Wednesday, 22 October 2014

WEDNESDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2014

WEDNESDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2014

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Members Sworn

Members Sworn

Mr Speaker administered the Oath of Allegiance to Murray Stuart McCully, who then took his seat in the House.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Child Poverty—Priorities and Measurement

1. Hon ANNETTE KING (Acting Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Deputy Prime Minister: Will he make reducing child poverty a Better Public Service target given the statement in the Speech from the Throne that his Government will continue to “have a focus on poverty, especially child poverty”?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister): Yes. The Government already has a number of Better Public Services related to children’s welfare and poverty, and we have focused on these results because we believe they have a longer-term impact on child poverty—for instance, reducing long-term welfare dependency, increasing participation in early childhood education, reducing assaults on children, and, in particular, increasing educational achievement. These targets are published regularly in the fashion that no previous Government has been able to be held to account on in respect of progress on its social policy, and the member is free to contribute any good ideas that she has to enable us to, for instance, reduce assaults on children or increase educational achievement.

Hon Annette King: If child poverty is a Better Public Service target, how will the Ministerial Committee on Poverty that he is to chair measure the success of the cross-Government approach announced as the method for focusing on poverty over the next 3 years?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: That committee is likely to do the same thing as the Government, and that is measure success in terms of better outcomes for real people. That is, for instance, higher levels of educational achievement and more people having their serious housing needs met, which is not one of our formal targets but something we will be very focused on. Another one that has been topical recently is that we will measure success by trying to reduce the proportion of household incomes that is spent on housing costs, because those have risen over the last 20 years, particularly for low-income households.

Hon Annette King: Will the ministerial committee use the EU measure of poverty, as the Prime Minister did on Radio New Zealand this morning, which, when applied to New Zealand, indicates 180,000 children living with seven or more items of deprivation; if not, what will the committee use to measure progress over the next 3 years?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Of course we can use that measure. There is any number of income measures available, including the EU threshold, which is a bit lower, actually, than the one that was discussed during the election campaign. But those measures are all readily available. They are tracked regularly by the Ministry of Social Development. We have come up with a series of in many ways more challenging measures, and those are ones that are directly related to the welfare of the children, not just to the measure of the income of the household in which they live.

Hon Annette King: The Prime Minister stated today: “There will be extra money to fight child poverty.” How much has he earmarked over the next 3 years to spend on this policy, and how has he calculated the amount required?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: That is all a matter for discussion. What we do know is that if you were going to try to shift some of the indicators, such as with the EU measure, then you would need to spend maybe several billion dollars to get some appreciable change. What the member can be reassured about is that the Government will take the investment approach; that is, we will look at putting money in where we can see there are clearly going to be payoffs in the future, as we have done with welfare dependency, as we expect to be doing with housing, and as we want to do with any number of other Government interventions.

Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder whether the Minister answered when I asked how much he had earmarked over the next 3 years to spend on this policy. He gave nothing other than airy-fairy sorts of answers about some money, sometime, somewhere.

Mr SPEAKER: No, on this occasion I think that to ask how much is being earmarked when budgets have not been presented by this new Government—I think the chance of getting an answer to that was not good. [Interruption] Order! The interjection question would have been better, and I will invite the member to ask an additional supplementary question.

Hon Annette King: Why is the Government, to quote the Prime Minister, “just starting to produce some paperwork on child poverty and a programme that we can work on.” when the Government already has numerous reports, and one exceptional one from the Children’s Commissioner?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: We do, but, as the member will well understand, child poverty is a complex problem. Fortunately, we are learning a lot more about what sorts of interventions might work, which ones do not, and too many of them do not. And so the work the Prime Minister is referring to is the ongoing evolution, actually, of issues this Government has been focusing on for the last 5 or 6 years.

Hon Annette King: Was the Prime Minister correct when he stated this morning that 15 percent of children go to school hungry; if not, is he prepared to spend some of the extra cash that is in the Budget for the next 3 years to provide some hard data, not just guesswork and anecdotal stories, about how many children go to school hungry?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Of course the Prime Minister was correct. There is quite an interesting issue—

Hon Annette King: On what measure?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, there is an interesting issue around data, and that is that most of the data held by the Government is organised around Government departments, not around families and communities. That is one of the reasons why we cannot know for sure how many kids turn up to school without having had breakfast. One of the challenges for the Public Service is to reorganise the millions and millions of dollars’ worth of data that it has in a way that is much more relevant to decisions about families and communities, not about Government departments.

Hon Annette King: The Prime Minister has said that there are a number of children who live in an unacceptable level of material deprivation—how will the committee identify those children so that it can address their issues?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: That is a very good question. The measures of hardship and deprivation are, by definition, statistical measures. What you then have to do is turn it into identifying actual families. The important point is this: the Public Service knows all these families—they are in our health population registers, they are in our school enrolment registers, they are in our State houses. The challenge is how to reorganise that information so that we can ensure that every single family in persistent deprivation is known to the Government and that for each one of those families, we are thinking much more deeply about the interventions that will change their life course.

Mr SPEAKER: Question—[Interruption] Order! I gave the additional one supplementary question, not two.

Economic Programme—Policies and Results

2. DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) to the Minister of Finance: What will be the main features of the Government’s economic plan during this term of Parliament?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): The Government’s economic plan will reinforce all those decisions and actions taken by New Zealanders over the last 4 or 5 years that have put this economy in the right direction. It grew by 3.9 percent in the year to June, 83,000 new jobs have been created in the past 12 months, and, on average, wages are rising faster than inflation. So we want to build on this progress: first, by keeping our spending under control, getting back to surplus, and reducing debt; secondly, by continuing to encourage what is now strong business investment and the enterprise needed to create new jobs; and, thirdly, we will focus on rewarding New Zealanders’ hard work—for instance, by reducing ACC levies and with modest tax reductions when we can afford them.

David Bennett: What reports has he received confirming the Government’s economic programme is helping to support more jobs?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The most important thing to support more jobs is businesses having the confidence to invest another dollar and employ another person, and, fortunately, more New Zealand businesses are doing that. Since the House was last sitting, Statistics New Zealand has reported that the unemployment rate fell to 5.6 percent as at 30 June, the number of people unemployed in the June quarter fell by 9,000, and the number of people employed increased by 10,000. This encouraging labour force data is backed up by other indicators, such as employment confidence among businesses. Total job advertising increased by 2.4 percent in September, following a 1.7 percent lift in August, according to the ANZ job ads survey.

David Bennett: How is New Zealand’s improving economy being reflected in confidence among manufacturers?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: We track manufacturing because the Opposition decided a couple of years ago that it was in crisis. Last week the BNZ - BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index came out for September. It rose by 1.1 points to 58.1 points. The manufacturing sector has now expanded for 25 consecutive months, beginning in about the month when the Opposition said the sector was in crisis.

David Bennett: Since the election, what reports has he received supporting the Government’s economic plan?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, a number of reports, but one particularly strong endorsement. The report said: “Well, I think at the end of the day people wanted stability. They wanted prosperity. They saw the current Government as for now delivering that for them, and they weren’t prepared to take what they saw as some kind of risk for a change.” That was from the then Labour leader, David Cunliffe.

Dr David Clark: Given the forecast of his own department that exports as a percentage of GDP will this very year fall to their lowest level in 25 years, will he finally concede that he has failed to rebalance the economy?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: No. The measure the member is using is, as I understand it anyway from what he said, the nominal measure, which actually is not the volume measure. But the Government, rather than attacking the export sector for non-performance, as the Opposition is, has been backing it solidly while it has been dealing with the headwinds of a high exchange rate. As the exchange rate comes off and our exporters show that they have become very competitive, we expect them to perform pretty well, actually, over the next few years.

Dr David Clark: Has he in the past month come up with any new ideas to rebalance the economy, given that his own department forecast exports as a percentage of GDP by March 2016 to be the worst since Robert Muldoon became Prime Minister—the worst exports to GDP ratio in 40 years?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: As I pointed out before, our exporters have done a fantastic job, given that they have been dealing with the highest exchange rate since the Second World War. Despite that, they have been able to hold their own. As the pressure comes off, they will be able to succeed. But, of course, alongside growing exports we have to do some domestic work in New Zealand—for instance, expanding the housing supply. So resources that are applied to that very vital task will not be able to be applied to exports until the construction catch-up is complete.

Dr David Clark: I seek leave to table a document.

Mr SPEAKER: The source of the document?

Dr David Clark: From the Parliamentary Library.

Mr SPEAKER: And what is the document?

Dr David Clark: It is outlining the extent of the Minister’s abject failure to rebalance—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. It is a privilege the member is asking for—the ability to table a document. If he stands and describes the document without that form of embellishment, then I might consider putting the leave. I will give the member a second chance.

Dr David Clark: I seek leave to table a document outlining the extent of the Minister’s failure to rebalance the economy.

Mr SPEAKER: I gave the member a second chance. He has not accepted it. I am not putting the leave.

Prime Minister—Communications with Blogger

3. Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: How many times since November 2008 has he spoken with blogger Cameron Slater on the phone and how many times, if any, has he texted him?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): None in my capacity as Prime Minister. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! When I remain on my feet, I do not expect interjections to continue from my left.

Dr Russel Norman: Given the Prime Minister’s previous statements to say that he regularly talked with Mr Slater on the phone, is the Prime Minister now claiming that when he talked with Mr Slater he was talking with Mr Slater as the leader of the National Party, not as the Prime Minister; and does he wear a different hat when he takes those phone calls?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am not now claiming that. That has always been the claim.

Dr Russel Norman: Did he call Cameron Slater to discuss the backlash Slater received after describing a young car crash victim as a feral who deserved to die; if so, what did he tell Slater about the dead man’s mother?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I have never rung Cameron Slater in my capacity as Prime Minister.

Chris Hipkins: Has he ever phoned or texted Cameron Slater on a phone funded or provided by Ministerial Services?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am not 100 percent sure of that, but what I can say is that, as Prime Minister Helen Clark would have told him, that is not the test of whether it is in my capacity as Prime Minister.

Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption] Mr Speaker—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I do not need the Leader of the House’s assistance at this stage.

Dr Russel Norman: The Prime Minister gave an answer to the primary question on notice, on the basis that he never called Mr Slater as the Prime Minister. We have now established that there are occasions where he used the prime ministerial phone to call Mr Slater. I would ask you to rule as to whether the Prime Minister’s original answer was within the Standing Orders of the House, given that he himself has now acknowledged he used a prime ministerial phone to call Mr Slater.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! In regard to the answer given by the Prime Minister to the first question, that answer was definitely in order.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. There is something particularly disturbing about the Prime Minister’s answer, because it would appear that any Minister can make this claim and say: “Not in my capacity as a Minister.” Around about now, we have got no accountability at all in this Parliament if you allow that to stand.

Mr SPEAKER: In regard to the very first question that was asked, the Prime Minister is perfectly entitled to answer it in the way he did. He is then responsible for that answer. Further supplementary questions have been asked that attempt to tease this issue out. They are equally in order.

Dr Russel Norman: Why did he tell Cameron Slater that the dead man’s mother was the same woman who sometimes confronted him at Pike River meetings?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am not going to describe conversations I have in capacities other than those as Prime Minister.

Dr Russel Norman: Was Cameron Slater correct when he said that the Prime Minister told him that the dead man’s mother—so these are the Prime Minister’s own words—was “ … the same woman effing feral bitch that screams at him when he goes to Pike River meetings.”? Is Cameron Slater correct that that is what the Prime Minister said?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I made clear at the time that that was not correct.

Dr Russel Norman: Is it not the truth that until the Dirty Politics book came out, he chose to have regular dealings with Cameron Slater, a man who is a hired gun for the tobacco industry, whose blog subjected a public servant to death threats, and who celebrated the death of a car crash victim, calling him a feral?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Over the time I have been Prime Minister, the answer to that question is no.

Dr Russel Norman: Is it appropriate for the Prime Minister or his staff to use an attack blogger like Cameron Slater as a platform to “get their message out”, as the Prime Minister’s spokeswoman described it on 12 December last year?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The Government and Ministers do talk to bloggers, for a variety of reasons. The reason we talk to social media is that they are part of the overall media that communicates with New Zealanders. That would be no different from other political parties. I have seen that member quoted on numerous blog sites. One assumes that he and his office talk to them, and I am sure he and his office probably talk to Nicky Hager.

Dr Russel Norman: Did he instruct his staff to cease all links with Cameron Slater after the blogger accused an alleged sexual attack victim of bringing it on herself, or after Slater described a car crash victim as a feral who deserved to die? Did the Prime Minister direct his staff to cease all contact with Cameron Slater after Slater made those comments?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No.

Dr Russel Norman: Does he not think that he should set a standard for the Prime Minister’s office by directing his staff to cease all contact with the attack blogger Cameron Slater, after Cameron Slater accused an alleged sexual attack victim of bringing it on herself, and Slater described a car crash victim as a feral who deserved to die? Would it not set a standard for the Prime Minister’s office to direct his staff to no longer have contact with Cameron Slater?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I have made it clear that we do not endorse many of the stories or comments that are run by a range of different bloggers, but, no, I will not be instructing my staff to do that.

Dr Russel Norman: Is he saying it is business as usual for the Prime Minister of New Zealand and his staff to deal on a regular basis with the most vicious and notorious blogger in New Zealand and for his staff to leak information to that blogger in order to intimidate public servants and silence his political opponents?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not believe that to be an accurate statement.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I ask that after question time you review the overall question here today, because I suspect this issue is going to arise again around the distinction between the Prime Minister’s other capacities and his capacity as Prime Minister. The issue that I would like you to consider—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a point of order.

Chris Hipkins: —is that, in fact, it is the content of the communications and not the means by which they are transmitted, or the hat that the Prime Minister claims to be wearing at the time that he makes the communication, that is at issue here. So if the Prime Minister is communicating with someone about matters relating to his role as Prime Minister and about activities he has undertaken as Prime Minister, then they are, by nature, prime ministerial activities that he should be answerable for. So I ask you to give some further consideration to the interchange today, and, in fact, perhaps come back with a more substantive ruling on the matter, because it seems to me that the Prime Minister could stand up and give any answer to any question and say: “Well, I wasn’t doing that as Prime Minister.”, and therefore would not be held to account.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I think it has been well established in this House for a very long period of time that Prime Ministers wear a variety of different hats, and that includes as leader of the National Party, and can include as a citizen. I fondly remember sitting in this House for years hearing Helen Clark saying that she made statements, or had conversations, or undertook actions as the leader of the Labour Party. I happen, for the record, to use my Ministerial Services - funded cellphone to ring my wife. When I ring my darling wife and when I put the cat out at night, I do that in my capacity as a husband, not as Prime Minister. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am on my feet. In regard to the very first point Chris Hipkins raised, I certainly give an assurance I will review the interchange today. As to the appropriate course of action following that review, I will not be bound. If it is necessary to come back with a further more substantive ruling, I will consider doing so.

Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a point of order. [Interruption] Order! We just need to get the rules straight for everybody. This is a point of order, and it will be heard in silence.

Dr Russel Norman: Thank you for that ruling. Given that it related to my questions, I would just like to make one point with regard to the point that Mr Hipkins made, which was that the issue was about John Key acting as Prime Minister—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: What’s the point of order?

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Dr Russel Norman: The point of order is that it is relevant to this question because he was acting as Prime Minister in the Pike River capacity. That is why it is relevant to this question.

Mr SPEAKER: The attempt to raise a point of order is not actually adding to the situation. I have given an assurance following the point of order raised by Chris Hipkins that I will have a look. I always review the transcripts of question time. As to what action may then be required, that will be determined by the conclusions I make in that review.

Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Is it a fresh point of order? I have dealt with this matter. If it is a fresh point of order I am happy to hear it, but we are not going to relitigate this matter any further.

Dr Russel Norman: Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Is it a fresh point of order?

Dr Russel Norman: Yes. Mr Speaker, while you were on your feet, and several times while I was trying to make a point of order, the Prime Minister interjected even after you had directed him not to. It seems to me that if we are going to have order in this House, it is very important that the Prime Minister in particular should set an example of not speaking while the member with the call is trying to speak.

Mr SPEAKER: That is a reasonable point of order to raise. I did not actually hear the Prime Minister continuing in a conversation. I did hear it from another frontbencher of the Government. The member is making a fair point. I do not want to get into a habit of ejecting many members on any day, but points of order should be heard in silence, particularly when I call the House to order and ask for the point of order to be delivered. For members to continue to interject is going to create problems and leave me with no choice but to ask that member, be it a Minister or a Prime Minister, to leave the Chamber.

Housing—Supply and Affordability

4. PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) to the Minister for Building and Housing: Does he agree with the statement from the Speech from the Throne that the Government will “have a focus on housing in this Parliamentary term. More special housing areas will be created—and therefore more new housing developed—as a result of Housing Accords signed between the Government and local councils”?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Housing): Yes, because it was a very good speech.

Phil Twyford: How many houses have been completed in the special housing areas and have people living in them?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: There have been 294 building consents granted. There have been 46 resource consents granted for 617 sections. There has never been a record kept of houses with code compliant certificates, not under the previous Government or the Government before that. What I would say is that there is a housing build going on in Auckland as a consequence of our policies.

Phil Twyford: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is a very straight question. In fact, Auckland Council, which is the partner in the Auckland Housing Accord, has been talking publicly about the number of completed houses. It simply defies credibility that the Minister says that he does not know how many houses have been completed.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Mr Speaker—

Mr SPEAKER: I will hear from the Minister, because he did not say that he did not know; he said there were no records kept, which I found quite a surprising point. I will hear from Dr Nick Smith.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The Auckland Council has said that six houses have been completed in one of the 80 special housing areas. It too has said that there never has been a record kept of the number of code compliant certificates on houses that are completed.

Mr SPEAKER: Before I invite the member to ask a supplementary question, it seems now that the first question has been answered as to how many houses have been completed. It is six.

Phil Twyford: Was he embarrassed to hear comments made by property developer Jon Maplesden that many developers signed up to the special housing areas simply to increase the capital gain on their property and have no intention of building houses any time soon, and reports that land in some special housing areas is now selling for three times its earlier value? Why did he conceal this information from the public while he was so busy trying to blame councils for the failure of his policy?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The 80 special housing areas that have been granted in Auckland, we know, is a good policy, because the member Mr Twyford said on the platform in the election campaign that it was such a good policy he would be keeping the housing accords and special housing area initiative. It is true that when areas do get special housing area status, the value is going up, but I would point out to the House that a block of dirt in Flatbush inside the metropolitan urban limit sold for $800,000 in 1998 and in 2008 sold for $113 million—more than a hundred times the price—because of the stupid policy of the metropolitan urban limit that that member has consistently backed. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! When I rise to my feet, it is important that all members resume their seats. [Interruption] Order! Just ask the supplementary question.

Phil Twyford: Does he stand by his statement that it will take some years for the market to respond to the special housing areas, and at the rate of five houses a year how many years will it take to meet his target of the 39,000 houses he promised Aucklanders?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The building consent figures show that in the last year 23,921 houses have been built in New Zealand, double the rate when we became the Government and the highest rate for 7 years. We know that the number of resource consents for housing is at the highest level for 10 years. We know from the GDP data that the residential building construction market has grown faster in the last year than it has in the last 20 years. We know from the employment data that the number of people working in residential housing is the highest for 10 years. That shows a housing building boom by anybody’s measure.

Phil Twyford: Will he concede that the average monthly building consent rate under National is 32 percent less than it was under the last Labour Government and 46 percent less in Auckland?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I am happy to share the exact numbers with the House. In the last 3 months of the previous Government, housing consents in New Zealand averaged 1,000 a month—1,000 per month. In the last 3 months we have done 3,000 a month. That is double. But let us talk about Auckland. In Auckland in the last 3 months of the previous Government, we averaged 200 a month. In the last 3 months, we have averaged 600 a month—a trebling. Not bad—I will settle for that.

Phil Twyford: I seek the leave of the House to table data from Statistics New Zealand that shows that the building consent rate is 32 percent less under National than it was—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Statistics New Zealand information is available very easily to all members.

Joanne Hayes: What progress has the Government made in developing new housing at Hobsonville in Auckland, and how does this compare with progress under the previous Government?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The Hobsonville development is progressing at pace. Two hundred and thirty houses have been completed and another 208 are under construction. Two new schools have been built and a new ferry terminal has opened. This contrasts with the previous Government, which turned the first sod in 2002 and 6 years later that was all it had done.

Housing—Supply and Affordability

5. ALFRED NGARO (National) to the Minister for Building and Housing: What advice has he received on the monthly rate of new house builds from when this Government was first elected in 2008 and the current rate?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Housing): As I just informed the House, we have basically doubled the rate nationally from 1,000 houses a month to about 2,000 a month, and in Auckland we have trebled it from an average of 200 a month when we became the Government; now we are building 600 new houses a month.

Alfred Ngaro: How are the Government’s measures like housing accords and special housing areas helping to build momentum in increasing housing supply?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: There are four steps required to convert bare land into housing. The first is a plan change, and I am advised that that normally takes 7 years. We are doing it with special housing areas in 7 weeks. The second stage is gaining a resource consent for a subdivision. The average period that that used to take was 2 years; the average period in the special housing areas is 2 months. After that stage, you need to construct the roads, the sewerage, the water, the drainage, and the power and the telecommunications infrastructure, and that is being completed in a number of those special housing areas. Then you require a building consent—

Denis O’Rourke: Why did it take 6 years?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: For the benefit of the member opposite, it is delightful to see that we have doubled the rate of housing building, and it will just be great to have the support of parties like his.

Alfred Ngaro: What further initiatives is the Government planning to ensure that a greater proportion of new homes are in a price range affordable for first-home buyers?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The Prime Minister announced in campaign 2014 the Homestart grant scheme, which will provide $418 million of support over the next 4 years for first home owners, starting from 1 April next year. The Homestart scheme specifically targets first-home buyers and will help an estimated 90,000 young New Zealanders to get access to a first home.

Phil Twyford: Discredited by all the commentators. It failed in Australia. Treasury advised against it.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: This is about increasing housing in the affordable range for those Kiwi families that aspire to get ahead under a National Government. For the interjecting member, I think it is about 1 million who voted for our plan and about less than half who voted for that lot’s plan.

Prime Minister—Release of Information

6. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does he stand by his statement of 13 October: “I would certainly describe my style as open and transparent.”?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If that is true, why did his Government withhold the two child poverty reports for 17 months in an abuse of the Official Information Act?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The member really should direct that to the responsible Minister; it was not in my office. But I think I am correct in saying—I could stand corrected—that it was because it was a work in progress and there were particular reasons as it was going through that process.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Having regard to the Hon Jim McLay’s comment in this House when the Official Information Bill was being passed, and he said: “The underlying philosophy of the bill is that official information should be made available unless there is good reason for withholding it.”, and that being the case, why has he admitted on 15 October to using delaying tactics for political purposes?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I have not.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I seek leave to table the evidence that he did admit that on 15 October.

Mr SPEAKER: What is the source of this evidence?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: It is a Radio New Zealand transcript.

Mr SPEAKER: No. That is also available to all members. Does the member—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Well, he’s just denied it, for goodness sake!

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I heard that. Does the member have a further supplementary question?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why are US congressmen kept well informed about the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations whilst New Zealand parliamentarians are kept totally in the dark on this matter?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well, every system is different, so I cannot speak for what happens in the United States. But what I can say is that in New Zealand it has been a longstanding tradition for free-trade agreements to be negotiated behind closed doors, essentially, until the point an agreement is reached, because we do not believe it is in the best interests to be discussing those in the public domain because it weakens our bargaining position.

Islamic State Conflict—Government Response

7. Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) to the Prime Minister: Why has he changed his pre-election commitment not to deploy New Zealand Special Forces to Iraq to his post-election statement that deployment is “definitely an option”?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): This is a rapidly evolving issue, and countries including New Zealand are having to consider the issue as it intensifies. The increasing threats from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the global response will require New Zealand to carefully consider this issue. Therefore, officials are preparing advice for Ministers and Cabinet to consider a range of options, including humanitarian, diplomatic, and military contributions. I would stress that no decisions have been taken at this time. As members know, my least preferred option is to deploy the SAS, but I expect it to be part of the range of options. Over the last few months countries around the world have been considering their contributions to the coalition to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and New Zealand shares the international community’s outrage at its brutal actions. We have seen clear evidence of what this group is capable of doing.

Hon Phil Goff: When he said on 16 June, without any qualification, that he ruled out New Zealand special forces being deployed to Iraq—even in an advisory capacity, he said—where in that assurance did he warn New Zealanders that, straight after the election, suddenly sending special forces to Iraq was definitely an option?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: For a start off, let me make it clear: that was the best information and advice I had at the time, and I believed it to be correct at the time. What I can say is the issue is evolving. I stand by the view that I have expressed, which is that sending the SAS is the least preferred option of the Government, but as I have said when I have been asked these questions, the Government will get a range of options presented to it. We do not pick and choose those options that are presented to us; we pick and choose the options we ultimately want to deploy.

Hon Phil Goff: When he told the country last week that the New Zealand Chief of Defence Force was attending just a regular meeting in Washington, is he telling the House that neither the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Ministry of Defence, or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade had informed him that President Obama would be addressing that meeting and the specific purpose of that meeting was to map out a strategy of military commitments to that war when that was in the International News Services wires 12 hours before he made that outrageous comment?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: It is only outrageous if it is incorrect, and it was absolutely correct. We were not aware that President Obama was going down to speak to the meeting and taking the White House press corps with him. That has been confirmed by the Chief of Defence Force.

Hon Phil Goff: Why does he believe that Western-led military intervention to remove ISIS will be more successful than Western-led military intervention to remove oppressive regimes in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011, both of which he supported and both of which were spectacularly unsuccessful, with disastrous unintended consequences?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Firstly, given the member’s previous roles, the differences between the situation in Iraq today and then will, hopefully, not be lost on him. In 2003 there was a situation where there was action taken to oust a regime. Whatever one thinks of that, that was the view that was taken against a regime that was believed to be oppressive. The current situation is quite different in Iraq. It is one where the Iraqi Government is actually asking both the United States, I think, and countries from around the world to give them support against ISIS. ISIS is an organisation that we have designated as a terrorist group. ISIS is an organisation that I believe presents both international, regional, and domestic threats. It may be extremely convenient or easy for the member to be in Opposition and to not care about the responsibilities that I have as Prime Minister, but I am not going to walk away from those responsibilities. I think that member should himself be very, very careful indeed about the claims that he makes, because I can assure the member that the actions I will be taking are those that are in the best interests of New Zealanders, even if he can afford the luxury of not doing so.

Hon Phil Goff: Why does it make sense for New Zealand to be part of a so-called coalition of the willing of 22 military countries represented at the meeting in Washington and to make a decision to put the lives of New Zealand soldiers at risk, when two members of that coalition of the willing, NATO ally Turkey and American ally Saudi Arabia, have both supported ISIS, and Saudi Arabia, in fact, is the major provider of weaponry and funding to the ISIS terrorists?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well, it is not the Saudi royal family who are in that position. There may be individual people who live in Saudi Arabia who happen to—

Hon Phil Goff: They allow it to happen.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well, if the member is aware of what Saudi Arabia is doing, then he must also be aware that they gave half a billion dollars of humanitarian aid and are seriously considering what their next steps might be to combat ISIS. You cannot rule out that there are individual people who live in Saudi Arabia who happen to believe in the particular form of Islamic faith that ISIS is following. I will go back to the original point. In the end, the Government will consider what is in the best interests of New Zealanders. The Government will act to do the right thing by New Zealanders even if he, as the spokesman for the Opposition, chooses to ignore what the right thing for New Zealanders is.

Ebola—Readiness and Response Plan

8. SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki) to the Minister of Health: Is he confident that New Zealand is prepared to deal with a case of suspected Ebola?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): I am. Although the risk that Ebola poses to New Zealand remains low, we are treating the situation very seriously and taking every precaution to keep New Zealand protected. I am receiving daily updates on the situation from both here and abroad, and officials are constantly updating the comprehensive measures that are in place as part of the international response to the threat of Ebola. I would like to recognise the hard work of officials, doctors, and nurses and all those involved in preparing New Zealand to respond to this threat.

Simon O’Connor: What particular measures are being undertaken as part of the comprehensive preparation in place to protect New Zealand?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: It is worth noting that this is not just a Ministry of Health response to keeping New Zealand protected. The Ministry of Health is working with Immigration New Zealand and the Customs Service to constantly monitor and update protections at the border. Officials are running specific Ebola-readiness activities, coordinated across 20 agencies, to model New Zealand’s whole-of-Government response.

Hon Te Ururoa Flavell: Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Kia ora tātou. How does he propose, in the event that Ebola might reach these shores, that we ensure that access to health services is equally available for everyone, particularly for vulnerable communities, many of which include Māori, Pasifika, and those on low incomes?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: The comprehensive steps we are taking are to protect all New Zealanders. There are more than 200 isolation rooms to deal with suspected cases, right across all district health board hospitals, and four specialist units, one of which, of course, is at Middlemore Hospital in South Auckland. There is also extensive engagement across the primary health sector to ensure high levels of awareness and preparedness, and of course this Government has worked very hard to increase access to primary care for all New Zealanders.

Hon Annette King: Is he aware that Queensland, our nearest neighbour, with a population about the same as New Zealand, has three isopod units to safely transport Ebola patients to high-level isolation? How many does New Zealand currently have, and are more to be provided?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: We have four units, and we are currently in the process of implementing their deployment in New Zealand.

Simon O’Connor: What capacity is there across the health sector to deal with a suspected case of Ebola?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: The health sector is well prepared. There are more than 200 negative pressure isolation rooms across all district health boards around the country, with specialist Ebola treatment facilities in Auckland, Middlemore, Wellington, and Christchurch. Guidelines for health professionals in hospitals, public health, primary care, and pharmacies have been distributed by the Ministry of Health. Relevant public health services are expected to undertake timely and effective management of ill travellers at borders, and all public health services are expected to manage routine public health activities including contact tracing in response to a suspected or confirmed case.

Investing in Educational Success Programme—Progress

9. Dr JIAN YANG (National) to the Minister of Education: What recent updates has she received on the progress of the Government’s $359 million Investing in Educational Success initiative?

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakahaere, otirā, tēnā koutou, tātou huri noa i tō tātou Whare.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker and salutations indeed to you and to us collectively throughout our House.]

I recently received an update that shows momentum and enthusiasm are growing as we implement this initiative to raise teaching quality and school leadership to deliver a better education to every student. This is evident by the keen interest already being shown in the process to form these new communities of schools. It is also very clear from what I have been hearing as I have been up and down the country visiting schools and talking with parents.

Dr Jian Yang: What has she heard from others about the importance of this initiative and lifting achievement for kids?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I have also been hearing and receiving a lot of other support. For example, the Secondary Principals’ Association of New Zealand has said: “Let’s keep the best teachers in the classroom. Let’s share the best practice that we’ve got in communities of schools.” The Ngā Kura-ā-Iwi has described the initiative as a winner, potentially transformational, and providing a real solution to improving achievement for kids. A top chief executive has said: “It’s the encouragement of inspirational teachers that sees kids from tough homes lift their sights”. That is why we are continuing to do the work that needs to be done and that gets this right for kids, their parents, and their schools.

Prisons—Staff and Prisoner Safety

10. MIKE SABIN (National—Northland) to the Minister of Corrections: What announcements has he recently made to help improve safety for frontline corrections officers in our prisons?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (Minister of Corrections): Yesterday I announced the release of a tender for 1,000 on-body cameras for our front-line corrections officers. This follows a successful 6-month trial for these cameras conducted in high-security Rimutaka Prison and maximum-security Auckland prison. We want prisoners focused on their own rehabilitation through education, skills, and training, and not on causing disruption to other prisoners and staff. Front-line correction officers are well trained and resourced to deal with difficult situations in our prisons, but we remain focused on continually improving the safety of our staff and prisoners. These cameras will be another measure available to de-escalate what can sometimes be highly tense situations.

Mike Sabin: What did the 6-month trial of on-body cameras in both Rimutaka Prison and Auckland prison reveal?

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: When we compared the average rate of prisoner-related incidents during the 180-day trial with the same 180-day period during the previous year, there was a 15 to 20 percent reduction in both trial units. This was compared with a 4 to 5 percent reduction for the wider trial prison sites. The trial also revealed that the use of cameras reduced the severity of incidents and allowed staff to use the footage in their debriefs as evidence of misconduct, in staff development and prisoner coaching. As I said in answering the primary question, we want prisoners focused on their own rehabilitation and working on learning, upskilling, and training for a productive and meaningful life outside prison.

Judith Collins—Inquiry into Compliance with Cabinet Manual

11. Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) to the Prime Minister: What are the allegations that led to him establishing the Chisholm inquiry into the allegations regarding Judith Collins and a former Director of the Serious Fraud Office?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): The allegations are that during her time as Minister of Police, with responsibility for the Serious Fraud Office, Judith Collins acted inappropriately to undermine the then director of the Serious Fraud Office, Mr Adam Feeley. These allegations have been totally rejected by Ms Collins, and she asked that I establish an inquiry so her name could be cleared. I was happy to oblige. I do not believe it is in the public interest for me to make any further comments while the inquiry is still in progress.

Dr Megan Woods: Is he still expecting the findings of the inquiry to be reported back to him by 28 November 2014, and when does he expect to publicly respond to it?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: In answer to the first part of the question, yes. In terms of the second part of the question, I am not sure at this point.

Dr Megan Woods: If the inquiry clears Judith Collins of the accusations, will she be reinstated to his ministry forthwith?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I have made that clear. The answer is no, not forthwith.

Dr Megan Woods: Has he received specific information about Judith Collins’ conduct as a Minister since the initiation of the inquiry into the matter; if so, what is the information?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No.

Dr Megan Woods: What factors, including any other activities of Judith Collins not included in the inquiry, are preventing him from giving a guarantee to reinstate her to his ministry?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: People are appointed to the ministry when I feel it is appropriate that they are and when we have an opportunity. As the member will be aware, we have just announced a new Cabinet line-up. That is where it stands at the moment.

Immigration Policy—Numbers and Impact

12. RON MARK (NZ First) to the Minister of Immigration: Does he have an ideal number of migrants coming to New Zealand; if so, what is that number?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration): I do have an ideal situation for migrants coming to New Zealand, and it is quantifiable, but not in a single number. My ideal is as many international students as want to come and study at our tertiary institutions; as many tourists who want to come and enjoy our beautiful country; as many skilled migrants as is necessary to fill the skill demands that we have; and, because migration data also includes New Zealanders coming home, as many New Zealanders who want to come home and contribute to this country’s social and economic development.

Ron Mark: As the Minister has just admitted to the House that he has no clear idea of what an ideal level of immigration is—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have a point of order, and no one should be surprised.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: The Standing Orders are very clear on what must be, or should be, in a question. Equally, they are clear on what there should not be. Statements of supposition that were statements, effectively, at the beginning of what we hoped would be a question are not inside the Standing Orders and should not be allowed in this Parliament.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: The problem with that complaint is that the Minister did say that he did not have an optimum figure that he could give the House. He admitted that he did not have that figure. He referred to tourists and he referred to students, neither of which was part of the primary question, and so, frankly, he is guilty by the statement he made.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: The Minister made it clear that he did not have an ideal number, but he had a series of scenarios that were acceptable. For the member to characterise the Minister’s answer as an admission at the start of his question it is not an acceptable way to ask a question in this House.

Mr SPEAKER: I have heard enough. [Interruption] Order! I am on my feet. Strictly interpreting the Standing Orders, all questions should start with a question word, but if members also take the opportunity to review Hansard today they will see that on many occasions members take the opportunity to add an introduction, which I have been relatively lenient in allowing. But, as the member who is asking the question will have noted, when he starts a question like that, it will inevitably lead to disorder. So I invite the member, if he wants to ask a supplementary question, to now rise and ask a supplementary question without the additional comments about a Minister having no idea, etc.

Ron Mark: Thank you, Mr Speaker; thank you, Gerry. Does the Minister, noting that he has not given an ideal level of immigration to the House today, realise that uncontrolled immigration is forcing Kiwis into queues for hospital beds, queues for housing, and queues for jobs, and is driving down Kiwi wages?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I think it would be helpful to assist the member by describing what migration definitions informed the permanent and long-term migration data that he sees. A migrant includes somebody who is here for a short time, for a long-term temporary basis, and permanently, and New Zealanders returning home. The member describes an out-of-control or uncontrolled permanent residence migration by foreigners. That is not true. We have a planning range of between 45,000 and 50,000 residents per year, and in the 5 years to 2014 we have not met that range because migration policy is demand-driven, and the demand during the recession has not been there. So I reject the assertion that it is somehow uncontrolled immigration.

Ron Mark: Is it not a fact that a Government using open-door immigration policies is likely to drive down wages and living standards, and when will he admit that we—New Zealand—are on track to replicate exactly what is happening in the United Kingdom right now?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I simply reject the prefacing comments about uncontrolled migration. We have very strict immigration policies, which are labour market - tested for temporary visa holders and are very well controlled for permanent residence visa holders. I note that permanent residence visa numbers presently are 20 percent below the 2006-07 numbers that existed when that member’s party was supporting Labour on confidence and supply.

Ron Mark: So if the number of people coming into New Zealand, as reported recently, in 1 year is such that it translates into a need for 8,000 new homes just to meet their requirements, and the Minister of Building and Housing has just told the House today that he has managed to build six houses this year—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! We are now getting to the stage where it is a speech. Ask the supplementary question.

Ron Mark: Thank you, Mr Speaker. What is the whole-of-Government plan to cater for this level of immigration in terms of infrastructural needs, in terms of housing needs, and in terms of catering for the hospitals and their extra workload? What is this Government’s population plan for New Zealand?

Mr SPEAKER: The Hon Michael Woodhouse, in so far as he has ministerial responsibility.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: As I think I have already explained, the migration data on which the member bases his question include working holidaymakers, international students, people who are going to help us rebuild our second-largest city, and, above all, Kiwis coming home. Yes, they need houses, and this Government does have a plan to fix housing supply, but I reject the inference that this is somehow some kind of peril that we need to be managing.

Urgent Debates Declined

Islamic State Conflict—Government Response

State Housing—Sale of Housing Stock

Judith Collins—Resignation as Minister and Inquiry into Compliance with Cabinet Manual

Mr SPEAKER: I have received a letter from the Hon Phil Goff seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the decision by the Prime Minister to consider the deployment of troops against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria forces in Iraq. In order for an urgent debate to be held, there must be a particular case of recent occurrence. The Government has not yet made a decision about the deployment of troops to Iraq. An absence of action on the part of the Government cannot be a particular case of recent occurrence. If a decision is made in the future to deploy troops, there are likely to be opportunities to debate it at that time. The application is, therefore, declined.

I have also received an application from Phil Twyford seeking to debate the Government’s decision to sell a large number of New Zealand’s State houses. The member bases his application on media reports of the Government’s ideas for reform of State housing and plans to sell some of the country’s State houses. The urgent debate procedure is a means of debating matters that have occurred, not what might or might not occur. An urgent debate cannot be granted on the basis of media speculation. A particular case of recent occurrence occurs at the point in time when a decision is publicly announced. The House is currently considering a motion for an Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne. This is a wide-ranging debate. This provides the opportunity to debate ideas for reform. This application is therefore also declined.

I have further received an application from Dr Megan Woods on the decision by the Prime Minister to accept the resignation of Judith Collins as a Minister and to initiate an inquiry into allegations that as Minister of Police Ms Collins acted inappropriately to undermine the then Director of the Serious Fraud Office. This is a case of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility because this is the first sitting of the House at which the matter could be raised. However, not every resignation of a Minister will occasion an urgent debate. Ms Collins was a Minister in the previous Government and an independent inquiry into the allegations regarding her has been set up under the Inquiries Act 2013. While the House has before it a debate as wide-ranging as the Address in Reply debate, the bar for the acceptance of an urgent debate is somewhat higher. Members can address issues related to Ms Collins’ resignation in that debate. The time to consider any wider issues is when the inquiry reports. This application is therefore also declined.

Address in Reply

Address in Reply

Debate resumed from 21 October.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources): Before the adjournment yesterday evening I was talking about transport and the fact that in New Zealand over the last few years, after a very long period of under-investment, this Government has spent many billions of dollars investing in roads of national significance, regional roads, and the like. That is a fantastic record. This morning I had great pleasure—and Phil Twyford, given the urbanist he is, will be very delighted in what I am saying—to go to Redwood Station here in Wellington and see part of what is nearly a half-billion-dollar investment by this Government in metropolitan rail. The $88 million project is about a third of the way through. I was there with my friend the Hon Todd McClay. That is part of $1.7 billion this Government is investing in metropolitan rail in this country because we believe in roads, we believe in public services, and, of course, we believe in cycleways, where we are investing $100 million over the next 3 years into projects all around New Zealand.

Of course, in energy, the other portfolio I am delighted to be Minister in—a great portfolio—we are going to sensibly explore our opportunities and resources out at sea and in New Zealand. We will do that with the highest environmental and health and safety standards and that is absolutely right. But we are pursuing a balanced approach where we are also doing great work in renewables, whether it is bioenergy, solar, wind, geothermal, or the like.

To conclude my remarks in this debate, it is a privilege to be back as part of a Government that is focused on what matters to New Zealand, that has a renewed sense of purpose and vigour, and that is going to govern resolutely and humbly for all New Zealanders in this country.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Before the next speaker commences, I wonder whether you might want to bring the House to a little bit of order. I could barely hear what Simon Bridges was saying, and I think there are a number of things happening around the House that mean the next speaker is not going to get a fair hearing either.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The point is well made. The House will observe some courtesy while members are speaking.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): It gives me great pleasure in this Address in Reply debate to recognise your election as Deputy Speaker, and alongside yourself to congratulate the Speaker on his re-election, Assistant Speaker Tisch, and Assistant Speaker Mallard, proving once and for all that the odd poacher makes a great gamekeeper.

Can I also acknowledge the newly elected and returning members and I would especially like to acknowledge amongst our Labour benches Peeni Henare, Adrian Rurawhe, and Jenny Salesa—all entering Parliament for the first time as part of the almost clean sweep of the Māori electorates by the Labour Party under the leadership of our Māori affairs spokesperson, Nanaia Mahuta, and the strongest Pacific team that Labour has ever had in its parliamentary history. So we are absolutely delighted with that result.

Can I also take some personal pleasure in acknowledging the return to Parliament of Stuart Nash, Carmel Sepuloni, and, of course, Kelvin Davis, who came in just before the election—very valued colleagues whom it is wonderful to have back on the team and raising the bar for all of us. It is great to have you back.

I want to warmly recognise all of the new members and the returning members from around the House. May you have a positive, a productive, and a highly entertaining time in this House. There is nothing else like it. This is the place where we deal with the market place of ideas, the clash of ideas, but within the framework of the democracy that we can all stand behind and alongside.

The Address in Reply debate is the opportunity for the Government to set out the general themes of the approach it will take to governing in this term, and for the Opposition to note the approach that it will take in response. We do so against the background of an election loss that was for Labour and the rest of the progressive parties in this country a very serious defeat. We recognise that voters have spoken. We are listening hard to New Zealanders. As a former leader, I have taken responsibility by resigning my role and acknowledging that there is a great deal for us to learn. We in the Labour Party are going through a proper and constitutional process to re-elect a new leader. It is a process that after much reflection I have decided is in the best interests of the party that I stand aside from. Like all members of the party, I give my 100 percent commitment to support whomever comes out of that process and ask all members of the Labour Party to do exactly the same.

The values for which the party stands are as important today as they have ever been—the values that every New Zealander is created equal, and is, therefore, worthy of equal opportunities and the dignity of a decent job, a warm, dry home, opportunities for all our children, a health and education system that we can trust, and the dream that each generation will do better than the one before. Those are Labour’s values. They are as relevant to New Zealand families today as they have ever been. But the way that we communicate, the way that we organise, and the way that we deliver on those values, clearly, we must rethink. We are going to be doing just that with a widespread review of our 2014 campaign in the context of the broader political environment and our recent history. I and the rest of the party will be taking extremely seriously the results of that review so that we can bring to New Zealanders more effectively a message of hope and renewal in years to come.

The priorities that on behalf of New Zealanders we campaigned on in 2014 are not, I believe, the wrong ones. Jobs, homes, and families—even members of the Government would agree, I think—are the basics that every New Zealander deserves. Our values of the dignity of work and of being able to get a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work are as relevant now as ever. It is true—and I know Mr English will be following on from this speech—that the Government has been returned on the basis of a cyclical high in our economy, cruising towards a growth rate of better than 3 percent, perhaps close to 4 percent, this year, despite the fact that dairy prices have already peaked and are now down by nearly 50 percent; that log prices are falling; and that we have not weaned ourselves away from the rollercoaster of an out—of—control property market. The underlying weaknesses, the structural problems, the lack of transformation, the lack of jobs in all our regions, and the growing gap between rich and poor, which impacts disproportionately on many of the communities that are represented here in Parliament today—all of those issues remain to be squarely confronted.

The lack of a regional development plan, the lack of a transformation agenda—in regional development, I believed that that was so important that as leader I kept that portfolio. I am delighted that we have got a win in Napier under Stuart Nash and that we have held Palmerston North under Iain Lees-Galloway, and I am sure that this will be a priority for the Labour Opposition going forward this term. That is why we started a new regional development fund, that is why we started the NZ Inc. fund—to challenge smart, sustainable growth around the country.

Meanwhile, the Government’s real agenda is becoming more obvious. On jobs, on this the very first day available for new legislation, National is introducing a bill, as predicted, to take away smokos and lunch breaks. It is absolutely petty, Dickensian trickle-down economics, which will actively widen the gap between the rich and the poor. Shame—if it were not such a tragedy, it would be a joke that on its first legislating day the Government is stripping away from hard-working New Zealanders the rights and protections that have been built up over many years.

It is the same way in homes and in housing. We went through a campaign where National trumpeted two things. It trumpeted the ability to have housing accords that have delivered only five—

Phil Twyford: No, six—six.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —six, by their own admission, new homes—

Phil Twyford: 12 months.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —in 12 months. That is one new home every 2 months. In the meantime, property values in Auckland in the last 3 years have increased by over a third. That might be fine for people who already have one, but it is going to lock out of the Kiwi dream the next generation of young New Zealanders, and that is a tragedy. My children, your children, and your grandchildren are losing the dream of owning their own home.

Families are as important as ever. The Government window dresses about child poverty, but omits from its priority targets even the measurement of child poverty and abuses the Official Information Act by suppressing for 17 months crucial reports about the state of child poverty in New Zealand.

The Government’s modus operandi is now clear. Nowhere—nowhere—in the campaign did it say that it would be privatising the entire State housing stock. There is no mandate for that action. Nowhere in the campaign—nowhere in the campaign—did it say that it would commit us to a war in Iraq. It specifically excluded boots on the ground. Now, little by little, the Prime Minister is trying to soft-sell to New Zealanders the idea of an SAS deployment against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Nowhere in the campaign did the Government say that it would rush through more security legislation to backfill the last measure that it needed to make lawful—a 12-month programme to tap the Southern Cross cable, which it later had to suspend. Nowhere did Government members campaign on reducing New Zealanders’ rights and freedoms further, including by the selective use—some would say “the abuse”—of classified intelligence information to create fear within New Zealand and to divide communities of New Zealanders against each other.

We have seen—and I will conclude on this because I believe it will be an important theme over the next 3 years—the abuse of the Official Information Act. We have seen the selective use of intelligence information. We have seen the systematic deployment by the National Party and its friends of attack websites, paid thinktanks, and underhand tactics, the suppression of information, and the denigration of journalists, and that drives down our democracy, which is precious. We will uphold it.

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister): Why is that man, David Cunliffe, not the leader of the Labour Party? He is articulate, if not eloquent. He has got the best rhetorical hand movements in the business, and what is more, he is experienced. He has been a Minister. He has run an election campaign. He came through the TV debates right up there with John Key. Why is he not the leader of the Labour Party? Wait—perhaps one day he will be. As my colleague said: “Cunliffe for 2023.”

Tim Macindoe: A bit soon.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, they will still be in Opposition, but, yeah, maybe a bit soon. What Mr Cunliffe demonstrated is what is at the heart of the definition of a cult—that is, irrational and extraordinary self-belief. David Parker was right. Actually, he exemplifies it more than most of them. He called the Labour Party a cult because Labour members still believe that New Zealanders are in the thrall of an extremist, neo-liberal, centre-right Government that deceived them in 2008, that Helen Clark should still be the Prime Minister, and that tax deductibility of research and development is what is going to change the world.

I disagree with my colleague Jonathan Coleman. The other day he said the Labour members are in the fifth stage of grief. I do not think they are. I think they have not yet reached the first stage, which is realising that they lost the 2008 election because New Zealanders did not like their direction and policy. How do we know they do not believe it? Because they campaigned on the same policies in 2014 as in 2008, which actually happened to be about the same policies that they campaigned on in 1996, 1999, 2002, and 2005. So the Labour Party one day will admit this basic fact: the voters are right and it is Labour that is wrong, and it will not have the cultish belief that Labour is right and the voters are wrong.

Actually, we saw it on the campaign trail, because one of the reasons that John Key led this Government to a victory in that campaign was his fundamental belief in the capacity of New Zealanders to run their own lives and do what is best for New Zealand. Time and again during the campaign when we were saying that over the last 4 or 5 years New Zealanders have had to readjust the way they do things, they have made changes in their households and in their workplaces, they have adjusted their debt, they have been careful with their spending, and we’re headed in the right direction, the Labour Party was saying: “No, no, New Zealanders got it wrong. They made their decisions when we should have been the Government—it should have been us. We know best.” It is pretty simple; that is why people did not vote for them. Time and again we saw the Labour Party telling New Zealanders that they have done it all wrong. Well, they have not. They have done it all right.

And we now have six former leaders in the Labour Party to demonstrate that probably, in the long run, the voters—they are holding out—will outlast the next Labour leadership reshuffle. It is not an election anymore; it is a reshuffle. You used to reshuffle spokesmen but now you reshuffle leaders. Whose turn will it be? Is it Andrew? Is it Grant? Who lost the most weight? The right name for the Labour leadership campaign is “The Biggest Loser”, because whoever wins it will certainly lose the next one. That is how it is going to work, because that is what has happened with the last four Labour leaders. So on “Planet Labour”, winning is losing. The only thing you know when you win the Labour Party leadership is that you will certainly lose it.

In the meantime the Government is getting on with the job of building on the sustainability of this economy, and there are a number of promising indications—no guarantees, but promising indications—that this economy can keep producing more jobs and higher incomes for a number of years. For instance, our concerns about inflation have moderated. We are unlikely to go into the kind of inflation spiral we went into in the mid-2000s under the Labour Government. Inflation is moderating. Unemployment is dropping pretty consistently. That is why Kiwis are staying home—unemployment is dropping here; it is going up in Australia. But that is another good sign. The fact that New Zealanders are staying home is another good sign. It also looks as if it is possible that we will have a slightly lower cycle in interest rates this time round. Our first-mortgage rates will not reach 10 percent as they did in 2008 and the labour market is proving to be pretty flexible. We are able as a country to rebuild Christchurch—we have got enough people to do it—as well as growing our other businesses and growing employment.

The Government is working on the kinds of policies that will underpin an extension of that sustainable economic growth, and we will continue to focus on the Business Growth Agenda, very ably run by my colleague Steven Joyce. Those are a whole lot of detailed decisions that all add up to an environment where businesses will invest another dollar and employ another person, where Kiwis with a bit of initiative realise it is going to be worthwhile stepping out and taking a risk. So we will continue with the Business Growth Agenda. Also, we are going to focus on two other things that are really critical to the success of this economic cycle. One is to maintain slightly contractionary fiscal policy. One of the reassuring things about the election campaign was general political agreement that relatively tight fiscal policy is the right thing for this economy. Of course, the trick is that when you are the Government, you actually have to execute that. We are in pretty good shape to do that although it will be difficult. The last thing this economy needs is a Government going on a spend-up, but if we are going to have tight fiscal policy, we have to really understand what drives the Government’s costs.

I want to recognise the efforts of my ministerial colleagues and our caucus through the last 4 or 5 years in holding to the line that we can produce better public services even with the same or less money, and that the measure of how much we care is not how much money we spend; it is what results we get. That is at the core of our fiscal discipline. The key to smaller government is better government; not bigger government but better government. And that means that we will be focusing very strongly on families and communities; not on the traditional way of saying we spent $100 million with the Ministry of Education and that is how you know that we care.

So the Government has a pretty challenging programme. New Zealanders’ expectations about the economy are high. They need to see this economy performing, and we are geared up to do what we can to ensure a high performing economy. They also expect that we will get results for the $70 billion or so that they hand to us every year to spend on their behalf, and those results are going to get more challenging to achieve. Getting the first 10 percent more kids through National Certificate of Educational Achievement, level 2, is bound to be easier than the next 10 percent. It is going to require more cooperation with communities, more cooperation across Government.

Finally, can I just acknowledge the National Party team: an outstanding leader in the Prime Minister, but a team of MPs, candidates, and volunteers who demonstrated the cohesion, the energy, and the teamwork that New Zealand has now come to expect as the benchmark for Government. They will not always agree with us in this term, but there is every commitment from this Government to maintain the same kind of cohesive, team-driven Government that respects New Zealanders and their efforts, that builds on their self-reliance and enterprise, and that does its best on behalf of all New Zealanders to create a better country for them. In particular—

Tim Macindoe: A superb Minister of Finance.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, actually, a superb quote yesterday from the Minister of Finance’s maiden speech—I noticed how Mr Bishop cultivated favour with all the senior politicians that he has worked with over the years. He did not leave any of them out.

Coming into a third term, the Government remains more committed and, I believe, more capable of dealing with some of the bigger challenges like long-term welfare dependency; like the ability of our businesses to grow sustainably over time through a business cycle. We look forward, I have to say, to the day when the Greens, New Zealand First, and Labour get over their grief, get organised, and start putting a bit of pressure on us. I am just not sure how long that will take. At the moment the signs are not promising, but we will do better when they do better, and it is in the interests of the country that this hopeless rabble of an Opposition gets its act together.

Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Why is that man not still leader of the National Party, after an address like that from Parliament’s own master of irony? Clearly, Bill English has spent the last few months hoping against hope that Labour would wipe out his record of 20.93 percent. Sorry to not oblige—you are still the biggest loser.

It is an honour to be delivering my first contribution to this 51st Parliament. Like other speakers before me, I would like to congratulate you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and your fellow Speakers on your appointment to your roles. And I would like to welcome new members to this House, as other speakers before me have done as well. As someone who entered this House in the last intake, it is good not to be the fresh intake now but to have entered the fourth form rather than the third form.

Carmel Sepuloni: It’s the naughty year.

Dr MEGAN WOODS: The naughty year, I am told by my colleague Carmel Sepuloni. I would like to wish my colleagues well who in only a few short moments will give their maiden speeches to this House. That is a special occurrence, and I welcome their families and their friends who have travelled to be with them as they do this today. I, like every other member of this House, feel it is a privilege to be here and to represent the people of Wigram and their views, their aspirations, and their dreams in this important place. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the voters of Wigram and to thank my remarkable team of volunteers and supporters who helped return me to this House. I will be for ever in their debt.

So we have noticed that it is another term in Opposition and that we have got a job to do, that we need to oppose and we need to propose. We need to show New Zealanders how New Zealand could be different under a Labour Government. We have a programme of work ahead of us to achieve that. But, most important, it is our job on the Opposition benches to hold the Government to account, to not allow this Government to slide out from the problems that it has created. This is a Government that has to take responsibility for what it has put in place and the problems that are flowing from that.

We will take the debate to the Government throughout the next 3 years on all fronts because this is our job and this is a Government that has already shown us that it needs to be held to account. We can see that the Prime Minister is already leading us to a seemingly predetermined outcome regarding the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. We can see that privatisation is back and badder than ever on National’s agenda. National has plans to sell off billions of dollars of State houses, but was the electorate told about this before the election? No, it certainly was not. On this side of the House this is an event that we fear.

We know what we are going to see in our electorate offices as the housing shortage intensifies and people are not able to afford housing. I have piles of cases sitting in my electorate office of people who cannot afford a house to live in, and that is simply not acceptable. We know that employment relations are going to be under attack from this Government. They are a priority for Government. Smoko breaks will be gone—the cup of tea taken away by two men who famously sat down over a cup of tea in the gearing-up to the last Parliament. We have a Government that is intent on curbing workers’ rights. We can see that the vulnerable, in terms of housing and child poverty, are something that has to be addressed. We are going to keep the Prime Minister to his word on this. We want to know how he is going to address the issue of poverty. From campaigning and doorknocking over the last 18 months or so I have seen too much poverty in my electorate. I have seen poverty and I have smelt poverty, and we simply must find solutions to it.

We will also be holding the Prime Minister and the Government to account on the words spoken yesterday around his continued commitment to my home city, Christchurch, where he gave a continuing commitment “to stand beside the people of Canterbury as good progress is made on the earthquake rebuild. The rebuild will continue to occupy a great deal of Government attention in this term of Parliament. Big strides will be made this term on anchor projects and horizontal infrastructure.” Roading is important. No one denies that anchor projects are vitally important. But I implore this Government to prioritise before anything else putting a roof over Cantabrians’ heads. A rebuilt city, a just and fair city that people want to live in, is going to make housing its citizens a key priority. We have made clear our desire to work with the Government to make sure that we can have the very best rebuilt city that we can have. We hope that moving the function of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority into the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet is not going to be just a bureaucratic shifting of deckchairs. We want to see real change on the ground for the people whom we represent.

We will also be holding the Government to account as more abuses of power are unravelled over the coming months. As John Armstrong noted in his column this morning—in unstartling news, to be fair—John Key made no mention of Dirty Politics in the Speech from the Throne yesterday. It was not one of the things he wanted to put up there in terms of the good news stories rolling out yesterday. This is a Government that is hoping that its recent electoral win will have pushed that out of the limelight, but this cannot be the case. There are serious and important questions that must be addressed. We have the evidence. We have all seen the documents. We know what has happened. We do know that there are men and women of honour at higher levels of the Beehive and in the National Party who will be appalled at what they have seen coming out from some members of their administration and their Government. This is not the way they want to govern and it is not the way they want to wield power.

No one in National has yet expressed the regret that you would expect over some of the disgraceful displays that we have seen in recent weeks. We heard in this House today during question time the Prime Minister splitting hairs over whether or not he was wearing his prime ministerial hat when he discussed with a blogger the mother of a West Coast person whom the blogger called feral. One of the things that causes me outrage about this is that I have not heard the outrage from National Party members, and particularly Canterbury National Party members, about the fact that Cantabrians were called scum who should be left there to rot.

Carmel Sepuloni: Shame!

Dr MEGAN WOODS: This is a shame. This is simply not the way we can do politics in this country. This is not what it is about. This is not about the fact that we have attacks on academic freedom, that we have attacks on anyone who wants to stand up and challenge the Government. Anyone out there who wants to challenge the Government should be very, very afraid. They have come for the West Coasters. They have come for Cantabrians. Who is next on the list?

We on this side of the House are not going to stand by and watch that happen. We are elected to hold the Government to account, and we will hold the Government to account on its abusive power. It is our job to stand up for the people whom we represent and people who want to challenge this Government. That is something we will not resile from in this Parliament. There is much for us to hold this Government to account for over this term. That is something that as a loyal Opposition we will execute to the best our abilities. We look forward to doing that throughout the course of this 51st Parliament.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. He mihi nui ki te Aotearoa whānau whānui me talofa lava ngā tangata o Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. Tēnā koe i te Whare Pāremata. I would first like to congratulate you, Mr Deputy Speaker, all the other new Speakers, and all the other new members who have come to Parliament today. Welcome to the madness. That is often the only way I can describe it. I could not say in the affirmation ceremony, without threat of punishment, what I am going to say now. So I am going to say this now because I am sick of not being able to say it. I swear to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi as the true foundation of this nation and the double-hulled waka where we can build relationships by respecting tangata whenua, me tangata Tiriti. One day Parliament will have the courage to reflect this unique taonga in our swearing-in tikanga. In the meantime, ka whaiwhai tonu mātou [we will continue to pursue it].

I am here speaking as myself and as an MP. It is not a contradiction. The Prime Minister has difficulty figuring out who he is; some of us are very clear. I am here to speak today about child poverty, as the education spokesperson for the Greens. Child poverty has finally been acknowledged as a meme worthy of attention by our very reluctant Government. We call it child poverty because the poverty of many adults has become acceptable. The beggars on Lambton Quay are invisible. It is business as usual that people should beg in the streets of Aotearoa now, to our shame. We call it child poverty because the poverty of 260,000 children might have the power to prick the conscience of the comfortable. We hope that this is true, or we consign another generation to much less than they need from day one.

However, the focus groups have spoken to the Government and cannot be ignored. Something must be measured and something must be done. Education can be a site for social justice action on child poverty, but Treasury advice so far has not really made any difference. The 2007 advice to Government was that feeding children at school would not help learning or attendance. Great work, Treasury team! Let us test your theory and take you off breakfast and lunch every day at work, just for a month or so, just to see how you go. Will it affect the number crunching? Will it undermine morale? Will Treasury and analysts become hungry and angry, or distracted and weakened, and fail to provide advice to the country? Will those with no food feel ashamed and want to stay at home in hiding while the rest of the world eats their lunch? Will it matter? What about the MPs? What if we went without breakfast and lunch for a month? No sushi, my friends. No Lewis Road Creamery chocolate milk. No Weet-Bix. What would happen to us? It is our kids we are talking about every day.

Meanwhile, we have had the Prime Minister say that he will spend more on child poverty. His speech yesterday was very light on detail—so light that you could have missed that it was a priority at all. However, Radio New Zealand did get the Prime Minister to expand a little bit more this morning. He was sounding pretty relaxed, as usual, because it is only 15 percent of children needing breakfast every day. He denies it is really a crisis. However, he does not know whether they get lunch or dinner—he is just guessing. Child Poverty Action Group is not guessing. It says that it is a crisis. My own tour of decile 1 to 4 schools before the election last political term taught me that every school I visited was feeding children. In some cases, a large proportion—far more than 15 percent of the roll—were being fed every single day. Principals and teachers were providing lunch out of their own pockets, and, what is more, some schools were taking the leftovers from the breakfast programme to the mothers in the community to feed the preschoolers and the rest of the family. It is a slow, grinding, shameful process. We have left our children and families in a situation where those children’s ability to concentrate and to learn is not working. They are hungry and, for goodness’ sake, we should feed them.

The Green Party has some immediate and practical solutions for this one aspect of child poverty. We are delighted that Hone Harawira, who is a real loss to this Parliament, has gifted his “feed the kids” bill to Metiria Turei. I echo her words that we should unite in this Parliament, put aside ideology, and support this bill, which would provide breakfast and lunch. The charities are doing their bit, but it is not reaching all children, and charity is not a solution. It is also not a solution to put more of our resources into measuring individual deprivation. They can dream up the seven measures, or whatever they call them, but that will lead to a labelling of a child who ticks the seven boxes. Will they get lunch or a social worker? What about a child who ticks only four boxes? Will they get half a lunch, half a social worker? It is not a system that is going to work. The ideological aversion to tie a universal approach to addressing poverty is doomed to failure. But I guess a whole lot of people can spend a lot of time and money working on their data-rich targeting agendas. If no one knows what that means, do not worry. I do not know what it means, but they talk about it all the time—a data-rich targeting agenda. Wonderful! It is meaningless and it will not feed anybody, but a lot of people can spend time on it. These are what we call faux solutions. The elephants stomping across this room are decent wages and benefits, affordable housing, job creation, and access to a quality public education.

The Greens’ school hubs programme is a great part of the solution and was well received by all the schools we visited. We would pay for a school hubs coordinator to bring the people and the schools together to meet needs. We would provide resources for communities and schools to manage a lunch for all the children who need it. We would provide free out-of-school care and recreation and after-school care, provide a school nurse for our kids—which was available when I was young, many, many years ago—and also build 20 new early childhood centres on school grounds for all decile 1 to 4 schools and others who want to opt in. We can rebuild our communities through policies of justice and strategies that actually bring people together. They are already doing that in many, many schools. Teachers know that if you want kids to learn, they need to not be transient and under-housed, to not be hungry, and to not be suffering from social dislocation. They need to be looked after. Schools and communities know how to do this. It is time for the Government and Parliament to come to the party and work with them, instead of having another round of measuring, another round of denial, and another round of individualising structural poverty issues.

I want to talk a little bit about my other portfolios as well as education. We strongly believe in the Greens that we have the solutions to addressing poverty and that we will lead in our challenges during this term of Parliament. We will work with communities to make sure that our education policies and our child poverty programmes will actually address the issues.

One of the other portfolios I am going to work on is water. Water is life. There is no life without water, and yet we are stripping our waterways, we are polluting our waterways, and we are taking away the essentials—not only the food but the water. Things are getting to an interesting dilemma in this country. I am also going to be working on issues such as human rights. Included in that will be my campaign to stand up with the people of West Papua, who are experiencing genocide. It is a country not so far from here, where there is no media freedom and where there is a trial of two French journalists right now. The people there are regularly locked up for raising their Morning Star flag—they can get 15 years in prison. So I am going to be standing here for human rights. I am also going to be standing here for Te Tiriti and for toxic chemicals—an interesting combination. The Treaty is not toxic, but the way in which we approach is becoming toxic when we cannot even mention it properly in this House.

There is a lot of work to be done, and the Green Party is determined that this term we will be a positive, constructive, agenda-setting Opposition. We will show leadership to a Government that is in a very complacent state, a very comfortable mode, but that actually does not have the majority of people in this country voting for it. It does not have the support of all the nation. It does not have the answers and it does not have the plans.

In the education portfolio, for example, there is no plan for early childhood education; there is just the market—there is just Kidicorp. In terms of schools there is no plan; there are charter schools and privatisation. We constantly see people articulating in this House, and I am afraid that some of the maiden speeches did it yesterday, and arguing for the ideology of free-market economics as manifest by the gentlemen who sat in the chair yesterday—we saw Roger Douglas and the others—who have brought this country to the state that it is in. They were advocating for more of the same—more poverty, more inequality, more child hunger, more lack in terms of vision, planning, and programmes that can support us. We do not believe the State will finish everything; we believe that the State and communities can address these issues. We will stand up together on those issues with our communities. Kia ora tātou katoa.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): E te Māngai o tēnei Whare, tēnā koe, otirā, tēnā tātau katoa. Me mihi au ki aku mātua o Te Āti Awa me Ngāti Toa nā rātau nei te mihi i āhei ai mātou ki te noho mai ki roto i tēnei Whare, ki runga hoki i tēnei papa. E te Māngai o te Whare e tautoko ana tēnei ihu hūpe i ngā mihi rangatira i ūhia ki runga i a koe, i a koutou ko te kāhui whakahaere i tēnei Whare, ō koutou whānau hoki, e ngā toki o Te Whare i te rā tuatahi i noho ai Te Whare i te Mane nei, e mihi ana ki aku huānga, ki ngā iwi tangata whenua o Tāmaki Makaurau, ko Ngāti Whātua ki Ōrākei, ko Te Waiōhua, ko Marutūahu ērā, ā, me Tainui whānui, ē ko Te Kīngi Māori ē! Kāti ake ki a koe e te pāpā, e Koro, kua kotahi nei tāua ki raro i te maru o tō tāua Kīngi, tēnā koe, tēnā koe, tēnā koe.

Ka kauria mai au i te moana kānapanapa o Te Wai o Te Matā kia tū mai ki runga o Pukekawa i reira nei a Te Wherowhero e noho ana. Ka rere arorangi taku titiro ki Ōhinerau, arā, ko Te Kōpuke kia tau au ki te pūtake o Maungawhau. Ka piki ki runga kia titiro iho au ki Te Ipu o Mataoho. Ka huri atu taku rae ki Riukiuta, ā, ko Wairaka kei te uru. Kō tata mai ko Te Ahikā o Rākataura. Ka hoki whakarunga ko Puketāpapa, ko Waitakere—ē! Kātahi atu rā ki te maunga rongonui, ko Maungakiekie, kai tōna pūtake ko Rarotonga. Mai i Rarotonga ki Mutukāroa, ko Ōtahuhu, arā, ko te tāhuhutanga o te waka o Tainui, tapotu ki te moana, ko Te Mānukanuka o Hoturoa. Kai uta ko Te Pane o Mataoho, arā, ko Te Ara Pueru. Tū tata tonu mai, ko Maungataketake, ko Mātukutūruru, ko Mātukutūreia. Ka hoki mai mā Ōhuiārangi, mā Taurere, kia tau mai ki Maungarei, Te Awa o Tāmaki i hoea rā e te waka o Tainui kia tau taku wairua ki Waiōuru, e tau taku wairua, ka tau ē! Ki te mātatorutanga o te iwi Māori, kei Tāmaki Makaurau e noho ana. Anei te tū whakamōwai atu i tēnei tinana koretake, ki te mihi whakamanawa atu ki a koutou. Hēoi anō tāku ki a koutou, kei te kōtihitihi o waku whakaaro koutou e noho ana i ngā wā katoa. He nui tonu ngā maunga hai piki. He nui anō hoki ngā māunga a ngā moana hai kau ēngari, i ngā wā katoa me anga atu te titiro ki ngā taumata o te moana.

E te pāpā, Tākuta Te Hōnore Pita Sharples, kua kawea ake te hoe ūringi o te waka kua mahue mai nei e koe. Ka hāngai tonu te tauihu o te waka ki uta mā runga i te reo o te tītītai, o te tūruki kia kotahi te hīpapa o ngā hoea—tōkihi, tōkihi! Ki aku pāpā e rua, ki a Hōne Harawira rāua ko Te Hōnore Shane Jones, e aku kākākura, e aku ika āwhiro, mokemoke ana te Whare i tō korua ngarotanga atu. Tērā te kōrero a ngā tupuna: “He mate noa iho ki uta, ko wai ka hua, ko wai ka tohu.” Ka ara mai te rā i a Ngāti Manu, e te uri o Pōmare, e tū!

[Thank you, Mr Speaker of this House, and greetings indeed to all of us collectively. I must extend my gratitude to my elders of Te Āti Awa and Ngāti Toa for allowing us to remain here in this House and upon this courtyard. Mr Speaker of the House, this inexperienced new member humbly endorses the revered accolades bestowed upon you and your cluster of assistant Speakers who run the House, and upon your families. In regards to the first sitting day of the House last Monday, I acknowledge my relations and local tribes of the metropolis of Auckland, namely Ngāti Whātua ki Ōrākei, Te Waiōhua, Marutūahu, and Tainui at large. Behold, it is the Māori King indeed! Enough about you, my uncle Koro, and me in terms of being united under the mantle of our King. Greetings, salutations, and accolades to you.

I have been borne here from the gleaming waters of Te Wai o Te Matā (Waitematā) to stand on Pukekawa the place where Te Wherowhero resided. I cast my eyes upwards to Ōhinerau, and there is Te Kōpuke. I alight at the base of Maungawhau and ascend it, then look downwards upon Te Ipu o Mataoho. My forehead turns to Riukiuta, and, behold, there is Wairaka to the west. Close by is Te Ahikā o Rākataura. I go upwards and behold—it is Puketāpapa and Waitakere! And so onwards I go and finally arrive at the famous mountain Maungakiekie, and at the base of it is Rarotonga. From Rarotonga I traverse to Mutukāroa and on to Ōtahuhu, at the place where the Tainui canoe was carried overland and brought down to the sea at the place where Hoturoa became apprehensive, Te Mānukanuka o Hoturoa, and shorewards to Te Pane o Mataoh—in other words, Te Ara Pueru—and very close by Maungataketake, Mātukutūruru, and Mātukutūreia. I come back by way of Ōhuirangi and Taurere to eventually land at Maungarei, at the river of Tāmaki, where the Tainui canoe paddled, and in so doing permits my spirit to alight at Waiōuru. Alight my spirit, and so it indeed lands amidst the thickly populated Māoridom living in Auckland. Here, then, is where this inept body stands desolate before you, extending this honourable tribute to you collectively. Mine to you furthermore is that you collectively are uppermost in my thoughts at all times. There are still many more mountains to climb. There are many more mountainous waves to swim through as well, but the focus must be fixed at all times on the summits of the ocean.

To you uncle, the Hon Dr Pita Sharples, I have taken up the paddle of the vessel that you left behind. The prow of the canoe is still fixed firmly shore wards on the call of the coastal sooty shearwater and the strength of the ritual chant for the paddles to move in unison—dart along, dart along! And so to my two uncles, Hōne Harawira and the Hon Shane Jones, my leaders, my slain warriors, how lonely the House is without you two. The old people had that saying: “A simple death ashore and who knows who might benefit or be spared.” The sun rises from the direction of Ngāti Manu, so to the descendant of Pōmare, stand to attention.]

Let me preface my maiden speech with the words of Sir James Carroll in his valedictory made at the funeral of Sir William Herries, Minister of Native Affairs from 1912 to 1921: “As I survey this wondrous gathering, my mind is as a honeycomb, to which home a thousand honeyed memories.” For it is 100 years ago, almost to the month, that my great-grandfather Taurekareka Hēnare entered this House upon the resignation of Sir Peter Buck, who enlisted to serve as a medical officer for the New Zealand Battalion, more commonly known as the Pioneer Battalion. E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Sir Peter Buck served with distinction at Gallipoli, and at this point can I acknowledge the centenary of the Great War—lest we forget.

History records that Taurekareka Hēnare entered this House to a hung Parliament, and in return for his support of the Reform party, at that time led by “farmer” Bill Massey, the confiscated lands of Te Kapotai and Te Patukeha were returned to them and the Government began discussions with Te Arawa, leading to the formation of the Te Arawa Māori Trust Board in 1924. Taurekareka Hēnare stayed on in Parliament for 24 years, somewhat longer and arguably more distinguished than his great-grandson of the same name, who retired from this House recently—of which I am sure, Mr Assistant Speaker Mallard, you are well aware. He was defeated eventually by Paraire Karaka Paikea in 1938.

I move on to my late grandfather Sir James Hēnare, who after returning from the Second World War stood for the National Party three times in the Northern Maori electorate. The last time he stood was in the by-election of 1963, when he was defeated by his nephew the Hon Matiu Rata, who won the Northern Maori seat with a majority of 412 votes, which I am sure you are aware of, Mr Assistant Speaker. This was the closest that the National Party ever came to winning a Māori seat, and long may that tradition continue.

It comes to mind that my uncles the Rt Hon Winston Peters and Pita Paraone MP, much—loved nephews and mentees of my grandfather, will remember him well for his speeches on the failure of the Government at that time to recognise the issue of Māori education. This would be ignored, to New Zealand’s detriment, in years to come. While on that issue I wish to recognise my auntie the Hon Hekia Parata, Minister of Education, upon whose shoulders currently rest the dreams and aspirations of thousands of Māori and Pacific Island children in my electorate of Tāmaki Makaurau.

History now goes on to tell us that the Māori nation was very lucky that he did not enter Parliament. As an elder statesman, he went on to achieve many more things for our nation that he would not have been able to achieve had he become a member of this august institution.

Can I say with some candour that this was an issue that weighed heavily on my mind when early on in life I considered a future in politics, but I am driven by the strong-held belief of my grandfather that the future vision of this nation is built upon a strong bicultural foundation—a foundation that was sanctified when my many ancestors put their sacred ngū to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Clearly, whānau political ideology is not a compatible bedfellow with the precepts of free-thinking as encouraged in me by my grandfather, because as irony would have it, today I sit across the floor with the very party that was the nemesis of William Massey at the time of my great-grandfather.

I am most humbled that the people of Tāmaki Makaurau have elected me to be their representative in Parliament. I pledge to them to work to the utmost of my abilities to advocate for their needs and to pursue a bipartisan approach in order to generate solutions for their issues. Please allow me to briefly share with other members of this House what some of those issues are and postulate possible pathways forward.

The A Company based in Whangarei is a concept that should be implemented widely throughout the Māori and Pacific communities in Tāmaki Makaurau. It has at its heart the education, the business, and the community sectors, giving learners the chance to gain exposure to other specialist skills that are not available to them within the sector at the moment. They are currently linking up with the local independent training providers to increase the scope of learning available to their learners. Its major funding source is the ASB Community Trust. This concept is very much about supporting all learners from the womb to the tomb. They are beginning to expand into Tāmaki Makaurau, and I believe this will prove to be a positive move.

Growing up, my generation had the right to a backyard, which gave us the opportunity to not only test our rugby skills but also our mothers’ patience. This right, I fear, could be lost for the generations to come. Housing is no longer about people but about profit. The backyard playground is now reserved only for land developers and property speculators. This, I believe, is to the detriment of the communities in Tāmaki Makaurau. Although poverty, it is said, is relative, it has to be accepted that it is endemic amongst many Māori and Pacific Island families in Tāmaki Makaurau. Its causes are many and varied, and there is no one fix. Some say if you provide employment, good housing, good health, and educational opportunity, the issue will simply go away, so I look forward to a bipartisan approach based not on political ideology—or, for that matter, more money—but on a pragmatic approach that sees instruments of the all-powerful State engaging with these communities.

Te Reo Māori is my first language. As one of the first children of kōhanga reo I am for ever grateful for the hard work of many to ensure that the native language of this land is not lost. The people of Tāmaki Makaurau deserve the right to learn Te Reo Māori and experience its richness. I believe my grandfather was right when he said the language is the life essence of Māori mana. We must free Te Reo Māori from the shackles of institutional racism and a lack of vision. Ā, kāti! E te Whare, ka tahuri atu ahau ki taku whānau. Ki a koutou, ka waiho nā atu ēnei kupu. E toru ngā tāonga hei waiho nā atu. Ko te whakaiti, ko te tino whakaiti, nā, e whakaiti nei, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou.

[Enough! To you the House, I turn now to my family. To you the family, I leave these words with you. There are three priceless ones: humility, self-effacement, and absolute humility. And so here I am standing humbly before you. Acknowledgments to you collectively and to us all.]

Waiata

JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Kia ora tātou katoa. Good afternoon. Talofa lava. Malo e lelei, Fakafeta’i ki he ‘Eiki pea ‘oku ou tuku pe ‘a e Kololia moe fakamalo ki a Sihova he koia pe taha ne lava ai e feinga ko eni. Tuku mu’a keu hufanga he ngaahi talafakatapu, kae ‘ata mo e ki’i fefine tu’a mo ma’ulalo ko eni ke fai atu ha ‘uluaki lea ki he Falealea ‘o Aotearoa, Nu’usila.

I give my congratulations to the honourable Speaker on his election, and to Deputy Speaker Chester Borrows as well as the Assistant Speakers, Lindsay Tisch and my good Labour colleague Trevor Mallard, on their election—congratulations. I would also like to acknowledge my predecessor Ross Robertson from Manukau East, who served our communities for 27 long years and was himself an Assistant Speaker of the House.

On Monday, here in this House, I swore an oath of loyalty and service to Parliament and to our nation. It is such an honour and a privilege to enter this House, with its history and traditions. This is the House of Government, and with that honour comes enormous responsibility. It is a responsibility that I feel as I stand here for the first time today. I was honoured to take my parliamentary oath, but it is not the only oath that I feel bound by. Since I was selected to be the Labour candidate for Manukau East I have also sworn another oath—an oath to the people of Manukau East and to other hard-working people in New Zealand. They are the kinds of people who do a lot and ask only for a little—people who really ask only for a just and equitable society. The oath I have taken is to serve, to listen, and to work for the people of Manukau East. The reason I have come to this House is to represent them—the thousands who elected me to come here, to bring their voices into our nation’s conversations, to remind our nation of Manukau East, and to make sure that our Government works for them, as well as for others throughout New Zealand much like them. The oath I made is to stand with and to stand for everyday working New Zealanders—the young and the old, the people who are the backbone of our nation.

We should remind ourselves that many of our nation’s voices have not always carried into Parliament. We would do well to listen more carefully to the many voices that have not always been heard clearly in this House—the voices of our poor, of our young, of our seniors, of our new migrants, of women, and of Māori and Pacific New Zealanders. Parliament is the people’s House and we would do well to remember all of the people when we sit here. Let us remember, most of all, those we do not hear, those who do not have the money or the power to gain the ears of their representatives. I come to this House today as a proud New Zealander, as an Aucklander and South Aucklander. I come as an immigrant to this country from the Pacific and as a Tongan. The fact that a girl from Lotofoa, Ha’apai and Nuku’alofa, Tonga can be elected to New Zealand’s Parliament says a great deal. It says a great deal about the strength of our democracy.

I was born and raised in our Pacific Island neighbour, just north of us in the beautiful Kingdom of Tonga. My family moved to Aotearoa New Zealand when I was 16 years old so I could complete my education. My upbringing was always one that celebrated service. I grew up with a father who for so many years was the only pharmacist in Tonga. If he did not go to work, people could not get their medicines. I saw what a difference he made in people’s lives and how much everyone gains when we honour each other with our hard work. For my father, who is 84 years old and who is here today, a life spent in service to others was the true hallmark of a Christian life. For my mother, who is also here, as she went to work in a factory in South Auckland, then as a part-time cleaner in the evenings, her service to our family was from a mother’s love, her commitment to her church, and our community. Not only did my family, many of whom are here today, make my aspirations possible, they also gave me the values of service and hard work that made them achievable for me.

My way of serving has been through my work as a public servant in policy and in funding, and through my voluntary work in the community. But behind this are the values and work ethics of my parents: respect your elders and respect others, love and serve your family, help those in need and serve your community, work for a just and equitable society, be humble and act with humility, and do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. These are Tongan values, these are New Zealand values, they are Labour values, and these are my values. The challenge has been how to put these values into action.

Labour values, when put into bold, smart policies, have been completely transformational and have made New Zealand the wonderful country that it is. I joined the Labour Party because it is the party that shares my values and ideals. However, I stand here today for the Labour Party because not only is it a party of values; it is the party of ideas, of bold and wise change, of transformations that have lifted the living standards of all New Zealanders and that have made our country prosperous, and also more humane and a better place to live. Labour delivered social security to New Zealand in 1978. Labour created the 40-hour, 5-day working week, with eight public holidays. Labour recognised the Treaty of Waitangi and allowed for claims to be retrospective. Labour made New Zealand nuclear—free. Labour codified universal free health care. Labour promoted Samoan independence and global decolonisation. Labour stopped the Springbok Tour in 1973. Labour passed the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Labour created KiwiSaver, the Superannuation Fund, and the Supreme Court. Labour recognised Te Reo Māori as an official language of our country Aotearoa. These are the kinds of ideas that make Aotearoa a better place for everyone. I look forward to being a part of the Labour Government that resumes such far-sighted and transformative Government in the very near future.

These past few months have reminded me that in our great country there is still so much work to be done. In large parts of New Zealand, including where I come from, child poverty is not a policy abstraction but a lived issue—one that too many families face or have known. Hundreds of thousands of New Zealand children now live in poverty. The fifth Labour Government showed that with smart Government and with good policy the numbers in poverty can be reduced. But in the last few years the number of children in poverty has grown. Let us not forget what poverty really means in this country. If you are a child living in the most deprived parts of New Zealand you are 20 times more likely to go to hospital with rheumatic fever. If you are poor you are five times more likely to die a sudden, unexpected death in infancy. These children, remember, are New Zealand children. Child poverty affects health, and child poverty also affects education. Research confirms what some teachers and principals have told me—that in some schools in my electorate up to half of their students move from school to school each year because their families are moved from house to house. This is such a problem in so many of our schools, and it has a name: churn. This is real insecurity—not even knowing where you will live—and this insecurity of tenure is not just a housing problem, but it is a problem for families, it is a problem for us in this House, and it is a problem for our nation. It is a problem of education, health, and opportunity.

Almost every day I see families coming into my electorate office in Ōtara asking for help, especially with housing. Many of these families do not have a place to live in. Many are homeless. Some live in garages. Some live in cars. Some live temporarily with relatives, until they are asked to move on. Most of these families are on the urgent, priority list for housing—priority A. In 2007 there were 133 families on the priority A waiting list. In June this year 3,188 such families were on the same list, waiting for a house. That is just the tip of the iceberg. Treasury estimates that tens of thousands of New Zealanders are living in severe housing deprivation. In 1935 the first Labour Government realised that in order to ensure both quality and quantity of housing, it was not enough to sit back and wait. The Government had to lead. Showing that leadership, the first Labour Government built thousands of homes. Those Labour State houses were little slices of Kiwi paradise. Labour’s State houses were built to last.

But New Zealand is no longer at the forefront of social housing and homeownership. We have gone from a nation that made bold and wise investments in the lives of families to a nation that has one of the lowest rates of social housing provision in the developed world, at only 5 percent. Politicians on both sides of this House grew up in social housing, but things have changed since then. Doing it hard in New Zealand used to mean living in a three-bedroom brick and tile house on a quarter acre. Now doing it hard in New Zealand means living with your six children in a car, or waiting for nearly a year on our “most urgent” housing list, or living in a caravan or a garage.

I came from Tonga to New Zealand because of New Zealand’s schools and universities. I have no doubts that a quality education is still the best way forward in New Zealand, but even education is shaped by child poverty. We have a high-quality educational system, but it is also highly unequal. The challenge for us as a nation is to ensure that all students get the same chance in schools, and we have not been meeting that challenge. We now live in a country where the most important predictor of your future education performance is your socio-economic status. Some progress has been made, but not enough. We have not addressed the root of the problem. We kid ourselves if we think that all problems we see in education can be solved within schools, because so many of these problems do not originate in schools. When kids are sick, cold, and hungry, they are not going to be as ready to learn. Seriously addressing child poverty, ensuring that the hundreds of thousands of kids living in poverty get out of it, is the giant leap we need to make in education. It is one thing to give a speech about it and declare child poverty a priority, but if we do not have a hard target, if we do not have genuine priorities that we publicly measure, these will all be just empty words. We will talk the talk about child poverty, and the numbers will continue to grow, as they have. People cannot eat a speech. People cannot live on a promise, a consent, or a plan, and a white paper does not fill a student’s empty stomach.

These past few months have reminded me again of just how we all are tied to each other. The road to Parliament is not one that can be travelled alone; nor should it be. Today I thank with all my heart my family, friends, supporters, and colleagues who have made the journey for me possible. For me, these are the people who live Labour values, and their commitment to serve has been inspirational. Their words have been full. Thank you very much to my husband, Toeolesulusulu Damon Salesa; my daughters, Mahalia and Esmae; my parents, Samiu and Loketi Latu; my in-laws, Yvonne and Ieremia Salesa; and my whole campaign team and support team, especially Matila Latu-Ali, Leila, Michael, Aiolupotea Sina, Dawn, Felicity, Lotu, Seini, Moeaki, Akesa, Sefita, Paane, Aleki, Kite, Siale, Leilani, Fia, Mele, Lile, the Gordons, and Reece and Fa’anana, you have my deepest gratitude. To my Labour whānau, especially Vui, Su’a, Carol, Carmel, Hermann, Nick, Jerome, and Judith, thank you.

Malo ‘aupito. Tu’a ‘ofa atu. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Korōria, harerūia ki a koe, Īhoa o ngā mano, tuāuriuri, w’aiōio; kī tonu te Rangi me te W’enua i te nui o tōna korōria. Matua Tama, Wairua Tapu me ngā Ānahera Pono me Te Māngai , whakahōnoretia a Ārepa, Ōmeka, Piri Wiri Tua, me Hāmuera, Māngai tautoko, Āe. E Te Mauri o Te Motu, Kīngi Tuheitia tēnā koe, otirā, Te Kā’ui Ariki, tēnā koutou. Kei te mi’i ’oki au ki ngā iwi katoa puta noa Te Tai Hauāuru. Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa-ki-W’akarongotai, Ngāti Raukawa-ki-Te Tonga, Ngāti Kauwhata, Mūaupoko, Rangitāne, Ngāti Apa, Ngā Wairiki, Ngāti Hauiti, Ngā Iwi-o-Mōkai Pātea, Te Ati’aunui-a-Pāpārangi, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Tūw’aretoa, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngā Rauru-ki-Ta’i, Ngāti Ruanui, Ngā Ruahine Rangi, Taranaki Tūturu, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Maru, Ngāti Tama, me Ngāti Mutunga, tēnā koutou katoa. Tēnei hoki te mi’i ake ki ngā Mōrehu e noho puta noa ngā moutere nei, tae atu ki te Pā o Rātana, nō reira e Te Tumuaki o te ’ā’i, Te Pere’itini o Te Māramatanga, e te pāpā Harerangi Meihana, tēnā koe, otirā, Te Iwi Mōrehu, tēnā koutou. E kī ana te kōrero o ōku mātua tūpuna, Apa wetewete, nāna ka piki te tākiritanga o te ata, ti’ei mauri ora! Ko Adrian Rūrāwhe ahau. He maha aku iwi ki Te Tai Hauāuru, Ko Ngāti Apa, Ngāti Hauiti,Whanganui, Ngā Rauru-ki-Ta’i me Ngāti Ruanui. Nō reira e Te W’are, tēnā koe, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Glory, halleluiah to Jehovah and Lord of the countless and the many; heaven and earth is filled with his glory. Father, Son, Holy Spirit and Faithful Angels and the Mouthpiece, glorify Alpha, Omega, Piriwiritua, Samuel and endorsed by the Mouthpiece, yes. Acknowledgments to you King Tūheitia, Life Force of the country, and to you indeed the royal family of the King movement, greetings. I pay a tribute as well to all the tribes throughout the Western Māori electorate, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa at Whakarongotai, Ngāti Raukawa to the south, Ngāti Kauwhata, Ngāti Muaūpoko, Rangitāne, Ngāti Apa, Ngā Wairiki, Ngāti Hauiti, Ngā Iwi-o-Mōkai at Patea, Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngā Rauru Kītahi, Ngāti Ruanui, Ngā Ruahine Rangi, Taranaki Tūturu, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Maru, Ngāti Tama, and Ngāti Mutunga, greetings to you all. Furthermore, I acknowledge the mōrehu throughout this country, including those at Rātana Pā, and so to you the head of the church, the president of the Te Māramatanga, uncle Harerangi Meihana, accolades to you but at the same to all the mōrehu followers. My ancestral forefathers and mothers had a saying, “Apa, the one who unravels, unfurled the dawn, behold the breath of life!” I am Adrian Rūrāwhe. I have many tribal affiliations in the Western Māori Electorate namely, Ngāti Apa, Ngāti Hauiti, Whanganui, Ngā Rauru Kītahi and Ngāti Ruanui. Therefore, acknowledgments to you the House and to us all.]

Mr Assistant Speaker, can I join with my parliamentary colleagues in congratulating you on being elected as Assistant Speaker. I also want to acknowledge the Rt Hon David Carter being re-elected as Speaker of the House; the new Deputy Speaker, the Hon Chester Borrows; and also Lindsay Tisch being elected again as Assistant Speaker.

I was born in Taihape. I grew up in a humble railway house. My father was a train driver, a second-generation railway worker. My mother trained as a nurse and later on became a social worker. Both my parents were born and raised in Rātana Pā. My paternal grandfather, Paki Rūrawhe from Ngāpuhi, had travelled from Kaeō in the far north to Rātana Pā in 1925. My paternal grandmother, Meipara Taawhi-Maaka from Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Kahungunu, had travelled from her home in Kaiapoi to Rātana Pā in 1919. My maternal grandmother, Iriaka Te Rio from Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi, arrived in Rātana Pā from the Whanganui River in 1920, and my maternal grandfather, Matiu Rātana, the youngest son of Tahupōtiki Wīremu Rātana and Te Urumānao Ngāpaki, was born in Rātana Pā and raised at Kauangaroa with his Ngāti Apa and Ngā Wairiki whānau.

I am not the first of my whānau to enter Parliament. I follow in the footsteps of my grand-uncle Haami Tokouru Rātana, my grandfather Matiu Rātana, and my grandmother Iriaka Rātana, all of whom were the member of Parliament for Western Maori, now known as Te Tai Hauāuru. More recently this seat has been held by another family member, my mother’s cousin the Hon Tariana Turia. I wish to pay tribute to her and the significant contribution that she made to the people of Te Tai Hauāuru and New Zealand. Anei ra taku mi’i maioha atu ki a ia mō āna ma’i nunui, ka ma’ia mai e a ia hei painga mō te iwi. [Here then is my appreciation to her for the great work she did for the betterment of the people.]

Not surprisingly, the Rātana faith and Labour politics featured strongly in my upbringing, although it was a matter of experiencing the whole environment of that reality, rather than receiving specific instructions about it. Each election year my parents would host candidates at our home. We got to hear very interesting stories from equally interesting people—people whom as children we knew as Uncle Matt, Uncle Koro, and Uncle Brownie, who turned out to be Matiu Rata, Koro Wētere, and Parāone Rēweti, and whom, along with Whetū Tirikātene-Sullivan, I would like to acknowledge for the lessons that I learnt from them.

I want to make special mention of the Hon Koro Wētere, who is with us in the House today. He has been very supportive of me, providing encouragement as well as advice and historical context about politics. Nō reira, tēnei taku mi’i ki a ia mō tōna tautoko mai ki ahau, e te pāpā, e kore e mutu taku mi’i atu ki a koe. Tēnā koe.

[Therefore, I pay a tribute to him for his support of me and say to him, dad, my thanks to you is endless. Thank you.]

In 1924 Tahupōtiki Wīremu Rātana led a delegation to England to address the breaches and omissions of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. While in England, Rātana was told that the New Zealand Government had sent a telegraph stating that he—Rātana—did not have a mandate concerning Te Tiriti o Waitangi, despite having representatives from most iwi within his delegation. He was, therefore, denied the meeting that he had requested with the King. Rātana was told that the problem lay with the New Zealand Government. Not long after this, Rātana decided to contest the next general election and that Te Tiriti o Waitangi would be the foundation of his policies.

On Monday, when I took the Oath of Allegiance, I was pleased to place one hand on the Bible and in my other hand to hold a copy of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. I did this as an expression of my commitment to upholding my faith and Te Tiriti o Waitangi during my time here in Parliament, ture wairua, ture tangata.

At the age of 17, my dad told me that I would be starting work the following day. I was still at school, by the way. I did not need to ask where I would be working. He was a second-generation railway worker, and I was fairly certain I was going to be a third-generation railway worker. Back then the railway unions were very strong, and I learnt about, and, indeed, experienced, how the unions had gained better rights and conditions for their members. These rights had been hard-fought for and achieved under Labour Governments.

The last job that I had with Railways was processing final pays. At the time that I had started with Railways there were over 20,000 employees. When I left there were fewer than 5,000. Although it is necessary to make operations more efficient, I believe that people should have been treated with a lot more dignity. I vowed at that time that if I ever were in a position to do something about the protection of workers’ rights, then I would do so. I look forward to the opportunity that the voters of Te Tai Hauāuru have afforded me to address those very issues in this House.

I want to acknowledge Te Kura o Rātana, a school that was established in Rātana Pā 90 years ago. I was a board member and a chair of that board for 13 years. It was on that board of trustees that I learnt so much about good governance. Our board faced many challenges, which were able to be met with the support of our community. We also had some major success, as well. It also prepared me for other governance roles. For example, in 2002 I was given the responsibility and honour of leading my iwi, Ngāti Apa.

During the 10 years that I chaired Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Apa, I represented my iwi on issues concerning health, social services, and education, as well as being a negotiator for our Treaty settlement. If I had thought that school governance could be challenging, imagine my surprise when confronted with iwi governance—such things as submissions to select committees, Waitangi Tribunal hearings, and court cases dealing with overlapping claims. And then, of course, I was required to attend hapū hui, where I had the pleasure of trying to explain all of the detail to my people, for them to be able to make sense of it. Of course we did it because we knew there were significant benefits derived from our settlement of our Treaty claim for our people.

I am immensely proud that our iwi was the first to negotiate a cultural revitalisation redress package—not because we were first, but because that is what our people wanted. I believe that through Treaty settlements, along with empowering policies, we can work together to unlock the potential of whānau, hapū, iwi, and our community.

I was pleased to hear that the Government will continue to fund Māori research. Until April of this year I was employed at Te Atawhai o Te Ao, an independent research institute based in Whanganui. The institute is carrying out a Health Research Council - funded programme of research called He Kōkonga Whare, which is research that focuses on Māori intergenerational trauma and healing. I think it is crucially important that the research sector and the academic sector accept that kaupapa Māori research methodology is not only valid but needs to be embraced and accepted by these sectors. I want to acknowledge my former work colleagues Dr Cherryl Smith and Dr Paul Reynolds for giving me the opportunity to work and participate in kaupapa Māori research.

As part of He Kōkonga Whare, Te Atawhai o Te Ao has a project that focuses on the impact of sexual violence on Māori. It is essential that we hear the voices of those who have experienced abuse. I acknowledge the very brave people who speak up about their experiences, and those too who have the courage to call for all parties to work together for the end of all forms of violence.

I want to recognise my party, the Labour Party. I am truly honoured to be a Labour Party member of Parliament. I look forward to working with all of my colleagues in this 55th—51st Parliament and beyond.

Hon Members: And the 55th.

ADRIAN RURAWHE: And the 55th! I would like to thank my hard-working and dedicated campaign team, led by my campaign manager, Gaylene Nēpia, and assisted by Christina Gush. Tēnā koutou me ā koutou kaha ki te hāpai i tēnei kaupapa nui. [To you collectively, I acknowledge your efforts in taking up this great plan.]

I thank also the people of Te Tai Hauāuru for the confidence and trust that they have shown in electing me to Parliament. I will work hard to be the very best member of Parliament for them all. I wish to acknowledge all of my whānau, all who have travelled here today, and all of those who are watching from around the country. Ki a koutou taku w’ānau w’ānui, aku w’aea, aku mātua, aku tēina, aku tuāhine, me pē’ea te mi’i ake ki a koutou? Tēnā koutou me ā koutou aroha mai ki ahau. Tēnei hoki au e tuku aroha atu ki a koutou me ā tātou tamariki, mokopuna. Ki a koutou o tēnei reanga a Mariana, Derryn, Raimana, Te Ari o te Kahurangi, Daylor, Matiu, me Te Ao Mārama, ko koutou te huarahi mō āpōpō. Me ū tonu ki ngā kaupapa tuku iho ā Kui mā ā Koro mā.

[How can I thank you all my extended family, aunties, parents, younger siblings and sisters all? Thank you for all your love and kindness towards me. I extend my love to you all, including all our children and grandchildren. To you all of this generation, Mariana, Derryn, Raimana, Te Ari o te Kahurangi, Daylor, Matiu, and Te Ao Mārama, you are the pathway for tomorrow. Hold on firmly to the things handed down by our nans and grandads.]

Finally, today is a very special day in the Rātana calendar. Eighty years ago saw the passing of Rātana’s son Hāmuera. Amongst our people Hāmuera is recognised as signifying the end of all evil practice. Can I recommend that today members, no matter what their faith, religion, or value system, reflect upon all the good things that our great country has to offer during this time that we remember and mark the centennial of the outbreak of World War I.

Kāti rā, ko tēnei te wā o te pīpīw’arauroa. E kī ana te kōrero, ko Hamuera te tatau, ko Hamuera w ‘akaotinga, me ū tonu ki tēnei kaupapa. Nō reira, huri rauna, huri rauna, tēnei W’are, tēnā koutou i runga i te tukunga iho ō rātou mā i te wā’i ngaro, Te Māngai hei tautoko mai āia nei, āke nei, āe.

[Enough, this is the time of the shining cuckoo. The saying goes: Hamuera is the doorway and the completion. We must continue to adhere to this edict. Therefore, to everyone throughout this entire House, acknowledgments to you all in accordance with what those who have gone to the place of no return have handed, whom the Mouthpiece endorses now and forever, yes.]

NUK KORAKO (National): E Te Mana Whakawā tēnā koe. Tēnei hoki te mihi atu ki a koe, Te Kaihautū o Te Waka o Aotearoa o Te Pirimia, the Rt Hon John Key, tēnā koe. Tēnā hoki koe Te Rakatira o Te Rōpū Reipa, the Hon David Parker, tēnā koe. Huri noa i Te Whare Mīere nei, ka mihi ki tā mema katoa. Ko Kaitahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha, Te Rakiamo tēnei e mihi atu ki Te Mana Whenua o Te Waha o Te Ika, Te Āti Awa, tēnā koutou. E, haere mai i kā waka katoa e tau mai nei ki Te Whanga-nui-a-Tara. Ko Tūtehounuku Kōrako ahau. Ko Aoraki Mauka e tū mai ake kei uta, maringi i Te Awa o Waitaki rāua ko Waimakariri ki Te Tai-o-Mahanui. Ko Te Whare Mahanui hoki rāua ko Te Whare-o-Wheke, kei Te Rāpaki-o-Te Rakiwhakaputa e tū ana. Hei anō, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker, and my acknowledgments to you as well to the Prime Minister and leader of the National Party of New Zealand, the Rt Hon John Key, greetings. To you, the leader of the Labour Party, the Hon David Parker, greetings, and to members throughout the House of Parliament, salutations to you all. I of Kaitahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha and Te Rakimo acknowledge the local tribe, Te Āti Awa, whose authority prevails over the Mouth of the Fish, my personal salutations to you collectively. A welcome indeed is extended to all the canoes that have landed here in Wellington. I am Tūtehounuku Kōrako. The mountain of Aoraki stands ashore yonder from where the rivers Waitaki and Waimakariri flow into the ocean of Mahanui. The houses of Mahanui and Wheke, which stand at Te Rāpaki-o-Te Rakiwhakaputa. Acknowledgments therefore to you all.]

Like all others who have entered this House over the past 150 years I cannot hide or disguise my humility. It certainly is a time to reflect upon family, my life experiences to date, and those who assisted me on the journey to this House.

I come from a working class background. My father, Tūtehounuku Te Here Māka Momo Kōrako, was a World War II returned serviceman and a freezing worker, and my mum, Hine Elizabeth Mānihera Kōrako, was a gentle, loving person, who passed away when I was only 10 years old, leaving behind nine children—me and my eight sisters. It was not long before we found ourselves in Cholmondeley Children’s Home, to give our father time to organise life without our mother. This sad event started a relationship between me and Cholmondeley Children’s Home that continues to this day.

My father worked hard to keep us together and to ensure that we all understood and lived by our family values, and he instilled in me the significance of ancestry, leadership, education, and humility. He taught us to be proud of being who we were and the importance of being able to move seamlessly between the two worlds of the Māori and the non-Māori. Education was paramount in our family, and I was lucky to be given the opportunity to attend St Stephen’s School, Bombay, Auckland. It is fair to say that I did not expect to be standing here as a member of Parliament and addressing the House of Representatives all these years later.

Like many young Kiwis, the call of the OE took me overseas on a much more extended journey than was originally planned, where rugby and the tourism industry kept me offshore for over 20 years. The hallmark of that journey, however, was meeting and marrying my beautiful wife, Christine, and, a few years later, with a family pending and a desire to raise our children as Kiwis, we came home to Canterbury—more specifically, to Christchurch and Ngāi Tahu’s Riviera: Rāpaki on Lyttelton Harbour.

Rāpaki is one of the ancestral communities of Ngāi Tahu. When you arrive, it is a little like being transported to another time. Our four boys, now aged between 17 and 22, grew up in this kāinga, or village, surrounded by our immediate and wider whānau. Growing up in Rāpaki in a safe and nurturing environment gave them the opportunity to learn the tikaka of their home place and their marae, and to enjoy and experience many adventures surrounded by mountains and sea. It is their safe haven and always will be. It was not unusual for Chris to feed 10 children at lunch or dinner time or for a family neighbour to do the same. That very environment created lifelong values for our children, their cousins, and the friends they brought home. My uncle Ben Couch, who was a three-term National Party MP, a Minister of Police and Minister of Māori Affairs, and a New Zealand and Māori All Black, was also raised in the same village.

In reflecting on my wider whakapapa, I am reminded that some of my tūpuna were familiar with the political environment. Hoani Paratene, the first ever Southern Maori MP, was my great uncle. My grandfather Tutehounuku Korako Tua Rua represented Ngāi Tahu at the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria in London in 1897 and at the opening of the Australian Parliament in 1901. My other grandfather, James Duncan Manihera, was a 1926 Māori All Black. These role models have instilled in me the idea that there is value in striving for something more than the mundane, more than the trappings of comfort, and in achieving something beyond myself, which is what I am doing in this special place.

I do bring a vision with me, and that is about where we are heading as a nation. I recently came across a National Party manifesto from the Māori MPs in the late 1940s, which said: “New Zealand as a whole is under a great debt, one that has not always been sufficiently recognised, to the Maori people for the role they have played in the economic development of this country. What you have received by way of social security and benefits is your due. You, as a people have contributed to the pool from which come these benefits. That is why we appeal to you to assist in the task of increased production … it is our aim to expand and develop the Maori Land Schemes inaugurated in 1929 by Sir Apirana Ngata. We know to what extent the human element is consciously developed along with work on such lands. That must be taken into consideration if we are to secure the maximum results from such a policy—the promotion of a healthy, intelligent people, disciplined in the habits of industry and business practice, equipped by the economic resources of their lands to enter with full confidence into the wider industrial life of this country.”

This illustrates not how much has changed in terms of vision, but how much has changed in terms of achievement. The Māori economy and Māori participation in our national economy has advanced so dramatically in the past 30 years, and I have been honoured to be a participant in moving that forward. I have operated my own businesses, worked on Māori incorporations and trusts like Mawhera and the board of Ngāi Tahu Holdings Corporation, and represented my hapū at iwi governance level on Te Rūnunga O Ngāi Tahu. The Ngāi Tahu settlement brokered by the Bolger-led National Government was a milestone for South Island development. I look forward to continuing to make a contribution to Māori economic advancement while sitting in this House because that is the only pathway to long-term prosperity and the betterment of ourselves, and it is not just for Māori; it is for all New Zealanders.

It is important, though, to acknowledge that I may move easily amongst the Māori communities but I also share a common set of values with all New Zealanders. My recent Banks Peninsula and Port Hills political campaigns have clearly shown that many other New Zealanders believe that I have something to contribute to all of society. I am deeply grateful to our people of the Port Hills for their continued support, especially our National Party members, the campaign team, the army of volunteers, and the Young Nats. I want to acknowledge our Canterbury-Westland regional chair, Roger Bridge, and my campaign manager, Cathryn Lancaster.

As most of you here will know, there is something remarkably rewarding about getting amongst the community and engaging with a constituency. Sure, some will slam the door in your face and some might be genuinely offended by your politics, but that is who we are. We are not homogeneous. We are diverse, we are passionate, and we are opinionated—thank God. It would be fair to say that I have never lived in a suburb that is built upon privilege. In fact, for much of my life I have lived in my traditional kāinga. My neighbours have been successful and struggling business owners, labourers and academics, bureaucrats and tradesmen, beneficiaries and retirees. These are my people. These are National’s people.

I have lived the National Party’s philosophies for most my life, despite my family background, where many of them were typical Labour Party supporters who lived the old adage that Labour looked after the worker. I have taken a fair bit of stick, especially on the front line in Lyttelton as a scrutineer for National in the port voting booth, but that was my decision and I stood by it.

The myth that National is simply there to look after the wealthy has been seriously challenged in this past election. Thousands upon thousands of voters abandoned their traditional roots to give their party vote to National because there was a greater accord with what they wanted in a Government. Voters responded to the quality of leadership and have been drawn to a unified party that really did care—and still does, passionately—about what matters to New Zealanders. I am sure that working New Zealanders have new expectations of themselves. New generations certainly understand that the State is not there to provide their every need. They genuinely believe that the Government is a partnership—us and them—and we each have to tow our own weight.

Labour may purport to represent the working New Zealander, but a bevy of career bureaucrats does not reflect the aspirations of the young checkout person at the Ferrymead Countdown, or the Lyttelton wharfie, or the process worker in Bromley, who all want better lives, with jobs, fair pay, homeownership, and the like. Preaching working class from Ponsonby does really fall upon deaf ears.

There are three immediate priorities for me for this term. One is to build the “brown blue”. Many Māori have lost sight of the huge gains made under successive National-led Governments, and one has only to reflect on the Ngāi Tahu and Tainui settlements and, more recently, the groundbreaking Tūhoe settlement to get a sense of what is possible. Whānau Ora and the underprivileged-focused partnership schools have arisen under National, and the modern iwi leader engagements have given effect to an unprecedented partnership approach. In the last election, even without a candidate contesting the Māori seats, National still secured 14 percent of the party vote within Te Tai Tonga. Over the next 3 years I want to assist in building that, not only in Te Wai Pounamu but also across Te Ika-a-Māui. I want to champion the “brown blue” cause.

The second priority is the Christchurch earthquake rebuild. We all admire the incredible earthquake recovery and rebuild work carried out to date under Minister Brownlee, and I want to assure him that, like in my years as a feisty rugby-playing No. 8, I am keen to put my two shoulders behind the pack and add my weight as required. I know that taking us through the next few years will require a continued team effort and I want to be part of that team.

My third priority is that I will deliver on what I promised to the Port Hills constituents during my campaign, by continuing to work hard within our Port Hills electorate alongside our community leaders in developing vibrant communities, with plenty of opportunities, supported by great leadership.

I want to acknowledge my extended and immediate whānau and friends, including those who have travelled here today to share this occasion. E ka whanauka, e ka hoa i te hunga kāinga e haere mai ki te tautoko i ahau, ko tēnei mihi aroha ki a koutou.

[To those of you, the relatives and friends from back home who travelled here to support me, I extend this fond acknowledgment to you collectively.]

It is also the time to acknowledge the wonderful people who have stood to support me in place of my tāua and pōua, and my mum and dad: my Auntie Mamae Warnes, who is here today, and was once a Young Nat in Wellington over 70 years ago; my Auntie Rima and Charlie Subritzky and Uncle Dudley and Melissa Couch from Rāpaki; my father-in-law, Derek Willard, in Australia; Alec Graham from Palmerston North; and my oldest and dearest mentor, Lachie Griffin, the unofficial mayor of Governors Bay. And to the person who has been there for me ever since we met on the Grand Canal in Venice 24 years ago, who bore me four sons and saved the Korako name from extinction—Chris: “I am because—you are.” To my sons Maximillian, Nicholas, Michael, and James Oliver: He mahi kai hoaka, he mahi kai takata, takata. [Anything worthwhile will always require a considerable effort.] This is how I got here today.

Finally, it is difficult to stand here being humble when there is so much to be proud of. I am in this Parliament, however, as a list MP representing the National Party’s interests. I cannot be other than a Māori and Ngāi Tahu, but it is my duty to address the needs of all New Zealanders and to concern myself with the whole spectrum of citizenship. Today I pledge myself to that task.

Huri noa Te Whare Pāremata, e mihi atu ana ki a koutou katoa, mauri ora, mauri ora.

[I extend a greeting to you all throughout Parliament House, good health and well-being.]

Waiata

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Mr Speaker, can I start by acknowledging you and congratulating you on your election as the Speaker of the House. I also wish to say that in my time leading the wine industry I thoroughly enjoyed working with you as the Minister for Primary Industries. I would also like to acknowledge the Kaikōura members of Parliament who have gone before me: Tom Shand, Sir Douglas Kidd, Lynda Scott, and Colin King. I will endeavour to serve the electorate as well as my predecessors did.

I stand here today honoured to have been elected as a member of Parliament, privileged to represent the people of Kaikōura. As a first-time candidate I find it truly humbling that I was elected with a record majority. This is something I will never take for granted. I personally judge my successes by the quality of the people who surround me. To this end, my talented and hard-working campaign team is no exception. I would like to acknowledge campaign chairman Tim Leslie. Tim is one of those special people who understand and enjoy politics but choose to stay in the background and promote others. Tim is in the gallery today, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for his hard work and wise counsel. I would also like to acknowledge and thank my campaign committee, many of whom have travelled to be here today. The hours invested and kilometres travelled by all of you were invaluable to the outstanding result we achieved.

The Kaikōura electorate is a reflection of New Zealand at its best, boasting strong agriculture, forestry, aquaculture, manufacturing, aviation, and tourism sectors. The area has a long and rich history. The oldest recorded archaeological site in New Zealand is on the Wairau boulder bank in Marlborough. As the fourth-largest general seat, the Kaikōura electorate covers 21,000 square kilometres. With over 2,000 kilometres of pristine coastline, 40 percent of the electorate area is administered by the Department of Conservation on behalf of New Zealanders.

Kaikōura has a rich farming background, with Molesworth being the biggest landholding at over 180,000 hectares. We also produce 80 percent of New Zealand’s wine in the Waipara and Marlborough wine regions. Most of the population lives in the urban area in the northern part of the electorate, with the remaining population spread out over a long, narrow, and at times rugged strip of land. From my home it is a 4-hour drive to the southern tip of the electorate, with a long winding drive and a boat ride to the northern tip on D’Urville Island.

I was born on a mid-Canterbury sheep farm just south of Methven, right close to Mount Hutt ski field. I fondly remember that from our house on a clear day we could see the outline of the ski lifts. My father was a blade shearer and still holds the record for shearing the most full-wool merino wethers in a day at Mount Arrowsmith in Ashburton Gorge. Dad worked his way into the farm through shearing, and he taught my brothers and me that we could have anything in life we wanted as long as we were prepared to work hard for it. Although I was privileged to grow up being able to ski, it was a privilege we had to work for. We had to earn enough money to pay for our day’s skiing and were not allowed to go until the work was done. This meant early mornings and hard labour. Those values of working hard and reaping the rewards of our endeavours are very dear to me, and align perfectly to those of the National Party. That is why I am so proud and privileged to stand here today as a National member of Parliament.

As everyone in this House knows, we cannot do what we do without the support of our families, and I wish to acknowledge that. I am very proud to have my family here, including my mum and dad, to share this special moment with me today. I am married to Julie and we have three teenagers, Hugo, Louis, and Fenella, who are all also here today, as are Julie’s parents. Julie and I started out farming together on the family farm, with Julie working as an occupational health nurse at the local Fortex freezing works. We both wanted to reach further up the value chain, and the wine industry offered us that opportunity. So we bought a half share in Julie’s family vineyard in Marlborough in 1994 and grew grapes on contract to local wineries.

It was not long before we decided that we wanted to take the next step and make our grapes into wine. This is an exciting process—to take the raw material that you grew with your own hands and make it into a finished product; a product that you can, if all else fails, drink yourself. Learning new skills along the way was great fun in the collegial atmosphere that typifies the wine industry. However, having grown the grapes and bottled the wine, the real work begins when selling it. The domestic market is too small to absorb all that New Zealand produces, which led us to become exporters. So we hopped on a plane and walked the streets of some of the world’s great cities to sell our wine. Although we had fun along the way, this was a great challenge that taught me many lessons. The world does not owe us a living, and we do not need to, nor can we afford to, sell on price alone. New Zealand is a niche producer, meaning that we must seek out niche markets and extract as much value as possible, but this takes investment in marketing.

This highlights one of the issues facing New Zealand export businesses. Producing products is a capital-hungry exercise, and having produced something means you are only halfway there. The real value is in the brand. Unfortunately, marketing and a brand are intangible, and although something may potentially be very valuable, it may not be what financiers are likely to secure debt against. Although Julie and I were fortunate enough to overcome this barrier, it is a real constraint on the growth and the development of the export sector.

Foreign investment has been a point of debate throughout the 2014 election campaign. I would like to take this opportunity to remind members that without foreign investment the wine industry would not be where it is today. Investment by foreign-owned wine companies brought so much more than money to the table. They certainly brought much needed capital, but, more important, they brought a route to international markets.

My journey into politics began in the wine industry. I got involved in the local grape-growers association and worked my way up on to the board of New Zealand Winegrowers, serving 6 years as chairman of the board until I stood down in late 2012. During my time in the chair, wine exports grew from $600 million per annum to over $1.1 billion. This rapid growth and change brought about many challenges but ones that I enjoyed tackling.

I am a proud member of the National Party Bluegreens as environmental sustainability issues have always been important to me. I remember as a boy on the farm helping dad burn barley stubble and thinking that there had to be a better way. Sustainability is a major plank of the New Zealand Winegrowers’ philosophy and during my time as chair we had a stretch target of 100 percent of the industry being members of a sustainability programme, whether it be organics, biodynamics, or Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand. I am proud to say that the industry achieved this goal 1 year ahead of target.

One of the keys to sustainable growth is undoubtedly irrigation, and I am proud to say that I am a founding member and chairman of the Southern Valleys community irrigation scheme. This is a scheme that irrigates 4,500 hectares in Marlborough’s dry, southern valleys. One of the big opportunities in our electorate is the Hurunui water project with a command area of 42,000 hectares. When fully developed, the scheme has the potential to generate $470 million in new GDP and create 3,300 new jobs in the wider Canterbury region. I will be working alongside the scheme’s promoters to help bring it to fruition. Further north the Flaxbourne community are also considering their own irrigation scheme, and I look forward to offering the benefit of my experience to help the community through the process.

I have some experience as an advocate of local health services. In 2013 a paper to senior medical staff of the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board outlined a proposal to cut acute surgical and orthopaedic services at Wairau Hospital in Blenheim, reducing them from 24 hours 7 days a week to, essentially, office hours 5 days a week. This, given the distances involved, would have been dangerous and totally unsatisfactory to the local community. I was one of four founding members of the group set up to oppose those cuts. With very little time we were able to attract a thousand people to a public meeting, and as a result the district health board gave an assurance that the proposed cuts would be dropped, and instead instituted a district health board - wide review of services, the results of which have given the community much heart and confidence in the future.

They say to win an electorate seat you need to burn a lot of shoe leather. In the Kaikōura electorate you also need a lot of Firestone rubber as State Highway 1 is not only the artery of the electorate but a vital link for the South Island as well. During my first term I will be advocating for the replacement of the last remaining one-lane bridge on State Highway 1 at the Hurunui River. The time has come for this to change. A coastal feeder service out of Picton is also long overdue and something I have been advocating for some time now. There are significant savings to be made for exporters from such a service, and with the shipping industry moving to a hub and spoke model, the time is right. I will be working alongside Port Marlborough and the Marlborough District Council to make this a reality.

Recently there has been wide consultation on the future of the Marlborough colleges. This is an exciting opportunity for the community to review the future of secondary education for the region. As a parent I welcome this and will work hard to ensure that Marlborough receives the best outcome for our younger generation.

I am delighted to join a National Government that will introduce a bill to create a recreational fishing park in the Marlborough Sounds, which will be managed by an advisory group made up of local interests. This is a major change in devolving management from a Government department to local interests, drawing on the successful Te Korowai o Te Tai o Marokura model in Kaikōura.

Thank you for the opportunity to present my maiden speech. I look forward to working with you and all members as we face the challenges that lie ahead. Thank you.

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): It is a great honour to be delivering my maiden speech to the House today. There are many values that we as New Zealanders cherish and work to uphold. As one of the 14 new National Party MPs in the 51st Parliament who are starting out on this journey, I, like so many before me, have reflected on which values will guide me and which I will strive to ensure we protect: equal opportunity, individual freedom and choice, personal responsibility, competitive enterprise and reward for achievement, limited Government, strong families and caring communities, and sustainable development of our environment. These are my reference points for my work and contribution to the making of good law in the 51st Parliament of New Zealand. Like a compass, I will seek to refer to these points as I navigate my way through my journey in this House. In application I will reflect, learn, and set course many times as I strive to benefit my electorate, Waimakariri, my region, Canterbury, and my country.

Mr Speaker, may I congratulate you on your re-election. It is a privilege to be part of a strong National Party, a strong National-led Government, and a strong National Party caucus. This strength is a result of the hard work of our leader, Prime Minister the Rt Hon John Key, our party president, Peter Goodfellow, our Canterbury/Westland regional chair, Roger Bridge, and our other regional chairs, our Ministers, our MPs, and National Party members and supporters.

I would like to acknowledge one Minister in particular, the Hon Gerry Brownlee, for his unwavering focus and commitment to the Canterbury earthquake recovery following the devastating earthquakes that hit the region and my electorate first in September 2010, primarily in Kaiapoi, and then the subsequent fatal earthquake in February 2011. The party votes in all our greater Christchurch electorates clearly demonstrated that Cantabrians support Mr Brownlee’s tireless efforts. We as Cantabrians have achieved a lot since these earthquakes first struck, and there is still a lot of work to be done to rebuild one of the greatest regions to live in New Zealand, and that is a fact.

Some of my fondest memories of growing up in Canterbury are from the early 1980s during Canterbury Rugby’s famous Ranfurly Shield era. I remember going to Lancaster Park on Saturday afternoons to watch and support the Canterbury Rugby team defend the Ranfurly Shield. Lancaster Park was known to be a hotbed of hostility for visiting sides, but for me this was an opportunity to meet other young kids from all over Canterbury who had come to support our winning rugby team. As I look back, remembering through a young child’s eyes, it seemed a special time in Canterbury when the whole region came together as one to support our team. Looking forward, as Canterbury rebuilds and rises again, I hope we can create an environment that will allow other young Cantabrians growing up to have those memories of a unified Canterbury—one region, one Canterbury, and, I am proud to say, somewhat one-eyed.

Can I acknowledge my mum and dad, Joan and Tom, my wife, Viktoria, and those from the Waimakariri electorate who have travelled up to Wellington for this speech and who are in the public gallery today. To the Waimakariri electorate team led by Jim Gerard, Dan Gordon, and Jill Spooner, which has provided me with so much support over the last 6 months, and to the many listeners and viewers back home in the Waimakariri electorate, I am humbled by all your support. Can I also make special mention of the Waimakariri National Party supporters group, led by Judith Parrott, which celebrated its 40th anniversary this year.

It is with much pride that I stand here today delivering my maiden speech as only the fourth member of Parliament to represent the Waimakariri electorate. I acknowledge those who have gone before me: Jim Gerard, Mike Moore, Clayton Cosgrove, and Kate Wilkinson. I owe a great debt to all those in the Waimakariri electorate who have placed their faith in me as their representative. I offer my commitment to represent and work for all in the Waimakariri electorate to the best of my abilities.

Waimakariri is a large electorate made up of both urban and rural areas. It spans from Casebrook, Northwood, and Belfast in northern Christchurch, up over the mighty Waimakariri River to the town of Kaiapoi, heading north to Woodend, Pegasus, and Waikuku, then west towards Tuahiwi Marae, and then to the main town of Rangiora, then through the lifestyle areas, including Fernside, Clarkville, Ōhoka, Mandeville, Swannanoa, Eyreton, through Cust to Oxford in the west. The electorate has seen some extraordinary population growth. It is the third-fastest growing area in New Zealand. The GDP of this region has increased well over 25 percent since 2010. This has been driven partly by the earthquake rebuild, and also by businesses that are benefiting from a strongly performing agricultural sector. Like we see in wider New Zealand, when the farmers are doing well the whole country benefits. Waimakariri is no different. When local farmers are doing well, the region benefits.

People ask me why I wanted to enter politics and become a MP. I answer this on two levels. The first is an instinctive feeling I have felt from a young age. I have always known that this is a path I would like to take. The second level is a rational one. For many years I have worked at the front line of health services and saw every day in the communities I worked in the benefits of better jobs and better incomes on people’s lives. I went into health care to make a difference. For me, politics is a way of continuing to make that difference, both for Waimakariri and New Zealand.

I was educated in Christchurch at St Patrick’s School in Bryndwr and St Bede’s College in Redwood—yes, another Bedean. Following high school I studied counselling psychology and went on to graduate with an honours degree in social policy and a Master’s degree in health care management. I worked at the front line of mental health services and in the management of health care services for a number of years, both here in New Zealand and in London.

As we move through the Canterbury earthquake recovery, international research tells us that years 3 to 5 post-disaster are important for both psychological and social recovery. Nationally and internationally, better mental health is important. We know that as the number of elderly people in our community grows, we will need to have better support in place for the expected number of elderly people with dementia. With children, we know that developmentally the early years are important and that if a child does not receive the emotional support they need, then this can be problematic. For working-age adults, mental health problems are one of the biggest causes of disability in the workplace and one of the biggest causes of loss of productivity for a business. It is considered that poor mental health such as depression will be the biggest cause of disability in the world. All of us will experience good and bad mental health over our lives. We are all in this together.

I travelled to London in the late 1990s for my OE with £100 in my back pocket. By the time I left over a decade later, I had not only built a rewarding health care career but also backpacked over 50 countries. Travelling at the grassroots of many countries taught me a lot about people—their culture, their history, their traditions. I learnt a lot about myself and what I want to achieve in my life. I am very thankful that I have had the opportunity to live in London while on my OE and I do hope my children will have this opportunity also. It is true what they say: travelling broadens the mind. The experience of living and travelling overseas has expanded my world view.

It was while living in London that I was selected to attend Birkbeck College to study a Master’s degree in global politics. From these studies and from my travelling through many countries, I learnt a lot about the globalised world we live in, where countries collaborate and compete, and how important it is that we have good economic management for the well-being of our people. We are living in a global market place where investment, information, and goods and services flow freely around the world with no borders. In this global market place competitive countries can provide growth and jobs for their people while uncompetitive countries do not. We have a choice.

There was a well-known philosopher in the 18th century, a Scotsman by the name of Adam Smith. He is the godfather of the market economy. He coined the term “comparative advantage”. This is where countries produce goods and services that they have a competitive advantage in doing so. For us, our biggest strength is the primary industries. We need to ensure that we gain access to other countries’ markets through free-trade agreements to sell our goods and our services. We also need investment into these sectors to promote innovation and research for higher productivity so we can add more value in our exports. Crucially, we will need innovation and research to ensure we find answers to sustainability concerns.

I come from a family that has a long history of contributing to the community. My late grandfather Maurice Carter was a Christchurch City Council deputy mayor and committed philanthropist. My mother, Joan Doocey, has dedicated her career as a teacher to young people with learning difficulties, empowering them to study in mainstream education settings. My father, Tom Doocey, received a Queen’s honour for his services to rugby and sports administration. Having role models like these in my life teaches me the commitment required for public service and the resilience needed for public scrutiny.

I am very fortunate that my wife, Viktoria, is supportive of my political ambitions. For Viktoria, her politics is real life. She was born and grew up behind the Iron Curtain in communist Hungary. She knows firsthand what it is like to live without the freedom and choice that we take for granted here in New Zealand. The effects of the poor economic management of the left are still visible in her homeland today. Just to make things a bit more interesting though, along the campaign trail my wife and I had our first child. In fact, my wife, Viktoria, started having contractions at one of my National Party selection meetings. I am happy to announce that we have a beautiful baby girl, Emily, who is now 7 months old and up in the public gallery today.

Having a young family makes me committed to ensuring families and communities are at the heart of growth and development in the Waimakariri, in Canterbury, and in the whole of New Zealand. For me it is all about family. I want to see mums and dads have better jobs and better incomes. I want their children to have a great education so they can achieve what they want in their lives. I want grandparents to have great health care and security in their retirement, and I want families to grow up in safer communities.

I am conscious of the challenges that lie in front of me in the Waimakariri electorate: roading and traffic congestion, the earthquake recovery—particularly the rebuilding of the town centres of Rangiora, Kaiapoi, and Oxford—the future of the red zone land, the importance of water, the issues surrounding nitrate levels, the completion of the Rangiora health hub, and working with and helping the Waimakariri District Council, whose work during difficult times has been acknowledged as exceptional. Then there are other groups and issues, such as the Rangiora, Kaiapoi, and Oxford high schools with their building programmes.

To conclude, I come to this House, like so many who have gone before, ambitious for our country and keen to make my contribution and work hard for the interests and aspirations of all constituents of the Waimakariri electorate, for the wider region of Canterbury, and for New Zealand. It is an honour to be the elected MP for Waimakariri. I will never forget the privilege I have been offered in being elected and the responsibility of the job I have been given to do. Thank you.

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Mr Speaker, Prime Minister, parliamentary colleagues, and the National Party team, as I deliver my first words in this awe-inspiring Chamber, I am mindful of the journey that I have travelled to be here. I am reflective on the definitive decisions I have made, the key opportunities I have seized, my discipline, my faith in the end goal, and the overwhelming loyalty of my supporters. Many try to get here and fail, but with the support and sacrifice of my husband, Mark, my children, Christabel and Hunter, the help of my parents, Ann and Alan Dowie, my National Party friends—in particular, Garry Thomsen, Anne McCracken, and Jon Turnbull—for their colossal efforts, and now with the mandate of the good people of the deep south, I am standing here, humbled, feeling surreal. I also acknowledge our party president, Peter Goodfellow, and board member Roger Bridge for their encouragement and wise counsel.

Mr Speaker, I congratulate you on your re-election. I have learnt much already from your own experience as a Minister and member in Opposition, and now I look forward to learning from you as to the rules of engagement in the House.

I am the Invercargill electorate’s first elected woman MP, and the moment is not lost on me. The Invercargill electorate has in the past been coined conservative but is now charging forward into a new era. The Invercargill electorate is a mixture of both urban and rural. It takes in the Catlins to the east and its ecological fame. It includes a yellow-eyed penguin colony, a Hector’s dolphin pod, and the petrified forest. Riverton and westward encompasses rolling hills, windswept forests, and stunning rugged coastline scenes. To the north there is Edendale and Wyndham’s fertile plains. To the south is Bluff with its oysters and traditional port activities, as well as Rakiura, which contains our newest and most remote national park. Finally, there is the city of Invercargill, our southernmost provincial city, steeped in Scottish tradition, and one that holds on to that pioneering spirit. It is an electorate of “can-do’s”, aspiration, innovation. Businesses carving out new niches are capitalising on the tried and true of the primary sector, education, and tourism, and developing and manufacturing new products for export. It is a quiet storm that is building to success.

However, Southland will be tested moving forward. We need to build on the industries we have and ensure we develop opportunities for the future. Industry productivity is challenged through a failure to attract more skilled people and families to the province. Although Southland’s economy needs to continue to grow based on its strengths in an environmentally sensible way, it must also diversify to sustain it. It also faces some real challenges in funding for essential services, especially when the spread of those services is across isolated areas. Despite these challenges, Southland continues to box above its weight per capita by generating over 12 percent of New Zealand’s total export receipts. We enjoy higher than average household incomes and high employment rates, and we are some of the happiest people in the country—and that is according to the last annual regional economic activity report.

There has been much media coverage in recent days and months about the cost of housing in Auckland. So I say to those Aucklanders who want a great lifestyle and affordable housing: does Invercargill have a deal for you! I am deeply passionate about the region and will fiercely advocate for development that has already been identified to continue to create varied jobs and generate more wealth and more opportunities for Southlanders. I will assist and support those who have innovative new ideas and will be vocal on the delivery of effective essential services across the region. That goes for anyone who wants to bring their business to one of the most cost-effective provinces in the country.

I intend to champion Southland’s progression to make it a province of choice for our people and families to thrive in and gain their fortune. I am a proud mother of two preschool children. Although I am acutely aware of the juggling that I will have to do to ensure that I do the job well and also maintain that all-important relationship with my family, I am not afraid to say that having children has changed my perspective for the better and driven me to contribute to this level. It is very hard to articulate the change in perspective as a mum, but it is a bit like going from watching black and white television to colour—or, for the Generation Ys out there, from digital to HDTV. I intend to use this breadth of view and colour in my approach to policy making—one that is holistic. I do not view my life in a silo, and, hence, I am supportive of the Government’s efforts to break down the silos of the Government in its problem solving. My opinions are mainly moderate, centre-right, and my approach to policy making will be for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

I am also the daughter of two police officers and by trade a solicitor, so law and order and justice are in my blood. I was raised with a strong ethic of “Reap what you sow.” The consequence of crime and the reality of it was in the forefront of my upbringing. My mother’s first husband, Constable Donald Stokes, was brutally murdered at age 23 while in the line of duty in Dunedin in 1966. I was raised with his photos on the walls, and the tragic end of his life has been etched into my mind from a young age.

On 13 November 1990 death on the job was again a reality as my father received a call from headquarters to advise that one of his best friends, Sergeant Stewart Guthrie, had been shot dead at Aramoana. I remember him methodically and soberly getting dressed in his uniform and walking out the door. The sum of the following 22 hours, with helicopters flying across the airspace of Dunedin and the general unknown, was not lost on anyone in Dunedin. However, it was obviously more pronounced for those with loved ones who were murdered or connected in some way. The sacrifice of brave men and women who put themselves on the front line to defend our liberties and the way of life that we hold dear in New Zealand is never far from my thoughts. I take this country’s security and our personal security very seriously, and, as such, I promise to uphold it, making sure that the police and other agencies have the resourcing and tools required to mitigate threats and reduce crime.

At the same time, I want to assure equal access to justice and the rule of law. New Zealand as a safe and fair community is something to always be vigilant about. But nurturing and growing a safe community is not enough on its own—well, not enough for me. I believe in the concept of social justice in so far as it relates to enabling every New Zealander the opportunity to lead a fulfilling life and achieve their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. This cannot be done, however, by keeping people down on an endless series of hand-outs. It is about creating an environment where people are supported to take responsibility for and to navigate their own lives, for they are best placed to make those decisions. It is about helping people gain the skills to get them into work. With a bit of can-do attitude they will find that they have options. I believe, as did the Hon Ralph Hanan, Invercargill’s last Minister, in furthering the real progress of all the people.

I am here to serve all New Zealanders to build on the wins that this Government has already achieved. I am here because it is our duty to build a New Zealand that the next generation, our children, are proud of, and where there is opportunity to get ahead in a country that has a heart to help those less fortunate but also rewards those who have the determination to work and make their own luck. I want our children to be pleased with the legacy we have left but also have the fortitude to build on this Government’s platform and drive forward initiatives for the betterment of all.

On a lighter note, I remember Sunday nights at 7.30 p.m. in front of the telly with mum and dad watching Our World, a series of fascinating nature documentaries that are probably responsible for fuelling my interest in science. I studied ecology at the University of Otago, Coupled with a law degree it became a powerful combination in helping my all-round understanding of environmental and conservation issues. It was a desire to still use my law degree but more of my science degree that saw me working for the Department of Conservation for 5 years. However, the department at that time is certainly not what it is today. The culture back then was that of dogmatic no, and, ultimately, I became frustrated when well-put-together environmentally sensible proposals were shut down with no logical thought to the greater picture of conservation.

It should be noted that I believe there is a place for preservation in New Zealand but there is also a place for sustainable development. The idea of protectionism, which is often seen as competing with development, recreation, and enjoyment, can be effectively balanced. We are ultimately part of our environment; we are not separate from it. We are dependent upon the environment for our well-being and our living. These two concepts are not mutually exclusive.

However, this frustration was nothing but a godsend as it catapulted me back to private practice and, wanting to stay involved in environmental issues at a higher level, I joined the Bluegreens. Our rationale is that economic growth goes hand in hand with improving the environment, and, therefore, this resonates with me. Inevitably, I was drawn into the mainstream of the National Party: party conferences, policy days, and candidates’ training—the final step that sealed my fate as to seriously consider politics as a career. I am, therefore, sincerely grateful for the advice and friendship of Glenys Dickson, whose gentle, well-timed, and highly effective nudges steered me here today. As Amelia Earhart once said: “Adventure is worthwhile in itself.”

So what have I learned in my short 40 years on this earth? What attitude will I bring to Parliament? I believe a superior understanding of the rules wins every time. I guess, therefore, Mr Leader of the House, that I will be a regular attendee at procedures meetings. I believe you should play the cards you are dealt, play them well, and then wait for the re-deal. With hard work and perseverance, eventually things must go your way. Fight hard but fight fair and never lose sight of who you are or where you are from. Humility is a characteristic that should never be underrated. I believe that one should be kind, because you never know when you may need kindness in return to get you by.

On winning the seat of Invercargill, I was told by a friend to dream big. In response, I defer to one of the most powerful symbols of triumph over adversity—someone who achieved and inspired despite the odds. Helen Keller said: “One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.” I promise to listen, to learn, to work, to dream, and to do my best to soar. Thank you.

TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland): I am humbled to stand here and speak for the first time in this Chamber. I am humbled by the sense of history, tradition, and culture, but I am also humbled as I look round because from today I am part of this place. It is a true honour to stand before you as the representative for Clutha-Southland. We are proudly the largest general electorate in New Zealand. We embrace Southland, South Otago, West Otago, Fiordland, and the Greater Wakatipu. At 38,000 square kilometres, we are almost the size of Switzerland.

I want to acknowledge and thank my family and friends, Clutha-Southland supporters, who are here today, and former ministerial office colleagues—in particular, Jamie Gray and Julie Ash. Mr Speaker, congratulations to you on your reappointment and thank you for the strong voice you have provided provincial New Zealand throughout your time in this House. I wish to personally thank some very important people who are responsible for me standing here today: Glenys Dickson, Tim Hurdle, Michelle Boag, and the Hon Roger Sowry. Your wisdom, advice, and sound, loyal counsel have guided me throughout my journey thus far. I wish to thank my campaign team, under the leadership of Jeff Grant, John Wilson, and Glenys Dickson. We ran a spectacular campaign, and it was thanks to these fine people. I wish to thank my electorate executive, under the leadership of Stuart Davies, Ailsa Smaill, and Nigel Moore. The Young Nats—thank you for all your hard work and support.

I would also like to congratulate my class of 2014 colleagues, all of whom I sincerely look forward to working with over the coming years—in particular, I want to pay special mention to my friend and previous colleague Chris Bishop. You ran a solid campaign and I am truly glad to be working alongside you once again.

Although I did not grow up on a farm, I do come from good Southland farming stock, and I hope to bring this down-to-earth approach to the House of Representatives. Dating back to the early 1900s, three generations on my mother’s side farmed sheep in Southland near Winton, and three generations on my father’s side were sheep farmers and trained horses at Croydon near Gore. I was born in Gore and my family moved to Dipton when I was about 3. My parents had the Four Square and mail run there before moving back to Gore in time for my final year at primary school. It was there where I completed the rest of my schooling. I completed a Bachelor of Commerce in Wellington while working at Parliament as an intern to Bill English, ministerial secretary to Gerry Brownlee, ministerial assistant briefly in the Prime Minister’s correspondence team—I think you were overseas at the time—and a political adviser to Hekia Parata. I then moved to Auckland and worked as a public relations and corporate affairs consultant before coming home, where I won this election.

My home, the electorate of Clutha-Southland, stretches from Waihola and Taieri Mouth on the East Coast to Milford Sound on the west. Our people vary, from the farmers and service providers in and around Tuatāpere, Ōtautau, Winton, Gore, Lawrence, Balclutha, and Milton to the tourism operators in and around Queenstown, Arrowtown, Glenorchy, Te Ānau, Manapōuri, and the Catlins. We also have innovators, entrepreneurs, and professionals engaged in business throughout the length and breadth of the electorate. All of these communities have differing social needs and local issues and deserve my unique representation. Despite such a large number of the residents of Clutha-Southland living in our larger centres, the major influence in the electorate remains decidedly rural. This is something not to be forgotten. The primary sector is still the backbone of this country and of our economy, and I look forward to making a strong contribution on the Primary Production Committee.

I consider Clutha-Southland to be particularly fortunate, though, because in addition to our strong provincial foundation, we also include a world-class tourism industry, which plays a pivotal role in shaping our nation’s proposition to the rest of the world. Queenstown is unique. Among other things, we are incredibly lucky that unlike many other parts of our country our challenge is in managing the pace of growth and development, not generating it.

I want to talk about the areas where I intend to make my main contribution. These three areas are, in my view, fundamental to the future growth and prosperity in Otago and Southland. I intend to make a difference in these areas. As a region, we are heavily reliant on a strong, high-quality, and productive primary sector and a savvy supporting service industry. Innovation and a drive to keep doing better are crucial in order to keep pace with the growing international demand.

Second, in order to move forward, attracting and retaining more innovative, skilled, and qualified workers down south is essential. To achieve this we need to systematically lift achievement at each point throughout the education pipeline. It is here that I want to acknowledge the Minister of Education, the Hon Hekia Parata. I strongly admire her relentless passion and conviction to bringing out the very best in every teacher and every school, and keeping our best teachers in the classroom so that they, in turn, can bring out the very best in every Kiwi kid. If you want an example of someone who has entered politics for the right reasons, she is that person. Hekia, I look forward to joining you in this pursuit and making a strong contribution as a member on the Education and Science Committee because, as you say: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

My third interest is trade, because this is what motivates and drives our demand for primary sector growth and workforce enhancement. We need to be constantly looking for opportunities to expand our export market base, which is why concluding a strong, dynamic Trans-Pacific Partnership is crucially important for the prosperity of my electorate and the country. As the people of Queenstown understand only too well, tourism is an important element in this. New Zealand’s reputation and the experiences our visitors have while they are here play an important role in how our trading partners in the rest of the world perceive our country. It helps that we have an outstanding Minister of Tourism who understands the strength and dynamism of the tourism proposition and is leading the charge in attracting more and more high-value tourists. My electorate’s tourism offering opens huge doors and paves the way to a number of flow-on trade and economic benefits that we as a country enjoy.

If I can contribute in any way during my time in this place to the delivery of tangible gains across the primary industries, education, trade, and tourism and how they interact and intersect, I will be proud to have helped enhance the ability of my region and our country to grow its economic potential. This is why provincial people deserve a strong voice in Parliament and in Government, on an equal footing to the representation enjoyed by those living in New Zealand’s larger centres. I believe the key to the strength and success of the National Party in the future is to ensure that our party’s two core—and, indeed, at times competing—followings, urban liberal-leaning New Zealand and rural conservative-leaning New Zealand, both continue to enjoy strong representation on an equal footing at the highest of our party’s ranks. It is important that we remain balanced in our views, realistic in our expectations, and resonant with middle New Zealand. That is why I believe that our Prime Minister, John Key, and Deputy Prime Minister, Bill English, make an exceptional complementary team.

Mr Speaker, the Rt Hon David Carter, when I stand before you in this House representing my view and the view of my people, I do so with an appreciation of the true honour and responsibility that privilege brings. I do so with the intention of being a strong, fair-minded, and informed legislator. Prime Minister, the Rt Hon John Key, when I stand before you in caucus representing my view and the view of my people, I do so with an appreciation of the true honour and responsibility that privilege brings. I do so with the intention of being a strong, fair-minded, and informed member of your caucus.

Parliamentary colleagues, for those of you unaccustomed to the deep south, let me introduce you to the fine people I humbly represent. The people of Clutha-Southland exemplify the best of New Zealand—of course, I would say that. We are conservative yet innovative, astute yet modest, quiet yet ambitious, and hard-working yet fun. We are proud New Zealanders. Our values are straightforward, straight talking. We are uncomplicated in our views, accountable for our actions, and solid in our beliefs. My values are simple. They are based on personal responsibility, free enterprise, and choice. These are the values that I will represent in our Parliament.

As British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said, we want a society where people are free to make choices, to make mistakes, and to be generous and compassionate. That is what we mean by a moral society. It is not a society where the State is responsible for everything and no one is responsible for the State. For my part, I believe that freedom and choice are the fundamental rights of all New Zealanders, but we as individuals need to be responsible for the choices that we make and for the actions we take.

I promised my constituents that as their MP I will act in order to preserve those values that they hold dear. Let there be no misunderstanding: I will act, and it begins today. I understand that my leadership as a representative requires much more than acting with no conscience. I genuinely believe in my electorate’s values, and I believe in my people. I will represent my constituency honestly and strongly.

It is here I want to acknowledge the Hon Gerry Brownlee. I had the privilege of working for Gerry over Pike River and for part of the Canterbury earthquakes. Gerry, it is your true selflessness, humble wisdom, and unconditional loyalty to the people of Canterbury that I believe will see the history books mark you down as one of New Zealand’s greatest political leaders.

In this place that I call home, we believe in phrases like individual responsibility, hard work, and equal opportunity. Clutha-Southland is a microcosm of the National Party. We are a microcosm of heartland New Zealand. As I begin my political career I ask myself a question: what type of country do we want to be in in 20 years’ time? I know what type of country I believe in—a dynamic, innovative, determined country; forward looking and forward thinking. That is the vision of my generation.

I am 24 years old. Like Marilyn Waring, Simon Upton, and Nick Smith once were, I am the youngest member of this House. People of my age are making choices that will affect them for the rest of their lives—they are marrying, buying houses, establishing career paths, and having children. It is important that when we are in this House we consider these people. I hope that I will provide a strong voice in this place for my generation. Although some people might not realise it, politics and other things that the Government does do affect all of our lives. Therefore, we must be in constant pursuit of delivering strong, stable, decisive government, consistent government, and predictable government. That is what we aim for and aim to deliver as part of team Key. It is an exciting future, built on a platform of 6 years of good government. I think it is important and I will aspire to maintain those standards so that the senior generation can thrive, so that my generation can thrive, and so that future generations can thrive.

In 1990, the year I was born, Simon William English came to this House. I am the same age as his eldest son Thomas—he and I used to go to the same playgroup. I have known Bill and his family literally my whole life. I want to acknowledge him as the most humble, selfless, focused politician I have ever met. The Hon Bill English, his wife, Dr Mary English, and their family have served the people of Clutha-Southland very well for 24 years. They are people of true heart and true courage. That makes them truly heroic in the eyes of us all. As our local MP, Bill was never afraid to stand up to those he opposed. He was, and continues to be, a man of judgment who understands what really matters. He was, and continues to be, a man of integrity who would never run out on the principles he believes in or the people who believe in him. He was, and continues to be, a man who understands the trust of those whose hopes he carries. Bill English is a man devoted to serving the public interest. Thank you for representing us proudly and strongly and setting such a high standard, which I will strive to live up to.

Those of you who know Bill will know that he has a reputation for being conservative, not only with the country’s finances but also with his own. He is famous for leaving his wallet behind. We were in Queenstown during the campaign and we had just finished visiting some businesses in the industrial zone. On our way back to the office Bill said: “Oh, I think I’d really like to take Barbara Swan out for a coffee.” She was his electorate agent. He said he thought it would be nice. I said: “Yes, that would be great. I’ll just drop you off.” There was a bit of a pause, and then he said: “Hey, I don’t suppose you’ve got any cash, have you?”. Bill’s staff who are here today will know this only too well.

To the people of Clutha-Southland, as we look forward and begin shaping our future we must never forget where we have come from, nor the people whose blood, sweat, and tears founded the path upon which we walk today. Nor should we lose touch with the present. As I look up to the gallery, I see a group of people who mean the world to me, my family—my mum, Maree; my dad Paul; my sister, Kelsey; Brodie Andrews; and Margaret Williamson. As you all know only too well, politics is my passion. The highest tribute I can pay to my family is to say that each of you is a person of warmth, support, loyalty, and unconditional love. Living up to the values you possess is what continues to make me strive to make you proud. Without you all I would not be here today, and it is the thought of you that will be bring me back tomorrow. Now is the time for me to stop talking and to start serving. For as long as the people of Clutha-Southland will have me, my time is their time. This is their time. I am from them, I am them, and I am proud to be representing them.

Sitting suspended from 6.01 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration): I move, That this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Employment Relations Amendment Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to principal Act

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you, Mr Chairman. As this is my first intervention of the 51st Parliament, can I just take a little bit of time to welcome colleagues back to the Chamber and to congratulate you, Mr Chair, and acknowledge you as this Chamber’s Deputy Speaker for the 51st Parliament. Can I also welcome those new MPs, particularly those who have had their maiden speeches this afternoon. I think colleagues will agree that the quality of the speeches and the calibre of our new intake on both sides of the Chamber are particularly impressive.

I have the very good duty, I think, as the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, to continue the excellent work of the Hon Simon Bridges, the previous custodian of this bill. I want to acknowledge the very good work that he has done. I also want to acknowledge the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee of the 50th Parliament, which considered this bill and, of course, reported it back with amendment. I acknowledge the chair of that committee, David Bennett, and want to congratulate him on his appointment today as the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. It is very well deserved after 6 years as the chairman of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, a committee I very much enjoyed being a member of in the 49th Parliament. It was a rather split-personality committee, where we had such strong and collegial relationships on those things such as immigration and transport safety, and, then, perhaps not quite the same level of collegiality around ACC and employment law. Nevertheless, it was a very effective committee then and I am sure it will be under the able chairmanship of Jonathan Young in this Parliament.

The Employment Relations Amendment Bill delivers on this Government’s manifestos in both the 2011 and 2014 election campaigns. It is designed to enhance and create a more flexible workplace relations environment. It continues this Government’s strong focus on reduction and compliance costs and unnecessary burdensome regulation. It does some very small but effective changes to flexibility in bargaining, to entry into collective agreements, and to the ability of employers to opt out of multi-employer collective agreements, and it has a number of other technical changes. It adds some flexibility to an employee’s opportunity to request more flexible working arrangements. That ability is currently available to employers of people who have caregiving responsibilities. I note that 70 percent of employers have actively considered and allowed some form of flexibility under that. So this is something that I think will be appreciated by employers and employees alike as we extend that to a far wider range of reasons to have flexibility. It provides, I think, a very sensible opportunity for employees and employers to agree on flexibility in work breaks and meal breaks.

I want to acknowledge the many people around the country who have emailed me this afternoon their views and their beliefs both in an email and on Facebook that this somehow is going to be the removal of the right of employees to take a tea break. Well, nothing could be further from the truth—[Interruption]. The irrational rant from the meerkats on the other side at the mere sniff of this kind of exploitation that they claim is there is unfortunate and untrue. We know that there are situations in the workplace, including workplaces that I have managed, where there are sole-charge operations for which it is necessary and appropriate to have some flexibility in the rest and meal breaks, whether it is the two registered nurses on night shift at the weekend at small surgical hospitals who, for safety reasons, cannot leave the ward at 2 o’clock in the morning. I, as an employer, gave them a meal, a meal allowance, and some extra time in recognition of that inability. Why you would want to leave and go downtown in Dunedin at 2 o’clock on a Monday morning is anybody’s guess, but, indeed, that was the flexible arrangements we had before this law change. It is probably still there and probably in breach of the Employment Relations Act. It is unnecessary, and this brings back some sense to that

There is the sole-charge air traffic controller at small airports who, again, for safety reasons, cannot leave. There is the night-shift supervisor at the 24-hour service station and the sole-charge person who, for very good reasons, want to have that flexibility. I think we patronise employees by pretending that they cannot negotiate with their employer for a fair outcome. It has to be done with the agreement of the employer and the employee together. That is the modern workplace, not the cloth cap - wearing rhetoric that I think we are going to hear during the Committee stage of this bill.

Very good improvements to the bill were made by the committee as it came out, and they were confirmed at its second reading. But there are a couple of amendments that I will be introducing under Government Supplementary Order Papers. I want to acknowledge the Hon Peter Dunne for his suggestions around the cessation of bargaining, the ending of bargaining, and for ensuring—albeit that I think that the bill was pretty clear about this; it is certainly appropriate to strengthen and make absolutely clear—that the Employment Relations Authority needs to be satisfied that both parties to the ending of the negotiations have acted in good faith and that the cessation of the negotiations should not take place if one party has not acted in good faith. So the Hon Peter Dunne has proposed a Supplementary Order Paper. The Government is happy to see that in place.

Part 6A has been a fairly contentious part of the Employment Relations Act for the last 9 or 10 years. There are some sensible amendments, in my view, to acknowledge the burden of Part 6A on very small businesses, small to medium sized enterprises of 19 staff or fewer, and to provide clarity around the obligations on the outgoing employer and the incoming employer under a restructure so that employees have enough time to consider their options, and the incoming employer has a clear understanding of the time frame for the getting of the information and an understanding of what employees he or she is taking on.

The last amendment under a Supplementary Order Paper is to the provisions under the Employment Relations Authority and the ability for the powers of the chief of the Employment Relations Authority to be delegated. In the absence of this and in the absence of the chief of the authority, if it were to occur, that could cause some problems with decisions that are required to be made by that chief. I think that is a sensible and pragmatic change.

This is a good bill. This is a bill that delivers on the promises this Government has made in the last two election campaigns. We have the mandate to pass it. We have the numbers to pass. It will improve the workplace by providing flexibility for both employers and employees. I expect that to be robustly debated this evening and I look forward to it.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Chair, and given that this is the first time that I have spoken whilst you are in the Chair, may I congratulate you on your election to that role.

I hope that members opposite enjoyed their meal break, because we in this House get the right to a meal break. It is something that we kind of take for granted. We work pretty hard, but we expect to get a meal break in the evenings. I suspect that most members, particularly those on the other side of the Chamber, have had a very enjoyable one. There were a few maiden speeches today, and there might have been a few wines and beers and maybe some nice nibbles enjoyed during the meal break tonight. But that is not, of course, what the National Government wants for the ordinary worker in New Zealand—no, sir. No, it is what those members want for themselves. It is what they want for themselves, but it is not what they want for the ordinary workers. So I hope they enjoyed their meal break. I hope they enjoyed their meal break, because workers right across the country will be watching this session of Parliament this evening and thinking to themselves what a lovely bunch of people they are in the National Government. They want meal breaks for themselves. They want caviar for themselves and scraps for the rest of the country.

Part 1 of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill is essentially the thrust of the whole bill. There are a number of changes made to the principal Act in this part, and I expect that there will be a lot of debate about those different changes. I want to focus my first contribution this evening on clauses 7, 8, and 9. These are the clauses that relate to collective bargaining and, in particular, to the duty to conclude collective bargaining. What clause 7 does is it repeals section 31(aa) of the principal Act, which states that one of the objects of Part 5 of the Act is “to provide that the duty of good faith … requires parties bargaining for a collective agreement to conclude a collective agreement unless there is a genuine reason, based on reasonable grounds, not to”. What a perfectly reasonable clause to have in a piece of employment legislation—employers and unions that are at the bargaining table have a duty to do their utmost to conclude that bargaining, to form a collective agreement, and actually conclude that bargaining and reach some form of agreement that allows the people working in that workplace to be on a collective agreement that is shared amongst them all. What a very reasonable thing to have in your legislation, and yet this Government, with clause 7, plans to remove that.

Then what clause 8 actually does is repeal section 32(1)(ca), which states: “even though the union and the employer have come to a standstill or reached a deadlock about a matter, they must continue to bargain …”—they must continue to bargain. Yes, we know. Look, I have been at the bargaining table myself and I know that sometimes you reach an impasse and it can be incredibly difficult to see a way forward. What the legislation does right now is it keeps people at the table. It takes away the soft option of simply giving up and walking away from collective bargaining. That is what this legislation, which this Government intends to pass this evening, will do. It will give, principally, the employer the opportunity to give up as soon as bargaining gets difficult and walk away.

Clause 9 replaces the duty of good faith. The principal Act required parties to conclude collective agreement unless there is a genuine reason not to, and clause 9 amends it to say, basically, that they can walk away from collective bargaining at any moment. This weakens the position of every employee in the country. This says to employers that you can bargain for a while—you can do a bit of surface bargaining, you can show good faith—and then, as soon as you reach an impasse, you can walk away from the bargaining table.

David Bennett: Oh, not true—not true.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: It absolutely is true, David Bennett. And if you think it is not true, David Bennett, get to your feet and tell us why it is not true. I want to hear from the former chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee why he thinks I am wrong on this point. That is what all the submitters came and told us at the select committee. That is what all the advice was when we were at the select committee. It was that these changes and this repeal of the duty to conclude bargaining weakens the position of employees and makes it easier for employers to walk away.

So what is the intent of this? Well, the intent is for unions and employees not to put up claims in their bargaining that they think are going to be difficult. They are going to try to make the bargaining process as simple as possible for the employer by avoiding the difficult issues, but what is the point of collective bargaining if it is not to address the difficult issues in the workplace? It might be about pay. It might be about conditions. It might be about industry standards. It might be about setting up some sort of joint committee to address an ongoing issue in that industry or in that workplace. It could be a whole host of things, but the incentive here with this legislation is not to introduce any of those issues into bargaining, because the employer will simply say: “This is too hard. We’re walking away.” That is the effect of this legislation, and it disempowers workers. It disenfranchises workers. It has got nothing to do with unions, actually; it has got everything to do with the bargaining power that working people have in the workplace.

It is typical of the National Government, is it not? It claims that this is a small but effective change. Well, it will be effective, all right. It will keep wages down. It will keep unions under control. It will keep workers suppressed. It will be very effective, but it is not small. It is not a small change because what it will do is keep wages down. I hear from the opposing benches that wages should move with productivity, and we on this side of the Chamber could not agree more. But over the last 20 years productivity has increased—I cannot remember the number off the top of my head. I am hoping someone will tell me, but it is significant. It is significant—

Hon Members: Heaps.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Heaps—it has improved heaps. But we know that wages have simply not kept up, and we know that if wages had kept up with productivity over the last 25 years, wages would be, on average, about $8 or $9 an hour higher than they are right now. Why have they not kept up? Because our industrial relations law has not been strong enough as it is, and yet this Government plans to weaken it with these changes in clauses 7, 8, and 9. That is why there is such a big pay gap between New Zealand and Australia. Does anybody remember when that was an aim of this Government—to close the pay gap between New Zealand and Australia? One of the main reasons why Australia has better wages than we do in New Zealand is that it has got better legislation and it has got stronger unions that can collectively bargain, and that collective bargaining actually raises wages for all workers, whether they are in a union or they are not. So that is what these three clauses are all about. They are suppressing wages and suppressing workplace rights.

Another rather insidious and odious part of this legislation is the removal of the 30-day rule, where someone goes on to the collective agreement automatically in the first 30 days. The thing is that employers say they want flexibility. Well, they have got flexibility right now. If they want to pay someone more than what the collective agreement allows for in the first 30 days, they can. There is nothing stopping them. What they cannot do is pay someone less than what the collective agreement allows for in the first 30 days. That can be the only possible reason for removing the right to go on to the collective agreement in the first 30 days of employment. It is so that the employer can offer a contract on less favourable terms than the collective agreement. That is the only reason. I have not heard a single substantive argument that proves me wrong, and if I am wrong about that, then again I invite the members opposite to get to their feet and tell us why I am wrong about that.

This again is about supressing wages. It is about weakening the new worker’s position in the workplace. Of course when there are scarce jobs out there, they are going to take the conditions that they are given by the employer. They are not going to take the choice of the better contract; they are going to take the weaker position because they know that the employer will just go to the other dozen or so people who applied for that job and offer it to them. Of course, we know that for every person who goes out and applies for a job, there are at least 10 or 20 other people applying for that same job when they line up. That is why we have queues of thousands outside supermarkets. People who are stuck on benefits actually do want to work and go out there and get a decent job, or even a low-paying job or a minimum wage job. People want to work, and there is so much competition for those jobs because the labour market is so weak at the moment under this Government that of course people will feel under pressure to take the contract that has worse terms and conditions than what the collective allows for because they know that the employer can just go to the next person if they do not agree to that.

What an awful for this Government to do. What an insidious and odious thing to do to workers. This, again, is not a small change. This is a significant change. Effective? Yes. Will it achieve what the National Government wants it to do? Yes, of course it will. Is it small? No, sir, it is not. It will have a massive impact on the ability of ordinary working people to bargain for a decent contract that has decent pay and decent conditions in the workplace.

SUE MORONEY (Labour): Well, here we are, the very first act of this Government in the 51st Parliament and what is it? Surprise, surprise! It is dealing to hard-working New Zealanders. That is the very first thing. It has suspended the Address in Reply debate to deal to the working people of New Zealand. It is a disgrace and the Government is reverting to type. Part 1 of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill is where the rubber hits the road. This is where it is all happening, because what is the urgency that this is the very first act of this new Government? What is the urgency in this? What is the harm that it is aiming to fix up? Well, in determining and weakening collective bargaining, who is it that this Government could be going after in such a hell of a hurry?

Well, I am looking at some of the collective agreements that are about to expire: nurses. Public hospital nurses are who the Government is after, because they are negotiating their employment agreement right now—right now—and that is who the Government is after. It is the nurses who actually look after people when they end up in the public hospital that this Government is going after. Why else would this be the very first act that it has undertaken as a new Government? Then after the nurses come the teachers. The teachers’ collective employment agreement is up about the middle of next year and they are whom the Government is going to have in its sights next. That is why it has suspended a debate to try to force this through. Nurses, teachers—police will be next, firefighters will be after that, and the Government is after each and every single one of them. So when nurses, teachers, firefighters, police, and anyone on a collective agreement think about the vote that they may have cast during the election, they need to know what the very first act is that this Government is taking against their interests.

The only reason for weakening collective bargaining—and Part 1 is weakening collective bargaining—is to drive down wages. That is the only reason to do it.

David Bennett: Oh, what a load of rubbish!

SUE MORONEY: Government members say “Oh rubbish!” but what is the reason? What is the harm that we are trying to fix here? Is it because we have had lots of long and bitter industrial disputes where workers have demanded unrealistic wages and gained them? Is that what has been happening in New Zealand? I have not seen any of that. In fact, what I have seen, though, is a report in the New Zealand Herald earlier this week where a Skycity worker got up at the annual general meeting and talked about how she is a sole parent, working 2 days a week, trying to make ends meet, and actually doing what the Government wants. She is actually in paid employment instead of being on the benefit. She was working 2 days a week. She, after 17 years or 11 years—one of those two, it might have been 11 years of service for Skycity—without any consultation was cut down to 1 day a week. She was cut down to 1 day a week at the minimum wage to try to exist on. She got up in that shareholders meeting. She told her story to a group of shareholders who were just about to vote in an increase in directors’ fees for Skycity.

That is what has been going on this country. We have got growing inequality. There have been wage movements all right but they have been for directors and chief executive officers when we know now that the gap between people on the average wage in organisations and their chief executive officers has grown hugely under this Government. And that is what this bill is designed to do. It is designed to make that even worse—even worse—than what it is under the current Government.

That is not the New Zealand that I think and the Labour Party believes we ought to have. We actually do not think it is fair that chief executive officers keep getting huge increases while this Government passes this sort of legislation for no reason. Where is the harm? Where is the dispute? I want the members opposite to get up and name the dispute where workers have won an unreasonable wage increase because there has been a duty to conclude collective bargaining. Minister Woodhouse, I challenge you to get up and name that dispute where workers have won an unfair wage increase because the Act, the legislation, currently requires a duty to conclude collective bargaining. If there is no such dispute, if there is no such example, then why is the Government making this its very first act? Well, I will tell you why. It is because it is after the hard-working nurses. It is after our very valuable teachers. I listened very carefully to Steven Joyce earlier this week when he said—

Hon Member: Why?

SUE MORONEY: Well, because I am interested to know what is in the recesses of the dark minds of the National Party. That is why I listened to him. He talked about the tertiary education sector. And do you know what he said? He said its costs have increased by 70 percent in the last 10 years and it must get its costs under control. Well, on this side of the Chamber we all know what that is code for because the tertiary sector does not have whizz bang machinery or lots of capital expenditure in terms of research and development costs and that sort of thing. It spends its money on employing quality people. It spends its money on wages to have the best academic people we can have in our tertiary institutions. So what Steven Joyce is saying is that he wants wage cuts. He wants wage cuts and this is the legislation in Part 1 that the Government is going to use to bring that about.

I want to move on to talk about the meal breaks and rest periods part of this bill. It is an issue that is very close to my heart because, in fact, I wrote the current piece of legislation. It was a member’s bill that I wrote in my name. It was adopted as a Government bill in my first term in Parliament and so I take it a little bit personally but, more important, the stories that we heard when we passed that legislation were incredible and that is what we are about to go back to. What people said was that they could not believe that in the year 2007—I think it was 2006 or 2007 when we passed that—workers in a civilised democracy like New Zealand did not have the legal right in law to have a lunch break or a rest period. People could not believe that but when they came to hear the stories—and Mr Bennett was on that select committee at the time—I think even they could not believe it. There were people who came before the select committee and told us stories about how they had been sacked. Yes, they had been sacked because they dared to take a lunch break in their workplace in the year 2007 in Aotearoa New Zealand.

That was not just an isolated incident. The one I remember very clearly was from Hamilton. A young guy by the name of Ānaru came and told the select committee about working for Subway in Hamilton where he had done his shift and he agreed to stay on and do a second shift because another work colleague of his was sick. He did the right thing. He did not have to agree to it but he did it. But after he had done about 10 hours, he started to get pretty tired and fatigued and he knew he was going to make a mistake if he did not get a break. He insisted on taking a break, a half-hour meal break—and when he returned he was sacked. He was sacked for daring to walk off the job. They said he had abandoned his duty. He had gone to take a meal break.

This brings me to another point. The reason I wrote that piece of legislation was because of my concern around the health and safety issues associated with fatigue at work. That is the reason we have the right to a tea break and to a meal break. It is to keep people safe, because we know that if people are tired they will hurt themselves and others, and sometimes that actually ends up in workers losing their lives. This is particularly when you think about dangerous industries like forestry where we know already there is pressure on workers to work without taking their breaks because they are paid on a piecemeal basis rather than on the hours that are worked. We already know that there are actually major health and safety issues going on, and here is the Government saying: “Well, actually you can bargain away your right to have a meal break. Just don’t bother having one.” Maybe the employer will offer you a chocolate fish! Or maybe the employer will just threaten you as they threatened Ānaru with his job if you insist on taking a meal break.

Those are the sorts of things that are going to start happening over and over again if this Government has its way. That legislation, that meal breaks and rest periods legislation, which was brought in as part of a Government bill that also dealt with infant feeding breaks—[Bell rung] I am probably going to continue the story later on.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): It gives me great pleasure to speak on the Employment Relations Amendment Bill. I would just like to acknowledge the Minister in the chair, Michael Woodhouse, who is a very fine Minister and he has done an excellent job on this bill, as well as members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, from both sides of the Chamber, who actually worked hard to make this bill the best that it could be. I acknowledge members of the Labour Party who were on that committee who actually had a lot of experience—people like Andrew Little, who is very experienced in negotiations and labour relations law. Their roles were pivotal in making sure that we got this bill to the stage we have today.

I would just like to clear up a few things that the Labour Opposition members have been talking about today. The first thing is that unions have a very vital role in our economy and in our workers’ representation, and the National Government understands and acknowledges that. Collective bargaining has a very important role as well. That is something that many unions engage in and it has given good results for workers in New Zealand. That is something that is not attacked in this bill, contrary to the Opposition members’ claims.

Opposition members are claiming that this bill is an attack on collective bargaining. It is not. This bill provides fairness and flexibility in the workplace. That is what this bill does. If you look at it, in collective bargaining there is a duty of good faith. Underlying all employment law is the duty of good faith, and that applies to both parties in the negotiations. They have to approach those negotiations in good faith.

Sue Moroney: That’s already in there.

DAVID BENNETT: Yes, it is, Ms Moroney—it is in there. This bill enshrines that in the sense that in collective bargaining you cannot just withdraw, as the Opposition says, because that overriding duty of good faith is still on the employer. So the employer cannot just withdraw because they do not like the idea of this collective bargaining. They are still under that duty of good faith, and that is an important thing. At the moment, in the current situation, the employee, through the union, can withdraw at any stage but the employer cannot. The employer, even if they have that duty of good faith and go through that collective bargaining process, cannot withdraw. They still have that duty of good faith.

The problem with this legislation is that it brings out the worst in the Labour Party. When you have legislation like this it shows the true colours of the Labour Party. Those people over there are not there to protect workers. They are protecting themselves because they want to be in the privileged position of representing unions and workers’ rights. They see themselves as some kinds of gods for workers, who can tell people what they should do. The 10 of them who are left over there tonight represent all workers in New Zealand and know better than workers, and that is not what we are about in this Parliament. We want to give flexibility and rights to workers.

I say to the Labour Party members that while most of the Labour Party leadership is out doing their election campaigning for their new leader, why do you not give each worker the ability to vote for your leader? Why do you make it so that only the union delegates can vote on behalf of the unions? Why do you not give every worker that ability to vote? Because they cannot. Did you know that? Under the election campaign that is going on now—

Sue Moroney: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I would ask about the relevance of that to Part 1 of this bill, but would also ask the member to answer the question that I asked him about what the example is of where this has gone wrong.

The CHAIRPERSON (Chester Borrows): Order! You are not going to use a point of order to bring about that sort of political comment.

DAVID BENNETT: Collective bargaining is the crucial part of this legislation. What we are saying is that this legislation gives flexibility and rights to workers. It does not encourage what the Labour Party wants, and that is a privileged few demanding and deciding for workers. I was just using the example of the Labour Party and its selection process, and how it does not give every individual worker the ability to vote. It is only the privileged few who all want to sit on those benches at some point who have the voting base. That is why the Labour Party is against this bill. The Labour Party is against flexibility, it is against freedom, and it is about having control over workers. It is about controlling collective bargaining. That is what the Labour Party is about.

DENISE ROCHE (Green): This is my first time speaking in the 51st Parliament and it grieves me to actually have to speak on this bill in the Committee of the whole House, because it is a noxious piece of legislation. I will confine my comments to Part 1 of the bill as is required under Standing Orders for the Committee of the whole House but I do want to have on the record that this is a distressing piece of legislation that is bad for New Zealand workers and that the National Government should be ashamed of itself.

This is not the legislation that we want in this country that will provide for harmonious workplace relationships. It is not; it will not provide that. This is not the law that we need in place that will work hand in hand with our health and safety laws to keep workers safe. This legislation is not going to provide that. This is not the law that will increase productivity through good employment relationships between employers and employees. This legislation will not deliver that. This is not the legislation that will encourage employers to be good, excellent employers to their workers. This legislation is not going to deliver that. The purpose of the Employment Relations Act is to promote collective bargaining. Contrary to what the previous speaker, David Bennett, said the amendment in this bill will completely undermine all attempts at collective bargaining across this nation for every group of workers who organise themselves into a point where they can negotiate collectively with their employer.

The bill does this in several ways. One way is in the removal of the duty to conclude, where the employer can apply to the Employment Relations Authority and ask that it deem the negotiations to be finished. They can do that if those negotiations have been what is referred to in the legislation as “difficult”. Negotiations by their very nature are difficult. I have never, ever, ever heard of a group of workers represented by their union actually going and asking for the type of mediation to conclude a settlement unless there was difficulty happening on the part of the employer all along the line. We have seen this countless times, and most recently, I guess, with the Meat and Related Trades Workers Union, with AFFCO employers, and with the Ports of Auckland. It was not ever the unions that were walking away from the negotiations, because it is not in their interests to. But it is in the interests of employers to walk away from collective bargaining because when you get into individual-based bargaining that is when you get to force wages down.

If we seriously want to be a country where we are welcoming back our young people to jobs in New Zealand then those jobs need to be good jobs. They need to be jobs that people want to take on, that they can feed their families with, and that they can provide for themselves with. They cannot do that when this Government creates what is essentially a low-wage economy. What this legislation does is it reinforces bad management behaviour. It gives no examples of how employers and employees can work for a more productive workforce and for more productivity. We see this happening in small pockets across New Zealand and in unionised workplaces. We used to be a country that pride itself on being fair. We used to be a country that thought that a fair day’s pay was what you should have as of right if you gave a fair day’s work.

This legislation eats away at every right that workers have, to the point where it removes even the right to a tea break. I acknowledge Sue Moroney from the Labour Party for the work that she did in ensuring that there was that right enshrined in this legislation before it is amended. Tea breaks, rest breaks, are essential not only for health and safety but also for a productive workforce. We know, if we look at our shocking ACC injury rates, that people need to take their rest breaks so that they are fit for work. What we have seen over the last 12 months is 182,900 claims for ACC for work-related injuries. They happened at work. In areas like agriculture, fishing, and forestry there is a one-in-four chance of being injured at work, and we know from talking to those workers that fatigue has a huge impact on their ability to do their jobs. Each one of those industries also has situations where workers may be single operators, as was referred to the Minister, but they need to take rest breaks more than ever in order to be able to minimise the risk that they deal with.

Those worksites—in farming, forestry, and fisheries—are frequently isolated workplaces. They are frequently workplaces where they do not have union representation. Here is where we come to the crux of the matter and to what this legislation is all about. It is about breaking the unions and reducing the rights of workers to belong to unions. If not, why would we have in this legislation the clause that removes the right for new workers to be offered, within the first 30 days, conditions based on the same collective employment agreement if there is one in place on that site? The removal of that means that we are therefore getting into a situation where workers are having to negotiate individually.

When we take into account the other legislation that the Government enacted in its previous term, like the 90-day trials, and like youth rates, we are creating a situation where new workers, desperate for a job, are not going to talk about wanting a tea break. They are not going to raise any issues of health and safety. They are going to work whatever hours and for whatever pay that the employer deems fit to give them, because if they do not they can be sacked within 90 days for no reason at all. This legislation goes hand in hand with the other provisions that this Government has put in place to make life harder for workers. It will drive wages down. It will certainly drive wages down, because we know for a fact that unionised worksites, worksites where there is a collective employment agreement in place, have better pay, better working conditions, and better health and safety. When we start to break down their ability to negotiate collectively through the removal of the duty to conclude, but also through the removal of the requirement for employers to participate in multi-employment collective agreements, then we are starting to break down bargaining to a point where individuals will be paid based on their individual ability to negotiate.

Most low-paid workers in low-skilled jobs, particularly in the service sector, have not got a lot of power to be able to negotiate—unlike, for example, the chief executive officer of the ANZ bank, David Hisco—

Carmel Sepuloni: $2,000 an hour, or something.

DENISE ROCHE: $2,000 an hour, or $4.1 million a year, is his income. If you look at those top 50 chief executive officers—the New Zealand Herald did a study on this quite recently—you see that they had, on average, a 4 percent pay increase over the last year, which is not the sort of increase that has been passed on to workers, I might add. It is only their strength in numbers that gives them the ability to negotiate decent pay rates. Otherwise there would be no point. If every employer was an excellent employer, and if every employer invested in their workforce, invested in their workers and treated them well, then it would not be an issue. But legislation is about protection. Legislation is about education as well. We need to lift the standard that our managers have so that workers are treated better on their jobs. This legislation does not do it. It goes completely the other way.

When the Government MPs and the Ministers talk about flexibility they are not talking about a worker’s flexibility around work; they are talking about the employer’s right to manage to the extreme and to force wages down. When we force wages down it is bad for all of us. It is bad for our economy as well. We need to be smarter about how we run this economy. We need to be ensuring that our workers are able to live on what they earn, but we see that two out of five of all the children who are living in poverty—and there are 265,000 of them—come from working families.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): I must admit, being back for the first time in 3 years, that I was astounded to have to speak on a bill that takes away the rights of good, hard-working Kiwis. The first speech I heard was the Prime Minister’s Speech from the Throne, which set out lofty ambitions around child poverty, housing, and all these other great things, yet the first piece of legislation before the Committee is a piece of legislation that takes rights from good, hard-working Kiwis. There is a little bit of a dichotomy there, I think.

What I would like to speak about is section 4(1B)(a), inserted by clause 4 in Part 1, in the bill. This talks about the disclosure of information. Section (1B) states: “However, subsection (1A)(c) does not require an employer to provide access to confidential information—”. What it does is it sets out a list of conditions under which an employer does not have to provide confidential information to an employee. Personally, I think that this offends the principle of natural justice and that is actually a right to a fair hearing.

But let me give the other side the reason why we have this bill and especially clause 4, before us. It is set out in the regulatory impact statement. Let me quote: “This arose from a case between the Vice-Chancellor of Massey University and Wrigley in 2010.” It is quite a well-known case in the Employment Court. It set a number of precedents. It is the only case on this, and let me tell you what the regulatory impact statement says: “The judgment is not consistent with widespread desirable and accepted employer practices in restructuring and redundancy situations …”. This bill is very definitely about what is good for the employer and how they can make workers redundant without going through the practices of fair and reasonable consultation. It says it here in black and white. Do you know what? When the regulatory impact statement actually looks at the scope of this problem, it says: “There is limited information on the scale of this problem.” It actually admits they do not know what the problem is. There is one case—one case.

I will tell you one other thing the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee did. It had a look at a range of options on how to deal with this, and one of them, it said, was the status quo. What they said about that is: “Benefits of the status quo include time to monitor the impacts of the decision and see how employer practices develop.” Do you know what? They decided not to do that. I suspect that the Attorney-General, who is a very good lawyer and is renowned in legal circles, has great difficulty with this bill. This bill is a reaction to one decision in the Employment Court. Without seeing how this beds down, without seeing how the market handles this, the Government is saying: “No, we don’t like that decision. We’re going to change the law.” That is not a good way to change the law. That is not good legal practice. I am astounded that the Attorney-General has not just tapped Mr Bennett on the shoulder and said: “Excuse me, Mr Chair of that select committee, I don’t think this is the right thing to do. Let’s give this a little bit of time and let’s see how the market reacts.”

The other thing that surprises me is that the regulatory impact statement says when it talks about the status quo: “These [legislative] requirements differ significantly from commonly understood principles of information provision to employees, particularly during restructuring and redundancy situations.” But I would argue that that is a contradiction of the clause above it, which said they do not even know the scale of the problem. So what are we actually trying to address here? One situation—one situation.

Let us have a look at the legislation. Section 4(1B)(a), as inserted by clause 4, says that this is not requiring “an employer to provide access to confidential information—(a) that is about an identifiable individual other than the affected employee …”. Keep in mind that a lot of this is about restructuring and making employees redundant. There is a whole lot of legal precedent around how you can actually do this, and in a number of legal precedents, and the Attorney-General will be aware of these—you know, the Communication and Energy Workers Union, Telecom New Zealand Ltd, Wellington International Airport, and Air New Zealand Ltd. These set out a number of tests around the definition of consultation. A number of these tests are very important to what actually constitutes fair and reasonable behaviour.

As the clause I read out says, that is about an identifiable individual other than the affected employee. The thing that really sets off alarm bells for me about this is with the non-disclosure of information. A bad employer—and most employers are good employers; I want to put that on the table—could say to an employee: “I’m not going to tell you, Mr Employee, why I am firing you, because they have changed the law and I don’t have to disclose that information.” I think that is a real breach of the duty to act fairly.

David Bennett: Read the bill.

STUART NASH: I am reading the bill, Mr Bennett. I am reading the bill here. I actually read it out. The other thing here, if we go down to subsection (e): “where it is necessary, for any other good reason”, this is where an employer does not have to disclose information, “to maintain the confidentiality of information, (for example, to avoid unreasonable prejudice to the employer’s commercial position).”—again, there are a number of legal precedents around this. What determines “unreasonable prejudice”? I think what is going to end up happening is this is going to have to be determined by jurisprudence, because this is just not clear.

I can imagine an employer would say: “I don’t have to disclose that information, why I am making you redundant, because it is ‘unreasonable prejudice’.” But the problem we have got here, as I see it, is that there are a number of very clear tests that have been set out by the Employment Court around how an employer must deal with an employee during a restructuring situation. They are very clear because what has happened in the past is employees have not been treated well, and the Employment Court has now set out a number of tests that allow the employee to have access to natural justice. I can imagine, as I mentioned, that this would allow an employer to be very disingenuous in the way they communicated with that employee, and I have grave concern.

But the concern I really have is that the tests that are set out now around restructuring, and certainly in terms of redundancy, are quite clear. It makes it quite easy for an employee who feels aggrieved to actually take a case to the Employment Court and get a fair hearing in a personal grievance. The reason I say that is it is actually very expensive for an employee to take a case to the Employment Court. Luckily, if an employee is in a union, then the union has the ability to do that, and what you find in a lot of these cases before the Employment Court is it is actually unions that are taking an employer to the Employment Court, because they are the only ones that can afford to do it. But under this clause, it just creates a whole level of uncertainty that Employment Court precedents actually got rid of. So what we ended up with is a situation that was actually very fair and reasonable. It really was fair and reasonable. It meant that the employer had to consult, and there is a whole lot of jurisprudence and a whole lot of precedents around the level of consultation, what it meant, how it was to be undertaken, and, basically, good faith—natural justice, and we all understand natural justice.

What that does, and I am really concerned about this, is that it once again blurs the line. What it does is move the pendulum far too far over to the right, when we had settled quite well in the centre. I think a lot of us will agree that maybe 60 years ago the pendulum was too far to the left, but a lot of jurisprudence and a lot of really good decisions by Judge Travis, for example, brought it right back to the centre. So employers knew their exact obligations. They knew their obligations, and, Mr Attorney-General, I hope you are going to stand up, because I do not know how you can defend a piece of legislation that is made to repeal one decision that was made in the Employment Court. It really is not a good way to make law.

I would like to reiterate that this is not about the workers versus the employees. This is not about employers versus unions. This is not about us versus them. All this is about is a fair go, and Part 1 section 4(1B) in clause 4 takes away the ability of the employee to know exactly where they stand. Section 4(1B)(a), as I said, is about an identifiable individual other than the affected employee. What is to stop an employer saying to Mrs King: “Mrs King, I’m going to make you redundant because of what someone said.”? “Well, who said what?”. “I’m sorry, I cannot tell you that.”

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Look, there are a couple of things I need to engage with, firstly, from that member, Stuart Nash. He was saying that it is not about us and them; it is not about the employer versus the employee. Well, in fact, when we have listened relatively carefully to the speeches from the other side of the Chamber, that is exactly what it has been: employer: evil and bad; employee: good. That is actually the antithesis, the opposite, of what this very bill has been about. In fact, those of us on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee will know about the various nuances.

The other quick element I need to touch on is natural justice. It is tossed out and thrown around as an idea all the time without an understanding. Using it in the context of clause 4, it is about natural justice not only for the employer, the employee concerned, but others who may have been a part of that process of handing over the information. The thing about natural justice—

Stuart Nash: But it’s fundamentally about the employee who will be made redundant.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Absolutely, and the member rightly points out that it is fundamentally asking a question about an employee to an employer, but the other fundamental element of natural justice is that it can touch on other people, and if they are being implicated as part of that discussion, you cannot compromise their natural justice. So I would encourage the member—and I know he will have an opinion on this—to go back to read clause 4 and see the nuances within.

This is a good bill. There has been a series of questions, particularly as we are looking into Part 1, of why this is one of the first Government bills. I have to say I think one of the reasons is the Minister, Hon Michael Woodhouse, and I say that because he is relatively new in the role, but walking to the Chamber here tonight, he was completely and utterly up to speed on this. This is not a reflection on my other ministerial colleagues, but he knew the intricacies of this bill, and that is most welcome. The other reason is, and we heard it in in the Speech from the Throne, that, actually, employment is a central theme for this Government—

Phil Twyford: What are you implying about Simon Bridges? Very uncalled for. He’s not in the House to defend himself.

SIMON O’CONNOR: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I just wanted to note that the member is drawing attention to the fact that people may be absent from the Chamber.

The CHAIRPERSON (Chester Borrows): Carry on.

SIMON O’CONNOR: I am just limbering up on the rules. [Interruption] That is right. It is egregious, absolutely. I am shocked and horrified! It is an affront to natural justice! Anyway, the second reason is that, actually, employment is at the heart of what we are talking about. This is a bill that is trying to set that balance.

We have heard lots of accusations from the Opposition. Those of us who sat on this committee and worked through this bill are happy with where it came to, because there are a lot of nuances involved. You can tell that the other side has not read that, because they have taken this as the Chicken Little approach. It is bad, it is evil, the sky is falling down, it is egregious, and it is the end of the world as you know it, which is clearly not the case.

Let us use a few illustrations. The whole thing of the element around the 30 days of the individual contract—at the moment, if you want to start a new job, you can only take the collective agreement. We are saying: “Actually, if you as an employee want to engage with your employer in an individual contract, why can you not have the choice?”. The whole point is that the other side do not like individuals having the choice. Only Labour and the Greens know best! I have to say that when I have taken up my employment agreements in the past, I would like the choice, but Labour and the Greens and the others—they know that if you get someone on that collective agreement right from the start in those 30 days, then they are going to be one of their mates. They are going to keep paying their money to the leadership of the Labour Party—ultimately through the unions—day after day, week after week, and it is not on. Why would you not have that choice?

Concluding bargaining—why should bargaining go on and on and on ad infinitum just for the sake of it? This bill redresses that. It says: to act “in good faith”. That is one of the core principles that we have had within our employment agreements. Actually, you cannot, as an employer, just walk away from it because you do not like bargaining. That is explicit—explicit—in Part 1 of this bill. What are the problems there? The bill introduces flexible working arrangements for people. Again, if you, an employee, want to make the choice to have flexible arrangements, you can ask for it. You do not need to kowtow and ask the permission of the Opposition.

We are hearing, too, a lot about meal breaks. We heard, I thought, quite adequately from the Minister, of those times when actually taking a prescribed meal break is not prudent. As someone who has worked in the health sector—when you think of the doctors, the nurses, and the administrators—there are times when walking out halfway through an operation is not prudent. Well, actually, I think of it even when I worked in a petrol station. Me walking away just because I had to have my prescribed meal break at the busiest time of the day is not prudent. You know what? It is the faith that Kiwis can make their decisions. So, again, this is a very positive bill.

TRACEY MARTIN (Deputy Leader—NZ First): Kia ora, Mr Chair. New Zealand First will be opposing this bill. We will be opposing this bill for the following reasons. First of all, let us just have a think about what is the purpose of laws. Apart from taxation, the purpose of the majority of our laws is to protect us. The laws are our fall-back place. The laws state that this is the minimum we will accept for our people.

I want to just harken back to when I was working in the insolvency division of KPMG Peat Marwick when the Employment Contracts Act first came in. That organisation ran training sessions for businesses and for employers on how they could use where the loopholes were and how that Act could be used to tighten, to keep their employees in line, or to be used to their benefit. I am not aware of any organisation that ran training sessions for employees around that Act.

Mr Bennett talks about flexibility. I see there the new member of the House from Invercargill, Ms Dowie. I listened to her maiden speech earlier today. It was a very good maiden speech, a very nice maiden speech, actually. Many of the new National Party members of Parliament used the word “choice”, used the word “justice”, and used the words “I am here for all New Zealanders.” I believe that is the catchphrase we are going to hear for the next 3 years. That is the 2017 campaign cry. I think that is what we are going to hear.

Well, let us just talk about a 19-year-old young man, a pizza chef right now. He came to see me about the fact that he cannot get a contract. He is working 13 out of 14 days, from 10 in the morning until 10 at night, and his employer, because of this situation of his employment, requires flexibility around his break times. So they are zero—so they are zero. And the law is supposed to be the minimum place that he can come back to so he can get some justice—so he can get some justice—whether it be natural or otherwise.

Minister McClay, who is in the Chamber, had a conversation with me in the elevator on the way up here. He said: “Well, this young man has rights. This young man can actually go and seek his rights.” And he absolutely can, except for the fact that it will cost him money to go and seek his rights. It will cost him money to go and seek his rights, and this flexibility that Mr O’Connor stands and blithely says that everybody should have—he does not mean for all New Zealanders. If this young man went to his employer tomorrow and said “Excuse me, but the law says I am entitled to a meal break, the law says I am entitled to overtime pay after a certain period of time, and the law says that I can actually work an 8-hour shift and decline working more.”, he would lose his job.

Do not tell me that that would not happen, because in this environment, particularly in this environment, it is those workers who are most vulnerable. They are part of that “all New Zealand” that that party, apparently, is supposed to represent. But they are migrant workers, young workers, older workers, women workers. Those are the people who work for the minimum wage. There is a queue out the door for their job. They do not have flexibility, and they do not have choice, and those members know it.

David Bennett: What about Brendan?

TRACEY MARTIN: Mr Bennett, you know it more than most. You know it more than most. But Mr Bennett would be the first to tell you that if that young man turned down those conditions, he is a bludger. He should be grateful for that one job, that job that has completely denied him all those rights that other workers stood up for—that his grandparents, his parents, and Mr Bennett’s parents believed was what was best and good about this country. It is the thin end of the wedge and New Zealand First will not support it. But it is incredibly interesting that it is this part of the wedge that this Government has decided, in the first week of coming back into this Chamber, will set the tone for the next 3 years.

So, New Zealand, listen to what they say. Listen to the words they use and then understand that it is just to keep you calm. Read the words in this bill and then tell me how—stand up, Mr Bennett. Take another call and tell us how that young man can be given his rights.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): This is my first call in the 51st Parliament and I want to start with a couple of points. First, I want to congratulate you, Mr Chairman, on your appointment as Deputy Speaker, and I want to thank the good people of the Te Atatū electorate for electing me to do this job for another 3 years. I particularly want to thank my hard-working campaign team for all the work they did in getting the vote out.

We have seen a branding exercise over the last few weeks, as there has been a lot of very soothing talk about child poverty and housing affordability. But let us look at what the National members are doing, not what they are saying. What are they doing? Well, they are talking about fixing child poverty and making more affordable housing. They are taking us off to war in the Middle East. They are setting out to privatise $5 billion worth of State houses. And in this bill they are setting out to weaken the position of workers in this country, to take away their rights.

I want to talk about the duty to conclude provision and clauses 7 to 9 in Part 1. The duty to conclude is an obligation and a duty of decency. What it requires is that both parties have a commitment to collective bargaining; they are not allowed to just walk away from the bargaining table. What this bill does is it strips out that decent, civilising influence of the duty to conclude and it replaces it with the law of the jungle. This bill, the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, may as well be called the “Ports of Auckland Bill”, because this bill is dedicated to the Ports of Auckland. In fact, the former Minister of Labour Simon Bridges pretty much put that on the public record when he said that this bill was a direct response to the Ports of Auckland dispute.

I want to say a few things about the Ports of Auckland dispute. I am an Aucklander and I objected to an organisation owned by the ratepayers of Auckland behaving in the most despicable way to its employees. This bill sends a signal to employers like the Ports of Auckland. It says: “The gloves are off. Knock yourself out. It’s all on. You can smash the union. You can casualise the workers. You can drive down your labour costs, and, boys, this is how you’re gonna do it.” That is what clauses 7 to 9 in this bill are all about.

In March 2012, the Ports of Auckland and the Maritime Union of New Zealand found themselves in a dispute. The union was seeking to place some restrictions on the ability of the company to contract out its workforce. In March 2012, the Ports of Auckland announced that it was going to contract out all stevedoring work on the Auckland wharves and make all of its workers redundant. It then began to enter into negotiations with a number of stevedoring companies, including overseas companies, to bring in strikebreakers en masse on to the Auckland wharves to smash the Maritime Union of New Zealand. The union went on strike and the Employment Court ruled that the port company had acted in breach of good faith. It said that you cannot simply contract out your workforce in the middle of bargaining and, effectively, walk away from collective bargaining like that. The port company was ultimately fined $40,000 for employing mass strikebreakers to come in to destroy and to take away the jobs of the members of the Maritime Union of New Zealand—the jobs of good, hard-working New Zealanders.

I want to say this: when we are talking about decency in the workplace, let us remember how the Ports of Auckland behaved during this dispute. There is a guy called Cecil Walker, who was employed by the Ports of Auckland. A couple of years before the dispute happened, Cecil Walker’s wife died of cancer. He had two young kids whom he was supporting on his own. He was caught up in the middle of the dispute. He committed the sin of talking publicly about the effect of the port company’s actions in sacking its workers and bringing in strikebreakers. He committed the crime of talking in the media about how that affected him as a worker. So what did the Ports of Auckland do? It rifled through his personnel files in the human resources office and it leaked Cecil Walker’s personal information to Whale Oil, the National Party’s paid attack dog. So Cameron Slater on behalf of the Ports of Auckland—a paid attack dog—launched organised character assassination against Cecil Walker.

That shows what some employers will do when the leash is off. The Ports of Auckland thought this was its big opportunity to smash the union, to end the collective contract, and it walked away from it, just as this bill will allow it to do once it is passed. But the decency of the current legislation with its duty to conclude, backed up by the Employment Court, brought the Ports of Auckland back to the negotiating table. The effect of that dispute—bringing in new workers on lower wages and setting up their own union to compete with the Maritime Union—was to weaken the terms and conditions of those employees. That is what this legislation is designed to do. You mark my words, when this bill is passed it will send a signal to the worst employers in this country and invite them to smash the union, to drive down the terms and conditions, and to lower wage costs. This is not a good bill. It is not a sensible or pragmatic bill, as the Minister said it was in his opening contribution. This bill is all about stripping out the decency from our employment laws.

We have seen a series of disputes under this National Government. The Government first came for the actors with The Hobbit dispute. It took a whole group of workers in New Zealand and stripped them of their employment rights and their ability to negotiate a collective agreement. Then the Government came for the meatworkers, and we saw the AFFCO meatworkers dispute. Just as this legislation will allow bad employers like the Ports of Auckland to smash the union and drive down conditions, it will be a green light to employers like Talley’s with its efforts to smash the meatworkers union in 2012.

This is bad law. It does nothing, as Denise Roche said, to address the productivity challenges that we have as a country, to lift skills, or to lift productivity through smart management and working with the workforce to raise productivity and to make things that the world wants to buy from our country. It reverts to a 19th century mind-set of industrial relations. It is all about driving down labour costs. That is what this National Government is all about when it reverts to type. It was elected in 2008 on a campaign about how our wages were lower than Australia’s. Why are our wages lower than Australia’s? They are lower because in this country successive National Governments have smashed the unions and weakened the power of New Zealand workers to collectively negotiate to get a fair share of the wealth they produce. This bill is just another chapter in that series.

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): I move, That the question be now put.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): It is very interesting to be here tonight. It is a day in this Parliament when we are enjoying the maiden speeches of new members across the Chamber. Over the last couple of days we have been in the ceremonial phase of the opening of this new Parliament. For those of us who have been here a few years, a few terms, it is always a welcome time because it is a very human time. We mix as MPs, and we celebrate the talent and the experience that people bring to Parliament across the Chamber.

Then we come to this bill. This is really the first substantive piece of legislation that the Government has put before the country. Here all of the camaraderie, the parliamentary process, and the chivalry, if you like, are put aside, and we come down to the differences between that side of the Chamber and this. It does not matter what you call it—at the end of the day, the National Party represents the interests of capital and the Labour Party represents the interests of labour. The clue is in our name—the clue is in our name. And it is in our colour too, which has got a bit of a history to it, but the clue is in our name.

Debates like this lay bare the age-old struggle between the interests, so-called, of capital to drive down labour costs by any means necessary and the interests of workers to bind together to protect the basic minimums. Here is the thing: the historical economic evidence shows that capital left to its own devices actually eats its own young. In the 1990s when the National Government last tried this despicable trick, through a thing called the Employment Contracts Act, we suffered through it for a decade. The cost was evident in two dimensions: firstly, in human misery. We saw a rapid widening of the gap between rich and poor, we saw a rapid increase in poverty, we saw a rapid increase in the diseases of poverty, and a growing child poverty problem, which is still with us—sheeted home to employment law changes like this that eroded the situation of those who work hard but do not earn a lot.

But here was the second effect out of the Employment Contracts Act: labour productivity declined. Why? Because it created an incentive for capital to substitute investment in machinery, tools, training, and productivity-enhancing investments for cheap labour—for cheap labour. What happened as a result was that labour productivity declined in New Zealand and started to get way ahead of us in Australia. The Employment Contracts Act, measured in terms of its human impact and measured in terms of its economic impact, was a failure.

Enter the Clark - Cullen Government and the Employment Relations Act, which this bill amends, that sought to find a sensible middle ground. It did not go back towards awards or compulsory unionism or some of the arrangements that pre-dated the Employment Contracts Act. What it did do was put in place obligations of good-faith bargaining and a reasonable set of minimum protections. That is what we are here today to watch the short-sighted National Government attempt to remove. Pillar by pillar, brick by brick, stone by stone, it is tearing down the temple of decency and building instead the ramshackle structure of the short-term self-perceived interest of capital.

So some examples—let us get out of the clouds and down to the grassroots. Let us take Part 6A. Let us talk about some real people, like Mele Tavete, a Wellington cleaner whom colleagues will have mentioned, who has been cleaning the same premises for 20 hours a week for 17 years. What happened was when Mele’s employer changed because the contract was sold to a small company, it told Mele that she had to have her hours radically reduced. She was working only 20 hours. She refused to take the lower hours and asked to be paid out. Part 6A protected her so that she could get reasonable compensation. Under the law as amended by this bill, she would have got nothing. So somebody who has done nothing wrong, after 17 years earning the minimum wage or close to it, loses the most basic rights because the naked interests of capital have driven the Government—[Bell rung] Mr Chairman. That was my first call, Mr Chairman.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I call the Hon David Cunliffe, but I do want to warn members that we are on the Committee stage.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Mr Chairman, I recognise your guidance. The amendments to Part 6A are contained in Part 1, and as we go back to Part 6A, the amendment removes the protections that apply to workers who are contracted out. So nothing changes for the workers except that the ownership of the business changes and the new owner uses that as an excuse to erode their terms and conditions. The sad fact is this is most often to be used against the lowest paid and most vulnerable workers. It is wrong. It is just wrong. It is unethical, it is un-sensible from an economic point of view, and it is wrong.

Let us move to another of the provisions, “Rest and meal breaks”. As we went around the country during the campaign that we have just had, this was iconic. It was the ACT Party’s support that was withdrawn that prevented this bill from going through before the election. It was withdrawn because the member concerned was on his way to the slammer and was no longer able to be a member of Parliament. That is why this bill did not get through before the election.

This is a kind of conservative’s dream. Imagine a provision that is already flexible—which is to allow something like a minimum 10-minute rest break and a minimum half hour lunch break on a flexible arrangement to be agreed mutually between the boss and the worker—all gone. All gone because the naked interests of capital played out through the National Party and its little subsidiary brand—whatever his name is over there. That is vested in this piece of legislation, which takes away the 10-minute smoko break. Workers around the country get this. It is something that belongs in a Charles Dickens story. It takes us back to sweatshop economics. It takes us back to 19th century labour law. It is a ridiculous, shameful thing to do in the 21st century.

This part also removes fundamentally the duty to conclude collective bargaining. The idea here is good faith means two sides negotiate and both sides have an obligation to reach a conclusion. It does not mean they have to agree. It does not mean that either side has to give in, but they both have to sit at the table and talk their way through the problem until they get to a compromise or a stand-off, which then is referred to arbitration. Not now. Not now, because this bill gives the employer a scot-free “get out of jail free” card.

Let us walk away! Spray and walk away—that is what this bill permits. Gone is decency, gone is the fair middle ground, and gone are the privileges that have been hard fought for over the years. Kiwis out there will know that on the first legislating day of this, the final term of this Government, they chose to break through the camaraderie of the parliamentary process and remind every single New Zealander that they are here to do the bidding of the bosses. They are here to pursue the naked interest of capital against the minimum decencies for Kiwi families that have been hard fought for.

That is the reality of the 2014 election—this piece of paper. First up: the Employment Relations Amendment Bill—the “Take Away the Smoko Break Bill”, the “Get Out of Jail Free, Spray and Walk Away, Gone is Good-Faith Bargaining, Remove the Protections for the Most Vulnerable Bill”. I am reminded of a passage in the Bible, which says to those who have much, so will more be given, but for those who have little, even that which they have will be taken away. Well, hey presto! It is taken away in this bill. National should be ashamed of itself, except it has done New Zealand a favour. It has just told us what it is really about and we are not going to forget it. This Labour Party is going to take the fight to those craven cronies of capital for the next 3 years so that New Zealanders have a real choice and can do what is right, decent, and fair, which is throw out this pile of rubbish and give ordinary New Zealanders a fair go.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Can people just settle down? I am going to take another call, but I do want to remind members again that this is a Committee stage for debate about specific clauses in the bill or in the amendments.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair, and congratulations on your appointment. I do look forward to what you will bring to the role. Just before I get into it—and I want to speak quite substantively around clause 11 of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill in my speech tonight—I would just like to acknowledge that after the nice, leisurely 1.5 hour dinner break that is set into our programme for every evening, it feels particularly ironic to be coming into this Chamber to remove the rights of ordinary New Zealanders to that predictability and security. It makes me very uncomfortable in my role as a parliamentarian to feel that there is such a distance between the conditions I expect and I experience in this place and what New Zealanders can experience in their lives. It seems to me it would be better if this Parliament returned a little bit more to focus on ourselves and connecting to the reality of average New Zealanders, rather than undermining the conditions and experiences of those people.

Tonight I would like to speak to clause 11 of this amendment bill, which provides employers with the ability to opt out of multi-employer collective agreement bargaining. That sounds like a really technical thing. I think it is a hard thing for most people in New Zealand who are maybe not members of unions or who are not part of a collective contract to understand what on Earth this might actually mean, be about, or mean in practice.

Tonight I would actually like, with the indulgence of the Committee, to relay an oral submission that was given to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee about this bill and what it may mean in practice in our mental health services in hospitals. It was a submission given by a staff nurse at Te Whare O Matairangi, the mental health recovery unit at Wellington Regional Hospital—a staff nurse called Grant Brookes. He clearly recalled the state of Wellington inpatient mental health services before the current national multi-employer collective agreement was put in place in 2005. He recalled for the committee that in 2011 a service user left the ward and climbed into a tiger cage at Wellington Zoo, where he was mauled. Another young man jumped to his death from the roof of Wellington College before he was even noted as missing from the inpatient unit. In 2004 another man jumped six storeys from the ward in the hospital to the car-park below. A young woman allowed out on day leave walked in front of a train and killed herself.

This was the state of our mental health services in Wellington at that time. It was a service in crisis. Yet the nursing staff had clear ideas about the roots of the problem, which were reported in the nursing journal Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand in October 2005. It was noted that the 29-bed ward had been caring for up to 50 people at a time and that throughout 2003 and 2004, the time of those deaths and terrible incidents, patients were bunking in lounges, in the TV room, and in the telephone room. They were even sleeping on mattresses on the floor in the corridor. Nurse-to-patient ratios were as high as 1:10 and 1:20. Grant Brookes told us that this was a result of the Employment Relations Act and the fact that there was not a multi-employer collective agreement in place.

He told us that the staff at the time had a clear idea about solutions but there was no mechanism for staff and management to collaborate on resolving the crisis. This is at the heart of what collective agreements can offer and what they have offered in the health context. Managers had cancelled all meetings with the nurses organisation. Communication had broken down and the acting clinical director basically denied that overcrowding or overstaffing in any way contributed to those events, describing staffing ratios in the ward as “very good”. Then in 2004 a third of the staff resigned, understandably—

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): I would like to take this opportunity, in my first speech of the 51st Parliament, to congratulate the Government. I congratulate it on its consistency, because it has consistently advocated for flexibility and choice for its mates, not for others. I will go back to 1992. I was not here then. I was here a year later. The Government advocated for choice and flexibility for mining companies so they did not have to adhere to the mines regulations. It then moved on, in the 1990s, to offer choice and flexibility for those building houses, so we had building deregulation. Then we had choice and flexibility in the electricity sector. As I look at Part 1 of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, what this legislation is going to do is change the balance and give choice and flexibility to the mates of the National Party—as my colleague says, those who have the interest of capital over labour—and leave nothing for the working New Zealander.

When I look through Part 1, I ask the question: what is trying to be solved here? What are we trying to do, or what is the Government trying to do? I go to the regulatory impact statement. It says in there, from the Government itself: “There is limited evidence on the size and underlying causes of the problems being assessed. While the Department is able to access data on concluded employment agreements, the Department does not have data on how much bargaining has been initiated and not concluded, or on how long, on average, bargaining takes.” The point is that the Government does not actually know what it is trying to solve here, other than an ideological approach that says we will try to crush the unions and any organisation of labour, and offer absolute flexibility to the free-market ideologues. There have been a few of them over there. These are people who advocate for free and open markets—the dairy industry. Mr Bennett over there would be one of them. He actually supplies a company that is forced to take milk from any dairy farmer who wishes to supply it. This is not choice and flexibility for Fonterra.

Let us go and look at a few other organisations. Complete choice and flexibility would mean that any manufacturer could do what they like. They do not have to be part of an organisation. In fact, what we have—

David Bennett: Mr Chair, are we getting on to the bill? What’s the story?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: If Mr Bennett would like to know the reference, Part 1 makes reference to the ability for employers to opt out or not conclude any negotiations. What we have in law are protections for people to ensure fairness in most parts of our society. We stand for that here. On that side of the Chamber, though, the members stand for choice and flexibility for their mates. However, they also represent organisations that understand that collective efforts offer greater good—collective efforts offer greater good. Who understands that? Unions do, I guess. So too does Business New Zealand, because they come together to advocate for what they want. The Manufacturers and Exporters Association, the Hospitality Association, the Tourism Industry Association, and Federated Farmers of New Zealand come together to advocate for one another, for fairness in terms of Resource Management Act reform, contractual arrangements with sharemilkers, and contractual arrangements with companies. They need protections to ensure their operations are fair and balanced. So too do workers. So too do workers. This Government has consistently trodden on the efforts of workers and the unions to represent them, in the belief that choice and flexibility deliver better outcomes. It is absolute hypocrisy—absolute hypocrisy—that it can advocate and allow unity on one side, and then try to destroy and break down—

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): I move, That the question be now put.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I want to speak specifically about a provision in the bill, but before I do that I want to acknowledge two things. I want, first of all, to acknowledge the fact that we are debating this in the lead-up to Labour Weekend and the irony of doing so, and I want to respond to a comment that the Minister made in his opening remarks, which I was listening carefully to, when he talked about the types of people who perhaps did not need to have rest breaks and meal breaks during their working day. He mentioned particularly the plight of a sole-charge air traffic controller. I want to say to the Minister that as a member of the travelling public and someone who does take flights regularly, I want to make sure that if my plane is being guided into land by a sole-charge air traffic controller, they are on top of their game and that they are not busting to go to the toilet and trying to find ways to short-cut the process a little bit. I want to know that my plane is going to land nice and safely. I want to make sure that they get the protections to ensure that they do that, and I am sure that the travelling public do, too.

I also say to the members on the other side of the Chamber that as somebody who frequently dines out in what could be otherwise described as a fast-food establishment, I want to know that the workers who are serving me my food are actually being given decent employment conditions, including the ability to have a meal break and a rest break when they need it, and that they are not being exploited.

Contrary to what members on the other side of the Chamber will say, this is not actually about union members. Most union members will be covered by a collective employment agreement that guarantees them. What we are talking about are the first-time employees, the teenagers who get their first job, and the people who are not members of the union, who are not covered by a significant collective employment agreement. They are the types of people whom we are talking about in this legislation. They are the types of people whom the National Government is riding roughshod over.

I turn specifically to the clause in the bill that I want to talk about, which inserts new section 69CA, which is the definition of an exempt employer for the purposes of Part 6A of the Act. What is Part 6A, first of all? Part 6A is the protection for vulnerable workers in a contracting-out environment. This is very important for New Zealand, for two reasons. One is that we are a small-business economy and, second, this Government’s agenda has been to turn New Zealand into a service industry economy, rather than a value-added economy. What is the major competing cost factor in a service industry economy? It is wages. Therefore, if we are going to compete in service industries, and in service industries alone, employers are going to be looking for ways to drive down the cost of wages.

Clause 30 in the bill inserts new section 69CA, which is the meaning of an exempt employer. It states that an exempt employer is one who “employs 19 or fewer employees;”. Well, let us just think about that for a moment. We have this National Government talking all the time about how New Zealand is a small-business economy. I know New Zealand is a small-business economy. I have got countless small businesses in my own electorate. That is a given; that is a reality. In many of the service industries, where subcontracting, and subcontracting from subcontractors, is an increasing trend, what we are going to see with vulnerable workers who are in these subcontracting subcontracting arrangements is that employers will find a way to make sure they have fewer than 19 employees. If that means they set up five small subsidiary companies that can subcontract from the main contractor in order to work their way round the law, that is what they will do. What we see under this Government is this mentality that we have to drive down labour costs in order to compete in service industries, because it has no plan to add value-added jobs to the New Zealand economy.

So this exemption creates an enormous loophole that once again will see vulnerable workers not being covered by the protections that they should be covered by. We are talking about cleaners and caretakers. We are talking about people who work in the hospitality industry, where contracting out is a continual mentality. People in the food trade—not necessarily the people who are the chefs; we are talking about the people who clean the pots and the pans, who are employed by some of the large employers that we have at the moment. To give an example, many large employers might tender for a contract to provide catering services to a large employer like, for example, this one—like Parliament. Rather than delivering that through one main company, they will set up separate companies for each of the sites that they deliver the service to. Thus, in many cases, they will get around the law by having 19 or fewer employees at each of those subsidiary companies that they use in these contracting arrangements.

This subcontracting mentality is the thing that is going to result in a lot of vulnerable workers, whom the Employment Relations Act was designed to protect, losing the protection that they should get under the law, and that is simply wrong. To restate, in many cases it is not going to be union members.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I wish to speak to clause 56 of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, which adds new sections 95A through to 95H into the original legislation. This is in relation to partial strikes and the penalties that this bill introduces for workers who undertake a partial strike. A partial strike is when workers maybe work-to-rule. They do not do any additional work that they are often expected to do over and above their normal contracted conditions. A partial strike may involve wearing a particular colour or wearing a badge to work that indicates to the customers of that business that the workers there are in some dispute with their employer. Under the current legislation there is no immediate penalty for workers who use that opportunity to have a partial strike. It works as a nice halfway house. It is a nice opportunity for employees to demonstrate that they are in bargaining, that they have reached some impasse, and to withdraw a portion of their labour or maybe to demonstrate to the wider public that they are in that position with their employer but without going the full way to a full strike, which, of course, has an impact on them as employees because it means lost wages but it also has an impact on the employer in terms of lost productivity.

What this legislation does is it penalises workers who use that partial strike option. The concern here is that what this clause in this bill will do is it will actually create the situation where industrial action—full-scale industrial action—is more likely to occur, because if workers are going to be penalised for taking partial strike action, if they are going to be penalised if they show up at work wearing a particular colour, then why not go the whole way and take the penalty for going into a full strike? Actually, the way the legislation is written creates a lot of difficulties for workers who plan to take a partial strike. For instance, there is no clarity in the legislation around whether the employer has to indicate whether they are planning to use the provisions of clause 56.

There is no indication that the employer has to indicate how much they are going to dock an employee’s pay by. It is set at a maximum of 10 percent of the employee’s pay. If the full 10 percent is adopted, that would most likely be an enormous overreaction from an employer for a partial strike, especially a work-to-rule strike, but there is no requirement in the law here for an employer to actually indicate how much they are going to dock the pay. If a group of employees were considering going into a partial strike and then the employer responded by saying “We are going to dock your pay.”, then the employees do not actually necessarily know what the consequences of that are going to be. I imagine that the intention of this legislation is that it will try to disincentivise the use of partial strikes by employees but, of course, they still have that ability to go to a full strike. If they are already at an impasse in bargaining, if they are talking about taking industrial action, then the obvious next step is to shift to full industrial action.

The other concern is, of course, that the decision made by the employer may be challenged by the employees. That means there is more likelihood in the event of these partial strikes and if clause 56 was enacted by an employer that we end up with more arbitration, more necessity to take these issues to the Employment Court. That takes up more of the employer’s time. It takes up more of the union’s time. That is more wasted resources, which I should imagine is the exact opposite of what the Government intends by introducing these clauses. Where a worker or a group of workers believes that the specified pay reduction has been incorrectly made, they may ask their union to request the information relied on to calculate the specified pay reduction. The union must request that in writing and as soon as reasonably practical after the pay day on which the first deduction was made. The workers cannot request the information directly.

JOANNE HAYES (Third Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Minister and Government members have consistently made claims this evening that this legislation is not eroding the rights of workers or the important role that collective bargaining plays in our economy. Yet if we look at the specific clauses in Part 1 of this bill, it is very, very clear that that is exactly what this legislation does. Clauses 7 to 10 turn the original intent of good faith collective bargaining completely on its head. It removes the requirement for collective bargaining to be concluded as an example of good faith and it extends the amount of time during which bargaining cannot be done. Clause 9 is the duty to conclude bargaining. This clause allows parties to apply to the authority if things get difficult. It means that workers will not be able to strike for a period of at least 60 days before bargaining can be initiated again, and it places workers in a very weak bargaining position.

Clause 11 gives employers the ability to opt out of multi-employer collectives, which my colleague Jan Logie very eloquently explained is going to result in all sorts of difficulties for workplaces where there simply is not the ability for employees and management to find collective solutions to some of the problems that they are facing. Clauses 15 to 18 remove the right of new employees who have not yet joined a union to be offered the collective agreement if there is one already in place on site. Clauses 28 to 42—we have heard a bit about clause 30—amend Part 6A of the original Act, which gives workers in some occupations where contracting companies regularly turn over a measure of job security by ensuring that they can be employed by the new contractor. What this does is it means that in companies with fewer than 19 employees, those employees simply will not have the same guarantees that other employees have in larger companies.

The sum total of Part 1 of this bill is to erode collective bargaining and to erode the rights of workers. I would like to ask those in this Chamber, particularly members on the opposite of the Chamber, and those watching at home to think to themselves when they have been the most effective, motivated, and productive. It is common sense that people work most effectively when they are not stressed, when they are not overworked, when they are paid a decent wage, and do not have to stress about making ends meet. The Government claims that these changes are about making our economy more productive but in fact they are simply benefiting a small number of people. They are not benefiting the economy as a whole.

I know there are a lot of great employers out there who realise that people work more productively when they are well looked after, but the reality of human nature is that not everyone will. In the absence of collective bargaining and good employment law, it is a race to the bottom. It actually disadvantages good employers to not have law that sets a minimum standard. This is what history has shown us. Before the collective action of workers, who fought for the protection of wages and working conditions, people worked in horrific conditions. That was to the benefit of a small number of industrialists who had mainly inherited their businesses and wealth, but it was not to the benefit of the overall economy. It was organised workers who fought for better wages and conditions, not the invisible hand that delivered that.

I just have to quote Adam Smith here, that great father of neoclassical economics. He observed this. He wrote that the interests of manufacturers and merchants “…in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, [the interest] of the public.” I think this is the common theme of this National Government. In its policy and legislation that we see implemented, it is acting in the interests of some employers and of some trades and industries, and claiming that this will be better for the economy as a whole when, in fact, it is the opposite. It is the very opposite. We know if we look at the evidence from overseas that the countries that are richer and more productive than New Zealand actually have more collective bargaining and more unionised workforces, not less. They have better employment conditions, they have more time off, and they have guarantees for workers. We cannot liberalise our economy any more. We already have—

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I want to warn the Committee that I am getting very close to taking the closure. What I will be looking for now is not only relevance but novelty. We have got to have some new arguments and new material.

SUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you for the opportunity to make another contribution on this bill. I want to make an additional point on clause 56 in Part 1 because my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway spoke on—quite rightly, and I think he was the first person to speak on it—the effect of the reduction in wages for undertaking a partial strike. I want to add the point that it is most frequently our emergency services that actually use this provision when they have a dispute with their employer, and there is a very good reason why it is frequently our emergency services that use this provision when they have a dispute with their employer. It is because they are so reluctant to take full strike action to address any dispute that they might have with their employer.

I will use the example of the firefighters. People probably did not even notice, but over the last year our firefighters have been in a dispute with their employer. People did not notice because fires kept getting attended to and the accidents kept getting attended to. All of those things kept happening because the firefighters did not withdraw their labour in order to get their dispute sorted out. What they did was to take partial strike action—that is, they worked to rule. They were on duty the whole time, but they chose not to do some duties that were actually outside what they were contracted to do: filling out some reports, sending some emails—some administrative functions that were not core to the service that we, the New Zealand public, rely on them for.

Why I am describing this in some detail is that without much fuss and bother they were able to demonstrate their value to their employer and get their industrial dispute sorted out, without it impacting at all—at all—on the New Zealand public. What I believe clause 56 will do—I think Iain Lees-Galloway is right about this—is that it will actually mean that if employees, the firefighters and other emergency service workers, are going to be actually penalised for that, they may well say: “Well, let’s just go the whole hog. Let’s not muck around with a partial strike. Let’s actually do the whole thing.” That is actually going to harm the New Zealand public if it is brought about. I sat in on some of the submissions on this bill and asked some of the unions that had used this provision about that. They said that the reason why they used partial strikes was the nature of the services that their union members undertook, and they said that they really wanted to try every other avenue first before they withdrew their labour and, therefore, harmed the public in that way. They said they believed that this provision would put more pressure on members of their unions to actually take much more drastic action. I think that that is the thing that the Government does not want to do, but I think that this will be an unintended consequence of clause 56 in Part 1 of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill.

I want to talk about the 40 percent of children living in poverty in this country who are in working households. I want to talk about them because the Prime Minister wrote in his Speech from the Throne that child poverty was going to be a priority, and yet here the Government is, in its very first act of the 51st Parliament, moving to reduce wages in the very households where those 40 percent of children living in poverty actually reside. I think that the Government is going about this in completely the wrong way because it is those same families who are going to have this pressure on them. When the employer says to them “No, you can’t have a wage increase this year, but I’ll tell you what. If you agree to give up your lunch break and your tea break, I might see fit to give you half a percent.”, it is these families who are going to come under the pressure to actually give away their right to have a lunch break and a tea break. That will be completely legal under what the Government is proposing, and yet they would not be able to do that under the current law. Under the current law, yes, they can bargain for their wage increase, but they must retain the legal right to have a lunch break and a meal break. It is these very families who are going to have this pressure on them, and that is the mechanism that is going to be used. So the pretence from the National Government that workers are going to have control over whether they are going to have a tea break and a lunch break we know to be a complete nonsense. It actually belongs in the crypt where Bill Birch’s idea that workers were going to have freedom of choice to keep their penal rates belongs.

JOANNE HAYES (Third Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): Mr Chairman, let me just begin by congratulating you on your elevation—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): This will not help.

Su’a WILLIAM SIO: —before I turn to clause 11.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Oh, all right.

Su’a WILLIAM SIO: Clause 11—I want to ask the Minister in the chair, the Hon Michael Woodhouse, whether he would take a call and explain to the Committee the purpose of this bill and what will be the result for the workforce. When one reads the regulatory impact statement, it does say there is limited evidence on the size and underlying causes of the problem that this Government has identified, and if you go further into that regulatory impact statement and look at what the proposal is to allow an employer to opt out of multi-employer bargaining, it says that the flexibility is for employers, but there is no flexibility for employees. So I would like the Minister to please rise and tell the Committee what the outcome of this particular bill is for the New Zealand workforce. If the economy has grown by 3.5 percent in the last year, why was it that last year 43 percent of the workforce did not get a wage increase? I put it to this Committee that 43 percent of the workforce did not get a pay increase because that workforce were not members of a trade union.

Now you have this Government, which has set its sights on those who are members of a union, and particularly those who are in multi-employer collective agreements, and it is determined to get rid of their particular rights. If you look at the list of those multi-employer agreements that are up for renewal in this year, it is the Public Service Association, and next year it is all the public sector. In my community, those who work in the public sector are earning a little bit more income than those in the private sector. Why is this Government now determined to start attacking those who are the middle-income earners in the public sector? What is that Government intending to do when on the one hand it says it is out there protecting the vulnerable, but on the other hand it has set its sights on undermining the ability of workers to organise and to negotiate in collective agreements? I want that Minister to rise to his feet and tell this Committee what the outcome of this bill is on the workforce that is out there in New Zealand.

The Government is determined, based on what I am reading in this particular bill on clause 11, to undermine the rights of workers. Why is that—why is that? What drives the Government? I would put it to this Committee that it is blindly feeding its greed and the greed of its friends, who are behind the scenes telling it that this is the right thing to do. I would say to you and that Minister that this is wrong. This is wrong. It does not support any of the workforce of New Zealand. It does not address the issues that were raised earlier today by my colleagues about poverty, about children—that you cannot feed children with promises, that you cannot feed children with white papers and the promise to do something. This bill is actually going to affect and have a direct impact on the livelihood of the workforce. Why is that? I have asked that Minister, who is pretending not to listen to me, to rise to his feet and tell this Committee what the impact is.

There is already a declining number of the workforce in the trade union movement, but those who are in the trade union movement are able, through collective bargaining, to achieve a little bit better than those who are not in the trade union movement. We have a situation that all in this Committee are aware of. We have the working poor—people who are working long hours in difficult conditions, often on a minimum wage, but who cannot maintain the bills. They cannot pay regular rent, and clause 11, in my view, is designed to even make it—

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Mr Chair, may I congratulate you. I do not think either of us ever imagined when we were in the same class at high school that we would end up here tonight.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): It is probably the only reason you got the call.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: I will not hesitate to make full use of my incredible advantages. The Chair was very quiet at school, but he seems to have found a voice. However, I know that he wants us to stick narrowly to Part 1 of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, so I intend to do that. The Chair also asked for novelty so I am going to attempt to give you a bit of novelty on this bill. I would like to acknowledge, however, all the Opposition speakers so far, because I think they have been absolutely brilliant and on the money. There is a bit of a novelty here when we start looking at the regulatory impact statement on the summary of assessment of the proposals when they look at the objectives of the Act in terms of international obligations. I do not know whether anyone else has mentioned this. There are nine proposals and out of the nine there are seven that fail to meet our international obligations. I am just going to read not the proposals but the summaries of what they are. They are “Uncertain”, “Inconsistent”, “Inconsistent”, “Inconsistent”, “Uncertain”, “Uncertain”, and “Inconsistent”.

Sue Moroney: It sounds like the Government.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Well, it does. It does sound a bit like the Government. It does sound a bit like the entire drafting of this piece of legislation, which is a disaster. But it is also interesting that, particularly in terms of labour law, international obligations are a serious matter, and yet this bill will go through despite the fact that seven of the nine proposals are completely at odds with our international obligations. Does anyone care on the Government side of the Chamber? I do not think they do, and it is a pity because the amount of work that goes into developing international labour law and the commitments that we make to international obligations are serious and binding and yet they are being absolutely abused.

However, I will move rapidly onwards to my favourite part of this bill, clauses 43 to 46. Let us talk about tea breaks. Let us talk about tea breaks in history, because clauses 43 to 46 are an example of how history does repeat itself and how important history is. It was interesting hearing some of the maiden speeches yesterday when they talked about Margaret Thatcher and the brave new world. It was quite disturbing to hear all these young people talking about this because they do not seem to know the facts of history and what labour laws such as this one can do in taking us back—way back behind Margaret Thatcher, way back into the 18th century—because, actually, in 1908 there was a miners’ strike that was directly related to clause 43 and 46.

Paul Foster-Bell: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. This speech is veering very distantly from relevance to the particular clause being debated.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Mr Foster-Bell, I will be the judge of that and although I agree with you, I think it is better that you do not bring it up.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: I will continue focusing on clauses 43 to 46, because I think clauses 43 to 46 could well be called the “Crib-time Bill”. Crib-time, if you do not know what crib-time is, for the younger people here who do not study history, is that in 1908 in Blackball they had the crib-time strike and it was about exactly this point, which is in this amendment Act—this point about people’s right to eat at work and to have time off. So, actually, it is incredibly important to remember what people went through to create this, and now in one stroke of the pen it is gone. I read the commentary on this and I found it pretty bizarre. Let us have a look at it. It says here that things would be more flexible, and it would be fine. Changes to meal and rest breaks provisions will be more flexible and will improve the work and productivity. It is just quite bizarre. How can this possibly be? It talks about the fact that there can be compensatory measures for cutting these breaks. What? What is going to compensate you for that? What is going to compensate the forestry workers who have died this year? Nothing.

We actually have to be serious about what meal breaks are. As many others have pointed out, this is not a luxury; this is a necessity. So do not bandy words around in these commentaries and do not make up stuff about compensation that does not exist, and then facilitate the undermining of laws that have been in place and that were fought for and developed by workers since 1908. It is dangerous down the mines, in the forests, in the rest homes, and in the mental health services, and crib-time 21st century is important. That is why clauses 43 to 46 are such serious clauses, because we should never take for granted such clauses.

I have a friend who works in the bakery of a supermarket. This is directly related to clause 43, I promise you, and she is on—

JOANNE HAYES (Third Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): The question is that the question be now put.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): You are not going to trifle, are you, Mr Lees-Galloway?

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I am not going to trifle—not at all. I just want to query your knowledge of the Standing Orders. Can a member raise a closure motion more than once in one debate?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Yes, they can.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Do you want my assurance that I am not going to trifle with you as well, Mr Chairman? I want you to explain why, during the course of the debate, you have gone against what I consider is a respected practice, and that is to call members who are receiving the call for the first time, rather than, as you have done on two occasions, call members for the second time. My colleagues Kelvin Davis, Dr Megan Woods, and I have all been here since 7.30 actively seeking a call at every opportunity. You were not here for the first hour. I will hold your predecessor responsible for that, but you are in the same position. Since that time you have called my colleagues Iain Lees-Galloway and Sue Moroney more than once, so I would like some explanation—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am happy to rule now. I acted in error in calling Iain Lees-Galloway. I should not have done that, but, having done that, I thought it was probably better to give his colleague, Sue Moroney, who was also a leader on the bill, a similar opportunity. As a result of that, the debate was somewhat extended.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.

Ayes 64

New Zealand National 60; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 6 in the name of Andrew Little to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 1 in the name of the Hon Michael Woodhouse to insert new clause 12A be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments to the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11.

Noes 64

New Zealand National 60; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendments not agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): We now move on to the Minister’s amendments. The question is that the Minister’s amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 1 be agreed to.

DENISE ROCHE (Green): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I just wanted to find out what happened to my Supplementary Order Papers 12 and 13—whether they were going to be put. They are amending Part 1.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): The Minister’s amendments go first. There are quite a few amendments, which we will work our way through, and I am pretty sure that when we get to the second page we will get to yours.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 1 in the name of the Hon Michael Woodhouse to Part 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 62

New Zealand National 60; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 59

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11; Māori Party 2.

Amendments agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I will just warn the Committee that as a result of that amendment being agreed to, there are a couple of Supplementary Order Papers later that will be ruled out of order because they are inconsistent with the decision that we have just taken.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 5 in the name of Andrew Little to Part 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11.

Noes 64

New Zealand National 60; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendments not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 3 in the name of Andrew Little to clause 9 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11.

Noes 64

New Zealand National 60; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 4 in the name of Andrew Little to clause 11 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11.

Noes 64

New Zealand National 60; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendments not agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Andrew Little’s amendment to delete clause 11, set out on Supplementary Order Paper 8, is ruled out of order as being inconsistent, as I previously outlined.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 8 in the name of Andrew Little to clause 13 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11.

Noes 64

New Zealand National 60; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 13 in the name of Denise Roche to clause 12 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11.

Noes 64

New Zealand National 60; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendments not agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Andrew Little’s amendment to delete clause 17, set out on Supplementary Order Paper 9, is ruled out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 9 in the name of Andrew Little to Part 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11.

Noes 64

New Zealand National 60; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendments not agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Andrew Little’s amendments to delete clause 30 and new section 69G(3) in clause 32, as set out on Supplementary Order Paper 7, are ruled out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 7 in the name of Andrew Little to Part 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11.

Noes 64

New Zealand National 60; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendments not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 12 in the name of Denise Roche to clause 30 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11.

Noes 64

New Zealand National 60; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendments not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 10 in the name of Andrew Little to clause 44 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11.

Noes 64

New Zealand National 60; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendments not agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Andrew Little’s amendments to delete clauses 51 and 56, as set out on Supplementary Order Paper 11, are ruled out on a similar basis to previously.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 11 in the name of Andrew Little to Part 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11.

Noes 64

New Zealand National 60; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendments not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 62

New Zealand National 60; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 59

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 11; Māori Party 2.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Application, savings, transitional, and consequential provisions

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Part 2 relates to the application, savings, transitional, and consequential provisions of this bill. It is reasonably technical in nature, but it does include the insertion of new schedules—schedules 1 and 2 in this bill. Schedule 1 will ultimately become schedule 1AA in the principal Act once it is amended by this legislation. Clause 2 of schedule 1AA relates to amendments to Part 5 of the principal Act, which relates to collective bargaining. What clause 2(2) says in schedule 1AA is that the amended section 33 of the principal Act, which was amended by clause 9 of this bill, will apply “to all bargaining, whether the bargaining commenced before, on, or after the commencement of [this amendment] Act.”

This is a genuine question to the Minister: why is this legislation being applied retrospectively? For those who have forgotten, and it has been a while since we talked about clause 9 of this legislation, clause 9 refers to the duty of good faith requiring parties to conclude collective agreements unless there was genuine reason not to, which, of course, was amended to “Duty of good faith does not require collective agreements to be concluded”. So the sum total of these clauses combined is that collective bargaining that is already under way and that started before this legislation is enacted will be subject to this legislation. So employers and unions that went into collective bargaining in good faith with one another, particularly the unions that went into bargaining in good faith, now face the prospect of this legislation applying to bargaining that started under the current legislation. In other words—

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.