Tuesday, 20 September 2022

TUESDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER 2022

TUESDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER 2022

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

Hon JENNY SALESA (Assistant Speaker): E te Atua kaha rawa, ka tuku whakamoemiti atu mātou, mō ngā karakia kua waihotia mai ki runga i a mātou. Ka waiho i ō mātou pānga whaiaro katoa ki te taha. Ka mihi ki te Kīngi, me te inoi atu mō te ārahitanga i roto i ō mātou whakaaroarohanga, kia mōhio ai, kia whakaiti ai tā mātou whakahaere i ngā take o te Whare nei, mō te oranga, te maungārongo, me te aroha o Aotearoa. Āmene.

[Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the King, and pray for guidance in our deliberations, that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom and humility, for the welfare, peace, and compassion of New Zealand. Amen.]

Visitors

Malaysia—Parliament, Delegation

SPEAKER: I’m sure that members would wish to welcome the Hon Dr Kelvin Yii Lee Wuen and his accompanying delegation from the Parliament of Malaysia, who are present in the gallery.

Petitions, Papers, Select Committee Reports, and Introduction of Bills

Petitions, Papers, Select Committee Reports, and Introduction of Bills

SPEAKER: Petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK:

Petition of Hayley Liu requesting that the House ban the selling of alcoholic beverages in all supermarkets across Auckland

petition of Associated Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Society Incorporated requesting that the House urge the Government to reclassify ME/CFS from chronic illness to disability

petition of Morteza Sharifi requesting that the House urge the Prime Minister to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist entity

petition of Tom Shanley requesting that the House urgently amend the eligibility criteria for prospective candidates in school Board of Trustee elections to require police vetting of candidates.

SPEAKER: Those petitions are referred to the Petitions Committee. Ministers have delivered papers.

CLERK:

Protocol to amend the Agreement of 3 April 2001 establishing the International Organisation of Vine and Wine in relation to the transfer of the headquarters, together with National Interest Assessment

Drug Free Sport New Zealand:

annual plan to 30 June 2022, statement of performance expectations

annual report 2021

New Zealand Parole Board, annual report 2021-22

Accreditation Council, 2021 annual report

Ministry of Social Development, statement of intent 2022-26

SPEAKER: Those papers are published under the authority of the House. Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Report of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee on the 2020-21 annual reviews of the Takeovers Panel and Te Ara Ahunga Ora Retirement Commission

reports of the Education and Workforce Committee on the petition of James Hilford and the report of the Controller and Auditor-General, Inquiry into management fees paid by South Auckland Middle School and Middle School West Auckland in 2018

report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Monetary Policy Statement, August 2022

reports of the Health Committee on the 2020-21 annual review of the Lakes and West Coast DHBs and the petition of Carmen Shanks

report of the Justice Committee on the Protection of Journalists’ Sources Bill

reports of the Petitions Committee on the petition of Andrea Menzies and the petition of Kiri Goodspeed

report of the Primary Production Committee on the Fisheries Amendment Bill

report of the Regulations Review Committee on the activities of the Regulations Review Committee in 2021, and

report of the Social Services and Community Committee on the briefing, Ombudsman’s report, and petition on Oranga Tamariki uplifts.

SPEAKER: The bills are set down for second reading. The report on the Monetary Policy Statement, the report on the report of the Controller and Auditor-General, the report of the Regulations Review Committee, and the report of the Social Services and Community Committee are all set down for consideration. The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of bills.

CLERK:

Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill, introduction

Taxation (Annual Rates for 2022-23, Platform Economy, and Remedial Matters) Bill (No 2), introduction

Dairy Industry Restructuring (Fonterra Capital Restructuring) Amendment Bill, introduction

Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill, introduction

Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill, introduction

Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: Those bills are set down for first reading.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Finance

1. Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The economy rebounded strongly in the June quarter. Last week, Statistics New Zealand reported that GDP rose 1.7 percent in the three months to June, which was at the top end of economists’ expectations. The economy is now 4.8 percent larger than before the start of the pandemic, ahead of most countries that we compare ourselves with. Despite a challenging global environment, our economic plan is working, and the resilience of the economy means New Zealand is in a strong position to support our people and take advantage of the opportunities available from our strong pandemic response.

Dr Duncan Webb: Which sectors contributed to growth in the June quarter?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The services sector, which makes up two-thirds of the economy, rose 2.7 percent, as New Zealanders and returning overseas visitors spent more on transport, accommodation, eating out, and sports and recreational activities. It’s also worth noting that exports jumped 20.5 percent, boosted by the return of tourists and ongoing strong agricultural prices.

Dr Duncan Webb: What reactions has seen to growth in the June quarter?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, Westpac’s economists said it was a strong result, while Kiwibank said the Kiwi economy staged an impressive rebound following the Omicron disruption. ASB’s economists said the underlying base momentum of the economy should continue, and is a testament to the underlying resilience of the New Zealand economy.

Dr Duncan Webb: How did New Zealand’s growth compare internationally?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, the timing of COVID variants and their economic impact has differed between countries, and it does make it difficult to make meaningful comparisons on a quarterly basis. A marker that we can use, though, is where the economy is now, compared to where it was before the pandemic started. On that basis, New Zealand’s economy is 4.8 percent larger than the pre-COVID December 2019 quarter, compared with 5.5 percent in Australia, 2.6 percent in the US, 1.8 percent in the EU, 1.7 percent in Canada, 0.6 percent in the UK, and 0.2 percent in Japan.

Nicola Willis: Does the Minister consider that the reason most New Zealanders aren’t quite as cock-a-hoop as he is about the state of the economy could be because, in the past year, real wages declined by 3.7 percent—that is, typical New Zealanders are going backwards as prices rise faster than wages?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No; the member is, in fact, wrong. Median weekly earnings from wages and salaries rose by 8.8 percent in the June 2022 quarter—[Holds up sheet of paper] right there for the member.

Dr Duncan Webb: What reports has he seen on the international context for the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, the World Bank has warned that the global economy may be edging towards recession in 2023, with global growth slowing sharply. New Zealand is, of course, not immune to these developments, but we are well positioned to respond to the challenges. Unemployment is near record lows, exports are rising, and our debt levels are among the lowest in the world. We’re investing in our future to deliver a high-wage, low-emission economy that provides greater security in both good times and bad. There are tough choices ahead for us, but New Zealand is well positioned to navigate a volatile and uncertain global environment.

Nicola Willis: Who should New Zealanders believe about the state of the economy: that Minister, who continues to show off about it; or the Parliamentary Library, who says that real wages have declined by 3.7 percent, and many New Zealand families who feel that economic times are tougher for them than ever?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Perhaps we could refer to the views of a neutral commentator here, Standard & Poor’s. I’ll just read from their executive summary—I don’t know if that’s a concept the member’s familiar with—it says the agency once again praised the Government, saying, “New Zealand [had] weathered the pandemic better than most countries in terms of health, fiscal, and economic outcomes.”

David Seymour: Would the Minister prescribe that Standard & Poor’s report as recommended reading for the majority of New Zealanders, who say the country is going in the wrong direction under his Government?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We, on this side of the House, acknowledge that 2022 has been a hard year for many people. That’s why our Government has stepped up by increasing benefits, by making sure there’s a cost of living payment, by making sure that we’re supporting New Zealanders with lifts to the minimum wage. All of these things that the ACT Party has opposed—we’re actually supporting New Zealanders.

David Seymour: So, just to be clear, has it been a hard year, or is everything going fantastically?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: This side of the House has acknowledged, time and time again, how hard it has been for New Zealanders. The good news is the New Zealand economy is resilient. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the OECD. We have one of the lowest levels of public debt in the OECD. We’ve got growth, so we’re 4.8 percent bigger than we were before the pandemic. There is every reason to be optimistic, even though it has been a hard year for many people.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

2. CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Leader of the Opposition) to the Acting Prime Minister: Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Acting Prime Minister): Yes, particularly the Minister of Finance’s statement that “despite these globally turbulent times, with war, supply chain disruption, energy shocks and inflation spikes, New Zealand has cause for optimism.” Quarterly GDP growth of 1.7 percent meant New Zealand outperformed other countries we compare ourselves with and, when combined with our reopening, we are gaining momentum. Just briefly, that’s shown by international traveller numbers crossing 100,000 for the first time since the pandemic; the ski season in Queenstown hitting 80 percent of pre-COVID times; and international student enrolments, just shortly after they have reopened, are now nearly at 50 percent of pre-COVID times. The resilience of the economy means New Zealand is in a strong position to respond to an increasingly difficult global environment, while continuing to support New Zealand families and businesses to take advantages available, because of our strong pandemic response.

Christopher Luxon: When the finance Minister said the Government is going to start targeting spending to where it can “get the most bang for buck for New Zealand”, does he think adding 14,000 bureaucrats to the public sector, at a cost of $1.7 billion a year in salaries, is an example of good “bang for buck” spending?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It always fascinates me that the Opposition looks at the kinds of people who helped New Zealanders get through COVID and decides to call them bureaucrats. These are the hard-working public servants who got up every day during the pandemic to make sure that New Zealanders got through as well as any other country in the world.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Was he urged to extend the most untargeted financial support offered over the last 2½ years to a greater number of businesses for a longer period of time, and, if so, what was his response to that?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes, indeed. Time and time again, members opposite called on us to give further support to the business community. We did give significant support, over $20 billion, but the National Party prefers an approach of untargeted support through tax cuts for the wealthiest New Zealanders. That’s not our policy.

Christopher Luxon: Why should taxpayers believe the finance Minister, when he claims the Government is going to start being targeted when spending taxpayer money, when over the last five years he’s overspent every single Budget spending target he set himself?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Because New Zealand continues to have one of the lowest levels of public debt in the world—lower than the level inherited from the previous Government; because we have unemployment at 3.3 percent; and because the economy has grown 4.8 percent since before COVID. The record of this Government in making sure that New Zealanders got through COVID has been recognised by the likes of Standard & Poor’s as one of the best responses in the world.

Christopher Luxon: Is he embarrassed that the Government’s cost of living payment was so badly targeted that tax officials had to remove over 100,000 people from the list of eligible recipients after the first payment was made, at the cost of millions of taxpayers’ dollars?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The cost of living payment was designed to make sure that those earning less than $70,000 who had not benefited from other changes that the Government made got some relief from the increasing cost of living. Members opposite were calling on us to do something. We did it and they don’t like it. They prefer untargeted tax cuts for the wealthiest New Zealanders.

Christopher Luxon: If the Government is finally planning to start being targeted when spending taxpayer money, why did they try to push through a $225 million a year tax increase on KiwiSaver funds?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The cost of living payment represents a move from the broad-based initiatives we had through COVID, such as the wage subsidy scheme. Those were initiatives that the member and his party supported. We’re now targeting that support for—the member’s option is to make sure that people in this House get thousands of dollars of tax cuts a year while those on the minimum wage get two bucks a week. That is not targeted spending.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Is the Minister of Finance aware of any instances where taxes on KiwiSaver savings were actually increased?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes. The previous National Government did exactly that when it increased the employer tax obligations and also when it took away the thousand-dollar kick-start. I also recall the National Party actually opposing KiwiSaver when it was first introduced. The Labour Party continues to be proud of KiwiSaver.

Christopher Luxon: Does he think taxpayers are getting good bang for their buck when, despite labour shortages in almost every sector, there are still 50,000 more people receiving unemployment benefits than when his Government took office?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I am proud of the fact that we have unemployment at 3.3 percent. I’m also proud of the fact that we work with those who are in receipt of income support to be able to support them back into work, and the programmes that we have put in place there are starting to bear fruit.

Christopher Luxon: Does he accept that with school attendance and achievement so shamefully low, taxpayers are not getting good bang for buck from this Government’s spending in education?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I believe taxpayers are getting excellent bang for buck from what we do in the education sector. Every single day in schools across New Zealand we are seeing students achieving and achieving well. We will always continue to work, as we have been, on attendance and attendance strategy. But I would bear in mind, when it comes to what’s happened in attendance—[Interruption] When it comes to what’s happened in attendance, Mr Luxon, he needs to look at the previous National Government to see where that trend started.

Christopher Luxon: Is the finance Minister’s claim that the Government is going to pivot to being targeted when spending taxpayer money an admission that the last five years have been a spending free-for-all, and does he accept this approach has contributed to the cost of living crisis that is sending Kiwi families backwards?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Our approach over the course of the last five years has meant that New Zealand has an unemployment rate of 3.3 percent. It means that we have one of the lowest levels of public debt in the world. It means that our economy has grown 4.8 percent from pre-COVID times.

We’ve invested to support New Zealanders through COVID. Standard & Poor’s and others around the world are telling us that that is one of the best responses to the pandemic from an economic point of view, from a health point of view, and from a social point of view. I’m proud of this Government’s response to COVID-19.

David Seymour: Why does the Government continue to insist on New Zealanders filling out a New Zealand traveller declaration form to enter their own country when contact tracing, vaccine requirements, and post-arrival testing are no longer required?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As has been stated a number of times, including by me yesterday, we are moving towards a system where that New Zealand travel declaration will be the document that is required to enter New Zealand. We will move away from the paper-based arrival card. Rather than stop the declaration and then restart it again, we’re continuing it so it will become the single document you need to enter the country.

David Seymour: Can the Prime Minister confirm that 10,000 people entering yesterday had to fill out the form for no reason other than the Government is in a holding pattern?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No, it still provides important information for New Zealanders, and it will become the document that everybody will use to enter New Zealand in the future.

David Seymour: What does this Government say to a shopkeeper in Christchurch who’s worked 156 days straight to keep the door open; when will the Government fix immigration so business owners facing severe worker shortages up and down the country can take a break?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The immigration rebalance and reset is already under way. That’s seen around 10,000 employers become accredited employers. It’s seeing the job-check process largely meet its targets, and it’s seeing visas granted. What I say to that shopkeeper is, like all New Zealanders, they’ve worked hard to get through COVID. In that time, they’ve been supported by the Government through things like the wage subsidy things, things like the resurgence support payment, the Small Business Cashflow Scheme. We continue to stand alongside those small businesses.

David Seymour: Does the Government stand by its announcement to amend consumer lending regulations under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA) next March, and, if so, why not fix them now so that struggling small businesses battered by the past two years of COVID restrictions can consolidate their debt without additional rigmarole?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Those changes have been welcomed by those both in the banking sector and those who borrow. You’ll need to direct the question to Dr Clark exactly on the timing, but from our perspective here, those things should not be preventing the business person the member refers to from getting access to the consolidated credit they need.

David Seymour: Well, if the regulations under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act are not stopping people from getting access to the credit they need, why does it need to be amended at all, and, if the regulations are stopping people getting credit, why is it acceptable that a problem first pointed out last December won’t be fixed by David Clark until next March?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: There are a variety of concerns that were raised about the CCCFA. Some of those were of the nature of guidelines that didn’t require regulatory change, so those changes are being made; some are the results of regulatory change, which will go through the system. I know from the conversations I’ve had with retail banks that they are satisfied that the changes that we’ve already made are making a difference.

Question No. 3—Education

3. MARJA LUBECK (Labour) to the Minister of Education: What progress has the Government made in supporting employers to maintain and increase the number of New Zealanders in apprenticeships?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): More good news. The Government’s Apprenticeship Boost programme has reached a significant milestone, supporting over 50,000 apprentices to move into or to retain their trade; 18,800 employers have signed up to the scheme so far. Under our Government, apprenticeships are back and they are thriving.

Marja Lubeck: How is Apprenticeship Boost making a difference for workplaces in the wider economy?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Two years after we introduced it, it’s heartening to see the impact Apprenticeship Boost has had on helping to deliver key infrastructure projects and bolstering our construction workforce. Apprentices are helping to build houses, fix up roads, upgrade commercial buildings, and fix infrastructure like our pipes. Unlike in the wake of the global financial crisis, when apprentice enrolments plummeted, we’ve overseen a significant increase, including through a global pandemic.

Marja Lubeck: How is Apprenticeship Boost delivering for Māori?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: A highlight of the scheme is that 19 percent of Māori apprentices are participating compared to 17 percent of the overall population being Māori. With Māori unemployment at 5.5 percent—the lowest since records began—our focus on providing targeted and wraparound support is paying dividends.

Question No. 4—Agriculture

4. TEANAU TUIONO (Green) to the Acting Minister of Agriculture: Is the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Fonterra Capital Restructuring) Amendment Bill consistent with her Government’s commitment to addressing the global climate crisis; if so, how?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Acting Minister of Agriculture): On behalf of the Minister, yes. This bill allows Fonterra the ability to change its capital structure, and this will help to drive investment around sustainability and innovative dairy practice. Farmers are already putting in the work to measure the emissions, improve freshwater quality, and increase sustainable practices on-farm. This reflects the broad programme of work that the Government is undertaking to support farmers to reduce their emissions in line with our climate change commitments. The benefit of a high-performing and efficient Fonterra will flow through its nearly 10,000 farmer shareholders into our rural communities, and it underpins a well-functioning, sustainable dairy industry.

Teanau Tuiono: What evidence, if any, does the Minister have that freed-up capital will go towards sustainability measures on farms rather than towards increasing milk production?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: Because the Government has a project of reducing emissions that they have worked on very closely with the industry: He Waka Eke Noa. There are commitments from farmers; this bill will not remove the expectations that we reduce our emissions. This is purely a bill to enable Fonterra to move capital and to invest in sustainable practices that many dairy farmers are already undertaking.

Teanau Tuiono: Then why was no climate implications of policy assessment produced for the bill, despite the Ministry for the Environment raising concerns that the proposals would support an increase in emissions?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: The bill regulates, as I said, the operation of New Zealand’s dairy industry and Fonterra’s capital structure. It does not make changes to environmental regulations or climate action but, rather, relates to decisions on who farmers may choose to supply milk to. What we know is that Fonterra and its farmers are working to improve practices and reduce emissions, and Fonterra’s capital restructuring will enable farmers to redirect capital that would otherwise have been required for share purposes to these ends.

Teanau Tuiono: Does the Minister think it is fair that Fonterra’s proposed capital restructure may make it more difficult for dairy farmers facing the effects of climate change to pursue land-use change, and, if not, why not?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: The bill allows Fonterra the ability, like I said, to change its capital structure, and it relates to decisions on who farmers may choose to supply milk to. Land-use changes have been a constant throughout New Zealand’s agricultural history, and it’s driven by a number of factors. Ultimately, if farmers are looking to move away from dairy, that is a business decision for each farmer to consider.

Teanau Tuiono: Does she believe it’s fair for the Government to support Fonterra’s restructure through legislation when this is designed to strengthen their monopoly and will have the effect of shielding them from the commercial realities of climate change?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: I thank that member for the questions, because the bill is yet to be presented to the House. But what I can say to that member is that there are some mitigating and transparency obligations in the bill which include a Government-appointed extra member to the price-setting panel, and that is one way of ensuring transparency so they avoid any price-gouging, and I look forward to that member putting in his submission when the bill reaches the House.

Question No. 5—Finance

5. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement that “we will enter a period of more targeted spending”, and does he consider that Government spending in the past six months should have been more targeted?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I stand by the full statement, including the context surrounding it: “As we move to implement our plan, future investments will obviously not be at the same scale as during COVID. As with all of you, with the emergency COVID response behind us now, we will enter a period of more targeted spending. This tighter period will require some tough choices. At a broad level, my focus will continue to be on making sure New Zealand maintains responsible debt levels, and ensuring our path back to surplus. This must not be done through austerity cuts to spending. These would do more damage than any problem we are trying to solve.”

To answer the second part of the member’s question, our spending has been targeted to deal with the conditions New Zealand has been experiencing. Our initial COVID response was broad-based and supported by the Opposition, for example, more than $20 billion in wage subsidies and other business supports, and more than $10 billion extra for health. More recently, the Government has continued to support businesses through the Omicron outbreak, with more than $2 billion of support for businesses since the start of March. This, of course, sits alongside support for households such as by reducing fuel excise duty, introducing the cost of living payment, and the other 1 April income support increases.

Nicola Willis: Does the Minister consider the cost of living payment scheme was targeted, when official documents revealed it was so badly designed that 6,629 people received it despite explicitly advising the IRD of their overseas address?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The policy that we put in place was to make sure that those who earn less than $70,000 were supported. That was something that the member and others across the House urged us to do, and we have done that. This is a payment that has not ever happened before in New Zealand’s history, and the Inland Revenue Department continues to work to refine its delivery.

Nicola Willis: Can he confirm he received advice from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment on 12 April and 26 May warning against a proposed new KiwiSaver tax, saying it would reduce retirement savings, and was his choice to press ahead with that tax regardless an example of the sort of tough choice we can come to expect from him?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As has been covered in this House over the last period of time, the member is mischaracterising the decision. The decision was taken by Cabinet. It was one that was taken on the basis of advice from a range of different Government agencies.

Nicola Willis: Why did the Minister recommend that Cabinet progress a KiwiSaver tax, and was it because he was very tempted by the additional $250 million in annual revenue it would bring in, allowing him to continue his lavish spending?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Again, the member mischaracterises the policy proposal that was put forward. It was designed to create a level playing field when it came to managed funds and how GST was treated with them. The Government, obviously, upon reflection—given the reaction of some of those who would have benefited from it, who no longer wanted the playing field levelled—decided not to go ahead with the proposal.

Question No. 6—Environment

6. ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour) to the Minister for the Environment: What actions is the Government taking to enhance protection for New Zealand’s most productive land?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): We need to house our people and feed them, too. Our cities and towns need to grow, but not at the expense of the land that’s best suited to growing our food. Once land is built on, it can no longer be used to grow food. This week, the Government released the National Policy Statement (NPS) for Highly Productive Land, which will enhance protection for our most productive land, providing security for both our domestic food supply and primary exports.

Angie Warren-Clark: Why is the National Policy Statement for Highly Productive Land necessary?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Over the last 20 years, about 35,000 hectares of our highly productive land has been carved up for urban or rural residential development, while 170,000 hectares of this land has been converted to lifestyle blocks. That’s why we’re moving to protect our most fertile and versatile land, especially in our main vegetable- and orchard-growing areas like Auckland, Waikato, Hawke’s Bay, Horowhenua, and Canterbury.

Angie Warren-Clark: What will the National Policy Statement for Highly Productive Land do?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Under the NPS for Highly Productive Land, councils will be required to map and manage highly productive land to ensure it’s available for growing vegetables, fruit, and other primary production now and in the future. Land more suited for development because of its lower-quality soils will be identified so that our best soils are not lost to urban sprawl.

Angie Warren-Clark: What immediate effect will the National Policy Statement for Highly Productive Land have?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Although councils have some time to map in some detail what areas are to be protected, immediate protections have been put in place for land that is zoned rural on top land-use class I, II, or III soils, unless that land is already identified or zoned for urban development.

Angie Warren-Clark: How will the NPS for Highly Productive Land work with other national policy statements?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The National Policy Statement on Highly Productive Land will work with the NPS on Urban Development (NPS-UD). Urban intensification under the NPS-UD will reduce the demand for outward urban growth on highly productive land. Under the two instruments, we will indeed both house and feed our people.

Angie Warren-Clark: What flexibility does the NPS for Highly Productive Land provide for councils?

Hon DAVID PARKER: In limited circumstances, councils will still be able to rezone highly productive land for urban housing if less productive land is not available and a number of other tests can be met. The NPS will introduce strong restrictions on the use of highly productive land for new rural lifestyle developments. Lifestyle blocks gobble up the most land, and they will be constrained.

Question No. 7—Housing

7. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Acting Minister of Housing: Does he stand by the Minister of Housing’s statement from May last year that “We have heard, we’ve listened, and we’ve acted to make sure that we are putting in a different system for Rotorua”, and is he satisfied with emergency housing provision in Rotorua?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment) on behalf of the Acting Minister of Housing: In response to the first part: yes, in the context in which it was made. In response to the second part: since 2013, Rotorua’s population increased by around 9,000 people and during this time, only around 1,500 new homes were consented. This shortfall in housing drove up rents and house prices and led to an increasing number of people living in emergency housing. That is why we formed the Rotorua Housing Taskforce, a forum for central government to work with the Rotorua Lakes Council and Te Arawa iwi to provide better support and outcomes for people living in emergency housing motels and the community.

The contracted motel model we introduced in Rotorua specifically for whānau with tamariki is working well and has seen positive outcomes. The support service providers have already helped over 200 whānau to move into longer-term accommodation. They have also supported many clients into employment. We have always said that motels are not a long-term solution; they are an immediate response to a crisis that is decades in the making, which is why we continue to focus on building as many public homes as we can.

Chris Bishop: When she says the system is “working well in Rotorua”, why has the Government spent $6.4 million with the Visions of a Helping Hand Charitable Trust, an organisation that reportedly removed a woman in labour from an emergency housing motel and has such a bad reputation one person interviewed on TVNZ Sunday programme said they would rather live in a bus with six people than one of their motels?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: It was really important that Government agencies didn’t go in to Rotorua pretending that they had all the answers. The ask from Rotorua, the council, and Te Arawa was that we work together and that we utilise the support of local community providers. On behalf of the Acting Minister of Housing, the allegations have certainly been looked into by the officials and the information that we have to date gives us the confidence to continue with the contracts.

Chris Bishop: Will he commission an independent inquiry into the emergency housing provision by the Visions of a Helping Hand Charitable Trust in Rotorua; and if not, why not?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The allegations that were made in the Sunday interview that the member is referring to are allegations that needed to be taken up with the police. To date, the police have provided no information or any instruction that there is cause for exiting the contracts and the provision of support that is in place for those people.

Chris Bishop: When the Minister of Housing said, “we are putting in a different system for Rotorua”, does that different system mean mothers going into labour in cars and children living for month upon month in squalor and misery?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I need to remind the member of where the emergency housing system came from. It came about from New Zealanders living in their cars and in doorways in 2016, under the previous Government. We have committed to building the houses that New Zealanders need. We recognise that in places like Rotorua, there were less public houses available than what there had been when the previous Government had started. We are building those houses again. In the interim, we need to provide a roof over the heads of people who are homeless, so that is currently the emergency housing system that we have in place. A review is being undertaken and we look forward to any improvements that can be made.

Chris Bishop: Why has the Government become a taxpayer-funded slumlord in Rotorua?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I refute that. Again, there is a level of hypocrisy in the question, given that the decades of under-investment in housing have led to the emergency housing model that was introduced by the previous Government that we inherited. We will do everything that we can to work with iwi, to work with councils, to work with community providers to ensure that the options that are in place are appropriate, but the main thing is building the houses that we need, and we are currently doing that.

Rawiri Waititi: Can the Acting Minister tell this House and the iwi of Te Arawa how, from the first COVID lockdown in 2020, the 50 homeless people who were moved to emergency hotels in Rotorua have now grown to near on 1,000 people living in emergency hotels in Rotorua in 2022?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: When COVID hit, it was important that we ensured that people were in some type of accommodation. So there were a number of people with very complex challenges at that time that needed to be housed, and the option in front of us right then was basically emergency housing provision of some sort. What I can say to the member is that what we have seen, I think, since March, is a steady decline in the number of whānau who are in emergency housing. We have seen a large number of whānau moved out of emergency housing in Rotorua into more permanent, more secure, more stable housing, and that is the trajectory that we intend to follow, and what we are focused on.

Rawiri Waititi: Can the Acting Minister tell us or confirm that they will use the 51 vacant Kāinga Ora homes in Rotorua for those living in emergency housing?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I do not have information on any vacant public houses in Rotorua. If the member would like to put that in writing, then we will happily receive that.

Tāmati Coffey: Can the Minister confirm that in the Aotearoa New Zealand Homelessness Action Plan, as done by this Government, there is a specific part of that plan which is dedicated to reducing the reliance of emergency housing clients on motels?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Absolutely. We are focused on decreasing the reliance on emergency housing in New Zealand. That comes down to building the houses that we need. There was an under-investment by the previous Government. We are well on our way to building the houses that we have committed to, and that has to remain our focus as a Government.

Chris Bishop: Can he confirm that since the publication of the much vaunted Homelessness Action Plan, the Government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars housing thousands of New Zealand families in motels all around the country?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: If we hadn’t inherited a deficit of houses by the previous Government, then we wouldn’t be in the position that we are now. We have a plan; that was something that the previous Government never had.

Question No. 8—Education

8. CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT) to the Minister of Education: Does he agree with the New Zealand Initiative that “The Ministry conducted no research on the effects of these ‘Modern Learning Environments’ on students’ learning prior to compelling schools to adopt them. Neither did they conduct any evaluation of their effects after they were established”; if not, what evidence has the ministry provided the Minister to show that modern learning environments improve literacy and numeracy skills?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): The Ministry of Education does not compel schools to adopt modern learning environments.

Chris Baillie: Does the Minister agree with the previous Minister of Education, Hekia Parata, who said in 2014: “Every new school building must meet the Modern Learning Environment standard and every existing school must prioritise the property funding they receive from the Ministry of Education to upgrade their buildings to the Modern Learning Environment standards”; and, are these open-plan classrooms still being built?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: In answer to the first part of the question, no. On this side of the House, in this Government, we believe that schools should have choice.

Chris Baillie: Will the Minister commit that no future learning or teaching initiatives be undertaken by the Ministry of Education without quantitative evidence that it works and a framework for ongoing monitoring and evaluation is in place; and, if so, why didn’t that apply to innovative learning environments?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I refer the member to my previous answer. On this side of the House, we believe that schools should have choice around how they structure their learning environments.

Chris Baillie: Will the Minister commit to funding resources for teachers in open-plan classrooms to support students with learning disabilities, such as auditory processing disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, without financial cost to the schools; and, if not, why not?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I thank the member for the opportunity to highlight the fact that this Government has put more additional funding into learning support in the five years that we’ve been in Government than the last Government, supported by the ACT Party, did in the nine years that they were in Government.

Chris Baillie: Will the Minister ensure that the Ministry of Education either provides schools and teachers evidence that innovative learning environments improve numeracy and literacy skills for students, or stop insisting that schools use their property funding to build more?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The member clearly hasn’t listened to any of the answers that I’ve previously given. The Ministry of Education does not require schools to do that.

Question No. 9—Police

9. Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa) to the Minister of Police: Did he receive any recommendation from the Police regarding the asset value threshold in the proposed Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill; if so, what was that recommendation?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Police): Yes, Police recommended there be no threshold but advised that a $10,000 threshold would raise the fewest operational challenges if a threshold was considered necessary for New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 compliance. The bill was drafted with a $30,000 threshold, which is consistent with the existing thresholds contained within the Act. We’re actively seeking to hear expressions and views on this matter through the select committee process and we’re approaching that with an open mind about what the threshold should be, if in fact there should be one.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Why does the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill contain a $30,000 threshold as opposed to a $10,000 threshold per his officials’ recommendation?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Because the $30,000 threshold is the current threshold for serious criminal activity in the law as standing today, passed by a National Government.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Did the Minister recommend to Cabinet that a $10,000 threshold, as advised by Police, should be contained within the bill?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The views of the Police were canvassed in the paper that went to Cabinet that contained the views of the Police, the views of Crown Law Office, and the views of the Ministry of Justice. The Cabinet ultimately made the decision to proceed with the existing $30,000 threshold, as is in the current Act, but we’re certainly open to hearing different views about that during the select committee process.

Hon Mark Mitchell: So, just for clarity, is the Minister telling the House that, as police Minister, he advocated for a $10,000 threshold to be contained within the bill, as recommended by the Police—because they said it would be more difficult to operationalise at a $30,000 threshold—and he was not listened to?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: No. In fact, I think the Police raised some compelling arguments in favour of a lower threshold. But that would require more significant changes to the existing primary legislation as passed by the previous National Government. It would involve reconsidering whether the threshold that was put in place by the previous National Government of $30,000 for significant criminal offending should be changed.

Question No. 10—Māori Development

10. TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour) to the Minister for Māori Development: What recent events has he attended to celebrate te reo Māori?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister for Māori Development): Kia ora. Mr Speaker, tuatahi ka mihi atu ki ngā tāngata katoa mō ō rātou kaha ki te whakanui i tō tātou reo. He roa tonu te huarahi e haere ana, engari e tika ana kia mihia tātou katoa mō te kaha o tērā wiki.

[Mr Speaker, firstly I’d like to acknowledge everyone for their efforts to celebrate our language. The path we’re travelling is long, but it’s appropriate that we all acknowledge each other for the strength last week.]

Just congratulating everyone who made an effort with te reo Maōri last week. I was privileged to host the 50th commemoration of the 1972 te reo Māori petition on the steps of Parliament last week with our Deputy Prime Minister. Alongside colleagues and members around the House, I was proud to see the thousands of New Zealanders who came together to celebrate this important milestone in the revitalisation of te reo Māori. The petition, which was signed 50 years ago by 33,000 New Zealanders, was the start of the movement that has seen te reo Māori become an official language of Aotearoa and a valued part of our national identity. Can I congratulate Te Taura Whiri for putting together the day—it was a wonderful day.

Tāmati Coffey: What other events did the Minister attend?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: On 15 September, I attended an event in New Plymouth which celebrated the efforts of Hana Te Hemara Jackson, a Ngā Tamatoa leader and wahine toa who presented the Māori language petition to Parliament. We should never forget the efforts of some of our Māori language champions who fought for the revitalisation of our language and the difficulties that they face. It was a fabulous evening, a fabulous night.

Kaua rawa e wareware ki ngā mahi taku Aunty Hana i a mātou ki a Ngā Tamatoa me tā rātou whawhai mō tō tātou reo.

[Don’t ever forget the efforts of my Aunty Hana with us in Ngā Tamatoa and their fight for our language.]

Tāmati Coffey: What reports has he seen on the support of New Zealanders for te reo Māori?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I’ve seen recent data that indicates 83 percent of Kiwis believe te reo Māori is an important component of our national identity. This is consistent with the Government’s ambition that by 2040, 85 percent of New Zealanders will value te reo Māori as a key part of our national identity.

Tāmati Coffey: What is the Minister’s current focus in supporting efforts to increase the use of te reo Māori amongst New Zealanders?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: We believe—the Government believes—learning Māori should be about being inclusive, not exclusive. In order to increase the use of te reo Māori, we need to see people shift from being passive supporters to becoming active users. A good starting point for all New Zealanders who want to embrace te reo is Te Taura Whiri’s website, which provides free language learning tools.

Kaua rawa e wareware ko te reo mō te katoa o tēnei motu.

[Don’t ever forget that the language is for this entire country.]

Tāmati Coffey: What progress has been made on the Maihi Karauna?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I think we’re well on our way to achieving our 2040 goal of having 1 million speakers of basic te reo Māori. I just want to be clear with the House: what does that mean? That means people being able to say a few words. In 2018, 907,000 Kiwis aged 15 or over could speak about basic things in te reo Māori, up from 770,000 on the 2016 baseline. People get a little bit confused because we’re not talking about conversational Māori, which is about 185,000. So there is a long way to go in terms of getting the conversational reo up, but everyone’s finding their way with the language, and I congratulate everyone in the House who’s making an effort. Kia ora tātou.

Question No. 11—Women

11. JAN LOGIE (Green) to the Minister for Women: Is she concerned that the gender pay gap increased recently to 9.2 percent and that Statistics New Zealand did not report on the ethnic minority gender pay gap altogether?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister for Women): No gender pay gap is acceptable, and while there is a gender pay gap there is more work to be done. There is no single fix to the gender pay gap, and the collection of good data is one of the many tools needed to fix it, along with the Equal Pay Amendment Act; Te Mahere Whai Mahi Wāhine, the Women’s Employment Action Plan; reducing the public sector pay gap; and implementing fair pay agreements. I’m advised Stats New Zealand has been considering this as a potential publication in the future. However, in order to ensure reliable and accurate data on ethnic pay gaps, Stats New Zealand needs to undertake a significant volume of work to assess, develop, and define the ethnic pay gap while ensuring those statistics remain internationally comparable.

Jan Logie: What is the Government going to do this term to reduce the pay gap which means wāhine Māori and Pasifika women get paid around 25 percent less than Pākehā men?

Hon JAN TINETTI: This Government knows that the ethnic communities are often the most marginalised group in the labour market, and that is why Māori and Pasifika women have been identified as two priority groups within Te Mahere Whai Mahi Wāhine, the Women’s Employment Action Plan, which sets out the actions that we intend to take as a Government. Having said that, we do look at the progress that has been made in lowering the Public Service gender pay gap by shining the light on what did exist in a major way. While it has come down, again there is still more work to be done.

Jan Logie: Does she think it’s adequate progress for the Government to still be developing a work programme for pay transparency when it was signalled last term that this work was to be started soon and the gender pay gap has only decreased by half a percent over the last six years?

Hon JAN TINETTI: The Government has agreed in principle to investigate whether developing a pay transparency regime would be effective in New Zealand, but we do have to be very careful about this. We have looked at other countries and other jurisdictions in the world, and we do know that pay transparency reporting is not a silver bullet. It is one tool in the tool box that will help us in eliminating pay gaps. We do need to be very, very careful about unintended consequences that may come from rushing through any regime.

Jan Logie: Is it true that international research shows pay gap reporting would reduce the gender pay gap?

Hon JAN TINETTI: We do know that other countries have brought in pay gap reporting, but I would like to point out that the pay gaps in those countries are generally higher than in New Zealand. So that speaks to the point that pay gap reporting isn’t the only panacea to the gender pay gap. That’s why we must undertake a thorough, thorough policy process to ensure that we are not creating unintended consequences.

Jan Logie: What assurances will she give women fighting for equality in the workplace that her Government is prioritising our right to equal pay considering we are approaching the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act and women are still being underpaid by as much as $35 a week?

Hon JAN TINETTI: I can assure all women in this country that this is a priority for both me and the Ministry for Women, but I will point to the work that this Government has undertaken already that has made a significant impact for women in the workplace. We have, as I’ve said, released Te Mahere Whai Mahi Wāhine, the Women’s Employment Action Plan; we have the Public Service Pay Gap Action Plan 2021-2024; and we are implementing fair pay agreements, which will make a big difference to all women in the workplace.

Question No. 12—Education (School Operations)

12. ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour) to the Associate Minister of Education (School Operations): How is the Government supporting students who have experienced lost learning opportunities as a result of disruptions from COVID-19?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Associate Minister of Education (School Operations)): We know that young people have missed some critical and crucial time in the classroom throughout the last 2½ years, and we need to address the impact of that head-on. That’s why last week we announced putting $20 million towards additional teaching and tutoring services, ensuring that all our tamariki receive the supports that they need.

Angela Roberts: What programmes will be funded through this announcement?

Hon JAN TINETTI: This will include exam preparation, workshops, tutorials and homework, and mentoring. We know that schools are best placed to make the best decisions to target the funding where it is needed most, and we are supporting them to do just that.

Angela Roberts: Who will benefit from these additional services?

Hon JAN TINETTI: $17.4 million will help years 7 to 13 students to catch up on learning they may have missed due to disruptions caused by COVID-19.

Erica Stanford: Why has she waited until just a few weeks before NCEA exams start to provide additional learning support to students who’ve experienced lost learning for the last 2½ years?

Hon JAN TINETTI: We know from what schools are telling us that this is a critical time, and so that’s why we are responding right now with a very, very good package.

Angela Roberts: What other support is being made available to students?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Over $2 million will support programmes designed specifically for Māori and Pacific students. We will expand existing community-led programmes across the motu that can target the specific needs of Māori and Pacific NCEA learners in their community. Altogether, these community-led programmes will be able to help at least 2,245 year 11 to 13 Māori and Pacific learners.

Angela Roberts: How will this support Māori and Pacific students?

Hon JAN TINETTI: That was the question that I’ve just answered, but if we want to reiterate that, it is continuing the progress that we’ve already seen with the work that we put in at the end of 2021. It has made a big difference. We know it’s made a big difference to our Māori and Pacific learners, and we are really looking forward to seeing further progress in that area.

Urgent Debates Declined

COVID-19 Response—Reasons for Northland Alert Level 3 in 2021

SPEAKER: I’ve received a letter from David Seymour seeking to debate under Standing Order 399 the reasons given for putting Northland into alert level 3 for 11 days in 2021. While this matter is not recent, since it refers to events last year, there have been new developments of the sort contemplated in Speaker’s ruling 205/4. At the heart of Mr Seymour’s application is his view that a Minister should have clarified or further explained his earlier statements on the alert level shift in Northland once more information came to light. The absence of action is not a particular case of recent occurrence for which an urgent debate can be held—see Speakers’ ruling 205/5. If a member wishes to know whether a Minister will take an action, then written or oral questions are the way to pursue the matter, not an urgent debate. The application is declined.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Point of order. I seek leave to table my letter requesting that debate.

SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is none. It may be tabled.

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

Bills

Imprest Supply (Second for 2022/23) Bill

Introduction

SPEAKER: I understand it is the Government’s intention to introduce an imprest supply bill.

CLERK: Imprest Supply (Second for 2022/23) Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: The bill is set down for first reading immediately.

First Reading

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Imprest Supply (Second for 2022/23) Bill be now read a first time.

SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Imprest Supply (Second for 2022/23) Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 75

New Zealand Labour 64; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Sharma.

Noes 45

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Bills

Appropriation (2022/23 Estimates) Bill

Third Reading

Bills

Imprest Supply (Second for 2022/23) Bill

Second Reading

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Appropriation (2022/23 Estimates) Bill be now read a third time and that the Imprest Supply (Second for 2022/23) Bill be now read a second time.

This is the final act in what most people think of as the Budget debate, but it has the initial bonus of also being the debate on the Imprest Supply (Second for 2022/23) Bill. I will address that matter first before moving on to the appropriations.

The imprest supply bill provides interim parliamentary authority for expenditure decisions made, or to be made, by the Government, through to the end of the financial year, that are additional to the amounts in the 2022/23 Estimates. They are a normal part of the parliamentary Budget process. The second imprest bill provides for any operating or capital spending decisions, including pre-commitments against future Budget allowances and expenditure occurred against the between-Budget contingency. It also covers fiscally neutral adjustments which increase one appropriation but decrease another, confirmation of expense transfers, increases in demand-driven appropriations, and draw-downs of existing tagged contingency. Provision is also made for any risks that may materialise, for example, matters covered in the risks to fiscal forecast chapter of the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update.

The amount requested in the Imprest Supply (Second for 2022/23) Bill is $28.5 billion. This is significantly lower than the $41 billion requested in last year’s second imprest supply bill and the $56.5 billion requested in the 2021 second imprest bill. The difference is largely due to a reduction in the size of the Government’s general contingency buffer to reflect the change in circumstances. As the Government’s COVID-19 response evolves and we move from our elimination framework through to minimisation and protection, it is prudent to reduce the size of this buffer. The reduction is also consistent with the closure of the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund. Although the amount sought in the bill signals a move closer to pre-COVID imprest levels, members can rest assured the buffer is sufficient to cover unexpected spending which may occur in this financial year. All expenditure incurred under the interim authority of the second imprest bill will of course need to be appropriated by Parliament before the end of the financial year, as is the case every year, and that is done through the Appropriation (2022/23 Supplementary Estimates) Bill, which will be introduced on Budget day 2023.

Just before I move off the question of imprest supply, it is important to note that, historically, the level of authority is rarely met in terms of what is actually expended. So for example, in the 2021/22 year, there was slightly more—$25 million in the operating expenses—but under capital there was only $2 billion as compared to nearly $13 billion that was authorised. Similarly, for capital injections, for the $2 billion, there was only around $500 million. So it’s an authority—it’s not a direction—to spend, and all spending that comes under the imprest authority ends up back with the House through the appropriation bills.

It is with great pleasure that I stand to speak in what is effectively the final stage in this debate of the Budget. I stand proud of Budget 2022. It was a Budget that was put together during a very challenging time for the New Zealand economy. When we put this Budget together, we were trying to balance three important things. The first of those was making sure that we began the journey to more of a stable fiscal position. As all Governments around the world have had to do through COVID, we have had to borrow money to make sure that New Zealand got through. I stand proudly by the Government’s record of getting alongside New Zealanders to make sure that they could get through COVID-19. Be that the more than $20 billion that we put in place to support people through the wage subsidy scheme or the resurgence support payments, be that the more than $10 billion of additional health spending that we put in place to make sure that our health system could support New Zealanders to stay healthy. While others in this House change their position, take on hindsight economics as their guiding light, we stand proudly beside what we have done. It is worth noting again that Standard & Poor’s, when they reaffirmed New Zealand’s local currency credit rating and our foreign currency rating, they said this: New Zealand has weathered the pandemic “better than most countries in terms of health, fiscal, and economic outcomes.” That is down to the hard work of New Zealanders and the resilience of New Zealanders through a very difficult couple of years, and we, as a Government, have stood alongside New Zealanders in doing that.

In returning New Zealand to a more stable fiscal position, this means making sure that our level of public debt stays low. On a comparable measure, New Zealand’s public debt remains under 20 percent of GDP. When we look—

Hon David Bennett: What was it when you started?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —at where we were—Mr Bennett, our level of debt is lower than what National left us. Is that right? Is that correct, Mr Bennett? Have we got New Zealand’s level of debt lower than what National left us? Because that is the truth. That level of debt, when we compare it to those countries around the world like the UK, like the US, like Australia, it means that we have a position to be able to deal with the challenges that the world will throw at us that is stronger and better than most other economies.

We also, in this Budget, are able to see a forecast that sees us return to surplus in the 2024/25 fiscal year. That achievement will mean that we have got ourselves back into surplus five years after COVID. Not the six years that the previous Government took after the global financial crisis (GFC), when, arguably, the dip in the economy was not as large as what it was from the first hit of COVID, and that comes from a careful and balanced approach to spending. Not the austerity cuts preferred by the National Party, but continued sustained investment in health and in education while being careful with our spending and getting ourselves back into surplus as soon as we possibly can. So that was an important part of this Budget, getting the balance of that right. Then, alongside that, was supporting New Zealanders with the immediate cost of living issues. That meant extending out the fuel excise duty cut, that meant making sure that half-price public transport was put in place, and then a cost of living payment targeted to the New Zealanders that once upon a time the National Party cared about, those earning less than $70,000 who didn’t get the support from our 1 April package. That has made a big difference for those people. And, on Budget night, we were able to pass the legislation to begin to reform our supermarket sector so we genuinely will have competition and make sure that New Zealanders don’t pay so much for their food.

The third element was to continue the Government’s programme to provide to New Zealanders the basis for a high-wage, low-emission economy that provides security to New Zealanders in good times and bad. It means taking on some tough issues. It means making sure that the health system actually operates in the interests of all New Zealanders, an issue kicked down the road by previous Governments. We weren’t prepared to do that, and we’ve invested significantly in the health sector. It means carrying on with our reforms of our planning system, of three waters—the issues that the Opposition would prefer to ignore; they’d prefer to make sure they didn’t address. But on this side of the House we have done that. We continue to invest in those businesses and get alongside those sectors where those high-wage jobs exist, so there is further investment in skills and in training. I want to echo the words of the Minister of Education from earlier in question time today; I am immensely proud of the fact that apprenticeships are a priority under this Government. I remember after the GFC when the National Party didn’t care about apprentices, they didn’t care that they were laid off. They were the first to go—

Nicola Willis: Keep talking about the past.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —and the National Party did nothing. I’m talking about today, Ms Willis. I’m talking about the fact that we’ve got 50,000 people who’ve gone through the Apprenticeship Boost, and 200,000 people who have benefited from trade training opportunities provided by this Government. That is what this Budget has done. It is invested in the young people of New Zealand and it is invested in making sure that we address the long-term issues.

One of the major one of those is around our infrastructure deficit, and this Budget confirms $60 billion worth of spending over the next five years in our infrastructure. That party opposite did nothing to make sure that our infrastructure kept up to date. Our population grew wildly and the National Party did nothing.

I am hugely optimistic about the New Zealand economy. It has been resilient through COVID and our prospects are strong. Our borders are back open, tourists are returning, international students are returning, our exporters are continuing to earn good money internationally on our behalf. As a Government, we will stick with New Zealanders. We’re not the fair-weather friends the National Party are. We stick with them. We make sure we are there in tough times and we’re there in good times, to make sure that all New Zealanders benefit from a stronger economy. I am immensely proud of this Budget and of New Zealanders.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): When will this Labour Government learn that New Zealanders will judge them not by what they promise to spend but by what they actually deliver? When will that Minister learn that it doesn’t matter how many times he says he’s spending more, it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t deliver more? When will that Minister learn that after five years of failure across the key areas he came to Government on, New Zealanders have learnt to read between the lines of his promises?

Actually, when we look at these Estimates of Appropriations, we see the biggest spending Budget in New Zealand’s history. And this comes at a time when everyday New Zealanders are going backwards. Their real wages have declined by 3.7 percent in the past year. We had the amusing, if somewhat startling, contest today in question time where the Minister of Finance denied that fact, despite the fact that that is a fact provided to me by the Parliamentary Library, where we have a Minister who is seemingly in denial about the fact that prices in New Zealand are rising at the fastest rate they have in 32 years, while wages are not keeping up. For the past eight quarters—that is, for the past two years—prices have been rising faster than wages.

So the context for that Minister’s Budget is a cost of living crisis. And what does his Budget offer to solve that? Does it address the underlying drivers of productive growth? Does it address the underlying drivers of inflation? No, it doesn’t. It proposes more band-aids, more bureaucracy, more spending, no targets, no results.

And if you want a case in point for that, let’s take the cost of living payment, because that is the absolute epitome of a band-aid. The Minister of Finance is smug enough to believe that New Zealanders who are beset by a cost of living crisis will thank him for doing something for just three months—for a $350 payment—when they know that that is the same Minister who is planning to fund his spending by a raid on their KiwiSaver accounts and who, in the next couple of years, is proposing a jobs tax that will levy every single employee such that the average taxpayer will be paying $800 more on tax. And yet the Minister of Finance expects those same New Zealanders to turn around and say, “Thank you so much for that $350 temporary band-aid payment.”

Well, actually, what New Zealanders are saying when they look at this Budget is “Why is it that the Government can’t be just a little bit more careful with its spending? Why is it that they were so sloppy that the cost of living payment ended up going to more than 6,000 people who explicitly told the IRD that their mailing address was overseas?” Well, here’s a clue: when you tell the IRD that your address is overseas, that means you’re not a resident in New Zealand and you shouldn’t be receiving the cost of living payment.

This is the same Budget that proposes massive spend-ups on areas that New Zealanders have made very clear that they do not wish to be prioritised. The billions of dollars for three waters reforms—that is adamantly opposed by dozens of New Zealand councils, that is opposed by tens of thousands of New Zealanders, who see it for what it is: a bureaucratic centralising answer to a problem that will see more inefficiency and more Byzantine governance structures.

And this is the same Budget that proposes to put billions of dollars into a health restructuring at a time when our front-line health workforce have had to cope with two years of global pandemic—a workforce who are exhausted and who have been told that the priority for this Government is another shuffling of the bureaucratic deck chairs. This at a time when our emergency rooms are overflowing—literally overflowing. Here in Wellington, we have had more than one person, more than two people, more than three people waiting more than a day for treatment in their emergency room; where we have had fewer elective surgeries delivered and where we have seen immunisation rates decline.

In all of this, we are expected to believe “Don’t worry, we’ll just pour some billions more into the bureaucracy and you’ll see some results.”—this despite five years of failure. And here we have a Government that says, “Oh well, look, we’re going to get better outcomes by spending 70 percent more.” Because you’ve heard the rhetoric from the Minister of Finance, who says—his actual phrase was “We’re going to begin the journey to more stable fiscal management. We’re going to begin the journey.”

So let’s be clear about where that journey is at. This year, the Government intends to spend $51 billion more than National did in its last year of Government. That is a 70 percent increase in spending. So it feels fair to me to ask, “Where’s the 70 percent increase in services? Where’s the 70 percent increase in results?” Actually, as far as I can see, we’ve got fewer children attending school, we’ve got declining literacy and numeracy rates, we have declining amounts of elective surgery, we have declining waiting times in our emergency rooms, and wherever I care to look, I see failure. We have a State house waiting list that has quadrupled. Last night, around 4,000 families put their children to sleep in a motel room. And yet we are to believe that this Government should be trusted with spending 70 percent more.

And let’s be clear about what’s fuelling that spending. It is being fuelled by the taxes from hard-working New Zealanders, because this year the tax take will be up $41 billion from what it was when National left office—$41 billion more. It is actually clear why that’s happening. It’s because with inflation roaring ahead, New Zealanders are being pushed into hard tax brackets, such that typical New Zealanders are paying more tax than ever. So they’re being robbed twice: once, whenever they face a price at the supermarket, at the pump, when they pay their rent; and the second time, when they go to the tax man.

And what is this Government’s response to that? This Government’s response to that is to see how it can sneakily devise more taxes so that it can continue to fuel the big spend-up. And we’ve had the unedifying spectacle of the IRD taking up to Ministers proposals for a KiwiSaver tax, and Ministers, instead of having the good judgment to say, “Well, you know, this will wipe $103 billion off New Zealanders’ savings; maybe that’s not a good idea.”—instead of Ministers having the good judgment to agree with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, who said, “We don’t think this is a good idea because it will lead to declining savings funds.”, instead Ministers licked their lips with glee at the thought of $250 million more in annual revenue.

So we have a situation in this Budget where we have a Government that is on an out-of-control spending track and that has lost all sight of delivery. And I would put to you, Mr Speaker, that my words at the beginning of this speech are words that this Government should listen to, because I think New Zealanders are a bit sick of Government by press release, Government by panicked reaction. It is not enough to put out a press release saying you care, with a big number attached; what New Zealanders want to see is that things improve as a result. If you want a really good example of that, look at mental health. A lot of people believed this Government when they said that they cared about mental health and they were going to do something about it, when they got that press release saying that $1.9 billion would be spent. And yet, when I talk to parents in this city here in Wellington, when I talk to New Zealanders across the country, they tell me that it is harder than ever to access specialist mental health services. They tell me it is harder than ever to get the help they need for their children and loved ones.

So this is a Budget that will take New Zealanders further backwards into more debt, more spending, more tax, less delivery, more band-aids, more bureaucracy—it’s more Labour. They’ve already had five years of failure and this Budget is just the cherry on a cake that New Zealanders don’t want.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): Listening to that speech from the finance spokesperson from the National Party, you’d think that spending is out of control in this country. This year’s forecast, according to the Treasury, of Government expenditure, as a percentage of GDP, is 31.6 percent of GDP, core Government expenditure. What was it in 2013? It was 32 percent of GDP. Under the National Party, after they had been in Government for five years, spending, as a percentage of GDP, was 32 percent of GDP. This year, it is 31.6 percent of GDP.

We’ve weathered the COVID storm. We’ve come out the other side. Vaccine mandates outside of the health workforce are on the way out. Mask mandates are already gone. The trees are blooming. It’s looking like it’s going to be a good spring and a good summer. There’s so much good news around; I can’t believe the negativity of the other side.

We’ve not just had one of the best outcomes from COVID in the world, we’ve probably had the best in terms of the number of lives that have been saved and the state of the economy. We heard today from the Minister of Finance, as the acting Prime Minister at the moment, about how New Zealand’s economy is already quite significantly larger than it was pre-COVID, and so much better than most other countries are, relative to how their performance is, compared with before COVID.

Even last week, we had great statistics out. Growth is up. Unemployment is very, very low at 3.3 percent. Inflation has peaked. Yes, inflation has been hard—it has been hard; it continues to be hard for people. People aren’t fooled by the rhetoric from the National Party. They see these terrible inflationary peaks overseas: Europe and their problems with their energy sector—spiralling cost of living there, which makes inflation here look low relative, and it is. Unemployment is low at 3.3 percent.

The galling misrepresentation of earnings by the finance spokesperson and deputy leader of the National Party—she quotes some information that she said she got from the Parliamentary Library. I have the official statistics dated 17 August 2022 at 10.45 a.m., if you’re interested, from Statistics New Zealand. It’s titled: “Weekly earnings rise as more in full-time employment”, and it records that median weekly earnings from wages and salaries rose 8.8 percent in the year to June 2022—8.8 percent increase in median weekly earnings from wages and salary, ahead of inflation. Even though it’s true inflation has been high, it has peaked.

Debt is low. New Zealand’s net debt is lower than in Australia, in the US, in Japan, in the UK, and in just about any European country you care to name. New Zealand’s Government debt is lower and peaks on a net debt basis at less than 20 percent of GDP.

A stunning result for our country that shows prudent fiscal management of this country since the last irresponsible fiscal leader of this country, who was, decades ago, the Rt Hon Robert Muldoon, under National. Every Government since then in New Zealand—Labour and National—has been fiscally responsible. It was the Douglas-Lange Government that got it under control, the Bolger Government continued, the Clark-Cullen Government continued, the Key-English Government continued, and this Government is too. There has not been a fiscally irresponsible Government in this country for decades, and it does not behove the Opposition well to pretend that we are, when Standard & Poor’s and other ratings agencies say exactly the opposite and record that, in the face of this incredible challenge brought on by COVID, we have good outcomes in our health result, our fiscal result—that’s the Government’s borrowings—and in the economic outcome for the country.

On delivery, I don’t know what planet Nicola Willis has been living on, but house building has doubled under this Government. The number of houses being built every year has literally doubled under this Government, after the woeful housing crisis left behind by the last Government. They never managed to reform the Resource Management Act (RMA). They didn’t pull any of the levers that we have in the RMA. No fast track. They did help us with upzoning legislation recently. After the global financial crisis (GFC), they cut the number of apprentices being trained.

Chris Bishop: No, we didn’t.

Hon DAVID PARKER: You did. The number of apprentices trained after the GFC, the funding for that was cut by the austerity Budgets—

Chris Bishop: Absolute rubbish.

Hon DAVID PARKER: That is exactly true, and it’s why, when we’ve taken the opposite approach—I was here when Phil Goff was criticising the National Government, post-GFC for cutting apprenticeship funding, which was one of the reasons why there was such a reliance on overseas labour to rebuild Christchurch, because not enough apprentices had been trained in New Zealand.

So, in contrast, we have had 200,000 extra people through trade training; 50,000 of whom have been apprentices, many of those apprentices in the building trades. That’s why not only has the number of houses being built in New Zealand doubled and we’re overcoming this housing crisis and rents in Auckland are lower than the rate of inflation, because supplies, at long last, are starting to catch up; that’s also why we’ve been able to have a record public house build which we’re building more public houses after the last Government sold them off and left a lower stock of public housing when they left—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Who to? Tell the whole story.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Now, Michael Woodhouse says, “Tell the whole story.” The whole story is that you do sometimes demolish a house to build more, but we haven’t sold them off and ended up with a lower housing stock than we started with. We on this side are building more public houses than have been built since the 1970s, and public housing stock is going up.

The Budget deficit is already under control. You can see that from the Budget documents. Of course there was a large deficit as we supported businesses and households through the COVID crisis. But that is behind us. We return to surplus five years after COVID; compared with National taking six years after the GFC to return to surplus.

I want to say a little bit about exports. We had lots of difficult decisions to make during COVID. We had to, effectively, ration the amount of moving around during lockdowns, and we decided that we needed to prioritise our export sectors, and we did. As a consequence, notwithstanding COVID, our merchandise exports are up—and our primary sector exports, for the first time, have passed $50 billion.

Now, there’s a lot of reasons behind that, but one has been the enormous and stunningly successful trade agenda that this Government has had to reduce tariffs, to secure access to new markets. We’ve landed huge trade deals. We finished off the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and there was some good work put into that by National. We’ve done the China free-trade agreement (FTA) update. We’ve done the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. We’ve started and finished the EU FTA, we’ve started and finished the UK FTA, and they have helped us diversify our export sales channels. For the first time in a long, long time, sales of our exports to CPTPP countries are now higher than they are to China. This is a trade-diversification strategy that is working. We have improved secure access to G20 economies: Japan, Canada, Mexico, Germany, the UK, and Italy—none of whom we had secured trade relationships with until this Government got on the road and pursued trade agreements so successfully.

Our exporters have come to the party. They worked through COVID. We helped them with the air connectivity system to keep exports growing. We have supported 12,300 flights; 235,000 tonnes of high-value exports that would not have been carried to market otherwise.

So we’ve opened the door. We’ve kicked those trade doors open. We’ve enabled connectivity and supply lines to be maintained. Our clever exports have taken the gap and they have earned money for the economy. That’s one of the reasons why this economy is so strong under Labour.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Well, quite to the contrary from this Government’s smug and sanctimonious approach to the public finances, New Zealanders know that the country is going backwards under this Government. After five years, they can point to very little substantive achievement and very little to actually show to the New Zealand public what they have accomplished for the massive increase in Government spending.

Now, David Parker wants to tell the story that every Government since the 1984 to 1990 Labour Government has been fiscally disciplined and has paid down debt and been prudent and responsible. That is sort of true, apart from the last five years, when there has been a 67 percent increase in Government spending—a $51 billion increase in Government spending. That is an enormous sum of money—a 67 percent increase in Government spending—and I’d just put it to New Zealanders whether they are 67 percent better off for that increase in Government spending—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Are they 1 percent better off?

CHRIS BISHOP: —“Are they 1 percent better off?”, as Michael Woodhouse says—and I would say that the answer is indisputably no. They are not 67 percent better off. There hasn’t been a 67 percent reduction in child poverty. There hasn’t been a 67 percent increase in hip operations or cancer treatment access or a reduction in emergency department wait times. In fact, emergency department wait times are worse—far worse.

Dr Shane Reti: Every health metric.

CHRIS BISHOP: Dr Shane Reti makes the excellent point that every health metric is worse.

Dr Shane Reti: Choose one—any one you like.

CHRIS BISHOP: Choose any one—every single metric is worse. I want to talk briefly later on in my contribution about the housing market and about housing in New Zealand, because I can tell you something for free: housing is not 67 percent better off as a result of this Government’s fiscally ill-disciplined approach to the public finances.

On almost every metric you choose to measure it, things are going backwards in New Zealand and not getting better. The Minister of Finance says, “Oh, unemployment is at record lows.”—yes, it is. That’s true, and we welcome that—congratulations. But, of course, New Zealanders ask the question: why do we have record numbers of people who are under 25 who are on the job seeker benefit at a time of record low unemployment—I mean, riddle me that. How can that be? People know that it doesn’t make any sense, and they say that at a time of labour shortages and in a time when businesses up and down the motu are crying out for workers, we have a situation where the Government is prepared to let predominantly young New Zealanders languish on the job seeker benefit for year after year, and only the National Party has a plan to do something about that.

So, yep, unemployment is low, but what David Parker didn’t want to talk about in his contribution was that inflation is at a 30-year high and, for the first time in a very long time, New Zealanders are going backwards in terms of real wages. It’s a point that needs to be remembered and that the Government needs to be reminded of over and over again, because under the Key-English administration, which David Parker sometimes likes to wax positively about—

Rachel Brooking: Not very often.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, you sort of laugh at it, but he’s the one who was talking about it. I mean he gave quite a positive speech about the Key-English administration and how they were fiscally disciplined and this, that, and the other thing. Six months ago, he gave a speech about how the tax switch, which the Labour Party criticised strongly back in 2019—David Parker gave a speech to the Institute of Policy Studies, I think it was, at Victoria University, talking about how it was like a masterful sign of political communication. So you might sort of laugh at it, but you’re laughing at your own Minister.

David Parker needs to know that inflation is at a 30-year high, but wage growth is well behind that. In the Key-English administration, over the time of that Government’s time in office, wage growth was around about double the rate of inflation. In other words, year on year, Kiwis were getting ahead at double the rate of inflation, so when people got a pay rise and they compared that to inflation, they were getting ahead, and, of course, that flows through to superannuation rates as well, because the super is tied to 66 percent of the average after-tax wage. Now we are in a situation where that has reversed, and where inflation is running well ahead of wage growth as measured by the labour cost index (LCI).

Now, I’ve been an MP for eight years; in fact, I was reminded by my colleague Dr Shane Reti today that today is the eighth anniversary of the 2014 election, and what a great election it was.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Happy anniversary.

CHRIS BISHOP: Thank you very much, Michael Woodhouse. What a great election it was and a great Government that kept doing things well and didn’t waste money like this Government. But anyway, eight years ago, I can remember Grant Robertson turning up in Parliament and sitting right here, where Nicola Willis used to sit—I mean, he was actually at various different places on the front bench as he had a variety of different jobs. But anyway, Grant Robertson would be standing up and saying, “LCI growth, LCI growth, LCI growth.” He used to rant on about the labour cost index, which is, of course, a measure of wage inflation, and now, of course, when he’s in Government, Grant Robertson doesn’t want to talk about the labour cost index because it doesn’t suit him, because he knows that when you compare the LCI, which is wage growth, to inflation as measured by the CPI—the Consumers Price Index—for the last two years or so, the CPI is higher than the LCI.

So, in other words, New Zealanders in real terms are going backwards. You can look it up—I got the library to do it the other day, or a while ago—and you can compare all the times that Grant Robertson turned up to Parliament and used to talk about the LCI. Now, of course, he says, “Oh well, that’s one measure. We want to talk about other things.” Well, he wants to talk about other things because his preferred measure of wage inflation doesn’t show what he wants it to show; in fact, it shows that the country is going backwards.

Wages are not keeping up, and that is literally why we in Opposition say—and it is true, no matter what David Parker likes to think—that Kiwis are going backwards. I’d just encourage Government backbenchers and, in fact, Government Ministers, more likely—because there are some Labour backbenchers who get out and about around the country a little bit, sometimes. But Government Ministers are stuck down here in Wellington. They’re in their cloistered offices and they’re taking the VIP limos around the country, and I’d just encourage them to get out of the limo and talk to real people.

Hon Kiritapu Allan: Mostly we use rental cars, bro.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, Kiri Allan is someone who keeps it real. I’m not having too much of a go at Kiri Allan. She is someone from the East Coast. She knows that her people on the coast, up in Tai Rāwhiti—she knows that some of them are doing it extremely tough, so she’s out there keeping it real.

But some of her colleagues need to take a leaf out of her book, and get out of their VIP cars and limos and go and talk to real people, because what they’ll find is that people are doing it extremely tough. They stare at their wages not keeping up with inflation, and, in particular, they stare at a housing market that’s come down a little bit, but, of course, it’s rents that are up 140 bucks a week in the last five years.

I think it is a disgrace that this Government in the last five years has spent over a billion dollars on emergency housing. We see the scenes of squalor and human misery and the despair in Rotorua, and we see 26,000 people on the State house waiting list. Again, I remember that in 2014, 2015, and 2016, there was no wait-list. There was no wait-list. I can remember a time in New Zealand history when there was no State house wait-list, and that’s got to be the aim. The aim is to eradicate the State house waiting list.

I can remember the Labour members talking about how it was disgraceful that children were living in cars and that it was appalling that children were living in motels, and I would agree with them. But on every metric, housing is worse under this Government. Things are far worse than they ever were, with 4,000 households living in motels around the country. People who are in the most severe and urgent need of State housing are at A20 on the State house wait-list, in the bureaucratic parlance. People who are in the most severe and urgent need—we give them a number, and it’s A20. They used to wait 45 days for a State house, and 45 days is too long—we accept all that. They now wait 421 days for a State house—421 days. That’s a year and a bit—it’s well longer than a year. It’s a disgrace.

The Government says, “Oh, we’ve built more public houses than any other Government in New Zealand’s history.”, and the Prime Minister rants on about it: “We’ve built 10,000 houses.” That is wrong.

Let me give you the numbers. Kāinga Ora: since October 2017, has built 6,716 Kāinga Ora houses, but guess what? They’ve demolished 4,000, or they’ve sold them. They like to say that they’ve stopped selling State houses, but they haven’t stopped selling State houses. They’re demolishing them and they’re selling them. The net increase in new builds: 2,000. Where does the balance come from to get to the 10,000? Leases, redirects, and buy-ins. That’s not building new State houses; that’s just juking your numbers by buying more State houses. That’s not building State houses, so we shouldn’t believe the Prime Minister.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I’ll start by talking about what was good about this Budget, and it was, actually, quite significant—it was our first real climate Budget. After decades of the Green Party campaigning for action on climate change and proposing practical solutions for climate change, we, finally, have Government taking climate very seriously. I am proud of the work that my colleagues, co-leaders of the Green Party, have done as Ministers in this Government, despite the fact they’re outside Cabinet, despite the fact that it’s a Labour majority Government. They have been in there fighting their hardest for meaningful action on the single greatest issue of our time, and the single most important thing that we need to respond to. You know, $2.9 billion made great strides, and I just want to be totally honest: what the Government is doing on climate change, right now, is not enough. It is not even close to what we need to do to address the climate crisis.

It’s not just the climate crisis. We have a biodiversity crisis. And quite intertwined with that, we have an inequality crisis. To be honest, the Labour majority Government is just tinkering; they’re not doing anything remotely like transformation. In part, it’s just evident from the debate that we’re having here in this House today, it’s a debate about the wrong issues in many ways, about the wrong solutions. We’re still having the debate that started in the framing of the 1980s. We had the Hon David Parker—who I really admire, and I think he works very hard—he was extolling the virtues of the 1984 Labour Government who, unfortunately, started us down this track of a Government approach that was actually undermining Government and undermining our collective public assets. Of course, it got much, much worse in 1991—don’t get me wrong, the National Government in the 1990s definitely made it much worse.

But here we are, we’re still debating, we still have Labour saying, “Don’t worry, don’t worry, we’re not spending any money. Debt is really low. We’ve got less debt than all these other countries in the rest of the world. And don’t worry, we’re not spending too much money. And growth is back, growth is up.” And, of course, the National Party’s scaremongering, saying, “Oh, this Government’s so terrible.” Now, they got a few things right: there is a problem with delivery, and public services could be much better. But they haven’t got a single realistic solution to that problem, because all of the policies the National Party are promising will actively make those issues work. Indeed, the fact that the Labour Government is so concerned about being attacked over Government spending, debt, and wanting to prove GDP is up, rather than measuring what really matters, rather than investing in the things that we need to invest in to address the inequality crisis to help us transform our society and our economy so we can live in harmony with nature, so we can have a stable climate for our children—because, right now, our children need us to be responsible.

We are already seeing the impacts of the climate crisis. I mean, this year, the extreme weather events around the world—the floods, the droughts—it’s only 2022. We haven’t even hit 1.5 degrees increase in warming, and we’re on track for way more than that. There will be some in this House who will say, “Oh, why should we do our part? We shouldn’t do anything. Little New Zealand—we’re just a small number of people, we don’t need to do anything.” That’s what they’ll say. “Oh, it’s the big polluters: it’s the United States and it’s China.” And they’re right. But, on a per capita basis, we are one of the worst. I would never imagine them arguing we couldn’t be the world champions in rugby because we’re a small country, or that we couldn’t have the first person to summit Mount Everest. That’s the true Kiwi spirit. We care about our planet, we care about our people, and we want to pull our weight in the world against this fight. This fight for life—we want to be on the right side for our children and grandchildren.

Now, the biggest barrier—like, we can have this, we can have a New Zealand where children are not in poverty, and where everyone has a secure, dry, warm home. We can have that. And we can have communities where people are able to access everything they need to access, to have that green, open space; schools in walking distance; kids able to walk and cycle to school; and frequent, clean, electric buses and trains available to people. All of that is entirely possible, and there are huge, huge advantages to quality of life from embracing this different approach. But the true barrier to us achieving this is vested interests, who have profited and continue to profit from the status quo, all right. And those vested interests are driving the political debate to try and limit what Government can do with its Budget, right. And that’s why we hear about the limited debt and, you know, “We’re not spending too much”, “You’re spending too much”—all of this debate is set up to undermine people’s faith in us, together as a people, to work together to deliver the outcomes that we need.

They’re doing that—they’re diving and conquering—because they’re saying, “Oh, if you’re struggling, if you’re struggling out there, blame the poor people. It’s the beneficiaries.” We’re going to hear this again, from the National and the ACT parties, in this debate. “It’s the people on the jobseeker’s benefit—they’re the problem. They’re the real problem that the middle class should be worried about.” All while they argue against any policy that would dare touch the wealthy elite who are passing down their wealth through hereditary policies—we’re right back to the aristocracy. But “It’s just the market.” The market has decided who’s best, rather than the divine right of kings. It’s the market and the banks, and “We’re going to ensure that that those people never have to contribute to the collective, that they continue to own their many, many, many homes.” And, you know, God forbid they should pay some fair share of capital—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ms Genter, we’ve got three minutes to go now, so I’ve tried to encourage you just to—it is a wide-ranging debate, but, at some stage, could we just talk about the Budget.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —gains tax. Yes. Yes. Mr Speaker, I am referring to matters that have been debated, and will continue to be debated, by other parties in this House today, but we need to put it in the context so people can understand. Yes, we can work together to solve our collective challenges. We can do that with a fairer tax system—something that was missing in this Budget, sadly—one where those who own property that’s worth lots of money actually pay their fair share of the income they get from that property.

But the companies who are massively benefiting from the current COVID environment—so we had the Government paying Government support to companies. And, yes, we do see inflation and high prices. At the same time, we see a number of companies posting record profits in certain areas where we do not, and never will, have proper competition. Supermarkets, the energy companies, the petrol companies, the banks—they’re all making enormous profits. So it’s not those on the jobseeker benefit that are preventing the Government from delivering great services and addressing the housing crisis, it is those entrenched, vested interests that are represented by the National Party. They will continue to defend those interests. They will claim that to increase public spending and investment in the things we care about, like health, education, sustainable infrastructure—the type of infrastructure that will enable us to address the climate crisis, protect biodiversity, and address inequality, because all of these things are interrelated.

We can have liveable incomes for everyone in New Zealand. We can have healthy, warm housing. But we’re not going to get it through the economic settings in this Budget, and we’re definitely not going to get it from the National and ACT parties because they’re all about protecting that wealthy, entrenched elite. So as long as the debate continues to be about, “Oh, no, no, no, no. We’re not going to spend money; we’re going to limit Government debt. But we are going to spend money on climate and try to address our housing crisis without fundamentally changing the settings”, like through a capital gains tax or through a wealth tax, which would make the tax system fairer, which would help address both the demand side and the supply side of our housing crisis. If we don’t get proper investment in transport infrastructure that’s going to enable people and goods to move around with less carbon and with less cost, with less energy, then we won’t be able to address this crisis.

So the Green Party stands here as the only party that is going to address the things that matter most to New Zealanders: our environment, our children, and our future.

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Justice): Mr Speaker, this is the first time I’ve appeared before you so I’d be remiss if I didn’t say: congratulations, the member of Parliament for Ōhāriu, for your ascension to this role. We are very, very proud of you and we can see by your conduct in this House how you command the respect of both sides of this Chamber. So tēnā koe e te Kaiwhakawā.

Turning now to the debate at hand. Listening to the contributions this afternoon, and I feel like I’m living in a twilight zone, to be honest. Because when I woke up this morning, I looked at the rising sun, there were three little birds, and they were smiling at my doorstep. They were smiling because Budget 2022 has provided a case for optimism. Do you know why? Because our Government is building the most houses in Aotearoa since the 1970s. In fact, 220 homes in Gisborne, 100 in Whakatane, over 10,000 across the country.

More homes have been built in this past year than since records began. Budget 2022: an additional $20 billion was invested in housing initiatives and those three little birds singing sweetly at my doorstep reminded me that today is a day to be optimistic. It sounds like a cloud of doom has descended upon this House if you are to listen to the trite contributions from the Opposition.

But returning from the mighty East Coast this weekend and coming in to Wellington, I can tell you: in an electorate like mine that isn’t all paisley red—it’s an electorate comprised of hard-working New Zealanders from all walks of life—the sun is out. The masks are off and people are smiling. You can hear those little birds tweeting at our doorsteps. And I think that’s because our Government has supported the most New Zealanders into jobs. We’ve heard the contributions this afternoon: 50,000 New Zealanders—what a milestone for Aotearoa—have been supported by this Government into apprenticeships.

Here in Aotearoa, on the back of an economic crisis—a pandemic—there’s doom and gloom as far as you can look if you have only looked at the economic times in the early 2021s or the late 2021s or earlier this year. But nevertheless, and despite those storms, 50,000 New Zealanders partnered with the Government, they partnered with private enterprise, they pulled up their socks, they got upskilled, and they are working hard all throughout our country. We have, as a consequence, one of the lowest unemployment rates in the OECD: 3.3 percent.

Again, if you listen to the trite contributions of my friends on the other side of the House, you would think that we were heading nose first into a deep recession. But—and I can say this as a proud rural member for the mighty East Coast—this year, record agricultural exports, $53 billion, came into New Zealand’s economy; $53 billion.

Now, you know, I actually watched the spokesperson on finance from the opposite side of the House last week. She obviously had her pre-prepared lines as what she was going to say when the GDP figures on all of her estimations would come out and showed that we had entered into a technical recession. They were all ready to go, but that’s not what the books showed. GDP had lifted.

We’re experiencing growth, and albeit it is modest. You know, when you look at the backdrop that we’ve had over the last couple of years, I don’t think that many people could have anticipated where we’d be as a country right now.

I’m not trying to say that everything’s all perfect—of course it’s not. There is an inflation crisis across the world. We can look at the war in Ukraine; we understand the impact that that war, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has had on oil prices and, consequently, to electricity prices across the globe.

I sometimes look at the backdrop to what we’ve been operating in here in New Zealand in the last couple of years. To use a word—and I’ll take it from the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance: he used the word to describe the backdrop as being “a little chaotic” and I think that that’s fair.

But where we’ve gotten to today, I just want to be really clear—and we’ve heard expressions, actually, Hon David Parker gave a good example earlier and contributed to this House, a ray of numbers that showed the state of New Zealand’s economy. And the state that we’re in—with the backdrop that we’re in—is not as a consequence of an accident; this is a consequence of design.

Budget 2022 is the fourth Wellbeing Budget that has been introduced into this House—[Interruption] I hear groans from across the House. Why is it important that we measure more than just mere GDP? Because what matters is how people—we need to assess it, whether it’s the environmental outcomes, whether it’s the educational outcomes, whether it’s the cultural outcomes. New Zealand is more than just a buck in your back pocket. Because the economy doesn’t measure how New Zealanders are faring across the world. [Interruption] So I look on—I can still hear them—they’re so disturbed by the fact that we’re just not where they had anticipated we would be as a nation.

I watched our Minister of Finance diligently—and I call him an ardent student of former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Dr Michael Cullen. He is a diligent student of his, and what he did—and also in the relative high time of 2017, 2018 and that period of time when we see GDP year on year on year was growth, growth, growth: 2019 until we got to COVID.

And he would say to all the naysayers who were saying, “Spend more, spend more, spend more” and he did it. He refused to put his hand into his pocket any more than was required because he said there will be a rainy day. We went into this environment—and that we are still sort of coming through—with books that were balanced and steady and stable. We saw a Government that could invest because it had the flex within its balanced books to be able to make the investments that kept business afloat through COVID. And now, here we are.

Budget 2022 had to walk the tight balance to find economic security for now—and like we said, let’s be fair, inflation rates through the roof across the globe. So we had to find that balance for economic security for now. That’s when we saw those measures like the cost of living Payment: $350 for 2.1 million New Zealanders. We saw the pause on gas—on the petrol excise rates—25 cents for every litre at the petrol pump. We saw things like the extension of public transport, knowing that it was real costs like those that were hurting everyday New Zealanders.

So you saw some interim and temporary measures. But, as my friends from the Green Party just alluded to, we also know that whilst we are holding the line and doing what we need to to wrap around New Zealanders today, we have to focus on the future as well.

We saw over $2 billion to decide to combat climate change. I always lead into the mighty East Coast because, in my world, the be all and end all—I’m sure my friend Willow-Jean might try to tussle me out with Northland and up north there—but you know, what we are seeing in real time are the consequences of climate change playing out in our home towns. Climate adaptation isn’t something of tomorrow; it’s something that’s right now. So we are seeing the investment through our climate change funds—over $2 billion that has been set aside to enable that climate change adaptation.

We looked to all of those areas that New Zealanders are looking to for us to respond. I want to put on very briefly—oh look, it’s too late—just in the Justice portfolio, one of the biggest commitments that we make was access to justice for all New Zealanders. The New Zealand Law Society showed that we had been failing New Zealanders, particularly through legal aid, and that goes back to the Bazley report. Something I’m very proud of is that we’ve lifted those rates for legal aid, and it’s something that we’ll continue to do.

This is part of securing New Zealand’s future. We’ve done that on the backdrop of incredible grey clouds, but when I woke up this morning, I smiled at the rising sun because those three little birds were chirping merrily away.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, that’s a perfect example of what happens when a member stands up in this House and has no idea what to say. I want to inform the member that the cannabis referendum voted no, because I fear she may have broken the law before she gave that speech. You see, when a Minister of the Crown stands up and says that because of the Government’s Budget, she wakes up and sees tweeting little birdies outside her window, you know the country’s in trouble. But that is literally what has just happened here in this House.

Well, these are actually serious matters. We’re debating here today the Imprest Supply (Second for 2022/23) Bill, a bill that allows people to spend—and by people I mean the Government—

Hon Kiritapu Allan: Point of order. Just referring to the contribution and the allegations just made in this House that I, as a member of this Government, had been consuming illicit drugs—illegal drugs—in this House. I take that—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Did the member take offence?

Hon Kiritapu Allan: I did take offence to that comment.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Ha, ha! I withdraw and apologise. You know, there’s an old saying—

Dr Deborah Russell: Point of Order. Madam Speaker, I am offended that the member over there laughed through his apology. That undermined it. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Thank you, Madam Speaker. You know, there’s an old saying “They don’t like it up ’em”, and the problem that this Government has is that they are finding New Zealanders are increasingly fed up with them. You look at the right direction - wrong direction—New Zealanders have never been more negative. Morale’s never been lower. And it’s partly because you’ve got a Government that can’t take a joke, as we’ve just seen, but you’ve got a Government that increasingly is a joke. A Government that gets up in a serious Budget debate and talks about the fact that there are little birdies tweeting outside their window because of the Government’s Budget.

Well, just for the record, what we’re debating is an imprest supply bill and an appropriation (estimates) bill. This imprest supply bill allows this Government to spend $16 billion of operational spending, $11.5 billion of capital spending—and that is just for July, August, and the days in September until today. Just two and a half months, and it’s about $28 billion of hard-working taxpayers’ money being spent, and that builds up to an annual Budget where it’s forecast that this Government is going to spend $128 billion. And what’s that up from when this Government was first elected? It is $76 billion core Crown expenses. In just five years, we’ve got a Government that has increased expenditure by $52 billion. What does that mean? Well, that money either has to be borrowed and then paid off by your kids or paid for by taxes today. Perhaps that’s why taxation under this Government has gone from $76 billion when Labour was elected to $103 billion forecast this year—$103 billion of tax. That means, on income tax alone, the average Kiwi worker will pay over $12,000 of income tax—up from under $9,000 when this Government was elected. That’s a 30 percent increase in income tax under Labour—more than twice the rate of inflation.

People complain about a cost of living crisis. This Government complains about the cost of fuel, they complain about the war, they complain about COVID, they complain about every single thing that pushes up prices, but they never start with the man in the mirror. Grant Robertson should be looking at himself, because rampant expenditure and taxation under this Government are bleeding Kiwis dry. And are we getting results for it? No. Do we see shorter waiting lists in the hospitals or for social housing? Do we see more kids going to school and getting better results, investing in the future of this country with smarter, more educated citizens? No, we do not. Every single measure that this Government “invests in”—well, you see, they seem to be going backwards, and that’s a real shame.

This Government has strangled the supply of labour in this country to the point I spoke to a shopkeeper last week who’s worked 156 days straight to keep his shop open and this economy going so these guys can try and take the credit while they tax and tax and tax and spend in this Budget. The ACT Party opposes this imprest supply bill; we oppose this Estimates bill that appropriates money off New Zealanders. Why? Because we have a better way. ACT is the only party in this Parliament that has put up an alternative budget—an alternative budget for real change, and an alternative budget for real change that is based on some real values and is based on the values that hard work should equal reward, that people that wake up in the morning get their kids up, make their lunches, send them actually to go to school, and then go in and put a solid day maybe with an extra shift because their workplace is missing workers because this Government shut the border and can’t bring itself to let immigrants back in to work in the volumes they’re needed.

Those people deserve a better deal, and ACT’s alternative budget for real change would first and foremost stop the run-away spending. We’d reduce spending by $6.8 billion per year. Some people say, “Oh, you can’t do that.” Well, just remember from the start of this speech, we’ve got a Government that in five years has increased expenditure by $50 billion. The reductions in expenditure—not having 14,000 additional public servants with no better wellbeing results for New Zealanders; that makes a lot of sense. The idea that we should no longer be paying superannuation at 65 as people work and live longer than ever and rely on a dwindling number of students—this is the kind of real change and honest conversations about the future of our country that makes it a place that young people want to stay, because the alternative is that people leave.

People see that New Zealand’s productivity is falling behind the rest of the world. They look at countries like Lithuania, they look at the Czech Republic, they look at Slovenia, they look at countries like Estonia and Israel—all of which have just overtaken New Zealand, or are about to overtake New Zealand, in productivity. These countries we used to feel sorry for are now richer than us, and don’t even think about the gap with Australia—now almost $25,000 at the median salary. Do you know what that means for New Zealanders that are actually in touch with the world, not looking outside for the little birdies like the Minister, the Hon Kiritapu Allan, who spoke earlier? What it means is they see their kids saying, “You know what? I love New Zealand, but do I love it enough to earn $25,000 less than I otherwise could?” Increasingly the answer is no.

For the first time in decades, New Zealand had a net loss of people in the year to July—11,500 fewer people. It gives me enormous amusement—Deborah Russell, she’s making notes; she’s saying, “Oh, I think he might have got that one wrong there; I’ll really get him.” Actually, the fact is she’s wrong; people are leaving the country under this Labour Government, and it needs to change. And the change that is needed is real change, the kind of change where we cut taxes, where we cut wasteful spending, where we allow foreigners to move to New Zealand and fill roles so that companies can grow and expand and compete internationally and provide exciting globally connected high-paying jobs for the next generation. We need a country that actually is not afraid of foreign investors and allows them to come in as Damien Smith of ACT’s bill proposes—to be debated tomorrow night. We need a country that does not hold on to businesses that do not make sense for the Government to own, when we know that a mixed-ownership model makes them more productive and pays down all that debt this Government has raised over the past two years of its COVID folly.

That’s the kind of real change we need, and if we get this right, then we might actually make this a country that people want to come and people want to stay, because the alternative is that people will see a Government that has no way forward, that has spent all of their money, that has put them under enormous inflationary pressure, and they’ll decide, actually, they’re going to vote with their feet. The alternative is ACT’s alternative budget for real change, reconnecting effort and reward and rewarding people that work hard, that save, that invest, and that want to make tomorrow better than yesterday, because that’s what this country is all about. What unites us all as New Zealanders—from so many corners of the globe and different walks of life—is that each of us, or our ancestors, made the longest journey of any humans in history to give their kids a better tomorrow. That is aspiration; that is opportunity; that is the kind of future that makes this project of having a First World country at the bottom of the world worthwhile. But if we don’t get that change very soon, then the future we face is very bleak, and it’s there to be seen in the right direction - wrong direction figures where by a margin of 20 points, a majority of New Zealanders now say, “We’re in the wrong direction under Labour; the alternative is ACT.” Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): I have heard an extraordinary amount of fantasy, of puffery, of rewriting of reality, of relentless negativity in the House this afternoon. It is clear that the Opposition live on some other planet, a planet in which there was not a global pandemic, a planet in which nothing has gone wrong in the world. On this side of the House, we trade in reality and the reality is that this Government has done an extraordinary job in getting New Zealand through the global pandemic.

The previous speaker, David Seymour, used this phrase: he said, “COVID folly”. He said that this Government had engaged in COVID folly. Was it folly when we rolled out payments to ensure that businesses could stay in operation? Was it folly when we funded businesses so they could switch to digital mode? Was it folly when we worked extraordinarily hard to support the New Zealand economy through a one-in-100-year event? The Opposition may rewrite reality all they like, but the fact is there has been an extraordinary event in the last few years, something we never thought we would live through—a global pandemic, and it had an extraordinary effect on this Government.

But this Government made one critical decision as the global pandemic started to occur. It made a critical decision to reject the politics of austerity and to ensure that we supported New Zealanders through, and that is exactly what our Budgets have done. These are Budgets that have worked to support all New Zealanders.

The reality is we have done extraordinarily well and the facts back it up. Unemployment is at a new near-record low of just 3.3 percent. Incomes are growing—8.8 percent growth in the year to 30 June, on the median weekly income. That is extraordinary growth in incomes. We have built more homes in the last year than in any year since records began. Our debt is going down. And, yes, of course we borrowed in order to get through the global pandemic, just like every other Government around the world, but out debt is still amongst the lowest in the OECD.

We have kept our Government spending under control. As David Parker previously said, back in 2013, spending was at 32 percent of GDP. That was under the National Government five years after they came into office, five years after the global financial crisis. This year, five years after the Labour Government has come into office, after the global pandemic, Government spending is at 31.6 percent of GDP. How can that be spending out of control? It is simply Government spending at the level we have kind of settled at over the last few years. So we are actually doing extraordinarily well.

But it’s interesting, and, you know, I think people in this House are right to point it out. All the macroeconomic indicators do show that we are doing well, that our economy is thriving, that the Budgets that the Minister of Finance has presented to this House have actually worked for New Zealand. But, of course, what matters to ordinary people is a roof over their head; it’s food on the table. And we have worked consistently hard to achieve those things for New Zealanders and to achieve security for them.

Now, in terms of housing, we are continuing to build social housing; we are continuing to work on emergency housing. But I heard a really interesting story a couple of weeks ago when I was visiting some financial mentors—people who provide social services. They had their offices opposite a number of boarding houses, residences of last resort. They said things have changed—these days when someone is in a dire situation, we can actually find them a room for the night; we can actually find them a room to rent. Sure, it’s not great; boarding houses aren’t great—they are residences of last resort—but they can at least find a bed for someone. Five years ago, under the previous Government, they said they couldn’t even find people a bed. So it’s taking a long and difficult time to solve the complex problem of housing in this country. But the solution is starting to work. We are starting to get there.

The other thing that people worry about is food on the table—a roof over their head and food on the table—and we have worked extraordinarily hard to help people with that problem.

Damien Smith: What about inflation?

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Now, the member over there is bleating about inflation, and we know that there is inflation in this economy. It is lower than other countries around the world, and every country in the world is experiencing inflation at the moment. No one likes it but it is not as bad as it might be, and we are working to ensure that people manage. That is what the cost of living payment is about. The cost of living payment is about ensuring that people have a little bit of extra money to help them get through. That is what Food in Schools is about. It’s ensuring that children get fed, literally getting food in their mouths. Talk to the principals of those schools in low socio-economic areas and they will tell you that this Food in Schools programme, the ensuring that children have lunches, is making a real difference.

We are working on the supermarket duopoly to try to keep prices under control. So there’s a whole set of work going on in this space to help New Zealanders deal with the worldwide phenomenon of inflation.

And there’s other work that we’ve done in that space as well. We’ve added to the dental grant so that people can get dental care. We’ve had the winter energy payment. We’ve had cuts to the fuel excise. We’ve got half-price public transport, and that’s going to continue for community services card holders. All of this adds to people’s security.

But when the Opposition calls for tax cuts, when they say that we are spending too much, they never ever tell us what services they are going to cut. What security do ordinary New Zealanders have if they do not have a health system? What security do ordinary New Zealanders have if they cannot get their children educated? What security do ordinary New Zealanders have if they do not have a welfare system? Now, we are working on all of those and trying to ensure that New Zealanders get the health, the welfare, the education that they ask for. But I challenge the Opposition—I challenge the Opposition—if the Opposition is going to call for tax cuts, if the Opposition wants to say that tax cuts are the way to solve all our problems, the challenge is to be upfront and honest with New Zealanders and tell us which element of New Zealanders’ security are they going to remove. Are they going to remove healthcare? Are they going to remove education? Are they going to remove welfare? Are they going to stop building houses? What are they going to do in order to pay for those tax cuts?

So when the member over the other side likes to say that it’s all the fault of this Government, I say, you know what? We do take responsibility—we do take responsibility for trying to ensure that New Zealanders get through these tough times. And we are getting there—we are getting there.

I’ve been out and about in my electorate, out and about talking to people, as all MPs do, and I’m picking that there’s an uptick in feeling. People are feeling positive. I was around the Avondale Sunday Market last weekend talking to ordinary New Zealanders—the workers, the people, the caregivers, and the like—and they’re saying, “It’s a lovely day. Things are getting better. We’re getting there.” So I challenge the Opposition. Think a bit positively for a change. Look at what’s going right. Look at the macroeconomic indicators that tell us we’re doing well. Look at the ways we are managing to help people. And I could say, “Listen to the birds singing—the riroriro calling; the pīpīwharauroa calling as well. Smell the kōwhai blooms. Enjoy the spring that is coming, that is on us; the summer that is coming our way.” We have been through a long, hard winter. It’s been wet and cold and it has been tough economically, and it’s not easy. But we are working on it, and what the Government is doing is actually working, and that’s the reality. The reality is that this Government is doing what New Zealanders need and delivering an economy for all New Zealanders.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, you’d think I would learn after 14 years of being in this place, because I worked really hard to come up with 10 intelligent minutes to discuss the Budget, and I end up every year spending those 10 minutes refuting the nonsense that we hear from the other side. You’d think I’d have learnt after 14 years. I’m going to try and do both, because I just can’t resist some of the things that were being said.

Let’s start with the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson. Those famous words, “We were careful with spending.” Well, they were certainly careful to spend. And, boy, they’ve spent like drunken sailors. As I’ve said in this House before, the difference between Grant Robertson and a drunken sailor is that at least drunken sailors spend their own money. But he is dipping into the pockets of every single New Zealander to fund his profligate spending plans.

And David Parker is not correct when he says that since 1984 we have had successive Governments that have been disciplined in their spending. He forgets that he was part of a Cabinet and a Government when between 2005 and 2008—in good times, when we didn’t need the stimulus—Michael Cullen managed to increase Government spending by 50 percent. We are now dealing with a Government that has increased Government spending on their watch to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, and that has set the economy spiralling out of control.

Now, Deborah Russell wants to know what we would cut. Well, for many of these things, it’s far too late. But as members know, the COVID Response and Recovery Fund spent over $60 billion. Some of it was good. The wage subsidy was necessary and appropriate, and yes, we think it should have been more targeted and gone on for longer for some businesses, but that isn’t a criticism of the scheme overall. But when the COVID fund is being raided to pay $710 million for three waters; $15 million for cameras on fishing boats; when we have a low-carbon future fund, $70 million; the Creative Arts Fund, $150 million; Government House Building, $100 million; here’s my favourite: solvency support for the racing industry of $50 million was paid out of the COVID fund. So anybody that wants to be challenged on the quality of the spend that this Government has gone on, I’m very happy to provide many, many more examples.

Then, Mr Robertson talks about infrastructure spending and accuses the previous National Government of not spending on infrastructure. Well, he must have been Rip Van Winkle - like, asleep for nine years while the Waterview Tunnel was built, while Transmission Gully was built, the Waikato Expressway.

Todd Muller: Eastern Link.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Exactly, Mr Muller.

Broadband—where on earth would we have been without the previous Government’s significant investment in high-speed broadband right across the country? Our COVID response would have been much, much worse. And for the extraordinary claims about no spending in health infrastructure, I have to say this: Middlemore Hospital, North Shore Hospital, Waitakere Hospital, Waikato Hospital, Taranaki Base Hospital, Hutt, Wairau, Greymouth, Christchurch, Burwood, and even Dunedin Hospital, which inherited a legacy of leaks in the operating theatres, a rundown neonatal intensive care unit—there was a disgrace; I should know, my daughter spent days there—they were all fixed under a previous National Government.

Here’s another legacy: a commitment to rebuild Dunedin Hospital. So I want to hear from the Rachel Brookings and the Ingrid Learys and the Rino Tirikatenes and the David Clarks, why they are not banging on the door of the Minister of Health and saying, “Where is our hospital?” Because in five years, all we’ve got is a massive car park and a couple of cranes. And worse than that, the advice that I’m getting from senior health officials is that Treasury has got their nose in again and there are going to be cuts to the capacity of the new Dunedin Hospital. My sources are saying 58 beds fewer, two operating theatres fewer, and no PET scanner.

That’s been out in the public domain for the last three weeks and not a single Labour member, not a Minister, not the Prime Minister, and certainly not the Dunedin-based Labour MPs have stood up and said “That is not true.” And the reason is, it is true. There is a significant cost pressure and their response to that is to cut. Now, that would be OK if those cuts had not already been made to the capacity that was being required of 513 beds, which, thanks to some heroic assumptions about admission rates and length of stay, would cut back to 421, and now they want to cut back another 50. Oh, I wonder if the previous Minister of Health wants to tell the House how much lobbying he’s done to make sure that that capacity isn’t cut even further. Because for all that, we’ve got a tax-and-spend-and-hope Government, they are not spending it in the right places at the right time.

We also had David Parker going on about unemployment, and it is low, but for the life of me, I would just like one of Louise Upston’s questions to be answered. Any one at any time, which is: why are there more than 50,000 people on jobseeker support if the economy is so great? Why is it that there has been a 55 percent increase in the number of people on jobseeker support for longer than 12 months? And why are we spending $6.8 billion more since 2016 on benefits? Now, the benefits have risen, but the real driver of that is not how much individuals are getting, but the volume of people on jobseeker benefits, at a time that the Government crows about low unemployment.

Now, I’ll just segue across to Ms Genter, because Julie Anne Genter and I have had a number of very interesting conversations about what she described today as the “ruling elite”. She also said something about “kings”, I thought that was probably not the most appropriate reference this week. But nevertheless, what she won’t tell the House is that the top 12 percent of income earners in this country pay half of the income tax. And half of the households in this country, thanks to Government transfers, don’t pay any income tax. That’s OK by me, I think that’s fair. What’s not fair is tax by stealth, allowing inflation to erode the income earning capacity and the spending capacity of hard-working middle New Zealanders who have been squeezed by this Government’s refusal on the basis of envy. That’s all it is, as somehow, because I might benefit from a tax cut, they’re not going to give that to the hardest-working middle New Zealanders.

You know what? A graduate nurse or midwife in this country—depending on when they work, if they work weekends or nights—are already, the year they get out of polytech, on a 33 percent top marginal tax. Now, some years ago, that would have been 17.5 percent, and the only reason that’s happened is because tax rates have not been adjusted for inflation, and they should be. But this is the “Tax Party.” It’s the “Tax by Stealth Government”. They tried it on our KiwiSaver; they’re coming after our incomes next year with the jobs tax for the redundancy payment—another 2.8 percent is coming out of the pockets of the employees. I say the employees, half of it directly and half of it will be lost in the next pay round because employers have got to pay for that somehow. That’s billions and billions of dollars grabbed up by a greedy Government that only knows how to tax and spend. So I’m sorry that the Minister of Justice and the member Dr Deborah Russell think we’re being negative. I’d love to be positive. I’d love to be optimistic. But at some point, the Opposition has to call out the nonsense and talk about what’s really happening.

I thought the Minister of Finance’s answers in question time just showed how arrogant and out of touch he is about the state of New Zealanders and the economy that serves them—or doesn’t, as the case may be. Because he, basically, blamed the public for not understanding how great the Government was. Well, I’ll take up Dr Russell’s challenge, because every single member on this side of the House has been doing it for the last five years, going out and listening to what New Zealanders are telling them. And they are telling them that food is unaffordable; that rents are going up way, way higher than incomes are; that oil and gas—which is uncontrollable, I’ll accept—and the transport costs are driving domestic inflation. Yes, there are some things that are not controllable, but the overwhelming majority of the pain that New Zealanders are feeling right now is as a direct consequence of this arrogant and out-of-touch Government.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): We can see how the other side of the House think when you have people like David Seymour talking about bringing in immigrants so that we can pay them lower wages to get our economy moving. Or people like Michael Woodhouse, who fail to recognise—

Toni Severin: It wasn’t low wages; it was—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member will not interject when she is not in her chair.

INGRID LEARY: Or people like Michael Woodhouse, who fail to recognise that actually—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Ingrid Leary.

INGRID LEARY: Thank you, Madam Speaker. In my view, the hardest-working New Zealanders—amongst them are the parents, the people who do unpaid work, and many, many of those are women. So let’s not forget about those people who work in casual employment, who work in unpaid labour, who work as volunteers, who raise children. They are amongst the hardest-working New Zealanders. But that side of the House fails to see that, because all they want to see are those people that are contributing to GDP. That is how they view the world.

I wanted to talk about the economic context, but, just to apologise to people at home if you’re feeling depressed, because it is really depressing listening to the speeches from the other side of the House painting such a terrible picture of New Zealand. Now, that of course is going to happen. That’s their job as the Opposition—to try to make things look bad. But they know that we’ve been doing a good job because the facts speak for themselves.

Let’s remember that we have been through COVID, through a pandemic that has affected 617 million people. There have been 653 million deaths. Any Government worth its salt would spend money trying to ensure that it would save lives and save livelihoods, and that’s exactly what this Government has done. And it has balanced the Budget to make sure that there is stability after the economic shock, that there is leeway for the cost of living pressures that have come about from this economic shock, but also from the nine years of neglect under National. There was neglect, despite what Mr Woodhouse says: neglect of schools, housing, social housing, and water infrastructure. It has been said in the Productivity Commission report that there is an infrastructure gap and that occurred under the National Government.

We are not just looking at COVID and at the cost of living pressures. We still want New Zealand to move forward. We still want to move to a higher-wage, low-emission economy. And that is why the Budget also looks at the health reforms, planning, infrastructure, apprenticeships, Resource Management Act reform, three waters, and, yes, as Julie Anne Genter pointed out, a really transformational climate change element to this Budget. We are seeing that because the facts speak for themselves.

It’s in the inflation numbers, GDP, employment figures, and that is enabling us to target support to those hardest hit by these tough times. It is the right sort of Budget for tough times. It is a Budget that anticipated difficult times. And thank goodness that happened, because I don’t think any of us here really anticipated that Russia was going to invade Ukraine. That has had a knock-on effect and it is this Budget that has enabled New Zealand to come through that in such a good way, with such good credit ratings from international agencies, with such a low unemployment, and now with a general mood of optimism as we head into summer and we have let go of the traffic light system, we are letting go of all those restrictions that we needed to save lives and save livelihoods.

New Zealand has every reason to be optimistic, but you wouldn’t think so, listening to the people on the other benches. But that doesn’t diminish the tough times that we have been through. COVID has caused illness, anxiety, and lockdowns. We’ve had disrupted supply chains. We’ve had the war in Ukraine. We have had inflation, and that inflation is being felt all around the world. I’ve just been to the US where it is palpable—their rate at the moment is 8.26 percent versus our 4.9 percent, and they are really feeling it there. But do you know what? I don’t hear them blaming their Government. They are looking at the war in Ukraine, they are looking at COVID, they are looking at what’s happening to gas supplies in Europe, and they know that this is a global phenomenon. And for us to be at 4.9 percent compared to their 8.9, or the UK’s 9.1 percent, the Netherlands’ 12 percent, or, get this, Turkey’s 80.21 percent inflation, in Turkey—we have got it pretty good despite the tough times. That is thanks to hard-working New Zealanders. And when I say “hard-working New Zealanders”, it’s those who are working for wages and it is those who are doing the mahi bringing up children, volunteering, working in the not-for-profit sector. It is all New Zealanders that have pulled together to do this.

Now, our inflation rate, as we’ve heard, has peaked and we are actually seeing a wage-growth market correction. So we’ve heard our official unemployment rate is around 3.2 to 3.3 percent; GDP is bouncing back. In the last quarter, our growth rate of 1.7 percent was the best of most comparable economies. Australia and Japan had 0.9 percent, the average of the OECD countries had 0.4 percent, and the US and the UK actually contracted slightly. So Chris Bishop is wrong when he says that the wage growth and inflation don’t make for a good picture, because wage growth is at 8.8 percent and that’s the largest annual percentage change since records began in 1998.

So what we are seeing is actually a labour market correction after years of wage gaps and we are heading into a period where inflation will stabilise or fall and wages will continue to trend upwards. All of that is because of astute financial management. And that is why we have been able to deliver the targeted support that so many of my colleagues in this House today have referred to: things like the cost of living payment, half-price transport for community service card users, winter energy payments, breaking up the supermarket duopoly, free lunches in schools, and so on. Our economy is really well positioned to weather these storms. And let us remember that our debt ratio is amongst the lowest in the world, despite what the Opposition would have you say.

If we look at the alternative, what is the alternative plan? Well, David Seymour said his party was the only one to have a plan. I tend to agree, because I haven’t heard anything from National except for tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts that would give Christopher Luxon—should he become Prime Minister—an $18,000 annual rebate compared to, say, a cafe worker on the minimum wage, who would get around $2 per week more. They don’t have a plan. They’re, basically, a bunch of sad sacks who want to jam tight the public purse and go back to austerity. They want to forget about the infrastructure gap because, to them, who cares if people get sick from bad water or from pollution spewing into Wellington’s harbour? Who cares about inter-generational social scarring? Everything for them is about money for money’s sake. It’s not about wellbeing, and it’s not because they care.

I support the remarks by my colleague David Parker around trade diversification. Every significant trade agreement that has occurred in the last decade has been signed under Labour, and we have seen a $53 billion record in our agricultural exports. That happened under a Labour Government. So we do care about money, but we care about money for the wellbeing that it brings to our families and our communities. We care about having infrastructure that works, because it’s no use having a family in a house if the house is falling down. And that was the house that we inherited when we became Government.

So I also just want to say that those trade relationships that David Parker talked about are so critical, not only because we are getting good income from them but they are helping with our regional peace and security. For the first time, we are diversifying our relationships to make sure that we can maintain a truly independent foreign policy. And as somebody who’s just come back from a meeting about global geopolitics, I think that’s a really important thing for New Zealand to keep its eyes on.

So things are looking up. We’re moving forward with certainty. We’re going into summer with no traffic light system. We’ve got the freedoms that we had pre-COVID times. We’ve removed restrictions that we had to have to save lives, to save livelihoods. We have had tough times, but we had a Budget that was able to futureproof us for a very unexpected war on the other side of the world that did have implications for fuel supplies and for supply chains, and that exacerbated what had happened through COVID. We have had a prudent, balanced, forward-looking, targeted, and fair Budget, and it has taken some of the sting out of the tail of various shocks for those who are doing it the hardest. Our Budget is also empowering people to get ahead. We haven’t forgotten about health. We haven’t forgotten about education. We are making sure that not only is this Budget looking after those who need help now but that it is futureproofing us into the future so that New Zealand can remain the best, fantastic, optimistic little country at the bottom of the world. Thank you.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): I had the privilege of going to several events with our finance Minister last week. The first was a business breakfast. It was the day that, in fact, the news broke that we were growing as an economy, and it was a very collegial event. He obviously had the respect of the people at that meeting, and they shared a lot of the optimism. They also shared a lot of the values that were coming through in the way that he’s leading in this area. The businesses involved—places like Westpac—are looking forward and they’re looking to sustainability, and they’re actually part of a process which demonstrates the leadership of the Government, because, actually, we’re changing the way we’re thinking, we’re changing the way we’re investing, and we’re changing the way that we’re building this country.

This is the fourth Wellbeing Budget, and that word “wellbeing” is something that I don’t think the Hon Grant Robertson gets attached to as much as, perhaps, our leader, Jacinda Ardern, because Jacinda epitomises a lot of that caring philosophy. But, actually, it is absolutely clear when you read this Budget that that’s Grant’s philosophy too, because that is where you can see the devil in the detail, and that’s the difference between one side of the House and the other.

What I just heard from Michael Woodhouse was very interesting. It was a playback to the idea that, actually, what he thought, essentially, was the same as what David Seymour thinks: essentially, that hard work is equated with high income. I have lived as an employment lawyer for 25, almost 30 years and found that to be utterly untrue. It’s just not correct. Yes, people work hard and they can earn a lot of money, and in my profession that’s a really good story for them personally, but, actually, the fact is it’s really, really important that the Government lead in a way which focuses on those across our economy and makes sure that everybody is supported in the economy, because, actually, it’s really important to the wellbeing of everyone that the people in our lower and our middle incomes are actually supported well, because they’re our brothers, they’re our sisters, even if we are fortunate enough to earn a high income. They are our people too. That was absolutely essential to the way that this economy was managed during COVID, and it’s essential to the way I want to see it managed into the future. And it’s absolutely hard-baked into this Budget.

I just want to talk about some of those things, because I think this Budget makes a really interesting decision. It tackles root causes. It isn’t afraid of systemic change where that’s necessary, but it also deals with detail so it catches people before they fall. Examples of that are things like health reform. Yes, we might all be tired after COVID, but boy, did we learn a lesson. Our hospitals need to be better. We don’t need leaks in our roof—and yes, Mr Woodhouse, there were leaks in those operating theatres in Dunedin that I was hearing about when I was campaigning the first time, and National was the Government back then. So those leaks were there. They needed to be fixed. We needed a health system that was fit for purpose, and we did not have one. This Budget cements that change, but it also does things like provides for ambulances and it provides for emergency helicopters.

The same is true of something like the cost of living. Yes, it’s very important that we gave people a payment in the right brackets to actually support them with buying cheese while it goes up, but it’s also important that we actually look at the duopolies that have been making it much, much harder for all New Zealanders for a long time. Apparently, a million dollars a day is coming out—that’s above and beyond any justifiable kind of profit in those supermarkets. So we need systemic change and we can’t be afraid of it, and we can’t be afraid of actually tackling an issue like that. That’s not hard-working New Zealanders earning more; that’s actually not OK, because it impacts on everyone. It makes those blocks of cheese more expensive, it makes our groceries more expensive, and it actually hurts ordinary New Zealanders who are working hard too. They just happen to be our nurses. They happen to be our teachers. They happen to be our fish factory workers—oh, I would never want to work in a fish factory; really hard job, so is working as a meat processor. One of the most horrible jobs I’ve ever come across is meat processing—worked for a lot of those workers over the years, wouldn’t want to swap it; would rather be a lawyer, quite frankly, even if they were paying me the same money. So, in that circumstance, we need to make sure that our system supports those people.

The police force: our police force has got more police than it has ever had. That is very important in this time. Our $94 million for gangs is a specific thing specifically being done for getting rid of the problem of gangs—$94 million’s been put in, but so has the broader issue of big money to support our police force.

Climate change adaptation: $2 billion. It’s a lot of money. It’s a huge part of a speech, and I apologise for not giving it more time. I’m pretty sure I’ve got a colleague who’s very passionate about this who may cover that in more detail.

Our crisis is, of course, in our transport sector. So one of the things that I’m proud of the Ministry of Transport doing is actually the electric car subsidies. I was pretty sceptical at the beginning; actually, it’s been incredibly useful—totally sold through the process. It’s actually worked so well. It’s going to transform our fleet over the next little while. The uptake has been through the roof. We’re going to actually get all those cars transferred over, because it’s really, really valuable once those cars become second-hand and ordinary people start to be able to buy them.

For all the whingeing about utes, we have some coming on the market because we’re demanding them. It turns out that all the naysayers who want to say something like, “Oh, we’re just at the bottom of the world; they’ll never give them to us.”—it turns out that’s not true. You actually have to create a demand and then you get these things, and that’s what’s happening. We’re transforming that fleet, and it would not happen under National.

We have also got something like the winter energy payment. Now, that’s actually a Labour invention, and I am really proud of it. You know, my dad is 91, and the other day he said to me, “You know, it’s not going to cover all the bill, but it’s so nice to have the support, that somebody actually has noticed it.” My daughter, she gets the half-price public transport, and she also got the cost of living payment. She’s on a low income. Those two things are actually going to her, and, actually, that helps me. It helps me because I don’t have to support her in the same way.

Hon David Bennett: You are supporting her—you’re paying your tax—where does the money come from, off a tree?

HELEN WHITE: She stands on her own two feet and she’s dignified, and she is using public transport in a way that perhaps Mr Bennett never would, because, actually, that’s her culture now, and she’s proud of it. We’ve moved her into the public transport mode for a long term, and so I am very proud of that.

I also talked to some girls at Auckland Girls’ recently who told me that that half-price transport makes a huge difference to them because their families are out in South Auckland and they travel to school and their families are quite large. All of those kids in that family get half-price transport and they get to school at half the cost they used to, and guess who that affects! It affects their hard-working parents—their hard-working, ambitious parents who’ve sent them to Auckland Girls’ for all the right reasons. We’re giving them support, and I’m so glad we are.

We are also feeding a whole lot of kids who need feeding in the schools, and that is a hugely important thing. I don’t know why Mr Bennett’s sniggering, because I’m pretty sure that National was quite into the idea of lunches in schools, too. I am a total convert to that—

Hon David Bennett: They go into rubbish bins.

HELEN WHITE: —and I don’t think they’re going in rubbish bins at all, Mr Bennett. I think that those lunches are making a huge difference in terms of supporting our poorest families, and it’s no laughing matter. It’s something that actually makes a difference out there. You might hate it, but it’s true. I commend the bill to the House.

RACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Today, I started the day in Auckland at the Environmental Defence Society and Sustainable Business Council conference with a whole host of business leaders talking about climate change, and I was not alone; there were other member of the House there as well. We were speaking about the emissions trading scheme (ETS) and complementary measures to reduce climate emissions.

So we were, of course, talking about the Climate Emergency Response Fund, and I’ll talk about that a little bit in my speech—that’s called the CERF, for short. In this Budget, it’s at $2.9 billion. That is an incredibly substantial investment in something I’m very proud of. So that CERF provides for a whole lot of the complementary measures that we need to combat climate change in addition to the ETS there. Then, I want to talk about some other things, as well, that are related to that, but go beyond the CERF.

So one of those things is resource management reform. It’s very important to know that in the reform that is coming with the Natural and Built Environments Bill and also the Spatial Planning Build, mitigation measures will be enabled in a way that they’re not in the current regulations. The current regulation, often, prevents good climate mitigation measures from happening, and that needs to change.

We also spoke, at this conference, about adaptation. I think it’s important that we always—whilst climate change, of course, relates to both adaptation and mitigation, and those two things are linked, adaptation is different from mitigation. Adaptation is our response to the climate crisis as the climate changes. This has got a lot of attention in the past couple of months, in the last month even, with what we’ve seen in both Nelson and Pakistan. Of course, these events have been happening for a long time and they’re going to continue to happen. In New Zealand, it’s very important that we address climate adaptation, as well as mitigation, and that is because we live on some islands. Of course, sea-level rise will affect us, but so too does changing weather patterns.

We heard at the ETS conference from a tourism provider in Queenstown and surrounds—Real Journeys—talking about the real changes that wind speed increases mean to their business. How do you moor boats? What sort of ropes do you need if the wind speeds are higher? How can you open your ski fields if you’ve got those high wind speeds, as well? So not only are we talking about sea-level rise and adaptation but there’s a whole host of changes.

Again, the resource management reform is going to be important to that. Then, there’s that third piece of legislation, as well, for climate adaptation. I’ll come back to these—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Can I invite the member just to come a little more closely into the appropriation Estimates bill.

RACHEL BROOKING: Yes, and I have this all here. Related to climate issues is, of course, biodiversity loss—I’ll come back to the CERF but we can go through some of the biodiversity funding that is in this Budget.

One of the reasons that people care about climate change and not wanting it to happen is because of the biodiversity loss that has happened. The Budget provides $61.5 million for implementing the biodiversity strategy around Predator Free 2050. There’s $30 million there for deer management and goat control. Predator control for those mast years, that’s at $26.9 million. And then there’s also concern about our marine taonga species, and so there’s $7.1 million there for the biodiversity. There’s also funding in the Budget for waste emissions, so that is to decrease waste emissions by a range of factors, including decreasing waste and diverting it from going to the landfill, for landfill gas capture research, and for resource recovery infrastructure.

So turning back to the CERF and what that has in this Budget—so we know that the CERF is that hypothecation of the ETS going back into measures that are really going to decrease emissions. So this includes $73 million for insulation of low-income homes. That’s a win-win, as we see with many climate measures—not only do people live in nicer, warmer homes; they don’t have to pay so much for electricity, and there’s a benefit for the climate.

There’s also money to decrease agricultural emissions. So there’s $338 million there for looking at how we can really reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the agriculture sector, and this includes money for research and development.

Also, we’re wanting to increase our renewable electricity. We’ve got a huge benefit in New Zealand in that a lot of our electricity is already renewable, but certainly not all of our energy. So how do we make more of our energy renewable? We want to add an electricity factor to it, and, of course, then we need more renewable electricity. So there’s $5.2 million in there for electricity market measures, because it’s a complicated system and we want to make it as good as it can be.

Also, you will see, in lots of other countries, there are large offshore wind turbines. We don’t have a regulatory framework for providing that energy and that infrastructure in New Zealand at the moment. So there’s money in the Budget for both that offshore regulatory framework but also a road map to hydrogen, with $17.6 million.

There’s also money in that CERF for community renewable energy projects, at $16 million. So that is when communities are able to use smaller pieces of infrastructure—so solar, maybe some small wind turbines, and that sort of thing—we really want to incentivise that as well.

Related, there’s money for mode shift in transport. Forty seven percent of our carbon emissions relate to transport, so we want to try and not only have electric vehicles, where they’re appropriate, but also encourage cycling and public transport. So there’s $374 million in that line item.

There’s also the important work that’s happened—and I acknowledge the Hon David Clark here—in terms of climate-related disclosures. Just being at this business conference discussing climate, this is a big thing that those business, the banks, are going to have to say what their risks and opportunities are around the climate. And those standards, there’s money in the Budget for implementing and getting those going.

Where I started was about the Resource Management Act (RMA) reform and having this legislation that does enable climate mitigation. It’s important to remember that when the RMA was first made into law, some 30 years ago, $2 million was assigned for its implementation, and we’ve heard now, for the past three decades, about how that Act was never implemented in the way that people imagined it to be. So there’s $133 million in that stream.

Also, one of those important reform pieces is the creation of a strategic planning Act. So that is to enable us to look both at our long-term planning of where we want things to go, but also where we don’t want them to go, so we can link in to the climate adaptation plans that we have, and that we can look at where we want those mitigations to be, as well. So there’s $31 million for that piece of work.

As I mentioned, there’s also this very difficult issue that the climate adaptation Act is to deal with, and that is existing housing and communities that are in areas where climate change is happening and we need to respond to it, and we need to respond to it in a fair way and the equity issues involved in getting over a moral hazard—so not just saying, “Someone’s rich by the beach, so we don’t need to worry about it.”; there’s lots of very poor and vulnerable communities that will need some assistance. So there’s $10.6 million for that very important piece of work.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, you have to give the Labour MPs some kind of applause for trying to put on a brave face in the midst of a Government that’s falling apart. You know, they’re actually speaking the lines that they’ve been told, saying how wonderful this Government has been and how successful, and isn’t Grant Robertson the greatest thing that ever walked the earth, and isn’t Jacinda the kindest person you’ve ever met—you know, all the beautiful lines the Labour Party tries to track out. But the reality is that the polls have shown the Labour Party has gone from—what?—51 percent at the election down to 32 percent, 33 percent, I think the last Labour poll was. They’ve dropped 20 points. The public—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! Can the member come back to this imprest bill. Thank you.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Yes. We’re talking about the impact of that, and the public has said no to this Government’s imprest bill. They’ve said no to it. They’ve said that this Government is on the wrong track; there’s no doubt about that.

The Labour MPs today are trying to resurrect the old issues of the past—“Look how we saved the country from COVID.”, and “Look how great we are.”—but the reality is, the public can see through it. Ask anybody out there what’s happened to their fruit and vege prices in the last year. Ask anybody out there what’s happened to their cost of living in the last year. Ask anybody out there what’s happened to their house price in the last year. It’s gone down. Ask anybody what’s happened to their interest rates. They’ve gone up. Ask anybody what they think about inflation. They know it’s here to stay. And ask anybody what they want from a Government, and that is somebody that is a prudent, economic manager at this time.

That’s what the public demand; they don’t want the unfettered social spending of this Government, and that is the truth of what is out there. That is why the Labour Party is doomed at the next election. That is why members of that party should be trying now to actually change the narrative, to actually look at what they’re spending the money on, and to do it properly.

Some hard choices need to be made. You don’t get away from inflation by looking at it. You don’t get away from inflation by giving it more money. You don’t get away from it by thinking you can spend your way out of it. It requires hard, prudent economic management. There’s no other answer to deal with the problem that we have. Once a household or a business is spending more money than it can afford, it only has one option, and that is to reduce that spending. It can increase its revenue if it wants to increase taxes, but the Labour Party has already said they’re not going to do that. But then they do it on the back ways, through little tax incentives every so often. But the reality is, in New Zealand, it’s where we spend that money that is the crucial thing. The Labour Party members have gone up today and said, “Oh, look, National spent all this money in the global financial crisis and all those things.” The reality is we spent it on things that actually mattered and helped the economy. New Zealand grew through that expenditure. We didn’t get inflation as a result of that expenditure; we got infrastructure that actually delivered for New Zealand, that meant we grew, and then—

Dr Duncan Webb: Like what?

Hon DAVID BENNETT: OK: roads in the Waikato—look at those great roads in the Waikato—a new hospital in the Waikato. When we came into Government, the Waikato Hospital had sewage coming through the sides of the walls. The National Party rebuilt that hospital. We put the fibre in New Zealand that enabled us, as a country, to get through COVID when we were in lockdown. Those things were done by National, never by a Labour Government. They were all done by National.

Hon Dr David Clark: Rubbish.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: David Clark—he knows they were done by National. He says they were done by National, because he knows they were done by National. We built those roads, we built that hospital, we put that fibre in—we did those things that actually made a difference, and the economy grew as a result.

Labour—all it can do is give money out, chuck money away to people that are overseas or have passed away. They can’t actually do anything good to actually build the economy. Where is this glorious infrastructure spending we’re seeing from the Labour Party? We’re not seeing any roads being built in this country. We don’t see any rail connections being built in this country. All we see is social spending. It’s all spending for today, trying to get through to the next election, and it will never work.

The public know that, and the public have seen through the Labour Party, and that’s why they’re getting smashed in the polls. So the members over there should be depressed, because they’ve ruined this country. This country, when they came into power, had very low debt. They will go and say, “Well, look at our debt levels. They’re low compared to the rest of the world.” Well, they were the lowest when they came in. It’s the percentage of debt that they have increased that needs to be calculated, and that has increased exponentially under this Government. They have borrowed to spend, to try and save themselves through an election process. It will not work.

What we really need in New Zealand is a Government that balances the books, that is prudent with the money, that uses that money for infrastructure so that we have a growing economy, and that actually looks at controlling inflation going forward. We can’t carry on as a country forgetting about those things, and a 1 percent growth rate is not good enough for this country.

Jo Luxton: Better than others.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: It’s better than others—well, 1 percent is not going to create an environment where New Zealanders will stay here. It won’t attract people to come here. As long as it’s better than someone else, it’s OK! That’s not the game we’re in. It’s a game for world talent, and our talent, they can easily leave and have left and is leaving now. People are moving with their feet. They are leaving this country in droves, because they know that 1 percent isn’t good enough for them when their costs are going up at a much higher rate than that.

There will be pain ahead for the New Zealand economy. It will be difficult for any Government to turn the ship around. This Government has set a trajectory that can only fail, and with that, New Zealanders will require a Government that actually makes some hard choices around how to get inflation under control. We will have to increase immigration, contrary to what the Labour Party wants. We actually will have to be able to welcome people to this country if we want it to grow. We will have to prioritise where we spend our money, and it won’t be necessarily for short-term spending; it has to be in a long-term economic benefit. We will have to look at our tax system to make sure it’s relative to the costs that people have incurred under the last few years, and the tax changes that the National Party is looking at are really only to give people back their purchasing power that they have lost in the last few years. We will have to look at how we invest in housing and things like that, where rental prices have skyrocketed because of the crazy policies of this Government that have taken away the ability for anybody to go into that business and provide housing.

Those are some of the fundamental things that the Government should have been looking at in the Budget. It wasn’t. What we got in the Budget was a whole lot of platitudes about what will happen in the future: dreams of environmental change, dreams about transport change, dreams about giving away money that they can’t even work out where to spend it on—all those things that will be a fallacy and will not work.

National would deliver a Budget that is what New Zealanders want and that’s why they’re polling so well, and that’s why the Labour Party has lost, basically, a third of its support in the last six months—a third of its support in six months. To those backbenchers there: don’t let the talking notes dictate your futures. Actually be upstanding. Yeah—stand up and actually look at what you need to do. Grant and the rest of them in the front row, they’re still going to be here. You won’t be. Stand up for what’s right for your constituents, because they demand better than what they are getting from this Government. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The next call is a split call between the ACT Party and the Green Party.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): I’ll take it, Madam Speaker. I’ve been listening carefully to the debate and I’ve been reflecting on how Government Budgets are an opportunity to right some of the wrongs that have been created by successive Governments.

Throughout this debate, I’ve listened to the National Party’s contributions where they’ve berated the Government over irresponsible spending and they keep talking about a prudent Government that will deliver for Aotearoa’s communities that we are supposed to serve. But if we unpack what they’ve been saying, what they’ve been proposing is nothing but tax cuts that will impact the wealthiest, and, at the same time, talking about and complaining on the spending on the things that actually set up people for a good future: things like school lunches and things like increasing benefits—targeted programmes that will help our communities.

What that tells me, though, is that if the National Party had its way with such legislation, what we would be seeing are cuts to the things that ensure that people have a warm home to live in, enough kai to put on the table, and instead talk about just spending things on roads. Let me tell you something, Mr David Bennett: people cannot eat roads. People deserve funding for things that will allow them to thrive.

While there were many good initiatives in this Budget, it is really clear to me that my Labour mates need to aspire for more than just doing somewhat more than the National Party. Our communities deserve a genuine, aspirational Government that will deliver the transformative change that was put out in rhetoric. And there were some good initiatives; you know, I was really stoked to see the Government moving towards the culture of free fares by cutting fares, at least temporarily, by 50 percent—and, gosh, I hope they listen to the campaigners who are calling for this change to be made permanent—and for public transport to be free so that more of our communities can participate in the clean public transport sector that will support people in our communities as we manage the climate crisis.

I’ve also been thinking of how previous Budgets delivered heaps of high trust levels of support for businesses and yet for low-income people, they’ve still had to go through hurdles at Work and Income to get the assistance that they needed. And we saw that reflected once again and the cost of living payment, where the people who are doing it the toughest were once again excluded.

Like, their argument for excluding beneficiaries because they received the winter energy payment—which I note some of the Labour members were talking about—was completely out of touch. We know that the winter energy payment is there because baseline benefits do not allow people to get by on those winter months.

So for us to be experiencing an all-time inflation and then to leave out people on the benefit from the key initiative to address those inequities just felt like a smack in the face, particularly with the rhetoric that we have seen from this Government for so many years.

I also heard, from my Labour friends, talk about addressing the climate crisis and that is something we of course feel very strong about and I know that our Minister—who I’m sure is doing heaps of work to ensure that this Government is on the right track.

Again, if the Government members want to honour that rhetoric around addressing the climate crisis, they’d do good to support my colleague Eugenie Sage’s bill to ban new mines on conservation land. We have to ensure that the rhetoric that we’re seeing in this House is reflected also in the decisions and the votes and other legislation that sets to do what this Budget was intending to do, which is to support our communities and protect our planet.

Every Minister now is supposed to be climate change Minister and every Minister is supposed to also be committed to Te Aorerekura, the strategy to end family violence. We saw some Budget initiatives, but when I’m seeing the Minister of Immigration, for example, ram through changes that will see more migrant families put at risk of family violence, it puts into question those commitments.

So I want to end this contribution by encouraging my Labour friends to put action—that rhetoric that I’m seeing today in the House, which is great, but our communities deserve the policies that will ensure that they’re able to thrive, not just survive.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I call on ACT. Who wants to take a five-minute call?

DAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Imprest Supply (Second for 2022/23) Bill and the Budget from 2022/23—I think it’s time for some honesty on the other side of the House. The fiscal and monetary response inside this Budget would probably go down in history as one of the greatest mistakes that has ever been made. We’ve finished COVID, which was conveniently done on the day of Her Majesty’s parting, and we’ve come out of it with more cases than we did when we went into it. So the whole of COVID management strategy is why ACT believes that, after this Budget cycle, there should be an inquiry.

Effectively, the Labour Party has to take responsibility for creating inflation in households through this Budget. Interest rates were set too low, the welfare effect was maintained—now we’re paying the price. It’s not just a mechanical, fiscal response; it’s one where the Budget appropriations have got to show yielding results. It’s very hard to point to a matrix of results—that should be attached to this bill—of what this money is delivering. We believe that it’s essential that the taxpayer gets value for money. The tax take is higher than ever and it’s got us through last year, but I’ve never once heard the Labour Party actually thanking the taxpayer for its contribution. The Government’s job is to divvy it up and it put it in places that are effective, that bring prosperity to the economy, but people out in New Zealand are feeling the pain of rising inflation, rising interest rates, and just a general dispiriting of regulations being too much for them. They look at what the Government’s spending initiatives are and think to themselves, “Well, how does that relate to me, and am I getting value for money?”

Time for a wake-up call, because this year coming will not be easier. The opposition to this bill by ACT is not just because we’re madly fixated on taxpayers—on protecting them—it’s because we know the people out in New Zealand know how to spend the money better than the Government does. The right thing to do in this last Budget was to actually—instead of clamouring at the eleventh hour to give them a dollar a day through the cost of living payment because the polls were bad—give them some stimulus in the back pocket themselves. Instead of giving them dollars, we should have given them thousands. We should have actually come to the party, where they felt that the Government was being sympathetic and was giving them a break; not having the boot at the throat of themselves and their households.

So we will remember this Budget as the one that also has contributed to the brain drain. We can see now the number of people leaving to go to Australia is rising every week. People know that they’re going to get paid more over there. We need to be more productive here. We need to invite foreign capital in here to help us to—we can’t just keep relying on the taxpayer to fund everything. We need to find another leg to the economy.

So in terms of this bill, taking the tax at its pure level, the Government’s skirting on the edge of its fiscal prudence. Talking to the Minister, he can’t move on what he’s collecting. Inflation is helping him because it’s driving up—by 7, 8 percent—his take, but even then, it’s not a lot of room to walk in.

So you can talk about Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s—and the Minister clutches them like it’s Genesis 1 and 2—but when the hard times come, those reports won’t matter at all. So ACT opposes this bill, and we believe the taxpayer has not been rewarded, nor the citizens, in this last Budget.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I was looking forward to going after the other Mr Bennett, but this Mr Bennett will just do his thing now because the previous Mr Bennett who spoke earlier seemed to be Mr “Negativity” Bennett and Mr “There is no future” Bennett, but, thankfully, right now, you’ve got Mr “Realistic” Bennett, Mr “Optimistic” Bennett, in the chair, speaking right now, and what is to come. No, it is a challenge, and I understand and am fully aware that we can be optimistic and we can also have those rose-tinted glasses. But, actually, on this side of the House, this Mr Bennett sees that we had to be pragmatic. We had to look at the here and now, but we also, obviously, had to look at our future and where we’re going. So that’s why I’m grateful to be part of a Government that is heavily investing in our people but also heavily investing in our planet. Yip, we’ve got more to do and more to go, but, thankfully, next year, we’ll get re-elected, and we’ll continue on the road that we are travelling right now.

I’m again grateful to be speaking, and as I was preparing for this afternoon—well, firstly, as I was listening around the House, it was definitely a game of two halves, but I thought a lot about Taranaki, where I come from, and the opportunities that are coming to our region because of what we are doing and because of the money that is being invested for our region. In fact, Rachel Brooking stole my thunder a bit earlier, but that’s OK because I’ll just reiterate that $18 million that’s been put into the development of an energy strategy. I’m not full of hot air, but in our region of Taranaki, we have some of the best offshore winds in the country. We have exceptional wind. But we’ve obviously had to do something about this wind, because there aren’t any regulatory things in place currently for what renewable offshore energy looks like. So part of this Budget and part of that $18 million is looking at that regulatory framework for offshore renewable energy, which for me as the MP for New Plymouth—for me as a member of the Taranaki community—is important because we are the energy province and we’ll continue to be the energy province into the future. That is sustainable and that is clean energy. So I am grateful that we’ve put that money in to ensure that we have a framework in place. I’ve regular meetings with those who are looking at this space and are wanting to invest in clean energy. We have the Waipipi Wind Farm down in South Taranaki that’s been successful. But we know that, now, we need to look at what it looks like offshore, because it makes a huge difference to that wonderful renewable resource of wind that is around the coastline that I live on.

On Monday, I was with a group of year 13 economics students at New Plymouth Boys’ High School, and they were doing a project around economic development but were also looking at the policy settings when it comes to the future of energy. They were looking at the policy settings when it comes to the carbon emissions trading scheme and what that looks like for their generation to come and what it means for them as they get older and inherit this planet from us. So that’s why I’m glad that not only is there $18 million in this development—whether it be around wind or whether it be around hydrogen or our energy strategy—it’s also that $2.9 billion in our climate emergency response. I know that many young people in that classroom, as well as many who have asked me to come on Friday as they march and challenge us yet again around what we are doing for their future, can say this is another step in the progress of ensuring that we are a sustainable, that we are a nation that is renewable, and that we are a nation that is going to hand over our whenua and our environment in good hands.

I’m grateful that the Hon Grant Robertson was able to find that balance in a Budget that was pretty tough. There is no silver bullet to fix what is going on in our world right now, but I’m glad that he was able to find that balance around here and now and, then, looking into the future and what that looks like. That’s why there’ve been challenges. I’ve heard across the floor and I’ve heard in the community that there’s been pushback around the cost of living payment. But it’s been really interesting as I’ve got around the electorate and talked to people and heard things around washing machines and new sports equipment and other things that people have actually purchased with this money. You may scoff from across the other side of the House, but that’s a reality for people in my community; $350 is a large amount of money. That $350 for some of us doesn’t seem like much. You can get a second-hand one for that. I did as well. That is the thing: you can. This is where you see the difference with us here in Government as the Labour Party, and those on the other side. “Ugh, $350, what’s that going to get you?” Well, actually, $350 gets you a school uniform; $350 gets you two new tires on your car—things that people actually don’t and can’t get, because they have little. It’s a challenge for us, as the Labour Party, to ensure that we find ways to support those who have little but to also celebrate those moments when a small piece of money for a small amount of time is going to make a difference to several people.

Now, I understand in my community that it is hard. Recently, I had to move house, and I’ve seen and understood what it’s like around our rental market—the prices but also the stock. So, again, I’m glad that we’re investing heavily in ensuring that we are a Government that is solving the housing crisis.

Another thing for myself and Taranaki is, in recent weeks, one of my boys and my old neighbour have both been in hospital—a mix of being in A & E, a mix of being in the ward, and a mix of being in ICU. As I talked to nurses and as I talked to doctors and as I looked around Taranaki Base Hospital, it’s not perfect—it’s not. But as I see a building project going on on the land that is going to ensure that we have a 21st century - fit hospital. As I look at the $11.1 billion—$11.1 billion—

Hon Member: That’s a lot.

GLEN BENNETT: That is a lot that we have put into our health system. That shows that (1) there’s been under-investment for a long time; and that (2) we want to make sure that our health system is fit for purpose in the 21st century so that when I go into the ICU ward on Saturday morning, when I went into the A & E on—what day of the week was it?—Monday night, just before I came down here, I ensure and see that there aren’t people sitting in the corridors and there aren’t people sitting without the right equipment—they had what they need. They don’t have all of that just yet, but, again, that’s why we have to pump this money in.

As the previous ACT Party member, Damien Smith, said, he thinks we’re being frivolous in spending money and it’s actually the taxpayers’ money. I agree; it is the taxpayer’s money—absolutely—but it’s taxpayers’ money that is given to us to be wise stewards of in ensuring that we have a health system that cares for people and in ensuring that they get the healthcare they need.

That’s why I’m grateful they put $11.1 billion into our health system. How’s it going for us? It’s a challenge—I absolutely agree—but at least we’re stepping up to that challenge; at least we’re putting money where our mouths are and saying, “We are going to do something because the status quo is not good enough; the under-investment is not good enough.” And that’s why we’re here doing this work.

Finally, I want to speak briefly about conservation. Last week, I had the pleasure of going and catching up with our local Department of Conservation (DOC) staff. I had morning tea with them and got to do the daily quiz—it was fabulous to see that we put $374 million extra into the operating funding of our conservation department and $26 million into capital spending. And as I speak with those members of the DOC team, they are so passionate; they are so driven. Taranaki Predator Free 2050—they’re all over that in terms of our riparian planting around our stream management, around ensuring that our riverways are protected, and around ensuring our Maunga Taranaki is something that is a legacy that is a taonga for all people not only today but tomorrow. I’m grateful that I’m part of a Government that’s investing $374 million—not just but more—into our conservation department.

We have challenges; we have a lot to do. I’m grateful that we are putting money into the places and spaces that need it.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to speak to this Budget; just pause for a moment and recognise what a thoughtful and strategic Budget it is, at this really critical juncture. We have come through the biggest economic shock in 100 years, and yet here we are still with low unemployment, with low Government debt, and with GDP which is growing, where, around the world, we see large economies falling into recession. But we can’t take that for granted. It’s great to see our Minister of Finance thinking about that and putting it into context and recognising the importance in New Zealand of the things that really matter. The thing that matters the most is our people, and that’s where the most money is going to go—into education, into health, and into getting better outcomes for our Māori and Pasifika communities to make us a stronger and more resilient community.

For those people who sometimes say that funds spent on those that need it most are wasted, I say to them that helping people out of poverty is never funds wasted. It is funds wisely spent on building a stronger and more equitable community, and I will never apologise for that and neither will any of our colleagues. That’s why we’re very proud of our cost of living payment, a payment that meant that people who were struggling, people who couldn’t make ends meet—it was targeted to exactly those people. We’ve heard from the other side of the House the quibbling, the pettifogging around a few payments that went astray. But we weren’t going to sit on our hands and devise a perfect system while kids went hungry. We stepped up and did what was needed.

We have shown throughout COVID, and throughout this cost of living crisis, that we will react quickly and effectively. We won’t bandy about ridiculous tax cuts that give the Leader of the Opposition $18,000 while people desperately need assistance. What’s more, if you look at what else we’ve done around cost of living in this Budget, it’s been very proactive. One of the things I’m most proud of—it’s not a huge Budget spend; I think about $270 million—is the half-price public transport. That has shifted the needle on the use of public transport and that’s a change which I think will stick. I know the other thing it’s done, certainly in Christchurch and Canterbury, is to show that if we change the cost structure usage goes up, and when usage goes up we can invest better into bus lanes, better buses, better public transport networks, and that means long-term change which is climate-friendly.

That’s the other key aspect of this Budget: getting a genuine, lasting, and just transition from the high-carbon environment and economy we’re in now, into a low-carbon economy. We need to invest. That’s another significant part of this Budget: shifting our economy away from a high-carbon economy, including transport mode shift, including looking at alternative fuels, and including looking at rail solutions for our regional networks. That’s really important stuff. Shifting industrial heat—encouraging and supporting our industrial users to move away from coal to renewable sources, whether that be woodchip or other sources. And we can’t forget the important agricultural sector, a sector that this Government has supported and continues to support, including funding research.

I’ve got a lot of support for the work that Todd Muller did in the climate change space, getting the zero carbon Act across the line. He did a lot of good work there, and he should be recognised for it. He doesn’t get the credit he deserves on that side of the House for the collaborative work he did with James Shaw getting the zero carbon Act and He Waka Eke Noa across the line. Well done to that man.

Of course, investing in our people means investing in health, and we have done more than any other Government for many years in funding health properly. We came into Government with a decrepit and demoralised health system, and we’ve turned that around, and we continue to do so; $11 billion is a lot of money to spend, but when something is as broken as it was in 2017, we can’t just patch it together. We’ve got to rebuild this system from the ground up. That includes health infrastructure, but it also includes years and years of accumulated debt that we have had to pick up. We must wipe that slate clean, because we cannot cripple the health system, going forward, with the burden of debt that the National Party left it with through a broken system. So we are taking a proactive approach, one that puts the wellbeing of people first, and isn’t some penny-pinching system which was what we had before.

Pharmac—another $141 million. We know the heartbreaking stories we see around Pharmac. Pharmac, though, is recognised internationally, and somewhat looked at sideways by some of the large drug companies in countries that have large drug industries. But we know it’s the right thing to do to have a single drug-buying agency; to have good market power, a good knowledge base, a good skill set to go out there and get the best deals we can for New Zealanders. They do it well. We know it’s always going to be hard when there are decisions made about what’s funded and what’s not. But another $141 million for Pharmac will go a hell of a long way there.

What’s more is the work we’re doing around housing. Housing is a challenge. It’s been a challenge for a while and we know that for many years we were building about 20,000 houses short in terms of what we needed. But you know what? We’ve turned the corner. This Government has turned the corner. It took a long time to turn that tanker round, because what had happened through the global financial crisis? All of our building industry apprenticeships were wiped. We had an industry that had no capacity. So even our work around apprentices and trade training is supporting the construction of warm, healthy homes for people to live in. We continue to do that, including increasingly subsidising warm and healthy homes, including an infrastructure fund to make sure that councils can create the infrastructure that is needed to support the housing developments we need: good, compact housing developments; housing developments which are great to live in. I do give credence to the National Party for joining with the Labour Party in the housing accord and having a plan to go forward to make sure that we have a good supply of houses 10, 20, 30, and 100 years into the future.

The other thing we’re interested in—and it’s really important; I emphasise this—is we’re a party that is committed to equity and we know that there are some parts of our community, some sections of our community, that haven’t done well historically for all kinds of reasons and have been let down. The Māori community is one of those, and the Pasifika community is another. We are facing up to that fact. We are targeting funding into Māori housing initiatives, Māori wellbeing initiatives, Māori mental health, and the same with Pasifika. I’m very excited about the stuff that’s going on in procurement. This Budget identifies that we should be looking to encourage Māori business, Māori innovation, and Māori entrepreneurs by having procurement guidelines and procedures which say let’s buy from Māori business, let’s grow Māori business in this way, not by propping it up but by lifting it up. That’s a fantastic initiative as well.

So this is a Budget which is well-thought-out. It’s a strategic Budget. A Budget that first of all says we need a just transition, a transition that brings everyone along, not just those at the top but everyone. One that puts the physical and mental wellbeing of New Zealanders at the front and foremost in all of our thinking. One that recognises that parts of our community, Māori and Pasifika in particular, need help, but they need to be empowered and lifted up, not propped up. That’s what’s going on in a lot of these initiatives. And, of course, child wellbeing—they’re the future. We’re going to put that first. We’ve got a lot of work to do and we’re going to get on with it. Kia ora.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): I must say, listening to that last address from the last speaker, Duncan Webb, saying that the last Budget was a “well-thought-out process”, it was pretty hard to hold back the chuckles from this side. But the reality is, this is no laughing matter, because it is quite the opposite of what we have seen from this Government in regards to the Budget process that was put through in 2022-2023. Quite the opposite from the statement of a “well-thought-out Budget”, because we can look at a number of aspects underpinning this expenditure spend by this Government and pull that apart. And that’s what I’m going to do over the period of the next few minutes or so.

Todd Muller: He did say some kind things though.

SIMON WATTS: Why? Because—well, Todd Muller’s saying he did say a couple of good things, and I think he was referring to where he was complimenting Todd Muller on his superb performance in aspects of his portfolio. But that’s not what we’re here for tonight.

Let’s get back into the conversation around debt, because I think the debt aspect is a conversation that the last speaker, again, was talking about the role in which prior Governments have played. The reality is that financing costs to fund Government debt are going to be in the region of $2.8 billion for the year 2022. That is an absolutely huge amount of money that is going on the interest costs to fund that debt. That amount is looking to increase in the next couple of years to in the region of $4.8-$4.9 billion of interest costs on Government debt. That is the entirety of the law and order funding appropriation for the Public Service in the Budget. And that is the significance of a Government that is addicted to spending, a Government that is addicted to growing our debt, in terms of that pie. As a result, hard-working Kiwis are now, through their contributions of taxes that come out the back pockets of hard-working Kiwis, they are funding a huge portion of that towards interest costs. And the challenge with the conversation where they said this was “well-thought-out” and the reality is it is not, is actually that those finance costs mean that money going into that doesn’t go into other areas.

In particular, the increasing levels of finance costs put at risk, in my view, front-line public services. Because you can’t do both. You can only spend a dollar once. And if a dollar is going in to pay interest costs to offshore borrowers primarily then that cannot go into front-line nurses, police, doctors, etc. So this, and this allocation of appropriation at this period of time has and will have significant locked-in issues in future years from now. And that is what this side has been calling for. We’ve been calling for the Government to be taking a much more prudent and well-thought-out process in terms of the way in which they spend taxpayer money, and making sure that when that money is being spent or invested, that we’re getting benefits and outcomes. I think if you could personify this Government in terms of their performance for the last five years, and when you talk to hard-working Kiwis around this country in terms of where they see things going, and when you ask them, “Do you believe that the country is heading in the right direction or the wrong direction?”, the majority of Kiwis that I speak to up and down this country believe this country is going in the wrong direction. And I’ll tell you why: because they are not seeing the outcomes. They are not seeing the deliverables from this appropriation in this Budget and those Budgets that have come before it in terms of outcomes that they can see day to day in terms of the issues they face.

I believe that not only do we have a cost of living crisis, we have a social crisis that is brewing behind the scenes. And what I mean by that is this Government has provided a cost of living payment—which we heard today from our shadow Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, that the nearly 100,000 individuals that this payment went to in error, that was wrongly done. They come across the side and say, “Well, these payments, yeah, they are well targeted.” That’s not well targeted. One hundred thousand people getting the payment when they shouldn’t have got it is wasteful spending. But the challenge more so is that there are families across this country, families in middle New Zealand that are getting squeezed at the moment because inflation levels in this country are sitting at around 7.3 percent. And I can tell you what: well, early on in the process they said that was just growing pains. The Minister of Finance about 12 months ago said, “Don’t worry, these inflation aspects, they’re just growing pains as we come out of COVID.” Well, absolutely not. Inflation is here to stay. It is going to be here a lot longer than what we expect, and that means that the pain that hard-working Kiwi families are facing around this country is going to continue.

So what do they need in terms of the appropriation from a Government, in terms of its Budget, like the appropriation that this Government has done in this year so far? Well, they need to make sure that that investment is actually going to provide them benefits in terms of the issues that they’re facing. I talked about the issue around a social crisis that I believe is brewing. What I mean by that is when a family cannot afford to fill up the petrol in their car, that means their child might not be dropped off at school, which might be 5 kilometres down the road, and that might happen once or twice. But what we know, talking to front-line service providers in my electorate and parts of the country we have travelled, that is happening today. That social crisis is brewing today. That side of the House have got their heads in the sand that this is an issue, and they believe that a cost of living payment in terms of the cash payment is going to solve all that. We know that that is not a sustainable response in order to deal with the cost of living process and the social crisis. And that side of the House, members on the other side, they’re chuckling away, thinking this is one big joke. But those families that make the decision around whether they’re able to fill up their car each week and the ability for them to therefore take their kids to school and the reality that their kids do not go to school, they’re truant, they’re not part of the education system, and they become disconnected from our communities. That has a social cost that will outlast every single person sitting in those seats on that side of the House. That is what our future National-led Government next year will inherit, and that is the problem at its core that we are going to need to deal with.

Bringing out a couple of hundred bucks here and there is going to do absolutely diddly squat in terms of providing solutions to those Kiwis. And you know what? That’s what Kiwis have clicked on to. People are trying to work out, “Do I trust the Government to deliver the outcomes that I need for my families?” Not in a year’s time. This week, next week, the week after. They want to understand what is going to be. “Where’s my hope? Where’s my certainty about the future?” And these guys think that just throwing that out on a one-off payment is going to solve everything. Well, it’s not. And that is the reality that a lot of families around this country are facing at the moment.

The other aspect that layers on top of that is in regards to the reform agenda. And I just want to pick one example, $2.5 billion in the appropriation in regards to better-off funding for the three waters reform programme, a reform programme that over 60 percent of Kiwis oppose. Just 18 percent of Kiwis in a recent poll said they support, and about a quarter of those are saying that they are still undecided. That must signal to the members on that side of the House that this reform agenda is not aligned with what Kiwis across this country want. It’s $2.5 billion. Imagine the impact of $2.5 billion if we can get that funding to the places that would drive economic growth, that would increase productivity, that would increase jobs and get those people that are feeling the pain a moment out of that, but into an aspirational New Zealand where they have hope for their future. That is the opportunity cost that that side of the House are foregoing, that is what a National-led Government in 2023 will inherit, and that is what we will turn around.

I want to finish in the last minute or so with a little bit of comment around the reality that Kiwis are going backwards. Inflation at 7.3 percent, wage inflation at 3.4; 7.3 minus 3.4 means Kiwis are going back 3.9 percent—round it up to 4 percent. Every single Kiwi in this country every single day is going backwards under this Government by 4 percent. And you can’t get that back, that is lost opportunity. That is the cost, that is the price of a Government that does not have a plan in order to manage this economy and get us from where we are to where we need to be, which is an aspirational country that has hope for the future.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Thank you, Madam Speaker. On the eve of travel with my colleague across the way in that speech, I will do my best to be as kind as possible, but I rebut his points because he is out of touch with Auckland’s North Shore. He talked about a social crisis and said that he cares about the social crisis, but the only thing that Simon Watts is offering anyone is tax cuts for Takapuna—tax cuts for Takapuna. The reality is we look across Auckland’s North Shore, and it is 15 years since we’ve had any other representation than National MPs on the North Shore. Now, we’ve got a wonderful Labour MP in Northcote, and we have delivered more to social services in Auckland’s North Shore than they have seen in 15 years.

If I look in this Budget, the commitment to address domestic violence for women on the North Shore, we’ve just allocated tens of thousands of dollars to support domestic violence on the North Shore—a social crisis, in fact. Secondly, the allocation of supporting, what was it—in there is the half-price public transport. It’s in there, supporting good people to take half-price public transport and that’s making the change that we need, because we know that the cost of living is difficult for everyone. The thing, though, is that we’re in touch with our reality—right? We understand the pragmatic decisions that we need to make to move our people forward—the actual things that will make a difference. This side of the House voted for that; that side of the House voted against it. So when I come back to talking about Simon Watts being an advocate against a social crisis, it’s only under a Labour Government, with a Labour MP on the North Shore, that we’ve managed to make any impact on the bottom end of the people that need it the most—the people that they called bottom-feeders, in fact, I remember. So I just want to acknowledge that.

Also, to the point that he raised around the three waters reform—yes, absolutely. Three waters is a challenging conversation. I’ve sat with my colleagues for full weeks of hearings, hearing across the country people that open up their oral submission with “We agree that we need water reform and we have an infrastructure problem.” We have an infrastructure problem, and anyone that lives in Auckland and those that live on the North Shore understand that our beaches are closed every month in Auckland—every month our beaches are closed. Right across in Takapuna and Wairau Valley, which has some of the poorest—the poorest—water infrastructure and where our waste water goes out to our beaches, in fact, our beaches are closed.

Those are particular points, and so I come back to the Budget and our social crisis that Mr Watts cares about. What about truancy and our allocation of money in this Budget that’s allocated to our local schools? It reminds the National Party that you cut our truancy services on the North Shore—you cut them.

Secondly, we’ve just increased the number of community police teams across both Northcote Kaipātiki, Takapuna, and up to the Hibiscus Coast, because—what?—you cut our community policing team when you were in Government. While this Government has been in town, we’ve added 116 additional police to the Waitematā district. We’ve added to our number of community policing teams. This Budget is making the difference there.

I go now to one of my favourite topics, where I’ll talk about transport—transport and infrastructure—where we start to plan. More recently, I had the Hon Grant Robertson, the father of this Budget, come over to the Shore. He talked to good Shore people to bring into context the amount of work that we are doing, and we can start with the Northcote housing development, the investment in water infrastructure, and the investment in our local schools and the number of classrooms that are being built under this Government. That was unheard of under the National Government. You didn’t deliver any houses in Northcote, you didn’t deliver any schools, and you didn’t deliver any investment in water infrastructure. In fact, you cut our services.

So now is the reality of where we understand that under a Labour Government, the North Shore is much better off. Sixty percent of people on the North Shore are supported by the cost of living payment, and people in this reality are not going to turn down any money, because it’s all helpful. Some might use it for some wheels on a car, as was said this afternoon. Some might use it for an additional loaf of bread. Some might use it for the sports fees to get their kids playing rugby. Those are the differences that we are able to make in a practical way under this Government—thank you, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! My apologies to Mr Shanan Halbert. This debate is interrupted for the dinner break. We will resume at 7 p.m., and he is welcome to come and complete the rest of his speech. Thank you.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean):The House is resumed. Members, when the House rose for the dinner break, we were in the third reading of the Appropriation (2022/23 Estimates) Bill and the second reading of the Imprest Supply (Second for 2022/23) Bill, and Shanan Halbert had one minute and 51 seconds, should he wish to continue.

SHANAN HALBERT: Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I spent a good eight minutes talking about the progress that we were making on Auckland’s North Shore under this Government. Having a Labour MP on the North Shore has been helpful to address what Simon Watts, my colleague and the MP for the North Shore, talked about. He called it a social crisis, but, in fact, it’s only under this Government that we’ve invested heavily in social services on the North Shore. I spoke openly about our commitment to addressing domestic violence, which has been a significant issue on the North Shore that hasn’t been resolved. So I’m really proud that we are investing in that.

Under this Budget, we’re delivering the largest police force ever. When I look at the numbers under the Waitematā district, there are 117 additional police on the beat under this Government, and, in fact, the announcement a month ago, when we invested in additional community constables, is something that our community has called for for a very long time. There is an increase from two community constables in the Kaipātiki to six. Similarly, across in Devonport and Takapuna, it’s really important, and it’s something that, actually, in fact, across the House, those members cancelled community constables and community police services in our community under their watch. I’m also equally proud of the investment into our truancy services in our schools. Under the National Government, they cancelled our truancy services and relocated them out west. We are now looking towards the North Shore service to support our young people—our rangatahi—to come back to school.

Lastly, I just want to acknowledge in this Budget the additional commitment under He Poutama Rangatahi. It’s about time that the North Shore gets its fair share, and in that piece of work, we’re supporting young people back into work and into training. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Appropriation (2022/23 Estimates) Bill be now read a third time and the Imprest Supply (Second for 2021/23) Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 75

New Zealand Labour 64; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Sharma.

Noes 45

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

Appropriation (2022/23 Estimates) Bill read a third time.

Imprest Supply (Second for 2022/23) Bill read a second time.

Bills

Imprest Supply (Second for 2022/23) Bill

Third Reading

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I move, That the Imprest Supply (Second for 2022/23) Bill be now read a third time.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Imprest Supply (Second for 2022/23) Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 75

New Zealand Labour 64; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Sharma.

Noes 45

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Urgency

Urgency

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I move, That urgency be accorded the passing through all stages of the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill.

The Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill creates a one-off public holiday to mark the end of the 70-year reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The holiday is to take place next Monday, the day of New Zealand’s State memorial service for the Queen, hence the need to pass the bill under urgency today.

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

Ayes 108

New Zealand Labour 64; New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Sharma.

Noes 12

ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill

First Reading

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I present a legislative statement on the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I move, That the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill be now read a first time.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was New Zealand’s head of State for more than 70 years. She lived a life of service, and the outpouring of affection that we have seen for her here in Aotearoa New Zealand and around the world shows that this is a very significant moment in New Zealand public life. Our Government has determined that a public holiday on the day of her memorial service here in New Zealand is an appropriate step to take. It is, firstly, a mark of respect for a much-loved and long-reigning sovereign. Secondly, the establishment of a public holiday allows families and communities to gather together to watch or participate in the national memorial service or other services that will occur all around our country, and it allows people to come together and share their memories and their reflections on this important day.

The bill designates this day to be Monday, 26 September, which is next Monday. This will be a one-off public holiday and the date will be written into the text of the legislation. Normal public holiday arrangements will apply on Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day. Workers who do work on that day will be entitled to a day in lieu and time and a half, but workers who are normally rostered to work on that day will be entitled to not work on that day. There will be no trading restrictions in place; it will operate as a normal public holiday. The bill also confirms that Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day will not be considered to be a working day for certain statutory or contractual purposes, which is important in terms of making many calculations in the law and in employment agreements.

Public holidays are a day for our nation to breathe, for the relentless focus on work and commerce just to be paused a little bit for one day, to enable us to step back and participate as a society in important national moments. The end of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s remarkable and historic reign is such a moment. I’m quite sure that millions of New Zealanders will value the opportunity to remember and celebrate the remarkable life of the only sovereign that most of us have ever known. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well, thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to make it clear at the outset, as the House has now moved into urgency to consider this piece of legislation, that the National Party and His Majesty’s loyal Opposition will be supporting this piece of legislation. We do so for a number of reasons, many of which have been already canvassed by the Minister in his introductory remarks.

Normally when the House goes into urgency to debate and pass a Government bill, it’s for reasons not of this sort. This is a unique event in the lives of most New Zealanders in that, as the Minister has said, for the 70 years and for Her Majesty to have passed away in her 71st year of reigning as our Sovereign lady is something that most of us have never had to consider or contend with or be involved with in the past.

I’m, like many New Zealanders, a little bit sleep-deprived today, because I spent quite a long time last night completely mesmerised and in awe of the television coverage of the royal State funeral—the processions and the pageantry and the appropriate farewell that was given to our late Queen Elizabeth II. So I think—and we think, on this side of the House—that this is an appropriate piece of legislation to establish what will be a one-off memorial day marking the remarkable service and dedication, over such a long period of time, of our late Queen.

But in doing so, we also acknowledge that there is a cost and that is not something to just ignore or to pretend isn’t occurring. But I would contend that, even in a time of financial difficulties that our current economy is in and when we have a cost of living crisis, I think, actually, on balance, most New Zealanders and most New Zealand businesses will think that this is an appropriate way to mark—as a nation, as citizens, as communities, as families, and as a country—the remarkable dedication and dedicated service that Her Majesty gave to us over that period of time.

So this piece of legislation means that, like the Sovereign’s birthday, Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day will be treated as a day on which, for instance, schools will be closed under the Education and Training Act. It’ll be, surprisingly enough, a non-release day for people who are involved and incarcerated in Corrections department facilities. So they’ll lose a day, and that may be something that they’re not initially aware of.

There will be other impacts as well, but I’m pleased to see that the Government has not gone so far as to restrict trading. Alcohol will be available to be sold, retail premises will be able to—

Ian McKelvie: We’ll be able to drown our sorrows.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Ha, ha! My friend and colleague Ian McKelvie says that we’ll be able to drown our sorrows. Well, maybe a small toast to our late Queen might be appropriate; just a small tincture. I know that in your case, Mr McKelvie, it will only be a small tincture.

But I’m pleased that the Government’s taken a view that this one-off memorial holiday should be treated in much the same way that we acknowledge the monarch’s birthday each year in New Zealand. And in an area like mine—in the beautiful Coromandel—that ability to trade on the day is actually quite important. That will be of some benefit to people who will choose to mark this day by actually visiting other parts of the country and turning it into, actually, a memorial weekend rather than just a memorial day. Some of us will be attending here in Wellington at St Paul’s cathedral, where there will be a memorial service. That will commence with a period of silence across the nation, and we also think that’s appropriate; we think that’s the right and proper thing to do under these circumstances.

We, on this side of the House, have—as part of our values in terms of our principles as a party—loyalty to our Sovereign. And Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was, without doubt, a big stable, influencing factor in pretty much all our lives. I don’t think there are any members in this Chamber who would recall—with the possible exception of Ian McKelvie—a time when Her Majesty had not been our Queen, and he would have been far too young at that stage to remember that period of time.

So this stable factor in our life, in our community, in our nation has been very, very important. She devoted almost her entire adult life to fulfilling the pledge of service that she made as a young princess: that her life would be devoted to service of her people, of her subjects, and to the Commonwealth and the Realm nations. As our leader, Christopher Luxon, said, “The strength and stability of Her Majesty’s leadership of the Commonwealth was a reassuring anchor for New Zealand and New Zealanders in uncertain and changing times. Through both the tumultuous and the good, her dedicated service embodied the values of duty, commitment, and strength.” And I think that there would be very few New Zealanders who would not concur with that view from Christopher Luxon.

So, on this side of the House, we acknowledge and support the motion that is before us. We understand the reasons why this piece of legislation is not going to a select committee process. This is a unique occasion when the processes of parliamentary procedure can, with legitimate cause, be put aside. And I don’t think that there will be too many New Zealanders who will be troubled by the actions that we are taking in the urgency debate tonight.

There will be some, however, who will want to use the opportunity, once the memorial day is passed, to open a broader debate about New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements. I would simply say to them: please have the dignity and grace to allow that debate to occur—if it is to occur—after a suitable and appropriate period of mourning, when we as New Zealanders can acknowledge with all the appropriate manner and customary care that we want to do as a Commonwealth country, to mark Her Majesty’s memorial. Because it will be a day for us to celebrate and commemorate her wonderful life.

Like many other people in New Zealand, I’m of an age where I can remember being taken by my mother to the footpath outside what was then the Mercury Theatre in Auckland. My brother, sister, and I waited patiently for what seemed like an eternity, for a fleeting glimpse of a magnificently dressed, gloved woman with jewels and all sorts of things—a vision that most of us had never seen before. In a fleeting moment, she passed before us with a gloved wave.

I’m very thankful that my mother had the fortitude to do that for us as young children. We may not have appreciated it so much at the time, but looking back with reflection and fondness, it’s a very fond memory of mine personally. I know that there will be literally hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who will have similar fond memories of an association with a much-loved and admired monarch who many of us felt, actually, we had an almost personal relationship, even though we may never have met her. We knew her from magazines, from news reports, from television, and from the many and varied activities that she and her family had undertaken during her long years of reign.

So I want to conclude by reconfirming that His Majesty’s loyal Opposition are going to support this piece of legislation. We do so understanding that it comes with some cost, but in this case we think that that cost is something that can be appropriately borne. And so we support this legislation.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): I also rise to support this bill, which we seek to pass under urgency. This is, however you view the monarchy and its relationship with New Zealand, a historic moment in our culture and for the world. She was a remarkable lady; she maintained her grace and her poise, but to reign over us for 70 years is—it has been world shaping for all of us. To get a moment to reflect on that with our families and to reflect on the relationship that the Crown has with mana whenua also, potentially, because, of course, that is an extremely special relationship—it is appropriate to take this time. I commend this bill to the House.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to support this bill and acknowledge, actually, the very impressive words and contribution of my colleague Scott Simpson. If I have one critique of the conversation that we’ve had thus far, it is that the Government has been entirely silent on the implications that this has for businesses who, certainly under this Government, have felt hugely put upon in terms of more compliance, more cost, more annual leave, more sick leave, more holidays. It was not even really part of the Minister’s introductory comments that there was any acknowledgment that there is a cost associated with this bill. I think that’s a mistake, and it’s a disappointment, actually. It shows a lack of respect for those who actually create the wealth and income in this community that the Minister was entirely silent on the implication for them and their businesses.

However, I think others in this House who have decided to take that to the point of view of opposing this have missed the significance of what we are reflecting on here this evening: that is a life of remarkable service and contribution to the world, but particularly as the Sovereign to this fantastic country; 70 years of service—selfless service. A paradox, really, when you are born into such privilege yet are remembered at the end of your life as someone who has given selfless service as a queen. I think it is absolutely appropriate for us, as a country, to reflect quietly in our own ways—individually, as whānau, as family—in response and reflecting on a remarkable 70 years of service. That is why the National Party so strongly supports this one-off public holiday on Monday.

Everyone immediately reflects on their own particular relationship with our late Queen. For me, it was a personal meeting on 1 November 1995. It was a Government House function. I was working for the Prime Minister Jim Bolger at the time. I was there with a huge number of other people and did not expect to find myself in a queue, only a handful of people away from Her Majesty. I quickly saw the opportunity to stand at attention as she was moving along the line. I had a Heineken in one hand and was not particularly well briefed as to what I should do. So, as she approached, I put out my hand, and shook it, and said, “Your Majesty, my name’s Todd Muller. I work for Jim Bolger.”, and she said, “That’s lovely.” But in all seriousness, she immediately said—and I think this just talks to the millions of experiences that have been shared in public lately—“And how was Bill Rowling’s funeral?” Because she knew that the Prime Minister was at Bill Rowling’s funeral that day. So hearing that I worked for Jim Bolger, the first thing she asks of is how did the farewell of a former Prime Minister go—how was his family, and was it an appropriate send-off? You know, I thought that that, in its little glimpse for me, talked to someone who immediately is focused on other people. We had a further conversation around what it was like working in a Prime Minister’s office, and then she moved on to the next person in the line. I have to admit, looking at the queue that then followed and reflecting that was probably the third or fourth function that she did that day—and she did that for 70 years; connecting with people and being interested in them—I find just breathtaking.

I think it is absolutely right that we do spend time in the hurly-burly of our life to actually pause and reflect. I don’t think, at times, we do enough of it, you know, when we have a public holiday to actually just reflect on the purpose of it. I would hope that on Monday we do take time as individuals and as families just to reflect not only on the Queen’s service but on the nature of service and the nature of selfless service. I often wonder what she thinks and thought of subsequent generations to her own, that she always called the “greatest generation”, the generation that she was most closest to in age, that had seen their fathers and uncles fall in the trenches of World War I, but went again to defend freedom and democracy, into that fire, when they were young. She was young at the same time, and you could tell that there was such an immense bond between her and that generation—that despite what they knew they were walking towards, they did it anyway because the values of decency and democracy needed to be upheld. And if not them, then who? So they walked towards the fire and in many cases death.

I wonder what she thinks or thought of the generations that have come since: obsessing on our phones, reflecting on curing our image on Instagram and other social media environments. I wonder what she would think of that in terms of the focus of selfless service versus a society which, perhaps, is becoming more focused on self as opposed to selfless service. So that’s what I will be reflecting on.

Now, I appreciate that my personal reflections are only valid for me and not necessarily for anyone, either on this side or on the other side of the House. But I think it is valuable to reflect on the nature of service—what it means to have a sovereign, for someone to have been so connected to this place, this institution, for 70 years, this country for 70 years, and so focused on the individual journeys that she was connected with over those 70 years. A remarkable lady—someone that I was very moved when I heard she had died; more moved than I expected to be. I had seen the photo of her meeting Liz Truss and I noted “Gosh, she’s really looking frail.” But when I got the message, as we all did, that she had passed, I was deeply moved. I’ve reflected since: why is that? Partly it’s her service; partly, I think she reminds me and reminded me of that generation that has passed. My great-uncle who lost control of his RAF fighter jet and pulled it down before a school and lost his life in 1940; my grandparents, who then went on to serve their community in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

I think part of the reason I have been so deeply moved is she reflected a core part of who I am and my family’s connection with this country and my family’s connection with service and that great generation. So let’s spend some time on this public holiday on Monday individually reflecting on what service, sacrifice, means in the context of this country as we look forward to the next five years or 10 years. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Unlike some of the members on the other side of the House, I never met Queen Elizabeth II, but I, too, did stand and see the fleeting gloved wave in 1981, as a girl guide lining the streets in Hamilton. But I guess the closest I got to the Queen was a photograph of her and Prince Philip that proudly sat on my grandad’s shelf in his house. He was a steward for her and Prince Philip in 1953, when he was in the RNZAF, and toured the country with her and Prince Philip. He spoke so fondly of her. When you spend time with someone in a very intimate space—the doors are closed and they get to relax—you get to see someone and you get to know them. My grandad wasn’t one to suffer fools, but he certainly never spoke of her or Prince Philip with anything but deep admiration.

So, like we hear from the other side of the House, Monday will give us an opportunity to reflect not just on her leadership and her service and what she meant to the Commonwealth and to our country but to individual people that she forged relationships with and, also, a wonderful opportunity to reflect on a generation that was committed to service. And whether it was born out of World War II, as we’ve heard reflected, I know that I won’t just be thinking of Her Majesty but also people like my grandad, our grandads, who served in World War II and were part of a generation that we really are saying goodbye to. It is a day to reflect and I’m very humbled and grateful to be able to recommend this bill to the House.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call, probably a short call, on behalf of the Green Party, noting our support for the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill. The Green Party is—no surprise—fully supportive of work-life balance and people having opportunity and time to reflect and, as I think Minister Wood suggested, step back from the focus of work and commerce. In that spirit, we are all for this.

I note the discussion from members of the Opposition—“But what about the cost to businesses?”—and I do want to take just a moment to touch on that point. In terms of—I have spoken to people in small businesses that are feeling things are hard. I’ve also spoken to a lot of workers who are finding things hard. We are living in a really difficult time at the moment, and a chance to rest and step back and reflect on things bigger than us actually feels very timely. To measure everything in dollars and cents may be to lose the value of everything. But even if we did measure this just in dollars and cents, we saw through Matariki that the costings of that holiday could well have been on the positive side of the ledger to our communities, and businesses as well, compared to the costs. So we do need to keep our heads up, as a House, on the things that really matter.

You may note, in my speech so far, I am not speaking particularly to the point of the role of the Queen. I do recognise that there will be—and there are, I’ve heard over the last week or so—many reports of people who are grieving in this country and around the world, and I acknowledge that. The Greens are all for those people being able to have that space to grieve. There are others in this country and around the world, people like me, who are not—who felt like the Queen was a titular head of State who my only connection to was through Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which I recognise as our founding document in this country. I do want to acknowledge the Queen for her reflection on the imperfect implementation of that agreement between the Crown and hapū and iwi.

So, for the Greens and for myself, I hope that when people are memorialising the Queen next Monday, they remember—and I googled “What’s the point of a memorial?” The answer I got was: “To remind”—and it was in italics—“people by connecting to the past, present, and future.” So this is not just about one person; this is about us as a country and our connections and history. For me and for many in the Green Party, we cannot disconnect this conversation from the conversation of colonisation and where we stand in relation as Crown and hapū and iwi. So I and the Green Party would love to encourage New Zealanders, as they memorialise, to look back and look at where we are now, and ask themselves “Are we compliant with Te Tiriti o Waitangi? Are we compliant and enabling He Whakaputanga? And what is the next step in our journey?” Because this is a day of potential reflection.

And I would love to encourage people to take that day to look up a report online called The Report of Matike Mai Aotearoa - The Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation, which is around constitutional re-envisaging of this country that is delivering on those commitments that have been made by the Crown and the people of this country. This is part of memorialising; I would say this is core to this conversation—that people will have time for a reflection at a really important moment in our history. We recreate our present in moments like this, which then creates a path for a future that recreates the harm of the past or sets us on a path towards something better. The Greens want us to take this opportunity to move towards something better. I will just end my speech there.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise tonight, on behalf of the ACT Party, in opposition to this bill. But, firstly, I’d like to acknowledge the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. She did mean a lot to a lot of New Zealanders. I think, in part, that’s because every time you went to the supermarket or to a bookstore and saw a magazine, you saw the face of the Queen, or you saw a face of a royal member. When you’ve seen that so many times, you feel an attachment to these people that a lot of people have never met. But we’ve seen what’s been happening in their lives and how that affects New Zealanders. So people in New Zealand feel a strong attachment to our royal family and to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

But it’s also, in part, because the Queen, over seven decades, visited New Zealand many times and touched the hearts of countless New Zealanders through personal interactions and through going through small towns up and down New Zealand. And we should acknowledge the life of service that the Queen had and gave to people. But I don’t believe that Queen Elizabeth II would have wished for her memorial, or for a reflection of her life of service to the people of the Commonwealth, to negatively affect other people that she so cared for.

I think, in this debate in particular, but in passing this law to pass a one-off holiday for Her Majesty the Queen, we are forgetting about the effect that this will have on the lives of people—real New Zealanders. And we’ve heard that businesses have really, really struggled through the COVID pandemic. They have really struggled with this Government, in particular, passing more and more regulations, more costs, and more public holidays on to businesses. That’s made it so hard to get up in the morning and create a living for people, their own families, and their business. This holiday is estimated to cost another $450 million to our economy and to businesses up and down New Zealand. But on top of that—and this is the aspect I would wish to speak to, tonight—is the effect that this will have on people who have medical conditions, people who are trying to access our healthcare system.

We have heard from people within the medical community that passing this one-off holiday is going to cause chaos in hospitals and GP clinics up and down New Zealand. The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners chief Dr Samantha Murton said, “It is going to make our lives much more difficult”. I spoke last week just to one GP who said that they are having to cancel 120 booked appointments because of this holiday. That has a flow-on effect, not only for that 120 lot of appointments but all of the appointments booked for weeks and months in the coming future. We know that this will have a flow-on effect for people who’ve been waiting—for months and months even—within our hospital system. At the end of June, just this year, 7,500 people have been waiting over a year for non-urgent surgeries. This will come as a blow to some of those people that will be told that their scheduled appointment will now have to be rescheduled because the Government has decided that there needs to be a full public holiday in commemoration.

I want to point to one particular area of the country, which is the Wairarapa. Now, the Te Whatu Ora district director for Wairarapa has said 488 disruptions to appointments and surgeries will happen in Wairarapa alone because of this. How large will this problem be across the whole country? This will have a detrimental effect. To the person that I spoke to who’s had their scan cancelled, there’s a feeling of anxiety, of people not being able to access the healthcare that they need when we already know that our healthcare sector is overstretched and over-burdened. This places another burden on those hospitals and those clinic staff, who now have to rebook countless numbers of people and postpone, even further, people who may have been hoping to get their appointments done in good time in the months ahead.

Another quote that came from the Association of General Surgeons, from Rowan French, said, “We normally plan about two months ahead, so two weeks is a very short time to make any changes,”. Hospitals are racing to cancel the operations that they have planned, to reorganise theatre spaces, and to recreate schedules. We are extremely short-staffed in our hospitals at the moment. We know that there are thousands of New Zealanders who haven’t been able to get their surgeries because of COVID, because they’ve only been doing those very, very acute surgeries, rather than the non-urgent surgeries, and this will be having an ongoing detrimental effect in people’s lives.

The last point I wish to talk about was the fact that, you know, we should pay tribute to Her Majesty the Queen. She has done a life of service, and is of huge importance to us all. But this one day off—this one particular day—has been scheduled just so the Prime Minister can come back and be here for this holiday. There is cynical timing about why this particular day has been chosen. We shouldn’t allow this holiday to allow health to come to a grinding halt, and I don’t believe that Her Majesty would have wanted people to miss appointments and healthcare options for a day of commemoration.

You know, New Zealanders are feeling the loss of Her Majesty the Queen. She really was a true leader, and she selflessly served the Commonwealth every day of her life. But this is at an enormous cost—not just to businesses, and children who are missing education, but the patients who will be missing their appointments. It is possible that the Government could commemorate this day in a better manner. They could introduce legislation that allowed for people to have a public holiday but to use their annual leave, rather than forcing businesses to use their own money.

While we do respect the Queen, there is no way that the ACT Party could, in good faith, vote for this piece of legislation. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth was a much-loved and admired monarch whose record reign of 70 years is a testament to her commitment and to her service. She’s an example to all of us and those who serve their communities around Aotearoa. Around the world, people are feeling an acute sense of loss. Our Government has determined that it is appropriate for New Zealanders to come together on Monday, 26 September as a time to be a part of those global acknowledgments of her service.

I want to acknowledge the comments of those around the House tonight—the Hon Scott Simpson, Todd Muller, Jan Logie—I’ve enjoyed all of your reflections on the importance of that public holiday and your reflections on what you’ll be thinking about. For me, I will be thinking about the strands that bind us as New Zealanders, and those strands which go from 2022 back to 1840, when the Treaty was signed.

I was in the crowd, as a six-month-old baby at the 1990 Waitangi commemorations on the shoulders of my father—he was the chair of the commemorations—when the Queen delivered what I think is one of the most important speeches to the discussion of our future in Aotearoa. She said, “I am the descendant of one party to the Treaty of Waitangi, and many who are here today are descendants of the original Māori signatories, your tūpuna.” She said, “Today we are strong enough and honest enough to learn the lesson of the last 150 years and to admit that the Treaty has been imperfectly observed. I look upon it as a legacy of promise.” It’s with that spirit of hope that I will go into our public holiday on Monday. That’s why I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Ian McKelvie—five minutes.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill. This will be, I suppose, to quote Sean Fitzpatrick, a speech of two halves. But, firstly, I’m a huge admirer of the late Queen and believe the least we can do as a country is take a day off to remember her extraordinary service to New Zealand, to the Commonwealth, to her own country, of course, but also to the world. I think that was very clearly indicated by the extraordinary events, really, that’ve happened—starting in Scotland, interestingly—in Britain in the last few days, or last 10 or 12 days, in fact, and the extraordinary response that she got from the rest of the world and world leaders, who turned up from everywhere to what can only be described as an extraordinary display of, I suppose, British history, to some extent, but also it was an extraordinary event. I think anyone who stayed up last night and watched it would’ve—in fact, my wife stayed up for hours watching it. I didn’t; I went to sleep in the end, but it was an extraordinary event.

Seeing as Todd Muller started telling stories, I thought I should tell a story about Government House. I don’t get to Government House very often, but I did get there one day and I was standing in a line waiting to meet one of her grandsons, actually, and I had a mince pie in my hand—anyone who’s had a mince pie at Government House will know they’re pretty special. I had it in my hand, and he walked out the door and I was the first in line—Chester Borrows was second in line. I shoved the mince pie in my pocket, and just as I shook the prince’s hand, Chester banged on my pocket like that. Ha, ha! It was a very uncomfortable feeling. But I thought it worth telling that story, because I did have the opportunity in my lifetime to meet most of the royal family, and that was one I’ll always remember because of Chester’s attitude to it.

But I do think that—and I had an opportunity last week to say a few words about this, too, so I think it’s pretty special—the heroes in this—and I don’t want to make any excuses for us supporting a public holiday, because I absolutely think it’s warranted and I think that it’s the very least we can do to respect an extraordinary woman who played such a massive part in world affairs, ever since the end of the Second World War, really. But I do think the real heroes in this are those people who—farmers, for example, who have lost a day’s processing, and some of them have waited weeks and weeks and weeks for that to happen; those people who have had medical appointments cancelled; those people who have had their dentist appointment cancelled. I was at the dentist last night; I can still feel it—they’ve had dentist appointments cancelled that they’ve been waiting weeks for. Those schoolchildren who no longer will get what, effectively—in a very difficult few years—is yet another day away from school, and they miss out on school. Those are the heroes, I think, of the fact that we—and I, as I said, absolutely accept we should have a public holiday to acknowledge the Queen. I really quite look forward to next Monday, because I think the memorial service to her will be pretty special, and I think that the day will be special to New Zealanders and we’ll remember it forever. But there are some heroes from a New Zealand perspective on that, and those are the people that have sacrificed a lot to allow the rest of us to have a day off, and I think we should remember that, particularly as we go forward.

So I think, you know, I make no excuses for the fact that the National Party have supported the Government in the opportunity to provide a public holiday in memory of who can only be described as the most extraordinary person that has lived in our times. I think her contribution to the world will last for years and years to come. So with those few words, we certainly support this bill, and I support it myself.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Debbie Ngarewa-Packer—five minutes.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Kia ora rā. We arrive here with our own experiences, and I think I’ve been very open and honest, since my maiden speech, that I arrive here as a mokopuna of muru raupatu and an uri of Taranaki. I’ve been raised to navigate between the respect to mana and the reminder of mana. So fighting for a Treaty-centred Aotearoa that reclaims equality, a dignity, and, ideally, whenua isn’t a policy or politics; it’s actually about making something right that was horrifically wrong and so dehumanising. Having our natural development interfered with does not make me a victim. No one in Taranaki sees ourselves as victims; we see ourselves as extremely resilient. That means that we have huge aroha; we have huge forgiveness and compassion. It’s an experience that I have that many couldn’t imagine, and it’s an experience I have because I am a mokopuna of muru raupatu from Taranaki.

It makes me, also, an extremely hopeful person—hopeful that one day I don’t have to stand up here in this House and feel w’akamā about explaining why we don’t support a memorial or this type of holiday; hopeful that one day I don’t have to defend our views as indigenous peoples or tangata whenua; hopeful that I don’t have to feel so hōhā that we’re seen as knocking an old order because we’re so hopeful for the new order and what that could mean and bring for us as Aotearoa.

So being asked to have a memorial in 2022 for a kaupapa that represents and has targeted tangata whenua in a way that nothing or no one else ever has is a big order. Being asked to have a memorial for something like this kaupapa that has created so much violence, loss, grief, and displacement does nothing but trigger us and reminds us of our differences at a time when we need to remember what we have in common, and the respect we deserve as tangata whenua. We believe with all our hearts, everything inside us, that we can be a better nation. That’s exactly what our ancestors taught us to be and to contribute towards.

I’m tired of being told when it’s appropriate to be traumatised. I’m tired of being told that our grief for our extraordinary leaders and rangatira doesn’t matter as much. I’m tired of being told when we’re allowed to remember and when we’re not allowed to remember. So I’ve arrived here to give voice, insight, in this very short call to all of those who have been affected by the monarchy, who’ve been affected by their imperialistic grievances. I’m not here to takahi anything else, but to be that voice when we know we’re in a House that has a majority and the bill is going to pass anyway. But I want it to be remembered, in the years to come, that we stood up and we said that there is a Tiriti that should be honoured, that this is a nation that has tangata whenua who will never forget—and should never forget—what the British imperialists did to our ancestors. I ask for your aroha and respect to understand that difference of opinion.

No doubt, in years to come, when we sit here and we say, “Where were you on this side of history?”, we can sit there and say that we were bold and courageous and we believe that there’s a time when we should say stop. Now is that time when we should say that enough is enough and it’s OK to let it go and to focus on repairing and being the best nation we can be.

Nō reira, i te āhuatanga o tā tātou tupuna, ngā mihi aroha. Ngā mihi, kia tau te rangimārie ki a koutou katoa.

[Therefore, in the manner of our ancestor, my heartfelt greetings. Acknowledgments and may peace be with you.]

Thank you.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill. I would just like to take a moment to acknowledge the loss of the immediate family of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, and all those lives that she has touched in some way. While there’s been many stories tonight recounted of how someone has met the Queen, I cannot match any story. My story was from 1986 when my dad took my brother and I to the corner and watched a car drive past and we waved our Union Jacks as she drove past the corner of Cashel Street and Fitzgerald Avenue. I remember that very clearly.

I guess before I conclude and say that the day that we are passing this legislation for is to remember a long reign that has contributed a significant amount, I would just like to reflect, to think how much the world has changed during the course of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. Just alone, the idea of what being famous is or how her image is portrayed, how that has so hugely changed in the course of her time as Queen, and how she has not changed in any way in terms of her service and dedication, yet so much around her has changed over those years. I would like to pay tribute to all of those, particularly in the United Kingdom, who have stood for many hours in order to pay their respects, and how many lives that she has had an impact on. So, to conclude at that point, I commend the bill to the House.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Well, thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s an absolute pleasure to rise to speak on the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill. I rise on behalf of the National Party and as the member of Parliament for North Shore.

As has been articulated so far, the National Party strongly support this bill in recognition of the significant service that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth has made over a period of 70 years, supporting not only as the Queen of the Commonwealth but also the Queen of the UK. I think the recognition of a memorial day to enable Kiwis across this country to stop, reflect, and remember the service and contribution of what can only be outlined as an amazing woman should occur, and very much is supported on this side of the House. The reality, right from the outset of the National Party back in the establishment in 1936, actually, is that our values have included—and I quote our constitution in 1936—“To unite all men and women of good will who are unswervingly loyal to His Majesty the King.” And, of course, at that time, that was the case. Our values now reflect—and first value: “Loyalty to our country, its democratic principles and our Sovereign as Head of State.” So I think there is no surprise, on that basis, in terms of where this side of the House sits in terms of the support for Queen Elizabeth II and her contribution.

I want to articulate a few examples that I’ve had through my lifetime in terms of interaction with the royal family and their contribution, and just to reflect on a little bit of that. But I think, you know, it is important to recognise that, as many speakers have said before, 70 years is a heck of a long time in order to serve, and the longest of any monarch. And, of course, you know, Queen Elizabeth II came into that role at the age of 25, which is very young, and she was 96 when she passed. So for anyone with any experience of that, that lifetime of contribution is absolutely so significant. I think we’ve seen, as we’ve watched the outpouring of significant support and emotion and everything else—I was looking at the statistics in terms of how many viewers around the world actually watched the funeral on the TV last night—it’s just unfathomable, in terms of the scale of support. And so while there are a few that aren’t in support, they are the minority. Globally, the recognition and acknowledgment of her service is very clear.

As many or some may know, Her Majesty became the Sovereign head of the Order of St John. I am a member of the Order of St John, and St John Ambulance obviously operates here in New Zealand. She became the Sovereign head of that order in 1952 at her accession, and has been a great supporter of the Order of St John and the services which they provide. I do want to recognise a number of my ex-colleagues, as a prior member of St John in London—Putney district was my unit—and friends were part of the funeral support progression. I also acknowledge those members of London Ambulance Service, the Metropolitan Police, and the royal armed services as well, for, I think, all of that support that goes from behind that significant, I guess pageantry, of what we saw yesterday. There is a huge amount of mechanics. And, jeez, don’t the Brits do it well in terms of putting on such a demonstration? We know that the Queen played a significant role in terms of the planning of what occurred last evening, and I think she can only be very proud. I know any of the volunteers relating to that would be very proud to have played their small part.

When I was there in 2012, I actually was fortunate, as a member of St John, to work on the Mall at the time of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the 60th anniversary. I guess at that point in time we thought “Coo, that was a long period!” You look back, and 2012 was what feels like a long time ago, but I remember that fondly. I remember a number of Kiwi expats and friends and family having picnics on the Mall, and the Union Jack flags down the Mall that leads to Buckingham Palace. My role was in regards to providing first aid support to the large and significant crowds that were there. The British street parties; I remember in our street in Putney, we all celebrated the Diamond Jubilee for the Queen by having street parties. They closed the streets, we put tables out in the middle of the street, we had ticker tape across our trees, neighbours brought out—it was sort of like “bring your own plate”—and we sat and we had a drink and everyone celebrated. I think those memories of recognition and also the important role that the Queen played are memories that I will never forget. But, I think, in a small way, we’re fortunate enough to see the impact of what the Queen has and did do over her period of time.

The other aspect I recall of when we were in London was actually attending one of the Queen’s garden parties. The Queen, obviously, hosts three to four garden parties a year in London at Buckingham Palace, and I was lucky to go along to one of those with my wife, Shannon, along with a number of Kiwi expats, I guess, at the same time as well. I remember, you know, watching while having a cucumber sandwich and a cup of tea, as you do—and very, very nice china; I think for Kiwis we thought “Well, this is a bit posh, but, you know, let’s get into it.” But the Queen, she literally—and I remember it from a distance—she’d just walk around and she’d interact with members of the public. She had her corgis and all the pageantry around that, and she—well, I never saw her but from afar—just looked so comfortable in terms of the way in which she interacted with people from all backgrounds. I think, as a Kiwi living in London, to be immersed in that period again reinforced the significant contribution and just the way in which she had the ability to simply interact with the average person, and I think that can’t be understated as well.

I grew up in Cambridge—Cambridge in New Zealand, that is—the home of the thoroughbred industry. I just lived down the road from Cambridge Stud. And so I do want to recognise that the Queen visited Cambridge in 1954, and then in 1990 she returned to Cambridge Stud, which was owned, and still owned, at that time by Sir Patrick and Lady Justine Hogan. I know that Sir Patrick Hogan has been quoted in a number of papers in terms of what he recalls from the interactions with the Queen at that point—we know that she was an avid lover of the thoroughbred industry. And so having grown up in that part of the world and knowing that the Queen used to come to our small town was also something quite special, and just showed the breadth and variation in terms of her background.

I’m not just a New Zealand citizen; I’m actually a British citizen as well, and so, therefore, as a dual citizen of both countries—I was Kiwi born and bred, but, because of the duration we spent in London, both my children were born there—I think there is an acknowledgment in terms of the way in which our friends and our colleagues that we still keep in touch with have been impacted by the loss of Queen Elizabeth II, and I think it is one that is also felt here. I think my community on the North Shore of Devonport has one of the highest proportion of British passport holders of any electorate in the country, and I know, as I walk around and talk with the many voices, as I have over the last period of weeks, that there is absolutely that acknowledgment and I think there is that appreciation. So while we are a small part of the Commonwealth and a small part at the bottom of the world down here, we do have significant respect and honour for the role in which she has played.

I want to finish by simply reflecting on the significant service—the significant sacrifice—that Queen Elizabeth II has made. The sheer weight of numbers, I think, that we’ve seen in terms of the last 12, 24 hours, and longer, really adds up to show how much Queen Elizabeth was and is and remains respected and loved by those around the world. We will remember Her Majesty for her significant contribution and what she has done for our country. On that basis, I commend this bill to the House.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Thank you, Madam Speaker. As the member of Parliament for Northcote, it’s my pleasure this evening to support the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Holiday Bill. Like many of our people, we have been thinking of Queen Elizabeth and the constant presence in our lives.

Growing up, my mum encouraged a strong following of the royal family and the sense of history they bring. Every year, watching the Queen’s Christmas message is a tradition that I personally respect, the commitment to dignity, to service, and greater sense of obligation that Queen Elizabeth brought into our lives. I speak often about my Māori whakapa, in this House, and this is an opportunity to also acknowledge my Pākehā descent. Tonight, I pay tribute to the dignified way she managed a complex relationship, being the embodiment of the Crown in whose name Te Tiriti was signed with tangata whenua, which is the foundation of our nation.

It is likely we will never see another like her in our lifetime. I want to thank her for her service. It is important that this day is recognised as a one-off, acknowledging 70 years of service to our country, Aotearoa New Zealand. Moe mai rā e te Kuīni. God save the King.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 108

New Zealand Labour 64; New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Sharma.

Noes 12

ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Second Reading

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I move, That the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill be now read a second time.

If I can thank members from across the House for sharing some of their personal and shared reflections on the death and the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and what this period of time means for them. We heard some quite varied reflections, which I think is entirely appropriate and reflects the fact that this is an important time and that there’s something here to be considered about this event in the context of our national story. The Government believes that a focused day—a national memorial day—enables us to come together as whānau, as communities, to be able to share these reflections.

I hope that in this debate we can mainly avoid niggle and rancour. But I do have to put on record that I do somewhat resent, in the first reading of this debate, for the ACT Party speaker to have presumed to have spoken on behalf of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II by claiming that she knew what the Queen would have thought about this particular piece of legislation. I’m quite certain that I do not know what the Queen would have thought. I’m very certain that Brooke van Velden does not know what the Queen would have thought. She was a famously independent woman who would have made her own mind up about these matters, and had she been asked about it she would most certainly have said, as the ever-appropriate constitutional monarch, that the matter is in fact up to the New Zealand Parliament. Rather than attempting to divine the mind of the late Queen, I can, however, directly quote from her, in response to some of the comments from the ACT Party speaker. The late Queen once said, “Perhaps we make too much of what is wrong and too little of what is right. The trouble with gloom is that it feeds upon itself and depression causes more depression.”

Well, I’m quite certain that while the creation of a new public holiday on Monday 26 September will mean that there is a degree of disruption and that some arrangements do need to be rearranged, that New Zealanders, as resilient people, will deal with that, that we are capable of doing more than one thing at once, that we are capable of making choices, and that we are capable of balancing things up. And sometimes as a country, as we do on other public holidays, we recognise that in balancing things up it is appropriate to come together as families and communities for a particular national purpose.

Ultimately, certainly on this side of the House, we don’t believe that we just live in a market. We live in a society, and sometimes moments like this are important. I do also need to put on record that the quoted figure for the economic cost of this public holiday is not correct and is not what is advised by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, who advise that, in fact, the possible economic impact of this public holiday ranges from a positive economic impact of $28 million through to a possible negative economic impact of $137 million—less than a third of what was quoted.

In rounding off my comments in this reading of the bill, can I reiterate the special and unique nature of this day. It is about commemorating our head of State, who was the only head of State known by most of us, certainly all of us in this Chamber, who was our head of State for over 70 years. It is one day to memorialise our Sovereign, for New Zealanders across the country to be able to attend memorials and to gather together, and reflect in whatever way helps us to move forward. Here, I acknowledge the contribution of the Māori Party speaker, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer; this day should be a day in which people and communities across the country can reflect in whatever way is appropriate for them. I believe that people will do that when this bill passes the House. I commend it to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Speaker. As I indicated in the first reading contribution, His Majesty’s loyal Opposition will be supporting this piece of legislation. Normally, in a second reading debate we have an opportunity as a House to reflect upon the submissions that have been made during a select committee process, the thoughtful considered opinions of officials and advisers, and a whole range of other matters that are usually the purview of a select committee. Well, of course, this evening, we are sitting as a Parliament under urgency to pass a piece of legislation that is historic and significantly important in the lives and constitutional history of our country, New Zealand. It’s a one-in-a-70-year event, and we on this side of the House think that it’s appropriate that the day that is going to be known as Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day will be passed tonight.

There are a couple of interesting things, and speakers in the first reading debate gave us the benefit of some of their personal reflections and experiences, and I for one appreciate those. But it’s probably important that we try and quantify in some way—for the sake of the record if nothing else—the significance of our late Sovereign lady’s contribution over her 70 years. She was in her 71st year of reign as New Zealand’s Sovereign. In terms of length of time served as a sovereign, she’s only outmanoeuvred—outplayed, if you like—by King Louis XIV of France, who reigned for 72 years and 110 days. The difference between our late Queen and King Louis XIV of France was he took the throne at age four. So a good number of his early childhood years, he was not actually reigning as a full monarch. He died, of course, in 1715. That’s 307 years ago. So that, I hope for the sake of members, put some sense of context into the remarkable contribution that the 70 years of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign has meant in historic terms.

What’s interesting about not having a select committee process under urgency is that some of the normal processes of parliamentary scrutiny don’t occur, and I note that on this piece of legislation, there hasn’t been a regulatory impact statement or a supplementary analysis report prepared alongside the policy relating to the contents of this bill. People listening and watching may think that that’s entirely appropriate, but when we come to just looking at the clauses in the bill, it’s a pretty simple bill. Clause 6 really sets it out; it provides for 26 September 2022 “to be observed as a day of commemoration in New Zealand” to acknowledge the “long and dedicated service of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to New Zealand. The day … is to be known as Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day.” That really just sums it all up, because that’s what this is about. Other speakers in the first reading debate have made it clear what their party’s view is, and we on this side of the House have made ours as well.

There’s an interesting little constitutional quirk: of course, the royal State funeral for Her Majesty took place in London and at Windsor yesterday, New Zealand time—in fact, during our night time. And of course our own Governor-General, along with a big group of other New Zealanders, is in attendance in London for that service. So, interestingly enough, clause 2 of this bill provides that the bill “comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” That’s going to be just a little bit tricky because the Governor-General is overseas. But we have an interesting constitutional arrangement that sees affairs that are now taking place while the Governor-General is overseas. The Government Administrator, the Hon Dame Susan Glazebrook, will, I’m sure, be the person who will sign this piece of legislation and provide the appropriate Royal assent to meet the provisions. It’s the Government Administrator who has actually been fulfilling the role of Governor-General in terms of investiture ceremonies at Government House over the last week or so, and for that, I want to acknowledge and thank her for stepping up to those important investiture ceremonies while the Governor-General is overseas representing us and the Crown at the funeral service.

One of the aspects that wasn’t considered during the first reading debate was the matter relating to the date, 26 September. Now, as it happens, that date is also South Canterbury’s anniversary day, and under section 44 of our Holidays Act 2003, it says that when two public holidays fall on the same day, employees only get one day off, and that seems for the good people of South Canterbury a little bit unfair and a little bit like they may have been short-changed. But we do know that the local authorities have the ability to set and add to or change provincial anniversary day holidays, and it’s my hope—and I understand that it’s a matter being considered by local Government officials in the South Canterbury area—that they may choose to move the date a little and make good of the intent of this piece of legislation.

Now, on this side of the House, we are not without sympathy for the business people who will incur cost relating to this holiday—unexpected in many respects but, we still think, appropriate. Normally we would be saying, “Well, this is an imposition that is one that needs to be considered fully.” It does; it absolutely does need to be considered fully. But we take our view after careful consideration and consultation with quite a few business people, I have to say, who will be inconvenienced to a degree—the vast majority of whom are prepared to make a sacrifice for this memorial day to occur. So there are a number of matters that have been traversed by other speakers in the first reading debate: we haven’t had a select committee process; we don’t have a select committee report; we don’t have a departmental report; and, I venture to suggest, in this particular situation, we don’t need one. We understand the circumstances; we think it’s appropriate; and, on this side of the House, we continue to support this piece of legislation at second reading.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. It has truly underlined how significant Her Majesty’s reign was, when you get people on both sides of the House reflecting not just on the Queen’s public significance but also on their personal feeling of connection, whether it was as a small child in short pants, waving a flag; or, for me, as I stand opposite the signs of the Battle of Britain, remembering my grandmother and my grandfather, both of whom served in the air force in the Battle of Britain; my grandmother and my grandfather in the South Pacific—and the insistence, which I could not understand as a child, that we stand for the Queen on Christmas, and we watch the Queen’s speech. She will be truly missed. This is an entirely appropriate time to take a moment to recognise a significant shift in our lives. I commend the bill to the House.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, it is a real honour. I asked if I could take a call, while reading this bill, because there was a lot of pressure on calls last week and I deferred so that I could have the opportunity to speak this week.

I want to acknowledge some of the contributions—Shanan, Arena, and Ginny—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Full names—order! Full names.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Sorry. Arena Williams, Shanan Halbert, Ginny Andersen, and, of course, the Minister Michael Wood, who said it was appropriate for us to share some of our memories as well. I’ll put my hand up and say that I remember the exact time and place that I heard of the passing of our Queen. It caught me immediately with a lump in my throat and tears welling in my eyes, because she had been a constant in my life, as she had been in all of our lives.

I think that we talk a lot about the sacrifice that she made, but do we actually stop and reflect on the size of that sacrifice when all of us in this House, with our passion and our desire for public service and to serve our own country—and the privilege to have to do that also comes with the scrutiny and the feeling sometimes that we’re living in a fishbowl where we get to look out; everyone gets to look in. But the level of scrutiny that we have to endure as part of our job is minuscule, it’s tiny, it’s insignificant in terms of the massive global stage that our Queen was on and the level of scrutiny and attention that was given to everything that she did from the time that she became our monarch, as a young mum with children, right through to her death when it was obvious that she was unwell and she was frail and she was still performing her duties as our monarch right up until those last two days when she met with the new incoming Prime Minister.

And if we just think about the weight of the public service, all of us in here may be here for five or 10 years, maybe 15 or 20. She served for over 70 years. She did that for us for over 70 years. And she carried that incredible burden because although she would have seen it as a massive privilege and she clearly understood the responsibility that she had in terms of leadership, I have no doubt at all that it was also a huge burden, and she did that with grace, and she did it with strength and intelligence. If ever there was a leader that the other leaders could look up to and aspire to be like, it was Queen Elizabeth.

I never met the Queen. I would have loved to have met her. It would have been a huge honour. I would have been completely star-struck if she had spoken to me. I would have probably very quickly forgotten the words or even heard the words. It would have just been a huge honour to have been in her presence. But I was given the huge honour in 2002, when she visited New Zealand with the Prince, and during her visit—it was four or five days; it was in February—she stayed at Huka Lodge in Taupō and I was included in her protection team. It was my job to patrol on foot, with my police dog Trent, the outer perimeter of Huka Lodge. It was a huge honour for me and I was extremely proud to have been given the opportunity to protect and guard our Queen.

But Prince Philip was very famous and well-known for the fact that he liked to look out and see whether or not he could spot any of the perimeter security, and we were told and briefed, when we started, to make sure to do the best that you can to not be visible. I can understand that, because they want to have a sense of privacy as well. But the prince was very good at spotting the security. So I went to great lengths to make sure that I wasn’t spotted. But I forgot about the fact that I had retired my first dog Czar, who was very dark and very black and sort of blended in with the night. My new dog was coloured more like a corgi. He was a sort of orange—a lovely orange—colour with sort of a black back. Anyway, the prince spotted my dog and in the debrief after they’d left, I was told that I wasn’t in trouble for that because the Queen was quite delighted that there was a long-legged corgi guarding her while she was in Huka Lodge. But you can imagine from that time forward, every time I arrived at a job, it was “Oh, here’s Mitchell with his corgi.” That was my only real sort of contact, or as close as I ever got to the Queen.

But I did want to share another story that was very relevant to our family, and that was during the Second World War. The Queen served during the Second World War. She became a mechanic and she also drove an ambulance. And when I lost my grandmother, I still felt very connected to my grandmother, through the Queen, because my grandmother had also driven an ambulance during the Second World War in London, during the bombings. And there was one time, on 30 September 1940, where a German Messerschmitt 109 had come spiralling out of the air—he’d been involved in a dogfight above London during the bombing of London and he came down and there was a young Kiwi who was a Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot, a Hurricane pilot, at the time, that saw the Messerschmitt coming down, realised that it was going to crash land, tried to anticipate where that was going to happen, and drove quietly to the scene.

Well, the 109 actually crash-landed in Windsor Great Park, which is, effectively, Windsor Castle’s front lawn. So it crashed on the front lawn of the castle and the pilot in the Messerschmitt had actually pulled his canopy back. And when the plane landed, it actually hit some of those big poles that they had to try and stop that happening and he was flung out and landed on the ground. The young flying officer rushed up to him, disarmed him and put him under arrest and put him in the back of his car and took him to one of the RAF depots. But very quickly, who should emerge from the castle? Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret came out to inspect the Messerschmitt that had crashed on their front lawn.

Maureen Pugh: Probably doesn’t happen every day.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: No, that doesn’t happen every day, does it? No, you’re dead right. So the Messerschmitt was actually taken. It was it was displayed in Windsor Park Village, and it was used to actually raise funds to buy more Spitfires for the war effort.

The reason why that story is so significant for my family is that the young flying officer that day that rushed over and arrested the German pilot was my grandfather. It was Thomas Francis Gill and he was 23 years old, Kiwi born and bred, but he was flying Hurricanes in the RAF at the time. It was reported in the papers and there was a later book written about that as well.

My grandmother, like the Queen, it was always a lot more fun driving in the car with her than it was with Pop, because Gran, having been an ambulance driver, had retained all those skills and thought she was still an ambulance driver in London even when they returned back to New Zealand later. And I’m sure that if you ever had a ride in the Land Rover with the Queen, you’d have the same sense of excitement—she also having been an ambulance driver in London.

So I just wanted to share a couple of small anecdotes—because we all have them. I mean, even Ginny Andersen referred to the fact as a young woman, she was out on the street waving the flag. We’ve all had those moments in some way, shape, or form where the Queen has touched our lives, and I think that it’s important that we do take a day to honour her and remember her. I’m sure that all of us in this House will be at a memorial service somewhere in the country, spending that day honouring the Queen.

Like my colleague and friend Scott Simpson said, we do understand that there’s a financial cost to this and I’m sorry, and I hope that that that can be recovered extremely quickly. But I think that it is important to remember a woman that gave up over 70 years of her life to lead all of us and make an extraordinary sacrifice that I don’t think we’ll ever see anyone ever make again. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Angela Roberts: Mr Speaker?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes. Now, what’s the member’s name? It’s—

Hon Member: Angela Roberts.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Angela Roberts, thank you. Excuse me.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Excuse me, Ms Roberts, but I have just taken the seat. So go ahead.

ROBERTS: That’s all right. More than welcome to settle in, Mr Speaker.

It is a pleasure to take a second call tonight on the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill. It’s wonderful, the more stories we hear—very, very personal or on reflection as members of the Commonwealth—how much we admired this woman, not just because she was our head of State but because she was a rural girl or she was a mechanic or she loved her animals. I think that is what is enduring about her. I think that Monday will give us an opportunity to reflect on her, on her generation, on our past, and—as many across the House have talked about tonight—on our future. It is because of that that I commend this bill to the House.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Mr Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, ah—

Hon Members: Ricardo.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ricardo Menéndez March.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I do miss our brief closeness on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, so I’m glad my name was remembered! When I think of public holidays, I often go back to the words of one of many queens—Dolly Parton—who wrote:

Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living

Barely getting by, it’s all taking and no giving

They just use your mind, and they never give you credit

and I think about how public holidays can be an opportunity for rest.

In this incredibly hyper-capitalist society, where many of our workers are overworked and exploited, a public holiday is absolutely an opportunity to slow down and to reflect, and, more importantly, it is an opportunity to dream. I absolutely dream for an Aotearoa where this House is fully committed to Matike Mai and constitutional transformation.

I think of the many contributions prior to my slot where people talked about the Queen’s life of public service, and I want to honour the many members of our communities who have also given their lives to service. I think of the grandmothers, the community workers, and the many people from Aotearoa who give their lives to improve the wellbeing of the world around them.

So the Green Party is happy to support this bill as it will give people an opportunity to slow down for their physical and mental wellbeing. But, more importantly, it also allows us—in the same breath as my colleague Jan Logie—to not just mourn, as some people may be also standing in solidarity with indigenous communities from here in Aotearoa to people in the Pacific and people in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and many other countries who will be thinking of the Queen in a different light. I do think there will be an opportunity for people to be standing with one another and thinking of the hurt and the legacy of the monarchy.

So, with that brief contribution, we’re happy for the bill to progress. We look forward to this Government and the Opposition being committed to perhaps putting in place some more public holidays that remember some of the local people such as Moana Jackson, who also gave his life to public service—an acknowledgment that (a) we don’t have that many public holidays, and (b) that we have so many people here in Aotearoa who have given their lives to service, too.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The unforgettable David Seymour.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Ha, ha! Well, I’ll tell you what, Mr Speaker, I’m glad that there’s some things you don’t forget. I hope you had a good dinner break!

I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill and I pose the question: is it possible to believe that Queen Elizabeth II was an outstanding leader, an inspiration to hundreds of millions of people across the Commonwealth, and somebody that we should greatly respect, admire, and now miss and, at the same time, be completely opposed to what amounts to a political stunt—having a public holiday paid for by employers up and down this country who have suffered enough? I would say that it’s totally possible to honour the Queen and oppose this holiday. In fact, for many reasons, it is the only consistent and correct position.

One reason you might think that is that it’s actually what we’ve done every other time. It’s interesting to look at the history of public holidays such as this, because there almost aren’t any. The only time that there have been spontaneous or bespoke public holidays were at the end of the two world wars in 1918 and 1945. We did not have such a holiday at the end of the 15-year reign of King George VI in February 1952; nor at the end of the one-year reign of King Edward VIII in 1972—although his reign ended much earlier than that; or King George V after a 25-year reign ending in 1936; King Edward VII who reigned for nine years until 1910; or even Queen Victoria, who reigned for 63 years until 1901. How many times did this Parliament declare a public holiday for the death of those sovereigns? Not once. So the idea that this is a normal thing to do, actually, it’s unprecedented. It’s never been done before, and it wasn’t necessary even for Queen Victoria when she passed on and this House was sitting.

Another reason why you might be in honour of the Queen but not want this public holiday is the cost. I was astonished to hear a member of the National Party say, “Look, we think it’s a good idea, but we offer our sympathy to those employers who will pay $450 million.” Well, it reminds me of the great National Party leader and Prime Minister Bill English, who once said to Jacinda Ardern, “People can’t go shopping with your values.” Well, I’d say to that member that the employers who will be paying this cost can’t go shopping with his sympathy. That’s simply not good enough.

Then I would point to the medical profession, or, more importantly, their patients who will miss out. In an excellent speech by Brooke van Velden on the first reading of this bill—of course, it’s been rushed through under urgency, so it’s all happening tonight—Brooke van Velden pointed out that in one district of Wairarapa, 488 procedures are being postponed that day. One GP clinic has cancelled 122 appointments on that day.

Ian McKelvie: We’ve already heard that.

DAVID SEYMOUR: People who do surgery, they plan two months ahead. And I hear Ian McKelvie, now normally he’s someone very focused on quality healthcare, and yet he thinks this is insignificant. For those people who have had the opportunities to have surgery and have doctor’s appointments cancelled and postponed when there are record queues for the medical profession to digest the long waiting lists that have emerged post-COVID, for those people, it’s significant.

Then perhaps we should listen to the school principals, to the educators and communities up and down New Zealand. I’ve had a number of them approach me and say, “This is madness. We’ve got two problems: kids not coming to school and kids who are trying to make up for lost learning after two years of disruptive disruption caused by COVID-19.” Or more specifically, the Government’s response to it. And the Prime Minister and this Parliament, or at least every party in it other than ACT, comes along and says, “Kids, take another day off. And not just any day, the Monday in the last week of term before you have a two-week holiday anyway.” This is the wrong message, and I know one person who would not support that message, somebody who was famously careful with her spending, who was quick to care for those who were in need of medical treatment or charity, and someone who believed in the value of education who would not want to have a sudden public holiday that disrupts all of those things. And that person, of course, would be Queen Elizabeth II. It is a very unusual way to honour somebody who, as we have heard, worked every day of her life by saying, “Let’s have a day off. And by the way, for the most part, someone else can pay for it.” That is totally wrong.

Another reason why somebody might oppose this public holiday and yet be in honour of the Queen is that they are opposed to illogical thinking and, specifically, voodoo economics. We heard it from the Minister of labour Michael Wood, unsurprisingly, the same guy who thinks fair pay agreements will boost productivity. He said, “Don’t worry, because if we have a public holiday, there will be more spending.” This kind of voodoo economics is the kind of thing that people repeat ad infinitum on all sides of the House—except in ACT I’m proud to say—that if people spend a dollar on a particular day, that’s an extra dollar. Well, I’ve got news for people who peddle that kind of voodoo economics. A dollar can be spent once. A dollar that is spent on a public holiday is a dollar that cannot be spent on another day. Someone who goes out for a meal on that day cannot spend the same money going out for a meal on another day. If it was true that having public holidays was a pathway to economic growth, then I’ve got an idea: why don’t we have a public holiday every day and we’ll all be rich? But of course nobody, including Michael Wood, ever takes the analogy that far because they know it’s bollocks. They know it is voodoo economics, and it does not make people wealthier. I know one person who always appealed to logic and reason and common sense and avoiding such mythical beliefs, and that, of course, was our fallen Queen, Queen Elizabeth II.

There is another reason why you might honour the Queen but be opposed to this legislation, and it’s the timing. You see there was an old joke that people used to make about our country, and they’d say, “When the world ends, I want to be in New Zealand because it’ll be 20 years to go where they are.” I’m proud to say that since that joke was popular 40 years ago, New Zealand has modernised and caught up and become in so many respects a leading country in the world. But this type of legislation will add just a cinch of truth to it again. Our slow response to COVID, where we had two months warning of what was happening in the rest of the world, were never quite prepared and still haven’t properly opened up. Where we have far fewer workers, far fewer international students—Camilla Belich there, she’s shaking her head. Let me give her some facts: in Australia, 38 percent of international students have returned pre-COVID levels; in New Zealand, 4.5 percent. That’s why people in the Epsom electorate are losing their jobs if they work at Auckland University of Technology—they don’t have any students. We are finding ourselves behind the world under Labour and the timing of this holiday is such that, after the rest of the world, after billions of people watched the funeral procession last night—Australia, now they’ve always been a bit behind the world, they’re having their memorial day on Thursday. And New Zealand, well we have to wait for a whole week until the Prime Minister gets home so we can have a day off.

I predict—and people on the backbench of Labour should think about this—that the average person in New Zealand, when that time comes around, will be sitting there thinking, “You know what? This is totally ridiculous.” Once again, New Zealand is behind the eight ball waiting for the political theatrics of Jacinda Ardern, at great cost to the real economy, being told by the National Party, “Don’t worry, just go shopping with our sympathy.” And they will say, “This is totally ridiculous.” It doesn’t help us solve our problems of catching up with the operations in the healthcare system, getting kids to school to learn useful things, closing the income gap with other countries, making sure we recover from COVID. It doesn’t help with any of that. And the symbolism is that we’re honouring someone who worked every day of her life by taking a day off. It makes no sense. Let’s honour our Queen and do it by voting down illogical, wasteful legislation such as this. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think it is incredibly important that New Zealanders are afforded an opportunity to honour and to remember the service and the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, and to do so in a way that’s actually befitting the significant contribution that the late Queen has made. For those reasons alone, I commend this bill to the House.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, it’s a privilege to take a call on the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill—in its second reading now, as we work to pass it through all stages under urgency to ensure that indeed it can be enacted in time for the public holiday on Monday, 26 September, to be observed.

Now, I’ve listened to this debate over the course of the evening and I’ve been impressed, by and large, with what has been a mainly respectful debate and an appropriate reflection and recognition and memorial, actually, of the service of Queen Elizabeth II.

I just wanted to make a few comments in addition to that, noting that we are supporting, on this side of the House, the bill as it progresses through. Because I think, actually, it is an appropriate opportunity for New Zealanders to have a specific day to acknowledge, to reflect, to share some memories and to, I guess, commemorate the life of our longest-serving monarch. Seventy years is a phenomenal achievement—longer than anyone in this House has been alive, I believe.

Rawiri Waititi: Not the Speaker.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN: That’s a rough call. So it is important that we do come together to acknowledge that and to think about what that might mean for us in our own lives, in our families, in our workplaces, in our communities, in our schools.

Of course, when we think about that—I do want to acknowledge that, yes, of course, having a public holiday does have some impositions with it. When we think about that in the context of the business interruption, specifically from the economic impact, that aspect is, of course, a consideration. But I think the gravity of the situation—the importance of the lifelong service of Her Majesty—makes it appropriate that we do indeed acknowledge the occasion in that manner.

You know, over the course of the last few days, I have spent some time travelling around my own electorate in the Waikato—as I always do—but asking the question specifically of some business owners. And I was really impressed by the willingness of business owners to acknowledge that this is, indeed, a momentous occasion and sharing anecdotes as we do between each other on reflections we may have had of Queen Elizabeth’s life and her time as Queen of New Zealand. So I do accept that it does come at a cost; as a business owner myself, I understand that. But on the balance of it, it makes sense and is appropriate on this occasion.

We ourselves will be having a State memorial service. I’ll be travelling down to Wellington here for that, and I look forward to joining many other parliamentarians and dignitaries to commemorate the life of Her Majesty. I just want to touch on a little bit of that, because in the context of New Zealand with her as our Sovereign, it doesn’t take much for someone’s life to have been touched or to have some connection to the Queen.

For me personally, there’s just two aspects that I just wanted to share in my brief contribution. The first of those being the privilege to have served in the Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment in the New Zealand Army. Obviously the New Zealand Army itself, interestingly, we have the Royal New Zealand Air Force but the army does not have the “Royal” in front of it; however, the infantry regiment does, which is an unusual distinction most people might not have appreciated.

But a real privilege to have served in Her Majesty’s regard in uniform. Although there were many times out in the Waiōuru tussock when one did wonder, perhaps, at the sacrifice one was making, but ultimately these are character-building moments and I’m sure character-building moments that Her Majesty would appreciate on her behalf.

And the other one, and one that I know was very close to the Queen’s heart—as was military service, of course and Mr Mark Mitchell mentioned that in his contribution: that the Queen had, herself, served in World War II as a diesel mechanic in the army and made a wonderful contribution there. I was really impressed at the ethos of service that has prevailed through her family over time.

But the other aspect was agriculture. Agriculture has been a massive part of the Queen’s life, and she has been a very proud agricultural supporter. The Royal Agricultural Society of New Zealand, of course, part of the royal agricultural societies of the Commonwealth. The Queen—on her first visit, actually—partook in a visit to the Claudelands showgrounds in Hamilton and got a good understanding of how agriculture works in New Zealand.

She’s always been a strong supporter of that. So my connection with that—having spent some years in the Royal Ag Society as well as the Australasian Rural Ambassador, one year—was a real privilege to have that connection as well.

So I just want to finish on that note. We do support this, it is an appropriate opportunity to acknowledge that service from Her Majesty. Thank you.

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Tēnā tatou. E Nanaia, nāku anō kē i kī atu i tērā wiki, e kore rawa ahau e whāngai i ō roimata hei kai mō taku patu. Engari taihoa ake, ko taku patu me taku utu he hoa haere, anei, e haere ake nei.

[Greetings. Nanaia, it was rather me who said last week, I will not allow your tears to be fodder for my weapon. However in time, my weapon and my revenge will be companions, and here you are, going forward.]

Like I said last week, our tikanga is clear: that we give time for whānau to grieve their losses, whether they be whānau, friends, allies, or even enemies. I have honoured our tikanga by giving her family time to mourn. But, now, I am released of this tikanga, to express the past and current grievances of tangata whenua and other indigenous peoples all over the world at the hands of the Crown, headed by Queen Elizabeth of England. We must acknowledge the brutal genocidal and ongoing impact of colonialism, of the imperial project that was overseen by the house of Windsor and its forebears, here in Aotearoa and around the world.

It is said that at its height, the sun never set on the British Empire. It’s hard to fathom, but that one statement is built on the backs of millions of indigenous peoples around the world. The sun never set on their colonialism, on their racism, and on their violence. The Crown was built on stolen assets and exploitation of tangata whenua and indigenous peoples all over the world. We cannot support this holiday. This holiday is a torturous and an insulting reminder for us. She said the Treaty has been imperfectly observed, but never tried to remedy this by honouring tangata whenua and honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Article 1 consented to kāwanatanga, not sovereignty. Article 2 recognised the pre-existing rights of tangata whenua, our full and exclusive rights to our undisturbed possessions of our lands, estates, forests, fisheries, and other properties—our taonga.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Waititi, I’ll just remind you that we are here to debate a bill. You’ve had two minutes now, and I would ask you, please, to now concentrate the rest of your time on the bill we’re debating here today.

RAWIRI WAITITI: Point of order, Mr Speaker. This is everything to do with this bill. This is a holiday for Queen Elizabeth, the Sovereign of England.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, and that’s what I’m asking you to debate, please—

RAWIRI WAITITI: And that’s exactly what I’m talking about.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: —Mr Waititi. So if you carry on, feel free to carry on, but please refer your comments to the bill before the House, which is around the holiday. So carry on, please.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Point of order, Mr Speaker. We have just been listening to colleagues across the House who have talked about agriculture, about their time in police, and about police dogs. This kaupapa is extremely relevant: it is the Crown who are the Tiriti partner.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Please confine your comments or reference your comments around the holiday, and you’ll be keeping within the Standing Orders. So carry on.

RAWIRI WAITITI: Article 3: “In [considering] thereof Her Majesty the Queen of England extends to the Natives of New Zealand Her royal protection and imparts to them all the Rights and Privileges of British Subjects.”—“imparts”. Therefore, I declare, on behalf of te Iwi Māori, that Queen Elizabeth, the Queen of England, and her predecessors and successors have never had sovereignty over tangata whenua here in Aotearoa. We are her equals as affirmed emphatically in Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Here’s a question I pose to this House: why for the Queen of England, and not for the Māori Queen Te Arikinui Te Atairangikaahu and many other significant figures of te Iwi Māori? Matariki, National did not support. Fifteen years we waited, since 2009 when Rahui Katene first presented that bill to this House. They could not support that. But they support a holiday that is going through this House in one night. It’s absolutely—I don’t get it. At least ACT is consistent and do not support the one-off holiday, as they did with Matariki.

If you look at our founding covenant as a marriage between ngā rangatira o ngā hapū Aotearoa and the Crown, Te Tiriti o Waitangi is a child of that marriage. It’s time tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti take full custody of the Te Tiriti o Waitangi from the Crown. This won’t mean the Crown is off the hook. If a couple gets divorced, you do not lose responsibility. There’s talking over there because they will not allow indigenous peoples to have their voice at this time. This will be an opportunity to reimagine a more meaningful and fulfilling partnership between tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti. It’s time for Māori to assert our rights to self-management, self-determination, and self-governance over all our domains. It’s time to remove the British royal family as head of State and move towards to an Aoteroa hou, a Tiriti o Waitangi-based nation in the Pacific.

Therefore, it is time for tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti to have an adult and mature conversation about how we realign the relationship through Te Tiriti o Waitangi to create a Tiriti-centric Aotearoa, to create a constitution based on our founding document, Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Until then, we will never have peace. Nor will the Crown, the royal family, or, for that matter, Pākehā in Aotearoa, have any honour in the eyes of tangata whenua or te Iwi Māori. The Māori Party—Te Paati Māori—absolutely and unequivocally do not support this bill. Kia ora tātou.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a short call on this, the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill. I acknowledge different comments made around the House tonight.

I support this bill because the Queen is the Queen of New Zealand, she is our head of State, she has a role constitutionally within our democracy, and she has undertaken this role for the last 70 years—a significant contribution to public service. A one-off public holiday is an appropriate way, in my view, to honour the significance that that role and her role as a figurehead, as the Queen has played in our country.

I want to particularly acknowledge how difficult it is for many New Zealanders who have lost someone recently in their family—that includes my family, sadly—and how many memories, I think, the funeral of the Queen, and the memorial services, will bring back for them.

So I support this bill and commend it to the House.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): “Both with gratitude for the past and confidence in the future, we range ourselves without fear beside Britain. Where she goes, we go. Where she stands, we stand.” So said Prime Minister Savage on 5 September 1939, in the hours after the outbreak of World War II. An awful lot has changed in the 83 years since he uttered those words, particularly here in New Zealand. We’re a very different country. We look differently. We think differently. We are more modern. And thankfully, most tangata whenua do not think the way Mr Waititi has just expressed, and I say to him, there is a time and now is not that time. A few short days since he last spoke in this House is not sufficient time to start that kind of vitriol on the passing of Her Majesty.

Hon Judith Collins: Lack of respect.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: It’s very disrespectful, Mrs Collins; you’re quite right.

Now, like most members of the House, I did not meet Her Majesty, but, like most of us, have a strong early memory, as a four-year-old, standing on the Kensington Oval in South Dunedin awaiting Her Majesty, Prince Philip, and, I think, Prince Charles and Princess Anne, as younger members of the royal family were also there. Perhaps a 10-year-old Mr Parker had travelled in from Roxburgh to join the thousands of people that were there, but it certainly was a magnificent occasion, and one which was repeated several times in Dunedin over the ensuing years—one particular event not quite so seemly, and that was breathlessly reported by British tabloid media as an assassination attempt by a 17-year-old Bayfield High School student who had a bit of form. He robbed the Andersons Bay post office in his lunch hour and then escaped on his bicycle. I think the better description of what happened that day was a very clumsy and flawed attempt and not the near death of the Queen that particular day. But it certainly put Dunedin on the map.

In 1990, it was my great privilege to be—I was lucky enough to be in the House of Lords for the State opening of Parliament. If any colleagues have the opportunity, I really suggest they take it, because the sort of pomp and colour and ceremony and the music that we saw last night, and the trumpets, were very much evident in things like the trooping of the colour and the State Opening of Parliament. Her Majesty was there, wearing the crown that sat atop her casket on the gun—what’s it called? The gun thing that took the casket around.

That was followed, actually, by the debate on the Queen’s speech between the Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the UK, and the Leader of the Opposition, Neil Kinnock, and it was an absolute doozy. Of course, no one was to know that just three short weeks after that debate, Prime Minister Thatcher was to resign as Prime Minister of the UK. But of course, the scenes that we saw last night—and actually the reason I’m feeling a bit fuzzy today is because I stayed up and watched just about all of it—some of those things and those traditions are so familiar to every single New Zealander who made the pilgrimage to London as part of their OE and felt a kinship with, I guess, that sort of ceremony. And boy, the British do it better than anyone in the world, and we saw that on great display last night.

It was my real privilege to be the Minister of Veterans’ Affairs, as I know the Hon Judith Collins was also, in the previous Government. I led a delegation of 84 World War II veterans to New Caledonia in 2014 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of war in the Pacific—84 very elderly servicemen, most of whom were Kiwis serving in New Zealand armed forces. Some were British serving in New Zealand armed forces, and some were Kiwis who served in the British armed forces. All shared a tremendous affection for Her Majesty and for the freedoms that they fought and so many of their colleagues died for. Actually, on that trip, John Jones was a member of that delegation. Now, he was the last surviving coast watcher from the Gilbert Islands. Most of his colleagues were massacred by the Japanese, beheaded on the island that forms now what is Kiribati. It was a tremendous privilege to hear his story of sacrifice. Of course, Her Majesty—at that time, Princess Elizabeth—served as well, and they told me how much that meant to them, that the royal family was not prepared to leave the United Kingdom and go to Canada as was recommended by the Government. They stayed in Windsor and Buckingham Palace, and Her Majesty as a princess, as a young woman, became a part of the war effort. I think that speaks volumes to her commitment to her country.

I want to address some of the things that David Seymour mentioned. Yes, I agree, it is possible that we honour the Queen and not support a public holiday, and that’s entirely their prerogative, but to suggest that this amounts to a political stunt is, I think, most unfair. He goes on to say, “Well, the only time we’ve had public holidays has been at the end of World War I and World War II.”, and that’s true. Well, I’ll make a deal with him that I’ll only ever support a one-off public holiday every time a monarch reigns for 70 years and then passes away. That’s my commitment to him. Because it’s not likely—in fact, it’s almost certain never to happen again. Our opportunity, however we express that on Monday, to pause and reflect on a life of service, of service to country, to her maker, and to the Commonwealth of nations that I’m proud we are still part of is an entirely appropriate thing to do.

Now, if he has a problem with the cost on small business, then the problem is not with this public holiday; the problem is with all the other costs that have been imposed on small business, with leave and other public holidays and bureaucratic red tape. The problem is not with the cancelled surgeries on Monday but with the thousands of surgeries that have already been cancelled due to the mismanagement of our health system. The problem is not, in our education system, that our children are going to enjoy a day off on Monday; it’s that the chronic absenteeism from their schools has been endemic for years and this Government hasn’t done anything about it. So those are chronic problems that this Government needs to address, but unlike Mr Seymour, I don’t believe that the solution is to prevent our country from pausing and reflecting on the legacy of Her Majesty. I will be at St Paul’s Cathedral on Monday, and it will be, I’m sure, a memory that I will take to my grave, because it is important to me that we, in whatever way we do it, with prayer or reflection or recollection, stop, as a country, and say thank you: thank you for a life of service and a life well lived.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a privilege to take a short call on the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill. Like my colleague Camilla Belich, I just want to acknowledge that there has been a range of views shared in this House tonight, but I support this one-off public holiday, because 70 years of service is significant. Unlike many parliamentary colleagues, I won’t be able to take a day off on Monday as I’ll be overseas with other parliamentary colleagues, which is very disappointing for me, and I want to just put on record an acknowledgment of one of my very close friends, Michael Stewart, who is the director of music at St Paul’s cathedral—originally a Nelson boy, but he will be leading the music at the cathedral across the road here, where I was married. So I will be thinking of you, Michael, and everything that you do on the organ and taking charge of the choir. It will be a significant moment, and I know that New Zealanders across the country will be celebrating this holiday. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 108

New Zealand Labour 64; New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Sharma.

Noes 12

ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

In Committee

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, the House is in committee on the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill.

Part 1 Preliminary provisions

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, we now come to Part 1. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

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

Ayes 108

New Zealand Labour 64; New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Sharma.

Noes 12

ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 2 be agreed to.

Ayes 108

New Zealand Labour 64; New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Sharma.

Noes 12

ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Part 2 agreed to.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. May I firstly say how reassuring it is that the Chair is back in the Chair and the Minister is in the chair beside the Chair, if that makes sense. It’s the first time since COVID restrictions were lifted.

I have two questions for Minister Wood, and I trust they won’t tax him too much. Firstly, on behalf of the good people of South Canterbury, the bill does appear to be—though reassurances have been provided, the bill does appear to be a little vague about how the reconciliation between their own anniversary day and this public holiday will go. Is that set out by inference in subclause (3) of clause 7? And, if so, by what method will an employee—sorry, firstly, will the day have to be set as a single day for the whole province? Or, as happens in Otago quite frequently, will employees and employers be free to negotiate and agree the day on which they can observe their anniversary day? Otago anniversary day is, I think, 23 March, and it’s very common for businesses to tack that day on to Easter and acknowledge Otago anniversary day on the Tuesday after Easter. So how rigid is this going to be for those employees and employers?

My second question is in relation to the costs as set out in the regulatory impact statement—and, I have to say, this is about as woolly as a cost estimate gets for a single day: either a positive benefit of $28 million or a negative cost of $137-odd million. It really does fall somewhat short of the degree of accuracy that I think the committee needs to have in order to understand what either costs are going to be imposed or benefits accrued. I cannot imagine that there will be a benefit, and that’s not a reason not to support the bill, but why is it that the estimate of the financial impact of this day is so wide?

Hon Michael Wood: Mr Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The Hon Michael Woodhouse—Michael Wood, sorry.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): It was bound to happen, Mr Chair. In response to the member Michael Woodhouse’s first question, the provisions of the Holidays Act means that local government has the agency to determine upon which day the relevant regional public holiday is celebrated, so it is not actually a matter for this particular piece of legislation. But I recognise the point that the member is raising. It will be up to local authorities in the South Canterbury region to make a decision about that. I understand that some might be considering shifting it to a different day, and that will be a matter that rests with them.

In response to the member’s second question, the range of costs which are presented are similar to the range of costs which have been presented when the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has conducted analysis of this nature in respect of other public holidays, such as Matariki. And that simply relates to the fact that the estimation of these things is not an exact science. By definition, officials have to assess a very wide array of economic activities that might or might not happen as a result of a particular decision being made. That leads to the range that has been provided. I’m confident that it’s a range that gives us some guidance, and it’s the best information that officials can provide us with. Again, I note that it ranges between a net positive economic impact and a net economic cost.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Scott Simpson.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): That’s very good, Mr Chair. You’re getting better—you’re getting better!

Hon Member: Got to get those bigger photos!

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Bigger photos at the Chair’s table.

This is actually a pretty simple and concise piece of legislation, and the primary purpose is, of course, to create a one-off bespoke memorial day: Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day.

But clause 7(2) is quite an intriguing piece of drafting. It says, “A reference in any legislation to the Sovereign’s birthday or the Queen’s birthday is to be treated as referring to Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day in addition to the Sovereign’s birthday or the Queen’s birthday.” My question, really, to the Minister is: what is the purpose and the reason for that particular clause? I would have thought that this was, as I say, a bespoke piece of legislation that stood alone and in its own right. I’m just intrigued—maybe I’m missing something—to know what this particular piece of legislation specifically has to do with the normal marking of the Sovereign’s birthday, which, presumably, will become “King’s Birthday weekend” in due course. So if the Minister could just enlighten me. Maybe I’m missing something.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): It’s a very fair question, and I can explain this one. This relates to the fact that a range of different pieces of legislation refer to public holidays, and there might be consequences in those pieces of legislation when a public holiday occurs. It might trigger something in respect of employment entitlements or something in respect of the operation of a Government department. So clause 7(2), effectively, is a hook which means that this public holiday will be treated as other public holidays are when public holidays have that effect in other pieces of legislation. It could have achieved the same effect by saying Christmas Day or Labour Day or any other public holiday, but it seemed most appropriate to make it Queen’s Birthday.

Clauses 1 and 2

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, we now come to our final debate, clauses 1 and 2.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. I raised a question and made an assumption in the second reading debate relating to the commencement clause that provides that the bill comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent. Now, normally, of course, that’s a matter that would be attended to on behalf of the reigning Sovereign by our Governor-General, and the Governor-General, of course, is now in London—presumably still there—and will be not back in New Zealand before the necessary Royal assent is required to give this piece of legislation effect. So my question to the Minister is: can he just confirm that the process will be one that is overseen by the Government administrator, the Hon Dame Susan Glazebrook, or will some other constitutional requirement be needed?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Yes, I can confirm that in accordance with normal procedure, the Administrator of the Government will perform that duty in the absence of Her Excellency the Governor-General.

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

Ayes 108

New Zealand Labour 64; New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Sharma.

Noes 12

ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Clause 1 agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Clause 2 be agreed to.

Ayes 108

New Zealand Labour 64; New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Sharma.

Noes 12

ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Third Reading

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I move, That the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill be now read a third time.

Can I, firstly, thank members across the House for their contributions in the debate this evening. I think that it has been a productive and generally well-mannered debate. As I said at the outset of my comments, the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill recognises an extraordinary contribution from a Sovereign who was New Zealand’s head of State for over 70 years. I by no means consider myself to be a committed monarchist, but it would be churlish for anyone not to recognise the extraordinary contribution, sacrifice, and dedication to duty that was exercised by Her Majesty over that 70-year period. I believe that any country that is worth its salt needs to have some understanding and recognition for the history and the traditions that have created it.

As I also reflected upon in that first reading speech, public holidays are one way in which we can, as a nation, pause for a breath, just for a short moment, in lives that are often filled with work, with business, and with other activities, to reflect on who we are and to reflect on a special moment in time. As we look around our country, Aotearoa New Zealand, other countries within the British Commonwealth, and around the world, and observe the enormous outpouring of affection, I think we would have to recognise that for many, many people this is a special moment in time that people are feeling quite deeply, and I am very confident that, with the establishment of this one-off holiday next Monday, many millions of New Zealanders will value the opportunity.

They’ll celebrate and remember Queen Elizabeth II in different ways. Some will attend the official memorial service at St Paul’s cathedral here in Wellington. I myself will be attending the service at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Auckland. Others will attend at churches and community halls around the country. In some cases, I imagine that families will simply gather in their homes and watch some of the coverage on the television or have a chat about it. Whatever way it is that New Zealanders choose to use this memorial day, I believe that for many people it will be a valuable time to express and share their sorrow at the loss of our Sovereign, to reflect on some happy memories, as we have heard around the House this evening, and perhaps also to talk a little bit about the future.

So I am very pleased that we have seen strong support for this legislation around the House, if not unanimous support, and I look forward very soon to the passage of this piece of legislation and the establishment of the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day next Monday, for all New Zealanders to experience in memory of Queen Elizabeth II, our Queen. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. We are sitting in urgency this evening for a once-in-70-year event in terms of a bespoke piece of legislation to honour, to commemorate, and to establish a one-off memorial day for our late sovereign lady, Queen Elizabeth II, who was laid to rest in London at Windsor Castle yesterday our time.

Like other speakers in this debate, I’m one who spent quite a lot of hours late into the night and into the early hours of the morning watching what I thought was a wonderful ceremony, an incredible show of affection, of gratitude, of appreciation by subjects of hers in the United Kingdom. And the measure of that was that today we know that there were literally billions of people who shared in watching those images from London and Windsor Castle last night. That’s a measure of the impact and the effect that this one woman had on so many lives.

As others have said in this debate earlier on, she has been a constant in our lives. We’ve watched her age. We’ve watched her family grow. We’ve watched her be stable and supportive during times of great good but also at times of great stress and trauma. It’s been a stable force in all our lives to have that calm influence upon us. Many of us, I think, will not forget her words during the COVID pandemic when the world was going into lockdown and Her Majesty was able to give assurance to—I think it’s not overestimating it—a fearful world that better days would come. It was that kind of stability and rock-solid determination in both her optimistic hope for a brighter future but also her personal faith as leader of the Church of England that I think led her steadfast through her 70 years and into her 71st year of reign as our Sovereign.

Many New Zealanders, hundreds of thousands—millions of New Zealanders—will have had the kind of experiences that I and others in this debate shared tonight, and that may have only been as a child sitting on a footpath waiting for what seemed like an interminable amount of time for a royal car to pass by and a gloved hand to be seen waving from the back seat of the car, or, in my own case, with my very patient mother taking my brother, sister, and I to sit for what seemed like, well, actually at the time it seemed like days that we were sitting on the footpath outside what was then the Mercury Theatre in Auckland and the Queen was on her way inside the theatre for a performance. But those are memories that many, many New Zealanders will have similarly. Here was a woman who, although we didn’t meet her, many of us—most of us—felt a connection with her.

I was struck this morning as I walked past our Reserve Bank on the precinct just diagonally opposite Parliament buildings here, to see the images that had graced our $20 notes over the years and how the images of Her Majesty had changed over those years. It was a very poignant visual display of the presence that she’s had in our lives. So it won’t come as any surprise that on this side of House, His Majesty’s loyal Opposition are supporting this piece of legislation. We do so, acknowledging the cost and impost that a small business and other businesses will have imposed upon them. But as I said earlier, this is a one-in-70-year event. It is a moment in time, a moment in history, and a moment for us as a nation to share, to ponder, to reflect on a life of dedicated service—the likes of which we, frankly, won’t see again in our lifetimes.

So all around the nation, people will have an opportunity on Monday, 26 September to use the day that this piece of legislation will create for that kind of personal reflection, maybe with their families, with their neighbours, and with other community members. Not only will there be a service of commemoration here in Wellington at St Paul’s cathedral—and I for one am greatly looking forward to attending that both in a personal capacity but also in my capacity as the member of Parliament for Coromandel representing the tens of thousands of people in the Coromandel who I know held the Queen in such high regard and respect—but there will be other services around the countryside, because during her reign, let’s not forget that Her Majesty visited our islands 10 times and she visited 46 towns and cities.

Over recent days, I’ve found it quite interesting to watch some of the file TV footage to reflect on some of the media coverage from those early visits, particularly that first one very shortly after her coronation—that she should come to New Zealand and spend a very long time here with us on that occasion. It was that first visit that, I think, actually etched an indelible relationship between Her Majesty and the people of our nation. So notwithstanding the cost that will be an impost upon business, we on this side of the House know that the vast majority of business people will understand the reasons for it—as do we as citizens.

Therefore, we support the legislation. We do so, acknowledging that the special nature of the circumstances surrounding this legislation mean that it has been passed under urgency without the scrutiny of select committee or the advice from officials or advisers. But this is a special occasion, and it is an occasion where it actually is right and appropriate to use the provisions of urgency that is the prerogative of this House to do on occasions that are very special, and this is one of them. On Monday when those of us who attend the service at St Paul’s and those others who attend other ceremonies or just take a few minutes to reflect quietly to themselves or with their families, it will be a period of time that they will remember, as my colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse said, probably for the rest of their days. We acknowledge that; we accept it; we are humans, and we feel the commitment and passion that Her Majesty had for us in our own individual ways. So, Mr Speaker, thank you very much. The National Party and His Majesty’s loyal Opposition support this legislation.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. The year was 1990, Sesqui was a failure, and I was in the fourth form in Christchurch. And I got to meet the Queen—very briefly, and with some very cheap supermarket-bought flowers, but I met her and it was a wonderful moment. And I commend this bill to the House.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to contribute on what is, I think, a very—well, it’s a memorable day. I think many of us were up until the very early hours of this morning, watching what, I have to say, was pageantry to end all pageantry. I don’t know why anyone else bothers to do it, the way that the British can do it. It was unbelievable. I was determined that I was going to get a decent night’s sleep, but, in the end, I chose to continue to watch this amazing send-off for an amazing human being, because that’s who the Queen was.

She was also, by the way, the representative of the Treaty partner to tangata whenua. So when I hear her and who she represents disrespected in this House, I am disgusted. I like, instead, the respect that I expect will be shown by other members of this House towards this very gracious person.

Ninety-six years old—that’s older than even you, Mr Speaker, and significantly older than the senior whip I’m sitting behind! It’s also, by the way, 70 years of service. Honestly, I don’t even think that departed member from this House Winston Peters could even compare to that. Seventy years of receiving bouquets, of saying the right things, of asking questions, of being briefed, of being able to bring happiness to people—what a wonderful thing to do—and to bring unity to people, and we’ve seen that over the last 10 days of mourning before her funeral. What a wonderful thing for her to have done. And never giving up. I just think she’s one of the most amazing people of my lifetime and of many others.

She is the only monarch that we have known, all of those of us in the House—the only one that we have known. I had a quick check, before I said that, through the ages of our MPs. She’s the only one. And one day—one day; we shouldn’t begrudge that should we? I feel for the businesses who feel that every single thing coming out of this Government is another impost on them, another cost for them, another obligation for them, but I also know that many of those business people will feel exactly the same way that most of us here do: that if we’re going to have a one-day, one-off public holiday in recognition of service, it is for this monarch, because, as my colleague the Hon Scott Simpson has said—and I agree with him—if there’s another one who ends up with 70 years of service, into their 71st year, then we can have another holiday then too.

This is not our holiday, by the way; this is the Queen’s recognition from this country, because we are happy recipients—well, most of us are anyway—of being part of a constitutional monarchy that is above politics; that can always be relied on to speak to the people, without fear or failure; that can always be relied on by her Prime Ministers of all ilks to give them the best advice—certainly in Britain, anyway—that she could and to listen to them.

I thought some of the speeches that we’ve seen on this matter have been some of our best. I also think that some of the speeches that I’ve seen in the British Parliament, in Westminster, have been unbelievably good. As Theresa May said, it was one of the few meetings she had which she knew would not be briefed against to the media straight away. Isn’t that true. To have someone of that experience who, as Boris Johnson said, sent off her 14th Prime Minister to be followed by her 15th, and then she passed away, you know, a couple of days later—what an outstanding contribution. The way in which she kept the Commonwealth together and showed the way through to accepting peoples right across the globe—with, yes, some common heritage but also quite a lot of discord, but to bring them together with a common purpose. What a wonderful contribution, and to continue to do that until, essentially, the day that she died.

Surely, if anybody is worthy of a public holiday in this country, a one-off public holiday, surely it is she. Surely it is the Queen that we have known all our lives—surely it is her. I can’t think of anyone else who would be better qualified for it. When we’ve seen her send-off and we’ve seen—I’d love to be able to tell the story that Glen Bennett has said, in which he gave some flowers to the Queen; I didn’t get to do that, but wouldn’t that have been wonderful?

Like the Hon Scott Simpson, I remember getting to wave at the Queen as a little child. I remember very well being taken on school trips to do that. One of the reasons was the wonderful unifying factor she is, not only for this country but for all the countries of the Commonwealth. At a time when there has been so much disunity in the world, she was the one who has been able to stand like a beacon. Some of us were brought up to listen to the Queen’s speech each Christmas. I always enjoyed that, primarily because there’d be only little tiny moments of personal reflection. Mostly it was about us, the people, and just occasionally would have this little moment where she would reflect a little bit on her own year.

But she made some very smart decisions. Number one: she never gave an interview to the media, something I wish we could do without. Wouldn’t that be a joy? That would bring us all together, wouldn’t it? It would be a delight. She always stayed above that, and I think that is one of the great things. But the other thing is we saw her as a mother, as a wife, as a grieving widow when her husband, Prince Philip, died and having to sit alone because of the COVID restrictions. And didn’t she do it with dignity? Everything she did was with dignity. She didn’t go sobbing all over the place, telling her stories to tabloids, attacking anybody else on their personal situations. She just rose above it every single time. When I think about what she did in her work with forming a relationship, a bond, with the Irish people, that was a very smart but brave thing to do and the right thing to do. These are the sorts of things where we’d look at Queen Elizabeth II and think, “Of course that’s the right thing to do.” Why did no one ever think that she wouldn’t do that? Because she would. It was her family who stood by and assisted her to do that.

I am a constitutional monarchist—like Sir Tipene O’Regan, who I thought spoke terribly well, actually, about that—and the reason is because the monarchy does us no harm, which is always good, but, secondly, represents a Treaty partner. It also represents a culture that many of us feel connections to and have connections to, but it actually represents our history and our present, and, I would say, our future. Having met His Majesty King Charles when he was Prince of Wales, and having met the current Prince of Wales, I think we are in good hands. They are grieving. They are doing their job. They are doing their duty, and I would expect nothing less.

So thank you for the opportunity to make a contribution. I hope that those who are having to pay for the public holiday, the businesses, will reflect on the fact that they have lost a champion for democracy in the Queen, but they have a new one in the King.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m looking forward to marking the occasion on Monday with a lot of other New Zealanders who’ll be taking time out to think about what the royal family means to them, what the future of New Zealand looks like, and about the life work of the Queen.

Nothing pleases me more than having seen our delegation fly to England to be there for that occasion, seeing our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern sitting next to the Māori king, King Tūheitia; sitting next to Tā Tipene O’Regan; sitting next to Dame Kiri Te Kanawa; standing next to Willie Apiata—actually, one of our heroes of New Zealand. It has been brilliant to see that representation of our high level.

I support this bill and I commend it to the House.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take another short call on the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill, which the Green Party is supporting primarily for the reason of believing that at this point in our history, our people need a holiday and actually deserve it. We are very happy to be supporting this at this time.

Also, I do just want to echo that this is an opportunity for reflection and, for the Green Party, our recommitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and He Wakaputanga. We’re just really talking, I guess, to the opportunity of thinking about the vision of our constitution and the reflection on our relationships, and all support for those who are grieving and reflecting at that time, but also for those who maybe fomenting peaceful revolution or planning how we have constitutional transformation as mapped out for us in Matiki Mai.

I do also just want to quickly reflect on the commentary around pageantry to end all pageantry in what we have been seeing over the last few days. I’d just ask people, having had that experience, to reflect on where that pomp and that wealth came from and what our world would look like now if that wealth had remained in the countries that it was taken from, and on how much better our future collectively could have been if that wealth had not been transferred into the pomp of the British monarchy.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a great privilege to rise on behalf of ACT for the third reading of the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill. I grew up in a family that supported the Queen and the monarchy and, although sometimes it was a topic of debate, I’ve always, always respected the royal family and appreciate the influence they have had on our lives. I’d suggest that I have more respect and understanding of the importance of the role of the monarchy than many people in this House. But everyone loves a day off, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that this holiday is being pushed through, even though it isn’t necessary. I really believe, despite the umbrage taken by Minister Wood, that Queen Elizabeth II would not have approved.

New Zealanders are feeling the loss of the Queen, a true leader who served the Commonwealth every day of her life, but is having a day off at enormous cost to children and patients the right way to honour a woman who worked all her life? We don’t think so. Having a day to pay tribute to such an incredible leader is fair. But businesses should not have to pay the cost, our health system shouldn’t grind to a halt, and schools should be free to choose how they recognise it. It should also be within an appropriate time frame of the event we’re commemorating; not on the first day that suits the Prime Minister’s schedule.

This holiday is unprecedented. Never before in our history has it been deemed appropriate to give everyone a holiday so they can grieve the passing of royalty. I’ve heard a number of speakers today say that it is appropriate for a holiday, but I’ve just got to ask why. As David Seymour pointed out: King George VI, 1952, a 15-year reign, no holiday; Edward VIII, a one-year reign, no holiday; George V, a 25-year reign, no holiday; Edward VII, a nine-year reign, no holiday; and Queen Victoria, a 63-year reign, no holiday. Although 63 years isn’t quite enough for Michael Woodhouse; he’ll only settle for 70 years. What is it about the entitlement attitude of today? Are we really that more united than previous generations? I think from some speeches we heard tonight, I don’t think we are. Unfortunately, it’s pretty obvious for those employers and hard-working employees that it starts at the top.

There were smarter and fairer options available. A couple of ideas: for those willing, everyone sing God Save the Queen in unison around the country at the same time for one last time; a minute’s silence; a minute’s applause; or an unpaid public holiday. The precedent has been set for forcing costs on to employers, so surely you can force costs on to employees too. You can guarantee unions around the country are grinning away, just waiting for the chance to fight for the next public figure to be acknowledged with a day off. We’ve heard some suggestions tonight. Watch this space. Or there could be an optional public holiday with each business to decide for themselves. We could have had an optional annual leave day today, after the funeral. Employees pay for it themselves if this is important to them. I do wonder how many people called in sick today because they watched the funeral all night—another cost to employers. We could have met in the middle with a half-day public holiday in the afternoon, allowing businesses to start early if they needed to get their work done, or hold a public holiday in memorial on a Saturday or a Sunday.

Holding a full-day public holiday at such short notice and one week after the Queen’s funeral is nuts and is unfair to businesses, especially after a nightmare 2½ years through COVID measures, another week’s sick leave—Andrew Little told us that that won’t affect us much because it’s only $2 billion—another public holiday, domestic violence leave, rapid increases in the minimum wage and inflation, and closed borders. This Government constantly pats itself on the back, but it’s easier to spend someone else’s money, and they’re experts. The $450 million for this holiday will cost businesses, not the Government. Michael Wood disputed this figure, but I believe Treasury—I know it’s only selective when he wants to believe them.

Grant Robertson told The AM Show that businesses won’t suffer that much because people will be out spending. That’s great: “The Queen’s memorial—everyone go to the mall.” The insincerity of this holiday is obvious to everyone. I heard him today tell the people that he looked after businesses during COVID. The wage subsidy looked after employees, and rightly so. The small business loan is a loan that has to be paid back—but, Mr Robertson, I suppose that if you keep repeating something often enough.

When the president of the Council of Trade Unions said in an interview last week that “It’s only one day.”, employers around the country despaired. It just confirmed who the tail is that wags the Labour dog, and I’m amazed to hear a couple of speakers from National say the same thing tonight.

Has anyone thought about our kids and their education? What a brilliant teaching opportunity this day could have been. Students could learn about our history, where our fantastic democratic system came from, and the reason this country is so great today. New Zealand history is so rich and varied.

Schools have had unprecedented disruption over the last few years. Truancy has gone through the roof, academic results are down the drain, mental health issues in schools are having a huge effect on our young people. Young people just want some stability in their lives and a reason to get out of bed. Kids will expect a day off if they feel sad, and why shouldn’t they? The precedent has been set. It would be very naive to expect otherwise.

You shouldn’t have to own your own business, be a teacher, or have kids to understand the damage that has been done to this country over the last 2½ years. Unfortunately, student politicians, union organisers, and those who have a sadly flawed and unrealistic ideology just don’t get it.

We don’t need this holiday. Businesses will suffer, young people will suffer, and sick people will suffer. If someone is serious about a memorial, they could have used one of their four weeks’ annual leave to mourn in their own special way. The only justification I’ve heard is that “Australia’s doing it, so we have to.”, and I don’t think that’s a good enough reason.

To suggest that we don’t care or are being churlish is just silly. ACT is the party for the people—employers, employees, young, old, and sick—and because of this, ACT opposes this bill. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, we’re nearly there. I seek leave for the House to adjourn at the conclusion of the debate on the third reading of the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is there any objection? There is no objection. That shall be the case.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Nicola Grigg—David Seymour.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It took a moment but you’ve remembered my name.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ah, no. Sorry, Mr Seymour—

DAVID SEYMOUR: You’ve called me, Mr Speaker, and I have the call.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Oh, sorry. I call Nicola Grigg.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, she sat down.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I actually called Nicola Grigg, so the member will sit down. Nicola Grigg.

David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Seymour, you will sit down. I called Nicola Grigg.

David Seymour: Mr Speaker, it’s a point of order; you have to take it.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, Mr Seymour. Just take it easy. All right. Now, your point of order.

David Seymour: Mr Speaker, with respect, if the member has the call, then you have to let them take the call.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I actually gave the call to Nicola Grigg, and so the member will sit down. Nicola Grigg has the call.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I have just a couple of comments to make in acknowledgment of this bill, the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill. I think that it is right and proper that New Zealand take a day to commemorate the reign of our former Sovereign. We’ve seen from the enormous turnout across Britain and, indeed, the billions that tuned in to the television service of her funeral, that this is an extremely significant event in world history, not just Commonwealth history, and it is right and proper. The National Party does support this bill, and we commend it to the House.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): I commend this bill to the House.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): I commend this bill to the House.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s with great pleasure that I take a call on this bill to pass on our thanks to the late Queen for her tremendous service to this country, to the Commonwealth, and to the people of the UK.

We are all in this room to serve. Whatever party we come from, we come here to make it a better place for future generations and people that are here, now. We only serve for a very small period of time. I think the average politician serves for six years. To think of someone that served for over 70 years as a world State figure, through tremendous trials and tribulations of her country and the Commonwealth, through personal trials and tribulations, and she always stood there with the integrity and honour of her leadership—she deserves the respect of this Parliament. And it deserves a day off for our people to understand what it means to be in service.

There’s so many people out there that serve our communities in the very smallest ways—whether they help someone going to a cancer treatment, or they help their neighbour, or they’re in Parliament—and we need to thank those people. That’s what it’s about: it’s about the legacy of what she leaves behind. I won’t stand for parties in this House that are trying to make political gain out of that. This is about a tremendous woman that was a woman in leadership at a time when we need to celebrate that.

There’s no perfect history in any world. There will always be debates about that. But she stood there with integrity and honour, and she tried to do the best for the Commonwealth and our country, so I think she deserves the respect of this House. I thank the honourable members for the chance to pay our tribute and respect to her.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 108

New Zealand Labour 64; New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Sharma.

Noes 12

ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 10.03 p.m.