Wednesday, 6 December 2023

Volume 772

Sitting date: 6 December 2023

WEDNESDAY, 6 DECEMBER 2023

The Speaker took the Chair at 10.30 a.m.

Karakia/Prayers

SPEAKER: 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, justice, mercy, and humility for the welfare and the peace of New Zealand. Amen.

CONFIRMATION OF Election of Speaker

SPEAKER: I have to report that, accompanied by members, I waited upon Her Excellency the Governor-General at Government House yesterday when I addressed Her Excellency as follows:

Following Your Excellency’s request, the House of Representatives has elected me as Speaker and I now present myself for Your Excellency’s confirmation.

Her Excellency replied as follows:

Mr Speaker, it is with much pleasure that I confirm the choice by the House of Representatives of you as its Speaker.

I congratulate you on your election to this distinguished office, marking as it does the appreciation of the House of Representatives of your impartiality and ability.

I then replied to Her Excellency as follows:

I thank Your Excellency for your confirmation of the choice made by the House of Representatives of me to be its Speaker.

I now, on behalf of the House, lay claim to all its privileges, and especially to freedom of speech in debate, to free access to Your Excellency whenever occasion may require it, and to the most favourable construction being put on all its proceedings.

Her Excellency replied as follows:

Mr Speaker, I confirm all the rights and privileges of the House of Representatives which have ever been granted. I assure you that the House of Representatives shall always have ready access to me, and that I will at all times place the most favourable construction upon its proceedings.

AUTHORITY TO ADMINISTER OATH

SPEAKER: I have received the following authorisation from Her Excellency the Governor-General to administer the Oath or Affirmation prescribed by law to be taken by members of the House:

In accordance with section 11 of the Constitution Act 1986, I, The Right Honourable Dame Cindy Kiro, Governor-General of New Zealand, authorise you,

The Right Honourable Gerard Anthony Brownlee

Speaker of the House of Representatives

to administer to members of Parliament the Oath or Affirmation of Allegiance to His Majesty the King required to be taken or made by every such member before that member shall be permitted to sit or vote in the House of Representatives.

Christopher Luxon, Prime Minister.

Cindy Kiro, Governor-General

5 December 2023

Resignations

Hon Andrew Little, New Zealand Labour

the Hon Andrew Little

SPEAKER: I wish to advise the House that I have received a letter from, resigning his seat in the House with effect at 6 p.m. on 5 December 2023.

Members Sworn

SPEAKER: I understand that the Hon Phil Twyford is present and wishes to make an affirmation. Would he please come forward to the chair on my right.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I, Philip Stoner Twyford, solemnly, sincerely, and truly declare and affirm that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles III, His heirs and successors, according to law.

Mihi

SPEAKER: I call on a senior Māori member to give a mihi.

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti): Karanga ki a Ranginui ki a Papatūānuku, ihi, wehi, wana, mana. Tūroa Royal mā ngā rironga kua karapinepine atu ki tua o Pōhutukawa, ko te pō te kai-hari i te rā, ko te mate te kai-hari i te oranga! Ahumairangi, Tangi te Keo, Whātaitai, Te Whanganui a Tara, me ōku ake o Taranaki Whānui me Ngāti Toarangatira whakatau mai. He hōnore he kororia ki te Atua, maungarongo ki te whenua, whakaaro pai ki ngā tāngata katoa.

Kīngi Tiāre te Tuatoru, Kīngi Tūheitia, me ngā punua kīngi me ngā kuao kuīni katoa o Aotearoa, ruahine, ruanuku, rangatakapū, rangatahi mā, e oati ana au ki te nuku me te whenua. Kei te Tiriti o Waitangi, kei te Magna Carta, kei te Bill of Rights me te Whakapuakitanga Whānui o Ngā Mana o te Tangata, ngā pou tuhinga me ngā pou tikanga o tō tātou whenua e kitea ana ngā ture Kāwanatanga o te wā nei, hei āpōpō ko wai ka mōhio, ko wai ka hua. Heoi kia rarau atu tātou ki ngōna whakatakotoranga.

Kei taku manu tātākī a Adrian, taku manu tātākī a Gerry, me te kāhui rere i hangā i tō kōhanga, nāu tō tātou kōrero i whakamāunu atu i te ata nei, kia ita, mau tonu, e te rangatira, e te Māngai o te Whare Gerry.

E rere ana te reo-ō-mihi me ngā takoha ki ngā manu tautoko arā ngā āpiha hāpai-ō o te Whare Miere, o te Whare Pāremata nei me ōna whare katoa. E ai ki te kōrero mā mua ka kite a muri, mā muri ka ora a mua.

Kei te Pirīmia Kiritopa, e whakakahurangi nei i tō tātou Kāwanatanga e rere nei hei manu topatopa ki ēnei hāpori ki tō tātou ōhanga. Āna, kua kōrero te motu, ko koe a runga i te Whare nei, hei manukura mō te motu nei. Kia ora e te Pirīmia hou!

Ko tō tātou manu noho mātārae a Winitana hei tuarua mō te hawhe tuatahi—e mihi ana ki tō pakanga ki te pae o te kōrero me ta pāti a New Zealand First. Kei taku kāhu kōrako tararā matua a Shane me te amokura Casey, koutou katoa hoki mai anō.

Kātahi ko tō tātou manu kaewa a Rewi mō te hawhe tuarua. Kōwhai rawa a Remuera me Tāmaki i te pō, haria mai te kahu pūkorokoro i Ōrākei, i Remuera kia tae ki tō taunga māwhero i te rā. Heoi kia tūpato, ko ngā pouākai o te āpōpō ētahi whakaaro hei kai.

Kei te Pāti Kākāriki, ki a Hēmi, Marama, koutou mō tō koutou rāngai nui a haere, tēnā koutou me te pikau nei i ngā kaupapa taiao, aha atu rā. Tamatha me Julie Anne i kānapanapa mai i Te Pane o te Motu, tēnā mauria mai te kārikiuri kia tupu matomato te taiao.

Kei te Rōpū Kākākura, me tō koutou kākā tarahae a Kiritopa, tō koutou kākā parakiwai a Carmel, tēnā koutou e kāwai nei i ngā ringa rehe o te Kāwanatanga tawhito. Kei ōku ngutu kākā a Matua Willie, Matua Rino, Kelvin, Peeni, Willow Jean, kia āta rere kata mai ki ahau e tūturi nei ki ō mahi. Ehara au i te tame heihei, otirā he tangata pekapeka kē!

Kei ōku ake o te Pāti Amokura Māori nei, e taku Toroa nui Debbie me te Korimako a Rawiri, koutou ko te tokowha tapu, taku rau huia Tarsh hei huruhuru mō kōrua, e kore rawa e wareware ngā take e kawe nei koutou ki te mura o te kōrero, toutoua tātou i te ahi kā ki kore e mātao ēngari mā te ahi hoki ō tātou waewae e tahu!

Ki ngā mema o te Pāti Kahurangi, e rere mai i ngā pae maunga o tāwhiti purū o tata purū. Kawea mai te rau o te rere ngatahi kia kotahi atu tātou ki te arahi i te kāwanatanga, ki te kōkiri i ngā take nunui roroa o te wā. Koinei te wā mō te rere a kārearea, haunga ko te rere a pīpipi nei, a korukoru nei. Mate ururoa mō Niu Tireni, mō Aotearoa New Zealand, mō ngā tāngata katoa. E taku manu hauora Shane, manu pūtea a Nicola, manu pihopa a Kiritopa, kia manawa wera e hoa mā! Kia miere te kōrero.

Kei ngā manu pōkai me ngā tamariki katoa a Tāne Māhuta a Hineahuone, kia rarau atu tātou ki ngā kīanga a tōku koroua a Rangitākuku Metekingi! He ao anō āpōpō, he Aotea! Utanga nui tātou ki te Manu Tāwhiorangi!

Tēnā koutou, tātou katoa.

[Hearken the sky father, hearken the earth mother, I call upon our spiritual connections to bless us with vitality, passion, and awesomeness. I acknowledge Tūroa Royal and others dead who have gathered beyond Pōhutukawa. Night brings day, and death brings life, those who have passed are released and set free. Tinakori Hill, Mount Victoria, the great harbour of Tara, and my kinspeople from Taranaki and Ngāti Toarangatira, I heed your welcome. Honour and glory to God, peace on earth, and goodwill to all humankind.

King Charles in England, King Tūheitia in Waikato, little queens and little kings all of Aotearoa, elders, peers, and youth, I pledge allegiance for our fine country. The Treaty of Waitangi, Magna Carta, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, along with other constitutional documents and conventions, underscore our constitution. Who knows what tomorrow brings? But today let’s take root, and gather to our constitutional arrangements in place.

I acknowledge our previous Speaker Adrian and our new Speaker Gerry and those who have prepared your nest. You have launched our discussion this morning, I implore you to preserve the protocols of our forebears.

My acknowledgments stretch to those officials and teams who provide for our Parliament, Beehive and related buildings. The proverb says, “Through the front, you can see the back. Through the back, the front will survive”.

Prime Minister Christopher, who has turned the Government blue and swooped in to support communities and our economy. The country has spoken and you are our honoured leader. We acknowledge you, Prime Minister.

Our esteemed sentinel Winston is the Deputy Prime Minister for the first half. We greet your effort to battle for New Zealand First. To my harrier hawk and Dalmatian-Māori elder Shane, and the sentry Casey, all of you, welcome back.

Congratulations and acknowledgments to our revered trailblazer David as the Deputy Prime Minister for the second half. Remuera and Tāmaki have gone yellow overnight, and you have returned to your pink perch in the daybreak. Bring the ancient mythical soaring bird of Ōrākei with you. However, let’s take care as some musings may attract significant attention from other future mythical birds.

The Green Party, James and Marama and your flying crew, you have brought many environmental and other issues. I acknowledge Tamatha and Julie Anne, who turned central Wellington green, bring the dark green so that our environment can grow healthy.

The Labour Party, your expert orator Christopher and spearhead Carmel, welcome back with the knowledge and skills of the former Government. My red-beaked speechmakers elder Willie, Kelvin, Peeni, and Willow-Jean, chuckle away like birds as I kneel in acknowledgment of your work. I am not a rooster; however, I could be the Batman.

To those of our Māori Party, my albatross Debbie and the bellbird Rawiri, along with your four wings and support crew, my huia feather Tarsh, we will not forget the critical needs facing people and which you have recently amplified, ensure our indigenous fire continues, yes, but let’s all be aware that our feet can get singed in flames if we do not take care.

To those of the National Party, who have flown from blue mountains near and far. Bring the focus on unity in leadership and address the massive economic and social issues of these times. This is a time to soar with the falcons and not squawk with the turkeys. We must be prepared to die like a thresher shark for New Zealand and all Kiwis. My health pigeon Shane, fiscal feathered friend Nicola, and the bishop bird Chris, we will burn our hearts for the country.

To all flocks and children of the forest lore parents Tāne Māhuta and Hineahuone, check in with the words of our elder Rangitākuku Metekingi, who said, “Tomorrow is a new day, and it will bring clarity”. Load up like the Aotea waka and gather around the spiritual bird of peace.]

Waiata—“Te Aroha”

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Kei taku Māngai, e mihi ana. [Mr Speaker, I thank you.]

SPEAKER: The House will now wait for the summons to attend upon Her Excellency the Governor-General.

SUMMONS TO ATTEND GOVERNOR-GENERAL

USHER OF THE BLACK ROD: Mr Speaker, Her Excellency the Governor-General commands the immediate attendance of this honourable House in the Council Chamber.

Accordingly, the Speaker and members of the House of Representatives, preceded by the Serjeant-at-Arms, proceeded to the Legislative Council Chamber, and, after a short absence, returned.

Governor-General’s Speech

SPEAKER: After Her Excellency the Governor-General made a speech to the House in the Legislative Council Chamber today, she handed me the text of the speech, and I now lay this on the Table of the House.

Karanga ki te rangi

Karanga ki te whenua

Karanga ki ngā pū ngahere

Karanga ki ngā maunga kōrero

Karanga ki ngā wai e tere nei.

E ngā rangatira, e ngā mema Pāremata, e ngā tāngata katoa o Aotearoa, ka nui ngā mihi matakoakoa ki a koutou katoa. Kia ora.

To the chiefs, Members of Parliament, and all New Zealanders, hearty greetings to you all.

Honourable Members of the House of Representatives.

It is my privilege to exercise the prerogative of His Majesty the King and open New Zealand’s 54th Parliament.

In October’s 2023 general election, New Zealanders voted for change – not just a change of government, but a change of policies and a change of approach. Following constructive negotiations to form a strong and stable government, a coalition between the New Zealand National Party, ACT New Zealand and the New Zealand First Party was agreed with a commitment to deliver that change.

This is the first time since New Zealand’s Mixed Member Proportional electoral system came in nearly 30 years ago, that there has been a three-way coalition government.

It took office on Monday last week when I swore in the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Christopher Luxon, and the ministry.

The Government enjoys the confidence of a clear majority of members in the 123-seat House of Representatives, but it is the people outside Parliament who will be the Government’s priority in decisions made over the next three years.

The new Government is committed to delivering; to getting things done. It wants people to see demonstrable, measurable results that make their lives easier, and help them to get ahead.

The Government will work alongside local government, businesses, community groups and iwi, believing that all of us can achieve more by working together, and that co-operation will enable greater reach into communities, particularly those with high needs, to effect change.

The Government’s aim is to improve outcomes for all New Zealanders, while leading a unified and confident country. The Government will encourage independence and reward hard work, while retaining a comprehensive safety net for those in need of support.

The new Government will show its respect for New Zealanders by spending public money carefully and with a clear purpose. The Government has many priorities and among them are rebuilding the economy to ease the cost of living, delivering tax relief and increasing prosperity for all New Zealanders.

The Government will restore law and order and personal responsibility so Kiwis feel safer where they live and work.

It will deliver public services so they are more efficient, effective and responsive to all who need and use them.

The Government will also strengthen New Zealand’s democracy.

Its policy programme will be extensive and ambitious, reflecting the amount of change necessary to provide hope and opportunity for more New Zealanders, and for this great nation to realise more of its potential.

Economy

To lift New Zealand’s productivity and economic growth, and in order to increase opportunities and prosperity for all New Zealanders, managing a strong economy will be a key focus for the next three years.

Restoring discipline to government spending will help the Government achieve its fiscal plan and ensure that public money is being spent effectively, using rigorous cost benefit analysis, where applicable.

The Government will reduce Core Crown expenditure as a proportion of the overall economy – with savings in government agencies targeted to deliver tax relief for hard-working, low-and-middle-income workers.

These savings will be informed by the increase in back-office head counts in each agency since 2017, but Ministers will be expected to work with individual chief executives to achieve their respective savings targets.

With the Official Cash Rate hitting its highest point since 2008, creating stress and worry for many mortgage holders and businesses, the Reserve Bank Act’s dual mandate has patently not worked at containing inflation. The Government will amend it within 100 days so monetary policy is quickly returned to having a single focus on price stability.

Red tape is adding costs to businesses that get passed on to consumers. A new government department, reporting to the Minister for Regulation, will be established to assess and improve the quality of new and existing legislation and regulation. A Regulatory Standards Bill will be passed to ensure regulatory decisions are based on principles of good law-making and economic efficiency.

As part of restoring fiscal discipline, the Government has already axed the expensive Lake Onslow pumped hydro scheme, and the Government will also stop work on Industry Transformation Plans, the costly Income Insurance Scheme, Auckland’s Light Rail project, and Let’s Get Wellington Moving.

Cost of living

Overwhelmingly, the public’s main concern is the high cost of living.

Reducing wasteful spending will contribute to taking pressure off inflation. Tax relief targeted at middle and lower-income workers will be of practical help to households. It will meet the Government’s objectives of encouraging people into employment, and people enjoying more take-home pay in return for their effort.

The Government will provide income tax relief to compensate for the increase in the cost of living, increase Working for Families tax credits, introduce the FamilyBoost tax credit to support young families with the cost of childcare, and widen eligibility for the independent earner tax credit.

These changes will see a median wage earner better off by at least $50 a fortnight - and more for many with children.

Mortgage interest deductibility for rental properties will be restored.

To further help with the cost of living, the Government will cancel planned fuel tax increases by freezing them for three years, while also removing the Auckland Regional Fuel Tax.

Funds raised from the Emissions Trading Scheme will be paid back to taxpayers through a climate dividend. They will no longer be used to unnecessarily subsidise the climate initiatives of profitable companies that should be making these investments themselves.

The Government will re-write the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act to protect vulnerable consumers, without unnecessarily limiting access to credit.

A select committee inquiry will be held into banking competition and the Government will explore options to strengthen the powers of the Grocery Commissioner to improve competitiveness in the sector.

Law and order

Honourable members,

New Zealanders are wearied and worried by brazen offending, particularly against retailers. All New Zealanders are paying for this offending but those working in fear are bearing the highest personal cost.

The explosion in gang numbers is concerning communities everywhere.

The Government believes a good education is the best way for young people to have better life opportunities than the mayhem and brutality offered by gangs and criminal offending.

To support Police and ensure New Zealanders are safer, the Government will train no fewer than 500 new frontline Police within the first two years.

The Government will introduce legislation to provide Police with additional powers to tackle gangs.

That legislation will:

Ban gang patches and insignia in public places Give Police the power to issue dispersal notices requiring gang members to immediately leave a public area

Allow Police to issue Consorting Prohibition Notices to stop known gang offenders committing serious offences

Give Police power to issue Firearms Prohibition Orders making it illegal for a gang member with serious convictions to enter certain premises where firearms are present, and give Police increased search powers for people who are subject to such an Order.

Too often, sentences do not reflect the gravity of offending so the Sentencing Act will be amended to ensure appropriate consequences for offenders. This will include making gang membership an aggravating factor in sentencing.

The “three strikes” rule for serious repeat criminals will be restored, with a tighter definition of offences that qualify as strikes.

To deter young people from a life of crime, the Government will create a new Young Serious Offender category and establish Young Offender Military Academies to help young offenders turn around their lives.

Additionally, over the term of this Parliament, the Government will increase the number of trained Youth Aid officers and will consider a Youth Justice Demerit Point system.

Funding will be increased for the Department of Corrections to ensure there is sufficient prison capacity and, where appropriate, prison officers will be equipped with body cameras and protective equipment.

Firearms legislation will be reviewed, including rewriting the Arms Act 1983 for greater protection of public safety and to simplify regulatory requirements. The Firearms Registry will be reviewed to see whether it is improving public safety.

Public services

While spending on public services has increased in recent years, and the head count in government departments has grown, the delivery of public services has, in too many cases, declined. This decline is seen in measures that matter to individuals, and to our country.

Targets will be set for important measures - like wait times in hospitals and waiting times for cancer treatment. These will help focus resources on the Government’s priorities, which are achieving better results in the things that matter to New Zealanders’ daily lives.

The pay of public sector chief executives and their deputies will be linked to outcomes to encourage high performance and ensure accountability.

Education

Education is essential for opening up young people’s life opportunities, but current school achievement rates are worryingly poor. For example, half of Year 10’s do not meet the basic literacy and numeracy standards the OECD says are needed to succeed in further learning, and in life.

This Government will not stand by as cohorts of young people see their life horizons shrink because of a lack of schooling.

The Government will require every primary and intermediate class to be taught an hour of reading, an hour of writing and an hour of maths, every day, because a good grasp of the basics is the essential foundation on which to build further education.

To help teachers, the curriculum will be rewritten with clear requirements on what needs to be covered each school year in reading, writing, maths and science, and the curriculum will be focused on academic achievement, not ideology. Student progress will be regularly assessed. Cellphones will be banned in classes. Every child will be taught to read using a structured literacy approach.

Partnership schools will be reintroduced and state schools will be allowed to become partnership schools. Further options to increase school choice and expand access to integrated and independent schools will be explored.

In tertiary education, Te Pūkenga will be disestablished with control over polytechnics restored to the regions they serve.

The first-year fees-free policy for tertiary education will be replaced with a final-year fees-free-policy, but not before 2025.

Health

The health system and the health workforce have been under enormous pressure and more support is required for the frontline.

To encourage more graduate nurses and midwives to stay in New Zealand, the government will establish a system to pay their student loan repayments, up to $4,500 year for five years, in exchange for them agreeing to work here for at least five years.

To further boost the health workforce, the Government will increase the number of doctors, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists being trained.

The Government will undertake a cost benefit analysis on the proposed third medical school, based at Waikato University.

To support the health workforce in hospital emergency departments, security will be increased.

Cancer patients have better survival rates in Australia than in New Zealand. To help narrow that gap and to improve management of breast, ovarian, bowel, and prostate cancer, the Government will invest $280m over four years to fund 13 cancer treatments recommended by the New Zealand Cancer Control Agency.

Free breast cancer screening will be extended up to 74 years of age.

Pharmac will be required to take the voice of patients into account in making decisions, and its funding model will be reformed.

Approvals for new medicines will be made easier by requiring Medsafe to approve within 30 days new pharmaceuticals approved by at least two overseas regulatory agencies recognised by New Zealand.

To support mothers and babies, a new entitlement will be introduced to enable every mother of a new baby to have three days in-patient post-natal care.

The Government will fund the Gumboot Friday/I am Hope charity with $6 million a year, ensure Plunket is adequately funded to do its job properly, allow appropriately qualified pharmacists to prescribe certain treatments, and permit the sale of cold medication containing pseudoephedrine.

The Māori Health Authority will be disestablished. There will be no co-governance of public services and emphasis will shift to the frontline rather than the back office. Services will be delivered on need, using a range of effective providers, including iwi and community groups who have the best reach into the communities they serve.

Welfare and work

Honourable Members,

Having 11 per cent, or one in nine New Zealanders of working age on a main benefit, means too many people are dependent on the effort of their fellow citizens instead of being self-supporting. The Government will encourage those who are able to work, to do so. The Government will uphold New Zealanders’ rights and expect individuals to demonstrate that they understand their responsibilities.

The welfare system will be focussed on helping get Jobseekers who are assessed as being able to work, into jobs. There will be sanctions for those who refuse to do their bit.

90-day trials for all businesses will be brought back to encourage employers to give workers a go.

The Fair Pay agreement legislation will be repealed because employers and their teams are best able to negotiate for their own circumstances.

Seniors

Turning to superannuation, the age of entitlement for New Zealand Superannuation will remain at 65.

The universal winter energy payment will be maintained. The Building Act and resource consent system will be amended to make it easier to build granny flats or other small structures up to 60sqm.

Housing

Successive governments have struggled to make housing more affordable for more New Zealanders, with house prices and rents rising particularly quickly over the last six years. The Government will require councils in major towns and cities to zone for 30 years of housing demand because getting more houses built is essential to having a more affordable housing market.

The Natural and Built Environment and Spatial Planning Acts will be repealed and replaced with genuine reform that will make it easier to build.

The Medium Density Residential Standards rules will become optional for councils, with councils required to ratify any use of the measures, including in existing zones.

Turning to social housing, the performance of Kāinga Ora is a concern. There will be a review of its finances, procurement, development and asset management practices.

The lives of some neighbours of some Kāinga Ora properties are being made miserable because of inadequate action against anti-social behaviour by some Kāinga Ora tenants. Under the new Government, there will be appropriate consequences for tenants who engage in repeated anti-social behaviour.

Infrastructure and Transport

Honourable members,

New Zealand has a significant infrastructure deficit and needs to improve the way it funds, procures and maintains infrastructure.

The Government will set up a National Infrastructure Agency. It will coordinate government funding, connect domestic and offshore investors with New Zealand infrastructure projects, and improve funding, procurement and delivery.

As part of amending the Resource Management Act 1991, the Government will make it easier to consent new infrastructure including for renewable energy, building houses, and enhancing the primary sector – including fish and aquaculture, forestry, pastoral, horticulture and mining.

There will be a fast-track one-stop-shop established for the consenting and permitting process for regional and national projects of significance.

The Government will deliver marine farming permits of longer duration to provide investment certainty, and remove regulations that impede the productivity and potential of the seafood sector.

The Government will partner with local government to create long-term City and Regional deals so there is an agreed, visible pipeline of priority projects underway across the country. Public/Private partnerships, tolls and other funding mechanisms will be considered to speed infrastructure delivery.

As promised, the Government will repeal the Three Waters legislation and restore council ownership and control with stronger central government oversight, and strict rules for water quality and ongoing investment.

The Government will invest in better transport infrastructure including progressing 13 new Roads of National Significance, with a focus on unlocking land for new housing developments and easing congestion in Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington, Hamilton and Tauranga.

The Government commits to a four-lane highway alternative for the Brynderwyns in Northland, and it will investigate the use of private finance to accelerate construction.

The Government will establish a Regional Infrastructure Fund with $1.2 billion in capital funding over the Parliamentary term.

Major public transport upgrades will be delivered to reduce congestion in Auckland and provide people with more options for moving around the city.

There will also be upgrades to transport infrastructure in Ashburton, Queenstown, Otago and Southland.

Primary sector / Emissions

As mentioned earlier, across government, red tape will be cut in order to get things moving and to remove costs that have been imposed for little or no gain.

Cutting red tape will unleash the investment in renewable energy that is needed for the country to meet its emissions reduction targets, aid primary sector production and improve the productivity of small businesses.

The Government will reduce the regulatory burden on farmers, who are spending an increasing amount of their time on paperwork. The implementation of new Significant Natural Areas will cease and existing Significant Natural Areas will be looked at as part of the reform of the Resource Management Act.

The National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020 will be replaced to ensure a local approach, allowing district councils more flexibility in managing environmental limits.

The Government will lift the effective ban on gene editing and genetic modification and encourage the use of these technologies. This will mean the advantages of technological progress, for example in reducing the production of methane by farm animals, will be available in New Zealand, just as it already is in many other countries.

The ban on live animal exports will be reversed, while ensuring the highest standards of animal welfare.

By December 31 this year, the Government will end the clean car discount scheme and, with it, so-called ute tax which has been particularly unfair on the rural sector and tradespeople.

The Government is committed to New Zealand meeting its greenhouse gas emissions targets. To encourage more renewable energy production, the Government will fast track consents. Consents will no longer be required for upgrading transmission lines and infrastructure.

The Government will undertake a cost benefit analysis on investing in a nationwide electric-vehicle charging network. The provision of more charging stations will encourage more people into electric vehicles, which will help reduce New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions from transport.

To further reduce emissions, by 2030 the Government will implement a fair and sustainable pricing system for on-farm agricultural emissions. As part of the Emissions Trading Scheme, 100 per cent recognition of on-farm sequestration will be introduced.

The Government will limit the conversion of productive farmland to forestry for carbon farming purposes.

Citizenship

The Government believes in equal citizenship with all citizens sharing the same rights and obligations.

The Government will work to improve outcomes for all New Zealanders with public services delivered to people according to their need, and not advance policies that seek to ascribe different rights and responsibilities based on race or ancestry.

A Treaty Principles Bill will be introduced and supported to a select committee for the public to have their say.

Waitangi Tribunal legislation will be amended to refocus the scope, purpose and nature of the tribunal’s inquiries back to the original intent of that legislation.

The Government will also review legislation – except where it relates to full and final Treaty settlements - that includes reference to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Reference to the principles will be replaced with words that explain what Parliament intends, in the context of that legislation, or will be removed.

Foreign Affairs/Trade

Finally, the Government should not – and will not – focus its efforts only within New Zealand’s borders.

The world is increasingly complex and contested. There are risks to be managed, but also opportunities for New Zealand to make the most of, to ensure our country makes more of its potential.

This requires New Zealand to have an active foreign, defence and trade policy agenda:

that enhances our security

that signals that New Zealand is open for business and outwardly engaged

that makes us a participant in major global and regional developments, not a spectator, and

that sees us working tirelessly to grow trade and prosperity.

The coalition Government is committed to getting offshore and raising our profile on the world stage. The Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs and other Ministers will strengthen relationships with key partners, advance New Zealand’s interests and promote our businesses offshore.

The Government will be bold in defending New Zealand’s interests, and vigilant in the protection of the values of democracy, freedom, and security.

Honourable members.

Perhaps New Zealand’s strong sporting traditions help New Zealanders to be generous in defeat, and humble in victory. Whatever the reasons, few countries in the world change governments as smoothly as New Zealand does. It is something of which New Zealand, as a nation, can be justifiably proud.

It has put the Government in a good position to start on its 100-day plan of action. The 100-day plan is a forerunner of three years of action because New Zealanders voted for change, and the Government will be tireless in executing it.

It has started work and will hold itself accountable for delivering results that make a positive difference.

No reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

PETITIONS, PAPERS, SELECT COMMITTEE REPORTS, AND INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

SPEAKER: There are no petitions. There are papers to be presented.

CLERK:

Government responses to the report of the Petitions Committee on the report of Arthur Yeo on behalf of New Zealand Equestrian Advocacy Network

report of the Regulations Review Committee on its inquiry into COVID-19 secondary legislation

reports in relation to selected non-departmental appropriations for the year ended 30 June 2023:

Minister of Social Development, Vote Social Development

Minister of Police and Tourism, Vote Business, Science and Innovation

2021-22 annual report for the Takeovers Panel

2022-23 annual reports for:

Arts Council of New Zealand

AgResearch

Airways Corporation of New Zealand

Animal Control Products

AsureQuality

Auckland Light Rail

Broadcasting Standards Authority

City Rail Link

Civil Aviation Authority

Classification Office

Crown Infrastructure Partners

Crown Irrigation Investments

Department of Corrections

Department of Inland Revenue

Department of Internal Affairs

Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

Education Payroll

Education Review Office

Electricity Authority

Electricity Corporation of New Zealand

Electoral Commission

Financial Markets Authority

Gambling Commission

Genesis Energy

GNS Science

Heritage New Zealand

Human Rights Commission

Independent Police Conduct Authority

Kāinga Ora

KiwiSaver

Kordia Group

Landcorp Farming

Law Commission

Licensing Authority of Secondhand Dealers & Pawnbrokers

Local Government Commission

Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission

Maritime New Zealand

Meridian Energy

MetService

Ministry for the Environment

Ministry of Business

Innovation and Employment

Ministry of Defence

Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Ministry of Social Development

Ministry of Transport

National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research

New Zealand Defence Force

New Zealand Forest Research Institute

New Zealand Growth Partners

New Zealand Lotteries Commission

New Zealand Police

New Zealand Post

New Zealand Qualifications Authority

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise

New Zealand Transport Agency

Ngarimu VC and 28th (Māori) Battalion Scholarship Fund Board

New Zealand On Air

Pharmaceutical Management Agency

Predator Free 2050

Privacy Commissioner

Public Service Commission

Public Trust Office

Quotable Value

Radio New Zealand

Rau Paenga

Real Estate Authority

Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand

Serious Fraud Office

Southern Response

Statistics New Zealand, Takeovers Panel

Te Māngai Pāho

Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori

Television New Zealand

Tertiary Education Commission

Transport Accident Investigation Commission

Tupu Tonu—Ngāpuhi Investment Fund

2023-2027 Statement of Intent for ACC

2023-2024 Statement of Performance Expectations for ACC, Maritime New Zealand, and the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission

Ministry for the Environment and Stats New Zealand environmental reporting series 2023: Our Fresh Water, and Our Atmosphere and Climate.

SPEAKER: I present the 2022-23 annual report of the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives and the Parliamentary Service, the 2022-23 annual report and the 2023-28 strategy intentions of the Office of the Ombudsmen, and the 2022-23 annual report and the 2023-27 strategic intentions of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Those papers are published under the authority of the House.

There are no select committee reports and no bills to be introduced. We come now to business of the House.

Appointments

Deputy Speaker

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Leader of the House): I move, That Barbara Joan Kuriger be appointed Deputy Speaker.

Mr Speaker, can I take this opportunity, as my first contribution to the 54th Parliament, to congratulate you, sir, on your election to—

SPEAKER: Yeah, take your time.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: That’s perhaps a comment you may not be repeating during the rest of this Parliament, but thank you. It gives me great pleasure to nominate and move that Barbara Kuriger be appointed as Deputy Speaker. I well recall when Mrs Kuriger was an inexperienced member of the Parliament, as she entered Parliament the same year as I did, in 2014, but she’s now been here for nine years, entering her fourth term as the member of Parliament for Taranaki-King Country. She has served on a variety of select committees over the time, including the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, Environment Committee, Finance and Expenditure Committee, Health Committee, as well as the Standing Orders Committee and Officers of Parliament Committee.

There have been times in the last Parliament, the 53rd Parliament, where Mrs Kuriger acted as a temporary Assistant Speaker and has discharged that duty very well indeed. I think she enjoys the respect of the entire House for the gentle and diligent way she chairs meetings, both in committees but also in the House. She brings a real gravitas to the role as Deputy Speaker and can I say, in closing, in nominating Mrs Kuriger, the symmetry of today is not lost on me because it was nine years ago that Mrs Kuriger and I moved the Address in Reply debate, which two National backbenchers will move this afternoon, and it’s nice to see Mrs Kuriger ascend to the august office of Deputy Speaker.

Motion agreed to.

Assistant Speakers

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Leader of the House): I move, That Maureen Helena Pugh be appointed Assistant Speaker.

Maureen Pugh is the MP for West Coast-Tasman. She was in the invidious position at least twice of being elected on election night only to be—not unelected, but not quite have that result confirmed after the special votes. So she entered Parliament the first time on 21 December 2015, and that happened again after a subsequent election. She’s a member of Parliament who comes to the House with experience on the Westland District Council, first elected in 1998, before she became the first woman mayor elected as the mayor of the West Coast. She has served in a variety of committees over the last few years in the Parliament, and for the last three years she has been junior whip for the National Party. She’s someone who I think also enjoys the confidence of the House to do an excellent job in the very important role as Assistant Speaker, so it gives me great pleasure to move her nomination.

Motion agreed to.

CHRIS BISHOP (Leader of the House): I move, That Gregory Eamon O’Connor be appointed Assistant Speaker.

It’s wonderful to see a fellow member of the parliamentary cricket team ascend to the august office of Assistant Speaker. But, of course, Mr O’Connor has been acting as Deputy Speaker in the 53rd Parliament and, of course, I think all members of the House would agree he did an excellent job in discharging that important job—someone who brought his experience in the Police, and the Police Association, with a firm but fair handling of the House. I’m sure that he will continue that diligence as the Assistant Speaker of the 54th Parliament.

Motion agreed to.

SPEAKER: Congratulations to those members.

Reinstatement of Business

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Leader of the House): I move, Government notice of motion No. 4 in my name relating to the reinstatement of business.

Members, if they pick up the Order Paper, will notice Government motion No. 4 is a very long motion and I’m not intending to read it out for the House. Basically, what we’re doing here is reinstating every item of business from the last Parliament on to the new Parliament. Now it may be that—

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: All quality legislation.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Ha, ha! Well, some of it’s OK; some of it isn’t, Mr Leader of the Opposition. There have been debates in the past, including the last Parliament, about the appropriate course of action for a new Parliament dealing with the business of the last Parliament, because, by definition, it reflects the business of a Parliament that has expired, and the people have spoken in the interim and given a new sense of direction to the Parliament.

Frankly, I think it was regrettable that the onset of the last Parliament discharged—made some changes to the business in this interregnum period. What we’re proposing to do is reinstate every item of business from the last Parliament so that Ministers—and members, actually, for that matter—can have a good opportunity to look at what they may wish to proceed with and items that they may wish to discharge. I think that’s the appropriate constitutional thing to do. I think it’s right in principle and right in a convention sense that that is what happens.

So every item of business is being reinstated, and Ministers and members, in due course as the weeks go by, will be considering whether or not bills and items of business get shunted further up the priority list or whether or not things make their way down the Order Paper to the tail end where things may not be advancing so quickly or may, in fact, be discharged.

But I think the constitutional thing to do is to reinstate the items of business and that’s what this motion does.

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

Motion agreed to.

Standing Orders

Sessional

SPEAKER: According to a determination of the Business Committee, I call upon the Leader of the House to move a motion regarding entities deemed to be public organisations.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Leader of the House): I move, That Air New Zealand Ltd, Genesis Energy Ltd, Meridian Energy Ltd, Mercury New Zealand Ltd, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Judicial Conduct Commissioner, the Māori Television Service, Te Pūkenga - New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology, and Te Aka Whai Ora - Māori Health Authority be public organisations for the purposes of the Standing Orders.

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

Motion agreed to.

SPEAKER: The House is suspended until 2 p.m. today for the Address in Reply.

Sitting suspended from 11.46 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Address in Reply

JAMES MEAGER (National—Rangitata): I move, That a respectful Address be presented to Her Excellency the Governor-General in reply to Her Excellency’s Speech.

E ngā mate, koutou e iri nei i ngā pātū o tēnei Whare, koutou i whawhai mō te here-kore o te manapori, e mihi ana.

To the fallen heroes, whose final resting places adorn these walls, and who fought for our freedoms and our precious democracy, I acknowledge you.

E mihi ana ki a koutou o Aotearoa, koutou i whakapono mai hei whakakanohi i a koe, e mihi ana.

To the people of New Zealand, who put their faith in us to represent them in this great House, I acknowledge you.

E mihi ana ki te Pirīmia hou, ki a Christopher Luxon. Tēnā koe i eke panuku hei ūpoko mō te Kāwanatanga, e mihi ana.

To the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Christopher Luxon, congratulations on your victory. I acknowledge you.

Prime Minister, with great power comes great responsibility, and I know that you will discharge that responsibility as a man with great courage, conviction, conscientiousness, and compassion.

Kei ōku hoa mahi, tātou e pīkau i te taumahatanga o ā tātou kaupapa nui, e whakamānawa ana, e mihi ana.

To my colleagues across the House, who now carry the burden of great purpose, I acknowledge and congratulate you all.

This is a special place, one which bestows upon us the power to make the laws of our land and exert great control over the people. Please use that power lightly and infrequently.

E mihi ana ki a koe e te Māngai, tēnā koe i tohua hei kaikōrero mō tātou, e mihi ana.

To you, Mr Speaker, I acknowledge and congratulate you on your election as our Speaker.

Mr Speaker, I have known you for almost a decade now—not as long as others here, but longer than some—and in that time I have known nothing but generosity, wisdom, and fortitude from you as a leader in this House of Representatives.

You are selfless, you are generous, and, in my view, you will go down as one of the most important politicians the South Island will have ever seen.

SPEAKER: You’re going to go a long way in politics!

JAMES MEAGER: Do I get to reclaim that time back, Mr Speaker, to the end of my speech?

SPEAKER: Most certainly.

JAMES MEAGER: E mihi ana ki tōku whānau, otirā, ki ōku hoa tata. Mei kore ake ko koutou, kua kore ahau.

To my family and my friends, I acknowledge you. Without you, I could not be here.

Ka mutu, ki ōku taniwha ake, ki ōku nawe, ki ōku nawe-rau, e mihi ana. Ki te kore ōku nawe, kua kore ahau.

And to my flaws, of which there are many, I acknowledge you. Because without my flaws, I would not be me.

I am flawed, perhaps a little more than some, perhaps a little less than others, but flawed still the same, much like we all are. It’s our flaws that make us who we are, and it’s the flaws in our society that I think bring us here to this House. For some, it’s the urge to right the wrongs of our predecessors. For others, it’s the drive to seek out and eradicate injustice. For some, it’s to simply and gradually move society in the right rather than in the wrong direction. It is the flaws that we see in everything that I think brings us to this House. Our purpose is to fix what we see is wrong in the world. Our purpose is to seek a brighter, more prosperous future for all New Zealanders. And so I stand here, flaws and all, in the most powerful room in the land—humbled, completely humbled.

My family has never sought the limelight. This entrance into public life won’t come easy for us. We are simple, straightforward people from a simple, straightforward part of the world. My dad is Ngāi Tahu, a freezing worker most of his life, a little Māori kid who was kicked out of school at 14 and who never told his parents, hiding in bedroom closets and spending afternoons down the river until he was old enough to convince his folks to let him go to work at 15. Until yesterday, he had never stepped foot in the North Island. His father, my grandfather, was a truck driver and a freezing worker, and my nana was a seamstress and a wool carder in Ashburton.

Dad’s a hard worker. He’s a bloody hard worker. You can’t stand on your feet for hours on end on the chain and in the boning room for 40 years without knowing what hard work looks like. Dad wasn’t around much growing up and that’s put a strain on our relationship, which has never healed and which may never heal, but I don’t blame him for that. We are products of our upbringing. We navigate through the world with the tools that we are given, and sometimes those tools just aren’t fit for purpose. Forgiveness and redemption are words that are often overused, but they are words that are fit for this moment. We should never judge people based on who they once were. We can only judge someone on who they are today compared to who they were yesterday. And I know my dad is making up for lost time. I’m so glad he’s here today and I love him dearly.

On my mum’s side, our family come from Devon and Cornwall in the South of England. Grandma was a cleaner; Granddad fixed fridges. Their parents were farmers, mechanics, inventors, and also freezing workers. To be fair, it’s hard to find someone from mid-south Canterbury whose family doesn’t have some connection to the meat and wool industry in one way or another. And Mum’s done a few jobs in her life—cleaning, teacher aiding, and now very proudly works at Countdown in Timaru. I’m glad she is here today and I love her dearly.

My mum and dad split up when I was in kindergarten, so Mum brought me, my younger brother, and sister up on her own—a single mum in a State house on the benefit with three kids. So I know what it’s like to be poor. I know what it’s like to grow up sharing a bedroom with my brother until I was 18. I know what it’s like to have to walk everywhere because we didn’t have a car until I was nine. I know what it’s like to see a father struggle to pay his bills and borrow money from his kid’s school savings account. I know what it’s like to see a solo mother juggle three kids, part-time work, correspondence school, and all the other worries that a single parent living in South Timaru has.

I know what it’s like to have your very first memory be of the police trying to coax you to come out from under the bed, telling you that everything would be OK. But make no mistake, we had a great life. We never went without. My mum has steel in her bones and grit in her soul. My recollection is that, yes, we were poor but we were never in poverty. My mum always made sure there was food on the table, clothes on our backs, and books in our school bags. Mum made sure schooling was everything. We always went to school, every single day.

There is no doubt in my mind that I would not be here today if it weren’t for my education. I would not have practised law. I would not have gone to Otago University. I would not have had the privilege of being head boy and dux at Timaru Boys’ High School. And that’s what brings me here. It’s why I’m in politics. It’s why I’m in this place. Because I know that in New Zealand today, not every child will have the same opportunity that I had 30 years ago. Not every child has a mum like I had, someone who drove home the importance of education, of working hard, of being a decent person and living a decent life. Too many children in our country will grow up without that opportunity. Some won’t grow up at all. So that’s why I’m here. That’s the injustice; that’s the flaw in the system that I want to change.

Perhaps to some I am a walking contradiction—you know, a part-Māori boy, raised in a State house by a single parent on the benefit, now a proud National Party MP in a deeply rural farming electorate in the middle of the South Island—but there is no contradiction there. Members opposite do not own Māori. Members opposite do not own the poor. Members opposite do not own the workers. No party and no ideology has a right to claim ownership over anything or anyone.

We, on this side of the House, are a broad church: town and country, liberal and conservative, old and young, and professionals and workers. What unites us is our fundamental belief that it’s the individual family unit that knows what’s best for their family—not the State, not the Government, and not us. It’s not the State that saved my family; it was my mum. She took responsibility for our situation. When we fall on hard times, as we all will at some stage, it’s our neighbours and our community that should rally around in support. Only after that does the State become our safety net, as the neighbour of last resort.

Our system should be one which helps pick us up when we fall but which then gets out of the way when we’re back on our feet and lets us lives our lives. The job of Government must be to create a system which makes it as easy as possible for good people to make the right decisions. But, instead, we have a system which creates broken families and turns good people into lost souls. It’s not right, and it must change.

I truly believe that social investment is that change. When we see people as having agency and dignity in their own right, rather than just as numbers on a spreadsheet, we will have a just society. When we look at spending as an investment rather than a cost, we can focus on outcomes that benefit not only the health and wellbeing of the individual but also the back pocket of the taxpayer. That’s what social investment does.

If we invest thousands in supporting the first thousand days of a child’s life, we can save millions in long-term costs that stem from poor health and poor education. If we can give more people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to accident compensation, if we can get them the treatment they need as quickly as possible, not only will we improve their health and their wellbeing and change their lives, we can get them back working, earning, and paying their way. If we are sensible with the rules and the regulations that we put in place about who can work in our education and health systems, for example, by allowing those who train in CANZUK countries—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—to work here as a right, we will save millions in costs associated with burnout and the constant under-resourcing of those sectors.

But this approach only succeeds if we are willing to follow the evidence so we can prove what works. Good programmes should be enriched, and bad ones should be cast aside. We don’t need complicated audits and reporting mechanisms for community organisations to administer taxpayer-funded programmes. The Government has this information. It can do the work to measure those programmes against long-term individual outcomes in health and education, in reduced welfare-dependency and better housing, in lower crime and in lower drug and alcohol use. All we need is to be more reasonable, be more sensible, and be more savvy with the use of this data.

The Privacy Act, with all of its good intentions, is a major barrier to getting New Zealanders the help that they need, and our approach to how we share information deserves a serious rethink.

This is why we are all here: to debate freely; to have an open, robust contest of ideas; to challenge one another in an environment where disputes are resolved by the showing of hands and not by the throwing of fists. We are here to represent the people who put us here. And some of us are here to disrupt and to challenge the status quo, and I get that—I really do. But in doing so, we must respect this institution, we must respect its traditions, and, importantly, we must respect those who have come before us and who have cleared the way for our many voices to be heard. We are here to fight for what we believe in, each and every one of us, without fear or favour, laying aside all personal interests.

We are a Parliament of the people, by the people, and for the people. Much faith has been placed in me by many people. I intend to work hard to repay that faith—flaws and all. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

KATIE NIMON (National—Napier): I second the motion that a respectful Address be presented to Her Excellency the Governor-General in reply to Her Excellency’s speech.

Mr Speaker, may I first congratulate you on your successful election as Speaker. I know you will bring respect, fairness, care, and honesty to the House and to the role, particularly given the number of new MPs that enter Parliament alongside me.

I’d like to congratulate the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Christopher Luxon, and say how proud I am to be a member of his Government. The Prime Minister’s leadership from the day he became the leader of the National Party has been nothing but motivational: integrity and intelligence, and relentless dedication to delivering better outcomes for every New Zealander.

I look forward to giving everything I have to help get New Zealand back on track. It is important that I start by thanking the people of the Napier electorate for putting their confidence in me as their representative in the 54th Parliament. I want to acknowledge my intention when I say “Napier electorate” rather than simply “Napier”. I am the representative of Napier City, yes, but also the Wairoa District and parts of the Hastings and Gisborne districts. Every township and settlement is equally important to me and I commit to staying connected to all 9,482.6 square kilometres of it. I started the way I wished to continue, being positive, approachable, connected, and always taking the high road. I am now privileged to officially represent you in that way.

I want to thank my opponents—plural—for a competitive campaign that constantly kept me on my toes. I also want to acknowledge Cushla Tangaere-Manuel for her successful campaign in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. I look forward to working with you for the communities that we share. I want to acknowledge Catherine Wedd, the new MP for Tukituki—while we have multiple neighbours, the partnership between Napier and Tukituki needs to be strong and united. I look forward to working with you for our twin cities and region.

While the people of Napier elected me, I am here today because the National Party believed I was the right person to contest the Napier seat in 2023, after first contesting it in 2020—but we won’t talk about that. What is most humbling is having people believe in you so deeply that they sacrifice their time and join the fray. To call these people volunteers is an understatement. They’ve become family. Some of them are here today while some of them are watching from home. While I’m now part of a team of National Party members of Parliament, you are the team that got me here, and I thank you for everything.

While I’m saying thank you, I want to acknowledge the Young Nats. I was a Young Nat and so were my parents, so I know why you do what you do, but your tireless dedication to the party and its candidates is astonishing and I will continue to learn from you and absorb your energy, so thank you.

Finally, to my family who are here today, thank you for your unwavering support in ways too many to list. My parents, Bill and Sue Nimon, never stood in the way of me becoming myself, no matter where it took me. I am strong-minded, often outspoken, and always questioning. I was never going to be a housewife. Despite that, my husband, Jeremy, still married me a year ago, and has been my constant reprieve.

I am a Nimon before I am Katie. My surname has always defined me. My family’s history is their legacy and my responsibility. My father’s maternal great-grandfather, William John Geddis, his namesake, came to New Zealand on the British Trident, and during his career in journalism, bought or established several newspapers including Napier’s Daily Telegraph.

In 1917, during World War I, William was chosen as one of six delegates to represent New Zealand at an Empire Press Conference followed by a tour of the British and French fronts. I have a copy of a treasured photo of him with his two sons, Clifton Geddis, and my great-grandfather Trevor, where they were fighting in the war when he visited. Having a visit from family during the war is a privilege denied to most soldiers. In 1918, William was appointed by the Massey-led Reform Government to the Legislative Council, and he was the representative for Napier until his death in 1926. The Napier Daily Telegraph was survived by my great-grandfather, his son, and grandsons, and merged with The Herald-Tribune in 1999 to form the Hawke’s Bay Today. My great-grandfather Trevor, chief Rotarian and chair of the Napier Harbour Board after the 1931 earthquake, was responsible for setting up the Napier Reconstruction Committee and launching the village settlement scheme. Trevor received an OBE in 1952 for his service to local government and journalism.

John Giles Nimon, known as Jack, is dad’s paternal great-grandfather, and started the bus company that has shaped who I am today. He came to New Zealand in the 1880s via Dunedin, settled in Hawke’s Bay, and through work as a stable hand, bought a bus service in 1905 and started Nimon and Sons. From horse-drawn carriages, to Studebakers, Seddons, and Bedfords, the business evolved with the community, as did the family. Jack’s son, John Joseph—known as Joe—carried on the business, also serving as the Mayor of Havelock borough, receiving the coronation medal in 1952 and an MBE in 1972 for services to the community.

My grandfather, also John, an engineer, went to England to join the air force, returned for a surgery, met my grandmother, and appropriately stayed in Hawke’s Bay. At the time, he decided there were too many family members in the business for it to sustain his family as well, so he started a new business, Roadair, a nationwide refrigerated trucking company. He went on to run the bus company as well and was heavily involved in the Bus and Coach Association, being awarded an MBE for services to business management and to the community.

My mother’s maternal great-great-grandfather, Thomas Wilmor McKenzie, was known as “The Father of Wellington”. He came to New Zealand with his mother in 1839 on the Adelaide. Shortly after his arrival, Thomas and a friend inadvertently strayed on to a tapu site in Thorndon. To prevent them from being killed by Te Rīrā Pōrutu, the paramount chief of Ngāti Awa, Ruhia—his daughter-in-law—threw a cloak over them to make them tapu. That cloak, alongside the story, is now in Te Papa.

As an apprentice, he helped produce the first papers of the New Zealand Gazette and started the Wellington Independent newspaper. I do appreciate the coincidence that McKenzie and Geddis both started newspapers, and often wonder if during their time in Wellington they knew each other well. I imagine the furthest thing from their minds would be that they’d share a descendant that would become a member of Parliament, and even less so a great-great-granddaughter.

My mother’s paternal ancestry is largely unknown, due to her grandfather dying before her father was born. However, we have found out since that they were storekeepers. One thing my ancestors all had in common was service to community; something I have inherited, along with my interest in transport, business, and writing. I share with you this history, because who I am, my values, my experience, and my passion, was set in motion by their actions.

My personal history is somewhat dichotomous. During high school, I was simultaneously racing ministocks at Meeanee Speedway, and tracking through the grades in speech and drama. My favourite subjects were classics, art history, and history, but on the weekends I watched rugby. I worked in the weekends at an information centre, and in the school holidays for my parents at the bus depot. When the time came for university, my interest and persuasion led me to study towards the advertising industry, and I spent two years there as part of the Clemenger Group Graduate Programme.

In Auckland, I became known as the ambassador for Hawke’s Bay. When I got the chance to come back and work in the family business, the decision was simple—Auckland wasn’t my place, and I wanted to work on my own legacy, not Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn’s.

Tourism was turning a corner in Hawke’s Bay, and I wanted to be part of it, smoothing out the peaks and troughs of the seasons. Being part of the passenger transport industry, the regional tourism industry, and the local school network showed me that provincial communities are powerful and that service is my calling. I went from business development to general management, and I managed to jam an executive MBA in there somewhere as well. After a rocky two years, including an election and another career change, I continued to serve my community by becoming the transport manager at Hawke’s Bay Regional Council. My time in local government was insightful, impactful, and enhancing. It aged me, but in a good way.

Although it sounds like it, work isn’t my entire life. I am passionate about mentoring young women. I have been on a journey of self-awareness and understanding my whole life. My brain is my favourite feature, and I feel strongly that knowledge is power. The world benefits from more powerful women, and the rising tide lifts all boats.

There was no one day where I thought, “Ah ha! I’m going to be a politician.”; rather, it was a natural progression based on the life I was leading. There is only so long you can serve a business, an industry, or a community before you reach the limitations of your own influence. While I didn’t know I was going to be a politician, my parents would argue that I did. What I do recall was secretly wanting to be an All Black and be part of a high-performance team. Sadly, I’m not an athlete, but I am part of a high-performance team—not in black, but in blue.

I would never call myself a political junkie; politics just happens to be neatly—or not so neatly—intertwined with life. Unfortunately, the more involved a Government becomes in people’s business, and businesses, for that matter, the worse things seem to get. In life, I have seen how different Governments have impacted communities through business. I have seen years where small businesses have become untenable, mum and pop owners sell to corporates, corporates grow, employment relations break down, unions grow, and service diminishes, and at some point along the way, the wind changes and the sun comes out. Instead of playing political whack-a-mole, I strongly believe in Adam Smith’s theory of the invisible hand. The argument for limited Government is a strong one, which is one of the many reasons why I stand here on this side of the House. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but you can’t spend your way out of every problem, nor can you regulate your way out of it. All you get is debt and dependency.

My political values have come from growing up in a family where work was life, not just a job, and seeing the real-life impact of theoretical experiments. When you grow up in a house where your landline is the after-hours phone number for a transport company and your holidays are bus conferences, you see the importance of competitive enterprise and reward for achievement. Business owners, landlords, and farmers take risks to provide goods and services. When there’s no reward, why would they take that risk? Sadly, in the last six years, a growing number of these people no longer see the risk worth taking. Economics 101 will teach you that when suppliers leave the market, supply doesn’t match demand, and you lose market equilibrium, and it doesn’t take much to learn who loses in that scenario.

You might consider me a liberal conservative. I’ve been told I’m fiscally conservative but socially progressive. What I hope is to help more people see that you can deliver improved outcomes for those that need it most, with more localised delivery and in partnership with the private sector.

There is a book I used to frequently check out of the Wellington Library called The Secret Language of Birthdays. Whether you believe in astrology or not, my birthday is the day of the bridge. Whether it’s written in the stars or because I was the middle daughter in a family with parents less like Venus and Mars and more like Mercury and Pluto, I’m known to help people see eye to eye. Whether it’s helping the Government understand the needs of Napier or helping Napier appreciate the intention of Government, my job is to be the bridge between them.

It hasn’t been an easy road since 14 February, but regardless of the impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle, the provinces have been left behind. It is unjust to prioritise the niceties of urban Wellington and Auckland when the locals of Tiniroto and Ruakituri are still taking a two-hour detour because the roads have been closed for nearly 10 months. The top half of the Napier electorate is cut off on a weekly basis, and without access to healthcare and education, it is hit and miss. Napier City was an island once again after the cyclone crumbled or closed every surrounding bridge, cutting off power, supplies and medical care.

The Napier electorate has all the ingredients to be the place to move for opportunities. It is the place that people could stay for their dream career. From Onekawa to Māhia, the industries are there—energy, space, tourism, film, ag-hort, construction—and we just need to get out of their way.

I want this for the whole region, but I want to make a special mention of Wairoa, the heart of the Napier electorate. Wairoa has endless potential and its people are strong, but what I want for Wairoa is for its rangatahi to not have to leave to find opportunities. Wairoa will achieve this for Wairoa, but we can meet them halfway with health, infrastructure, and services that make life there not only possible but enviable.

I am here today as the representative of the Napier electorate. For Napier City and Matawai, for rural and urban, for employer and employee, for landlord and tenant—for every person, no matter how they cast their vote. I want the region to flourish for the sake of the rest of New Zealand.

I intend to start the way I wish to continue. While I have spent the last 15 minutes talking, I will spend the rest of my career listening, advocating, and delivering, because the Nimon family motto states “I show, not boast”.

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the Opposition): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the following words be added to the Address “and expects, over the next three years, to see action on the cost of living pressure Kiwi families are facing, with inflation falling faster than Treasury’s pre-election projections, interest rates falling, real incomes continuing to grow, near record-low unemployment being sustained, the Government’s books being returned to surplus at least as quickly as previously forecast, the number of affordable homes built increased, all those on State house waiting lists being accommodated, significant reductions in crime, climate emissions continuing to decline, school attendance materially improving, rates of literacy and numeracy amongst 15-year-olds improving, and material improvements in the overall living standards of all New Zealanders.” Anything less than those things will mean that this Government has failed to deliver on the promises that it made to New Zealanders.

Sitting and listening to the Speech from the Throne, I listened very carefully, hoping to see some shred of vision, some shred of hope for the future for New Zealanders, but what we heard was a plan to take New Zealand backwards—repeated use of words like “stop”, “repeal”, “replace”, “reverse”, and “disestablish”—a plan to go backwards, not a plan to take New Zealand forward. What we also saw was a confused set of priorities: a Government that has chosen to prioritise mega landlords over renters and first-home buyers; a Government that has chosen to prioritise the tobacco lobby over the health and wellbeing of young New Zealanders; a Government that has chosen to prioritise oil and gas companies over our environment; a Government that has chosen to prioritise millionaires instead of salary and wage workers; a Government that has chosen to accept conspiracy theories instead of policy-based facts, evidence, and science. Not only does the Government have its priorities wrong, this could well be the most shambolic beginning of any Government in New Zealand’s history.

First, we had the coalition negotiations, with, as predicted, Winston Peters and David Seymour running circles around Christopher Luxon. I don’t think I have ever seen anything quite as pathetic as the incoming Prime Minister literally sprinting out the door of Parliament to fly back to Auckland because he had been summoned by Winston Peters, because Winston Peters decided that he didn’t want to come to Wellington; he wanted instead to summon the others to come to Auckland—not exactly a strong and stable start to coalition negotiations. But then, of course, when the Government finally took office and we thought things might settle down a bit, it actually got worse, because in those signature moments in the formation of the new Government Winston Peters once again stole the show, upstaging the Prime Minister throughout the entire process.

On a serious note, though, I respect the fact that New Zealanders at this last election voted for change. I don’t think the change that they’re getting is the change they thought they were voting for, though. I don’t think that this was the change that they had in mind, because, when we look through the coalition documents that form the basis for this incoming Government, we see a mishmash of confused priorities and broken promises literally weeks out from the election.

First, let’s start with the fundamentals. Let’s start with the economic fundamentals that underpin this Government: tax cuts that are simply unaffordable. Bigger tax cuts for mega landlords than what was promised before the election and smaller tax cuts for working New Zealanders than what was promised before the election—that has been the upshot of the coalition negotiations. Mega landlords, around 300 of whom stand to get over a million dollars in tax cuts each under this incoming Government, actually get their tax cuts brought forward so they are going to get more while working New Zealanders see the tax cuts they were promised by National starting to erode away through the wheeling and dealing of the incoming Government.

New Zealanders discovered late in the election campaign that the tax cuts that were being promised by National were actually a hoax to begin with: $250 a fortnight is what National promised the average working family—$250 a fortnight—and not “up to”. In fact, we can go back and we can watch the video. It was $250 a fortnight. But then we discovered late in the campaign that actually there were only about 3,000 families that were going to benefit from that, and for the rest of the country it was going to be significantly less than that. And now we know it is going to be even less than what they were promised before the election.

I do want to welcome one change, and I want to congratulate New Zealand First for the change, and that is the reversal of National’s policy to allow foreign homebuyers back into the New Zealand housing market. It was the wrong way to fund tax cuts. It made a mockery of National’s claim for the last six years that tax cuts were affordable, because they had to raise a new revenue source in order to pay for them, but also it was a complete fiction that never would have raised the revenue that was promised. If anything, I think Nicola Willis and Christopher Luxon were relieved that New Zealand First drew a line through that one, because they were soon to be found out that it was simply a fiction. There was a reason why they never released their costings during the election campaign—because I don’t think they actually had any. I don’t think they actually had anything more than a few back-of-the-envelope calculations that simply did not stack up.

But what I think New Zealanders will be shocked by is what they have replaced it with: the idea that more young New Zealanders should take up smoking in order to pay for tax cuts is morally reprehensible. I don’t think New Zealanders thought that was what they were going to get. I don’t think that’s the change they were voting for when they voted at the last election. National’s decision to wind back the smoke-free Aotearoa agenda is a disgrace to New Zealand as a country. It is an international embarrassment, and it is making headlines around the world for all the wrong reasons. Members opposite should think carefully about where they are positioning themselves when even the Conservatives in the UK think that they have made the wrong decision. When the Conservative Party in the UK are progressing an agenda which this Government are now choosing to abandon, it should surely have them questioning their priorities.

But that is not the only reason that the incoming Government are embarrassing New Zealand internationally already, trashing New Zealand’s international reputation. Live animal exports is another area. It is cruel and it is wrong, and it was banned for a reason. This is a Government that proposed to reverse all action on climate change, and that is an embarrassment to New Zealand, a country that trades on its “clean, green” reputation. What we are seeing is a Government that says that you can have all the emissions reductions and yet do nothing that has actually contributed to achieving those things. It is an embarrassment to New Zealand internationally.

Let’s then turn to the core of their promises during the campaign. There is no doubt that this was a cost of living election. The increase in inflation that we have seen post pandemic has hurt Kiwi households, and hurt Kiwi household budgets in particular, but what are we seeing from this incoming Government? Will their policies that they have signed up to actually reduce inflation? Tax cuts that aren’t properly funded and the catalogue of spending commitments that we’ve seen in the coalition agreement are more likely to stoke inflation than see inflation coming backwards. There is a reason that the Government are now so desperately thrashing around trying to blame the outgoing Government for everything they possibly can—because their numbers didn’t add up before the election and they certainly don’t add up after the coalition negotiations.

Rt Hon Christopher Luxon: Smoke and mirrors.

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: So let’s talk about smoke and mirrors, and let’s talk about some of the smoke and mirrors that we’ve seen in the last few days. The idea that Pharmac’s funding and that the funding for school lunches was somehow a new surprise to the incoming Government despite the fact that it was in their own fiscal plan before the last election. Suddenly, somehow, this is all news to them now, and somehow the outgoing Government was wrong in not grouping up all of the time-limited commitments into a nice easy summary that was easy to read, because apparently nobody on the other side of the House bothered to read the last Budget as they put together their alternative fiscal plan. It’s not that long, and I’m sure that someone on the other side has an attention span that can make it from the start to the finish, even if the incoming finance Minister doesn’t.

As for cost overruns, I don’t know whether it’s escaped the incoming Government that there has been an increase in inflation and that as they were talking about the cost of living facing New Zealanders, it’s somewhat surprising that they didn’t factor that into their fiscal plans—because Government costs have gone up during that time as well. We factored that in to our fiscal plans, and during the campaign made it very clear to the National Party that they’d underprovided for that—“Oh no, no”, we were told, “We’ve got it all right.” Now they know their numbers don’t add up, they’re trying to blame everybody but themselves when their numbers did not add up.

So let me begin with my first pledge for this Parliament: we will not let this incoming Government rewrite history. They have inherited a set of Government books that are on track to getting back into surplus. They have inherited an inflationary track that will mean by this time next year, inflation will be back to the 1 to 3 percent target range. They have inherited near-record low unemployment that has been sustained for a prolonged period of time. They have inherited strong wage growth that means working Kiwis are able to work hard and get ahead. They have inherited an economy that is growing faster than many economists had predicted it would grow—and it was never in recession, despite the fact that the new Prime Minister went up and down the country preaching doom and gloom. In fact, he went around the world preaching doom and gloom, saying that New Zealand was “wet, whiny, and miserable”, and that “Kiwi businesses have gone soft” and we were “in recession” when we never were. Not only did we do all of those things but whilst we were doing those things, we ensured that we were investing record amounts in fixing up New Zealand’s run-down infrastructure. We also made sure that health and education was being properly funded, something that we could not say when we became the Government in 2017.

But I also want to make the second of the pledges that I want to make in this House today: that as an Opposition and as a future Government, we will seek to bring New Zealanders together, not drive a wedge between Kiwis. The three most egregious examples of that that we see from the incoming Government are this: first, the adoption of COVID-19 conspiracy theories as apparent Government policy. I say to the members opposite who have pledged to end all COVID-19 mandates: can they name one that’s still in place? Can they name one? I hear crickets on the Treasury benches, because there aren’t any—but they want to buy into the conspiracy theorists’ view; they are now questioning the efficacy of vaccine science. I think this House should be proud of the fact that we, as a whole Parliament, said to New Zealanders that vaccines were safe and effective and Kiwis should do that, and I think it is a massive step backwards that this Government are now officially questioning that.

I also think that it’s a stain on New Zealand’s international reputation that we are one of only two or three countries in the world saying that we don’t want to be part of the system that the World Health Organization are setting up to stop future pandemics—a system set up to stop future pandemics—and this Government are saying they don’t want New Zealand to be part of it, making us an embarrassing international outlier. We see outright attacks from the incoming Government on our gender diverse community that are frankly a massive step backwards. I want our schools to be a safe place for all young New Zealanders, including our gender diverse young people. I want all of our young people in New Zealand to be free to be who they are; to not feel like they have to be someone who they are not when they walk through the school gate. And I want New Zealand to be a country where young people learn to be respectful of diversity and difference, not one where they are encouraged to judge and persecute others who are not like them.

But perhaps the most egregious and divisive policies that we are seeing from this Government are when it comes to issues around Māori. During my lifetime, I’m very proud of the fact that New Zealand, under successive governments—blue and red—has made enormous progress towards righting some of the wrongs of the past, towards bringing New Zealand together, towards celebrating Māori culture and identity in ways that we haven’t in the past. And I am very disappointed that, based on what we’re seeing in the coalition documents of this Government, this could be the first Government in a generation to go backwards on those issues. New Zealanders have nothing to fear from Māori thriving in New Zealand. When Māori thrive, all New Zealanders will thrive. I believe that te reo Māori is a taonga for New Zealand; we should be proud of it, we should celebrate it, we should foster it, and we should encourage New Zealanders to take it up in greater numbers.

The rhetoric that we’ve seen in the last 24 hours—of suggesting that those who speak fluent te reo Māori in public service roles should have their pay docked—is simply disgraceful. We pay extra allowances to teachers who are fluent in te reo Māori because there is so much demand for it, because so many young New Zealanders want to learn it. And I am proud as a Minister of Education to have seen an expansion of te reo Māori provision in our schools, so that future generations of New Zealanders—including Pākehā New Zealanders—can learn te reo Māori, something I didn’t get the opportunity to do when I was at school and I wish that I had; and I want to make sure that future New Zealanders get to have that. I say to members opposite that non-Māori New Zealanders have nothing to fear from a Māori Health Authority focused on improving the health outcomes for Māori New Zealanders, and we have nothing to fear from a by Māori, for Māori approach.

This Government, in the Speech from the Throne and in their coalition agreement, set out all of the areas where they want to take New Zealand backwards; very few where they want to take New Zealand forwards. Repealing the Resource Management Act (RMA), which the last National Government said was flawed and needed to be changed, and putting it back to what it was before—so repealing the repeal and going back to the RMA—isn’t going to take New Zealand forward, particularly when they don’t know what they’re going to eventually replace it with. Dialling back workers’ rights isn’t going to take New Zealand forward. Removing fair pay agreements that had the potential to lift salary and wages for some of the lowest-paid New Zealand workers isn’t going to take New Zealand forward. Reinstating 90-day fire-at-will trials isn’t going to improve the lot of working New Zealanders, and watering down contractors’ rights will simply return us to the race to the bottom. I think one of the big challenges our economy faces in recent decades is that we’ve seen a decoupling of effort and reward. We actually have to make sure work pays, and this Government wants to turn back the clock on all of the things that have seen rising incomes for working New Zealanders.

Another area where the Government want to take us backwards—tragically for New Zealand today, but even more tragically for New Zealand tomorrow—is the area of climate change. This Government inherit a climate emissions reductions profile that is trending down for the first time in New Zealand’s history, and has been for the last three years. And yet what they want to do is remove the three things that have actually contributed to that reduction. They want to abolish the Climate Emergency Response Fund, they want to abolish the Government investment in decarbonising industry, they want to abolish the clean car rebate—all examples of things that will take New Zealand backwards, that will turn back the clock on our effort to combat climate change. And they have nothing to replace those things with. It’s all hollow rhetoric—greenwashing, if you wanted to call it that—which is actually going to see New Zealand’s climate profile getting worse again.

Given that it was the cost of living election, I looked closely in the Speech from the Throne and the coalition deals to see what they were actually going to do about it. And there’s very little in there that is actually going to help New Zealanders to tackle the rising cost of living, particularly given the things that are in there are likely to keep inflation and interest rates higher for longer.

They’re off to a shambolic start, but sadly there is a lot more to come. I am looking forward, for example, to seeing New Zealand First’s response when the ACT Party brings the legislation to the House—that they have promised and that New Zealand First have pledged to support—to repeal changes to the Overseas Investment Act that the last coalition Government introduced, at the behest of New Zealand First, to introduce the national interest test into the Overseas Investment Act. I’m not sure they were fully awake at that part of the discussions, where they literally signed up to that and said that they were going to vote in favour of repealing the provisions in the Overseas Investment Act—

Hon Shane Jones: Mere detail!

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: —that they wanted to put in place in the first place. “Mere detail”, Shane Jones says. I think we’ll hear a bit of that in the next little while. I look forward to hearing what New Zealand First has to say about rail investment, given that the incoming National Government have made very little provision for any increased investment in rail—and I know that that’s something that matters a lot to them. Although I did notice Nicola Willis railing against the increase in the cost of replacing the inter-island ferries. Fortunately for her, she could speak to the Minister who initiated the replacement of the inter-island ferries: he’s sitting two seats down, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, who kicked off the procurement process for the replacement of the inter-island rail ferries.

Of course, we know that the New Zealand First Party say they want to increase the minimum wage while the ACT Party say they want to have it frozen. So I’m sure that’s going to be an interesting debate around the Cabinet table. It will be very interesting to see where they land on forestry conversions, given New Zealand First seem to want more of it for forestry, and ACT and National seem to want less of it. I’m looking forward to seeing them progressing their legislation on the Kermadecs after six years of complaining about the lack of progress on that under the last Government.

Hon Shane Jones: Haere rā! Haere rā!

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Don’t give in so early, Shane. Although there’ll be a few people saying “haere rā” when New Zealand First vote in favour of bringing back 90-day trials, something they voted in favour of removing in the first place; and actually some tenants saying “haere rā” when they bring back no-cause evictions for tenants—something, again, New Zealand First previously voted to abolish. New Zealand First, of course, have also signed up to reintroduce charter schools, something they spent nine years in Opposition being vehemently opposed to.

Ultimately, it is a Government that wants to take New Zealand back, but I do want to—given this is my first contribution in this House—take a moment to say thank you. Because whilst this marks the beginning of the new Government, it does also mark the end of the last Government and I want to take a moment to thank New Zealanders for their support over the last six years through some extraordinarily challenging circumstances; to thank all of those staff who worked for us in the Beehive who now find themselves seeking other employment—one of the perhaps more brutal parts of this democratic process. I do want to take a moment to say thank you to all of them for their contributions, and I do want to take a moment to reflect on what they helped us to achieve in that six years that we were in Government, because it does very much set the context for what this Government is inheriting.

There are more New Zealanders in work than ever before. We have the highest rate of Kiwis in jobs, with a 69.8 percent employment rate, having created 281,000 new jobs during our time in Government. I’m proud of the work that we did to close the gender pay gap, and I hope—all politics aside—that that is work that will continue under the incoming Government, because it is simply wrong that for generations women have been paid less than men for doing work of the same value. We have made significant progress in closing the gender pay gap; in resolving historic pay equity claims. I hope that work will continue, because I believe that it must.

We extended free doctors visits to 14-year-olds. We extended paid parental leave to 26 weeks. We significantly increased health funding, including to Pharmac, and we abolished prescription charges, which resulted in 3 million free prescriptions for New Zealanders, something that I believe stopped New Zealanders ending up in our emergency departments with avoidable illnesses because they weren’t getting the medication that they needed. We significantly increased the pay for our public sector workers like nurses, like doctors, like teachers, like police, like firefighters. We introduced new options for mental health support, including 1 million free Access and Choice mental health sessions, and I hope that the momentum on those things will continue.

I hope that the momentum that we had in rebuilding our apprenticeship scheme continues: 274,000 New Zealanders benefiting from free apprenticeships and targeted trades training. I hope the work that we started to rebuild our schools and hospitals will continue: 2,200 more classrooms, 3,800 more teachers, Mana in Mahi and programmes like that helping to get young New Zealanders into work and into education and training. One million free and healthy school lunches, 77,000 fewer children living in poverty, emissions in New Zealand falling for three years in a row, record levels of renewable electricity generation, 110,000 low-income Kiwi households getting cheaper power bills because of the Warmer Kiwi Homes scheme.

There’s been a 70 percent increase in the number of electric vehicles on our roads. When we became the Government in 2017, just 2 percent of the cars coming into the market were electric or hybrid vehicles. As we leave office, that is 37 percent—a huge improvement. We’ve been replacing coal boilers across the country with renewable energy sources. I want to highlight the key work of David Parker and Damien O’Connor, our trade Ministers—two of the most successful trade Ministers in New Zealand’s history. When we became the Government, less than half our exports were covered by free-trade agreements. Now, nearly three-quarters are.

The work that we have done in public housing deserves particular mention: 13,000 new public homes under our Government since 2017. The work that we did to put extra police on the beat: 1,800 extra police on the beat under our Government—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: It was never your policy.

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: —1,800 extra police on the beat under our Government. Firearms reform, including the introduction of the firearms registry: something that the New Zealand Police have asked for for a long time. There have been record investments in transport, including fixing a record number of potholes over the last year; completing legacy infrastructure projects like Transmission Gully that were left in a heck of a mess by the outgoing National Government.

I want to say that I’m very proud of our track record in delivering for Māori and delivering for Pacific New Zealanders. On that last note, I want to say that Pacific New Zealanders are a growing and significant part of the New Zealand economy, a growing and significant part of New Zealand society, and I think it’s telling that the incoming Government didn’t mention them once in the Speech from the Throne today—not one single time. That does not bode well for Pacific New Zealanders in the future.

So we leave Government proud of our track record, committed to holding the incoming Government to account, concerned about the direction that they are taking New Zealand in—which is backwards on all of the important measures that should be important to New Zealand’s future—and absolutely resolved that for the first time in New Zealand’s history, this will be a one-term National Government.

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

CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Well, it is great to be back. Not just back, but back with a bigger team, more talent, fresh ideas, committed coalition partners, and a big programme to deliver, and a big mandate from voters to get New Zealand back on track.

Speaking of more talent in National, before I go further, can I say thank you to both James Meager and Katie Nimon for those outstanding and inspiring maiden speeches. James, I am moved to know that both your parents were watching here in this space today. Having met both of them, I can only imagine their pride. You are the embodiment of the belief on this side of the House that education can change lives. I want to acknowledge your mother’s foresight, as you do too, because in instilling the value of education in you she gave you a gift. You stepped up and you made the most of it and you worked hard as a result. You are here today because of it, and I know you are going to make great contributions to this place. So congratulations, James. Well done.

Katie, you were also instrumental in helping National win back the Hawke’s Bay, and we can all see why. Like James, you too have been strongly shaped by your family’s circumstances, and, in your case, through business, service, and a love of the place that you call home. I also want to acknowledge your family on what is a proud day for them too, and for you, and for National. So congratulations, Katie, as well.

James and Katie’s paths to this House have been very different, but their values, I believe, are very similar. They are National Party values that cherish independence, that cherish aspiration and effort, and that call to public service. It is for all 123 of us MPs an honour and a privilege to serve the public from this very place which is the beating heart of New Zealand’s democracy. We represent different parties and we come from different backgrounds and experiences with unique life stories, but in this House each of us is heard, our voices count. Across the House, I genuinely want to congratulate every new MP on your election to Parliament and I urge you to use your time here well. Congratulations again to you, Mr Speaker. Your guidance, experience, and sense of fairness will serve all of us in this House and New Zealand very well.

Now, I have to say: New Zealand is under new management. We are here because people believe that we are the parties that can get things done; that’s why you elect parties on this side of the House. Just like there are laws of nature and there are laws of physics, there are laws of politics. Because if you want lower tax, you vote for us. If you want the Government books managed well, you vote for us. If you want to create more opportunities for everyone, you vote for us. New Zealanders get it, and New Zealanders want it, and that’s why they elected the parties in this coalition Government. They know that we will get things done, and that those things will be the things that matter to them. New Zealanders want National, ACT, and New Zealand First to be the strong Government that New Zealand needs. They want us to deliver, and I am telling you—we will.

So let me take a moment just to acknowledge the National team in this House, and you’ve already met two of our class of 2023. But from Grant McCallum in Northland to Miles Anderson down South in Waitaki, from Dana Kirkpatrick in the East Coast to Maureen Pugh on the West Coast, National MPs reclaimed from Labour so much of New Zealand in this year’s election. I welcome two National MPs who are here for a second term: Northcote MP Dan Bidois, and Paulo Garcia. Didn’t Paulo Garcia do well turning New Lynn blue for the first time in 60 years? It is great to have you both back. We also welcome Nancy Lu off the list after a happy by-product of Andrew Bayly smashing the Port Waikato by-election.

Now, in the North Island our new MPs are Carl Bates in Whanganui, Cameron Brewer in Upper Harbour, Mike Butterick in Wairarapa, Carlos Cheung for Mt Roskill—Mt Roskill, what a win that was as well. We’ve got Tim Costley in Ōtaki. We’ve got Greg Fleming from Maungakiekie. We’ve got Ryan Hamilton—aptly—in Hamilton East. We’ve got David MacLeod in New Plymouth, Rima Nakhle from Takanini, Suze Redmayne from Rangitīkei, Tom Rutherford from the Bay of Plenty, and Catherine Wedd from Tukituki, who you heard Katie talk to in her remarks.

In the South Island, where we already have a strong showing of MPs, we’re adding Hamish Campbell in Ilam, and we’re adding Vanessa Weenink in Banks Peninsula—what a great win that was, too.

And on top, there are all the returning MPs, some now with seats that they’ve won back. I want to say congratulations to you all. It was an excellent election for National, but the pledge of the coalition Government is that whether you voted for us or not, we will govern for you.

I do also want to take this opportunity to welcome back to Parliament the expanded ACT and also New Zealand First teams. Thank you for sharing National’s commitment to doing the practical, the important things that will make this a better country for all New Zealanders, to growing the economy, to governing with common sense, and to making people’s lives easier. We are the parties with different priorities and different concerns. But there is a strong alignment on our core values, like believing in the dignity of independence, and that if you work hard in the best country on planet Earth, you should be able to get ahead. I have to say I am looking forward to working together with our three teams, putting New Zealand’s interests first as we deliver our shared policy programme.

Now, on this side of the House, we all came to politics to make a positive change for the country that we love, that we are proud of, and that we see so much potential in. We are going to manage the economy well. Now that we’ve rescued it from Labour, we’ll nurse it back to health. We will ease the cost of living—in fact, we’ve already started. We will restore law and order. The coalition parties separately and together as a Government are absolutely committed to offenders facing real consequences for their crimes, and are committed to New Zealanders feeling safe in their homes and their businesses and in their communities. We are going to get public services working better, because when you care about people—and we care deeply about people—you don’t just wring your hands and look anguished and spout rhetoric. Looking anguished doesn’t take an hour off an emergency wait-list in an emergency department. You need to actually get stuck in, sort it out, and actually get things done to make the difference.

We are about attitudes on this side of the House, not platitudes. Our attitude to public money is to respect the people who actually earn it. We’re going to do that by letting the people who earn it keep more of it. That part of it that they hand over in tax, we will spend on helping New Zealanders get ahead, and on making this great country even better, with better education, more support for the stretched health workforce, better and faster roads, less red tape, more renewable energy, and more initiatives to increase New Zealand’s prosperity so that we can all get ahead. We’re about increasing incomes and outcomes. I have to say that I’ve had many impressive briefings already with very good senior public servants in the past few days. When they come in with their good ideas for actually achieving what the Government wants, I say to them, “That’s great, but how do we do it faster?” Because good execution matters, and that’s measured by results and it is measured by outcomes.

The first result I actually want to talk about is the election result, and specifically Labour’s. Because the swearing-in yesterday was my very first day in the House on the Government’s benches. The view from here is still of Labour, but now there’s just a lot fewer of them. I have to say what we just now heard from Chris Hipkins was not righteous indignation. It was not righteous indignation; it was ritual humiliation. Because I’ve got to say, Chris Hipkins started the last term with 65 MPs, and he’s starting this one with 34. Think about it: Chris Hipkins started the last term with the biggest majority in MMP history in New Zealand, and is starting this one with one of the most humiliating defeats for the Labour Party. I have to say, Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson, they started this last term with everything that they needed to actually set up a political dynasty for a decade, and they squandered it. They squandered it. No reason they shouldn’t have been in power for 10 or 12 years, they didn’t make it. They squandered the opportunity that they’d got.

And I recall when he lost Meka Whaitiri and he said he didn’t know where she’d gone. Well, he’s lost around 30 MPs—he’s lost 30 MPs. But he knows where they are—he knows where those 30 MPs are: they’re out looking for jobs. And I have to say, they’re not bad people, but they served in a very bad Government. New Zealanders saw it, and New Zealanders paid for it, and New Zealanders kicked them out. And make no mistake, Labour earned its loss. It worked hard for it. Labour wasted time, they squandered public money, and they made this great country and its people miss out on opportunities. MPs on that side of the House put Labour ideology and dogma ahead of New Zealand’s interests and New Zealand punished them for it. Let it be a reminder to all of us in this House that we are actually here to represent the people and their needs—that’s what we’re here to do.

So I have to say, Labour is sitting over there wondering who to blame for them going from 65 MPs—the most ever in the history of MMP in this country—to the 32 uncomfortable people over there with survivors’ guilt that I see opposite me. You got two new MPs and I say congratulations, but we heard from a bitter and a twisted and a negative Chris Hipkins, the one we saw during the campaign over there. But you can see he’s sitting over there asking the question, “How has he survived when nearly half of his caucus lost their jobs under his leadership?” Why is he still here when so little was achieved and so little was delivered? Why is he still here? Why is he still here after squandering and decimating an absolute majority in just three years—squandering an absolute majority in three years, and so many Kiwis said, “I’ll vote for anyone but Labour”, and they did.

I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about Chris Hipkins a little bit. I just have to say, he is like—he is actually like an arsonist who, having thrown an accelerant all over the joint and lit the place up, he doesn’t just slink off, actually leaving the scene, realising he’s caused a huge amount of damage, he doesn’t actually fess up, put his hand up, apologise to the New Zealand people and actually say he got it wrong, he just simply loiters and hangs around at the scene of the crime, actually just waiting and watching everything. Meanwhile, the good news, I’ve got to tell you, is the fire brigade is showing up and we’re going to deal with it. That’s what’s going to happen. But you have to ask the question, “Why is he here?”

Then Grant Robertson, he’s also got survivors’ guilt, and he’s sitting there saying, “Why me? Why did I survive when I was the Minister of Finance who delivered food price inflation of 28 percent?”—28 percent, faster than at any time since the 1980s—“Why did I survive when weekly rents went up $180 per week?” Why? Why is he still here? When the official cash rate hit its highest point since 2008? You tripled mortgage interest rates, you crippled family budgets, and the question Grant Robertson has got to ask is “Why am I still here?” Why? Why is he still here after spending more, borrowing more, taxing more, and delivering worse outcomes? He’s got nothing to show for it.

So we’re asking the same question. Why, having done a terrible job, is he still here? Ginny Andersen probably isn’t asking herself why she survived because self-reflection may not actually be her thing. But she should be asking why she is still here, because crime got a lot worse on her watch and Kiwis feel a lot less safe on the street and in their own neighbourhoods. Ayesha Verrall, she should also have survivors’ guilt because we know so many health outcomes went backwards under Labour: immunisation rates, wait-list times in emergency departments, first specialist appointments, surgeries—all went backwards over that time.

So let me, just in the spirit of being supportive, help Labour with where they went wrong, because we heard a diatribe from Chris Hipkins and some revisionist history going on, but let me just get you some help. While Labour was wasting billions of dollars and achieving nothing, while they were distracted building a big new health bureaucracy as health outcomes went backwards, while they were alienating the public by progressing co-governance without ever explaining it, and while they were talking gibberish in the draft science curriculum—which didn’t even mention the words physics, chemistry, or biology—New Zealanders were actually struggling—actually struggling. Families were facing rising bills, they were going backwards, and Labour was busy, busy, busy on new taxes and hate speech.

I point this out merely to help Labour work out what went wrong, and also to say that on this side of the House we understand what matters to New Zealanders. The things that impact their daily lives are the things that matter the most to all of them. Those are the things that we need to be talking about in this place, those are the things that the public elected us to talk about here, those are the things that matter the most to them. And along with the billions of dollars of wasted public money, there was the Cabinet chaos, the underperformance everywhere, and New Zealanders’ fear, genuine fear, that they could lose their homes.

Don’t tell me it wasn’t so because I spoke to those people on the election campaign, and I listened to them, and I literally held the hands of some of them—like that small-business owner who was trying so hard, but her business was going under and she hadn’t told her team yet because those families depended on those incomes. She cried telling me how hard it was, and that’s how it was to be a small-business owner after six years of Labour. I met people who owned dairies where terrible thigs had happened to them, and I truly hope that the children in those families recover from those experiences. I met farmers who used to spend a couple of hours a week on paperwork and they were dedicated to running their properties in the most environmentally sustainable way they could, and now they spend a day a week complying with the Government bureaucracy and the rules telling them how to do their jobs. This Government’s going to show a lot more respect than the last Government did to those people.

So, I have to say, there is hope. There is a Government that appreciates that businesses provide jobs and opportunities for other New Zealanders. Business owners and managers understand that their greatest resource is their team. It is by working together that the team grows the business, and it creates better wages and more opportunities and more jobs. That’s the National way of looking at it—it’s the aspirational way. We say it takes a lot of courage to start a small business and to employ people, and those who do it well should be extremely proud of what they do.

It’s similar with private rentals. Over here, we know that landlords are mostly New Zealanders who are trying hard to get ahead by investing their savings and providing homes for other families. Here’s what Labour has never understood: many of the tenants that they see as the perpetual victims of the so-called “evil capitalist” landlords have aspirations too. They have aspirations too. Not only to own their own homes but perhaps one day maybe to become landlords themselves. So they voted for us as a Government of aspiration. We are a Government that says this will once again be a country where you can realistically go about achieving your dream. Your path might be trades training, it might be tertiary education, a business you started at the dining room table, or on a fishing boat, or just a really good idea to solve something that bugs you, but whatever the motivation, and whoever and wherever you are, we want to encourage people to have a go in this country. We will not be a Government that slams people with rules and costs that makes even the most hopeful entrepreneur lose hope, as they have been doing.

National campaigned on three key areas that concerned us before the election, and I’m telling you we’re going to continue to drive improvement in Government, and I want to thank ACT and New Zealand First for their support in doing that. The first thing is we’re going to rebuild the economy to make it work for all New Zealanders, because we know on this side of the House that the living standards of every single one of us depends on a strong and growing economy. A strong and growing economy provides individuals and families with the opportunity to get ahead, and it generates the value and the wealth that lets us invest in this country, in the infrastructure, and the public services that we so well deserve.

On the other hand, when the economy stagnates, as it has for the last six years, things become harder for more of us. That’s what we’ve been left with by Labour. An economy in a mess where high inflation has wreaked havoc on people’s budgets, where the price of food, housing, and groceries has risen faster than wages, meaning so many Kiwis have been going backwards, where interest rates have had to climb to eye-watering levels to try and put the lid back on inflation. But inflation has become so entrenched and embedded from six years of reckless, wasteful Government spending that the Reserve Bank is already foreshadowing rates will have to stay higher for months to come.

That is Labour’s legacy, and it’s felt most keenly by anyone with a large mortgage, which they had to take on after the record increase in house prices under Labour. It’s a legacy felt by families and workers who are struggling to make their paycheck stretch for another two weeks. It’s for those people that we promise to work. It’s for those people that we will be better than our predecessors. We will stop the wasteful Government spending and get the books back in order, because we know that every dollar the Government spends had to actually be earned by someone going to work and working hard. That’s why Simeon Brown has already instructed officials to stop work on the ridiculous $16 billion Lake Onslow pumped hydro scheme. When we’ve said we’re going to stop doing things that are stupid and wasteful, we mean it.

There’s more of that coming because people who are working out there in the rain, or people who are cleaning our offices here late at night and paying their taxes expect us to treat that money carefully, just like they would themselves—and you didn’t do it. We’re going to let them keep more of their own money to encourage and reward hard work and to help ease the cost of living so that life gets a little bit easier for workers and families. Let’s be clear: Labour should have adjusted tax rates a long time ago. That would have actually been the fair thing to do, but they had such an insatiable appetite and an addiction to spending. They wanted more and more of the public’s money, and they took it off people who deserved to be paying less tax, not more.

We’re going to cut red tape, because we actually want to make life easier, especially for small businesses and especially for farmers, but also we’re going to cut that red tape so that cost stops getting passed on to consumers with higher prices. In some sectors, getting things done is more expensive in New Zealand than it is anywhere else in the world, and, yes, we want to be world leading, but not for the cost of doing business. We’re not a wealthy country, so we need to stop making things even more expensive by loading up unnecessary costs. That means we’re going to simplify planning rules so people who want to build stuff and get things done, from a new deck to an offshore wind farm, can actually get on and get it done.

We’re going to get going on infrastructure, including 13 new roads of national significance and public transport projects that actually get progressed, not just talked and talked and talked about by consultants. We’re going to unleash significant investment in new renewable energy generation so we can meet our climate targets without shutting down our most important economic sectors. Given the scale of the infrastructure deficit New Zealand faces after six years of a Labour Government, we’re going to be unapologetic about getting the private sector involved where that makes sense too. We know there’s a lot of money sitting around with institutional investors both here in New Zealand and overseas—investors who are looking for safe, stable, long-term projects to invest in. So one of the first jobs of our new National Infrastructure Agency is going to be to set up a better matching of investors with projects to get things done faster.

Now, let me turn to law and order, because ensuring people are actually safe in their own homes, businesses, and communities is a pretty basic responsibility of any Government. But the Labour Government didn’t live up to that responsibility, and over the past six years violent crime went up 33 percent; serious assaults went up—I think it doubled; gang membership went up over 70 percent. I’ve got to tell you, gangs wreck lives and they are responsible for enormous social and community harm. Under Labour, they were allowed to overrun entire towns, take over motorways, and actually beat people up in public daylight. That growth in gangs is troubling, especially for communities with a large gang presence, but also troubling for anyone who truly cares about our country. As I’ve said before, if you care, you do something about it to help. So this Government is going to focus on law and order and restoring personal responsibility as part of our commitment of making our communities safer. Of course, we’ll focus on the causes of crime too, but also on law and order, because here’s another stat for you: 60 percent more gang members are on home detention under Labour, and they’re responsible for one-third of the breaches. Here’s another one: retail crime has been impacted by an incredible 92 percent. It’s cost us actually $2.6 billion extra, and we’re all now paying for that crime with higher, higher prices and more inflation.

We are going to combat youth offending. We’re going to make sure we get our young offender military academies in place. We’re going to make sure we actually put young people’s lives on a better and a much more productive path going forward. I tell you our parties here on this side of the House are all aligned in amending the Sentencing Act so that we make sure you get appropriate consequences and you actually get serious time when you actually cause pain and suffering for people across New Zealand. We’re going to restore the three strikes and we’re committed to training no fewer than 500 new front-line police officers in our first two years.

Now, Labour said the 2017 election was going to be a new beginning for our education system. Remember that? Remember that one? That was what they said—transformational Government, going to be fantastic, going to deliver outstanding outcomes for education. They were right, but not in a good way, because essentially it was a new beginning for our education system, and a sad one. What we’ve seen is a rapid slide in academic achievement and the beginning of an enormous problem with absenteeism. Around 40 percent of our kids are not attending school regularly. That is startling and shameful—absolutely shameful. Just last night we had the shocking and more sad news—not surprising—that actually in the Programme for International Student Assessment test, which is how countries are benchmarked against each other, in reading, maths, and science New Zealand has slid even further, and in all three of those subject areas, our results are the worst that they’ve ever been. That is Labour’s legacy in education, and that is Chris Hipkins’ legacy as education Minister for 5½ years. All talk, all rhetoric, lots of hiring of bureaucrats—no delivery, no outcomes. I am determined we are going to turn it around, because every pupil—every pupil—whether they’re Māori, non-Māori, urban, rural—whoever they are, whatever they hope for—needs for the education system to do better by them.

Our results in health have also declined. There is just so much for us to do, and we’re up for it. We are going to boost the health workforce, encourage nurses and midwives to stay, train more doctors. We’re going to focus on results, because results matter; they save lives.

We are delighted to be back with a big team. We are delighted to be back with a big programme and big ambitions for New Zealand at home and overseas. New Zealand has everything it needs to be successful, and now with a Government committed to making it happen. New Zealanders can be positive about the future. Change won’t be easy and it won’t be quick, because Labour has left us a lot to repair and to rebuild, and the books are not in good shape. But I tell you there’s nothing that can’t be done by a Government that actually knows what it’s doing. There’s nothing that can’t be done when we put New Zealanders first. That’s what all this is about, and what this Government’s going to do. That’s what we’re going to do. It’s what we came here to do. Our team is in place, our partners are ready, the people have given us the mandate, and we are ready to go to work. Thank you very much.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Ko te oranga o te reo te take. Ko te mana o Te Tiriti te take. Ko te pai o Aotearoa te kaupapa. Nō reira tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora mai tātou katoa.

[The health of the language is the purpose. The power of the Treaty is the purpose. The good of New Zealand is the issue. So greetings, acknowledgments, and thanks to us all.]

Mr Speaker, let me begin by congratulating you personally on taking the Chair. Like all of us here, you have been elected as a member of a political party but as Speaker you have made a promise that you will set that aside and you will be neutral. To be strong, a democracy relies on fair and honest debate. Mr Speaker, your job is to make sure those debates move us forward as a country. People at home look to us to uphold the highest possible standards, and whether we like it or not this House is at the heart of our democratic process. Our words and actions in this House travel through the media and social media into our communities. We owe it to everyone to create a safe space for public debate. I trust, Mr Speaker, that you will preside over the debates that happen here with good grace, humour, and a fair and even hand.

It is the single-greatest honour of my life to be standing here as part of the largest Green Party caucus ever. This is important because smaller parties traditionally lose support after being linked up to a larger party in Government. This has happened every time. But the Greens have now not once but twice grown our support after being in a Government arrangement—unheard of. This is an achievement that is unheard of anywhere in the world, and we did it with heart, with values, and with a vision that uplifted people instead of berating them, in a way that appealed to the best of our humanity rather than to the worst of it. The leaders of our two biggest parties spent more time telling you who not to vote for, trying to scare people with how things will be under the other lot than they spent time talking about how we build the beautiful future our mokopuna deserve. But not us—not us. The Green Party ran one of the most hopeful campaigns we have ever seen in Aotearoa—a campaign that inspired hope rather than fear, Uncle Winston—a campaign that focused on well-thought-out long-term policy, not just soundbites, a campaign we fought—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order, Madam Speaker. I rush to defend myself. That relationship is not true, and it’s obvious from the speech it’s not true. I’m not her uncle.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: We will call people by their formal names please.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: Certainly, Madam Speaker. We ran a campaign that inspired hope rather than fear, Mr Winston Peters. We set out clear solutions to the challenges people face and for a climate-friendly future that will make our tamariki and mokopuna proud, and people voted for it in record numbers.

I want to acknowledge every single one of the nearly 8,000 volunteers around the country who got us here today. Door by door, conversation by conversation, community by community, to all of you: thank you. You turned up for the kaupapa. Thank you for showing up, thank you for making your voice heard. These 15 seats are your seats too. You are the reason we take our seats here as the third-largest party in Parliament with the biggest caucus we have ever had. It is a team that includes, for the first time ever, three Green Party electorate MPs.

The first Green Government may have drawn to a close, but I promise you this. From these seats and in our work we will fight for an Aotearoa where everyone can get by, where our native wildlife and oceans thrive, where we take bold climate action, and where we honour Te Tiriti, a record—record—330,000 people voted Green. Your voices will be heard and they will be loud.

The journey that brought me here actually began on the steps just outside this building where my parents met for the first time. They came to protest the loss of land and language that our people had endured. It fills my heart to continue their fight for the tino rangatiratanga our tūpuna maintained as part of the largest Māori and Pasifika caucus that the Green Party has ever had. Our mātāwaka caucus of Māori and Pasifika members of Parliament has grown from three members to seven. Every one of us, along with our wider caucus, will emphasise and prioritise tino rangatiratanga, mana motuhake, and kaitiaki responsibilities by pushing this Government to have equitable relationships, devolve power to Māori, and hear the calls from our people and communities.

A commitment to Tiriti justice is absolutely integral to everything I and the Greens do, but it needs to be integral to the work that all politicians do. We must strive for a world that keeps the pā harakeke nourished and bursting with health. We must insist Tiriti justice is upheld across all our work, and we must be clear that tino rangatiratanga is key to healing relationships across communities and our reconnecting all of us with our seas, our rivers, our bush, our mountains, and our whenua. These fiercely proud tangata whenua and tangata moana MPs take their place alongside me as part of a wider team of 15 tireless, experienced, staunch community leaders who will stand strong on the issues that matter most to our people.

Look, I know that many of you have had to travel long distances to get here, often spending weeks away from whānau. It never gets easier; I know because I do it too. I love my job and it breaks my heart to say goodbye to my mokopuna and tamariki every week. To all of you in a similar position, but especially to Mr Luxon, Mr Seymour, and Mr Winston Peters, I do hope you will take some comfort in knowing that every time you arrive in Wellington for work, you are arriving in the Green electorate of Rongotai and you travel through another Green electorate, Wellington Central, to get to Parliament. There is not a street, not a single street from here to the airport that is not represented by a proud Green MP fighting to make life better for everyone and for future generations—won convincingly, might I add. I hope Ministers remember these electorates when their Crown limos get stuck in the inevitable traffic jams resulting from his decision to defund the Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme.

When I look across our new, super-charged caucus, I am struck not just by the breadth of skills and experience they bring to Parliament but also by their personal stories. Lan Pham, who proudly takes her place as the first MP of Vietnamese heritage that Aotearoa has ever had and brings with her a deep knowledge of Tiriti justice and ecological justice. Steve Abel, a grassroots activist of grit and unbreakable determination. Darleen Tana and Hūhana Lyndon, proud Ngāpuhi mates for me, wāhine Māori and daughters of the north whose roots, life, and career are firmly grounded in the whenua and protecting te taiao, including Tai Tokerau.

Kahurangi Carter, another wahine toa and powerful voice for our Ōtautahi whānau and the health of Papatūānuku herself. Efeso Collins, a proud descendant of Samoa whose longstanding commitment to strengthening the family, community, and cultural connections between Pasifika families and peoples living in Aotearoa and the islands, found his rightful home here with the Greens. Our man from the deep South, Scott Willis, who knows as well as anyone how to bring together a community for positive, local-led change. And, finally, Tamatha Paul, MP for Wellington Central and a new generation of wāhine Māori political leaders who make Auntie Marama’s heart burst with pride.

James Shaw and I are truly honoured to be leading these eight new MPs and the seven who return for another three years. They have each made it their life’s work to challenge the status quo and change Aotearoa for the better, and I am pumped to see what they will do in the House. Whatever they do and however they use their power, I can assure this House of one thing: the members opposite are not going to get away with their political violence lightly. If they think they have a problem with their own team leaking confidential papers to the media in the very first week, they best buckle up. It is over here on this side of the House where they will find their real challenge.

One of the things that makes the Green Party unique is that we do not make a choice between action outside of Parliament and inside of Parliament—we need both. We have to engage in protests and rallies and raise the voice of our communities, but we do also translate our passion and our causes into laws, policy, and practice. That is why the 15 of us ran for Parliament, and I promise you this, to the country and to this House: we are going to give it everything that we have got, absolutely everything, because everything a Government does is a matter of political choice. These choices reflect the underlying values of the people in charge, the people who are making decisions that affect our lives and the lives of people we love.

Unburdened by what is to come, the Speech from the Throne was the best chance this Government will ever have to make clear to people why it is actually in power, to set out its vision for Aotearoa that it wants for our mokopuna to grow up in, to explain how it plans to allocate resources where they are needed the most so we can build the kind of communities and society that are good for all people to live in, to create the conditions we need to support each other, to care for our native wildlife, and to cut climate pollution. Instead—instead—what we got is a random, visionless, and harmful grab bag of laws that are more about politicians’ pet projects and petty grievances than they are about addressing the challenges we face right now.

Watching this Government take shape over the past few months has been hard and dispiriting for thousands of people up and down Aotearoa, myself included, but now more than ever we need to be willing to overcome cynicism and disappointment and take the hard work of change forward. The fear and uncertainty of what lies ahead is made so much worse by the all too frequent reminders that prejudice and inequality still shapes so much of our politics. What matters most in politics isn’t the headlines, the meetings, or the speeches; it is people, and I have to say, watching as people and whānau have come together across the motu in recent weeks, including yesterday, to call for peace and speak up for Te Tiriti makes me hopeful. It reminds me that all our actions, no matter how small or large, are powerful, worthwhile, and capable of delivering lasting change.

Thousands and thousands of you have shown up in your communities to demand this Government uphold our shared values and an end to the atrocious and enduring killing of children and innocents happening in Gaza that requires lasting, just peace for the mokopuna of Palestine and Israel to be able to cherish their whenua together. And if you ever doubt you can make a difference, just look at what you did when this Government dared to say it would reopen our moana and our oceans to oil and gas companies. Nearly 30,000 of you, so far, took an immediate stand and signed a petition telling the Prime Minister and his co-deputies that they had no mandate to tear up climate action. Days after promising it, lifting the ban was nowhere to be seen on the Government’s 100-day plan. People power won the oil and gas ban, and it is people power that is going to save it.

These are the reasons why I am optimistic, and as I stand here today I am absolutely clear about one thing: this Government and its programme of performative cruelty does not represent our future. That is up to us. Yes, the path ahead will have some ups and downs, but we remain focused on our journey towards an Aotearoa that upholds Te Tiriti, heals te taiao, and ensures everyone has what they need to live a good life, though this Government is wanting to put obstacles in our way, like unwinding the freshwater standards that are finally restoring the mauri to our awa; like tearing up fair pay agreements (FPAs), a move that will disproportionately harm young people, women, Māori, and Pasifika.

FPAs would have put more money in the pockets of people who work tirelessly to teach our mokopuna, keep our workplaces clean and safe, stock the supermarket shelves, and get us around on the bus. Ending FPAs is a big political middle finger to all of those workers. Like raising the price of electric cars by ending the Clean Car Discount—but only after the PM himself had benefited from it. Like winding back protections for people who rent and giving tax cuts to landlords. Like raiding the money raised from our biggest polluters through the emissions trading scheme to pay for their tax cuts for wealthy people, a decision that is about as far away from a climate dividend as you can possibly get. A dividend would give the same amount to everyone, not higher tax cuts for the wealthy while people who need support the most completely miss out. This is a cynical, dishonest policy that speaks to National’s gross incompetence in both climate policy and financial policy. Though we face these obstacles, we are absolutely clear about where we are heading as a country.

We have overcome obstacles and changed this country before. We stood up as a small nation and made a promise to future generations that the Aotearoa they grow up in will be safe and free from nuclear power. We stood up to the harms of the past and through the Treaty of Waitangi Act enabled some redress for land wrongly taken from tangata whenua and Māori. We have won marriage equality, stopped the harms of conversion therapy, ended the logging of native timber, revitalised te reo through kōhanga reo and kura kaupapa, decriminalised abortion, and built thousands of warm, dry homes. These changes only happened when people got involved and came together to demand them. Now is not the time to stand by and let the future just happen to us. The time is now to take charge of it and to do everything we possibly can to pass on to our tamariki a planet that is stable, cleaner, and based on equity and Tiriti justice.

Those of us in this House have a choice to make. We can reject a politics that breeds division and hatred and whips up fear and disinformation. We refuse to spend all our time talking about the next outrageous thing Mr Seymour or Mr Peters said instead of focusing on what matters to people’s daily lives. We do not allow spectacle to take the place of robust, good faith, public debate. We say kāore to all of that that.

Instead, we can work for change—change that means that every child always has enough to eat, a safe bed, warm clothes, and decent shoes. To support the whānau all over the country who are being forced to cut back on kai just to pay the bills. To address the homes that are cold and damp all of the time and making children sick. We can debate how we restore our native wildlife so every generation, and the seven generations that come after them, can enjoy the astonishing beauty of our natural world. Native birdsong in our backyards, streets lined with trees our playful tamariki can climb, and an ocean once again full of fish, dolphins, whales, and healthy underwater forests. How we make sure tamariki can ride their bikes or scooters to school without worrying about noisy, fast moving, polluting traffic. How we protect our communities from a climate crisis that is turbocharging flooding and extreme weather in places like Auckland, Northland, Tairāwhiti, and Hawke’s Bay. How we honour the promise of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, celebrate te reo Māori, and support tangata whenua to live long, healthy, and happy lives. How we affirm the tino rangatiratanga of whānau, hapū, and iwi over their whenua and their taonga.

So we all have a shared responsibility for the whenua we live and rely on, and to care for each other and make decisions to benefit the many and not just the few. As a Parliament, we should be debating how to achieve these things, not whether to even try. We can be that beautiful, inspiring country. I believe with all my heart that the vast majority of people want Aotearoa to be that country too.

Our success depends on how we use our power at this moment, how we use our voices, and how we organise and mobilise collectively to channel our justifiable anger into sustained and effective action. Our job of caring for Papatūānuku, so she is thriving in her own right, can only move forward if we move forward together. Change will never come from turning on each other, but by turning towards each other. It will never come from sowing hatred, division, and lies, but by staying true to our values and sharing the truth. It will never come from abdicating our responsibilities to whakamana Te Tiriti o Waitangi, but by embracing those responsibilities so our tamariki and mokopuna can grow up in an Aotearoa where their language and whakapapa is celebrated, their health is prioritised, and their whenua is protected.

Democracy is about more than just gimmicky announcements—things politicians say for attention—and it’s even about more than just Parliament. It is about coming together to bring about real and lasting change. And that is what the Green Party is here to do.

So, to anyone listening at home today, I want you to know you have to stay encouraged—we have to stay encouraged together. Whāia te tika [Pursue truth]—we can always make a difference. Fighting for what is right is always, always worth it.

Now, no one doubts that it will be tough. This Government is actually saying the truly nasty things out loud, like they care more for the ability for unhealthy programmes and rolling back Auahi Kore numbers and targets and aims. They care more for allowing that than they do for solid public-health policy that also acknowledged inequities. They’re saying that out loud—that and so many more things. This Government is showing and telling us who they are actually here for. And I can tell you, not for the people I see in my community in South Auckland. They are not here for students, for single parents, or for people with disabilities. They’re here for people who make money from exploiting workers, renters, and our taiao.

For more than 30 years, we have known better than anyone that there is only one way to change Aotearoa for the better, and that is together. Aotearoa needs us. All those people who need support to pay the bills and live a good life need us to fight for them. The children who go to bed hungry tonight and every other night need us to fight for them. The whānau who cannot pay the rent and are sending their tamariki out to work instead, need us to fight for them. The young people growing up worrying about what their future holds on a planet where extreme weather becomes a new normal, need us to fight for them.

We will be stronger, we will be tougher, and we will be more compassionate. We will be more staunch than we have ever been before—and we have already been staunch. These Green MPs, here, will carry with them the voices of our communities and ensure they are heard loud and clear in the halls of Parliament and power and beyond.

We live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We have everything we need to create the Aotearoa we all want to live in—an Aotearoa where everyone has what they need to put kai on the table, and a safe place to call home and live a good life. We can reduce the outrageous and immoral level of income- and wealth-inequality we have in this country. We can confront climate change with the urgency and the scale that it demands, and invest in action to protect our rivers, land, forests, beaches, and oceans. We can uphold Tiriti justice and return resources directly back to iwi and hapū so tangata whenua can finally have the autonomy and authority over our whenua and wellbeing that our tūpuna always maintained. This is the Aotearoa we must continue our journey towards. Our actions, no matter how small or large, are powerful, worthwhile, and capable of delivering lasting change.

E te iwi, don’t sit this one out. Don’t sit this one out. Let’s get out there and fight for the future we all deserve. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora mai tātou katoa.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I’ve got to say, if you’ve ever wondered why the Green Party needs to have two leaders, that speech by Marama Davidson was all the evidence you would ever need! It felt like it was written by an ad agency but, at the end of it, no one had a clue what they were actually selling—platitude after platitude—and that’s why they’re over there. I hope that they stay over there, for the sake of New Zealand, for a very, very long time.

Turning to you, Mr Speaker, I want to congratulate you again for your election, after a long and winding road to today, where you are our Speaker, and we think you’re going to do a very good job. To the other leaders of political parties who have been elected again—the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins; to Chris Luxon, Prime Minister, along with Nicola Willis; and to the Rt Hon Winston Peters and Shane Jones—congratulations on the results. To Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, congratulations on leading your party back to this place in Parliament.

To all of those people who are new to Parliament, it is a wonderful institution, and it is whatever you make of it. You are given enormous privileges to speak freely and debate, but you are given those privileges by the people of New Zealand to do your best for them. I look forward to hearing the maiden statements, as we’ve heard two excellent statements this afternoon. I look forward to hearing as many as I can of what new members are bringing to this House, to use those privileges for the betterment of those who have given them to them.

I particularly want to acknowledge ACT’s MPs—the six of us returning. Nicole McKee, now a Minister, the Associate Minister of Justice, and for Courts, is going to fix so much of what has been done wrong in firearms law in particular but is also going to be a formidable opponent of crime in her role, making the courts work better and faster for all those people who seek justice in our country. To Karen Chhour, who completes an extraordinary journey from being a victim of mistreatment at the hands of the Children and Young Persons Service, then the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, then Oranga Tamariki, to being the Minister for Children, in charge, with the capacity to do something about it.

To Mark Cameron, our farmer MP; to Simon Court, the only person I know who has applied for complex Resource Management Act consents in this Parliament and who is now in a position to make them a little bit less complex for the people trying to build this country. And to our new MPs: to Todd Stephenson, the pocket rocket, straight from corporate Australia and fitting in just perfectly in the parliamentary environment, we welcome him—and a strong presence for ACT in the lower South Island. To Andrew Hoggard—they say, “If he walks like a farmer, if he talks like a farmer, guess what!” He’s going to be a fantastic Minister for Biosecurity, and for Food Safety, and Associate Minister of Agriculture. It’s fantastic that those people in rural New Zealand, across the three parties of Government, have such strong and experienced advocates, where they have been neglected for so long.

Parmjeet Parmar is coming back to Parliament with a new playing strip! I’m really pleased to have her as an experienced member—and one of the most qualified people to be in this Parliament, perhaps in decades, with her deep knowledge of science, along with her business and broadcasting and political background. Laura Trask, someone who runs a business, something we haven’t heard on the Government side of this House for quite some time. Laura Trask is someone who runs a business, as does Cameron Luxton, a builder. Cameron Luxton, I think it’s probably true, has built more houses personally than the Government built in the six years that it had! This is the ACT team that I want to congratulate.

But, in case you think I’ve forgotten, last but most certainly not least is Brooke van Velden, my good friend, my deputy, now the MP from Tāmaki, who has just had a whole electorate of people see what we have seen in Brooke for such a long time. I might add that I think Richard Wagstaff has seen a new side of her in the last 48 hours, too. I’ll just say that, if you’re going to go on camera and lie about your interactions with Brooke, you probably won’t be doing it again. Brooke is a formidable politician, a formidable intellect, and someone with an enormous future that is going to bring about tremendous change in her ministerial portfolios. I believe—and I haven’t researched this, but from memory—I saw Simon Upton over there before. I believe that Brooke may be the youngest Cabinet Minister in the history of our country, certainly in any memory that I have—

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Phil Goff.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Paul Goldsmith—this is why you don’t have a historian next door! He says it’s Phil Goff. But there you go; she’s going to be the best and youngest.

I also want to thank those many people outside Parliament who have made possible what just happened: another peaceful transition of power, a contest of ideas, a battle of words rather than of weapons. There are so many countries where so many people are literally fighting to have the things that we in New Zealand so easily take for granted. And it’s often the people who take the practical steps to make it happen. ACT’s volunteers—and we seem to have appealed to practical people—put up so many pink signs in some parts of the country that we actually got safety complaints from the local authorities because there was more pink than road signs on large parts of New Zealand’s highway network. It’s those people who came to streetcorner meetings, who came to townhall meetings—

Rawiri Waititi: That’s what money will do.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: And I’ve just heard Rawiri Waititi say, “Oh, that’s what money will do.” Well, let me tell Rawiri Waititi that a skin for a billboard or a hoarding costs about 30 bucks. It’s the volunteer labour of the people who got out and did that. But you wouldn’t ask Rawiri Waititi if you wanted to know about hard work, would you? We also saw people who attended townhall meetings, who came to streetcorner meetings. We had people who argued with their colleagues and their family and persuaded, eventually, a quarter of a million New Zealanders to trust ACT with their party vote, beyond those in the Epsom electorate, who I am incredibly grateful to and thank for sending me to this place for a fourth time. It is humbling to be elected by your neighbours to speak on their behalf, and what wonderful neighbourhoods they are in the electorate of Epsom.

I also want to thank the ACT Party board. They are the head of a great membership of volunteers, activists, donors—all of those people who give up their time for nothing but the feeling that they have made our democracy possible. Nobody forces any of them to do it. Almost none of them is paid a cent and yet they show up every three years and make our democracy possible.

There are also many candidates from all parties who gave it their all and were not returned to Parliament. That is the reality of any contest, but I want to say to them that, if you’ve missed out this time, it may be that next time is your time, or the time after that. Some people stand many times and go on to have tremendous parliamentary careers, but your efforts have been noticed and they will contribute to whatever you want to do in a future election.

I think the reason that so many people came out and were prepared to work so hard towards ensuring the Government changed is that, well, frankly, they were motivated by the Labour Government and its allies, and its potentially allies, who made such a hash of New Zealand. If you look at just the raw numbers, Grant Robertson, as finance Minister, was reduced to trying to explain why perhaps a boondoggle might actually be a good thing! I mean, it was hard to believe today, but that actually happened.

You had a Minister of Finance saying, “Oh, no; boondoggles could be good. Here’s the dictionary definition and if I can contort myself enough I might even convince myself.” That is Grant Robertson’s legacy. but it’s also by the plain numbers list. Grant Robertson, as Minister of Finance, had the job of ensuring that the taxpayers dollar went as far as possible to deliver the services and alleviate the suffering of New Zealanders in a range of areas. And the bottom line is that from 2017 to this year, he increased the amount Government spends above inflation, above population growth—you know, there’s no jiggery-pokery here. Per person, after inflation, he increased expenditure by 30 percent. New Zealand taxpayers need to ask themselves: am I getting 30 percent better real service from Government?

In which area might they look for it? They might look in education. Chris Hipkins—it was kind of interesting today. It’s almost like he has the most wonderful form of selective amnesia. I listened to him and I thought this can’t be the same guy who is predominantly responsible for the state of education today. But he was the Minister of Education for five years. He was responsible for Te Pūkenga.

The challenge for this Government laid down today could not be starker. The Programme for International Student Assessment examinations of 15-year-olds in science, literacy, and mathematics have been tested every three years since the turn of the century and we have just had the worst results ever for New Zealand. The damage that has been done over the past two decades will take another generation to fully turn around. And yet we had not 2,500 bureaucrats in the Ministry of Education but 4,400. That’s the growth under Labour and our results got worse. Our school attendance got worse. So Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins—thick as thieves; in fact, taxpayers might say that’s exactly what they were—were conniving together to get fewer kids going to school, learning less for more money. That’s the big problem.

Productivity right across the economy was in the tank. You might have thought that all these schemes they had to invest in this and invest in that would somehow make New Zealand more productive. The truth is that if Labour MPs knew how to invest capital, they wouldn’t be Labour MPs. They’d be rich. The reality is they had no idea how to transform an economy, but they inadvertently transformed it to have some of the highest inflation in living memory.

I think Grant Robertson and a possible exception—no offence—Adrian Rurawhe were probably the only people in that Labour Government old enough to remember the last time inflation had been as bad as they left it. But that is one of the outcomes of Grant Robertson’s unproductive spending spree.

But perhaps more than anything, the previous Government was elected to solve the problem of housing. It’s one of the biggest drivers of the cost of living crisis, one of the biggest drivers of poverty, and one of the biggest drivers in crime and educational under-attainment—people getting moved as students from uncle to aunty, from one term to the next, and never settling in one school. The Labour Government was elected more than anything to solve the shortage of housing and build more homes. And how did it go? Well, KiwiBuild was so politically and policy-wise disastrous that it almost became unfair to raise it in politics. I mean, it was so bad, you sort of thought: oh come on, go easy on them. You know, their Resource Management Act reforms managed to make the resource management law more complicated, but with novel terms such as te Oranga o te Taiao, which would need to be interpreted in new jurisprudence by the Environment Court, by which time we would probably be economically overtaken by Indonesia. Yet that was the Labour Party’s idea of how to get more houses built.

In just about every area we found a Labour Party that spent more money and made more rules and got worse results. I have to tell you that they returned today so rundown and clapped out that if this Labour Party was a used car it would be illegal to import them to New Zealand. They just don’t go any more—

Hon Simeon Brown: They hate cars anyway.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: And they also hate cars anyway, the Minister of Transport tells us; it’s an excellent point.

I raise all of this because we heard from Chris Hipkins a couple of things in his speech. He said that the Government doesn’t have a vision; it just wants to delete so much of what the previous Government has done. That second part is true. Three waters—we do want to cancel. Te Pūkenga was a disaster under Chris Hipkins’ watch that does need to be unravelled. Fair pay agreements, so-called, will be gone by Brooke van Velden, no matter how eager and quickly the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions are to find out about it.

The reason that we want to get rid of these damaging policies like the Natural and Built Environment Act and the Spatial Planning Act is that Labour’s vision was one of central control: centralised politics, centralised healthcare, centralised three waters—give the Minister for the Environment more power over what is built in your street. That is certainly a vision in Labour and perhaps the Greens and Te Pāti Māori’s eyes, because their vision is about politicians doing things. It’s not that we don’t have a vision; it’s just that we have a different vision from the point of view of the New Zealanders who have to live in this country and are trying to make a difference in their own lives and the lives of those that they care about.

That’s why this Government will be strongly committed—more committed than any Government in history—to dealing to the red tape and regulation that wastes people’s time going through compliance activities that add nothing to the public welfare but dramatically impoverish people and, eventually, all of us in their private welfare. If we want to raise productivity, we must spend more time producing and less time complying with rules that don’t make sense. And I’m proud to be the first Minister for Regulation, with a Ministry for Regulation and a Regulatory Standards Bill setting out the principles of how you make laws that do make sense and then go through the enormous stock of out-of-date rules and regulations that waste our time and money. That is what I call a vision. But it’s a vision of empowerment for ordinary people, not a vision of meddling for the few politicians and the not so few bureaucrats that Labour hired. Our vision is that people get to spend more of their own money.

You see, as I mentioned, the Labour Party spent like drunken sailors and were about as effective at getting useful things done. The previous Labour Government has given us a massive fiscal headache and, sadly, that is pain that in different ways will be shared by all New Zealanders. But I have great confidence in Nicola Willis along with Chris Bishop and Shane Jones and myself as Associate Finance Ministers to get this ship back on course.

I’m pleased to see that 2017 baselines for the number of public servants will be a starting point for getting costs under control. Because you don’t just have to pay these people; they then get bored and make you jump through extra hoops which further damages our productivity. And just as that could be a lose-lose, removing unnecessary expenditure and activity is a win-win, and that’s a vision for everyday New Zealanders.

When it comes to crime, it is time to call time on the experiment of Labour. That is, if only we are kind to criminals, they’ll be kind back. Now, I can understand—I like to be kind too, but it’s a little bit harder when you meet the victims, when you go to liquor stores, when you go to dairies, when you go to retailers, when you talk to storeowners who keep a boutique fashion place that they’re afraid to lock up at 6 o’clock in winter, because it’s dark then and they don’t know who’s going to be around and they heard what happened to one of their colleagues in the alley just a few weeks back—something the police are still investigating. I’m sorry, but these stories are real and they’re not from some place where people think there’s a lot of crime. They’re from places where people would otherwise think there wasn’t a lot of crime in central Auckland.

This Government is going to increase prison capacity. This Government is going to give the courts and the police options for young offenders. This Government is going to make sure that if you attack someone in a sole-charge workplace or a workplace attached to their dwelling house, then that’s an aggravating factor, or if you’re a member of a gang, you’re going away for longer, because being kind to crims hasn’t worked. It’s time to put them back in their place, and that is behind bars.

We talked about education, and I think we have an excellent education Minister and an excellent commitment to shift the way that education policy is done. You see, for far too long, we have had an education policy that is driven by a burgeoning ministry that meddles endlessly in the inputs. They’ll tell you how to teach. They’ll tell you what shape the classrooms should be—hint: it’s three classrooms joined together with lots of beanbags. They’ll tell you what to teach—hint: it’s usually politically motivated. But they don’t actually ask the hard questions like: how many kids showed up to school yesterday, how many of them are passing, and how many of them are prepared for the modern workplace, to be citizens in the most knowledge-rich century that humans will ever exist in? Well, this Government is going to flip that switch. We’re going to empower educators to actually be in charge of their schools, with their cellphones safely away, and then demand that the kids show up and the results are achieved.

The Labour Party has said that there isn’t a lot of vision. Well, I can tell the Labour Party that I know a few parents and I know a few kids, and, actually, the vision of being enabled to navigate the 21st century with the basic skills that these guys neglected—that’s a vision. If only we had had that vision six years ago and had started earlier, there’d be far fewer kids who have been sent out into the world, cruelly, without the basic skills to navigate that world. The purist version of demanding results and giving flexibility and empowerment to educators is partnership schools, kura hourua, colloquially known as charter schools, which will be back and better and bigger than ever—teacher unions, you can hear that.

We have an excellent Minister of Health, not only because he’s a doctor but he’s also a seriously passionate and good guy. We are going to see a healthcare system that is not focused on the vision of reorganising the wiring diagram in Wellington, but, instead, on a Ministry of Health and a health system that treats all New Zealanders equally, based on need, using good data—not lazy and bigoted discrimination based on race—and that focuses on ensuring that the patients are getting the results, not that administrators are happy or that the health system is doing right by identity politics. We’re also going to see Pharmac dragged into the modern age, with an attitude that is friendly to those people going through difficult times and in need of pharmaceuticals so that they can get by, and we’re going to see their funding model reflect the impacts of funding on the rest of the Government’s books.

Immigration: we’re a nation of immigrants. We’re going to lift the cap on recognised seasonal employers so we don’t have the constant interjurisdictional fights over who has quota to have people to get the work done.

We’re going to redeem a promissory note made to thousands, or in fact hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders that this is a country that wants you, and, if you come here and if you cover their costs, you can bring your parents. I was speaking to a woman not so long ago who was a prominent person at a major university—in fact, it probably doesn’t harm to say that she was running her department. She said, “I’m an only child. My mother is in the United Kingdom. If I can’t get her here, I’m going home, and I know that’ll have an impact on my career, it will have an impact on the university, and it will have an impact on my students.” Well, this Government says that if she’s prepared to pay the costs of the healthcare and if she’s prepared to guarantee there’ll be no costs on the State, her mum can have a five-year visitor visa to come in and out of New Zealand as much as she likes and be in this country. Doesn’t that restore the faith that new New Zealanders who have come from all over the world have put in this country? That is our objective.

There’s another group of people who have been a bit marginalised. They’re people who own a house and let another New Zealander live in it in return for money. Now, I would have said that that was a beautiful example of human cooperation, but the Labour Party and allies have been so myopic that they thought that the way to help the people living in the house was to attack the people that owned the house. I think their philosophy is that beatings would continue until morale improves. Well, plot twist: morale did not improve. People pulled back from being landlords, and tenants were the ones that suffered, with record increases in rent over the six years that we’ve just seen with this Government.

Well, we’re going to say that if it’s your house and you want to evict someone, you can—that’s just how property works—but it has the enormous advantage in that it makes people more willing to let someone else live in a house that they own in the first place, and especially someone that they may have some questions or causes for concern about. That, to me, sounds like the civilised way to go about doing business in New Zealand, and it’s actually going to help the most disadvantaged tenants when we have no-fault evictions. It’s also going to help landlords enormously when the amount of mortgage interest that they can deduct from their tax bill is increased more rapidly than any other party had promised, and that is an enormous benefit, not only to landlords but also to tenants, because they go together.

There’s another group of New Zealanders who have been neglected for reasons I struggle to fathom: those who go out of their way to give food to other New Zealanders and to about eight times as many people who are our export customers overseas, and yet we have seen rural New Zealand—the likes of Andrew Hoggard and Mark Cameron—beaten around the ears as public enemy number one for year after year for having the temerity to use the land to produce food, to employ people, and to try and feed the world and earn export receipts. Well, they now have a Government that actually has some farmers, that actually respects farmers, and that is going to get rid of the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020 and replace it with something sensible that actually has regard to local conditions.

We’re going to stop putting significant natural areas (SNAs) where some pimply teenager out of planning school looks at your farm on Google Earth and says, “That looks like a bit of biodiversity. You can’t have that any more.”, because if you do that, people won’t want to do conservation because the pimply teenagers at the local council will take your property rights. So no more SNAs.

We’re going to have a split-gas approach to methane and other greenhouse gases because we actually do follow the science, and the science says that methane has different characteristics from carbon dioxide. Now, you’re not going to get that from the Green Party, who have not elected an MP who has studied science past high school in 12 years. The ACT Party has more scientists than the Green Party has elected, probably, in its history. But I will watch the maiden statements to see if any of you guys have actually studied science, because if you have, you’ll be the first Green MP that’s done that for a very, very long time.

There’s another group of people—licensed firearms owners—scapegoated, punished, and pushed beyond reason by this previous Government. They were almost blamed for our nation’s tragedy in Christchurch. The Government pushed hundreds of thousands of what they deemed the most dangerous firearms into the grey and black market in what may have been one of the stupidest, most irresponsible policies that any Government has rushed through this Parliament. But Nicole McKee, for 25 years a firearms safety officer, is—it’s difficult to think of a better person to be in charge of firearms law. Now, I feel much safer already, and we’re going to see clubs and ranges have the most egregious regulations gone. We’re going to see a new arms Act, and we’re going to ask a very basic question that you should ask about any policy, which is whether this firearms registry is actually making us safer, because there’s a good school of thought that it’s not.

In housing, we’re going to see the Resource Management Act gone and replaced with a law based on property rights. Speaking of property rights, the medium-density residential standard—a folly that invaded the peaceful enjoyment of so many people’s property, or it would—will become optional, with councils required to re-ratify it.

We are going to see a constructive debate about what the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi mean, and people will get into enormous hysterics about this, because, you know, some people aren’t what you’d call intellectual. Those people who aren’t so intellectual, they tend to be afraid of debate, and so they will call you racist and they’ll shout you down and they’ll try and block the motorway. But those of us who do enjoy the contest of ideas are looking forward to having a discussion about what those principles mean and what the lens through which we view the Treaty from 2023 actually means, and I suspect that if they do their study and if they read and they take the time—and some of those people shouting in the background might actually enjoy the discussion and find that it is mana-enhancing for Te Tiriti and Māoridom. But I’m not sure that they’re up to it. The challenge—the wero—is now laid down for them.

This Government has a vision of empowerment—a vision of New Zealanders as people who are treated alike in dignity, regardless of their identity, and who have the ability to make a difference in their own lives and in the lives of those that they care about—and with that vision, we are all going to be wealthier and happier for it. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Deputy Prime Minister): Mr Speaker, right here, right now, something that the political experts said could never happen is happening. So congratulations to you—

SPEAKER: Yeah, what do they know!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —and also congratulations to Chris Luxon and David Seymour in the formation of this Government, and their political parties—something that, also, the experts said could not happen. So if we’re going forward, can we just have a look in the future at these experts and start examining their record of being right? Because, so many times, they have been wrong.

I say, also, that hearing Mr Hipkins today was actually an astonishing event. This is somebody that came to power and had his own bonfire—a bonfire of the stupid vanities that his party had in place. But then, today, he came along and defended it. The extraordinary thing is he didn’t seem to understand that the forward forecast for GDP for next year by the IMF has us at 159 in the world—just in front of Equatorial Guinea and doing less than 1 percent in terms of GDP—and he said that that was a success story. Well, you can see why they are so troubled now and in such small numbers.

Congratulations to every member of Parliament that’s here, whatever the party that might be, and for the time that you are here, because it’s a very privileged place to be. We’re all here to do one thing: despite what some of your leaders or your manifesto might say—and what your past colleagues might say—you’re here to represent everybody as one people called New Zealanders, regardless of our DNA, our gender, our background, or our creeds. This country was made being one country. Or, as Dame Whina Cooper said, we signed the Treaty so that we could become one people. I’ll remind some people that were posing here yesterday—as though they’re the new vision, they’re the new light, now they’re the epiphany of what Māori is—oh no, you don’t. No, you don’t. Let me tell you: if you’re looking for trouble, you’ve come to the right place. We came back to Parliament doing the impossible.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: We got back from Parliament, too. You’re not the only ones.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: True; it’s true. But let me tell you two things: you’re heading for 54 years, if you’re on the Greens, of never having been in Cabinet if your party was formed in the first contest of 1972 under the name “Values”—54 years’ never being in Cabinet is a long time to wait. Even Moses was only 40 years. For 54 years—and the Green Party is never going to make it back at all, and nor is Te Pāti Māori. I’ll tell you why it is, it’s because you’re heading straight to the bottom pile claiming to be what you’re not: the voice of Māori. Uh-uh, no you’re not and never will be, and certainly not someone who is so decolonised he wears a cowboy hat—so decolonised he wears a cowboy hat. Amazing. Every pretension he’s got can be found out in five seconds flat.

Whilst we’re at it, the $350,000 that came from a charity, why on earth did Te Pāti Māori get that money? So $303,500 charity money to Te Pāti Māori, and what is going on when that can be allowed to survive in this country’s democracy? [Interruption] Oh yeah, not too happy now. Well, there’ll be somebody knocking soon, believe me. The same law will apply to them as applies to every other political party.

Now, can I just say this. We survived the last campaign having been marginalised, Cinderella-ised, demonised by too many who were in the Public Interest Journalism Fund—paid off in the media. But we’re back. No, no, no. We want a democracy where there is a fourth estate.

Hon Willie Jackson: You don’t like them.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh no, somebody else didn’t like them either, did he? He would threaten somebody on TV, if you please. Of course, he wasn’t obeying, according to the way the fund should be already according to Willie, the Minister of broadcasting. It was the most embarrassing circumstance.

Hon Willie Jackson: You did the worst interview in history.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Yes, I do like journalists. I like journalists who understand that it’s a profession and that they are critical to any democracy. But I do not like fifth columnists. I don’t like people, for example, who go out, who have politically motivated commentary, day in, day out. It reeks. Their questions reek of their preference. They’re not professionals.

Hon Willie Jackson: What are you talking about?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: They’re not professionals. Well, I can see why Mr Jackson wouldn’t understand. Because Mr Jackson has been the key voice in the Labour Party these last six years, and he’s sent them to their demise. He’s their Māori leader—he’s their Māori leader—and there’s one left now in the Māori seats. Oh, and by the way Te Pāti Māori: only one party has ever taken all of the Māori seats off Labour, and you’re looking at it. Only one party’s ever done that.

You know, before the 2020 election, New Zealand First was attacked by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). It’s April in 2020, we’re on about 4.5, 5, almost 5.5 percent, and we were attacked by the SFO. Then the media relentlessly, as an organisation, went after New Zealand First and one outlet—and publicly owned, it was, too—no fewer than 27 times attacked us. Yet when we beat the SFO; when we beat the Serious Fraud Office—not once, but twice: before the election and after it—and put out a press statement about our rights, the rights of the victor in this case, they never printed a word. They claimed to be balanced; never printed a word. After hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of personal costs and expense, they expect me to forgive them and go back to treating them like the way they should be treated.

Hon Willie Jackson: Go on Radio Waatea.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: When they understand—no, Radio Waatea didn’t do that. You’re quite right. Radio Waatea didn’t do that because of the guy called Dale Husband that understands fairness. He’s one of those guys that, despite his colleagues, he’s professional. Despite people like Willie Jackson, he remains professional. I salute that, and that’s why I go on his show every second week—like the farming show. All those that talk to us will get to talk to us after the election. But those new-found that turn up the day after—or they did the day before the election, this is true: I was on there, turned up the day before the election, and journalists, they wanted to interview me. I said, “Well is there any chance of any vote being affected by your comment?” “No.” “So what the H are you doing here, then?” That’s what they thought was fair. Then, all of a sudden, now, they wanted Chris Luxon to rule Winston Peters out—he’s misbehaving himself. Oh no I’m not—I believe in democracy and I believe in the media, and I want to see them back to doing what they should do and not becoming an unelected political party in this country sitting up there [Points to press gallery]. That’s all I want. [Interruption] Ha, ha!

Ladies and gentlemen, look, can I say that we were out there packing the halls in Tauranga. We got 750 in Tauranga. Not one journalist there. Then we’re on to places like Dunedin, Papamoa, Dargaville, Invercargill, Hawke’s Bay, Kaikōura, Nelson. Everywhere we’re packing the halls and no journalists at all. Do you think that’s commentary? Do you think that’s fair? Oh, they say, “We sent somebody.” No, you didn’t. I can show meeting after meeting after meeting where they wouldn’t give us any coverage whatsoever.

Cushla Tangaere-Manuel: They were there.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh no. Unlike that member—she couldn’t fill a telephone booth. But we packed the halls—not enough chairs or anything. My point is: why were they gaslighting us out of the campaign? This is not what a democracy looks like. Whether people agree or not, they’re entitled to hear, as Phil Collins sang, they’re entitled to “hear both sides of the story”. Not one side—both sides of the story.

Hon Willie Jackson: Democracy’s changed.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: And here’s Willie trying to defend them now. He knows in his heart of hearts, as he goes from this job very shortly—and he will. Oh no. They’re calling it—look, when you’re in a game and, in the end, they look around and say, “Who’s responsible?” and you think to yourself, “Maybe it’s the guy I’m looking at in the mirror,” then the time staying here, Willie, is not going to work for you. And the sooner you go, the better, so that somebody can step up and start to rebuild what was once a great party, but it’s forgotten the workers. They wouldn’t know a worker if they fell over one. Totally forgotten the working people of this country.

Ladies and gentlemen, we got back because we went to the social media and we didn’t use any boosters—at all—but we knew out there, at least unfiltered and unedited, we could get our story away. But had we got a decent go, we’d be sitting here with far more than the members we’ve got now. And that’s a fact.

Why, the Greens never had a meeting. They never had a meeting. They go down to the beach, get a few starfish, and they’re headlining the 6 o’clock news. What was political about that? Pray tell me, if you’re a media person: what was political about that? Unbelievable—deafening! And they never had any public meetings anywhere in the whole campaign, and there they are, sitting there.

Fa’anānā Efeso Collins: We had plenty in Ōtara.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: But I tell you what, Mr Collins—

Fa’anānā Efeso Collins: Yep?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: This is the high point. It’s going down now. I’ve been around—I’ve been around a long time. I know a bunch of losers when I see them. Any money you like—you’re going that way, because these people want their seats back, and they’re better organised, and they will be, when the time comes. So enjoy the next three years, try to do the best you can, but it won’t be long.

Ladies and gentlemen, can I just say to those in the media who wrote us off and relentlessly attacked us: guess what! New Zealand First is back. Now, I know Willie’s charmed by this, because Willie came to a speech where he was giving a farewell speech that was put on by FOMA, the Federation of Māori Authorities—in case people think Māori authorities don’t understand how much we’ve done for them over the years. Willie gave my farewell speech, and I said to him: “Willie, you’re being premature. Anybody who even dreams New Zealand First is going to get beaten should wake up and apologise.” So, Willie, wake up and apologise now.

Hon Willie Jackson: Give me another example.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Another example? Well, actually, Willie, having spanned six decades, I can give you a few examples. If you know anybody else who has—right? See, I respect the people that you should respect, like, for example, Ngata and Pomare and Buck and Carroll. These are political geniuses. Their view of the Treaty of Waitangi is written in the book from 101 years ago by Ngata himself, not by these people over here making it up as they dream it up at some sociological class at university. It’s balderdash. Oh, no, you can wave and do all the hongi and put the huia feather in your hair, but it doesn’t belong there. Ask Ratana. Ask the man himself. What’s the huia feather doing on your head? No, no, the immodesty knows no bounds.

I’ve got to tell you: I’m pleased New Zealand First is back, and not a day too soon, because that sort of humbug is going to stop. And we’re going to go back to calling our country New Zealand. We’re not going to have a French Polynesian name that’s an insult to everybody in the South Island. And there’s a South Island member of Parliament for Te Pāti Māori and he can’t even defend his people’s name for their part of the country—Te Wai Pounamu is the name; it ain’t Aotearoa. Oh, but he’s too new and too unlearned to even make a defence of it. Did Ngata think that? Did Pomare think that? This genius called Buck, who ended up as a major anthropologist—a doctor first and an anthropologist, all the way to Hawaii. Did he think that? No. He’s my authority. What’s yours? What’s your authority? They haven’t got one. And so no more of this darn humbug, and you can put the tā moko on and dance around and carry on in a way that we find very strange because where I come from, that’s conferred upon you; you don’t just paint yourself like some tattoo shop. That’s what they’re doing.

And I saw yesterday—to walk into this place and take over the traditions of a great democracy that’s been going since 1854, one of the great democracies of the world.

Hon Willie Jackson: I thought it was wonderful!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh, Willie thought it was wonderful. No consultation—no. Here comes “Johnny Come Lately”—or, in this case, “Rawiri Come Lately”—and he’s going to design the whole thing anew. I’ve got news for you, sunshine, and it’s all bad. We’ve got news for you and it’s all bad. We’re not putting up with it. And some of us have done far more for Māoridom than you will ever do; that’s a fact. Who settled the central North Island Tribes’ 14-iwi settlement? Who settled that? The Māori Wardens—who gave them their start? The Māori Women’s Welfare League, Mt Hikurangi—I could be here all day on what we’ve done for Māori, not like these people: all talk and no action; all talk and no action. And we’re not coming back here to listen to this humbug any longer. We want this country to be called New Zealand, and if we’re going to change the name, then we’re going to ask all New Zealanders first. We’re not going to have a little bunch of the minority who say, “We’re the Māori voice.”

Hon Members: Woo hoo!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: OK, so if they’re the Māori voice and they got only 3 percent of the vote most of the time, and yet they say the Māori people are 18 percent of the population, it means that one-sixth of the Māori people might support them and five-sixths don’t. How can they call themselves the Māori voice? And why does Willie sit by and allow them to do that? But we knew from the word go that when these people arrived, there would be a race to the bottom between Te Pāti Māori and the Māori members of the Labour Party. And that’s a tragedy.

It’s tragic because, at the end of the day, what we get from that is not what people want out in the Māori world. You know what they want? They want an affordable house. If they feel sick—hopefully not them, their parents, or their children—they want to get medical treatment as soon as they possibly can, and they want to get on the escalators that take you, with education, as far as you’d want to go. And the fourth thing Māori want is First World wages. These people never even talk about that at all—it’s all their highfalutin Auckland University sociology department claptrap—making it up as they go along.

And the moment you challenge their authority, they start shouting out the easiest, most cowardly answer—racist. Oh no we’re not.

Hon Willie Jackson: Are you not racist?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No, as the founder of the Kōhanga Reo said, “Winston is not anti-Māori; he’s just anti-nonsense.” Remember her name? Leni Kapa said that, didn’t she? And also somebody’s mother said that too.

Hon Willie Jackson: My mother!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Yeah. Somebody’s mother said that too. And I wish he was as bright as his mother, and paid more attention. Ha, ha! You know, your mother was a very bright woman, and she had high hopes for this party and New Zealand First, and, all of a sudden, her son is going his own way and thinks he’s smarter than mum—oh no, he’s not.

I was going to make a lot of statements today, but the reality is that we’re out to turn this country around. This was an inflection election—make no bones about it. If we’d not got back, these three parties, we were heading off to be Venezuela or Myanmar. [Interruption] They’re there clapping at the back—that’s what they want: clearly with no idea that it was once the most successful economy in South America, and look at the cot case it is today. Those sorts of policies took them there. Same with Myanmar—after being the most successful economy in Asia—and look what sort of policies took them there. We just got back in time, and we’re proud to have joined this coalition to save this country.

SPEAKER: This is a split call. The first 15 minutes will be taken by Rawiri Waititi, and it will be immediately followed by Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori): Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Otirā tēnā tātou e te Whare. Wow! That was entertaining. You’re asking us to compare CVs with somebody who’s been here 50 decades. You know, that’s a long, long time, and a long, long time in a House that has done a lot of damage, and he admitted to that. He admitted to being here and damaging a whole lot of things—for tangata whenua—as we’ve moved on in this democracy. Anyway, you’re going to see this moko and his hat for a long, long time there, Winston, and you’re going to get used to it—you better get used to it.

So, anyway, I stand in this House to give a speech from the throne of Kīngi Tūheitia. I stand here to speak on behalf of tangata whenua of Aotearoa. The true mana of this nation does not live in this place; it resides on marae and papa kāinga right across this country. It resides in the hearts and the minds of te iwi Māori.

To our people, thank you. Thank you for believing in yourselves. Thank you for believing in your own mana. Thank you for being magic people. Thank you for being proud to be Māori. You have elected the largest Te Pāti Māori caucus in the history of this Parliament, and may I remind Winston: you only won five seats; we won six. The largest contingent of fighters for mana motuhake and tino rangatiratanga. From Te Tai Tokerau, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. From Tāmaki Makaurau, we have Takutai Tarsh Kemp. From Hauraki-Waikato, the youngest MP in many, many years, we have Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke. In Te Tai Tonga, we have Tākuta Ferris, and in Te Tai Hauāuru, we have Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The kōhanga reo generation is here, and we will carry your dreams and aspirations in this place. We will continue to be unapologetically Māori—thank you, Chris, for using our words. We will always remember why you put us here, ahakoa te aha [no matter what]. This is our pledge to you.

As our tīpuna remind us, ours is a struggle without end. Against all odds, tangata whenua have resisted colonisation and imperialism for more than 200 years. We are the descendants of navigators who traversed the largest ocean on the planet. We are the innovators who have time and time again proven to be cultural, social, and economic leaders in Aotearoa. We are rangatira who never ceded our sovereignty, never bowed down to a foreign power.

The Government’s agenda is a flashback to the 19th century. This Government’s agenda for the first hundred days is taking us back a hundred years. The coalition documents read like a manifesto of white supremacy and cultural genocide. There are attacks on Māori and Te Tiriti right across health, education, welfare, employment, justice, the environment, and the economy.

Repealing section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act will undo all the progress that has been made to try and fix a systemically racist organisation that, over generations, has stolen our kids.

Removing the prison reduction target and cultural reports in the justice system proves that this Government is intent on locking up more brown people and throwing away the key.

Scrapping Aotearoa’s world-leading smokefree laws will sacrifice Māori lives to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. Repealing fair pay agreements and bringing back 90-day trials will guarantee that whānau are stuck in low wages and our rangatahi are exploited in insecure work.

Rolling back progress on climate change and taiao protection is co-signing our mokopuna to a future of chaos and instability.

Leaving the door open to a referendum on Te Tiriti—the constitutional right for this Parliament to even exist—highlights just how extreme and dangerous this Government’s policies are.

But if all of that wasn’t bad enough, it goes even deeper than what is written on paper. The racist signals that the election of this Government has sent are so strong that Public Service departments are pre-emptively wiping te reo Māori from official documents and rolling back years of progress overnight. This Government has opened the floodgates of hatred towards Māori. You have given all Government departments the permission to hurt our people. White supremacist radicals who sent Māori leaders death threats are celebrating. They are over the moon that their political champions now hold the levers of power. It is disgraceful. These attempts to erase our people and our culture from public life hark back to the colonial philosophy that tried to smooth the pillow of a dying race.

To this Government, my message is simple: you will not succeed. Māori will not be assimilated. Māori will not be subjugated. Māori will not be silenced. Māori will not be erased. We will not cede. Your weaponising of racism and prejudice will be resisted with the full force of the Māori nation. You have been put on notice, Mr Shane Jones. Ka whawhai tonu mātou, āke, āke, āke.

[We will continue to fight, for ever and ever and ever.]

This coalition presents the last gasp—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: This is pinko rubbish.

RAWIRI WAITITI: —Mr Peters—of a generation and demographic who are terrified of no longer being the majority; terrified of being treated the way they have treated us. But what they don’t realise is our tikanga informs us to rise above hate, rise above division, rise above radical supremacy, and rise above imperialism.

The 21st century will be remembered for the rise of generation Tiriti—“Gen T”. It will be remembered for the kotahitanga of tangata whenua, tangata moana, and tangata Tiriti, unifying to forge a nation that honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It will be remembered for the treaty revolution. It will be remembered for the rise of an Aotearoa hou. Our Aotearoa hou gives us space to realise how things should be; an Aotearoa hou that makes you feel like you would when you come on to our marae. We will welcome you. We will feed you. We will house you. We will connect you. We will educate you. We will care for you. We will hear you. We will love you. And, yes, Shane Jones, we will farewell you.

Our Aotearoa hou looks like every whānau in Aotearoa having a warm, secure, and affordable home. Not just a house, but a home. An Aotearoa hou looks like future-proofing our communities, protecting our pepeha, protecting the whakapapa of Papatūānuku. An Aotearoa hou looks like whānau being able to swim and drink from their own local awa without getting sick, gather kaimoana from their local pātaka without worry, and not having to deal with flooding week after week. An Aotearoa hou looks like taking climate change seriously. It means investing in clean energy and restoring our taiao, protecting and preparing communities for climate adaptation, transitioning to regenerative and organic culture, banning seabed mining.

In an Aotearoa hou, everyone will know their rights, and everyone has a right to know their whakapapa. If you don’t know your whakapapa, you can rest assured that your whakapapa knows you. If you do not know your maunga, your maunga knows you. If you do not know your awa, your awa knows you. If you do not know your marae, your marae knows you. If you do not know your reo, your reo knows you. We are the solutions to be realised. In an Aotearoa hou, no one is left behind. Whether you are tangata whenua or tangata Tiriti; tangata hauā, takatāpui, wahine, tāne, rangatahi, mokopuna—you are whānau. You are good enough, because your tīpuna made it so.

While Te Pāti Māori will resist the racist agenda of this Government at every step, our core mission remains the same, and that is to realise this vision of an Aotearoa hou. It is the manifestation of the dreams and aspirations of our tīpuna, who signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi and laid the foundation for peace and prosperity in this country. Te Tiriti is not to be settled. It is not to be rewritten. It is not to be questioned by referendum. Te Tiriti is to be honoured. We are the movement that will fight for Te Tiriti - centric Aotearoa. In the words of the black American author Toni Morrison, “The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.” And that’s what I heard in the last speech.

As tangata whenua, we cannot allow the racist agenda of this Government to let us lose focus from what matters: the realisation of our tino rangatiratanga. As Moana Jackson laid out in the Matike Mai kaupapa, we must strive for self-determination, self-sufficiency to be implemented by 2040, on the 200th anniversary of the Treaty of Waitangi. That must remain our steadfast goal, our guiding light, our pae tawhiti. We must make mokopuna decisions. How best can we create an Aotearoa hou that will ensure my mokopuna—whom I will never meet—are able to thrive and live in abundance? How do we maximise the opportunity for success and prosperity? Those are the questions that we must grapple with as tangata whenua. Colonial Governments come and go, but we remain. Racist policies come and go—and then come again—but we remain.

We will continue to stand as the unbreakable force of mana motuhake. This will not allow Pākehā to determine our rights as tangata whenua. This Government must prepare for a Māori revolution if a referendum ever does go ahead. Every Government has the right to govern, but they do not have the right to undo 30 years of progress for Māori. Te Pāti Māori will fight on all fronts to protect our people from policies that seek to erase our whakapapa and whitewash our history—policies that privilege the wealthy and punish the poor. We will fight against the short-sightedness of a Government that would allow oil and gas exploration during a climate crisis—absolute foolishness. We will ensure this Government’s reign is short. Te Pāti Māori are calling on our nation, tangata whenua, tangata moana, he tangata Tiriti, to stand as one to protect what it is that makes us Aotearoa. We need not fear what we might lose, but have the courage to stand for what we might gain.

Toitū Te Tiriti. Kia ora tātou.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori): Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. Koinei te wā tuatahi ka tū ahau hei [Indistinct]. Ka whakanui ahau i te taenga mai ki konei i tēnei wā ki te whakakanohi i ngā reo me ngā kanohi o tō tātau iwi nā rātou i tuku te mana kaha. E whakapono koutou katoa te Aotearoa hou. E whakatau tō tātou iwi me whawhai ki tētahi Kāwanatanga e kaha ana ki te whakahoki ki whakamuri i a tātou. Nō reira kua tae mai mātou. Toitū Te Tiriti.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker. My greetings to the House. This is the first time I’m standing to [Indistinct]. I acknowledge our arrival here to represent the voices and faces of our iwi, who inspire us with great mana. You all believed in the Aotearoa hou. You decided that we should battle a Government that wants to ensure our regression. So, we are here. Honour the Treaty.]

It is an honour to be the largest indigenous party today. First of all, I want to mihi and thank the Government made up of parties funded and supported by the hyper-rich, the 2 percenters who own more than 50 percent of the wealth, the hyper - anti-Māori, the hyper - Hobson Pledgers, the Julian Batchelors, the anti-environmentalists, and the anti-minorities. I want to mihi to you all—hugely mihi to you all—for providing the greatest opportunity for Te Ao Māori. Your hatred has encouraged us to unite. Your attacks on our culture have motivated our standing in solidarity for ourselves. Your calls to take us back have been a drive to advance. Ka nui te aroha mō tō kūaretanga.

[I express my regret for your ignorance.]

A Government awarded Fossil of the Day award—how awesome are you guys!

In 72 hours, Te Pāti Māori tested our people’s capacity and capability to step up and be counted, to mobilise at the shortest of notice and show each other what we are capable of. All this was done using nothing but our social media. We too are not fans of and not covered by the press, but we did that, and do you know what? At the beat of our whanaungatanga, we didn’t need the press. We didn’t “wah-wah” and tangiweto about the fact we didn’t have that. We didn’t need billboards in pink sponsored all over the place—centrefold adverts in the New Zealand Herald. As the drum beat, all the planning was going on behind the scenes, with not a single leak—not a single leak—until we were lined and we were ready. Who said Māori can’t keep a secret?

Te Pāti Māori is as proud as heck of all our whānau who dropped everything and believed in themselves. We know more will jump on as we continue, and you know we will because you have given us the sole mandate to be the undisputed, unapologetic, unshackled voice in Aotearoa.

Remember, whānau, just because those men over there in Government have w’akapapa, it doesn’t mean they are mandated to talk on behalf of Te Ao Māori. They don’t take pride in being Māori; they take pride in being labelled as professional politicians, but they belong to parties that don’t have the best interests of Māori at heart—proposing to review, rewrite, and referend our Te Tiriti.

I come from a community where our women have had to stand and hold the line. We are not victims, and despite our natural development being interfered with, we are here, thriving. We are resilient and we are beautiful, huia feathers or not, and we will not be bullied or stood over by men on that side of the House who embarrass themselves, who ridicule our culture. I wish you healing and I hope you find strength in your culture unity as we do. I hope that you don’t continue to isolate yourself from the Generation T, because Generation Te Tiriti are here. Our kohanga generation has arrived and we’re as excited as heck.

You see, those whose hearts are full of hate and envy don’t understand that the more you attack us, the stronger we will grow. This Government started with a policy platform made up of 15 policies which stand to disestablish, disband, disconnect our Tiriti, our reo; undo inequity solutions, prison their way to justice—oh, how unoriginal, how uninspiring. There is nothing else; no new solutions. Just look back in the manifesto of 1840.

Then, themselves—you have attacked our reo. You have dressed up as helping those confused to find themselves through their reo. You have attacked it and dressed up as a Trojan Horse.

Hon Shane Jones: Drama.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: That is so—absolutely. It’s the stuff you can’t pull off, because what you have done is use the typical colonisers’ tools. The first thing they do—what do they do? They destroy indigenous people’s culture. By what? By removing, demoting, and demonising their language.

My goodness, does this Government really think we can’t see your policies for what they are? I’m sad—no, truly. I am sad that for some politicians in the eve of their political profession. This is your last mark; I’m sad for you. I feel aroha that you represent voters who are not worldly, who do not embrace indigenous peoples, who are anti-Māori, and who are unable to embrace the reo anywhere, but I also get that you will now be comfortable calling yourselves flightless birds and hope that you can handle it when the Māori version comes off and the English signs are up for places like Urenui, English for Uretiti, Rahotu—but wait, Shane, I have one more—and the English sign for Kaitīeke.

That is what these small parties who make up this Government, ACT and New Zealand First’s combined vote is less than the 20 percent who you have offended the hell out of—the hell out of. This population who make up Māori and our amazing tangata Tiriti have come back at you and they will fight. They will fight side by side. Tangata Tiriti will fight side by side to represent a united dignified Aotearoa hou.

I am proud as heck that we showed those who paid $440,000 to get a single MP in that our little $17,000 per candidate goes a long way. See, that is the resilience of Te Ao Māori. If you really want to know how to do economic development, we can show you how to do that. Do not be hateful or angry, whānau mā. Do not be hateful or angry at this new Government’s treatment and disrespect. Be inspired. Be motivated to be more ourselves. Unlike the elite, flightless birds who want to focus on protecting the rich, we care for all whānau in Aotearoa.

We want to end poverty. We want to have a tax policy where we would have 2.2 million people living better. We want to look at those people who are deliberately being put in poverty because you do not see or care about them. We want to see it as absolutely a choice. We want to focus on putting more money in the pockets of those struggling. But no—no, we’re being told to smoke more and get taxed to help the rich. What the hell have I arrived in?

But that’s OK—that’s OK. We wanted to see GST off kai. We wanted to see an end to duopolies in supermarkets. We wanted to see the end to seabed mining—protect our environment; I know, for your mokopuna. But some of you are so far removed from your mokopuna, you’ve forgotten who they are. I look opposite me and I see tobacco lobbyists, I see gun lobbyists, I see Hobson’s Pledge lobbyists, I see absolute profiteers, landlords, conspirators, and climate change deniers. Moana Jackson said that if there is proof of the ongoing presence of colonisation, it is the constant Crown interpretation of redefining of what Te Tiriti promised. That is what we are seeing.

What is unfair to our new Prime Minister is that you have started your legacy as a Prime Minister by attacking Māori and attacking our environment, but, worse, attacking our mokopuna. I know some of those who are with this Prime Minister and I actually believe that he’s a decent bloke. But the sad thing for him is that he is alongside people who do not have as long a career in politics as he has, and I urge this Prime Minister to take balanced counsel and immerse himself in communities who are proud of their culture, who have their own solutions, and are not embarrassed about who they are, rather than live only in the past—they respect their past and they use that to focus on their future.

Finally, to ourselves, to our reo speakers, to those who carry our reo rangatira, our tōhunga: you and your commitment to promote and strengthen our reo was one way we were able to feel our whenua and our tūpuna. You are futuristic, you are the beacon for all of us, you are what we all aspire to be, and how the Government is targeting you is kino. We will stand with you; we will stand with the unions to protect your rights and all workers’ rights.

To our whānau standing for Palestine’s freedom, to end this horrific genocide and the sights that we see going on for these babies, these children—innocent civilians. Keep active, keep sharing, keep the pressure on, because we as indigenous peoples must look after each other. We know the atrocities of colonisation. Stay strong in your unity for kotahitanga. Free Palestine.

To our whānau who are out there who have had to watch the atrocity of this new Government clumsily coming through, trying to pretend that it knows what is right for Māori. Take heart, some of these politicians are on their eve. Some of these politicians are new, and we need to manaaki them, and we need to help them. We need to help them to be better politicians, we need to help them to be great Prime Ministers. I believe we have the ability and the influence to do that. Ignore the loudness, look after our whānau who are in that party. Help them to think past one term, because these buddies that they have, they don’t stay around. They’re like the kutu, you can spray and walk away.

To our whānau, protect the whenua between your taringa. Reflect on the collective strength of your past: Tohu, Te Whiti, Tahupōtiki Rātana, the Kīngitanga. Most importantly, grab all of that, look at your mokopuna, embrace your rangatahi, and you focus on what it is that’s required to protect your rights to be the best people in the world. Toitū Te Tiriti. Kia ora rā.

SPEAKER: Just before I call the next speaker, can I just remind the House that—and I haven’t wanted to interfere with anybody’s speeches or interrupt them—the use of the word “you” in speeches does refer to the Speaker. I know it’s difficult at times, and I will have continued leniency throughout the debate so that we get a free flow of things, but just bear that in mind. That would be good, thank you. I know the member down there didn’t mean all those things she said about me.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Tuatahi e hiahia ana ahau ki te mihi ki a koe, Gerry, kua riro te tūranga rangatira. E mihi ana ki a koe.

I tēnei wā kei te pīrangi huri atu ki Te Pāti Māori. Me mihi ki a koutou mō tō koutou kaha inānahi ki te kōkiri i te kaupapa. Rawe. Tino whakahīhī ahau ki te kite i ō koutou mahi mō tātou te iwi Māori. E mihi ana ki a koutou.

Koutou katoa kua tae mai i tēnei wā, tēnei te mihi ki a koutou. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Greetings, Mr Speaker. First, I’d like to congratulate you, Gerry, on your new appointment. I acknowledge you.

At this juncture I’d like to turn to te Pāti Māori. It is only right to commend your strength in supporting the call. Fantastic. I am very proud to watch the work you do for the Māori people. I acknowledge you.

To all who arrived today, I’d like to acknowledge you all. I acknowledge each and every one of us.]

It’s a shame Gerry Brownlee has left the Chamber, because I came into Parliament in 1999 and never would have thought he would have got up there. But he will be, I think, a very, very good Speaker.

I’ve really enjoyed—I think we’ve all enjoyed—the entertainment this afternoon. But I did want to mihi—and I’m sincere here, and I’m sure Peeni Henare and others in the Labour Māori caucus are—in all seriousness to Te Pāti Māori for what happened in the House yesterday. I know we’ve had different descriptions, haven’t we? That it was about theatre. We hear the brother over there—Shane—saying it was Matatini. No, it’s not; it’s about tikanga Māori—bringing tikanga into the House. This House was set up for us as Treaty partners. Māori have never had the opportunity to exercise our tikanga, and I mihi to Te Pāti Māori, because this is an evolving of our culture. This is an evolving of the House.

While I used to have old, fuddy-duddy sorts of views, like Shane Jones and Winston Peters—I can’t help it, because our ages are not that far apart—I was taken by some of our young Pākehā wāhine who came into our offices, and they loved what happened yesterday in the House.

Hon Shane Jones: Hippies, hippies.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: And I explained to them—shush up, Shane—that this is meaningful. This is about challenging what happens around the Oath. I too would prefer not to take the Oath, but I’m a bit older now, so I’ve got to leave it to the younger ones to do the performance. I just do the business. But, when I see that performance yesterday, it’s a reminder to te iwi Māori. So mihi nui ki a koutou—mihi nui ki a koutou.

I want to say to the two old fuddy-duddies over there that they’re two of the great personalities in terms of our people. We are a bit embarrassed with some of their actions lately, but they remain great personalities for our people, and I think it’s our job to get them on the right track over the next three years. Because, as you can see, Winston has gone off track somewhat and Jonesy just can’t shut his mouth. So I want to say today that, when I woke up this morning and I read about Nicola Willis talking about te reo and cutting back in terms of some of our bureaucrats getting paid extra for speaking te reo Māori, I was shocked. I was shocked, because I was the Minister who was in charge of overseeing the language, and part of that strategy is getting 1 million speakers by 2040. I think it’s all going to go out the door now.

I’m disappointed with Nicola Willis. I know that National, in the past, have supported the reo. John Key and Bill English were good supporters of the reo when they embraced the more conservative Māori Party in past years—different from today’s party of course. National was hugely supportive of the language—hugely supportive of the language—and I don’t mind saying that I think there’s a lot of good National people. I know I go a bit tough on the Chris Bishops and call them Tories and the “dirty rotten”—all that sort of stuff comes into campaigns, but there has been a support for the Māori language. Nicola Willis does not understand how important the language is. She does not understand. And I mihi to all our people who have made that effort to get their reo up to scratch, and they go into the workforce and they become examples for other to learn the reo—for others to learn the reo—and so to threaten the workers with reducing their wages is, I think, a shame and an embarrassment to this Government.

Our people are latching on. We saw that yesterday with the most wonderful expression from our people, and that was only the beginning. That was only the start. We are talking about our people rebelling on the streets. You imagine when iwi Māori get together and work a strategy out. You think about that: when we have the North come on, and the East Coast come on, and all around the nation, you’ll get a hīkoi 10, 20 times bigger than yesterday. That’s the key. Our people are tired of it. What they’re seeing here is an attack on our people. These attacks are around the Māori language. These attacks are around Māori health, where they’re shutting down our Māori Health Authority.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, they’re not.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Yes, that’s an absolute attack on Māori. Māori health professionals have been very clear that a Māori Health Authority is important, and these attacks are around the Treaty of Waitangi. It is a shocking strategy from Seymour. Seymour knows nothing about the Treaty. He’s been expelled by his own iwi. He got kicked out of the tribe the other day. You know this, Shane Jones. Mana Epiha kicked him out of the tribe.

Now we have this expert on the Treaty telling us that we must revisit the principles. The principles were not even supported by my uncle Moana Jackson and all the activists that Te Pāti Māori talk about. The principles are in there for the Government.

You know this, Shane Jones. You argued for the principles. You’ve been a supporter of the principles. The principles are there for the Crown so that they can exercise status quo. Tell that stupid Seymour this.

Seymour doesn’t know. He’s this expert! I asked him, “What was your legal training, David Seymour?” He has none. Unlike you, Winston Peters, you know? You’ve got a law background, haven’t you? You’ve got to talk to this Seymour. He knows more than Jim Bolger, he knows more than Jenny Shipley, he knows more than Bill English, he knows more than Jacinda Ardern—he knows more than every Prime Minister who has supported the Treaty principles since 1987! It is a disgrace the way he is approaching this—it’s a disgrace.

This lot over here are not into the principles; they’re into the articles of the Treaty. They’re into tino rangatiratanga. They’re into article 2 of the Treaty.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: They’re into apartheid—they want apartheid.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Does Seymour know what he’s doing? No, it’s not apartheid. [Interruption] Shush, Jonesy!

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order across the House. The Hon Willie Jackson is speaking. It’s OK to have debate, but just be careful at the back.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I’ve got to make it clear to the House about the dangers around this Treaty principles thing, because Winston tried to get a crackpot principles thing up a few years ago, and now he’s trying to do it, I think, through Seymour.

All that the principles talk about is partnership. They talk about good faith. They talk about participation. That’s what the principles are about. They were brought in to stop the Government in terms of privatisation. You know all this, Shane. You were working at the time. They were brought in because this dirty, rotten Government—I think you were representing them at the time, Winston—were looking at privatisation. So they had to bring in something: “What shall we bring in? Oh, we’ll bring in principles.” Māori didn’t want that.

Matike Mai is very clear. They don’t want that. Māori want to talk about the articles. They want to talk about article 2: tino rangatiratanga. So the funny thing here is that Seymour and this Government will be playing into Māori hands, who never supported the Treaty principles anyway. It’s a dangerous, dangerous area, and I’m surprised that the Prime Minister has gone along with this and supported this, given the type of information he’s been given by Anne Salmond, who has walked away from David Seymour, and by experts out there.

But my point is, as was pointed out by Te Pāti Māori, that our people are ready. They’re ready on the streets. There was a great representation yesterday. They will not put up with nonsense from this Government. I said very clearly about three weeks ago that Māori would revolt in the streets. I said there would be civil disobedience—not my choice. I said you’ll get protests worse than the Springbok Tour. That’s all going to come to fruition, all because of this Government—this Government who said they’re going to get rid of division; they’re going to make things equal for everyone. Now we have the most separatist Government we’ve seen in history, the most dangerous Government we’ve seen in history, and we’re committed as a Māori caucus and as a Labour Party to fight it and advance the aspirations and rights of our people. Kia ora tātou.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Thank you, Madam Speaker. As I embark on my first contribution to this 54th Parliament of New Zealand, I’d like to offer my congratulations to the presiding officers’ teams.

This afternoon we saw the Leader of the Opposition, Chris Hipkins, lay out an amendment to the motion that was put that spelt out exactly what it is that we, as a Labour Opposition, will be holding this Government to account on. That is the job of an Opposition—it is to hold the Government of the day to account, and that is what we will be doing. We have seen the trilogy that has emerged through the coalition agreements, the 100-day plan, and today, the Speech from the Throne, the actions and priorities that this Government has spelt out at the beginning of its term. They laid that bare today, and I’ll go into that in some more detail. That is exactly what we will be looking to hold the Government to account on.

First and foremost, this is a Government that says it is going to deliver relief for New Zealanders on the cost of living. The tax cuts are a package looking for a way to be funded. This Government came in with all kinds of—on the campaign trail, the National Party had all kinds of grand plans for how they were going to fund that tax package. But that did not survive the coalition talks. It did not survive the coalition agreements.

So instead, what have we seen? What we have seen from the Government that is sitting on the Treasury benches today is a decision that they are going to roll back world-leading smoke-free legislation—that would have seen smoke-free generations in New Zealand—with a Minister of Finance who thinks it is OK to baldly say that the revenue is needed to fund the tax cuts. I don’t think there are many New Zealanders who voted—thinking they might like a tax cut—that thought they were voting for a tax cut that was premised on increased revenue from cigarettes and rolling back world-leading legislation. That is something that we will be holding this Government to account.

But it is not only looking to increasing rates of smoking to fund tax cuts. We’re also seeing flip-flops on things like the app tax. We were told—all through the election campaign—by the National Party how this was a measure that would impose costs on New Zealanders. But, already, we’re seeing a backflip on that as well. We will be looking for more of these backflips. That is our job, and one that we will prosecute with precision. We will be looking for what it is that this Government is doing to fund the huge fiscal hole that has opened up over their tax package. We’re no longer hearing the Minister of Finance, the Hon Nicola Willis, tell us that it is a fiscally neutral tax package. So we look forward to hearing more detail on how that is going to be funded.

The other thing that we saw today in the Speech from the Throne—I thought what was also telling was what was not mentioned, what did not receive priority. One of the things that I saw that really was missing from this was a decisive plan for how it is that New Zealand will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. What we’ve seen in the 100-day plan and the Speech from the Throne is great lists of things that this Government will undo. But what we are waiting to see is great lists of what this Government will do. That is fair enough; that is the prerogative of the Government of the day to reverse decisions of previous Governments. It is what Governments do. But what is beholden on them is to come forward with their own positive agenda. So if I go through the 100-day action plan, we see it’s stop this, it’s cancel this, it’s reverse that. But what is it that this Government is going to do?

In the area of climate, we’ve heard that they’re going to scrap the Climate Emergency Response Fund, which was money set aside for funding initiatives to reduce New Zealand’s emissions. We know what those initiatives are doing, how many emissions they are saving. The National Party anyway agreed to carbon budgets in the previous term of Government. So what measures are being put in place to replace those emissions? That is something that we will push this Government hard on, because this is a party that signed up to multi-partisan climate legislation that puts in place carbon budgets. So we will want to see what their detailed plan is there.

But what we’re seeing in climate is really just indicative of the great leap backwards that is going to happen under this Government; progress that has been made that is being unwound. The other thing that I didn’t hear in the Speech from the Throne, I haven’t seen in the coalition agreements, and I certainly haven’t seen in the 100-day plan is what the party is going to do in terms of housing. Now, they’ve made grand promises. They’re going to get everyone out of emergency hotels in Rotorua within a year. We’ll be watching that one closely. They’re going to clear the public housing waiting list. We’ll watch that closely. We’ll also be watching to make sure that they didn’t do what they did last time that National was in Government, and that is just kick people off it, and then not let people be put on the public house waiting list.

What we are going to have to see is a programme of work to deliver housing. The previous Labour Government made it easy for this Government. There is funding to deliver more houses right through to June 2025. It is funded. It is in the Budgets. There are 21,000 new public housing places funded by the previous Governments between 2017 and 2023. We delivered over 13,000 of them in the six years that we were in Government; the most public housing of any Government since Walter Nash, I think it was, or did we update that? This is something we will be watching closely to ensure that this Government not only delivers through to 2025, but what are they going to do after that. What is the new commitment for more public housing places? Because on the campaign trail, the National Party certainly would not commit to any more. So we will be watching that.

The other area that we will be watching is: what are we going to do to ensure that we can continue to progress as a country? Now, obviously, we have different ideas on this side of the House than the current Government in terms of what progress looks like. But I think, by anyone’s definition, backsliding, and becoming an international laughing stock is not going to be the way forward for New Zealand. Already, we have seen, at the current climate talks, that New Zealand received the “Fossil of the Day” award. But the thing that marks this out: this was the very first one of the meeting. This was the very first country to be singled out, and it is because of this Government’s winding back the clock to bring back oil and gas exploration. Now, banning new offshore exploration was something that I was proud that we delivered in our Government. It was very much driven by our Labour belief that we have to ensure that we are planning for a secure future for those workers who are engaged in those industries. That is something that we will be monitoring this Government to ensure—what is a sunset industry, whatever tinkering that they make with the rules, that we are seeing globally that this is a sunset industry, and we will be watching to see what provisions are being made for those workers and those communities in areas that are reliant on that for economic wealth.

So it is the job of an Opposition to hold the Government to account. We’ve seen a shambolic start to Government from this three-headed being that is our Government. We’ve seen the two junior partners in the coalition running rings around the Prime Minister. Hold their Government to account—we on this side of the House will do.

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s great to be back in the House and it’s great to be back on this side of the House.

Firstly, Madam Speaker, can I congratulate you on the role that you have taken up. As chief whip to the National Party, it was always your wise counsel that we appreciated so much. For those of us—maybe me—who got ourselves into shtook sometimes, you were outstanding in leading us and helping us. I’ve always appreciated that, and I think you’re going to be outstanding in this role.

To our Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon: I am so excited for Christopher Luxon to be the Prime Minister of this country. His drive, his determination, his commitment to this country—I am very proud to serve under his leadership.

To Chris Hipkins: can I say to you, Chris Hipkins, welcome home. Because no one has ever looked so at home than Chris Hipkins in Opposition. He slotted right back in like it was an old shoe. So welcome home, Chris Hipkins. But his speech today about this coalition was a bit rich. Because if you’re looking for chaos, if you are looking for a lack of direction, look no further than the previous Labour Government.

Labour were a party at the election who stood for nothing. Everything Jacinda had built—or tried to build—over 5½ years: gone. Everything she had tried to stand for: under Chris Hipkins’ leadership, gone. The worst defeat of any Government in this country ever was this previous Government because they stood for nothing. They were confused, they were chaotic, and the people of this country were the ones who suffered because of it. Chris Hipkins’ Prime Ministership was a legacy of backflips, of U-turns, and it’s no wonder the public lost confidence. Because they didn’t know what Labour stood for.

We remember the ex - finance Minister and - Deputy Prime Minister’s social insurance scheme. He worked on it for 2½ years. I think there were more Ministers involved in that scheme than anything else. The vision of Grant Robertson; the vision of Carmel Sepuloni: gone by lunchtime. David Parker, the most senior Minister in Government, threw his toys, gave up his revenue portfolio, because his vision for tax reform: gone by lunchtime under Chris Hipkins. Willie Jackson, the second-highest Māori Minister, worked on broadcasting reform for years. His vision: gone by lunchtime under Chris Hipkins. The bonfire was not so much of a bonfire, but a towering inferno full of Woods, Sepuloni, Parker, Robertson—all of their visions up in smoke. This was a party that stood for nothing and continues to stand for nothing.

National is a party that stands for delivery; we stand for outcomes; we stand for evidence, front-line results, and improving people’s lives. In education, we stand for achievement, ambition, success, and equality of opportunity. We know that education is the great enabler, and we will be relentless in our drive to improve achievement. We will be ambitious—unashamedly ambitious—in the targets that we’ve set for this nation’s children. The most egregious thing that happened under the last Government—in fact, under Chris Hipkins’ watch as Minister of Education—was the fact that our achievement went backwards.

There was a reason that in Chris Hipkins’ speech today, when he listed all his perceived achievements, what did he say about education? “We built some classrooms.” Nothing about improving achievement outcomes for our kids. Nothing about how many kids we got to curriculum. Nothing about how we improved our NCEA results. Nothing about getting our kids to school. And there’s a reason for that. It’s because they failed abysmally.

It’s egregious because it’s not just like they said they’d build a bridge and then they didn’t. These are the lives of our kids; it’s their futures that they have taken away. That is what is so egregious, and we will not, as a Government, stand by and allow that. It should have lit a fire under them when they saw the declining results over time. The Programme for International Student Assessment results last night just confirmed that decline. Under our Government, the trends of decline, the decline in performance, the trends of teacher retention: they stop. They stop under our Government.

I have set a very ambitious target of getting 80 percent of our kids to curriculum by the time they leave intermediate. We owe it to our kids; we owe it to their families to make sure that every child has the opportunity to succeed at high school, to go on to live the life that they want, and take on the world like we know that they can.

For decades, we have had a curriculum that has been very loose; that has been a paper-thin document devoid of knowledge. National will return a curriculum that is knowledge-rich; that lays out the core content knowledge, every year, in order of how it should be taught to ensure that there is consistency across the country. So no matter where you go to school, no matter which school you are in, no matter which teacher you have, you have access to the same core content knowledge as a child. We will ensure there is consistency across the country.

I’ll tell you what: chemistry, bio, and physics will be in the science curriculum. I can’t believe that I actually have to say that. I tell you what: the Government will just say, “Oh, it was just an idea that we had.” It was just a fast draft that they worked on and spent money on for months to remove those core areas out of science. That will not happen under our watch. We will ensure that the methods of teaching literacy and numeracy are based on the science of learning; about how the brain learns. We will ensure that every single child in this country at primary school will learn to read through structured literacy, and we will ensure that structured mathematics is embedded so that the basic concepts of maths are taught in a structured, and with a scope and a sequence, and that those basics are mastered.

Let me just remind this House how Labour proposed to teach mathematics through a critical awareness of wider political and ideological and economic issues, addressing issues of power, social justice, and equality. That will not happen under this Government, I can tell you that. We will ensure that we assess progress of our learners along the way so that we catch our kids before they start to fail, and make sure that they can go on to be at curriculum by the end of year 8 and go on to experience success at high school.

In our first 100 days, we are taking the very first steps on this journey. We are ensuring there will be consistency across the country in terms of reading and writing and maths time spent. We already know that most schools do this, but we are ensuring that it’s formalised and that there is consistency across the country so that every child—no matter where they go to school—has access to an hour a day of reading, writing, and maths.

We will remove the distraction of cellphones in our schools, because we know that the evidence shows that our kids improve their achievement and also their wellbeing. We will start the job of rewriting the curriculum and the Common Practice Model.

Can I say to the hard-working and passionate teachers and principals and teacher aides up and down this country, this Government is here to support you; to provide you the tools, the resources, and the time that you need to do what you do best: helping our young learners to succeed and achieve at school, to grow up to live the life that they want.

When Jan Tinetti said on the news, after Labour’s defeat, that she felt a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders when she lost her job as education Minister, I say it is my great privilege and great honour to take on this huge responsibility: of ensuring that our children experience academic success and we bring it back to the heart of our education system. I will never describe this job as a “weight” or a “burden”.

Can I finish by quoting a great principal that I visited last week—the first week on the job—Iain Taylor at Manurewa Intermediate School. The thing that he says to the learners at his intermediate is, “There is no time to lose.” Every minute counts. It’s a school that doesn’t allow cellphones; that has an hour a day of reading, writing, and maths; it is a school, under his leadership, that values academic success and has high standards for their children. When he says “There is no time to lose” to his young learners, I say that to all my colleagues. We have no time to lose because this job is too important. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Kia ora, Madam Speaker, and congratulations on your role. Given the time we’ve spent together on parliamentary duties, I’m sure we’ll get on fine. I wish I could say the same for Gerry Brownlee. When I was standing in Christchurch Central for the first time, he called me an ambulance chaser and I called him deeply offensive. I don’t chase ambulances anymore, and I’m sure he’s not deeply offensive anymore either. So I’m sure we’ll get on fine as well.

The last speaker, Erica Stanford, said she has no time to lose. And you know what? Maybe that’s why National is trying to turn the clock backwards. I have seen nothing new from the National Party in this incoming Government. I listened to the Speech from the Throne, I got back to my office, and I wanted to get the details right, so I quickly googled, you know, let’s get the Speech from the Throne. And here it turned up, I’ve got it here, I’ve printed it off. And here’s one of the things that this Speech from the Throne says: “for the past several years the number of people employed in the public service has grown at a rate that has not been matched by a commensurate increase in the level of services provided to the public.” Does that sound like Christopher Luxon to you? No, that’s the 2008 Speech from the Throne. So we’ve got a retread—I think he might have used ChatGPT, but he needs to be a bit more careful, because when you google “National Party Speech from the Throne” you basically get the same speech every single time.

So, sure, he’s got in the new speech “spending on public services has increased in recent years,”—it’s just lifted from John Key’s Government. But that’s not John Key that you’ve got over there; that’s a corporate middle manager who himself said today, from that chair, that the Government’s “Under new management”. We don’t want a managerialist approach to Government here; we want a proper, careful governing approach—and this is not what we’re going to see. We’ve got no vision—“Vision Impossible”. And what did the John Key Government say about the Resource Management Act in 2008? “The first stage of this reform will be on improving the consent process”—it will, “streamline and simplify the Act, including priority consenting for projects of national significance.”

Well, if this was a law school essay, it would be thrown out for plagiarism: let’s have a “one-stop-shop established for consenting and promoting processes for … projects of national significance.”—straight out of 2008. Not an original thought in this Speech from the Throne. This is the great leap backwards. You can’t turn the clock back—New Zealand in 2023 is a different country, it’s moved on.

In fact, a lot of what the Key Government did was more progressive than what that Government’s proposing, so you should be utterly and totally ashamed of yourself. And even better—even better; it just gets better and better—regulatory reform. I’m very excited about my spokesperson role in regulatory reform. You know, because “This Government will undertake a regulatory review programme”, John Key said, in 2008. “There’s superfluous regulation. Regulation should be used sparingly.” So what have we got now? A new Government department. This is like Kafka, but worse. It’s written worse than Kafka—a new Government department with a Minister of Regulation to cut regulatory costs, ha ha! It is laughable. You know, so you’re going to have an entire machinery to cut costs. That is absolutely ridiculous.

And here’s a new idea, a regulatory standards bill will be passed—like this one from 2011 that wasn’t passed, or this one from 2021 that wasn’t passed. It’s rubbish. It’s absolutely rubbish. And what’s more, it’s reckless. As Richard Ekins said in the New Zealand Universities Law Review, it’s “reckless lawmaking”—it’s unconstitutional, it politicises the Public Service, and it threatens the rule of law. You can’t take a neoliberal approach to law and enshrine it in legislation. It’s utterly wrong. It’s a neoliberal straight-jacket and it’s been roundly criticised by anyone who knows anything about it.

And as for climate change, you know, way back in 2008, the great thought of the Key Government was “investment in research and development to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” because we’ve got a “unique agricultural emissions profile”. What have we got now? Exactly the same approach. In today’s Speech from the Throne, they will use the “Technological advantages to progress the reduction of emissions including methane by farm animals.” It’s school childish. I cannot believe it.

But you know what, the one I’m going to go to that really bugs me is smoking. Here was the Key Government’s approach on smoking, as agreed with Te Pāti Māori: “Further work will be done on plain package smoking and other anti-smoking initiatives.” Something progressive from the Key Government that made real change in lowering smoking rates. It wasn’t mentioned in the Speech from the Throne, for good reason. Because it’s shameful. It’s utterly shameful that a party with a number of medical doctors in its ranks will vote to increase smoking. The member for Banks Peninsula, Vanessa Weenink, GP, would have had people come into her practice with emphysema caused by smoking addiction. Will she vote for it or will she uphold her Hippocratic Oath that says “Do no harm.”? This is a harmful piece of piece of legislation. It will cause death. Death by taxes is what we’ve got here. It is utterly shameful, embarrassing and I know that that member, the member for Ilam,—

Hon Member: It’s just like KiwiBuild.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: —the Minister himself, will have to swallow this.

It’s nothing like KiwiBuild. KiwiBuild might not have built enough houses, but it didn’t send people to their graves. It’s utterly shameful.

And as for bonding, we’ve got a great new idea. Let’s get people into work in nursing and doctors by helping them pay off their student loans. It might not be a bad idea, because in 2008 John Key said, “We’re going to introduce voluntary bonding schemes based on student loan write-offs.” Wow. I really, you know, I would have thought that this Government could do something better. It’s like déjà vu, but worse, you know?

So why don’t you have an original idea of your own to face the real problems that are facing New Zealand today: the problems of climate change, the problems of housing, the problems of the health system. Not rewarming, reheating, and retreading policies from 2008.

Boot camps. I cannot believe that this is still happening. Back in 2008, John Key said we could have “A new youth court, a Fresh Start programme incorporating military style training and intensive mentoring.” I heard Erica Stanford say she wants an evidence-based approach, and there is evidence on boot camps. The evidence on boot camps is that it disenfranchises and alienates the young people that go there. It makes them network with other disenfranchised young people and it makes reoffending greater and it puts those people into a cycle of crime. If you want to have boot camps, be honest and say you want to have boot camps because you don’t like these people. The people, the families, the communities that they come from are not your communities, so you don’t care about them and you want to shut them off and you want to cart them off and shut them away. Well, don’t do it, because it doesn’t work. It’s not good for you, it’s not good for our community, and it will be bad in the long term for everyone. It’s a reheated, failed policy. So wake up and get on board.

As for consumer credit, again, the Key Government took on consumer credit, started the progress on vulnerable borrowers, started the work that Kris Faafoi finished in terms of loan sharks. And here we’ve got an incoming Government—Andrew Bayly, who seems to be saying that he’s going to loosen lending rules so more money can be given to vulnerable borrowers. Rolling back the protections that John Key started, that Kris Faafoi finished, that means that you don’t have truck shops cruising around South Auckland selling essential goods on 100 percent interest rates. That is, again, a shameful approach.

As for Māori, this Government is intending to do nothing other than roll back: roll back the Treaty, roll back the equity progress that’s been made, roll back the functions of the Waitangi Tribunal—which has a fundamental role in pointing out the missteps of Government—and roll back the Māori Health Authority. Unlike John Key, who in the Speech from the Throne in 2008 said “Māori face”—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired. Thank you, Dr Webb.

Hon MELISSA LEE (Minister for Economic Development): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d like to begin my contribution today by first of all acknowledging you, Madam Speaker. As my colleague the Hon Erica Stanford has actually said earlier, your history with the National caucus is tremendous in the sense that you have been a nurturing senior whip, who actually looked after the newbies coming in. Whoever was actually ever in trouble, you were always very generous with your time and your energy and wise counsel. So I’m sure that you will do tremendous work as the Deputy Speaker.

I just want to comment on the very lacklustre contribution by the Hon Dr Duncan Webb. You know, I love speaking in this House, and often when I speak, I actually tag on to something that the opposite member has actually said, and we can have our, you know, tit for tat, and you feel absolutely energised. I just felt completely drained after that speech because I was like sitting there going, “Oh my goodness, can he just drone on?”—something that my mother would actually say, “Put a mirror in front of you to look at your history, and see what you have done before you criticise someone else.”

On that note, I’d like for him and his colleagues to, potentially, actually think about how, under the previous Labour Government, they had a 65-seat majority—it was a complete majority ever in the history of, you know, MMP, and they haven’t actually achieved anything, really. They haven’t delivered for New Zealanders. They couldn’t even deliver something that I think Michael Wood actually calls—it’s the light rail all the way to the airport down Dominion Road that was supposed to have been completed last year—

Hon Simeon Brown: 2021.

MELISSA LEE: 2021! Oh my goodness, two years ago. It was supposed to have happened in 2021, all the way to Auckland Airport, that they were so happy about and championed that they were going to deliver. They had 65 members, a complete majority in this House; they could not deliver a centimetre of that light rail—it’s a light fail.

KiwiBuild—100,000 KiwiBuild homes they said they were going to deliver. Instead, what did they deliver? 14,000 public servants and 1,400 KiwiBuild homes. It’s nowhere near the 100,000 that they actually said. And I know that Duncan Webb actually talked about emissions, and I think, you know, as somebody mentioned something about a dud, you know, COP28 award that New Zealand actually got; I thought awards were actually given to the country for the performance in the previous year. So I guess it’s actually—I think we need to look at the emission profile of the previous Government’s performance when they have to import so much coal from Indonesia because they couldn’t actually power the generators, so they had to actually import coal from overseas. So the profile for emissions in New Zealand was worse under that Labour Government.

I was thinking that maybe the Rt Hon Gerry Brownlee was going to be sitting on this session, and I had some funny quips about him, but I’ll have to leave that for another time.

I’d like to acknowledge my colleagues—well, actually, acknowledge the people of Mt Albert who came very close to electing me as their MP. They came very close, but not close enough. But I’d like to acknowledge my colleagues the MP for Mt Albert, Helen White, and I have to say the Mt Albert community actually have two list MPs and one MP of the electorate who will actually work for the benefit of the Mt Albert community. I think we are blessed to work there, but I think the people of Mt Albert will be very, very pleased to actually have three MPs who will actually work to their benefit in representing them across the House in this Parliament.

It’s an honour to have made the Cabinet of the coalition Government, and to join the ranks of my distinguished colleagues right across. It’s an absolute privilege, and since this is the first time, I had some Labour colleagues—former Ministers, who have also given me some tips about how I should actually take on my role. I think that’s very kind of them to actually do that, you know, in terms of the overwhelming amount of paperwork that you tend to get buried in, and the ability for Ministers to actually read and actually understand the responsibilities that come with the role. I thank those colleagues from across the other side who have actually been very kind to give me their counsel. So thank you.

I want to acknowledge former Ministers, as I said, who held the portfolios, you know, that I currently hold. But I just want to actually say to Willie Jackson, who was the former Minister for Broadcasting, and broadcasting is no longer the word that we’re using, we’re using Minister for Media and Communications. I can just guarantee that I won’t be wasting $20 million trying to actually dream up something called ANZPM—Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media bill—and literally pay nearly $20 million to consultants who had absolutely no clue about broadcasting. The ANZPM was literally about bringing Radio New Zealand and TVNZ together, and he couldn’t actually give us a realistic answer as to why he was doing that. You know, there was no reason to bring Radio New Zealand and TVNZ together, and they weren’t going to deliver for New Zealanders something that they didn’t already deliver separately as Radio New Zealand and TVNZ.

There is so much that we have to do, and, you know, I’m looking forward to working very closely with the Under-Secretary for Media and Communications, Jenny Marcroft. We look to address a wide host of matters during this parliamentary term. As a Minister, I have to think about the delegation, but I started off talking about her passions and where she would like to work, so I think we’re going to work really, really closely, and really well to deliver better outcomes for the media and communications sector.

As the Prime Minister the Rt Hon Christopher Luxon stated, our 100-day plan is focused on rebuilding the economy, easing the cost of living, restoring law and order, and delivering better public services. These are things that New Zealanders voted for and expect us to deliver. Unlike the previous Government who couldn’t actually deliver on, as I said, light rail, couldn’t really deliver on ANZPM, couldn’t really deliver on KiwiBuild—or anything, actually. They didn’t deliver on anything when they had a majority. I think that’s dire indictment on their ability to deliver.

So we won’t take any advice on that delivery aspect of the work that they did, but I think, on this side of the House, we know that we have a commitment that we have made to the voters of this country that we will deliver together as a coalition Government. And I know that my colleagues actually are going to be working really, really hard. I know that Ministers have actually been pulling like really, really long hours. Like, I didn’t realise that I had to get up at 4 o’clock in the morning, and sometimes it’s actually going until 2 o’clock in the morning—but hey, we’re on to it, right?

I think we need to get on with the job of delivering for New Zealand that they expect, and they voted for, and I look forward to working hard with my colleagues to deliver that. I would like to acknowledge particularly my caucus colleagues, actually. They’re all amazing, but I want to actually pick off a couple of very special ones. Dr Carlos Cheung—it’s amazing that he won Mt Roskill. I want to actually welcome back Paulo Garcia—it’s amazing that he managed to get New Lynn, which is a Labour seat. I’d like to acknowledge Rima Nakhle—amazing—you know, three ethnic MPs. I’m sorry, I’m the worst one, I didn’t actually win Mt Albert—you guys won a Labour seat. I didn’t quite make it, but what a turnaround it was. I literally, literally came very close. But having said that, the member for Mt Albert has actually said to me that we will work together for the benefit of Mt Albert, and I hope to keep her word—I hope to make her keep her word, and I promise that I will do the same.

I look forward to working with everyone across the House, and I know that sometimes it has been frustrating in Opposition when you try and actually go see a Minister and they say, “Yeah we’ll take good ideas” and they never do. I’m saying, if you have good ideas, come and see me. I’ll listen to you. Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The House will suspend for the dinner break and will resume at 7:30 p.m. to continue with the Address in Reply debate.

Sitting suspended from 5.57 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Members, the interrupted debate on the Address in Reply is resumed.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Tuatahi, ka kōrero au i te reo Māori. [First, I will speak Māori.]

Just to advise the House, I’ll speak in Māori at first if you choose to listen or otherwise.

Tuatahi, māku e mihi atu ana ki a tātou katoa.

Ki roto i ōku tūnga katoa i tēnei Whare ko tāku mahi tuatahi kia mihi poroporoaki atu ki te hunga mate kua riro atu ki te pō.

Anā, ki roto i ngā rangi tata kua pahure ake nei, ko Tūroa Royal, ko tōku pāpā, a Moka Puru, ā, i te rangi nei ko tōku matua, a Waitai Tūoho.

Nō reira rātau ki a rātau.

Ka whakahokia mai ngā rārangi kōrero ki a tātou e ōku rangatira. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[First, I’d like to acknowledge us all.

In all of my speeches in the House, the first thing I do is acknowledge those who have recently passed.

In the very recent days that have passed, they include Tūroa Royal, my elder, Moka Puru, and today, my uncle Waitai Tūoho.

May you rest peacefully.

I would now like to return the relevant topics of conversation, my esteemed colleagues. I thank you all greatly.]

Kia ora and greetings to the House. I’ve become accustomed, just as I do on the marae, in my chance to contribute to the House, I always start to acknowledge those who have passed on and I can see everybody in this House who just acknowledges how special that is. When we consider our time in this House, we think that we do walk in those people’s footsteps, so it’s important to acknowledge them.

Madam Speaker, I want to acknowledge you and of course your colleagues who preside over our House. It is indeed a huge honour that’s been put upon you all to make sure that the House certainly lives up to the expectations that many have already spoken about today, calling and describing this place as an august institute. So it’s important that we acknowledge you all and wish you all the best through this sitting term. I also want to acknowledge all of the new members who have come into the House, in particular our own on this side. I do want to acknowledge my new colleagues, Cushla Tangaere-Manuel, who comes in from the mighty East Coast, winning the seat of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. I also want to acknowledge our very good friend down in the south, Reuben—

Hon Grant Roberston: Davidson.

Hon PEENI HENARE: Davidson, that’s right, yes. I keep confusing him with Kelvin Davis but Reuben Davidson, yes, who’s a lot better looking than my former form 2 teacher, Kelvin Davis, and I want to acknowledge them both because coming into, as I did in 2014, as a small number into an Opposition—the Labour Party—it was a difficult time but also a very exciting time. So I want to acknowledge them and of course new members right across the House. I want to acknowledge also my colleagues from the Māori Party. Why? Because, sadly, I didn’t hold on to my seat but I want to acknowledge them who have received the mandate from Tāmaki Makaurau and a number of the other Māori seats, and I acknowledge them.

I also want to acknowledge my two beautiful tuāhine here, my relatives from the far north: Hūhana Lyndon and Darleen Tana. We come from the same whakapapa. In fact, if colleagues in the House are interested and you looked at Te Tiriti o Waitangi, you’ll look at the first name right at the top; it’s Kawiti. The three of us are descendants of Kawiti. So it’s really special to have my tuāhine, my relatives, here in the House joining me and walking in the illustrious footsteps of our ancestors. Tēnā koutou. Kia ora tātou.

If I can offer any advice to the new members, it is: it’s always true, the only time you get to say what you want is on your maiden speech, so good luck, and the only other time is in your valedictory speech. I say this as an Opposition member: I hope that for you that comes a bit sooner than later. But I do want to acknowledge all of the new members, and I also want to take this opportunity to apologise. What I witnessed earlier in the House isn’t the House that I think represents our people. Bringing a bit of decorum to our debate and making sure that we actually are here to debate what matters to our people. It’s far better than a slanging match. I apologise for the new members because we don’t want you to see that as the example for you to follow into the future. Let the debate be robust. Let the debate be about the facts and the matters that are important to our people. But let’s always keep it correct. Let’s always keep good decorum in our house. Tēnā koutou, welcome.

I want to start my contribution, after all of the thanks and all of the praises across the House, by reading something very brief, if you’ll indulge me. The Māori people are opposed to any sort of referendum or process in this, our House of democracy, for the obvious reason that we are numerically inferior to our other treaty partner. If taken, the result is a foregone conclusion. The choice for the Government is quite clear: to honour or dishonour, between treachery and good faith, and that we have at last reached the dividing line which makes or tarnishes a nation worthy of the name. Now I wish those eloquent words were mine, but they were indeed the words of my grandfather, the late Sir James Hēnare, who in September of 1988—in Parliament House, here—addressed the members of Parliament and used those words 35 years ago. Here we are today debating the very same thing. After years and years of progress between the Treaty partners, progress for Māori and our communities, our country moving forward into a bicultural and a multicultural society—and sadly, here we are 35 years later. It would appear that my grandfather’s words continue to ring in the halls of Parliament. My hope is that they continue to ring in the ears and the hearts of the members of this House, in order for us to make sure we have a debate moving forward on the issues that matter and that we do not take our country back into the past.

That is the premise and the basis for the rest of my contribution here today, and that is to say that the Government has made very clear their agenda for the nation. However blunt that might be to some of the ears, in particular my colleagues on this side, it has become very clear to me that a very regressive Māori policy agenda is going to beset this nation, and I want to make sure that we are here for the fight. I want to make sure, as many members across the House have already said, we look towards scientific proof, we look towards the facts, we look towards good research in order to make good decisions.

I was but one of the former Ministers from this side of the House who was part of the architecture of Te Ata Whai Ora, the Māori Health Authority. The reason we did that was based on sound research over many, many decades. In fact, the person who I’d like to call the godfather of Māori health, Sir Mason Durie, was the leader of that particular kaupapa and initiative—not me, not the Minister of Health in the day, but actually Sir Mason Durie. In fact, we went to his house and, as you do when you go into a home you take goods, so I took some muttonbird and some pāua, just to grease the old man up a little bit, but more importantly to make sure a man who has dedicated his life to ensuring Māori health in this country was able to work with us and lead this particular initiative.

It makes me sad to think that Te Aka Whai Ora has not been given a chance; that Te Aka Whai Ora is not just about the delivery of equitable services in our community, but more importantly—and we’ll approach this when we come to the debate—it is about holding the Pākehā system or the actual health system in this country to account, making sure that that system can continue to deliver better services for our people. Because what became abundantly clear during the COVID-19 pandemic was that it didn’t serve our people. The data wasn’t there in order for us to reach Māori communities. It wasn’t there in order for us to reach rural communities, not just Māori communities. We called it the “postcode lottery of health” and that is very clear when we look into how we on this side—the Labour Party in power—actually made significant changes to the health system. Of course we want a health system that delivers for all. My plea for this House, and we’ll come into this matter when we debate Te Aka Whai Ora, is that we do give it a chance; we make sure that it does meet the well-worked-through intentions of Sir Mason Durie and many others before him to give something equitable for Māori healthcare in this country.

The other one is of course smoking, and I heard today in the House many people say, “It’s just smoke and mirrors.” Well, from where I’m sitting in a Māori community, it’s more smoke and less mirror and it’s really sad to hear that. You know, I grew up in a household that smoked and it was just one of those intergenerational things. I don’t smoke and I’m proud of that, and my tamariki don’t smoke, my nephews and nieces, they don’t smoke—simply because of the changes that a brave Government in their day made many years ago. It would be a real shame to see that reversed. But we’re here, on this side of the House, to hold the Government to account, and I’m fortunate to sit amongst many great members of this House, many who have served as cabinet Ministers, many who have worked really hard in their communities, and it will be our job as the Opposition to make sure we continue to hold the Government to account. And they can bet that we will do that. We will do that by discussing the facts; we will do that by discussing, of course, the sentiments and the feelings amongst our communities that we bring and represent here in this House.

Finally from me, I am looking forward to this term of Government—this is my fourth term here in this House—continuing to serve Māori, continuing to serve our country, and may we all look towards making sure that this country does move forward together, and certainly doesn’t leave anybody behind. Thank you.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Tēnā koe. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to start by acknowledging the legacy and the shoulders that we stand on of all the people who have built our movement, the Green Party. That has enabled us to return as incumbent MPs and to bring our biggest caucus ever, and I want to say just how exciting it is to be working with some of the best organisers and campaigners in this country to work towards a fairer future.

Today, we’re here to discuss the Government’s agenda and what was said in the Speech from the Throne. I think there is as much being said when there is a speech where something is omitted, and something that was not said in the Speech from the Throne was anything in relationship explicitly to poverty. In fact, the words “poverty” and “inequality” did not get a single mention in today’s speech.

We are talking about the communities who have been underserved by successive Governments, who have been kept in poverty by political decisions from politicians in this House—from people who have said that countless families deserve to live below the poverty line. The myth that has been spoken for far too long in this place is that all it takes is hard work to get ahead. What has been said by Christopher Luxon in referencing someone else’s maiden speech in his speech, which was that all it takes is to have good parents, is a myth, because, actually, we have designed a House that is designed to keep those families in poverty and that has been designed to keep disabled people living below the breadline—and I see that people are going “No”, and nodding and rejecting what I am saying, but look at the numbers. Look at the evidence. Look at how much someone earns when they’re on a benefit, and then match it up with the median rents across the country. Tell me that the incomes that we’ve decided to give to people who deserve support are livable—they are not.

These are decisions and it doesn’t have to be that way, and yet while there was talk about reducing red tape and subsidies for landlords, there was nothing in today’s speech about how we’re going to eliminate poverty, let alone continue meeting our child poverty reduction targets, which were—yeah—a first of a kind, but were not even ambitious enough to actually commit to eliminating poverty. They simply were there to reduce poverty, and it didn’t even get a single mention.

The Green Party has a proud legacy of working and fighting to end poverty. It has been our mahi in this place from previous MPs that secured those child poverty reduction targets and that secured increases to benefits and the removal of some of the punitive sanctions, and yet despite poverty not getting a mention in today’s speech, if we trawl through the coalition documents, we can find what’s in this Government’s agenda. We can find that this Government intends to introduce punitive sanctions—sanctions that have no evidence of working.

I think back to 2017, when we were finally having a more sensible public discussion on sanctions on sole mothers. We were talking about 17,000 mothers who were being sanctioned at that time for not naming the father of their children. The Government at the time was unable to produce evidence that those sanctions were working towards supporting whānau, or towards supporting people to actually have a relationship with their partner, or the father or mother or caregiver, of the children. There was no evidence that punishing beneficiaries or that leading them further into poverty was working towards the benefit of anyone in our society, and all it was doing was criminalising the same people that were being scapegoated.

So all the talk about getting tough on crime is simply a scapegoat. It’s a dog whistle that hides the fact that this Government will be criminalising people, because when you strip people of their only legal source of surviving, you put people in a position where their only way to survive is to commit a crime, and so this Government is actually working against the goal of reducing crime by creating a generation of people who will have no means of surviving.

When they say that they want to get tough on people on the benefit by putting those obligations on jobseeker beneficiaries, they should spend some time talking to those people who attend those work seminars. Do they even actually support people into meaningful employment? No. The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) in Wellington has been unable to even keep track, for example, of the number of people that attend those seminars. MSD has been unable to actually quantify the wages that those people go on to, and yet successive Governments have been eager to punish people who are not deemed to go into the types of jobs that policies from Governments have chosen to push people into.

By sanctioning those people who you deem to not meet those obligations, you will be leaving them without any source of income or any ability to pay their rent. Shame on this Government and their agenda to wage a war on the poor. The Green Party will be working to eliminate poverty, not to continue to increase it, as this Government is intending to do.

For all the talk of this Government about personal responsibility and people needing to learn to make good decisions, it’s quite frankly insulting when the goal of this Government on those on the lowest incomes is to monitor their expenses more closely, and to give people less agency and less opportunity to make those decisions in life. Forcing people to go to Work and Income, to queue at Work and Income, to prove every single expense in order to get a food grant—a measly food grant that has not even been properly increased in countless terms—is insulting. It’s both a waste of time for the person sitting at the Work and Income office and it’s degrading for the families that have to queue up just to survive. This is a Government that, by omitting the words “poverty” and “inequality” from the Speech from the Throne and from its opportunity to set an agenda, has told the whole country that its interests lie in protecting landlords’ ability to evict people without any reason and to give them more money.

I also want to reflect as a migrant to Aotearoa on the fact that for far too long, the Government parties—all of them—have chosen to pit our communities against each other. I don’t want to hear any celebration of the new migrant members of the Government’s caucus, who are complicit—who are completely complicit—in driving a divide between our migrant communities and Māori. What many of us know is that our struggles for liberation are absolutely connected and that the only people—the only people—who have something to lose from our migrant communities by strengthening the ability for people to recover their reo and to actually have a partnership approach in the way that we do things are the people who have gained from the direct exploitation of those communities.

As migrants, we should be working towards supporting our companions and their struggles for liberation, whether it’s in Aotearoa, whether it’s in Palestine, or whether it’s in West Papua. By standing together towards the common cause of taking climate action, ending poverty, and having a true Te Tiriti partnership, we’ll be able to actually create the society that this Government proposes to represent and to aspire towards.

In pre-colonial times, immigration policy was not based on the exploitation of workers, and I did want to quote Professor Khylee Quince, the dean of law at Auckland University of Technology, who spoke at length about how in pre-colonial times immigration policy was actually led by concepts around manaaki, aroha, and utu—policies that we actually have a lot to learn on, and, actually, it could be time for the Crown to think more about devolving power and resources so that those values can be restored.

I’ll end with a whakatuakī which I think represents the solidarity and the connection that we can build with one another, rather than the division that this Government wants to create with one another.

Mā whero, mā pango ka oti ai te mahi. Kia ora. [With unity, the task can be achieved. Kia ora.]

Hon JAN TINETTI (Labour): Madam Speaker, can I start by offering my congratulations to you. As someone who hails from the West Coast, it is wonderful to see a fellow West Coaster in that chair, so congratulations, Madam Speaker, and I wish you all the best in it. And can I also say congratulations, especially to all the new members in this House—and what you bring to this place. It is something I was thinking about listening to the speeches today, but also in the swearing-in yesterday—of my time six years ago, and what a very special time that is. And so I just want to reiterate my congratulations to you, and I look forward to working with you over the next term of Parliament.

That’s where, unfortunately, I have to sort of take a little bit of a diversion, now, because listening to that Speech from the Throne today; devoid of vision—

Hon Simon Watts: Tell us about education!

Hon JAN TINETTI: Just wait, I am going to talk about education, and I will happily talk about education and the smoke and mirrors that we are seeing coming from the current Government at this point in time, because what we heard about today was a turning back of the clock. New Zealand is going backwards under this Government and will go backwards and not forwards. Do you know, I actually had a time before, when I was listening to some of the speeches, that I thought, “Do the Government realise they’re in Government now, or are they still thinking they’re in Opposition?”—because their speeches were more about us, and more about Labour than what they’re going to do, and that is what I have heard all day: I have heard only about us, repealing, and going backwards. I haven’t heard anything about going forwards whatsoever. And I’ve heard a whole reinvention of history where facts have been slightly put out there and maybe not quite as the reality is—nothing about the proud record of this Government.

So let me remind you, Madam Speaker, of just a few things that have come through from the previous Government. In jobs: more Kiwis in work than ever before. All of the wonderful things happening in health: things like three million free prescriptions; the increase in Pharmac’s funding by 51 percent. Child poverty: 77,000 fewer children in poverty than when we took office. Climate change: emissions have fallen over the last three consecutive years.

And let’s talk about education. Let’s talk about early childhood, because have we heard much about early childhood from the current Government? No, we haven’t. The previous Government strengthened curriculum in early childhood. We strengthened oral language provision, because we know that that’s where it starts: it starts with early childhood. It isn’t about saying “Learning and education starts at age five or six”, it starts well before that—in fact, it starts at birth, and some say prior to that. We put an early learning action plan in place—something that the previous National Government had got rid of. We worked towards pay parity and because of the absolute complexity around that, we committed to a funding review—I’ve heard nothing about that in this Government’s plans. In fact, as I say, I’ve heard nothing, or very little, about early childhood.

Let’s move to the schooling. We put in an evidence- and research-based strategy developed by experts on literacy, communication, and mathematics because we know that it takes time to turn around the results that we have been seeing declining over decades. We made certain that we had the experts there to bring in that evidence-based and research strategy, and implementation had well started. I heard the Minister saying just recently that, “We need to make certain that teachers know what they are teaching.” Well, guess what! That’s exactly what the refresh of the curriculum has been doing, so teachers know what to teach and when, but that Government does not deal with facts at all.

We have put in place—or had put in place, ready to be released—the common-practice model, which has the core teacher requirements. I challenge that to be released now. That work is right there, ready to go. Teachers are crying out for it, it is already there. But what have I heard from the Government? They are bringing in one hour of teaching of reading, writing, and mathematics every day. Nothing about professional development for teachers—to increase the professional development so they know what they’re teaching, when they’re teaching it, how to teach, and how to be better teachers—nothing about that. We’ll just say, “Oh, we’re going to bring in one hour of teaching of reading, writing, and mathematics every day.”, and even the sector are finding that confusing. Does it mean integration; does it not mean integration? I’ve even heard that the Minister has been saying, “Well, most schools do teach an hour a day of reading, writing, and mathematics; it’s just the odd few that don’t.” So what’s the problem that we’re trying to solve here?

The banning of cellphones, which schools have been able to do for ever—

Hon Grant Robertson: They don’t trust schools.

Hon JAN TINETTI: They’re obviously not trusting of schools. But when I do ask schools around the country—if there are schools that haven’t banned cellphones—“Why don’t you?”, they reply “Oh, because there is a bit of a digital divide there and cellphones are a way that we’re able to breach that.” So why is nothing being done about that? We’re just going to put a whole ban on cellphones in that time. I think the real smoke and mirrors are the one hour of teaching reading, writing, and mathematics and the banning of cellphones, to take the real focus away from what really is insidious, and has been hidden in the documents so far that we have seen: the assessment, the measuring progress along the learning journey. Well, guess what! That sounds like national standards mark two, and how well did that work out for the Government last time? What a failure for our kids, and they are still feeling the outfall from that, even today. Those young people that started under National’s standards had the worst start in education that any young person could ever have, and that’s what this Government wants to bring back. It’s the smoke and mirrors around charter schools, an attack on public education—we will create this system over here and fund that, but let’s not put the resourcing over here into the majority of young people who are in the public system.

But what I’m really concerned about is that—and here is sort of the irony that can happen sometimes—the statement that has been made in both coalition agreements and in the Speech from the Throne today, to refocus the curriculum on academic achievement and not ideology, including the removal and replacement of the relationships and sexuality guidelines. Well, first of all, what are charter schools if they are not ideology? That’s exactly what charter schools are—exactly; they are exactly ideology. Secondly, I would ask what is ideology in the relationships and sexuality guidelines? I challenge anybody to show me the ideology. My thoughts are that they are going to say that it is “gender diversity.” Go tell that to our community who are seeing themselves represented—but saw themselves represented in the 2015 guidelines that were released under the then National Government. The 2020 guidelines brought a bigger focus on to consent, not gender diversity—gender diversity was already there. And I can remember speaking to the Hon Nikki Kaye in about 2018 and her talking of pride of bringing those guidelines into the education curriculum. But here, we’ve had this flip-flop already, coming through and saying that we’re going to make sure that they’re age-appropriate.

Well, the Government need to go through and make certain that they read those before they make such rash statements, because they are only harming communities who are already under threat and in a minority in this country. And it just beggars beyond belief that those statements have been made. People are getting upset about what isn’t in there rather than what is, but what I want to finish with is what has not been mentioned by this Government: I said early childhood education, I’m going to say learning support, Māori education, Pacific education—where are they in this Government’s plan? They are being let down.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. May I join the other brownnosers and acknowledge your appointment as Assistant Speaker and hope that it may pay dividends in years to come! But, in all seriousness, I am very pleased for you, because you have been a solid contributor to this House and you really deserve this, along with Barbara Kuriger, Greg O’Connor, and, of course, the Rt Hon Gerry Brownlee—delighted with the group of presiding officers. To those who are new to this House: welcome. You will enjoy yourselves. We did, and we will. And to those who have returned: congratulations. Because it truly is an honour to be here.

I do want to start my first contribution since the election by acknowledging Mike Butterick, who won the Wairarapa seat. I think that’s only right.

Hon Member: What a great man.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: Yep; that’s right. Thank you—thank you. What they may not have picked up at home is that the reason members were clapping is because they said I’ll win it back next year! So I appreciate your support. Thank you for that!

Today is a special day. It is a day when we have the Speech from the Throne. It is a day, one might think, that members of the Government might celebrate—celebrate the speech that outlines what they intend to do over three years—and the time in which to do that is the Address in Reply. Have we heard that? Have we, my foot! We have heard three contributions from the Government, and each and every single one of them slagged us off. They talked about what we did, and I think I know why: because all they’re going to do is reverse what we did. They are going to bring this country backwards, and if they were proud of what they’re going to do, I reckon they’d want to talk about it. But they don’t.

I wonder why they’re not talking about tax cuts that don’t add up. I wonder why no one on that side has mentioned te reo Māori. I wonder why no one has mentioned smoking. What about fair pay agreements? They campaigned on those. They’re supposed to be proud of those. I wonder if the reason why they haven’t mentioned those is because, within the first week, their Cabinet had leaked the document to the media that contained advice that said very clearly that repealing fair pay agreements would disproportionately disadvantage women, Māori, Pasifika, youth, and low-wage workers. I wonder if that’s why they’re not mentioning it. Why have they not mentioned that they are going to bring in a rule that allows employers to sack people within 90 days without giving any single reason? Why? Why haven’t they mentioned that, because of what they plan to do, ratepayers will face bills that they simply cannot afford? If they had mentioned those, they would be being upfront and being consistent with what was in the Speech from the Throne today. None of them has mentioned it, and I would wager that not many of them will.

When you serve in this House, be it for a short time or a long time, there are occasional moments when you reflect on what you have achieved, and I am sure that, when our time collectively is finished in this House, we will talk about what we did when we were members of Parliament, be it with our children, our grandchildren, or, for some of us, great-grandchildren. And I wonder if we would be proud, when we spoke to those young people, if we told them that we got elected on the basis of talking about doing something about climate change but, when we had the opportunity, we actually took away the things that were working. I wonder if we would be proud if we told those young people that on the one hand we said that we should encourage te reo Māori but then we removed the measures that actually did just that—actually punished those workers who should be rewarded for having a particular skill that is in demand, that requires them to work more hours and do more tasks than other workers because they speak Māori, and they don’t like it. And if they take exception to that, I would ask them to refer to some of the statements and some of the policies that they have signed up to.

Riddled throughout the coalition agreement are things that will push Māori backwards. The reason this Government wants to get rid of the Māori Health Authority is because of the first word in those three words. That’s it: “Māori”. They know it works. It’s been proven to work. They know that it’s backed up by stats. They know it’s backed up by evidence, but they don’t like it because it focuses on Māori. Where’s the talk of repealing the rural health strategy? That’s what I want to know. Where’s the talk of that? They won’t do that, because they know that rural people vote for them, and they know that Māori people don’t, and they know that they can kick them, and I think it’s bloody disgraceful.

Fair-pay agreements will help people’s wages go up. It is proven. Their advice says so. It is the reason why our wages in New Zealand and Australia are so far apart. They don’t care—they don’t care—because the people that back them don’t want to pay higher wages. They don’t care about low-wage workers, and if they take exception to that, don’t bring in policies that will hurt them. Fair-pay agreements advantage large businesses and disadvantage people who work for a living. But guess what! The vast majority of New Zealanders work for a living. So how on earth can they stand up and say that they are the party for New Zealanders? The proof is in the pudding, and in three years’ time, New Zealanders will see what it is that they’ve actually brought in here. Because they’ve campaigned on broad promises, but what is in the coalition agreement is actually the guts of it, and the guts of it is going to hurt people. It’s going to hurt workers. It’s going to hurt women. It’s going to hurt Māori, Pasifika, and young people. It’s going to hurt the majority of New Zealanders.

They have an opportunity now to actually do what’s right, to back New Zealanders and be upfront with Kiwis and say, “We can’t deliver tax cuts, because we overpromised. We can’t do what we said we were going to do, because our numbers don’t add up.” They didn’t add up before the election; they certainly don’t add up after they’ve given Shane Jones $1.2 billion and given the ACT Party interest deductibility backdated to April. None of that was campaigned on. So when you’ve got a $10 billion hole in your transport budget and at least a $2 billion hole in your tax budget, and then you add on $1.2 billion for Shane Jones and God knows how many millions for the ACT Party, that’s a massive hole—a massive hole that Nicola Willis is desperately trying to put on us, even though the thing she’s pointing to was already out there in the public domain, and two of them are already factored into their fiscal plan. That’s not going to wash. New Zealanders aren’t dumb. They know a fiddle when they see it, and that is exactly what they’re trying to do. Their numbers don’t add up. They cannot deliver what they’ve promised, and they’re trying to shift the blame, but Kiwis will see right through it. Kiwis will see right through that.

What we’re seeing right from the start is a pushback on what has to be the shortest honeymoon in a new Government’s history, be it leaks or be it policies that no one campaigned on but they decided to do, not for health reasons but because it gave them money. It plugged the hole. It made the massive hole in their fiscal plan just a little bit smaller, and what it will mean by reversing the smokefree rules that have been coming in is that, for those young people who wouldn’t have taken up smoking, some of them will, and some of them will die from it. We know smoking kills. Successive Governments, National and Labour led, have done things to decrease the number of people smoking, and just like climate change and just like wages and just like the promises they’ve made to working people and the elderly and women, it all sounds good, but when you look at what the detail is, none of it helps. This is exactly the same. On one hand they say that they want to discourage people from smoking and on the other, because it’s convenient and it brings money in, they actually scrap the things that will help.

It is shameful, and I think, when that comes in, in years to come, they’ll look back on that, and I wonder whether the members opposite, when they are speaking to young relatives and reflecting on their time in Parliament, will mention that. I wonder whether they will think back on that with pride and say it was financially and fiscally convenient to change rules that we knew deep down people would die from. It’s a disgrace.

Hon CHRIS PENK (Minister for Building and Construction): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. May I start by congratulating you personally, as well as your fellow presiding officers who have been elected to this higher office. As a partner in crime in the last term of Parliament, I’m delighted to see that you’ve risen to this lofty station and hope that my remarks now will stand us in good stead as you make rulings throughout the parliamentary term. Congratulations, too—if I may be so bold as to bring you into the debate—on the election win that you had in the area that you now represent.

I wish to join others who have congratulated our new members of Parliament from across the House—both from the National side, of whom there are many; and also from those of other parties based in the same area that I am fortunate enough to continue to represent: my friend Jenny Marcroft, of course, returning to Parliament; also Hūhana Lyndon of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand. I also wish to acknowledge the maiden speeches that were made earlier tonight by my colleagues James Meager and Katie Nimon—look forward very much to the maiden statements of other members of the class of 2023.

I do wish, also, to acknowledge, particularly, Dr Weenink and Mr Costley—new colleagues. They have very recently served, in one case; and for a long period of service, in both cases, in the New Zealand Defence Force. So I’d like, as the newly minted Minister for Veterans, to thank them for their service, as well as all of our New Zealand Defence Force personnel. I know that the defence Minister, the Hon Judith Collins, would wish to do so, likewise. I do also wish to acknowledge—as we’re being reflective about this wonderful institution of Parliament and even the building itself—we stand here in a war memorial with such auspicious but moving reminders of the sacrifice made by so many New Zealanders. I look around and I see Afghanistan, I see Timor-Leste, Vietnam, and many other reminders of the history that we should always bear in mind when we speak in this House, exercising our freedom of expression and so forth.

I also wish, of course, to congratulate the right honourable Prime Minister for the formation of Government. I’d also like to congratulate him on his choice of ministry, in the case of an excellent Minister for Building and Construction, and, as I said, veterans and various others. I do actually want to speak about some of the things that I would like to attempt to do in in those various portfolios and areas going forward.

It is important, however—notwithstanding Mr McAnulty’s speech—that we do reverse some of the unpopular policies that have been put forward by the Government in the last six years. Indeed, we campaigned on those; we gained a mandate on the basis of doing so. It would be strange, and indeed anti-democratic, were we not to follow through with those policies—so we will. So when Mr McAnulty says that we can’t go through and provide tax relief, I say to him: not only is it not true that we can’t; we should, we can, and indeed we will.

So on a positive note, then, in terms of the various briefings that I’ve received so far in relation to portfolios, I note that there are, in some cases, longstanding issues that face our country. Other ones are more in the category of things that have been somewhat let slide these past six years, or certainly, particularly, the last three in a couple of cases.

So in relation to the veterans’ affairs portfolio, major question marks remain in relation to even such a basic and fundamental question of what is a veteran, what length of service, what type of service—operational or otherwise—should qualify a person who puts himself forward in service of this country to be regarded as such. Some valuable work was undertaken two terms ago, led by the Hon Ron Mark, who was very passionate about this work, and consultation was undertaken in relation to the idea of a covenant—or a kawenata—to reflect that special bond of service between New Zealand and these fine women and men who put themselves forward. That work needs to be progressed.

Frankly, we let down people who have served our country if we don’t come to some manner of conclusion in relation to that question, as well as very specific questions about how we regard the service of those who witnessed nuclear testing at various different places around the globe. That’s a question that the Government will need to resolve in terms of how we recognise the presumptive injuries that have come about for people who were placed in that terrible position some decades ago.

In building and construction, we’ve seen far too little progress lately on the question of how we can allow the building sector to be more productive, less bound by regulation; while acknowledging, of course, where safety is an issue of workers, but of course in terms of the abilities of buildings to be safe and secure environments too. Of course, there is a balance to be struck there. But I’m pleased to say that along with other aspects of the Government’s programme in removing the wasteful industry transformation plans, or ITPs, likewise in the building construction sector, while we commit very firmly and strongly to talking with the sector, we won’t do it through a mechanism that has not been productive at all in the way that the Government had intended. We will save the taxpayer money by doing so, and therefore we will make a contribution to reducing those cost of living pressures that we rightly talked about during the campaign and on which basis New Zealanders have given us a mandate to go forward and govern.

Other issues, I’ll leave perhaps for another day—perhaps as early as question time tomorrow; I might be fortunate enough to be asked a question about these, so sort of just throwing it out there in case the Leader of the House is watching.

Arena Williams: Are you on Regs Review?

Hon CHRIS PENK: I’m not on the Regulations Review Committee.

Arena Williams: You love it!

Hon CHRIS PENK: I know, I know, I know. Ms Williams has asked if I might be on the Regulations Review Committee and I’m so committed to the idea.

Arena Williams: Tell us what it does.

Hon CHRIS PENK: Ask what it does. Well, look, we’ve only got 3½ minutes. Even though, in a funny kind of way, if I were to talk about it, it would seem like a lot longer. Anyway.

So we are in a phase, though, actually, in all seriousness, of discovering—as every new Government does when they come in and they find exactly the state of things and, on occasion, that might be better; more often they will be worse. But, actually, I do have a very serious point to make in relation to this. It concerns at least one school in my electorate. It’s Kaipara College, which has had planned for many years a major new innovation centre. They need the space; this is an important project, but it turns out that through considerable mismanagement, over-promising, under-delivering, announcements being favoured over the hard reality of delivery, and a mismatch of rhetoric and reality, this project now appears not to be able to be funded given the state of the books that have been left with us. I’ve sought advice. The Minister of Education, I’m very pleased to say, is seeking briefings to understand how the situation has risen, how it might be resolved.

Can I just make a plea on behalf of that community, of which the school is a really important part, and of which this project, in turn, is a very important new innovation, as I say: we simply need to be non-ideological in the way that we commit to providing services and facilities to New Zealanders. So if it is able to be the case that we can have this built in a way that is perhaps through a public-private partnership programme or some other creative mechanism of ensuring that the kids of that area get what they need to actually be in school, learning and so on, then we should absolutely go ahead and do it. So my plea to all concerned is that they recognise the importance of that. I know the Minister of Education does. I’m very grateful that we have, in Erica Stanford, someone who gets it; someone who will be deeply committed to those.

With all due respect to Ms Tinetti, when she talks about issues and decries our focus on ensuring that at least one hour of math, reading, and writing takes place every day, well, it’s not very much help if we don’t have school classrooms in which to be able to actually conduct those. So I say to her: it would be helpful for her to reflect on her legacy and her Government’s legacy.

We’ve heard a lot about smoke and mirrors—no doubt it’s in the talking points; that’s fine. But, actually, some of those Government Ministers should be looking in a mirror and reflecting, quite literally, upon the cause of some of the malaise across this country and including, particularly, as I say, in the education system. It’s an absolute crying shame. Goodness knows so many kids haven’t been turning up to school, so they probably barely even know what they’re missing. But they should know, and they should know who’s caused that problem.

My remaining time, I commit, again, on behalf of the Government, and as a member of that Government, we will work hard to reduce the cost of living issues. We will improve the situation with law and order in our New Zealand cities, towns, and indeed rural areas. We will improve health and education services. You’ve heard about some of those measures we’ve undertaken through the Speech from the Throne. More importantly, it is a speech for the people. It will get New Zealand back on track and I can’t wait to see how we, on the National Party side of things, along with New Zealand First and ACT, can achieve that in the next three years. Thank you.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour): E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Otirā tēnā tātou katoa kei roto i tēnei Whare o tātou i tēnei pō.   

E mihi ana ki ngā mema hou kua hau mai nei ki roto i tēnei Whare, ā, ka mihi hoki ki a tātou kua hoki mai anō ki roto i tēnei Whare. E mōhio ana ahau he hōnore tēnei mō mātou, mō tātou katoa e whai wāhi ki te hau ki roto i tēnei Whare hei mema Pāremata ki te tū ki te kōrero i roto i tēnei Whare.

Ka kōrero ahau i roto i tōku reo rangatira nā te mea i tēnei ata i ara ahau, i kite ahau i tētahi kōrero kātahi anō ka puta mai i tētahi Minita hou. Ko tana hiahia ki te whakakore i te utu mō ngā kaimahi o te Karauna e matatau ana ki te reo Māori. Ka tino riri ahau. Ka tino pōuri ahau. Ka tino pā mai te mamae ki ahau nā te mea ko tāku e kite ana, e takahi ana koutou te Kāwanatanga hou, ahakoa e ono rā noa iho, e whitu rā noa iho koutou e mahi ana, i tō tātou reo rangatira.

E tika ana te kōrero a Chris Hipkins i te ahiahi nei: he taonga te reo Māori. Me patu te whakamā, ki taku whakaaro, koutou e tautoko ana i tērā āhuatanga, nā te mea e hoki muri ana tātou.

I te wā o ōku tūpuna karāni, i a rātou e haere ana ki te kura, i patua mō te kōrero i te reo Māori. I akiaki i a rātou ki te ako i te reo Pākehā kia whai hua i roto i tēnei ao. Waiho tō reo Māori ki te taha, ki te kāinga.

Nā, i tae mai te petihana me te hīkoi i te tau 1985 mō te reo Māori. E tautoko ana ngā pāti, tēnei Whare, kia motuhake te reo Māori mō Aotearoa whānui. Engari nā tēnei kaupapa here, nā tēnei kōrero i puta mai i tēnei ata, e tino āwangawanga ana ahau, e tino mataku ana ahau e hoki muri ana tātou.

He taonga te reo Māori nō reira kia kaha tātou katoa ki te tiaki i tō tātou reo Māori.

I kite ahau i ētahi kōrero i runga i Paeāhua inanahi, i runga i Pukamata inanahi, i runga anō i te porotēhi mō te reo, mō te whenua, mō te Tiriti o Waitangi, me te auē o ngā māmā mō wā rātou tamariki, mō wā rātou tamariki Māori. E kite ana rātou i ngā hiahia o tēnei Kāwanatanga, i rongo i te kōrero i puta mai i te Kāwana-Tianara mai i te Torōna i tēnei ahiahi, te hiahia o tēnei Kāwanatanga ki te whakarerekē, ki te tutu i te Tiriti o Waitangi, ngā mātāpono, ki te whakakore i Te Aka Whai Ora, te pai ora mō wā tātou tamariki, ko te tango i te 7AA i te ture Oranga Tamariki mō te whānau, te hapū, te iwi, te whakapapa, te reo o ngā tamariki, o ngā mokopuna.

E mōhio ana ahau he aha tō rātou āwangawanga, tō rātou pōuri, tō rātou mamae mō wā rātou tamariki nā te mea e kite hoki ana ahau i tērā i roto i te rautaki o tēnei Kāwanatanga hou. He hōnore mōku te whiwhi i ngā kaupapa o te tamariki, o ngā taitamariki, me te mātauranga wāhanga Māori anō hoki.

I taku hautanga mai ki roto i tēnei Whare, i taku kōrero tuatahi i kōrero ahau mō wā tātou tamariki. I whakahua ahau i te kōrero a Dame Whina Cooper. He aha tana kōrero?

“Take care of our children, take care of what they hear, take care of what they see, take of what they feel, for how the children grow, so will be the shape of Aotearoa.”

E tautoko ana ahau, e whakaae ana ahau ki ngā kōrero a Chris Hipkins i te ahiahi nei. I a au e whakarongo ana ki te Kōrero mai i te Torōna, kahore ahau i rongo, kahore ahau i kite i tētahi paku whakakitenga mō wā tātou tamariki mokopuna. Horekau.

E ai ki te kōrero a Te Puea, “ki te kore he whakakitenga, ka ngaro te iwi”. Nō reira e tautoko ana ahau i wērā māmā i runga i Paeāhua e tangi ana mō wā rātou tamariki, e tangi hoki ana tēnei māmā mō waku tamariki, me ā rātou tamariki hoki.

I a au e whakarongo ana ki te kōrero, ka pā mai te mamae mō wā tātou taitamariki me ngā hiahia o tēnei Kāwanatanga ki te mauhere i wā tātou tamariki, taitamariki e taka ana ki te hē. Me te hanga i tētahi kaupapa hou, ko ngā boot camps. Horekau he rangahau e tautoko ana i tērā, engari he kōrero e mea ana e hē ana wērā mea katoa, kaua e mahia. Ka hoki anō ki te hē. Ka tino pōuri ahau ki te rongo i tērā kōrero.

I rongo ahau i tētahi atu o ngā rautaki, ko te hiahia kia āta titiro, āta kōrero, āta wetewete i ngā mātāpono o te Tiriti o Waitangi. E, nā tētahi uri o rātou mā i haina i te Tiriti o Waitangi. E tū ana tēnei uri i tēnei pō ki te kī atu ki a ia, koutou katoa i whakaae ki tana hiahia ki te tutu i te Tiriti o Waitangi. Tētahi kōrero nā te tupuna, nā Kawiti, kua whakahua i tana ingoa i roto i te Whare i tēnei rā. I waiho tēnei kōrero mā mātou, ngā uri.

“Waiho kia kakati te namu i te whārangi o te pukapuka, hei konei ka tahuri atu ai.” E kakati ana te namu i te whārangi o te pukapuka, tērā namu. Kahore i konei i tēnei wā engari mōhio ana tātou katoa ko wai e kakati ana i te whārangi o te pukapuka. I roto i tērā whakataukī, kei takahia e koutou te papa pounamu a ō koutou tūpuna e takoto nei.

Nō reira kia tūpato tātou. He kawenata tapu te Tiriti o Waitangi, te Whakaputanga anō hoki. E titiro atu ana ahau ki ngā taumata o te moana, ka hua mai i reira he ao hou mā tātou. Kāore e kore ka porotēhi tonu te iwi Māori. I porotēhi inanahi, ka tū mai tētahi hui nā te Kīngitanga i karanga i tēnei rā, ka tū ki Rātana, ka tū anō ki Waitangi. Kahore rātou e noho noa iho me te, āe, noho puku, kahore.

Engari ehara ko ngā Māori anake e tū ana ki te whakahē i tēnei. E tū ana ngā tāngata Tiriti ki te tautoko nā te mea he whakakitenga mō Aotearoa. Tērā te mea e hiahia ana mātou i tēnei taha.

E te Māngai o te Whare, kua tata pau te wā ki ahau. Kotahi wiki anake tēnei Kāwanatanga e mahi ana i tā rātou rautaki, kua kite i ā rātou mahi takahi i wā tātou tamariki, taitamariki, te momi paipa, te whakakore i te ture mō te auahikore hei utu i ngā nama o ō rātou kaipōti, kaitautoko ā-pūtea nei hoki. He aha te utu i te mutunga o tērā? Ko wā tātou tamariki, taitamariki, he mate. Patua e te whakamā.

Nō reira e te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker. Indeed, greetings to all of us in this House of ours this evening.

I acknowledge the new members who have entered this House, and I acknowledge those of us who have returned to this House. I know that it is an honour for us, for all of us to have the opportunity to come into this House as members of Parliament to stand to speak inside this House.

I will speak in my noble language because this morning I rose, I saw a statement that has only just come out from the new Minister. His desire is to do away with the funding for staff of the Crown that are proficient in the Māori language. I am very angry. I am very sad. I truly feel hurt because of what I see you are trampling, the new Government, even though you’ve only been in the job for six days, seven days, our noble language.

The statement of Chris Hipkins this afternoon is true: the Māori language is a treasure. You should be stricken with shame, in my opinion, you who support that phenomenon, because we are regressing.

In the time of my grandparents, when they were at school, they were beaten for speaking the Māori language. They were encouraged to learn the English language so that they could be successful in this world. Leave your Māori language to the side, at home.

Well, the petition and march for the Māori language arrived here in the year 1985. The parties, and this House, supported the initiative that the Māori language become an official language for all of New Zealand. But due to this policy, and this statement that came out this morning, I am very concerned, and I am very fearful that we are regressing.

The Māori language is a treasure so let us all be resolute to protect our Māori language.

I saw some statements on Instagram yesterday, on Facebook yesterday, on the protest for the language, for the land, for the Treaty of Waitangi, and the cries of the mothers for their children, for the Māori children. They saw the desires of this Government, they heard the speech that came from the Governor-General from the Throne this afternoon, the desire of this Government to modify, to mess with the Treaty of Waitangi, the principles, to disestablish Te Aka Whai Ora, the healthy futures of our children, the removal of section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki legislation for the family, the hapū, the iwi, the genealogy, the language of the children, of the grandchildren.

I know what their concern is, what their sadness is, what their pain is for their children because I also see that in the strategy of this new Government. It is an honour for me to hold the portfolios of children, of youth, and Māori education also.

When I first came into this House, in my maiden speech I spoke about our children. I quoted Dame Whina Cooper. What did she say?

“Take care of our children, take care of what they hear, take care of what they see, take of what they feel, for how the children grow, so will be the shape of Aotearoa.”

I support, I agree with the statements made by Chris Hipkins this afternoon. While I was listening to the Speech from the Throne, I didn’t hear, I didn’t see a single vision for our children and grandchildren. Not at all.

According to Te Puea, “If there is no vision, the people will be lost”. So I support those mothers on Instagram that are crying for their children. This mother is also crying for my children, and for their children too.

While I was listening to the speech, I was afflicted by anguish for our youth and the desire of this Government to incarcerate our children and our youth that fall into trouble and to create a new initiative that is boot camps. There is no research that supports that, but there is a statement that says all those things, don’t do it. They will only fall into trouble again. I was very sad to hear that statement.

I heard another of the strategies, the desire to closely examine, to deeply discuss, and to analyse the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Well, it was by a descendant of those who signed the Treaty of Waitangi. This descendant stands here tonight to say to him, to all of you that agreed with his desire to mess with the Treaty of Waitangi, a quote from the ancestor, from Kawiti, whose name has been mentioned in this House today. This quote was left to us, the descendants.

“Wait until the sandfly chews on the pages of the book, that is when you must act”. The sandfly is chewing on the page of the book, that sandfly. He is not here at this time but we all know who is chewing on the pages of the book. In that proverb, don’t trample the sacred ground of your ancestors that lie here.

So we must be careful. The Treaty of Waitangi is a sacred covenant, the declaration of independence also. I look at the peaks of the ocean, a new world for us will originate from there. Without doubt the Māori people will continue to protest. They protested yesterday, a meeting will assemble that was called by the Kīngitanga today, they will stand at Rātana, and stand again at Waitangi. They will not merely sit, and yes, do nothing, not at all.

But it is not the Māori people alone that are standing up to condemn this. Our Treaty partners are also standing up in support because there is a vision for Aotearoa. That is what we want on this side.

Mr Speaker, my time is almost spent. Only one week has this Government been working on their strategy and we have seen their abusive actions to our children, our youth, the smoking, the repeal of the smoke-free legislation to pay the bills to their voters, their financial supporters also. What will the price be at the end of it? It will be our children, our youth, a calamity. Be afflicted by shame. Thank you, Mr Speaker.]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Before I call the member, can I just make a reminder, especially for some of our new MPs, that we do not permit filming in the House. You can watch it again later on Parliament TV, if you so wish.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Let me join with members from across the House with congratulating you on your recent ascension into the seat, and I look forward to supporting you, of course, with other members across the House in your executing your duties over this parliamentary term.

I’d also like to extend my greetings to all new members of the House, those who have come here if this is their first parliamentary term. Nau mai, haere mai, whakatau mai.

[Welcome.]

It’s an honour and a privilege and also a massive responsibility to be here to represent our diverse communities, our different communities, and I wish you all the best in how you do that.

I was thinking about a whakataukī, and it goes “He toka tū moana koe”.

[You are a sentinel rock in the ocean.]

This whakataukī translates as a rock standing firm in the sea, and it refers to a person who is steadfast and strong in their culture, beliefs, and/or position, against all oppositions. They are likened to the rock in the ocean that stands against strong elements, against all elements. The Greens—we’re a bit like that. This is my second parliamentary term, and in my first parliamentary term in 2020, we were here when the red wave kind of swept through, and now here, after the 2023 election, we’ve got the blue wave kind of sweeping this way as well. But guess what! The rock that is the Greens is here and there are more of us, and we’ve got a couple of electorate seats on the way.

I want to also acknowledge the anxiety that many of our people are experiencing, the anxiety of the people that gathered to protest yesterday, who gathered under the whakaaro of toitū Te Tiriti. I do want to acknowledge the words by my whanaunga Willow-Jean Prime, me āna kupu katoa i te mea kei te tautoko au i ērā kupu, kei te mihi atu au ki ērā o ngā kupu i te mea kei te rangona, kei te rangona ō tātou nei iwi ki ērā o ngā whakaaro.

[and all of her words because I support those words. I acknowledge those words because they are heard, those ideas are heard by our people.]

In English, they say “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”, but in te reo Māori we have a saying that goes “Ko te kai a te rangatira he kōrero”—kōrero, conversation is the food of chiefs. Words have power, words have meaning, and they clothe our intentions, and it is important that in this place we give each other a bit of a hard time. It’s part of the job. We’re here to debate vigorously the issues and vigorously the bills and all that kind of stuff as well, but I think it’s really important that we’re mindful that words trickle out of this place into social media and they trickle down into rabbit-holes as well, and I think it’s our responsibility to be mindful in the way that we use our words.

I was reflecting on some of the words that we’re saying about cultural theatrics as well, around the kapa haka application of some of our politics. I say this as someone that didn’t make it into the fifth-form kapa haka group. Some say I did not have the—

Hon Marama Davidson: He’s got other skills—it’s fine.

TEANAU TUIONO: I’ve got other skills. Some of us do not have the coordination. Actually, my kids won’t be watching this, but we have waiata practice in my whānau and my kids put me in the back row of a song that I taught them 30 to 40 years ago, as well. But here’s the thing: our kids love kapa haka. They love those cultural expressions. That is the way that they can help to build their identity and that strength as well.

So I just wanted to support some of what people would call the theatrics or antics of our whanaungas in Te Pāti Māori and say, “Hey, you know what? This is how many of our people express their politics.”, and we should be free and able to express our politics in the way that we feel comfortable.

What I would say to those protesters as well is thank you very much for not blocking the Wellington motorway as I was coming down from the mighty Manawatū. Wellington traffic sucks at the best of times, and I was reflecting on that Speech from the Throne where they were going to get rid of Let’s Get Wellington Moving and replace it with “Keep Wellington Stagnant”. We’re going to go from Let’s Get Wellington Moving to “Keep Wellington Stagnant”, and that was the theme in that Speech from the Throne. But fortunately for Wellington, Wellington Central has got a new member of Parliament who will be doing everything that she can to keep Wellington moving—Tamatha Paul—and also somebody who has a bit of experience in terms of transport issues, the Hon Julie Anne Genter, as well. So this Government might want to keep Wellington stagnant, but we’re going to try to keep it moving.

As I was listening to the Speech from the Throne, I—like, honestly, I just felt it was like a grab-bag of policy gimmicks. I felt that it ruined Christmas for many people: for workers, for Māori, and for Pasifika who were listening to that speech. This Government is shaping up to be the Grinch who stole Christmas—the “Grinch who privatised Christmas”. Sorry, kids, nothing under the Christmas tree this Christmas but pseudoephedrine, cigarettes, and guns, and especially bad luck if you wanted a Government that would give us a stable climate.

How embarrassing that up at COP28, this Government got called to account for wanting to reverse the oil and gas exploration ban. How shameful—how shameful. That was echoing the sentiments of leaders at the Pacific Island Forum as well. How did our new Minister for Climate Change keep his head high?

But here’s the thing: the science tells us that we need to stop extracting oil and gas. We need to stop that. We need to focus on making sure that we stabilise the climate, an here’s the thing which concerns me: this Government loves oil and gas so much that they’re going to use some of that gas to gaslight the workers.

They’re going to use it to gaslight the workers. They want to get rid of the fair pay agreements—shameful—and I want to say this to all the workers who are out pulling double shifts tonight and might have the misfortune of hitting the wrong remote button on the remote control and happen to be tuning in to our speeches: the Greens will always listen to you. The Greens will support you. The Greens will back the unions and fight back against the stripping back of workers’ rights. Our lowest-paid people deserve a pay increase, not a Government that is deliberately deciding to put the profits of big business ahead of making sure working people are paid what they deserve—paid what they deserve.

For many people, the cost of paying the bills and putting food on the table has been going up, but their wages have not. Fair pay agreements were designed to raise the bar for pay and conditions for poorly paid industries. The idea is simple: people working alongside each other who are doing a similar job in the same sector should be able to work together to make sure the minimum pay in their sector is fair for everyone. But there’s one person I actually feel especially sorry for in this whole fair pay agreement debacle, and that is the new Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, whose colleagues are already leaking on her within the first five minutes.

The fair pay agreements would have put more money in the pockets of people who really need it and who really deserve it, who tirelessly teach our mokopuna, keep our workplaces clean and safe, stock the supermarket shelves, and get us around on the bus. This Government has not given a second thought to whether or not these people are working two or three jobs just to make ends meet. All they care about is making it easier for businesses to get out of paying proper wages.

Here we have the official advice that was leaked, and I’m not sure who it was. I’ll scan the room—maybe they are here. All we have is the official advice to the new Government that spells out in black and white that young people, women, Māori, and Pasifika will be harmed most of all of this legislation is removed.

We’ve got a long three years ahead of us. The Green Party will be resolute, standing up for the workers, standing up for Te Tiriti o Waitangi, standing up for our taiao, and standing up for our mokopuna. Nō reira e te Whare, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise for my first speech in this new Parliament. Madam Speaker, may I congratulate you on your elevation to a well-deserved role, and also if I may take the liberty of congratulating you for winning the great electorate of the West Coast-Tasman, the only general electorate in the country bigger than my own great electorate of Southland. Congratulations, Madam Speaker.

May I take this opportunity to congratulate every member of this House, regardless of your political persuasion. The people of New Zealand have put you here to be a voice for them, and it’s a real, sacred honour that we have. As others have said before me, we look around and we see the memory of those who have gone before us, and sometimes have made the ultimate sacrifice so we can have this Chamber, we can have this democracy, and we can have these discussions and these debates. We need to contest robustly with one another, but there’s also a collegial respect, I think, that we also develop in this place, and so I look forward to working with all of you to ultimately work towards a better New Zealand, which is what we are all here about.

This is a new Government. New Zealand has chosen a change of direction, a change of policy, and we are here to deliver. This is a Government that is focused on action, it is focused on results, it is focused on delivery, and we will deliver on what we have promised.

I congratulate the new Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, the Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and New Zealand First, and David Seymour, the leader of the ACT Party, and the ACT Party members of Parliament, who have all come together with differing ideologies and different promises we’ve made to our electorates. We’ve come to a comprehensive agreement—the first one of its kind in New Zealand’s history—to deliver a comprehensive policy agenda for the people of New Zealand, and I’m very excited to see this done because this country does have some major challenges that we need solved.

I spent three years in the Opposition before this, and I saw a Government that had a lot of, I think, well-intended—I think there was a lot of good intentions in terms of many of the things they were trying to do, and there’s the different lenses that we bring to the roles that we have in this place. But what I didn’t see in many cases was delivery on those results, and that is something that we actually have to get for New Zealand. So I think in many cases we agree on the ultimate outcome that we’re trying to seek for the people of New Zealand, but we have different ways of doing that.

Now, I speak for myself. I am someone who experienced severe poverty in the mid-1980s in New Zealand, when we had high inflation. I know how much high inflation hurts poor people; I’ve experienced it myself. We need to solve that, and we have made a commitment that we will refocus the Reserve Bank. We will narrow its focus to focus on inflation, which is the real killer for the household budgets of people across New Zealand, and it puts people into poverty. It puts children into poverty—children who do not have food on their table. Now, it’s absolutely critical that we solve it.

We need to focus on small businesses and, again, inflation crushes small businesses more than most. The fair pay agreements is a well-intentioned idea, but the reality is that the majority—97 percent, in fact—of firms in New Zealand are small businesses. They are businesses that have 20 or less employees, and this is what our country is made up of. There are about 546,000 small businesses in this country, and this well-intentioned but misguided aim to try and lift up the minimum wage—and I’ve talked to many, many small businesses—makes it actually impossible for many of them to hire new, young people to give them a chance. It puts them out of business in some cases because their margins are so small, and if one has not been in business, one does not know how tough it is to run a small business.

I have built and run small businesses and I know how tough it is. Those margins are small. Small-business owners work long days and long nights, they absolutely believe in their staff, they sweat bullets for their staff, and they mean everything. The business doesn’t work for them; it’s actually a family. These small businesses are families. They care deeply about them, and so we want them to succeed.

We’re going to be focused on delivering an economy where they can succeed and we’re going to celebrate aspiration—aspiration where people can set up their own business where they can provide employment. Those people can have good jobs and they can put food on the table for their children, and that’s one of the things that drew me to this place and drew me to being a member of the National Party, because I know from my childhood that the Government doesn’t solve all things for poor people—it really doesn’t. What you need is for people to have a chance. They need to have a good education. They need to have a chance to get a good job, or to build their own business and provide jobs for people to put food on the table so their kids can have that opportunity. The kids can see an opportunity for themselves to build that mana in their own family and in their own selves, and this is something that our Government will be very relentlessly focused on.

Now, if I touch on education, we have a relentless focus on actually making sure our kids can read and write and do science well. Unfortunately, New Zealand has been going backwards. In fact, the most recent PISA tests—the Programme for International Student Assessment—show that we have dropped back. In fact, in reading and science, our 15-year-olds are now a year behind where they were when testing first started. It takes a year longer for them to get up to standard. They’re at the 14-year-old standard now, our 15-year-olds, so they’re a year behind. In mathematics, they’re a year and a half behind where they were when testing first started. So this is actually a blight on our country. It’s a blight on the opportunities for our young people to get ahead. It’s a blight on the chance for them to build that opportunity for themselves, and for those who follow them.

It’s absolutely critical, and I hear in terms of our aspiration for Māori, rangatahi—the biggest opportunity for so many of our young people, our rangatahi, is education. Again, I speak for myself. I am someone who failed high school. I went out and I did every tough, rough job you can talk about. I eventually made my way to university and I eventually got an honours degree in law, and it’s taken me to this place. I know how important education can be. I know the doors it can unlock. This is something we want to unlock for all of our people in New Zealand, and that’s why we’re going to have an absolutely relentless focus on education in this House.

When I hear the concerns expressed about Māori and the approach this Government is taking, now, let me just say that I know the Opposition has a role to take to criticise the Government, to raise issues, and to try and give themselves a chance to win back again, but let’s be responsible about the terminology we use here, because this is a Government that is focused deeply on what it’s going to deliver for Māori. Māori want jobs, they want education for their children, they want healthcare for their young people and for all of their whānau, and they want homes for all of their people. These are the things that we need. This is what we want, and we celebrate te reo Māori.

Look, let’s just keep in mind that there have been some people who’ve felt left behind in the last three years, and who have felt that things have been—

Rachel Boyack: Why?

JOSEPH MOONEY: Why? Co-governance. The previous Government, without a mandate, introduced co-governance provisions without discussing it with New Zealand. Now there’s also: what does co-governance mean? What does co-governance mean? Does it mean that some will govern others without being electorally accountable for them? There are so many questions that hang in the air that need to be answered and that need to be discussed, and we need to have a rational, considered debate about this and discussion about this. Let’s not shout at each other; let’s have a kōrero with each other, like we have on the marae. Let’s discuss it with each other and let’s be sensible and careful, because the words we say reverberate across the nation and it affects the 5.2 million people who call this great country home.

We’re all passionate about this place. There’s only a few of us who live here, far from the rest of the world. We need to take care of each other. We need to belong together differently, be proud of our differences, and be proud that we have different lenses and points of view, but let’s work with each other. Let’s have a respectful discussion with each other, and let’s not create fear where fear does not need to be had in the debates that we have. So let’s have those careful discussions.

I heard some discussion about climate change. I’m very pleased to say that my great colleague from the 2020 intake, the Hon Simon Watts, is our great Minister of Climate Change. As I say, I heard criticism about oil and gas. Let’s just keep this in perspective. We jumped a generation, previously, from coal, in many cases, straight to trying to find renewables which we didn’t actually have, and as a result we started importing record amounts of coal. Gas is used as a transition fuel across the world to transition away from coal, which has a high-emissions profile.

So we’re actually about doing things sensibly. Again, we’re recognising that we need our energy in this country to look after our people, to make sure that our elderly can turn on the heater, for example, and have their home warmed in the depths of winter. We’re not the warmest country in most of the land, but we need to do it in a sensible, staged way that actually makes sense in our economy. So, with that, I’m pleased to be part of the Government that is going to deliver for New Zealanders, and they’ve got an exciting three years ahead.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. Malo le soifua maua malo ma le lagi e mama. Can I congratulate you first, Mr Assistant Speaker O’Connor, on your appointment as an Assistant Speaker. You served us well under the previous Government and were very fair in your rulings. But also I really want to congratulate you on your win in Ōhāriu. That was a well-fought campaign, and I know the people of Ōhāriu have absolutely acknowledged and appreciated your contribution in the bowling clubs, in the different RSAs, and in the markets every Sunday. So congratulations, Mr Assistant Speaker.

I also open with my congratulations to the Rt Hon Gerry Brownlee. My favourite part of being an MP in the last three years was watching the Rt Hon Gerry Brownlee interject with a lot of humour from this side of the Chamber when he was here. So I really hope that the Speaker will take it in mind to allow our interjections to bear with humour as well—and also to the Deputy Speaker and to the Assistant Speaker, Barbara Kuriger and Maureen Pugh.

I want to thank the people of Mana for re-electing me as your member of Parliament. A little over three years ago, I gave my first speech in this House and I gave my commitment to my electorate of Mana to be a tenacious, empathetic, and strong advocate. That will continue in Opposition.

To the new members of Parliament, welcome. This is a place of privilege, where there have been more All Blacks than parliamentarians.

I also wanted to especially acknowledge two of my new colleagues, Cushla Tangaere-Manuel, the MP for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, whose “Push for Cush” campaign saw her take the seat emphatically. I also want to acknowledge my good friend Reuben Davidson, the MP for Christchurch East. We saw you take the seat from our very good friend the Hon Poto Williams, and we know you will take care of that electorate. For many of you in the House who don’t know, Reuben is an acclaimed award-winning TV producer—oh, I’m looking forward to the goods that you’re going to produce here, my brother.

I also wanted to just acknowledge two other MPs who are not necessarily from my party but whom I have had some history with. To Kahurangi Carter, she is one of our ex-Carmel girls, which is a school on Auckland’s North Shore, in Milford. It’s a strong school, and I’m really proud to have you, my Carmelite sister, here with me in the House. We are the first two MPs from that formidable school, so welcome.

I also want to acknowledge, surprisingly, Andy Foster, who was a former Mayor of Wellington City, who took the surprise decision not to run for any of the Wellington City electorates, but actually came up north to Mana to try and give me a go. So I just want to acknowledge that and thank you for being a respectful candidate on the campaign, and sorry you didn’t get that many votes instead.

I also wanted to acknowledge two people who have now retired from this House: the Hon Andrew Little, who has done remarkable work over his time as a Minister but also in his very courageous and brave act in 2017 to allow the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern come through. We thank you, Andrew, for your decision to allow the depth of the caucus come through—so thank you very much for that, Andrew—and I also wanted to really quickly actually acknowledge the Hon Michael Woodhouse. My first years here in the Beehive were actually spent working for the Hon Michael Woodhouse. I know he has not been able to give his valedictory speech, but I wanted to acknowledge him here today.

In my maiden speech, I spoke of different love stories that were weaved throughout my name, and they say in this place that new Governments get a somewhat of a honeymoon period when they get elected in. If anything over the last few weeks, it’s a story to tell: if that was a honeymoon, I wonder what this marriage is going to be like. From a leak of a Cabinet paper from someone on the other side, to protests on your very first day, I suspect and I think many other people in this House suspect that this marriage is going to end in divorce.

I also want to turn to the Speech from the Throne. As I was sitting there—and this is probably from my family experience of holding a poker face; we did many poker nights when I was growing up as a child—my poker face wasn’t as strong as Chlöe Swarbrick’s poker face, but I waited in anticipation for a vision, for some inspiration. I waited for the principles and the values on which this new Government was going to govern. I waited for a “p”—I waited for a “Pacific”—and I waited and I waited for that “p”. The only thing I heard was “pseudoephedrine”, and that was the vision that was lacking from that Speech from the Throne.

Then I thought, “OK, maybe give the Prime Minister another chance. You know, he is new at this.”—I’m really good about giving fair chances. But when we came into the House, all I heard was, “Ring-ring, ring-ring. Hi, it’s 2008. We’re calling—we would like our Speech from the Throne back, please.”, and that’s what we heard. We heard time and time again a repetition from a 2008 Speech from the Throne. It was absolutely devoid of vision. There was no inspiration, and that’s why it’s so quiet on that side of the House, because it’s true, and you know it’s true.

Where was “This is our vision for New Zealand. This is what we’re going to do to build it back better.”, as they say? No, they’ve spent most of the time on that side of the House, basically, trying to personally attack us—basically, they just spent it on us. That is one lesson that you should learn as a Government: you need to focus and look at yourself and figure out the principles and the values on which you are going to fight for this country.

When I thought about how there was division and it was devoid of “Pacific”, it’s because of a very simple reason: there is no Pacific representation in the Government. It is here, on this side of the House. I see the representation here, and it’s important there is representation, because if there was a Pacific person on that side of the House, perhaps when they were reviewing the Speech from the Throne on behalf of their Prime Minister’s office, they would have said, “By the way, you’re missing something for Pacific.”

I’ve sort of thought really hard and I thought “I’m waiting, I’m waiting.”, because I thought that maybe it’ll be in the foreign affairs policy—nope, there was nothing there. Even when the Rt Hon Winston Peters was the Minister of Foreign Affairs under our Government in 2017, there was a focus on Pacific—on the Pacific reset—because we knew how important the Pacific would be to our geopolitical outcomes here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

So, again, it was devoid of vision, devoid of aspiration, and devoid of inspiration, and what I’ve seen over the last few weeks is, basically, a Government scrambling to pay for its promises—a Government that, one, clearly didn’t read the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update (PREFU) and didn’t actually have the competency or the ability to read and see what was in it, to interpret it, or to actually understand what the difference between time-limited funding and baseline funding is. That’s important, because these are the people who are supposed to be looking after this country, but they can’t even read the PREFU. Everyone else could read the PREFU, but perhaps the Minister of Finance will now have a strong Treasury bench that might be able to help her out—maybe.

But then the other factor that I was concerned about was the smoke-free policy. Is that—yes—trying to scramble to find money, to find $800,000 from taking away te reo bonuses, and trying to find money through smoke-free? I just thought, again, this is where the lack of representation fails us, because who are the people who are most affected by those rules? Who will actually most benefit by keeping those smoke-free rules in? It is Pacific and it is Māori people. But, again, the lack of representation concerns me and it concerns a lot of people out there, and then what do we get? The international view of this new Government in the last couple of weeks has been, one, getting rid of world-leading smoke-free rules—that’s the representation. Every single one of you on that side of the House, when you say yes to that bill going through repealing it, that is what you’re saying to the world—it’s that we’re no longer world-leading.

The second thing that the international view of New Zealand will probably be now, because of this Government, is Fossil of the Day.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Here’s here—oh, he’s gone now.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: No, he’s gone now. Fossil of the Day—this is the representation you are leaving with for the world for the first few—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Just for the sake of new members, we don’t comment on the fact that members are not in the House.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: We didn’t refer to a specific member, but nevertheless. There was no one—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): We don’t answer the Speaker back, either.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: There no was reference at all to what the vision is, what the aspiration is; instead, just wait. Just wait until the rest of the world finds out that we are peeling back some of our world-leading gun reforms. Then what will the world say to us? That we are not world-leading in being smoke-free, that we are the Fossils of the Day, and that we’re peeling back our gun law reforms. Shame on you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Dan Bidois—welcome back, Mr Bidois.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. It’s my pleasure to join the chorus today of congratulations to you, Mr Assistant Speaker O’Connor, in your elevation to Assistant Speaker, and also, dare I say, for winning and holding your seat. We on this side of the House know how hard it is to do that, and I commend you for winning the people of Ōhāriu’s support once again.

I’d like to acknowledge the new MPs across the House—it is a fantastic privilege to be back here with you—and also to the new MPs here in my own caucus team. How great were the speeches from Katie Nimon and James Meager? Excellent talent. We’ve got excellent talent, with principles, with vision—just like what Barbara Edmonton wanted, but she did not choose to comment.

It’s my first contribution, actually, to this House since I left, and I’ve been in the political wilderness for the last three years. I return to this place with a little bit more humility, with a little bit more resilience, and better listening skills. I also return having reflected deeply on the challenges that our country faces in this present time and in the future. I’m a little bit wiser, slimmer—having not been to Copperfields as much—and above all, I think, I say for the benefit of my new colleagues in the House, I’ve reflected on how short political careers are. So my one piece of advice to those of you who are in the proud 2023 year group is to make this job count. Make this job count because there are so many members of Parliament that leave here having achieved nothing, and our goal in this Parliament and in this term is to actually effect change for people out there.

Now, we’re here debating the contribution of the Prime Minister’s Speech from the Throne here today, and I can maybe just take a step back and I want to thank the voters who have elected us to be here. In particular, I’d like to thank the voters of the Northcote electorate, who have instilled in me the ability to be here and to speak on behalf of them.

I’d also like to thank the many volunteers who got out, day after day, and campaigned for all of our seats across New Zealand. It is an immense privilege to have people that give up their time and their effort and their resources because they believe in you—not you, Mr Speaker. They believe in us, and they believe in what the National Party stands for.

I’m a really proud member of the National Party. Katie Nimon has made reference to Adam Smith, of whom I am a lifelong admirer. In my belief, Adam Smith’s values are the core values of a centre-right National Party—a classic, economically liberal National Party.

Mr Speaker, the take-aways that I see from the election are, I think, pretty clear for us to see. But I want to give you and this House some observations from the bellwether seat of Northcote. The desire for change was strong. We did a poll locally, and three-quarters of the Northcote electorate said they were unhappy with the way the country was going. That is something that that side of the House—

Hon Willie Jackson: Can’t believe that.

DAN BIDOIS: You can argue all you want, Willie Jackson. You can argue all you want, but the voters in Northcote and the voters in the wider public were very clear that they were not happy with the way this country was going. They wanted change, and they’ve got that through ACT, National, and New Zealand First.

New Zealanders are very clear: they want hope for a better tomorrow—that’s the first thing. So it’s what Barbara Edmonton said: hope for a better tomorrow. But they want a Government that can actually deliver for them and they want a Government that presents real solutions to the problems that they face.

Now, my community wants meaningful change, particularly around areas like law and order, and it’s a great privilege to call Mark Mitchell the current Minister of Police—and you’re doing a great job, Mark. Crime is up 50 percent in the last six years under this Government. I’ve got shops in our community of Northcote that have been ram-raided, and I’ve just had today, by the way, a jewellery shop that has decided to close because they’ve been ram-raided three times. So that’s a key area of priority of focus for delivery for us.

The next area is the economy. The cost of living is biting. I met a person on the campaign trail whose husband actually had to leave this country and take a job in Australia just to pay the mortgage here in New Zealand. That is not the type of country we want to live in; that is not the type of country that we want our kids to grow up in. So I’m really pleased with the package around tax, and I’m very confident that our finance Minister will find the money in order to pay for that.

Education is another one. It’s a disappointment that the former Minister of Education Jan Tinetti didn’t want to talk about the Programme for International Student Assessment results that have just been released. She didn’t want to talk about 20 years of educational decline in this country, but here on this side of the House, we will, and we are committed to reversing that trend. It’s a trend, I will say, that successive Governments have contributed to in this country. So we have a huge task ahead of us in Government to reverse that multi-decade decline in educational underachievement.

Health and mental health is another one. On the North Shore of Auckland, we’ve got wait list after wait list for emergency surgery, elective surgery—the basics are all there. In mental health, I have people contacting me over the phone, crying because their son or their daughter cannot access the appropriate mental health solutions that they need. This is an abomination in this country, and it is something that I’m convinced our new Ministers Shane Reti and Matt Doocey are committed to improving on and getting delivery in that area.

The list goes on: transport on the North Shore. Simeon Brown, the Minister of Transport, has already talked about how expensive the previous Government’s options were for the third harbour crossing, or the second harbour crossing. We have to deliver a real, practical solution for transport in Auckland to futureproof—

Hon Members: What is it?

DAN BIDOIS: Well, it’s certainly going to be a lot cheaper than putting tramways down Dominion Road, and right up to ghost trains that never happened.

Right, then we’ve got environment and climate change. Can I say, this House is absolutely committed to the targets in the Paris Agreement and to actually delivering on our climate change commitments—

Scott Willis: What’s your plan?

DAN BIDOIS: —and, actually, we’ve got some fantastic policies around electric vehicles (EVs). Do you drive an EV, sir?

Scott Willis: I do.

DAN BIDOIS: Oh good—excellent. So you’ll be happy with the EV roll-out that we’ve got.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Mr Bidois, one rule that hasn’t changed while you were away is we don’t use the word “you” across the board—

DAN BIDOIS: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): —but we address the Speaker.

DAN BIDOIS: Thank you very much. So we have a lot to do, and Barbara Edmonton—Edmonds—said, actually, where were the principles of this Government? Well, I will give you some principles.

Ingrid Leary: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The member is required to call the other member, my colleague Barbara Edmonds, by her correct name, which is Edmonds, not Edmonton.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): That’s something for the Speaker to decide, I think.

Ingrid Leary: Thank you, sir. I’d just to point out that it was three times.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): I’m sure the member, as he gets to know the new members in the House, will take note of their correct names, and we will add 20 seconds on for that.

DAN BIDOIS: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. That’s very generous of you, so I can spend 20 seconds talking about the principles of this Government. The first principle is a return to equal citizenship in this country. Principle No. 2 is liberty—economic and individual liberty. Principle No. 3 is the value of the private sector and the farmers in this country as the engines of economic growth. Principle No. 4 is equal opportunity. I believe in the economics of opportunity, not the economics of envy. The last core principle of this Government that I want to highlight is that we will restore consequences for those that break the law. Those are the types of principles that we will seek to uphold in this National, ACT, and New Zealand First Government, and I’m really excited about the coalition arrangement that has been announced.

I’m immensely optimistic about the future potential of this country. We have a liberal democracy, as was indicated. It is one of the few places in the world where people, the people of New Zealand, get to pick who sits here. We are well placed geographically. We’re friendly to all nations around the world. We’ve got industrious people. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but I have no doubt that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and the whole team—with ACT, New Zealand First, and National—are committed to delivering for New Zealand and delivering for the people of Aotearoa. Thank you.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you, Mr Speaker. May I begin my contribution this evening, Mr Speaker, on congratulating you on your appointment as Assistant Speaker. I look forward to you remembering all of our names throughout—I’m skating on thin ice already, I know, Mr Speaker—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): That’s not a special skill of mine, I might say!

RACHEL BOYACK: —but I do want to congratulate you, and I look forward to working with you and the rest of the presiding officers throughout this term.

Can I begin by acknowledging a former member of this House who was also unable to deliver her valedictory speech, and that is the wahine toa who is the Hon Nanaia Mahuta. Can I acknowledge the contribution she has made to Aotearoa over many, many years, the bravery, the vision, and the foresight she has had, and her tenacity, quite frankly, in dealing with what were some unprecedented attacks on her and her whānau throughout the previous term, which was distressing to witness. So I want to thank her for her support of me and many others in this House and for her commitment to the people of New Zealand and to having a better country for all of us. Thank you, Nanaia, for your service.

Can I also acknowledge the new members of this House, and, in particular, a friend of mine—a good friend of mine—from the other side of the House, Tim Costley. Now, Tim and I have been friends for over 30 years, and all I will say about that is that what happens at church youth group stays at church youth group.

Hon Members: What?

RACHEL BOYACK: I’m not insinuating anything. Let’s not have any—

Tangi Utikere: Not in Palmerston North?

RACHEL BOYACK: Definitely not in Palmerston North. But we now have three members of this House who are proud to be former students of Ross Intermediate: myself, Tim Costley—we were in the same class together—and then a very slightly younger member, Mr Tangi Utikere, who was always called on to give the thankyous to the visiting guests. I just note that Mr Costley and I were not.

On preparing for this speech, I wanted to reflect on the maiden speech that I gave to Parliament, to this House, nearly three years ago, and, to begin, I wanted to talk specifically about my love of te reo Māori, and my love of Te Ao Māori and Te Tiriti. In my maiden speech, I talked about my father, Jonathan Boyack, who hasn’t been back to New Zealand since I’ve become a member of Parliament because he lives in the United Kingdom, but I’m very pleased that he will be here next week to come and spend some time in this House. When I was a child in the 1980s growing up, my father was one of a new crop of area health board chief executives, and he was the chief executive of the Wanganui Area Health Board. He was part of a crop of young chief executives who began work on delivering Māori health services, and I was really privileged, as a young Pākehā girl, to spend time running around at marae, listening to my father speak in the wharenui, listening to waiata, and being taught waiata by my mother. I reflect on that and I reflect on this new Government’s decision to can Te Aka Whai Ora, and it distresses me greatly.

On the campaign trail, I took the then Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, in to meet with Te Piki Oranga, one of our Māori health providers, and here’s what they said to me. They said to me and to Chris Hipkins that the new Māori Health Authority was allowing them to get money and services out to whānau who needed it so much faster. One of the reasons was that no longer did money go from the ministry to the DHB to the primary health organisation and then to the Māori health provider; it came straight from the centre to the organisation. It meant they had more money that wasn’t being clipped by the tickets of bureaucracy—more money to actually spend on those who need it.

I say to the members on the other side of the House, why is it that we need to focus on this? This is because Māori, as a whole, die so much earlier than those of us who are non-Māori, and that is a disgrace. That is a shame on our nation. The Labour Government took steps to actually try and address that, and it’s going to get thrown away on the basis of some kind of idea that somehow other people are going to miss out. Well, I’ll tell you what Māori don’t miss out on: they don’t miss out on dying younger, because of their ethnicity. That is not OK. That is not equality. That is not equal rights in this country, and, as a Pākehā, I say it is not OK for me to have a greater life expectancy than my youngest brother, Piers, who is Ngāti Kurī. I don’t talk about him much in this House, but there should be no difference in the expectations and the life expectancy that he and I have, based on our ethnicity.

So I am proud of the work that we did, and it’s work that I think should be continued. There is nothing those of us who are Pākehā have to lose.

We’ve also talked a little bit tonight about kapa haka. I talk about kapa haka because I’ve had the privilege of being a member of the New Zealand Youth Choir for five years, and then been the holder of a music degree. It’s one of the reasons I asked to take on the arts portfolio, and I’m very, very proud to have that portfolio and to finally use the skills that I learnt at university here in this House. I’ve had the privilege of representing New Zealand all over the world, singing kapa haka, having been taught by amazing people like Ngāpō Wehi—“Bub”—and Aroha Cassidy, and I just want to acknowledge their memories and their contribution to our country.

Do you know what? When we stood there, we sang English cathedral repertoire, which is my favourite stuff to sing, and we would sing European art songs, but do you know what everyone stood up and gave us standing ovations for? It was when we sang waiata. It was when we sang I Te Timatanga and told the story of the creation of Aotearoa. That was what got people overseas talking, and it’s the story I tell people.

In my electorate of Nelson, there are people who do not always understand why we are embracing Te Ao Māori in the way that we are, but I tell you that when Mr Watts and Ms Grigg and Mr Waititi and the former member for Northcote Shanan Halbert and I were in Canada recently, do you know what everybody loved us doing? Finishing our meetings by singing waiata. It is what puts our country on the world stage. It helps our trade. It helps our identity. We should embrace it; we should love it. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be divided in the way in which, unfortunately, so many politicians have been leading us down that pathway. We have obligations as members of this House—Māori and Pākehā; people who were born here, people who are new here—to uphold what is so special: the taonga that is te reo, that is Te Ao Māori, and that is Te Tiriti. That is my pledge to this House for this term.

There are a couple of other things I wanted to mention, and I’m going to run out of time, which is unfortunate, but I’m going to focus quickly on a couple of pieces of correspondence I’ve had from my constituents specifically about smoking. Now, I’ve smoked cigarettes. I was a child of the 1990s, when we could get down to the dairy and get them pretty easily and cheaply without ID, and successive Governments over many, many decades have worked to make it harder for people to access cigarettes and to make it less of a sexy option, shall we say.

So here are a couple of emails I’ve had from constituents. One constituent, who wanted to specifically talk to Dr Shane Reti, said, “Until very recently, I saw you as someone with the mana to lead the National Party. This makes me even more disappointed with your complicity in repealing the progressive smoke-free legislation. Are you really OK with people dying in order to fund the party’s tax cuts?”

Here is an email I received from a doctor in Nelson: “Dear Rachel, I am sure you are registering the absolute outrage that front-line health workers are expressing around the prospect of repealing the smoke-free legislation. As an emergency specialist in Nelson Hospital Emergency Department, I daily see the damage done and years lost of people and their family, both as a direct and indirect result of smoking. To see patients fearfully approaching a premature, smoking-related death is an unpleasant and avoidable experience. The tobacco industry has a lot to answer. Aotearoa New Zealand has been a world leader with its enlightened approach toward a smoke-free country. You must do all you can as a member of the Opposition to appeal to the consciences of those on the Government benches to do the right thing for our people.”

That is what I do tonight. I appeal to the consciences of those on the other side. Every other time we’ve introduced legislation, any colour of Government, the next Government has not repealed it when it comes to smoking, until now. I began by talking about Māori health, and that’s where I’ll finish, because it is our Māori and our Pacific people who will suffer as a result of this. We have obligations to ensure we are making decisions for all New Zealanders, and this legislation will ensure that Māori life expectancy increases. Mr Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity. Kia ora.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in this House, and this is my first speech as the MP for Mt Albert. Now, the first thing I wanted to do was to was say congratulations to you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to have you in this position.

I also wanted to congratulate Melissa Lee, who has become a Minister in this Government, and she was quite right when she said earlier in her speech that I reached out to both her and to Ricardo Menéndez March, who were candidates in Mt Albert—a hotly contested seat—to say that it is absolutely important that we work together as far as that is possible. She has met me in the spirit of that, and I hope to work very well with her.

It was a very tight race, and I’d like to thank the voters of Mt Albert for seeing me back into this House. I intend to do everything I can to earn their respect.

Yesterday, when we were sworn in, it was one where I took the step of speaking my affirmation in Māori. I had done that before, and it was when I was a very new MP and I was very nervous. I was equally nervous yesterday. I don’t take to languages well. I find them pretty scary, actually, and I’m worried that I’ll be judged for my terrible pronunciation. But I thought it was really important to do so on this occasion, because I am concerned that there is an attack, and I think it is really important that we push ourselves. We do that as parliamentarians all the time.

I recently had my uncle and aunt visit from Australia, and I took them around this Parliament, and they were so impressed with it. We are actually privileged in this House to work together and to work, quite often, in very much a consciousness of the tikanga and in an integrated way in that around the House. I think we actually come on our journeys in this place towards a much greater respect and engagement with Māori culture, so I will be very, very sad if that is undermined in the currency of this Government.

I wanted to talk about my greater concern about that because of what I heard from Winston Peters today. He said—and I was listening to him carefully—that what Māori want is First World wages, and I wanted to say to him that that’s exactly what the people of Mt Albert want, too. That is a common need of people—we do want First World wages.

Hon Mark Patterson: That was the point.

HELEN WHITE: The point, absolutely, is that Winston Peters has got into bed with ACT and got into bed with National, and they have made an agreement—

Hon Member: To fix the economy.

HELEN WHITE: —which I am concerned—and I will now talk about in my speech why I don’t think it’s going to achieve that, sir.

We have an issue in this country with productivity. One of the things I saw on the list that will be over is ITPs—the industry transformation plans. Those are our long-term plans for our industries. What on earth was wrong with them? What on earth was wrong with keeping plans which actually make sure that there are skills pathways for people and make sure that all the flow-over effects from those skills pathways affect other people? You can look at something like the digital transformation plan. Digital industries—it’s a really good plan, and it feeds out a high-paid workforce. But the decision of this coalition is that we will not have them.

Do you know what else we’re going to get rid of? The Productivity Commission. It’s going. It’s going on order to pay for a new Minister for Regulation. It is laughable that the Minister for Regulation is, in fact, setting up a Ministry for Regulation, which is sort of more regulation, isn’t it? But we’re going to get rid of the Productivity Commission for that, which actually is the body that recommended long-term planning for productivity—for things like ITPs. I am really sad to see that. I’m going to be the spokesperson in the Labour Party for manufacturing and small business. These things are critical to the development of these incredibly important things, and that is what pays the wages of people in this country.

So it is very sad to see those moves go—those forward-thinking, future-thinking moves go—for something that is so backward-looking, because there is an ideological background to the decision to do things like this, which is that we just have to get out of there and cut all the red tape and everything will come right. Well, it didn’t. It didn’t come right in the 1990s, and it’s not going to come right now. What we need to do is make sure that we’re supporting our businesses and supporting our workforces, and making sure that we build high-wage work in this country. That is what we were doing because we had a vision, and what it’s being replaced with is a 1990s ideology which is long since out of date, long since disproved.

I want to talk about wages a bit more because I was an employment lawyer for 25 years and I saw the pain low wages caused people. There has been a halt and a suggestion—softened, I think, by the New Zealand First Party—that perhaps the minimum wage might have to go up a little bit. Well, that’s not just good enough. The Labour Government made sure that wages stayed ahead of inflation and they made sure the minimum wage went up. I am proud of that, and I will be very sorry if it gets slipped backwards, and so will the working people, including the Māori people that Winston Peters talks about—so will they. They will be very sorry to see their wages slip backwards while the majority of tax cuts go to the wealthy in this country because, again, ideologically, the fundamental underpinning is a belief—an outdated belief—in trickle-down economics. Long since has that myth gone and long since has most of the world lost interest in that ridiculous philosophy, because it’s never worked and it never will.

I want to talk to you about contracting. That would have been a very big piece of work that needed doing. We needed to get a handle on the back door to paying bad wages, which was basically subsistence contracting, or dependent contracting. Instead, a deal has been done that we’re not going to look behind the words—it was called the status quo in the agreements. But we aren’t going to look behind the words of what people call themselves. So I am fearful that what the coalition Government has decided to do is ignore utterly what the real relationship is between people and whether there is exploitation, whether they are actually, really in business on their account, or whether they are actually just dependent and subservient and exploited.

If you do that and if you go through with that, that’s going to hurt working people in this country, so please don’t. Think twice. Think twice, because—again, I quote the Hon Winston Peters—“I understand that Māori want First World wages too.”, because so do I and so do the people of Mt Albert.

Now, I want to talk about an issue that is related, and that is housing, because another thing that people need is they need a decent house. They need a decent place to live. There has been so much work done on that and it is about to be undermined, and that is my fear. My fear is that we have a situation where we are going to see rents rise in this country but also insecurity of rent—insecurity. You cannot deny that if the proposal is to bring in a 90-day, no-fault termination, because that means that it doesn’t matter if you can now bring your dog to the rental—which I’d love—you could get kicked out in 90 days for doing nothing and for doing no harm.

We need to make moves towards treating rentals as homes, not investments. If we did that, and if we stuck to the plan and moved on that, what we would end up with is homes for our children—secure homes for our children—and, yes, I welcome the idea that we would bring pets into them. That is a really nice move, but you have to have base security first. You have to have a rental that you can call your home and that you can bring up your kids in, so that they can go to Mount Albert Grammar School and know that they’re not going to get kicked out tomorrow. It’s a really important part of security for people.

Poor first-time home buyers. What’s going to happen to them in the next little while, because they’re now going to be competing—they’re going to be competing—with a whole lot of rental investors, because that’s where the money is going to go. You know where it’s not going to go—and I’m going to return back to my speech here. It’s not going to go into the productive economy, is it, where we would really like that money. That money, if it was in the productive economy, would boost wages and productivity in this country—something that we sorely need to do. Thank you.

SAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s great to be able to stand here, and I’d like to congratulate everyone who is a part of this 54th Parliament. To all of the new MPs, welcome to Parliament. I wish you all the best in your career here in this place, and I hope you are able to deliver for your electorates and for the people of New Zealand. To all the returning MPs, well done on your re-election and I also wish you all the best, and to all of those from the 53rd Parliament who haven’t made it back, thank you for your service to New Zealand.

I would like to send my congratulations to the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Christopher Luxon, to the Deputy Prime Minister, and to the Speaker and the Assistant and Deputy Speakers, including yourself, sir. Well done on your roles. I’d also like to congratulate the coalition Government: National, ACT, and New Zealand First. It’s very good to be on this side of the House.

I will give a little mention to two other MPs who are here, who are from my neck of the woods: Tom Rutherford, from the Bay of Plenty, and Cameron Luxton, also from the Bay of Plenty. I’ve had a fair bit to do with you both in varying degrees over the past couple of years. I know you will bring a lot of passion and enthusiasm to this place and will represent the people of the Bay of Plenty and, by extension, Tauranga as well, so that we can continue to make it the best region in New Zealand.

Well, it’s been a real sigh of relief, I think. I know that I’ve noticed it, and I know probably a few other members have when they’ve walked around their electorates and they’ve had a lot of people coming up to them and saying, “We are so happy that National is back in Government.” We hear it over and over again, and I definitely hear it when I’m walking around Tauranga. We got in there because we’d campaigned on what the New Zealand people were interested in.

I think that when people look back on the 53rd Government and why those members are no longer on this side of the House—and this is just my opinion—they will probably see that they didn’t deliver on what they talked about when they were in Government, and when it came to the election campaign they failed to talk about the things that actually mattered to Kiwis. As a result, they were resoundingly rejected by the electorate, and we have been given a mandate on this side of the House to deliver for New Zealand. We have a very ambitious 100-day plan. I think this will be one of the most transformational Governments in New Zealand’s history, and I am very proud to be a member of it and I’m very proud to represent the people of Tauranga.

Now, there are four key things we are focused on, and that is to manage a stronger economy for New Zealand, to ease the cost of living crisis, and to deliver tax relief; secondly, to restore law and order; thirdly, to deliver better public services; and, fourthly, to strengthen our democracy. You will see in our 100-day plan that we’re quite clear around some of the things that we wanted to do. We needed to rein in Government spending. It was out of control under the last Government and that delivery of service wasn’t there. Look, I think most people would be all right if you were willing to spend more as long as you actually got something back in return, but we didn’t see that, so we are going to be reining in that spending there.

We have committed to repealing some of what we would consider to be poor or misguided legislation from the previous Government around the fair pay agreements, three waters, and projects like Let’s Get Wellington Moving and Auckland light rail. We’re committed to returning the Reserve Bank of New Zealand mandate to prioritise price stability, which is very important and is almost one of the most important things that we need to get on top of, because if we don’t get on top of inflation quickly, it is going to continue to erode the wealth of New Zealanders.

We’ve been in a cost of living crisis for far too long. We’ve seen rents up $180 a week over the past six years. We’ve seen grocery prices continue to eat away and petrol prices continuing to increase, and Kiwis have really been doing it tough. But good news: we have some sound fiscal discipline back on the Treasury benches.

We’re also committed to making New Zealanders safer, so we are getting rid of the prisoner reduction targets and cracking down on gangs. I know that the Hon Mark Mitchell is going to do an absolutely fantastic job as the new Minister of Police.

We are committed to delivering better public services, and I think in this House we would all agree that we want to see excellent, First World health and education services. We might have different ideas around how we want to get there, but we all share the same concerns that we want our children to have a First World education. We want them to graduate from school and be able to compete in the 21st century, where skills and knowledge are going to be more important than they ever have been.

We want a healthcare system that looks after people and can deliver for them, so if they get sick or they fall ill or whatever it may be, they know that they can get these services that they need to get them through, and we haven’t been seeing that in education and we haven’t been seeing that in health. So we are going to restore health targets.

We are going to lift educational performance. From 2024, I know Erica Stanford will make an excellent education Minister, and we are going to ensure that New Zealand children at primary and intermediate level are spending an hour each day on reading, writing, and mathematics. As a parent of three young children, that makes me very happy indeed.

We are ambitious for all New Zealanders. We are very ambitious, and we want to raise the standard of living for all New Zealanders. We want all New Zealanders to have a fair shot at their version of the New Zealand dream, whatever that may look like. So we are going to be a Government that enables that. We are going to be a Government that reduces restrictions and reduces impediments. For too long, we have seen red tape—nonsensical red tape that adds more pain instead of benefits—getting in the way. We have hampered our primary industries, which contribute enormously to the wealth and prosperity of New Zealand, and it’s through those sectors that we are able to pay for the health and education and police and all of those other services that we need.

We are ambitious for New Zealanders on this side of the House, and I look forward to working very strongly with all of my colleagues. I look forward to working with members on the other side of the House. I know that they may have different versions of how to make New Zealand a fantastic country, but we will work together and I am confident that the 54th Parliament will be a fantastic Parliament for New Zealand, and I wish us all the best going forward. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Rt Hon ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Mana Whakawā. Ka tuku mihi atu ki a koutou katoa; te Whare nei, tae atu ki ngā mema hou, anei ahau e tuku mihi atu ana ki a koutou.

Tae atu ki a koe, Cushla Tangaere-Manuel me Reuben Davidson. Tēnei te mihi ake mai i ahau ki a kōrua tahi.

He tika hoki kia tuku mihi atu ki aku whanaunga nō Mōkai Pātea. Tuatahi, te mema hou mō Tāmaki Makaurau, ki a koe Takutai Tarsh Kemp, tēnei te mihi.

Ko te hokinga mai anō o Hon Tama Potaka anō hoki. Nō reira tēnā kōrua aku whanaunga.

Ki a koutou katoa. Kua roa te wa ka tū ake ahau ki te kōrero i roto i te Whare nei. Tata ki ngā tau e whā. Nō reira he tino hōnore tēnei kia tū ake au, kia tuku atu aku whakaaro ki te Whare nei.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker. I acknowledge you all; this House and its new members. I commend you all.

Especially Cushla Tangaere-Manuel and Reuben Davidson. I would like to welcome you both from me to you.

It is only right that I address and commend my Mōkai Pātea relatives. First, to the new member for Tāmaki Makaurau, to Takutai Tarsh Kemp, I acknowledge you.

To the returning Hon Tama Potaka as well. I acknowledge you my relations.

To you all. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to stand and make a speech in this House; just about four years. So it is an honour to stand here to give my contribution to the House.]

As I said, it’s been a long time since I’ve made a speech in this House. I do want to, Mr Speaker, congratulate you on becoming an Assistant Speaker this time. I think you were an excellent Deputy Speaker to me when I was Speaker. I now become the former Speaker, and I hope to carry it out as well as the Rt Hon Sir David Carter did when he was the former Speaker.

I acknowledge the other presiding officers as well, especially the Rt Hon Gerry Brownlee, Barbara Kuriger, and Maureen Pugh. I think you’ve got a great presiding officer team, and I hope the House sees it upon itself to give the new team a good start. So congratulations again to you.

I want to acknowledge the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins, who has given me the responsibility in Opposition to be the spokesperson for the Labour Party on Whānau Ora. So I do mihi again to my whanaunga, the Hon Tama Potaka, who holds that portfolio.

It’s one that is really dear to my heart, and I think back to before I came to Parliament of the work that I did as the chair of Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Apa, and also chair of Te Oranganui Iwi Health Authority, chair of Te Kōtuku Hauora, and a member of the Whanganui Regional Primary Health Organisation as well. Throughout that time, Whānau Ora was an important kaupapa for all of those organisations, because we knew it was a great way forward. Tariana Turia—now the Hon Dame Tariana Turia—was the first CEO of Te Oranganui Iwi Health Authority. She was the architect of that plan, and I was right there when that was happening. I feel honoured to have witnessed its emergence into a Government policy.

I’ll be making certain that my cousin Tama also upholds that. I think it’s important that his colleagues in the Government support him in that. He’s got a lot of portfolios that are going to attract a lot of attention, because when I saw and I heard the speech that was made today, I heard a lot of things there which bothered me—bothered me a lot—because I know from experience how difficult it is for whānau Māori without those mechanisms being in place. I know it because I’ve been part of it. I’ve seen it, I’ve walked in that world, and it’s difficult. It feels like we’re going to go backwards after hard-fought gains to address the inequities that clearly exist in our society.

I heard today that the Government would govern for all people, for all New Zealanders. Māori are New Zealanders. I just want remind everyone in this House: Māori are New Zealanders. Not only are we New Zealanders; we deserve to have the Treaty relationship and the promises in it upheld and acknowledged. There is nothing less that will do. We deserve nothing less. This country deserves nothing less.

We have to do the best that we can do, so we will oppose—we will oppose—for those things that have been hard gained and fought for and that have made a difference in our people’s lives. For example, in the last six years, funding for Whānau Ora has increased by 145 percent. It has gone from servicing 13,000 families to 30,000 families—a huge increase—because the need is there.

Now, I hear a lot of things that are going to be taken away. What I don’t hear is how those inequities are going to be addressed. There are mountains of evidence, even in this House—evidence. In the 52nd Parliament, there was an inquiry by the Māori Affairs Committee into the inequities in health for Māori. The report was tabled in this House. It recommended by majority that a Māori health authority be established to address that. That was the evidence that was collected over that inquiry. I can point to the Simpson report—again, evidence; not just making up stuff.

I just feel it’s an absolute tragedy to go backwards after gaining so much. We will lose much more, it will be much harder to regain a Māori health authority, and the impact on Māori families will be huge. I want all of us to know that.

I line it up directly alongside the impact of removing smoke-free legislation. When I was the Speaker of the House, one of the proudest moments I had was presiding over the passage of that legislation. It will change lives if it’s left alone. By that, I mean we all know the evidence: smoking kills our people. There’s no way of dressing it up so it looks nice and feels nice. It doesn’t—it’s not nice. Too many of us have gone to hospitals and hospices to witness the impact of smoking. I can take you around the urupā at my home and I can point to the graves of those who have passed away from smoking. Removing the barrier that is going to prevent more of that is a horrendous thing to do. I would be ashamed to vote for the repeal of that legislation, and I think every single member in this House should actually ask themselves, “Do we want a future where the impact of such an activity as smoking should be legislated for or against? What is the best outcome for our people? What is the best that we can do for the future generations?”

I don’t know, but I think that if it is repealed, then the next time that we have a progressive Government that wants to make a difference about the number of kids that take up smoking and then eventually die from it, it will have to be a lot stronger in the legislation that we put up—like, let’s just ban the stuff. Kia ora.

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere): Talofa lava lau Fofoga Fetalai. Malo le soifua maua ma le lagi e mama. Mr Assistant Speaker O’Connor, congratulations on your new role. It’s really good to have you there today, and I’d also like to congratulate the rest of the presiding officers that will look after us in this House and in the debating chamber.

I’d also like to congratulate all the new members of the House, the members of Parliament that are new. It’s really good to see the diversity across the House and also to hear the different languages that we heard yesterday. I’d like to acknowledge two of my new members of caucus in the Labour Party, Cushla Tangaere-Manuel from Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, and our colleague Reuben Davidson, Christchurch East. Also, I’d like to acknowledge another brother from South Auckland, Fa’anānā Efeso Collins, and we have a history of working in previous roles.

This is my first contribution to the House in the 54th Parliament, and it’s a real pleasure to be the final speaker tonight. We heard today from this Government the Speech from the Throne and their 100-day plan, and as a member on this side of the House, I actually had real trepidation about the progressive initiatives from the last Government. On this side of the House, we heard the leader, the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins, speak about how we are going to be a strong Opposition pushing back against the changes that are coming up.

It is important that we hold this Government to account on the many announcements that have been made today, because New Zealand wants to move forward and not backwards. Where is the hope in vision for New Zealanders—particularly young New Zealanders—in all the repealing of many of the progressive legislation that the Labour Government has worked on since 2017? I want to acknowledge the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins for his words of wisdom that he shared today, and we will continue to hold the Government to account.

The Labour caucus will be building the machinery towards 2026, and we may be down but in no way are we out. We believe on this side of the House that the Government has the wrong priorities and that they are out of touch, and I will tell you why. There’s a couple of areas that I want to focus on, specific to my community—specific to where I come from in South Auckland. I really listened intently to the speech that was shared today, specifically around Pasifika, because we know that in a lot of the stats across the country, Pasifika feature really low in those stats, whether it comes to socio-economic environments, the health stats, or education. I have a very strong interest in Pasifika, and in the document that I read afterwards, there was very little mention of Pasifika.

It is important to hold the Government to account and that they understand Pasifika communities, because that’s the community that I represent. That is the community of Māngere in South Auckland, who put me in this role, and I’m very proud and feel very privileged to have this role.

The Pasifika communities are diverse. They’re actually the fastest-growing and youngest population of Aotearoa, and it’s a real shame that there is no member of the Government who is of Pasifika ethnicity, because on this side of the House, we have the Labour Pasifika caucus. I interpret today’s announcements as being that the Government has no commitment. It just does not understand that kaupapa. We heard that on the campaign trail, and if you were in Māngere and you were out there doorknocking and talking to the people of that community, they’re very worried, because when you don’t have that commitment, what next?

So the research and the evidence that has been provided in many of the Government agencies led by the Ministry for Pacific Peoples really tells it black and white: Pasifika are tuākana and tuāhine to Māori, and if Māori are worried, as we’ve seen very recently as of yesterday, then Pasifika need to be worried as well. So how do we hold the Government to account? I will be one of the members on this side of the House, asking those questions every time I get to speak.

As a second-term member of Parliament, I say that culture and language is our very being. That is what we represent. Our young people—Pasifika, Māori, ethnic—are really welcoming in terms of expressing themselves as young New Zealanders being able to speak their reo, speak their language, and being able to present their skills and talents in the education sector, in the arts and culture sector, and in the sporting sector. If you take Pasifika people out of all those sectors, it will be a very dire picture. Our young people are very proud of their identity, not just in metropolitan areas but also in the regions. They are growing fast.

So I just want to reflect really quickly in my time left. We saw yesterday that many members of Parliament, right across the House, when they did their oath or when they did their affirmation, either they spoke in English or they spoke in te reo, and then they spoke the language of their culture, and that was very special. That is a taonga. We need that reflection in the policies and legislation that we see across, because New Zealand is a growing, diverse population.

We shouldn’t be afraid of people expressing their cultural identity. That is something that we need to celebrate because when you have a member who understands where they come from, where their origins come from, that is something that is woven in their work, and as a member of Parliament, that is really important to my kaupapa.

Secondly, I just want to quickly acknowledge where I came from, which I mentioned earlier. I am here because the people of Māngere voted me to be in here. I am a very proud member of my local community, and I want to just do a shout-out to the Labour members but also to the community that voted me in with such a high percentage. I’ll just share with you that I just wanted to get over the line, but the percentage of voters that voted for the Labour Party and that voted for a Labour member to represent our local community is a very proud moment for me.

Very quickly—the Government needs to understand that there is a lot—a ton—of research and evidence that points to all different factors, be it social or be it economic, about the different populations in various communities. I want to remind members that it’s not just in the metropolitan areas but it’s actually right across Aotearoa.

The last point I want to just stress is the smoke-free legislation, and there have been a lot of members on this side of the House who have really expressed why we need to have that legislation continue and for it not to be rolled back. I am sure the Government can go back to its books to see where else it can take some revenue and leave the smoke-free legislation that is impending where it is.

A lot of young people were represented when we had a select committee hearing in Māngere. A lot of young people came and spoke to us as to why they want to see a progressive, smoke-free environment in their local community. They are tired of seeing many members of their families, and going to tangi—and just seeing them reduced with their health implications.

It will be a real travesty if that legislation goes in those repeals. It is something that the Government really needs to think about in terms of the representation from our communities specific to Māori, specific to Pacific, and specific to other parts of our communities. I do want to remind members that our young people really want to stress that having smoke-free environments are really important, especially in this day and age. We no longer want to lose many of our community, many of our family members. We want a smoke-free generation because it’s good for Aotearoa—it’s good for New Zealand.

Just as I finish up, Mr Speaker, I want to thank you for the opportunity, but I do want to stress that a smoke-free environment for Aotearoa as we move forward is something we need. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day, and can I congratulate members on the quality of debate tonight. It’s been excellent. The House is adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 9.59 p.m.