural group—and, furthermore, the participants have confirmed they spent some time hula dancing with the girls from the school.

Document not tabled.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: What does it say about the politically correct culture in the public service under this Government that an agency charged with fixing leaky homes, which is thousands of cases behind in its workload, sees fit to have a Pacific Island awareness day, and how many other Government agencies that we have not yet found are engaging in that sort of politically correct nonsense?

Hon CHRIS CARTER: What it does say about this Government is that we set up a service to fix a problem that the previous National Government, which that member belonged to, created.

Primary Health Organisations—Reports on Future Changes

10. DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki) to the Minister of Health: What reports, if any, has she received on future changes to primary health organisations?

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Acting Minister of Health): On Monday I read a report in the New Zealand Herald that talked about rationalising so-called inefficient primary health organisations in small communities whether they served rural areas or specific groups in cities and regions. Rationalisation, in my view, is just another name for cut-backs. Small communities would be deprived of the ability to determine the health services they need. This is what the National Party proposes to do to pay for its tax cuts. That is the party that says it supports choice.

Darren Hughes: Can the Minister explain how primary health organisations are performing this valuable role in our smaller communities?

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: As it happens, yes, I can give many examples of smaller primary health organisations relating to specific community needs in a way that larger organisations would find more difficult. Examples include the Lake Taupō primary health organisation’s home insulation project in Mangakino, the Mornington primary health organisation’s door-to-door transport service in Dunedin, Ngāti Porou Hauora’s diabetes programme on the East Coast that promotes practical activities, and the Canterbury Community primary health organisation’s project to improve the oral health of teenagers. National calls such primary health organisations inefficient, but I say they understand their communities in a way that National never will.

Heather Roy: What is the Minister of Health’s response to the independent report, Review of Primary Health Organisation Management Services, commissioned by her own ministry, which states: “PHO management is deficient in performance monitoring and reporting requirements, business planning, research and analysis, community liaison, development of protocols, quality management, and referred services.”, and how is she intending to address this damning criticism of primary health organisations, especially smaller organisations?

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: I am aware of that problem. There were some small primary health organisations that received insufficient funding to adequately carry out those management services. This Government has increased the funding so that they can indeed address the problems raised in the report.

Judy Turner: Does the Minister agree that scrapping primary health organisations would mean burdening New Zealanders with yet another restructuring of our health system, and wastage of significant investment in primary health, two things that they do not want; but would he consider that, if we are to continue with primary health organisations, they do need to undergo significant streamlining and coordination to ensure that the resources are not squandered?

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: Yes, I do agree that the last thing health practitioners in the primary area need is radical change. We are seeing some outstanding results from the good work that primary health organisations are doing up and down the country. We acknowledge there will have to be ongoing improvement in some areas, but there are numerous examples that show, and many general practitioners up and down this country who now think, that primary health organisations are one of the best things this Government has done in the whole area of health care.

Traffic Infringement Notices—Policy

11. Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay Of Plenty) to the Minister of Police: How many hours will the police dedicate to speed control this financial year compared with last financial year, and how many traffic offence notices and infringement offence notices are expected to be issued this financial year compared with the past financial year?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Police): I am advised that the hours dedicated to speed control for the 2005-06 year will be approximately the same as those for the last financial year. The police are not expected to issue any number of offence notices, and any that they do issue will be to people who are breaking the law. The latest information I have is that the number of tickets issued during the January-March quarter showed a decrease of 8 percent against the quarterly average, and that the number of speed camera offences has dropped over the last year. The police and I hope the reduction continues.

Hon Tony Ryall: Why has the Government cut the number of hours that police will spend targeting drink-drivers this year?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: Because the police each year look at what the need is, and where the drop-off is, and make sure they are policing our roads better. I can tell the member that the number of fatal accidents over the last few years is a lot better than it was in the previous 50 years. Fewer people per 10,000 people have been killed on the road. [Interruption] The member opposite may say that is rubbish, but he would not know because he does not do his homework.

Martin Gallagher: In the light of the Minister’s previous answer, can he detail what reports he has seen on the result of the Government’s road safety strategy designed to save life?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: The Land Transport New Zealand website indicates that road fatalities per 10,000 of population in the last few years are the lowest for more than 50 years. I am further advised that 74,922—

Gerry Brownlee: What about warrants on the cars?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: I will repeat this, seeing that Mr Brownlee is getting excited. I am further advised that 74,922 fewer speed camera tickets were issued last year. The message is getting through.

Peter Brown: Is our road toll fatality record inferior or superior to that of nations such as the UK, Holland, and Sweden; if it is inferior—as I suspect it is—will the Minister tell us why?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: I will get that information for the member, but what I can say is that our having the best figures for the last 50 years is something we can be proud of. The average, mean speed on our roads is dropping dramatically.

Hon Tony Ryall: Given that the Government’s own latest available data shows an increase in the proportion of crashes and casualties where drink-driving is a contributing factor, why would Labour cut the effort against drink-driving, or has revenue gathering become even more of a priority for the Government?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: It is not about revenue earning. That member must realise that $216 million goes into road safety, and only $100 million is collected in fines.

Peter Brown: What is the Minister’s view of a dedicated traffic policing force, separate from the police force, my noting that when in Opposition he voted against National’s amalgamation of the two forces—what is his view now?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: When John Banks brought it in I thought that it was not a good idea. John Banks now thinks the same; so do I.

Peter Brown: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. We are just trying to work out what that answer meant. I wonder whether it is convenient for the Minister to talk to John Banks, then he can tell us what he really thinks.

Madam SPEAKER: I will say that the Minister addressed the question but he may have not have done it satisfactorily for the member.

Hon Tony Ryall: Why will the Government not use the extra hours funded for the police to issue even more speeding tickets this year, to target drink-drivers?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: The police always target drink-driving. They have done that all the time. The member did not listen earlier. The number of speeding tickets is going down, and the member does not like it. In a recent DigiPoll survey published in the New Zealand Herald, about 70 percent of people thought we were getting it right.

Hon Tony Ryall: I seek leave to table two documents. One is table 16 from the safety administration programme, which shows that the Government is cutting the police effort on drink-driving and putting it into additional speeding tickets.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

Hon Tony Ryall: Secondly, I seek leave to table a document from Land Transport New Zealand that shows that the number of deaths per 100,000 people has increased, and that the road toll is perilously close to that of previous years.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

Genetically Modified Food—Contamination Test

12. IAN EWEN-STREET (Green) to the Minister of Agriculture: When did the Government obtain a copy of the positive GM contamination test announced yesterday and what does it say?

Hon JIM SUTTON (Minister of Agriculture): The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry was alerted to the positive test result on Monday. However, that screening test is only a basic one, and further testing is required in order to get information about the GM presence. Hopefully, that testing will be available within a couple of weeks.

Ian Ewen-Street: When did the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry first hear about the contamination, and why did it take so long for the test certificate to be provided to the Government?

Hon JIM SUTTON: The industry participants have provided the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry with assurances that the grain is voluntarily embargoed. The industry has amply demonstrated its integrity in that regard. The ministry issued biosecurity directions on Wednesday to secure the grain after necessary legal procedures.

David Parker: Do we have systems in place to deal with this situation?

Hon JIM SUTTON: We certainly do. I have confidence in the work of our officials. After all, we have dealt with adventitious GM presence in maize previously on several occasions.

Hon Brian Donnelly: Does the Minister stand by his statement made on television last night that New Zealanders opposed to GE do not mind eating a little bit of GE food?

Hon JIM SUTTON: That comment was made in a somewhat different context. I must say that the law of the land allows for zero tolerance of unauthorised GM material, and that law is the one we are enforcing.

Ian Ewen-Street: Is the Government now willing to act on the unanimous recommendation of the select committee inquiry into “corngate” that legislation be passed to require testing laboratories to immediately make available any test certificate when requested to do so by the Government?

Hon JIM SUTTON: The Government sees no need for such a requirement. The industry has demonstrated its complete responsibility and we do not think it is right that we should treat it as though it were a public enemy.

Ian Ewen-Street: Is the Government willing to admit yet that there will continue to be regular contamination events unless we have a liability regime that holds the GE patent holder, or the importer of the seed, liable for all costs caused by the contamination; if not, why not?

Hon JIM SUTTON: As I said, the Government does not see any merit in treating the people involved in a situation like this as public enemies when they have demonstrated good faith and their responsibility. We will continue to try to tighten up the controls to prevent any unauthorised GM material entering New Zealand, but members must realise that we are operating on the very limit of detectability at the lower end. So it is that one can never rule out another such incident.

Ian Ewen-Street: Does the Minister agree with the comments of Hugh Ritchie of Federated Farmers that our overseas markets for maize rely on our GE-free status, and that ongoing contamination scares would be damaging to our reputation; if not, why not?

Hon JIM SUTTON: New Zealand is not a significant exporter of maize, but nevertheless, we have a very high-integrity system for authorising, or certifying, the content of what we export. We will continue to the best of our scientific ability to make sure that that remains of high reputation.

Ian Ewen-Street: Can the Minister name one GE food product that can be grown in New Zealand for which there is any demand in any of our major export markets; if so, what is that food, and what is the demand?

Hon JIM SUTTON: To the best of my knowledge there are no GM foods produced in New Zealand, or no foods produced from GM plants grown in New Zealand. Almost all the GM technology employed commercially around the world so far—all 80 million hectares or so of GM crops—are types of crops that are not commonly grown in New Zealand at all.

Amended Answers to Oral Questions

Question No. 7 to Minister, 26 July

Hon PAUL SWAIN (Minister of Labour): On Tuesday, 26 July, in answer to a supplementary question to question No. 7, I gave figures relating to the number of backlog cases investigated by the fraud and investigations unit of the Immigration Service. I have since been advised that those figures were not correct. I will provide the correct figures to the member and to the Clerk’s Office as soon as they come to hand.

GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I thank the Minister for his explanation; that is fine. But seriously, is this the first opportunity he has had to make that explanation? Has it really taken from question time on Tuesday through to the end of question time on Thursday to find out that he had this problem? Did he have that statement in his pocket when he came into the House at 2 o’clock? Did he have it at any stage yesterday—perhaps last night? For the Government to try to bury its mistakes at little moments when that may not be noticed is not a fair use of the Standing Orders, at all.

Madam SPEAKER: I thank the member for his contribution. The Minister was required to make a statement as soon as the matter came to his attention on the day. He has done that. The matter, of course, is not open to debate.

Estimates Debate

In Committee

Debate resumed from 27 July on the Appropriation (2005/06 Estimates) Bill.

Vote Health (continued)

DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki): In Vote Health in the coming financial year we will see the real investments that can be made in public services under a Labour-Progressive Government. This Government is good for people’s health. When we pick up the Budget, pick up any community newspaper, visit the local primary health organisation, visit the local Plunket nurse, call in to see a general practitioner, or go out there with the people working in our communities on health, we can see the massive inroads that have been made in terms of improving the health of ordinary New Zealanders over the last 6 years. We can also see what is planned for the coming year.

We have a very clear plan for health—for public health, for primary health, and for getting more operations done right throughout the sector. Then we have to go into the primary health organisations—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Why are twice as many people on a sickness benefit?

DARREN HUGHES: Nick Smith asks about the sickness benefit, in terms of Vote Health. I am not going to reply to him about that; I will let him think about that himself. The total number of people on benefits in New Zealand has fallen from over 400,000 to less than 300,000 in the last 6 years, under this Government. A quarter fewer people are on all welfare rolls than ever before. Just last week the Minister for Social Development and Employment put out a report that shows that the growth in sickness benefit numbers has halved, to just 3 percent. So the big increases that we have seen in the number of people on the sickness benefit have come right down. But even if we are uncharitable, as the Opposition members are, and just focus on that, we can still see that the total number of people on all welfare benefits has gone down, from over 400,000 under National to under 300,000 under Labour. That is progress. And, of course, we have halved unemployment in this country in the last 6 years, putting more people back into work.

In terms of Vote Health there has been a record spend—40 percent more than when we became the Government in 1999—and that is making a huge difference. I think of two projects that are being funded by the Hon Annette King in this financial year, which we are discussing in these estimates. One is the plan to conduct another 7,500 cataract operations. Those operations are life-changing for the people who receive them. Normally they are our senior citizens, who need access to that kind of surgery in order to improve their lives. This Government is delivering it, because we are prepared to put the money into the public health system. It is not for us to go around slashing taxes for our rich mates. We are not going to do that; we are putting money into the health system. The National Party members are interjecting wildly, but I ask them this question: what is their health policy? Silence. What is their tax policy? Silence. At the moment the Committee of the whole House is considering Vote Health, which is paid for by the revenue the Government receives. In both those areas, health and revenue, we have not had one policy from the National Party members. They are not using this estimates debate, 7½ weeks out from a general election, to front up to people with a health policy or a tax policy.

Let me ask Nick Smith this: would the 7,500 extra cataract operations stay under a National Government? Would the doubling of hip and knee operations stay?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Absolutely!

DARREN HUGHES: Nick Smith says “Absolutely!”. Of course, he paused for a long time before he said that.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: There will be more.

DARREN HUGHES: Oh, there will be more, he says. So we now know that National wants to spend more than Labour on its health policy. Well, this is a very good debate. It is no wonder that Simon Power is keeping very quiet; he knows that that does not add up. What about National’s tax policy? That has not come forward, either. So the National members are going to spend a whole lot more, but they will not tell us what their policy is. We have gone from having Roger Sowry, to Lynda Scott, to Katherine Rich, to Judith Collins, to Paul Hutchison as National’s spokesperson on health. National has gone right through those people, sacking them left, right, and centre—there is no problem there. And on the revenue policy, nothing has been said in terms of tax.

There has been an absolute flip-flop on health funding. Don Brash said, first of all, when he was asked about primary health organisation funding, that he did not know what a primary health organisation is. Well, he would not know, would he? He would not spend any time meeting with ordinary people about their needs. So that was his first point.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: How many ordinary people know what a primary health organisation is?

DARREN HUGHES: The three primary health organisations in my electorate are making a big difference to people in my constituency. Why does Nick Smith not find out what is happening in Nelson?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Because it’s a mess.

DARREN HUGHES: Oh, right! So for an old person to pay only $3 for a prescription is a mess, is it? For a senior citizen, a poor old pensioner, to be able to go out to pick up a prescription is a mess, according to Nick Smith. What National wants to do is to use that money—the money that those old people have been able to save by paying only $3 for a prescription—and hock it off to its rich Tory mates. The National members will not tell us how they would do that, because they are too embarrassed. National has no health policy. There has been no word on its tax policy. It will not tell us what it would do in respect of cataract operations, or hip or joint operations. The National members cannot tell us what they would do with regard to the primary heath organisations. It does not add up.

I say to people that National is bad for their health. If people think the flu was bad this winter, they should imagine how bad it would be if Don Brash were running the country, with no health policy and no tax policy.

Clayton Cosgrove: “Blumsky-itis”!

DARREN HUGHES: Well, I do not want to do down that path, in terms of the health policy. I am not sure whether any primary health organisation could fix those particular problems. People should vote Labour.

DIANNE YATES (Labour—Hamilton East): I wish to speak on this whole matter of health, and I wish to thank the Government for the $200 million that is going into Waikato Hospital and Thames Hospital to improve emergency services in those hospitals. I am very thankful that my family has benefited from that money already, and so have many, many other people in the Waikato and the Coromandel. I am also pleased that Helen Clark spoke recently at a Grey Power meeting in Hamilton. The local chair of Grey Power was able to say, with his walking stick in his hand: “I no longer need this, because I have had my hip operation.” There are 7,500 people who are also pleased that they can see more clearly because they have had their cataract operations. There are people whose prescription costs are now down to $3.

Why does Mr Smith have to scream and yell on the other side of the Chamber instead of saying thank you to the Government on behalf of all the good people in Nelson who are receiving their hip operations? I probably know more people in Nelson who have received operations than he does.

We are very, very pleased that the primary health organisations are moving outwards. We had a briefing at the Health Committee yesterday, about meningococcal meningitis and how it is already apparent that immunisations are affecting health, particularly in Manukau where they began, and how they are having results. We are very, very pleased that the Hon Annette King, Minister of Health, has seen fit to continue with the meningococcal immunisation programme. We heard the National Party health spokesperson, whatever his name is—Dr—

Darren Hughes: Brash, is it?

DIANNE YATES: No, I do not think it is Dr Brash.

Darren Hughes: Hutchison?

DIANNE YATES: Yes, it is Dr Hutchison, and he was critical of the flu vaccination, but who did we see lining up to get a flu jab? We saw Dr Hutchison himself! He made sure he got one. We are very, very pleased the programme is continuing.

Another very good aspect of the Budget is the continued ring-fencing of money for mental health. Labour ring-fenced that money and will continue to do so. We are very, very pleased about that. Do we hear nurses saying how sorry they are they did not get a pay rise? No, because nurses did get their pay rise and we are pleased about that.

In the Waikato we are very, very pleased about Project Energize. That research programme is looking at the health needs of children in schools. Those children get free milk and free fruit. We are carefully monitoring the rate of reduction in obesity amongst children in our schools. This project is panning out well and making a great deal of progress. We thank the district health board and the Hon Annette King for the fruit in schools initiative, and the tremendous amount of progress on preventive health care for our children. Once again, that is a very, very good policy from the Minister of Health. I am very proud of the Government. Labour Governments always perform very well on the basic needs of society—namely, health, education, housing, and jobs. Beat that!

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Associate Minister of Health): I take the opportunity to acknowledge the work of my colleague Annette King, and to provide the nation with one good reason to vote this Government back in—that is, its performance on health.

I encourage National members to read the newspapers occasionally and find out the facts. The New Zealand Herald ran a report the other day stating that reduced hospital admissions in south Auckland may be an early sign that the pouring of millions of dollars into primary health care is indeed making a difference. That is a great sign. The National Party has criticised us time and time again for putting money into primary health care, but we have done that on the basis that prevention is better than cure. If National were to get anywhere near the levers of power again, this country would revert to a market-driven, blindly ideological health system. Its members believe that the market will deliver to everyone and that a competitive system will deliver to each and every New Zealander. If New Zealand ever has to face again the disastrous experiment that was tried in the 1990s, then the health of each and every New Zealander will slip backwards—except for those who are wealthy enough to buy into their own private health system. People such as Mr David Carter, Mr Nick Smith, and Mr Power, who get nice big fat salaries, will be able to buy their own health care.

The least we can do is ask the National Party for its alternative health policy. There is silence. The newspaper quotes Dr Hutchison as saying that National is not planning to unveil its health policy for several weeks, so he could speak only in principle. Quite frankly, I did not know National had any principles. That is an oxymoron. We will be watching very closely.

New Zealanders know, be they general practitioners, the elderly, or the parents of young children, that the money this Government is spending on primary health care is making a real difference. There were general practitioners who were sceptical. They were not very enthusiastic about primary health organisations. On my travels up and down the country, and around rural areas, I have asked general practitioners upfront what they think about their primary health organisation. They have said they were a little wary at the start, but now see the real value starting to flow through—not only in better health-care for their patients, not only in better support for the general practitioners themselves, but in the fact that the organisations are working for each and every community. [Interruption]

If Nick Smith showed a little more support for the primary health organisation in Nelson, and if some of his Tory mates would not try to undermine it, then I am sure we would make a whole lot more progress in Nelson, as well.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Why have 50 percent Māori on the PHO board?

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: I am not going to say much more. The member asks why we have Māori on primary health organisation boards. Do members know the horrible reality for a Māori adult living in New Zealand—in Nelson as well? Do members know how many fewer years a Māori adult male in New Zealand—including in Nick Smith’s electorate—lives? They do not. The fact is that the average lifespan of an adult Māori male in Hawke’s Bay is 11 years shorter than that of a Pākehā.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Keep talking about it. It is costing you votes. They see it as PC crap.

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: The one thing about New Zealanders is they are fair-minded. When they hear the facts—that if one is a Māori one lives, on average, 11 years less than a Pākehā does, they know something has to be done.

Hon David Carter: Why put 50 percent of them on the board?

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: Mr Carter does not want them on the board, either, because he will not look after Māori; neither will Nick Smith. They will not acknowledge the reality that through the 1990s the National Government’s competitive-driven privatisation attempts in the health system led to greater disparities in health status and greater disparities in access to health services, but over the last 6 years Labour has worked very hard to close that gap.

I am not going to say too much more other than to say we are very proud of our huge investment in health care. Annette King has worked hard to extract the money from Michael Cullen. We have endorsed that. We are going to spend that money to provide a public health system that is available to each and every New Zealander, regardless of one’s wealth, regardless of what school one went to—I say to Mr Carter—and regardless of where one lives. Because that is a basic tenet of the New Zealand way of life, and Labour is proud of it.

LESLEY SOPER (Labour): I am a member of the Health Committee and the former elected deputy chair of the Southland District Health Board. I am proud of what this Government has achieved, and proud to have such an excellent Minister of Health as Annette King.

I was the deputy chair of the Southland District Health Board when it opened the new $70 million hospital in Invercargill last year—a facility funded by this Labour-led Government. It is one of the many new, effective, and efficient hospitals that Labour has funded, because we believe in excellence, not in old-style buildings and services not suited to modern New Zealanders.

This Labour-led Government has been exceptionally, excellently, and outstandingly good for health. We found a mess in 1999. The Tories had gone through user-pays, bed night charges, the loss of professionals, and hospital closures. May I say that the Tories had also for years done such things as tell my elderly father, for whom I cared, that he would wait years on a public health list for a cataract operation. What has Labour done? The Tories had no ideology for health, no real belief that health was absolutely a public service and a public good. Labour came in with a philosophy that health was a public good. We actually talked about health promotion and illness prevention as a goal—not just about a sickness model, as the Tories like to speak of. We have thought as a Government about the future of good health for this nation, and we have a New Zealand Health Strategy that promotes that.

What has that meant? It has meant increased access to affordable primary health care since Labour has been in Government. Now, 3.7 million New Zealanders are benefiting from being enrolled in a primary health organisation, which means that by 2007 they will all pay cheaper doctors’ fees and prescription charges. We have delivered on our promise to deliver double the number of hip and knee operations this year, and I am exceptionally proud of the fact that we have also provided funding for up to 7,500 more cataract operations in the next 3 years—something that my father would have benefited from if the Tories had bothered to think it important to provide for elderly New Zealanders. We have invested $200 million to fight back against meningococcal meningitis, because we realise how important that is for the health of New Zealanders overall. Lastly, we have funded district health boards more than half a billion dollars over the next 4 years to help them meet the costs of this year’s historic pay increase for nurses. It was long overdue and well deserved, and has now been delivered; with Government funding, it is able to be provided over 4 years.

We have been an exceptionally good Government for health. We are proud of what we have done, and we are looking forward to doing a great deal more to improve health and to turn round those disastrous years of a National Government that could not keep a Minister of Health for 5 minutes.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Vote Health be agreed to.

Ayes 61

New Zealand Labour 51; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Noes 36

New Zealand National 26; ACT New Zealand 9; Māori Party 1.

Abstentions 19

New Zealand First 13; Green Party 6.

Vote Health agreed to.

Vote Agriculture and Forestry

Hon DAVID CARTER (National): In the dying days of this Labour Government, I hope the Minister of Agriculture, Jim Sutton, will take the opportunity to tell New Zealand what Labour’s position on public access is. What is Labour’s position on removing farmers’ rights to restrict public access to privately owned farms in New Zealand? Last Thursday Mr Chris Carter, the Minister of Conservation, said at a public meeting of his mates from the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society that the legislation was finalised, that the decisions had been made, and that as soon as a Labour Government was returned to power, the legislation would be frogmarched through this Parliament.

That contrasts completely with what Mr Sutton keeps saying. He has said to the farmers of New Zealand that the matter will now require further consultation, and that no decisions have been made. I ask the Minister in the chair, Mr Sutton, to take the opportunity to clarify who is telling the truth. Is the debate finalised? Is the legislation finalised? Is Mr Chris Carter, the Minister of Conservation, actually telling the truth, or is Jim Sutton to be believed when he says to Federated Farmers and the like that the Government is prepared to continue genuine consultation? I say to the Minister that he cannot have it both ways. New Zealanders are fed up with the trickery of this Government, which continues to prance around New Zealand saying one thing to one audience, and another thing to another audience.

That brings me to another point I want to know today: what has been the Department of Conservation’s role in the preparation of this public access policy? I ask that because during the examination we became aware of a number of consultants that the ministry had used in the preparation of reports. We asked for copies of those reports, and the Minister in the chair, Jim Sutton, agreed to give them to the select committee. He subsequently came back and changed his mind, saying that, in actual fact, there were no such reports, and that that money had been paid to staff. I became immediately suspicious when I saw that one Ann Vogle, who is a personal friend of the Prime Minister, received $35,000 for work on walking access policy. That lady, besides being a personal friend of the Prime Minister—and I acknowledge that that in itself is not a crime—had apparently been working for the Department of Conservation immediately prior to her secondment to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to collect $35,000 for this policy work.

But that is only part of it. Mr Sutton’s department spent, in total, nearly a quarter of a million dollars sourcing information from what we were told by members of that department were consultant assistants with specialist skills. When we looked more deeply at this stuff, we found that it was paid to groups like Careering Options Ltd and Wheeler Campbell Consulting Ltd, which I understand to be recruitment agencies. The Minister needs to tell the Committee how that could ever be considered consultation assistance to get specialist advice.

The Minister ought to tell us how much resource has been wasted on the development of the public access policy, how many man-hours the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has put into this, and how many man-hours the Department of Conservation has put into it.

While he is at it, the Minister might want to tell us the relationship between the New Zealand Fish and Game Council and the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society in this regard, because I do not think New Zealand farmers have been told the truth. We certainly have not been told the truth when the Minister attempts to tell us that the policy is now back for genuine consultation. That is not the case, and the Minister hangs his head because he knows that is true.

This is the greatest issue worrying rural New Zealand. That is why rural New Zealand has completely lost confidence in the Minister of Agriculture. Never before in the history of New Zealand have Federated Farmers passed so many votes of no confidence in that Minister.

CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri): I have much pleasure in following the previous speaker. For the uninitiated out there in the real world, that was the would-be member for Banks Peninsula—the member who would like to take over from Ruth Dyson. He is the man who described the people and the area of Woolston as akin—and I will be careful what I say—to excrement. That is the technical term for a substance that the people of Woolston now realise he is full of. I invite David Carter to get on his soapbox and to go down to Woolston, to go into the footy club, to go into the Woolston Workingmen’s Club, and to use the same words that he used—I believe it was to Tracy Watkins—and to tell them to their face. To use another member’s term of reference, that member is a lion in the House and a lamb in Woolston, because he will not front up. That is the credibility that that member has. He is the—

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The member needs to come back to the estimates.

CLAYTON COSGROVE: Indeed I will. He is the National spokesperson on agriculture. He is the man who represents a party whose leader said that we should cover up the foot-and-mouth scare—that was Dr Brash’s contribution—possibly with the substance the member talks about in respect of the people of Woolston. But Dr Brash said that we should cover it up.

In these appropriations, there are large amounts of money increased every year for biosecurity, to protect our borders—

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Biosecurity is the next one.

CLAYTON COSGROVE: Yes, in terms of agriculture. The money in these appropriations is to protect our farming communities, to protect livestock—and what is the greatest plank in the National Party agricultural policy? Don Brash’s original thought is to cover it up and to put our markets in jeopardy.

I want to look at the Sustainable Farming Fund and our achievements as represented in these appropriations. It was National that surrendered, waved the white flag, and sold out every rural area and region in this country. That is its legacy. Do we hear that member on the other side of the Chamber talk about that?

Half my electorate in Waimakariri is rural. I am really looking forward to standing up in places like Cust, Swannanoa, and Oxford, and talking about the heartland service centres that have been put back into rural areas by the appropriations of our Government. We did not sell them out. We got heartland services back in there—there are 13 or more of them. That member will stand up with me on the stump, and I invite him to tell people in rural areas that he was part of a Government that sold them out by withdrawing services and shutting them down.

Over the life of this Government, we have seen reforms through the Primary Production Committee that I sit on, in the dairy, pipfruit, kiwifruit, hops, wine, and meat industries. It is worth noting that those issues were brought to the Government by the industries concerned, and the Government then accepted that and facilitated the reform, as did the Minister of Agriculture. That is our legacy; that is what we have done. I always say not to trust politicians by what they say but to judge them by what they do—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You’re gone!

CLAYTON COSGROVE:—and that member over there, the person with “Blumsky-itis”, Dr Nick Smith—“I cannot recall; I cannot remember.”—will be judged as well on his legacy when he was a Minister in a National Government.

We have returned services to rural areas with the Sustainable Farming Fund and with what we have done with apprenticeships, as noted in these appropriations. The rural sector is no different from any sector in this country. It has the positive problem that there is a shortage of skilled staff. It is a positive problem, because it is a problem related to expansion and growth in the industry. We have 9,000 apprentices on the go, many of whom will take up skilled positions in the rural and farming sector. So I say to the National Party that it should get up and tell us what its legacy is—tell us, through the Chair, what National as a party did for the rural sector. It should show us the reform it put through that was supported by the rural sector.

The member got it wrong on apples. Thanks to National, the apple industry was torn apart, because that party would not do what the industry wanted. National got it wrong on apples, but who fixed it? Labour did. We put the legislation through. I believe that the National member at that time, Mr Carter, the member from Woolston, was not even on the Primary Production Committee.

R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First): It is interesting for anybody listening to hear Labour and National members talk about the small things that are happening in agriculture. We are talking about the estimates for the agricultural portfolio, and I want people to think about a couple of things.

Firstly, I want them to think about the $9 billion deficit that was announced post-March this year, about how it happened, and about how it will be resolved. How did it happen? It happened because we have had a boom of consumerism in this country. Our exporters, who are mainly agricultural people, have been working away day and night, and they have been earning record prices for their produce, I must say. While that has been happening, consumers have been bringing untold produce into this country, mainly from China, and people have been spending up large. We have ended up with our overdraft—in normal people’s terms—growing to $9 billion.

In the meantime, what is the National Party talking about? It is talking about land access. Labour wants it; National does not, and neither does New Zealand First. I want to talk to members a little about land access. I was at a Federated Farmers conference last Tuesday in Hamilton, and that subject was not even mentioned. Well, it was mentioned but it was not an issue. One ACT party member, namely Gerrard Eckhoff, has been going all around this country for 6 months in a yellow bus, trying to drum up some enthusiasm by farmers for making that subject an election issue. The Minister of Agriculture was at the conference, so he knows that it was not an issue. National was—I do not think I can use the word I was thinking of—working in tandem with ACT, to make it the big issue of this election. Never mind the dollar, and never mind that the farmers will have to pay back that $9 billion! All that those members can do is run around the country trying to stir up this business of land access—for which we do not even have a bill, I might tell members. When we do, New Zealand First will oppose it, and everyone knows that.

But land access is not an issue for farmers, because the things that concern them are things like the dollar—the comparative worth of the dollar with the US dollar. The things that concern farmers are the inputs they need. The price of land is a concern to farmers, and the Kyoto Protocol is a concern to farmers. The Kyoto agreement was signed by the National Government in the early days, and was continued by this Labour Government. We are not allowed to use coal in our electricity generation. We are not allowed even to use coal in our homes, so the rumour is going up home. But we are allowed to export coal to countries that are not bound by the Kyoto Protocol.

I am talking about that because it is yet another burden for our farmers to overcome. They will have to claw back $9 billion, plus some more. That money will not come from computer software. It will not come even from wine exports, although they will be a contributor. It will come from the same industries that have set the standard of living for this country for years past, and will for years into the future. New Zealand First is concerned to talk about the real issues for farmers, which are the dollar, input costs, and the prices for their commodities.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN (Minister for Transport Safety): It is a pleasure to be here today to talk on the Appropriation (2005/06 Estimates) Bill, and particularly to talk about the primary production sector with regard to the agriculture and forestry estimates we are doing. I am a member of the Primary Production Committee, and it has been a vastly more interesting committee to be on, I have to say, than I had ever imagined it would be. Coming from Taranaki, an area where agriculture is a very important part of the region’s make-up—some would say it is the backbone of the province’s income—it is certainly pleasing to me to see that record prices have been enjoyed for primary products for some time. New Zealand is doing well, but I do know that those things are dependent on the value of the New Zealand dollar and on what the markets do.

I think that it is very worthwhile to consider the work we have had before the Primary Production Committee for some time, because it shows the legislative change that the Government has been involved in. I think that by any measure the select committee has been busy. It has had some very good members working very hard on issues, and when we look at the major reforms that have occurred in the dairy industry, the pipfruit industry, the kiwifruit industry, the wine, wool, and meat industries, and even in hops, we see that we have done a lot of work on that committee in responding to the needs of the agricultural and rural constituents of New Zealand. They have made their needs and views very clear.The committee has also done, of course, a lot of work in the aquacultural area, on fisheries, and has looked into some very interesting issues. The Sustainable Farming Fund has, I think, been a really good Government initiative. I am sure other speakers will talk in detail about that, but I want to say that that fund is aimed at helping to tackle obstacles to economic, social, and environmental sustainability in rural communities. I think we would all agree that the fund has been of great benefit to the rural sector.

It seems to me that a lot of issues come into this portfolio area. So far in this debate we have heard about communication, apprenticeships, prices, the value of the New Zealand dollar, land access issues, Kyoto Protocol credits, and transport—all sorts of things come into this area. Let us just start on a few of those issues. Let us look at apprenticeships. They are something I, as a member of Parliament, have been on about, to the point of being like a needle in a cracked record, for many, many years. I am delighted to see that the rural sector, particularly, has picked up on apprenticeships.

Just this week in Parliament the 4,000th Modern Apprentice in the motor trades was presented by the Hon Trevor Mallard with a plaque to celebrate being the 4,000th young person to get a Modern Apprenticeship in the automotive trades. He is from a small rural business. As an automotive electrician from the town of Matamata, he is not a city dweller but a rural person whose company has been in business for many years and absolutely depends on a successful rural policy to remain in business—a successful agricultural policy that actually delivers for rural communities. Without the farming sector doing well, small rural businesses close—it is as simple as that. That particular case was a very good sign. The young man concerned was able to talk about the others he knew of in rural businesses, and he looks forward, no doubt, to owning a rural business one day himself. His employer had bought the business from the gentleman who had owned it when he had worked there as an apprentice himself. So that sort of generational change is going on in rural districts.

How does access to broadband fit into that? We need to have good communications, in an increasingly technological world. In the select committee we have often talked about the need for good communications and access to broadband.

Just recently, we have seen the very successful work done by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in the containment exercise in relation to the foot-and-mouth scare on Waiheke Island. We saw a report in Parliament earlier on the very good exercise that occurred prior to that in the Wairarapa, looking at how we can prepare for any major disastrous incursion of a disease like foot-and-mouth, or perhaps an outbreak of tuberculosis amongst cattle, etc. Those preparations can only be made when there is funding to do so. Funding depends on taxation, and National has not told us where its tax reduction would come from.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I want to raise this afternoon some very serious issues in respect of the forest industry, which depends on the Government to regulate properly the treatment of timber and to ensure that New Zealanders can have confidence in timber products. That matters because thousands and thousands of New Zealanders have investments in the forestry sector.

I draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that on 11 July, after being approached by a number of players in the timber industry, the Government’s Department of Building and Housing approved a timber product, quite fraudulently and quite wrongly, that is causing huge disruption within the timber industry. My concerns at the time were threefold. The first was the way in which the T1.2 timber was being quite wrongly marketed as the equivalent of H—

Simon Power: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I apologise to the member for interrupting him, but the Hon David Cunliffe has, while out of his seat, been volleying a barrage at my colleague during the course of his contribution. I ask you to consider the fact that, although this is a robust debate, Ministers who shift their seats to advantage themselves—and we are used to Mr Cunliffe doing that—should be careful when interjecting on members who are trying to make a valid contribution to the debate.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I thank the member, but I would just point out that there has been a fair degree of constant barraging from the Opposition side on many—

Simon Power: Out of their seats?

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Mr Power, I am ruling on this point of order. I ask the member to continue.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I raised three serious concerns about the T1.2 product. The first was that it was being grossly mismarketed as being identical to fully treated timber—timber that has been treated all the way through. My second concern was that the product had not been properly tested. My third concern was that the conditions put on the use of T1.2 timber were totally impractical—this idea that when a builder cut the timber, he would have a paintbrush handy with which to paint over the surface, to make sure the timber was properly treated.

When I raised those concerns the Government came out with a number of statements. The first thing it said was that this was the very first it had heard of this problem. In fact, five times on the Close Up programme the Government said that this was the first it had ever heard of this problem. Well, I have a letter in my hand from the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors, dated 3 June last year, which states: “This product in its accreditation, with only a light covering of boron to the outer timber, has been given the same status and standing as a fully core-penetrated timber product, and this is obvious nonsense.” Greg O’Sullivan said: “I am very concerned about the situation of this envelope treatment of timber. It is going to lead to a future disaster.” That is what they wrote to the Government and said.

Later in that interview the Government’s Minister said: “Don’t worry, the timber has been extensively tested.”, and that is where I want to take things a step further today. The testing was done by a Dr Mick Hedley of Scion, which was formerly the Forest Research Institute. He is the person whom the Government is relying on in backing the T1.2 product. Let me quote what this email stated: “T1.2 is a misnomer invented by Tenon which is totally misleading, mischievous, and which I disagree with entirely.” That is from the scientist whom the Government is relying on in backing this timber product. [Interruption] Mr Cunliffe says it does not matter; I tell him it does. It matters because 10,000 homes out there are being built of this timber, and the scientist whom the Government is relying on in backing it says that.

Let me tell members what else the scientist stated: “We tested the active ingredient as a brush-on formulation. We were never asked to test the commercial product.” Thousands of homes around New Zealand are being built with this timber nicknamed “Agent Orange”, and it has never ever been tested. What is worse is that after the billion-dollar leaky home scandal the Government had a duty to ensure that in future timber was properly treated and safe, and it is not doing that. Again I quote Dr Mick Hedley: “I believe the real issue is that the conditions of use, of which I was not consulted at any stage, are impractical from a building perspective, and are probably incompatible with conditions that prevail on many building sites. This is where the Government probably got it wrong.” So the scientist behind this product is saying that it is all very well for him to do the testing, but if we set conditions that are totally inappropriate for the average building site, his testing proves nothing. Members should remember that builders, on cutting this product, are meant to open a tin of paint and paint over the areas they have cut, and that the timber is not meant to get wet. Well, a building about 100 metres from here is made of this “Agent Orange” timber, it is getting wet as we speak, and this Government does nothing.

Now I raise the most serious concern, which is the scientist’s last quote: “I also have concerns that the Government was empowered to approve alternate solutions for preserving timber when there are perfectly adequate standards available. I have a particular concern that there was no public consultation on this action, which is a requirement of all New Zealand standards. It undermines the purpose and the status of standards.” The very scientist whom the Government is relying on in approving a product involved in 50 percent of houses constructed in the last 12 months is saying that this product undermines the standard of treatment in New Zealand. I say “What a disgrace!”.

Three weeks ago the Minister said that the department would have a review of how that product got accredited, and that the review would be completed within a fortnight. Well, that was a week ago; why have we heard nothing? I will tell people why. It is because the Government wants to wait until after Parliament has risen before it fesses up. What is wrong with that is that builders and homeowners are again being left in the lurch by Government members, because they will not come clean and say “We cocked up.” The reality is that the Government cocked up. We have an “Agent Orange” timber out there that is totally inappropriate and is not supported by even the scientist whom the Minister quotes to back it. It is a disgrace!

The Government should come clean today, say it got it wrong, stop this product from being used, and de-accredit it, so that the industry can move forward. We also need an independent inquiry into how it is possible for a timber product to be approved in breach of the new New Zealand standard for treated timber, and when the scientist who supposedly did the treatment work has no confidence in the naming of the product or in the conditions under which it is meant to be used.

This is a very serious issue. Thousands of builders and homeowners want to know the answer. The Government has let the side down. That email is absolutely damning, and it is time for the Government to come clean, to admit that it got it awfully wrong, and to provide some security for those homeowners.

Hon David Cunliffe: Who deregulated the industry?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, I ask whether Mr Cunliffe can tell me why this product was approved. I ask whether anyone on the Government benches can tell me why the Government approved this product. Those members cannot tell me; they do not care. The department is having hula parties, kava drinking, and Cowboys and Indians theme parties while people’s homes rot, and, most seriously, the Government has not even ensured that future homes are built to a proper standard. I look forward to a Government member providing an explanation as to why it approved a product in breach of the New Zealand standard, which was adopted only in 2003. Why has the Government ignored the scientist who investigated this product, who has such serious concerns about it?

I seek leave to table an email from Scion, which was formerly the Forest Research Institute, in which the scientist whom the Government has quoted as evidence for it backing the product expresses very serious concerns about this product.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

Hon JIM SUTTON (Minister of Agriculture): I will deal first with the issue raised at great length by the member who has just resumed his seat. He spoke about the leaky buildings issue, and there is one thing that seems to have escaped his attention: properly designed and properly constructed buildings do not leak. Now it is all very well for Dr Smith and his colleagues to try to make excuses for the jerry-builders of Auckland, the sloppy architects, and the sloppy building inspectors who have not done their jobs properly, and blame it all on the wood, but it does not wash. Those people, including Dr Smith, whose Government was in power when most of these buildings were constructed, should reflect on their own performances instead of trying to pass the blame on to others. Wood is wood, and if it is allowed to get wet and dry, and wet and dry, and be left in a wall full of water, it is going to rot sooner or later. The member should realise that.

Now I go back to members who raised issues concerning rural New Zealand. Harry Duynhoven pointed out the value of training, education, and economic development policies to rural New Zealand. He hit the nail right on the head there. I am proud when I go through my own electorate. The towns of Timaru, Geraldine, Temuka, Waimate, and Twizel have never looked better. They are looking in great shape. They have had 5 years of booming prosperity on the basis of the policies of this Labour Government. They have done well because farming has been doing well, because tourism is doing well, because niche manufacturing is doing well, because industries adding value to the products of our land are doing well, and they are doing well with the enthusiastic and energetic assistance and partnership of this Labour-Progressive coalition Government, and long may that continue.

If members do not believe that they are doing well—because one can probably always find a farmer who has some complaint to make, whether it is about having to pay ACC insurance levies, pay his or her income tax, or fill out his or her GST form, and all those things that make compliance such a chore doing business in the modern world—they should note that according to the statistics derived from the monitor farm survey, the average pastoral farmer in New Zealand has increased his or her net worth over the last 5 years by something closely approaching $400,000 a year. Whoops, $400,000 per year almost, each, per farmer, tax-free capital gain! That is not doing badly, and that is a vote of confidence in the future of farming by the people who are investing their savings, and their profits, in expanding their investment in that industry.

They are not taking the money and running. They are bidding the prices up and up because they know how great the future is looking under the policies that are at present in place. It is a pretty exciting future for provincial and rural New Zealand as a result.

I want to say this in respect of Clayton Cosgrove’s question. He asked a very serious question, and I sat back and waited for someone to answer it, and nobody did. So I will give it a go.

Clayton Cosgrove: Good on you.

Hon JIM SUTTON: I have had reports, you know! He asked what National’s legacy to rural New Zealand was. I think National sort of answered that in its agricultural policy this year. National’s policy does not mention agriculture. Everything in its policy comes from other portfolios. There is nothing about agriculture in it. It is a nothing policy, and its legacy is nothing. We inherited a neglected mess and we have been trying to fix it up. When we get to biosecurity I will deal with that part of it, and biosecurity is a pretty important part for agriculture in New Zealand. But we will have another go at that, and we will not miss that opportunity.

Doug Woolerton asked how New Zealand’s balance of payments deficit—pretty dramatic in its size—would be resolved. He said New Zealand has been spending up large, and there is some truth in that. New Zealanders have been spending up large. New Zealanders are not great savers, I have to say, although the present Government is prudently setting aside money to ensure that the bare essentials will be there for the member and myself, and others, when we reach retirement age. It will be possible to continue New Zealand superannuation at present real levels through the bulge of the retirement of the baby boomers, because we are being prudent and investing now. If individual New Zealanders are also doing that, it will be great, but the Government is making sure it is underwriting the efforts of individual New Zealanders, and so we will do it. As I said, the farmers’ net worth has been going up. So farmers are keeping their investment in their properties, obviously with a high state of confidence that they will increase their incomes accordingly as a result.

The Budget 2005 is great news for agriculture. It builds on a great foundation that has been laid over the previous 5 years. It allocates a further $31 million over 4 years to complete trade agreement negotiations, and that is extremely important to rural New Zealand, because rural New Zealand produces most of New Zealand’s export products, and earns most of New Zealand’s export income, and farmers know the value of getting those markets opened up to creative opportunities.

The Sustainable Farming Fund is now part of mainstream and core Vote Agriculture and Forestry funding. The Sustainable Farming Fund is one of the aspects of Government policy that I am most proud of in connection with agriculture because it backs the innovation, the energy, and the brains of rural New Zealanders when they have good ideas. It provides a bit of seed money to get them started and to give them an opportunity to put together community-based programmes, to do a bit of relevant research, to make use of the information gained or the information that already exists but has not been translated in a form readily accessible to farmers, and it supports sustainable environmental management and sustainable and thriving rural communities.

I think that is great and I want to mention that an independent assessment of the Sustainable Farming Fund that analysed a sample of the more than 300 projects that have been funded throughout New Zealand estimates that those projects potentially will contribute between $350 million and $500 million a year extra to the New Zealand economy. That, of course, will not happen unless further investments are made by the people in a position to make them, or who are motivated to do so, but it does indicate the value of well-targeted research money, even in the relatively modest amounts we have made available in that particular programme so far, the value of that, and how that can multiply for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

It was great news in this year’s Budget that that was baseline. It will be there unless the Nats get back in and cancel it the way they cancelled its predecessor programme, the farm partnership, which the National Party, when trying to get into office, had promised that it would keep going. However, in its first Budget, the “mother of all Budgets”, it cancelled the funding. The programme was kept going on a purely voluntary basis, with no funding, and, of course, the inevitable happened. So much for National Party promises! Rural New Zealanders should remember that history when they vote next month.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Vote Agriculture and Forestry be agreed to.

Ayes 61

New Zealand Labour 51; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Noes 37

New Zealand National 27; ACT New Zealand 9; Māori Party 1.

Abstentions 18

New Zealand First 13; Green Party 5.

Vote Agriculture and Forestry agreed to.

Vote Biosecurity - Agriculture and Forestry

Hon DAVID CARTER (National): It will certainly be my hope that a vote that is so critical to the New Zealand economy is a vote on which all parties in the Chamber will work constructively to achieve the best outcomes. I take this opportunity to thank my colleagues on the Primary Production Committee for the way that we conducted a debriefing this morning into the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s biosecurity exercises. I am referring to Operation Taurus, which was a simulated exercise that took place a couple of months ago in the Manawatū, and also to the hoax scare on Waiheke Island immediately following that. During that select committee process, all members of the committee worked diligently with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to make sure that we did our best to help to identify the inadequacies that had been shown to exist in our response to what was a hoax scare.

I want to talk specifically about two issues. One is a concern that the Primary Production Committee has expressed on numerous occasions over the time I have been involved with it, which is over the availability of a standing army to respond to a major disease incursion, particularly of foot-and-mouth disease. In the past, though we have been unsure of the availability of that standing army, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has taken the opportunity to assure us that it did exist. The debrief this morning showed clearly to the committee that there are inadequacies in the availability of that standing army. I am pleased that the ministry acknowledged that and will be looking at ways and means to make sure that we achieve far better cooperation with sectors such as the stock and station industry, the meat-processing industry, and the dairy processing industry—people who obviously have the skills and the manpower resources to be muscled into any genuine response.

The second issue the committee was certainly concerned about was the accuracy or, more correctly, the inaccuracy of the initial database as to where farms existed and where livestock existed, and as to the numbers of livestock on particular properties. Again, the ministry has acknowledged that more work needs to be done. To be fair to AgriQuality, which has over a long period of time supplied the agri-base data, it has a reasonable system of accounting for those who are genuine farmers. But the incident on Waiheke Island showed a glaring inadequacy in the boundary between genuine farmers and lifestyle farmers who held a few livestock. They have as much ability to assist with the spread of foot-and-mouth disease as has any genuine farming operation located adjacent to an outbreak.

In my opening comments I said that I hoped biosecurity would be treated seriously and in a more apolitical way. Already we have had an interjection from Clayton Cosgrove that Don Brash had suggested the original response to the scare on Waiheke Island should not have been carried out in the way it was. That is absolutely not right. For the record, I confirm that on the day when Mr Brash was interviewed by Television One his first comment was that the incident was very serious for New Zealand. His second comment was that if it were a hoax, he was surprised that the Government was responding to that extent, and his third comment—the most important comment—was that, however, he wholeheartedly endorsed the Government’s response. Although Government members enjoy playing cheap, incorrect politics, I remind them that biosecurity is of far greater importance than that.

While I am on that point, I also ask the Minister to start being more honest in his press releases. I remind him of his press release immediately after the Budget, with the headline “Government boosts biosecurity again’’, which stated ‘“Biosecurity funding has been boosted again’, Biosecurity Minister Jim Sutton said today”. Yet when Audit New Zealand came before the select committee in preparation for our examination into this vote, it was able to tell us that the total appropriations of $157 million were less than those in the 2004 Budget, which were $164 million. I want to make sure that Mr Sutton will take the opportunity to assure this Committee that he and his spin merchants will start to tell the truth.

Hon JIM SUTTON (Minister for Biosecurity): It is certainly a good indication of the level of desperation in the National Party that its spokesperson on agriculture should spend his call in the biosecurity estimates debate trying to paint some whitewash over the comments made by his leader Dr Don Brash when we found we had the threat of the release of the foot-and-mouth virus on Waiheke Island. There is no question that Dr Brash was caught out in public saying that he was very surprised that the New Zealand Government would make this matter public. Frankly, subsequent events proved that that was entirely the wise thing to do. The Government had responded completely appropriately, and Dr Brash had put his big foot right in his mouth, put the other foot in there after it, and danced a jig to the acute embarrassment of his troops back here in Parliament. They had to take him outside to explain the whole matter to him in words of one syllable. Subsequently, after that, he kept his mouth shut. I think those words were all of one syllable: “Keep your mouth shut, Don”. That was sound advice, but of course, he has been following that advice only spasmodically every since, which gives us some confidence in the approaching election.

I want to speak on the matter of biosecurity, because the one thing that I do agree on with the member who has just resumed his seat—or who has beaten a hasty retreat—is that biosecurity is extremely important to New Zealand. The New Zealand economy is founded upon exotic species— both plant and animal species—that are not indigenous to New Zealand. Fortuitously as much as by good management, those species were imported largely without the serious pests and diseases that accompany them and limit their productivity in other parts of the world. We have to put a lot of effort into trying to maintain that comparative advantage, and we do.

When this Government took office we found an absolute mess. We found a growing number of tourists and crew coming into this country without being examined or inspected to make sure they were not bringing in risk material. Research showed that tonnes and tonnes of meat products that could carry foot and mouth disease were coming in unchecked in pockets, in cabin bags, and in hand bags of passengers coming to New Zealand, and being distributed around New Zealand. They were being chucked out car windows, and so on. The incursion of fruit fly in Auckland some years ago was caused by someone bringing in a capsicum with fruit fly larvae. No doubt the passenger whistled his way through the airport because the Government of the day had not put enough quarantine officials on the job to do it properly.

We have done the job. We have made New Zealand’s quarantine system the most rigorous system at the border of any country in the world and we will keep it that way. We now ensure that every sea-freight container is opened in the presence of a properly authorised, trained person. We have stemmed the flow of new incursions, in the face of an ever-increasing torrent of freight and travellers, and we will make the system better and better. Continuous improvement is the only rational, responsible response to the situation and the challenges that we face. It was not happening before we took office and now it is.

If the member who spoke before me is saying that from now on this will be a bipartisan policy, I would say that is great; it is good to see a man big enough to admit his failures and mistakes and undertake to mend his ways in the future. I hope he is speaking for all his colleagues, although it will be some years before we find out.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Vote Biosecurity - Agriculture and Forestry be agreed to.

Ayes 61

New Zealand Labour 51; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Noes 37

New Zealand National 27; ACT New Zealand 9; Māori Party 1.

Abstentions 18

New Zealand First 13; Green Party 5.

Vote Biosecurity - Agriculture and Forestry agreed to.

Vote Biosecurity - Health agreed to.

Vote Education

Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland): Probably the worst report I have ever seen on the public sector is the June 2005 report called Education Sector Review. Those who take an interest in education will find it a very useful summary of the stewardship of the current Minister of Education. The report has been done by the three top civil servants in New Zealand. It is a 64-page saga of a leaderless, confused, demoralised, and chaotic bureaucracy—and not a cheap bureaucracy, I might add; it is one on which the Government spends over $100 million a year. After 5 years of this Government, the leading civil servants of New Zealand have said that this bureaucracy is in such bad shape that we should not do anything to it because it will make it worse. They say we will make things worse if we try to fix it. I invite anyone with an interest in education to read Education Sector Review.

I also invite anyone interested in the effect of interest-free student loans to visit two websites. One is the Labour Party website, which has a calculator on it that tells people what their overall savings will be. The other is the Inland Revenue Department website, which has a calculator that tells people about loan repayments. One would think that if people went to the Inland Revenue Department website and used its calculator, then went to the Labour website and used its calculator, they would get the same answer. But they do not. They do not get the same answer. [Interruption] No, they do not. They get a completely different answer. I do not know why people get completely different answers, depending on whether they use the calculator on the Inland Revenue Department website or the one on the Labour Party website. I am asking the Minister in the chair, Trevor Mallard, to explain it to us, because 78,000 students have been to the Labour Party calculator to work out what they will save with interest-free student loans. Unfortunately, some of those students also went to the Inland Revenue Department calculator and tried to compare like with like.

These people are not economists with degrees in econometrics; they are not accountants. They are just normal graduates who are trying to work out what they will save with an interest-free student loan. If they have the average loan of $15,000—that is the average; not $60,000, as the Labour Party official who appeared on the front page of the New Zealand Herald said; the New Zealand Herald did not say he was a Labour Party official, and nor did he, I understand—and are on an average income of $35,000, and they put those numbers into the two respective calculators, they get completely different answers.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Do you know why?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Minister has a chance to take a call and tell us why. All I am saying to the Minister is that any student who goes to the websites and tries to compare the results gets a big difference. The Labour Party website tells him or her that it takes 18 years and 4 months to pay off the $15,000 loan, and the Inland Revenue Department website says it takes 11 years and 11 months. That is a big difference. Clearly, someone is misleading the people who use the calculators.

I do not know how Labour’s calculator is set up, and I do not know how the Inland Revenue Department calculator is set up. All I know is that there is public interest in what one can save from having an interest-free student loan, just as, I think, there would be public interest in what one could save with an interest-free mortgage on one’s house. I suggest that if Labour members genuinely believe that removing interest from student loans means students will borrow less, why do they not try legislating against interest on mortgages, because then we will all borrow less and we will be better off? So why do they not do that? This is Social Credit recharged with 21st century atomic energy. The Minister should explain why those numbers are so different.

BERNIE OGILVY (United Future): I rise to speak in this estimates debate particularly on the issue of teachers. The largest line item in the estimates concerns teachers. Because of the largeness of the monies allocated in the estimates in that regard, I would like to talk a little about teachers. Teachers do matter. I do not think anyone would deny that teachers matter, but we are talking about quality teachers. Quality teachers matter. This morning one or two of us, including the Minister, were at Newlands Intermediate for the launch of a national school strategy. That school promotes its teachers and the quality of those teachers. I was impressed by that event, and I know that a lot of really good work is going on in schools around this nation.

In order to get well-qualified, quality teachers we need to bring at least three matters into the equation. I would like the Minister and others to realise that we need to have more strategic direction in teacher recruitment, in order to attract quality candidates into the profession and support them throughout their careers. When it comes to strategic recruitment, we need to have a system that will look at increasing the numbers when there is a shortage of teachers. Right now, there is a shortage in the early childhood area and in some parts of the secondary school sector. At the same time we need an ability within the ministry to see that the number of funded places is reduced when there is an oversupply. I think that is the case at present in the primary sector. So a juggling in the strategic recruitment balance needs to take place.

We want to help hard-to-staff schools to attract teachers. They need them, and I think one of the ways of looking at that—and I am not sure whether this is in the projections in the vote—is to pay more in order to attract those quality teachers. May I also suggest that United Future recognises there is a huge difference, or that a huge difference can occur, when principals are properly recruited, especially for those schools we know are struggling at the tail of the educational queue. Offering higher salaries, and making positions more attractive for exceptional candidates to lead those schools, are issues that I think need to be targeted in these estimates. United Future feels that one of the ways through that for teacher trainees is to bring in a bonded scheme, whereby they are recruited and bonded through scholarships and student loan write-offs—through those types of programmes.

We must make sure that the trainees recruited for schoolteaching are quality trainees. When the Science and Education Committee looked at that issue and at the teaching profession last year, we noted that the minimum entry standards require aptitude, as well as suitability, for teaching. We noted, I believe, that we need to raise the esteem of the profession by appealing to high-performing graduates. Having stated that in that report, the evidence regarding the importance of teacher aptitude is, we noted, far more compelling and clear than any existing evidence about teacher training as such. We heard many discussions from many providers as to what makes a good teacher training programme, but there was a commonality that teacher aptitude was one of the issues that should be developed as part of the assessment of trainees. The pre-service programme should give greater recognition to prior learning, as well.

LYNNE PILLAY (Labour—Waitakere): I am really pleased to take a call to talk about education in New Zealand. I spoke the other night in the Chamber and it was really good to celebrate all the major achievements of this Government. In particular, I spoke about Modern Apprenticeships and how successful that scheme is, and I am really heartened today to see yet another announcement from our Government that we will be bringing in yet another 5,000 Modern Apprenticeships. That scheme was shelved, was scrapped, under the previous National Government.

Mark Peck: Really!

LYNNE PILLAY: Yes, it was scrapped under a National Government. So it is really good to see that those quality apprenticeships that Labour has brought back will grow, in the next term of a Labour Government.

Also, I cannot go past talking about the wonderful feedback I have had about our announcement of no interest on student loans. That has been a major success. I am really heartened by the young people who have rung me and said that they remember when Labour lifted interest while they were studying, but this is just too good to be true. They said that this gives them hope to look towards their future, and then once they have finished their studying, they know they have employment opportunities in this country under a Labour-led Government and they also know they will have things like paid parental leave when they have their children.

We have quality early childhood education. That is another thing I really want to comment on. When I look at our early childhood education policy I feel really proud. We know how successful children are when they have quality early childhood education. That is what we in Labour are absolutely committed to delivering. When in 2006 we bring in 20 free hours per week of quality early childhood education in community-based centres, that will give tremendous opportunity to young children, but also to young parents because they can go to work or take time out from their children, knowing that the children are getting quality education, education that will give them a good grounding for when they move on to school.

I have to comment about how proud I am of our Government’s commitment to education. I think it is a 40 percent increase that we have put into funding. I just look at my own electorate. When I look at the new developments, extensions, and halls, I see a real celebration of education. It is something I feel really proud of.

Something we in Labour hold very dear is the right of every kid in New Zealand to go to his or her local school. We are absolutely committed to that. What do we hear from the other side? We hear that they would abolish school zoning and abolish the right for any child to go to his or her local school. Whilst we are going down that same old tired, failed policy line, we hear that they would reintroduce bulk funding, but this time make it mandatory.

Hon Maurice Williamson: That’s right.

LYNNE PILLAY: Maurice Williamson says that that is right. He is proud of it. I know that going backwards to the failed policies of the tired old National Government of the 1990s would not find favour with people who are visionary and forward-looking about education in New Zealand.

When we look at special education, we see the extra funding that this Labour-led Government has put into special education to support children who need added assistance to set them off on their path in life. We in Labour can hold our heads very high and feel very proud about the things we have delivered, but we know there is much more. Much more will be delivered in the next term of a Labour-led Government.

Hon Paul Swain: Hear, hear!

LYNNE PILLAY: Paul Swain has a new baby, and he is looking forward to that little girl getting quality early childhood education under a Labour-led Government.

Hon Trevor Mallard: She’ll be a tertiary student under a Labour Government, too.

LYNNE PILLAY: Exactly; that is right. And as a tertiary student, she will not be charged interest on her loan. As a tertiary student, that young, hopeful Kiwi will be doing very well.

Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First): Firstly, I tell the previous speaker, Lynne Pillay, that in fact the extra funding this Government has put into special education is miserly, compared with the increased amounts that the New Zealand First - National coalition put into the 1997 and 1998 Budgets. Secondly, I say to the Minister that it was a good launch today, but that I am the one education spokesperson who genuinely can give a guarantee to the people there that, following the election, that strategy will be continued. Perhaps it would have been good if the Minister had told people where the $30 million of building money that he has taken out of the code development funding has gone. That would have helped. Nevertheless, it was a very good launch.

I say to the people who are listening to these proceedings that out on the hustings I keep hearing National Party candidates and members say that they are really indignant about the burgeoning bureaucracy that has formed under this particular administration. They often refer to education—they use education as an example of that. People hear the story that 2,000 extra bureaucrats are working for the Ministry of Education. I say that those Nats are being fairly loose with the truth. The reality is that the Special Education Service, which used to include speech therapists, psychologists, and all those things, was absorbed into the ministry, and it had 1,600 people. The Nats call them unnecessary bureaucrats, and say they will cut them. They say they will cut all those bureaucrats, so we will not have psychologists and the people who work in special education. Other people were absorbed into the ministry from Early Childhood Development. There had been a duplication of services, and for efficiency gains that group was put back into the ministry.

Really, in this case National needs to be honest with the people it is trying to portray that story to. I have had a look at what is included in the $423 million increase for education in this Budget, and at what has actually gone towards what we may call bureaucrats: those responsible for the administration of regulations, the administration of education sector resourcing, ministerial services, policy advice, and all those sorts of things. The total increase is $26.7 million—the funding has gone from $227 million to $253.7 million. In most of the areas there has been no increase at all, or there has been a reduction. The marked increase is in the provision of information, funding for which has jumped from $45.9 million to $61.7 million.

Then we can look at what comes out of that output class. What is it? It is work arising from the curriculum stocktake—and National would stop that. That work is critical. In fact, the stocktake was set in place by the previous National Government. It is work on the development of an Internet-capable assessment tool—that refers to asTTle, one of the finest assessment tools that has been developed in the whole world. Will National cut that? It will cut the implementation of an education information programme for families and communities. There is work on effective teaching initiatives and initiatives for adult literacy. When we really look at what National is talking about, we see we have to ask some very serious questions. Listeners should not be sucked in by National’s spin, and National should be a lot more honest with the people out in the electorates.

However, what the public should be concerned about—and this is something the Hon Bill English referred to—is the Education Sector Review. The problem is not one of the numbers that have been exposed through that review, but of the actual quality and operation of the bureaucracy. That is a really damning report. I do not think that the Minister can be very proud of the report. It demonstrates a whole pile of things. It demonstrates the real reason why Simon Power rolls his eyes every time the education bureaucrats come to the Education and Science Committee and start to give off all their verbiage.

Simon Power: I frown, you know.

Hon BRIAN DONNELLY: Oh, no. I say to Mr Power that there is a distinctive rolling of his eyes. The report shows a total non-alignment of the different agencies, and a lack of progress towards any goals established by the present Government. It questions the leadership in the sector, and asks some very serious things, as Bill English said. It states that things are so bad that the agencies should not be realigned at this point in time, because we have to get things on track. It states that the agencies do not listen effectively. That is what we have continually heard from submitters and stakeholders at the select committee—they say that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, in particular, does not listen. In general, the agencies do not have the essential capability, and, let us face it, that has been the Minister’s responsibility for almost 6 years now. His own Education Sector Review states that the education agencies do not have the essential capability at the level required to support the magnitude of the changes that this Government has required of them.

No one else but this Government can be blamed for that. The present Government has to be blamed for saying that those were the changes it wanted to have put in place, but for not putting in place the bureaucratic resources or the capacity for lining things up in a way that would make them happen.

Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland): The Minister has a number of questions to answer. When I read the Education Sector Review I see that he has more questions to answer, in fact, than any other Minister I have come across. I want him to answer this one: the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) has been something of a controversial matter—particularly this year. In fact, it has been controversial since it started, but there was a major scandal at the start of the year about scholarship. Given the extensive publicity given to that scandal, I would have thought that any Minister who cared about the young people of New Zealand, and the qualification they get for all their hard work at secondary school, would pay some attention. One would think he would round up all those thousands of officials and tell them that it needed sorting out. The Education Sector Review tells us that he did not do that. On page 41 it states: “There is an urgent need to stabilise NCEA,”. I suppose that is why we pay senior civil servants $300,000, to figure that out! They should just ask sixth-formers.

It goes on to state: “and there is a view that greater Ministerial involvement and drive would assist this.” That is bureaucratese for saying that he is doing nothing. It was the State Services Commissioner, who was responsible to the Minister, who said that. For his own chief official to say that he is lazy is a huge risk, but he said it. He put it in print. I have never seen that before—the most senior official in a department says that a Minister is lazy.

What could be more important than stabilising the NCEA if someone is a Minister of Education? What could be more important than 130,000 young New Zealanders turning up to classrooms every day, working hard, full of aspiration and ambition? Well, they have found out—no one has told them yet, but we will—that the Minister’s senior official thinks he was not doing anything to stabilise NCEA.

I am sure he had plenty of ministerial involvement and drive to get to the test matches, and to get to China to destroy our overseas student market—the more he goes, the quicker the numbers drop. But he was not stabilising the NCEA. That is just one of the sad tales that is laid out in vivid detail in the Education Sector Review.

There are a couple of other ones, and I will hold the Committee’s interest with just one. We have had 2 years of debate about the quality of tertiary courses, and this is what the officials conclude about the Government agencies that overlook quality in tertiary education: “it”—meaning the 10 pages of description beforehand—“means that there is no independent assurance of either the quality of these courses or the credit value which is a key driver of costs”.

So we have spent $100 million on the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, Tertiary Education Commission, and bits of the ministry per year—I do not mean $100 million over 5 years; Labour always inflates its figures—and the conclusion, having spent that $100 million, is that there is no independent assurance of the quality of courses.

I say to the Minister that he may think he is the toughest, smartest, smoothest political operator, and the pride of a generation of the left. That is what he thinks. The only one who thinks more in terms of that is Steve Maharey, who was equally responsible. But Minister Mallard has left the most appalling mess in education, and when I say “left”, I do so advisedly.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education): I congratulate the member who has just sat down. I think that was probably the best speech of the year from the Opposition. As we are sitting here, a lot of us are contrasting the quality of the questioning from the former and the current Leader of the Opposition. Bill English is the former Leader of the Opposition, and he gets up on his hind legs in the Chamber and asks questions. He is the one whom the whips let speak. Murray McCully says to Don Brash that the National whips will get Bill English to speak, because they really know that Don Brash is not good enough.

I want to get back to some of the questions that have been asked. I thank Bill English for suggesting that I am smooth. He is the first person who has ever suggested that, and it is not something that I have ever claimed. In fact, some people are of the opinion that the opposite of that is true.

I want to make it clear and put it on the record, though, that I stand by the student loan calculator on the Labour website. I want to run through the assumptions that are in that calculator, which shows the massive savings in student loans according to the policy that was announced on Tuesday. First, it is assumed the repayment threshold will increase each year at the rate of inflation. That is the current Government policy. That may not be built into the Inland Revenue Department assumptions, but that is not the responsibility of the Labour Party—it is a matter of looking at that website.Second, the current—[Interruption] John Key is the six-house man, who talks about productivity. The current interest rate is made up of 7 percent—an inflation adjustment of 2.8 percent and base interest of 4.2 percent. That is in the Labour Party system; I do not know whether the same assumption is built into the Inland Revenue Department system. Income growth is set by the user. It is something that works according to what actually happens. People’s incomes grow. The automatic setting is 3 percent, because that is about what income growth has been over the years.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: This is an explanation.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well, people do not like it. I know that the Tories hate it. They have an inkling of what has happened in the last week, and they know why Don Brash will not get up in this Parliament and ask questions, so I am explaining to them why that is happening. [Interruption]

That member wishes to become the Minister of Finance, but I understand that his colleagues already say that his tax cuts do not add up. [Interruption] No, no—I tell the member that they say his tax cuts do not add up. The reason the National Party is not prepared to release information on its proposed tax cuts is that some of its members, including a former Minister of Finance, say that they do not add up.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

Valedictory Statement

Valedictory Statement

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT): I think I may be able to help—by confirming that this is my last speech to this honourable House. The first valedictories I heard were actually in the Labour caucus room by MPs who had been defeated in the Muldoon landslide of 1975. So in my moment of personal victory I was surrounded by friends all of whom had lost, and I listened to speeches that live in the memory only of those who heard them.

Rufus Rogers was a doctor who had represented Hamilton East, and he said that when legislating we should remember that every New Zealander is entitled to only 1/3,000,000th of the opportunities this wonderful country has to provide—well, it is now 1/4,000,000th. I have journeyed across the political landscape, but it is still good advice, no matter what side of the House one is on. Many petition this House asking for privileges, whether they be from business, trade unions, or interest groups, but all we are actually entitled to is the opportunity to 1/4,000,000th of what this country has to offer. I made Rufus Rogers’ advice my personal touchstone. I have always opposed privilege, and where I could I have dismantled it. And those who have been granted privileges by this House have a duty to exercise them for the benefit of the nation. No one has greater privileges than those in this House.

My first majority was 284. I was, as Sir Robert would describe me, the lowest of the low. When, with the help of boundary changes—wonderful things—I had the biggest majority, even with encouragement I could not get Sir Robert to admit that I then must be the highest of the high. The whips were concerned about recounts, and summoned me to Parliament on the Monday after the election. I explained that I thought I would do well in the special votes. In fact, Sir Robert claimed that one had only to take a bus through Auckland Central to get on the roll. I want to put the record straight: that is not true. We enrolled people only when the bus stopped.

I went up to the back-benchers’ offices to see my friends like Mike Bassett and Mike Moore—all of whom had been defeated. Mike Moore said to me: “You won’t be here, Richard. You’ll be over in Siberia.”, as the Opposition block behind the Parliamentary Library was known. I came to learn that that name referred not just to the political wilderness but actually to the temperature. The main Parliament Building here is heated by boilers, but Siberia was heated by electricity supplied by the Wellington power board, which had a custom of switching off the heaters when there was a power surge, as on cold nights. So we wore long johns, coats, and gloves, yet on those all-night winter sessions the Opposition literally froze.

“This is an odd place.”, said Mike Moore; “It might pay to put your name on the furniture.” So I did. As I had nothing else to do, I put my name on the furniture of all the defeated MPs. I came back the next Monday and directed the taxi to the library entrance, and as I was going up the steps I could hear the unmistakable voice of Bob Tizard, the man who, 8 days earlier, had been Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance—our sort of Michael Cullen—“Who the hell is this Prebble fellow?”. I came round the corner and saw a number of former Cabinet Ministers milling around in the corridor. “I am Richard Prebble.”, I said; “Can I help?”. Tizard pointed to a pile of furniture stretching all the way along the corridor. “Why have you got all this furniture and we have none?”. I ingratiated myself to the caucus—and probably reached the peak of my popularity; after that, it was all downhill—by inviting them all to take their pick.

The only other new Labour MP was Frank Rogers, nicknamed “Taxi” by Muldoon. This shows how politics has changed: Frank got his name for literally fighting for the working man’s right to smoke in a taxi. Oh well, things have changed.

Another change is that in those days elections were held in November, but Parliament did not meet till May. Frank could not see any point in rushing down, so he arrived in December. He surveyed his empty office, and came to me and said: “How do you get new furniture?”. I suggested that he try the Clerk’s Office. He returned to say that there was good news and bad news. The Clerk certainly did agree that he needed furniture; the bad news was that the budget was exhausted and the next financial year began on 1 July. I had no idea what to suggest. Frank said that he would go and find Bellamy’s bar.

I came back the next day feeling bad that I had not looked after my fellow new MP. I looked into Frank’s office, only to see that it had the most magnificent furniture. Frank arrived some time later, and I asked what had happened. He said: “Bellamy’s was closed, so I went to the messengers’ bar. They’re wonderful fellows. I explained my problem and, for two bottles of Bellamy’s whisky, at 1 o’clock in the morning we fixed it. The desk comes from the Deputy Prime Minister’s office, the chair comes from Adams-Schneider’s, the filing cabinets are Allan Highet’s,”—he had a piece of furniture from every Cabinet Minister’s office. I said: “What did you take from Muldoon’s office?”. “We’re not mad.”, said Frank—he had not taken anything.

Then I said: “Look, Frank,”—displaying all my knowledge as a lawyer—“this is theft. You have to take it back.” “No way.”, said Frank; “The messengers, who know how this place is run, say I’ll be OK.” I was sure that a policeman would come and arrest Frank. Instead, some days later I saw the Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand, the Rt Hon Brian Talboys, coming cautiously down the Opposition corridor. He asked for directions to Frank Rogers’ office. I followed him and eavesdropped as the Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand begged the most junior MP to please return his desk. It was part of a set, apparently. Frank said that he had no desk, and Talboys offered to take him personally to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he could have his choice of any furniture he liked. Over the next few days, each Cabinet Minister had to come in turn and beg for the return of the furniture.

It was then that I realised that Parliament is a very different institution. We have privileges so that the executive cannot stop us from holding Ministers to account. Shamefully, too many MPs have abused that privilege, but we must maintain the right to fearlessly debate and criticise. I modestly claim to have done my bit. Those who have measured these things—I have not—tell me that I have more words in Hansard than any other MP in the history of our Parliament. Perhaps I had better stop at this point.

I actually started my career way back in 1966 as the campaign organiser for Norman Douglas, who was Roger Douglas’ father. Norman taught me a great deal. One of the great lessons was: “You can’t lose what you haven’t got.” He always kept a copy of the electoral roll by the phone. When constituents rang and asked for assistance, telling him that they had voted for him, Norman would look them up on the roll. Being Norman, he would say: “You’re not on the electoral roll, so so far we’ve established you’re a liar. What else can I do for you?”.

I would occasionally receive calls from people who lived in Muldoon’s electorate—we shared a boundary. When he got one of my constituents he would say: “You’re Richard Prebble’s constituent. I know he’s a wild young man, but he’s a good electorate MP. Here’s his home phone number. He won’t mind you ringing him. He’s a bit of a night owl, so ring after 10 p.m. and be sure to say that I told you to call.” When his constituents rang me I would say: “Parliamentary protocol means you must approach your local MP. Muldoon’s good to his constituents. Here’s his confidential home phone number. He gets up very early to catch the early flight to Wellington. Best ring him before 6 a.m.” I would then add, no matter how difficult the problem: “Sir Robert’s the Prime Minister; he can easily fix this problem.” We did that to each other for 18 years. But the amazing thing is that Sir Robert actually did fix the problems. One constituent had been ringing every MP to say that the SIS was beaming gamma rays at his head. Muldoon just said: “Why didn’t you ring me before? I’m the Minister in charge of the SIS. I’ll put a stop to it today.”

I realise that I will be remembered—as much as any of us are remembered—as part of the Lange Government. David Lange is critically ill. Let me pay this tribute to him—a great New Zealander. We all know that he was our greatest platform speaker, so let me record what only his Cabinet witnessed. David Lange was actually a brilliant chairman. His Cabinet passed some of the most far-reaching reforms in our nation’s history, yet Cabinet rarely met after lunch. He kept the discussion focused while allowing all Ministers to make their points. How did he do it? He used his wit to defuse tension, and he started every Cabinet with a monologue of his recent experiences, with insights so funny that I saw Cabinet Ministers fall off their chairs with laughter. There was the time he told us that he had arrived home late at night only to find that the Ministry of Works had fitted—unrequested—security. He opened the gate only to be blinded by spotlights. He concluded that this must have been requested by the escorts, to make sure that if there was an assassin he did not shoot the wrong man! I am proud to have served in his Cabinet. I am sure that the whole House wishes to join with me in telling David and Margaret and his family that they are in our thoughts and prayers.

It is, I think, the greatest honour in a democratic society to be elected by one’s neighbours to represent them. I am grateful to my staff, to my many supporters, to my family, to my children, and to my wonderful wives—and to the voters, who have returned me so often. I have to say that I am a little incredulous that I am the longest-serving member of Parliament, and, in a way, I feel I am just getting to terms with the job when I am quitting.

We are one of the world’s oldest Parliaments. We now actually have the best select committee system of any Westminster Parliament. Jonathan Hunt’s ruling that MPs may use their allocation of supplementary questions as they choose has made our question time very searching. Instead of a Minister facing a limited number of supplementary questions, Ministers can now face a gruelling cross-examination, and I think it is part of the reason the Government has found Parliament such hard going this year.

But we could be so much better. When I first arrived and knew nothing, I received half an hour for my maiden speech, and I know that under the Standing Orders my valedictory is officially to be 10 minutes long. Most speeches in this Parliament are just 5 minutes long. I defy anyone to explain accident compensation reform, Resource Management Act amendments, or taxation changes in just 5 minutes. There are MPs in this House who, through no fault of their own, have spoken for less than a total of 20 minutes this session. They cannot represent their constituents, or give value for the cost to the taxpayer of having an MP, in less than 20 minutes a year. Our Parliament does not sit for long enough. Although we meet for more days a year than the great Parliaments, we are in session for fewer hours. The most powerful legislature, the US Senate, still has unlimited speaking time, but it meets all hours, including Sundays. To be a real check on the executive, this House must meet for more hours—not to pass more laws; there are already 1,441 Acts of Parliament, an estimated 40,000 pages of statute law, and that is not counting the 2,850 regulations that are in force. No wonder small businesses complain about red tape! No member of Parliament could possibly read all the laws that we pass each year.

I have always believed that our Parliament would be better if there were a group of independent-minded MPs who sat on the cross benches and advocated rational economics, and attempted to keep everyone honest. Leading such a party has been my own personal highlight of my career—the only new party not formed by present MPs to break into the House. I rang Rodney Hide on the Sunday after our first election victory and said: “Come down tomorrow. We need to put our name on some furniture.” We were referred to the floor where the United Party had had its office. Somewhere in this complex there is a store of green wheelie bins. It is how many careers end: defeated MPs throwing into wheelie bins documents that, just 48 hours earlier, had seemed so important.

I recall the chaos of the 9 weeks of Government negotiations. The Parliamentary Service said it could not allocate the ACT party any telephones until it knew who was in Government. I pointed out that the only thing we actually knew was that ACT was not going to be in Government, because we were the only party not negotiating with Mr Peters—and, I have to say, vice versa.

Rodney Hide managed to find a desk with a computer. He started to use it, but it was incredibly slow. He rang the computer support service, which said someone would be there directly. A technician appeared a few minutes later with a trolley and a brand new PC, installed it, and took the old one away. “How did you know what was wrong?”, asked Rodney Hide. “All MPs want a PC on their desk,” said the technician, “so we give them the old discards. If they complain, we give them a PC that works.” “Get many complaints?”, asked Rodney Hide. “Not really.” From that conversation, I realised that Rodney Hide would take to politics.

I recall one of Muriel Newman’s first questions, a patsy to Jenny Shipley: “Could the Minister outline the advantages of the National Government’s announcement to sell six small hydro stations?”. Jenny Shipley, no doubt thinking that ACT would be a good doormat, said what a good question it was and waxed on about the advantage of the sale. Then Muriel Newman asked: “If selling six small hydro stations is of such benefit to consumers, why not sell six big ones?”. Poleaxed, I think, is the phrase. I think we have been raising issues that parties would rather not consider ever since. I note that ACT has voted against the whole of Parliament twice this week, on the cricket tour and the nuclear issue.

I do have just one uncompleted piece of business. It did reduce me to tears when it happened, so I hope I can tell it. Helen Clark said this week that she thought the public’s response to the Unknown Warrior was a highlight, and I think that is because so many New Zealanders did not return. A few years ago I received a handwritten letter asking whether I was any relation of Bill Prebble, who was in the Battle of Crete. I wrote back: “There is only one family of Prebbles in the world, so we are all related. My middle name is William. Bill Prebble is probably a descendant of William Prebble, who arrived in New Zealand in January 1840.”—that is why the treaty does not apply to us—“Why do you ask?”.

Then I received this letter. He explained that the Battle of Crete had been a much bigger muck-up than has ever been admitted. He wrote: “We were all teenagers in our platoon. Our sergeant, who we called the old man, was Bill Prebble, aged just 23. We lost all of our officers on the first day of the battle. Our sergeant led our platoon across Crete displaying great bravery and single-handedly taking out German machine-gun positions. Bill Prebble got us all off, and we owed him our lives.

“When we got to Egypt the platoon went to see headquarters. We thought that the sergeant should get a medal for bravery—we believed the Victoria Cross. We were told that because no officer had witnessed this action there could be no medal. Our platoon thought that this was very unfair so we took an artillery shell, and we polished it and engraved it, and presented it to our sergeant. We fought together across Africa and into Italy. Outside Monte Cassino, Sergeant Bill Prebble was hit in the head by a stray bullet and died instantly. We had to leave his body on the side of the road and just take his personal effects. I picked up the shell case, and carried it for the rest of the war, and it’s been in my living room ever since. I’m an old man and now it should be with a relative.”

It has been in my office ever since—let me try to finish this properly—and I am proud to have it, but it is time it was presented to one of Sergeant Bill Prebble’s closest relatives. I have asked the Army, which is unable to find his file. From the Monte Cassino war cemetery I found that his name was actually Roy Francis Prebble, son of John and Ivy Prebble of Christchurch. That is right, because the shell is actually engraved R A Prebble—and teenagers could easily have got the middle initial wrong. So I decided to use this valedictory speech in the hope that I can find his closest relative. As Bill Prebble died defending our democracy it is fitting that he be remembered in the pages of Hansard.

Madam Speaker, all that remains is for me to wish you and all members all the best. Be careful out there, and for those who are about to be defeated, it is not so bad. I have been there too. Once you are out of Parliament, New Zealanders are very forgiving and very kind. And, who knows, like me, within a year you could be running a New Zealand - Viet Nam railway. I am having some refreshments in the ACT caucus room, and you are all very welcome. There you are—I am mellowing already. Thank you.

Estimates Debate

In Committee

Debate resumed on the Appropriation (2005/06 Estimates) Bill.

Vote Education (continued)

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): After that amazing valedictory speech from Richard Prebble, it is back to battle. I want to raise with the Government the damning report that is provided in the Education Sector Review, which paints a horrifying picture not only of the state of the Government’s education bureaucracies but of the mess that they have made impacting on ordinary New Zealand students. When the Government first came in it passed a big Tertiary Education Reform Bill, which set up the Tertiary Education Commission. It told this Parliament, and the people of New Zealand, that that would result in a flash new strategic approach to tertiary education. As my colleague Bill English said, that bureaucracy has consumed $100 million a year of public money—$100 million every year. We are talking about half a billion dollars of public money. Five years later, what does the Government’s own report state? It states: “The … education agencies do not have the capability to take a strategic approach to policy implementation.” That is what the Government’s own report states. We can remember so well Steve Maharey giving speech after speech about the new strategic approach to tertiary education. Five years later, and after spending half a billion dollars, the Government’s own report states that that has not happened.

Then there is the fiasco that occurred in respect of students’ school qualifications. That is the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) debacle. We have the same report—it is from Treasury, from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and from the State Services Commission—stating that “the agencies do not have the essential capability … to support the magnitude of change” that is expected to be undertaken in the senior secondary sector. What does that mean? It means that the 540,000 secondary students in New Zealand get a botched qualification. After 5 years of having Trevor Mallard at the helm of our education system, we have botched the qualifications for thousands of New Zealand students.

Some of those students are my constituents. Some of them are bright top students from excellent secondary schools like Nayland College, Waimea College, and Nelson College for Girls. I have met some of those young people, who are angry and frustrated that for their 5 years of hard toil at secondary school they have ended up with a botched qualification. What does the Government say? Government members think that is funny. Trevor Mallard was in the Chamber earlier, making jokes about it. After 5 years of him being in the role of Minister of Education, we have a gigantic botch-up.

What does the report state about the NCEA? It states that there is an urgent need to stabilise the NCEA and that there is a view that greater ministerial involvement would assist that. What does that say? It says that the Minister has not been doing his job, and that young, bright New Zealanders have paid the price for that with a botched qualification. Then we hear what the report states about the Tertiary Education Commission. The commission is the bold new agency that the Labour Government set up, and the report is damning in terms of that commission. We know that 2 years after Trevor Mallard said that singalong courses would be stopped, they are still going. This very day, at the Eastern Institute of Technology, students continue to be enrolled in singalong courses.

SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei): I have sat on the Education and Science Committee for the last 12-15 months, and I have to say that a number of the issues that have been raised so skilfully and diligently by the Hon Bill English—particularly in the last 12-15 months—reflect the most interesting trend in the education sector. I can recall standing in this Chamber during the reading of the legislation to pass the Tertiary Education Commission into life. At that time the Hon Steve Maharey told the House that the Tertiary Education Commission would be a light-handed, strategic steering instrument. I do not know what that means. I spent 6 years at university and I do not have a clue what that means, but that is Steve Maharey’s language. The point is that there is nothing light-handed about the Tertiary Education Commission, and, more to the point, there is nothing strategic about it, either.

I ask the Minister in the chair, the Hon Paul Swain, to tell us the last time a new bureaucracy was set up in this country that was described by the Minister who created it as light-handed. The Tertiary Education Commission has an annual budget of approximately $42 million, it employs 324 people, and within the first 12 months of its life it had a massive restructuring to make its governance and management structure more relevant. The result of that restructuring was that the number of people working at the Tertiary Education Commission reduced by four.

The governance structure, which had an executive chairman—Dr Andy West—in place, an executive deputy chairperson, a commission, a general manager, and a deputy general manager, was a structure that we told the Minister would not work. Andy West left within 2 years of the commission being formed. The structure was completely rejigged and good old Russell Marshall had to return from London to fix the mess that Steve Maharey had created by creating this particular commission, which has gone nowhere.

In the meantime singalong courses continued. We discovered in this Chamber on Tuesday that they are still on the website of various institutions. People are still enrolling and still doing those courses, and the total cost at the end of this year will be over $9 million to the taxpayers of New Zealand. In the meantime pet homeopathy, twilight golf, and other courses have continued, yet this Government has the nerve to tell the people of New Zealand that it is not wasting their tax dollars; that matters of surpluses in the vicinity of $7.4 billion are being well spent.

Well, I can tell the Minister that they are not. The bureaucracy in the education sector in this country has been exposed. Steve Maharey was shifted out of that particular portfolio and “Mr Fix-it” was brought in. We saw last week how that went. If the Government is relying on the Hon Trevor Mallard to fix this mess, it will be waiting a long, long time. What Trevor Mallard discovered was that the Te Wānanga o Aotearoa was being fed hundreds of millions of dollars and was not performing. So when it recorded its troubles to the Minister, what did the ministry do? It wrote a cheque for $20 million and told the wānanga: “Here, have some more, and this will make it OK.” Trevor Mallard is delicately trying to say: “Well, actually, I wasn’t the Minister at the time.” Well, actually, as the Minister he controls the vote. As the Minister of Education he controls the vote for tertiary education. The responsibility for the mess in education lies squarely on the Minister’s shoulders.

In the meantime, while all this was going on, at least four inquiries were being held into the National Certificate of Educational Achievement debacle. Students were getting scripts and marks for exams they did not sit and no marks for exams they did sit. No scholarships were awarded in some subjects; too many were awarded in others. These estimates had better fix the problem.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Vote Education be agreed to

Ayes 61

New Zealand Labour 51; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Noes 36

New Zealand National 26; ACT New Zealand 9; Māori Party 1.

Abstentions 18

New Zealand First 13; Green Party 5.

Vote Education agreed to.

Vote Education Review Office agreed to.

Vote Energy agreed to.

Vote Sport and Recreation agreed to.

Vote State Services

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): When we look at the State Services Commission we see the mess we have in the public service. I just want to reflect on a little bit of the con job that has been pulled on the New Zealand public on the state of our State sector.

Harry Duynhoven and the Labour Party promised, after the honest speech by Don Brash at Ōrewa about the state of race relations in New Zealand and the waste of the public sector, that they would fix all of that. They promised that all the politically correct nonsense that goes on through the State sector would be gone. They would end any issues around public money being wasted. I would like to know from Harry Duynhoven why he supported the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service spending—

Hon Harry Duynhoven: Because someone had to clean up the mess National had made.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: What about the $6,600 that was spent on Pacific Island training days in the flashest hotel in Auckland? Harry Duynhoven has interjected that that would help the leaky-home owners. Would he explain to me why $6,600 was spent on hula dancing and kava drinking. That is the sort of politically correct nonsense that Mr Duynhoven and Labour support. It is extraordinary. Mr Duynhoven is getting all excited. I would like him to explain why the State Services Commission is allowing public servants to have Cowboys and Indians parties, Sound of Music parties—

Hon Harry Duynhoven: They paid for them themselves.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member said they paid for them themselves. Well, who paid for the drink? The taxpayer. Who paid for the food? The taxpayer. Who paid for the flights? The taxpayer. Who paid for the accommodation? [Interruption]

I think that was the member who made a big deal about Tuku Morgan’s $89 underwear. Was that the same member? [Interruption] He did. I ask Mr Duynhoven why $89 spent on underwear by Tuku Morgan is a big deal, when the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service spent $6,600—that is, $493 per person—on an all-day session on Pacific Island training. Why does he not explain it to me? Why do Weathertight Homes Resolution Service staff need Pacific Island training? Could the member opposite explain that to me? It is sickly political correctness. It shows how rotten the public service is under this Government. It shows why the public should vote the Government out, and why they will do so. It is a mess.

If I have been able to find that whole series of parties within the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service, how many other Government agencies are having Pacific Island training days? If it is good enough for those who are fixing rotten homes, I assume the State Services Commission is also having such training. Is the Ministry of Education? How many other agencies are spending money on hula dancing and kava drinking parties?

Hon Harry Duynhoven: It’s shocking.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: It is absolutely shocking, and I am yet to receive any apology or any explanation.

Let me tell members why it matters. It matters because people have taken their own lives over the tragedy of leaky homes. There are people whose marriages have broken down. There are hundreds of people facing bankruptcy while George Hawkins has been in charge of this agency. What have we heard from George Hawkins? Is George Hawkins happy, as the Minister in charge of this portfolio area, that taxpayers’ money—$6,600—has been spent on kava drinking and hula dancing at the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service?

What has taken place within the public service is a disgrace. There is waste all over the place. The level of waste within the public service is a total disgrace. Have we heard any explanation from the Government as to why $1.3 billion of public money has been spent on tertiary education courses that people did not attend? That is the sort of level of waste that has gone on under this Government.

When the Minister of State Services was put on the ropes as to why there had been that awful blowout in Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, and the waste in that agency, do members know what he said? He said it was Nick Smith’s fault. Well, that was a good line. I have never been the Minister in charge of tertiary education—never ever. When National left Government, the wānanga got $3.4 million, and Labour grew that to $243 million last year. Where was the State Services Commission? Where was Trevor Mallard when all that waste was going on?

Whether we look at education, at health, at the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service, or at any one of the huge range of Government agencies, we see that the waste that is taking place is something extraordinary. There is a culture of extravagance within this Government that will mean voters will give it the message in 52 days’ time.

Just what has the State Services Commission been doing? If it had been checking, the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service might have been doing its job. We know from the statistics that 3 years after it was promised that the resolution service would provide a quick and cost-effective solution for those poor homeowners, only 10 percent of claims—only 300 claims—have been resolved. Do members know at what cost?

Hon Harry Duynhoven: And which Minister presided over that mess?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: George Hawkins. He is right here; hopefully, he will take a call. George Hawkins has presided over the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service disaster. This Government allows public servants to have parties—all sorts of parties—while people’s homes rot. What have we heard from George Hawkins?

Jill Pettis: We don’t approve of those kinds of parties.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Oh! Jill Pettis says she does not approve. Well, why did the Government official say yesterday that there had been no waste? Mr Nigel Bickle, the head of the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service, says there has been no waste. I ask Jill Pettis whether that is the Government position.

Jill Pettis: We don’t like waste.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Oh! She says the Government does not like waste. Well, what is it going to do about it? Nothing—absolutely nothing.

What we have is a public service out of control. We have the Government saying in this Parliament that it does not think those sorts of parties are very good. In fact, I think we heard the Minister say that the situation was absurd. Yet we have the head of the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service saying it is all OK and there has been no waste. It shows a public service completely out of control—public servants think it is OK to have kava drinking and hula dancing parties during work time at the expense of $493 per staff member. They think that is OK—such is the culture within the State sector.

Well, I have to say to the public of New Zealand that help is on the way. National is going to make sure that public money is spent properly—not on singalong courses, not on twilight golf, not on hula dancing and kava drinking, not on Cowboys and Indians parties. We are going to ensure that public money is spent where it should be spent. It will be spent on the services that matter—that is, on doctors, nurses, and providing New Zealanders with some police so we can have law and order. We will put the emphasis—

Jill Pettis: 10 in Nelson, 10 in Wanganui?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Absolutely! Jill Pettis already knows our policy. She knows we will provide front-line police, so New Zealanders can be safe. We are going to end the culture of extravagance and waste, because New Zealanders have had enough.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Vote State Services be agreed to.

Ayes 61

New Zealand Labour 51; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Noes 36

New Zealand National 26; ACT New Zealand 9; Māori Party 1.

Abstentions 17

New Zealand First 12; Green Party 5.

Vote State Services agreed to.

Vote Climate Change and Energy Efficiency agreed to.

Vote Commerce agreed to.

Vote Lands agreed to.

Vote Statistics agreed to.

Vote Transport

MIKE WARD (Green): Vote Transport has made significant gains, and I would like to suggest the Greens had a role in that. As a consequence of our commitment to working with Labour on transport policy implementation over the last 3 years, there have been substantial improvements in public transport, rail, and cycle and pedestrian initiatives. Rail-track is back in the hands of New Zealand taxpayers once again, and over the next 10 years $200 million of public money will be spent on upgrading that track. The $200 million will be matched by Toll’s investment in rolling stock. For the first time in decades there is a rail strategy. Toll is now able to plan with confidence—most obviously, perhaps, with the deal with Fonterra in Waikato where the rail link to the Waitōtara dairy factory has been reopened and dairy freight has been consolidated and large numbers of heavy trucks are now off the road.

That is a safety issue. It is not just a transport issue, not just an energy issue, or a means of getting freight to the right place more economically. It is a safety issue. Folk out there in their cars know there are fewer big trucks they have to share the road with.

The Green influence is also obvious in last year’s release of the national walking and cycling strategy, and the first-ever dedicated fund for walking and cycling, which is $6 million this year.

We are also encouraged to see the funding for passenger transport. Funding is up from $53 million in 2000-01 to $240 million in just 5 years—up 350 percent. Public transport funding is up 5.5 percent to 15.2 percent of transport funding. We have seen as a consequence skyrocketing public transport patronage, and again the advantages are advantages to everybody, not just those folk who are transport disadvantaged—those who cannot drive, or do not drive—but it is an advantage to those who do drive, with now more room on the roads. I can recall sitting on the train coming in from Porirua and looking out and seeing queues of traffic moving rather slowly.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 5.55 p.m.